Red Right Hand

He's totally not the hero.


On a gathering storm
Comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat

With a red right hand.
—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Red Right Hand"

There are heroes and then there are villains. And the audience needs to know which is which, even before anyone gets to Kick the Dog or Pet the Dog or does anything involving the metaphorical dog. The hero, in order to be properly heroic, will be sickeningly handsome. The villain may be good-looking as well, but if they are, they will often have some type of physical defect or tip-off to their monstrous nature.

People sympathize less with others who have a physical defect.

Often, the defect will be vaguely Satanic. Fritz Lang was fond of these, as is the James Bond franchise. Kids' shows usually use slightly off-white eyes and teeth in their villains, presumably doubling as a less Anvilicious reminder for kids to brush. Supernatural critters often have specific forms of Glamour Failure inherent in their evil nature (think Fangs Are Evil and Femme Fatalons) which they often use to intimidate enemies and prey.

The phrase originally comes from Horace, a reference to Jupiter's wrath.

Many evil shapeshifters have one as well, a telltale sign that they aren't who they say they are. Of course, the scariest and most effective shapeshifters and puppeteer parasites are the ones that avoid this trope.

Since Evil Is Cool, a Red Right Hand may occasionally overlap with Fashionable Asymmetry.

Arguably a deliberate trip to the Uncanny Valley, using the minor defect to provoke a negative audience response. Bonus points if the villain also turns out to be a demon/alien/shapeshifter etc. masquerading as mentioned above.

In heraldry, a red right hand denotes either the province of Ulster or a baronet's status, although that probably has no direct connection to this trope. Nobody likes baronets, after all.

Not to be confused with a Red Right Ankle, nor with A Date with Rosie Palms. For the more blatant examples, see Obviously Evil. See also Came Back Wrong. Does not count if said hand is red because it's burning and telling you to defeat your enemies.

Related to Good Scars, Evil Scars, Scary Shiny Glasses and Hypnotic Eyes. If this appearance also comes with labored breathing or a cough, it's Vader Breath. If this appearance carries discolored veins, it's Tainted Veins. Of course, you should be more scared if you don't see the villain at all. A White-Haired Pretty Boy, the undeathly pale and an Evil Albino will typically fall under this category. Contrast The Grotesque, whose outer deformity hides an inner goodness, although Grotesques may occasionally be given a Red Right Hand, usually symbolic of their struggle against inner evil or madness. May be justified with depicting the villain as having become evil because of being bullied or mocked for the deformity in question (the best known example of this is probably Frankenstein's Monster). If it's a sign of demonic possession, see Mark of the Beast. Also Contrast with Hidden Evil.

Examples of Red Right Hand include:

Anime and Manga

  • Most if not all villains in Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin and its sequel have at least scars of some kind, but Kaibutsu from Weed takes the cake on this one. He's a former dog who has been turned into a monster by genetic engineering and as a result is a giant semi-dog like creature who has near-impervious skin. On the other hand, he has no skin at all on the left part of his upper body.
    • A close second would have to be Alam/Aramu who is an ordinary German Shepherd by breed but is missing both his ears as well as the skin on his muzzle, resulting in a rather terrifying look. The trope gets subverted when he has a Heel Face Turn, though.
  • Ralph Werec in Soukou no Strain is a creepy albino with a scar across his eye, which turns pink when he's angry. However, when he was sane, his skin was less pale, his hair was blond and more meticulously hair-gelled, and he didn't have the scar.
  • The Noah from D.Gray-man look normal in human form. In Noah form, they have a line of cross-shaped marks across their foreheads.
    • Oh ho, let's not talk about Noah awakened form.
    • While only Allen can see it, all Akuma are powered by a bound human soul protruding from their bodies.
    • Played with with Allen, whose left arm is twisted and red, with a big cross on the back of his hand and occasionally a will of its own. His parents abandoned him because it was so freaky. Not only is he a wonderful person, the scary arm is actually a holy weapon for destroying Akuma.
      • His other 'mark' is his funny-looking cursed right eye, which is a mark of sin but also one of his messianic attributes, since it causes him suffering and keeps him from ever forgetting there are innocent souls within the Akuma who he wants to save.
      • His Super-Powered Evil Side, on the other hand, has left no physical mark on him at all. Although his hair gets wavy when The Fourteenth comes out to play. Is wavy hair a deformity?
      • His skin gets darker as a noah. The artist may not have thought that part through all that well...
      • It becomes less unfortunate an implication when one reads that the darker skin is considered superior by design. Or it simply swings the other way. Technically this is correct however, darker skin providing more resistance to the sun. It's minute, but the fact is there.
  • Scar of Fullmetal Alchemist has a Tattooed Right Hand, which was a sign of his early evilness.
    • The Homunculi all have their Ouroboros tattoos, as well.
  • When not wearing his gloves, Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion has what looks like a fetus fused unto his hand. He has his reasons...
  • Haji of Blood+ is a subversion. Although he is the only chiropteran to have a permanent, visible indication of his inhuman nature - a literal red right hand with monstrous claws - he is unequivocally a good guy, and the only chevalier in the series who never fully transforms into a monstrous chiropteran combat form, instead limiting himself to transforming his other hand and growing batlike wings.
  • In Hellsing the evil Nazi Doctor known only as the Doctor has a sixth finger. However, it's not very noticeable unless you pay much attention to his hands.
    • Played with when Seras gains her shadow-arm.
    • Zorin Blitz's right eye is almost completely black and in a permanent squint, while the other is bright green and is able to move around normally.
    • The Anime has Incognito, a cone-headed vampire with a massive left eye.
  • The left hand of the titular character of Hell Teacher Nube is actually a sealed Oni, Baki, which replaces the left hand he lost fighting said Oni. Most of the time, it looks like his regular hand wearing a black leather glove; when his students are threatened by spectral horrors, he will reveal it as a monstrously large, dark red hand with visible tendons and black claws. However, he constantly seeks a way to seal it permanently, as only the influence of his childhood teacher prevents the Oni from taking over his entire body.
  • Most of the villains in Berserk have something of the sort, even if they don't start as demons. Father Mozgus, for example, has an unnaturally flat face (revealed to be the result of him slamming his face into the ground two hundred times every day during his daily prayers). Guts, having a touch of Genre Savvy, sometimes marks his enemies by looking for this sort of trait.
    • The Godhand, the Big Bad Duumvirate of Berserk, is a very literal case. The podium that they present themselves to would-be sacrifices from is a red right hand. Genius, you say?
  • Towa Kannagi from Mermaid Saga is a White-Haired Pretty Girl that always keeps her right hand heavily bandaged. What's under there isn't so much a hand as it is a mottled, pulsating claw she received after drinking mermaid's blood. The constant physical pain it leaves her in (not to mention her forced isolation because of it) has left her more than a little deranged.
  • Inuyasha has Naraku, whose incarnations are marked by a spider-shaped scar on the back.
  • Red Left Hand in the case of Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
  • Ryo Takatsuki of Project ARMS has a literal Red Right Hand, which is a nanite-based AI prosthetic known as the Jabberwock. Like that's gonna work out well. When the hand starts spreading over the rest of the body, run...now.
  • In Darker than Black, it's fairly obvious that we shouldn't trust Wei or Maki, even though a big deal isn't made about it. More explicitly, the Red Eyes, Take Warning effect that accompanies a contractor using their powers is definitely a bad sign. More literally, the leader of The Syndicate turns out to have two prosthetic hands.
    • In case the red glowing eyes of a contractor weren't enough of a hint that it's about to hit the fan, they also emit synchrotron radiation when activating their powers. This is not something that normal humans are supposed to do.
  • A villain with a literal Red Right Hand is Devimon, the first Big Bad of Digimon Adventure. It's far from the only characteristic that identifies him as evil.
  • You Higuri's manga Cantarella features a possessed Cesare Borgia with a color-vague demonic arm, which eventually had to be lopped off to stop him from becoming an avatar of Satan. Mind you, while the explanation is textbook Red Right Hand, the arm subplot seems to have been included entirely so that Cesare's faithful servant had an excuse to tie him to the bed.
  • Some of the less thinky Detective Conan episodes use this trope to show who amongst them is the killer, like the sinister looking head librarian who exudes 'evil boss' vibes from the moment he appears on-screen in the book drug trafficking episode.
  • In part Three of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, J. Geil and his mother, Enya Geil, figure as fairly prominent villains. Both of them are distinct with having two right hands.
  • Sora, in an arc of Naruto Shippuden, has a demonic-looking right hand. He wasn't necessarily evil, just a Jerkass who also happens to be a vessel for some of the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra that has been cultivated and injected into Sora by the real villain.
    • When Naruto tries to defeat the Kyuubi on his own, he has his former inner hatred shoved into his face, and then Naruto's left eye transforms into that of his inner evil counterpart. On the outside, he develops a 2-tailed fox cloak on the right side and a 2-tailed V2 cloak on his left.[1]


Comic Books

  • Satan as portrayed in The Sandman had an aura of Grecian beauty, but his hair kept forming little horn-shapes. His resemblance to David Bowie upped the creepiness level yet further. Also the nightmare called The Corinthian, who hid his eyes opaque sunglasses because instead of eyes he had two tiny mouths with actual teeth, which he used to eat the eyes of his victims to learn anything they had seen.
    • The Corinthian gains normal eyes after he was temporarily made mortal and developed compassion for others.
  • One The Legend of Zelda comic book has Link's hand turn red when he takes the Triforce of Power. Sure enough, he soon discovers that With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
  • In the Dick Tracy strips, the most famous enemies are the grotesque ones and their hideousness reflects the fact that almost all of them are unrepentant murderous scum.
  • Herr Starr, the Big Bad of Garth Ennis' Preacher (Comic Book), starts with a nonfunctional right eye and five scar lines around it. As the series goes on, the "redness" only increases: He gets his left ear shot off, a nasty (and phallic) line is cut into his scalp, he loses his right lower leg to cannibals and his penis gets bitten off by a dog. Crosses the Line Twice when he says "My cock is in the bitch's mouth. And not in a good way."
  • Batman's rogue's gallery has three big examples of this. The Joker is often depicted with a permanent freaky grin on his chalk white face, The Penguin has a distinctly birdlike appearance (sometimes including flippers for hands), and Two-Face has half of his face horribly scarred by acid.
    • Another example is Killer Croc, and he becomes more and more of an example as time goes on. When he first appeared, he looked like a normal person, save for green scales covering his body. The official story is that he has a bizarre version of atavism, which gets worse as time goes on, making him look more and more reptilian.
  • The French comic book Le vagabond des limbes once featured this - Axle, the hero, spends most of the series looking for Chimeer, a mysterious woman that is obviously in love with him, and upon failure to have God himself locate her Axle puts him to the task of creating her. The resulting bloody pile of randomly fused red flesh seems to be the source of the hero's truly memorable horrified stare... but no! There is the unmistakable arm and voice of Chimeer coming out of it, and her arm is the only thing not red and horrible! This is obviously a subversion as the newly created "Chimeer" is genuinely in love with Axle and only means well...
  • Superman: Yes, Lex Luthor, yes, mechanical right hand. Ironically enough, from his kryponite ring (of hate). Also, Bald of Evil.
  • In X-Men Reverend Stryker finds the remains of a Sentinel from the future and uses the robot's glowing PINK hand as a glove and an apparent weapon. He dies before he gets to use it. Just goes to show you need to get a real red hand. No one respects you with a pink one.
  • DC Comics' Heroic Fantasy hero Claw the Unconquered had a literal demonic hand, hidden under a red glove to reduced its evil influence on him.
  • Dr. Doom, whose face is so horribly scarred that it's never shown.
    • Almost averted. According to Reed Richards, the scar on his face was only slightly superficial. But Von Doom's ego was so great, that even the slightest imperfection was enough to vow vengeance on Richards.
      • Later, upon receiving his armor from Tibetan mystics, he didn't even wait until the metal had cooled before trying on the mask, which is the true cause of his now hideous deformity.
  • Ghost Rider, the titular character has a skull on fire for a head to show what a Badass he is.
  • Conan's ally Fafnir Hellhand twice lost his arm, and twice had it replaced with a demonic substitute that had a will of its own.
  • Watchmen: Former stage magician turned criminal mastermind Moloch has pointed, satanic ears. He resembles Orlok.
  • Hideaki's right hand man from Silent Dragon has a pair of cybernetic arms that are designed to look reptilian and dragonlike.
  • The pirate-turned-Imperial officer who caused the deaths of Wedge Antilles' parents, Loka Hask, had a Corellian limpet, basically a sort of eyeless octopus, latch on to his face when Wedge blew up his ship. He never has it removed, and it just sits there covering one eye and ear, appendages going into his nose and mouth. Even if it had devoured a good amount of his face, you'd think he'd just have it cybernetically rebuilt, but no. No one ever mentions it. It's just there as a visual aid to his Complete Monster status.
    • Delak Krennel, who later featured in the novels, had a literal prosthetic right hand that glowed red. Card-Carrying Villain to the core.
    • Captain Semtin has obvious, creepy prosthetic eyeballs and mechanical thingies in his ears. He abandons some of his soldiers on Ryloth, which has local rules that offworlders with no influence or transportation get sold into slavery. The soldiers promptly switch sides.
  • A prominent character in the Hellblazer series (particularly in the trade paperback, "The Red Right Hand") develops a literal red right hand (occasionally drawn as his left hand) after murdering his girlfriend and recklessly causing the terrible demise of several innocent people, including children, infants, and young parents. The hand becomes redder and darker in accordance with changes to his character as the story progresses.
  • New Mutants member Josh Foley aka Elixir was a golden skinned mutant whose Omega-level power over biology granted him incredible healing abilities. When he used those powers to kill a villain who orchestrated his girlfriend's assassination his skin turned black and he entered a catatonic state. He got better eventually, but ever since his golden skin is marred by a splotch of darkness that keeps moving around his body—a permanent reminder that he killed someone and that he can kill again.
  • In Planetary, John Stone has a literal red right hand, the "Devil's Paw," hidden under artificial skin, with which he battles Jakita Wagner. "I hacked it off of someone tougher than you twenty years ago. It had killed 180 people before I laid eyes on it."
    • Likely a reference to Nick Fury, whom Stone is an Expy; Fury's archfoe Strucker used a red mechanical gauntlet called the Satan Claw, and after beating Strucker and capturing it Nick has sometimes used it as well. The Satan Claw, then, is another example of the trope.
  • In Cross Gen comic Sojourn, Mordath's evil nature warped the Sigil he recieved, so instead of a red-and-yellow yin-yang symbol it was entirely red. Recieving the Sigil in the first place brought him Back from the Dead, so he's also a zombie.
  • Justified example in Creature Tech. Jameson exchanged his hand for that of the demon Hellcat so he could gain demonic powers.


Film

  • Many James Bond villains:
    • Dr. No has mechanical hands.
    • Karl Stromberg has webbing between the fingers.
    • Jaws has metal teeth.
    • Scaramanga's superfluous third nipple.
    • Le Chiffre's eye weeps blood.
    • One of the most literal is Red Grant of the book version of From Russia with Love whose nickname besides referencing his allegiance to the Soviet Union, refers to his unpleasantly red skin tone which indicates the evil behind otherwise handsome features.
    • Zao from Die Another Day has diamonds seared to his face.
  • Azrael, the secondary villain in Dogma, has little tiny horns. Though this is less a physical defect and more that he's literally a demon.
  • In the movie Mystery Men, Casanova Frankenstein has creepy fingernails.
  • The pimp in Taxi Driver has long fingernails, apparently for cocaine.
  • Kevin the cannibal, from Sin City, had claws. And then there's Yellow Bastard, which should be pretty self-explanatory.
  • The six-fingered Count Rugen from The Princess Bride, as well as his albino assistant. In the book, though not the film, Vizzini is a hunchback as well.
  • Doctor Strangelove: His right hand tried to strangle him and would compulsively do a Nazi salute. Unusually for this trope this is played entirely for comedy.
  • Deformed superhero Darkman restores his left hand before his right, and spends a few scenes with the right completely devoid of skin. Shortly thereafter, he has something of a nervous breakdown.
  • Torgo's knees in Manos: The Hands of Fate. They were supposed to make him look like a Satyr, which is more often lost on people who have only watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, which frequently cuts off his "hooves."
  • In the X-Men movies, Mystique can look like anybody she feels like, but she can't cover up the scars Wolverine gave her in the first movie. Also, her eyes occasionally flash yellow. This is contrary to the comics, where she has total control over her physical appearance, but Wolverine can still identify her because she can't mask her scent.
  • In John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995), readers of the books of hack horror writer Sutter Cane go insane and develop strange physical afflictions, like a second pupil in their iris, or bleeding from their eyes. And berserk homicidal tendencies, of course. Over the time, these minor affliction develop into serious bodily mutations- including tentacles, distended jaws, and reversible joints.
  • The main villain of the third Death Note live action Alternate Continuity film, L: Change the World, has a cloudy blue left eye.
  • 2007's Beowulf gives Grendel's Mother the power to assume the pleasing form of Angelina Jolie, but she has a prehensile and whiplike ponytail, as well as humorously high-heeled feet.
  • Used with great gusto in 300, in which Sparta's Corrupt Church, the traitor Ephialtes, and much of the Persian empire are monstrous or deformed people. This is generally explained as the result of an Unreliable Narrator who is delivering propoganda to Spartan soldiers before a battle.
  • Darryl Revok, the villain of Scanners, has a very noticeable scar on his forehead, from where he once drilled a hole in his skull to let the voices out.
  • The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West and her iconic green skin.
  • Dr. Rotwang from Metropolis has a mechanical right hand.
  • In Nosferatu, Count Orlok Looks Like Orlok.
  • In Revenge of the Fallen, the resurrected Megatron has an enormous right arm—and a pitifully gimpy-looking left one. The enormous right arm is later torn off.
  • In Coraline, everyone in the Other World appears to be more attractive than their real-world counterparts with the exception of those goddamn button eyes.
  • The elite Nazi mooks in Order of the Black Eagle have decidedly non-Nazi traits, such as flaming red hair worthy of a Celtic warrior of legend, or being as bloated as a sack of potatoes. The only elite mook who actually looks like a bonafide Nazi Aryan superman is, of course, the traitor. The amazing thing about this movie is that its made in the late 70's prior to any FPS game being released, otherwise the elites being markedly different would definitely have counted as a Shout-Out to FPSes like Wolfenstein, so it was simply a stylistic choice to remind you who the officers were.
  • Enter the Dragon has two examples: Mr. Han is missing one hand and likes to replace it with various killer prosthetics (such as a literal iron hand or the claws that inflicted the iconic scratch mark injuries on Bruce Lee's character). His Dragon, O'Hara, also has a jagged scar on his face that we soon discover was inflicted by Lee's father in an attempt to stop O'Hara from raping Lee's sister.
  • Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan features Khan, the genetically augmented superman makes a spectacle of removing a glove from his left hand, but never removes the right glove throughout the rest of the movie.
  • Kinda in Inglourious Basterds with Aldo marking Nazi soldiers with a Swastika on their foreheads so that everyone will know what they did even when they are out of uniform.
  • In the early 90's Captain America (comics) film, Red Skull has a prosthetic hand, but had underwent plastic surgery to get red of his skull-face.
  • In Surf Ninjas Colonel Chi has a mechanical arm, and this is used to make jokes obviously referencing Dr. Strangelove.
  • In Star Wars films, people's eyes turn yellow when they become Sith. Emperor Palpatine also became further deformed when Mace Windu used the energy of his lightsaber to deflect his own force lightning attack back onto him.
  • Gremlins and its sequel feature this by way of showing some pre-Gremlin mogwai having extra tufts of hair: Stripe and Mohawk.
  • In The Dark Knight Saga, the Joker has mouth-scars in the shape of a smile.
  • Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass has an unusual scar on his forehead that looks like a cross between a spiral and parentheses. This is never explained.
  • In Flash Gordon, Ming's Dragon Klytus wears a golden gauntlet on his right arm, making it all the more noticeable that it seems to be paralysed, possibly in a Shout-Out to Richard III.
  • In Mad Max, each member of the biker gang, including the Nightrider at the beginning, has a prominent facial mole.
  • In Dune, Baron Harkonnen has diseases injected into his face for some reason, which gives him giant facial pustules. This was invented for the film, though both book and film versions are also morbidly obese.
  • In Contagion, Krumweide (played by Jude Law) is given crooked teeth to foreshadow the revelation that he's a crook and a liar. His name also helps.
  • In Cube Zero, Jax has a cybernetic implant fitted where his right eye used to be. It's never shown or explained what abilities it gives him; it's only ever used to identify him as a villain.
  • The Bug Alien in Men in Black disguises himself and attempts to pass as a normal human. But while his disguise is good enough that Muggles would never suspect he's not human, he certainly comes across as being quite abnormal. Not only are many of his behaviors creepy, not only does he walk with a lopsided, unnatural gait; but he also has hundreds of cockroaches living inside his clothes and vehicle, and every minute or so a cockroach will crawl out, to the disgust of any human who sees it. It's rather reminiscent of The Worm That Walks, although it's not that trope (when his true form is finally revealed, he's a giant bug, and the smaller cockroaches are stated to be his immature brood).
  • An inversion of the trope was used by the Mole character in Austin Powers in Goldfinger. His main characteristic was a large mole on his face. Despite this, he's actually one of the good guys (a double agent that was officially serving Dr. Evil's organization, but his actual employers were Austin Power's organization), and was largely responsible for Mini-Me's defection.
  • In the orginial Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Hitchhiker has a large and prominent birth mark on the side of his face.


Literature

  • Precision, from Hells Children by Andrew Boland, literally has a red right hand. He also has a catastrophic plan.
  • In the Silmarillion, Morgoth has incurable burns on his hands from handling the Silmarils. And he was also eventually cursed with a permanent ugly appearance.
  • The main villain of Derek Landy's novel Skulduggery Pleasant literally has a red right hand—that is to say, there is no skin on that hand, only muscle and bone. He can use this to channel a torturous killing curse.
    • The second and third books have Billy-Rae Sanguine, who has two black holes where his eyes should be. Creates a particular dissonance, since he is otherwise a fun-natured (albeit Ax Crazy) Texan. Also the Faceless Ones cause the faces of those they possess to melt in a manner which destroys all of their features, the source of their name.
  • In the books, Hannibal Lecter had six fingers on his left hand (later in the series, he had the extra finger removed because it made him recognizable) and maroon eyes. Creepy.
  • The title character of Philip K. Dick novel The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch has horizontally slitted metal eyes, metal teeth and a mechanical right arm: all physical signs of his metaphysical transformation into something very other than human.
  • In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, the villain Mr. Teatime is described as "quite pretty," except for his eyes: one is blank glass, while the other (considered far more disturbing) is yellow-white with a pinpoint pupil.
    • In other Discworld novels it is stated that the Gods can look like anything they choose, but that the one feature they cannot disguise is their eyes.
      • Not just gods, it applies to transformed mortal creatures too. In Witches Abroad, Greebo retains cat's eyes in human form, and the Duc has to wear dark glasses because he's still got the eyes of a frog.
    • And the Cunning Man from I Shall Wear Midnight has no eyes - not blank skin or empty sockets, you just can see what's behind his head through the spots where his eyes should be.
  • T. H. White does this with Mordred in The Once and Future King, and explicitly makes a comparison to Richard III.
  • Saint Dane's chilling ice-blue eyes in The Pendragon Adventure.
  • Harry Potter series:
    • With a snake-like face that nosedives into the deepest, darkest bowels of the Uncanny Valley, you can tell at first sight that Voldemort is evil.
    • Dumbledore's left hand is blackened and scarred after trying to remove one of Voldemort's curses. But Dumbledore is decidedly on the good side. It does represent his moral failings, though.
    • Peter Pettigrew, on the other hand sacrifices his hand to reconstitute Voldemort. He gets a beautiful silver hand in payment. But the hand is loyal to Voldemort only and ends up strangling Pettigrew to death when the latter hesitates--yes, only hesitates--out of a debt to Harry.
  • Similarly Harry Dresden in the Dresden Files has one of his hands blackened and useless for several books. There was one area of his hand that wasn't burnt. And it was shaped like Lasciel's seal.
  • Jander Sunstar, vampire hero of Ravenloft novel Vampire of the Mists, got permanently scarred (in some sources up to the bone) hand after wielding the holy artifact of Lathander against another vampire, Strahd Von Zarovich.
  • Lord Foul's eyes look like "yellow, carious fangs", betraying his true nature. Significant in that his usual form is all but concealed but for those eyes, and when revealed but for them he looks pretty noble.
  • Keys to the Kingdom series:
    • Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, and Drowned Wednesday have all been corrupted and are significantly diminished.
    • And then there's the Skinless Boy, which isn't an entirely accurate name, but is close enough. It has a red (okay then, ochre), skeletal half.
    • Lord Sunday's eyes are entirely dark.
  • Cinder of the Chandrian in The Name of the Wind is a White-Haired Pretty Boy with solid black eyes. He also has a nightmare-inducing grin.
  • Outcast of Redwall features Swartt Sixclaw and his son Veil, who each have an extra digit on their left paw. Veil also ends up with a literal Red Right Hand, and red left hand too. He's tricked into staining them with beetroot juice in a trap set to find a poisoner which plays on his temporary Out, Damned Spot! mentality.
    • Quite a few Redwall villains have this.
    • Cluny the Scourge has an abnormally long tail which he uses as a weapon
    • Tsarmina is a cat, which is unusual for a character in Mossflower.
    • Slagar the Cruel had half his face ripped off by Asmodeus back in the first book.
    • Feragho the Assassin has those charming blue eyes.
    • Urgan Nagru is a silver fox.
    • Swartt Sixclaw surprisingly has six claws.
    • Ublaz is a hypnotist, apart from being the only pine marten in the book (and one of the three in the series).
    • Damug Warfang is twice the size of a normal rat.
    • Mokkan (and the other Marlfoxes) are all pure white.
    • Ungatt Trunn is the only cat in the book.
    • Princess Kurda is an albino.
    • Raga Bol has a Hook Hand from his encounter with Lonna Bowstripe.
    • Gulo the Savage is a wolverine.
    • Riggu Felis also has half his face ripped off, by Pandion.
    • Vizka Longtooth is a golden fox with a Meaningful Name.
    • Korvus Skurr doesn't really have a Red Right Hand but is still notable as the only bird Big Bad.
    • Vilaya is a sable, as is Zwilt the Shade.
    • Razzid Wearat is a weasel/rat hybrid.
  • In Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu, a young and horrifically injured girl falls victim to this trope: a withered and nigh-useless hand, missing one eye, besides the fact she's traveling with a foreigner who brought magic items from a distant land while in the company of great wizards.
  • The titular character of the Vampire Hunter D series has a parasitic creature that takes the form of an obnoxious, ugly little face in the palm of his (left) hand. The symbolism is of a hero with inner demons.
  • In J. Michael Reaves' fantasy novel The Shattered World, the evil sorceress Ardatha has made a pact with a demon, which transformed her left hand into the likeness of a demon's hand, with claws and black scaly skin. The hand is the source of great magical power, supplementing Ardatha's own considerable power, and can glow with unholy fire. It's a source of both pride and terror for Ardatha.
  • Sword of Truth
    • Emperor Jagang is pretty thuggish looking anyway, but it is highly unusual and disturbing eyes which mark him out as something special and evil. They are totally gray, with no irises (though you can still tell when he is focusing on you apparently), with murky shapes moving across the gray.
    • Darken Rahl was also described as incredibly handsome except for his side, which was horribly burned. You can also tell by the way his name is Darken.
  • In the Deltora Quest series, the shapeshifting Ols must always travel in pairs, and have a mark on their body that they can't get rid of. And when you get to suspecting every pair of twins (and twin-like sorts) they come across... well, maybe you don't stop to think that the pairs don't have to look anything like each other.
  • A bogeyman-ish torturer in the Seventh Tower series has half of his body replaced by a living mass of shadow. Of course, this is thanks to his boss removing that half of his body in the first place to ensure his loyalty, but that's hardly a burning issue to the people whose minds he's wrecking through their nightmares.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Sandor Clegane is first introduced as a thug, with half of his face grotesquely burned. This seems to be a Red Right Hand until further characterization shows how conflicted Sandor is, mostly because of his disfigurement.
    • Tyrion Lannister (loosely based on Richard III) in the minds of the people of Westeros. While Tyrion isn't a villain (yet), the fact that he's a particularly ugly dwarf causes just about everyone to view him as "the twisted little monkey demon" and the evil power behind the throne.
    • Victarion Greyjoy has a literal example with his burned arm. After Moqorro the Red Priest healed his festering hand wound, the relevant arm became permanently burned to the elbow, but functions perfectly well and is implied to now be super-strong, at one point doing a Neck Lift on some poor bastard with enough force to rip the man's throat out. Oh, Victarion also got real fond of human sacrifice after this.
  • Crowley in Good Omens is only moderately evil, but he does have yellow snake eyes (hence the Cool Shades). Since he gets given human bodies to blend in on Earth, the implication is that he/Hell can't change these. He also has snake-skin boots that are implied to not be boots and he can "do interesting things with his tongue", both of which are suggestive of his origin as the Snake which tempted Eve.
  • The book version of The Phantom of the Opera has Erik's deformity cover the whole face, in that it makes his head look like a skull.
  • Inverted in the Warhammer 40,000 novel Grey Knights, where the Allking of Sophano Secundus and his retainers appear normal at first, but only reveal their Chaos mutations once the truth is guessed at.
  • In The Magicians, The Beast (AKA Martin Chatwin) appears completely human except for three or four extra fingers on each hand.
  • Dan Brown seems to be fond of this, as he has a Deaf Dragon in Digital Fortress, and an Evil Albino Dragon and Evil Cripple Man Behind the Man in The Da Vinci Code.
    • And the Big Bad in The Lost Symbol has tattoos over literally his whole body. When he goes incognito, any skin not covered by clothes has to be heavily coated in makeup to hide them.
  • The race of trolls in Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine appear mostly human, save that each sports a Red Right Hand or two (clawed hand, cloven hoof, fox muzzle, etc). These may be a legacy of their origins, as some claim they were once humans who became contaminated by their overuse of dark magic.
  • In a Pirates of the Caribbean prequel novel, there is a pirate named "Left-Foot Louie", who literally has two left feet.
  • Several examples in Terry Brooks' works. Rimmer Dall of The Heritage of Shannara keeps his left hand covered in a glove. Mr. Meeks of Magic Kingdom of Landover is missing an arm. The demon from Running With The Demon looks perfectly normal, except for his curiously pale, washed blue eyes.
  • Dimitri, the protagonist of a Brazilian novel released in English as Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist has... guess it. (and since he's really clumsy, they sometimes screw him over: he almost starts World War I, but jams both index fingers in the trigger, allowing for Gavrilo Princip to shoot... and the original title is The Man Who Killed Getúlio Vargas because the extra index "suicides" a Brazilian dictator)
  • In the Revelation Space novels, people infected with the Haussman Virus spontaneously bleed from their right hands in stigmatic imitation of the crucifixion of Sky Haussman, which helps in tracking a certain character through multiple memory gambits and deep covers
  • Charles Dickens often used this trope. Uriah Heep in David Copperfield is an Evil Redhead with maroon eyes, bald eyebrows, sweaty palms and a squirmy way of moving; Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby only has one eye; Mr. Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop has a head too big for his body.
  • In The Lord of the Rings, about the only physical description given of Sauron's current form is that he is missing a finger on "the Black Hand." (It was chopped off after one of his previous defeats.)
  • Most of the Big Bads in the Alex Rider series don't exhibit this, yet it is quite common with Dragons.
    • Mr Grin has a Glasgow Grin.
    • Mrs Stellenbosch is a particularly ugly and buff woman.
    • Conrad had half his body replaced with metal due to a bomb exploding while he was carrying it.
    • Yassen Gregorovitch has a scar on his neck from when Ian Rider saved him from a black widow, conveniently revealed in the fourth book where he became The Dragon.
    • Nile is a black man with a disease that puts visible white blotches on his skin.
    • Kaspar has his head tattooed to resemble a globe.
    • Ash has a scar on his abdomen area, which he received after being shot by Scorpia agents
    • Erik Gunter has a disfigured body shape and a limp because of war injuries and Julius Grief is physically identical to Alex.


Live Action TV

  • On The League of Gentlemen, Serial Killer brother-sister couple Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup both have piggy noses. There's also Monster Clown Papa Lazarou's blackface makeup, which is later hinted to be his actual skin color.
  • On Supernatural, both demonic possessions and shapeshifters are indistinguishable from the real person except for occasionally discolored eyes.
  • In Dollhouse Topher's slightly less moral counterpart Bennett Halverson has a red left hand, her dead arm kept in a sling.
  • Rankel, Ming's vizier in the 2007 remake of Flash Gordon, wears a long robe that obscures his legs, and does not walk, but rather glides along the floor. Additionally, and less subtly, he has a glass plate on his head which exposes his brain. In a twist from the usual, though, it seems he's going for a Heel Face Turn, or has been plotting like The Starscream
  • Doctor Who: Davros has a mechanical right hand, after the original was shot off. He can fire energy bolts from it. Not to mention his Eyeless Face, Bald of Evil, and forehead sensor thing.
    • Lucius Petrus Dextrus from the same series has a, er, petrus dextrus[2] of his own, but he's Genre Savvy enough to keep it hidden under a cloak. The Sybilline sisters are well on their way, too, but their symptoms are less extreme, more easily concealed - appropriate, as they're equally a little more neutral than Lucius.
  • Inverted in Lost, where Locke gets a Dr. No-like scar across his eye from the plane crash and was a paraplegic. He's the good guy until the last season.
  • Kenny on Kenny vs. Spenny is missing the tip of one of his fingers. Kenny often employs "evil" tactics like irradiating Spenny so he can't produce semen.
  • In Smallville's various Bad Futures, President Evil and Man in White Lex Luthor is typically shown with one black-gloved hand. The effect is...unsettling.
  • Ankh from Kamen Rider OOO. To an extent.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vengeance demons and Dark Willow are both explicitly described as "veiny". When Warren acquires a talisman of super-strength, Andrew is disappointed that it didn't make him "all huge and veiny".
  • In The Invaders (1967–68), the aliens (at first) can't bend their pinkies.


Music

  • As quoted above, the song "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is about such a character. This character goes around doing good deeds, giving people their hearts' desires, but only as the prelude to some unspecified plot. (The song was inspired by Milton's use of the phrase...which was, despite the vaguely Satanic implications of much of the uses of the trope and indeed the song itself, referencing God.)

You're one microscopic cog
 In his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed
By his red right hand

  • Lupe Fiasco's concept characters all have these. "The Cool" has a skeletal right hand, "The Streets" has glowing dollar signs for pupils, and "The Game" has dice for eyes and breathes out crack smoke.
  • The music video for Rammstein's song "Ich Will" has this - the band members perform a robbery, and most of them have a physical defect to show them to be the bad dudes - club foot, plastic hand, blind in one eye.
  • Laura Branigan's "Self Control" has a character with two red hands who tempts and seduces the singer.
  • The Lemon Demon song "Atomic Copper Claw" is supposedly about a person who's seemingly friendly, but is actually planning to murder the singer with the eponymous instrument. However, there's a fairly strong implication that the singer's just paranoid.
  • Used word for word in the opening stanza of "The Writhing South," by Say Anything. Not that the narrator's intentions are dubious in the first place, though.


Mythology

  • In old English myth, the barghest—a monstrous, ghostly black dog—could look like anything, but it would always have glowing red eyes.
  • In many old English folktales, the devil could take any form, but couldn't disguise his clubfoot/cloven hoof. Perhaps some sort of high heeled shoes?
  • The original ghouls of Arabic lore had a similar deal, only they couldn't hide their cloven hooves.
  • The somewhat less evil (though still dangerous) hulder of Norse legends looked like ordinary people, except that they had little cow tails. If they became "good," their tails would drop off (some versions also gave them a hollow back).
  • Similarly, Kitsune can't hide their tails, or in some variations, their tiny paws instead of feet. In some Chinese versions of the same concept, this inspired foot binding.
    • It was also claimed that Kitsune couldn't pronounce 'moshi-moshi' when speaking, even in human form. This led to the tradition of using 'Moshi-moshi' as a greeting in Japan.
  • In folklore of India the Rakshasa, tiger-headed demons, can masquerade as humans, but their hands always point the wrong way (palms up instead of down, and their thumbs point outwards).
  • In Eastern European folklore, the werewolf will have fur growing beneath his skin in his human form, fur that becomes visible when you cut him. Something Van Helsing got right, shockingly.
  • In Jewish folklore as well as some Eastern European traditions demons and vampires look like normal people except that they have bird's feet.
  • Several types of malevolent spirits in English and Celtic mythology looked like horses or cows with hooves pointing backwards. Indian folktales had female spirits with the same defect.


Tabletop Games

  • In Vampire: The Masquerade, the Tzimisce do this to themselves using their unique ability of "Vicissitude", AKA "Fleshcrafting".
    • Also in Vampire, vampires from the Gangrel clan gained a physical animal traits each time they raged. A kind Storyteller would make you into this trope while a more vindictive one would have you sprout a tail or a frikkin' beak.
    • In the same universe's Demon: The Fallen, the character Harvey Ciujilo (a.k.a. the demon Hasmed, a recurring character in the setting) has one normal eye and one eye full of blood and pus, referred to as his "Evil Eye".
    • In the New World of Darkness, Freaks and Mutants are types of slashers, though some may lean towards The Grotesque.
    • The version of dhampyrs presented in the NWOD book Mirrors are all marked by a minor supernatural deformity.
  • Marks of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 start as this, and may become full-on One-Winged Angel.
    • Although the Soul Drinkers are good guys, many of them still have mutations from a close call with Chaos, providing a constant reminder of how close they came to damnation. Luckily, they have uses for them - Sarpedon stabs people with his eight spider-like legs, for example.
    • In both Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 there is a deity called Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God. In 40K, the Avatar model is usually shown with a blood-dripping left hand.
    • His hand is constantly bleeding with the blood of one of the greatest Eldar Heros who he murdered and was cursed for by the way.
  • Ubiquitous in the Ravenloft setting, where committing an evil deed and then blowing a Powers check wins you a Red Right Hand of your very own.
  • The Dungeons & Dragons demon lord Graz'zt is described as having shiny black skin, yellow eyes, fangs, six fingers on each hand, and six horns on his head. According to his entry on The Other Wiki, "These fiendish traits are apparent, regardless of whatever form Graz'zt chooses to take."
    • Members of the binder class in 3.5 gain power by channeling vestiges, and can end up with Red Right Hand traits if they botch the checks involved.
  • In the Lankhmar supplement for 1st and 2nd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, black wizards are afflicted by disgusting deformities each time they level up.
  • In Nobilis, Lord Entropy (a.k.a. The Darkest Lord, Imperator of Scorn, Desecration, and Destruction, and the leader of Earth's Imperators in the War for the survival of Creation) has hands that constantly drip blood due to the sheer evil of the deeds he has done in the service of Creation.


Theater

  • Older Than Steam: One of the paragons of this is Shakespeare's Richard III, who has a whole set: hunchbacked, with an atrophied arm, one leg shorter than the other, and born with all his teeth already in place. The real Richard III did not have these deformities.
  • Almost literal in Friedrich Durenmatt's The Visit, in which Claire, the villain, has an artificial hand and foot to symbolize her inhumanity.
  • Averted with green-skinned misunderstood political activist Elphaba from Wicked. Of course, everyone thinks she's evil, even giving her the name Wicked Witch of the West, since it's a retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Played straight with her Yandere sister, wheelchair-bound Nessarose.


Toys

  • Bionicle has Takanuva gain one when his light is drained, his right hand having shadow powers. The mix of light and shadow in him during that period creates a lot of conflict inside.


Video Games

  • The Prince/The Tall Man of Chzo Mythos has no skin on either of his hands.
  • In Baldur's Gate II, the player must take a side in a mob war between a regular crime syndicate and a creepy lady with red eyes and a soft voice. Simply to drive the point home, she will only agree to meet you at the local graveyard, at midnight. Also, she has fangs. And not the nice kind.
  • In an expansion to Neverwinter Nights the player can opt for the Pale Master prestige class; one of the features of this class is that after a number of levels, the player's right arm is replaced with a skeletal arm which can kill foes with just a touch.
  • Mass Effect has Saren, who looks just like a normal Turian except for Geth parts grafted onto his armor and his lack of clan markings.
    • The Illusive Man has strange blue markings in his eyeballs much like Saren's hinting at a shared history of coming into contact with Reaper technology.
    • Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3 doesn't have proper eyes, just a strange cybernetic strip that runs across his face at eye-level.
  • Nero from Devil May Cry 4 has the Devil Bringer, a red-and-blue-with-glow demonic right forearm that can project a spectral hand for powerful attacks. He attempts to hide it from others at first, but it is eventually known to all. It proves instrumental in defeating the villains and his love interest learns to look past the deformity and accept him for who he is.
  • Trias the angel from Planescape: Torment looks precisely as a being of pure good should... But his wings have burned away and been left a charred, skeletal frame.
  • Chiaki in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne gets one after she undergoes her Evil Makeover. See it here.
  • Morphs in Fire Emblem 7 look completely human, except their pale skin and golden eyes give them away. One such character even earnestly believed herself to be human, but her appearance gave her away. Then there's Nergal's scar and exposed eye.
  • Sho Minamimoto has a black left hand and in his second incarnation, two black arms due to his being half Taboo Noise in The World Ends With You.
  • King of Fighters features Rugal Bernstein, who gets a cybernetic hand and eye.
  • Wolfgang Krauser also bore an X-shaped scar on the top of his head. Geese Howard has a sizable scar on his back that he shows off by removing his shirt before battle, gained when he was punted out a window at the end of Fatal Fury. K' has a literal red right hand, as his real one was "incinerated" during the first "live firing" after Kyo's blood was infused into him. He's more of the Anti-Hero though.
  • Hitting the obscure, Doll Master from Threads of Fate had a massive, evil right hand of death.
  • In one of the Ace Attorney games, the Big Bad is your defendant, Matt Engarde. He looks innocuous enough, until he pulls The Reveal, which consists of giving himself a phone call, pulling back his hair to reveal scars on his eye, and pulling a glass of brandy out of nowhere just to swirl it around while grinning evilly.
    • In the final case of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Kristoph Gavin has a scar on the back of his hand that looks like a skull when he flexes his fingers a certain way.
    • While not an unusual feature, Dahlia Hawthorne's red hair is the only difference between her and her good-natured twin sister Iris.
    • Frank Sahwit has a mole in the middle of his forehead
    • Furio Tigre's red skin
    • Shelly De Killer has stitches down the middle of his face.

Phoenix: A baseball has stitches! Are you saying all baseballs are suspicious because they have stitches?!

  • In the Soul Calibur series, Nightmare has a bulky demonic right arm that is passed on to anyone he possesses. Siegfried's arm is restored by Soul Calibur, but Pyrrha's appears to be permanent even after she turns good again.
  • In the Geneforge series, canister addicts have faintly glowing skin and cold, glowing eyes. Those that have been using canisters for a long time have translucent skin, with their glowing muscles visibly reshaping themselves at all times.
  • In In Famous, Kessler has a mechanical gauntlet covering his entire right arm, presumably to enable the long-range energy blast he uses in his boss fight. His Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Sasha basically has Cthulhu for a tongue.
  • I don't know if this was the same in the old version, but in Tomb Raider Anniversary, the first time you see Natla, you know she'll be the villain. The really really long nails are a dead giveaway. Did I mention they were bright red, too?
    • Not to mention that rather long (yet surprisingly sexy) face with the sharply slanting eyebrows.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Even as a normal human Ganondorf had unusual green skin. How green depends on the artist and game. Chancellor Cole in The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks has twin top hats worn on his head, which very obviously cover up the devil horns he's seen with later. And reverse colored eyes.
    • Ganondorf's skin tone might just be because he's a Gerudo. And a very rare male Gerudo at that. It might be normal for male Gerudoes to have olive skin.
  • You don't really need any sort of hint concerning the Overlords of the Overlord series, what with their spikey, face-concealing helmets, the Shoulders of Doom, clawed gauntlets, etc. all quite obviously screaming "villain" from the CD cover. But considering the title, do you even need the hint?
    • The Overlord of Overlord 2 has blue skin as well, but this is the result of the old tower heart blowing up around the time he was born.
  • Fate Stay Night: True Assassin aka Hasan-i-Sabbah sports a literal example of this. Its primary use was to assassinate targets by making a fake heart of the target out from ether and then crush it, destroying the original along with it.
  • Yuri in Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge. Bald guy with tattoo on the forehead? Check. Cybernetic implant? Check. Evil goatee and mustache? Check and check. Psycho gaze? Check. Creepy voice? Check. Performed by Udo Kier? Check.
  • Gol and Maia have Facial Markings, purple skin, and Gol has scary Artificial Limbs.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3, Colonel Volgin has lightning-shaped scars
  • Team Fortress 2: the Engineer has a mechanical right hand. According to canon, he severed his own flesh and blood hand in order to replace it with a machine one that his grandfather designed. Somewhat averted, though, as Engie is still more or less the nicest guy on the Team. (Which isn't saying much.)
  • The titular Crystal Bearers in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Crystal Bearers have some part of their body replaced with crystal, which provides easy identification for the purpose of ostracizing them. In Layle's case it's a small growth on his cheek that provides conveniently justified Bishie Sparkle, but his Evil Mentor Blaze has his right eye and the surrounding area hideously deformed into crystal, and the Big Bad has a literal Red Right Hand hidden under his gauntlet.
  • In the Kingdom Hearts series, anyone completely immersed in darkness, including all incarnations of Xehanort, have striking amber eyes. Tellingly, the amnesiac Xehanort inhabiting Terra's body doesn't have them. Oddly, the real Ansem the Wise has them too, which makes his true identity somewhat of a mystery throughout Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II.
  • The Slayer class of Dungeon Fighter Online sports a red demonic left (or right) arm, making this another literal case of Red Right Hand
  • The Dragon from Deus Ex, Walton Simons, has unpleasant-looking blue veins covering his skin as a result of his nanoaugmentation upgrades. (It's implied that JC and Paul would, too, if they shaved the sides of their head like Simons does—they certainly have similar markings elsewhere.)
  • Averted by Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII. He has striking green eyes with catlike pupils but he had them even before his Face Heel Turn. Played straight with his single wing which manifests to show how inhuman he has really become in Advent Children.
  • Ragna the Bloodedge's right arm is the corpse of an Eldritch Abomination.


Webcomics

  • Charby the Vampirate has the author having a right red hand (complete with black spikes and claws!) added to the author's sexy and nice self portrait in the first page to remind everyone she draws a wickedly evil webcomic that kills characters off AFTER they've been around long enough for you to get attached.
  • In Comedity one of Garth's personae, number 47, literally goes by "The Red Right Hand" and while not strictly evil is all of Garth's violent tendencies embodied. Hello again, Natalia.
  • Dominic Deegan: Dominic's older brother Jacob is missing most of the flesh from one arm and the bottom half of his face due to his screwing around with necromancy. Though it's been restored a couple times, as well as being turned pitch black (momentarily) by absorbing pure undiluted Undead Blight.
    • Eventually Jacob gets his body completely restored, and seems to be keeping it that way after a Heel Face Turn.
  • Nature of Nature's Art: SV spends quite a bit of time in self-imposed exile, seeking the power of malice... and that ended up taking priority over his own well-being. So when he returns to civilisation, his fur is really messy, his incisors have become extremely long (and they curve out of his mouth in an unnatural way), and one of his eyes... well, it's either completely red or completely black. The greyscale art makes it hard to tell.
  • Trace of Twokinds has ended up with a black and clawed left hand (sinister, huh?) after using potentially mind destroying dark magic.
  • Drucilla the shape-shifting succubus of Pibgorn (from the creator of 9 Chickweed Lane) has reddish notched elf ears that she can't alter even if she's just in other people's dreams.
  • In Homestuck, whoever wears one of the Queens' rings gain physical features of each player's prototyped spirit; ie, wings, long tentacles and a sword through their torso. After Jack becomes the only one left wearing the ring, he gets a literal Red Right Hand. It's covered in the blood of WV, who Jack punched through the stomach to get the uranium he ate.
    • Many characters, including Jack, are also missing an arm and an eye. Not all of the others are evil, though.


Web Original

  • Linkara's robot double Mechakara in Atop the Fourth Wall has a mechanical left hand. Which makes for an absolutely wonderful piece of foreshadowing later on.


Western Animation

Commentator: You know, it's so inspiring the way he found success after that tragic military accident that left him using a robotic claw for a hand.

  • In an episode of The Simpsons, a cigarette company executive has horns which he tries to pass off as a football injury. He also occasionally turns into a gigantic red devil.
  • Mozenrath, a villain in Disney's Aladdin television series, wears a magic gauntlet that stripped away the skin and muscles of his hand leaving a skeletal hand that still continues to feel pain from the gauntlet. He's furious that Aladdin got "easy" power through his Genie, as opposed to the sacrifice he made and suffering he endures.
  • Most of the villains and villainesses in Jacob Two Two have poor dental hygiene and off-white eyes. Those that don't are unbearably clean smug snakes.
  • A one-shot Dungeons & Dragons villain, Queen Syrith, in the episode "Child of the Stargazer", had a literal red hand (it eventually turned out that an entire half of her body was like that, but her hand was her only visible deformity for most of the episode).
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko's scar and hair are used to mark him as a bad guy. After turning good, he changes his hair to make his scar look less ugly.
  • Blackwolf, the scenery-chewing villain of Ralph Bakshi's 1970s sword-n-sorcery opus "Wizards," takes this to such an extreme that he is almost The Grotesque. His skin is grey, his eyes are blood red and glow in the dark, and—inexplicably—both his arms are bare bones between wrist and mid-bicep.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Skeletor: He has a skull for a head, people.
  • Doctor Blight, one of the major Captian Planet villains was perfectly normal, even icily attractive...until she moved her fringe, and we saw that all the face around her left eye was hideously burned. All the other villains took this so far as to become grotesques (Verminous Skumm was literally a rat-man) except for Zarm, who was a standard Evil Overlord, and Looten Plunder, who was a Smug Snake crossed with a Corrupt Corporate Executive, though the fact that his suit was trimmed with what appeared to be zebra skin might count as an eco-sensitive version of this trope.
  • Phantom Limb from The Venture Brothers has both arms turned into invisible glowy dispensers of death. His legs, too. And "something else" that The Alchemist decided to keep at the end of season 2. In fact, a lot of minor villains from The Venture Brothers fall into this trope. Baron Ãœnderbheit has a prosthetic iron jaw and hideous grey skin. Scaramantula has a scar or birthmark shaped like a spider on his face and eight fingers on one hand. Brainulo (a hyper-intelligent time traveller from the future) has a grotesquely swollen, bald head covered in little blinking lights. Even the Monarch, while otherwise normal-looking and even handsome, has long antenna-like eyebrows.
    • While not visual, Dark Mistress Doctor Girlfriend has a man's voice.
    • Spoofed in the episode "Now Museum, Now You Don't", where, in a flashback, Scaramantula assembles a Fraternity of Torment of villains who were spurned by society due to their deformity. Dr. Venture Sr. infiltrates them disguised as a stereotypical Chinese/Japanese villain with a supernumerary nipple (on his chin).
  • Akin to the Venture Bros. "Fraternity of Torment" example is Chairface Chippendale, foe of The Tick (animation), and his speech to his cohorts about their various deformities uniting them in evil.
  • Shego on Kim Possible has a greenish cast to her skin and hair and can shoot green plasma from her hands. (Originally this was written as being due to gloves, but they turned out to be her own powers.)
    • Drakken has pale blue skin as well, but he can't shoot anything out of his hands. Apparantly he's blue simply because he is evil, as in one episode him and Ron switch moralities through a machine (don't ask) and Ron turns blue while Drakken looks like a normal person for once.
    • Let's not forget Monkey Fist's surgically attatched monkey hands and feet
    • Sheldon "Gemini" Director has a prosthetic hand that launches miniature missiles.
  • In an episode of Osmosis Jones, an allergen serving as the Monster of the Week had two thumbs
  • Van Kleiss, Big Bad of Generator Rex, has a mechanical left hand that's made far creepier by the fact that its nails elongate into the syringes he uses to leech the nanites he needs to survive out of his victims.
  • In Mulan, the Huns have gray skin and yellow eyes.
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Heloise has a scar on her forehead. According to Edward Kay, it's largely a design choice to make her look twisted.
  • In The Lion King Scar is the only lion in the pride with a different color scheme and to have his claws bared all the time, and of course, he has a scar over one eye.
    • Also, in the German version of "Be Prepared", he sings "Meine Zähne sind blank wie mein Neid", which translates as "My teeth are uncovered like my envy".
    • The sequel both subverts it with the protagonist Kovu (who has more or less the same color scheme as Scar, and even acquires a scar over his eye about halfway through the movie), and plays it straight with the other outsiders, most notably Zira (who has a vertical stripe on her head). Before the end battle, the outsider lionesses all walk through mud, just so we (and maybe they themselves) can tell them apart from their prideland counterparts in the heat of the battle. By the time they realize there's really not all that much of a difference between the two groups, and reunite, they're all clean again, though their distinguishing drawing style remains.
      • In the sequel the distinct appearances actually make sense, as the Outlanders live on much poorer diet than the Pridelanders, and in result are leaner and have duller coats of fur.
  • The Argentinian cartoon Las aventuras de Hijitus by Manuel García Ferré had a villain called "Dedo Negro" (Black Finger), a master of disguise easily who despite his uncanny ability to pass as other people, was identifiable by his black left index finger. One of his exploits included, with the help of Professor Neurus, to hammer all people's index fingers in the city of Trulalá (!) to render impossible the identification by this means. More information here.
  • Grune, one of the villains from Thundercats and ThunderCats (2011), has only one fang, which is notable, since he's a saber toothed cat.
  1. ↑ It would have gone further if his mother didn't intervene.
  2. ↑ Latin for "stone right hand"
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