Faux Affably Evil/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A villain keeps up a superficial veneer of amicability.

  • Straight: Stephen politely invites Kyle for dinner, only to beat the latter up.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Stephen slowly tortures Kyle to death while hugging and kissing him like a father to his child.
    • Stephen kindly offers Kyle a hand towel after giving him repeated swirlies and punching him in the nose.
  • Justified:
    • Despite learning to have impeccable manners to keep people liking him, Stephen has a severe personality disorder.
    • Stephen is an utter hypocrite.
    • Despite his friendly facade, Stephen has never learnt proper anger management and channels his impulses to evil.
  • Inverted:
    • Affably Evil
    • Stephen calls his girlfriend a slut after treating him to a dinner at a fancy restaurant.
  • Subverted: Stephen acts pleasant while committing horrific crimes, but it turns out he was only trying to fool people.
  • Double Subverted:...except, acting that way is actually his normal personality.
  • Parodied: Even Stephen's victims adore him because he is so polite and pleasant while committing crimes.
  • Deconstructed: Stephen's affability causes people to treat his misdeeds far more seriously than he deserves, because it makes him look creepy and hypocritical.
  • Reconstructed: ...but those people change their minds, deciding that said affability, though superficial, proves that Stephen is capable of redemption.
  • Zig Zagged: Stephen is polite most of the time, but he is Not So Stoic when someone presses his Berserk Button.
  • Averted: Stephen is a Complete Monster but makes no secret of what an outright Jerkass he is, inside and outside.
  • Enforced: The writers want to make their horrific villain enjoyable to the audience.
  • Lampshaded: "Stephen is only pretending to be polite so he can kill us."
  • Invoked: Stephen decides to put up a pleasant face, because he knows that to be a powerful psychological tactic for scaring heroes shitless.
  • Defied: Stephen decides acting all polite is a waste of time and that not pretending to be anything else than a monster he is helps him achieve what he wants the quickest route.
  • Discussed: "Stephen's probably just trying to frighten and confuse us. Or he's just insane."
  • Conversed: "It's kind of unrealistic how some villains in movies pretend to be nice even while murdering the hero's love interest. Although it sure is entertaining to watch."

Back to Faux Affably Evil

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Faux_Affably_Evil/Playing_With?oldid=103144"