For The Evulz / Western Animation

Antagonists who do terrible things just because they can in Western Animation.

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• Aladdin: The Series:
  • Mirage is a cat goddess who's labeled as "Evil Incarnate" and whose primary motivation is to destroy good and spread misery. She developed into wanting revenge on Aladdin, but started out trying to hurt Agrabah because there was too much good in it.
  • The being named Chaos. Aladdin and Co. think he's following this trope, but it's really more because It Amused Me. They eventually find out he's not ACTUALLY evil, just making things "interesting" for them because of the "rut" that Aladdin is in, always being the hero and whatnot. When he accidentally lets slip that Mirage sent him there? They proceed to let him know that Aladdin's life is already pretty chaotic, but Mirage? ALWAYS the same thing, nothing but evil, evil, evil. He decides to go make HER existence a little more... Varied. It's even revealed that screwing with Mirage for trying to manipulate him was his real plan all along.
• Mrs. Robinson from The Amazing World of Gumball. Virtually every action she takes is to cause suffering in others, just because she enjoys it, whether it's swapping newborn babies between two innocent families to make them fight each other to looking into a child's eyes as they choke to death and smiling. She takes such glee in this that the Season 4 episode "The Wicked" gives her a very fitting Villain Song adaptation of My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music.
• Roger from American Dad! often has no particular motivation at all for his despicable behavior. He'll casually admit as much without hesitation, as exemplified when he explains why he's familiar with the Kubler-Ross model of grief:
  Roger: Back in the late '60s, I was porkin' this unattractive lady scientist, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. I dumped her hard for no reason. Out of nowhere. It was awesome.
  • It is explained in "Franny 911" that he not only can't help being mean, his race has to be, as if they go too long without letting out their "bitchiness", it turns to bile that slowly poisons them. It's not like he's making it up, mind you- that specific episode, the symptoms slowly show (headaches, nausea, then overall fatigue and sluggishness), and by the time they realize what's the problem, his skin is pale and falling off and he's near death.
  • His persona Ricky Spanish is the embodiment of this trope (and so evil that even Roger fears him). All he does is pure evil for the sake of it. This ranges from petty harmless evil acts like shutting an elevator while someone runs at it and literally taking candy from a baby to murdering dozens of people at a wedding.
• In Angel's Friends this is the devils' main motivation, as they are supposed to tempt people.
• In the Animaniacs episode "Bully for Skippy", Skippy tries several non-violent methods to curb Duke's bullying (ignoring it, trying to be his friend, and appealing to his sense of empathy). None of them work, and Skippy eventually realises that Duke has no Freudian Excuse or even an explanation, and is just an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. At this point, he has Slappy help him simply beat and blow up Duke into submission.
• In Aqua Teen Hunger Force Master Shake physically and psychologically tormenting Meatwad for no reason other than his own amusement.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Azula may have her eyes set on the crown and other external motivations, but a lot of times she seems to just enjoy being an evil bastard. Especially when you consider how cruel Azula was to Zuko during their childhood. This blatant evil comes back to bite her in the ass when she has a tremendous Villainous Breakdown.
• In Nelvana's 1989 Animated Series of Babar, The Hunter killed the title character's mother but didn't even bother to remove her ivory tusks. While this is probably because of censors, as the dead body of Babar's mother shown no bullet holes, The Hunter seems only kill animals just for the sake of killing rather than profiting off the ivory trade. In fact, after discovering the animals' sentience and intelligence, the Hunter just becomes motivated to hunt the animals further.
• In Batman: The Animated Series, naturally, we have the Joker. While the rest of the criminals, despite their outlandish gimmicks, generally do have motivations like greed or revenge, the Joker is in it for his own sick amusement and "funding [his] happily hedonistic lifestyle". It's spelled out on multiple occasions, like in "The Man Who Killed Batman" when Joker and his gang apprehend the title character, a nondescript thug named Sid, and take him with them to rob a jewelry store and lure Batman out. When Batman doesn't show, Joker concludes that he really is dead and mournfully tells his goons to put the jewels back because "Without Batman, crime has no punchline." Another episode, "The Laughing Fish", has him concoct a scheme to blackmail a copyright clerk into giving him royalties over the "Joker fish", and we get this exchange between the poor clerk and Batman:
  Mr. Francis: Uh, Batman? Why is this happening to me? I've never done anything to this "Joker." I'm just a paper-pusher, I can't change the laws. I'm harmless!
  Batman: And in his sick mind, that's the joke, Mr. Francis.
• The Boondocks:
  • The reason why Stinkmeaner comes back from Hell to torment the Freeman family.
  • Stinkmeaner and the Hateocracy are pure personifications of this trope, stating that "they don't need no reason to fuck shit up".
  • "It's fun to do bad things" is Lamilton Taeshawn's catch phrase and excuse for his behavior throughout his episode.
• While all the villains from Captain Planet and the Planeteers seemingly pollute for no reason, they actually have some incentive ranging from Looten Plunder being a Corrupt Corporate Executive to Verminous Skumm wanting to wipe out humanity so his kind can take over. Dr. Blight is the only one truly fitting of this trope to a degree. Her motives vary from episode to episode, and she is the only villain other than Zarm to scheme to destroy the Planeteers and Gaia.
• ChalkZone: When "The Scrawl" is first introduced in that episode, his reasoning for hating Rudy is the unflattering way that he was designed. Rudy tried fixing him up to make up for it and it seems to work, but then Scrawl still wishes to have everyone who's his prisoner dropped to their doom and steal Rudy's chalk anyway. His reasoning is simply: "I'm evil. Get it?".
• Katz from Courage the Cowardly Dog to the point that it's actually frightening. All of his little scam businesses typically involve killing his "customers" when he has no more use for them, or simply torturing and killing them for laughs.
• 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. Unlike many Western Animation examples, which are hammy, Anvilicious or just an excuse motif, Dark Danny plays this for pure terror.
• Princess Irmaplotz and Empress Zonthara from Dave the Barbarian, whose nature is simply, unavoidably evil.
  Dave: But, Irm, you don't look evil.
  Irmaplotz: Well, I'm half-good on my father's side.
• Swiper the Fox from Dora the Explorer doesn't actually want anything he steals from Dora. When he swipes things from her, he invariably throws them somewhere difficult for her to retrieve them, simply to make whatever task she's trying to accomplish harder.
• The Fairly OddParents!
  • The anti-fairies go out to cause bad luck, for no other reason than to go out and cause it. They are the Evil Counterpart to the Fairies, who go out to help kids For Great Justice, and to fill the void of not having kids of their own.
  • Vicky also counts. Her very purpose in life is either to swindle cash or torture those under her care, even her own little sister. When Timmy asks why she is working in the hospital in the episode Open Wide and Say Aaagh, she replies with this obvious answer: "I like volunteering in places where there's pain." When Timmy's parents tell her off at the end of the special Channel Chasers, Vicky gives a half-assed excuse for her obvious sadism: "I blame television!" Thankfully, for once, Timmy's parents don't buy this for a second.
    • The Episode Vicky Loses Her Icky reveals that her cruel personality is a result of her being under control by an Evil Bug, who once Timmy wishes away from her, ends up causing other characters, being Mr. Turner, Principal Waxelplax, and The President of the United States. In the end, Vicky ended up saving the day, but at the cost of going back to her mean form.
• Family Guy: This is how Peter Griffin can be described in recent years. While there are times where his evil actions can be boiled down to his stupidity, there are other times that show just how malicious he is and that he commits various evil acts purely for his own self-gratification.
• Sarmoti from Father of the Pride. In "The Siegfried and Roy Fantasy Experience Movie," he deliberately tells Larry to forbid Kate from going to her group. Later, when Larry tells Sarmoti he followed his advice, Sarmoti reveals that he gave him wrong advice due to his personal hatred for him.
• Final Space: Invictus want to conquer every universe, dimension, and timeline in every existence solely because it can. It actively manipulates people into freeing it from Final Space and directly possesses anyone it can't deceive. For extra evil points, whenever it possesses a corpse, it first restores their personality and memories, and then it takes control of them.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the pilot movie House of Bloo's, bratty imaginary-friend Duchess and Mac's bullying older brother Terence devise a plan to take revenge on Bloo and separate him from Mac. Duchess has sort of a persecution complex about Bloo (totally unknowingly) keeping her from getting adopted, but when Mac asks his brother why he's locking him in the closet, all he gets is an uninterested "'cuz."
• Futurama: In "A Head in the Polls", Richard Nixon's head states that if he gets elected, he'll sell children's organs to zoos as meat and break into people's houses at night to wreck up the place, seemingly for no other reason than to prove how evil he is.
• In G.I. Joe: Resolute, Zartan says this about why he does what he does: "But I like the idea of living in a world where I can kill anyone I like, anytime I like. I don't need the money; I just need the killing."
• Eris from The Grim Adventures of Billy & 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 ruining a kung-fu tournament or tormenting the main characters while they aren't even bothering her.
• Stavros Garkos from Hurricanes has this as his apparent main motive aside from money and wanting to make his team, the Garkos Gorgons, world superstars.
• 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.
  Zim: Well... back to my filthy evil, I guess.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Subverted with Daolon Wong. Jade did theorize this as the reason Wong broke into Santa's workshop, as she believed him to be just another Christmas-hating villain, but Uncle explained that Santa spends the whole year accumulating chi to help him deliver gifts and that makes Christmas time the occasion he has more of it to be stolen. So, it wasn't a matter of hating Christmas but a matter of not caring enough about it to pass up a chance to steal Santa's chi when he's got the most of it.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes
  • Lucius is evil for the sake of being evil. The sole focus of his MegaCorp 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.
• 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.
• Justice League Unlimited:
  • Though Lex Luthor does have a legitimate master plan, in "Question Authority", he states 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. All just to tick Superman off.
  • When Flash and Luthor get mind-swapped in "The Great Brain Robbery", Flash-as-Luthor (who is doing a terrible over-the-top Luthor impersonation) explains to Doctor Polaris that he didn't stop to wash his hands on the way out of the restroom "because I'm evil!"
• Kaeloo: Most of the show's antagonists have a reason for doing the things they do; Olaf wants to make the world more livable for himself and his "wife", Mr. Cat was mostly neglected and abused as a child, Pretty has a reputation as an Alpha Bitch and does mean things to people because she's a Slave to PR, but Stumpy... finds being a dick funny.
• Shego from Kim Possible. She works as Drakken's mercenary enforcer, but her primary reason for villainy seems to be reacting against her Lawful Stupid brothers after quitting their superhero team. When Kim points out to the team 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 "Because it was obvious!" When the Lawful Stupid nature of the brothers is commented on, Shego responds "Why do you think I left!?"
  Hego: The more we fought evil, the more Shego liked it.
  Ron: The fighting?
  Kim: The evil.
• Looney Tunes short "Canned Feud" is one of the more dramatic examples in the Warner Brothers canon. Sylvester the cat is battling with a clever mouse, as he often was if he wasn't battling with Tweety—but in this instance Sylvester isn't trying to eat the mouse. All he wants to do is eat his canned cat food after his owners left on vacation without leaving out any food. Unfortunately for Sylvester the only can opener is in the hands of a mouse. Not only does the mouse not give over the can opener, he tortures Sylvester with it, continually dangling it in front of him only to devise elaborate traps. The short ends with the canned food under lock and key, with Sylvester apparently doomed to starve to death. Oddly enough, the mouse is actually endangering himself by doing this.
  • Daffy Duck in at least half of his cartoons with Speedy Gonzales. The most extreme example is "Well Worn Daffy" where Daffy is absolutely determined to deny Speedy and a friend access to a desperately needed well in the desert for no other reason than for being vicious for its own sake. Furthermore, after drawing all the water he wants, Daffy attempts to destroy the well in an act of murderous pointlessness. Although in their first appearance together it was strictly Money, Dear Boy as Granny was paying him handsomely to exterminate Speedy.
  • Though this was not the case in earlier shorts, Elmer Fudd states in two later shorts that he is a vegetarian and just hunts for sport. This angers Bugs, as it means that he is trying to kill him and Daffy just for fun.
  • Before Sylvester dealt with him in Canned Feud, Bugs Bunny had to deal with the same mouse in Rhapsody Rabbit. In this cartoon, the mouse upstages and ruins Bugs' performance of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for no discernible reason.
  • The Mad Bomber from The Blow Out doesn't seem to have any real motive, simply blowing up buildings for the sake of it.
• In The Lion Guard, Janja the hyena hunts rather than scavenge, just because he enjoys the fear live prey have. The usual 'hunting for sport, not out of hunger' trope also applies.
• Many villains in Megas XLR live by this trope. Two explicitly notable examples include Gerrkek the Planet Killer and Ender.
  Ender: My name is Ender. I end things. People, planets, galaxies.
• Masters of the Universe:
  • Skeletor in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983). 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.
  • The same seems to be true for Hordak, his counterpart in She-Ra: Princess of Power.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's reasons for bullying the Cutie Mark Crusaders are unclear but this seems to be their main motive for doing so. During the class elections in Season 5, it's shown that Diamond Tiara is bullied into acting this way by her tyrannical mother. When the Cutie Mark Crusaders help her out after she loses the election, she becomes a much nicer pony, as does Silver Spoon.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Wisp of Wickedness", the wisp is a ball of vapor consisting of pure concentrated evil. It possesses a hat and forces anyone who dons the hat to commit acts of pure evil, such as trying to run down children in a playground or dump a school bus into a smelter.
• Ninjago:
  • The Overlord, the overarching antagonist of the series, commits his crimes simply because he is the embodiment of darkness, and has no other motivation other than his belief that peace can only exist after all life is destroyed.
  • Master Chen started the First Serpentine War solely because he thought that peace was boring.
• Doctor Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb is a bit of a subversion. His plans usually have a purpose (making money, petty revenge or taking over the tri-state area), but what he seems to care about above all is that his plans are evil!!... somehow. The joke is that Doofenshmirtz is never remotely close to being as evil as he believes himself to be (but don't tell him that, or you'll hurt his feelings).
• In The Powerpuff Girls, this is the only reason Him does anything... except his aerobics.
• All the villains in the short-lived Saturday Morning cartoon series ProStars.
• ReBoot:
  • There is no doubt that this is the cause of Megabyte's actions later in the series. Shapeshifting as Bob and almost marrying Dot was done for no other reason than to amuse him.
  • Hexadecimal is so chaotic that she sometimes falls into this trope, for example creating the Medusa Bug and overriding the system Paint command. She even fires The Hardware at the Principal Office, despite Megabyte's warning that doing so will destroy the entire system and everyone in it, including herself, simply because it is "screaming out to be destroyed".
• Samurai Jack: In the DVD Commentary, Genndy Tartakovsky 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.
• In Shadow Raiders, this is the only apparent motivation for The Beast Planet's behavior of eating up planets and solar systems.
• SheZap from SheZow, his existance is valued by nothing but chaos, plain and simple, and slandering SheZow's good name.
• The Simpsons:
  • Mr. Black in "Kamp Krusty", as demonstrated by his toast to the three juvenile delinquents he is employing as camp counselors:
    Mr. Black: (raising his glass) Gentlemen — to evil.
  • Itchy kills his best friend Scratchy for this. A good example is a cartoon where Itchy pretends to commit suicide by jumping in a well so he can shoot Scratchy when he comes down to save him.
• South Park:
  • Apparently the Mongolians' only motivation for repeatedly destroying sections of the Great City Wall of South Park in "Child Abduction is Not Funny." Every time they succeed they just laugh, and then leave without even entering the town.
  • In "Scott Tenorman Must Die", the titular 9th grader cons Cartman into buying his pubic hair for $10, and then cons him out of an additional $6, and then tricks him into traveling 106 miles to go to a non-existent "Pube Fair" in Fort Colins. After he's grown bored of messing with Cartman, and after he's pushed Cartman to such a point of desperation that Cartman sings and begs for it, he burns the money right in front of Cartman and taunts him that he never even cared about the money and was only doing it to mess with a stupid 4th grader.
    Scott: You really care that much about sixteen measly dollars? I mean, what can you buy with sixteen dollars? My parents give me a fifty dollar-a-week allowance. This pittance means nothing to me!
• SpongeBob SquarePants: while there are several reasons for Plankton committing misdeeds, this is certainly one of them. In "F.U.N", he even refuses to make a Heel–Face Turn because "being evil is too much fun".
  • In later seasons, Mr Krabs becomes more antagonistic. Episodes like Plankton's Regular and Once Coarse Meal feature him straight up torturing Plankton for the sake of torturing Plankton.
  • Squidward, thought not liking SpongeBob, doesn't exactly plan anything against him most of the time. But on some occasions, like in Fools in April and Little Yellow Book, he gets fed up with SpongeBob's antics and is willingly trying to cause harm to him just to watch his misery.
• In the Super Mario Bros. (DiC) 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.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • One memorable episode features the season's Big Bad trying to create a giant tidal wave to drown the city — for no discernible reason at all. Admittedly, the one-shot villains often fall into this too, though they're usually just following whatever their gimmick happened to be.
  • Also the Brotherhood of Evil, at least in their first appearance. There is no logical reason, other than being a massive dick, 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.
  • Trigon, being the God of Evil, kinda has to fit this trope.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
  • This exchange sums up Karai's early characterization quite well:
    Leo: Karai, you don't have to do this.
    Karai: I know. That's what makes it fun!
  • Of course, as time goes by, Karai gains more motivation and eventually becomes a good guy.
  • This also applies to Xever/Fishface. In "Baxter's Gambit," he tells Raphael that he enjoys having a job where he gets to crack skulls.
• Toad Patrol has Medea the osprey, who relentlessly chases the Toad Patrollers throughout the course of the series, and since she only communicates in bird noises we never get an explanation for her actions. Justified in that she's a wild bird and she's probably hunting for food.
• Tom and Jerry:
  • Very few episodes have Tom actually want to eat Jerry. While some episodes have him chasing Jerry for a good reason, such as because his owner wants him to or because Jerry did something to antagonize him, intentionally or otherwise, the majority of episodes have Tom chase Jerry just to be mean.
  • When Jerry intentionally provokes Tom, it's usually over food or because Tom was intruding on his living space, but there are more than a few shorts where Jerry antagonizes Tom for no reason at all.
• Wander over Yonder: Lord Dominator causes havoc and destruction because its so much fun. Her Villain Song, 'I'm The Bad Guy', sums it up nicely.
• In Young Justice (2010), the council of Big Bads are Social Darwinists dedicated to the advancement of humanity across the universe... except, apparently, for Klarion, a Lord of Chaos, who Word of God says joined because he thought it would be fun.

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