Evil Laugh / Live-Action TV

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• 30 Rock:
  • Liz Lemon, when she deceives her crush to get him to hang out with her.
  • This was mirroring the behavior of evil laughing Spanish-language soap-opera character 'El Generalissimo', a dead-ringer for Jack.
• Angel: Lampshaded in one episode when Lorne describes a scene where the Big Bad "mwa-ha-ha'd at us." Played extremely straight (and sinister) when the episode "Awakening" ends with Angelus opening his eyes and...smiling. Then chuckling softly but continuously until the credits.
• A.N.T. Farm:
  • Subverted with vampire Fletcher in the Halloween episode, whose Evil Laugh is a girlish "Tee-hee-hee" while his normal laugh is easily mistaken for an evil one.
  • Played Straight by Sequoia on Creative ConsultANT. She says Chyna is suspended, then laughs. Angus does it too, but only because he doesn't get her so-called joke but fakes it. While Olive knows something is wrong because of that and Chyna would never miss an opportunity to sing live.
    • Later, Olive and Angus find Chyna suspended above a shark tank, and Angus realizes what she meant and does the Evil Laugh again.
• Ashes to Ashes (2008): Jim Keats has a seriously creepy giggly one. And in the finale, when he's implied to be none other than Satan himself, he combines it with a weird hissing noise that's pure Narm Charm.
• Batman (1966): Frank Gorshin's evil, high-pitched chuckle as The Riddler in the Adam West series.
  • And Cesar Romero's manic laughter as The Joker.
  • And let's not forget: "Waugh waugh waugh!" This was an invention of Burgess Meredith — in the original comics the Penguin had an effeminate giggle. The cigarettes Meredith had to smoke for the role irritated his throat, producing a laugh that just so happened to resemble a penguin's squawking.
• The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon Cooper, described by Leonard as "One lab accident short of being a supervillain", has a rather droll one used during an escalating prank war with Penny.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy: Does this in one episode about plants that eat meat.
• Blackadder: In the episode "Potato", we see, in turn, Captain Rum, Blackadder himself, and Baldrick try out what are definitely evil cackles of the pirate variety. They then stop as the line gets to a disconsolate Percy, asking him if he is not going to join in the "Ha Has".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The nerd trio in Season 6 : "We're like... supervillains. Mwahahahaha!" (The script notes "It needs some work"). In the season finale their leader tries this in a demon bar, and belatedly realises they're laughing at him, not with him.
  Warren: This... isn't the Evil Laugh of Victory, is it?
  Vampire: More like the evil laugh of "You're a dead man."
  • The most complete counter-example is the Buffy Season 3 uber-villain, the Mayor. His chuckles and general good humour are completely sincere and natural.
• Castle:
  • This cop/writer TV show had an awesome evil laugh moment in the Halloween episode. The main character, Castle, has an impressive go at it with a running pumpkin drill in his hand and a mild threat to go after any boys who hurt his daughter. Impressive, that is, until he has a coughing fit.
  • He has a more successful one when he suggests building a weather machine out of liquid nitrogen so that Alexis won't have to choose between staying at home to study and going with her friends out of the city.
• Cheers:
  • Carla has a particularly evil cackle she lets out from time to time. Usually when she knows something someone else doesn't.
  • In the episode "The Executive's Executioner", Norm gets saddled with the soul-crushing job of "office hatchetman"; in the end, he uses his new boogeyman-status to get revenge on the executive who inflicted it on him: "This is NORM PETERSON! MUHAHAHAHA!"
• Chuck: Parodied in "Chuck Versus the Subway" by Daniel Shaw, after he has captured Sarah and Casey. And then, in "Chuck Versus the Ring", by Chuck, after he reveals to Daniel Shaw how he beat him and took down the Ring.
• Community:
  • Senor Chang gets a couple of good ones in the episode "Modern Warfare". He also shares a less cackling one with Dean Pelton at an earlier point.
  • One of the German students does an evil laugh when he figures out a plan to get revenge on Jeff and the study group. He's in class when he does it, however, and tries to cover it up by claiming to remember a joke from the German version of The Nanny.
• Deadliest Warrior: Vlad the Impaler has a very low-key, sinister laugh during the final sim of the "Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu" episode.
• Doctor Who:
  • Some, no, any incarnations of The Master worth their salt have a penchant for dramatic mad laughter.
    • Jonathan Pryce's Master from The Curse of Fatal Death deserves a special mention. His Laugh is so Evil that it causes thunder and lightning to strike inside his TARDIS.
    • "The End of Time" has John Simm's Master, having just turned the entire of humanity into copies of himself, go into an Evil Laugh that lasts 45 seconds, is echoed by all his copies, and gives us the sight of John Simm in drag.
  • Davros combines this with a touch of Robo Speak at high volume for a memorably batshit insane Evil Laugh. If you're really lucky, it's probably the finishing touch on a spectacular Motive Rant.
    • If you're exceptionally lucky, you're listening to an Audio Drama^note There's no page to put it on, hence why it's here., most likely Davros, where the aforementioned character gives a full-tilt psychotic cackle!
  • In "The Masque of Mandragora", the Helix does this, often when there is no other sign of its presence.
  • Invoked in "The Invasion of Time" when the Fourth Doctor is pretending to be evil. Of course, developing an evil laugh and using it extensively is an important part of this.
  • Subverted in "The Pirate Planet". The Fourth Doctor is made to Walk the Plank to his apparent death, and the villains all have an evil laugh... only to stop when they hear the Doctor laughing along with them.
  • The Black Guardian's version is good, if rather traditional; it goes something like "nyaaaaahahaha". Captain Wrack, meanwhile, seemed unable to function if she didn't cackle evilly every two minutes or so. "Enlightenment", where they both appear, makes for some interesting watching.
  • The Rani plays this trope straight in "Time and the Rani", but in the mine shaft scene with the Master and Peri in "The Mark of the Rani", she starts choking and knocks Peri out with her poison gas capsules.
  • "The Idiot's Lantern": The Wire indulges in a bit of this as it gets closer to its endgame.
  • "The Runaway Bride":
    • The Racnoss Empress has a very hammy one: "AK-akakakakaka!"
    • Her human accomplice Lance Bennett has a more subdued one.
  • "Flesh and Stone" has the Weeping Angels making a very alien sound that is an approximation of laughter.
  • "Resolution" presents the very first instance of a Dalek engaging in this trope, as the recon scout Dalek taunts the Doctor and company when she establishes communications with it.
• Dollhouse: When Echo is in the Attic, she comes across a projection of Boyd Langton. When she asks where her friends are, he lets out a reverberating evil laugh before telling her she has no friends (he's lying of course).
• Downton Abbey: Vera Bates, Mr. Bates's psycho ex-wife, indulges in one once.
• Eerie, Indiana:
  • In "Foreverware", Betty Wilson, the evil neighborhood woman who has been retaining her youth forever, does a rather over the top one (complete with lightning strikes) when Marshall and Simon escape from her house.
  • In "Reality Takes a Holiday", Dash X does one after he and the Eerie, Indiana writer José Schaefer tell Marshall that he is going to be killed off.
• Firefly: Wash gives us an example of a good guy doing this in the pilot episode 'Serenity', as a conversation between...two toy dinosaurs. "I think we should call it your grave!" '"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!", "Hahaha! Mine is an Evil Laugh! Now die!"
• Friends: Appears under the name "The Plan Laugh", employed by Phoebe — Joey tries to imitate it, but can't get it right.
  Phoebe: Muahahahahaha!!!
  Joey: Ho, ho, ho!
  Phoebe: It's not Santa's plan!
  • Joey's stalker (played by Brooke Shields) has a pretty scary laugh.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Walder Frey has one during and after the Red Wedding.
  • Averted by notably humourless Tywin Lannister and dispassionate Roose Bolton, who almost never laugh at all.
• Get Smart: Max and 99 are sneaking through a cave looking for a Mad Scientist when an Inescapable Net drops onto them. The cave immediately echoes with the scientist's sinister laugh.
  Max: Well we can be thankful for one thing.
  99: What's that, Max?
  Max: Whoever captured us has a terrific sense of humor.
• Good Eats: Alton Brown of does it occasionally, usually when turning a food trope into a Subverted Trope. Most recently used when getting his veggiephobic niece to eat vegetables (specifically the parsnip).
• Good Luck Charlie:
  • Mrs. Dabney has been practicing her evil laugh for years, making her sound deeper as she does it.
  • Gabe also has an evil laugh in "Appy Days".
• The Good Place:
  • Michael lets out one when Eleanor discovers that he's actually evil.
  • Eleanor and Michael share one when the rebooted Chidi reaches the same realization.
• Hell's Kitchen: Strangely enough, Jen in Season 4 actually does a Laughing Mad version of this after her former team lost. Check it out (1:43).
• House: Gregory House has one, perhaps unsurprisingly. He's not evil, though. He's just Dr. Jerk. Watch the BWA-HA-HA-HA! here.
• How I Met Your Mother: Barney does an evil laugh at times (notable in Season 6 Episode 23); then again, he has been working with a vocal coach.
• I, Claudius: Livia, awesome scheming mega-bitch that she is, gets an epic evil cackle at the end of the episode "Poison is Queen". Starts here, at 3:58.
• Tim Curry as Pennywise gives a really odd rendition in the miniseries version of It:
  Pennywise: Wa-HAH! Wa-HAH! Wa-HAH! Wa-HAH!
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Double: Ryubee Sonozaki has one of these. Regular users of Gaia memories (i.e ones without drivers) cross this with Laughing Mad.
  • Chiyoko Shiraishi provides a rare heroic example, when she indulges just little bit too much in her role as a mad scientist in one of the weirder episodes of Kamen Rider OOO
  • Aran engages in a mocking one while preparing to unleash his full power as Kamen Rider Necrom in #22 of Kamen Rider Ghost.
  • It is kind of obvious that Kuroto Dan would do this, being a mad programmer and so. The more deranged it gets the more hilarious it becomes. ^note Maybe the most famous evil laugh of the franchise.
    • Emu, of all people, has a small psychotic chuckle upon being possesed by Parado, who is Perpetual Smiler, but usually leaves the laugh to Kuroto. It turns into full blown sinister, unhinged laugh later on.
  • Night Rogue and Blood Stalk, the Big Bad Duumvirate of Kamen Rider Build have both some extremely menacing laugh that is not funny even when pulled alonside Slouch of Villainy (that is funny). Extra points for Blood Stalk, whose laugh echoes in a way that should turn dreams into nightmares. When Blood Stalk becomes Kamen Rider Evol (and reveals his true identity as the demonic spirit of Evolt, the destroyer of Mars), his henshin jingle includes a psychotic one.
  • Storious, the story Megid of Kamen Rider Saber notably averts this. He is not prone to gloating or any other tradiotionally villainous antics and just mantains a polite, professionally pleasant attitude. What makes him even more eerie of an appearance are his hammy co-villains' and an occasional indulgence that signifies that stuff is about to hit the fan.
• The League of Gentlemen: Played terrifyingly straight by Papa Lazarou, who has an absolutely nightmarish cackle.
• MacGyver (1985): One of the Murdoc-centric episodes ends with MacGyver answering the phone to hear Murdoc's laughter.
• Married... with Children: Any time Marcy got one over on Al, she would unleash a loud, shrill, staccato like witch-cackle that could shatter glass.
• The Mighty Boosh: One of the most underated antagonists in history, The Hitcher, provides an interesting subversion. Whereas most villains contain their evil laughter until the final moment, releasing it in one guffaw, The Hitcher laughs evilly AS HE TALKS, spreading it out through his dialogue!!
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: John Cleese does a surprisingly evil cackle of the psycho variety at the end of the sketch "How Not to Be Seen" (immediately following the explosion of a man, his wife, his neighbour, his house, and the building in which he was born).
  "Ahhahaha hahaha hahah— (cough, pause) And now for something completely different."
• Mr. Brain: There is no doubt GACKT was having a lot of fun playing the role of a cannibalistic serial killer in this TV series.
  "I will kill you all and feast upon your flesh! I will...be reborn! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
• My Hero (2000): In the episode "Nemesis", Piers, possessed by Rovi, laughs several times. When George asks him why he keeps laughing, he replies "It underscores my evil — it's a flourish."
• MythBusters: All the hosts (except Jamie) have indulged in this at least once. For instance, when Adam inhaled sulphur hexachloride...
• NCIS: The episode "Bikini Wax". Tony DiNozzo gives us a truly epic one when he sees his co-worker Kate's picture on the "Wet T-Shirt Hall of Fame" as the screen fades to black.
• Once Upon a Time: Rumplestiltskin is as infamous for his crazy giggles as for his Evil Deals.
• Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin laughs evilly on a couple occasions. This example is from the episode "Two Way Stretch Snodgrass":
  Mr. Conklin: I just learned that Biff Mooney, one of the greatest college football players, is interested in a high school coaching job in this part of the country. I've already opened negotiations by mail, and it's a foregone conclusion that he'll accept my offer. Ah-ha-ha-ha [evil laugh] ah, I can't wait to see the expression on Brill's face when I tell him about it. Heh, heh, heh. [evil laugh]
  Miss Brooks: In some states, that laugh would be banned.
• Staple of villains in Power Rangers. Notable examples include:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
    • When Tommy was evil in the first season, he tended to do this quite a bit during that particular arc, and it got hilarious very quickly.
    • "I'll be back! You haven't seen the last of Rita Repuls-ah-AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!" Hear it yourself here, starting at 1:36.
    • Almost all of Lokar's lines are just evil laughs.
  • in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Ryan during his evil phase has one that is a match for Tommy's. Must be an evil Ranger thing.
  • Mesogog, the Big Bad of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder is made creepier by averting this trope. A Mad Scientist, who doesn't rise his voice and keeps his behavior reptilian cold is a contestant for the scariest villain in the history of the franchise.
  • When Chase is transformed into an evil elf in the second Christmas episode of Power Rangers Dino Charge, he cackles like this every so often. Somehow it's hilarious without being narmy.
• Seinfeld:
  • Jerry does an epic one of these while smoking assholish cigars in one episode when Elaine is paying him money, having repeatedly lost her bet with him about not sleeping with David Puddy.
  • Parodied in the episode, "The Susie" Jerry suggests that Elaine should "get rid of Susie," an Invented Individual at her office. He then bursts into laughter at the sight of an offscreen bumper sticker. Unbeknownst to both of them, Mike, who's trapped in the trunk of Jerry's car, thinks they're planning to commit murder, and from his point of view, it sounds like Jerry is laughing evilly.
  • The blooper reel has several outtakes of Jerry doing his evil laughing while Julia Louis-Dreyfus keeps cracking up at him and ruining the take. Jerry eventually starts choking on all the cigar smoke on set in the middle of one of his evil laugh takes. It's hilarious.
  • Newman does one in "The Calzone" which is cut short when a random fork on the chair he was sitting on pokes him in the rear.
• Smallville: In one episode, Lana, Chloe and Lois get particularly chilling ones due to being possessed by evil witches.
• Spaced: Tim Bisley does a magnificent one in S1E4. He finishes the laugh with a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, diving through the closed window. Then the scene returns to reality.
• Star Trek: Voyager: Doctor Chaotica in "The Adventures of Captain Proton", the show's homage to Flash Gordon. Most noticeable when Chaotica has Constance Goodheart tied up as a supreme sacrifice to Queen Arachnia and, later, after Arachnia has agreed to marry him. There's even an The End... Or Is It? laugh at the conclusion of the episode.
• Supernatural: In the episode "Born Under a Bad Sign", Meg!Sam gets to indulge in a chilling (and strangely hot) evil laugh.
• Tales from the Crypt: The Crypt Keeper's famous evil cackle at the intro.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • Pip lets one out in "A Nice Place to Visit" when he reveals to Valentine that he's not in Heaven as he originally presumed, but actually in Hell.
  • In "Deaths-head Revisited", when former SS captain Gunter Lütze is told by the ghost of one of his victims that sentence is about to be passed on him, Lütze lets out a vicious, cruel laugh as he mocks the ghost for thinking that he can be judged.
  • In "The Jeopardy Room", the Soviet commissar uses a particularly nasty laugh at the end of the taped message he leaves for the defector he's toying with.
• Twin Peaks: BOB has a pretty terrifying laugh. While inside the Black Lodge he laughs backwards and it sounds even more perverse and malevolent.
• UFO (1970): In "Timelash", Turner, one of the HQ radar operators, has turned traitor. Aliens have given him power to manipulate time, which makes him almost impossible to catch. He uses this to lead Cmdr. Straker and Col. Lake on a chase all across the area to distract them from stopping an impending UFO attack. All the while, he keeps taunting Straker with verbal abuse interspersed with hollow, very annoying laughter worthy of a melodrama villain.
• Ultra Series
  • Kemur Man from Ultra Q started the trope off in the Ultra Series; when the size of a human, he utters an extremely deep example partly taken from the eponymous mushroom people of the Toho horror film Matango, with some of his laughs being reversed and others seemingly original in nature.
  • Baltan from the original Ultraman had a deep and menacing "Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho", While very popular with fans, it's another example of the Mushroom People's laughter in Matango. Listen to it here.
  • Ultraman Gaia: Gan Q, a kaiju from another dimension. Clearly insane, it finds everything on Earth hilarious, and spouts maddening laughter that can be heard for miles around it.
  • Many of the Big Bads have one.
• At the end of the WandaVision episode "Breaking the Fourth Wall", The Reveal of the actual villain is capped off by a comically over-the-top cackle.
  Agatha Harkness/Agnes: And I killed Sparky, too! HAHAHAHAHA!
• Wizards of Waverly Place:
  • Dr. Evilini has a habit of snickering evilly while dramatic music plays in the background. This, along with her Meaningful Name, is proof that she's Obviously Evil.
  Dr. Evilini: (laughs) Oh, that sounded mysterious!
  • One-upped by Gorog during "Wizards vs. Angels". When he laughs, his voice is amplified and projected like an echo to make him sound more terrifying.
    • Lampshaded humorously when he's disguised as Dexter, the doorman of the 13th floor in the "Apartment 13B" saga, and realizes the evil laugh doesn't work with this face.

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