Eunuchs Are Evil

It takes balls to take the throne. It takes no balls to be the power behind it.

"Why is it no one ever trusts the eunuch?"

— Lord Varys, Game of Thrones

So you've got a villain and you've got to give him a Red Right Hand, and your protagonist is the manliest of men. So, why not make your villain a Foil and remove his male gonads? Especially prevalent in fantasy and historical fiction, the Evil Eunuch is simultaneously creepy and effeminate — think Sissy Villain meets Virgin-Shaming. Since testosterone increases muscle gain, a villainous eunuch's lack of testosterone makes him unlikely to have a Heroic Build. Instead, he tends to be either a Fat Bastard (especially since castration also decreases metabolism and energy levels, hence the Lazy Neutered Pet) or Lean and Mean. Eunuchs also tend to have less bodily and facial hair than intact men do, which lends itself well to comparisons to reptiles, and of course, the limited sex drive makes this trope likely to overlap with the No Love for the Wicked. Throw in a Creepy High-Pitched Voice^note along with Creepy Long Fingers and Creepily Long Arms (and long legs, which tends to overlap with Evil Is Bigger) if the writer is going for accuracy if he was castrated before puberty, and you've got a great recipe for an Obviously Evil foe.

Eunuchs tend to be Evil Chancellor types, in keeping with the myriad historical records of ruthless and power-hungry eunuchs in societies like the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Turkey, and Imperial China. These empires appointed eunuchs to key court positions under the assumption that since they couldn't have children, they'd be more inclined to serve the good of the empire instead of trying to accumulate power for their families (which was an especially important factor in places like Byzantium and China, where usurpers who aimed to start their own imperial dynasties weren't uncommon). As it turned out, the lack of a family to enrich didn't stop eunuchs from seeking to enrich themselves, and in fact, gave them that much more time to scheme and plot, and that much less incentive to ensure they didn't destabilize the empire for future generations, so employing eunuchs didn't do much to solve the problem, and in some ways made it worse. Meanwhile, in post-Roman Europe ("Roman" here encompassing the Byzantine, or more properly Eastern Roman, Empire) or a setting based thereon, if a eunuch appears in a Period Piece, he's likely a castrato singer who behaves not unlike the usual Prima Donna celebrity.

In terms of physiology, pre-pubescent and post-pubescent castration have rather different outcomes — the former renders the subject pretty throughly nonsexual, while the later does not. In either case, because the practice of human castration ended around the time the study of endocrinology got started, so the knowledge base is limited and Artistic License – Biology is inevitable.

If a villain like this has supernatural powers, it could overlap with Virgin Power and Disability Superpower. Failing to avert the fate of the very castration that the animal so feared can be the Freudian Excuse for animal examples of this trope. Many, but not all male examples are Sissy Villains. It may or may not overlap with Pure Is Not Good: a villainous eunuch may be characterised as pure due to his lack of sexual development, or as impure due to his physical mutilation. This type of character frequently has an Effeminate Voice.

This trope is mostly, but not exclusively male. This trope is not restricted to castrations, both surgical and chemical. Penectomy and ovariohysterectomy examples can be included as well.

Compare Evil Cripple and Depraved Dwarf. Oh, and this trope has nothing to do with Unix outside of puns.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Butler has a female version: Madam Red, a doctor who lost her unborn child and her womb in an accident. Having to perform abortions on prostitutes while she herself couldn't have children led her to snap, becoming one half of Jack The Ripper along with Grell Sutcliffe.
• The High Eunuchs from Code Geass, Evil Chancellors who betray the Chinese Federation for personal gain and use their young empress as a Puppet King.
• Averted in Hetalia: Axis Powers, which features the famous eunuch Zheng He as one of Imperial China's advisors and does his work pretty well.
• In Red River (1995), it's revealed that Urhi Shalma was forcibly made a eunuch when he was a child, because he was the Sole Survivor of the royal family of a kingdom that was conquered, and the conquerors didn't want to risk him having heirs. He only reveals that he's a eunuch towards the end of the series, when it's necessary to clear up rumors that he's secretly Juda's father.
• Tokyo Ghoul downplays this with Juuzou Suzuya, castrated with a hammer (among other tortures) by the ghoul who raised him. While not a straight-up villain, he is a Psychopathic Manchild — though his upbringing kind of justifies that, and he becomes more stable and empathetic through his work partner's caring influence.

Art

• Possibly inverted in a lot of art from the Byzantine Empire, which depicted angels as androgynous — sometimes attributed to an association between angels in heaven and eunuchs at the imperial court. The straight form of this trope did manage to coexist in Byzantine culture with the more angelic and pure associations, though.

Card Games

• The Magic: The Gathering expansion Portal Three Kingdoms has a card called Corrupt Eunuchs.

Comic Books

• Juge Bao: The Chief Eunuch came up with a plan to discredit one of the Emperor's two favorite concubines (as he'd promised to elevate the first to bear him an heir) along with the other concubine by arranging for the pregnant concubine's child to be taken away and claim she'd given birth to a dog. However, another eunuch serving the unlucky concubine found a way to hide the child and have him raised by the emperor's brother (who knew the truth but never spoke it), eventually becoming the emperor's heir.
• In XXXenophile by Phil Foglio, the Eunuch is the one supervillain who is immune to Orgasm Lass's superpowers.

Fan Works

• At the beginning of Farce of the Three Kingdoms, the other characters all agree that the court eunuchs are primarily responsible for the downfall of the Han empire. However, they mostly come across as Harmless Villains unless you're He Jin, and are easily dealt with in the first few chapters... and when they're gone, the problems get much, much worse.
• In Frank's Night Out, Frank becomes a bloodthirsty psycho after Robert and Susan destroy his penis, and the ending reveals he’s become a Serial Killer.

Films — Live-Action

• 14 Blades features a particularly powerful Court Eunuch, Jia, as one half of a Big Bad Duumvirate. Until the other half decides he has outlived his usefulness, that is.
• Evil Eunuchs are a Chinese cinematic tradition, as seen in Butterfly and Sword and A Touch of Zen. If the movie has a fantasy bent, expect the eunuch to be some flavor of Evil Sorcerer.
• Bombaata in Conan the Destroyer is another example that only gets specified in the novelisation. This explains why he's the only man Taramis trusts around her niece Jehnna, and why Jehnna mentions that she hasn't known any real men. Going by Bombaata's Beard of Evil and deep voice (being played by Wilt Chamberlain and all), he presumably lost his 'nads after puberty.
• Possibly averted in Curse of the Golden Flower, where the court eunuchs and servants side with the Empress and the coup against the Big Bad.
• Subverted by another Bob in Demolition Man, who mentions in the novelisation that Cocteau had him castrated to "limit any aspirations of power" he might otherwise have had. Bob ultimately turns out to be a Punch-Clock Villain, willing to work with the heroes once his evil bosses get defeated.
• Dragon Inn and its sequels/remakes New Dragon Inn and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate featured evil eunuchs.
• Jonah King from Drive Angry was literally emasculated before the film begins, and he heads a Satanic cult. The heroes spend the whole movie calling him "Dickless".
• The Eunuch: Another Shaw effort, the titular Eunuch had a family massacred for trying to overthrow him in the opening scene, even killing their young son by bisecting the boy into half. It's also a film whose story is told from the villain's perspective, making the Eunuch a sort of a Villain Protagonist.
• Inverted with Bob Paulson from Fight Club, who lost his testicles to cancer stemming from steroid abuse. Despite being duped into joining Fight Club and Project Mayhem, Bob is probably the nicest character in the whole movie, and he repeatedly demonstrates that he has plenty of figurative "balls".
• Heroic Trio plays on the Chinese myth of eunuchs being evil, mystical beings.
• In Jumanji: The Next Level, one of the villainous Brothers Kababik is a eunuch. It's mostly Played for Laughs — since said brothers are The Ghost and Bethany and Fridge are impersonating them, the latter is forced to listen to a guard talk about how he supposedly bravely lost his testicles and go along with it.
• Kull the Conqueror: Subverted by the royal eunuch, who seems set up to fill an Evil Chancellor role in alliance with the two main bad guys in the Decadent Court, but he apparently remains ignorant of their (and later Akivasha's) schemes. His most morally ambiguous act is to declare that Kull can't abolish slavery, as it's permitted by the ancient laws (which is more Deliberate Values Dissonance-he's just upholding tradition).
• The main bad guys in The Kunoichi: Ninja Girl are a pair of eunuchs who are part of a group whose job is to kidnap women and deliver them back to their home village to serve as Sex Slaves for the village elite. The children selected for this group are castrated at birth so they are never tempted to interfere for with the women.
• In The Lone Ranger, Latham Cole is hinted to have become a eunuch during the Civil War.
• The villain in Orgazmo is blasted with the orgazmo ray so many times in the "climax" of the film that he returns in the epilogue for a Sequel Hook, proclaiming himself to be a eunuch and thus immune to Orgazmo's weapon (just like the villainous character they created in the movie-within-a-movie to bump off Orgazmo's character).
• Amber Sweet's psychologically-neutered valets from Repo! The Genetic Opera. They still have male genitalia and are traditionally masculine-looking beefcakes, but have had their sex drives obliterated to the point of incapability.
• Shaw Brothers' Secret Service of the Imperial Court: The film's main villain is the cruel Eunuch, Wang Zhen, who had hijacked control of the Brocade Guards for himself from the Emperor and rules as a tyrant.
• Turkey Shoot: All the camp guards must be castrated to hold the position, Anders says. They're all sadists or at least working for a brutal regime (the job kind of entails this). However, it's possible he's lying.

Literature

• Squealer the pig from Animal Farm, who serves as Napoleon's Propaganda Machine, is an example that might not be apparent to readers unfamiliar with animal husbandry. George Orwell calls him a porker, indicating that he was originally raised for, well, pork, and male livestock raised for meat are usually neutered to make them fatter and more docile. In contrast, Orwell refers to elite pigs like Napoleon as boars, which denotes intact male pigs; a typical farm will often keep a few intact male animals of a given species for breeding rather than eating. It's even said Napoleon sired all new piglets there initially, confirming this-it may mean he's the only boar starting out.
• Bazil Broketail: While not evil per se (aside from one who aids the Sephisti casting a spell against Emperor Banwi) Ourdh's eunuch court officials are all completely obstructive, hindering Ribela at every turn even though she's trying her best to save them, apparently just out of territorial jealousy and/or obedience toward the Emperor's petty whims.
• Averted in Gillian Bradshaw's The Bearkeeper's Daughter. Narses is a good-guy and the protagonist's mentor. He himself says, "When men curse eunuchs they make an exception for me."
• In The Belgariad, the Decadent Court of Nyissa is staffed by eunuchs, most of whom are backstabbing poisoners as a matter of course. Subverted in the Mallorean sequel series by the former Chief Eunuch Sadi, an Anti-Hero who joins the protagonists and eventually helps save the world. Also, while most of the senior eunuchs are highly corrupt, their being made eunuchs in the first place was for reasons of necessity - when your country has been ruled by a succession of girls who spend pretty much their entire adult lives in a state of chemically-induced nymphomania for five thousand years, you have to do something to ensure that the civil service will be able to focus on getting their work done instead of servicing the queen.
• Narses is an antivillain in the Belisarius Series. While a traitor and an assassin he is not particularly sadistic and has some claims to being an Only Sane Man. Interestingly he is not shown as effeminate; he is certainly more traditionally manly than the Vile One except in the strictly biological sense that the latter has slave-girls as his favorite entertainment, while residing in his mobile palace so far to the rear of the battlefield as not to be in any danger. An entertainment which Narses is incapable of should he have been inclined to stoop to it.
• The Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales is implied to be a eunuch, although this is never confirmed in the text; he is also one of the sleaziest of the pilgrims, a Con Man who sells fake indulgences and relics to poor parishioners (as well as to his fellow pilgrims, after he's explained his entire routine to them).
• The Crimson Tide, being a fantasy-adventure in a setting inspired by Ming Dynasty China, has the villain being the court Eunuch Pantu, who is pulling the strings behind orchestrating a decade-long war between two kingdoms. As a Bilingual Bonus - "Pantu" in Mandarin Chinese literally translates as "traitor".
• In The '80s pulp series Doomsday Warrior, it's briefly mentioned that Colonel Killov, the head of the KGB in the Invaded States of America, was born without testicles, and repeatedly emphasized that the only sexual thrill he gets is from killing people. Apparently he's planning to get the ultimate thrill by destroying the world. (Needless to say, this series doesn't go for subtlety in portraying the Dirty Communists.)
• Downplayed with Count Hasimir Fenring in Dune. He's a scheming member of the imperial court who may have poisoned Emperor Shaddam's father, but when ordered to kill Paul, he refuses. It turns out that he's a failed attempt at a Kwisatz Haderach due to a genetic defect that made him sterile.
• Dyke Mellis in Eat Them Alive was castrated by his fellow criminals after he tried to betray them and steal their money. While he was never a particularly nice person to begin with, losing his genitals turned him into a sadistic misanthrope who eventually has revenge handed to him in the form of giant praying mantises, which he trains to attack and eat people. Not only does he feed his former cohorts to the creatures, but also their friends and families, as well as several completely innocent bystanders, because he finds he actually enjoys watching the mantises rip people apart.
• The Elenium features the Elder God Azash, a God of Evil whom the Younger Gods castrated in order to reduce his power.
• In The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry, there is a conspiracy of eunuchs to manipulate the course of Chinese history.
• Inversion. In The Emperor's Winding Sheet by Jill Paton Walsh the most admirable character was a Byzantine eunuch.
• Dennis Wheatley's The Eunuch of Stamboul. Given that Wheatley's villains are often disabled, ugly or otherwise malformed, one knows who the villain is before one even reads the first sentence.
• Played with in Everworld; Hel's harem-city is guarded by eunuchs, but one of them purposefully slips Jalil a hint that Galahad's sword could hurt her, which helps them escape.
• The Grace Year:
  • Hans voluntarily submits himself to "the cut" (castration) as punishment so he can be a guard and escort the girl he likes on her way to her "grace year" (a ritual in which the village girls are exiled to the wilderness). Instead, he pulls an If I Can't Have You… when she rejects him.
  • The women from the outskirts have to do sex work to survive. They dread visits from the guards the most. Ryker explains to Tierney that castration does nothing to their minds and in fact, makes them worse and more violent.
• In The Horse and His Boy (an interquel set during the Time Skip in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first installment published in The Chronicles of Narnia), Pauline Baynes's original illustrations provide a Fridge Brilliance example that's less "eunuchs are evil in their own right" and more "eunuchs serve evil":
  • The two slaves who accompany a secret courtly meeting (between the Tisroc^note may he live forever of Calormen, his arrogant son, and their sycophantic Grand Vizier) are among the only Calormene men whom Pauline Baynes drew without any facial hair, indicating that they might be eunuchs, which would be in line with Calormen's Islamic and Mesopotamian influence. At any rate, C. S. Lewis explicitly describes them as deaf and mute, a more specific nod to the Ottoman Turkish tradition of employing such courtiers because they were better at keeping secrets.
  • The only other Calormene men drawn without beards (and with similar clothes to the aforementioned deaf-mute attendants) are the slaves who carry Lasaraleen's litter, another historically common role for eunuchs. Lasaraleen isn't evil — in fact, she's depicted as Spoiled Sweet, and even as a helpful friend to the heroine Aravis — but she does thoughtlessly accept her culture's injustices like slavery and arranged marriages.
• Another inversion. In The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (and sequels), The Hero is a nineteenth century Ottoman eunuch who solves crimes.
• This is a given in the world of the Judge Dee novels; "The necessary but horribly dangerous source of evil in every palace!" And yet he clearly feels a certain respect for the Chief Eunuch in Necklace and Calabash. It's mutual, and even as the Chief Eunuch dies from having taken poison, he lets Dee through to see the Princess.
• Kushiel's Legacy: Inverted. Two minor characters are eunuchs: Erik, a Skaldi boy in the Marhkagir's harem, who is shattered by his experience, but ultimately helps Phaedra escape, and Sunjata, an ex Carthaginian slave who'd been freed by Melisandre in the past, then recruited into the Unseen Guild but turns out to be good. Both are portrayed as victims of this.
• Played straight with the necromancer Korbal Broach in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, whose castration has made him obsessed with procreation by creating creatures out of stolen souls and dead flesh.
• Inverted with Sazed in Mistborn: The Original Trilogy, who is probably the nicest character among all the main characters of the series, and then he becomes the new god of the setting and saves it from total annihilation.
• The Neanderthal Parallax: Inverted with the Neanderthals, whose punishment for violent crimes is castration (of male criminals — we don't learn what happens to female ones), precisely because it kills their aggression afterward, thus making them less likely to commit new crimes. Cornelius Ruskin is given this treatment by Ponter after he discovers that he'd raped Mary, with the same results. He begins feeling remorse at what he'd done to her and Quasir, Mary's boss. In fact he comes to hate violent men like him, and even engineers a virus which targets human males. Unfortunately this gets loose and kills two men. Cornelius kills himself in guilt over it, since he didn't intend for this to happen.
• Mary Renault's The Persian Boy is a definite subversion. The narrator and protagonist is Bagoas, who was forcibly castrated at a young age and became the lover of both King Darius of III of Persia and, later Alexander the Great. From the outside he might seem like a scheming eunuch, but because we see everything from his perspective and are privy to his train of thought, he becomes a very sympathetic character. Renault took his story right out of the history books. To complicate matters, King Darius had had a Grand Vizier also called Bagoas, who was this trope to the hilt.
• In Qiang Jin Jiu Pao Rugui and the other eunuchs are extremely corrupt, which is Truth in Television for Imperial China.
• Evil Eunuchs have been a staple villain in China for centuries — the trouble started in the Latter Han period, where the Emperor would end up in a power struggle between his relatives and the imperial court, and the eunuchs who served him would be trusted with state secrets (Romance of the Three Kingdoms chronicles such a power struggle that sees Dong Zhuo rise to power).
• Rose of the Prophet: Two unnamed eunuchs are guards of the harem in the Sultan's palace, portrayed as loyal mooks.
• Shukeli from The Scarlet Citadel was stated to have lost all normal desires, and only have cruelty in their place.
• In The Smiling, Proud Wanderer by Louis Cha, Dongfang Bubai, Yue Buqun, and Lin Pingzhi all become eunuchs at varying points in the story to learn martial arts manuals. Dongfang Bubai practiced Sunflower Manual, which is actually a sister manual to the Evil-Repelling Sword Buqun and Pingzhi both learn. Both manuals give their practioners nearly invincible speed. Zig-Zagged considering most of the characters who try to learn these manuals are already villainous like Yue Buqun and his rival Zuo Lengshan but played straight by Lin Pingzhi who underwent increasing Sanity Slippage after learning it to the point of murdering the only woman who loved and supported him.
• She Who Became The Sun: When Anti-Villain general Oujang was a child, his family was executed for treason, and after he begged for mercy, he was only spared on the condition of getting castrated. Even 20 years later, he pursues revenge, and is willing to mistreat his army and kill the only person he loves for it.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Varys, the eunuch spymaster, has traits of this, but it's unclear if he's really evil. While he'll gladly stab anyone in the back, he tells Ned that he'll do anything to keep the realm relatively stable, as the last thing he wants is a repeat of the last war and all its casualties. However... he still does try to destabilize the upper tiers of the realm to a shockingly great degree, as its part of his plan to bring Aegon VI Targaryen to power. Having said that, he does seem to be trying to leave most existing institutions relatively intact for later use, even if they get horribly undermanned, disrupted, confused and bamboozled in the process.
  • Possibly inverted with Theon Greyjoy, who is a jerk with his manhood intact but manages to become more sympathetic after a Trauma Conga Line which is heavily implied to have involved emasculation.
  • Subverted with the Unsullied, an army of eunuch slaves; their evil actions aren't based in scheming, but in being broken tools often wielded by tyrants. As part of their training, they literally have to kill a puppy and a baby, though this is less malicious and more because they're forced to do so.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Eunuchs exist solely as fat, effeminate bad guys who try to thwart heroes by poisoning them.
• In the first chapter of The Years of Rice and Salt, a boy from Africa named Kyu is Made a Slave and castrated before he's sold to an aristocrat in China. He eventually becomes one of the high ranking eunuch officials in the Imperial City. He isn't out-and-out evil, but is definitely a Creepy Child, Ax-Crazy, and possesses some Dissonant Serenity over the people he kills.

Live-Action TV

• The Villain of the Week in one episode of Alcatraz is a serial poisoner who had lost his testicles when a bully threw a firecracker at him.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Varys could be described this way, although that's not how he sees it even if he's not entirely benevolent. This is invoked in regards to him by Maester Pycelle. Varys even lampshades it when he offers Eddard a flask of water and Eddard hesitates, asking with exasperation, "Why is it no one ever trusts the eunuch?" However, Varys may have only been as kind to Ned as he was because it could make him feel better about other things he'd done, and he knew it wouldn't cost him anything. In later seasons, through Adaptational Heroism (he doesn't employ mutilated slave children as spies and doesn't carry out a pair of assassinations to throw the realm into political chaos) he's established firmly in one of the heroic factions.
  • Averted by Theon who suffers an an implied involuntary penectomy after showing remorse for prior crimes he committed. Following this, he became The Atoner fully.
• Smoothie from Happy! is a sadistic Torture Technician whose name refers to his lack of a penis. Overheard dialogue in the second season implies that he cut off his own penis as a child and displayed the severed parts at his school's science fair.
• The King's Woman: Zhao Gao (who was a real person, and just as bad as his fictional counterpart) is supposed to be Ying Zheng's advisor. He's actually plotting with Min Dai to protect Zhao, their shared homeland.
• Lost Love in Times: Sun Shi is a variant. He's loyal to the emperor, but he's only too happy to help the emperor plot against Yuan Ling.
• Averted in Magnificent Century; the eunuchs in the Royal Harem are more like Gay Best Friends to the women there. Of special note is Sümbul, who becomes the closest and most reliable confidant of Hürrem Sultan, one of Suleyman's wives.
• Miami Vice: Frank, a.k.a. "the Savage", is a former CIA operative who used to work in Vietnam. He was emasculated by a prostitute he mistreated and subsequently became a serial killer of prostitutes, stabbing almost 90 women to death and writing "VC Whore" on the wall in the victim's blood.
• The Carver, one of the primary antagonists in Nip/Tuck, is revealed as this as a plot twist and part of his character motivation. It's a genetic abnormality caused by his parents being siblings.
• The Princess Wei Young: Zong Ai (who was also a real person) murders the emperor and helps put Tuoba Yu on the throne.
• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Played straight with Wang Qin, who forces Lianxin to marry him then abuses her, driving her to attempt suicide. Averted with most of the other eunuchs, especially Li Yu and Yunche.

Myths & Religion

• The Abrahamic faiths repeatedly avert this. In Judaism, rabbinical literature describes Daniel and his companions as eunuchs (which makes sense, since they were advisors of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar). This later came in handy in discrediting charges of sexual immorality, as detailed in The Talmud. Meanwhile, in Christianity, Jesus praises eunuchs for their purity in the Gospel of Matthew, and the first Ethiopian Christian was a eunuch. (On the other hand, Abrahamic civilizations tended to play it straight; eunuchs in the medieval and early modern courts of both Christian and Muslim monarchs uniformly^note Except sometimes in the Byzantine Empire, where — in addition to the straight version of this trope — eunuchs could also be considered pure (even angelic) in other depictions, as mentioned above under Art. had nearly as bad a reputation as they did in the Sinosphere.)

Tabletop Games

• The Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition sourcebook Oriental Adventures has a "Eunuch Warlock" Prestige Class that's exclusive to Evil characters. However, its abilities mostly focus on enhancing the character's magic in morally neutral ways.
• The Eaters of the Lotus from Feng Shui, an entire cabal of evil eunuch sorcerers.
• Evil eunuchs (sorcerous and otherwise) also show up with some frequency in Martial Arts adventures in Hong Kong Action Theatre.
• Mage: The Awakening: The iconic villain Angrboda specializes in bargaining with Abyssal spirits for power. Castration was one of the many physical, mental, and spiritual degradations they asked in return.

Theatre

• In Parsifal, the Big Bad Klingsor is implied to have castrated himself in a failed attempt to prove himself worthy of being a Grail Knight. Due to his missing the point of a vow of chastity, he's kicked out by the king.
• While it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're really thinking, Koby and Loby probably count as this in The Visit, since it was those two who decided it would be hilarious to set a vicious panther on the town of Guellen.

Video Games

• The MMORPG Age of Wushu has recently announced a faction of these called "The Rootless Clan". There's also The Sunflower Manual, a Harder Than Hard Prestige Class based on this archetype, which requires an absolutely absurd number of player kills to level up. In-universe the former were inspired by the latter.
• Interestingly played with in China The Forbidden City: While investigating a murder case that only ends with more murders, the player interacts with a great deal of Eunuchs (who are normal servants in the city). Since most are obedient, quiet and merely more than Non Player Characters, two are an important part of the plot and - of course — in on the murder plot. Though them being evil is less contributed to them being Eunuchs as them being able to move freely around the city.
• In Civilization V, the in-game encyclopedia entry for the city-state of Sidon mentions the Biblical princess Jezebel, who — according to the first Book of Kings — married the Israelite king Ahab, promoted Phoenician paganism over the Hebrew faith, and eventually got assassinated by her own eunuchs and thrown to the dogs in the street. As the Civilopedia puts it, "There are two great lessons from this story for all rulers: first, don't mess with the people's religion, and second, never trust the royal eunuchs."
• It's offhandedly mentioned that Excellus in Fire Emblem: Awakening is an eunuch. His behavior makes it rather obvious. He's also easily the biggest slimeball in the game, making even Gangrel look pleasant.
• Near the Thief's ending of Quest for Glory II, the hero must sneak past several eunuchs to get into the palace at Raseir - while not explicitly stated to be evil, they're Mooks of the very evil dictator who you're trying to overthrow, and if they see you it's game over. In the Mage's or Fighter's path, you have to take out one patrolling the balcony above the entrance or he'll summon an overwhelming number of guards.
• Suwonkas from Utawarerumono not only a VERY creepy Sissy Villain of the highest order, he also thanks the amazon to whom he was all Yandere for chopping his balls off, because they freed him from "the curse of masculinity." He does gets an in-universe Alas, Poor Villain from the woman that he went Yandere level Love Makes You Crazy for, though.

Webcomics

• Freefall: Inverted with Dr. Bowman. As a genetically engineered chimpanzee, he knew he was prone to being an uncontrollable sociopathic rage machine, so he neutered himself in early adolescence to curb the worst of his impulses.
• Zig-zagged in Unsounded with the Black Tongues, an Ancient Conspiracy dedicated to Sufficiently Analyzing Magic whose members castrate themselves to show their dedication. Their For Science! ethos attracts everyone from the kindly, altruistic old Maur to the sadistic lunatic Delicieu, the latter of whom builds a Fantastic Nuke out of ghosts and tortured children.

Web Original

• One theory from Cracked proposes that Darth Vader of Star Wars fame lost his genitals in the same lava pit that destroyed his limbs on Mustafar. According to this theory, The Emperor wanted to recruit Luke to The Dark Side not just as another Sith apprentice, but also as a viable source of sperm for a Super Breeding Program. (If you're wondering how a eunuch could also be a basso profundo, castration only creates a soprano if done before puberty, in which case it prevents the voice from changing.)

Western Animation

• A canine example of this appears in the Rick and Morty episode "Lawnmower Dog". The neutered family dog Snuffles is accidentally given super-intelligence. After he builds himself an android body, he demands to know where his balls are. Snuffles then enslaves humanity for the many crimes against dogkind.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has two examples. One is in the brutal General Grievous, the right-hand man of Darth Tyranus, who willingly replaced more and more of his body with cybernetic parts until only his respiratory system and part of his face remain of his original flesh body. Then there's Darth Maul, who also got unintentionally neutered due to being sliced in half by Obi-Wan before the start of the show in The Phantom Menace. When he's rebuilt, he is given a completely cybernetic lower half, also rather like Grievous, leaving him without any equipment to speak of. Both characters have their missing genitalia alluded to a few times, such as when Ventress seductively tells Grevious "My dear general, you have nothing I could possibly want" while she caresses his face.
• In The Twins of Destiny, the Big Bad is the Empress Dowager of China, and her chief enforcer is a court eunuch, Po Dung.

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