Hate Sink

"I'm telling you, he is dirt. he's a douchebag, gutterslime, dogcrap pukechunk." — Lucy Pollati, Godzilla (1998)

The guy everyone just loves to hate, seeing as that's the whole point.

A character whose intended role in the story (the role the authors made for him/her) is to be so despicable that the audience wants him or her to fail just as much as they want the heroes to succeed.

However, this person doesn't have to be the main villain of the story, or even a villain at all. Let's say we have a cast of perfectly likable protagonists, sane and polite villains............... and Jim. No, Jim is not the Big Bad, he is not causing the struggle that the heroes must overcome, thank goodness, but he IS making the heroes' lives more difficult. His list of character traits includes pettiness, selfishness, stubbornesss, greed, Holier-Than-Thou contempt, cowardice, an inexcusable penchant for making all the wrong decisions in dangerous situations and sociopathy. He may also be spiteful and rude, bigoted, sleazy and needlessly smug, not a good person. Basically, Jim exists, if anything, to be hated. Every action he commits and peice of dialogue he says is to make the audience think "I hate this guy." If we see his eventual downfall — and we usually do — it is just as satisfying as the writers can possibly make it. Laser-Guided Karma, such as losing his home near the end or getting taken into custody by the police, is always a nice touch, and can be quite satisfying to watch. On the other hand, if Jim manages to get away from what thereotically should be coming to him, he may end up being hated much more than what was intended.

The common habitats for this unpleasant character vary a lot, but here a few to name;

• Disaster and killer animal stories, because you can't hate a force of nature.
• Works where The Protagonist's struggle is caused by a faceless group, say a corporation. The Hate Sink might not nessicarily be The Leader, but will be a representee of the corporation.
• Works that operate under Grey and Gray Morality.
• Works where these charecters are present and either they form a Big Bad Ensemble or NONE of them are the main anatonists.
• Certain action movies where the villians are just as badass as the heroes.
• Works where the Big Bad is too sympathetic and/or not all that threatening to hate.
• Horror movies for when the Hate Sink winds up being an Asshole Victim.

The difference between this and Designated Villain is that the Designated Villain is just thrown into the role for the sake of storytelling, but they never do anything really evil. The Hate Sink, however, if Jim is being loathesome in the scene, he's very much fulfilling his intended role.

See Villainy Free Villain for when they act like like a Jerkass. For political works, especially in more recent years, this character has been a Politically-Incorrect Villain. The Complete Monster, complete and totally irredeemable despicableness being their main trait, is a controversial version of this. Contrast with Evil Is Sexy, where fans derive Fanservice from a villian, no matter how unlikable he/she is. Contrast with Rooting for the Empire, where fans support the villians more than the heroes. With that said, a Hate Sink will never get support for their actions. Remember, Tropes Are Tools, so a poorly written Hate Sink will end up becoming The Scrappy, while one that's a little bit too unique or cool will end up a Love to Hate example.

Also, this isn't a place to complain about characters you hate, other characters must hate them in-story.

Examples of Hate Sink include:

Anime and Manga

• The Diamond and Pearl part of the Pokémon anime shows the heroes' first significant losing streak, which is much of the real conflict. Enter Paul, the most ruthless rival Ash has ever met, who's borderline Social Darwinist with his training methods, and the only one Ash has never beaten, but Paul's importance in the overall story is nonexistent, not even as a driving force like the others have been.
  • Also present is Meowzie who coldly rejected Meowth simply because he was poor. And although she claimed to like humans, she dismissed him as a freak when he tried to become more like one. Karma condemns her when she's abandoned by her trainer and becomes just as poor as he was.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Most Fullmetal Alchemist villains tend to be sympathetic or at least have some sort of redeeming quality. This is not the case with Shou Tucker. While appearing at first to be a decent man who loves his daughter (though admittedly his wife did decide to leave him), it turns out that he had turned his wife into a chimera, which caused her to commit suicide. Not showing remorse to what he did, Shou Tucker decided to repeat his actions and combine Nina with her own dog, turning her into a talking chimera as well. While he's not considered to be The Scrappy (since he doesn't actually detract from the work), Anime Planet has him take the spot of the #1 most hated anime character. Unsurprisingly, the author has him burn in Hell for his horrible actions.
• Frieza from Dragon Ball Z is one of the most evil characters in Dragon Ball Z and is hated if not outright feared by pretty much everyone who knows of him. Unlike other villains in the Dragon Ball series, who were created to be evil or have gone off the deep end, Frieza actually does every evil action he does voluntarily. One of his worst actions is when he slaughters numerous Namekians to get his hands on the Dragon Balls...and for personal pleasure.

Fan Fiction

• Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations trilogy:
  • Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations Vol. 2 - Ex-Aid Era feat. Cross Ange: Sylux is written like this on purpose. Of all the Big Bad Ensemble in the story, the Black Cross Armada's generals Xenogaea and Viper are Affably Evil and geniunely honorable, and are more willing to help Samus and the gang in dealing with the Bugsters; Kuroto has Pet the Dog moments and veers on Well-Intentioned Extremist territory, and Parado being a Fair Play Villain. Sylux is the most disturbingly ruthless and unlikeable of all of them - almost everyone who comes contact with Sylux utterly loathe him; he is a borderline Straw Nihilist who wants nothing more but to cause sheer destruction and with delusions of Dystopia Justifies the Means. Sylux is ungrateful to anyone he comes contact with and obviously has no qualms in betraying others to achieve those goals, something that Masamune Dan of all people found out the hard way, albeit too late.
  • In the sequel, Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations Vol. 3, Kaguya Kozuki shows zero redeeming qualities whatsoever. Even other villains such as Shingetsu, Juzaburo Namba, Evolto, Gentoku Himuro, Nariaki Utsumi, and the Pandora Demon Beasts can't stand her, let alone if you heard of her backstory. Kaguya also showed how far a narcissistic megalomaniac can go so far to make her own family suffer out of petty jealousy towards a fellow scientist for bruising her ego, bossing anybody to do her dirty work and even kills them when they served their purpose, and adding the fact that Kaguya proved herself to be more malicious than Evolto.
• From the same author behind the aforementioned Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations series, Engine Sentai Go-Onger: 10 YEARS PRELUDE feat. Kamen Rider Build has Kai Amataro, an agent of Foundation X. He is the most despicable human villain the Go-Ongers have ever encountered. While presenting himself as civil and professional, in reality, he's a heartless, misogynistic Mad Scientist. He barely shows any empathy for any of the Engines, seeing them as disposable experimental guinea pigs rather than individuals.

Film

• Titanic: Billy Zane's character, Cal. The audience can hate this guy. He is designed to be hated. He is the anti-Jack. He disparages the Picasso paintings; he verbally and physically abuses Rose; he tries to have Jack killed; is exposed to care more about money than Rose; and finally cowardly escapes on a lifeboat using a small child. Although he survives, he is deprived of Rose in the end, loses his money through bad investments and ultimately puts a pistol in his mouth and that is the audiences' consolation.
• Independence Day: The Secretary of Defense, Mr. Nimzicki (a.k.a. Foily McAntagonist). The aliens are inscrutable, have cool ships and bring the Monumental Damage and massive carnage that is the reason you bought the ticket. This guy knows about the aliens ahead of time but stays silent to give the President "plausible deniability." He continually pushes the use of nukes that are ineffective. He cockily celebrates victory too soon only to immediately be proven wrong. Finally he is the only person to disagree with the final plan that ends up working. His comeuppance is being fired by President Whitmore in person.
• The Mummy: Though the title character is the main antagonist of the movie, he’s not necessarily a hateable character, since his motivation is mainly to resurrect his dead lover. His lackey Beni in contrast IS a horrible person, because he sold out his comrades to the Big Bad in an effort to save his own skin, and is shown to at some level enjoy watching Imhotep kill Mr. Burns. As such, he ends up dying a horrible death, especially compared to Imhotep who is simply stabbed.
  • The sequel has Baltuz Hafez, the cultist who is responsible for resurrecting Imhotep so that he can slay the Scorpion King, who like Beni Gabor is a Dirty Coward, and like Beni suffers a horrible death...ironically at the hands of the Scorpion King which is what he sought to kill.
• Aliens: Paul Reiser's company guy, Carter Burke. The aliens are already scary, but they’re motivated by sustenance and their desire to reproduce, so they include Burke as the weaselly company guy that only cares about money and fame. He knows about the aliens ahead of time and sends the colonists to investigate. He disagrees with nuking the site from orbit. He tries to impregnate Newt and Ripley with alien embryos with a plan to sabotage and kill the other heroes. Finally he cowardly retreats behind a door locking the other heroes out, where he is deliciously killed by an alien.
  • In the novel, he was to be found attached to a wall when Ridley went on her rescue mission to save Newt. Begging for death, she hands him a grenade instead.
• Die Hard: Richard Thornburg. The German terrorists/bank robbers have awesome accents and their leader is the perfect villain to love: intelligent, Wicked Cultured, and compassionate to the hostages, but swift and deadly toward the authorities and driven by greed. So who do you hate? Thornburg, that ends up exposing who Holly McClane really is by threatening the McClane housekeeper with deportation and terrorizes their kids all for the sake of a story. Possibly the greatest comeuppance example: he is punched by Holly McClane at the end.
  • Coke snorting yuppie Harry Ellis, who constantly badly flirts with Holly exposes John's identity to the terrorists, problably hoping to finally get her in the sack. He ends up getting shot in the head by the terrorists.
  • To a somewhat lesser degree, the two Agent Johnsons (no relation). The are rather disrespectful to Powell and the other police, unknowingly play into the robbers hands by cutting the power, and are perfectly fine with allowing some of the hostages to die if it means getting the villains.
  • Thornburg gets zapped with a stun gun by the same Holly McClane in Die Hard 2 after revealing on international TV that the airport has been hijacked, thereby causing a panic that the authorities were desperately trying to avoid. William Atherton seems to have made a career playing jerks we love to hate. Speaking of which...
• Ghostbusters: Walter Peck, probably the quintessential Obstructive Bureaucrat. You can't hate ghosts or Gozer. But this pencil pusher is pissed that someone has the audacity to be as cool as the ghost busters. So he shuts their containment system down causing the climax of the movie.
  • Peck must be a complete Jerkass to avoid stirring up Fridge Logic. Peck's insistance the Ghostbusters follow environmental laws is hardly unreasonable, even if he is a jerk. Egon already Lampshaded the questionable legal status of their business with his line about "unlicensed nuclear accelerators."
    • He doesn't believe in all this "ghost mumbo jumbo", and there's implications that he's one of the reason for the Ghostbusters losing all credibility between films. But still, when you've got the guy who invented this machine telling you the horrid consequences for turning it off, and an unbiased electrician telling you he's never seen the likes of it before, you have to be borderline Too Dumb to Live to go ahead and turn it off anyway. At the very least he should have simply gotten a court-ordered injunction to have them stop 'busting until third-party groups could look over the equipment.
• Twister: Cary Elwes plays the corporate-backed scientist Jonas. You can't rage at the tornadoes, right? They're a force of nature, and they inspire awe in the heroes and give them purpose. But this guy "sold-out" and got corporate funding, making him a puppet of The Man (and why would a scientist ever want funding?). His team travel in four sinisterly identical black SUVs compared to our Ragtag Bunch of Misfits' ragtag assortment of vehicles, he's a hack that doesn't know the true science and just copies the heroes or relies too much on the instruments rather than the clairvoyant way that Helen Hunt just stares at the storm and knows which way it will go. Ultimately, his whole team is sucked into the storm when he arrogantly ignores the heroes' warnings.
• Sean Parker from The Social Network. In a story full of Gray and Gray Morality, he's the closest character portrayed as an outright villain due to what a Jerkass he is.
• The Purge: The killer who murdered Senator Roan’s Family during the Purge. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but during said screentime, he makes it all too clear that he’s a pretty nasty individual. He’s actually the reason why Roan wants to remove the Purge.
• Harvey Baylor in the laughably awful Planet of the Dinosaurs. The protagonists have all crash-landed on a far flung planet inhabited by prehistoric creatures, with no way to contact Earth and little hope of being rescued. Harvey proceeds to whine indiscriminately about how he's the Vice President of Spaceways Incorporated (and therefore their boss) and he can get them all fired, complains about having to do so much walking with no clear endpoint, and repeatedly sexually harasses his secretary. You can't hate the dinosaurs because they're dinosaurs (and barely put in any appearances in the movie anyway), and you can't hate the planet because it's a planet. But BOY can you hate Harvey Baylor! Thankfully he dies about halfway through the movie by being fatally gored by a Centrosaur and tossed off a cliff.
• You can't hate the titular eldritch abominations from The Langoliers (especially since they're just a creepy noise closing in from over the horizon for most of the story), and there's no one to really blame for stranding the characters in the past. But there's Toomy. Hateful, spiteful, assholish, with Freudian excuses and issues stacked high, who annoys, irritates and backstabs. Yeah, you can hate Toomy. You can't not hate Toomy. He gets eaten by the title Clock Roaches near the end of the movie.
  • In a similar Stephen King example, in the live action production of The Mist, the monsters are terrifying but you can't hate them because they don't appear to be acting with true malice. They're just trying to fulfill their instincts. But boy, oh boy, can you ever hate Mrs. Carmody, the shrill, hateful Jesus freak who looks down her nose at anyone who isn't as "righteous" as she is and whipped the mob into a religious frenzy that almost resulted in the murder of the protagonist's young son.
  • Let's go for King story number 3: Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. You can't hate the racism in the '30s that put John Coffey on Death Row; you can't hate the system for making sure he'll die in the electric chair; and you sure as hell can't hate Old Sparky itself. But you can definitely hate Percy, who uses the fact that he's the nephew of the governor's wife to duck authority at every turn...even after deliberately sabotaging the execution of a convict he particularly hates and having him literally fried alive. His comeuppance comes in the form of Mr. Coffey, who "uses him as a gun" to kill a more proper villain, William Wharton, then leaves him catatonic.
  • In the 2017 film adaptation of IT, there is already a (mostly) non-speaking monster as the antagonist. But however, that dosen't mean there aren't any people to hate. For one, there's Beverly's violent and sexually disturbed father. What makes it even worse is that Beverly's dad at least recives some form of punishment while Greta manages to get away.
• Mayor Mills and Dudley Ryan from Yonggary (1999) are the movie's human antagonists... and they play it straight. Mayor Mills is a smug, stubborn, petty mayor that sees Yonggary as a force of fear and destruction that is determined to convince the .U.S. Military to kill her, although he IS right about the collateral damage they cause while trying to kill her. Dudley Ryan is a conniving news reporter that constantly abuses Holly and Bud. Mills receives his Laser-Guided Karma after Yonggary is killed and uses the event to boost his popularity, but it only gets him arrested.
• Carl Anhauser from 2012... is a subversion of this, surprisingly. While he acts like a dick for much of the movie and occasionally lashes out at people, he's still trying to keep as many people alive as possible, and the movie never really paints him as a completely bad person.
  • And my oh my, what could a surname like Anhauser possibly remind you of?
• Jurassic Park: Donald Gennaro, the lawyer. Specifically because of how different his character is in the book from the movie. In the book he is actually fairly competent and brave, not the useless, spineless, one-dimensional character in the movie, illustrating the screenplay writers needed someone the audience to focus some hate on, because you can't hate the heroes or the dinosaurs right? He's the only person to not see any problem with the dinosaurs, shows his stupidity on the tour by asking if the dinosaurs are "autoerotic" (perhaps confused with animatronic). and then abandons the children during the scene with the T-Rex. His comeuppance of getting eaten sitting on the toilet is masterful.
  • Ironically, the novel version of John Hammond fills the role very nicely; he's an arrogant, rich bastard used to getting his own way, whose refusal to listen to criticism ends up getting numerous people killed. His comeuppance is falling prey to the dinosaurs himself at the very end, after it seems as though they're safe. In the movie he's upgraded to a kindly old man who loves his grandkids and whose only fault is naive overconfidence...and sexism in survival situations.
• The first Resident Evil Movie has Spence. While the main villain the Red Queen is a well-intentioned extremist who wishes to prevent the T-Virus from leaking (though there are apparently several flaws with her AI, since she didn’t tell anyone about the T-Virus leak in the first place), this is not the case with Spence. He’s the one who started the T-Virus outbreak in the first place, simply so that he could get some ill-gotten cash by selling it on the black market. While it seems like he loves Alice at first, it ultimately becomes apparent that all he cares about is money. Small wonder Alice smashes her fake wedding ring after encountering the zombified Spence once the Licker catches him.
  • Resident Evil Afterlife: Kim Koates plays the annoying Bennett, a movie producer trapped in an L.A. prison with a few other survivors. His character is the classic hate sink-he is rude, selfish, and disagrees with every other main character on decisions. When things start to go wrong he shoots a fellow survivor and then escapes in a small plane leaving the rest behind. Then in the climax he does the bidding of the main evil character so that he is saved. But he gets his just deserts when the heroes kill the main villain and leave him to be eaten by some unseen horror.
• Unstoppable: You can't hate a runaway train, but you can hate Obstructive Bureaucrat Galvin. His comeuppance is that he loses his job afterwards.
• None of the groups at play in Ant-Man and the Wasp come out looking perfect, but Sonny Burch — despite his genteel surroundings— is a greedy bastard after the Pym technology and whatever money he can pick up on the side. Scott even calls him a "weasel" as he tries to catch him at the end.
• Deadpool features Ajax, a sadistic and sociopathic Mad Scientist who puts his victims through Cold-Blooded Torture to stress them into turning into mutants so he can sell them. His stress experiment is the reason why Wade Wilson (AKA: Deadpool) is so deformed. He also kidnaps and threatens Wade's girlfriend, Vanessa, out of spite. Wade eventually kills Ajax once the latter admits that he lied about there being a cure for the former's deformity deformity.
  • Deadpool 2 features the Orphanage Headmaster who sadistically tortures young mutants under his care due him considering them to be "abominations". He is especially cruel towards Russell, which eventually results in the the latter's Start of Darkness that contributes to Cable's Bad Future. He's also proven to be a Dirty Coward once Russell hunts him down; not even thanking Deadpool and his gang for sparing him in order to prevent Russell from heading on to the said dark path. He eventually gets killed by Dopinder's taxi in the most satisfactory way possible.

Literature

• In the Malazan Book of the Fallen novel Deadhouse Gates the Chain of Dogs (a massive host of refugees marching across the continent) is constantly being attacked by enemy armies, but our viewpoint character for these sections of the story never gets more than a few glimpses of the enemy leaders. Without a face or personality to put to them, it's hard to dislike the armies of the Apocalypse on a personal level. Instead we're invited to vent our loathing upon a group of whiny nobles within the Chain of Dogs, who protest the Canon Sue's actions at every turn, are openly cruel to their servants, and get a lot of their fellow refugees killed through incompetence.
• Harry Potter gives us Dolores Umbridge. In the fifth book in which the Big Bad Voldemort is laying low, she takes the stage as the main face of opposition, and is one of the most hated characters in the franchise. Umbridge, on the other hand, is a good demonstration of what you get when you take a bigoted, hypocritical shrew and give her authority, and is so plausibly cruel in the course of her travesties of justice that readers find their blood seething with her every word and deed.
  • The series also has Peter Pettigrew, who sells out his friends to the Big Bad, Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort himself only puts up with Peter because he is useful towards him, such as resurrecting him following his downfall for instance. Though having said that, Peter does SHOW some regret for his actions, though it's not immediately obvious.
• Since there's no real villain in Flight 116 Is Down by Caroline B. Cooney, the audience gets to focus their hatred on Darienne, a selfish passenger who ends up being completely unharmed in the crash. Heidi and Patrick work hard to save the passengers of the crashed plane while Darienne stands around doing nothing but complaining and being useless, yet she tries to take credit for saving people at the end. Even Patrick loses his cool when Darienne gets too much to handle.
• Most of the villains in Airframe. Marder is a bellowing, greedy Jerkass, Malone is a Straw Character for sensationalism in the news, and Richman is a Smug Snake.
• Carmelita Spats in A Series Of Unfortunate Events. According to Lemony Snicket, if you wanted to give the gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, Carmelita Spats would be an excellent candidate. And no, she does not care about anyone but herself. Unsurprisingly, she has a habit of antagonizing the protagonists, who are orphans, no less.
• When she's at home in Kansas instead of the Land Of Oz, Dorothy doesn't face any evil witches. What she does face is Miss Almira Gulch, who wishes to euthanize Toto for biting her...even though she provoked him by hitting him with a rake. In most professional play productions, she ends up becoming an Asshole Victim when the tornado causes a telephone pole to fall on top of her.

Live Action Television

• Persons Unknown: We don't know who's behind the kidnappings of our main cast, but Bill Blackham, played by Sean O'Bryan, seems to be a repository for all the negative reactions one could have to being kidnapped and placed in a ghost town. Everything he does is selfish or irrational, especially his forcing Janet's gas mask away from her (which backfires), trying to rape Tori, and blackmailing Charlie when he finds out about Charlie's possible Mercy Kill / serial killing of his wife.
• Game of Thrones: Joffrey Baratheon is this trope personified. He's a viciously stupid dog-kicking machine with no redeeming features, and is hated by everyone In-Universe and out. When he kicks the bucket in Season 4, only Cersei mourns his death, and even she admits her son is a monster. He got so despised George R.R. Martin himself congratulated Jack Gleeson (Joffrey's actor) for his skills at achieving this status!
  • Ramsay Bolton isn't any better. All his screentime being performing unspeakable atrocities for the fun of it. His Humiliation Conga and subsequent Karmic Death prove to be even more satisfying that Joffrey's, since his house goes down along with him.
• Netflix's hit series Orange Is The New Black is set in a women's prison, so it's filled with pretty horrible people, inmates and staff alike. However, they tend to have sympathetic (even pitiful) moments and being funny and entertaining in their hijinks. Even the despicable Vee has pragmatic reasons for her vile actions. There's an exception to this rule in Season 3 with new prison ward Charlie "Donuts" Coates. Initially charming, he proves to be a repulsive excuse of a human being by raping inmate Pennsatucky (who has just turned around that season) in a van For the Evulz. Unlike anything else seen in the show, this is played completely seriously, made all the worse with Pennsatucky's Dark And Troubled Past regarding rape. Any of his appearances darken an already dark show, and seals his status as the most loathsome and irredeemably evil character in the series.
• Lizzie McGuire: The show in question takes place in a realistic setting, so it doesn’t have any villains. It does however have mean girls that antagonize Lizzie McGuire, the protagonist. While Kate has a tendency to act selfish, that is not to say she doesn’t have redeeming qualities. However, her best friend Claire is even worse than she is, and she doesn’t have the redeeming qualities she does, meaning that she isn’t designed to be sympathetic at all.
• Super Sentai:
  • Great Professor Bias of Choujuu Sentai Liveman qualifies. While his three generals have sympathetic moments and were nothing more but tools to his grand plan, Bias is meant to be even more repulsive and deplorable as possible. He would go so far to dispose those who serve him have outlived of their usefulness.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has Basco ta Jolokia, Marvelous's Arch Enemy. Basco is a two-faced, spiteful backstabber who will go further lengths to get what he wants. He's more willing to take anyone or anything for granted to achieve that goal, like killing off his own pet, Sally. And then, blowing up a school and harming children makes you want to despise him.

Theater

• Inspector Javert is the main villain of Les Misérables, but while he does make life miserable for Valjean, Javert honestly believes that he's the good guy and he's just trying to do his job and arrest what he believes to be a dangerous criminal; when Javert realizes that Valjean is really a good person through and through, it turns his world upside down. So who can the audience hate? The Thenardiers, the cowardly comic relieft thieves who abuse Cosette, loot bodies during the Revolution, and try to attack Valjean's house, which leads to Cosette being sent away to protect her.

Video Games

• In Pokémon Gold and Silver, the evil Team Rocket organization only turns up three times and hardly drive the plot, and end up hardly detestable as a result. However, the story features many encounters with your rude, thieving, Pokemon-abusing, borderline-sociopathic rival, who is much easier to hate.
  • Until he finally undergoes Character Development, that is.
  • Your rival in Red/Blue, though not to the extent of Silver. He's not evil in any sense, but hes a rude, annoying braggart, always one upping you and WILL make you want to beat his face in sooner or later.
• Final Fantasy X. As it's rather hard to develop much hatred for a giant, emotionless crustacean regardless of how many people it kills (and even harder to keep coming up with excuses to wind up in the ocean having boss fights with it), Seymour keeps popping up in the plot to provide a speaking villain for the party to fight on land instead of Sin. While he does have his own motivations and does get somewhat tied into the plot with Sin, his personal impact on the story itself is quite minimal overall aside from providing ever more complex boss fights after you kill him and he just keeps creating ever more elaborate boss forms for himself.
• Volgin of Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater. His first action is blowing up his allies with a nuclear bomb, for the hell of it. However, despite being (relatively speaking) the Big Bad of the game, he's not the main antagonist - the game is much more interested in the relationship between Naked Snake and The Boss. Volgin simply serves as 1) A Homage and Affectionate Parody of James Bond villains; 2) a Foil to The Boss; and 3) a form of catharsis before The Reveal.
• Super Paper Mario has Dimentio, the psychotic jester that is a minion of Count Bleck. While the latter is ultimately a sympathetic character who is motivated by the loss of his loved one (though he's clearly the villain, considering he is trying to end all worlds), Dimentio has no such tragic backstory and commits every action that Count Bleck does and more, wishing to destroy all worlds simply so that he could create new worlds that he can rule over. As such, he turns out to be the true villain of the game, not Count Bleck who ultimately redeems himself.
• Octopath Traveler: Primrose’s personal villains tend to fall into this. For example, there’s Helgenish, the man who she works for as a dancer. Not only does he treat his female employees horribly, he tortures her friend Yusufa to hunt her down after she walks out on him to find her father’s killers, and he then proceeds to murder her as well. While he's not a member of the Crow Men himself, it is revealed that he in fact associated with them, selling some of his dancers to Rufus the Left Hand of the Crows as part of his human trafficking ring. It’s a small wonder he also ends up on her revenge list.
  • There's also Simeon, the Puppet Master, the person responsible for murdering Primrose's father. who is described as being the most evil member of the Obsidians. He pretends to be a loving boyfriend towards her, only to eventually reveal while stabbing her that HE was the one who murdered her father along with her associates, and that he was the leader of the Crow Men the entire time. He then sets up a play mocking her life.
• Tales Of Symphonia has Kvar. While the Big Bad himself turns out to be a sympathetic character (though still a villain), this particular Grand Cardinal was never intended to be sympathetic and is known to be the cruelest amongst them. Like the other Grand Cardinals, he treats humans horribly, using them to farm Exspheres and subjecting them to hard labor. However, he also happens to be responsible for the death of Lloyd's mother, transforming her into a monster...giving her husband (later revealed to be Kratos) no good choice to kill her and put her out of her misery to protect himself and his son.
• Runescape: Out of the four God Wars Generals hoping to obtain the power of the Anima Mundi for their employer, Gregorovic is easily the most repulsive one. Since he wanted immortality, he abducted and then cruelly experimented on several elves in order to find out the secrets of their lifespan. After being turned into a jester monster by his master Sliske, he voluntarily drained the life from others in order to extend his lifespan. Unsurprisingly, both the Twin Furies and Helwyr despise him.
• Xenoblade Chronicles has Mumhkar, a Dirty Coward who decides to abandon his comrades who are risking their lives to protect the citizens of Bionis. He later comes back as a Mechon after his supposed demise and proceeds to sell out the Homs to the Mechon. He’s also responsible for killing Fiora and the High Emperor, even if the former DOES return to life. By contrast, his boss Egil is sympathetic and has rather understandable motives, especially since Zanza possessed his best friend Arglas and turned him into his puppet.
• Resident Evil 2: Out of all the characters in the game, there's only one that you can really hate. The zombies? No, they're clearly the victims here...dangerous or not. William Birkin? Well, admittedly he was guilty on experimenting on innocent people, but he WAS planning to leave Umbrella and start a new life with his family before being mutated by his own virus. Annette Birkin? Not the best mother in the world, but by the time the game begins, she ACTUALLY does regret not being there for Sherry, so it's entirely possible to sympathize with her. So whose left to hate? Brian Irons, the corrupt police chief who accepted bribes from Umbrella and allowed them to experiment on Umbrella's citizens. In addition to being clearly corrupt, Brian Irons is also a serial killer who was also accused of raping two students back when he was in a college, collecting their bones and organs as trophies. His worst actions come when the T-Virus ends up infecting Raccoon City. He betrays his fellow police officers and plans to kill them all, personally shooting one in the back and remarking how enjoyable killing him was. He then decides that he's going to stuff the mayor's daughter's body after killing her so that he can admire her beauty forever.
• Resident Evil 4: You can't hate the Ganados (since they're brainwashed to be evil by the Las Plagas), but you can hate Osmond Saddler for turning them to evil in the first place. The end credits show that the villagers weren't always evil for example, and that it was a peaceful village community before Osmund Saddler corrupted it. While he does admit that the loss of his men was disheartening, he was also responsible for corrupting Ramon Salazar and was implied to have corrupted Bitores Mendez (the village chief of the aforementioned village) as well.
• Resident Evil 7: Though each of the villains in Resident Evil 7 are scary, that is not to say that they're unsympathetic. Yes, Jack and Marguerite Baker are both murderous, but it's not their fault that they became evil, since it was Eveline who corrupted them. Eveline herself is Obliviously Evil and wishes to have a family. Then we get Lucas Baker, the only character in the game who is truly evil. It turns out he actually ISN'T under Eveline's control and is simply taking advantage of his newfound abilities to do whatever he wants to those that are in the Baker's clutches. He particularly enjoys designing death traps to ensure that his victims die horrible deaths, as opposed to his parents who simply kill their victims quickly.

Web Comics

• Order Of The Stick: Out of all the members of Team Evil (which of course consists of villains), Xykon is the only one amongst them without any sympathetic or redeeming qualities. As Redcloak notes, while Xykon may seem funny and charming when you first meet him, he's willing to sink to downright horrific lengths to do whatever he wants. He is also putting the entire world in danger, because he wants to control the Snarl for himself and presumably use it to kill anyone he wants.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic loves this character type. They include Prince Blueblood, Spoiled Rich (and her daughter Diamond Tiara), and Svengallop.
• The Wild Thornberries Movie: Since the actual villains aren't revealed until moderately late in the movie, the movie includes a character by the name of Sarah Wellington, Eliza's obnoxious roommate who makes it clear that she is not fond of Eliza who thinks that she'll bring animals into her room and becomes jealous when Eliza befriends her friends, wanting to have them all to herself. Though she DOES eventually assist in allowing Eliza and Darwin escape, this is partly due to pragmatism, since she would once again have the room all for herself.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut: Though Satan seems to be the Big Bad at first, since he wishes to open up a portal that would link Earth and Hell together, it turns out that instead of wishing to conquer the world, he just wishes to see Earth for himself instead of remaining in Hell. Then we get to his abusive boyfriend Saddam Hussein, who DOES wish to conquer Earth and is manipulating Satan to allow him to do so. And yes, when Satan decides that he's going to Earth alone, he manipulates Satan into thinking he'll change his ways so that he can take over the world. Small wonder Satan eventually gets fed up with Saddam's mistreatment and kills him.
• Buckley from King Of The Hill is one of the show's earliest examples, being Luanne's selfish and dimwitted boyfriend. He gives Hank a job at the Megalo Mart despite promising that he would get Luanne the job instead, and talks down to Hank even though unlike him, he had prior work experience. Incidentally, he ends up causing his own death. Luanne is actually more concerned that she lost her hair in the explosion than she is that Buckley had perished in the blast.
  • Also present is Cotton Hill, Hank Hill's father as well as a World War II veteran, who isn't the kind of father you would want to have a child. Specifically, he's chauvinistic, violent, abusive, and intolerant, and regularly boasts about what a great war hero he is, showing himself to have a massive ego. He also attempts to spread his misogny to his grandson Bobby. Like Buckley, he's eventually killed off for real.
• Teen Titans: Out of all the villains on this show, Malchior the dragon is quite a repulsive one. He acts much like an abusive boyfriend would, manipulating Raven into doing everything he wanted so he could release himself from his book. The end of the episode has Raven crying on Beast Boy’s shoulder after realizes that she had been used the whole timeline.
• Fairly Oddparents: Vicky the Babysitter plays this straight, being the babysitter that every person dreads having as a child. Her most frequent victim is none other than the main character, who is repeatedly shown to be frightened by her.  Earlier episodes fhe series tend to have her more focused doing her job than simply tormenting Timmy Turner, though even then she made his life miserable enough to have fairy godparents in the first place.
• Simpsons: Patty and Selma start off as this, being Marge's aunts who Bart, Lisa, and Maggie all dread being babysat by. Homer in particular refers to them as the Gruesome Twosome. However, episodes focusing on them actually make them sympathetic to a degree, meaning that they aren't always this trope in the episodes they appear in.
  • There's also Captain Mordecai Barrows (the villain of Marge's novel), who behaves like Homer Simpson...but as the end of the novel proves, he doesn't have any of Homer's redeeming qualities at all, and murders Cyrus who was his wife's love interest (Since she found him to be preferable to Mordecai) Fortunately, Homer wants to be a better husband instead of committing murder, proving that he and Mordecai are different people at the end of the day.
• Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command: Out of all the characters in this cartoon series, Evil Buzz Lightyear is basically the only one without any redeeming qualities. He’s responsible for destroying Star Command in this series and is also responsible for making the lives of Mira and Booster’s alternative counterparts miserable, not least because he murdered the former’s father. While he’s not as evil in his followup appearance, he heartlessly leaves Gravitina to die to save his own skin in the same episode.
• Doug has Lamar Bone, a vice principal who is hated by every student who attends his school. He has so many rules for student behavior that it’s basically impossible not to break one. Small wonder he’s portrayed as one of the villains in Doug’s fantasies. There are however episodes that humanize him and make him not such a sadistic teacher, though these are hard to come by.
  • Also present from Doug is Percy Femur, who incidentally is Mr. Bone’s nephew. He behaves somewhat like Roger, but unlike Roger, who is simply mischievous, Percy actually enjoys hurting other students and actually makes Roger fear for his safety. When Doug stands up for Roger, Percy decides he’s going to beat him up after school. Fortunately, Mr. Bone of all people takes action after he realizes what a bully he is.