Equal Opportunity Evil

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"I will be an equal-opportunity despot and make sure that terror and oppression is distributed fairly, not just against one particular group that will form the core of a rebellion."
—Evil Overlord List Cellblock A

Bad guys are often remarkably open when it comes to race, gender, religion, species, and so forth of their members. Some races might always be evil, but evil really knows no bounds. If the characters have the ambition, the bloodlust, the hatred of puppies, or the simple enjoyment of being evil, they're welcome to sign up. Evil Is One Big Happy Family, after all.

At full force, this trope leads to a remarkably diverse set of top brass, as well.

If this trait is emphasized more than necessary, it might come across as a Pet the Dog moment. It might even result in Rooting for the Empire if the "good guys" are not so unbiased. (Beware, though: there are many forms of evil in the human heart besides bigotry, and being unprejudiced does not necessarily make one heroic.) Remember, the reason the villains are doing this is because they feel it greater serves their own evil means. Someone who employs equally can just as easily hate everyone equally and may have no problems with disposing of their minions just as easily, often permanently. No wonder they always have positions available. This is often done as a way to avoid Unfortunate Implications about certain races.

Compare White Gang-Bangers and Straight Edge Evil; contrast Politically-Incorrect Villain. See also Alike and Antithetical Adversaries and Anti-Human Alliance.

Examples of Equal Opportunity Evil include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the Trigun manga, the Gung-Ho Guns were very equal-opportunity in employing all manner of disabilities and lifestyles (a paraplegic, a quadriplegic, a gang of midgets, a child, a one-eyed woman, a transvestite, a samurai, a man with split personality, their own musician...) As long as they were sufficiently villainous and ruthless, their employer didn't care.
    • It's more complex than that. Namely, they're all human and Knives doesn't care enough about humans to discriminate.
    • Well in the manga the child in question is really a sand worm, yeah turns out they're pretty dang smart, it also uses a teenage woman and a Manly Gay black man as host
  • In Berserk, the Big Bad, Griffith, allows people from all walks of life to join his army, including demons, commoners, soldiers from nearly every neighboring country, and even people from the nation of Kushan that he is currently fighting against.
  • Dragon Ball: While the Red Ribbon Army wears strangely familiar uniforms, they apparently do not discriminate based on race. Or species.
    • Or sexual orientation.
  • Bleach gives us Aizen, who enlisted Kaname Tosen, a blind black guy, Gin Ichimaru, an Osakan, Halibel, a dark skinned blonde woman, Nnoitora, a sexist prick, and Ulquiorra, the very-white saddest clown in the world, among others. So, that's a black handicapped person, The Idiot From Osaka, a dark skinned blonde woman, a Politically-Incorrect Villain and an Emo. For those of you less open-minded, don't worry: He is an Emo, but he is competent in spite of that.
    • Except that Gin speaks in a Kyoto-dialect which has completely different implications than an Osakan dialect.
      • In trope-speak, The Idiot From Osaka can be expanded to include anyone who speaks the Kansai regional dialects.
  • Similarly to Aizen, One Piece gives us Sir Crocodile, who has hired a black man, a flamboyant transvestite, old people, and every male member of his team has completely equal female partner, including himself. Sure he may be evil, but at least he isn't prejudiced! Well, the transvestite doesn't have a partner. He considered himself his own partner in that regard.
  • The military dictatorship Amestris of Fullmetal Alchemist is mostly an example of this, despite being A Nazi by Any Other Name. There are women in the military, and it is a multi-ethnic country (if only because of its continual brutal conquest of its neighbors). They don't quite qualify though, as prior to the war against Ishball, there was a purge of people of Ishballan descent from throughout the ranks of Amestrian society.
    • That's not necessarily surprising; Hitler teamed up with the Japanese, and after all, Amestris are literally Nazis by another name.
    • Not in the manga.
  • In Naruto Orochimaru's Sound Four are a fat guy, A brown six armed person, a woman who curses like a sailor, two persons not completely unlike Siamese Twins, and the leader is a terminally ill guy.
    • In-Universe there is Akatsuki, who employ members from (almost) every major country[1] (and some minor ones) and every member has an completely different philosophy (humorously, the members with opposite philosophies are paired together). That being said, they have only one female in their ranks.
  • The computerized Dream Future executive branch of 'Net Ghost Pipopa' is composed of American, European, Asian and North African members.
  • In Rurouni Kenshin, Shishio's main followers include a former prostitute, a Transsexualism, a blind guy, giant who is about 20-feet tall (and a financial expert and an Arrogant Kung Fu Guy). Further, his philosophy itself fits this. Shishio is a Social Darwinist who dreams of Japan becoming a militaristic warrior paradise. While he has no empathy at all for those he considers weak, Shishio doesn't gauge strength based on wealth and background.

Comic Books

  • In the 1980s and 1990s, Marvel's Serpent Society fit this trope to a T. From the group's inception, about half of them were women—and supervillain teams have tended to be boys' clubs. There were several black members, at least one Hispanic member, and at least one Middle Eastern member. The Society also welcomed disabled people: Death Adder was mute, Rattler was deaf, and Bushmaster was an amputee. (The last was a case of Disability Superpower, as he'd replaced his missing limbs with super-strong cybernetic parts.)
    • Funny thing is that the Serpent Society started out as a spin-off from HYDRA... Who were NAZIS. (Although they kind of grew into "generic evil organization" over time.) Although, Hydra itself has some notorious female members, Lady Viper being their leader as of the New York branch as of a 2020 storyline.
    • Both played straight and subverted with many of the X-Men's enemies. While both the human bigots and mutant supremacists actively hate and discriminate against the "other side", their own memberships are often depicted as otherwise ethnically diverse. The subversion comes with the fact that they're hatemongers against either humans or mutants, and yet have no problem accepting members from many different ethnic backgrounds.
  • In the DCU, Kobra might be a bunch of crazy murderous cultist with a snake fetish, but they pride themselves on understanding that "the serpent comes in many colours."
    • Apparently serpent-obsessives have no time for prejudice.
  • Somewhat lampshaded during Marvel's Acts Of Vengeance event, in which the mastermind assembles an evil team supreme consisting of Doctor Doom (Romani), Magneto (Jewish), the Mandarin (Chinese), the Kingpin, the Wizard, and the Red Skull (a Nazi). It really didn't work out. Entirely apart from the clash of egos, none of them could stand the Skull, and vice-versa.
  • Lampshaded in Marvel's Runaways number 7, our heroes are doing some survival shoplifting. Upon arrival, Nico rather effectively sums it up with the page quote.
  • The Marvel Star Wars series of the late 1970s and 1980s probably has more female antagonists than the rest of the Star Wars Expanded Universe combined. Lumiya is by far the most famous but there are many others ranging from serious villainesses like Kharys to one issue annoyances like Captain Traal. There are even a couple of nameless female Mooks! The contrast with later writers is really quite startling.
  • Darkseid has an entire team of female enforcers led by Granny Goodness, who is often regarded as his second-in-command.

Film

  • Death Wish 3 is an Egregious example, portraying all the street gangs of New York as multiethnic. That's hardly the film's only problem, however...
    • Perhaps the most ridiculous example in the film is a biker wearing a Nazi helmet complete with a swastika(!) who has no qualms about joining forces with other ethnicities.
  • City of God features multiethnic gangs. Truth in Television as ethnic tensions in Brazil are very low.
  • La Haine features three poor French criminals working together: Vinz (Jewish), Hubert (black African) and Sayid (a North African Muslim).
  • The Street Fighter movie has Bison recruit minions and henchmen from all over the world, the end of the movie even has a joke segment using national stereotypes to make fun of his international regiments.
  • Spoofed in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles: The villain's "Thugs Wanted" ads specify that he's "An Equal Opportunity Employer".
    • And, of course, it includes several representatives from hate groups like the KKK and the Nazis.

Lamarr: I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the west. Take this down.
(Taggart looks for a pen and paper while Hedley talks)
Lamarr: I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

  • The thousand armies of the Persian Empire in 300 seem to encompass every non-Greek race living in the Old World at the time—from actual Persians, to black Africans, to...orc ninja samurai?
    • And historically speaking, the Achaemenid Persian empire was gigantic,(that's them in brown there) and frequently levied large numbers of troops from its conquered territories, many of whom signed up willingly, as the Persian empire, was at the time, one of the most advanced and diverse places to be, where one could rise to fame and fortune thanks to his own skills and sagacity (the emperor employed secret agents to spy on distant satraps lest they become too greedy and corrupt! Satraps! Secret Agents!!) while on the other hand "democratic" Greece was a much lamer and stiff society where basically you were doomed to toil in the line of work of your father if you had not the luck to be born in a family of cultured, city dwelling landlords.
  • The League of Shadows from Batman Begins had Europeans, Asians, and at least one African among its ranks in the few scenes we see them with their masks off (a review of the video game based on the film pointed out how jarring it seemed that the enemies the player faces in the game are very racially mixed). The Dark Knight shows that the various ethnic gangs in Gotham (Blacks, Italians, Chechens, Chinese, etc) are so scared of the Batman that they started working together against him.
    • Well, they are supposed to be committed toward their view on serving justice. It doesn't seem like they would discriminate based on race when looking for applicants.
  • The gang in RoboCop. White, black and Latin.
  • In the original Star Wars Empire, which was clearly based on Those Wacky Nazis, white men were the preferred members (ESPECIALLY if they sported sideburns). However, in the Expanded Universe, villains like the Sith come in all colors and both genders...though the material set around the time of the Rebellion still makes the point that the Empire is not just strongly speciesist but somewhat sexist and perhaps even subtly racist.
    • The CIS in the prequels seems to be this combined with Cosmopolitan Council. Every member race/organization is a non-human, with Count Dooku being the only human in the organization. They employ Droids, Geonosians (the flying insect aliens), cyborgs (Grievous), fallen Jedi (Asaaj Ventress), and mutant alien caveman cyborgs. (This could be taken as impetus for the Empire to be as discriminatory as it wanted to be, if they fostered backlash in the media.)
      • The novelization for Ep. III makes it clear that fostering backlash and animosity against non-humans was indeed part of Count Dooku's plans (he would conveniently switch sides after being captured by Anakin). Palpatine, being the ultimate pragmatist, couldn't care less.
    • The Expanded Universe also implies that Emperor Palpatine himself couldn't care less about colors, genders, or species (considering everyone to be equally inferior to him personally), but encouraged the prejudice anyway to help maintain his power since humans are the majority of the Empire's population and the Core Worlds elite tend to be human males who actually are extremely prejudiced. Thus, the Empire officially was pretty much human males only, with women and aliens being at best shuffled off to insignificant roles, but Palpatine would make (almost always secret) exceptions for women and aliens whose skills were particularly useful to him.
    • Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi anyone? You had all kinds of aliens: a Hutt, two Twi'leks (one of them female), Humans (of all races), Rodians, Gamorreans, Weequays, Klatooinians, Niktos, Jawas, even DROIDS, etc as the villains. Plus a cackling lizardmonkey.
  • In the 2008 Iron Man film the villainous terrorist group operating in Afghanistan, the Ten Rings, is specifically described as having members speaking a variety of languages from all over Central Asia, plus Russian and Hungarian. Astute fans of the comic book might not have been surprised if an East Asian showed his face, too... (As the leader of the group, naturally.)
    • Plus, there was the obviously mixed-race Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Dude's a terrorist. Who knew? (Apparently, Jon Favreau.)
  • The gang from the horror movie While She Was Out consists of a white guy, a black guy, a Puerto Rican and an Asian. The Dread Central review referred to them as "the United Thugs Of Benetton".
  • The crew of the Black Pearl (both Barbossa's lot and Jack's lot) in Pirates of the Caribbean include white, African, and what appear to be Indian members—Annamaria in the first film is a black woman, and while Gibbs makes much of her gender nobody bats an eye at her skin color. Possibly justified because...well, they're pirates. Truth in Television. See more under Real Life below.
    • And in At World's End we see pirates literally from all over the world, with the Brethren Court encompassing many races, cultures and at least two genders.
  • Memnon in The Scorpion King runs an equal opportunity and multicultural Horde.
  • The gang in Death Sentence is multi-ethnic.
  • Lampshaded in The Big Hit: Hitman Melvin (white Mark Wahlberg) is suspected of betraying his employer (black Avery Brooks), who sends Cisco (mixed-race Lou Diamond Phillips) and two gunmen (one black, one East Asian) to confront him at his house. The four have a tense standoff sitting at Melvin's kitchen table, when his girlfriend's drunk father (Elliot Gould), walks in and remarks how happy he is to see four young men of different races sitting together in friendship, in contrast to his wife's rejection of Melvin as a future son-in-law for not being Jewish.
  • The gangs in The Warriors are generally racially segregated except for the Warriors themselves and the Turnbull AC's who, oddly enough, are a gang of skinheads.
  • In the original Assault on Precinct 13, the gang attacking the eponymous station isn't united by race or much of anything really. The police officers even mention how weird it is. It fits though, they have no dialog and almost seem like a supernatural force.
  • Averted with the all-black street gang Chance encounters in Being There.
  • In the Bruce Lee film Way of the Dragon (aka Return of the Dragon), Bruce goes to Rome to help a Chinese restaurant threatened with extortion by the local gansters. The crime boss has an effete, Chinese lackey and thugs that are both white and black("I'd like some Chinese spare ribs!") who scare away the customers and beat up the staff. After Bruce deals with these guys, the crime boss flies in an American (Chuck Norris) to kill Bruce.
  • The criminal gangs in the various Crow movies were pretty ethnically diverse. Even the brother/sister team in the first film were of different ethnicities.
  • Frank White of King of New York runs quite the multiracial gang, which even features women in several prominent roles. This creates conflict between him and The Mafia, which is run by a very Politically-Incorrect Villain.
  • While his ancestors followed a white guys only rule, Griff Tannen's cybernetically-enhanced teenage gang includes at least one Asian and a woman.
  • In Die Hard besides Hans Gruber and his mostly blonde, Eurotrash henchmen, his gang of terrorist/thieves also included a nerdy black computer hacker, an Asian guy with a Fu Manchu mustache, and an American who looked a lot like Huey Lewis.
    • Die Hard With a Vengeance. While the film's villain, Simon Gruber, doesn't quite fit this trope in terms of his mooks, John McClane uses this description to convince Zeus to help him. McClane lies and tells Zeus that Simon put a bomb in Harlem (he actually put it in Chinatown), saying, "This guy doesn't care about skin color even if you do.".
  • When She Was Out has a 4 person gang with a white, black, Asian, and Hispanic member.


Literature

  • Evil Overlord Sauron's empire in The Lord of the Rings had armies of Orcs, Trolls, Uruk-Hai, Easterlings, Southrons, Haradrim, Corsairs and Wild Men. Plus we are told that he even had even more allies and trade relations beyond that. The Good Guys (outside of the heroes) consisted of the light-skinned Men of Gondor and Men of Rohan, the Elves, the ents, the dwarves, and allied nations of Men. Despite what some critics have said, some of these allied nations' folk are explicitly described as darker-skinned than the folk of Gondor.
    • Who canonically could be described as slightly tanned, given Gondor's supposed to be like Italy latitude-wise.
    • Also, the Corsairs were pretty much racist vikings themselves; they had very pale skin, came from the north, and claimed to be the true descendants of lost Numenor, and thus superior.
    • Tolkien recognized the Unfortunate Implications of having all the black and swarthy men on the evil side (in The Silmarillion some fight on either side) and suggested in Unfinished Talesof Numenor and Middleearth that the other two Wizards of the Order were at work in the distant South and East helping good folk of those races resist Sauron's domination.
  • On the Discworld, Speciesism is more prevalent than racism:

Black and White lived in perfect harmony, and ganged up on Green.

  • The Turner Diaries has, as its villains, the System, a group that espouses multiculturalism and consists of every non-white group in the country (led by the Jews). The book ends with The Order, a gang of white supremacists led by the eponymous Turner, overthrowing the System and committing genocide against all non-whites and "race traitors" in the country (and later, the world). Mind you, these are the good guys. The writer was William Luther Pierce, the former head of the white supremacist National Alliance.
    • The book is widely believed to have served as inspiration for Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, whose plan for the attack closely mirrored Turner's plan to bomb a federal building. It also inspired a number of white supremacist gangs and terrorist groups, including one that took its name (the Order) from that of the group in the book.
  • In Day Watch, there are a group of dark wizards, called the Regin brothers, who belong to the family chronicled in Norse Mythology and Wagner's Ring Cycle. While the family is of Scandinavian descent, the brothers themselves were all children adopted from poverty in various countries, and who had magical talent. So, you get black, South American, etc. vikings.
  • In the Tom Ripley series, Ripley, the Villain Protagonist, is a textbook sociopath who for all his affability manages to destroy a number of peoples' lives. In between his villainy, he likes to go to a "workingman's bar" in the French village in which he lives. Two of the frequent customers are a far leftist and rightist who don't agree on anything except their hatred of non-white immigrants. Tom finds this racism highly offensive.
  • In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the book goes:

"In principle, membership of these three groups is not hereditary. The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area."


Live Action TV

  • House utilizes this trope in his constant put downs. He is an equal opportunity offender insulting all people equally and specifically based on their ethnicity, race, religion, gender, age, culture, physical characteristics, job, and lifestyle. Although he himself is a white middle aged man, he is so misanthropic he might as well be an alien being.
  • Since 24 focuses on matters of terrorism, a rather sensitive topic these days, the producers are wary of staying on any particular race or nationality of villain for too long. Sure, Islamic Arabs have come up in more than one season, but usually not two seasons in a row, and usually it is revealed about halfway into the season that they're actually just Mooks in a larger plan. The larger plan will be headed either by a whiter nation or some rogue Americans. At the very least, there are always a few Americans in the villain's employ. Also, expect a balancing Aesop to even things out when the producers feel guilty about who the villain is.
  • Along with Western Terrorists, used a lot by earlier seasons of Spooks. Probably the most Egregious example is the fictitious terrorist group Shining Dawn.
  • The Goa'uld of Stargate SG-1 generally pose as Egyptian Gods, and while there are a number of dark-skinned hosts and Jaffa, they also have lighter-skinned races and cultures, including Goa'uld posing as Chinese and Greek gods.
  • Blakes Seven regularly featured women in high-ranking roles in the evil Federation, most notably Supreme Commander Servalan.
  • The gang that forms out of the Level 5 escapees on Heroes.
  • In Charmed, The SecondSource of All Evil has a pretty diverse group of underlings. Pretty much the only bad guys he didn't accept in his group were vampires and harpies.
    • Actually, he originally let the harpies into his group, but then one of them tried to kill his wife. After that, he cut them out (and cut off their leader's hand). The vampires, however, had a queen who refused to serve him.
  • Space Cops was set on a planet with 3 species: humans, blues and crocs. Both cops and criminals were equal opportunity employers and to emphasize the point, each week, the criminal gang was led by a committee of 3, one of each species. One episode, the Crime of the Week was racism, so TPTB had to invent a 4th species of Space Jews for the criminals to be racist at. The worst thing is that the 4th species never appeared in any subsequent episodes. Therefore, the cops defeated ONE gang of Those Wacky Nazis, but ultimately, the Space Nazis won.
  • The shadowy gangster known as The Greek in the second season of The Wire employs the Greek Vondas, the Ukrainian Sergei, and the Israeli Etan, among others, and he deals with the Polish-American Frank Sobotka and the African-American drug kingpin Prop Joe. And in the end, he wasn't even Greek.
  • Boardwalk Empire places some emphasis on the willingness of gangsters at the time to work with different racial and ethnic groups.
  • The Alien Nation TV series had a multiethnic human-supremacist group.

Music Videos

  • The Michael Jackson videos "Beat It" and "Bad" both have multi-ethnic streetgangs on the verge of fighting each other before going into heavily choreographed dance numbers instead.
    • Also applies to the Weird Al Yankovic parodies of each video.

Tabletop Games

  • Chaos of Warhammer 40,000 accepts/corrupts everyone, regardless of species, though the main races are, in general, conveniently resistant or immune—Eldar know how to resist, Tau have next to no warp presence, Orks and Tyranids have huge psychic strength and are too devoted to a single purpose ("fighting and winning" and consuming any and all biomass, respectively) to be easily corrupted. The Necrons appear to have contractual immunity, considering Chaos comes from the Warp and the Warp is anathema to them.
    • There's also the Imperium, which will hire any colour of Human at all (... when the colours that aren't describable as "white" appear.) - so long as they actually are Human (or an accepted Abhuman variant like Ogryn or Ratlings). The Tau have a British Empire sort of deal - they'll hire anyone from the worlds they've conquered, but colonials will get a bit of a rough deal.
    • Though Chaos is itself divided, as the four gods are opposed diametrically. It's mentioned that this is the main reason ther've been so many Black Crusades, because they keep falling apart from intestinal power struggles. Khornates especially are likely to start killing their teammates for little to no reason other than BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • Stock incompetent villains of Forgotten Realms, Zhentarim. They're bad, sometimes mad, used to serve a God Of Evil Overlords and ended up with a pair of even worse ones. But their armies and poisoned knives work for a simple strategical purpose: power to control the trade. As such, The Black Network is understanding as to the strange tastes of its subsidiaries, but when things like hostility to nonhumans threaten the trade, Zhent high-ups remind the locals their style is about "An Offer You Can't Refuse", not "A Strongly Worded Letter". For that matter, an elf Ashemmi is one of their top-ranked wizards and Sememmon's consort.
      • Xanathar's Thieves' Guild (actually, more slavers than thieves): here you can see their high-ups including beholder (or rather Elder Orb) boss, a dwarf and a half-drow, the rest of the bunch are humans. Not depicted: doppleganger (or is it?), half-orc, gargoyle.
    • The humanoid tribes from Mystara's Broken Lands, though each is numerically dominated by a specific majority race, often include substantial minorities of other D&D humanoids.
  • Some of the street gangs in Shadowrun accept a diverse mix of ethnicities and/or metatypes, often because they're united by their Hats rather than their backgrounds (e.g. all-decker gangs).

Video Games

  • Many of the evil organisations in World of Warcraft, to the point that the racist organisations like the Scarlet Crusade or the Grimtotem are the exception. Criminal organisations such as the Defias Brotherhood, the Venture Co. or the Bloodsail pirates employ members from the Alliance (mostly humans) and the Horde (orcs, undeads...) as well as non-aligned races (ogres, gnolls) as mercenaries, while cults like the Shadow Council, the Cult of the Damned, the Wyrmcult or the Twilight's Hammer accept anybody fanatic/hungry for power/nihilist or stupid enough to join them.
    • This can lead to some Fridge Logic when overwhelmingly good races like the Draenei show up as members of the Twilight's Hammer.
  • The game Evil Genius takes this into an interesting combination. Henchmen can indeed be picked from anywhere in the world, but the limited number of sprites means that minions all look identical. However! clicking and zooming on a minion gives a mini biography, and shows that each has a different name and last name, many are Anglosaxon, Latin, and even Asian! Clearly, the Evil Genius may be a heartless power seeker, willing to execute minions at the drop of a hat, but (s)he values diversity, or at least regards everyone else with equal contempt.
    • Also lampshaded in-game, where a couple of the Acts of Infamy point out that the Evil Organization is equal-opportunity, and thus will spread pain and misery in equal amounts to everyone. One mission involves burning down a national park, if only because "we've been focusing on urban mayhem lately."
  • The Nazis in BloodRayne are surprisingly diverse for, well, Nazis. Their leadership includes among their ranks two women (one of whom is Asian), a pair of cripples, a freakish 10-foot-tall cyborg, and an 80-year old man.
    • Don't forget the she-Mooks in the sequel.
      • The real Nazis did ally with the Japanese, and even attempted to convince themselves that the Japanese were closer to Aryan than they'd otherwise think. The Japanese were even called "Aryans of the East" by the Germans.
  • Once, the City of Heroes developers held a poll as to whether they should add more gender equality to enemy groups, or simply add more, different enemy groups to the game. The latter won out in the end, and most players think the groups have enough gender and racial diversity to fit them thematically- while street gangs and Mafia and Yakuza-ish syndicates tend to be boys-only clubs in Real Life (with a few exceptions), the Crey Corporation is as politically correct as you'd expect an Evil Corporation to be (and the Corrupt Corporate Executive running the whole show is female), the Arachnos army has plenty of men and women on the front lines, and the heroic paramilitary Longbow corps and Vanguard are both run by women and staffed by many. And as of a recent issue, even Ancient Romans have female soldiers in the ranks.
  • Metal Gear: Throughout. The very first Quirky Miniboss Squad contained a Russian, a Brit, a German, an Australian, and and American, and from then on teams get even weirder. In context, probably Dead Cell are the strangest, with an openly bisexual Romanian and a black woman as the two team leaders in what was originally a SEALs unit.
  • The 3rd Street Saints in the eponymous Saints Row series, from the second game you'll find members of any race and gender wearing purple. The enemy gangs include both genders but are orientated towards one particular race to suit their theme (Brotherhood - Caucasians, The Ronin - Asian, The Sons of Samedi- Hispanic). Then in the sequel you have the all-male Luchadores, the Deckers who have male cannon fodder and female Specialists and the Morningstar who have both gender members. The Saints once again welcome anyone with a taste for mayhem and violence and you're free to customize the gang's members anyway you wish.
  • Villains in the Mario series are known to contain a variety of different evil minions. The most famous being of course, Bowser, whose Mooks include giant mushrooms, giant turtles, evil man-eating plants, squids of varying sizes, evil fish, ghosts, and some games have enemies unique to them.
  • In Castlevania, Dracula's evil army contains the undead, classic horror monsters, virtually every mythological monster you can think of, and various other enemies that all fit into other categories.
  • The Warlock/Dungeon town in Heroes of Might and Magic contains a wide variety of creatures of the course of the series, which include harpies, minotaurs, centaurs, hydras, hot dark elves, and their signature unit, dragons. The Barbarians of I and II were also somewhat free in their hiring, featuring goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, cyclopes and wolves (and a large number of human heroes) - all traditional horde-related creatures, but better than just undead. III removed the barbarians/Stronghold from the evil camp, and the new Inferno town wasn't quite so inclusive[2]
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, Arl Howe's servants include qunari mercenaries, elves and even mages. The latter two are both heavily discriminated against in the setting. In fact, Howe doesn't seem to care who he employs, so long as they're … morally flexible. (As one city guard says, Howe's men are "worse than the criminals we arrest. Some of them ARE the criminals we arrest.")
  • The Colonel Badasses from Just Cause 2 have Chinese, Indians and Malays in their numbers, if the names are any indication.
  • Mad King Ashnard was notable for this in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. It was said he would hire any powerful men without checking their backgrounds or motives.
  • Assassin's Creed plays this seemingly straight for the 11th century Templars, featuring both Arabs and European Crusaders in their ranks. However, it's slightly subverted in the spinoff sequel Bloodlines, where former high-ranking Templar Maria has now lost her status and is pretty much hunted, since she no longer has Robert de Sable to keep her in despite the No Women Allowed rule.
  • The racist First-Person Shooter Ethnic Cleansing has you fighting a force composed of black, Latino and Jewish enemies. Like the The Turner Diaries example above (the game contains a speech by that book's writer as an Easter Egg), the enemies are depicted as evil because they are equal opportunity. This trope also crops up in the Spiritual Successor White Law, which is primarily an Author Tract railing against multiculturalism and race-mixing.
  • No More Heroes and its sequel featured very diverse enemies in terms of ethnicity, lifestyle, etc. In between the two, they included an old Soviet Cosmonaut, a black girl with a Japanese name, a straight-up Japanese man, an English schoolgirl, an all-American quarterback, a character actor, a Polish magician, a German punk-rock star, a black Irish cult leader, and an amputee/fashion model/marine, just to name a few.
  • Goblins in Dwarf Fortress frequently kidnap children of other races, and raise them as productive goblin citizens who advance normally in goblin society and abide by goblin societal norms.
  • In Deus Ex Human Revolution, despite being based in a Chinese city and explicitly being under the control of a Triad leader, the Harvester street gang has a large amount of American accented Scary Black Men (who ironically call Jensen "gwailo" or "laowai", Chinese racist terms for "foreigner").
  • Pirate crews and the Aetherblades (essentially Sky Pirates) in Guild Wars 2 have members of all five playable races and both genders, in contrast to antagonistic organizations encountered at the beginning of the game that are specific to a race (the Sons of Svanir and the Flame Legion are also misogynistic).

Web Comics

  • In this page of Cwen's Quest the villains make it clear they do judge anyone in a speech to rally the team members to slaughter a village down the last child.
  • The Slavers in Lightbringer seem to be predominantly Caucasian, but Lightbringer notes that its members come from all sorts of different races. This probably has to do with how they began as a group of unrelated gangs.
  • Last Res0rt has the furry variant of this trope: the Star Org isn't just made up of several different species, it also contains several alien species that aren't seen anywhere else.
    • Enforced by a cameo drive (to raise funds for the first book) where fans submitted their fursonas (most of which were not of a species already featured in the story) to sign up and be featured as mooks and officers in the Star Org.
  • While the page image does this as a punchline, Team Evil from Order of the Stick is surprisingly inclusive. It is willing to employ or work with goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, ghasts, zombies, chimeras, mind flayers, humans, succubi, drow elves, kobolds, dwarves, half-orcs, and others. Ironically enough, Xykon is much more tolerant than Redcloak, who dislikes humans and hobgoblins. He got over the latter
  • The Veslian armies from Dark Wings will hire anyone or anything that can kill Veslin's enemies.
  • The trolls in Homestuck seem to be pretty thoroughly egalitarian when it comes to gender: they're just terribly strict about the roles and rights of different blood castes. This trope is pretty well justified when it comes to sex: trolls are born in hatcheries en masse, with no knowledge of their genetic parentage, and any romantic coupling (male/female, female/female, male/male) is equally viable for breeding. Since biological gender became completely irrelevant to them ages ago, it makes sense that they don't feel the need to split up their galaxy-conquering firepower with sexism. Racism is still perfectly okay though.

Web Original

  • Although the * USA of Decades of Darkness are an ever-expanding, slaveholding empire that makes peons of most Mexicans and other Latin Americans, some Hispanics from rich families manage to rise to the top—Alvar O'Brien (Alvarez Obregon) even becomes president as early as 1932.
  • The Evil Overlord List specifically recommends being this; recruiting people of both genders and all races into your Legions of Terror, allowing handicapped people to work for you to prevent a few common mistakes, and spreading oppression and terror equally amongst all your subjects, and not singling out a specific group who will form the core of a rebellion.
  • Dragonstorm, the enemy organization of SF furry role play Darwin's Soldiers, has shown in its ranks examples of almost every species yet introduced. Of course, so does every other faction; cross-species racism is almost never touched upon.


Western Animation

  • The Critic spoofs this with a film that Jay is reviewing; a politically correct James Bond film, On His or Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond brags that he was able to convince Ernst Blofeld to start hiring midgets, homosexuals, and the blind. He is immediately attacked by a blind midget homosexual, whom he directs to the next room over.
  • Cobra in G.I. Joe is made up of people from all corners of the world, with Cobra Commander himself being one of the only white American males.
    • In the original Marvel/Sunbow cartoons, at least, Cobra is predominantly filled with Caucasian males. Females are notably absent from the rank-and-file Cobra Vipers, and the partially-exposed face masks they wear make the absence of dark skin obvious.
    • There are a few noticeable (and generally uncommented on, curiously enough) exceptions with Cobra troopers—most prominently in the episode "Spell of the Siren," with Cobra and the Joes forming ad hoc Amazon Brigades of their female unnamed low-ranking troops after most of the men are zombified.
  • In The Venture Brothers, one of the mooks of Baron von Ünderbheit explains that in Ünderland, both men and women are required to serve in the Baron's army between ages 12 and 36 (at age 37, they are executed). All of the Baron's mooks to appear on-screen seem to be male, however... Except Girl Hitler, who leads the Terrible Trio / Quirky Miniboss Squad and later La Résistance.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Among the series four Elemental Nations, Evil Empire the Fire Nation has integrated women into their armed forces, and even their prisons are unisex. Contrast this with the Northern Water Tribe, which didn't even allow women to learn combative Waterbending until Southern Tribemember Katara forced the issue.
    • Though the typical Fire Nation policy and attitude towards other nations is essentially racist, Princess Azula is quite willing to employ the Dai Li (the Earthbender Secret Police of Ba Sing Se, whose ruthlessness she admires), and even returns to the homeland with a personal contingent of them.
    • Sequel Series The Legend of Korra has the titular Avatar visit multicultural Republic City, where she encounters three members of the multiethnic organized crime gang the Triple Threat Triads, consisting of a waterbender, earthbender and firebender respectively.
    • The concept of a vaguely Chinese army spawned this one-off crossover between Avatar and Mulan, in which Mulan sees that there are women and gets angry about the unnecessary effort she had to put into her Sweet Polly Oliver.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Tombstone is a Scary Black Man and an Evil Albino, and his bodyguards are black men and women.
  • In The Lion King, Scar generally gets along with the hyenas (though being a snob, he looks down on everyone) and is more than willing to employ them in his plans to take the throne, and integrates them into the Pride Lands after becoming king, whereas the other "good" lions are pretty big pricks to them. Additionally, going by the voice actors, the hyenas Shenzi, Banzai and Ed are respectively black, Hispanic and white.
    • There might be some Fridge Brilliance there. Note that the lions have golden or beige coats, while the hyenas are dusky gray and have spiky black fur (whereas in Real Life, lions and hyenas are roughly the same color), and that Scar's skin and fur is similarly darker than the other lions, and his features are angular like those of a hyena. Not that Scar deserved the throne (he was the younger brother, after all), but it's plausible he was the victim of some pretty heavy Fantastic Racism.
  • Parodied in the Family Guy episode "Excellence In Broadcasting" with Brian being attacked by a racially diverse Theme Park Version of a criminal gang.
  • All Dogs Go to Heaven: While trying to lure Charlie to the bad side, Anabelle's evil cousin Belladonna pretty much says this word for word.

Belladonna: Think of my organization as an equal opportunity employer. No matter who you are or what you want to be; when you join with me, it's always an easy ride.

  • Rango has a gang of bad guys comprised of a British or possibly Australian gila monster, a Mexican lizard(?), and a Swedish(?) rabbit.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Krang describes himself as an "equal opportunity tyrant" when he hires the female assassin Lotus Blossom.
  • Played for laughs in Harley Quinn in a scene where the protagonist busts into a Bad Guy Bar full of Mooks:

Harley: Listen up, goons!
Patron: Excuse me, I identify as a hench.
Harley: Listen up, goons and henches!"

Real Life

  • Cracked.com presents several cases of Truth in Television in 6 Enlightened Ideas Brought to You by Evil Empires.
  • Communist regimes fit this trope which is why communism was so appealing to women, ethnic minorities, and lower classes in the countries that turned to it or made serious efforts to turn to it. One of the reasons revolutionary leaders like Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China were so successful was because they gained the support of the women in their countries. They have committed many human rights violations, including outright genocide, but both genders and many ethnic groups were found within their ranks, and communist rulers have come from many different backgrounds. Additionally, even the genocides were usually more based around crushing opposition than about religious, ethnic, or racial intolerance.
    • Though, inside the regimes themselves, there could be racism. The USSR (particularly during Josef Stalin's rule) was happy to continue the centuries-old Russian/Polish animosity and had an essentially genocidal hatred of the Poles, killing them by the thousands in an attempt to destroy, if not the race, their culture. North Korea has preached yellow supremacy (specifically, and unsurprisingly, Korean supremacy), and China's treatment of non-Han Chinese has earned condemnations from human rights organizations.
      • There's also the Ukrainian genocide (Holodomor) although we're going to start feeling some serious Internet Backdraft if we bring that up, and the Soviet inclination to herd unpopular ethnic groups into Central Asia. Although Stalin even had a heavy Caucasian accent and Dzerzhinski was a Pole and so on, it doesn't necessary mean much about the attitudes towards Polish or Caucasian people in general. For instance, people who were popular with Adolf Hitler's inner circle but who didn't have strictly pure Aryan ancestry were sometimes awarded the status of "honorary Aryan" depending on Hitler's whims and how much he personally liked them. So it goes with any institution that favors one group of people arbitrarily over any other.
      • There was also a very definite, very real tinge of anti-Semitism within Stalinist Russia, as the war dragged on and afterwards, likely a revival (possibly, partly engineered by the Party) of the old anti-Semitism of Tsarist Russia. Jews rescued from the Nazi death and labour camps who had the misfortune of winding up on the Russian side were, however, treated just as well as the Russian's treated liberated Russian Prisoners of War. That is to say, they were all treated like dirty traitors because they had been working for the enemy (albeit as slaves to be worked to death/exterminated). Stalin himself was known to have become increasingly anti-Semitic towards the end of his years, despite the presence of some Jews in the Politburo (such as his old ally "Iron Lazar" Kagonovich), which may or may not have been influenced by his deep hatred for his Jewish Arch Enemy Leon Trotsky. The Doctors Plot, where shortly before his death he started having doctors in Moscow arrested for trumped-up consipracy charges, was partly motivated by anti-Semitism.
    • Women in Soviet Union had the same rights as men, but no one really had any rights anyway. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space in 1963. It took America until 1983 until they had a woman enter space.
    • During World War 2 a number of Axis POWs were offered a chance to fight as part of the Red Army instead of being shipped to POW camps or gulags. Some took up this offer, thinking it improved their chances of survival, but there was a catch: units formed from ex-Axis soldiers were frequently used as Cannon Fodder. There is speculation that their role on the Eastern Front was - and has been - underplayed and hushed up by the USSR and its successor states, for understandable reasons. As many as a fifth of German Sixth Army captured at Stalingrad may have been 'Hiwis' - USSR POWs and citizens drafted in as logistics and support personnel (think ammunition carriers and couriers).
  • The Turkish Ottoman Empire constituted this from the perspective of Christian Europe, offering tolerance towards individuals of all ethnicities, and even maintaining a relatively enlightened attitude towards religious freedom. While the highest positions were often reserved for Muslim Turks, much of the Turkish military command structure and civil service was comprised of non-Turks (though almost all were Muslim), including some Christians. However, their elite Janissary Corps was comprised primarily of European children enslaved and indoctrinated while young.
  • The Habsburg (often called "Austrian") Empire was a LOT like this, as it encompassed (at various points in time) parts of Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, and Southern Germany. This was taken Up to Eleven by its last incarnation, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose number of official languages was in the double digits and whose ethnic composition has to be seen to be believed.
  • Brazilian Integralism, an openly fascist movement which emerged in Brazil in the 1930s, yet did not preach racism (despite an anti-Semitic faction) and even made use of the slogan "Union of all races and all peoples". Justified because Brazil is a very heterogeneous country, with the majority of people being a mixture of two races or more.
  • Saddam Hussein had many non-Muslims in his cabinet, allowed more religious freedom than his neighboring countries, and Iraqi women under his regime had considerably more social freedom than in other countries in the Middle East; could dress as they wished, drive, vote (even if the elections weren't exactly legit), and did not require a male escort in public.
  • Criminal gangs in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, have become somewhat multi-ethnic over the past decade. This includes the UN Gang, a gang that, yes, named itself based on the fact that it would accept people of any ethnic background.
  • Surprisingly, even Those Wacky Nazis could muster this... once in a while when it was convenient for them. While they were blatantly racist and bigoted, their greatest allies were Fascist Italy, which contained a high population of non-Aryan Europeans, and the decidedly non-White Japanese Empire. They organized military units of (amongst others) Russians, Ukranians, Frenchmen, Arabs, Bosniaks, Serbs, Indians, Africans, Scandinavians, Spaniards, and Portuguese, and offered military support to virtually anybody they could reach willing to fight against their enemies, including Chechens, Iranians, Iraqis, Croats, Syrians, Russians, Vichy France, and Jews. (Google the Stern Gang).
    • They tried to justify their alliance with Japan by claiming the Japanese were descendents of an Aryan offshoot or something. Sometimes, they would really reach to justify their racism.
    • In private Hitler confessed that, while he was genuinelly prejudiced against Jews and the like, it was based more on matters of culture and integration (or lack thereof) than Nazi racial propaganda, which was basically designed to simplify the message and justify his most heinous actions. As far as the Japanese were concerned he actually admired what little he knew of their culture and history- the real irony is that he felt the same about the Chinese and other nations that Imperial Japan was actively conquering and demonizing (it was the Japanese who actually villified the White Race).
  • Al Capone was one of the first equal opportunity mob bosses and let people work for him who regularly underwent deep discrimination in hiring for "honest" jobs; Jews, Poles, Slovaks, Blacks, Irish, as long as he considered them trustworthy, they could work for him.
  • Lucky Luciano bucked the early Mafia trend of discrimination between members from different regions of Italy (e.g.: Sicilians vs. Calabrians), and had close ties to Jewish associates, such as Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
  • Pirate crews could often come with a lot of diversity in race. Escaped or freed slaves were sometimes known to join pirate crews that were made up of white Europeans. Slave ships were often taken by pirates because they were large, fast, and well armed. The slaves on the ship would sometimes either be dropped off or join the crew. Some pirate captains were even known for acknowledging that a crew member is a crew member and would not be judged based on race. There were even some female pirates, and female pirate captains.
    • Pirates were fond of stealing slave ships because of the vast amounts of space, but had no real need for the actual slaves. So when they got ahold of one, they either let the slaves free at the nearest dock or let them join the crew.
    • Not to mention, because the pirates historically travelled the world (Francis Drake, anyone?... though he was barely a pirate), they teamed up with/acquired/kidnapped/etc. the locals pretty much everywhere, male and female, of every race. And there was plenty of intermarriage amongst the pirates (or at the very least, interbreeding, although a surprising number of pirates were in fact very religious and would have observed traditions such as marriage) so many children "born and raised" pirate were bi- or multi-racial. Pirates from blended backgrounds typically sufficed it to respond with, "From the seas," when questioned about ethnicity.
      • In fact, given the strong prejudices against mixed-race individuals in much of the world, piracy was often their only recourse to escape from permanent underclass status.
  • Unlike most dictators in the Arab world, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was quite vocal in his writings about his opinion that women deserved the same rights as men- the most infamous example of this was his all female personal bodyguard squad. In fairness, however, a lot of countries with differing rights for each gender give women more rights than Gadaffi gave either, so...
  1. ↑ The leader of the lightning village took the time to remind everyone that there was no one from his village among Akatsuki's ranks
  2. ↑ But more inclusive than it might seem at first glance, the RPG series revealing that efreet, gogs and imps (and probably hellhounds, as well) were not invading aliens that arrived in a Night of Shooting Stars.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunity_Evil?oldid=1985066"