Even Evil Has Standards/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Drazens in 24 agree to spare Kim Bauer's life in exchange for Jack surrendering himself to them after originally planning to kill them both.
  • In Bull : The Good One there is a subversion. One of the son's (Brendon) of a family of Irish mobsters, murders a judge who was about to try his father and than forces (as in with a pistol) his brother, Conor to be his getaway driver.Jason Bull's legal team tries to convince to testify the truth, which was that Conor had never taken part in the family business, planned to be a doctor and was guilty of no more than learning the only good thing about his kin. That is he never was willing to testify against them even when on trial for his life. Brendon however, aside from being a an obscenly evil character that only a brother could love, was a nasty little coward and he turns States and lies about Conor, saying he was the inspiration for the murder of all things. Of course this is doubly subverted because Brendon pays the traditional price and gets stabbed by a hitter who by chance was in the same prison. Bull in an interesting twist actually suspects the mother, who had given up on Brendon and just wanted Conor free of the life and might have been willing to go to extremes.
  • In D!rt, main character Lucy Spiller has a reputation of being evil incarnate. However, she holds journalistic integrity above all else; she's only interested in the truth, not gossip (no matter how big it may be), and she always protects her sources.
  • Doctor Who deconstructs this trope in the episode "Boom Town", which features the return of the Slitheen, aliens who had previously appeared in "Aliens of London" and "World War III." This time the only surviving character from those episodes has had herself installed as mayor of Cardiff and is planning to destroy the city to get herself home. However, when she is about to kill a reporter who is getting too close to the truth, she stops when she learns that the intended victim is pregnant. It leads to this exchange between her and the Doctor:

Margaret: "I promise you I've changed since we last met, Doctor. There was this girl, just today, a young thing, something of a danger. She was getting too close. I felt the bloodlust rising, just as the family had taught me, I was going to kill her without a thought...and then, I stopped. She's alive somewhere right now, she's walking around this city because I can change, I did change. I know I can't prove it--"
The Doctor: "I believe you."
Margaret: "Then you know I'm capable of better."
The Doctor: "It doesn't mean anything."
Margaret: "I spared her life."
The Doctor: "You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then a little victim is spared because she smiled, 'cause he's got freckles, 'cause they begged...and that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions, because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind."

    • Played straight in "Journey's End", where a Dalek actually pulls a Heel Face Turn. Said Dalek, Dalek Caan, had been exposed to the time vortex and was witness to literally every act the Daleks have and ever would commit. This perspective made him decide that it was time for all Daleks to die. Note that Caan was actually one of the more "conservative" (read: stubbornly genocidal) members of the Skaro Cult and initially had no hesitation in destroying an entire species.
    • In the novelisation of "Remembrance of the Daleks", it's explained that the Daleks, Omnicidal Maniacs one and all, really aren't comfortable with the Special Weapons Dalek, because they think that, by Dalek standards, it's a dangerous insane killer.
  • Double the Fist. "Eating babies is Unaustralian!"
  • In Dexter, Serial Killer for Justice Dexter Morgan has a strict code he adheres to driving him to kill only people who have somehow escaped justice. When he confronts a Serial Killer of children, Dexter states his revulsion for his crimes with the claim, "I have standards."
    • See also his response to the "coyote" couple who are involved in human trafficking, sneaking immigrants across the border only to kill them if their relatives don't pay an extra fee: in this case, he's more intrigued that they can love each other, being as monstrous as he is, and wants to know how they do it.
      • His response to seeing videos of 13 young women being tortured and raped to death plays this more straight: "Despite having considered myself a monster for as long as I can remember, it still comes as a shock when I'm confronted with the depths of evil that exists in this world."
    • Dexter is always sure to kill quickly, the release is in the killing. When he discovers that the Trinity Killer has been psychologically terrorizing and physically torturing his own family for years Dexter is completely horrified.
  • Sebastian Stark from the TV series Shark wasn't exactly "evil", but some of his clients came close. When called in to the murder of a sleazy pornography producer, Stark remembers him.

Stark: Right, he came to me for representation on an embezzlement charge a couple years ago.
Isaac: You turned him down?
Stark: Guy made Larry Flynt look like Mary Poppins. Even I have standards.

  • Inverted on Angel: Kate describes Wolfram & Hart as "the law firm Johnny Cochran was too ethical to join."
    • Played straight with the Ethros demon who possessed a young boy, only to discover that he had "no humanity, no conscience, just a black void." The demon was unable to get out, and tried to kill the boy even if it meant killing himself. A different kind of Even Evil Has Standards - the Ethros demon committed evil out of a belief in evil, whereas the boy had no reason whatsoever.
    • Lindsey decided that he "wanted out" of Wolfram & Hart when they tried to get him to defend a woman for killing three blind children and their teacher. And again later when he discovered that they kept people in storage for spare parts. Of couse, when Lindsey stands up to the firm and comes out on top, the firm rewards his guts and cleverness. They know they'd be far better with him on their side.
      • With him, it was probably similar to the Doctor Who example above.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In Becoming, Spike, well before his Heel Face Turn, joins Buffy against Angelus simply because Angelus plans to wipe out the universe. Spike may like causing murder and mayhem (and Manchester United), but he needs a world to do it in. (Though this isn't a case of standards, but rather self-interest--he only objects to destroying the world because doing so would interfere with his own preferred acts of evil.)
    • Another example of Spike being appalled by Angelus' actions, albeit about a much much lesser crime, is the Angel episode "Destiny". William the Bloody (the future Spike), newly vamped, confides in Angelus about how he is completely in love with Drusilla, and he even considers her his "destiny". Angelus then goes and sleeps with Drusilla, just to piss William off. William is shocked and appalled by both Angelus and Drusilla, who taunt him and tell him that being a vampire means Even Evil Has Standards basically goes out the window. Judging by the above example, he never learned this.
    • Vampires and demons are supposed to give the mortals a break on Halloween. Spike treats those who violates this rule with disdain.
      • Note that demons lay low on Halloween because (as Giles says) "They find it all much too crass." Not because they're "supposed" to "give the mortals a break". Spike is applying a crassness standard, but not a fair-play or ethical standard.
    • After Faith kills an innocent she finds she really enjoys killing, and becomes The Dragon to the Big Bad. Even after Buffy puts her in a coma Faith is eager to kill her (or ruin her life) and the Scoobies, until she finds out about a Church Full Of Innocents and comes to the realization she has to save them.
      • Faith doesn't really count, because it wasn't so much that she enjoyed killing, so much than she was digging herself deeper and deeper after the first kill. After the initial shock of killing a man, she tried to hide, then bury, then conceal her guilt by pinning the blame on Buffy because she was afraid of going to prison. Even when she joined the Mayor, she was only rationalising her murders with the fact that "Boss wants you dead" because she valued the Mayor's approval so much, shutting off her empathy. It's not until she switched bodies with Buffy and found herself Becoming the Mask that she finally started to really recognise that she'd been wrong and tried hard to repent for her actions.
        • On top of that, Faith only went to work for the Mayor because of Wesley's actions (trying to ship her back to England for punishment of what was an understandable accident, right when she was most vulnerable). That betrayal drove her to the Mayor, who she felt she could trust.
    • Principal Synder made Buffy's life a living hell the three years he held the position, such as framing her for murder, covering up the numerous supernatural-related killings of students, and attempted to use a Uriah Gambit on her and the other Scoobies more than once. However, despite being the Mayor's henchman in all but name, he would not approve of the Mayor's plan to sacrifice infants in order to summon a demon called Lurconis, and aided the Slayer in preventing it.
  • In Stargate SG-1, Anubis was once expelled for committing "crimes unspeakable even for a Goa'uld". What these are is never mentioned, but considering that Goa'uld System Lords are quite capable of torturing even their own kind to death only to resurrect them and start over again (and again. and again. and again. and again...), this says quite a lot.
  • Malcolm in the Middle episode "Evacuation", where, even in school gym where the neighborhood is staying (because Hal's couch accidentally tipped over a train carrying radioactive waste), Malcolm is still grounded, despite not being at home. When Malcolm has had enough and sarcastically asks Lois if she's going to spank him, she puts Malcolm over her knee and... lightly taps him on the butt. EVERYONE IN THE GYM reacts with silent shock as if it's the worst thing ever and Lois is banished outside along with Hal, Reese and Dewey, while Malcolm finally gets peace. Though Reese was banished for setting up a black market, Hal for causing the problem, and Dewey and been telling people his family was dead to get sympathy (and toys).
    • Also, Reese has a lack of empathy towards people, is the class bully, and has absolutely no qualms about bullying his brothers, even freely confirming that he is the worst brother ever after Dewey labels him as such after Reese bought a plane for Dewey just to see his face when he smashed it. However, aside from certain instances, he deliberately avoids picking on/bullying Stevie specifically because he is a paraplegic, and declares him off limits.
      • And the one time he wanted to settle a feud with Stevie, he paralyzed his own legs so that he can allow a fair fight.
  • In the American Gothic episode "Strong Arm of the Law", Sheriff Buck is shown tormenting, manipulating, and eventually killing or running out of Trinity a foursome of out-of-town criminals. The thing that makes this an example of the trope is that even though Buck is, nominally, a lawman, we never see him upholding the law, merely subverting and twisting it to his own ends. While getting rid of the criminals smacks very much of "This is my turf, only I get to run roughshod over my people," the simple fact is Buck is in the right in this episode, and is shown to have standards, albeit warped ones: while he will haunt, corrupt, blackmail, and drive people insane, he won't come out and be an outright criminal, or allow any real ones to hurt the innocent in Trinity.
  • Though calling her evil may be a stretch, Nancy Botwin of Weeds is a suburban mother that deals pot for a living who refuses to deal to kids and confronts one of her buyers in the pilot episode when she learns of a ten-year-old caught with pot in his lunch box.
  • In Heroes, Sylar calls Mohinder for help when he has a prophetic vision that he will cause an explosion that will destroy much of New York, killing hundreds of thousands of people for no apparent reason; Sylar had until now viewed his killings as "evolutionary imperative", taking powers from those who didn't deserve them, and considered the destruction of New York to be meaningless and therefore "evil".
    • Later, in the Volume Three episode "Villains", it is revealed that Arthur Petrelli's attempt to kill his own son is what prompted Angela and Linderman to betray him and (attempt to) kill him. While this makes sense for Angela Nathan is her son too, after all), Linderman seemed to have no motivation beyond considering killing one's own child to be too evil for even him.
    • In Volume Four, after Tracey Strauss briefly escaped and killed a member of the group that was rounding up supers before being recaptured again, Strauss accused Nathan of deliberately setting her up to escape to allow the policy to work when a government inspector arrived with the implied intent to shut it down. Turns out, not only did Nathan not know about it being done, but he later confronted the real person who deliberately made it possible for her to escape, Danko, in private and scolded him for it, indicating that while Nathan is content with rounding up evolved people to be relocated from regular people, he will not stoop as low as to orchestrate an escape of one of the evolved humans and sacrifice one of his men to prove a point to why their organization must continue.
  • Jim Henson's series The Storyteller has a good example in "The Heartless Giant". The titular Sealed Evil in a Can tricks a prince into letting him escape and proceeds to go on a rampage throughout the kingdom. However, he conspicuously never harms the prince and is actually quite friendly to him even as he knows that the prince is trying to kill him to undo his mistake. Much like the similarly heartless Davy Jones of Pirates of the Caribbean, the giant embodies the Tin Man trope and is presented sympathetically.
  • In an Alternate History episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, it is all but openly stated that the American Resistance movement against the Nazis in a timeline where they held the East Coast is made up entirely of gangsters and other mafia-types.
  • In the Firefly episode "Objects in Space", Bounty Hunter Jubal Early tries to pull this on River during their exchange. However, she pretty quickly and bluntly shoots that notion down by revealing what a cruel and sadistic bastard he really is.
    • Straight example in "Train job". Even though they are hired by a psychotic ganglord known for punishing failure with horrible death, Mal is still unwilling to carry on with the heist and returns the stolen medicine which the whole town would suffer terribly without.
    • Oblique Example is Shepherd Book, and his "special kind of hell" speech to Mal, especially when you consider Word of God stating he was an Operative before assuming the identity of a holy man.
      • Based on the information about Book's past from the comic book Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale, we now know that this isn't a valid example of the trope. Book wasn't simply "assuming the identity" of a holy man--he had a genuine conversion, so this is at most a Heel Face Turn. But even that is arguable: When he was working for the Alliance, he was actually a double-agent for the Independence, and it's not clear that he ever did anything evil as an Operative. On the other hand, he did kill a random passerby and steal his identity in order to join the Alliance in the first place.
  • For all that Colonel Klink likes to think he's a tyrant, the attitudes of the more sadistic Nazi officers have occasionally revolted him.
  • On Dollhouse, the Dollhouse's operators -- whose entire organization is based on mind control, prostitution and illegal activities including murder -- are nevertheless horrified to learn one of their employees has been raping one of the Dolls in her Wiped state (which means she basically had the mind of a child and couldn't resist).
    • The episode "Belonging" shows what happens when the character of Topher, a man identified as having no morals who views other human beings as playthings, discovers that there indeed is a line he will not cross. In the previous episode, Topher having a moral problem imprinting a VIP onto Victor is used as evidence that it's probably not a good idea.
    • The motivation of the characters (other than Paul, Echo, Victor, and Sierra) to turn against Rossum seems to be that, while they're perfectly okay with mind rape and human trafficking to turn a profit, all the Bond villain shit that Rossum's been getting into is going too far.
      • Well, not precisely. It should be pointed out that all of the Actives have supposedly signed on voluntarily for the job, and will be compensated at the end of their contracts. Topher's limit (and, to a lesser extent, DeWitt's) comes when they find out that (a) not all of the Actives are volunteers and (b) Rossum has no intention of letting them go.
  • Hazzard County's Boss Hogg may be so crooked he makes Al Capone look honest, but he draws the line at actions that might actually physically harm someone and refuses to work with anyone who supports that sort of thing. (One episode that dealt with marijuana had Boss Hogg vehemently declare that he would never sell drugs for any type of money.) His would-be partners don't take kindly to such an attitude, of course, and Boss Hogg often needs the Dukes to pull his bacon out of the fire when this happens.
    • Ironic, in that Boss Hogg started his criminal career moonshining with Uncle Jesse (who eventually went straight). But drugs are bad, m'kay?
      • There was one episode where Boss Hogg had no problem with trying to sell off a large truck of firearms (which included a Browning Machine Gun) that he stumbled across, perhaps making this character trait an example of Depending on the Writer.
  • In a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, the Ferengi arrest one of their commanders for attempting to avenge himself on Capt. Picard, because "There's no profit in such action." And we all know, the Ferengi are all about the profit.
    • More specifically, the Ferengi second in command said "There's no profit in this for us," so YMMV.
    • In a Deep Space Nine episode, the Ferengi Grand Nagus (Basically their Leader / CEO) is replaced by Brunt, a recurring antagonist of Quarks. They object to him being the Nagus not because he's greedy (Greed is considered a virtue), but because he puts his own personal greed before the collective greed of the Ferengi Alliance.
  • Leverage: A priest is beat up, and two of our heroes go looking for the "local talent" involved. When they question a Hispanic gang, the leader goes "We're not monsters." It turns out one of the gang members was involved, whereupon the leader asks for his gun back so he can point it at the guy's head. "You have a long penance ahead of you. Start by answering the man's question. NOW!"
    • In another episode, Hardison, the team's computer expert is listening to a live feed of a Corrupt Corporate Executive discussing the benefits of owning a US Congressman. His response is, "I'm a professional criminal and I find that disturbing."
    • Displayed amusingly by Parker in The Bank Shot Job. She's likely stolen anything and everything under the sun, but even she thinks illegal downloading is wrong (much to Hardison's confusion).
  • Though he's not evil by any means, Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother is a sexual deviant in the purest form. He's slept with dozens (possibly hundreds) of hot women, betraying them, lying to them, and stealing from them in the process. However, he revealed that even sexual deviants have standards in "The Bracket": as low as he's sunk when it comes to women, he is not the type of guy to have sex with a girl and forget her name or what she looked like. When he believes that a girl he sees was a girl he slept with but doesn't remember her, he immediately goes up and gives what may be his first whole-hearted apology ever.
    • Then there's the extreme guilt when he first slept with Robin because she's Ted's ex. Granted, it's because it violated one article of his own silly "Bro Code," but it also means that Barney believes in practicing what he preaches and truly values Ted's friendship.
  • In Oz, Simon Adebisi is the biggest, meanest, most frightening inmate in the whole prison, and seems to have no soul at all most of the time. However, even he balks at the suggestion that his gang steal the money that has been painstakingly raised to send another inmate's dying grandson to Disney World, saying "Sometimes it's good to be human."
    • Verne Schillinger orders the kidnapping of Tobias Beecher's daughter and one of his sons and then has one of them killed and the body dumped near their grandparents' house. The prison's priest Ray Mukada pleads with Schillinger to spare the second victim. Schillinger says nothing, then phones his accomplice and says "it's time to deliver the second package", pauses and adds "deliver it alive". Schillinger also contributed to the fund mentioned above.
    • Ryan O'Reilly, ostensibly a sociopath, confesses to having his brain damaged brother Cyril kill Gloria Nathan's husband, even though it means another 40 years added to his sentence. Nathan later finds herself falling in love with him and hates herself for it. She is raped soon after and O'Reilly confesses to having orchestrated this as well. However, Sister Pete figures out that he was lying in an attempt to allow Nathan to hate him as she should (he wasn't lying about having her husband killed).
  • In the Seinfeld episode "The Limo," George accidentally impersonates an up and coming white supremacist named Donald O'Brien, whose manifesto includes the Jews stealing money to help the Blacks buy drugs, and further oppress "our white minority subcultures." A reporter at the scene mentions that real life Ku Klux Klan member David Duke has denounced O'Brien as a dangerous extremist.
  • Played with in an advertisement in The Chaser's War on Everything which parodied a Government ad in which men try to rationalise their physical or sexual abuse of women and are responded to in text ("it's never acceptable" and other such things). In the Chaser version, the men lament that people think they're rapists and thugs because they appeared on the aforementioned ad and the text says things like "you should have thought of that". Finally, one man says "it's not as bad as appearing in one of those Work Choices ads, is it?" (referring to the then Government's controversial workplace legislation), which is followed by the text "no, nothing's that bad".
  • Both Dr Forrester and TV's Frank apologized for showing Joel and the Bots Manos: The Hands of Fate, feeling they "really crossed the line".
    • Later in the series, his mother Pearl compliments the then-recently-deceased Raul Julia despite the fact that he was the star of the terrible movie she was about to inflict upon Mike and the Bots.
  • In a two-part episode of the The A-Team, the titular team go on a mission to rescue someone from some pirates who were hired by a gangster. Later, the pirates end up teaming up with the A-Team when the gangster turns out to be a Nazi.
  • Terran Federation officers in Blakes Seven sometimes namecheck this one. War criminal Space Commander Travis objects (half-heartedly) to Servalan declaring a dead surgeon to be a deserter because his family will become slaves as punishment (he also saved Travis' life), and another officer is horrified when he learns Servalan released a pandemic on a planet to force the inhabitants to allow her to use their cloning facility to clone herself. Of course, they both still follow their orders afterwards.
  • A CSI: NY hitman turns himself in and spills the beans on his client when said client switched targets from a man to a woman. This hitman doesn't do women.
  • Omar on The Wire is a badass shotgun-wielding terror of the streets, preying on drug dealers and stealing their money. He's very careful, though, to make sure that nobody who's not in the game gets hurt... in other words, civilians and citizens who don't deal drugs. He also brings his grannie to church once a month. Also, when two hitmen try to kill Omar on a Sunday, the Baltimore underworld reacts in uproar. Business is business, but Sundays are sacred.
    • Like Omar above, Bodie isn't necessarily painted as evil, but he's still an unrepentant drug dealer who has murdered. Even he is disgusted by the amount of people Marlo Stanfield has had murdered and how he had them murdered as well.
  • The Shield pointedly acknowledged this towards the end of the series, when corrupt cop Ronnie Gardocki is horrified at the fact that his partner/mentor Vic Mackey is willing to kill not only turncoat cop Shane Vendrell but also his wife, in front of their own son. Given that Ronnie was obsessed with killing Shane to avenge the murder of Detective Curtis "Lem" Lemanski, it was a moment where the writers quite clearly were drawing a line towards Ronnie being shocked and appalled by Vic's downward spiral towards villainy.
  • Benjamin Linus on Lost: As retribution for his daughter's death, Ben decides to kill Widmore's daughter, Penny. But when he finally has Penny at gunpoint, he lowers his weapon when he sees Penny's young son Charlie. Having never known his own mother and been abused by his father, Ben couldn't bring himself to orphan another child.
    • Ben also refuses to kill baby Alex, and instead kidnaps her and ends up raising her. This has added significance because the other Big Bad of the show, Charles Widmore, was the one who had ordered him to kill the baby, so it makes Ben look more like an anti-hero than a villain in comparison.
  • Power Rangers has had plenty of villains who followed this trope.
    • In Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Villamax questions Trakeena's desire for revenge on the rangers for destroying her father when she attempts to destroy all of Terra Venture. After saving a little girl from death and is ordered to attack a shuttle full of innocent people, he disobeys. Refusing to fight back, he is killed by Trakeena.

Trakeena: You taught me well.
Villamax: You... learned... nothing.

    • In Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Diabolico swears off his loyalty to Bansheera when she tricks his best friend, Loki, into fighting the rangers and forcing the former to attack them, resulting in Loki's death. He starts helping the rangers, showing that even though he hated them, he hated Bansheera more. This is a creature who saved a man's son so he can keep him for years while turning him against his father, sent monsters to destroy a city, considered killing the infant prince to keep his place as second-in-command, but the loss of his best friend caused him to go renegade. In the final episode, his ghost arrives and saves Carter (the red ranger) from Bansheera, resulting in the latter to fall in a pit where several monsters presumably torture her for eternity, fulfilling his revenge.
    • Diabolico was also disgusted by the fact Bansheera cares more about conquering Earth than about her own son and that she absorbed Vypra just to gain a fully functional body.
    • Power Rangers Time Force featured Ransik, a human hating mutant hellbent on killing every last one. His daughter Nadira, after witnessing a baby born and spending time with kids, causes her to question her father's hate for them. After the loss of Frax and much destruction, she tries to convince her father that enough is enough, but he refuses to listen. During his final battle with the rangers, he attacks Nadira, mistaking her for Jen (the pink ranger) while she was saving a baby. The shock of almost killing his daughter and a baby causes Ransik to realize what his hate has caused him to become and willingly surrenders.
  • Saeko Sonozaki killed her husband Kirihiko, who was on the verge of a Heel Face Turn, and betrayed her own family at the behest of Isaka. Neverless, she refuses to aid Kazu in the Assimilation Plot involving her sister, if only because she no longer feels the need to prove herself superior.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess refuses to kill women and children long before she turns good... in fact, saving a baby is why her army turns on her. They're warriors, not barbarians....
  • The unfortunately short lived series Action has this memorable scene where an amoral director and a hypocritical senator argue over which of them has standards and which is truly repulsive.

Senator Powell: (After harranguing Dragon about the violence and sexual content in his movies) You have a young daughter, named Georgia, who is about 10 years old... how can you look that sweet little girl in the eye?
Peter Dragon: I manage. I never voted to subsidize the growing of tobacco, while turning my back on food programs for starving kids. I've never vetoed a gun control bill. All my guns are fake, Senator! I've never rushed to the defense of Kuwaiti oil fields, while ignoring genocide in Africa, because big oil companies that line your fat pockets aren't concerned with black Africa. Those are all productions of your company Senator, this company right here!

  • In one episode of ER, African rebels didn't hesitate to shoot their hostages who had absolutely nothing to do with the war (some being doctors and a geologist) in cold blood and rape a woman, but they won't kill a man they believe to be a priest.
  • Forever Knight: Lucien LaCroix, despite being quite the sociopath, wouldn't turn a young Adolf Hitler into a vampire because he felt too much evil from him. And a near word-for-word invoking of this trope comes when LaCroix's daughter / maker Divia shows back up and reminds him of his refusing her long-ago wish (she wanted him to have sex with her, which LaCroix of course refused to do, as she was his daughter. LaCroix's feelings, however, haven't changed.

LaCroix: I always thought evil was a finite entity until you showed me otherwise. Even I have my limits, Divia!

  • Erastes Fulmen, crime boss of the Aventine Hill in Rome, is sitting in his den of scum and villainy when he hears an account of Mark Anthony's rabble-rousing at Caesar's funeral. This provokes him to an indignant and foul-mouthed rant on standards of public behaviour.

Erastes Fulmen: No excuse! It's a consular fucking funeral, innit?. Y'supposed to show some fucking respect! Not run around looting and burning. Animals. An' that Anthony's a cunt too. Mark me now, any one of you cunnies join in this disgrace, you?ll be disjointed - quick as Pan. We observe the fucking decencies! Right?!

  • Played for laughs in The IT Crowd: owing to a convoluted series of events, Moss and Roy have agreed to allow a German cannibal to consume some of their limbs if he lets them watch a movie Roy's been desperate to see on his swanky home entertainment system. The same episode has also featured a parody of the standard over-the-top and slightly hysterical anti-piracy adverts. They put the DVD, the advert starts, and the cannibal immediately shouts out "Oh, these piracy warnings!" in frustration and disgust.
  • On a Weekend Update segment, the Devil (played by Jason Sudeikis) appeared to talk about how the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals made him sick, and to assure viewers that there was in fact, "a special place in hell" for these pedophiles.
    • Another skit on Weekend Update involved The Devil talking about the Westboro Baptist Church, saying even he didn't support them and their views on homosexuals.
      • But the major tipping point was when he heard about the Penn State scandal and got so enraged over the cover-up and how nothing was done to bring down Jerry Zandusky that the Devil decided to quit his job as Prince of Darkness and go back to his old job as Time-Warner Cable's customer service representative.
    • Hilariously lampshaded in another SNL skit which had a brave knight (Jimmy Fallon) trying to rescue his love from a monster (played by episode host Jack Black) who had demanded that a virgin be sacrificed to him once a year. However, it turns out that the monster actually wants a slut since virgins don't have the enthusiasm or experience.

Knight: Is that why you let the last girl go? Because she was a virgin?
Monster: No, man, it's because she was thirteen! I may be a monster, but that's just sick!

  • Subverted by Al Swearengen in Deadwood. Swearengen begins the series by stepping on a woman's throat, then goes though three seasons of Pet the Dog moments. In season three, he delivers a avenging beatdown on one of Hearst's mooks, berating the man for trying to hurt women and children. Moments later, Swearengen admits that he was only putting on a show. He himself has no qualms about killing women and children, and is torturing the mook simply because he enjoys it.
  • An episode of The Montel Williams Show had psychic Sylvia Brown answer questions from the audience. One audience member expressed concerns about her health problems. Brown gave the usual psychic BS about chakras being out of line, etc. When the audience member said her doctor suspected multiple sclerosis, Montel cut to a commercial. Montel has MS himself and obviously wasn't going to have this woman played with.
  • Cold Case serial killer George Marks abducts women disguised as a cop, takes them to a secluded wood, has them strip and then hunts them all night. When he discovers that one of his victims has her 9 year old daughter in the car with her he backs off and waits until he can kidnap his victim without the little girl around.
    • Seeing as how one of his victims was a 14-year old girl and that he implies that he did in fact threaten to harm the 9 year old if her mother didn't come with him, it's more likely that he didn't want any witnesses.
  • Marty Di Stasio is as unethical as any other reporter on the Frontline team, but even he balks at his executive producer's decision to air an unsubstantiated story about a priest accused of rape. When Emma asks, he admits to being a (lapsed) Catholic.
  • Londo Mollari in Babylon 5 is this in some ways.
  • Despite how far he is willing to go to get laid, Charlie from Two and A Half Men draws the line at sleeping with his possible sister.
    • He also does not like it when he sleeps with someone who is either married or is dating someone else/about to get married to someone else. In fact, most times he does these things, he usually doesn't even know that they were this until after the fact.
  • In ""Little Hell"" Nick Cocks, a child killer who once brutally slaughtered a 3 year old baby in cold blood while it's weeping mother watched as well as then going to rape said mother before killing her husband then drowning the mother, is shocked and horrified when he hears about a man who went on holiday while leaving his cat without food for a 2 day break. Nick even goes as far as to kill the man before taking the cat to a animal shelter stating:

"How dare you stave a innocent cat! I love cats and now you're dead!"

    • As well as this in one episode, a criminal is taken to court on suspicion of killing his friend. As the trial proceeds it is revealed that the lawyer of the man, raped a woman however the trial proceeds anyway. Just as a not-guilty verdict is about to be pronounced, the man steals a guards gun and shots the lawyer in the head before being tackled the ground. When asked why he did so he replies by saying:

"I can't get of the hook by a man who raped a woman! I may be paying the ultimate price, but it was either I get of the hook by a bastard, or I kill the bastard. Either way I get punished somehow..."

    • Another episode involves a group of terrorists whose ultimate goal is to destroy both American and British spirits. They have been behind multiple major attacks evening once flying a plane into a nursery, however what one thing makes then so utterly shocked and disgusted that they end up shooting themselves to stop the painful thoughts that it provokes? The story of a man throwing a crisps packet on the ground. As they put it:

"We may be terrorists, but we don't do litter!"

  • An episode of Walker, Texas Ranger had a group of criminals escape from prison and hide out in a church, taking the people there hostage. One of the gang members is extremely uncomfortable with this and keeps saying so. The ringleader tells him to shut up. . .and two seconds later, punches out another gang member who has begun to make sleazy advances to one of the nuns.
  • Although not quite "evil" (with the exception of their ringleader, Max Hudson, who murdered his wife), the shock jock team members J.J. and Little Willie (who is as small as his name implies) were very obnoxious and often play very cruel jokes. However, when Hudson mocks Trudy's death on the air when Monk admits that his wife was killed via a carbomb, even they were horrified at Hudson's actions, telling Hudson to go easy on Monk.
    • Also, Dale "The Whale" J. Biederbeck III may force his servant to commit a murder against a judge, draw out a case to ensure that Trudy drop out of a libel lawsuit that he knew he had no chance of winning otherwise, using his own weight and lack of movement as an excuse to get himself out of a crime that he committed, and try to frame the innocent to get himself out of jail, but even he would not stoop as low as to arrange a hit on a fellow inmate for not owing him an extremely small ($1,200) amount of money. (Although it's likely that he simply had no desire to expend any time or effort arranging a hit on someone who was set to be executed soon anyway.)
    • Also, in an episode about an anti-military extremist bombing a power generator to keep his identity undercover (he earlier faked his death), one of his friends, a literal tree-hugger, was initially supportive of his efforts in bombing recruitment stations. However, when he learned that his recent actions of bombing a power station had led to three deaths (all people who were in a hospital at the time of a blackout), he drew the line and told his friend off in secret. This, of course, led to his friend turning on him by knocking the tree down with a bulldozer with him still on it.
  • On Fringe, Walternate has no problem with human experimentation, breeding shapeshifting cyborg assassins, encasing people in amber, and killing hundreds or even millions if it will save his world. But he will not allow experiments to be run on children.
    • except he did it's hinted at that he had alternate Olivia kidnapped and infected with a untested drug/virus to accelerate her pregnancy. it was to avoid the fact that all babies died in the other universe before being born but still he did experiment on kids.
  • One of the murderers in Midsomer Murders took a young boy who was a witness to one of his crimes out on his boat. When Barnaby shows up to arrest him, the child is unharmed, with the murderer admitting that he couldn't bring himself to kill a child (who happened to be his great-nephew). Keep in mind that he strangled a woman to death, killed a doctor and burned down his office, and ran over another woman and injected her with nicotine to protect his company's reputation.
  • Arthur Frobisher of Damages reacts with horror when he is offered the chance to kill a dangerous witness, and initially declines. Of course, he goes ahead with it in the end, but the reaction fits the trope before he Jumps Off the Slippery Slope.
  • The Outer Limits episode "Rule of Law" features an alien being put on trial for murdering a human. The prosecuting attorney is racist against aliens and pushes for an execution, but when everybody learns why the alien killed the guy ( the guy smashed the alien's unhatched eggs with full knowledge of what they were), he sides with the protagonists.
  • The X-Files has (given the set-up) quite a realistic example in "Our Town". Walter Chaco, who led the town into the practice of serial killing and cannibalism of random people passing through for the purpose of keeping themselves youthful gives a rather heroic-sounding speech about the virtues of sticking together as a town and not harming each other. His standards get him killed.
  • Wild Boys: Superintendent Fuller may be a Corrupt Hick, but he does not tolerate men who hit women.
  • In Law and Order SVU, there's an episode where a guy breaks into a house and winds up finding kiddy porn pictures and reports them to the police anonymously.
    • it's happened a couple of times in the real world.
  • Supernatural: Crowley, being the chief Crossroads demon (and later King of Hell) has no problem with making deals with desperate humans for their souls, and will usually even twist the wording of the deals to his benefit. However, he will not have his "clients" killed so he can collect their souls sooner, as he explains to a lower demon who had been doing exactly that, before canceling all of the demon's deals and taking him away for punishment.

"This isn't Wall Street, this is Hell. We have a little something called integrity!"

    • That's more a case of Pragmatic Villainy. Crowley says it's more to do with consumer confidence. You sell your soul, you get 10 years with whatever you made a deal for, then you go to Hell. But if word got out about demons collecting early, nobody would make deals with them.
    • Balthazaar is a rogue, hedonist angel, who takes up the demons' hobby of making deals with humans for their souls. However, when he learns that his part-time employer and friend, Castiel, is working with Crowley to locate Purgatory and take control of its souls, he's so horrified that he switches sides and teams up with the Winchesters to stop them. This ends up costing him.
  • A Show Within a Show example in The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Living Witness", when the Kyrian civilization uses historical revisionism to depict a centuries-earlier run-in with Voyager. The biased depiction of the neighbouring Vaskan leader has him going to war with the Kyrians simply to steal their land. He contracts Voyager as mercenaries to accomplish this, but even he objects on moral grounds and tries to cancel the deal when evil Janeway decides to effect massive genocide of the Kyrians as the best solution.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 plays this trope straight and averts it! In Manos: The Hands of Fate, both Dr. Forrestor and TV's Frank realize and even admit they went too far picking the movie, though apparently they just can't stop the movie, so Joel and the Bots still have to suffer. On the other hand, Pearl shows no sympathy at all for Mike and the Bots when she shows them Hobgoblins, then again, they kinda deserved it.
  • The MythBusters aren't exactly evil (mayhem and destruction aside), but they do a fake-out that smacks of this trope. In a first-season episode, they trot out the "poodle in the microwave" myth as if they're going to test it, and they even show the poodle they're (supposedly) going to run the test on. Of course, just before they're "slated" to run the test, they reveal that "there are some myths even we, on MythBusters, can't do", establishing a long-standing rule against certain animal tests.
  • On Casualty the Farmead Crew is a council estate gang that deals drugs, among other things. Anton, the gang leader, is horrified that one of his subordinates set up the gang-rape of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in order to keep her boyfriend quiet about a failed shooting.
  • Played for laughs in an episode of Room 101, a programme in which celebrities discuss their pet hates. Ian Hislop had just argued the case for Piers Morgan being put into the titular room, and host Paul Merton pulled the lever... at which point the room vomited Piers up on the grounds he was 'too toxic for Room 101'.
  • The Mentalist: Red John does NOT tolerate "poor imitations" of his work, and is even kind enough to spare the life of the patsy the main perpetrators of the plot blackmailed into it (with his mother's life no less) with merely a shot to the leg.
    • In the Season 4 episode Pink Champagne on Ice a Women who is planning to rob a casino kills her accomplice, finding him too evil as he laughs about killing the room-mate of the girl he kidnapped as a hostage. The Women, Trish, is prepared to kill the hostage and two people who can recognise her despite them giving her the money. She says she would have felt terrible about it though.
  • While Raymond "Red" Reddington, from NBC’s The Blacklist, maybe a former government agent prior to his life as a wanted fugitive, he turns his life around by helping the FBI catch up other fugitives who evaded… hence the title of the show. Red still harbors his criminal ways, but animal cruelty is one form of crime he seems to be disgusted with.
  • The Claimers from The Walking Dead forbid lying among their group, even though they engage in activity that a person who has decided "every man for himself" would commit, such as murder. God help you if you're a member of the group but decide to lie anyway. They also decide that whatever they find they keep for themselves to prevent fighting over something valuable. (For example, one Claimer strangles another so that he can have a bed for himself...which incidentally prevents Rick from being discovered by them.)
  • One well known - and controversial - Saturday Night Live sketch was ["World's Most Evil Invention"], which was all about this. The Card-Carrying Villains at the convention are all mortified at the idea of a robot that molests children. Of course, this turns even darker when the sketch is revealed to be a parody of a White Castle commercial, with the slogan "We Serve Anyone".
  • In the episode Bad Day to Be a Hero from the reboot of Magnum, P.I. a friend of Magnum's was hosting an underground poker game which was robbed. Unfortunately one of the players was a notorious lone shark. Much of the episode features repaying his money. Then in curiosity about the motive's of the robbers said loan shark is asked about whether an associate of his is shady. The reply is indeed so, "Word on the street is he's a slave trader".
  • Hilariously Played for Laughs in this short from Studio C, which is similar to the SNL sketch mentioned about, but more whimsical. Hannibal Lector throws a dinner party and invites several other movie villains - Hans Gruber, Norman Bates, Samara, and… Neil Miller. The first four villains think Miller (whose “crime”, as fans of The Santa Clause know, is telling children Santa doesn’t exist) is far too evil for their company.
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