Hate Sink

This character is typically found in stories that don't contain a true "villain", and are meant as a target that the audience can channel their dislike toward. Examples include disaster stories where there literally is no villain behind it all, films where a system or even an idea are the "villains" so to speak, and certain action movies where the villains are just too cool to hate.

This character is most of the time not the main villain, and is usually not a true antagonist at all. They aren't causing the struggle that the heroes must overcome, though their actions always make the heroes' job more difficult. Their list of character traits usually includes selfishness, stubbornness, greed, holier-than-thou contempt, and a simply inexhaustible ability to make bad decisions. Basically, they exist to be hated. Every action they perform and every piece of dialogue they utter is designed to incite rage in the audience. They usually get their comeuppance in a very audience-satisfying scene.

This isn't the same as Jerkass or Designated Villain. The key here is in the story that the character comes from. The writers are giving you someone to hate simply because the story needs an anthropomorphic "villain", but the character is sort of an afterthought to the actual plot. See also Villainy-Free Villain.

This can overlap with Love to Hate if the character's despicableness becomes enjoyable and memorable with the fanbase, though not necessarily.

Contrast with The Scrappy, who is an unintended example, or a villain who is hated for the wrong reasons.

Anime and Manga

 * Candy Candy is a Slice of Life kind of story, so it has the Regan family (Ruth, Eliza and Neil) to fill the antagonist role. They (especially Neil) personify the worst traits of the Rich Bitch trope, and are guaranteed to gain the reader's wrath. Worse, they're usually Karma Houdinis, which makes the moments when they finally pay for their actions a spectacular sight to behold.
 * Kill la Kill: Satsuki invokes this trope for the first half of the series. She intentionally makes herself the target of Ryuko's hate, even suggesting she had something to do with her father's murder to fuel her hatred. She did this so
 * A straight example would be Nui Harime, . A sadistic, disgustingly childish madman bordering on Villain Sue, it was made clear she existed to be hated. Nui herself lampshades this, stating hate and love are pretty much the same thing, and wants to earn love by making everyone hate her. She succeeded.
 * And she's nothing compared to Ragyo Kiryuin, Satsuki's mother She's considered to be the "Worst Anime Mother Ever", and for very good reasons, given her sexual abuse of Satsuki,  The fact she doesn't have a reason for being evil apart from liking it doesn't help in the least.
 * Played with Dio Brando. At the start of Phantom Blood, he plays this trope straight, being a disgusting bully towards Jonathan, turning his peers against him, stealing his girlfriend's First Kiss, and burning his dog alive. Upon getting his vampire powers, however, he becomes the cool, memetic villain fans Love to Hate, with the Hate Sink mantle being passed on to some minor villains (J. Geil, Steely Dan, etc.)
 * Griffith from Berserk, possibly the most hated character in the entire genre of Anime. His fall from grace leading to the murder of his trusted and loyal allies for makes his name synonymous with "betrayal".
 * Admiral Akainu from One Piece, a man who believes the end always justifies the means, a man who has committed some of the gravest atrocities in the series in the name of Justice. Slaughtering civilians and his own soldiers, using blatantly untrue propaganda, his brand of "justice" seems to do little but cause more injustice.
 * Earlier on in the series there's Captain Kuro, who plotted to betray and kill his employer Kaya (even though she had done nothing to him and considered him to be her friend), along with his entire pirate crew to make sure that he could erase his old life as a pirate.
 * Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist. Look up almost any list of "Top 10 Most Hated Anime Characters", "Top 10 Anime Villains", or "To 10 Assholes in Anime" and you'd be hard pressed to find one that didn't include him in the 1 or 2 spot. He's Number 1 on the hated character list on the anime character database.Everyone hates this guy, even the author, and Anime America went so far as to disqualify him from her list simply because he's so easy to hate. To put it bluntly, he may not have committed genocide or plotted world domination, but this guy was so obsessed with maintaining his position as state Alchemist (their system's equivalent of tenure, sort of) that he turned his five-year-old daughter into an abomination by using alchemy to combine her with her dog. Not some Angry Guard Dog, mind you, the  type who wouldn't hurt a fly. Clearly, Shou is beneath contempt, and was the only villain in the whole series who proved completely irredeemable.
 * Similar to Tucker, there's Malty Melromarc from The Rising of the Shield Hero. It says a lot when the fans are siding with the in-story crowd screaming for a young woman's blood as she's dragged out to be publicly executed. She made the False Rape Accusation that ruined Naofumi's life, and she spends her screentime corrupting and ruining people's lives For the Evulz, her atrocities becoming bigger and bigger as time passes. Not even saves her from this spot. Tellingly, she's the top 1 of both "Top 10 Hated Anime Characters Ever" and "Top 10 Hottest Girls with the Worst Personalities", and deservedly so. Not to mention that ever since  she was made to change her name to "Bitch", some fans seem to exclusively refer to her as such, for obvious reasons.
 * There are a lot in Dragon Ball. But one of the biggest examples would be Frieza from Dragon Ball Z, specifically during the Namek saga. As badass as he is, it's clear that Akira Toriyama really went out of his way to make him utterly despicable as a middle finger to the real estate speculators he based him off of. He's a smarmy sadist who takes a lot of glee in ordering planetary massacres as well as killing people in the most horrible ways he can think of. And when Goku defeats him for the first time, he takes a hit to his coolness factor when he turns out to be a wimpy little coward who begs Goku for mercy, only to try to murder him once he helps him. However, his effectiveness as a villain got him a lot of fans, so once he returned in Super, he properly left this status due to developing a few genuine Evil Virtues during the Tournament of Power.
 * Quite a few of Frieza's henchmen are just as disgusting as their master. There's Goku's brother Raditz, who lacks the cool factor most Saiyans have going for them due to being a cowardly bully. Then there's Dodoria, who's just as cowardly as Raditz but far crueler, to the point of being way too happy to murder Namekian children. And finally, Vegeta himself started off as this. Before he became the cool Anti Hero people fell in love with, he was just as twisted and sociopathic as Frieza, and spent a lot of time acting like an utter prick to everyone around him until his Character Development really kicked into full swing.

Comic Books

 * Minimonsters is a comic filled with several characters, so it's expected to have jerks and even outright villains among its cast. Due to several factors, none of them could be considered truly hateful. The exception is Quasim, the dumb, brutish bully of Villa Susto. His only role in the plot is to torment the students and teachers and generally being a pain in the ass. To reinforce this trope, his favorite victim is the local Cute Ghost Guy Gus, who is the least deserving of his abusive treatment. He usually doesn't get any comeuppances, but when he does, is extremely satisfying to watch.

Film - Animation

 * In the 2002 movie Groove Squad, the villains can't be hated for several reasons: Dr. Nightingale is entertaining in his ambition of TOTAL! WORLD! DOMINATION!; Flower Power are a trio of evil hippies with cool powers, and the Giant Worm is a... well... giant worm. So the movie has one in the form of Star, Chrissy's bitchy rival at the squad. Every moment of her screentime is her complaining about how Chrissy's the cheerleader captain and not her, constantly trying to take her place in the squad and steal her Love Interest. And if that wasn't enough,
 * Subverted tragically in ParaNorman. As it turns out later,  Their state, instead of being portrayed as a Catharsis Factor, shows how tragic they are
 * Bob's boss Mr. Huph from The Incredibles isn't a murderous supervillain like Syndrome or even a criminal, but he makes up for his lack of crimes with his startling Lack of Empathy. He belittles Bob for trying to help Insuricare's customers get paid, refuses to let him stop a mugger, and takes a sickening amount of glee in humiliating him. You'd be hard-pressed to shed a tear once Bob has enough and breaks every bone in his body by throwing him through several walls, even though he gets fired for it in the process.
 * Lord Barkis from Corpse Bride is not just a deplorable gold digging murderer, but also a smug blowhard with no good qualities to his name. Him tricking the lovable Emily into eloping with him only to murder her once he got his hands on her family's money is horrible enough, but when he cruelly mocks her for never being able to marry either the men she loved, the viewer's bound to have no sympathy for him when his own stupidity leads to his death and horrible afterlife.

Film - Live Action

 * Titanic: Billy Zane's character, Cal. He disparages the Picasso paintings; verbally and physically abuses Rose; tries to have Jack killed; is exposed to care more about money than Rose; and finally cowardly escapes on a lifeboat using a small child. Although he survives, he is deprived of Rose in the end, loses his money through bad investments and ultimately puts a pistol in his mouth and that is the audiences' consolation.
 * Independence Day: The Secretary of Defense, Mr. Nimzicki (a.k.a. Foily McAntagonist). The aliens are inscrutable, have cool ships and bring the Monumental Damage and massive carnage that is the reason you bought the ticket. This guy knows about the aliens ahead of time but stays silent to give the President "plausible deniability." He continually pushes the use of nukes that are ineffective. He cockily celebrates victory too soon only to immediately be proven wrong. Finally he is the only person to disagree with the final plan that ends up working. His comeuppance is being fired by President Whitmore in person.
 * Aliens: Paul Reiser's company guy, Carter Burke. The aliens are already scary, so the filmmakers are hedging their bets by offering Burke as the weaselly company guy that only cares about money and fame. He knows about the aliens ahead of time and sends the colonists to investigate. He disagrees with nuking the site from orbit. He tries to impregnate Newt and Ripley with alien embryos with a plan to sabotage and kill the other heroes. Finally he cowardly retreats behind a door locking the other heroes out, where he is deliciously killed by an alien.
 * In the novel, he was to be found attached to a wall when Ridley went on her rescue mission to save Newt. Begging for death, she hands him a grenade instead. This scene was excluded from the film because it would take too long for a Facehugger to impregnate him from the time span of Burke being abducted to Newt being abducted.
 * The Mummy has Beni, the Dirty Coward who sells out the protagonists to the title character. Not only does he help Imhotep kill Mr. Burns, he also abandons Rick early on in the movie to die. This is why he dies such a horrible death...he betrayed everyone. Imhotep in contrast is sympathetic and the reason you bought the ticket for the movie (or got it on DVD in the first place), In The Mummy Returns, there's Baltuz Hafez, whose his spiritual successor. Like Beni, he's a Dirty Coward, but he takes it a step further by being the one who resurrects Imhotep in the first place, rather than Evelyn doing so by accident.
 * Die Hard: The reporter. The German terrorists/bank robbers have awesome accents and their leader is the perfect villain to love: intelligent, Wicked Cultured, and at least tries to look compassionate to the hostages, but swift and deadly toward the authorities and driven by greed. So who do you hate? The annoying reporter that ends up exposing who Holly McClane really is by threatening the McClane housekeeper with deportation and terrorizes their kids all for the sake of a story. Possibly the greatest comeuppance example: he is punched by Holly McClane at the end.
 * The coke-snorting yuppie asswipe who constantly badly flirts with Holly and exposes John's identity to the terrorists out of hopes to finally get her in the sack. He ends up getting shot in the head by the terrorists.
 * To a somewhat lesser degree, the two Agents Johnson (no relation). The are rather disrespectful to Powell and the other police, unknowingly play into the robbers' hands by cutting the power, and are perfectly fine with allowing some of the hostages to die if it means getting the villains. However, thanks to being hilarious it's a bit harder to hate them than the other guys mentioned above.
 * The same reporter gets zapped with a stun gun by the same Holly McClane in Die Hard 2 after revealing on international TV that the airport has been hijacked, thereby causing a panic that the authorities were desperately trying to avoid. William Atherton seems to have made a career playing jerks we love to hate. Speaking of which...
 * Ghostbusters: Walter Peck, probably the quintessential Obstructive Bureaucrat. You can't hate ghosts or Gozer. But this pencil pusher is pissed that someone has the audacity to be as cool as the ghost busters. So he shuts their containment system down causing the climax of the movie.
 * Twister: Cary Elwes plays the corporate-backed scientist Jonas. You can't rage at the tornadoes, right? They're a force of nature, and they inspire awe in the heroes and give them purpose. But this guy "sold-out" and got corporate funding, making him a puppet of The Man (and why would a scientist ever want funding?). His team travel in four sinisterly identical black SUVs compared to our Ragtag Bunch of Misfits' ragtag assortment of vehicles, he's a hack that doesn't know the true science and just copies the heroes or relies too much on the instruments rather than the clairvoyant way that Helen Hunt just stares at the storm and knows which way it will go. Ultimately, his whole team is sucked into the storm when he arrogantly ignores the heroes' warnings.
 * Sean Parker from The Social Network. In a story full of Gray and Gray Morality, he's the closest character portrayed as an outright villain due to what a Jerkass he is.
 * Harvey Baylor in the laughably awful Planet of the Dinosaurs. The protagonists have all crash-landed on a far flung planet inhabited by prehistoric creatures, with no way to contact Earth and little hope of being rescued. Harvey proceeds to whine indiscriminately about how he's the Vice President of Spaceways Incorporated (and therefore their boss) and he can get them all fired, complains about having to do so much walking with no clear endpoint, and repeatedly sexually harasses his secretary. You can't hate the dinosaurs because they're dinosaurs (and barely put in any appearances in the movie anyway), and you can't hate the planet because it's a planet. But BOY can you hate Harvey Baylor!
 * You can't hate the titular eldritch abominations from The Langoliers (especially since they're just a creepy noise closing in from over the horizon for most of the story), and there's no one to really blame for stranding the characters in the past. But there's Toomy. Hateful, spiteful, assholish, with Freudian excuses and issues stacked high, who annoys, irritates and backstabs. Yeah, you can hate Toomy. You can't not hate Toomy.
 * In a similar Stephen King example, in the live action production of The Mist, the monsters are terrifying but you can't completely hate them because they don't appear to be acting with true malice. They're just following their instincts to eat and reproduce. But boy, oh boy, can you ever hate Mrs. Carmody, the shrill, hateful Jesus freak who looks down her nose at anyone who isn't as "righteous" as she is and whipped the mob into a religious frenzy that almost resulted in the murder of the protagonist's young son.
 * Let's go for King story number 3: Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. You can't hate the racism in the '30s that put John Coffey on Death Row; you can't hate the system for making sure he'll die in the electric chair; and you sure as hell can't hate Old Sparky itself. But you can definitely hate Percy, who uses the fact that he's the nephew of the governor's wife to duck authority at every turn...even after deliberately sabotaging the execution of a convict he particularly hates and having him literally fried alive.
 * And now King story number 4: Captain Hadley, Bogs Diamond, and are all the main sources of Andy's suffering during his stay in prison, and each is more vile and hateable than the last. Hadley is a violent psycho who brutalizes inmates for the smallest offenses and swears like a sailor, Bogs is a sadistic serial rapist who rapes Andy again and again, and despite . Thankfully, each bastard gets their comeuppance while
 * Carl Anhauser from 2012...is a subversion of this, surprisingly. While he acts like a dick for much of the movie and occasionally lashes out at people, he's still trying to keep as many people alive as possible, and the movie never really paints him as a completely bad person.
 * Jurassic Park: Donald Gennaro, the lawyer. Specifically because of how different his character is in the book from the movie. In the book he is actually fairly competent and brave, not the useless, spineless one-dimensional character in the movie, illustrating the screenplay writers needed someone the audience to focus some hate on, because you can't hate the heroes or the dinosaurs right? He's the only person to not see any problem with cloning dinosaurs, shows his stupidity on the tour by asking if the live people are autoerotic (perhaps confusing the word animatronic?), and then abandons the children during the scene with the T-Rex. His comeuppance of getting eaten sitting on the toilet is masterful.
 * Ironically, the novel version of John Hammond fills the role very nicely; he's an arrogant, rich bastard used to getting his own way, whose refusal to listen to criticism ends up getting numerous people killed. His comeuppance is  In the movie he's upgraded to a nice old man whose only fault is naive overconfidence and sexism in survival situations.
 * Resident Evil: Afterlife: Kim Koates plays the annoying Bennett, a movie producer trapped in an L.A. prison with a few other survivors. His character is the classic hatesink - utterly one dimensional and can be lifted right out of the story. He is rude, selfish, and disagrees with every other main character on decisions.
 * Unstoppable: You can't hate a runaway train, but you can hate Obstructive Bureaucrat Galvin. His comeuppance is that he loses his job afterwards.
 * Back to the Future: While he gets a lot of genuinely funny lines, Biff Tannen is still a real shitheel at the end of the day. It's bad enough that he's currently George McFly's boorish, overbearing boss, but when they were teenagers he was a violent bully who got his kicks out of cruelly humiliating him, and attempts to do the same to Marty when he travels back to 1955. He's also an attempted rapist who tries to have his way with Lorraine, but gets his lights punched out when George finally stands up to him.

Literature

 * In the Malazan Book of the Fallen novel Deadhouse Gates the Chain of Dogs (a massive host of refugees marching across the continent) is constantly being attacked by enemy armies, but our viewpoint character for these sections of the story never gets more than a few glimpses of the enemy leaders. Without a face or personality to put to them, it's hard to dislike the armies of the Apocalypse on a personal level. Instead we're invited to vent our loathing upon a group of whiny nobles within the Chain of Dogs, who protest the Canon Sue's actions at every turn, are openly cruel to their servants, and get a lot of their fellow refugees killed through incompetence.
 * Harry Potter gives us Dolores Umbridge. In a book in which the Big Bad Voldemort is laying low, she takes the stage as the main face of opposition, and is still the character most hated by many fans. While Voldemort was never seen as the slightest bit sympathetic, he is so cartoonishly evil that he's hard to take seriously on an adult level, and so singleminded (and subsequently flawed) in his purposes that he's more like a force of nature than a person. Umbridge, on the other hand, is a good demonstration of what you get when you take a bigoted, hypocritical shrew and give her authority, and is so plausibly cruel in the course of her travesties of justice that readers find their blood seething with her every word and deed. This goes to the point that J. K. Rowling herself had to state she was tossed into Azkaban for life for her crimes at the end of the final book. Fans would have much preferred throwing her to the Dementors, if not for the fact that she has clearly has no soul for them to take.
 * Since there's no real villain in Flight 116 Is Down by Caroline B. Cooney, the audience gets to focus their hatred on Darienne, a selfish passenger who ends up being completely unharmed in the crash. Heidi and Patrick work hard to save the passengers of the crashed plane while Darienne stands around doing nothing but complaining and being useless, yet she tries to take credit for saving people at the end. Even Patrick loses his cool when Darienne gets too much to handle.
 * Push, and subsequently its movie Precious, has Precious' Abusive Parents Carl and Mary. Carl is an horrendous Domestic Abuser who has been raping Precious since she was a child, leading to two pregnancies, while Mary beats and insults Precious to no end going as far as While Mary's villainy gets reduced in the movie to the point of giving her a mildly sympathetic breakdown at the end, she still qualifies as this trope. Mary's actress Mo'nique even won an Oscar for how successful she was at portraying this trope.
 * Speak runs on Teens Are Monsters who basically ostracize the protagonist Melinda for calling the police at a party a year prior, with some examples being Rachel, Melinda's former best friend; and Heather, who dumps Melinda for popularity. The worst of them all is Andy Evans. Why?
 * The Percy Jackson series has Gabe Ugliano, who is the last husband you would want to have as a woman. Not only does he hit his own wife, but when she allegedly dies, he’d actually happy about it, because he gets the payout money from her life insurance. And yes, there’s the implication that he would eventually be accused of murdering her. And he also treats his son Percy Jackson much the same way. Thankfully, Percy’s mother eventually finds a much better husband.

Live Action Television

 * Persons Unknown: We don't know who's behind the kidnappings of our main cast, but Bill Blackham, played by Sean O'Bryan, seems to be a repository for all the negative reactions one could have to being kidnapped and placed in a ghost town. Everything he does is selfish or irrational, especially his.
 * Game of Thrones:
 * Joffrey Baratheon is this trope personified. He's one of the most evil villains on the show, and obviously the winner of the "Face You'd Most Want to Punch" award. He's a viciously stupid dog-kicking machine with no redeeming features, and is hated by everyone In-Universe and out. He got so despised George R.R. Martin himself congratulated Jack Gleeson (Joffrey's actor) for his skills at achieving this status! Not that Gleeson himself was fond of the character; he claimed in an interview that he hated Joffery as much as anyone else.
 * Ramsay Bolton isn't any better. All his screentime being performing unspeakable atrocities for the fun of it.
 * Lizzie McGuire: The show in question takes place in a realistic setting, so it doesn’t have any villains. It does however have mean girls that antagonize Lizzie McGuire, the protagonist. While Kate has a tendency to act selfish, that is not to say she doesn’t have redeeming qualities. However, her best friend Claire is even worse than she is, and she doesn’t have the redeeming qualities she does, meaning that she isn’t designed to be sympathetic at all.
 * Skins has Josh Stock and Jal Fazer. The former drugs 14 year old Effy and tries to force her brother to have sex with her, purely out of spite. The later starts out as a likable character, but loses all sympathy when she has an abortion purely for convenience. Their Karma Houdini status doesn't help.
 * Super Sentai:
 * Great Professor Bias of Choujuu Sentai Liveman qualifies. While his three generals have sympathetic moments and were nothing more but tools to his grand plan, Bias is meant to be even more repulsive and deplorable as possible. He would go so far to dispose those who serve him have outlived of their usefulness.
 * Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has Basco ta Jolokia, Marvelous's Arch Enemy. Basco is a two-faced, spiteful backstabber who will go further lengths to get what he wants. He's more willing to take anyone or anything for granted to achieve that goal, like killing off his own pet, Sally. And then, blowing up a school and harming children makes you want to despise him.
 * Maria La Del Barrio: Soraya Montenegro was clearly intended to be hated by the audience, being a sociopathic Yandere who goes out of her way to ruin Maria's life for petty reasons, treats everyone like absolute shit (especially her stepdaughter Alicia and Nana Calixta, ) and has no qualms about killing others to get what she wants, earning the contempt of everyone else in the show. Much like other villains like Dio Brando, Judge Claude Frollo and Yuuki Terumi; she became the most popular and memorable character in the series due to her delightfully over-the-top antics, spawning multiple memes (In particular, the infamous MALDITA LISIADA! scene)
 * Black Mirror is notorious for deconstructing the Asshole Victim trope, making despicable people like sympathetic due to the horrific ordeals and final fates they go through. However, it still features straight examples of this trope:
 * Rolo Haynes from Black Museum is a faux-pleasant Smug Snake who puts people through torturous experiments for his own amusement, like tricking a man into putting his wife's consciousness inside a stuffed monkey and making a doctor addicted to pain, driving him to kill a homeless man. His worst act by far is . To make it more blatant, he's a self-deprecative Author Avatar of the creator himself. Thus, it becomes extremely cathartic when
 * A close second would be Catherine Ortiz from Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, Ashley O's evil aunt and manager. Seemingly supportive of her niece in public, she's actually resentful of her and feels entitled to control and exploit her niece to deplorable levels, like inducing a chemical coma in her and trying to get her killed once she stops being useful. When her plans get foiled by the titular characters, she cowers in fear of the police, prompting Ashley to give her a long-overdue middle finger in response.
 * Din Djarin fights his way through all kinds of shady and unsavory types during his adventures in The Mandalorian, some more vile than others.
 * Migs Mayfeld and his crew of bounty hunters are this, being a band of smug assholes who are nothing but rude and disrespectful to Din and his people's customs, are willing to hurt The Child for fun, and murder a scared prison guard in cold blood when Din tries to peacefully disarm him. However, when Mayfeld appears in Season 2, he loses this status due to showing off a plethora of redeeming qualities, culminating in him
 * Said commanding officer is Valin Hess, a ridiculously creepy high-ranking Imperial who is just as ruthless as Grand Moff Tarkin but with none of his wit and Peter Cushing's natural charisma. When talking with Din and Mayfeld, he shows no remorse in sending thousands of his troops to their deaths and is downright smug about outliving them, then goes on to boast about willing to commit the atrocity that killed all those men on a grander scale. Viewers have been known to cheer when
 * Morgan Elsbeth is the tyrannical magistrate of Corvus, who rules over the planet with an iron fist and gleefully tortures and orders the deaths of innocent civilians as easily as breathing, all the while overseeing an operation to strip mine the planet of everything it's worth. It's hard not to sympathize with Ahsoka's deep, seething hatred of the bitch due to her being as unlikable as humanly possible with every bit of screentime that's afforded to her.

Theater

 * Inspector Javert is the main antagonist of Les Misérables, but while he does make life miserable for Valjean, Javert honestly believes that he's the good guy and he's just trying to do his job and arrest what he believes to be a dangerous criminal (and Valjean technically is); and when Javert realizes that Valjean is really a good person through and through, it turns his world upside down, . So who can the audience hate? The Thenardiers, the cowardly comic relief thieves who abuse Cosette, loot bodies during the Revolution, and try to attack Valjean's house, which leads to Cosette being sent away to protect her.
 * They're a strange case in which the Hate Sinks are actually welcomed by the audience, due to them being the only source of levity in a bleak setting, as well as having enjoyable songs to boot.
 * John Dickinson of Pennsylvania in 1776. There are no real enemies among the delegates to the Continental Congress, and they have the shared goal of preserving the rights of the Colonies in the face of British rule, but they don't all agree on what's the best course of action.  Dickinson, however, serves in the role of a "villain" for the piece for being the the most prominent and vocal delegate in opposition to Independence.  But he's not opposing independence because he's evil, but because he honestly thinks it's a bad idea -- and when it passes, he resigns from Congress rather than sign the Declaration, then enlists in the Continental Army to fight in defense of the new nation anyway.  (And unmentioned anywhere in the story is that 11 years later, he becomes one of the architects of the Constitution.)

Video Games

 * In Pokémon Gold and Silver, the evil Team Rocket organization only turns up three times and hardly drive the plot, and end up hardly detestable as a result. However, the story features many encounters with your rude, thieving, Pokemon-abusing, borderline-sociopathic rival, who is much easier to hate. Until he finally undergoes Character Development, that is.
 * Your rival in Red/Blue might count. He's not evil in any sense, but he's a rude, annoying braggart, always one upping you and WILL make you want to beat his face in. He gets better at the end of the game, though.
 * In Pokémon Black and White, the conflict of the story is between the player and N. So there's, guaranteed to earn the player's hatred and disgust.
 * While the Big Bad of Pokémon X and Y has a sympathetic backstory and does show regret over having to kill all the innocent Pokémon in the crossfire of his plan to wipeout mankind, most of his Grunts as a whole make up for his likability. While comedic, they're so smug, boorish, and delighted at the thought of wiping out all the people that they deem inferior that it's satsifying to watch them freak out after beating them in a Pokémon battle.
 * Final Fantasy X. As it's rather hard to develop much hatred for a giant, emotionless crustacean regardless of how many people it kills (and even harder to keep coming up with excuses to wind up in the ocean having boss fights with it), Seymour keeps popping up in the plot to provide a speaking villain for the party to fight on land instead of Sin. While he does have his own motivations and does get somewhat tied into the plot with Sin, his personal impact on the story itself is quite minimal overall aside from providing ever more complex boss fights
 * Resident Evil 2 is unusual for the Resident Evil series (along with Resident Evil 3) for not featuring Albert Wesker, since at the time he was thought to be deceased after the Tyrant impaled him in the chest (and even if he were, one could argue he's too cool to qualify for this trope). The main antagonist of the game, William Birkin, though responsible for Raccoon City being infected with the T-Virus (which inevitably leads to a nuke destroying the city when the zombies grow too numerous for even the military to handle), was shown to love his family and was simply trying to recover the G-Virus, his life's work, from Umbrella before leaving the company. So whose left to hate? None other than Brian Irons, the corrupt police chief who not only was responsible for keeping STARS from revealing the truth about Umbrella (even though both STARS and BRAVO were devastated by the creatures that they had created), but was also taking bribes from Umbrella, is violently aggressive towards women, prevents survivors from escaping Raccoon City (including his own men who he shoots when he believes that he is infected with the T-Virus), and last but not least, kidnaps the mayor's daughter and kills her so that he can stuff her as a trophy.
 * Volgin of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. His first action is blowing up his allies with a nuclear bomb, for the hell of it. However, despite being (relatively speaking) the Big Bad of the game, he's not the main antagonist - the game is much more interested in the relationship between Naked Snake and The Boss. Volgin simply serves as 1) A Homage and Affectionate Parody of James Bond villains; 2) a Foil to The Boss; and 3) a form of catharsis before The Reveal. Not to mention the fact that if it hadn't been for the stunt he pulled with the nuke, the entire series would probably had never happened.
 * Huey in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain qualifies as well, even In-Universe. You can't really hate Skull Face too much when you consider his backstory, despite being a despicable villain otherwise. You can't really hate Zero comes out (though it doesn't entirely excuse his actions), and you can't hate Cipher because they are Doomed By Canon anyway. However, everyone can hate Huey, because
 * Amateur Surgeon is a wacky medical comedy in which the patients are hilariously sympathetic criminals who can't be hated due to their hijinks, so we have the main villain of the entire series and Alan's arch-nemesis . He's a sociopathic Serial Killer whom his horrible misdeeds include: All of this for revenge and fun. Every one of his deeds are taken in a much more serious way compared to the others, and settles his status as an horrifyingly dark villain in an otherwise lighthearted game. Not to mention, his levels are possibly the hardest in the entire game, making him a Goddamned Boss.
 * And if he wasn't hate-worthy already, he Oy...
 * Ace Attorney has a lot of horrible criminals, but these are guaranteed to earn the player's hatred:
 * The first game has Redd White, a slimy Corrupt Corporate Executive who thinks he can get away with his actions due to his money. He's especially hated due to him murdering Mia Fey, Phoenix's mentor and a fan-favorite character, and is extremely satisfying to render him a pathetic, begging wimp after his trial.
 * from Justice for All proves to be even worse.
 * Grand Theft Auto V: While the main characters Franklin, Michael and Trevor are highly flawed criminals (especially Trevor), they're nowhere near as loathsome as the Big Bad Ensemble, Devin Weston and Steve Haines. Devin is one of the most despised GTA antagonists due to him acting like a cowardly and incredibly annoying Rich Bastard Man Child who goes as far as to Steve, for his part, beats the crap out of Michael for the unforgivable crime of standing up to him, becoming more and more of a dick as the game goes on.
 * The Last of Us focuses on a Zombie Apocalypse full of Grey And Gray Morality, so it has David from the Winter Chapter, being a cannibalistic psychopath who tries to rape Ellie, with his boss battle being considered the most tense "Hide and Seek" level ever.
 * Blaz Blue: Yuuki Terumi is a weird zig-zagged example. In-Universe, he's the personification of this trope, being a sadistic and cruel Troll who thinks of himself as the center of the universe, and ruins everyone's lives For the Evulz, to the point he even uses this trope to survive. Out of universe, though, he's beloved by the fans for his design, cool powers, accomplishments, and generally being praised for succeeding at being this trope.
 * Undertale invokes this trope with Flowey. For most of the game, he's shown as a repulsive sociopath who tries to kill you at the beginning of the game, This is done to make The Reveal about him all the more effective:  As such, his status as this can be subverted with both the Pacifist Run  and the Genocide Run
 * The King of the Dark World from Deltarune however is a true example of this trope. He's a thoroughly selfish, sadistic bastard and a horribly abusive father with no good traits whatsoever. When the heroes decide to show him mercy, he even takes advantage of their kindness by brutalizing and almost killing them.
 * Animal Crossing has another invoked example in Resetti, in a completely opposite role to the aforementioned Flowey. His main job is to prevent players from resetting the game by acting as a deterrent, which means acting like a loud Jerkass by lecturing the player endlessly and forcing him to say certain words for the player to be left alone. It worked a little too well (there were reports of young children crying because of his attitude), so he was toned down in New Leaf by making him an optional feature, giving certain options when he appears to prevent his lectures, and emphasizing his pitiful traits and benevolent intentions. Don't expect fans to live his previous reputation down, though.
 * Digital Devil Saga doesn't have a clear cut villain, as all antagonists have legitimate reasons for what they do and have extremely cool traits to boot. Because of this, the duology gives us
 * While he was more stupid and later in life, insane, than truly malicious, you'll absolutely want to punch Ted Faro's teeth in after hearing how he sent the world of Horizon Zero Dawn down the toilet.
 * In the Mega Man X games, main villain Sigma as well as other prominent baddies like Vile, the X-Hunters, and are too cool to hate. So picking up their slack are several of the many Boss Mavericks through the series:
 * Thanks to being fleshed out in the Maverick Hunter X rerelease, Flame Mammoth and Sting Chameleon are a lot easier to hate than they were in the SNES days. Flame Mammoth is a smug bully who takes great joy out of crushing those he deems weaker than him, and is so unlikable that none of the soldiers he commanded followed him when he joined Sigma. Sting Chameleon on the other hand is a slimy, giggling asshole who loves to rub it in to X's face that a number of his friends have gone Maverick.
 * Frost Walrus from X4 is a lot less sympathetic than most of his comrades, and is a foul-tempered asshole who only joined Repliforce to get out of being scrapped for his destructive behavior. The manga adaptation would crank the hateability up to eleven by showing him to be a sadistic nut who freezes Reploids to death and keeps their corpses on display like serial killer trophies, and ruthlessly hunts Reploid prisoners he set free for sport.
 * Magma Dragoon may be one of the most badass Mavericks in existence thanks to basically being Akuma in robot dragon form, but he still makes the grade thanks to the sheer pettiness that drove him to commit the atrocities that kick off the game. Why did he destroy Sky Lagoon and kill millions of innocents in the process? Because he wanted to fight X and/or Zero. And he even has the gall to mock X over it, and brag that he would happily do it again.
 * Most of the Maverick bosses in X5 have been turned evil due to the Sigma Virus, and either beg to be put out of their misery or are visibly corrupted by it. This does not apply to Mattrex, Dark Dizzy, or Axel the Red, all of whom don't seem to be under the viruses effects and are more than happy to help Sigma destroy Earth for the hell of it. The first two are simply sadistic lunatics, while Axel only cares about being able to steal everything he wants once most life on Earth is dead.
 * Blaze Heatnix and Infinity Mijinion are a lot easier to hate than the rest of the Nightmare Investigators due to them either being tragic, sympathetic, or a lot less severe in their attitudes and crimes. Heatnix was an asshole who endangered his companions as a disaster relief worker and would leave them to die and not give a damn because he thought they were too weak to live. Meanwhile, Mijinion was also prone to endangering his coworkers while testing out heavy machinery and didn't care, causing them to murder him and cover it up as an accident with no one caring to look into it any deeper. Now that they've been revived, they're bloodthirsty and willing to kill anyone they look down on... which is basically everyone else in the world, with Mijinion being particularly obnoxious and haughty about it.
 * There aren't any true villains in Stardew Valley due to it being a farming simulator, but Morris is so unlikeable that he may as well be one. He's a representative of the corrupt Joja Corporation who seeks to establish a Jojamart in the valley, and goes out of his way to antagonize the town's local shopkeeper Pierre by poaching his customers by offering to slash his prices so they're way cheaper than his. He's also written letters expressing mock-pity for his shop floundering and offers to take him on as hired help and pay him 5G (Around 5 cents or so) an hour. He's so smug and cold-blooded that when you restore the community center, it doesn't matter if he's chased out of town in a panic or, it's satisfying to dump him on his ass either way.
 * There's also Leah's Ex Kel, who was an emotionally abusive and manipulative partner until she had enough and left the city. If you romance Leah, it turns out that he/she has been stalking her and demands for her to get back together with him/her. Much like Morris,
 * Bug Fables: While a vile piece of work himself, the Wasp King doesn't go out of his way to antagonize the good guys and is a pretty impersonal foe at the end of the day. The same does not go for Mothiva, Team Snakemouth's explorer rival. Despite acting the part of a friendly bubbly popstar, it's all an act for her fans. When she's out of the public eye, she's a rude and antagonistic pain in the ass who attacks Team Snakemouth twice in order to steal their glory. The second time is especially bad, since she's threatening to ruin important negotiations with another kingdom to help save the world and doesn't give a damn when Kabbu tells her this. The one guy she's decent to is her partner Zasp, but that's because he's useful to have around. If he falls in battle first during Team Mothiva's boss fights, she's every bit as rude and bitchy to him as she is with everyone else.
 * As befitting of one of the darkest takes on the Batman universe, the Batman: Arkham series has quite a few nasty, despicable punks that will make you want to bash their skulls in with a Batarang.
 * Unlike most incarnations who are classy, dignified, and possess something resembling a redeeming quality, the Arkhamverse's Penguin is a crude, classless thug of a man who milks every bit of screentime he has to make the player hate his guts. He's as cruel as the Joker but with none of his charm, and when he isn't horribly killing or torturing someone, he's usually screaming death threats at his men or smugly taunting a helpless victim he's about to do horrible, horrible things to. Thankfully he's also a huge coward, which makes his freakouts when you turn the tables on him so deliciousy satisfying.
 * Fellow classic villain Riddler doesn't fare much better. Here, he's an insufferable douchebag who won't shut the fuck up about how much smarter he is than everyone else, and constantly taunts and belittles Batman while he's collecting his trophies and solving his puzzles. And while it's satisfying as hell to make him freak out when you keep proving that he's not as smart as he thinks he is, his immature Sore Loser mentality makes him that much more obnoxious. Tellingly, most characters hate the guy as much as the player.
 * Branden is the living embodiment of everything wrong with Gotham's police force before Commissioner Gordon cleans house. He and the cops loyal to him are corrupt bastards who are making underhanded deals with criminals and brutalize and arrest Gotham's homeless for no good reason. Meanwhile, Branden himself cheats on his wife and tries to have then-Captain Gordon killed in a prison riot he instigates. He's also an arrogant idiot who thinks he can go toe-to-toe with Batman, and luckily, the player gets quite a few moments to prove him wrong. VERY wrong.
 * Like he did in Batman: The Animated Series, Ferris Boyle picks up the always sympathetic Mr. Freeze's slack in being a villain you can root against in the Cold Cold Heart DLC of Batman: Arkham Origins. Like in Heart of Ice, he screws over the meek, kindly Victor Fries when he tries to save his wife and causes the accident that turns him into Mr. Freeze. Unlike in Heart of Ice, he was helping Victor find a cure for Nora's condition provided that Victor help him make dangerous cryogenic weapons to sell on the black market, only to stab him in the back and kidnap Nora, calling her his property in the process. When he isn't putting up a friendly facade, he's a classist blowhard who looks down on everyone around him, and cruelly tells Freeze that he'll force him to watch his wife die before killing him. He even has the gall to try to kill Batman after he saves his life, so try not to cheer too loud when the Caped Crusader punches his lights out.
 * Spider-Man PS4's incarnation of the Sinister Six is mostly full of people with sympathetic, or at least understandable reasons for their horrible attack on Manhattan at the end of the game: Mr. Negative and want revenge on Norman Osborn for screwing them over in the past, Rhino wants to be freed from his restrictive suit, and Vulture wants a cure for his cancer. And even though he selfishly wants to become a being of pure energy, you can't hate Electro since he's a funny guy willing to pal around with Vulture and quip back with Spidey. But Scorpion? He's a sadistic, scummy little asshole who kills and tortures for the hell of it, and is incredibly rude and obnoxious towards Rhino during their boss fight. He's such a douche that Spider-Man is more than happy to trap him in a shipping container with Rhino, and let him be mercilessly beaten until the cops show up.
 * In the DLC, the devs really wanted to make Hammerhead as much of a scumbag as possible. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and cares for nothing aside from power, and the lows he'll sink to get it include murdering a bunch of police officers just to terrorize and hurt one of them, having the likable Silver Sable tortured, and even stealing aid to a foreign country, something that has nothing to do with his plans, just because he can. Unlike Mr. Negative and who are pitiable in their defeats, the player's bound to feel great after taking down such a cruel, sadistic asshole.
 * Screwball also graduates from goofy side one-shot villain to this in the same DLC. Not only is she an obnoxious blabbermouth who's forcing Spidey to participate in dangerous, stressful challenges for livestream views, but she's more than happy to mock and insult him for doing a less-than-perfect job. And on top of that, she's annoyingly untouchable and keeps slipping through Spidey's fingers despite her general stupidity, and even capturing her at the end of Silver Lining feels like a hollow victory at best.
 * Unlike the Tinkerer who you're at least supposed to sympathize with (even though she makes it VERY hard to do so), Simon Krieger's designed to attract all the player's bile during the main campaign of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. He's a smug, sociopathic blowhard and textbook corporate douchebag willing to allow his dangerous new energy resource to poison the citizens of Harlem with the justification that no one will care about the deaths of sick people in a bad part of town. His own mercenaries are treated with the same kind of disdain, and he's more than happy to screw over anyone who works with him if he can benefit from it in some way. His creepy willingness to torture and dissect the teenage Miles don't win him any likability points either.
 * In the fourth God of War game, we see that most Norse gods are just as cruel as the Greek pantheon, with the biggest example being Thor's son Modi. Unlike his brother Magni who at least has some standards and decency, Modi's a cowardly thug who constantly makes misogynistic taunts about Kratos' late wife, as well as some seriously creepy comments about his young son Atreus that have heavy pedophilic undertones to them. Any fathers playing the game will absolutely want to bash the little creep's skull in out of sympathy for Kratos.

Webcomics

 * Sakana, being a Slice of Life, doesn't have any real antagonists (the closest would be a Yakuza boss who doesn't appear much anyway), but it has one hateful scumbag in The fact  is a fan-favorite character does not help, nor does being the exact opposite of the much more beloved Taisei,  Ironically enough, his status as this has made him popular with the fanbase.
 * There's also the unnamed old woman in the side-story "Help Wanted". She proves to be an unpleasant Jerkass who dismisses Yuudai for being half-japanese, and isn't much nicer to Uncle Ren either. The thing that made her despised by the fanbase is her being the responsible for Shigeru's injuries by making him accidentally chop off his fingers due to her constantly interrupting his work, clinching this by running away after the incident like a Dirty Coward.
 * Penny and Aggie has Cyndi Kristoffer, who takes the Alpha Bitch role way too far by She fully cements her status as a monster in the "Missing Person" arc, in which she reveals  Naturally, she's despised by the main characters, the readers and even the author.
 * Long Exposure has these two:
 * Dean Wagner, Jonas' adoptive father, a controlling Abusive Parent who is also an Heteronormative Crusader (which goes against the official relationship between Jonas and Mitch). He has shown no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and many readers root for either Mitch or Jonas to give the asshole his just desserts with their newfound powers.
 * Neil Beckham, Mitch and Jonas' school nemesis. He's an annoying Rich Bastard Smug Snake who always competes with Mitch to be the "Top Dog" of the school. About the only entertaining thing about him is Mitch turning things around (usually with his powers) to make him and his gang look like the jackass losers they really are.
 * Living with Hipstergirl and Gamergirl parodies this trope with Clara, the Social Justice Warrior extremist, due to the fact she's too ridiculous to take her antics seriously.

Web Original

 * In Joss Whedon's supervillain musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, there's Captain Hammer, the Arch Enemy and Foil of the titular Villain Protagonist Dr. Horrible. He's a petty, bullying, womanizing and smug Jerkass who only engages in superheroics for the PR, completely uncaring for the safety of the citizens. He constantly bullies Dr. Horrible because, in his mind, all nerdy kids end up being supervillains. The final nail is him dating Penny to spite him, which leads to the doctor taking matters into his own hands . Seeing him being defeated and humiliated by Dr. Horrible is incredibly satisfying,
 * That said, Nathan Fillion's performance makes him entertaining despite his status as a Hate Sink, being similar to the Thenardiers in this regard.
 * Worm is filled to the brim with Black and Gray Morality, with several horrible villains. However, their abilities and accomplishments cause more awe than hatred. With that in mind, we have Taylor's high school bullies, Emma, Sophia and Madison. Their bullying campaign was so awful, this caused Taylor's Traumatic Superpower Awakening and considered suicide, and they do this remorselessly and for no reason at all. Emma and Sophia are the worst, Emma because she used to be Taylor's best friend (and uses this to make the bullying even worse), and Sophia

Western Animation

 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy: the movie introduces the closest this series has to a Big Bad in the form of, who changes most things of the entire series in their short-timed presence. . What makes this character repulsive is The reason why  exists is {{spoiler|to redeem Eddy and the rest of the kids for a well-deserved happy ending.
 * The Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman is all about showing how Horrible Hollywood can be, and as such, it has many characters worth the viewers' hatred and revulsion. That said, it provides a unique spin on this trope by making the Hate Sinks as three-dimensional as possible, either by showing some redeeming qualities (Vanessa Gecko and Rutabaga), genuine tragedies that made them the way they are even if their actions are still inexcusable (Beatrice and Butterscotch Horseman) or simply following the standards of the era ({{spoiler|Beatrice's father Joseph Sugarman}}) The point is that, while they're horrible people whose actions can never be excused, they're still people whose role in the show isn't just commit horrible deeds for the sake of it, but rather to illustrate what kind of extreme Crapsack World would require to make them such Hate Sinks in the first place.
 * Recess has Randall, whose hated by pretty much every student at Third Street Elementary School. The reason for that? He's a snitch who rats out students to Mrs. Finster. He also happens to be a coward. For this reason, he's one of the enemies of the Recess gang. "Randall's Friends" reveals that he doesn't have friends at school, and it's not hard to see why. Even the Ashleys dislike him. Inevitably, Prince Randall (in which he obtains power over the playground by King Bob, due to Randall blackmailing Bob) has him become The Caligula.
 * The aforementioned Ashleys represent the mean girl stereotype. Though her first name is also Ashley, Spinelli has no intention of joining their group, and it's not hard to see why. Their first appearance alone has them jinxing Gus, which is far from fun for him. Though having said that, they are legitimately friends with each other. One Ashley was kicked out of the group for wearing the opposite color on Purple Day (which represents the day that they all met and became friends), but they eventually reconciled.
 * Lawson is basically a Spear Counterpart to the Ashleys. He's not the type of person that you would want to play sports with, as he is a very sore winner. One episode in particular had him stealing the fort the Recess Gang had worked so hard to build, and he and his gang of friends threw water balloons at them when they tried to take it back. It's not surprising he's Vince's rival when it comes to sports.
 * Miss Finster herself zigzags the trope...while she's regularly portrayed as a sadist teacher, it is shown in Recess: School's Out that she was against Dr. Phillium Benedict's idea of abolishing Recess. And she legitimately considers Principal Prickly to be a friend of hers. It's also shown that she's a nice lady when she's off the clock. And she actually does sew the Recess Gangs's pants when they rip, as embarrassing as it for them.
 * Burgermeister Meisterburger from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is a lot goofier than most examples of this trope, but since he's a humorless adult obsessed with not letting the children of Sombertown have fun in a Christmas Special, he still runs afoul of it. It's best exemplified when he gets so fed up with Kris sneaking toys to the children, that he has them all tossed into a roaring bonfire while the crying children are forced to watch. Being petty is one thing, but the Burgermeister definitely takes it to new heights.

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