Pragmatic Villainy: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

A subversion of the [[Even Evil Has Standards]] trope, when a villain refuses to [[Kick the Dog|do something abhorrent]] not because it is too horrible, but rather because [[Stupid Evil|it is too inefficient or ineffective]], or there isn't much to be gained from it. He's tried [[Kick the Dog|kicking the dog]] or at least studied those who have. No matter the combination of dogs and boots, and he's investigated thoroughly, there [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|just isn't any profit]] and one's toes tend to hurt after a while. Also, [[The Dog Bites Back|dogs sometimes manage to sink their teeth into their tormentors]]. In some ways, the pragmatic villain can actually be more dangerous than a typical [[Card-Carrying Villain]] because he is almost invariably resolute in his determination not to carry the [[Villain Ball]]. What he does all depends on [[Stock Evil Overlord Tactics|which option]] would [[Evil Plan|serve his purposes]] best. Being evil for these types just means that they have all the illegal and immoral options available to them in addition to the more legitimate (or at least socially respectable) tactics they usually prefer.

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', Cornelia tries to fight the drug trade because the drugs hurt productivity among the conquered Japanese.

* Dutch from ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' runs illegal booze, slaves, guns and drugs. He does piracy when the delivery business goes slow. He does not, however, condone his employees running off [[Ax Crazy]] and taking out their issues by shooting at noncombatants when he's in a combat zone. Not because he gives a crap about their lives, but because he wants to know that his backup can be relied upon and stay professional.

** Dutch also said in the manga that he doesn’t want to risk himself in an operation that could make him a lot of money, (dooming himself to work for significant less money that other operators) because he knows [[One Last Job|that is the best way to get himself killed]]).

* The Gandor Family in ''[[Baccano!]]'' stays steadfastly out of the drug trade, sticking with [[Neighborhood Friendly Gangsters|relatively less objectionable crimes]] like bootlegging and gambling. This is due to [[Even Evil Has Standards|actual moral objections]] on the part of Keith Gandor, but the other two Gandor brothers, Luck especially, recognize that it's also because their relatively small organization is not equipped to compete with the larger organized crime families currently running drugs.

* Moo in the ''[[Monster Rancher (anime)|Monster Rancher]]'' anime captured Holly to use the Magic Stone to locate his original body, figuring he could destroy the heroes with it. They rescued her, but by that time he had gotten what he needed to know. Rather than let them find out where he was going or try and stop him in his humanoid form, he simply left them behind so they had no idea where he was.

** [[Mad Scientist|Mayuri]] has shades of this too. He's outright worse than most of the actual villains, but he sticks to being the [[Token Evil Teammate]] because of this. Working for the Soul Society gets him: an officer position, funding, minions, supplies, etc. Working freelance gets you.. execution by the Soul Society. He's still committing all sorts of atrocities in the name of science, but at least this way, [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|he gets paid for it.]]

* In ''[[Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]]'', Arnage and Veyron take on two other Eclipse infectees. The latter's willy-nilly attacks on innocents will be blamed on the Huckebein, who don't want the added attention.

** Although it's implied Light's only real objection to it was that he considered the move premature. Once all the criminals were bumped off and Kira was God, Light fully intended to prune out other undesirable elements from "his" world.

 

* Crime Boss Wallenquist from ''[[Sin City]]'' refuses to seek revenge on Wallace, who almost singlehandedly dismantled his human slavery market, because there's no benefit to him.

{{quote|"Revenge is a loser's game. There's no percentage in it. All that matters is profit and power."}}

* He needed [[Wonder Woman]] to point it out, but no, Ares does not support nuclear and biological war. If everyone died, there would be no one left to fight wars anymore.

* [[Darkseid]] will never try to conquer the universe through [[Time Travel]] on the grounds that it is far too reckless.

* The [[Red Skull]] may indulge in petty wasteful sadistic villainy often, but he does not appreciate anyone on his payroll doing the same. Villainy committed on his dime has to have ''some'' kind of profit for him.

** One comic showed him foiling a plan by Madam Hydra, her subordinate at the time, that wanted to blind every american who was watching a television set at some point. He said he was called a lot of things, but never a Nihilist anarchist.

{{quote|'''Mob Boss:''' Idiot. This man is a superhero. They ''always'' have friends. Kill him and tomorrow I will have ''Superman'' pulling me out of my car.}}

 

 

* ''[[Pale Rider]]'': "I want that preacher with a rope around him. No, wait, if we get too rough we'll make a martyr of him, last thing we want to give them is a martyr to fight for."

* In ''[[The Godfather]]'', Vito Corleone defends his refusal to involve his family with the drug trade by claiming that [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections|his friends in the criminal justice system]] would quickly turn against him if they found out his business was drugs, as opposed to "harmless vices" like gambling or prostitution. This is [[Truth in Television|a reflection of the real-life decline of the mafia]], as one of the lynchpins in its downfall (That is, assuming it really has "fallen") was the greater involvement of federal forces in the "War on Crime" resulting from anti-drug legislation and the demonisation of drug dealing.

** Subverted later on, when they actually capture Will. They proclaim they're going to spill all his blood into the chest, just in case a cut on the hand doesn't do the trick (and also because most of the crew probably didn't want to "savor" him). They also decide to do this to Elizabeth, after seeing her blood didn't work at first.

* In ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'', Mr. White and Mr. Pink disapprove of Mr. Blonde's killing spree...not because they have any qualms whatsoever about killing someone (they don't) but because they need a reason, even if that reason is "I'm fleeing the cops and you're standing in my way." Mr. Blonde appears to kill and torture [[For the Evulz]].

 

* Vetinari, from the ''[[Discworld]]'', does not really rule his realm with an iron fist. He has the novel idea of maintaining control by making people actually ''want'' him in charge, or at the very least, [[Vetinari Job Security|make removing him from power an unsavory prospect]].

{{quote|''He didn't administer a reign of terror. Just the occasional light shower.''}}

* In the ''[[The Draka|Draka]]'' series, the [[Villain Sue|Draka]] are horrified at the Holocaust. Because the death camps were a massive waste of resources.

* In ''[[The Hobbit]],'' the three trolls don't want to eat Bilbo, simply because he wasn't big enough to go through the trouble of skinning and boning him.

* In Tony Hillerman's ''People of Darkness,'' the hit man Colton Wolf kills as few people as he can manage (aside from his assigned targets), because the fewer people that are killed, the shorter the resulting manhunt is.

* This is one of the defining traits of [[Evil Overlord|the Lady]] in the ''[[Black Company]]'' novels- she's almost entirely devoid of compassion and mercy, and totally devoid of remorsely, but neither is she cruel for the sake of cruelty- everything she does is to get some kind of advantage, and her empire is designed to be stable and enduring. She's deliberately contrasted with her psychotic rival {{spoiler|and sister}} Soulcatcher, who is pretty much pure chaos, and her ex-husband, [[Sealed Evil in a Can|the Dominator]], whose empire, rather than being opressive but stable and organized was almost literal [[Hell on Earth]].

* In [[Belisarius Series]] Narses is a partial example. His chief motive seems to be delight in [[Because I'm Good At It|craftsmanship]] however given that, he has utter contempt for incompetent evil. Damadora is a better example. He is willing to do evil things up to and including war crimes-but only if he thinks it necessary to achieve his goal which seems to be roughly, keeping him and his family from being executed first, and stopping the war second.

 

* The Ferengi from ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' are a [[Planet of Hats]] based on greed. They'd never practice mass slavery or genocide-because people who are enslaved and/or dead can't buy things.

** Which doesn't actually stop one of them (working for a non-Ferengi) from selling weapons that they know will be used for genocide, though another Ferengi prevented it.

** The Female Changeling gets an instance of this near the end of the series. The Dominion have just gained the Breen as allies, who have a weapon that totally disables any ship it hits. This decisive advantage allows the Breen to defeat a combined Federation/Klingon/Romulan armada, including the ''[[Cool Starship|Defiant]]''. Once everyone's stuck in escape pods, the Changeling orders them spared. Not because she cared, but because their effect on morale to their enemies was worth far more than their deaths. Then again, given Sisko was among those in the pods, she might not that thought that through entirely.

** ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' uses this trope as a [[Take That]] against the Kazon villain race from the first season. When an off-hand comment about them is made in front of Seven, she recalls how the Borg ran into one of their colonies. ''They refused to assimilate the colony because it would detract from their perfection.'' They didn't even have desirable physical qualities. Even the Talaxians got praise for that.

** An earlier episode had someone spared because the taste of steroids in his blood disgusted the vampire. Also, they were [[Magic-Powered Pseudoscience|special]] steroids that were slowly turning him into a fish, so it's understandable.

** Mayor Willikins was equal parts [[Affably Evil]] and this trope.

* ''[[The Wire]]'' plays this straight in Season 2 when The Greek and Vondas contemplate {{spoiler|killing Frank Sobotka}}, not out of genuine malice but rather because police are using damning evidence of his corruption in order to [[Heel Face Turn|turn him for the prosecution]] [[He Knows Too Much|against them]]. Vondas convinces The Greek it would be more pragmatic just to buy {{spoiler|Frank}}'s loyalty (and silence) by manipulating {{spoiler|Frank's son Ziggy}}'s murder trial and preventing a conviction. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, Frank had already made a deal with the FBI by then, and both The Greek and Vondas find out from a "friend" in the FBI while Frank is on his way to meet with them. [[Tear Jerker|Frank is shown with his throat sliced open in the beginning of the next episode.]]}}

{{quote|'''The Greek:''' "Your way... ''It won't work."''}}

{{quote|'''Nathan:''' If you've got a body in the trunk then you're going to be extra careful not to speed, right?

'''Elliot:''' Nate, has anyone told you that your similes get creepier the more you get sober?}}

 

* In ''[[Dick Tracy]]'', the final Big Boy Caprice story by Max Allan Collins has him trying to kill Tracy with a million dollar open contract on the detective. Eventually, the organized crime ruling committee, The Apparatus, confront Caprice and tell him that the contract must be canceled. In this case, this is not motivated by moral considerations, but as a matter of professionalism considering the fact that Tracy has learned about the mob contract on him and has taken personal control of the department's Organized Crime Unit to retaliate. The Apparatus knows that they can't afford to let Tracy come at them full bore and so they must take action.

 

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has the Tau, who are (besides the [[Card-Carrying Villain]] that is Chaos) the only faction that do not have "All the aliens must die, sooner or later" as policy, and are willing to incorporate other species into the Empire - sometimes at gunpoint, but other times a species will willingly join the Tau.

** The Dark Eldar was made into this to explain how a bunch of [[Neutral Evil]] backstabbers were still alive after 20,000 years.

** Also, despite being brain-eating eldritch monsters, illithids generally have good relations with their neighbors. This is because they have the power to astrally project themselves into other planes of existence, and so never actually eat any of their neighbors because their neighbors know where they live. Instead they largely confine their raiding to extra-planar or remote victims who have no practical way to reach their tormentors, or even find out what planet they live on.

** Also, since the illithid method of travel has an imprecise arrival point, illithids have a practical reason to keep a several-mile radius around their home free of predators and other dangers. Between this and their "don't eat where you keep your shit" policy, its actually safer to live right next door to an illithid colony than it is to live next door to pretty much any other sentient race in the Underdark save the good-aligned deep gnomes.

 

* In Tennessee Williams' ''Sweet Bird of Youth'', [[Corrupt Hick|"Boss" Finley]] is upset to discover that his son arranged for a team of goons to break into his political rival's house, rough him up, and burn some of his possessions on the lawn. Not because it's wrong, of course, but because they left evidence linking them to the Finley campaign. [[Crosses the Line Twice|The least they could have done was dress up like the Klan and let them take the blame.]]

 

* In ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] IV'', after founding his own kingdom, the necromancer Gauldoth the Half-Dead gains a once-in-a-lifetime chance to invade his neighbouring nation while their armies are elsewhere and become the most powerful ruler in the world. Instead of doing this, he sends the invasion plans to the queen of said nation, telling his [[Number Two]] that [[Genre Savvy|whenever a necromancer gets too greedy, every living thing in the world allies against them]]. Instead, he's content on ruling his own little nation for all eternity, overlooked by everyone else.

* [[Super Mario Bros.|Bowser.]] At times he helps the Mario Brothers and other people, only because he wants to be the only one to take over the Mushroom Kingdom. Also, since his goal is conquest and not destruction, he'll assist the Mario Brothers so that others can't destroy what he wants to conquer.

** Colonel Moore is this. She is willing to put up with anything the Courier does because it will lead to winning the war, but she makes sure to slander the Courier and gets Ambassador Crocker fired for doing things their way instead of hers.

* "Good" choices in ''[[Overlord]]'' are often framed as this. For instance, after retrieving a village's stolen food supply, you're given the option to take it to feed your horde—but giving it back to the villagers instead increases their productivity (represented in-game by a higher respawn rate for the sheep you kill to feed your basic troops.)

{{quote|The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. And I'll be honest. {{spoiler|Killing you? Is hard.}}}}

* In the ''[[Deus Ex: Human Revolution|Deus Ex Human Revolution]]'' "The Missing Link" DLC, {{spoiler|you can find an email from the evil base commander where he claims he was informed that his subordinates are raping their female prisoners and demands that they stop or face harsh punishment...because this decreases the chance that they survive the [[Body Horror|horrific surgical procedure]] that turns them into [[And I Must Scream|Hyron Drones]].}}

 

 

** His entire philosophy is when [[Evil Is Stylish|style]] fails, fall back on this trope.

{{quote|''And now I see that planning doesn't matter. Strategy doesn't matter. Only two things matter: Force in as great a concentration as you can muster, and style. And in a pinch,'' style can slide. }}

{{quote|It's okay to have a steak when there's a chicken in every pot. But if you're eating steak and the majority of people have nothing, it doesn't take long for you to look like a chicken.}}

 

* Pretty much the basis of the [[Evil Overlord List]].

* Dark General Cobalt of ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' is this in contrast to his [[Card-Carrying Villain]] acquaintances. It's not that he has a moral objection to rape, torture, and murder, it's just that he finds it a colossal waste of time. He'd much rather focus on getting things done. Interestingly, his pragmatism actually results in his being the villain the heroes encounter the ''most''—in the interests of actually getting his project off the ground, he decides to kill the girls who've been wiping out his underlings.

* The very reason the [[Flanders Company]] was created in-universe.

 

* Shere Kahn in ''[[Tale Spin]]'' once made certain that his workers were freed from a corrupt underling who was working them to death.

{{quote|'''Shere Khan''': ''My dear, I desire only money and power. Unpresentable employees provide me with neither.''}}

* Zordrak, of all villains, invokes this in ''[[The Dreamstone]]'' when Urpgor asks why he doesn't just ''kill'' [[Team Rocket|his bumbling minions Blob, Frizz and Nug]].

* In ''[[South Park]]'', "Fun With Veal"

'''Cartman:''' Guys, I've got it. We can kill Butters, and then float the cows on a river of his blood!

'''Kyle:''' Don't be stupid! Butters doesn't have that much blood in him! }}

* The Kingpin was presented this way in the 90's [[Spider-Man: The Animated Series|Spider Man]] animated series, even occasionally teaming up with Spidey against more [[Omnicidal Maniac]] villains because "there's no profit to be had in the end of the world."

* Xanatos from ''[[Gargoyles]]'' never carries the [[Villain Ball]]; his plans are [[Xanatos Gambit|pretty much designed so he HAS to win something]]. He also refuses to engage in revenge, because as he sees it, it's a "sucker's game" with no real benefit, and seems to want to remain [[Affably Evil|friendly with his enemies]], since he could easily [[Enemy Mine|need their help]] someday.

* Although he hates [[Darkwing Duck]] and would be happy to get rid of the interfering superhero once and for all, [[Psycho Electro|Megavolt]] has helped DW on one or two occasions when the city of St. Canard is destroyed. He justifies this by pointing out that if St. Canard is destroyed, there'll be nothing left for him to rob.

* One of the lessons [[Megamind]] learns after {{spoiler|apparently killing Metro Man}}. Part of the enjoyment of being a [[Super Villain]] is having a worthy superhero to do battle with.

* ''[[Beast Wars]]'': The Tri-Predacus Council, leaders of the majority of all Predacons, sends an agent to prehistoric Earth to aid the Maxials and capture Megatron, whom they declared a dangerous criminal. They, like Megatron himself, still want to take over Cybertron and spark a second interstellar war, but would prefer to do so through subtle manipulations and waiting for the opportune moment. {{spoiler|That and Megatron's [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right|plan]] is too reckless even for them to consider.}}

** From the [[Transformers Generation 1|comics based on the original series]], We have Shockwave. Essentially a poor man's Soundwave in the cartoon, he was far more badass in the comics from Marvel, Dreamwave and IDW; as an aversion of the [[Straw Vulcan]] trope, Shockwave actually DOES try and take the most efficient course to victory. His defeats usually come from going against incredibly illogical opponents, like the [[The Berserker|Dinobots]].

* [[Big Bad|Amon]] from ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'' is this to the point of [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]. He specifically {{spoiler|picks certain benders that are established monsters or jerks, refuses to debend the Avatar to avoid creating a martyr, and won't indulge in any [[Kick the Dog]] moments for the fun of it [[Magnificent Bastard|in order to build up a strong following]]}}.

* Though some fans mistakingly believed Vilgax had suddenly become [[Lawful Evil]] in [[Ben 10: Alien Force]] due to his return episode portraying him as following a galactic code of conduct, it's strongly hinted (and confirmed by [[Word of God]]) that he was only following because it was more profitable for him, allowing him to conquer ten planets in a short amont of times without wasting massive ressources to it. In later episodes, after this strategy failed against Ben, he has no scrupple breaking said code several times.

 

* [[Francisco Franco|Generalisimo Franco]]. While he was not a nice person, he was competent as a dictator, was more instrumental about his atrocities, and avoided the type of "eccentricities" that [[Those Wacky Nazis]] are associated with. One contemporary said, "Franco made Spain safe. Not for Democracy, but for the people."

* [[Benito Mussolini]], ''Il Duce'' of [[Fascist Italy]], killed far fewer political opponents than Hitler or Stalin (whole orders of magnitudes fewer) and remained fairly pragmatic (although unnecessarily showmanlike) about instituting Fascism in Italy and the world up till the point he started getting chummy with Hitler.

** That may be more, [[Even Evil Has Standards]]. He was an incompetent tyrant, unlike Franco who whatever his faults was competent at least. Mussolini also devoted himself to a cult of conquest which Italy's military capability could really not support (nor morale - what's with all the accounts on how the Italian troops abroad clearly wanted to go home no less than the locals wanted to throw them out), and which brought no benefit to Italy. Franco did none of this; he was perfectly happy to remain neutral, and avoid tangling with the [[Brits With Battleships|Royal Navy]]. And Franco didn't give a hoot about how ungrateful [[Adolf Hitler]] thought him.

*** Of course, Mussolini is the one who got himself messily lynched.

{{quote|Kill everyone, and you take a million bolts of silk all at once. Let the people live, and you can have ''500,000'' bolts of silk ''every year''.}}

** He also recognized the value of trade, even with nations whom you planned on conquering, and encouraged trade with other nations heavily. Gaining material goods from other lands is always a welcome asset, and sending your own merchants into foreign lands allowed them to gather crucial intelligence for when you finally moved in to conquer them. In fact, he didn't move on Baghdad after the local ruler robbed the caravan (loaded mostly with gifts to him in the first place - which is to say, performed the exact opposite of Pragmatic Villainy), but sent envoys to investigate what the hell just happened - though when ''they'' were assaulted, this was one of the things he considered unforgivable.

*** The really odd thing in all this is that it may well have been the choice of Madagascar that did it, rather than the much-closer Palestine. The militant Zionist group [[wikipedia:Lehi (group)|Lehi]], known to the British authorities in Mandate Palestine as the "Stern Gang," are reported to have sent a message to the Germans to the effect of "Ship all the Jews to the Middle East, and we'll be more than happy to carve out a little fascist empire here and not bother you guys ever again. Also, we'll help you beat Britain and the Commies." The Nazis, of course, rejected this out of hand, not least because Lehi was at that point a splinter group of a splinter group ([[We ARE Struggling Together!|Lehi broke off of the main Revisionist formation, the Irgun/Etzel, which broke off from the main Zionist formation, the Haganah]]), and further not all Lehi members were behind the proposal (meaning that the folks who sent the message were a splinter group of a splinter group of a splinter group).

*** Everyone in the know could see where it goes. To summarize the pre-war meetings of Bazhanov (Stalin's runaway secretary) with Germans: "You do understand that your only chance is to quickly form some sort of a Russian anti-Bolshevik government, then leave it to the locals and return to your wrestling with Brits without distractions, right? -Yeah, of course, we already have proposed this several times, but the Fuhrer is frothing and saying he wants to play a great conquistador. -I cannot express verbally how screwed everyone is, then."

* Georgy Zhukov, while defending Leningrad in 1941, issued an order that if any man surrenders to the enemy, his family will be shot. Malenkov (a senior Politburo member who was in Leningrad at the time) cancelled the order immediately. After all, scaring your own army away from the battlelines is kind of counterproductive.

* [[Josef Stalin]] disbanded his infamous "blocking detachments" - these were formed in 1942 and were deployed behind front lines with the sole purpose of shooting "cowards" and fleeing Soviet troops - after only three months. Of course, [[We Have Reserves|this wasn't because he cared for the lives of his soldiers]], but because they had a detrimental effect on morale and wasted manpower by diverting troops to the rear.

** Stalin was also highly pragmatic in his treatment of Christians and other religious people in the Soviet Union. Due to his Communist beliefs, Stalin brutally suppressed religious institutions. These institutions were viewed as greedy and corrupt by the laity, so their destruction did not greatly anger them. However, Stalin knew that antagonizing all Christians, which were a huge part of the Russian population, would be a waste of time and resources. This resulted in lay Christians being left alone. Stalin also revived the Russian church in order to stir up support for the war against the Nazis.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrvu7P1Sp24 In this video] a lion saves a baby rhinoceros from getting eaten by hyenas...because he wanted the hyenas to get away from a carcass.

 

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