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Pragmatic Villainy: Difference between revisions
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* A Russian mob boss during Chuck Dixon's run on the ''Green Arrow'' comic displayed this trope in spades when his psychotically violent loan shark collector managed to offend the local resident superheroes. Having already decided to cut this guy loose because his excessive love of violence was resulting in decreased revenue (the point is, after all, to beat them up enough to motivate them to pay their debts, not to beat them to death for shits and grins because dead people don't make loan payments), the mob boss walks in on his enforcer while he's managed to get Green Arrow (who was coming after him to investigate his latest murder rampage) trapped in a pit. 'Look at this, boss! We can just throw grenades in the pit and shoot him! I win, yes?' His boss responded by shooting the ''enforcer'' instead, and helping Green Arrow out of the pit.
{{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.}}
== Fan Works ==
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** Obtaining a sample of Plastic Man's DNA for purposes of superpower experimentation by the simple expedient of offering Plas $25 million for it (to go to either him, a charity of his choice, or both). When Plastic Man asks why "Luthor" is doing this when there's any # of mercenary supervillains who'd gladly wrestle him down and forcibly extract a tissue sample for 50 grand, "Luthor" responds by saying 'Because I'm entirely willing to pay $24+ million extra for the benefit of pissing Superman off by making this a legal transaction he can't interfere with, and its hardly like I can't afford it'. Plas finds this explanation 100% believable.
** Convincing Project Cadmus and Amanda Waller to fund the creation of a new super-lawful-good All-American superhero instead of their latest genetic abomination to try and fight the JLA with, on the reasoning that 'If we're creating this construct as a contingency against them going rogue, then all we have to do is give our living weapon a genuinely heroic motivation and he'll fight them when the day arrives just because he's a good guy and they're the bad guys. And this way they can have the Martian read his mind all day looking for hidden betrayal and not find anything, because all he's doing is thinking like a total good guy'.
== Film ==
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** Jagang perhaps manages to be a bigger monster, but he's still smart enough to gather intelligence and listen to his advisors, especially when they're experts in magic and he's not. In ''Phantom'', for instance, he and the Sisters of the Dark are looking for the Book of Counted Shadows. On finding what appears to be a copy, he thinks it's fake, while the Sisters insist it could be real. You might expect him to simply overrule them considering they're essentially slaves. Instead, they have a pretty civil debate about it.
* From [[Dune]]: "A pogrom? That's not like the Harkonnens. A pogrom is wasteful."
** Which is why even the Baron doesn't much like Rabban, who is just a brute
* [[Zig Zagged]] in ''[[Animorphs]]'' with Visser One, who claims she wants Earth to be conquered slowly and secretly because it's more pragmatic than Visser Three's plans of open war and genocide. In reality, she's worried that an open war could coincidentally kill {{spoiler|two children she gave birth to through a previous human host}}. However, since the whole ''point'' of going after Earth was because there are enough people to give every Yeerk a host, the whole thing would have been pointless if Visser Three killed a large percentage of humans.
* The government in ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' outlaws the death penalty, preferring torture and brainwashing potential rebels into model citizens, rather than killing them and risk them becoming martyrs for the next generations rebels.
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* Flameth in [[Dragon Age]], especially [[Dragon Age 2]]. Kidnapping and eating children? Like I don't have anything better to do with my time.
* Not so much a matter of avoiding morally reprehensible actions, but Agatio parts with his dignity in ''[[Golden Sun]]: The Lost Age'' and consciously plays the part of a [[Dumb Muscle|dumb]] [[The Brute|brute]] [[Unwitting Pawn|being manipulated]] by Alex because he knows that will ''get the job done'', though he makes it clear that he's actually a [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] [[Genius Bruiser]] and [[Teeth-Clenched Teamwork|not fond]] of Alex's [[Smug Snake|attitude]].
== Webcomics ==
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* [[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.
* Genghis Khan famously mused over the idea of massacring the entire population of northern China (as the ancestral enemy) to create pastureland for Mongol horses. He was dissuaded when it was realized living Chinese pay more in taxes than dead Chinese. The story goes that he was convinced when one of his advisors, a Uighur, told him:
{{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 Nazis' racial ideology painted East Asians as untermenschen, which did not stop them forming alliances with Imperial Japan (and prior to switching sides, with the Republic of China).
** While not considered as übermenschen, the Asian people was still held in high regard by the Nazis. They were regarded almost as the Aryan race's closest cousins.
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**** Killing them all and getting at least something out of their detention (at least in theory) was more efficient than the original plan to ship them to Madagascar. Unfortunately. So there is that aspect to it; they were at least ''trying'' to be pragmatic about their goal 'de-Jew Germany.' It just so happened that the merciful option was too expensive. Also, it relied upon a conquered British Navy doing the shipping, which the Nazis couldn't use after they lost the Battle of Britain.
*** 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.
** Supposedly, there were plenty of ideas and designs which he rejected out of hand due to them not being immediately useful. That's not Pragmatic Villainy, that's just shortsightedness (from a guy famed for his 5-year plans).
*** And yet somehow there are not a lot of specific examples that actually were introduced in USSR later (or anywhere else) and actually worked. E.g. the agrarian crackdown happened in part because the team in question didn't bother to check whether they are able to store the product and the experimental state farm lost all its food (which was kind of a sore spot after "collectivisation") - in fact, girasol for some reason didn't make the list of common crops even after it was praised to the skies again. Though mostly it was the usual Soviet departmental backstabbing.
** 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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