Poke the Poodle: Difference between revisions

If a henchman is the one who can't maintain a minimum level on villainy, he's a [[Minion With an F In Evil]].

A lot of jokes about [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]] are built this way. The polar opposite to this trope is [[Moral Event Horizon]].

== Anime and Manga ==

** She also [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|reads a book in a book store without paying for it]]. Luckily for Keiichi's health, it wasn't Borders. And although she's not ''trying'' to be evil, she's quite happy to let her younger sister attempt to murder her boyfriend with a chainsaw.

** Also Mara, even in her debut episode, where she knocks over some kid's ice cream cone, after which the kid and his friend kick her in the shin.

** Many of Ranma's villains have their own [[Poke the Poodle]] moments - putting pantyhose over people's heads, stealing cute things and giving them French names, distributing test scores from a giant balloon...

* [[Transformers|The Predacons]] Slapper, Gas Skunk and Darkscream in ''[[Transformers Robots in Disguise]]'' attempt to gain energy for Megatron by stealing hundreds of ''flashlight batteries''.

** It should be noted that the Skypieans don't hold gold to have any notable value, the gold they were trying to steal was a few sacks worth of treasure from the belly of a giant snake, and that the gold the grateful Skypieans were about to give the crew was a massive pillar of gold that was probably at least three times the size of their ship.

* In episode 14 of ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'', Keroro decides he's had enough of being pushed around by Natsumi, which prompts him to go home, and with an evil glare in his eyes... track mud all over the hall floor.

** Note she only lets him off after doing things that [[Corruption of a Minor|possibly scar him for life.]]

* A pair of minor villains try to ruin the protagonists' puppet show in ''[[Karakuri Circus]]''. Not only do they fail, the protagonists work the few attempts into the routine.

* In ''[[Freezing]]'', once Atia is told that the third years are no longer allowed to try to brutally beat the snot out of the main character, she still can't leave Satellizer alone, so she resorts to pettiness. Which is actually kind of hilarious seeing how seriously she still treats the whole matter. In the manga, Atia tries to get Satellizer sick with booze (which someone else ends up drinking), while in the anime, she has her go on stage in a see-through costume.

* The Evil Organization Florsheim in ''[[Tentai Senshi Sunred (Manga)|Tentai Senshi Sunred]]'' once kidnapped a boy!... Well, all right, he volunteered. And they made him dinner, played video games with him, let him go in time for his cram school, walked him over there, and promised him he could come over and play again whenever they liked... But he was still late for his cram school. By, like, five minutes! Bwa ha ha ha ha!

* Wendy Marvell from ''[[Fairy Tail (Manga)|Fairy Tail]]'' is so cute that she literally cannot scare anyone on her own, despite being a Dragon Slayer. [[Ax Crazy|Gajeel]] has to do the scaring ''for'' her.

* Shia in ''[[Pita-Ten]]'' is a demon sent to Earth to train (or retrain according to the manga) to be evil. Evil things she does include poking Kotarou with her magic rod so lightly it's more of a massage. She ends up even living with Misha, an angel, and does all her cooking and cleaning. {{spoiler|In the manga Nya points out that her selfless behavior ultimately made her the perfect demon because she made everyone fall in love with her, then she died making everyone sad.}}

== Webcomics ==

* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=301#comic throw its hat into the ring.]

** Another example is the first antagonist Garland, who isn't much eviler than White Mage, much to the frustration of the {evil) princess he captured.

* ''[[Skin Horse]]'': As shown in [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/memberimages/sh080712effort_to_find.jpg this strip], Sweetheart hasn't got the hang of rampaging yet.

** Wade once thought the cops would arrest him for removing a couch's tag.

* ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'s'' idea of evil is taking not one, but ''two'' free samples from the Take-One tables. Of course, he feels so guilty after doing it that he buys twelve boxes of the stuff he sampled to make up for it. He did it because he was dating a girl who mostly evil, and rather than jump straight to the messy breakup, they decided to try compromising (the girl had to return a book to the library on time). Dave treats it as an act of evil when he's doing it because he's [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|so not-evil]] that it might as well be, for all that he's going to be able to go through with it.

** Don't forget backing up sewers and reversing street signs.

** A lot of Jumba's earlier experiments tend to be this, like the one made out of pudding.

** This was apparently ''before'' allowing his "sworn enemies" (the [[TMNT 1987|1987 turtles]]) to join them on the ride home on the Technodrome.

* ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'': In "Star Trek," Steve decides to become the Bad Boy of Children's Authors. He accomplishes this by such heinous tasks as running with scissors and refusing to eat his vegetables.

* An episode of ''[[Johnny Bravo (Animation)|Johnny Bravo]]'' sees Johnny [[Demonic Possession|possessed by a demon]] who makes him pull out one of the safety filters in the city's water treatment plant. While the demon is full aware that the multiple fail-safes and redundancies will ensure the tap water will be just as pure and drinkable as before, removing that one filter will give the water a "nasty, metallic aftertaste".

** The demon's previous attempts to do evil not only fit the trope but also backfire. His disrespect of the "Keep Off the Grass" revealed toxic waste buried under it; he increased the minimun height requirement to keep children from enjoying a ride, which saved the children.

* ''[[Danny Phantom (Animation)|Danny Phantom]]'' had the Box Ghost. His idea of scary devices are the Mail Box of Misfortune and the Lunch Box of Terror. Needless to say, he's not taken seriously until he steals [[Sealed Evil in A Can|Pandora's Box]].

* Let's not forget the [[League of Super Evil]] who make most other entries on this page look like Doctor Doom in comparison

* An episode of ''[[Archer]]'' had the eponymous character become the pirate king to a group of [[Ruthless Modern Pirates|pirates]]. He took whole-heartedly to the drinking and wenching, but not so much to the plundering. The one time they did invade a ship, he pointed out that small businesses are the life-blood of the economy and, in reality, captains like the one they were attacking have razor-thin profit margins.

* Anybody who pretends to be evil by [[Mattress Tag Gag|tearing off the tag on their mattress]], even though the only way that could be considered illegal is if the retailer were to remove it.

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Hornigold Captain Benjamin Hornigold], a pirate, once captured a ship and boarded it, then apologetically asked for the passengers' ''hats''. He explained that his own crew had got drunk the night before and thrown their own hats overboard. After receiving the hats, the pirates left the ship alone. This would happen occasionally: pirates would often pillage ships of menial supplies and such that they, as wanted criminals, couldn't easily obtain, and, if nobody started anything, they generally just left people unharmed. Blackbeard himself (or was it Henry Morgan) was known for stealing medical supplies and clothes and not hurting people during such raids. Blackbeard in particular is famous for attacking a ship, stealing nothing but medicines for syphilis and other STDs, and leaving.

** Of course it's heinous. [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|They stole 120 boxes of sweets]]. [[Memetic Mutation|That's as many as twelve tens]]. [[And That's Terrible]].

* And then there's the French terrorist organisation ''Le Front de Libération des Nains de Jardins'', "The Garden Gnome Liberation Front". They stole garden gnomes and left them in the forest. Their main claim to fame was to have "liberated" a Ronald McDonald once and really pissing off McDonald's in the process...

* Among the ''many'' ([[Idiot Plot|idiot]]) plots by the CIA to deal with Castro was an attempt to make his hair fall out (ridding him of his iconic beard).

* A plot was hatched against Hitler where they wanted to spike his food with estrogen so they could make his mustache fall off and his voice become squeaky so he would lose support despite the fact ''that this would never work anyway'' they paid his gardener to spray the gardens which Hitler ate from with estrogen. The gardener pocketed the money and dumped the estrogen down the drain.

* Weaker forums trolls, since real life threats can lead to real life reprocussions, they usually tend to use juvenile insults, [[Insane Troll Logic]] and other [[Logical Fallacies]] to annoy people.