Hate Sink

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

This character is typically found in stories that don't contain a true "villain", and are meant as a target that the audience can channel their dislike toward. Examples include disaster stories where there literally is no villain behind it all, films where a system or even an idea are the "villains" so to speak, and certain action movies where the villains are just too cool to hate.

This character is most of the time not the main villain, and is usually not a true antagonist at all. They aren't causing the struggle that the heroes must overcome, though their actions always make the heroes' job more difficult. Their list of character traits usually includes selfishness, stubbornness, greed, holier-than-thou contempt, and a simply inexhaustible ability to make bad decisions. Basically, they exist to be hated. Every action they perform and every piece of dialogue they utter is designed to incite rage in the audience. They usually get their comeuppance in a very audience-satisfying scene.

This isn't the same as Jerkass or Designated Villain. The key here is in the story that the character comes from. The writers are giving you someone to hate simply because the story needs an anthropomorphic "villain", but the character is sort of an afterthought to the actual plot. See also Villainy-Free Villain.

This can overlap with Love to Hate if the character's despicableness becomes enjoyable and memorable with the fanbase, though not necessarily.

Contrast with The Scrappy, who is an unintended example, or a villain who is hated for the wrong reasons.

Should any Troper have more interest in researching Hate Sink characters, there is in fact, an entire Wiki for them, the Hate Sink Wiki, where each page gives an analysis of just why the character in question deserves this Trope as a label.

Examples of Hate Sink include:

Anime and Manga

  • Candy Candy is a Slice of Life story, with the Regan family (Ruth, Eliza and Neil) filling the antagonist role. They personify the worst traits of the Rich Bitch trope, especially Neil, and are guaranteed to gain the reader's wrath. Worse, they're usually Karma Houdinis, which makes the moments when they finally pay for their actions a spectacular sight to behold.
  • Kill la Kill: Satsuki invokes this trope for the first half of the series. She intentionally makes herself the target of Ryuko's hate, even suggesting she had something to do with her (or, better said, their) father's murder to fuel her hatred. She did this so Ryuko will be powerful enough to join the battle against the Big Bad Ragyo.
    • A straight example would be Nui Harime, the actual killer. A sadistic, disgustingly childish madman bordering on Villain Sue, it was made clear she existed to be hated. Nui herself lampshades this, stating hate and love are pretty much the same thing, and wants to earn love by making everyone hate her. She succeeded.
    • And she's nothing compared to Ragyo Kiryuin, Satsuki's mother who turns out to be Ryuko's mother too. She's considered to be the "Worst Anime Mother Ever", and for very good reasons, given her sexual abuse of Satsuki, her experimenting on and ditching Ryuko as a baby, raping Ryuko mentally (and possibly physically too), and being the one who created Nui in the first place, with her "raising" being the reason why Nui is such a Hate Sink as well, making her a Jerkass Woobie in retrospect. The fact she doesn't have a reason for being evil apart from liking it doesn't help in the least.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Played with Dio Brando. At the start of Phantom Blood he plays this trope straight - being a disgusting bully towards Jonathan, turning his peers against him, stealing his girlfriend's First Kiss, and burning his dog alive. Upon getting his vampire powers and his resurrection in Stardust Crusaders, however, he becomes the cool, memetic villain fans Love to Hate, with the Hate Sink mantle being passed on to some minor villains. (e.g., J. Geil, Steely Dan, etc.)
  • Griffith from Berserk, possibly the most hated character in the entire genre of Anime. His fall from grace leading to the murder of his trusted and loyal allies for makes his name synonymous with "betrayal".
  • Admiral Akainu from One Piece, a man who believes the end always justifies the means, a man who has committed some of the gravest atrocities in the series in the name of Justice. Slaughtering civilians and his own soldiers, using blatantly untrue propaganda, his brand of "justice" seems to do little but cause more injustice. His worst act by far is murdering Ace right in front of Luffy, causing the poor guy to go on an Heroic BSOD. It really says a lot about him he makes Blackbeard look better by comparison. He downplays this trope a little by being a scarily competent fighter, which is more than can be said for the examples below.
    • Earlier on in the series there's Captain Kuro, who plotted to betray and kill his employer Kaya (even though she had done nothing to him and considered him to be her friend), along with his entire pirate crew to make sure that he could erase his old life as a pirate. What makes him especially noteworthy is the fact that he was one of the first villains Luffy genuinely hated after seeing how he'd happily cut through his own loyal men in order to kill him.
    • In the Enies Lobby Arc there's Spandam, who completely lacks CP-9's cool or redeeming traits, being an absolute coward who is always kicking dogs (especially Robin and Franky). Needless to say, his comeuppance at the end of the arc is extremely satisfying.
    • While the series has a lot of Good Parents (adoptive or not), Judge Vinsmoke is certainly not one of them. His list of atrocities include experimenting on his wife's womb to make his children emotionless killing machines (forcing Sora to take drugs to save them, only saving Sanji), abusing his "weak" son Sanji since childhood, and forcing him into an Arranged Marriage by threatening his loved ones, causing poor Sanji much heartbreak. Like the above mentioned examples, he's also a coward who begs for his life when threatened (showcasing him as a Hypocrite), to the point his own children tell him to stop whining and accept his fate - and he's only saved by said hated son, who makes it clear he's not his true father in any way.
    • The crowning examples of this trope, however, are the Celestial Dragons. Being descendants of the World Government gives them carte blanche to perform every atrocity ever known to man, with many not being able to retaliate due to them being protected by said government, thus making it extremely satisfying to see someone giving them their just desserts. Though good Celestial Dragons exist (Sabo and the Donquixote Family save Doflamingo), they're clearly shown being defectors working to dismantle said cruel system.
  • Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist. To put it bluntly, he may not have committed genocide or plotted world domination, but this guy was so obsessed with maintaining his position as state Alchemist (their system's equivalent of tenure, sort of) that he turned his five-year-old daughter into an abomination by using alchemy to combine her with her dog, showing no regret for doing so. Not some Angry Guard Dog, mind you, the type who wouldn't hurt a fly. Clearly, Shou is beneath contempt, and was the only villain in the whole series who proved completely irredeemable - look up almost any list of "Top 10 Most Hated Anime Characters", "Top 10 Anime Villains", or "To 10 Assholes in Anime" and you'd be hard pressed to find one that didn't include him in the 1 or 2 spot. Everyone hates this guy, even the author, and Anime America went so far as to disqualify him from her list simply because he's so easy to hate.
  • Similar to Tucker, there's Malty Melromarc from The Rising of the Shield Hero. It says a lot when the fans are siding with the in-story crowd screaming for a young woman's blood as she's dragged out to be publicly executed. She made the False Rape Accusation that ruined Naofumi's life, and she spends her screentime corrupting and ruining people's lives For the Evulz, her atrocities becoming bigger and bigger as time passes. Not even being a fragment of Medea saves her from this spot. Tellingly, she's the top 1 of both "Top 10 Hated Anime Characters Ever" and "Top 10 Hottest Girls with the Worst Personalities", and deservedly so. Not to mention that ever since she was made to change her name to "Bitch", some fans seem to exclusively refer to her as such, for obvious reasons.
  • There are a lot in Dragon Ball, but one of the biggest examples would be Frieza from Dragon Ball Z, specifically during the Namek saga. As badass as he is, it's clear that Akira Toriyama really went out of his way to make him utterly despicable as a middle finger to the real estate speculators he based him off of. He's a smarmy sadist who takes a lot of glee in ordering planetary massacres as well as killing people in the most horrible ways he can think of. And when Goku defeats him for the first time, he takes a hit to his coolness factor when he turns out to be a wimpy little coward who begs Goku for mercy, only to try to murder him once he helps him. However, his effectiveness as a villain got him a lot of fans, so once he returned in Super, he properly left this status due to developing a few genuine Evil Virtues during the Tournament of Power.
    • Quite a few of Frieza's henchmen are disgusting, though not as disgusting as their master overall. There's Goku's brother Raditz, who lacks the cool factor most Saiyans have going for them due to being a cowardly bully. Then there's Dodoria, who's just as cowardly as Raditz but far crueler, to the point of being way too happy to murder Namekian children. And finally, Vegeta himself started off as this. Before he became the cool Anti Hero people fell in love with, he was just as twisted and sociopathic as Frieza, and spent a lot of time acting like an utter prick to everyone around him until his Character Development really kicked into full swing.
    • Following Frieza's example would be Zamasu in Dragon Ball Super (both his present and past selves). While Goku Black is just as bad due to possessing all of Zamasu's negative qualities, he at least gets a lot of showings as a genuine badass. Zamasu, on the other hand, is defined by his vanity and vindictiveness, and is motivated to destroy all mortals because he couldn't cope with the idea that Goku, a mortal, was stronger than him, a Kai. And like any Hate Sink worth his salt, he goes from confident and smug when he has the upper hand to a petulant, tantrum-throwing manchild when he loses the advantage.
  • While most of the demons encountered in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba are evil, a lot of them have tragic backgrounds and deaths that make them sympathetic both in-universe and out. Nevertheless, there's still some despicable demons designed to be hated:
    • The Big Bad, Muzan Kibutsuji, is the first demon and the being responsible for most of the death and suffering in the series. His Establishing Character Moment involves him turning an innocent man into a demon and slaughtering humans just because they inconvenienced him, and the series starts with him slaughtering Tanjiro's family and turning Tanjiro's sister Nezuko into a demon; with his actions getting worse and worse as time progresses. To top it all off, he's a Bad Boss who corrupts innocent people into being his subordinates, then kills them in horrific ways when he has no more use for them.
    • A close second would be Upper 6 Rank Kaigaku, Zenitsu's former rival and Evil Counterpart. He was introduced as a mere douchebag who bullied Zenitsu for being a cowardly weakling (despite the fact he proves to be even worse in that regard), but subsequent appearances only serve to make him worse. He told a demon to attack the temple he and other orphans Himejima was taking care of were just because they caught him stealing, and willingly sold himself out to Muzan, causing his and Zenitsu's master to commit Seppuku in remorse. He spends most of his battle with Zenitsu being an ungrateful shithead hurling slurs at his former master and mocking Zenitsu, who fortunately manages to slice the bastard's head off in revenge.
    • And then there's Hatengu, who was already a thief and a murderer before Muzan turned him into a demon and killed the magistrate who sentenced him to death afterwards, all the while refusing to claim responsibility for his actions. Tanjiro refusing to sympathize with him only emphasizes this further.
    • The Mugen Train Arc has Enmu. While Akaza manages to rank Evil Is Cool points and later on being revealed as one of the series' biggest Tragic Villains, Enmu is nothing more than a cold-blooded sadist who enjoys trapping humans into their dreams to destroy their minds before eating them, even being excited at his boss' dispatching other lower ranks like himself.
  • While it initially comes off as an incredibly unfair, yet well-intended AI doing its job, Psycho-Pass's Sibyl System falls into this territory after The Reveal. Thanks to being a smug Hive Mind of sociopathic criminals, it's far easier to hate it for being responsible for the emotionally constipated and oppressive society it oversees that results in lives being ruined just because an arbitrary, flawed algorithm pegs certain people as being "latent criminals". Then once it becomes a full-on Obstructive Bureaucrat and manipulative murderer, you'll probably find yourself rooting for Shogo Makishima to dismantle the damn thing despite the horrific evil he indulges in.

Comic Books

Film

  • In the 2002 movie Groove Squad, the villains can't be hated for several reasons: Dr. Nightingale is entertaining in his ambition of TOTAL! WORLD! DOMINATION!; Flower Power are a trio of evil hippies with cool powers, and the Giant Worm is a... well... giant worm. So the movie has one in the form of Star, Chrissy's bitchy rival at the squad. Every moment of her screentime is her complaining about how Chrissy's the cheerleader captain and not her, constantly trying to take her place in the squad and steal her Love Interest. And if that wasn't enough, she's revealed to be Nightingale's daughter, which makes him kidnap the heroines to make her the captain. Unlike her Karma Houdini father, she gets her comeuppance at the end of the film.
  • Subverted tragically in ParaNorman. Judge Hopkins and the other Puritan citizens did cross the line by sentencing The Witch/Agatha Prenderghast to death, showing nothing but callous dismissal over the whole thing, which led to Aggie viciously retaliating by transforming them into zombies, leading to Blithe Hollow's famous curse. As it turns out later, Hopkins did not do this out of senseless cruelty, but because he wanted to protect his people and was afraid of Aggie's ability to speak to the dead (the time period didn't help matters). The zombies are crushed with guilt over this, and the reason they help Norman is to make up for the mess they've caused. Their state, instead of being portrayed as a Catharsis Factor, shows how tragic they are and how deranged Aggie has become. Due to this, Norman talks her out of her rage in order for her and the zombies to finally pass away and end the curse once and for all.
  • Bob's boss Mr. Huph from The Incredibles isn't a murderous supervillain like Syndrome or even a criminal, but he makes up for his lack of crimes with his startling Lack of Empathy. He belittles Bob for trying to help Insuricare's customers get paid, refuses to let him stop a mugger, and takes a sickening amount of glee in humiliating him. You'd be hard-pressed to shed a tear once Bob has enough and breaks every bone in his body by throwing him through several walls, even though he gets fired for it in the process.
  • Lord Barkis from Corpse Bride is not just a deplorable gold digging murderer, but also a smug blowhard with no good qualities to his name. Him tricking the lovable Emily into eloping with him only to murder her once he got his hands on her family's money is horrible enough, but when he cruelly mocks her for never being able to marry either the men she loved, the viewer's bound to have no sympathy for him when his own stupidity leads to his death and horrible afterlife.
  • In Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama, we have Eric the Synthodrone. While at first he appears to be an awesome boyfriend and just the boy Kim wants in her life, it’s eventually revealed that he’s a backstabber working for Dr. Drakken - in his defense, this is his programming. But he also enjoys doing what he does to Kim to a certain extent, and goes a bit further by insulting Rufus as well, which presumably wasn’t in his programming. This is likely why he dies at the end (since he doesn’t have a real way of seeking redemption), though it’s implied he can be rebuilt.
  • Titanic: Billy Zane's character, Cal. He disparages the Picasso paintings; verbally and physically abuses Rose; tries to have Jack killed; is exposed to care more about money than Rose; and finally cowardly escapes on a lifeboat using a small child. Although he survives, he is deprived of Rose in the end, loses his money through bad investments and ultimately puts a pistol in his mouth and that is the audiences' consolation.
  • Independence Day: The Secretary of Defense, Mr. Nimzicki (a.k.a. Foily McAntagonist). The aliens are inscrutable, have cool ships and bring the Monumental Damage and massive carnage that is the reason you bought the ticket. This guy knows about the aliens ahead of time but stays silent to give the President "plausible deniability." He continually pushes the use of nukes that are ineffective. He cockily celebrates victory too soon only to immediately be proven wrong. Finally he is the only person to disagree with the final plan that ends up working. His comeuppance is being fired by President Whitmore in person.
  • Aliens: Paul Reiser's company guy, Carter Burke. The aliens are already scary, so the filmmakers are hedging their bets by offering Burke as the weaselly company guy that only cares about money and fame. He knows about the aliens ahead of time and sends the colonists to investigate. He disagrees with nuking the site from orbit. He tries to impregnate Newt and Ripley with alien embryos with a plan to sabotage and kill the other heroes. Finally he cowardly retreats behind a door locking the other heroes out, where he is deliciously killed by an alien. It really says a lot when the actor's mother outright cheered when he died.
    • In the novel, he was to be found attached to a wall when Ridley went on her rescue mission to save Newt. Begging for death, she hands him a grenade instead. This scene was excluded from the film because it would take too long for a Facehugger to impregnate him from the time span of Burke being abducted to Newt being abducted.
  • The Mummy has Beni, the Dirty Coward who sells out the protagonists to the title character. Not only does he help Imhotep kill Mr. Burns, he also abandons Rick early on in the movie to die. This is why he dies such a horrible death...he betrayed everyone. Imhotep in contrast is sympathetic and the reason you bought the ticket for the movie (or got it on DVD in the first place), In The Mummy Returns, there's Baltuz Hafez, whose his spiritual successor. Like Beni, he's a Dirty Coward, but he takes it a step further by being the one who resurrects Imhotep in the first place, rather than Evelyn doing so by accident.
  • Die Hard: The reporter. The German terrorists/bank robbers have awesome accents and their leader is the perfect villain to love: intelligent, Wicked Cultured, and at least tries to look compassionate to the hostages, but swift and deadly toward the authorities and driven by greed. So who do you hate? The annoying reporter that ends up exposing who Holly McClane really is by threatening the McClane housekeeper with deportation and terrorizes their kids all for the sake of a story. Possibly the greatest comeuppance example: he is punched by Holly McClane at the end.
    • The coke-snorting yuppie asswipe who constantly badly flirts with Holly and exposes John's identity to the terrorists out of hopes to finally get her in the sack. He ends up getting shot in the head by the terrorists.
    • To a somewhat lesser degree, the two Agents Johnson (no relation). The are rather disrespectful to Powell and the other police, unknowingly play into the robbers' hands by cutting the power, and are perfectly fine with allowing some of the hostages to die if it means getting the villains. However, thanks to being hilarious it's a bit harder to hate them than the other guys mentioned above.
    • The same reporter gets zapped with a stun gun by the same Holly McClane in Die Hard 2 after revealing on international TV that the airport has been hijacked, thereby causing a panic that the authorities were desperately trying to avoid. William Atherton seems to have made a career playing jerks we love to hate. Speaking of which...
  • Ghostbusters: Walter Peck, probably the quintessential Obstructive Bureaucrat. You can't hate ghosts or Gozer, they are way too cool. But this pencil pusher is pissed that someone has the audacity to be as cool as the Ghostbusters, so he shuts their containment system down causing the climax of the movie.
  • Twister: Cary Elwes plays the corporate-backed scientist Jonas. You can't rage at the tornadoes, right? They're a force of nature, and they inspire awe in the heroes and give them purpose. But this guy "sold-out" and got corporate funding, making him a puppet of The Man (and why would a scientist ever want funding?). His team travel in four sinisterly identical black SUVs compared to our Ragtag Bunch of Misfits' ragtag assortment of vehicles, he's a hack that doesn't know the true science and just copies the heroes or relies too much on the instruments rather than the clairvoyant way that Helen Hunt just stares at the storm and knows which way it will go. Ultimately, his whole team is sucked into the storm when he arrogantly ignores the heroes' warnings.
  • Sean Parker from The Social Network. In a story full of Gray and Gray Morality, he's the closest character portrayed as an outright villain due to what a Jerkass he is, though he manages to be mildly entertaining despite this.
  • Harvey Baylor in the laughably awful Planet of the Dinosaurs. The protagonists have all crash-landed on a far flung planet inhabited by prehistoric creatures, with no way to contact Earth and little hope of being rescued. Harvey proceeds to whine indiscriminately about how he's the Vice President of Spaceways Incorporated (and therefore their boss) and he can get them all fired, complains about having to do so much walking with no clear endpoint, and repeatedly sexually harasses his secretary. You can't hate the dinosaurs because they're dinosaurs (and barely put in any appearances in the movie anyway), and you can't hate the planet because it's a planet. But BOY can you hate Harvey Baylor! Thankfully he dies about halfway through the movie by being fatally gored by a Centrosaur and tossed off a cliff.
  • You can't hate the titular eldritch abominations from The Langoliers (especially since they're just a creepy noise closing in from over the horizon for most of the story), and there's no one to really blame for stranding the characters in the past. But there's Toomy. Hateful, spiteful, assholish, with Freudian excuses and issues stacked high, who annoys, irritates and backstabs. You can't not hate Toomy. He gets eaten by the title Clock Roaches near the end of the movie.
    • In a similar Stephen King example, in the live action production of The Mist, the monsters are terrifying but you can't completely hate them because they don't appear to be acting with true malice. They're just following their instincts to eat and reproduce. But boy, oh boy, can you ever hate Mrs. Carmody, the shrill, hateful Jesus freak who looks down her nose at anyone who isn't as "righteous" as she is and whipped the mob into a religious frenzy that almost resulted in the murder of the protagonist's young son.
    • Let's go for King story number 3: Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. You can't hate the racism in the '30s that put John Coffey on Death Row; you can't hate the system for making sure he'll die in the electric chair; and you sure as hell can't hate Old Sparky itself. But you can definitely hate Percy, who uses the fact that he's the nephew of the governor's wife to duck authority at every turn...even after deliberately sabotaging the execution of a convict he particularly hates and having him literally fried alive. His comeuppance comes in the form of Mr. Coffey, who "uses him as a gun" to kill a more proper villain, William Wharton, then leaves him catatonic.
    • And now King story number 4: Captain Hadley, Bogs Diamond, and Warden Norton are all the main sources of Andy's suffering during his stay in prison, and each is more vile and hateable than the last. Hadley is a violent psycho who brutalizes inmates for the smallest offenses and swears like a sailor, Bogs is a sadistic serial rapist who rapes Andy again and again, and despite his jovial Jesus-loving good-ole boy schtick, Norton is a slimy hypocrite who uses his prisoners as glorified slave labor and is more than happy to force Andy to stay in prison despite knowing that he's innocent and tortures him by sticking him in solitary confinement for weeks when he objects. Thankfully, each bastard gets their comeuppance while Andy escapes and flees the country.
  • Carl Anhauser from 2012...is a subversion of this, surprisingly. While he acts like a dick for much of the movie and occasionally lashes out at people, he's still trying to keep as many people alive as possible, and the movie never really paints him as a completely bad person.
  • Jurassic Park: Donald Gennaro, the lawyer. Specifically because of how different his character is in the book from the movie. In the book he is actually fairly competent and brave, not the useless, spineless one-dimensional character in the movie, illustrating the screenplay writers needed someone the audience to focus some hate on, because you can't hate the heroes or the dinosaurs right? He's the only person to not see any problem with cloning dinosaurs, shows his stupidity on the tour by asking if the live people are autoerotic (perhaps confusing the word animatronic?), and then abandons the children during the scene with the T-Rex. His comeuppance of getting eaten sitting on the toilet is masterful.
    • Ironically, the novel version of John Hammond fills the role very nicely; he's an arrogant, rich bastard used to getting his own way, whose refusal to listen to criticism ends up getting numerous people killed. His comeuppance is falling prey to the dinosaurs himself at the very end, after it seems as though they're safe. In the movie he's upgraded to a nice old man whose only fault is naive overconfidence and sexism in survival situations.
  • Resident Evil: Afterlife: Kim Koates plays the annoying Bennett, a movie producer trapped in an L.A. prison with a few other survivors. His character is the classic hatesink - utterly one dimensional and can be lifted right out of the story. He is rude, selfish, and disagrees with every other main character on decisions. When things start to go wrong he shoots a fellow survivor and then escapes in a small plane leaving the rest behind. Then in the climax he does the bidding of the main evil character so that he is saved. But he gets his just deserts when the heroes kill the main villain and leave him to be eaten by some unseen horror.
  • Unstoppable: You can't hate a runaway train, but you can hate Obstructive Bureaucrat Galvin. His comeuppance is that he loses his job afterwards.
  • Back to the Future: While he gets a lot of genuinely funny lines, Biff Tannen is still a real shitheel at the end of the day. It's bad enough that he's currently George McFly's boorish, overbearing boss, but when they were teenagers he was a violent bully who got his kicks out of cruelly humiliating him, and attempts to do the same to Marty when he travels back to 1955. He's also an attempted rapist who tries to have his way with Lorraine, but gets his lights punched out when George finally stands up to him.
  • Delgo‍'‍s villain Sedessa has been criticized for being cliche; it's also made clear that she has made things far worse for both the Nohrin and the Lochni, who had coexisted peacefully before she stepped on. The Kockni had stopped giving the Nohrin land, but it was only because they themselves needed land in order to survive. But while King Zahn (the Nohrin king) wished to negotiate, Sedessa chose to commit genocide out of xenophobia and ruthless pragmatism, even encouraging her own brother (the king) to do the same. Inevitably, Sedessa’s actions cause a race war... but her later decision to murder King Zahn and his wife only made things worse. And she did it over being punished for causing so much horrible things.
  • Calvin Candie from Django Unchained. Director Quentin Tarantino claims he has some sympathy for most villains in his films, and “liked them to some degree or another”. This even applies to Hans Landa; as much of a monster as he was, Tarantino could at least "see his point of view” and that actor Christoph Waltz made him likable. Not Candie, however. He is the only character in Tarantino's films that he absolutely hates. A man who is racist, sadistic, impulsive, unpredictable, and selfish, he stands out even for someone known for creating some of the most vile villains in film.

Literature

  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen novel Deadhouse Gates the Chain of Dogs (a massive host of refugees marching across the continent) is constantly being attacked by enemy armies, but our viewpoint character for these sections of the story never gets more than a few glimpses of the enemy leaders. Without a face or personality to put to them, it's hard to dislike the armies of the Apocalypse on a personal level. Instead we're invited to vent our loathing upon a group of whiny nobles within the Chain of Dogs, who protest the Canon Sue's actions at every turn, are openly cruel to their servants, and get a lot of their fellow refugees killed through incompetence.
  • Harry Potter gives us Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As the Big Bad Voldemort is laying low, she takes the stage as the main face of opposition, and is still the character most hated by many fans. While Voldemort was never seen as the slightest bit sympathetic, he is so cartoonishly evil and single-minded (and subsequently flawed) in his purposes that he's hard to take seriously on an adult level, more like an incarnation of evil than a person. Umbridge, on the other hand, is a good demonstration of what you get when you take a bigoted, hypocritical shrew and give her authority, and is so plausibly cruel in the course of her travesties of justice that readers find their blood boiling with her every word and deed. This goes to the point that J. K. Rowling herself had to state she was tossed into Azkaban for life for her crimes at the end of the final book. Fans would have much preferred throwing her to the Dementors, if not for the fact that she has clearly has no soul for them to take.
    • Aside from Dolores Umbridge, there’s Bellatrix Lestrange. Normally, it’s entirely possible to feel bad for somebody when they’re sent to Azkaban (even when they’re guilty), since they can no longer think happy thoughts, but all sympathy is thrown out the window when it’s revealed she’s proud of what she did to Neville’s parents, torturing them to the point where they can barely think anymore. And once she busts out, one of the first thing she does is murder Sirius Black. Small wonder Harry Potter wants her dead afterwards. (Though because he’s driven by a desire to bring her to justice instead of true hatred, using the Cruciatus Curse doesn’t work.)
  • Since there's no real villain in Flight 116 Is Down by Caroline B. Cooney, the audience gets to focus their hatred on Darienne, a selfish passenger who ends up being completely unharmed in the crash. Heidi and Patrick work hard to save the passengers of the crashed plane while Darienne stands around doing nothing but complaining and being useless, yet she tries to take credit for saving people at the end. Even Patrick loses his cool when Darienne gets too much to handle.
  • Push, and subsequently its movie Precious, has Precious' Abusive Parents Carl and Mary. Carl is an horrendous Domestic Abuser who has been raping Precious since she was a child, leading to two pregnancies and her being infected with HIV as a result, while Mary beats and insults Precious to no end going as far as blaming her from being raped and make her fall from the stairs with her newborn son. While Mary's villainy gets reduced in the movie to the point of giving her a mildly sympathetic breakdown at the end, she still qualifies as this trope. Mary's actress Mo'nique even won an Oscar for how successful she was at portraying this trope.
  • Speak runs on Teens Are Monsters who basically ostracize the protagonist Melinda for calling the police at a party a year prior, with some examples being Rachel, Melinda's former best friend; and Heather, who dumps Melinda for popularity. The worst of them all is Andy Evans. Why? He raped Melinda at the party, traumatizing her and initiating the whole shabang, and it's eventually revealed he assaulted many more female students prior. In the climax, he tries to assault Melinda again when she ruins his reputation, even going as far as saying she enjoyed it. This time, though, Melinda kicks his ass, and subsequently he suffers an off-screen but equally satisfying beatdown from the female hockey team.
  • The Percy Jackson series has Gabe Ugliano, who is the last husband you would want to have as a woman. Not only does he hit his own wife, but when she allegedly dies, he’d actually happy about it, because he gets the payout money from her life insurance. And yes, there’s the implication that he would eventually be accused of murdering her. And he also treats his son Percy Jackson much the same way. Thankfully, Percy’s mother eventually finds a much better husband.
  • While it's a given that you're not supposed to like the IRA-offshoot with communist leanings in a Tom Clancy novel, Sean Miller from Patriot Games is far more vile than the rest of his comrades for the sheer cruelty and bigotry he displays through the book. Him choosing to cripple a prison guard who saved him from rape, his attempt to murder Jack Ryan's daughter and wife out of spite, and his racism while working with a black Western Terrorist will all make the reader loathe him as much as Jack does.
  • Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and any and every adaptation. Quite possibly the Trope Codifier for the Spoiled Brat Trope, the only thing any fans find wrong with the comeuppance she receives is that they aren't able to actually witness it. While none of the children other than Charlie have any redeeming qualities, Veruca is the most vocal and blatant about hers, going so far as to have a Villain Song in the 1971 film to emphasize it.

Live-Action TV

  • Persons Unknown: We don't know who's behind the kidnappings of our main cast, but Bill Blackham, played by Sean O'Bryan, seems to be a repository for all the negative reactions one could have to being kidnapped and placed in a ghost town. Everything he does is selfish or irrational, especially his forcing Janet's gas mask away from her (which backfires), trying to rape Tori, and blackmailing Charlie when he finds out about Charlie's possible Mercy Kill / serial killing of his wife.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Joffrey Baratheon is this trope personified. He's one of the most evil villains on the show, and obviously the winner of the "Face You'd Most Want to Punch" award. He's a viciously stupid dog-kicking machine with no redeeming features, and is hated by everyone In-Universe and out. When he kicks the bucket in Season 4, only Cersei mourns his death, and even she admits her son is a monster. He got so despised George R.R. Martin himself congratulated Jack Gleeson (Joffrey's actor) for his skills at achieving this status! Not that Gleeson himself was fond of the character; he claimed in an interview that he hated Joffery as much as anyone else.
    • Ramsay Bolton isn't any better, with all his screen time spent performing unspeakable atrocities for the fun of it. His Humiliation Conga and subsequent Karmic Death prove to be even more satisfying that Joffrey's, since his house goes down along with him.
  • Lizzie McGuire: The show in question takes place in a realistic setting, so it doesn’t have any villains. It does however have mean girls that antagonize Lizzie McGuire, the protagonist. While Kate has a tendency to act selfish, that is not to say she doesn’t have redeeming qualities. However, her best friend Claire is even worse than she is, and she doesn’t have the redeeming qualities she does, meaning that she isn’t designed to be sympathetic at all.
  • Skins has Josh Stock and Jal Fazer. The former drugs 14 year old Effy and tries to force her brother to have sex with her, purely out of spite. The later starts out as a likable character, but loses all sympathy when she has an abortion purely for convenience. Their Karma Houdini status doesn't help.
  • Super Sentai:
    • Great Professor Bias of Choujuu Sentai Liveman qualifies. While his three generals have sympathetic moments and were nothing more but tools to his grand plan, Bias is meant to be even more repulsive and deplorable as possible. He would go so far to dispose those who serve him have outlived of their usefulness.
    • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has Basco ta Jolokia, Marvelous's Arch Enemy. Basco is a two-faced, spiteful backstabber who will go further lengths to get what he wants. He's more willing to take anyone or anything for granted to achieve that goal, like killing off his own pet, Sally. And then, blowing up a school and harming children makes you want to despise him.
  • Maria La Del Barrio: Soraya Montenegro was clearly intended to be hated by the audience, being a sociopathic Yandere who goes out of her way to ruin Maria's life for petty reasons, treats everyone like absolute shit (especially her stepdaughter Alicia and her mother Nana Calixta, whom she eventually murders) and has no qualms about killing others to get what she wants, earning the contempt of everyone else in the show. Much like other villains like Dio Brando, Judge Claude Frollo and Yuuki Terumi; she became the most popular and memorable character in the series due to her delightfully over-the-top antics, spawning multiple memes (In particular, the infamous MALDITA LISIADA! scene)
  • Black Mirror is notorious for deconstructing the Asshole Victim trope, making despicable people like child murderers and even pedophiles sympathetic due to the horrific ordeals and final fates they go through. However, it still features straight examples of this trope:
  • Din Djarin fights his way through all kinds of shady and unsavory types during his adventures in The Mandalorian, some more vile than others.
    • Migs Mayfeld and his crew of bounty hunters are this, being a band of smug assholes who are nothing but rude and disrespectful to Din and his people's customs, are willing to hurt The Child for fun, and murder a scared prison guard in cold blood when Din tries to peacefully disarm him. However, when Mayfeld appears in Season 2, he loses this status due to showing off a plethora of redeeming qualities, culminating in him killing his ridiculously loathsome former commanding officer in the Imperial Army for his callous attitude towards letting his soldiers die on purpose, most of which were Mayfeld's friends.
    • Said commanding officer is Valin Hess, a ridiculously creepy high-ranking Imperial who is just as ruthless as Grand Moff Tarkin but with none of his wit and Peter Cushing's natural charisma. When talking with Din and Mayfeld, he shows no remorse in sending thousands of his troops to their deaths and is downright smug about outliving them, then goes on to boast about willing to commit the atrocity that killed all those men on a grander scale. Viewers have been known to cheer when Mayfeld shuts his smug ass up by plugging him in the head with a blaster bolt.
    • Morgan Elsbeth is the tyrannical magistrate of Corvus, who rules over the planet with an iron fist and gleefully tortures and orders the deaths of innocent civilians as easily as breathing, all the while overseeing an operation to strip mine the planet of everything it's worth. It's hard not to sympathize with Ahsoka's deep, seething hatred of the bitch due to her being as unlikable as humanly possible with every bit of screentime that's afforded to her.
  • Pick almost any villain from Walker, Texas Ranger and you'll have someone so irredeemably evil it'll be satisfying to see them get their butts kicked.

Tabletop Games

Theatre

  • Inspector Javert is the main antagonist of Les Misérables, but while he does make life miserable for Valjean, Javert honestly believes that he's the good guy and he's just trying to do his job and arrest what he believes to be a dangerous criminal (and Valjean technically is); and when Javert realizes that Valjean is really a good person through and through, it turns his world upside down, culminating in his suicide. So who can the audience hate? The Thenardiers, the cowardly comic relief thieves who abuse Cosette, loot bodies during the Revolution, and try to attack Valjean's house, which leads to Cosette being sent away to protect her.
    • They're a strange case in which the Hate Sinks are actually welcomed by the audience, due to them being the only source of levity in a bleak setting, as well as having enjoyable songs to boot.
  • John Dickinson of Pennsylvania in 1776. There are no real enemies among the delegates to the Continental Congress, and they have the shared goal of preserving the rights of the Colonies in the face of British rule, but they don't all agree on what's the best course of action. Dickinson, however, serves in the role of a "villain" for the piece for being the the most prominent and vocal delegate in opposition to Independence. But he's not opposing independence because he's evil, but because he honestly thinks it's a bad idea -- and when it passes, he resigns from Congress rather than sign the Declaration, then enlists in the Continental Army to fight in defense of the new nation anyway. (And unmentioned anywhere in the story is that 11 years later, he becomes one of the architects of the Constitution.)

Video Games

  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver, the evil Team Rocket organization only turns up three times and hardly drive the plot, and end up hardly detestable as a result. However, the story features many encounters with your rude, thieving, Pokemon-abusing, borderline-sociopathic rival, who is much easier to hate. Until he finally undergoes Character Development, that is.
    • Your rival in Red/Blue might count. He's not evil in any sense, but he's a rude, annoying braggart, always one upping you and WILL make you want to beat his face in. He gets better at the end of the game, though.
    • In Pokémon Black and White, the conflict of the story is between the player and N. So there's Ghetsis Harmonia, N's scumbag of a father, guaranteed to earn the player's hatred and disgust with his cruel and manipulative nature.
    • While the Big Bad of Pokémon X and Y has a sympathetic backstory and does show regret over having to kill all the innocent Pokémon in the crossfire of his plan to wipeout mankind, most of his Grunts as a whole make up for his likability. While comedic, they're so smug, boorish, and delighted at the thought of wiping out all the people that they deem inferior that it's satisfying to watch them freak out after beating them in a Pokémon battle.
    • Lusamine from Pokémon Sun and Moon is interesting in the sense that she's an unintentional example of this trope. On paper, she's a tragic example of a once-loving parent Mind Raped into insanity by an interdimensional Eldritch Abomination. But thanks to the execution, she comes off as an abusive sociopath whose cruelty towards her own children and any Pokémon that are unfortunate to cross her path make her beyond any sort of redemption, alien brainwashing or not. Not helping matters is her extreme narcissism and the vagueness surrounding Nihilego's influence on its victims, since the game itself can't decide if she's a helpless pawn or a bad woman turned worse. This led to a lot of fans disgusted with her to the point of comparing her to Ghetsis, and likely played a part in just about every incarnation of her in future media having their vile traits toned way down.
    • Melli from Legends Arceus is aggressively rude and confrontational towards you, and is a constant thorn in your side while you try to calm down the Lord Pokémon he's tasked with looking after. A vain, foppish Smug Snake of a man, absolutely no one likes him, and his antics aren't likely to win you over either.
  • Final Fantasy X. As it's rather hard to develop much hatred for a giant, emotionless crustacean regardless of how many people it kills (and even harder to keep coming up with excuses to wind up in the ocean having boss fights with it), Seymour keeps popping up in the plot to provide a speaking villain for the party to fight on land instead of Sin. While he does have his own motivations and does get somewhat tied into the plot with Sin, his personal impact on the story itself is quite minimal overall aside from providing ever more complex boss fights after you kill him and he just keeps creating ever more elaborate boss forms for himself.
  • Resident Evil 2 is unusual for the Resident Evil series (along with Resident Evil 3) for not featuring Albert Wesker, since at the time he was thought to be deceased after the Tyrant impaled him in the chest (and even if he were, one could argue he's too cool to qualify for this trope, at least after he gained powers). The main antagonist of the game, William Birkin, though responsible for Raccoon City being infected with the T-Virus (which inevitably leads to a nuke destroying the city when the zombies grow too numerous for even the military to handle), was shown to love his family and was simply trying to recover the G-Virus, his life's work, from Umbrella before leaving the company. So whose left to hate? None other than Brian Irons, the corrupt police chief who not only was responsible for keeping STARS from revealing the truth about Umbrella (even though both STARS and BRAVO were devastated by the creatures that they had created), but was also taking bribes from Umbrella, is violently aggressive towards women, prevents survivors from escaping Raccoon City (including his own men who he shoots when he believes that he is infected with the T-Virus), and last but not least, kidnaps the mayor's daughter and kills her so that he can stuff her as a trophy.
  • Volgin of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. His first action is blowing up his allies with a nuclear bomb, for the hell of it. However, despite being (relatively speaking) the Big Bad of the game, he's not the main antagonist - the game is much more interested in the relationship between Naked Snake and The Boss. Volgin simply serves as 1) A Homage and Affectionate Parody of James Bond villains; 2) a Foil to The Boss; and 3) a form of catharsis before The Reveal. Not to mention the fact that if it hadn't been for the stunt he pulled with the nuke, the entire series would probably had never happened.
    • Huey in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain qualifies as well, even In-Universe. You can't really hate Skull Face too much when you consider his backstory, despite being a despicable villain otherwise. You can't really hate Zero once the truth about how he was betrayed by Skull Face and did what he could to keep Big Boss safe from him comes out (though it doesn't entirely excuse his actions), and you can't hate Cipher because they are Doomed by Canon anyway. However, everyone can hate Huey, because he committed biological warfare against his own allies, tried to use his son in his experiments, left the mother of his son to die when she opposed to this, and betrayed MSF to XOF long before that, only to switch side again because he heard Big Boss was back in town and wanted to get in his good graces to avoid having his treachery be exposed, the last one disgusting Skull Face himself.
  • Amateur Surgeon is a wacky medical comedy in which the patients are hilariously sympathetic criminals who can't be hated due to their hijinks, so we have the main villain of the entire series and Alan's arch-nemesis Dwayne Pipe. He's a sociopathic Serial Killer whom his horrible misdeeds include: killing a million patients (including Aureola's parents) and blaming Dr. Bleed for it (ruining their lives in the process); poisoning Bleed when uncovered and mocking Alan about it; disguising himself as The President and ruining Alan's life by closing his hospitals and making him lose contact with his family; forcing Bradley to kill Alan and beating him to near-death when he refuses to... All of this for revenge and fun. Every one of his deeds are taken in a much more serious way compared to the others, and settles his status as an horrifyingly dark villain in an otherwise lighthearted game. Not to mention, his levels are possibly the hardest in the entire game, making him a Goddamned Boss.
    • And if he wasn't hate-worthy already, he used his own clone, Hubris, as a pawn, becoming the Big Bad of the third game and carrying out the Evil Plan of poisoning everyone in sight in revenge for Dwayne's imprisonment. Even then, Hubris is still more likable despite doing the same things on a larger scale, which is really saying something.
  • Ace Attorney has a lot of these, given its premise. Some are the main villains of the games (like Manfred Von Karma and Dahlia Hawthorne), but most of them are secondary villains and Asshole Victims more often than not. Standouts include:
    • The first game has Redd White, a slimy Corrupt Corporate Executive who thinks he can get away with his actions due to his money. He's especially hated due to him murdering Mia Fey, Phoenix's mentor and a fan-favorite character, and is extremely satisfying to render him a pathetic, begging wimp after his trial.
    • Matt Engarde from Justice for All proves to be one of the most despicable culprits despite having a shorter rapsheet than other similar Hate Sinks like Dahlia Hawthorne. Dahlia at least committed her murders partly to cover herself (and this applies to other villains as well), and has something of a tragic backstory that gives her a very slim bit of pity despite her actions being completely inexcusable otherwise. Matt, on the other hand, doesn't even have that in his favor, driving to suicide his innocent ex-girlfriend out of spite and fun. Moreover, he manages to kidnap Maya Fey and forces Phoenix to defend him in court while gloating about it like the smug bastard he really is. God, is it satisfying to wipe his smug grin and seeing him break down in court at the end of the case, no matter the sentence you chose.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: While the main characters Franklin, Michael and Trevor are highly flawed criminals (especially Trevor), they're nowhere near as loathsome as the Big Bad Ensemble, Devin Weston and Steve Haines. Devin is one of the most despised GTA antagonists due to him acting like a cowardly and incredibly annoying Rich Bastard Man Child who goes as far as to send the military organization Merryweather to kill Michael's family, as well as forcing Franklin into betraying either Michael or Trevor. Steve, for his part, beats the crap out of Michael for the unforgivable crime of standing up to him, becoming more and more of a dick as the game goes on. Needless to say, choosing the C Option (leading to the "Deathwish" ending) is extremely satisfying despite its difficulty, since it allows to deliver these bastards the comeuppance they so deserve.
  • The Last of Us focuses on a Zombie Apocalypse full of Grey And Gray Morality, so it has David from the Winter Chapter, a cannibalistic psychopath who tries to rape Ellie, with his boss battle being considered the most tense "Hide and Seek" level ever. Which makes it more of a relief when Ellie slams the psycho with a machete repeatedly.
  • Blaz Blue: Yuuki Terumi is a weird zig-zagged example. In-Universe, he's the personification of this trope, being a sadistic and cruel Troll who thinks of himself as the center of the universe, and ruins everyone's lives For the Evulz, to the point he even uses this trope to survive. Out of universe, though, he's beloved by the fans for his design, cool powers, accomplishments, and generally being praised for succeeding at being this trope.
  • Undertale invokes this trope with Flowey. For most of the game, he's shown as a repulsive sociopath who tries to kill you at the beginning of the game, steals the six souls you collected twice, uses his resetting powers to torture the player, and overall tries to prevent you from getting your happy ending. This is done to make The Reveal about him all the more effective: Namely, his true identity as Asriel Dreemurr, and consequently, the most tragic character of the game. As such, his status as this can be subverted with both the Pacifist Run (When he, as Asriel, recovers his compassion for enough time to apologize for his actions) and the Genocide Run (When he's killed by the Fallen Child while pleading for mercy, making his fate too horrifying to get any satisfaction from it.)
    • The King of the Dark World from Deltarune however is a true example of this trope. He's a thoroughly selfish, sadistic bastard and a horribly abusive father with no good traits whatsoever. When the heroes decide to show him mercy, he even takes advantage of their kindness by brutalizing and almost killing them. At least in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, he does develop a small redeeming quality with the implication that he does care about Lancer and was bluffing when he said he'd kill him.
  • Animal Crossing has another invoked example in Resetti, in a completely opposite role to the aforementioned Flowey. His main job is to prevent players from resetting the game by acting as a deterrent, which means acting like a loud Jerkass by lecturing the player endlessly and forcing him to say certain words for the player to be left alone. It worked a little too well (there were reports of young children crying because of his attitude), so he was toned down in New Leaf by making him an optional feature, giving certain options when he appears to prevent his lectures, and emphasizing his pitiful traits and benevolent intentions. Don't expect fans to live his previous reputation down, though.
    • For a proper example, there's Crazy Redd for being a swindling huckster that lives for conning people out of their money. Not only did he screw over his partner in crime Lyle and his legitimate business partner Tom Nook, but the fact that he's your main vector for obtaining paintings means that he'll screw you over by trying (and in older games, likely succeeding) to trick you into buying forgeries that are worthless to you. The more you lose money to his scams, the more you'll want to punch this foul-hearted fox's lights out.
  • Digital Devil Saga doesn't have a clear cut villain, as all antagonists have legitimate reasons for what they do and have extremely cool traits to boot. Because of this, the duology gives us Serph Sheffield, Serph's human template and the catalyst for every tragedy in the story. He was a sociopathic Smug Snake who wanted to become God by performing callous experiments on Sera, whom he frequently manipulated at every turn; dismissing Heat O'Brien's concerns about it, and has him killed for trying to stop him, which led to Sera snapping and angering God himself, transforming him into a demon and killing him not soon after. Poor Serph was horrified about this, and when fighting him as the Fake Varna, he shows he hasn't changed one bit, which makes all the more satisfying when you finally kick his ass.
  • While he was more stupid and later in life, insane, than truly malicious, you'll absolutely want to punch Ted Faro's teeth in after hearing how he sent the world of Horizon Zero Dawn down the toilet. Thanks to his negligence, the robots his company created turned into genocidal human-eating machines that destroyed all life on Earth, save for survivors hidden deep in bunkers. While Elizabet Sobeck and her AI Gaia were able to restore the world, Faro would go on to delete the archives that would teach the re-cloned humans Earth's history and kill all the Zero Dawn personnel so they couldn't somehow reverse it, which forced humanity back to the stone-age and reset its evolution all out of a mix of guilt-induced insanity and wanting to cover his ass so he wouldn't be remembered as humanity's greatest monster. Thankfully, Forbidden West reveals he got his long-due karmic retribution by being subjected to a Fate Worse Than Death not long after said events.
  • In the Mega Man X games, main villain Sigma as well as other prominent baddies like Vile, the X-Hunters, and Lumine are too cool to hate. So picking up their slack are several of the many Boss Mavericks through the series:
    • Thanks to being fleshed out in the Maverick Hunter X rerelease, Flame Mammoth and Sting Chameleon are a lot easier to hate than they were in the SNES days. Flame Mammoth is a smug bully who takes great joy out of crushing those he deems weaker than him, and is so unlikable that none of the soldiers he commanded followed him when he joined Sigma. Sting Chameleon on the other hand is a slimy, giggling asshole who loves to rub it in to X's face that a number of his friends have gone Maverick.
    • Frost Walrus from X4 is a lot less sympathetic than most of his comrades, and is a foul-tempered asshole who only joined Repliforce to get out of being scrapped for his destructive behavior. The manga adaptation would crank the hateability up to eleven by showing him to be a sadistic nut who freezes Reploids to death and keeps their corpses on display like serial killer trophies, and ruthlessly hunts Reploid prisoners he set free for sport.
    • Magma Dragoon may be one of the most badass Mavericks in existence thanks to basically being Akuma in robot dragon form, but he still makes the grade thanks to the sheer pettiness that drove him to commit the atrocities that kick off the game. Why did he destroy Sky Lagoon and kill millions of innocents in the process? Because he wanted to fight X and/or Zero. And he even has the gall to mock X over it, and brag that he would happily do it again.
    • Most of the Maverick bosses in X5 have been turned evil due to the Sigma Virus, and either beg to be put out of their misery or are visibly corrupted by it. This does not apply to Mattrex, Dark Dizzy, or Axel the Red, all of whom don't seem to be under the viruses effects and are more than happy to help Sigma destroy Earth for the hell of it. The first two are simply sadistic lunatics, while Axel only cares about being able to steal everything he wants once most life on Earth is dead.
    • Blaze Heatnix and Infinity Mijinion are a lot easier to hate than the rest of the Nightmare Investigators, who are either tragic, sympathetic, or simply less severe in their attitudes and crimes. Heatnix was an asshole who endangered his companions as a disaster relief worker and would leave them to die, not giving a damn because he thought they were too weak to live. Meanwhile, Mijinion was also prone to endangering his coworkers while testing out heavy machinery and didn't care, causing them to murder him and cover it up as an accident with no one caring to look into it any deeper. Now that they've been revived, they're bloodthirsty and willing to kill anyone they look down on... which is basically everyone else in the world, with Mijinion being particularly obnoxious and haughty about it.
  • There aren't any true villains in Stardew Valley due to it being a farming simulator, but Morris is so unlikeable that he may as well be one. He's a representative of the corrupt Joja Corporation who seeks to establish a Jojamart in the valley, and goes out of his way to antagonize the town's local shopkeeper Pierre by poaching his customers by offering to slash his prices so they're way cheaper than his. He's also written letters expressing mock-pity for his shop floundering and offers to take him on as hired help and pay him 5G (Around 5 cents or so) an hour. He's so smug and cold-blooded that when you restore the community center, it doesn't matter if he's chased out of town in a panic or punched though the ceiling by Pierre, it's satisfying to dump him on his ass either way.
    • There's also Leah's ex boyfriend/girlfriend (depending on the player's gender) Kel, who was an emotionally abusive and manipulative partner until she had enough and left the city. If you romance Leah, it turns out that he/she has been stalking her and demands for her to get back together with him/her. Much like Morris, you or Leah can punch Kel's lights out for being a pushy creep.
  • Bug Fables: While a vile piece of work himself, the Wasp King doesn't go out of his way to antagonize the good guys and is a pretty impersonal foe at the end of the day. The same does not go for Mothiva, Team Snakemouth's explorer rival. Despite acting the part of a friendly bubbly popstar, it's all an act for her fans. When she's out of the public eye, she's a rude and antagonistic pain in the ass who attacks Team Snakemouth twice in order to steal their glory. The second time is especially bad, since she's threatening to ruin important negotiations with another kingdom to help save the world and doesn't give a damn when Kabbu tells her this. The one guy she's decent to is her partner Zasp, but that's because he's useful to have around. If he falls in battle first during Team Mothiva's boss fights, she's every bit as rude and bitchy to him as she is with everyone else.
  • As befitting of one of the darkest takes on the Batman universe, the Batman: Arkham series has quite a few nasty, despicable punks that will make you want to bash their skulls in with a Batarang.
    • Unlike most incarnations who are classy, dignified, and possess something resembling a redeeming quality, the Arkhamverse's Penguin is a crude, classless thug of a man who milks every bit of screentime he has to make the player hate his guts. He's as cruel as the Joker but with none of his charm, and when he isn't horribly killing or torturing someone, he's usually screaming death threats at his men or smugly taunting a helpless victim he's about to do horrible, horrible things to. Thankfully he's also a huge coward, which makes his freakouts when you turn the tables on him so deliciously satisfying. Ironically, Cobblepot himself hates the Joker.
    • Fellow classic villain Riddler doesn't fare much better. Here, he's an insufferable douchebag who won't shut the fuck up about how much smarter he is than everyone else, and constantly taunts and belittles Batman while he's collecting his trophies and solving his puzzles. And while it's satisfying as hell to make him freak out when you keep proving that he's not as smart as he thinks he is, his immature Sore Loser mentality and tendency towards Rigged Riddles makes him that much more obnoxious. Tellingly, most characters hate the guy as much as the player.
    • Branden is the living embodiment of everything wrong with Gotham's police force before Commissioner Gordon cleans house. He and the cops loyal to him are corrupt bastards who are making underhanded deals with criminals and brutalize and arrest Gotham's homeless for no good reason. Meanwhile, Branden himself cheats on his wife and tries to have then-Captain Gordon killed in a prison riot he instigates. He's also an arrogant idiot who thinks he can go toe-to-toe with Batman - but luckily, the player gets quite a few moments to prove him wrong. VERY wrong.
    • Like he did in Batman: The Animated Series, Ferris Boyle picks up the always sympathetic Mr. Freeze's slack in being a villain you can root against in the Cold Cold Heart DLC of Batman: Arkham Origins. Like in Heart of Ice, he screws over the meek, kindly Victor Fries when he tries to save his wife and causes the accident that turns him into Mr. Freeze. Unlike in Heart of Ice, he was helping Victor find a cure for Nora's condition provided that Victor help him make dangerous cryogenic weapons to sell on the black market, only to stab him in the back and kidnap Nora, calling her his property while leaving him to die. When he isn't putting up a friendly facade, he's a classist blowhard who looks down on everyone around him, and cruelly tells Freeze that he'll force him to watch his wife die before killing him. He even has the gall to try to kill Batman after he saves his life, so try not to cheer too loud when the Caped Crusader punches his lights out.
  • The Playstation 4 Spider-Man incarnation of the Sinister Six is mostly full of people with sympathetic, or at least understandable reasons for their horrible attack on Manhattan at the end of the game: Mr. Negative and Doc Ock want revenge on Norman Osborn for screwing them over in the past, Rhino wants to be freed from his restrictive suit, and Vulture wants a cure for his cancer. And even though he selfishly wants to become a being of pure energy, you can't hate Electro since he's a funny guy willing to pal around with Vulture and quip back with Spidey. But Scorpion? He's a sadistic, scummy little asshole who kills and tortures for the hell of it, and is incredibly rude and obnoxious towards Rhino during their boss fight. He's such a douche that Spider-Man is more than happy to trap him in a shipping container with Rhino, and let him be mercilessly beaten until the cops show up.
    • In the DLC, the devs really wanted to make Hammerhead as much of a scumbag as possible. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and cares for nothing aside from power, and the lows he'll sink to get it include murdering a bunch of police officers just to terrorize and hurt one of them until she snaps and gets kicked off the force after going on a murderous rampage, having the likable Silver Sable tortured, and even stealing aid to a foreign country, something that has nothing to do with his plans, just because he can. Unlike Mr. Negative and Doctor Octopus who are pitiable in their defeats, the player's bound to feel great after taking down such a cruel, sadistic asshole.
    • Screwball also graduates from goofy one-shot side villain to this in the same DLC. Not only is she an obnoxious blabbermouth who's forcing Spidey to participate in dangerous, stressful challenges for livestream views, but she's more than happy to mock and insult him for doing a less-than-perfect job. And on top of that, she's annoyingly untouchable and keeps slipping through Spidey's fingers despite her general stupidity, and even capturing her at the end of Silver Lining feels like a hollow victory at best.
    • Unlike the Tinkerer, who is at least supposed to be sympathetic (with mixed results, but still), Simon Krieger's designed to attract all the player's bile during the main campaign of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. He's a smug, sociopathic blowhard and textbook corporate douchebag willing to allow his dangerous new energy resource to poison the citizens of Harlem with the justification that no one will care about the deaths of sick people in a bad part of town. His own mercenaries are treated with the same kind of disdain, and he's more than happy to screw over anyone who works with him if he can benefit from it in some way. His creepy willingness to torture and dissect the teenage Miles don't win him any likability points either.
  • The fourth God of War game doesn't have a Big Bad per se, and since most of the Norse Gods don't appear in this game and The Heavy The Stranger/Baldur is surprisingly sympathetic, there's Thor's son Modi to take up the mantle. Unlike his brother Magni (who at least has some standards and decency), Modi's a cowardly thug who constantly throws out misogynistic taunts about Kratos' late wife, as well as some seriously creepy comments about his young son Atreus that have heavy pedophilic undertones to them. His death is horrifying, but that's because of concern for Atreus' Sanity Slippage rather than any kind of regard towards him.
    • The very next game, God of War: Ragnarok has two examples of this trope. Heimdall takes a page out of Hermes' book by being a smarmy, condescending pain in the ass with superspeed, and he can't go a sentence without insulting and belittling the people around him. He's especially cruel to Atreus, who he gladly beats up and sneers at for being half-giant. Odin seems a lot nicer on the surface, but when he shows his true colors he's every bit the cruel madman Mimir warned us about all the way back in the previous game. And he's not only a treacherous, genocidal Manipulative Bastard, but he's a nasty Abusive Parent who ruined the lives of his children and treats Thor like a dumb animal he can push around for fun. And when he kills Thor for standing up to him, he refuses to take responsibility and has the audacity to pin the blame on Kratos for "making" him do it.
  • He may have valid points in being so harsh towards the depraved outlaws that plague the old West, but Pinkerton Detective Edgar Ross from Red Dead Redemption is clearly designed to be so utterly unlikable that it's impossible to even remotely agree with him despite this. He's already a big enough creep for holding former outlaw John Marston's family hostage and blackmailing him into killing the remnants of his old gang for him, acting like a smug little prick every step of the way. But when he releases Abigail and young Jack, he betrays him and leads a platoon to John's home and shoots him dead, grinning smugly during his last moments. He even goes on to claim that he was the one responsible for taking out the remnants of the Van der Linde gang... but unfortunately for him (and fortunately for us), he never stopped to consider that the consequences of his own crimes would come back to haunt him they way they did with John Marston, and John's son Jack kills his smug ass in a duel three years later.
    • Micah Bell from the sequel not only eclipses Ross in sheer loathsomeness, but has made his mark as one of the most hated villains in video game history, to the point that there's an entire subreddit dedicated to hating him (with even his voice actor joining in!). Every ounce of hate he gets is completely warranted: he's a sadistic mass-murdering asshole, kicks and later on kills Jack's dog Cain, is openly racist and heavily implied to be a rapist, sells out the rest of the Van Der Linde gang to the Pinkertons, and depending on your playstyle, kills the lovable Arthur Morgan. Thankfully, his fate is similar to that of Ross's, as you end the game by playing as John Marston, who hunts him down and kills him for his betrayal.
  • Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time has the Twin Tropys, who take caring about absolutely no one other than themselves to the point where their main evil plan is "destroy our entire universe and then rebuild it so that it will be exactly how we want it to be (in other words, make Crash Bandicoot itself no longer exist) while committing selfcest in the process". In fact, Neo Cortex himself utterly despises them, as does Crash Team Racing's Nitros Oxide after incredibly-abusively being forced to work with/for the two of them.
  • Mother 3 has Porky Minch, a total Fat Bastard who completely rips the family of Flint and Lucas apart and pollutes their world in all kinds of ways, and Fassad, another total Fat Bastard who sadistically abuses a cute monkey and gleefully brainwashes the inhabitants of the Nowhere Islands while doing so. Unfortunately, said characters really are quite difficult to kill.
  • The Origami Killer in Heavy Rain is set up to be this, thanks to the ridiculous sadism he shows as he murders children and forces their fathers to endure hell in a bid to save them. It's subverted later on once it's revealed that he is Scott Shelby, who is a very sympathetic and even likable man with a fucked-up childhood that explains why he does what he does, even if there's no justifying it.
  • Pigma Dengar from Star Fox has his fair share of entertaining moments, but he's a lot less likable than his Star Wolf wingmen and even Andross himself. A total swine of a man in more ways than one, Pigma was a loyal member of the original Star Fox team before selling them out to Andross and playing a role in the death of James McCloud. He's disgustingly proud of being a greedy traitor, and cruelly taunts Fox, James' son, by making fun of his dying screams. When you shoot him down during the boss fights against Star Wolf, it's hard not to smile when he whines and complains about his misfortune.
  • Dr. Barnaby from Dead Rising isn't a likable character. Admittedly, it wasn't wrong for him to try genetically engineering cattle. Americans do need to eat, even if one could consider Americans to be gluttonous without really sounding racist. But while Carlito ended up going completely insane from what he saw after witnessing Barnaby unintentionally create zombies (more or less), Barnaby decides not to regret anything. So he ends up becoming a zombie himself, because Barnaby was more or less intended to be Carlito’s first victim. The Willamette Mall was a trap for him.
  • The Dragon Age franchise has plenty of despicable jerks, but Arl Rendon Howe from Dragon Age: Origins is arguably the worst. While Loghain has at least understandable reasons for his evil deeds, his underling Howe (his dismissive smugness portrayed excellently by VA Tim Curry) is little more than a power hungry coward; players who choose Human Noble origin are likely to hate him the most, where his betrayal of the PC's father is there for all to see and quisling behavior is the most pronounced. The man is even willing to murder children to fulfill his selfish goals. While you are able to gain revenge - and a great deal of Catharsis - later, he maintains his Entitled Bastard delusions to his final breath, and a lot of players were upset that they couldn't make his death more agonizing than it was.
  • Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has an example in its main twist villain Faux aka Teun Vogelaar. Far from the seemingly friendly and generic Decoy Protagonist shown in the beginning, he's a treacherous, entitled sociopath who uses his newfound status as the police force's Project Algo to hunt down other writers so he could become "All City King", going as far as to murder the previous commissioner and try to slaughter treacherous crew Devil Theory for outliving their usefulness. If that wasn't enough, he murdered his friend and previous All City King Felix (who is Red's true identity) in the backstory because he discovered he was using his Dirty Cop father to scrub off his criminal records by pining them on other innocent writers as well as petty jealousy. When confronted with all of this, he goes from self-assured Smug Snake to spoiled brat throwing a tantrum trying to poorly justify his actions on his roots, having the gall to put the blame on Felix for daring to go All City by himself. Needless to say, seeing Red/Felix shutting down his rant and delivering an ironic Karmic Death in the final battle is immensely satisfying.
  • Another Code has Sofia Callaghan from the sequel. In a setting when even the main villains have some sympathetic reasons for their behavior and unsettling defeats (especially in Recollection), she stands out as nothing more than a selfish, manipulative woman who will go as far as to assault children just for money. It really says something Ashley absolutely hates her.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy's Big Picture Show introduces the closest this series has to a Big Bad in the form of Eddy's previously unseen older brother, who changes most things of the entire series in their short-timed presence. Previously seen as The Ace, he's revealed to be instead a repugnant excuse for a brother who has been abusing Eddy all his life, making him the messed-up kid he is, and revealing to have lied abut him and himself in order to be accepted. What makes this character repulsive is his beatdown on Eddy and Edd is played mostly seriously, unlike anything else in this show, and everyone is absolutely repulsed by his actions. The reason why he exists is {{spoiler|to redeem Eddy and the rest of the kids for a well-deserved happy ending.
  • The Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman is all about showing how Horrible Hollywood can be, and as such, it has many characters worth the viewers' hatred and revulsion. That said, it provides a unique spin on this trope by making the Hate Sinks as three-dimensional as possible, either by showing some redeeming qualities (Vanessa Gecko and Rutabaga), genuine tragedies that made them the way they are even if their actions are still inexcusable (Beatrice and Butterscotch Horseman) or simply following the standards of the era (Beatrice's father Joseph Sugarman) The point is that, while they're horrible people whose actions can never be excused, they're still people whose role in the show isn't just commit horrible deeds for the sake of it, but rather to illustrate what kind of extreme Crapsack World would require to make them such Hate Sinks in the first place.
  • Recess has Randall, who’s hated by pretty much every student at Third Street Elementary School. The reason for that? He's a snitch who rats out students to Mrs. Finster. He also happens to be a coward. For this reason, he's one of the enemies of the Recess gang. "Randall's Friends" reveals that he doesn't have friends at school, and it's not hard to see why. Even the Ashleys dislike him. Inevitably, Prince Randall (in which he obtains power over the playground by King Bob, due to Randall blackmailing Bob) has him become The Caligula.
    • The aforementioned Ashleys represent the mean girl stereotype, and though her first name is also Ashley, Spinelli has no intention of joining their group, and it's not hard to see why. Their first appearance alone has them jinxing Gus, which is far from fun for him. Though having said that, they are legitimately friends with each other. One Ashley was kicked out of the group for wearing the opposite color on Purple Day (which represents the day that they all met and became friends), but they eventually reconciled.
    • Lawson is basically a Spear Counterpart to the Ashleys. He's not the type of person that you would want to play sports with, as he is a very sore winner. One episode in particular had him stealing the fort the Recess Gang had worked so hard to build, and he and his gang of friends threw water balloons at them when they tried to take it back. It's not surprising he's Vince's rival when it comes to sports.
    • Miss Finster herself zigzags the trope...while she's regularly portrayed as a sadist teacher, it is shown in Recess: School's Out that she was against Dr. Phillium Benedict's idea of abolishing Recess. And she legitimately considers Principal Prickly to be a friend of hers. It's also shown that she's a nice lady when she's off the clock. And she actually does sew the Recess Gangs's pants when they rip, as embarrassing as it for them.
    • Dr. Benedict himself is a noticeable aversion: Principal Prickly doesn’t actually hate Benedict, but still finds him to be insane.
  • Burgermeister Meisterburger from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is a lot goofier than most examples of this trope, but since he's a humorless adult obsessed with not letting the children of Sombertown have fun in a Christmas Special, he still runs afoul of it. It's best exemplified when he gets so fed up with Kris sneaking toys to the children, that he has them all tossed into a roaring bonfire while the crying children are forced to watch. Being petty is one thing, but the Burgermeister definitely takes it to new heights.
  • Gill from Kim Possible is this, though he also doubles as a scary swamp monster. He is a bully at his core that more or less bullies Ron for the fun of it. While he teased Ron about not wanting to swim in Lake Wannaweep, he shows no remorse when he discovers that it was polluted (the hints were there) and it turned people into mutants, which eventually happened to him. (To put it in perspective, only prolonged exposure resulted in someone becoming a mutant, so he could have avoided it if he didn’t swim in it so much.) So he isn’t such a tragic monster. And he’s even worse in his second appearance.