For the Evulz: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Ladd Russo for ''[[Baccano!]]'' makes it clear that the only reason why he works as an [[Career Killer|assassin]] and goes on a murderous rampage on the train is because he FEELS LIKE IT.

* (Dis)Honorable mention goes to Eliza Reagan from ''[[Candy Candy]]'' who specifically tortures and abuses Candy a lot ''just because she can'' and she is amused at torturing her.

*** {{spoiler|She ''thinks'' the demon makes her. She's just delusional, which wasn't her fault to begin with.}}

 

* Nearly all depictions of [[Batman]]'s arch-nemesis, [[The Joker]], who might as well be the trope incarnate.

** Example: In one issue of ''Gotham Adventures'', the comic based on ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'', Harvey Dent, the criminal [[Two-Faced|Two-Face]], has reformed and is starting a romance with his lawyer Grace Lamont. Joker hints to Harvey that Lamont is dating Harvey's friend Bruce Wayne, and is just seeing Harvey out of pity. Then he gets his assistant Harley Quinn to leak to a newspaper that Lamont is planning to marry Bruce and delivers the newspaper to Harvey. One breakdown, jailbreak, attempted murder and broken heart later, Batman asks the Joker why he caused such a horrible disaster. His response?

* In the original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'', Baxter Stockman seemed to have no motive at all for unleashing his Mouser robots on the city; extortion, maybe, but it became clear he would still have done it even had the city paid them. As far as villains go in this version, he was worse than the Shredder.

 

* ''[[Ultimate SpiderWoman|Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light]]'' features Jack O' Lantern, who starts out with bank robberies before graduating to hostage-takings, gassings, [[Mind Rape]], and finally orchestrating a city-wide gang war. He implies that the reason he commits these increasingly ghastly crimes is, quite simply, because he knows it's wrong. Jack O' Lantern also brags about being so superior to people who in his mind [[At Least I Admit It|hide their impulses behind their civilized facades]], and develops an almost insane hatred for Spider-Woman in part for defending those people and in part for interfering with his fun.

** [[An Ice Person|Blizzard]] is a less malevolent example, in that he and his entire family are a group of chronic jailbirds who are always in and out of prison for offenses ranging from drug dealing to armed robbery to car theft. They actually ''enjoy'' prison, which for them is an extended family reunion. On the other hand, [[Even Evil Has Standards]] and Blizzard and draws the line at rape or murder. When an army of [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] supervillains are invading New York, Blizzard actually helps Spider-Woman protect the people of the city, before sticking around for the police to take him back to Ryker's Island.

* Anything relating to [[Touhou Project|yukkuri abuse]] tends to revolve [[Complete Monster|monsters of humans]] who delight themselves in causing harm and death towards defenseless head-like creatures just because they can. Then there's [[Root of All Evil|the factory]], which all yukkuri are naturally afraid of. They say it won't let them "take it easy", but it's way more sinister than that. There are even yukkuri shops people can go to select their "victim" on some works.

 

* Pictured above, [[The Joker]] in ''[[The Dark Knight Saga|The Dark Knight]]''. The Joker actually seems more Nietzschean than sado-hedonistically Evil-for-evils-sake. He does not care about lost lives or pain - including his own! He lives without rules and enjoys showing others how stupid living by the rules is. We cannot reason with him - only make a different choice. Which is really the point and why it is so important for Batman to save him in the end. And why his real victory is bringing Dent down. If evil-for-the-sake-of-evil was the motivation, he would have blown up more hospitals and subverted fewer DAs.

** Other than the obvious mention of [[The Joker]] in ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', there was also the Burmese Bandit that Alfred Pennyworth mentioned in the movie, who frequently stole gems that were intended to be given by the SAS to various tribes to bribe them, and then scattered them around, strongly implying that he only stole them simply because he could and that such antics greatly amused him.

* The gang member at the beginning of ''[[Assault on Precinct 13]]'', who {{spoiler|shoots and kills a little girl while they're robbing an ice cream truck just because she's there}}.

 

* In ''[[Under the Dome]]'' by ''[[Stephen King]]'' those responsible for the Dome.

* While Nyarlathotep from [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s [[Cthulhu Mythos]] often works to fulfill the wishes of the Outer Gods or release the [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Great Old Ones]], a lot of the times he seems to be messing with mankind for no other reason than his own amusement. In ''Nyarlathotep'', he seems to be destroying the world without any actual motive. In ''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath'', his goal is apparently to snatch off the earthly gods from their scented revels in the glorious sunset city purely to screw with them. Also, in spite of apparently sending Carter off to achieve this goal, he betrays Carter for no apparent reason other than, again, to be a real dick. The ways of the Outer Gods are essentially beyond human comprehension. In ''The Dreams in the Witch-House'', he appears as a black-skinned [[Expy]] of [[Satan]]. He's even worse in other authors' appropriations of the character.

* The sadistic serial killer in [[Spider Robinson]]'s novel ''[[Very Bad Deaths]]'' exemplifies this: He inflicts horrible cruelties upon his victims because he enjoys it. He derives the same sense of satisfaction from cruelty than most people get from kind ones.

 

* Q in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', half the time. The other half he's playing a [[Trickster Mentor|mentor]]...

** Arguably, Gul Madred, the Cardassian interrogator from "Chains of Command". Eventually, he lays off of the torture and drugs when he realizes that Picard really doesn't know what he wants to hear... and then picks up where he left off and keeps going ''for the sole purpose of breaking Picard's brain''.

{{quote|Killing was all I knew. Is that what you want to hear? I killed. But I didn't just kill fifty, I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed ''ten'' thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance, it wasn't for greed. It was because... I liked it.}}

 

* ''Folsom Prison Blues'' by Johnny Cash:

{{quote|''But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.}}

* The title character of "Excitable Boy" by [[Warren Zevon]] seems to be this.

 

* In one ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' strip, Calvin asks Moe why he bullies him all the time. Moe's answer is "Because it's fun." Calvin, lying in the dirt, remarks, "Oh, he's a ''sportsman.''"

 

* Doing this in pro wrestling is generally called garnering "[[Cheap Heat]]"; being booed by the fans not for doing something legitimately vile but simply for the sake of being jeered. Interrupting someone's well-deserved title match to spoil their opportunity at glory is a truly nefarious act and being booed for this is well-earned. Telling the town you're in that their local football team just lost to [some other city] is done For the Evulz. Sometimes, cheap heat really adds to a wrestler's charisma (it's a great way to show how arrogant their character can be) but done sloppily, the facade is easily lost and the obviousness that it's a swing at just being bad for bad's sake is made evident.

 

* In one [[George Carlin]] routine Carlin discusses the Catholic doctrine of sins of intent, and uses the hypothetical example: "You could wake up one morning and say to yourself, 'I think I'm going to go down to 27th St. today and commit myself a mortal sin!' Save your bus fare, man! You did it!"

 

* Many older RPG modules had this in spades due to the focus being on the gaming rather than the story - why did the evil overlord capture the princess, build a ten-level dungeon, hire all those monsters and threaten to destroy the world with his ritual? I already mentioned he's Evil, didn't I? So do you want this loot and XP or not?

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', the Ebon Dragon is the incarnation of this trope. Seriously, when the world was being created from formless chaos, he invented the entire ''concept'' of betrayal. He also argued for the invention of a being of virtue and light to defend the world solely because its formation would empower him as something to oppose. His power suite is built entirely around dicking people over. Just to cap it off, while he's trapped in the prison-body of his king like the rest of his kin, he would gladly make his escape back into the world and slam the door shut behind him in the face of the Yozis, and possibly seal them away for all eternity just to laugh in their faces. This guy just doesn't do it For the Evulz, he wrote the book on it as a checklist for personal life goals. The only consolation is that he is such a complete pathological dick that when sealing his kin while escaping, his own component souls are likely to betray him and trap the rest of him within the permanently sealed hell.

* Most agents of the Wyrm in ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' don't have a whole lot of motive for what they do. A fair amount of the Pentex book is scary not because of the malevolence on display, but because most of it seems to have no motive at all beyond "yay Wyrm".

 

* [[Shakespeare]] is known for doing this:

** Iago's motives from ''[[Othello]]'' were noticeably thin and contradictory, which leads many scholars to surmise that he doesn't have motives at all, only excuses. This trope was almost named "The Iago" because of this. The alternative title [[Motiveless Malignity]] is a term Shakespearean scholars often use to describe his actions.

Hopes and dreams }}

 

* From ''[[Bionicle]]'', we have the Piraka, six (formerly seven) former [[Bounty Hunter|Dark Hunters]] out for the [[MacGuffin|Mask of Life]].

** Even [[Big Bad|Makuta Teridax]] himself strayed into this territory at times, like when he ''became'' the Matoran Universe itself, and so gained control over the natural forces of the universe.

* The ''[[Purr Tenders]]'' had to deal with Ed-grr, the grumpy pet dog of the owner of Pick-A-Dilly Pet Shop. While they'd all gotten adopted thanks to their [[Paper-Thin Disguise|disguises]], meaning his owner didn't have to care for them anymore and they were out of his hair, Ed-grr wanted to capture and drag them back to the shop ''just'' so they'd be unhappy and he could laugh at their misery.

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'': As a Horde character, many players may enjoy engaging in particularly Orcish behaviour towards the Alliance. It was also part of the game's history, that the reason why Blizzard removed the ability of the two factions to communicate with each other, was because of how savage and profane player communication could become during combat. Given that the Alliance could be considered the "jock," faction, [[WoW]] provided an environment where the average Horde gamer could release and work through the sorts of psychosocial dynamics that probably led to the Columbine Massacre, without actually entering a real classroom with a gun.

** Here's a humorous example from the [[Black Comedy]] that is the Forsaken:

* [[Ax Crazy|Munenori]] from ''[[Onimusha]]'': Dawn of Dreams is a crazy piece of work. His motivation in this is cemented {{spoiler|when he learns that his eye from his mother was not forced upon him to make him strong but given by his mother willingly to save his life.}} He begins to break down....and then ''starts [[Evil Laugh|cackling]] and explaining that it's irrelevant to why he does anything.''

 

* Jeff of ''[[RPG World]]'', Eikre's {{spoiler|former best friend}}, essentially {{spoiler|killed Eikre's mother, neighbor, and burned down part his village simply to show everyone what true evil was and because he enjoyed it. He has now ascended to [[The Dragon|Dragon]] status.}}

* One Stolen Pixels strip has [[Jerkass|Fran]][[Left 4 Dead|cis]] trick Bill into thinking a pushbroom is the best weapon.

* Aram of ''[[Men in Hats]]''. His two entertainments are television and the physical and psychological torment of his housemates.

 

* [[Troll]]s, of course.

* Blood Boy of ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]''. [[Word of God]] states he does have a motive, but it A) Doesn't make sense, and B) If it did, boils more or less down to this anyway.

*** It goes without saying that Veronica is [[Ax Crazy|definitely insane.]]

 

* All the villains from ''[[Captain Planet]]'' except [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Looten Plunder]], [[Corrupt Hick|Hoggish Greedly]] and [[Name's the Same|Duke]] [[I Love Nuclear Power|Nukem]].

** Sly Sludge ''usually'' has greed as a motivation like Looten Plunder, but sometimes is just out to pollute apparently for the heck of it.