Magnificent Bastard/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Would YOU make a deal with this man?
If you're going to take me on, son, you're going to have to bring your game up to a whole different level.
—Lionel Luthor, Smallville.

Examples of Magnificent Bastards in Live-Action TV include:

Babylon 5

  • Alfred Bester epitomizes this trope. He combines ruthless scheming with an infuriating charisma that drives the heroes crazy even as they are forced to respect his skill.
  • Speaking of Babylon 5... Londo Mollari!
    • Babylon 5's characters tend to evolve with such complexity that nobody knows just who is going to be the bastard at any given time. Londo careened between comic relief, Magnificent Bastard, and Tragic Villain countless times throughout the series.
      • Londo was always a Magnificent Bastard at his core. Case in point: A meeting between himself and one of his allies of the moment, Lord Refa. Londo invites him out to Babylon 5 to discuss recent Centauri military activities (re: starting twelve wars and depending on the Shadows for assistance). Londo does not approve. He offers Refa a drink, and runs down why this plan is a disaster waiting to happen. When Refa asks why he should do anything Londo says, Londo replies "Because I have asked you. Because your sense of duty to our people should override any personal ambition. And because I have poisoned your drink." He goes on to describe how the poison comes in two parts, one of which was in Refa's drink. If he does not comply, one of Londo's agents in the Royal Court will introduce him to the second half of the poison. Finally, Londo lifts his own glass while Refa is sitting there ashen-faced and jovially proposes a toast to Refa's health.
        • Topped in a later episode, where Londo tricks Refa into getting beaten to death by a team of angry Narns and framed as a traitor to the Republic...but only after he is shown a holographic recording of Londo explaining how he did it and gloating over his victory.
  • Word of God has it that their respective actors tossed a coin to see which one of Londo Mollari and his rival G'Kar would be the bad guy. Word of God did not reveal which actor won. Ten years after the show ended, its fans still haven't figured out which character was the bad guy. That's complexity.
  • Morden is another great example. For a long time, he successfully manipulated Londo, with the help of his "associates". Until Londo finally out-gambitted him in "Into the Fire".

Doctor Who

  • The Master, in many of his incarnations. For instance:
    • In the Delgado era, he was a suave foil for the Doctor, constantly trying to take over the world, using untrustworthy allies.
    • In the Ainley era, he created a city for the sole purpose of trapping the Doctor, managed to foment a civil war among people who were convalescing, and nearly derailed the signing of the Magna Carta, among other schemes. Not to mention the time he held the entire universe for ransom.
    • In the Simm era, he ran for and was elected Prime Minister. He took over the Earth, decimated the population with six billion robot beachballs Of Doom, tormented the main protagonists while dancing around his Cool Ship to "Voodoo Child" (by the Rogue Traders), and was generally bastardly. And magnificent. This was undone in the end, but still...
    • He then went on in The End of Time to improvise a hostile takeover of the body of every single human being on planet Earth - over the course of about ten minutes' worth of episode! Six billion magnificent bastards, right there. And when Rassilon, the Lord President of the Time Lords, shows up and reveals exactly how well and truly he's screwed the Master over, the Master pulls a Taking You With Me Heroic Sacrifice and uses up his remaining life force to take Rassilon down.
  • Davros in the serial Revelation of the Daleks. After escaping from a maximum security prison, he adopts an alias and becomes a hero to the galaxy by alleviating famine. How does he do it? He uses the bodies sent to a planet-sized cemetery complex as the main ingredient for an "artificial" foodstuff. When the Doctor asks if he's actually told the general public about this Davros says no, because "That would have created what I believe is termed 'consumer resistance'." Oh, and while he's doing all this, he's using other bodies from the complex to create (yet another) new race of Daleks.
    • Come to that, he was pretty bastardly in Genesis of the Daleks as well. When the Doctor convinced the Kaled government to investigate his research programs, he simply gave the Thals, his own people's arch-enemies, the information they needed to annihilate the Kaleds. Then he sent the Daleks to wipe out the Thals. Meanwhile, he carries out a purge of any surviving Kaleds whose conscience might hinder the Daleks' development. If you actually pay attention, you'll notice Davros isn't even so much as momentarily inconvenienced for the whole Six episodes, despite the numerous twists and turns, up until the last few moments where the Daleks turn on him and (almost) kill him. Whoops.
  • Ramón Salamander in The Enemy of the World. A public benefactor for his own ends, he was consolidating power by engineering tectonic disasters. He did so by herding some people into a giant fallout shelter under the pretext of avoiding a war, and telling them the survivors were so warped it would be a mercy to kill them. Also, his supposed arch-nemesis was actually The Dragon (and The Starscream). When his plans went aft a-gley, he used his resemblance to the Doctor to get into the TARDIS (His cover did not last, of course).
  • Li H'sen Chang from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Onstage, he was a star illusionist and the most popular act (albeit with some unfortunate facets to his act). Offstage, however, he was The Dragon for a fifty-first century mass murderer, very skilled in hypnosis, and quite possibly Jack the Ripper.
  • Cessair of Diplos, from The Stones of Blood. She absconded with part of a Cosmic Keystone and three silicon-based creatures, which she used as attack "dogs". With the ship hauling her to prison stuck in hyperspace by Earth, she passed herself off as a deity among the locals. For ages they fed her Ogri (with animal blood once human sacrifice was abolished), and she bought up the land her shrine was on, through the ages. Oh, and she may have been an agent of the Black Guardian.
    • The Dalek Emperor The Evil of the Daleks. Establishing a council of Smug Snakes to procure the materials necessary to destroy the Earth, and then manipulating the Doctor himself, making him isolate the "Human Factor" so that the Daleks could isolate the "Dalek Factor".
    • And then there's the plain vanilla Daleks that show up in "Victory of the Daleks". Eight of them (five of which were only created halfway through the story) in a broken-down, underpowered ship pull one plan after another with the Doctor as their Unwitting Pawn in both cases. They play the last of the Time Lords like a fiddle and use him to restore the Dalek race, before giving him an Sadistic Choice and forcing him to let them escape. The audience spends the whole story expecting the Doctor to bounce back and defeat them: he doesn't. They win. They absolutely school him.
      • This just goes to show how much the Daleks have learned. Not to mention that the three Daleks that helped started this magnificent plan were, according to Word of God, what were left of the Crucible Daleks created from Davros' cells. Given Davros has been put in this very page, it's no wonder they count.
  • The Valeyard from The Trial of a Time Lord. Of course, any bastard siphoned off of the Doctor while the latter was regenerating would HAVE to be magnificent, and the Valeyard almost succeeds in getting the Doctor executed, all the while plotting to wipe out the High Council. In the ensuing Gambit Pileup, his plan literally blows up in his face, but he survived and become Keeper of the Matrix. And even the Master was afraid of him.
    • The Master's fear of the Valeyard was the ultimate reason for The Valeyard's defeat: Rather than risk facing the Valeyard (who is, being a version of the Doctor, MORE than capable of defeating any scheme the Master is likely to cook up) and risk being killed (the one thing the Doctor won't do to him) the Master opts to reveal the Valeyard's entire plan to the court itself FROM INSIDE THE MATRIX.
    • He's the future Doctor (well, an Enemy Without) sometime between his 12th and 13th incarnation. Given how badass the Doctor has been already and how badass he's become in future episodes, this isn't surprising in the least.
  • Taren Capel from The Robots of Death overcame more than a million subroutines per robot when making them forget the First Law of Robotics and turn on the humans, while impersonating a man assigned to a Sandminer.
  • Invasion of the Dinosaurs gives us Well Intentioned Extremists Sir Charles Grover and Professor Whitaker. Their plan was to turn back time to land their chosen few in the Mesozoic, undoing everything that had happened since. They also arranged that the head of the British Army's operations in London would be in on it, too.
  • The Dream Lord, the villain of "Amy's Choice". As befits his status as the manifestation of all the Doctor's self-loathing and malice, he is a magnificent one-episode wonder, complete with a classic The Plan, who really enjoys his work. The end of the episode implies we may see him again.
  • Madame Kovarian, who leaves the Doctor thoroughly Out Gambitted in "A Good Man Goes To War", managing to distract him from the real Melody Pond the exact same way she distracted him from Amy Pond, rendering all of the Doctor's incredible efforts completely moot with the most beautifully simple of schemes. And then she calls up just to mock him for falling for it.
  • The Doctor is capable of this. Often short on allies with no weapons other than what he can lay his hands, yet he manages to MacGyver and come up with an on the fly plan that leaves everyone who isn't the Daleks and occasionally the Master (and both have been Out Gambitted by him in on prior occasion) in the dust.
    • Capable?? The Doctor is the ultimate MB of the Whoniverse by default, considering the fact that, for the most part, he outgambits all the other Magnificent Bastards.
  • Captain John Hart from Torchwood. A slick, charming, handsome, stylish, pathological liar who enjoys using The Plan to get what he wants (which includes attention from Captain Jack). He poisoned Gwen, shot Tosh, beat up Owen, and threatened Ianto at gunpoint, and enjoyed every minute of it. When he blew up a good chunk of Cardiff, he said, "Let the fun begin! Do I mean fun or carnage? I always get those two mixed up." True, he was acting on orders from Grey, who'd strapped a bomb to his arm, but he was still clearly enjoying watching the city and the Torchwood Team panic.
    • Jack Harkness himself can be this when you put him on the spot, especially in his earliest form in Doctor Who. Case in point: starting out as a con man who charmed his victims out of their cash, and ending on Torchwood by killing his own grandson in order to save the planet. I Did What I Had to Do maybe, but... damn.
    • Also from Torchwood, Bilis Manger: a polite, unassuming old man who happens to be able to travel through time and space at will. For the duration of the last two episodes of the first season, Bilis plays everyone like puppets from beginning to end, all while remaining cool, calm and elegantly understated. And there was that soft, malevolent smile he'd break into...
    • And now, in Torchwood Miracle Day, we have Jilly Kitzinger, a devious, sexy, well-dressed PR representative who manipulates Complete Monster Oswald Danes to gain power for herself. She's not pure evil, though; she still privately finds Oswald repulsive.

Heroes

  • In season one there's HRG, smooth and calculating enough to trick even his employers, although his eventual Heel Face Turn puts an end to his Bastardry. Later, we get introduced to another, Mr. Linderman, the Affably Evil mastermind behind everything. Season 2 brings us a new Magnificent Bastard in the form of the new Big Bad, Adam Monroe. Magnificent and manipulative to boot, Adam recruits resident Idiot Hero Peter Petrelli to be his unwitting dupe, attaining a level of villainous charisma unmatched by any villain in the series since.
    • Even after HRG Heel Face Turn he's capable of being a Magnificent Bastard when he threatens his former teacher's family in order to get the information he wants to help keep his family safe
      • Due to the fact that HRG's methods in achieving his aims have not changed at all, despite the fact that he changed sides, one could argue he never took a true Heel Face Turn, but counts as just a straight example of this trope.
      • Noah "I'm fine with morally grey" Bennet does not even acknowledge the difference between heel and face. He's just that magnificent.
  • Let's not forget everyone's favourite Manipulative Bastard and self-described shark politician, Nathan Petrelli. While his bastardry got derailed in seasons two and three, as of season four, he bounced right back to full-on Magnificence.
  • Two Words: Angela. Petrelli. Heroes' resident Queen Magnificent Bitch.
    • Amen, amen, alleluia, amen.
  • What, we got this far without mentioning Sylar? Volume One aside, manipulating the Blunder Twins, sometimes just for fun, the end of Volume Three, the whole of Volume Four...
    • And now we have Volume 5, where he shows that he can be a Magnificent Bastard, even with his soul being stuck inside of Parkman. Some feats include: making Matt see a dead body that isn't really there to get him to kill a suspect in a crime out of rage and tricking Matt into thinking that alcohol can beat him, slipping in while Matt's passed out and taking control of the body. Of course, Matt's been a Magnificent Bastard right back, tricking Sylar into trying to bring a gun on the airplane AFTER Sylar gained control of the body, and making Sylar get surrounded by cops, and sacrificing himself to kill Sylar (well, trying) by making Sylar look like he's pulling out a gun.
  • Volume 5 gives us Samuel Sullivan, a charismatic, manipulative carnie who lures people with powers to join his carnival with promises of a holy land where specials can live free. All to make himself more powerful.

Lost

  • Benjamin Linus is notorious for being a magnificent bastard. His entire character revolves around manipulating others into doing his bidding, constantly lying, and emotional blackmail. Among his accomplishments:
    • Season 2: Gets captured by Danielle Rousseau (Word of God is that he was legitimately captured, some fans think it was all part of the plan), then calls himself "Henry Gale" and concocts an intricate fake backstory for himself that doesn't crack even under torture. Of course, his true identity as a member of the Others is eventually discovered, at which point he starts emotionally playing with John Locke's inferiority complex. Locke will end up becoming Ben's archnemesis and whipping boy. Ben eventually escapes when Michael shoots and kills Ana-Lucia and Libby, and is then revealed as the Others' (apparent) leader. He has Michael lead Jack, Kate, and Sawyer into a trap, and captures them.
    • Season 3: Ben intentionally allows Kate and Sawyer to sleep with each other to emotionally force Jack into doing surgery on Ben's tumor. Later, when Locke arrives at the Others' camp, he begins forcing Ben to do his bidding as the Others start to believe Locke is their "chosen one" and not Ben. Locke eventually demands that Ben bring him to the mysterious Jacob, and Ben does so (season 5 reveals this was all some kind of elaborate ruse gone wrong). Ben then proceeds to shoot Locke and leave him for dead when he discovers the latter heard (the alleged) Jacob speak. Ben eventually gets captured by the survivors again, and they refuse to listen to him when he tells them the people coming to rescue them are actually dangerous.
    • Season 4: Even though he's captured, a member of the Others describes Ben as being "right where he wants to be." Once again, Ben begins manipulating Locke, explaining the freighter was sent by his archenemy, Charles Widmore. Eventually, Ben and Locke team up to take down the freighter mercenaries, and (the person claiming to be) Jacob tells Locke to move the island. Ben decides this means he has to move it, and proceeds to do so, getting banished from the island in the process. Season 4 is the first time where one of Ben's Evil Plan moments blows up in his face: his attempt to bluff the mercenaries results in his daughter getting executed in front of him. When banished from the island, Ben begins blackmailing Sayid into assassinating alleged Widmore goons on his behalf, all because Sayid's girlfriend Nadia was killed by someone Ben claims worked for Widmore. Word of God states that Nadia's suspected killer indeed killed her and indeed worked for Widmore
    • Season 5: Once Locke banishes himself from the island (having been told to do so by Richard, who was told in turn by Locke himself...or was he?), he encounters Ben again. Locke tries to reunite the Oceanic Six and fails. Just as he's about to kill himself, Ben appears, talks him out of it, gets some information...and then strangles Locke to death. Ben then attempts to kill Widmore's daughter Penelope, in what would have been a Kick the Dog moment if it wasn't for the intervention of Desmond (though Ben seemed reluctant when he saw Penny's son, showing Even Evil Has Standards). Upon return to the island, Locke comes back to life and reverses the roles, manipulating Ben with his newfound knowledge of the island and claiming Ben is going to have to kill Jacob. When they find the real Jacob, a huge twist occurs: the resurrected Locke was actually a previously and briefly introduced character in disguise (READ: the fucking Smoke Monster), masquerading as Locke to manipulate Ben, Richard, and the Others. He told Richard to tell the time travelling Locke to leave the island and kill himself, a predestination paradox that would allow the man to use Locke's body. The man then uses Ben, still unaware of "Locke"'s true identity, to kill Jacob.
  • Speaking of Lost, this trope also belongs to UnFlocke. Manipulative Bastard? Check. And as The Candidate shows, he is one hell of a Chessmaster ( even if it didn't work fully, it was still a badass plan). The way he manipulated Ben to kill Jacob was just classic. Jacob himself also counts
  • I[who?] would say Sawyer counts as well. The episode where he manipulated almost all the main characters so he could get the guns and take over the group is still this tropers favorite moment in the series.

Supernatural

  • Azazel is no slouch on the bastardry, but with the revelations of the end of season 4, Fridge Brilliance kicks in, and he becomes the magnificent bastard we know and loathe. For starters, we find out that his master plan, previously hinted at, was to release Lucifer himself, and for kicks, exclusively torment one family. He starts by arranging the release of Lucifer's firstborn, Lilith, who is the LAST of the 66 (of 600+) seals necessary to free Lucifer. He then tricks various parents into signing away their unborn children's futures as incubators for demon blood, specifically so that they can kill said firstborn. The master stroke here being picking a favorite future mother, killing the parents of Mother Mary brutally, possessing the dead father, killing her future husband for the first of TWO times, then tricking her into unwittingly signing away her child's future, with a deal of bringing back John, the future husband. This "bargain" was of course done for the sole purpose of creating the child he'd had her sign away. The deal was sealed with a kiss, again, between Mary and her dead father, whom Azazel was wearing. Of course, leaving right afterwards, no doubt making her carry the body away. This takes place a few decades before the series begins.
    • During the course of the show, on the other hand, he has a couple of pet projects: plotting to get his hands on a gun that kills everything, attempting to kill the entire remaining Winchester family, choosing an heir to herald the armies of hell, and attempting to literally open the gates of Hell. He succeeds in all of them. The kicker is, his greatest victories, as well our knowledge of any of his true plan, only come after he dies, with the knowledge that he's basically already succeeded in everything he set his mind to. magnificent.
    • And he only died because he made the mistake of underestimating Dean, John happened to raise out of hell at the last minute, and there was one bullet left in the Colt that could kill (almost) anything. Leaving both Dean and John alive and uncorrupted was an integral part of his plan, as one of them would need to be pure so that they could break the first seal by becoming a torturer in hell. Assuming John had remained in hell and would eventually break, Azazel planned to use that last bullet to kill Dean, the future host of Michael, thus ensuring Lucifer's victory in bringing about the Apocalypse. When John escaped without breaking, that left Dean to break the first seal that paved the way to setting Lucifer free. Magnificence again.
  • It's debatable that The Trickster AKA the Archangel Gabriel and Zachariah deserve a mention.
  • And Crowley. The guy's got style.
    • His crowning moment comes in the season seven finale — he plays the Winchesters and Leviathans against each other, and ensures that he ends up being the only winner of the season. By the time the dust has settled, latest Big Bad Dick Roman is dead, Dean and Castiel have been banished to Purgatory, Meg and Kevin are his prisoners, and Sam is alone and powerless.
  • After the end of the sixth season, Castiel ascends to this level. Through his scheming, he's managed to become God. Its hard to get more magnficiently bastardish than that. Even if Death does call him out as nothing more than a "mutated angel" who has almost literally bitten off more than he can chew. I mean, Death already said he'd reap God.

Other works

  • John Ross Ewing, II.[who?] That is all.[context?]
  • Luther Graves from Justice. In False Confession, he is able to get an alternate theory across easily, completely tears apart the pompous detective and makes him like a total douchebag in front of the entire jury while said detective can only stew in impotent rage, and he's able to convince the jury that a kid is lying without being a jerk (he simply conveys that the kid was telling the DA what she wanted to hear so that he could get out of his tough situation, and that he lied to the mother simply to prevent her feelings from being hurt.) In Crucified he tears up the profiler, and in Prior Conviction, his closing argument is just a beautifully crafted speech. From the same series is Ron Trott. Though Ron is sort of a douchebag, he's got lots of style.
  • Jim Moriarty from Sherlock.
  • Ted Roark from Chuck. He is like the mix of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. So selfish and narcissistic, but oh so highly charismatic.
    • Also Daniel Shaw of all people, after his Face Heel Turn. He plays Chuck and Sarah like a cheap fiddle.
    • Alexei Volkov, so very much. He makes just introducing himself into a terrifying Oh Crap moment.
    • Though he's indisputably the good guy, Chuck himself has his moments, manipulating both Shaw and Volkoff into their own downfalls with ease.
  • Speaking of Chucks, Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl is a mixture of this trope, the Handsome Lech, and the Upper Class Wit.
  • Star Trek has entertained us with many a Magnificent Bastard. Such as the villainous Q. Omnipotent, yet petty; cruel but not vicious; causing devastation yet helpful at times, you really couldn't help but love the bastard(s).
    • Q's villain status, however, is in question. Most of his actions as portrayed on TNG have been in some way beneficial to the resident crew or humanity as a whole. One example is how, as it has been established in canon The Borg Collective was aware of humanity long before humanity was aware of the Borg, Qs forcing a confrontation between Enterprise-D and a Borg cube served as the early warning that allowed Starfleet to avoid complete disaster.
      • Q's behavior throughout TNG might be described as obfuscating villainy.
    • The best example from the Star Trek franchise has got to be Elim Garak. He fits the trope exactly, always being one step ahead of everyone and knowing precisely what to do to turn the tide in his favor. As a Semi-Retired Monster he has a wide repertoire of dirty tricks and knows exactly when his opponents will try to use them against him. A walking CMOA, and maybe most importantly he's also one of the franchise's best Deadpan Snarkers.
      • Upon hearing The Boy Who Cried Wolf for the first time, Garek decided that the moral to the story was 'Never tell the same lie twice.'
    • Another Magnificent Bastard is Gul Dukat. Even going so far as to turn himself into a Bajoran in order to corrupt their entire religion. And always expects people to be grateful to him.
      • Gul Dukat was far too often a victim of his own ego and hubris. Garak, on the other hand...
      • Dukat was actually an unintentional one. He was a racist mass-murderer with clear and intentional allusions to Hitler, but was also very charismatic. The creators of the show were distressed by the fans liking of him, and wrote an episode that clearly portrayed him as this, and had him finally admit it. Many of his fans were unhappy about it. (Largely because they retconned to accomplish it, and did it poorly. YMMV, of course.)
    • Seska from Voyager was a Cardassian spy surgically altered to look Bajoran. After she was busted, she wormed her way into power in a rabidly misogynist society and got them to steal Voyager. Some time after the ship was retaken and she was killed, it was discovered that she had edited a tactical training scenario to trap the author -- Tuvok -- in it and hunt him down and kill him -- after toying with him for a while.
    • Lets be honest Cardassians pretty much have Magnificent Bastard as their Hat.
      • Especially Cardassian males. Females may or may not embody this trope.
  • Lionel Luthor from Smallville is the Trope Codifier. If you are on Smallville you have, at some point, been used by Lionel.
    • His counterpart from Earth-2 seems to be having a good run at himself, naturally enough. "Cutting out your daughter's heart to save your son because you're a Magnificent Bastard" should be a facebook group.
    • Major Zod, Season 9's Big Bad is a non-Luthor example, in sharp contrast to his General Ripper genetic source material. He manages to use pretty much everyone in-show, including Tess, and Amanda Waller and Checkmate to fullfill his own ends, and does it all while more or less flying by the seat of his pants. He's less of a Chessmaster than Lionel was, but even more of a Trickster.
  • Olivia Pope, the heroine of Scandal is on the verge of being one. Her Arch Enemy is a straighter example.
  • Jack from Tru Calling. His Bastardry comes from his mission: to keep the protagonist from saving the lives of the dead people who ask her to do so. His Magnificence comes in the way that he does it. Where Tru tends towards attacking the problem at its source, Jack thinks sideways, poisoning people against Tru before she even shows up. He also tends towards taunting her with little notes and snide commentary. He managed to infiltrate her inner circle with a mole, thus allowing himself to garner all manner of info on her without her knowledge. By the end of the series, he literally has 3 people connected to Tru and her gang that they are entirely unaware of. Imagine the Bolivian Army Ending when the good guys don't even know the army is there.
  • The Community season one episode "Physical Education" gives us this example:

 Coach: From now on, you can play pool however you want.
Jeff: I choose shorts. I choose SHORTS!
Coach: Son of a bitch. You magnificent son of a bitch! (Kisses him)

  • Don Draper of Mad Men is a Magnificent Bastard in the finest sense of the term: He can manipulate almost any antagonist or client alike into falling into a plan of his devising (just observe his Batman Gambit in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"), and has a devilish charm which makes him impossible not to admire. Magnificent. He also cheats on his wife with a number of women, and stole his identity from a fellow soldier after said soldier died in war. Bastard.
    • Then there's his boss, Bert Cooper, who found about about his past in Season 1, filed that information away, and used it again in Season 3 to make Don sign a contract. There's a reason he's in charge.
  • Livia in the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves' I Claudius. She spent years brilliantly and subtly manipulating everyone in the highest level of the Roman Empire, just to get her son Tiberius chosen as Emperor. And that's just a part of what she did.
  • Catherine Packard Martell in Twin Peaks. It's not just everyone who can fake their own death in a mill fire, come back to town in drag to foil the plans of everyone looking to profit off the land, and then plot with their Not Quite Dead brother to seek revenge on his treacherous wife.
  • Damages featured a brutal winner-takes-all war fought between the magnificent bastard Arthur Frobisher and the magnificent bitch Patricia "Patty" Hewes.
    • Continued into Season 2 with Patty vs. David Pell and Walter Kendrick's energy-manipulation scheme.
  • Francis Urquhart in House of Cards. He plots, schemes, manipulates and backstabs his way up the political chain in the hopes of becoming Prime Minister; remaining above suspicion among all of his colleagues. He does it with class, skill and style, all the while giving conspiratorial No Fourth Wall asides to the audiences, explaining his thoughts on his opponents and next steps. He commits terrible deeds, but the audience has to forgive him, because his charm and panache are too overwhelming for him to be hated.
  • Richard Cross in Murder One. A fabulously rich developer with a love of fine wine and Renaissance art, who has a marvellous public image through his various donations to charities. He also helps out South American drug lords just for the hell of it, and after one of these affiliations goes very, very wrong he spends the entire first season wildly improvising to keep himself and his associates in the clear, all while appearing completely unruffled and dangling his involvement in the faces of the show's heroes. It also doesn't hurt that he's played by the indescribably charismatic Stanley Tucci.
  • Holtz from Angel falls under this, mostly for his sheer efficiency. Jasmine spent millenia with godlike power manipulating events to come to earth, lasted less than a week, and died at the hands of her most loyal servant. Wolfram and Hart spent five seasons with nigh-limitless resources trying to corrupt Angel and all they accomplished in the end was letting him know who to kill. Meanwhile Holtz, had no powers whatsoever, was out of his own time and had no allies but those he created for himself. And in half a season he managed to convince one of Angel's closest friends to kidnap Angel's son, then escaped into a hell dimension with him, raising him to be Angel's worst enemy. Then his assisted suicide actually made things worse between them.

 Angel: You took my son!
Holtz: I kept your son alive. You murdered mine.

    • Lilah Morgan also comes to exemplify this trope by mid-season three, having begun the series as more of a Smug Snake. The turning point is probably either "Billy", in which Lilah coldly executes the title character, or Darla's pregnancy storyline, over the course of which Lilah gets some great one-liners and becomes legitimately scary for the first time. In season four she's every inch the Magnificent Bastard, ruthlessly dispatching her former superior Linwood, leaving significant emotional scars on Wesley and ably defending herself from a rampaging Angelus. It's only the complete shock of Cordelia's possession by Jasmine that catches her in the end.

 Translator: Well, this should be fun!
Lilah: No. This shouldn't be fun. What it should be is done by morning -- or I'll have your family killed.

  • Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was sometimes seen as this before his infamous (and highly arguable) "Spikeification." However, he has a large strike against his cred in his admitted tendency to "get bored" and rush into things without thinking, something a full fledged Magnificent Bastard does not do. That being said, whenever he does take the time to plan things out, he can hang with the best of them; most notably in episodes like "The Yoko Factor", where he nearly tore the Scooby Gang apart, or the second season finale in which he seemed to realize rushing into things against Angelus would not be a smart move and thought a successful plan out in advance, all behind his boss' back.
  • The Devil in Reaper not only arranges for Sam to get an apartment next to a pair of rebel demons whose plan to destroy him would actually have worked, and manipulates Sam into infiltrating the rebellion with a new (doomed) plan to kill him, he also signs Sam's lease with his name and sends him clues as to what is going on that Sam, Sock and Ben can only work out moments after it is too late to do anything about it. Then repeats this plan with the few survivors of the rebellion, and is still witty, charming and diabolically affable. Ray Wise's portrayal is just so good that fans now think he may actually be The Devil.
    • How about another Devil, The Devil from Brimstone? Also happens to be another Magnificent Bastard played by John Glover.
  • Ryan O'Reilly from Oz controls the prison's drug trade, has all this rivals killed by other people, starts gang wars between the ethnic clans and is one of the few characters to survive the show's entire run, and never has anyone other than his mentally retarded brother for muscle. As he replies when one character asks him how he became a leader of the prison riot despite his lack of a gang: "I'm like the Lord of the Fucking Dance. I've got moves."
  • The title of Super Sentai's only Magnificent Bastard goes to Dr. Mikoto Nakadai of Bakuryu Sentai Abaranger, an Insufferable Genius who takes on the mantle of AbareKiller, the Evil Counterpart of the Abaranger. Within five seconds of his introduction, he captures the Monster of the Week and turns the poor thing into his personal maid, complete with apron. He sets up a series of Deadly Games for the heroes just to amuse himself and demonstrate that Humans Are Bastards to the Wide Eyed Idealist heroes. He seizes control of three of their (sentient) zords via More Than Mind Control. He decides to take over the villains' headquarters and install himself as their new leader just for kicks. Oh, did I mention that the Super Prototype Transformation Trinket he uses will eventually blow up with the force of a nuclear warhead and that not only is he fully aware of this, he doesn't mind one bit?
  • Scorpius of Farscape fame spent the entire run of the series, plus the Made For DVD Movie holding allegiance only to himself, and doing his darnedest to manipulate every side in his favour... and more or less succeeding by series end. And he accomplished his goals with such intelligence and charm, even his apparent Freudian Excuse is transformed into a rational explanation.
    • That said, although each action of his shows his badge of MagnificentBastardry clearly, it's only by the end of season 4 that you can look back and see how insanely Crazy Prepared and manipulative he was. Mostly because he managed to survive: 1) the blowing up of a Gamack base, 2) the blowing up of a Shadow Depository, 3) the blowing up of a Peacekeeper Command Carrier and 4) the blowing up of the entire Scarran secret base (Yes, John likes his explosions). Oh, and being buried alive. But it's true that when you see how he grew up, it all starts to make a lot more sense.
      • Not to mention the almost casual reveal in the final episodes that while he was securing his position in the upper echelons of Peacekeeper Command, he was a spy for the Scarran Emperor himself.. Now that's chutzpah.
    • The canonical Scorpius comic book takes his Magnificent Bastardry to a whole new level. Stranded on a snow planet with nothing but his suit and a single cooling rod when a militarised alien fleet stops for repairs? He takes total control of it. At the mercy of invincible aliens? He becomes their dragon. Stuck in orbit around the Scarran homeworld in a deserted ship he can't control? He talks the Emperor into surrendering the entire Scarran Empire. If that's not magnificent, what is? It also helps to establish the new villains credentials, as when Scorpius admits he's having trouble outsmarting them, you know they're scary.
  • Roman Grant in Big Love: the patriarch of a polygamist compound who stole the title of Prophet from the hero's grandfather. He's also an extremely cunning businessman, who manages to one-up the hero, Bill, throughout the first season - in one case, just when Bill appears to have blackmailed him into giving up his financial interest in Bill's business, by threatening to destroy a guitar he particularly likes, he makes a deal with Bill that appears to give Bill everything he wants - a third outlet of Bill's "Home Depot" style store. Except then he gets the government to declare the land Bill has already bought an historical site. Despite being a thorough swine, he also believes deeply in the importance of family and calls to commiserate for Bill when Bill's family is exposed as polygamists. Of course, he exposed them...
  • Sheriff Lucas Buck of American Gothic fulfills this trope again and again throughout the series. Among the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) offenses would be his Mind Rape of Dr. Crower, beginning with forcing him to relive his past tragedies (his alcoholism, its destruction of his career, and the terrible accident which cost him the life of his wife and daughter), which nearly makes him fall Off the Wagon again. This then continues on to the convoluted Gambit Roulette wherein he convinces Dr. Crower via a woman who claims to be his mother that he is the Devil Incarnate. Armed with this Cassandra Truth, Matt morphs into a Stalker With a Crush (only without the crush, unless you take it to mean wanting to crush Buck to death), so that in the end he gets dragged away, having gone off the deep end, and is last seen locked away in an insane asylum. Talk about a Downer Ending...but so ingeniously pulled off.
    • Honorable mention also goes to the number Buck pulls on the orderly in "Eye of the Beholder", Carter in "Damned If You Don't", and the talk show host in "Resurrector" he forces to kill his wife...or at least, he thinks he does.
  • Avon, of Blake's 7, is an example of a Magnificent Bastard protagonist.
    • Whatever Avon did though; Servalan did better, and in high heels.
  • Joey Heric from The Practice gleefully eludes justice for one blatant murder after another with his expert manipulation of the legal system, confounding both the district attorney's office and his own defense firm with theatrics, misdirection, and at times even the truth. His ability to shed reasonable doubt into just about everything he does is so uncanny, he can even imply responsibility for crimes he's legitimately not involved in and still have people conviced he might have something to do with it.
  • T-Bag from Prison Break. This guy has built his house behind the Moral Event Horizon.. Or so you'd think. He sexually abuses prison mates. He raped children and killed them. He's racist. And yet, you still somehow find him awesome. Maybe you can stand him because he more than once got what he deserved. (One hand hacked away, for example). Maybe it's because no matter how often he gets beaten, he always rises from the ashes and continues his magnificent plans.
    • There are several others in the series. Such as John Abruzzi. Let's review that the guy is solely responsible for T-Bag getting his ass handed to him for like 2 or 3 times in season 1, like he so richly deserves. Then there's the whole thing with putting up a fake personality of now being a devout Christian seeking forgiveness... While planning to get rid of all the "extra luggage" (extra luggage being the majority of the escapees) and kidnapping Veronica to force Michael into revealing where Fibonacci is. In season 2 he regains most of the power he once had as a mob boss and when Mahone hunts him down, he calmly claims "I only kneel to God... And I don't see him here" before attacking the police, fully knowing he'd be shot immediately by them.
    • On the same note, Mahone also works, as he deliberately set up this situation knowing Abruzzi wouldn't surrender. When IA comes calling, the investigator points out that there were other ways of getting Abruzzi that wouldn't lead to his death.
  • Edmund Blackadder, the third incarnation and the episode involving the French Revolution, especially.
  • The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere makes his living by trading favours, and will call them in whenever he likes, however he likes, whether the debtor likes it or not. He's also been known to orchestrate the situation that leads them into his debt in the first place.
  • Al Swearengen from Deadwood slowly earns this title over the course of the second season when it becomes clear he's trying to bring order to the horrible frontier town in order to protect his dominance. Sure he orders hits on little girls, kills innocent people and generally does horrible things to everyone. Compared to Hearst and his cronies, Swearengen is practically a populist man of the people.
    • Season 2? In just season 1 alone he is shown to be behind almost every scheme that the protagonists run into, from the murder of the Norwegian settlers by road agents to the swindling and murder of Brom Garrett. All the while he insults Starr and Bullock to their faces while refusing to sell them their land, belittling and insulting his cronies. And he doesn't even need to pull a Karma Houdini, because he's easily the most popular character on the show!!
  • Parodied with Bill from News Radio had a tendency to see conspiracies in coincidences and accuse Dave of being a Magnificent Bastard, once even uttering the page quote (with Rommel replaced with Dave). This said, the true Magnificent Bastard of the show is Jimmy James.
  • Julian Sark from Alias is a perfect example.
  • Commander Cain, commanding officer of the battlestar Pegasus in the original Battlestar Galactica, certainly qualifies. He was based on Patton, after all. His counterpart in the re-imagined series, Admiral Cain, is more of a General Ripper.
    • Starbuck calls Apollo this in the new series after he flies through a conveyor system to fly under a Cylon base's defences and blow it to bits. More a congratulatory term for pulling off something insane brilliantly, but still.
  • Gaius Baltar of the new Battlestar Galactica has demonstrated an amazing ability to weasel, connive, and adapt every adverse situation to his own personal advatage. Even when he has been called out on his manipulations and lies and has grudgingly admitted to it, he has been able to show his opponents how it is to their advantage to grant his wishes, just this one more time. At the start of the series, a Cylon gulls him into giving her the codes for the Twelve Colonies' defence mainframe allowing them to subvert it and invade. As the human race evacuate the planet of Caprica, a Viper pilot gives up his seat for Baltar because Baltar is the most intelligent man in the universe and therefore of great use to the human race. While onboard Galactica, Baltar creates a fake Cylon detector and incriminates a man as a Cylon because this man was previously suspicious of Baltar. As providence would have it, this man actually is a Cylon although Baltar can't really take credit for that. He also exposes a Cylon device concealed aboard the ship, further gaining favour with the fleet. Later in the series, he runs for Presidency of the Twelve Colonies and gets elected based on charisma alone. He then orders the colonisation of a planet which he names New Caprica. The occupation of the planet is not a success. The planet turns out to be extremely hostile and Baltar just showers himself in oppulence while his subjects suffer and starve. Then the Cylons invade and make Baltar their political puppet, forcing him to sign executions and using him as a scapegoat but Baltar secretly feeds information to the resistance movement until Galactica arrives and drives away the Cylons. Baltar then joins the Cylons and forces the mentally unstable Sharon Agathon to turn the human/Cylon hybrid baby, Hera over to the Cylons who take care of her. When Baltar is recaptured by the humans who try to torture him for information, he refuses to crack and demands a trial. During his incarceration he releases a book which causes a mutiny in the fleet but also provides the information necessary to restore order, gaining a fanatical cult that worship Baltar as the Messiah and also forcing President Laura Roslin to give Baltar a trial. Baltar hires the best lawyer in the business and gets off scot-free. When he is released from gaol, he joins his cult for protection and when that cult is threatened by dangerous fanatics, Baltar threatens to provoke a religious war unless he and his people are left in peace. And at the end of the series, he settles down to live quietly as a farmer with the love of his life! Watch his hair. When it's slicked back, he's about to pull something underhanded. When it's not, he already did.
    • John Cavil. Unbelievable son of a bitch. Manages to be both this and a Complete Monster.
      • Helen Tigh, Leoben Conoy and D'Anna Biers also qualify!
  • Jack Donaghy - Titan, maverick, lover - from Thirty Rock ultimately personifies this trope, being a motivated, cutthroat corporate head who usually finds incredible ways to benefit both himself and his favorite underlings, usually while sounding totally ridiculous (see Season 2's scene in which he imitates Redd Foxx in order to aid a black movie star under his employ in coping with his family issues.... and actually manages to make it work. DY-NO-MIIITE!)
    • Also from the same show, Devon Banks - Jack's archrival who manages in Season 2 to seize control of NBC from Jack by marrying his bosses daughter and convincing the board to accept her as the new head who he then controls as a puppet. He eventually forces Jack (!) to resign from GE by moving his office to the 12th floor. .
    • Basically anyone Alec Baldwin plays.
  • The System Lord Ba'al from Stargate SG-1. What, you DARE mock him??
    • RepliCarter. Just by being polite, she maneuvered herself into a) becoming immune to the anti-replicator superweapon, b) passed on that immunity to her fellow machines, and c) eliminated what she saw as the only real stumbling block to replicator rule over the Milky Way galaxy.
    • The Wraith "Todd" on Stargate Atlantis
    • As of the episode "Earth" on Stargate Universe, Dr. Rush is this. And we love him all the more for it.
      • Since the second season, Rush has kicked the magnificent bastardry into overdrive. Not only does he crack Destiny's master code without telling anyone, he also manages to divert suspicion away from him by using Chloe as a scapegoat and then manipulating Chloe into helping him with her subconcious knowledge all while making it seem like he actually cured Chloe. Respect, Doctor Rush.
  • Parodied humorously in That '70s Show when Fez calls Hyde a magnificent bastard. Which leads to the response "Sorry buddy. By the way it's pronounced 'bas-TARD'."
    • Hyde actually does fill this role around Fez and Kelso throughout the series.
      • Of course, it's not as if manipulating Fez and Kelso is very difficult...
  • King Silas in Kings. As one fan put it, "Never try to outsmart Ian McShane. He is smarter than you."
    • So much so that we root for him even though the Bible itself tells us he's doomed.
    • The finale just cements his Magnificent Bastardry. As of the finale, he is still alive and kicking, having returned from two assassination attempts, done an amazing Unflinching Walk past a battalion of armed soldiers to retake his crown, has scared William Cross into hiding, apparently plans to wall his own son up in a cell ALIVE for treason, and has sent David on the run. Bible, schmible. Silas is pretty awesome.

  Silas: "Oh, William . . . bringing guns to a tank battle."

 "Somebody's got to stay in control."

  • Adelle DeWitt has ascended to Magnificent Bastardry in the last couple episodes of Dollhouse The woman took a bullet and proceeded to watch her former right hand man be lobotomized then carried on a conversation as cool as ice cream!
    • Her reputation as this has been solidified for sure in the later episodes. Turning in the one piece of technology that could end the world to her less than cautious superiors to regain control of her house? That's one thing. Doing it to regain a foothold large enough to send Echo to the Attic and have her bring enough new and devastating information to bring them down? Magnificent.
    • It turns out, however, that she and everyone else have been played by Boyd Langton, who had evidently intentionally sent Caroline to the LA Dollhouse to become Echo because he apparently expected exactly what happened with her to happen, then he became her handler and later head of security which allowed him to directly manipulate the rest of the main cast while pretending to be a part of their budding resistance movement. Boyd is revealed to be the head of Rossum Corporation, and everything that Adelle has done toward bringing the company down has apparently been all a part of his plan. Revealing that the Magnificent Bitch has been the Unwitting Pawn all along? Magnificent!
      • Of course, Boyd doesn't see it that way. He was mentoring her to let her grow into her magnificent potential. Scariest family ever, Boydster.
    • No love for Alpha? He masterminded the events of season one to get into the Dollhouse, got Echo out, all while playing Ballard for a fool. In season two he pulls off another amazing plan to get back into the Dollhouse all while playing the main cast for suckers.
  • Colonel Montoya, the Big Bad of the cheesy TV show Queen of Swords. Possibly as a result of being played by one of two decent actors on the entire show, and being one of two intelligent characters.
  • The season two finale of Gossip Girl manages to turn its title character into one while still keeping her The Unseen. First everyone gets a text during graduation of Gossip Girl's own judgements about their personality flaws. When some of them team up to try to discover her identity, she retaliates by printing all of the most hurtful information she's held back on. Finally Serena tries to bluff her into a private meeting at a coffee shop, saying she knows her identity, but instead Gossip Girl arranges for the whole class to go to the coffee shop, then sends them another text saying that they're all looking at Gossip Girl right now, as the only reason she can do so much is that people keep sending her information. She goes on that they're not rid of her yet, and she'll still be keeping tabs on them all in college.
  • Holly Day from Slings and Arrows. Neither as evil nor as magnificent as many on this list, she still earns her place by managing to display exactly how batshit insane corporatization and commodity culture are, and how they can seem perfectly reasonable and good from the inside. And for taking a bright and sunny disposition far beyond Affably Evil. And for just being so over-the-top as to gush about her plans for the New Burbage Festival in the middle of her sex scene with her Bastard Understudy.
  • Stringer Bell from The Wire is one of these. Soft-spoken, well-dressed and bespectacled, he is in actuality a shrewd, Machiavellian power-player in the Baltimore drug trade.
    • That being said, he isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is and when he attempts to establish himself as being above the drug game, he runs straight into the real magnificent bastard of The Wire, Senator Clay Davis, who is a blatantly corrupt, money-grubbing politician and goes throughout the entire series completely unscathed because he's that charismatic and good at politics.
    • Even bigger than Davis is probably the Greek. As the head of an international crime organization, he will kill, manipulate, and outplay anyone who stands in the way of allowing his crime organization to operate, all the while managing to come across as a friendly old man. He manages to outsmart the police by keeping an informant in the FBI and by ensuring that the only thing to identify him by is his nickname. The clincher for his magnificence? He's not even Greek.
    • Strangely, one of the biggest ones in the series is one of the few examples of a good guy being a Magnificent Bastard. Lester Freamon is, without a doubt, the most intelligent character in the series. He's a cop who moves everyone, whether they be criminals, politicians, or fellow cops, on the board like they were chess pieces. He even outwits Clay Davis. He's also manipulative, just not in a negative way and plays himself off as a harmless old detective that won't give much trouble. But if he's after you, your days as a free man are numbered.
  • Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It and The Movie, In the Loop. As the Prime Minister's chief spin doctor he has made a whole career out of Magnificent Bastardry, and MP Hugh Abbot even coined the term "Malciavellian" to describe his particular brand of it. He gets by on his frankly terrifying degree of charm, which he greatly enjoys abusing. Considered a bastard even by the standards of other spin doctors, his colleagues can't help but grudgingly admire him:

 Nick Hanway: "Fuck you very much, you unscrupulous bastard."
Malcolm Tucker: "Scruples? What are they? Those low fat Kettle Chips?"

    • Even his choice of understudy is bastardly: he appointed the Violent Glaswegian Jamie, knowing that he lacked the charm and intelligence that would be required to overthrow him.
  • In George Lopez, there's an episode where George and Vic get into a fight, and Vic puts a lock on George's garage because George could only build it because of a loan Vic gave him. George spends a few minutes trying to get the combination to the lock, he finds out his son Max was given the combination. But he runs into some problems.

  "He gave the combination to a dyslexic fifth grader. The man is an EVIL GENIUS!

  • Hugo deVries in the Inspector Morse episode "Masonic Mysteries". Basically spends the entire episode ten steps ahead of everyone, jerry-rigs Morse's home stereo to play really awful Opera (LOUDLY), sets Morse's house on fire with Morse inside, frames Morse using the Internet, and delivers some utterly fantastic monologuing and Deadpan Snarkery to boot. The fact that he's being played by Large Ham Supreme Ian McDiarmid is really just gravy at this point.
  • Iris Crowe in Carnivale is a fairly spectacular example. The sweet, innocent spinster sister of Brother Justin? Has not only spent her entire life playing Xanatos Speed Chess with her brother's true nature, but burned down her brother's church to get him publicity, allowed an innocent man to go to jail and eventual execution for what she did, lured an innocent woman out beyond the camp and then bashed her over the head with a boat oar, to keep her from talking about how evil Justin really is and kept the secret of Sofie's paternity from everyone. After the big battle, when Ben and Justin are lying dead in the cornfield, the New Canaan faithful have almost been completely slaughtered by Justin, and the Carnivale has had to slip away for fear of the authorities in the early morning hours, what is Iris doing? Cooling her heels as the Last One Standing.
    • Must run in the family, considering the entire events of the series are masterminded by "Management", aka Lucius Belyakov, Justin and Iris's father. Management plays everyone, up to and including Samson and Ben, and even plots out his own death in order to get Ben to full Prince status.
  • Both Tony Stonem and his sister Effy from the E4 drama Skins.
  • Criminal Minds has had its share of Big Bads, but the crown has to go to the Boston Reaper (aka George Foyet), who just escalates with every appearance. Not only has he evaded capture for over ten years, but he passed himself off as his own victim by stabbing himself multiple times.
    • In "Omnivore", he blackmailed the lead detective at the time into dropping the case and stopped killing for ten years just to watch the detective self-destruct out of guilt. He comes out of hiding to offer the same deal to Hotch, but when Hotch refuses, kills an entire bus full of people. He knocks out Morgan and steals his credentials, but leaves him alive, to live with the knowledge of how close he was to dying. He allows the team to capture him only because, in the interim ten years, he's memorized the schematics of every single prison in the state of Massachusetts, and bites his own wrists to fake a suicide attempt. He escapes.
    • In "...And Back", he returns to attack Hotch in his apartment after the Turner case.
    • In "Nameless, Faceless", he shoots at Hotch at point-blank range, then overpowers him physically, stabbing him nine times and sadistically torturing him. He then leaves a nearly-dead Hotch at the door of a hospital with a page missing from his day-planner: the one with his ex-wife's address. Foyet's message is clear - he's targeting Hotch's family next - and so Hotch puts Haley and Jack into protective custody, meaning as long as Foyet is at large, Hotch can never see them again.
    • In "Outfoxed", he's not even IN the damn episode, and he's pulling the strings, by sending letters to an UnSub that the team had caught four years ago (S1's "The Fox"), bragging about what he did to Hotch, knowing that Hotch would come to see the Fox himself and have to face up to the fact that Foyet's winning.
    • Finally, in "100", he targets and kills the federal marshal charged with protecting Haley and Jack, and doesn't even expend the effort to kidnap them by force. Instead, he impersonates another marshal, telling Haley that Hotch is dead, and he's going to bring her someplace safe. Haley goes to him of her own accord, only realizing when Foyet calls Hotch to gloat that he's the killer that's been hunting them. Foyet makes Hotch listen as he threatens Haley and Jack, and while Jack escapes, Foyet shoots Haley while Hotch is still on the line. When Hotch reaches the house, Foyet leaves Haley's body in her bedroom, and hides and waits for Hotch to shoot him - knowing Hotch is so grief-stricken that he'll empty his entire clip - and springs right back up when Hotch goes to confirm the kill: he's wearing a bulletproof vest. Unfortunately, Hotch is way beyond reason, and beats Foyet to death with his bare hands.
  • April Devereux of Half Moon Investigations gets this, despite being, at most, 15. While Half Moon can figure out what she's done all the time, she's never close enough to the action to be convicted, and in the rare case when she is, she's managed to make it so that no one is willing to turn her in. Plus, after Fletcher helps her win back her posse, she asks him to dance and, in a classy move, informs him she's going to get him excluded or discredited the next term.
  • From the remake of V comes Anna, High Commander of the Visitors (played by Morena Baccarin), who is quickly establishing herself as quite the Magnificent Bitch. "A Bright New Day" should leave no doubt in anybody's mind, between her convincing the staunchest anti-V protester to change her mind AND gaining support from the public by responding magnanimously to an assassination attempt on her right-hand man--an assassination that she planned.
    • Just watching her practice her speech before she meets with the protestor blows this troper's mind.
    • This troper was under the impression Anna had drugged or replaced the protestor with a duplicate before she spoke, seeing as she was led into a stairwell away from prying eyes.
  • Hansi von Spitzmark, from the still-quite-obscure short series called Dreaming in Mono. He has a gold medal from every contest he entered, he's a best-selling author, poet, singer, and won the competition that blew the losing protagonist to pieces -- and he doesn't even think that much about it. When you've listened to the protagonist's dramatic, tragedy-filled, extensive, long ramblings about the contest, an interview with von Spitzmark rolls. He has only this to say about it.

 Spitzmark: What happened in '74? ...Well, I won. Simple as that.

    • Not to mention that, after hearing about the protagonist's new goal in life, has this to say to him:

 Spitzmark: Alain...please, my friend, get a life. I am serious. Okay? Are we done?

  • On Leverage, other than the obvious main character and resident mastermind, Nate Stark, we have Jim Sterling, Nate's Not So Different Evil Counterpart and insurance investigator turned Interpol officer, played by none other than the extremely smirk-ey Mark Sheppard. The universal rule of Sterling's appearances on the show is that Sterling never loses, meaning he's immune to Villain Decay. The only way the gang can win when Sterling shows up is to make sure that he wins, too.
    • Hardison aspires to running his own crew one day but Nate advises him he doesn't have what it takes (at least not yet) because he can't pull off the "Bastard" part of this trope in order to manipulate his crew as the job requires. A later episode shows Hardison has been working on the "Magnificent" part, coming up with a brilliant but overly-complicated plan for one of the crew's jobs. Nate admits it was pretty good, but he still needs experience to learn how to really make the plan work for any contingency.
  • The Cigarette-Smoking Man of The X-Files. His scheming villainy and Affably Evil demeanor became one of the principal reasons to watch the series, even as Seasonal Rot set in.

 "Don't threaten me, Mulder. I've watched Presidents die. If men were to know of the things I know, it would all fall apart."

    • The fact that he plays both his sons - Agents Mulder and Spender - off each other, as well as running the Government Conspiracy? If TV Tropes had existed when this show was on, there's no doubt he would have been considered the Trope Codifier.
    • Alex Krycek, who is consistently loyal only to whichever party will benefit him most, tries very hard to be as magnificent as the CSM, but ends up as The Chew Toy instead. He ends up, on various occasions, beaten within an inch of his life ("Krycek gets punched" ought to be a drinking game), on the run from the law, having his arm amputated, being possessed by the black oil virus and trapped in an underground bunker with no hope of rescue.
  • Glee's cheerleading squad coach Sue Sylvester sinks her teeth into the vicious pettiness of small town high school power politics with a relentlessness that leaves her adversaries stunned by its imperviousness to defeat, deterrence, or sheer weight of the extensively documented evidence of her many crimes.
    • Santana's ploy in the episode "Born This Way" makes it clear that Santana has picked up a thing or two from her old coach.

 "Only straight I am is straight-up bitch!"

  • The titular character of House to a degree, though his personality leaves something to be desired.
    • The other doctors who interact with House sometimes have their moments, though generally only against one another. Anyone who tries to pull this on House has it reversed on them immediately. Except Wilson. He's the only one to be able to keep up with the title character; he usually chooses not to.
  • Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother often fits into this trope, mostly with his schemes to get laid. In one instance, he was in danger of losing a bet to see who had "more game", himself or main character Ted. The two bet to see who could have sex with a pre-determined woman at the bar first. After approaching her and getting slapped, Barney revealed that he had slept with her before, and that he had technically already won the bet. This did not fly, however, and so Ted would go on to get in a relationship with the girl. However, Barney managed to stop Ted from sleeping with her by reminding him that he had already done everything with her. Ted immediately broke up with her. Barney then reveals that he had never slept with her, and had actually set up the aforementioned slap, asking the girl to slap him to "make his friend (Ted) feel better." He also utilized information from Ted's phone conversations with her to get to know her interests and grow closer to her. Immediately after Ted breaks up with her, she calls Barney over and the two date. The only thing that goes wrong is that the girl refuses to get intimate for some time after, due to the betrayal, and thus Barney, ever the Butt Monkey, is forced to endure a very painful relationship.
    • "Thank God we're alive sex! It's even better than 'I can't believe you just proposed to me' sex, which I've only had like, four or five times. "
    • One word: Playbook. That Is All.
    • And in "The Ducky Tie" it's revealed that Barney actually uses Pavlovian conditioning on his friends so he can con them more easily in the future.
    • And let's not forget Lorenzo von Matterhorn.
  • Breaking Bad: Gustavo Fring. He owns a successful chain of chicken restaurants, organizes anti-drug fun runs... oh and he's secretly a drug kingpin who runs one of, if not the biggest meth making operation in the American Southwest all under the DEA's nose.
    • Gus further cemented his Magnificent Bastard status by singlehandedly decapitating the Mexican drug cartel who was disrupting his business, and whose Don had killed his business partner 20 years ago. He does this through his gift bottle of tequila to poison the Don and the rest of the upper management of the cartel. To get them to drink, he poisons himself first and then excuses himself to meticulously vomit out the poison. Do not screw with Gus Fring.
    • Gus' right hand man, Mike Ehrmantraut, is almost just as good. Every bit as cool-headed and pragmatic as his boss, he's also an expert marksman and infiltrator capable of clearing out entire rooms of gunmen by himself and slipping in and out of highly secure areas without raising any eyebrows.
    • Walter White has an interesting, complicated relationship with this trope. On one hand, he's way out of his depth in the world of narcotics and is regularly outwitted and humiliated, as well as prone to screwing things up due to being a hot-headed egomaniac. But when he's got the entire deck stacked against him and ends up pushed against a wall, he has the uncanny ability to worm his way out of trouble while looking like a total chessmaster in the process. Whether it's poisoning a pair of dangerous gunmen by discreetly cooking red phosphorous, making himself Gus' only option for a meth cook by tricking Mike into letting him order the execution of his replacement, or poisoning a child to turn Jesse against Gus before killing the latter by using his hatred of Hector Salamanca against him, there's a reason why many fans consider him to be a genuine badass.
  • Jim Keats of Ashes to Ashes. Starts out as a nerdy Obstructive Bureaucrat obsessed with rules and regulations, charming his way into CID, and at the end of 3.01, pulls one of the fastest (practically nonverbal) Face Heel Turns in history. He continues to gain the trust of the team - particularly Alex - and all seems well until the end of 3.04, where he cradles the dying Louise in his arms and seemingly acts as an Angel of Death for her. He gets a hell of a lot darker and more sinister in 3.06, when he lets Viv die alone and frightened, cheerily whistling as Viv - who has sinned in allowing a gun into a prison and covering it up, thus facilitating a riot - screams in terror. It's finally revealed in 3.08 that Keats is quite possibly the Devil himself, and when the truth of the world is revealed - that everyone is dead and Gene is supposed to help them move on - loses his shit in fairly spectacular fashion. He breaks the world. He even manages to headbutt Gene and proceed to deliver a terrifying No Holds Barred Beatdown to him. While he doesn't win - Alex fixes the world by helping Gene believe in himself and his team again, then crosses over instead of joining Keats - he does slink off into the night promising Gene they'll meet again.
  • Brian Moser, the Ice Truck Killer, in Dexter. He finds Dexter, leaves little notes and messages for him via his kills, and even gets engaged to his sister, all in order have a beer with him.
  • Twenty Four's Sherry Palmer, nicknamed Lady MacPalmer. Even in the World of Badass that is this show, she stands out: a master manipulator, cunning and vengeful, capable of blackmail and backstabbing while maintaining a sweet, calm, would-be First Lady smile. And does she ever feel bad about it? Hell, no. Somehow, whenever Sherry very calmly says "Let me help you" to anyone, it's nearly as terrifying as Jack Bauer screaming that he's A FEDERAL AGENT! She's so magnificent that her (ex-) husband David Palmer knows she's about to stomp all over the Moral Event Horizon but keeps calling her back for help anyway.
    • She killed a guy by talking to him. If that doesn't qualify her as a Magnificent Bastard, I don't know what would.
  • Russell Edgington, the King of Mississippi, from season three of True Blood. He's honed his skills over several millennia and has gained the eternal obidience of a cadre of werewolves by addicting them to his own blood before we even meet him. From there it just gets better. He's also easily able to beat up Bill Compton, unlike just about everyone else in the show.
    • He does, however, go through a huge Villainous Breakdown near the end of the third season on account of Talbot being staked, thus quite effectively stripping him of his magnificence.
  • Most Soap Operas are positively swimming with these types as any villian with Flair and wit tend to be long runners. A few notable examples, both male and female:
  • On The Tudors, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell definitely apply, as does Edward Seymour. (Truth in Television for Wolsey and Cromwell; harder to say for Edward, who has trouble following through when he most needs to.) Note that these guys are each involved in each other's takedowns - and were allies before that. This is more pronounced for Wolsey and Cromwell - Cromwell owes his start in royal service to Wolsey. Edward and Cromwell were allies of convenience; no way it was going to last on this show.
  • Katherine from The Vampire Diaries is properly introduced into the series by making perfect use of her resemblance to Elena. She only gets more impressive from there, particularly when we find out she's immune to the vampire Achilles' Heel of vervain due to having taken increasing amounts of it for over a century to build up her tolerance. And then there's her Xanatos Speed Chess coup in the aptly titled "Plan B." Holy crap.
    • Klaus has far and away eclipsed Katherine in his magnificent bastardy. Made all the scarier by the fact that he's now immortal
  • In the HBO series Rome we get a load of these. Mark Antony is perhaps a bit less Chessmastery, but he gets his share of the scheming, even if it bites him in the arse in the end. He is only defeated by the more calculating and manipulative Octavian, who in turn inherited his position from Caesar, who was so magnificent in his bastardry that this adoptive son of his was going to further some of his plans even after his death. Pompey is seen as more of a former magnificent bastard, although in reality he was just as magnificent a bastard as Caesar to the end. Then there's Atia, the ultimate one, who uses manipulation, assassination, torture and her charms, not to mention sexual prowess, to have her way, and that's where Octavian probably gets it in the first place (they're all family with Caesar and through that, Mark Antony, which makes Antony's and Atia's relationship interesting, although Romans had a different view on sex and family). Servilia of the Junii, Atia's rival proves herself as malevolent a manipulator as Atia after Atia exposes her affair with Caesar, causing him to break off the affair. Aware that Caesar has a dark secret, she seduces Atia's daughter and persuades her to seduce her brother, Octavian in order to find it out (the secret is that Caesar has epilepsy). The plan fails and Atia hires a band of thugs to beat up Servilia in broad daylight. Aware that Atia ordered the hit, Servilia persuades her son Brutus to murder Caesar, costing Atia her political power. While Atia survives and Servilia ultimately commits suicide after Brutus's death, Atia acknowledges her as a worthy opponent. Even Titus Pullo, an archetypal Boisterous Bruiser at first glance, does a bit of magnificent bastardry on a smaller scale, though being the closest thing to a protagonist besides Vorenus he is more like a Jerk With a Heart of Gold, and most of the time he's not quite on the ball as to be a true example. He gets an honourable mention.
  • Kougami from Kamen Rider OOO is this while masquerading as a Bunny Ears Lawyer. Why? Because of one episode where Eiji couldn't activate the Ride Vendor (yes, a vending machine that turns into something he could ride, namely a bike), and his "friend", who is also a Magnificent Bastard in a sense, and a living incarnation of greed known as a Greeed, Ankh is talking with Kougami about declining a deal where he gives 70% of his winnings to him (winnings being Cell Medals, long story short...), and even considers killing Kougami and calling the deal off. Kougami then shows Ankh a clip of Eiji trying to get the Ride Vendor to work and tells him that if he does kill him, then the system that allows the Ride Vendors to work will deactivate due to it working on his own will power. It soon turns to a haggle ending on Ankh having to give only 60% of the cell medals he gains and has to pay a 100 Cell Medal advance fee as well. Kougami then claps his hands and allows the Ride Vendor to work. However, unbeknown to Ankh, Kougami was simply having some guy, who was nearby Eiji, use a remote that activates and deactivates Ride Vendors at will. Yes, that's right... He just tricked a living embodiment of greed into giving him his equivalent to food. Damn. And that is early on in the show too!
    • You missed the best part: after Ankh agrees to handing over sixty percent of his winnings, Kougami pulls the lid off a box in front of him, revealing a cake signed with that number, and shouts "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!". Damn.
    • Don't forget Kazari. Absolutely no one considered him to be the biggest threat. Then he started talking with Dr Maki. He then managed to trick Eiji and Ankh into stealing a majority of their medals, including one of Ankhs. It Gets Better. He also manages to trick Uva and Gamel into going ahead, and then seriously injuring Mezuru and taking all but one of her medals. For those of you who don't know what this means, its the closest equivalent to ripping out her organs and leaving her with barely enough to live. It gets better. He then pins it on Eiji to Gamel into order to keep him busy and get a few more Cores (Eiji got a few back as well). And when Mezuru goes to Uva to explain this situation and get help, Uva gets the idea to go after her. It gets better. Kazari then loads Gamel so full of Cores that he goes insane and kills himself to heal Mezuru. Mezuru, loaded with Medals of both her and Gamel, as well as two of Uva's thrown in at the last minute then turns into a huge monster so strong that it took Eiji as GataKiriBa and a Cell Burst from Birth, his premire by the way, to take it out, and Kazari just watches and takes most of the Cores, with Ankh and Uva only able to steal like three. Magnificent doesn't cover it. He then manages to very nearly steal all but one of Eiji's medals. Granted, Ankh loaded the case with cells and Ankh stole on of his own medals back, but Kazari still managed to regain all but one of his own. That one being of course, Eiji's Tora Medal.
      • What makes Kazari fit the Magnificent part is he's just so dang entertaining to watch. The guy is a Chaotic Evil Complete Monster, but he's just so fun to watch do it!
  • Desperate Housewives has, in it's seventh season, Paul Young, who returns to Wisteria Lane after being falsely incarcerated. After no one came to visit him in jail, or supported him, he decided to punish the responsible parties by making them suffer. As such, he engineers gambits to own enough house to open a halfway house for convicts, seeding seeds of distrust among the neighbors to make them hate each other. And it works, Lynette invites people to start it who cause a riot (spurred on by Bree attempting to break up a fight), it knocks Susan unconscious, another neighbor incites them to attack Lee, who was tricked into selling (and also attempt to hurt both Lee's boyfriend and a 7-year-old girl), and causes a real mess of things. Perhaps his most brilliant manoeuvre ever.
  • Bill McNeal from News Radio is an arrogant, blusterous radio newscaster who delights in spreading mischief around the station where he works, and generally torments the his co-workers whenever possible. Special targets include his boss, Dave, whose attempts to control his actions are often thwarted, and the "office spaz" Matthew, whom Bill exploits due to Matthew's sycophantic attitude towards the newscaster. His exploits include bringing a piano to the office and playing Mark Russell-style political satire songs during working hours, (damaging Dave's reputation with an efficiency expert who has the power to fire or demote him). He also "outfoxes the foxes" when he is temporarily installed as news director by the two co-workers who had previously held the title (Dave and Lisa, respectively) to teach him a lesson about the difficulty of being the boss; instead, he glories in it and manages to win over part of the staff by giving them pointless busywork which they think is real, thus motivating them to work for him, and turning them against Dave when he tries to expose Bill's chicanery.
  • A Law and Order SVU example is Darius Parker. He plays the police and the DA's office, basically gets away with double homicide, and forces his mother (who hated him all his life and gave him to her mother to raise because he was the result of rape) to acknowledge him in open court by bringing all the secrets and lies to light.
  • In his very first appearance in the 1960s Batman series, the Penguin gets Batman and Robin, by means of a well-placed bug, to plan his own crime for him.
    • Then there's Ma Parker, who arranges for a takeover of the state Penitentiary. Even Batman and Robin are Unwitting Pawns in her game--at first...
  • One of the Villains of the Episode (Flame Red) in the Mentalist, was this. Specifically Tommy, who donned a perfect persona and lived as a mentally ill person for years, tricking everybody, in order to do as he liked and later for revenge.
  • Percy, the Big Bad of Nikita, has spent most of the first season working his way to this status, but finally earned it in the second-to-last episode, "Betrayals". To sum up, he reveals that he's been aware of Michael's Heel Face Turn since it happened, and of Alex's status as the Reverse Mole almost as long. He let them continue to believe he was unaware until he had used them to set up his Batman Gambit against the government - he let them capture one of his Black Boxes and the only person capable of decrypting it, and then let them hand both over to the CIA, because the box is a Trojan Horse. And then, on top of all that, he manages to turn Alex into a Double Agent through a combination of a threat on her life and The Reveal that Nikita was the Division agent who killed her father. God damn, this man could give Lionel a run for his money... and there's still one episode left in the season for him to do even more!
    • His plan is just barely stopped in the season finale, and by the following season premiere his superiors have locked him away. However, that is literally all they can do to him, since if he dies the information on the Black Boxes will be released and bring down the government. So, now he spends his days mocking Amanda from his cell, calmly threatening to one day take his revenge, while only sharing his information on missions in exchange for concessions. Most recently, he talked his way into getting his own clothes back (as opposed to a prison uniform) and managed to make something as simple as putting on a suit look badass. So, yeah. Magnificent.

 "It's a start."

      • More recently, he carried out a rather effective Batman Gambit, manipulating Alex, Amanda and Nikita with the end result of now being in a position to blackmail Alex into doing whatever he wants. This is impressive, but it gets even better when one realizes that he did all this from the confines of his cell.
      • That's nothing compared to the gambit he carries out during the entire first half of the season, discreetly giving orders to the Guardians via Roan -- by the time it's done, he's free from his cell to plot his revenge, and all his superiors in Oversight are dead.
      • And he just topped himself again in episode 2x18, where he managed to retake control of Division. How? When his mole informs him that Amanda's out of headquarters, he lets himself be captured, and then Hannibal Lectures the agents assigned to kill him into switching loyalties back to him. Then he strolls into Operations with them at his back and, ignoring the Mexican Standoff around him, exposes Amanda's secret alliance with Ari, winning back the loyalty and control of Division. The look on Amanda's face when she realizes what's happened is what seals the deal.
      • Icing on the cake? 2x21 reveals that Percy's gambit in Season One partially suceeded; while he wasn't able to gain access to the CIA's black budgets, the CIA's director was replaced -- with a Division mole. And he can't betray Percy because he has a kill chip implanted in his pacemaker: his life is literally in Percy's hands. Fortunately, Team Nikita was able to neutralize it.
      • He hits his masterstroke in the last two episodes of the season. By taking control of an old Cold War-era Kill Sat and threatening to destroy cities via blowing up nuclear reactors with it, he essentially makes the President of the United States his bitch. The kicker comes after Nikita and Michael infiltrate Division to destroy the satellite's control system and the President sends in the Marines to take Division down -- the satellite was a dud that Percy was using to cover his real means of destroying the reactors, and Roan has orders to destroy one in D.C. if the President doesn't grant Percy amnesty and let him walk away. When Nikita corners him, and forces him to confess to Division that he's been lying to and manipulating them, he does so in such a way that they all want to kill him, forcing Nikita to keep him alive and help him escape, because if he dies, Roan gets the signal to carry out his orders. He very nearly ends up walking away free and clear, but he chooses this exact moment to shift from MB to Smug Snake and screws himself -- once he's out of Division, he attempts to finally kill Nikita (probably believing his deal with the President will protect him), and in their struggle ends up dangling over the edge of Division's missile silo. He tries to talk Nikita into helping him, but she instead lets him drop, so Birkhoff can track his death signal and use it to lead Alex and Sean to Roan to stop him.
    • Nikita herself, in her dealings with Division, Oversight and Gogol. Her former handler/teacher and lover, Michael, shows some signs of this as well. Her adversaries - Percy, Amanda and, to a lesser extent, Ari Tasarov - are this as well.
  • Torrence, the charismatic sociopath played by Eddie Izzard in 2009s The Day of the Triffids starts of as a pretty Magnificent Bastard but suffers Villainous Breakdown when his plans start to go awry, revealing himself to be more of a Smug Snake, albeit a very high-functioning one.
  • Sanctuary has an intermittent Magnificent Bastard in Nikola Tesla. Yes, that Nikola Tesla. The vampire one.
  • Alex Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place often has her moments as this due to how sly and manipulative (and good at it) she can be.
  • Morgan Pendragon from the Starz television series Camelot is the daughter of the former king and the legitimate heir to the throne of England. Ambitious, intelligent, ruthless and a great manipulator with a talent for the The Plan, she'll stop at nothing to become queen and gets most of the English people on her side, given the fact that in this show, King Arthur is apparently useless. Morgan is seemingly intended to be a villain but her incredible charisma, the fact that she's actually more relatable than the supposed protagonists and being played by Eva Green mean that most of the fans are cheering her on. In fact, most of the people on the show are even cheering her on.
  • Helen Cutter of Primeval is a perfect example. So much so that even though she dies in the end of Season 3, the extent of her manipulations and future planning means that she arguably remains the villain right up to the end of Season 5.
  • Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith of the A-Team. His tagline, "I love it when a plan comes together," usually uttered around a giant cigar and a grin is classic Magnificent Bastard.
  • Kenny Hotz of the Canadian series Kenny vs. Spenny. He's ruthless, underhanded and, he rarely loses!
  • Certain contestants on Reality TV competition programs can be Magnificent Bastards if they win in an impressive manner, or if they didn't win, came very close to doing so. Good examples include Richard Hatch, Brian Heidik, Parvati Shallow and "Boston" Rob Mariano from Survivor and Dr. Will Kirby from the American version of Big Brother.
  • Emily Thorne of Revenge. A Distaff Counterpart to Edmond Dantes, she effortlessly pulls off one Batman Gambit after another to take down anyone who had a hand in sending her father to prison. She belongs here rather than Guile Hero because of her complete lack of concern for any innocent bystanders who get hurt along the way, but pulls all her schemes off with such panache you can't help but root for her.
  • This seems to be a requirement to be the Big Bad on Warehouse 13, as, to date, all three of them (James MacPherson, HG Wells, Walter Sykes) have spent their respective seasons carrying out elaborate plots against the Warehouse agents, always staying one step ahead of them, and ultimately only being stopped by unforeseen circumstances (and in Sykes' case, isn't stopped at all; he dies, but his plan still succeeds, granting him a post-mortem victory).
  • Eastenders has known its fair share over the years.
    • Dirty Den was probably the best out of them all. A sharp-suited, womanising Deadpan Snarker who managed to play everyone for fools, even the audience but still had moments of philanthropy. He was to Walford what Lionel Luthor is to Smallville, complete with his own Lex Luthor in the form of Dennis Rickman!
    • Den was outplayed by his wife, Chrissie Watts in the end though.
    • Johnny Alan was conceived as a Magnificent Bastard but could never quite pull it off.
    • Archie Mitchell started out as one until he crossed the Moral Event Horizon and ended up as Complete Monster.
    • And currently we've got Doctor Yusef Khan. A calm, calculated Man of Wealth and Taste who always has a nasty hidden agenda earning him the nickname "Dr. Evil" (apply little finger to corner of mouth and laugh evilly.
  • Patrick Jane, from The Mentalist, is the epitome of this trope. He is brilliant, charismatic and manipulative. He runs rings around poor Lisbon, the rest of the team and the criminals. Nobody ever knows the full plan except him and, on the rare occasion something goes wrong, he will get out somehow. The audience want Patrick to succeed in catching the murderers and to eventually get Red John even though his methods are often questionable.
  • Ming in the re-imagined Flash Gordon series. Unlike his comic book or movie portrayal, this Ming doesn't look like a Fashion Victim Villain and try to out-ham everyone. Instead, he dresses and acts like a third-world dictator by relying as heavily on propaganda and the media as on his Patriot troops. He wears a (mostly) plain military uniform, except for one episode where he wears a ceremonial cloak for a day of rememberance. He can be ruthless or kind (although, he usually leans towards the former). In one episode, a man is caught smuggling ice, a crime punishable by death on Mongo, as most of the water on the planet is contaminated. When the man pleads that he only did it to save his sick daughter, his words seemingly fall on deaf ears. Then, on the day of the public execution (via a gas chamber), Ming addresses the wife and daughter of the man, publicly promising them several rations of water in order to cure the girl... and then orders the execution of the man anyway. After all, a crime is a crime, no matter the reasons. The name "Ming the Merciless" does show up in an episode, which is revealed to be a nickname given to him by the poor. When he finds out, he personally chokes the entertainer who speaks it. Ming usually prefers "Benevolent Father", and you better use it.
  • Ron Sandoval of Earth Final Conflict played virtually everyone else in that series like cheap flutes - Taelon, human, and Jaridian. Mostly, it appeared he was playing them all against each other for mutual destruction out of revenge for the Taelons manipulating him and him being too much of a bastard for most humans' standards.
  • Rumplestitskin (or Mr. Gold) in Once Upon a Time has mastered the art of the deal, suckering virtually every fairy-tale character into his plans in one way or another. Even from behind bars, he was cheerfully cutting deals and calling the shots! In the Storybrooke reality, he literally owns the town, and has ensnared both Emma and Regina into oweing him favors.
    • Speaking of Regina, she can be quite the Magnificent Bitch in her own right; even getting the drop on Rumplestiskin twice. In the fairy-tale world she manipulates Belle into almost stripping him of power, and in the Storybrooke world arranged for his Tragic Keepsake to be stolen, helped him get arrested, and then forced him to reveal that he was unaffected by the curse like she was. She tried to manipulate Emma and Henry by arranging so Henry would overhear Emma doubting his belief in the curse. She also arranged for the genie of Agrabah to murder her husband via a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, then tricked him into becoming her magic mirror. Regina and Gold are basically a Magnificent Bastard tennis match with everyone else in town as the tennis balls.
  • Arnold Rothstein of Boardwalk Empire. Fixed the 1919 World Series and got away clean. Kingpin of New York, running an empire of gambling, prostitution, drugs, booze, and crime - all with impeccable manners and a sense of style. Steal from him? You're a marked man. Kill one of his business partners? He may have you killed immediately, or he may let you swing when it becomes more politically expedient. Because if he'll watch a man choke to death for his own amusement, what do you think he'll do to someone who crosses him?
    • It takes until the end of season two for him to hit full Magnificent Bastardry, but Enoch "Nucky" Thompson gets there in spectacular fashion. When his protege, Jimmy, betrays him (after screwing up numerous business deals for him in season one) and teams up with the Commodore and Eli to bring Nucky down, Nucky predicts he'll ruin Jimmy. After surviving a second assassination attempt, Nucky starts cutting deals in spectacular fashion: bringing in Torrio and Rothstein for advice (and taking it), using his ties to Chalky to incite a race riot, and calling in the favors the IRA owes him and selling them guns in exchange for booze. Nucky doesn't have to do much else before all of Jimmy's deals start to backfire and he spirals out of control - but shooting Jimmy himself in the head sends the message that he's back in charge of AC.
  • "Fred" from Unforgettable not only manipulates three separate people into being killers (one a serial), he chooses to out himself Carrie and her team, knows they're utterly unable to pin a single thing on him, and cheerfully implies he'll look forward to more fun and games.
  • The aliens in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. They manipulate their targets into turning on each other.
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