Fashion Victim Villain

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Tremble before my bathrobe of DOOM! Or else I'll kick some ice!

"Just whose idea was it to have this evil general running around wearing neon blue lipstick? It's hard to look like a militaristic badass when you look like you just escaped from a production of Cabaret! I kept wondering if his D&D alignment was Chaotic Fabulous!" —Scott Foy on Dungeons and Dragons (The Movie)

The heroes have had it. They've been captured and tied up, and can only watch mutely and impotently as the Evil Overlord's final plans unfold. The large, oversized doors at the far end of his cavernous control room swing open, and in walks the Big Bad himself in an ominous swirl of purple fog...

Wait. Is that a cocktail dress he's wearing? Is that a bone in his nose? Hoop earrings in his ears? A pink satin turban? Clown makeup?

Did the Evil Overlord suddenly forget that he was in a serious action-adventure and decide to play dress-up with a trunkful of his mother's old castoffs?

Uh-oh. It seems we have a Fashion Victim Villain on our hands.

This trope comes into play whenever a villain decides to don an outrageous, over-the-top costume, usually replete with Dark Colors, Shoulders of Doom and Spikes of Villainy, thinking it will make him look like a fearless, all-powerful Badass. Instead, it makes him look pitiable and ridiculous, if not slightly unhinged.

It's not hard to see why this should happen. Villainy, as a profession, tends to attract flamboyant personality types. Still, this is no excuse for dressing up as a gothic drag queen during the least appropriate times, and no amount of inhuman strength, dog-kicking, or Magnificent Bastard-ness can restore a villain's menace once it's been undercut by a move like this, at least most of the time. (Unless the villain happens to be a Monster Clown, and the over-the-top costume and makeup is part of his/her schtick.)

A Fashion Victim Villain most often dresses in this manner during moments of triumph or when they're first meeting with the heroes (in a failed attempt to impress them). Sometimes they may dress like this unintentionally—a radiation suit, designed for the very utilitarian purpose of protecting the villain, may have ridiculously large hips or a phallic helmet, or be colored with loud shades. Either way, one can expect the audience watching the show to chortle a bit upon seeing the villain's new threads. The heroes themselves may mock the villain for his lack of taste, but just as often will let it pass without comment (especially if they have other, more pressing matters on their minds). The villain's allies and henchmen probably won't dare to even crack a smile around the villain (when he is around).

Of course, it was also stated in the Evil Overlord List #29, which stated "I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion." Still, that's no excuse for not doing it well.

Tends to happen a lot with Sissy Villains and Agent Peacocks. May cross over with Highly-Conspicuous Uniform if the Mooks are victims, too.

A subset of Narm. Compare WTH Costuming Department.

Examples of Fashion Victim Villain include:

Anime and Manga

• If you're a female villain or Monster of the Week in Sailor Moon, you will have a bad outfit. The rare exceptions are good guys turned into bad guys (Black Lady, Mistress 9) or the Big Bad (Galaxia, Nehellenia, Beryl), and even some of them have questionable tastes.
• Not a costume, exactly, but the ridiculously over-the-top "Blue Eyes White Dragon Jet" that Seto Kaiba flies in the Yu-Gi-Oh! series has definitely got to qualify for this trope. It gets plenty of fun poked at it in the Abridged Version.
  • Though, to do it justice, in the Manga it was a fully-functional Fighter Jet just painted to look like Blue-Eyes. You wouldn't be laughing when you found out that it still had all of its weaponry.
• Code Geass R2: After seeing Lelouch's and Suzaku's new outfits after episode 21, the fanbase spent weeks snickering childishly. The actual outfits really aren't that bad, being designed by CLAMP... but... well, they... are... designed by CLAMP. Lelouch's outfit is the better one of the two, but the Nice Hat just pushes it past the "Pope/Not Pope" outfit threshold. Suzaku looks OK while wearing the cape, but then he takes it off and you see he has skin-tight shoulders. The fact that their arms and legs are insanely long (there's a reason why fans call CLAMP's character's noodle people) doesn't help.
  • A CLAMP artbook shows that the Nice Hat could have been worse. the original version looked like nothing so much as a kite; the hat he does wear in the show is merely the base of the original.
    • CLAMP also designed an outfit for C.C. to go along with Lelouch and Suzaku's. It actually looks pretty good, so of course it's the one that doesn't show up in the series (though she does wear it in the final Picture Drama).
  • For some, the overly fancy looking ornamental sword Lelouch carried, which to most looks like a plastic toy, was usually taken more seriously after he got fatally skewered by it in the last episode while others have said that the sword actually ruined the aforementioned scene for them, sending it from Tear Jerker to Narm territory.
  • Several Britannia nobles have hairstyles out of date by at least a hundred years, including the Emperor. The British just really love wigs.
• About half of the main villains in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure suffer from this.
  • The Pillar Men wear nothing but loincloths and over-the-top Aztec accessories.
  • Most villains would never be able to get away with half of the costumes Dio wears throughout Part 3. Also, his Renfield, Vanilla Ice, has a sillier outfit.
  • Diavolo borders on, but comes up just short of Villainous Crossdresser.
  • Pucci and Kira suffer from this the least, as Kira wears business suits and Pucci wears his priest outfit. The President in Steel Ball Run also averts this somewhat.
• After the first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam 00's second season (or after the release of season 2's first character sketches), the fandom has been snickering hard upon the... outfits used by Ribbons and their followers. It is really difficult to take a man in pastels seriously. Especially when he has a "chest window". And the less said about their party outfits, the better. Hilling Care, WTF is up with that tux of yours?
  • Graham Aker was a whole lot cooler when he wasn't wearing a goofy samurai outfit as Mr. Bushido.
  • The Trinity Team with their white and yellow spandex bike shorts definately count as well. Nena looks fine in hers, but the problem is that Johan wears spandex shorts and Michael's own pants are horrible as well.
• Bleach: Harribel.
  • Harribel's outfit wouldn't be so bad if she actually kept it on. Alas, her Espada tattoo is located on her enormous boobs so she needs to go topless to show it off. It only goes downhill from there.
  • Oh, you think Harribel is bad? Remember Nnoitora? Remember that spoon thing behind his head? Remember the shoes?
  • Bad as Halibel's ultimate form is, there is nothing that the creator could come up with to top Charlotte's ultimate form. It reaches Jojo's-level of sending the fandom into fits of laughter. He's supposed to be an over-the-top parody of Magical Girl anime.
  • What about Aizen's banana suit? The form-fitting dress, high heels, and butterfly wings aren't much of an improvement. To say nothing of that tacky mullet.
  • Ginjo's new outfit. Did he take up fashion clues from AIZEN?
  • The Vandereich mostly avert this trope due to rhem Putting on the Reich, but Kirge Opie wears the FVV medal with pride. Lennon Specs? Check. Weird hat? Check. Horrible spoon shoes? Check. VERY ugly haircut? Oh baby, Check, Please!.
• Creed from Black Cat has a rather over-the-top villain outfit. It looks more like an overdone, flamboyant JRock drag, being open-chested and having large black feathers lining it.
• Fist of the North Star. This is a show where your garden-variety Mook runs around in makeup and pink clothing suits that wouldn't look out of place on Conan the Barbarian (y'know, if it hadn't been freaking pink). And has a mohawk.
• Okay, so Olba Frost from Gundam X wears a purple and white jacket. Fine, doesn't look that bad with the rest of his clothing. But the electric blue boots? Oh crap, that CLASHES.
• In Gundam SEED Destiny Lord Djibril doesn't get out much. Which is a good thing, since his yellow suit and blue lipstick make him look like a complete idiot (of course, he actually is a complete idiot).
  • The less said about Yuna's pajamas, the better. You won't be able to easily escape from them, though: they've become a huge Memetic Outfit.
• Specialty of Mamoru Nagano. Probably the best example would be Possoidal, the Big Bad of Heavy Metal L-Gaim. It takes a special kind of person to wear curtain-rods as epaulets. And then there's at least half the cast of The Five Star Stories...
• While Naruto generally averts this, with most villains having outfits much simpler than average for Shonen (probably a necessity because everyone moves around so much), two examples still stick out: Orochimaru's otherwise normal usual outfit with the huge purple rope he wears as a belt that is tied up in a ribbon on his back (Sasuke after the Time Skip also has a rope-belt like that, but it's tied at the front and much smaller) and the outfit Sasuke wears after fighting Itachi and joining Akatsuki with the ridiculously over-sized collar.
• Agon of Eyeshield 21 seems to incorporate everything that screams "douche" (rather appropriate given that he's a Jerk Jock) in to his look which frankly makes his popularity with the ladies rather perplexing. This is a 17-year-old Japanese boy who wears dreadlocks, sunglasses, and a gold chain around his neck at all times. To say nothing of the huge dragon tattoo on his back and his horrendous clothing choices (wearing an animal print dress shirt to a date is just all kinds of wrong...)
• Smug Snake Shapiro Keats from Dancougar likes his purple eyeliner and has the fashion sense of David Bowie.
• In Shiki, if you are one of the titular Shiki, if you aren't a mook, you get a fabulous outfit. Tatsumi apparently has cat ears as expressive hair and an outfit which probably gets him a lot of willing female Shiki. Then there's the Shiki who apparently is Vampire Lady Gaga. Sunako has utterly insane hair and a Victorian dress, and Megumi's fashion fails could get a page of their own.
• In City Hunter, there's an In-Universe example with one of the Villains Of The Week: after he managed to capture both Ryo Saeba and the girl he was protecting, a fashion designer, said girl accuses him of poor fashion taste upon seeing his clothes; this flusters him, as when they meet later after Ryo and the girl made their escape, he has put up more tacky clothes, and inevitably gets further mocked by the protagonists, to his embarrassment.
• Tiger and Bunny gives us Jake Martinez, who manages to be terrifying while looking like... Well, picture the phrase "glam rock serial killer".
• Envy of Fullmetal Alchemist, who's running around in a skirt, and a tanktop, and has his/her/its hair in what looks like a palm tree. First-Anime!Wrath is as bad or worse, since it's that same outfit on a ten-year old boy.
• Fuala Griffon from Victory Gundam thinks she rocks a look via using cat bells as earrings and putting on a pink spacesuit. She doesn't.
  • Also, the Zanscare meetings become unintentionally hilarious when you see either grunts or commanders wearing really stupid-looking old-fashioned wigs. Even people who do realize the parallels between the Zanscare "fashion" and traditional looks associated to some officer posts are... weirded out, to say but politely.
• In the first Appleseed movie the officers of the Olympos Regular Army wear completely ridiculous teal uniforms.
• While not a villain per se, at least not an outright one, Mello's outfits in Death Note are often bizarre, to say the least.
• When Sugata joins the Glittering Crux in Star Driver, he comes out wearing...this. Even in a show full of Camp Straight, and bad fashion choices, his outfit just goes beyond.

Comic Books

• This flash animation gives us Marvel's less than stellar choices in villainous fashions. At least Galactus has an excuse.

Galactus: I CARE NOT FOR THE OPINIONS OF LESSER MORTALS REGARDING MY HAT.

• • In the tie-in comic for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Dante even comments, upon looking at him, that adding a cape and a cane, Galactus would be the biggest pimp he'd ever seen.
  • Also from Marvel, we have Black Talon. Deadpool's encounter with him says it all.
  • And Mysterio, who wears what appears to be an upside-down goldfish bowl on his head. This is especially hilarious because he's supposed to be a Master of Illusion, yet he apparently has never thought that it might be a good idea to create the illusion that he isn't wearing an upside-down goldfish bowl on his head. Eventually they caught on, and when his illusionary gas was enhanced by Dr. Doom, he went around town with the rest of Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery in various disguises - a metal band, a punk band, and a schoolboy - with the rest of them as schoolgirls. Of course, they didn't know how they appeared.
    • A charming cartoonist named Katie Cook has Lampshaded the fishbowl effect.
    • The exact same thing was done in the first Spider-Man Playsation game, if "What If?" mode was activated.
    • It seems that everyone has made fun of Mysterio's headgear - Marvel Ultimate Alliance has Spidey bringing it up if he's part of your team on the helicarrier, for example. In fact, "fishbowl for a head" is Spidey's favorite method of addressing him.
    • They fixed that in Ultimate Spider-Man where he loses the fishbowl and instead just has a vaguely head-shaped cloud of fog drifting above the metal device he wears around his shoulders. It's actually rather creepy but still, the beads he wears around his left hand look kind of silly.
    • He's been described as having been dressed by the Liberace Space Program.
• A rather unknown (for a reason) Marvel comic called Thunderstrike featured a villain called Carjack (whose specialty was, well, carjacking. Truly a worthy opponent to the successor of the Norse god of thunder), who had dreadlocks and wore a brown trenchcoat, purple pants, huge boots and gloves and a Dr. Doom-style metallic mask.
• The Flash villain The Rainbow Raider: Admittedly, he is colorblind, so it's not really his fault, but still.
• Doom Patrol villain Codpiece. He has a laser cannon mounted exactly where you would guess he does from that name, and while he was actually pretty damn dangerous with it, the costume was no less hilarious for many reasons. Then again he fought The Doom Patrol who are... weird...
• Deimos from The Warlord. Between the pixie boots, the bare midriff, the long, dangling loincloth, the random high collar and the huge sleeves, there's something here for everybody to laugh at.
• Sometime during the '90s, Dc introduced Nightwing's future self from an alternate reality. He started a out as a good guy before being turned to the dark side rather quickly. He wasn't the first Bat-family member to do so, or the last, but certainly the worst dressed. Spikes of Villainy. Mullet. Nipple piercing. Only half a shirt, but an enormous 1970's collar to compensate. Surely it all made sense in the mind of a madman.Of course, then it in a shocking twist, it he was actually just some guy who had no relation to Nightwing whatsoever and wasn't really from the future. It was the 90s.
  • His name was Deathwing. Lets play him off.
• In Flight No. 714 to Sydney Tintin's arch-nemesis Roberto Rastapopopulos, who had until then shown an impeccable taste in clothes, suddenly decides to put on a bizarre pink-and-cream cowboy-outfit. He then undergoes a long and painful Villain Decay through the story and the cartoonist later admitted that it was the clothes that did it. Seeing his villain in that outfit had made him lose all respect for the guy.
• Keith Giffen's Mister Nebula, a parody of Galactus, might as well be the best example of this trope, considering instead of eating planets, this guy travels around the Universe in his Nebulamobile, redecorating planets according to his own sense of aesthetics, which has a distinctive tasteless flair.
• Electro is another Spider-Man villain who gets a lot of gaffe for his costume. The main thing is that mask resembles a starfish made of lightning bolts, but the rest of his lightning bolt-bedazzled costume is pretty ridiculous too. The Spectacular Spider-Man averts this by giving him an army green insulation suit, and having his mask become real electricity that obscures his face. It's considerably cooler looking.

Fan Works

• This trope is spoofed in The Return, where Big Bad Alexia and her Dragon Aurora continually dress like catwalk models with OTT fake tans and makeup and are mercilessly mocked by the heroes. Thanks to an Evil Makeover Dark Mercury also comes in for ribbing, but she is acting more as a Card-Carrying Villain on purpose so probably feels she needs the rather hideous and impractical get up.
• The parody crossover Harry Potter in the Realm of Dungeons and Dragons plays with this. Harry, Ron and Hermione wind up in the realm of the animated show Dungeons and Dragons, where much amusement is gotten from the fact that the D&D kids regularly face off with "a one-horned devil in an evening gown".
• In this Kung Fu Panda fanfic, everyone (yes, even the protagonists) is a Fashion Victim Villain. The biggest offender is, probably fittingly enough, Josef Stalin.
• My Immortal takes this to its logical conclusion, where all the bad guys are stereotypical preps wearing pink. It has the balls to depict Voldemort/Volfemort/Vlodemort/Volxemort/Darth Valer/Tom Andorson/Tom Bombodil wearing high heels.
• Queen of All Oni: Minor villain Lung, at least in the opinion of Tarakudo. And since the former's described as looking like "Ming The Merciless' Goth cousin", the latter may have a point. And in addition to clothes, Tarakudo also derides Lung's choice of lair, viewing his abandoned, ancient, cliffside fortress as an unoriginal cliche.

Films

• Films featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 seem to love this trope. Notable examples include Troxartas from Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, Kobras from Puma Man, and the main villain from Operation Double 007.
• A utilitarian example occurs in the James Bond film, Dr. No. The protective suit the title character wears at the end of the film is Narmtastic.
  • This was parodied at the end of the first Austin Powers movie. The clear see-thru suit Dr. Evil is wearing seems to serve no useful purpose, other than making him comically slide off chairs whenever he tries to sit on them.

Dr. Evil: Mr. Powers, how do you like my quasi-futuristic attire? I designed it myself.

• The Masters of the Universe movie. Frank Langella's golden Skeletor costume, acquired after he achieves ultimate power, plows a line right through Narm and crosses back over to Totally Awesome again. It's like a gay metallic Chiquita-Banana-ator.
• An example occurs in the live action Dr. Seuss movie The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. The costume the titular mad conductor wears at the end is probably the most flamboyant example of this trope ever made. The villain's dress-up routine even gets its own song written about it.
• While the Batman franchise is partially based around silly costumes, Riddler's light-up jacket from Batman Forever qualifies. It's so bad he makes a joke about it:

Riddler: Like the jacket? It keeps me safe when I'm jogging at night.

• • Really, Riddler spent the entire movie getting steadily more ridiculous, culminating in a costume containing five thousand pounds of glitter.
  • Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin wears a bathrobe. With polar bear slippers. Just another nail in the series coffin.
• Xerxes in 300 wears a gold cape and speedo and is covered in gold chains and facial piercings. The facial piercings are a shared trait among the Persians, while the speedo seems to be a universal trait in the film's warped version of reality.
• Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, especially in the 1980 movie.
• Averted in Labyrinth: clothes that would look ridiculous on a lesser man actually look pretty spectacular on David Bowie.
• In its deconstruction of superheros, Watchmen features a lot of snide comments about the intentionally silly costumes that heroes and villains wear. Veidt's bright purple-and-gold suit and mask are overtly compared to Studio 54 excess.
• Todd Spengo from Mom and Dad Save The World. Then again... everyone on the planet of Spengo has bad fashion sense.
• Evilene in the Sidney Lumet version of The Wiz wore a large, garish-looking dress which, like many items in the movie, seemed to be made of garbage.
• A rare narmless example is Anton Chigurh of No Country for Old Men. His bizarre appearance and mannerisms only contribute utterly terrifying presence.
• Zorg (and his weird head-covering...thing) in The Fifth Element, though the whole universe is filled with outrageous fashion.
• This is almost the point of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Perhaps the bustier is more of a Villainous Crossdresser thing (mm, Fetish Fuel), but as Frank-N-Furter is so pale, his green surgical scrubs reflect up into his face and makes him look like a dead ringer for Kermit the Frog in drag, and a grade-A fashion victim.
• Dr. Schadenfreude from Igor, deliberately designed to look like a cross between Elton John and Marilyn Manson.
• The Big Bad from Warriors of Virtue definitely qualifies as this. And in a movie about ninja kangaroos no less.
• Darius Sayle in Stormbreaker. Because nothing says "scary villain" like Mickey Rourke in a white pimp coat and Jack Sparrow makeup.
• Gozer from Ghostbusters.
• Megamind plays with this a lot, as the Villain Protagonist wears ever more ridiculous giant collared outfits. He's Genre Savvy enough to know that the key to being a super-villain is "PRESENTATION!" (cue Guns N' Roses).
• Matthew Patel in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is dressed pretty ridiculously, to the point where someone actually thinks he's dressed like a pirate. Patel responds defensively:

Matthew Patel: Pirates are in this year!

• • Patel is deliberately portrayed as a typical over-the-top Bollywood villain.
• Even for the 80s, Velvet Von Ragnar, played by Gene Simmons from the movie Never Too Young to Die, had hilariously bad fashion sense.
• Profion's sidekick in Dungeons and Dragons wears blue lipstick for...some reason.
  • Damodar becomes the Big Bad in the sequel, somehow losing his badassery.
• In Zoolander, Mugatu looks like an unholy mixture of Satan, Cruella DeVille, and a poodle. He also inexplicably dresses up as a young German boy during the brainwashing scene.

Literature

• Esmé Squalor in A Series of Unfortunate Events is an extreme example.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible: Who Dares? laugh at the tights and red velour cape of Doctor Impossible!
• One goblin villain in the Drizzt Do'Urden series combined this with Rummage Sale Reject—all his clothing was scavenged at random off slain humans, and he had no idea what went with what. For that matter, he had no idea that bras are female-only.
• Azrael de Gray, Evil Sorcerer and Fish Out of Temporal Water. Also known as "That guy in the pimp jewelry."
• Ublaz Mad Eyes in Redwall. His evil plan, resulting in years of work and the horrible deaths of hundreds of innocents, was all so he could get hold of a pink pearl crown.
• In Young Legionary, Haxxarians seem to be an entire culture of this.

Live Action TV

• As noted, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has had plenty of movies that feature this trope. The top page quote comes from the movie Operation Double 007, which had the main, middle-aged male villain dressing in a flowy silver caftan and (at the end) a skintight red pleather suit.
  • Traxartus, the villain of the movie Deathstalker, frequently wore short tunics with boatneck collars, pink fur, and satin turbans.

Traxartus: Give her something of yours, then... something billowy and soft... Crow: Wait -- something of mine...

• • Puma Man had Big Bad Donald Pleasance wearing a girly black and silver tunic.
  • And who can forget the main villain from Cave Dwellers, with his ridiculous "Swan Helmet?"
  • Prince of Space had the Phantom of Krankor and his chicken suit... with no freaking undergarments. Shots below the waist were quite terrifying to behold for all the wrong reasons.
  • The cone-headed invaders from Invasion of the Neptune Men.
  • Xenos, the evil priest king from Outlaw of Gor. Even the fact that he was played by the incredibly Badass Jack Palance couldn't make up for the fact that he was wearing a long dress and a hat that looked like an opening seed pod.
  • Even Dr. Forrester himself, after Joel and the bots discuss world domination schemes and costumes following the Undersea Kingdom short in the Attack of the Giant Leeches episode.

Joel: You can bet that anybody seriously interested in world domination is gonna end up looking like a real snickerdoodle. Dr. Forrester (in a ridiculous outfit): What is that supposed to mean?! I’ll deal with you later! Back to the drill, Frank. You will bow down before me, Son of Jor-El! Bow down!

• What about The Master's outfit from the end of the Doctor Who movie? I mean, seriously. Photos here
  • The outfit is Time Lord formal wear, most famous for its abundance in the "The Deadly Assassin". The serial was aired twenty-one years before the movie however, so introducing it without any explanation nor the outfit's Nice Hat results in this trope. It's very much not the Time Lord clothing of the classic series. It's like someone saw Time Lords with their giant formal collars, thought that the collars were made of fabric and part of the robes (which means that the gigantic evil pointy collar droops a bit), and then dyed the whole thing black, red, and gold so we could tell that the guy possessing his murder victim's corpse was evil.
• The short-lived Sid and Marty Krofft superheroine series ElectraWoman and DynaGirl featured some truly crazed villain outfits, but special mention must be paid to evil musician Glitter Rock, who wore a huge sparkling green afro wig paired with equally enormous star-shaped sunglasses.
  • Glitter rock musicians' outfits tended strongly to the ridiculous, even for the 70s. Glitter Rock's outfit was ridiculous by glitter rock standards.
• In The Mighty Boosh, Vince is such a fashionista that he'll always comment on the villain's taste, whether good or bad. Vince himself makes some pretty eccentric fashion choices.
• Every Goa'uld overlord on Stargate SG-1 qualified for this trope. Bad taste must be encoded in Goa'uld DNA. Along with Dr. Doom rhetoric.
  • Ba'al swings widely: from looking like he wearing a bathrobe to leather longcoats... Zipacna is the worst: His first appearance he wore what looked like a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt. This is supposed to be "traditional" Mayan dress, given that he's impersonating one of their deities.
  • There's also Lord Yu-huang Shang Ti, the Jade Emperor, who not only dresses like a Chinese emperor, but he actually was the first Chinese emperor, meaning he created this style.
• The Riddler Unitard was so hated by Frank Gorshin, his actor on the 1960's Batman series, that he designed a new outfit for himself. The green three-piece suit and bowler hat with question mark tie that resulted is now the character's most common outfit.
• While Ming in the short-lived Flash Gordon TV series avoids this most of the time, preferring to pass himself off like a benevolent dictator of a Third World country ("Ming the Merciless" is what his subjects call him behind his back) by wearing a military uniform, he does wear an ornate robe in an episode where Mongo commemorates the Sorrow, a manmade cataclysm that destroyed the previous Mongo civilization and left their world in ruins. Ming's Dragon Rankol wear a long black robe and some sort of a metal plate on his head.

Pro Wrestling

• Triple H's entrance from WWE Wrestlemania 22 definitely qualifies here, for the worst Conan outfit ever. Should have saved that one for Halloween, Trips... Not that Face John Cena's homage to Al Capone was much better.
• Damien Demento, especially his hairy Venus flytrap shoulder pads.
• When Goldust turned back to heel at one point, he became The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust, who wore garish, disturbing outfits.
• Nelson Frazier (Mabel/Viscera/Big Daddy V) used to wear body suits that resemble balloons or garbage bags (especially the latter when he was Viscera), then pajamas, and finally pants and suspenders but no shirt (his cup size must be bigger than even the most well endowed Diva's).
• Zack Ryder wore bright purple tights with different length pants legs, a see through jacket (which closer inspection shows to really be an extremely gaudy dress shirt), swimming goggles, and a head ban on his first ECW appearance. Just in case that look wasn't bad enough he also spiked all of his hairs straight up. Thankfully his outfit became more bearable as time went on, acquiring solid jackets, ditching the goggles for shades, and finding sensible tights.
• Inverted at Summer Slam 2010 in the Divas' title match. The heel Alicia Fox wore a respectable outfit while her opponent Melina came out decked in a yellow and orange ensemble complete with an excess of feathers and a garish Aztec headdress.
  • Speaking of Alicia Fox, during her title reign, she had a nightmarish pink and silver outfit that consisted of a skirt and sports bra covered in fringes and tassels, making people wonder if she'd robbed a piñata from some kid's birthday party.
  • She keeps doing it now she's gone and given herself red hair and insists on wearing the pink piñata gear, giving her the look of a melting iced-cake.
• Beth Phoenix showed up at SummerSlam wearing a cross between a 50s waitress uniform and a nurse's costume. Sadly she's brought out even more of them since.

Video Games

• Many villains in the Final Fantasy series. A lot of the Amano designed villains look particularly effeminate, all the way back to Final Fantasy II which gave us Emperor Palamecia, his sexy black lipstick, and his multi-colored hair. These include...
  • Kuja from Final Fantasy IX is the most over the top example of this trope, what with his man-thong. Not shockingly, his original character design was done by Amano, and was one of the few that made it to the final game relatively intact.
  • Seymour, with his chest-baring technicolor robes and Picasso-esque hair follows close behind, though at least he can keep his manliness intact.
  • Kefka from FFVI, although being a Monster Clown, is one of the few where this look actually makes him menacing.
  • Not even the women are safe. While Edea from Final Fantasy VIII (designed by Tetsuya Nomura, not Amano) looks suitably goth in her pitch-black dress (and, being a witch, she doesn't require much freedom of movement) Ultimecia wears an eye-searing red evening gown with a plunging neckline... plunging all the way to her naughty bits, a split skirt, and painted feet instead of shoes. That's before discussing her makeup, too.
• Cole from In Famous does this if you make Evil Karma choices. In the original game his clothing and skin gradually desaturate to the point of appearing black and white, and he gets covered in black tar. In the sequel his changes are a little different. His shirt starts turning black and red, his skin starts going pale with his black veins showing, and his tattoos change as well. In the final stage he hangs his (red) belt loose with rips in his shirt and pants, and has an evil looking new stance to top it all off.
  • And of course, Cole can have a Good Costume Switch if the player goes for Good Karma.
• Zaki from Live a Live wears a lizard. And nothing else.
• Dantel, the final boss of the laughably awful Mortal Kombat ripoff Survival Arts is best described as an "incredibly cheap and hilarious white trash ripoff of Shang Tsung."
  • More like "Amakusa on the change from someone's couch cushions".
• Team Galactic in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum. They have bowl cuts for Christ's sake. Parodied by VG Cats.
  • Between the weird future-skirts and planet names of the female appearing lieutenants, Sailor Moon jokes are impossible to avoid. Then you find out Saturn's a dude.
  • The Cipher Peons in Pokémon Colosseum and XD wear a hybrid between Stormtrooper armor and Power Ranger uniforms. In Colosseum, it's black and dark purple; in XD, it's white. Regardles of the color, the group screams EVIL! In XD, the Hexagon Brothers go one step closer to Sentai with individually colored uniforms!
  • Team Rocket grunts in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver have pink hair. All of them.
  • Team Plasma has their agents dressed like Crusade-era knights, complete with Chi Rho on their chest cloth. A few folks on the internet think of them as Renaissance Faire rejects.
  • And then, there's Ghetsis. His abomination of fashion doesn't take centre stage to his unrelenting, sociopathic bastrady. And it does fit with the yin-yang theme.
• Yggdrasil in Tales of Symphonia. It's a jumpsuit. Also, it is extremely disco and leaves absolutely nothing whatsoever to the imagination. Except his gender.
• Almost everyone from Mortal Kombat, but special care must be taken to name Shinnok, Quan-Chi, Sindel, Shang Tsung in MK3, Kano in MK3, and many others. For some reason they don't seem so goofy in the game (except Shang Tsung and his dorky fighting stance), but if you've ever seen pictures of the actors wearing their actual costumes, it is very hard not to laugh. Most of the Earth Realm warrior look rather normal, particularly dressed down characters like Lu Kang and Johnny Cage. Unless doing everything shirtless counts. Sonya, and the ninjas (well, male ninjas anyway) also look rather normal.
• Jeanne from Bayonetta wears a red jumpsuit with a huge poofy collar and a bow just above her ass, open-toed, high-heeled sandals, and fluffy tassels on her guns. However, she has nothing on Balder, who wears a dead white peacock stole, a golden quarter mask, and an earring-attached monocle over said mask. And a single glove.
• The Big Bad of Apollo Justice Kristoph Gavin is frequently mocked by the fandom for his shoes.
• This is invoked with the Soda Poppers in Sam and Max.
• Konstantin Brayko in Alpha Protocol.

Michael Thorton: How many gay cheetahs gave their lives for this jacket?...

• • Henry Leland is more restrained, but still has a deeply unfortunate taste in shirts and ties. Thorton comments on it, but never to his face.
    • One such comment is about how the only thing Leland and Brayko seem to have in common is a similar taste in shirts and ties. Ouch.
• Atelier Iris' Palaxius and his horrible, horrible man-sideboob.
• One of Big Bad Sadler's Dragon's Ramon Salazar from Resident Evil 4. Not only does he look like a wrinkly literal Man Child, his outfit makes him look like a mini-Napoleon wanna-be that makes it practically impossible to take seriously (if not for his better dressed towering mutant Mooks)
• In Fallout: New Vegas, Big Bad Wannabe Benny wears a checkered suit that makes him look like a used car salesman. NPCs and companions will even remark about how ugly the suit is after he's dead.
  • Benny is based on real-life mobster Bugsy Siegel, who owned a similarly hideous suit.
• Shen Yu (a Fu Manchu Expy) in Evil Genius wears a long, ornate robe of yellow, black, red, and white, complete with a dragon medallion the size of his head and a jade jewel in his forehead. He's almost completely bald, save for a single ponytail. He appears to be wearing blue eye shadow and has perfectly-groomed eyebrows, a ridiculous mustache, and painted fingernails.
  • Some of the henchmen aren't much better, such as Jubei (an Anime-inspired samurai) and Moko (a tribal protector).
• The obscure Japan-only Data East game Garyo Retsuden takes place in Three Kingdoms-era China, and for the most part, the enemy forces don't look out of place there. At least until you reach the final boss. Red-and-yellow garb you'd normally expect to see in a superhero comic, wild blond hair, green half-mask and gloves...you get the idea. Even better, he's none other than Lu Bu. Yes, that Lu Bu.
• Dark Souls has a hilarious example in an NPC Black Phantom called Xanthous King Jeremiah (Jeremiah the Yellow King in Japanese). As expected from his Boss Subtitles, he wears yellow getup, which is about as close an equivalent to a near gold yellow yogist's gear (think Dhalsim) with an overly huge, pointy suppository-shaped turban. Even the item description snarks about its color which "hurts the eyes".
  • The yellow turban however, is a legacy item from Demon's Souls, where it is awarded to players who play the role of a Boss in a certain map. While the Dark Souls example doesn't do anything special (except being traded for a very rare ring), the Demons Souls variation gives an increase in magic damage, at the cost of wearing what looks like a custard tornado.
  • Another unfortunate example is Demon's Souls' Garl Vinland. Say what you will about his supposed villainy (or rather, lack thereof), but the man is very knightly and very badass-like, if not for his squid head-shaped ornament on his helmet. The nicknames "Squid-head" and "Squid-knight" are particularly frequently mentioned.

Web Comics

• Sluggy Freelance: in the Punyverse story arc, the Evil Overlord wears lipstick and goes pantsless. Even his minions consider him a walking fashion disaster, and some of them are dumb enough to call him up on it.
• Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater heralded his transformation into a walking nexus of destructive evil force by wearing a clown costume. This was was not his idea, he just annoyed the dark god who was granting him his new powers, and has suffered numerous jokes about his appearance.
• Galgarion, the Big Bad of RPG World, has a designer that does this to him (the comic largely being an Affectionate Parody of the Final Fantasy series, we are not spared the Kuja outfit).
• Parodied in The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, as Hitlerella points out the possible downsides of a Darker and Edgier costume change to Jokerella.

Wonderella: Holy crap! This bomb may have a few seconds left... but those assless chaps? Those are forever.

• Homestuck: Eridan Ampora. Bright purple Ominous Opera Cape with a High Collar of Doom, blue Scarf of Asskicking, black shirt, blue-and-black striped pants, thick Hipster glasses, purple hair highlight, and an absurd amount of rings. It turns out how you'd expect it to. It appears he's trying to emulate the appearance of his Famous Ancestor Dualscar, but he's trying just a bit too hard at it. It's also not the only thing he's trying too hard at.
  • And even though he apparently wasn't a villain in that timeline, his God Tier outfit inspired much lulz, especially his pantaloons.
  • An argument can be made for Gamzee as well, depending on whether you find his clown makeup and scars combination to be scary or hilarious. Certainly his God Tier outfit raised a few eyebrows, thanks to its Huge, Purple, Codpiece.

Western Animation

• The Animaniacs episode "Good King Yakko" (a pastiche of Duck Soup) has the Warners meeting with an evil dictator from a neighboring country. They mock his formal, pseudo-historical garb.

Wakko: Oh boy! The clown is here! Dictator: This is the uniform of a great man! Yakko: Does he know you're wearing it?

• When Valmont from Jackie Chan Adventures is possessed by the demon Shendu, Shendu forces him to wear sorcerer's robes, which Valmont comments on looking like a dress.

Shendu: This is not a dress, it is a sorcerer's gown! Ratso: Isn't a gown a dress? Shendu: NO! Ratso: Oh. (Beat) Yes it is.

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: All Hail Phoenix King Chicken Head! Let us say Ozai looks rather more imposing stripped to the waist (or at least without the helmet, which he abandoned after the coronation).
• Some Decepticons have a bit of..a crazy color scheme.
• The Contessa from Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego??
• Yzma from The Emperors New Groove sports some of the most extravagant costumes ever worn by a Disney villain, and that's even counting Maleficent and Jafar.
• In The Venture Brothers, Doctor Venture explains this to his son:

"Every professional nemesis has weaknesses. One, they wear goggles. Peripheral vision is shot! Two, helmets with logos and stuff on them? A guy with a big metal piece of punctuation on his hat can't turn his head fast!"

• • Among the tons of examples of actual characters, The Monarch stands out quite nicely in black and orange spandex with armored bits and huge butterfly wings.
• Kim Possible
  • In "Dimension Twist", Drakken gets an "Evil Eye For The Bad Guy" makeover into this ^{[dead link]}.
  • His Bueno Nacho CEO outfit ^{[dead link]} in So The Drama isn't going to win him any Best Dressed Executive awards, either.