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 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.

Anime and Manga

 * Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu has no clear-cut antagonistic force, save the characters' own idiocies. The Tokonatsu duo introduced as filler villains during the OVA serve as the necessary, obnoxious road bumps hindering the main characters' cultural festival.
 * Dragon Ball Z has one in Mr. Shu, the Sadist Teacher Chi-Chi hires to tutor Gohan during a filler episode in the Trunks Saga. Every moment of his screen time is spent either openly mocking and trash-talking Goku and/or beating Gohan with a whip for the slightest transgressions, so it's incredibly satisfying when Chi-Chi, upon realizing what a scumbag he is, throws him out a window and then chases him off of her property. For some fans, this act resulted in Chi-Chi being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
 * Girls und Panzer has Shiho Nishizumi, the cold, abrasive mother of Miho and Maho. She disapproves of her youngest daughter abandoning her tank to save the lives of her teammates, to the point . To drive things home, it's clear that Miho has given up on actively trying to gain Shiho's approval, and the only reason Maho does what Shiho tells her to as Nishizumi heiress is.
 * Mayo Sakaki from the 3rd Fushigi Yuugi OVA. Word Of God states that she's supposed to be a deconstruction of fangirls who want to take over Miaka's role and disrupt the status quo. So she's a Villain Protagonist.
 * Tomoo in Elfen Lied is an orphanage bully who loves trying to make Kaede cry, to the point of forcing her to watch him murder her loyal puppy. He ends up dying shortly afterwards when she makes his head explode.
 * Spandam from the Enies Lobby arc of One Piece is this trope personified. Lucci and the other members of CP9 are too cool/quirky to really hate, and this also applies to many other One Piece villains. Spandam's main quirk is how despicable, incompetent, and weak he is in spite of his inflated view of himself.
 * Then there is Admiral Akainu. Remember Ohara? He was the one who ordered the civilian ship to be blown up. Marineford? . What a prick!
 * And finally there are the World Nobles, human parasites who are the reason piracy is rampant in the One Piece universe, why Boa Hancock was a frigid bitch until Luffy's arrival at Amazon Lilly, and why Doflamingo is, well... Doflamingo. It's telling that Eustass Kidd says even the worst pirates are almost considered saints compared to the Nobles.
 * Naruto: Between bashing women, considering the Bijuu as mindless slaves, putting the two protagonists at death's doorstep, turning 's life into a nightmare so bad he would try to remake reality, and surviving every goddamn thing they throw at him; Madara Uchiha seems to serve no better purpose than this. In-Universe, the number of people who don't completely despise him can easily be counted on one hand.
 * In an odd twist, Madara was seemingly relieved of his duties in this role, as The Man Behind the Man
 * Tonpa of Hunter X Hunter. A Fat Bastard who intentionally sets back the main characters and other participants of the Hunter exams for no other reason than to see them fail and does it with absolutely sadistic glee, to the point that he's nicknamed "Tonpa the rookie crusher."
 * Soul Eater has Medusa Gorgon, a relentlessly cruel Manipulative Bitch who treats her own child Crona like a test subject and initiates the plot with her wicked schemes. Whether or not she's the Big Bad is a matter of debate, but she's definitely The Heavy and continues to play a large role throughout.
 * Kyosuke Higuchi from Death Note. He's the only one of the Kiras to evade Draco in Leather Pants status, as he's an extremely sleazy Corrupt Corporate Executive and a Pointy-Haired Boss literally and figuratively, and his character design is noticeably less attractive than that of his coworkers. He also threatens to rape Misa. No wonder the audience is glad when
 * Demegawa is possibly the most loathed character in the show, in and out of universe. You know you're bad when the Kira Task Force basically says that you deserved to be killed by him.
 * Towards the end of the series, Light Yagami himself becomes this, having derailed from a charming Magnificent Bastard to a crazy, Smug Snake Serial Killer by the time he's put down.
 * In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, the majority of the antagonists are very sympathetic Anti-Villains who either aren't really evil or have good reasons for their behavior, with many of them turning good at the end. This is not the case of the third season's Quattro, who at her best, enjoys making fun of her younger sisters and at her worst, has absolutely no regard for human life and thinks those who do so are foolish. She's such a repulsive individual her Villainous Breakdown is more than satisfying,
 * Chaka from Black Lagoon. While most villains have either tragic backstories or affable traits that make them fun, Chaka is a scumbag to the core, with neither likeable nor redeeming qualities whatsoever.
 * In Fairy Tail, Minerva Orlando was this throughout the Grand Magic Games arc. After that arc was over, though, she started to subvert this, . Kyouka and Zancrow, on the other hand, are full-blown straight examples of this trope.
 * In Hellsing, you can't hate The Major, the Crazy Awesome Colonel Kilgore commander of Millenium, as he's an awesomely charismatic strategist with an interesting philosophy that makes him fun to watch. You neither can't hate most of his officers like The Captain, First Lieutenant Rip van Winkle, and Warrant Officer Schrödinger. However, you will hate First Lieutenant Zorin Blitz, a despicable Brawn Hilda with a penchant for Mind Rape. The fact that only draws more hatred.
 * The Gold-toothed Doctor in Fullmetal Alchemist. You can't hate the Homunculi; they have cool powers, make hammy speeches, and have more than a little tragedy about them. Their boss, Father, operates on a nigh-incomprehensible moral system. The Doctor, by contrast, willingly threw his hat in with the above characters Evulz, acts completely nonplussed by the impending end of the world (he's the only one of Father's human allies who knows his full plans, incidentally), and slits a beloved character's throat to force a Sadistic Choice on another character (who happened to be said beloved character's love interest).
 * And then there's Shou Tucker, a barely competent alchemist who has no problem turning his wife (and later his adorable little daughter and her Big Friendly Dog) into tormented monstrosities For Science! and to keep his title of State Alchemist, consistently refusing to own up to what he did. Needless to say, Tucker is universally despised by the In-Universe characters, the audience and even the author herself, who makes him the only character in the entire manga to go to Hell in the "In Memoriam" omakes.
 * Kill la Kill:
 * Nui Harime. Powers worthy of Villain Sue status? Check. Check. Always keeping a cheerful attitude, in spite in other's misery? Check. Constantly putting Ryuko, Satsuki, and the Elite Four down? CHECK.  Big. Fucking. CHECK. Just so we're clear that she's a Hate Sink, her personal belief is that hate is pretty much the same thing as love. She wants us to love her by hating her.
 * Then we get to Ragyo Kiryuin, Nui's boss as well as Satsuki 's horrible mother. Mother-daughter bonding moments are instead replaced with incestual molestation; action-packed hilarity is drowned by a pseudo-Cosmic Horror Story the moment she takes the reins in the show; and there's the fact that none of her evil plans are expanded upon beyond being evil for the sake of it. And if that wasn't enough, she's the one who created the monster that is Nui Harime, with all the horror that implies, making Nui a Jerkass Woobie in retrospect.
 * Satsuki invokes this during the first part of the series. She pretends to know who killed Isshin Matoi and is even implied to be the killer, and promises to only tell Ryuko the truth once they fight. Come their fight, and she proceeds to beat the living crap out of Ryuko. Once Ryuko starts to get the upper hand, Satsuki calls off their scrap and redacts her promise, only telling her the truth after she beats the Elite Four. It's later revealed that she intentionally kept pissing Ryuko off
 * Clannad usually is in a setting where there is No Antagonist, thus it's a daily life series. Every character seems to always have more sympathetic qualities, even the more unpleasant ones. The exception are the school's whole soccer team, a team of of Jerk Jocks who kicked Youhei Sunohara out. While he was being a jerk when they kicked him out, they prove to be even worse, with implications that they did enjoy making Sunohara's time in the club miserable. When his sister Mei begged for them to put him back to club to re-ignite his passion in life, they instead chose to torment not only Mei but also Tomoya (and Nagisa in the anime) for nothing but laughs, complete with false promises that if they put up with it, they will let Youhei back. This goes to the point that when Youhei struck back at them for bullying his sister, it's one of the biggest Crowning Moment of Awesomes of the series.

Film - Animation

 * Bolt is a road trip movie with No Antagonist: even the slightly insane producer and the snarky network representative are doing what they believe is best for the Show Within a Show. So there's Penny's horribly obnoxious agent, who by contrast is doing what he thinks is best for himself, with no regard for the feelings or well being of the child he's supposed to be looking out for or her mother.
 * Dumbo, likewise, doesn't have a real villain. The Ringmaster, while responsible for locking away Dumbo's mother, was not aware that she was trying to protect her son and believed that she was a public menace. Even the four elephant bullies who made fun of Dumbo for his large ears very occasionally have a point in being angry at him (especially when he did screw up their climax and wounded them greatly), which downplayss the hatred a little. But good luck finding fans of that one kid that bullied Dumbo and incited the wrath of Mrs. Jumbo, triggering a chain of events that resulted in Dumbo's misery. Most people use him as a prime example of the show's Kids Are Cruel and Humans Are the Real Monsters.
 * Chi-Fu from Mulan is a misogynistic, obnoxious, snooty, Obstructive Bureaucrat who constantly irritates the other characters with his arrogance. He's even told to his face by the emperor that he can easily be replaced by the heroine. The reason for his presence is that Mulan, as a war movie, has a villainous faction that is difficult to personalize (even once the Hun army is stripped down to a Five-Bad Band) and Big Bad Shan Yu is a Badass Lightning Bruiser who regards Mulan as a Worthy Opponent, as well as one of the few people in the movie who never cares about her gender.
 * The main conflict in Balto revolves around trying to get medicine for a diphtheria outbreak. You can't hate a disease, but you can hate Steele, a bigoted, repulsive bastard of a husky.
 * Kent Mansley from The Iron Giant is an arrogant, slimy government agent who constantly causes trouble for Hogarth and sleazily eyes his mom. His only concern is finding the giant and making himself look good to his military superiors. And if that isn't enough, he also ends up instigating a near nuclear disaster by the end of the film which leads to the giant's famous Heroic Sacrifice.
 * Mertle from Lilo and Stitch is a bullying Alpha Bitch who repeatedly kicks the dog by insulting and excluding Lilo, and also making harsh comments about her deceased mother. She exists because the real antagonists Jumba, Pleakley and Captain Gantu have sympathetic motivations and/or are too entertaining to really hate.
 * Oogie-Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas exists so that the audience doesn't end up hating Jack, since while Jack has the best of intentions, really all of the problems in the movie stem from his own dissatisfaction with his job. Oogie-Boogie, as being the only actively malicious character, gives the audience someone to hate and gives Jack a way to redeem himself.
 * The reason why Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame was so monstrously cruel was because Disney wanted to avert the Evil Is Cool trope, which was common among Disney villains and continues to be so to this very day. It backfired, as Frollo ended up becoming one of Disney's most popular villains.

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.
 * 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 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 exposes John's identity to the terrorists, problably hoping 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 Agent Johnsons (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.
 * 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.
 * 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.

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.
 * 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.
 * John Green's books don't have true villains, since they're Teen Dramas. That said, there's still some loathsome people in them:
 * Looking for Alaska has Kevin, a Rich Bastard student at Culver Creek who makes his entrance by nearly drowning Miles as Revenge by Proxy against his roommate Chip, whom Miles had only just met that day, escalating a war between his crowd and the heroes.
 * An Abundance of Katherines has Colin Lyford aka "Other Colin" (since he shares the same name as The Hero), probably the closest thing to an outright villain Green has written. He's the Big Man on Campus in Gutshot, Tennessee and current boyfriend of heroine Lindsey Wells, even though he used to bully her in elementary school. He's also been cheating on her with her best female friend, and gets found out when he's caught doing the do with her in the middle of a graveyard.
 * Paper Towns has Jase Worthington, Chuck Parson, Becca Arrington, and the rest of the popular crowd who betrayed Margo Roth Spiegelman and in doing so kick off the plot.
 * The Fault in Our Stars has Peter Van Houten, Gus and Hazel's favorite author. He's an exceedingly unpleasant drunkard who insults them for having cancer and refuses to tell them any of what they want to know about his book. That said, Van Houten gets a Freudian Excuse for his behavior, as well as an attempted Pet the Dog moment at the end of the book, so he's not as hateable as the above examples.

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.
 * Cold Case loves this trope. Virtually any episode with a Sympathetic Murderer will also have a secondary villain who is genuinely scum, and as the investigation proceeds it's typically revealed that they've committed a (non-murder) crime, too, enabling the cops to throw the book at them.
 * In Game of Thrones, where every character has complicated morality and isn't entirely good or evil, King Joffrey is there to ensure that everyone hates his guts. . George R. R. Martin would personally congratulate Jack Gleeson for his skill at achieving this status for Joffrey!
 * And then there's Ramsay Bolton, who is quite possibly the single most vile, depraved and despicable character in the entire story, surpassing even Joffrey. Every second he's onscreen is filled with a nightmarish tone about what horrible thing he's going to do next; torturing, hunting, raping and breaking people for the fun of it.
 * Lost excels at introducing characters who seem completely unlikable at first, only to reveal that they're more complex than they seem at first glance. However, there are two exceptions: Anthony and Martin Keamy. Each of these characters only appears in a handful of episodes, yet manage to come off as more evil than any of the show's main villains. The writers have stated that Keamy in particular was a deliberate attempt at creating a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
 * Several characters fulfill this trope in Sons of Anarchy, most notably Carusso the porn producer that kills Luann, the Ghanezi brothers that made torture and rape porn, the prison guard that kills Opie and the porn actress that sleeps with everybody’s husband. All of these characters seem to be added to the series to be hated and/or for the public to applaud when the heroes kill them. After all, if you have a series about criminals, you do need to make them look as good as possible.

Theater

 * Inspector Javert is the main villain 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; 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 relieft 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. Ironically, despite being the only truly morally bankrupt characters in the show, the Thenardiers are probably among the best-liked in the cast; since they have the only truly funny songs in the work ("Master of the House" and "Beggar at the Feast"), and as such are the only source of levity in the musical otherwise.

Video Games
"Shepard: That was for Thane/Miranda/Kirrahe, you son of a bitch."
 * 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 hes 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.
 * The straightest example is from Pokémon Black and White. Although the game's main conflict is about clashing ideals between the protagonist and N,  In the sequel, he's more clearly the Big Bad, but even then his underlings in this game (Zinzolin, Colress and the Shadow Triad) are still way more sympathetic than him.
 * 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
 * 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.
 * Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain has, who manages to be even more despicable and hateful than the game's Big Bad Skull Face. How? By
 * 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 closest thing to a Big Bad of the first two games 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.
 * The Big Bad of the third game,, is even worse. At least shows impressive Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard tendencies, so he can get some respect. , on the other hand, merely copycats his MO, and proves to be an stupid, incompetent bastard. As such, he's the only character to hate in the game.
 * Undertale has two:
 * The game works as hard as it can to make you utterly despise Flowey, the two-faced, fourth wall-breaking flower who never ceases to guilt-trip the player for their actions during the beginning of the game This is done so the game
 * The other one, Played for Laughs, is Jerry. Jerry is The Friend Nobody Likes, and is designed to be obnoxious as shit no matter what path you're taking. Pacifists find that Jerry can't be properly spared, only ditched, and he'll come back after just one turn if the battle isn't over by then. Murderers find that Jerry is a Stone Wall with massive HP and Defense, so even with their massive attack stat they have to hit him several dozen times before he finally dies.
 * Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing is a mole who reminds you to save your game if you quit without saving or reset it to get better items to reload in shops. However, he does it in such an abrasive manner (yelling and insulting the player and doing so for a very long time) that he's widely regarded as the worst character in the game. There are even reports that he made some young female players cry when he appeared. That said, he does make an effective deterrent for resetting your game (as he's effectively a weaponized version of Kaepora Gaebora's long monolouges). Nintendo knows about his status of being hated by plenty of fans and made him an optional feature in New Leaf.
 * Mass Effect 3: The principal antagonists are the Reapers and the Illusive Man. Problem is, they both exemplify Evil Is Cool to a certain degree, the former being implacable forces of destruction dedicated to wiping out all life; and the latter a Magnificent Bastard trying to serve humanity's "best interests" through taking advantage of the war and the Reapers, while also regarding Commander Shepard as a Worthy Opponent (not to mention the fact that in Mass Effect 2, the Illusive Man was a major ally who actually saved Shepard's life). So instead, these guys are there to take the audience hatred instead:
 * Kai Leng is the Illusive Man's dragon who spends most of the game taunting Shepard and potentially killing off fan favorite characters. He's a racist, runs from every fight he doesn't have the advantage in but acts like he's an unstoppable badass, and is a perfect example of Evil Is Petty, going so far as to steal and eat Captain Anderson's cereal and sending Commander Shepard a taunting message about . This makes the prompt where Shepard one of the most popular prompts in the series.


 * Dalatrass Linron generally exists solely to be vilified for not helping the Krogan overcome the genophage. Under certain circumstances, though, Linron can subvert this. Specifically, the source of Linron's Jerkass attitude is that she's afraid that if the genophage is cured, the galaxy will have another Krogan Rebellion on its hands, the krogan overwhelming everybody with force. In most playthroughs, this attitude comes off as prejudiced and closed-minded. But if
 * The greatest example is Henry Lawson, Miranda's Archnemesis Dad, who makes the above two look like saints compared to him. He's a narcissistic Mad Scientist with an astonishing Lack of Empathy who creates Designer Babies as a way of having a dynasty, controlling them and discarding them if they don't meet his expectations. In this game, he proves to be even more despicable than he seemed by . When confronted by Shepard, he uses one of his children Oriana as a Human Shield, and depending on the player's choices, he can kill . He does this atrocities on his own free will, and only shows loyalty to himself, not caring about Cerberus' good intentions. He's pretty much the most evil, irredeemable and despicable character in the entire Mass Effect trilogy, and considering the variety of villains in this series, that's saying a lot.

Webcomics

 * Drowtales officially has no Big Bad, so Snadhya'rune Vel'Sharen is the closest fit with most of the strife in the story resulting from her machinations. Despite this, she's largely a behind-the-scenes player who keeps up a friendly veneer in public, and can seem downright reasonable until her sanity façade shatters in a later story arc. Kalki, on the other hand, is openly antagonistic from the moment she's introduced, with one of the first things she does on panel is kill one of the more sympathetic characters with a dirty trick in front of his mother and entire family. And that's not even touching on her later actions, which include stabbing her sister's hand into the table to make her stay, chopping off her arm seconds later and going for a thrill kill against some unfortunate guests in the middle of her own home being attacked by actual invaders, which establish her as firmly Ax Crazy compared to Snadhya's refined manipulations.
 * The Order of the Stick has Daimyo Kubota, a Filler Villain lacking in the entertaining, impressive, sympathetic, or redeeming qualities the other villains have shown. He's a scheming aristocrat who cares only about getting himself into power, thinks taking Azure City back from Xykon will be a trivial matter, repeatedly tries to assassinate Hinjo to take Azure City's throne, sees no value in commoners, tries to have a pregnant woman assassinated to give himself a political edge, and murders Therkla in cold blood when she tries to convince him to simply defect and form his own kingdom somewhere else. Once captured by Elan, he spends a few moments gloating about how he'll manipulate the situation to be a Karma Houdini,

Web Original

 * RWBY has many antagonistic characters and groups (Grimm, White Fang, Roman Torchwick, Cinder Fall, etc.), but for one reason or another, most of them are difficult to be a target of audience hatred. As such, that role is filled by Team CRDL, a group of callous, obnoxious, bigoted, cowardly bullies who pick on many of the show's designated Woobies. It's no coincidence that their leader, Cardin, is named after the man who oversaw the trial and execution of Joan of Arc.
 * Red vs. Blue has many villains, but like RWBY above, they're either too Badass or entertaining to be hated. So the Chorus Trilogy, there's to fill that role. He seems to be a Loveable Rogue Jerk with a Heart of Gold at first, until he gleefully shows his true colours halfway through season 12. It's revealed he's actually been manipulating the Reds and the Blues into perpetuating a civil war with the goal of killing everyone on both sides, among other atrocities. It's telling that, in a show where everyone's a Jerkass, he's the only character whose sociopathy isn't Played for Laughs in the slightest, being even more hated than the guy who's actually paying him to commit his misdeeds.
 * 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,

Western Animation

 * Adventure Time has Martin,
 * My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
 * In the episode "The Best Night Ever", there's Prince Blueblood. He's just a Royal Brat who acts like a Jerkass to Rarity when she tries to win his affection.
 * The teenage dragons from "Dragon Quest". Their only purpose is to be complete and utter jerks to Spike and anything that's not a dragon. Toward the end of their episode, the dragons attempt to kidnap baby phoenixes and try to force Spike to smash an unhatched phoenix just because it's fun.
 * Diamond Tiara used to be this for the longest time, only appearing to make life miserable for the Cutie Mark Crusaders and other school-aged characters. It's not until Season 5's episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" that she became more sympathetic and subverted the trope. The same episode, however, introduced Spoiled Rich, Diamond Tiara's horrendous mother, who's an incredibly nasty snob who looks down on everyone for virtually no reason and holds Diamond Tiara to ridiculous standards, with no forgiveness should she fall short.
 * Svengallop in "The Mane Attraction." The manager of Applejack's Childhood Friend Coloratura, he spent the entire episode being obnoxious towards everypony whether it be Applejack, children, or even Coloratura herself. The final straw was his treatment of Pinkie Pie. Gilda may have gained ire for making Fluttershy cry, but it takes a special kind of evil to overwork and criticize a pony known for being Fun Personified, to the point where she's battered and almost about to cry.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants:
 * In the episode "Pickles", we have Bubble Bass, who proves to be more of a Fat Bastard than the trope namer. He (intentionally) caused SpongeBob to have a Heroic BSOD, and when his lies were revealed, he tries to run away like a coward. The operative word here being "tries", since what he does is less "running" and more "attempting to move faster than walking speed while wheezing heavily due to his morbid obesity".
 * Squilliam Fancyson, Squidward's rival, who takes Squidward's bullying tendencies Up to Eleven and stripped of any redeeming qualities. His losses, however short, are always rewarding, especially considering how unusual wins are for Squidward.
 * In a similar manner, "Pizza Delivery" features an Unsatisfiable Customer who, after ordering for a pizza to be delivered from a service, rewards Spongebob's arduous loyalty by screaming blue murder at him for forgetting a drink he never ordered and slamming the door in his teary-eyed face. This all to set up for another rare Everyone Has Standards moment for Squidward, who promptly force feeds him the whole pizza box in one bite in retaliation. Interestingly, the character here is a recurring Living Prop, so some of the other characters he takes on aren't nearly as odious.
 * South Park has a Show Within a Show example inside "Terrence and Phillip". The show in question is about two Canadian actors who enjoy farting in other's faces. Though it's considered a horrible show by Sheila Broflovski and other adults, there's nothing to really hate about that... except for Scott the Dick, the nemesis of Terrence and Phillip who thinks fart jokes are the lowest form of humor and wishes that Terrence and Phillip have cancer despite them not really doing anything to antagonize him.
 * In the series proper, there's Stephen Stotch, Butters's scumbag of a father. He treats him horribly, whether it be getting angry over a "bad" school photo or gas-lighting him for putting Hamburger Helper in coffee, making it hard to blame Butters for seeing him as a monster. Butters' mom Linda counts to a lesser extent, since she at least shows in few occasions she cares about her son, at least more than her husband does.
 * When the titular Kim Possible isn't saving the world, chances are she's dealing with Bonnie Rockwaller, a stereotypical cheerleader who loves making her life miserable. While she did help Kim on occasion, it's mostly out of pragmatism, and will go back to bullying Kim when job is done. It goes to the point that Ron Stoppable wonders why Kim doesn't resort to using kung fu on her, since she's dedicated her life to stopping evil.
 * Family Guy, being a high order Sadist Show, tends to flip around with this for almost every character depending on Rule of Funny, being this what led to the show's frequent Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. That said, there's some few consistent ones:
 * Connie D'Mico serves the purpose of being a high school bully who picks on Meg, so that fans can hate her and cheer when bad things happen to her.
 * Carter Pewterschmidt, Lois's father, qualifies before and after the uncancellation.
 * In-Universe, Meg herself. When the whole family is stuck in the house, just trying to wait out a hurricane, tensions finally reach a breaking point and Meg calls out her whole family for all the abuse they've done to her. For example, she makes Lois realize that she's been a dick to her only daughter for no particular or justifiable reason. Lois, Peter, and Chris all storm off, completely devastated. It's only when Brian talks to her that she realizes that she needs to serve as a "lightning rod" for all the hate just to keep their dysfunctional family together.