Evil Brit/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The villain has an upper class British accent, even if he isn't actually British.

  • Straight: Alice must stop the British accented Robert from taking over the world.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Robert is introduced drowning kittens in his teacup while snacking on crumpets with spread made from babies. Alice must stop him from taking over America with the help of the SAS and turning it into the world's largest Bangers and Mash factory.
    • Alice visits Britain, and everyone there is an Obviously Evil Card-Carrying Villain.
  • Downplayed:
    • All British characters are Mean Brits.
    • Most characters are evil, and a couple happen to be British.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: The heroic Robert must assemble a crack team of SAS commandos to prevent American General Ripper Alice from starting a nuclear war.
  • Subverted:
  • Double Subverted: He was planning to take over the world, however.
  • Parodied: Bobbie the cockney orphan is the only character without an American accent. He turns out to be the Man Behind the Man.
  • Deconstructed: Britain is attacked by a group of deluded right wing fanatic Knight Templars who have concluded that Britons are Exclusively Evil based on the stereotype. This escalates and leads to a war between Britain and America.
  • Reconstructed: "Don't worry chaps, we'll bring those dastardly Yanks to heel!...and afterwards we'll have bangers and mash to celebrate.".
  • Zig Zagged:
    • Alice tries to stop Robert from taking over the world...wait, it turns out he's innocent. Hang on, it looks like the real Big Bad has an accent anyway...nope he just put it on to mock Alice's assumptions about Robert. Wait, Robert's the Man Behind the Man...or is he...?
    • The evil British villains are working for an American. (For a more unusual twist, the Big Bad is, say, Belgian or Canadian.)
  • Averted: The cast is made up entirely of Britons or has no one with a British accent in it.
  • Enforced:
    • It's a movie about the American Revolution, at the very least the villain will probably be British.
    • Corollary: if an American movie is about a ragtag group of rebels against an Evil Empire the rebels will speak with an American accent and the baddies with a British accent.
  • Lampshaded:
    • "Good day chaps, did my accent give me away?"
    • "We Britons have a long history of supervillainy! Shall I give you a history lesson?"
  • Invoked: Robert enjoys being the Devil in Plain Sight and puts on a British Accent because of this trope.
  • Defied: Robert joins the heros solely to disprove this trope.
  • Discussed: "I have my eye on you, limey."
  • Conversed: "Hmm, an Irishman and Englishman and an American. I wonder who the villain will be."

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