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| | alt title(s): Motiveless Malignity; Did It For The Evulz; For The Evil |
For The Evulz
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Most villains have some kind of logical motive. Greed, zeal, fear, and revenge can all drive people to evil, and most normal people are capable of understanding these and many other motivations most of the time. Whatever the villain's motivation is, if it can be understood, you can talk the villain down sometimes.
But then there's the kind of villain that doesn't have that kind of motive. They can't be reasoned with because there is nothing reasonable about their motivation. Their motive for doing evil things is "because I can". Such characters often happen to be card-carrying villains. Some Psychos for Hire follow this trope as well. If your motive is this, you might be a complete monster, but it's just as likely that you're evilly affable. Or both. If you do this while ignoring common sense and basic self-preservation, you're probably Stupid Evil. Or, possibly, Chaotic Stupid. Or both.
Such a villain is usually either really, really cool, Evilly Affable, completely depraved, or absurdly stupid, or some combination of these. Or, (s)he may just be the victim of rampant motive decay. This depends on the writing and the context of the story.
Video Game Cruelty Potential is when the player of a game is allowed, or even encouraged, to do things For The Evulz.
Compare If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten, It Amused Me, and Trolls. Chaotic Evil is a very similar trope, with significant overlap and with unclear distinctions, although there may be one chief difference: a villain who is chaotic evil does what they do because of their desire for what they consider to be freedom, and simply have no moral constraints in their pursuit; For The Evulz means the character's goal is evil in and of itself. The distinction is not always clear and may not always be relevant either.
If a whole race has a motive like this, it's Always Chaotic Evil. If it's a group of people (nations, organizations etc.) it's Villain By Default.
Examples:
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Anime/Manga
Comics
- In the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comics, this is Fiona Fox's reasoning for turning traitor and joining Scourge, Sonic's anti-universe counterpart.
- In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin asks Moe why he bullies him all the time. Moe's answer is "Because it's fun." Calvin, lying in the dirt, remarks, "Oh, he's a sportsman."
- Nearly all depictions of Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker.
- Example: In one issue of Gotham Adventures, the comic based on Batman The Animated Series, Harvey Dent, the criminal Two-Face, has reformed and is starting a romance with his lawyer Grace Lamont. Joker hints to Harvey that Lamont is dating Harvey's friend Bruce Wayne, and is just seeing Harvey out of pity. Then he gets his assistant Harley Quinn to leak to a newspaper that Lamont is planning to marry Bruce, and delivers the newspaper to Harvey. One breakdown, jailbreak, attempted murder, and broken heart later, Batman asks the Joker why he caused such a horrible disaster. His response?
- Victor Zsasz. There is a storyline where an archvillain tells him he's got potential for greater evil than random murder as a part of his criminal empire and asks what he'd like to do. Zsasz's reply is simple: "I like to hurt people."
- Some versions of the Riddler. Sometimes he steals to make ends meet, and leaves riddles out of compulsion. But in other stories, he just wants to see if he can leave a clue and still get away with his crimes.
- A Star Wars Boba Fett comic featured a Mengele-analogue who has given up any pretense of being scientific. He openly admits that he's butchering entire alien races because it's fun.
- Blackblood from ABC Warriors ran a weapon shop where you didn't pay with money or goods, but with videotapes of the weapons being used on orphanages and such.
- Carnage, of Spider-Man. Blood. Just 'cause he can.
- And it wasn't the symbiote's influence on Cletus either. He was a murdering psychopath before he bonded with the Carnage symbiote.
- A few of the Joker's lines in The Dark Knight are taken directly from Cletus in Maximum Carnage.
- Daredevil's Bullseye.
- This was the only visible motivation of Antonio Prohías' Sinister Man and Sinister Woman.
- In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, this trope was explicitly stated to be the motivation behind Baxter Stockman's plan to blackmail the city with his mousers.
- When The Hobgoblin was asked why he framed Flash Thompson for his crimes, he answered "Why not?"
- That being said, there was a reason the Hobgoblin decided to frame him. At the time of Tom DeFalco's story where The Hobgoblin frames Flash, Ned Leeds (whom DeFalco intended to reveal as the Hobgoblin) had discovered Flash had been sleeping with his wife. He was understandably pissed. Years later, Roger Stern wrote a retcon in which the true Hobgoblin was actually Roderick Kingsley (his original choice when he created the Hobgoblin) and Leeds was just a patsy. Kingsley also had a reason to single out Flash, however; Flash had been on TV calling the Hobgoblin a "creep and a coward", among other things.
- Doctor Destiny's Diner of Death. When he briefly freed his victims from his control, one of them demanded to know why he was tormenting them this way. His answer? "Because I can."
- Supreme Power villain Redstone's reasons for killing: "Because I can, because I'm good at it, and because I like it." Well, okay, the real reason he does it is because he's crazy and he thinks nobody can stop him, but as you can imagine he doesn't recognize this.
- Willy Pete. What else is there to say about a cannibal who doesn't even need to eat at all, but just happens to like the taste? (Plenty, actually, but I'll spare you the squick.)
- Subverted with Sid Fernwilter Piranha Club (formerly known as Ernie), who is not being evil just because he can, but vicious just because he can. Purely on principle, he refuses to spend money on anything useful or necessary. He would rather sit in the darkness and freeze than to pay the electricity bill - And he has.
- Also, Mr. Mxyzptlk in Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? He explained that since immortality is boring, he tries out different things to break the monotony. He spent 2,000 years not moving at all, another 2,000 years being purely good, and then the last 2,000 years being a mischievous prankster. Now, he's going to be evil. Things gets ugly, fast.
- The "Reaver-Cleaver" killer from Preacher confesses to one of the protagonists that he only does what he does because it's fun, being amused at having gotten away clean with killing a man in a drunken hit-and-run and just kept on killing to see how far he could push his luck.
- Cletus from The Authority
"I didn't get involved in this because I'm some cackling super-villain who gets off on hurting people or anything."
Cletus: "Hell, I did."
- Kaizen Gamorra from the very first Warren Ellis' arc. When asked why he orders his armies to invade major cities, he answers Gamorra -nation is built on terrorism, because Terror is its own reward. In addition, just before his Karmic Death thanks to Midnighter, he whines: I just wanted to have some fun.
Fan Fic
- Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light features Jack O' Lantern, who starts out with bank robberies before graduating to hostage-takings, gassings, Mind Rape, and finally orchestrating a city-wide gang war. He implies that the reason he commits these increasingly ghastly crimes is, quite simply, because he knows it's wrong. Jack O' Lantern also brags about being so superior to people who in his mind hide their impulses behind their civilized facades, and develops an almost insane hatred for Spider-Woman in part for defending those people and in part for interfering with his fun.
- Blizzard is a less malevolent example, in that he and his entire family are a group of chronic jailbirds who are always in and out of prison for offenses ranging from drug dealing to armed robbery to car theft. They actually enjoy prison, which for them is an extended family reunion. On the other hand, Even Evil Has Standards and Blizzard and draws the line at rape or murder. When an army of Brainwashed And Crazy supervillains are invading New York, Blizzard actually helps Spider-Woman protect the people of the city, before sticking around for the police to take him back to Ryker's Island.
Film
- The Dark Knight: The Joker, as the above quote indicates.
- Oddly enough, though, the quote at the top of the page was (possibly) misapplied by Alfred. The motivations for the Bandit in Rangoon were never made clear - it could very well have been a way to keep the British from corrupting the tribal leaders, from his point of view.
- The main character's former partner in End of Days suggests they cast their lot with Satan under the reasoning that their long careers as mercenaries meant they had no chance of "going upstairs" anyway, so they might as well have fun while alive.
- The evil scientist from The Human Centipede wants to join together three peoples' digestive systems. Why? Well, why the hell not?
- Castor Troy from Face/Off ought to qualify.
Troy: You're not having any fun, are you, Sean? Why don't you come with us? Try terrorism for hire, we'll blow some shit up. It's more fun!
- Kathlyn's reason for destroying her Ladykiller In Love steph-brother's relationship in Cruel Intentions.
Kathryn: You were very much in love with her. And you're still in love with her. But It Amused Me to make you ashamed of it. You gave up on the first person you ever loved because I threatened your reputation. Don't you get it? You're just a toy, Sebastian. A little toy I like to play with. And now you've completely blown it with her. I think it's the saddest thing I've ever heard.
- The sociopathic door gunner from Full Metal Jacket. While machine-gunning Vietnamese peasants from his helicopter:
Joker: How can you shoot women and children?
Gunner: Easy. You just don't lead 'em so much! (cackles) Ain't war hell?
- Deconstructed by the two killers in Funny Games. They give several conflicting backstories and motives, but ultimately they have none. They exist solely to be villains in the film.
- The Creepy Child Enfante Terrible titular character of The Good Son.
- John Ryder from The Hitcher.
- All the Mad Scientists in Igor are of the traditional sort, loving evil for its own sake. But the prize goes to the king, who created a weather-controlling device that cast the entire country under permanent storm clouds, destroying the citizens' livelihood, and then suggested they all turn to mad science to make the country successful again. Okay, and... why did he do this, again?
- Reservoir Dogs: "Was that as good for you as it was for me?"
- Specifically, Mr. Blonde: "Listen kid, I'm not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don't give a good fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It's amusing, to me, to torture a cop. You can say anything you want cause I've heard it all before. All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain't gonna get."
- "It's so hard to keep this smile from my face, Losin' control, yea I'm all over the place!"
- Hannibal Lecter, the quintessential psychopathic serial killer, at least in Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter, and Red Dragon.
- The three killers from The Strangers.
Why are you doing this to us?
Because you were home.
- Lola from The Transporter 2 is outright ax crazy. When the hero asks her why she slaughters people nearly at will she says, "Because it's fun".
- The Warriors.
Swan: Why'd you do it? Why'd you waste Cyrus?
Luther: No reason. I just like doing things like that.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West, opening the door to severe Leather Petticoating.
- Hey, bitch stole her shoes - that shit don't fly in the merry old land of Oz.
- Michael Myers from the Halloween films is never given a concrete motivation (they're always retconned) and Dr. Loomis, his psychiatrist, is convinced that Myers is pure evil, plain and simple. Moreover, he isn't even shown to enjoy his actions. Apparently, he murders people for literally no reason, which makes him all the more frightening.
- Despite the (former) picture above, Agent Smith is an aversion. He may do a huge amount of evil things, but he does them for a simple reason:
Agent Smith: More.
- Agent Smith's motivation may have been entirely self-serving: "I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it."
- Smith is definitely not doing things for the Evulz in the first film, but his motives certainly seem to slide that direction during the sequels.
- It's clear at the very end of the trilogy that for all the philosophical nihilistic motives he claims to be acting on, Smith doesn't really understand WHY he is doing what he does, but he DOES seem to enjoy himself in the process, so maybe he counts after all?
Bane: (Being assimilated into Smith.)"Oh, God..."
Agent Smith: "Mmm. 'Smith' will suffice."
- Daisy Pringle, a Creepy Child from The Wicker Man.
Daisy: The little old beetle goes 'round and 'round. Always the same way, y'see, until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing!
Sgt. Howie: 'Poor old thing'? Then why in God's name do you do it, girl?
- The truck-driver in Duel.
- Played straight rather well with Gabriel in The Prophecy.
Gabriel: I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.
- Chad in In the Company of Men. When asked why he manipulated a deaf woman into a love triangle, he says "Because I could."
- Alex from A Clockwork Orange has no other motive for his rape and ultraviolence than that he enjoys it. This actually brings him into conflict with the rest of his gang when they start to insist that their crimes yield a more substantial payout.
- A deleted scene in Dogma revealed that the triplets from Hell died when they were being carted to Juvenile Hall for bashing in a baby's head to see what it would look like.
- Josie And The Pussycats, of all places. As soon as the band and Wyatt meet he is nothing but rude and dismissive of Valerie, to the point of leaving her by the side of the road when their car starts (He thought she was "already in") and delivering only two party invitations instead of three (Well, she could still come anyway). Towards the end of the film she learns too much, so then he begins to deliberately try to push her out of the picture for the sake of the evil plan, but for the first hour there is absolutely no goal or plan, he seems to be doing it just to watch her squirm.
- The villain in The Vanishing is an emotional blank slate. The greatest high of his life was when he saved his daughter from drowning. Now he wants to see if he can get a similar high from doing something really evil.
- The Gremlins of Gremlins are pretty much made of this trope. Even those who aren't as sadistic as Stripe or Mohawk act without a care for the consequences of their actions.
- In The Crow, Top Dollar gives a speech about how profiting from Devil's Night has grown boring to him, and the criminals of the city should sow mayhem purely for the evil of it.
- In Space Buddies, Mr. Finkle is given absolutely no motivation for attempting to sabotage the mission when it could have been as easy as just having one line about him being a double agent for the Russians or something.
- Paranormal Activity: Katie's demon. Honestly, it slams the door shut then bangs on the other side of it just to fuck with them.
- Indeed, Katie even acknowledges this trope when she asks "Do you think it would have left footprints if it didn't want to? Do you think it would do ANYTHING if it didn't want to?"
- In the 2007 ending, the demon fucks with them one last time. Just before the police discover Katie, a light down the hall is turned on and then turned off. The police end up shooting Katie because they were startled by the sound of someone slamming a door behind them.
- Orin Scrivello from Little Shop Of Horrors amputates a girl's jaw just so he can give her a hideous prosthesis.
- This is discussed in Scream, which was big on Lampshading various horror film Tropes. Randy points out how about halfway through the film that in most horror movies "Motives are incidental." The eventual killer does have one (rather flimsy) motive for the carnage he unleashes, but does lampshade this fact.
- Several of the villains in 8mm. The rich old man who commissioned the snuff film? According to his lawyer, "He did it because he could." Machine, the man who actually committed the murder, sums it up horrifically:
Machine: Mommy didn't beat me. Daddy didn't rape me. I'm this way because I am. There's no mystery. Things I do, I do them because I like them! Because I want to!
Literature
- Carcer from the Discworld novel Night Watch. "The sort that joins up for the looting, and that you end up hanging as an example to the men". Possessed of a pair of shoulder demons, in competition with each other.
- While Nyarlathotep from HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos often works to fulfill the wishes of the Outer Gods or release the Great Old Ones, a lot of the times he seems to be messing with mankind for no other reason than his own amusement. In Nyarlathotep, he seems to be destroying the world without any actual motive. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, his goal is apparently to snatch off the earthly gods from their scented revels in the glorious sunset city purely to screw with them. Also, in spite of apparently sending Carter off to achieve this goal, he betrays Carter for no apparent reason other than, again, to be a real dick. The ways of the Outer Gods are essentially beyond human comprehension. In The Dreams in the Witch-House, he appears as a black-skinned expy of Satan. He's even worse in other authors' appropriations of the character.
- Fantomas: the valuables he steals is just an added bonus, what he really enjoys is to spread fear.
- Pretty much the guiding philosophy of Acheron Hades from the Thursday Next series, and probably the rest of his family as well. He even says as much in one of the quotes from his book "Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit"; despite the title he feels that crime-for-money is rather crass and much prefers evil for evils sake.
- Inverted in The Acts of Caine. The bad guys always act out of self-interest, ideology, or pure hedonistic lust. The protagonist is the one who, for shits and giggles, escalates conflicts almost compulsively. So far this includes "escalating" a verbal argument into a lethal fight, a skirmish with an ogrillo tribe into ethnic cleansing, and a minor political conflict into a civil war. (And the bad guys are still worse.)
- In the Young Wizards series the Lone Power's primary motivation seems to be that It enjoys suffering.
- Edgler Vess from Dean Koontz' Intensity is a self-proclaimed homicidal adventurer, who loves to kill just for the sheer intensity of it.
- Vassago from another Dean Koontz novel Hideaway kills people so he could be reincarnated as one of the demon princes in Hell.
- Every villain in every Dean Koontz book ever written ever.
- In CS Lewis' Perelandra, Satan himself is this. While he has real (and deeply malicious) ambitions, when he can't move directly toward them he's just as happy torturing small animals or tearing up the turf, so long as he can hurt something.
- In James Beauseigneur's Christ Clone trilogy when Decker, the viewpoint character, asks The Anti Christ Christopher Goodman why he does what he does when he knows he's going to lose the reply is "Because it feels so good to twist the nose of God!"
- In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, O'Brien admits that the Party isn't looking forward to improving the world, only seeking power for the sake of power, oppression for the sake of oppression. Ironically, this is the same reason why the nameless prole woman sings: just for the sake of singing.
- Jack Mort, a minor villain from Stephen King's Dark Tower series likes to hurt people and has ruined the lives of two major characters just for his own sadistic joy.
- A Song of Ice and Fire — The series has some minor villains, who seem to be along just for their own sick pleasures. The worst ones would be the huge rapist knight Ser Gregor Clegane (among countless other atrocities sickening in nature), the inhumanly cruel outcasts in the Brave Companions, aka the Bloody Mummers, sadistic Ramsey Snow and the heartless boy-king Joffrey Baratheon, who practically revels in his power and prefers to make people fear him (not to forget what he did to Ned Stark).
- Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. This guy likes to kill, beat up and rape people for his own enjoyment and one could say he certainly deserves the treatment he gets after being brainwashed...
- Organizations with essentially the same motives as 1984's The Party are a recurring element in the satirical horror novels of Bentley Little. e.g. The Store is about a Walmart-esque retail chain that goes far out of its way to be as oppressive and cause as much unnecessary suffering as it can; The Association is about a homeowner's association that does the same; The Policy is about an insurance company that does the same.
- Warrior Cats: Okay, so we know that Sol wants to use the Three's powers to gain control over all cats living around the lake and eliminate belief in StarClan, but his manipulation of the Twoleg place cats doesn't have anything to with his plans, and was seemingly done for the hell of it. Plus, he doesn't seem that committed to his goal, doesn't approach it with much urgency, and seems to get way too much enjoyment from messing with the main characters' minds.
- Dr. Mabuse, who was inspired by Fantomas (see above). In addition to spreading fear, however, Mabuse wants to destroy the world... and laugh maniacally over the rubble.
- Bellatrix LeStrange from the Harry Potter series always seems to have way too much fun killing people and breaking their stuff.
- Um, yeah. Like, torturing innocent people into insanity? Would that count?
- The werewolf Greyback also qualifies. He takes to infecting ''small children'' because he thinks they will be more likely to join his cause if they are infected young. He claims motives such as overthrowing the wizards, but most of his actions are purely for the fun of destroying people.
- According to the Harry Potter Lexicon
 , all Dark creatures (including werewolves) harm people for the sake of harming people, not for survival like normal animals. Greyback is unique because he hurts people in his human form.
- At the end of the Darren Shan Saga, it is revealed that Desmond Tiny's plan - fortunately foiled by Darren - involved magically fathering both Darren and Steve and giving the Vampaneze the fire coffin (so that they could find the Vampeneze Lord) and the Vampires a special stone that would help them in their hour of need (made from the brain of a dragon). He then manipulated events to ensure that Steve and Darren both went to see the Cirque du Freak, paving the way for Darren to eventually become a Vampire Prince and Steve to become the Vampaneze Lord. He then pits the two against one another, insisting that the vampires only have three chances to kill Steve before he overthrows the Vampires and later tells them that whichever boy won - Darren or Steve - would become the Lord of Shadows and kill all of their friends. When the vampires used the stone gift to create more vampires, it would create a new breed of violent ones. The reason he did all of this? He looked into the future and saw that things were going to be too peaceful for his liking, so he set the stage for a lot of chaos to amuse him.
- The protagonists of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom, as well as many of the men in the prostitutes' stories, like to rape, torture, murder, financially ruin, and otherwise harm innocent people, for pleasure.
- Speculated as being one of the motives of the mutineers in the first Empire From The Ashes book for meddling with human civilization.
- Eragon: Galbatorix eats, erm, I mean, kills babies For The Evulz. Out Of Character for the otherwise not too evil dictator; probably just an attempt on Paolini's part to reestablish him as our resident Complete Monster. He wouldn't want us mistaking Galbatorix for a misunderstood Knight Templar Designated Villain, right? Not that that stopped anyone.
- In The Halfling's Gem, Artemis Entreri needs to get off a ship with his captive, and there's no reason why he couldn't just sneak away with a lifeboat in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, he decides to murder the whole crew in their sleep and then set the ship on fire so that the captain will burn to death.
- The protagonist in Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat starts hurting people and animals around him For The Evulz or, as he himself puts it: in the "spirit of PERVERSENESS".
- Melisande Shahrizai, of the Kushiels Legacy series. When asked why she started a civil war and tried to conquer her own country she responds with, "Because I could."
- The Vardii Collective Military in Earth 2350 killed all life on a planet because, hey, if you have a crust-melting superweapon on hand, why not use it on someone you don't like?
Live Action TV
- Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation'', half the time. The other half he's playing a mentor...
- Arguably, Gul Madred, the Cardassian interrogator from "Chains of Command". Eventually, he lays off of the torture and drugs when he realizes that Picard really doesn't know what he wants to hear... and then picks up where he left off and keeps going for the sole purpose of breaking Picard's brain.
- In Doctor Who, we have this dialogue between Martha and a Toclafane:
Martha: But why? Why come all this way just to cause all this death and destruction?
Toclafane: Because it's FUN.
- From the same series, the Master fit this trope after he lost anything resembling a motive, or, as one of the producers said while trying to describe his actions in "Last of the Time Lords": "He is a twelve year old and the world is his bed room." No wonder he felt an affinity for the Toclafane!
- Also, his last appearance in the last serial of the Classic Series. He has just escaped the doomed planet that the Doctor is still trapped on. Does he then go and steal the Doctor's TARDIS and call it a day? No, he instead goes over to a youth-club to mind-rape the kids and sic them on the Doctor when he shows up again. Why? Because the Master is an enormous dick, that's why.
- The 80s were arguably the nadir of this for the Master. It got to the point where he would be used when they couldn't think of a good motivation for the villain, because his being "the Master" was motivation enough. Hence his incredibly evil schemes to transport Concorde through time into the distant past and muck about slightly with the signing of the Magna Carta.
- Played For Drama and deconstructed in the Big Finish audio Master. All his evil plans were never expected to work, they were only designed to cause as much misery and destruction as possible. Why? Because as one of the Doctor's titles is Time's Champion, the Master is Death's Champion.
- In the 2010 episode "Flesh and Stone", the Weeping Angels tell the Doctor they are forcing Amy to count down to her death "for fun, sir."
- Similarly, a villain in the Torchwood episode "Countrycide", when asked the reason for his actions, simply responds "Because it made me happy."
- And there's this quote from a charming recurring villain in "Exit Wounds", the second season finale:
Captain John Hart: Do I mean fun or carnage? I always get those two mixed up.
- Dr. Mikoto Nakadai in Bakuryu Sentai Abaranger is an Evil Genius who is utterly bored with life... until he discovers that tormenting the heroes and plotting widespread death and destruction is just the kick he's been missing.
- Similarly, in the Supernatural episode "The Benders", Sam gets captured by a family of cannibal hillbillies, and Dean allies himself with a female county cop (whose brother was captured by the same hillbillies) to get him back. At the end, the female cop asks the hillbilly patriarch why they killed her brother, and he answers, "Because it was FUN." She shoots him off-screen.
- Subtly subverted in the Millennium episode "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me". Four demons cause death and destruction behind the scenes apparently just because it's fun for them. Except at the end, it's revealed (by Frank Black himself) that the demons are very lonely, simply doing evil not because they like it, but because it's what they've been doing forever and they don't know what else to do.
- About the only reason why Arthur Petrelli of Heroes does anything. Mr. Linderman of Season One wanted to blow up NYC to heal the world and Adam Monroe of Season Two wanted to release a deadly virus to give his people a second chance, but Arthur didn't even bother with idealistic pretense. He just spouted the usual villainous cliches, and even then in a half-hearted fashion, as if he could barely be bothered to even offer a modicum of justification for his douchery.
- Angelus during season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who nearly destroyed the world just for the giggles. Somebody earlier mentioned what could be more evil than leering at nuns? How about killing an entire convent just to drive one girl insane? Yeah, he did that because he could. And then he made her a vampire.
- Most demons and vampires are like this, by their very nature. Two villains, however, get special mention: Spike and Ethan Rayne. Spike at least has an excuse, he's a vampire, and therefore is Always Chaotic Evil. Ethan doesn't even have this excuse; he's just an ordinary human who worships pain and chaos.
- Angel and Spike have a conversation in Angel concerning how they committed atrocities For The Evulz — but in different ways. Spike loved killing for the sake of it and didn't bother to give his victims another glance. Angelus couldn't look away from his victims and relished their suffering.
- Spike could also be considered a subversion. While he enjoys killing humans as individuals, he actually likes human society in general (with Sex Pistols being his favorite rock band) and doesn't want to see it destroyed.
Spike: "The thing is, I like this world. You've got Manchester United, dogracing, and people. Millions of people, all walking around, like Happy Meals on legs."
- While, in the beginning, Warren Mears' motive is world domination, towards the end of the season, and especially in the Season 8 comics, he basically just does these things for shits and giggles.
- Jonathan Creek, given that it focuses on Locked Room Mysteries and other planned murders, usually has very rational and logical villains with complex motives. Thus this trope came as something of a surprise when it was played in season four - after the media suggests that a series of murders are inspired by the fact that all the women killed were named after flowers (as an attempt to "deflower women") and the real killer is caught, Jonathan notes that no-one had considered the idea that a young woman would kill other young women "simply because she likes to". The floral connection of the names was just a coincidence.
- Criminal Minds: A trio of killers graduate from vandalism to murder, and one of them is caught editing footage from their latest killing (to The Dead Weather of all things). When asked why they did it especially in light of the fact that unlike the profile they had steady jobs in a bad economy, the lone survivor can only say "Because it's fun."
- Also the (unrelated) rioters in the same episode.
- This seems to be the case for the Reaper George Foyet as well. The core of his character is that he gets off (maybe literally, it's hard to tell) on manipulating and having power over people.
- Adrian Bale in the early episode "Won't Get Fooled Again". He agrees to tell the BAU how to disarm a complicated bomb, and in exchange he will be transferred from his maximum security prison to a mental hospital, and Agent Gideon will have to apologize to his victims' families, and admit that it was entirely his fault their respective relative died. When the inevitable Wire Dilemma occurs, Bale, even though doing so completely invalidates his deal, purposely tells them to cut the wrong wire... because the bomb blowing up will give him some kind of thrill.
- It's a TV show about FBI profilers who hunt down (mostly) serial killers. At least half the episodes fall into this trope.
- Rico in Hannah Montana explains the fact that he is always trying to make people (his so called friends no less) miserable as "I'm rich and bored, it's what I do."
- On an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a serial rapist and murderer who is also a Phony Psychic keeps butting into a case in which he is actually the killer. After he's captured, a detective asks him why he did it, since he'd probably have gotten away with it if he hadn't. His response? "I just had to see what I had set in motion. The expressions on your faces were priceless. This place was like a big beehive that I poked with a stick."
- To be fair to the poor idiot, real life serial killers are known for attempting to insert themselves into police investigations - so much so that anyone who does so pretty much jumps to the top of the suspect list.
- CSI episode "Fannysmackin'", where local teens beat tourists to death.
- Broken Aesop: At the end of the episode, we're supposed to feel sorry for the teens.
- This isn't really true. The point made at the end was that these kids were bored and were stupid enough to pick this to break the boredom.
- Every villain in the 1960's Batman TV show. Has even one of them ever tried to commit a subtle and/or profitable crime?
- In the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" Saffron implies she might be this, after Mal questions her about why she needed such a convoluted plan.
Saffron: "You're assuming the payoff is the point."
- Professional Wrestling: The Big Bossman practically sprinted past the Moral Event Horizon and dove into Complete Monsterdom for no reason whatsoever, other than that he enjoyed it.
- In Kamen Rider Kuuga The Big Bad was quite different from other final bosses of Kamen Rider, no speech about his desire to win the game, all he wants to do is fight Yosuke and even as he died fighting him. He didn't whine about how a mortal beaten him, just smiling as he watches Yuusuke being so violent.
- A rather light example in The Goodies: Bill's just signed up to do a row of extremely violent shows for the BBC. Graeme and Tim, bewildered, simply ask why he'd join up for such 'immoral, gratuitous violence'.
Bill: Oh, don't worry, I have a perfectly good reason.
Graeme: Oh really? What's that?
Bill: I like violence! (jumps Graeme, beginning to strangle him)
- Jim Moriarty from Sherlock: he threatens to blow up a series of bombs in London just because he was bored and to get Sherlock's attention.
- The Vampire Diaries - The motivation for most of Damon Salvatore's actions.
- On Degrassi The Next Generation, Peter likes Manny, but Emma likes Peter. Manny gets drunk, and Peter films Manny stripping and uses it for blackmail. Emma then puts Peter in leather pants and blames Manny, but starts dating the guy who filmed her best friend stripping. Strike that. That whole plot was For The Evulz. Peter's motives are more clear in season 6. (Sean likes Emma, Peter's dating Emma, Peter frames Sean for "possession".) And he actually gets a random Face Heel Turn in season 7.
Music
- Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash:
"But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."
- Voltaire's "When You're Evil" pretty much sums up the trope.
And it's so easy when you're evil
This is the life, you see
The Devil tips his hat to me
I do it all because I'm evil
And I do it all for free
Your tears are all the pay I'll ever need
- My Chemical Romance's "I Never Told You What I Do For A Living"
It ain't the money
And it sure as hell ain't just for the fame
It's for the bodies I claim
And those only go so far
- Only a Lad by Oingo Boingo discusses Johnny, who appears to have been born this way, despite society's attempts to suggest otherwise (Primarily as an excuse not to deal with it.)
His teachers didn't understand,
They kicked him out of school at a tender, early age just because
He didn't want to learn things,
Had other interests...
He liked to burn things!
- Such Horrible Things by Creature Feature:
I'm not a bad man
Even though I do bad things, very bad things, such horrible things
But it's not quite what it seems, not quite what I seem
Ah hell, I'm exactly what I seem.
Tabletop Games
- In Exalted, the Ebon Dragon is the incarnation of this trope. Seriously, when the world was being created from formless chaos, he invented the entire concept of betrayal. He also argued for the invention of a being of virtue and light to defend the world solely because its formation would empower him as something to oppose. His power suite is built entirely around dicking people over. And just to cap it off, while he's trapped in the prison-body of his king like the rest of his kin, he would gladly make his escape back into the world and slam the door shut behind him in the face of the Yozis, and possibly seal them away for all eternity just to laugh in their faces. This guy just doesn't do it For The Evulz, he wrote the book on it as a checklist for personal life goals. The only consolation is that he is such a complete pathological dick that when sealing his kin while escaping, his own component souls are likely to betray him and trap the rest of him within the permanently sealed hell.
- Quite a few Dark Eldar and followers of Chaos in Warhammer 40000 have lost whatever reasons they once might have had for their journey to what lies beyond the Moral Event Horizon and are now in it for the giggles.
- The Dark Eldar are a particularly stellar example as the reason for their current predicament (hiding in the Webway and constantly hunted by the god of perversion) is that their entire civilization imploded in an orgy of hedonism and depravity, and they have no intention of stopping.
- While this is buried away in some fairly obscure canon, the Dark Eldar carry on as they are out of a deep-seated spiritual dread. All the evuls are to try and stave off the attention of the god of perversion for just a bit longer
- The Orks, meanwhile, are an entire species who embark upon interstellar campaigns of genocide for entertainment purposes. "Orkz wuz made fo' fightin' an' winnin'!"
- Most who serve Chaos do so for the promise of power and advancement from them, or are even just clinging to it for the hopes their god(s) may help them (they generally won't, and even if they do, you still probably won't find it pleasant.)... but it's not common for many of their servants to simply become addicted to the horror they inflict in the names of Chaos. With Khrone's followers, it's generally hard to tell due to their sheer Ax Crazy.
- Once you get far enough into slaaneshi cultism, everything you do to yourself/other beings is for some kind of high. removing your own arm then replacing it with some ones else's leg, for teh lolz.
- Remiare, the assassin, in Mechanicum, who casually burned out a man's memory centres simply because she enjoys making living beings suffer.
- The old fantasy Warhammer has the Skaven... Frankly, most of their clans neither want nor need a motive for what they do.
- Though they are pretty goal-oriented whenever they are put up against someone of equal or superior skill (and considering the strength of the average skaven, that isn't too hard).
- Tends to happen rather spectacularly every time PCs are permitted to be actually evil rather than just designated. The Full Frontal Nerdity take on this gave us the cleverly innocent name of Dark Lord Evisceratrix O'Kittensquisher. This is not much of an exaggeration.
- Depending on what Haunt you trigger in Betrayal at House on the Hill, the Traitor's motivation can range from Tragic Monster to More Than Mind Control to this. The poor preacher might randomly turn into a werewolf, or the geeky Tagalong Kid may just decide the Giant Spiders are just too cool to fight.
- Vampire: The Requiem has the Crassus family. It's a horrible, horrible example to retype here, so just check it out on their section on the Requiem article.
- Fiends in Dungeons And Dragons. As the Witch-queen Iggwilv explains in the Demonomicon:
"To understand a demon is to know what drives it. All demons crave carnage and absolute ruin, but to what end? Unlike devils, demons do not commit acts of violence from a philosophical desire to foment evil for its own sake. The desires of a demon are less existential. More instinctual."
Theatre
- Shakespeare is known for doing this:
- Iago's motives from Othello were noticeably thin and contradictory, which leads many scholars to surmise that he doesn't have motives at all, only excuses. This trope was almost named "The Iago" because of this. The alternative title Motiveless Malignity is a term Shakespearean scholars often use to describe his actions.
- The "Villains by Necessity" speech in King Lear Edmund gives, in which he mocks people blaming their faults on the stars, as they did him, for being an illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester conceived under "bad stars." Edmund sums up with "S'foot (bullshit): I should have been what I am had the maidenliest star twinkled on my bastardizing." It's also possible that he went bad because people thought he would, in something like a Self Fulfilling Prophecy. Of course, to Edmund it doesn't matter anymore...
- Don John from Much Ado About Nothing, actually mentions early in the play that since people have pegged him as a bastard already, he might as well get into it and enjoy himself.
- Richard III: He tells us in the very first speech of the play that he's going to be a villain because he has nothing else with which to occupy himself.
- Aaron of Titus Andronicus does everything he does over the course of the play because he simply likes being evil.
Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?
I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
I should repent the evils I have done;
Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will.
If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.
- Ursula in the stage version of The Little Mermaid, from her Villain Song entitled "I Want the Good Times Back".
Video Games
- Kefka from Final Fantasy VI is the result of crossing this trope with Nietzsche Wannabe. Thanks to the Magitek experiments he's undergone, his mind has rotted to the point that destruction and death are the only things that bring meaning to his life, so he destroys and kills everything and everyone he can because it's the only thing that puts a smile on his face. And boy does it ever.
- Saleh, one of the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Tales of Rebirth is an extreme case that he is very much repulsed with anything good and strives to do evil and it just delights him to see people suffer.
- Kirei Kotomine, the Big Bad of the Fate route in Fate Stay Night, was going to empty the contents of the Holy Grail, an Artifact Of Doom containing a tangible form of all of man's evil upon the world, causing untold amounts of death and destruction. When The Hero asks him why he's doing it, he replies with a speech that can be summed up as: "Just as some people find music or art entertaining, I can only find amusement in watching other people suffer".
- The Heaven's Feel scenario turns this into a Deconstructed Trope by giving us Kotomine's backstory and showing just what sort of twisted and tormented person he is: Kotomine is perfectly capable of understanding the nuances of right and wrong and has, in fact, in several occasions tried to live a good life — by for instance becoming a priest specializing in healing and trying to have a family — while at the same time being utterly unable to get any pleasure from life unless he's causing someone pain and suffering. He is fully aware of just how deviant this makes him and he considers his birth to be a 'mistake'. This in fact turns his motives into a subversion. What he is truly aiming for is something close to a rage against the heavens.
- Yuber and Luca Blight from the Suikoden series.
- Both Psycho For Hire Grims and Lubikka Hakinnen from Super Robot Wars. Archibald forced Elzam von Branstein to make the Sadistic Choice between killing his wife or having his whole colony gassed, as well as bombing an excavation site all for the lulz. His predecessor Lubikka is also said to have done a lot of atrocities for the lulz, and takes extra lulz if he is torturing Tytti Noorbuck mentally.
- Archibald actually does have a grudge against the Branstein family, but when not torturing them, he just really likes killing people. His hobbies include joining rebellions that he couldn't give a damn about, "accidentally" firing on civilians in an occupied country, and drinking red tea because it looks like blood.
- Majora's Mask from the Legend of Zelda game of the same name. This is emphasized by the fact that the person it chooses to possess is a (skull) kid, and during one of its three boss fights, it dances around giggling like a child. It doesn't seem to have a clear reason for all of the horrible things it does, part of what makes it scary as fuck.
- Doubly so in the questionably canon manga adaptation, where the Mask is revealed to have hexed Kafei into a child for the hell of it when he refused to play with the possessed Skull Kid, and once discarding the Skull Kid, comments that Link "looks like a fun fellow" and tosses off a few inexplicably creepy lines about how he wants to play with Link now, eventually settling on "tag". Majora further has a Villainous Breakdown as he and Oni Link fight, calling Oni Link a "meanie" when he hits him the first time and giggling madly before repeating his actions from the video game of running around tittering with excitement. In the final form, he bawls out Link for ruining his "game", screaming that humans had always "played" willingly with him before. We're given a pretty good view that Majora threw the entire world into chaos and tried to destroy it purely because it was fun.
- Not Majora himself, but they establish a Freudian Excuse for the Skull Kid, who was being influenced by him at one point in the game. A long time ago, the Skull Kid and the Giants were friends (his ONLY friends), but the giants left to sleep in the four compass directions leaving the Skull Kid all alone and feeling he had been abandoned. This caused him to become bitter and antagonistic toward people, which got turned Up To Eleven when Majora possessed him.
- Plus the evil plan brings his friends back to visit/stop him from destroying the world!
- Doctor Neo Cortex in Crash Bandicoot.
Coco Bandicoot: Cortex, why do you keep doing stuff like this?
Doctor Neo Cortex: Well, actually it's pretty fun. You should try it. Y'know, riding around in huge, rumbling machines and whatnot? Very stimulating.
- Perhaps in the new games, but in the original three Neo Cortex was always all about World Domination.
- The killer in Persona 4 decides to cure a serious case of Small Town Boredom with murder and (attempted) rape. In his own words:
"I did that stuff 'cause I could. And it got interesting, so I watched."
- Rugal Bernstein from King of Fighters. Some of his plans have a reasonable motivation, but he usually just does evil because he's amused at how low he can sink. Why do you think he killed all those people he then made into decorative bronze statues? Because he could.
- The Evil Matriarch Hilda from Fire Emblem 4. Most of her acts seems to derive from her lust of power. But torturing her sister in law Tiltyu to death and then her daughter too? That's simply done For The Evulz. Also, when her husband was very much disdainful towards child hunting so they can be sacrificed to an evil god, she goes ahead and supports it wholeheartedly. For what? For The Evulz.
- Carnage and mass destruction are integral parts of fun for Gig from Soul Nomad and the World Eaters. He is very open about this, by the way.
- Likewise, Thuris seems to cook up virulent, nigh-incurable plagues mainly for shits and giggles. The protagonist of the Demon Path trumps them both by a long shot. His/her final words after destroying reality itself in a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum? "It doesn't matter. It was fun."
- This is what The Adel Bernal's motivation boils down to essentially in Super Robot Wars Z.
- Meria, of Knights in the Nightmare, loves to run around blowing shit up. She will actually take it all the way to Asgard if you let her.
- Pokey/Porky Minch from the Earthbound series seems to fit this trope perfectly in Mother 2 and Mother 3. He pretty much states that being the hero doesn't sound like fun to him. In Mother 2 he seemed more like a harmless example who usually appeared to taunt or hinder Ness. Mother 3 however... his actions shifted more towards Complete Monster territory, transforming a peaceful island's plants and animals into violent chimeras, then gathered all the inhabitants on the island to his flying "utopia" so they could all watch as he awakened a dragon to destroy all of existence. All this because he was bored and needed a quick laugh.
- Rosso from Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. Her motivation boils down to "why not?". The rest of the Tsviets say similar things, to the tune of "We were made as killing machines, so why not do what we do best?"
- Most characters in Touhou have a reason for what they do, if not a good one. Except for Tenshi, who causes a lot of chaos and some earthquakes because she was bored. Utsuho would also qualify, but she got beaten down before she actually did anything.
- More than half of the Acts of Infamy in Evil Genius are done solely to make sure you're the most evil genius trying to Take Over The World.
- Malefor is a Complete Monster, no matter what fans try to portray him as. We're talking about a villain who kidnaps a baby dragon only too have some company after exposing her to darkness - no doubt putting her through terrible misery and suffering in the process. Then he launches an army of crazed apes (whom he eventually condemns to a Fate Worse Than Death simply because they do not seem totally loyal) to kill anybody who tries to stop him, so that he can destroy the entire world with a deadly blast. His motive is apparently Because Destiny Says So, but seriously - what would his actions accomplish?
- Not to mention when the heroes show up to stop him, he gets a kick out of using Mind Control to turn one against the other, and is visibly miffed when she breaks free, ruining his game. Then as the planet starts to disintegrate during the final battle, he gets an even bigger kick out of taunting them for being too late: "Welcome to the end of the world!"
- And if you you're really looking for nasty evil leadership, seems like the whole place of Sim Nation is an ultimate Crap Sack World that corrupt mayors can run cities in. Crime can be rampant on the streets, or a mayor can summon a tornado to hit that peaceful neighborhood, or he can even drive around and spill toxic waste in shopping districts.
- The people living in those cities aren't too bright for staying there either. Try reducing all firefighter budget to zero and set a few fires. As the industries explode and set the entire map on fire, you will find that even with a third of the map burning and another third already turned to ashes, 30% of people polled will still find traffic or taxes to be the biggest problem in town...
- Word Of God states that this is Wario's reason why he's working with the Subspace Army in Super Smash Bros Brawl. [1]
- Wario does have motivation in greed, but the efforts he goes through to get it, right down to literally shaking money out of enemies way too gleefully just proves he enjoys the methods as much as the gains.
- RICHARD Hawk, who laughs constantly while testing out a superweapon on New York City and filling Chicago with poison gas for no reason other than the fact that he just hates freedom for some reason.
- Most villainous contacts in City of Villains use you as a tool as part of a Xanatos Gambit, for some petty thefts or revenge plots, or trying to further their own (and, in some cases, your) agendas. Westin Phipps, on the other hand, poses as a charity worker and sends you to do things like kidnap an inspirational schoolteacher, destroy textbooks, and poison food supplies. Why? For no reason other than to crush the hopes of the downtrodden poor. People are split over whether or not he's evil enough to make even villains uncomfortable.
- Murry, the Demonic Talking Skull from the Monkey Island series fits this trope quite nicely.
"What! Murry, I did you a favor!"
"Yes, thus making my betrayal all the more evil! Muhahaha!"
- The first mission of Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception has Enemy Chatter showing that some Leasath chair forcers are raining bombs on a defenceless city just because they can spare the ordnance.
- Mass Effect: The Reapers plan to purge the galaxy of all intelligent life, including mankind, because... that's simply what they've been doing for ages.
"Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything. ... The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilisations rise, evolve, advance and at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished."
- It should be noted that this is game one of a planned trilogy, their motives right now may appear to be "for the evulz" but by the end of the third game it's likely that there will be an actual reason given.
- And in Mass Effect 2, their secondary motivation has been revealed to be reproduction. By way of melting the most appropriate races into primordial porridge. This porridge is then used as the primary ingredient for a gargantuan cyberorganic gestalt of the entire species in question, that then becomes the core of a new Reaper. While the biological imperative of this motivation is typical, the sheer absurd horribleness of it is probably Lulz related.
- Emperor Murod, Prince Sornehan, and Queen Galliene purposely cultivate Zero Percent Approval Ratings upon taking power? Because they're part of a demonic cult whose acolytes literally fuel their magical power with evil and suffering.
- SHODAN from System Shock. She's an apegy of villainy and bloodlust. First, Edward Diego tricks the hacker into removing her ethical restraints, and how does she thank him? By turning everyone except you into her mutant slaves, while letting Diego still have at least somewhat of a mind. Worst of all, she plans to use Citadel Station's mining laser to destroy the cities of Earth, and then use her mutant virus on anyone who survives her wrath.
- After you defeat her in the first game, there's also her appearance in System Shock 2. SHODAN merely used Dr. Marie Delecroix as a pawn for disposing of The Many after Dr. Janice Polito commits suicide. But she abandoned her when she needed her most. She also made a deal with you: if you destroy The Many, she will let you live. She never lets you come to the aid of another human being in need of your help. You destroy the Many, and she leaves you for dead. Only to fight you... and die. But not really, because you then see her TAKE OVER REBECCA SIDDONS! Why? 'Cuz she's "a perfect immortal machine!"
- Nene in Blue Dragon has an actual ultimate plan: he tricks your party into powering up their magic so he can steal it and save himself from a wasting disease, but in order to pull this off, he simply cackles and invokes this Trope at every one of their meetings. At a certain point, it starts to seem like he just sits around brainstorming new ways to make the heroes mad.
- In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion there is the Dark Brotherhood which the player can join. While some of the victims are slain for revenge or to send a powerful message to the Brotherhood's enemies, there are a few instances where there is no hint in that direction. On your second mission you are sent to stage a lethal accident on a harmless old man, who doesn't seem to have done ANYTHING to deserve his fate. Later you are sent to a fancy manor to where five guests have been lured by a false promise of hidden gold. No matter how much you socialize with the guests and how much information you get them to tell you about themselves(and each other), at no point do you get any slightest clue about why the Dark Brotherhood would want them dead. Quite frightening, if you think about it.
- The Dark Brotherhood are assassins. They kill people for payment.
- Actually, the first time you meet Lucien Lachance and ask him about the Dark Brotherhood, he remarks:
Lucien Lachance: '''We kill for profit, for enjoyment and for the glory of our Dread Father Sithis."
- The stark contrast from Morrowind's I Did What I Had To Do Morag Tong can be very disappointing for people coming to Oblivion from that game.
- The murder of Baenlin, the harmless old man who dies in the 'accident', is explained in a way, his nephew Caenlin moves into the house soon after the hit is complete, and if you talk to him and/or read the black horse courier article about Beanlin's death, you'll likely assume Caenlin used the hit to claim his inheritance.
- To get in, however, you must murder someone who doesn't deserve to die, like a shop keeper.
- That above statement about "for the glory of our Dread Father Sithis"? That gets even worse when you consider that canonically, Sithis isn't even sentient, it's the term for the void, basically nonexistence. The Dark Brotherhood take up many of their missions to kill people in order to appease an abstract concept that wouldn't even care. Talk about Complete Monsters.
- Fawful in the third Mario and Luigi game at first seems like he's pretty much just out to make everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom have a really bad day and nothing more, but then it is revealed he actually DOES have an evil plan. However, absolutely nothing he does to Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser and the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom in any way contributes to his evil plan, making this more of a subversion than an inversion.
- By the time Travis Touchdown reaches her, Bad Girl in No More Heroes is so utterly burned out by her career as an assassin that she slaughters countless gimp clones just for the fun of it. She openly admits that she has no reason to kill anyone, she does it to keep herself entertained. Travis, who is only slightly less of a Villain Protagonist than Kratos, finds himself disgusted.
- Most of the villains in the first Sly Cooper game have some sort of Freudian Excuse or another behind their criminal careers. Sir Raleigh, however, is simply a bored aristocrat who commits crimes and sinks ships to entertain himself.
- In Assassins Creed, Majd Addin is the only one of Altair's targets not to try and justify his actions by claiming they were for the greater good. When asked why he executed innocent people (to the point of performing the executions himself), he replies that he simply enjoyed the feeling of holding someone else's life in his hands.
- In Prototype, you (as Alex Mercer) can run around murdering absolutely anyone you care to using a multitude of techniques and abilities. True, they drop some health for you, but then why not absorb them instead of, say, throwing the smoldering remains of a helicopter at some random grouping?
- The Blood Roses from All Points Bulletin are bored rich kids who commit crimes for fun. Their leader, Jeung, started with killing a hobo just because he felt like it.
- Terumi Yuuki from Blazblue is directly responsible for a lot of the bad things that have happened to Ragna, Jin, Noel, Kokonoe, Arakune, and many others, and he has no motivation for doing many of these things except to be a
dickTroll.
- It goes deeper than that, though. Terumi has stated that if he is not hated, he would cease to exist. Therefore, he had to be as Troll-ish as possible and make as many people hate him. It's a double-subversion, however, because Terumi himself enjoys inflicting sufferings here and there.
- Seems to be almost the entire motivation for the witches in Umineko no Naku Koro ni especially the Voyager witches Bernkastel and Lambdadelta. But when you live for a thousand years, your sources of entertainment eventually start to run out.
- My own personal theory on how any why Kaizo Mario World was born. If so, it worked.
- Here's a humorous example from World Of Warcraft:
Undercity Champion: I punched a penguin on my way in here.
Argent Confessor Paletress: Oh, my. Do you feel remorseful, at least?
Undercity Champion: Nah, not really. I just wanted to see the look on your face. (laughs)
- Golden Sun Dark Dawn brings us Blados, a Card Carrying Villain who just plain loves his job. Whether it's kidnapping a child, blowing up and collapsing a cavern so the heroes can never go back to that area, taunting characters for being "too weak for a good fight", forcing the heroes to activate a forbidden Alchemy Machine and plunge most of the continent into a Total Eclipse Of The Plot, or turning a giant laser superweapon against his own country, it looks like he's only doing it for laughs.
Webcomics
- One Stolen Pixels strip has Francis trick Bill into thinking a pushbroom is the best weapon.
- The lich Xykon, the Big Bad from Order of the Stick is simply out to be as evil as possible, and often goes out of his way to commit atrocities just 'cause it's fun. The result is the bizarre twist of an
Affably Evil Evilly Affable Complete Monster.
Xykon: ...sure, I could've just blasted you all from above with fire and lightning and such... But I've always felt that when it's really important, it's worth to go that extra mile. Don't you agree?
<Last moving warrior in the room commits ritual suicide for the horrible deeds she did because of Xykon's tricks>
- Xykon was like this even as a mortal, but he got even worse when he realized that, as a lich, he could no longer taste coffee. Killing and torturing people are now the only pleasures Xykon has now that he can no longer enjoy a good or bad cup of coffee.
- Belkar may also qualify in his more murderiffic moments. Especially when he tries to get a Paladin to murder him in cold blood surely so she'd fall because of how funny it would be.
- General Tarquin is a really odd case. He thinks he's Above Good And Evil, but for some reason he keeps doing things in the most evil (and often Obviously Evil) way possible. Often it's quite possibly just to get what he wants regardless of who is hurt, but sometimes there's no logical reason for it at all.
"But you can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others."
- Bun-bun of Sluggy Freelance fame is sometimes this. A lot of the time, he's after something (money, strippers, alfalfa hay), but sometimes, he just wants a bit of a laugh. Ka-CLICK.
- In the second Dungeons and Discourse, Dmitri's character in Dresden Codak excuses stopping to eat the philosophical zombies with "Evil for Evil's sake." Then he kills off the entire party with the Dungeon Boss's mega-weapon. Again, For The Evulz. (His character type, Dark Kantian, is based on this trope.)
- Evil as a categorical imperative and whatnot.
- Richard from Looking for Group is a delightfully evil character who will happily slaughter entire villages out of sheer boredom. He takes great joy in seeing the hero of the comic, Cale, slowly become less innocent, more violent, and more cynical. His motivations are largely unknown, but after each of the other characters had explained their reasons behind the main quest, he simply states "I like to kill things. How do you not get that by now?"
- To be fair, he's not completely motiveless. Remember: that orphanage attacked him first!
- Actually, this is his main motivation for traveling with the group at all. He's bored, and enjoys all the chances he gets to do very bad, exceedingly violent things.
- During his trial in issue 6 Richard says that he feels he's on a path like Cale is.
- Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater frequently has this as the motivation for his behavior. Here's just one example out of many.
Dwarf Villager: By Moradin's beard! Why do only our homes and children burn!
Black Mage: Because it seemed excessively cruel! [winks]
- Cyndi of Penny and Aggie toys with others' lust for her, and manipulates people into abandoning their friends or into eating disorders and suicide attempts, simply because it amuses her: "I do like to play." Best summed up by Penny:
Penny: She never tries to win. She just tries to make everyone else lose.
- Juathuur averts this trope, and explicitly evokes it here. The comic, as a whole, makes a point that no one is evil 'just because', everyone has his reasons.
- This is the motivation for easily half the people and events involved in Ansem Retort. Axel even explicitly stated that this is why Zexion should steal tax dollars from his constituents to finance Axel's wedding: just to prove he could.
- In Girl Genius, most of the old Heterodyne family's sadistic experiments were For Science, but they left behind a Castle whose motivation for messing with prisoners is, aside from protecting heirs of the Heterodyne family, For The Evulz.
Web Original
- Blood Boy of Survival of the Fittest. Word Of God states he does have a motive, but it A) Doesn't make sense, and B) If it did, boils more or less down to this anyway.
- Don Sebastiano of the Whateley Universe. His idea of 'romance' is seducing a classmate, having sex with her until she's in love, then humiliating her in front of the whole school. And that's the least damaging side of him.
- Entire basis of Evil FTW, but not NEARLY so extreme.
- That Guy With The Glasses did a sketch about the Joker from The Dark Knight trying to come up with an origin story. After several rather ridiculous attempts, he decides to forsake the attempt altogether.
Joker: "Argh, that will never work! You know what? I'll just say I'm an asshole!"
- In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, it seems that this is part of Vegeta's motivation for his presence on (and subsequent attempt at destroying) Earth.
Vegeta: "Say goodbye to your planet, Kakarot!"
Goku/Kakarot: "That's not very nice."
Vegeta: "Of course not! I'm f** king evil!"
Western Animation
- All the villains from Captain Planet except Looten Plunder, Hoggish Greedly and Duke Nukem.
- Sly Sludge usually has greed as a motivation like Looten Plunder, but sometimes is just out to pollute apparently for the heck of it.
- Zarm is definitely the biggest example, trying to start nuclear wars just for kicks.
- Although eponymous Invader Zim does have a motive, it's obvious from his actions, particularly in flashbacks, that he's more concerned with the evulz than anything else.
- Especially since his actual mission is to observe and report. His decision to conquer and destroy is all for the heck of it. Well, and his ego.
- Shego from Kim Possible. her entire family is classic Lawful Stupid. When Kim, visiting another superheroic team composed of Shego's old family, points out that having a huge TV screen in their base that the villain can appear on any time he likes for spying purposes is a huge security flaw, Shego's response is an annoyed "Why do you think I left?!"
Hego: The more we fought evil, the more Shego liked it.
Ron: The fighting?
Kim: The evil.
- The anti-fairies in The Fairly OddParents go out to cause bad luck, for no other reason than to go out and cause it.
- Oh come on!! Who didn't mention babysitter of doom Vicky yet? Her very purpose in life is either to swindle cash or torture those under her care, even her own little sister. When Timmy (who needs his tonsils removed) demands why she is working in the hospital, she replies with this obvious answer: "I like volunteering in places where there's pain."
- From Bionicle, we have the Piraka, six (formerly seven) former Dark Hunters out for the Mask of Life. Oh, and they have hilariously Narmy commercials.
- Samurai Jack: In the DVD Commentary, Genndy Travakofsky mentioned the idea that Aku set up the Jackass Genie well in Episode VII as well as several other obstacles Jack encounters throughout his travels. He notes this isn't to capture Jack, but so Aku could just mess with the people he's already enslaved.
- One memorable episode of Teen Titans featured the season's Big Bad trying to create a giant tidal wave to drown the city- for no discernable reason at all. Admittedly, the one-shot villains often fell into this too, though were usually just following whatever their gimmick happened to be (except for Adonis, who just seemed to wreck things because it helped boost his ego).
- Also the Brotherhood of Evil, at least in their first appearance. There is no logic reason, other than being a massive dick (quite an accomplishment for a brain in a jar), that the Brain would use a black hole machine to destroy the Titans' home city. They weren't even there at the time, and he knew it. Even their later plan to capture and freeze every hero only seems to be so they can be evil without interruption.
- On the other hand, there's really quite a lot that the head of an international crime ring could do with a black hole machine, even if it's not spelled out. Can you say "extortion", anyone?
- Even Slade flirted with this — see "Forces of Nature", where Robin wonders why Slade wanted to destroy the city, and never gets an answer. For that matter, Thunder and Lightning from the same episode would fit under this label, although they have a more believable "motive" of causing trouble for the fun of it because they're immature jerks. (Being forced to consider the victims of their actions gives Thunder pause.)
- Slade in that episode could be Fan Wanked into setting the whole thing up to see what the Titans would do to stop it (thereby helping pick an apprentice- and it's only after that episode he decides to focus on Robin alone). Or it could just be Characterization Marches On, as they hadn't quite decided what they wanted to do with him yet.
- Sleeping Beauty has Maleficent. She tries to murder the titular character. And when that fails, she captures her Prince Charming so she can send him back when he's old and grey. Why? 'Cuz she's "the mistress of all evil!"
- On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius is pretty much evil for the sake of being evil. The sole focus of his Mega Corp is to make people miserable.
- Heloise too. On one occasion she was seen sucking up all the water around a tree just to get it to wilt.
- There is no doubt that this is the cause of Megabyte's actions later in the series. See page quote for explanation.
- In the Super Mario Bros cartoons, King Koopa and his kids are Card Carrying Villains that are always doing evil for the sake of doing evil. Occasionally they would have plans that involved financial gain, but evil always took top priority and financial gain was a bonus.
- Arguably, Swiper from Dora the Explorer might count. As a villain, Swiper's only motivation seems to be to steal Macguffins for the purpose of inconveniencing the protagonists and then throwing them away (similar to the jewel thief mentioned in The Dark Knight).
- Lamilton from The Boondocks. "Iy's fun to do bad things" is basically his catch phrase throughout the episode.
- In Powerpuff Girls, this is the only reason Him does anything.
- In Justice League Unlimited, though Lex Luthor does have a legitimate master plan, he explains this as his motive for the part where he tricks the League into thinking they were destined to become like their Knight Templar Alternate Universe selves.
Luthor: That's right, conspiracy buff, I spent seventy-five million dollars on a fake presidential campaign just to tick Superman off.
- Skeletor in the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe certainly qualifies. His motive was simply that he enjoyed being evil. He waxed rhapsodic about how much he loved evil. He found joy in any act of nastiness, no matter how petty or arbitrary, and was repulsed by anything good or nice. (Of course, being an '80s cartoon character, he never did anything really evil like, say, trying to kill anyone. But given how much fulfillment he found in even the smallest acts of evil, maybe he didn't feel the need to.)
- Eris from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy. Even though her actions are justified since she is the goddess of chaos after all, she seems to enjoy way too much what she does, and the worst part is that most of the time her goals are just petty or meaningless, like a kung-fu tournament or the main characters who haven't done anything to her yet.
- Mr. Black in episode 401 of The Simpsons, "Kamp Krusty", as demonstrated by his toast to the three juvenile delinquints he is employing as camp counselors:
Mr. Black: (Raising his glass) Gentlemen— to evil.
- Gnorga, the Queen of Trolls in A Troll In Central Park, who likes to watch babies cry just for fun and even goes so far as to sing a song about this being her motivation.
- Madam Mim in the Disney film The Sword In The Stone despises anything pleasant (such as flowers and sunshine) and tries to murder Arthur just because Merlin sees something good in him.
- The villains from Freddie As FRO 7, Freddie's aunt Messina and El Supremo, plan to take over the world by hypnotizing people for reasons completely unclear. However, El Supremo seems to be really into it, with evil laugh and everything, not to mention Messina, who boasts about her evil power in her song Evilmania.
- One episode of Johnny Bravo had the devil's nephew, IIRC, possess Johnny in order to turn off the filter to the city's water supply, giving the water a metallic taste. When Pops asks why the demon couldn't have done it himself, the demon says that he could, but it wouldn't be as interesting as forcing someone else to do it.
- While many of the other ghostly villains from Danny Phantom did what they did for money, power, revenge, or just because it was their job, Dark Danny clearly caused chaos and destruction throughout the Earth and the Ghost Zone mainly for this trope.
- Sid from Toy Story spends most of his free time thinking up ways of torturing toys for a quick laugh, including, but not limited to, tearing them apart and switching their pieces together.
Real Life
- Serial killers in general, especially the subset known as "thrill killers." A thrill killer is literally into murder for the hell of it. There are other subsets, with more Freudian motivations, but thrill killers are possibly the most terrifying kind - at least you can kind of relate to a former abuse victim. More examples follow below.
- The infamous Zodiac killer in the '70s. While at least one of the messages he left behind claimed that he was killing people in order to make them his slaves when he dies and is reborn in "paradice", the prevailing opinion among investigators has been that he was being intentionally misleading, that he was far more intelligent and educated than some of the letters he sent made him appear, and that he was killing simply because he believed he could do so and get away with it.
- Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, seems to have had similar beliefs.
- Likewise, Mr Starkweather.
- They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled/ They wanted to know why I did what I did/ Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.
— Bruce Springsteen, "Nebraska"
- John Allen Muhammad is on record saying that he did his crimes "for the sheer terror of it."
- Although there has been suggestion that it was part of a crazy plan to murder his ex-wife and make her look like just another victim of a serial killer so the crime couldn't be traced to him.
- More people know that Brenda Ann Spencer had no more reason for her crimes than "I don't like Mondays" than know who she is or what she did, thanks to The Boomtown Rats. For context, she used a rifle to shoot a bunch of elementary school students and other random people from her bedroom window, killing two men and injuring eight children. She later professed to actual motives in the Freudian Excuse category, but all indications are that she's just making this up to try to excuse herself from her actions, and she was just a good-old-fashioned sociopath. She also claimed to have been on PCP at the time.
- Anonymous, a faceless army of Internet trolls with minimal hacking expertise out to cause grief "for the lulz". The bulk of their antics are meanspirited but ultimately-harmless pranks (Your Mileage May Vary depending on
whether a given prank actually is harmless how seriously YOU take the Internet, you liberal nazi), but they did put flashing strobe-type graphics on an epilepsy website at one point. That said, characterizing Anonymous as a whole this way is tricky business, given just how many people are a part of it — members of "Anonymous" have also helped track down and stop child molesters and protested Scientology, although in some cases, this could be interpreted as simply taking out their impulses on Acceptable Targets.
- Cheyenne Cherry the 17 year old girl who threw a kitten into an oven because she doesn't like them, and she thought it would be funny. What the hell?
- In a similar vein, the two guys who posted a video of themselves lighting a cat on fire on the internet, eventually leading to the YTMND fad "NEDM", "Not Even Doom Music" can
make setting a cat on fire cool justify voting five for lighting a cat on fire.
- The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs, also known as The Ukrainian Thrill Killers, are a group of three young Ukrainian men who killed 21 people at random, filming and/or photographing most of their crimes. They claimed to have an interest in making snuff films, and even a prospective buyer for their films, but there's a strong possibility that's just an excuse, and not a very good one at that.
- Robert Hansen, who played The Most Dangerous Game with his victims.
- Serial killer Edmund Kemper claimed that he killed his grandparents "just to see what it felt like".
- This is referenced in the The Silence of the Lambs, when Jame Gumb did much the same thing.
- Ted Bundy said the same thing when asked why he chose to take a bite out of one of his many female victims.
- Robert Berdella once offered a similar explanation ("to see what would happen") when asked why he tried gouging out the eyes of one of his victims.
- Aaron Joseph Streets, who believed he was going to prison, figured he may as well go down for something significant and bashed and murdered a defenseless old man. When caught by police he talked about the high he got from the murder, better than any drug to take someone's life away.
- Cats and bottle-nosed dolphins tend to kill, and sometimes play with the corpses, for fun. In the latters case some males even rape for fun.
- Leopold and Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks just to see if they could commit the perfect crime. They couldn't.
- 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante murdered her 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olton and buried her in a shallow grave that had been dug a week earlier. The reason? She wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Alyssa later admitted to digging two graves, leading police to theorize that she had initially intended to kill her twin brothers.
- Many dictators follow this trope. The most notorious example of recent times is Saddam Hussein who ran what amounted to “a pornographic theme park”. Saddam and his goons were always thinking up new ways to gruesomely murder people for no apparent reason and not only made family members watch, but made them applaud. If the family members were not available at the time the event was recorded and the video delivered to the family. Wow.
- “There was nothing in the realm of torture and humiliation he didn't try. You can look up what Human Rights Watch (…) has produced about Iraq for many many years and you'll read stuff that will freeze your blood, you won't be able to get it out of your mind what it was like to be a prisoner in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It was almost like a theme park.” – Radio interview with Christopher Hitchens.
- Mary Bale, a woman recently and widely vilified in the UK for being caught on camera stroking a cat before dumping it in a wheelie bin and walking away. Apparently it was supposed to be a joke.
- The Hungarian AVO, later renamed AVH, as well as the Romanian Securitate, now known as the SRI, were primarily drafter from people like this. The SRI that exists even now, however, is little more than a bogey man by now
- Bullies in general. Some might have Freudian Excuses, but for the most part, they simply treat other people like garbage for no other reason than the hell of it.
- Although some research shows that sometimes due to their own mistreatment (and a feeling of a lack of power) they need to exert their dominance over others.
- Tell that to the victims of bullies. Most anti-bullying guides nearly always portray bullies as just being misunderstood and just need friends. No they don't. Most bullies are just arseholes who do it for the evulz.
- Yeah, and if you're going to say "some research" you should actually CITE it. Don't expect the rest of us to take your word for it.
- Oftentimes, those who commit random acts of violence are doing so out of boredom.
- In a mild example, crossing over with Dick Dastardly Stops To Cheat, the 2007 New England Patriots were caught filming the hand signals of opponents in the first week of the season. They went on to break several NFL records, win 18 of the 19 games they played, the only loss being Super Bowl 42 to the New York Giants, and have won 63 of the 78 games they've played since the start of that season. As Cracked put it, when comparing a Russian fencing team who were in a similar situation, even if you vastly outclass your opponents in pretty much every way, cheat anyway just for the thrill of it.
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