Villains that call themselves evil

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Rick Bruiser

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Anyone else glad this trope is mostly gone? This always annoyed me to no end, even as a little kid. Why would a villain fighting for a cause for something call that cause itself evil? Shoul;dn`t that cause, in their minds, be good?

It's one thing to have a villain who dosen`t care about what happens to others to get what they want, as that it what usually constitutes a villain. But to call their own actions evil? Wouldn`t they just..stop?

The only exception I can see to this is when a villain is literally a demon or some other kind of entity of elemental evil or emotion, then it would make sense.
 
Well, that depends. This really fits on shows that don't really take themselves too seriously. Shows like Kim Possible, The Fairly Oddparents, and Phineas and Ferb can use it since they're just playing things for laughs.

But on more serious shows...yeah, it's probably for the best that morality has stopped being so black and white. The villains become much more interesting if they don't believe they're evil. If they're self acknowladged as evil, they're probably crazy these days.
 
Does Lelouch count as a subversion? I mean, he claims his actions are "evil", but at the same time, I thought it showed that even though his actions are supposed to be for the greater good, he wasn't kidding himself by assuming he was a true hero given the death and destruction that often resulted.
 
I love the "I'm evil because I say I'm evil" type of villains. I know it's corny but it just doesn't bother me. Probably because I grew up with characters like these.
 
In comedies, it's fine. But for non comedies, it worked decades ago. But since story telling has gotten more sophisticated, you can't do that anymore.

"Beast Wars" had a line that always bothered me in "The Agenda part Three" when Megatron destroys Optimus Prime's head, and time begins to change...

"Say good-bye to the universe, Maximals. The Autobots lose. Evil triumphs!"

Why did that last bit bother me? Because up until that point, this Megatron was being depicted as a revolutionary, leading a small uprising to overthrow Maximal oppressors and conquer the galaxy.

Hell, not even two minutes before this, he had an entire monologue about how the Autobots were archaic energon guzzlers who made them (Predacons) slaves.

"Unwilling though I was to follow my namesake's instructions, it has all come down to this moment. The ultimate risk for the ultimate prize. A day of reckoning with THOSE WHO MADE US SLAVES!"

... Would someone who sees himself as a rebelling slave really call himself evil?

Michael Reaves once said that the trick to writing a good villain is that no one sees themselves as a villain.
 
I think it's all about balance, villians who think their the good guys and that their cause is just can be interesting but if all bad guys were like that it would be dull.

Besides, I can find a purely evil character fascinating and even admirable at times.

See, wicked characters who know their wicked like The Joker, The Green Goblin, Darkseid and various anime/manga villians are much more fascinating to me because at least they still have a pretty clear idea of what good and evil is. They just chooses not to abide by those standards.
 
I don't think Green Goblin thinks he's doing the right thing so much as he thinks he's doing the Green Goblin thing. In which case, he has it all right. ;)

I of course speak of the Spectacular version. I'd delve further, but the end of season two hasn't aired yet.
 
Well some villians must be aware that there is no way to justifiy what they do so they admit it
though good and evil are both only relative changing person to person constantly having there definitions twisted making both meaningless
 
On Megs- I think you have to keep in mind that really evil and conqueroing has always been the Decepticon angle. So taking that on board, you could easily say that Megatron is talking about how as he sees it the rightful rulers (Decepticons/Predacons) have been denied their place. Dinobot's comments throughout the series seem to reinforce that. Sure it gets murky since the show tried to make the Maximal higher ups fairly nasty themselves, but then Beast Wars never did seem to perfectly decide if it wanted a more developed story or 'Buy the toys, goodies vs baddies!'. Animated had alot of the same angle on the Autobots vs Decepticons conflict but did it generally better.
 
I'm not really into villains who call themselves 'evil'; especially if they're, as stated, believed to be doing the right thing. The only way I could see that working is if they're making fun of the protagonists or patronizing them.
 
As noted, it only works from a philosophical perspective: the idea that the rebel fighting against the self-proclaimed "righteous" must necessarily be "evil" by the definitions of the world at large, even if the actual morality of the two sides implies that the reverse is true.

Otherwise, I get on my soapbox and declare it symptomatic of a deranged media culture that assumes that its audience is incapable of making nuanced moral judgments, that they are incapable of telling protagonists from antagonists unless they are signposted in big flashing lights. I might drag in tangential observations, like how The Matrix originally had the much more sensible premise that the trapped humans were being used as a massive biocomputer rather than a murderously inefficient power source, but the execs who greenlighted the film decided that it would fly over the audience's heads, or how the U.S. version of Life On Mars completely dispensed with the mystery and ambiguity of the original British version, even going so far as to wrap up its run with a mind-numbing storm of television cliches instead of the wonderfully mind-twisting original finale (where we still don't really know what happened to Sam Tyler!), or how apparently the word "Black" was considered offensive enough that for several years it was excised completely from Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, giving us such wonders as "Red-Eyes B. Dragon", or better still, "Dark Hole". (Which still has a counterpart called "White Hole". It would've been fun to drum up accusations of racism against them back when "White" was acceptable in card names but "Black" wasn't, just to watch the fireworks...)

Worst-case scenario, I go into full-on rant mode and take up a few pages. Not posts, pages.
 
It definitley works with comedic villains, but I think it occasionaly works with serious ones too, esepcially when the villains are meant to actually personify evil. Maleficent (THE MISTRESS OF ALL EVIL!!!!), the Joker... stuff like that.
 
I pretty much agree with this. If every villain was either like Ra's Al Ghul (bad but thinks he's good) or even Joker (well aware of what he does being wrong) villains would pretty much be kinda boring. I do like both types of villains, so it doesn't annoy me at all when there are some who know the difference between right and wrong, but just don't care and choose to go on the wrong side of the path. For example:
*in the bathroom*
Dr Polaris: You gonna wash your hands?
Lex Luthor: No, because I'm evil.

See here, Lex chose to do wrong.
(Yes I know it was Flash in Luthor's body, but still)
 
Ha Ha this thread made me remember something.

A loong time ago I was watching Teletoon and they had a Donkey Kong cartoon and then Krusha started singing a song saying "I like Evil I like Evil"

Ha Ha The Donkey Kong Cartoon. Greatest. Cartoon. On. Earth. :D

But to be on topic yeh it is kinda annoying these days. Although it never bothered me when I was a little kid.
 
Joker doesn't see himself as evil though, Joker's a psychopath and a nihilist, he doesn't think he is evil, he thinks those concepts are irrelevant. In real life evil people don't think they are evil, they don't care about anything besides themselves and think getting ahead is more important then anything else.



Not all villains think they doing think they are doing the right thing, a lot of them don't care about what's right and wrong, don't think they are evil but they don't care about being good. In real life there lots of people who are psychopaths, they know the difference between right and wrong, but they have no conscience so they don't care. A really nasty psychopath would not think he is evil, but act in an evil manner. If psychopaths exist in the real world, it makes sense they would exist in cartoons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath
 
Firstly good and evil are like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. It's all about perspective. To somebody evil and good are something, to another they are another. There is no universal good and evil (putting aside religious idealism which i won't mention any further due to forum rules probably having something against discussing religion) and thus what is good and what is evil is largely decided by the people. Now villains, not being normal individuals, are thus seen as 'evil' as they go against society as a whole, or the most part of it, or at any rate inflict damage upon part of society. Social animals like humans will of course, living in a utilitarian scientific context, try to protect their society and as such will classify anything opposed to their wellbeing 'evil'. However from a rational third party perspective there is no such thing as good or evil.

When i consider villains who 'call themselves evil' i think of The Regurgitator and other posers and wannabe mall goth villains who think they're so big but they're not. Firstly they have no reason to do what they do, so they're illogical and irrational, secondly they make real villains fighting for worthy causes such as myself look bad because we get associated with these freaks, and thirdly the term villain is used to describe them as well as us so that creates more confusion. Of course at a palce like this you also have more precise terms such as magnificent bastard etc etc... As a 'villain' who fights for a cause i see as being worthy (Being Holmesian and logicalwith my data i of course treat this worthiness as a fact but for the sake of forum policy i'll call it an opinion) i find these self made villains stupid and dangerous.

The problem with these 'i'm evil' types is they are evil (i/e commiting 'evil' acts for no reason aside from commiting evil acts) without reason, and thus they are irrational as there is no reason to do that, and thus they make us real villains/rebels for a worthy cause seem illogical and irrational power crazy megalomaniacs, which distorts the truth and fairness quite a bit. In a comedic cartoon of course this isn't such a problem, as it can be seen as a watered down satire from the normal perspective of villains, and if it isn't taken seriously i'll let it pass (theres much worse that gets by these days on the old box) but when in a cartoon taking itself pseudo seriously or seriously like avatar you expect a Zukoid villain and not a Firelord Ozai type.
 
As far as i am concerned, the three types of villains that can be allowed to call themselves evil are:

1 Villains in comedys, meant primarly as parodys of villains from serious works (examples: Dr Claw and King K. Rool).

2 Demons and other inheretly evil supernatural beings (examples: Trigon and Sauron).

3 Psychopathic and/or insane villains who get a kick out of commiting acts that they know others will percieve as evil (examples: The Joker and Carnage).

But as for typical "wants to rule the world" villains whose primarly motivation for doing their stuff is a hunger for power (examples: Dr Doom and Mother Brain)? No, just no. There is just no reason why a villain like that would want to think of himself as evil.
 
Oh yeah? That seems a tad biased and generalized a statement




Just because you don't have a conscience doesn't make you 'evil'. And just because somebody is aware what evil is and commits an evil act doesn't make them evil. After all you wouldn't call someone evil who knew there was a law against littering but littered anyway. Well Captain Planet might... The point is you can't blame a villain for what he/she does based upon the fact they are evil, or because they are psychopaths. Psychopaths and nihilists are ordinary people and just because if they had a reason to they would commit acts you might not doesn't mean they see a reason to commit said acts on a daily basis. It's not like just because i wouldn't shy from killing someone i'm going to go on a murder rampage, now is it my good fellow?
 
I like to think Megs was being sarcastic, "so I'm "evil" am I Primal? well "evil" just kicked your ass! How do you like them apples?"

Admititly that might not be what the writer had in mind but it's my take.



I don't think any of these guys consider them selves evil so much as they see the whole concept of good and evil as beneath them.

Like others have said, Joker is the ultimate nihilist who sees morality as delusion that society has foisted upon itself to hide from the truth that human life is essentially cheap and meaningless.

As for Goblin and Darksied, I think they'd agree with the Tom Riddle school of thought...

"There is no good and evil, only power and those to weak to seek it!"



Actually according to Tolkien's original notes Sauron was originally more interested in bringing order and prosperity to Middle-Earth. Unfortunately he became so obsessed with imposing order at any cost that he decided the best way to achive that was to enslave or slaughter everyone on the planet.

keep in mind the Sauron we see in Lord of The Rings is merely a broken decrepit shadow of the near godlike entity he once was.

All this is just my opinion of course. What do you think Lord Sutekh?
 
Another I might add:

4. Those who inhabit a parallel universe where evil is considered good to them. Granted, Darkwing Duck is a comedy, Negaduck fits the bill (pun not intended:sweat:) and for a recent example The Injustice Syndicate from Batman The Brave and The Bold.
 
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