Bad Bosses in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Hilariously Lampshaded in Arithmancy, a Doctor Who/Harry Potter crossover, when the Master, while possessing (for want of a better word. Its a sort of symbiosis) Draco (most of the nasty bits of the Master's personality are gone, due to his original body being long dead) in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about Voldemort, saying this sort of behaviour was not the way to reward loyal minions. Although, while he might have a point, since the Master (as noted below) is hardly in the running for Boss of the Year, he's not exactly in a position to lecture.
- Children of an Elder God: Gendo is a jerk who treats his subordinates like garbage, mistreats them, sends them on dangerous missions without warning them previously about the risks, insults them and belittles them rather reprimand them properly, and sacrifices them when it is convenient.
- All Keepers from Dungeon Keeper Ami in spades, being set in the Dungeon Keeper-verse and all. Ami, Sailor Mercury turned Keeper through unusual circumstances, subverts this by being herself, but has to occasionally put up appearances lest any of her harder minions get funny ideas.
- A Girl and Her Bike: Like Judas Thereupon Kissed features Affluous, who not only severely underpays his employees, but subjects them to terrible shocks, installs Restraining Bolts to keep them from being able to transform, and deliberately refuses to learn anybody's names.
- The Dalek Inquisitor General from A Hero is this. It is implied that Daleks are more terrified of him than they are of The Doctor. Dalek Sec was promoted to Dalek Supreme simply because he survived five consecutive missions under the Inquisitor General. No other Dalek ever accomplished that.
- The Last of Us Series (Once Upon a Time, The Last of Us): Robin cares nothing about his men, with their deaths only evoking annoyance or indifference in him. He also nearly strangles his right-hand man to death and sends his men into a blizzard without caring about their safety.
- My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: Nine, who is already in a bad mood at losing his sub and approximately two-thirds of his forces in Chapter 13, kills one of his own men for forgetting about the stairs.
- Wolfram leaves his gunmen, Swordkill, Nobu, Daigo and Specs to die at the hands of the Slayer.
Curator: Didn't you say you were going to wait for them?
Wolfram: Screw 'em. - Necessary to Win, a Saki and Girls und Panzer crossover, has Ceylon, the previous commander of the St. Gloriana tankery team, who is rude and abrasive, belittles the weaker members of the team, and plans on scapegoating Sumiyo for their defeat against Pravda in the semi-finals. In the end, Ceylon gets little satisfaction out of her actions, leaving the team as a pariah.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, John Vladislav runs a vampire mob. His management style is simple. Disagree and he'll stake you. Screw up and he'll feed you garlic. And THEN he'll stake you. Run away and he'll tear you to pieces with his bare hands.
- WannaBee: Katie is verbally abusive to her employees, while Tom forces his to sleep with him.
- Dirty Sympathy: Kristoph feels free to physically, sexually and emotionally abuse his assistant Apollo since he is the only person who would give him a job and reminds Apollo that he practically owns him and no one would miss him.
- Trade Us for the World: Captain Grime shows just how selfish he is by forcing his injured troops to spend weeks tracking down Anne, refusing to permit them any recovery time whatsoever.
- Adventures of the Morning Star: When Deckard accidentally lets Veigar escape, Silco responds by using him as an unwilling test subject for Shimmer.
- Ilook from the Azula Trilogy becomes this in "Soul of Fire" when he is loaned three henchmen from Jian Chin to track down Azula. He kills one of his henchmen trying to attack Azula, and kills the other two because they pointed out how much he enjoyed torturing her.
- Batman Beyond Revisited: Chainsaw once brutally killed a henchman for backtalk, and seems to rule over his flunkies with fear.
- Contractually Obligated Chaos: Mr. Monitor, the Corrupt Corporate Executive of Neitherworld television, is presented this way. He fires his employees at the drop of a hat for such offenses as disagreeing with him or suggesting such outlandish courses of action as obeying the law.
- Please Stop Eating The Hell Butterflies: For all of the madness that Yamamoto has to clean up, he can at least order the Gotei 13 to behave. The same cannot be said of the lower-ranked Shinigami, who are made to mate with ostriches, beaten up by Zaraki, tormented by Yachiru, thrown into hell, have their genders changed, thrown into mobs with a desire to kill them even before an announced prize on their heads without their weapons, and otherwise abused by their leaders without any recourse unless Yamamoto tells their bosses to knock it off.
- In The Day After You Saved the Multiverse, the unnamed Mafia Boss abuses physically his own minions just for saying something he does not like. In the first chapter, he slaps one subordinate for trying to find the silver lining in the fact that Superboy has nearly completely ruined one of their operations.
- Funeral for a Flash: After being out-gambitted by The Flash, Col. Karshov vents his anger by shooting one of his own soldiers (who wasn't responsible in any manner whatsoever for his commander's failure, mind you).
- In Hellsister Trilogy, Darkseid obliterates one his most valuable minions because Desaad made a bad pun. Given that Darkseid can bring his slaves back whenever he wishes, he is even more uncaring regarding their lives than your average bad boss.Desaad clutched at the shaft transfixing his midsection in agony. His master shot forth beams from his eyes which reduced him to his primal atoms. Later, he would reassemble them, and trust that Desaad would learn by that not to make jokes using his name.
- Freeza in Dragon Ball Z Abridged is even worse than he is in canon. He tends to execute his soldiers at the drop of a hat, for anything from "needing an example" to avoiding an awkward conversation. When his soldiers decide to form a union because of this, his reaction is predictable. Finally, it is revealed that he doesn't pay his minions; their payment is being allowed to live. Downplayed because although he executes his soldiers for no reason, he does seem to genuinely care about his stronger minions. He's shocked upon learning of Dodoria's death, ponders how he'll break the news of the Ginyu Force's deaths to their families, and during his fight with Goku outright admits he misses Zarbon.
- Savior of Demons: While enraged at Frieza's treatment of him, Haabu turns around and breaks his minion Mirtiro's arm. He then refuses to let Mirtiro receive any advanced medical treatment for the injury, declaring it would use up valuable supplies.
- What If Frieza Turned Good?: Trogen, King Cold's third son and his intended successor after Frieza's exile, manages to be even worse than his predecessor in this regard.
- In A New Hope, Luke, who owns the laundromat that Cloud works at, is one of these. He admonishes him for missing two weeks of work due to being in the hospital, and threatens to fire him if he doesn't show up for work the next day. But Cloud, being the Extreme Doormat that he is, puts up with it.
- In Shinra High SOLDIER, Hojo's technicians are terrified of him, and are implied to be constantly abused.
- A Brighter Dark: While ordinarily reasonable, Corrin makes it clear to two underlings that their lives don't matter to her and that she fully expects them to give them up in order to protect Silas, her favorite. And emphasizes that if he ever dies and they don't, she will personally make sure both they and their families will wish they had.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
- It's revealed that Ghidorah regarded the terrestrial Titans it once commanded as "lowly beasts" who have no higher purposes than being lapdogs to Ghidorah's whims.
- Alan Jonah racks up a few points too. He doesn't even think about his soldiers' welfare when refusing to get them away from San's old Ghidorah-head (this may in fact be an effect of his Sanity Slippage). He also warns Vivienne that he'll have any of his Disposable Vagrant labor who show signs of feeling too sorry for her shot to avoid a Merciful Minion scenario, and that's not even going into his Playing with Syringes.
- I Reincarnated As A Minor Villainess And Survived Past My Death Scene: Past-Duo was such a tyrant that the maids and butler are outright terrified at the prospect of dealing with him, especially as he frequently took out his frustrations upon them under the pretense of "correcting" supposed missteps in their behavior.
- Enemy of My Enemy: Brute High-Chieftain Torikus, what with casually (and brutally) killing those who fail him or even bring him bad news from the front. It's been established in canon works that most Brutes are like this.
- Wish Carefully: Thanks to Harry's well-considered terms of surrender, Voldemort no longer has any Muggle-borns, Muggles or Light-aligned wizards around to torture — he and his Death Eaters are magically prevented from even touching any Muggles, on pain of being completely cut off from their own magic. This has cut off Voldemort from being able to vent his sadistic tendencies upon anyone aside from his own followers.
- Proposed in the Golden Age series as one of the reasons why the Alternian Empire is having so much trouble fighting the United Galaxies. The harsh and volatile leadership common in Alternian society destroys morale and prevents R&D from being developed as quickly, as opposed to the much more forgiving United Galaxies leadership. This is also a major reason why so many trolls have defected.
- Becoming a True Invader:
- The Tallest, as per canon, regularly boss around and torment their underlings.
- Zim views all the members of his group (except for Gaz) as expendable meat-shields.
- Invader Togan regularly kills his subordinates for interrupting him while he's taking a stroll.
- For the Glory of Irk plays this for Black Comedy with Professor Membrane, who happily describes his employees as expendable to his experiments.
- Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: Zim is a terrible master to his minions, showing them no respect, constantly treating them as expendable, and blaming them for his mistakes.
- Queen of All Oni: Filler Villain Anton Mortimer — in keeping with his extreme Otaku tendencies — makes his female Japanese assistant to not only change her name from "Megan" to "Mitsuki" (because it's more Asian), but also forces her to wear a sailor fuku as a uniform. And that's on top of the fact that the fine print of her contract means she can't even quit without him being able to penalize her. Is it any wonder that when she ends up with an Oni mask that she is almost instantly corrupted and tries to kill him?
- In Queen of Shadows, Shendu is this, to the surprise of exactly none of the readers. In his first scene in the new reality, he forces a slave girl to dance for him until she's practically dropping from exhaustion. When she's done, he states that since she's given her best performance, she'll never do better, and is therefore of no more use, so he incinerates her (and judging by his court's reaction, this is a regular occurrence). Even when he's trying to be nice he's a jackass, as shown by the fact that he "rewards" his servant the Grand Eunuch by surrounding him with beautiful women he knows the poor bastard can't enjoy.
- Ryuko Kiryuin in Natural Selection treats her Elite Four and underlings horribly, as befits The Caligula. She routinely beats them up for minor failures, often to the point where they can barely walk, uses them to vent out her anger, and generally doesn't care for any of them save for Mako, her girlfriend, and to a lesser extent Sanageyama.
- Hyrule Warriors: Heroes Through Time: While she already displayed such traits in the game itself, Cia takes it even further here by zapping Volga and Wizzro with dark magic lightning whenever they question her orders or simply talk back to her.
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis
- Saetwo's Story has Romelau, who is such an utter sociopathic bully that, as its revealed midway through the story, even his own minions can't stand him, but are too scared to stand up to him. After his defeat, they run off without complaint.
- He Can Only Blame Himself
explores a world where Gabriel hired Marinette after she started dating his son. He uses their relationship to emotionally extort and blackmail her into working long, unforgiving hours, claiming that she's obligated to do so "because they're family." And when she catches Adrien cheating on her with Lila, Gabriel immediately fires her, ostensibly so that she won't be forced to see his son at work anymore. About the only upside is that she's not bound by an NDA, though he tries convincing her to sign one even as he's finalizing her expulsion from the company. - Several entries in the Smart Adversaries AU highlight how Hawkmoth has absolutely no regard for anyone he akumatizes. Perhaps the most standout example is Gorizilla Grabs, where he not only akumatizes his own son's bodyguard, but forces him to hurt Marinette in front of Chat Noir, getting him Cataclysmed. This not only infuriates Chat Noir, it convinces Nathalie to turn against her boss out of fear of potentially meeting a similar fate.
- What Goes Around Comes Around: Gabriel and Emelie Agreste prove to be absolutely horrible bosses and parents; they treat Nathalie, Chloe and Lila just as awfully as they treat their son, taking their services completely for granted. In Nathalie's case, it's eventually revealed that they presume she'll always remain loyal since she's actually a Sentimonster they made to replace the real Nathalie; the girls, however, they openly treat as nothing more than disposable pawns.
- Cheat Code: Support Strategist: During their attack on the USJ, Shigaraki disintegrates one of his own men when the Technopath can't figure out where Izuku's interference is coming from.
- Hero Class Civil Warfare: When Katsuki is put in charge of the Heroes' side of the exercise, he swiftly proves to be a Drill Sergeant Nasty with no leadership or management skills whatsoever, completely demoralizing his side to the point that one of the heroes attempts to switch sides.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Commander Sullamander from A Brief History of Equestria, who all too happily kills her underlings for disagreeing with her.
- Earth and Sky: Diamond Tiara is more than happy to threaten her employees with Blackmail in order to force them to follow her demands. She's also generally unpleasant; none of her employees really like having to deal with her and her tantrums.
- Friendship Is Magical Girls: Sunset Shimmer is an absolute slavedriver to Snips and Snails, constantly verbally abusing and threatening them. She ultimately sacrifices Snails to Chrysalis, and would have done the same to Snips too if Spike hadn't killed him first. Trixie ultimately realizes as well that Sunset has no intention of holding her end of their contract, as well. So she double-crosses her first.
- Loved and Lost has "Holy King Jewelius I". When one of his guards helps him up in the 13th chapter, he's so furious over the heroes' escape that he smacks the guard in the face. In the 17th chapter, another guard questions his decision to wipe out both the heroes and all of Ponyville's inhabitants. Jewelius responds by throwing the poor guy out of the throne room's window.
- A Father's Wrath: Keiji Sosano quickly establishes himself as one during the Chuunin Exams, threatening to kill the other Akatsuki agents if they fail their missions. He only gets worse after becoming the Tsuchikage, willingly sending thousands of his followers to their deaths solely to muddy the waters and make it harder for his opponents to figure out what he's really planning. He even kills the one person who has feelings for him, using her heart to power up his ultimate weapon.
- True Potential: Suien kills one of his subordinates with the excuse that he was taking too long to beat Anko; in reality, he just wanted to test the powers he'd gotten from infusing the Hero Water.
- Advice and Trust: Commander Gendo Ikari is prone to make bad choices and blame them on his subordinates. He came up with a bad strategy to defeat Bardiel. Shinji, Asuka and Rei had to go against his orders to triumph, and his reaction was firing his two best pilots rather reprimand them because he was angry at them. When the enemy attacked and Ritsuko got hurt he ordered everything ignoring her because she was "irrelevant". When the two pilots that he had fired returned and helped to defeat Zeruel he got mad.
- The Child of Love: Gendo Ikari plays with his employees' feelings and motivations to manipulate them, discards them when he considers that they have outlived their usefulness, threatens them with terrible punishments if they do not comply, and is not above of boosting his teenager pilot’s hormones so that she has sex and gets pregnant because he wants to play genetic engineer with her baby, even if it may kill her.
- A Crown of Stars: Jinnai has all classic traits: short-tempered, irrational, paranoid, prone to execute whoever displeases him and willing to hold his troops’ families hostages in order to ensure their loyalty.
- Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88): Gendo regards his employees as chess pieces, and he isn't above coercing them, threatening them, blackmailing them, manipulating them or risking their lives.
- Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Shiki the Golden Lion demands absolute perfection from his navigators and weather-watchers, and the first clue that the heroic Kamikaze Pirates have that he's a dangerous psychotic is when Ryoga accidentally discovers him executing a weather-watcher for failing to predict an approaching storm.
- Captain Seacliff of Junior Officers was extremely abusive towards his staff, which including assaulting a 19-year-old junior officer.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
- Ghaldin Rayazo, the creator and master of Apoch and Astreal Ezrana. They suffered so much under his control that they actually ran away to Yokai Academy to find someone strong enough to kill him and free them. When he catches up to them, Ghaldin physically abuses the sisters and outright says that they're nothing but living weapons and tools for him to do as he pleases with. Needless to say, no one is sorry for him when Inner Moka offs him.
- Fairy Tale has several examples of this:
- As shown in Act VI, several of Gyokuro's subordinates are scared of her and try to avoid crossing her in any way.
- The Clone Army of Apoch and Astreal that Fairy Tale created back in Act II suffered so much abuse at their hands that they eventually snapped and turned on them en masse.
- Kiria has quite the disregard for his own troops. In Act II chapter 25, he deliberately stands by and watches as Dark fights and kills Miyabi, even personally helping Dark by giving him a sword; upon Miyabi's death, he deems it a "necessary sacrifice." Furthermore, a significant chunk of his plan in Act III involves infecting most of his troops with Blackheart, a Psycho Serum that drives those who take it insane and kills them after one hour.
- A Rabbit Among Wolves: Adam was not empathetic to his minions, to the point that "Adam" is a term his grunts use when expecting punishment. It is part of the reason why almost no one in the White Fang is actually upset when Jaune accidentally kills him.
- If a villain has followers in Ruby and Nora, they’re going to be this.
- Team LVDR: Blaze uses his fellow prisoners as suicide bombers, murders them to blow off steam, and is perfectly willing to kill them just to score a victory against his enemies.
- War of Remnant: A RWBY Anthology:
- Jacques Schnee treats his workers with abuse and slavery. He has plenty of money to stop deadly cave-ins from happening, but is so greedy he refuses to pay for safety precautions, resulting in dozens of cave-ins that kill his workforce.
- Adam can be quite cruel to his fellow White Fang members. In one instance, he uses a female member as a Bulletproof Human Shield and abandons his men to be killed by Winter.
- Beautiful Destroyer Sailor Moon: Both Nephrite and Zoisite casually sacrifice their youma whenever they feel like it. Zoisite can't even be bothered to recall any of their names.
- Omen in Skylanders Academy: New Horizon is a terrible boss to his Tyke Bomb Cyrus, abusing and belittling him at any opportunity and freely using a torture brand for the most menial of infractions, leaving the poor dragon terrified of failing his master. This turns out to be a means to further control Cyrus, as him being miserable makes him much easier to control, since a dragon's power is tied to their emotions.
- Forum of Thrones:
- Harren Hoare is shown to have absolutely no care for his underlings or their well-being. He doesn't even make sure the workers that are supposed to build his castle are properly fed.
- Clayton is technically the superior to Kersea, Alysanne and Wolfius. Since he is Clayton, he antagonizes all three of them, mentally abusing Kersea, trying to get Alysanne killed and using Wolfius as a scapegoat for his own crimes, all of it without even the hint of remorse.
- Maron Mullendore is secretly the crimelord Butterfly. This means, he actively sacrifices some of his guardsmen to make sure his cover remains believable.
- Sonic Mania: The Novelization: In chapter 3, Eggman detonates the Explosive Leash in one of his Eggrobos right in front of the Hard-Boiled Heavies, warning them that he'll do the same to them if they don't shape up and obey him.Eggman: Now I think we understand each other. Anyone who disobeys me, anyone who fails me, anyone who just annoys me goes... boom. So, are you with me, or against me?
- Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo:
- Sidious brutally tortures Maul for failing to kill Vader, then outright kills him when Maul delivers Vader's message to him. Plagueis resurrects the Zabrak immediately afterward, but damn...
- Plagueis gives Vader his express permission to butcher any and all Sith agents (or Unwitting Pawns) within the Trade Federation if they do anything detrimental to the Sith cause in the future.
- Double Agent Vader expands on the canon implications of Emperor Palpatine being a bad boss, and goes into detail about his mistreatment of Vader; he subjects him to Cold-Blooded Torture when his performance is unsatisfactory, deliberately gives him substandard medical care and prosthetic equipment, and amuses himself by making him do annoying or unpleasant tasks.
- Diamond Authority: Agates have a species-wide reputation for being notoriously bad bosses.Steven: Um, are all Agates like that?
Amethyst 8XJ: Nope! Some of them are worse. - Little Rebellions: Generally speaking, everyone who owns a pearl is shown to be varying shades of horrific. At best, they tend to be Entitled Bastards who take their servants completely for granted; others are outright monsters who will send them off to be harvested just because they've decided they wanted to replace them with 'a prettier model'.
- Nagas and later Tensombrek in the Tales of Symphonia fanfic Tasks of Spirit. Oh MAN they are bad. It is impressive. Though, to be fair the latter does not kill useful minions. Just everyone else. And the innocents.
- The Adventures Of Brianna Baggins has Traude, once the dragon-sickness kicks in.
- As Eugenesis begins, both sides of the Cybertronian war are stuck with crappy leaders. Galvatron's just brooding on his throne, making schemes that make sense only to him and plotting to kill one of his last loyal troops, while Rodimus Prime is just wasting time with pointless exercises. Meanwhile, the Quintessons have Xenon, who despite being a Well-Intentioned Extremist is perfectly willing to threaten his own people. But as bad as Xenon is, his underling Quantax, the Dragon-in-Chief of the piece, is far worse.
- Most of the Interrogators that the All Guardsmen Party encounter certainly qualify, some more than others. Sarge is finally persuaded to accept a promotion to Interrogator to keep the Guardsmen from any more bad bosses.
- A Darker Path: Coil had his underground base fitted with a special self-destruct system, paying the ones who developed it handsomely... before immediately having them all murdered to ensure their silence.
- Sben, Big Bad of the Yognapped series (one of them, at least), routinely kills his Peons for moderate transgressions. Justified in most cases, such as when he gouges out a scientist's eyes for badly messing up Martyn's clone and forcing him to alter the plan. Whatever ones aren't justified are just a result of him being certifiably insane.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: "I am Marik Ishtar, I like to take control of people's minds and dress in highly effeminate clothing. Also I have an irrational hatred for Gummi Bears. I'm pretty much the worst boss ever."
