Evil Brit

He uses mind control to take over the city, invades it with British pop culture, and makes everyone say "biscuits" instead of "cookies".

Ben Kingsley: Have you ever noticed how, in Hollywood movies, all the villains are played by Brits?
Mark Strong: Maybe we just sound right.
Tom Hiddleston: [flying in an open helicopter without spilling a drop of his tea] We're more focused. More precise.
Strong: We're always one step ahead.
Kingsley: With a certain style; an eye for detail.
Hiddleston: And we're obsessed by power! A stiff upper lip is key.
Strong: And we all drive Jaguars.
Kingsley: Ohhh yes. It's good to be bad.

— Jaguar 2014 Super Bowl commercial: "British Villains"

Any character with a British accent, particularly in upper class Received Pronunciation (far and away the most common type you'll hear in American media) is likely to turn out to be a villain. The English tend to view this trope in one of three ways, depending on the particular depiction. Either: with a sense of pride (Evil Is Cool / Evil Is Posh after all!), mild eye-rolling amusement (tsk, Americans) OR annoyance at the apparent national stereotyping.

The exact origin of this trope is unknown, but American examples of it probably have roots in nationalistic pride given the United States' world-famous origin story: The American Revolution. Ergo, American accent = good, British accent = bad.

This includes all evil characters with British accents (where the rest of the cast has American accents), whether or not they are actually stated to be British. Quite a few of these are not actual Brits but have anomalous quasi-British (usually vaguely upper-class and English, as noted above) accents in settings where almost everyone else has some sort of American accent and no one is necessarily supposed to be from either country, just to mark that character as villainous. As you might expect, this version appears to be associated with films and shows in which the use of English is (at least weakly implied to be) a Translation Convention for whatever the characters are "really" saying, although it's not exclusive to them. See The Queen's Latin and Aliens of London, when British accents (especially Received Pronunciation) are used for non-British characters.

Villains of this type come in two flavours. The first is usually wealthy and snobbish, and probably quite well educated. The second is the hooligan with the Cockney (or similar) accent.

This is fairly recent since during Hollywood's Golden Age it was acceptable for the good guys to speak with an upper-class English accent as well.

The Romans, who generally are the baddies in most historical films, are almost always played by English actors. The British also are often the imperial bad guys in Hong Kong kung-fu flicks and other Asian series. World War II films using the Translation Convention usually have Nazis played by Brits as well. Surprisingly, they are quite rare in Irish films.

In Hollywood at least, this may be a product of different acting traditions. Simplifying wildly, Americans go into movie acting to be rich, famous, and loved by the audience; Brits go into acting because they like acting, and some who do well at it then go to Hollywood for the money. With, on average, more training, more experience, less need to be loved, and a cheerful interest in any well-paying gig, they can often make excellent charismatic villains. Of course, it seems that there are also people in Hollywood with a cultural aversion to Britain who are all too happy to cast them in these parts.

Given the way in which American fans often respond to British accents, fandoms sometimes turn this sort of character into Draco in Leather Pants. In non-Western eyes, expect most evil British characters to have white hair.

Contrast British Stuffiness, which may be applied to a nominally heroic character who must nevertheless Die for Our Ship. Also, contrast Quintessential British Gentleman, which can apply to usually heroic and good-aligned characters, who pride themselves as chivalrous gentlemen, displaying impeccable manners whilst helping others.

Doesn't really apply in British works, of course. In those, this role is often given to the French, Germans, people from the Balkans or (rarely, especially nowadays) Americans.

See also I Am Very British.

noreallife

---

Examples

Advertising

• Discussed in the 2014 Super Bowl Jaguar commercial quoted above with Ben Kingsley, Tom Hiddleston, and Mark Strong, who have all played villains^note and have all been opposite Robert Downey Jr., though technically they do nothing villainous in the commercial itself. The commercial was also directed by a Brit, Tom Hooper of The King's Speech.
  It's Good to be Bad.

Anime & Manga

• Beyblade Burst has a British antagonist in the seventh season complete with a healthy dose of Smart People Speak the Queen's English and a side of elemental power called Pax Forsythe.
• Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors is a Japanese propaganda film from April 1945, and the British are the bad guys. A flashback sequence shows how British pirates lied to, manipulated, and conquered the natives of a Pacific island, which the Japanese then set out to liberate.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure :
  • Dio Brando is very, very evil. This only applies to him in Part 3, since Part 1 is set in England, meaning everyone else is also British.
  • Diego "Dio" Brando from Part 7, which is set in America (while Diego is born in Britain), is a downplayed case. While he always puts his interests above the well-being of others and even left Wekapipo to die, his motives are no more evil than trying to reach a position of power and avenge his dead mother and he ultimately sides with the heroes, even if it's for his own benefits. Interestingly enough, the Big Bad is actually the president of America.
    • The alternate universe Diego "Dio" Brando, however, plays this trope straight, lacking the original Diego's sympathetic traits and being far more evil, trying to finish the Big Bad's plans, using his fangirls as human shields and attempting to rape Lucy Steel, a 14-year old girl.
• R.O.D. The TV. Britain IS the villain. Well, the British Library, at any rate...
• Code Geass zigzags this slightly; though it's based out of the North American continent, the Holy Britannian Empire draws chiefly on the Theme Park Version of the British Empire, with a few aspects of Germanic, Celtic, and Arthurian mythologies. As a rule, most Britannians are at best apathetic to the plight of conquered people, and openly oppressive at worst. There are a couple Token Good Teammates, but its actual culture and society beyond its imperialism is barely explored.
  • In the only real straight example, Luciano Bradley is given a British accent in the English dub.
• Bakura in the American English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, although his British accent sounds more pronounced when he's his mild-mannered self rather than his Superpowered Evil Side. The accent was how the dubbers tried to match his use of polite Japanese Honorifics in the original.
• In Robotech, the Zentraedi Commander Khyron Kravshera sports a pseudo-British accent. The novels based on the series even note that he sounds just like James Mason. He really does. Interestingly enough, Khyron was voiced by actor Greg Snegoff who also was the voice of Scott Bernard, a character that sounds nothing like Khyron. Even more interestingly, the Southern Cross (Robotech Masters) segment had a minor character named Alan Fredericks who was also voiced by Snegoff in a Khyron-like voice. However, Fredericks was more erudite and reserved than Khyron. Appropriate since Fredericks was a good guy, even if he was a member of the GMP.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z, King Cold, Freeza's father, was voiced with a British accent, as was Perfect Cell / Super Perfect Cell. Strangely, in the dubbed versions of Dragon Ball, despite General Blue's not-so-subtle hints at being of German origin, Blue was given a British accent.
  • Freeza himself was given a slight British accent in Dragon Ball Z Kai, courtesy of Chris Ayres. In another dub, Dr. Gero was also given a slight British accent.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, Zamasu and Goku Black both have British accents, the latter of whom obtains one after changing into his Super Saiyan Rosé form. Their accent is also a sign that Black and Zamasu are the same being.
• The Pokémon: The Original Series English dub went out of its way to show us what a bastard Ash's Charmander's original owner was by giving him a god-awful Dick Van Dyke-esque cockney accent.
• Subverted with Edo Phoenix from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. While he was introduced as a sort-of-antagonist and his Destiny HERO monsters were not looking like good guys, he turned out to be an Anti-Hero. His deck references the culture of England, but rather the darker side of it.
• As the result of JB Blanc, who spent most of his childhood in England^note Blanc was born in France and went with his mother when she moved back to England, who's more than capable of doing an American accent, Not Even Bothering with the Accent as Obadiah Stane in Iron Man: Rise of Technovore, Stane became this trope

Asian Animation

• Big M. from Happy Heroes is the main antagonist of the show and is given a British accent in a small handful of Miao Mi's English-dubbed episodes. Also doubles as Aliens of London since he's a Human Alien.

Comic Books

• Mad Mod, a minor Teen Titans villain from The '60s, who is probably better these days known for his appearance in the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon, was a Carnaby Street fashion designer whose assumed name is derived from the Mod style popular in England at the time. He used his label as a front to smuggle goods inside his clothing. After being foiled, he later hatched a plot to steal the Queen of Britain's scepter but was stopped as well.
• Superman villain Manchester Black. Other than his thick English accent, omnipresent Union Jack tattoo, and a few snippets he told about his life, very little is known about his background, although he is most likely from the city of Manchester, England.
• Hawkman and Justice Society of America villain Gentleman Ghost was the son of an English gentleman who abandoned both him and his mother, forcing them into poverty. He grew up to become a notorious highwayman and robber who terrorized England in the 1800s before eluding death to rise again as a phantom.
• The Judge Dredd miniseries Young Death, which reveals the origin of Judge Death, strongly implies that he and the Dark Judges are British, or his world's equivalent of British. Although the comics are made in the United Kingdom, Judge Dredd himself is a post-Apocalyptic American. Retconned in The Fall of Deadworld series, which establishes that the Dark Judges are from an alternate America.
• Batman:
  • Depending on the Writer, Oswald Cobblepot, otherwise known as The Penguin, has dual citizenship by descent and tends to use more English expressions, slang, and swears than Americanisms.
  • Jervis Tetch, criminal alias Mad Hatter, is obsessed with the writings of British author Lewis Carroll, and has based his identity off of the Hatter character appearing in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the story's sequel Through the Looking Glass.
  • Robin (1993): Recurring foe Sir Edmund Dorrance aka King Snake hates that he lives past the age of British colonialism, it's not so much that he seems particularly proud to be British, he's just incredibly racist and misogynistic, thinks himself above everyone else and hates that foreign (and his own) governments take issue with his trying to subjugate, torture and kill people.
• Lower-Class Lout Billy Butcher in The Boys had high-functioning psychopathy and was more Chaotic Neutral than full-on evil. Though he was violent, unstable, and manipulative, he was very much capable of concern for his fellow man. Though this concern was largely kept to his closest allies. Everyone else meant little to him, and he outright hated supes to the point of trying to enact a Final Solution against them.
• Tomahawk: Lord Shilling, the British master spy and Master of Disguise who was the Arch-Enemy of the titular character.
• Wonder Woman:
  • The Post-Crisis version of Wonder Woman foe the Cheetah was a British archeologist named Barbara-Ann Minerva. The New 52 reboot relocated her to Idado, but her Nottinghamshire background was restored in DC Rebirth, although that also made her more of a Tragic Villain.
  • The Tomas Byde version of the Duke of Deception from The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) is British, made a deal with Ares, is working with the Nazis and using illusions and Nazi Zombies to ambush and painfully kill allied soldiers.
• Requiem Vampire Knight has Dystopia, an undead version of The British Empire from Hell whose inhabitants are greedy reptilian monsters. Their capital is named Donlon (London not-quite-backwards) and their monarch, Queen Perfidia, is strangely uncanny to Elizabeth I. And who their greatest champion is revealed to be? King Arthur.

Fan Works

• Beast Boy and Raven Join PETA: Ingrid Newkirk, Founder and President of PETA, is British-American and a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Mortal Kombat Khronicles: Kano's mentor and the former leader of The Black Dragon, Trev, may have been this. Though Kano himself admits that he was not sure and he could have passed for South African too. And being an international criminal, Trev wasn't big on sharing his background. ^note This is probably a reference to Trevor Goddard, Kano's actor in Mortal Kombat: The Movie, who's English Accent was mistaken for Australian by viewers, leading to Kano's Awesome Aussie portrayal in subsequent instalments.

Films — Animation

• Many Disney Animated Canon villains have vaguely British accents; some manage to have them while being Arabian or French. Or carnivorous cats.
  • The Lion King's example is particularly notable in that Jeremy Irons' Scar is directly related to the rest of the (American-voiced) cast.
  • In Pinocchio, the Coachman has a Cockney accent despite the story taking place in Tuscany, Italy.
  • Zig-Zagged Trope in Robin Hood. Prince John has a thick British accent and is the main antagonist of the movie. On the other hand, Robin, Maid Marian and several other sympathetic characters have British accents too, which isn't surprising considering that the movie is set in England.
  • Tarzan plays this straight with Clayton (voiced by none other than BRIAN BLESSED), who originated from the United Kingdom and only used the trip to Africa as a means of poaching the gorillas inside the jungle that the titular charater is living in, simply out of greed.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • Tai Lung from the first Kung Fu Panda movie. Being voiced by Ian McShane just makes him more badass
  • The sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 does it again, with new villain Lord Shen being voiced by Gary Oldman.
• In The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue, when Martin becomes evil, he inexplicably switches to a British accent (voiced by Eric Idle, no less), only for it to change back to his American accent (and voice) when he becomes good again.
• In Fantastic Mr. Fox, every single bad guy, literally, has a British accent (except Rat, who has a Cajun accent), while every good guy has an American accent. Word of God says that this film uses a Translation Convention whereby the animals have American accents (so the director could cast his favourite actors) and the humans have English accents (as a nod to the author). It's pure coincidence that all the humans in the story are villains...
  • Lampshaded in the promotional interviews by Bill Murray, who proclaimed that the villains had British accents because they were the villains.
• The Big Bad of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Cat R. Waul, is one of these. Voiced by John Cleese at that.
• John Hurt as The Horned King in Disney's film adaptation of The Black Cauldron. The heroes also have British accents, however.
• In Cars 2, the mastermind behind the Lemons' terrorist plot is Sir Miles Axlerod, who's voiced by Eddie Izzard, no less.
• The Egyptians in The Prince of Egypt have British accents (and are played by some very fine English actors), while the Hebrews are "Americans". Moses also has an American accent despite having grown up in the Egyptian royal family.
• There are two candidates for Big Bad in the movie Resident Evil: Degeneration. Between the spineless, obnoxious asshole Senator Ron Davis and the polite, -talking Brit Frederic Downing, which do you think ends up being the true villain responsible for the outbreak? The first guess doesn't count.
  • In the main film series, the holographic manifestation of the Red Queen is a British little girl.
• In Quest for Camelot, The Big Bad Ruber is voiced by the British actor Gary Oldman.
• In the Rainbow Magic movie, Jack Frost is this — though, like The Black Cauldron, the heroes are also British.
• Jude Law, the only British actor in Rise of the Guardians, predictably turns out to be the villain.
• Both the Fairy Godmother and her son Prince Charming from the Shrek franchise are not only immoral adaptations of their respective original sources, but were also voiced by English actors (specifically, Jennifer Saunders and Rupert Everett respectively).
  • Ironically, Shrek himself was initially portrayed as being a genuinely antisocial ogre (something that he lived through again in Shrek Forever After, at least temporarily) who speaks with a Scottish accent, and this ain't the first time that his voice actor Mike Myers (who is actually Canadian himself) has played a character who speaks with that kind of accent.

Films — Live-Action

• Angels & Demons: The Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, who is nonetheless portrayed by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor.
• In Australian Westerns like Captain Thunderbolt, Ned Kelly (1970), The Outlaw Michael Howe, and Van Diemen's Land the Big Bad prison governor is usually an upper-class Englishman with a hatred of the Irish. In Mad Dog Morgan, Dirty Cop Sgt. Smith is a vicious Cockney, and his boss Cobham is a Hanging Judge who speaks perfect Queen's English.
  • The trope is also seen with the brutal aristocratic Colonel in Kiwi Western Utu who treats the massacre of unarmed Maori like a fox hunt.
• Vinnie Jones: The "hooligan" sounding tough guy variety of Evil Brit is exemplified by this man in the American film The Condemned (2007), where he plays a war criminal. This is as opposed to his criminal roles in Snatch. and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, where most of the cast have some form of UK accent.
• Alan Rickman and Jason Isaacs were famously typecast in these roles.
  • This is the driving force behind both men's careers; after Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rickman began declining villain roles to avoid Typecasting (including turning down Sean Bean's role in GoldenEye). He also nearly turned down playing Severus Snape in Harry Potter before JK Rowling let him know that there was more to Snape than what met the eye.
  • And Jeremy Irons'.
  • And, going back a bit, George Sanders.
  • And Terry-Thomas.
  • If it was too late to be the Trope Codifier, Alan Rickman's villain in Die Hard certainly made the Evil Brit villain an almost obligatory character for a while (although his character is supposed to be East German).
  • The topic of British villains in movies and Rickman in particular was discussed on Stephen Fry's panel show QI where they surmised that Americans subconsciously see the British as tyrannical and machiavellian because of the legacy of the Revolutionary War, while on Top Gear, Scottish actor Brian Cox suggested to Jeremy Clarkson that Brits were cast as the baddies in Hollywood movies because Americans "fundamentally mistrust intelligence."
  • Averted for Rickman in Galaxy Quest. At his worst, his character Alexander Dane is a bit snobby and a Classically-Trained Extra who loathes his most famous gig as being beneath him, but an awestruck alien fan who reveres him as a genuine hero causes Dane to eventually embrace the role.
    Kevin McDonald: (on Alex) Give him a hand - he's British!
• Alien³: Because of where it was filmed, this film's Prison Planet is filled with mostly with British actors including Paul McGann as an Ax-Crazy inmate.
• All Quiet on the Western Front: The 1970s film had German characters played by English-speakers: all the likable characters sounded American while the cruel drill-sergeant and the blood-thirsty new recruit sounded British.
• Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: The British team member is the only one to turn Well-Intentioned Extremist in the search for the rare and immensely valuable blood orchid, willfully sacrificing his colleagues to do so.
• Austin Powers:
  • Fat Bastard is a rare example of one with a (faked) Scottish accent.
  • Dr. Evil himself turns out to be British-born because he is Austin's brother.
• Bedazzled (2000): Liz Hurley as Satan. Given that the first movie was British, and it helps the sexiness, it's Justified.
• Blue Thunder: Gave us Col. F.E. Cochrane, complete with irritating catchphrase and requisite accent.
• Braveheart: Averted with the Scots (with a few exceptions) and the Irish. Played straight with the English.
• Bulletproof Monk:
  • Mister Funktastic. Interestingly, he was originally supposed to have a Big Damn Heroes moment during the Storming the Castle scene by coming to Kar and Jade's aid. Sadly, this was cut.
  • The Big Bad's granddaughter and Number Two has a British accent. Possibly, she deliberately cultivated it to hide her Nazi roots.
• Nearly all of the storybook villains from the Children's Party at the Palace, as they’re all from British literature and the theatre-film production was filmed in London. Exceptions are the Grand High Witch and the Child-Catcher, who speak with German accents.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Inverted in the films, where the only characters in the series with American accents are the evil wolves and the heroes are all British.
• Cliffhanger: John Lithgow played the lead bad guy with a strangulated upper-class English accent whilst most of his team was played by actual Brits.
• Constantine: While the half-breed angel Gabriel technically doesn't have any specified nationality (especially in the theological perspective), he surprisingly speaks with a British accent, due to the fact that his portrayer Tilda Swinton is a British woman herself.
• David Warner:
  • He is another British actor who can't help sounding evil so he might as well play mostly villains. He was Billy Zane's Battle Butler, Lovejoy, in Titanic (1997), and Jack the Ripper in Time After Time.
  • He pulled triple duty as a baddie in TRON by playing human antagonist Edward Dillinger and the evil program Sark, as well as providing the voice for the Big Bad, the Master Control Program. The casting got Lampshaded by the director in the DVD extras as an American thing.
  • One rare aversion to this was an appearance on Babylon 5, where he played a kindly (though tough) old man who politely asked the various alien ambassadors if any of them had come across the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, he was Too Cool to Live. He also played Admiral Tolwyn in Wing Commander, one of the few higher-ups who have no problems with Blair's ancestry (Tolwyn was, in fact, close friends with Blair's parents).
• Dead in Tombstone has Judah Clark: a mine owner who happily cuts a deal with Red and the Blackwater Gang to keep the money flowing into his coffers, even if it means the rest of the town is living in virtual slavery.
• Disney: If several Disney animated films feature British-sounding villains, also Walt Disney himself was somewhat of an Anglophile and some of the films he produced in the '50s and '60s are set in Britain with British casts and heroes. Likely because of his ancestry - the last name "Disney" comes from the village of Norton Disney in Lincolnshire (UK).
• Dreamcatcher:
  • Has a particularly odd example - all of the characters start off with American accents, but as soon as one guy gets infected by The Virus and becomes the Big Bad he starts talking with an upper-class British accent.
  • The same thing happened in the early (1970s) Battlestar Galactica. Two teen boys who rejected the advice of Starbuck and Apollo ended up becoming evil and acquiring British accents. Which they lost once they had learned the error of their ways!
• The Fast and the Furious - both in-universe and real life.
  • Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 6, even though the actor (Luke Evans) is Welsh.
  • His brother Deckard Shaw in the subsequent movies - this time played by English Jason Statham.
• A Fish Called Wanda: Completely an Inverted Trope. While almost all the characters are morally suspect, Kevin Kline's character Otto (one of two Americans in the movie) is the biggest scoundrel of them all, while the most (relatively) morally upright character is John Cleese's Archie. The fact that a Brit, the aforementioned John Cleese, wrote the film might have had something to do with it...
• George Zucco: This classic British character actor (who starred in many horror movies from the '30s and '40s) combined this trope with Bald of Evil to good effect.
• G-Force:
  • Bill Nighy plays the main villain known as Saber in this Disney flick, who wants to take over the world, and in the trailer even blatantly says he wants to do so.
  • It's actually misleading. Saber did want to take over the world but in a good way. The real villain was The Man Behind the Man, who double-crossed Saber into turning every single product made by his company into a weapon.
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: The English dub has all the characters voiced by American actors except for the scene where Lisbeth gets mugged in the subway by a group of people who are given English accents.
• Gone In Sixty Seconds: Christopher Eccleston. He shows he's evil because he doesn't like baseball.
• High School Musical 3: Senior Year: Tiara Gold, who is proven to be far nastier than her rival Sharpay Evans (who at least has some standards and managed to completely change for the better).
• Hot Fuzz: The entire Neighborhood Watch Alliance, which was lead by Frank Butterman, Danny's own father, is full of Brits who have the main purpose of making their residence of Sanford win the "Village of the Year" award by eliminating those who were deemed as being socially "imperfect" for the town (which they deemed as being for the "greater good").
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
  • Has a rather meta subversion. British actor Julian Glover played the main villain, but with an American accent. Similarly, the English Paul Freeman plays the French Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Indy's old friend Mac is a Cockney who does a Heel–Face Revolving Door throughout the movie, ultimately betraying Indy in the end.
    • Julian Glover has, in fact, played villains in James Bond, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Doctor Who, and elsewhere, most of them with a Brit accent.
• Ip Man 2: The British are portrayed as opponents and racist to the Chinese, including a brutal policeman and a boxer called Twister who takes sexual pleasure in brutally beating sick and elderly Chinese Warriors to death.
• Irish movies: Surprisingly rare in these movies but one place they do turn up is in films set during the Anglo-Irish War. See Michael Collins or The Wind That Shakes the Barley for good (well, evil) examples.
• Jackie Chan: The Evil Brit is a common trope in his movies due to their anti-colonial themes, discussed in detail in here.
• James Bond: Averted in all of the movies, despite their being produced by Americans and targeted in large part at American audiences. The heroes are always British members of Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the villains most often Continental Europeans, Asians, or even Americans. The exceptions are GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.
• Johnny English Reborn (which is ironically part of a film series that primarily parodies the spy genre) has Simon Ambrose, who, despite being a prolific agent of MI7, also works for Vortex, an organization of suspicious assassins, in which he is one of their founding members.
• In Jupiter Ascending, the Abrasax family are thoroughly evil galactic aristocracy who make their phenomenal fortune processing entire planets of Human Resources for Longevity Treatment. While they have the accent, Humanity Came from Space in the setting, and they're all Time Abysses who predate England by millennia.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service: Inverted and parodied, as the leading villains are American. The director's intention was to poke fun at this trope.
• Komodo: There's Bracken, Oates's superior. He blackmails him into solving the komodo problem on the island. He orders Oates to kill the visitors and refuses to send a medical pickup when Oates demands one.
• Labyrinth: Jareth, the seductive and manipulative Goblin King, played by David Bowie, who challenges the American heroine, Sarah.
• Little Nicky: Adrian, one of the titular good-natured character's more wicked older brothers (alongside Cassius) who is cunning and manipulative, interestingly speaks with a British accent (and the only one in his family to regularly have that trait), which can be attributed to the fact that his portrayer Rhys Ifans is Welsh.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Tim Roth plays Emil Blonsky (in the comics, a Russian) in The Incredible Hulk. Loosely hand waved as saying the character was brought up in England.
  • Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Thor and Thor: The Dark World, would be an aversion, since all Asgardians have British accents, up to and including Thor himself. However, the trope is played straight in The Avengers, where most of the characters are American.
• Matilda: Agatha Trunchbull, in which every other character is American.
• This trope shows up in a lot of Mel Gibson films. All have been roundly criticized by historians for their wild inaccuracies, often involving playing up (or outright fabricating) British atrocities and general nastiness.
  • The Patriot (2000): The main villain is Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs), based on the Real Life Banastre Tarleton. While Tarleton himself did not perform some of the deeds attributed to him in the film, the Revolutionary War in South Carolina was especially violent nonetheless. In a particularly notorious example, British soldiers burn a group of townsfolk alive in a church, an act actually committed centuries later by the Waffen-SS in France but one century earlier by English Parliamentarians against Irish townsfolk and the English refugees they were sheltering during the Confederate War. This is downplayed by Tavington's superiors, who universally despise him for his tactics, but are willing to look the other way to win the war.
  • In 1981's Gallipoli, the British soldiers are shown drinking tea on the beach while the Australians die in the battle. The Royal British Legion were extremely miffed by the portrayal of the British, noting that more than twice as many British soldiers as Australians died, that the Australian landing at the Nek was actually a diversion for a New Zealand landing at Sair Bair, not the British landing at Suvla Bay (which, incidentally, was a brutal and bloody action, not a tea picnic as it is portrayed in the movie). Finally, it was Australian commanders' idiocy, not British, that was behind the failure at the Nek. Christopher Hitchens has noted that the British people are so often portrayed as incompetent in Gibson's films that he suspects it is a deliberate prejudice:
    Hitchens: Englishmen don't form picket lines outside movie theaters when "stereotyped," but still.
• Momentum: James Purefoy as Mr. Washington, a smooth-talking assassin who conducts business in an expensive suit and tie. And a British accent, naturally.
• The Muppets (2011): Uncle Deadly. Subverts this via Dark Is Not Evil after a Heel Realization and subsequent Heel–Face Turn.
• The Net: The debonair, dashing and very deadly Devlin, who seduces Sandra Bullock's character in a bid to steal a disk in her possession, and then sets about trying to kill her.
• The Old Guard: The villain of the film Stephen Merrick, an unscrupulous English-accented CEO of a large pharmaceutical company (played by Harry Melling), a greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive who displays a sadistic streak when he stabs and tortures the immortals to test their healing ability.
• Once Upon a Spy: Although his nationality is never stated, Evil Cripple Marcus Valorium has a British accent. Given he is played by Christopher Lee, his villainous credentials seem fairly well established. He also possesses a strong disdain for democracy.
• Our Man Flint. Malcolm Rodney is an important agent of the Galaxy organization. He constantly tries to undercut his boss Gila and repeatedly advises killing Derek Flint. He's portrayed as sleazy and completely untrustworthy.
• Passenger 57: Bruce Payne's airborne villain oozed evil from every icy English-accented word, starting with "Bloody."
• Planet of the Apes:
  • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, while Jacobs (David Oyelowo) is not the main villain outright, he is the closest thing we have to the Big Bad and has a deeply British voice.
  • In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, while very clearly trying to make Koba's voice sound animalistic, Toby Kebbell's pronunciation of some of the words Koba says in English are British, albeit not obvious.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Cutler Beckett is a very stereotypical evil British aristocrat. However, most of the other major characters are also Brits of various stripes, and some of them are aristocrats themselves! Beckett's Dragon Mercer is Mancunian.
  • Davy Jones in movies two and three was played by Bill Nighy. That said, he doesn't technically count, because Nighy portrayed Jones as Scottish.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard was played by Ian McShane.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Admiral Scarfield is an Insane Admiral who plans on harnessing the power of the Trident of Poseidon. That said, he can't hold a candle to Big Bad Armando Salazar, a Badass Spaniard, and eventually Salazar unceremoniously kills him.
• Revolution (1985): Sergeant Major Peasy is British (though played by Canadian Donald Sutherland), and definitely a bad guy.
• In Rogue (2020), Zalaam, the leader of the al-Shabaab cell, has a working class British accent, although it is at least explained that he arrived from the UK and took control of the group, rather than it merely being an unexplained accent.
• Rufus Sewell: Every character played by this man. Dark City was one of his few heroic roles, and that was as a Fake American.
• RRR: The huge Tollywood hit RRR has Ray Stevenson and Alison Doody lead a whole host of evil Brits, and in line with the rest of the film it is extremely over the top.
• Scoop: Double subverted in this Woody Allen film, where a charming high-society Brit, played by Hugh Jackman, is suggested to be a murderer. However, he's so charming and so handsome that the reporter played by Scarlett Johansson finds this impossible in the end, it is revealed that he was the murderer after all.
• The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal Lecter as portrayed by both Scot Brian Cox and Welshman Anthony Hopkins. The less said about the French kid and Hannibal Rising, the better.
• Sorority Row: Andy Richards, Cassidy Tappan's boyfriend, was revealed to be the weapon-wielding guy behind the dark graduation cloak who primarily targets Theta Pi, initially for his girlfriend to not be persecuted with the abrupt death of Megan from a prank that was set by the girls themselves.
• Spider-Man 2: Deliberately an Averted Trope, in which British actor Alfred Molina played Doctor Octopus as an American. Molina later joked about this in interviews:
  Molina: If we gave him a British accent, it's a bit like giving it away right from the start. It's a bit like, carrying a great big sign that goes "movie villain." And underneath that, "Alan Rickman wasn't free".
• Star Trek Into Darkness: Benedict Cumberbatch plays Brit villain John Harrison, whose first act is orchestrating a terrorist attack on London. The casting decision seems straightforwardly this trope until it's revealed that Harrison is actually Khan Noonien Singh - a character with a Sikh name and therefore of south Asian origin, previously played by a Hispanic actor.
• Star Wars:
  • Although that was more incidental since union rules for British films at the time required a minimum number of speaking parts for British actors, so a lot were cast as Imperial officers. ^note Part of it was Lucas objecting to being told he had to, and demonstrating his contempt for the policy Both the Imperials and Rebels were played by mostly British actors, but the Rebels' actors either faked American accents or were dubbed by Americans. A few sources claim that the upper-class English accent is the default accent on Coruscant; everyone listed below (except C-3PO) either grew up or spent large amounts of time living there.
    • There is one aversion to this — in A New Hope, Admiral Motti (the man who gets Force-choked by Vader) has a North American accent. The actor kept to the trope, however, as he was married to Sarah Douglas, who you'll find filed one entry down under Superman II.
  • The late Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin), who actually played mostly good guys in his career — including Sherlock Holmes and a non-canonical incarnation of the Doctor in Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D..
    • In fact, all major bad guys from the George Lucas era were played by Brits: The Emperor (Ian McDiarmid is Scottish), Darth Vader (although not his voice actor, as the voice of David Prowse was too west-country, earning him the nickname Darth Farmer), Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), and Darth Maul (London-based Scot Ray Park's voice was dubbed by British voice-actor and comedian Peter Serafinowicz). Even Darth Vader's voice actor James Earl Jones shifted his accent to a more Mid-Atlantic register.
  • A good number of good guys in Star Wars have British accents, however. Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) and Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebel Alliance. In the first film, Princess Leia has a quasi-British accent in some scenes. The heroine of The Force Awakens, Rey (Daisy Ridley), also speaks with an English accent; as does Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) of Rogue One.
  • This trend is continued in the sequel trilogy. General Hux (played by Irishman Domhnall Gleeson) has a British accent, while Resistance fighter Finn (played by Englishman John Boyega) has an American accent.
  • Solo continues the trend, with murderous crime boss Dryden Vos played by Paul Bettany.
• Superman II: Evil Kryptonian General Zod and his Femme Fatale hench-woman Ursa were portrayed by Brits Terence Stamp and Sarah Douglas.
• Lord Oliver in Timeline. The British part is justified, since the time travelers end up in the middle of the Hundred Years War, although it seems like Oliver does everything For the Evulz. His Number Two, though, turns out to be a Fake Brit (in-universe). He's actually an American time traveler left behind by the Corrupt Corporate Executive in charge of the project (who's British too, by the way).
• Total Recall (2012): Underworld's Kate Beckinsale plays an Evil Brit in the remake, as Quaid's fake wife Lori. As "nice" Lori, Beckinsale uses an American accent but reverts to her natural British accent as "evil" Lori. Funny thing is, there's no reason for her to adopt an American accent, given that the only livable areas are a chunk of Europe and Australia.
• Underworld (2003):
  • Saw Bill Nighy as an Evil Brit vampire.
    • Even though he's supposed to be Hungarian. Possibly a case of Translation Convention. The only Brit (according to some non-canonical sources) is Kraven, who's supposed to be from Leicester. While this would qualify him for the trope, the actor (from Northern Ireland) adopts an American accent for the role.
  • The sequel has Marcus Corvinus, also a Hungarian, played by the Scottish actor Tony Curran with a British accent.
• In the Deconstructive western Unforgiven, English Bob is set up as a badass, fearless gunslinger, and he does demonstrate some skill with a pistol by shooting a bird out of the air from a moving train, which is no small feat... but is ultimately revealed to be just a vicious Dirty Coward who is outright exaggerating about his past heroism (in reality he earned a living killing Chinese Laborers in cold blood and he murdered poor Two-Gun Corcoran in his sleep after he showed interest in a woman Bob liked). He undergoes a prolonged Humiliation Conga at the hands of local Rabid Sheriff, Little Bill Daggett and is then run out of Big Whiskey as a joke.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • While Magneto isn't British, being German Jewish by background (though in the comics he spent some of the post-war period working for a Western intelligence agency that might have been MI6) he is depicted by Ian McKellen with a classic resonant RP accent, one that Michael Fassbender tries to imitate with mixed success.
  • X-Men: Toad is British like his comic book counterpart.^note In X-Men: Days of Future Past, he was changed to an American.
  • X-Men: The Last Stand: The Juggernaut. He's American in the comics, but there was no attempt to alter Vinnie Jones' voice.
  • Deadpool: Ajax has an English accent, and he's the first example of a British Big Bad in the movie series. He's even credited as a "British Villain." His chief defining characteristics apart from his accent are a wealth of scientific knowledge, and lack of any form of pain, physical or emotional.

Literature

• In Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon stories, the villains are the Dark Empire of Granbretan: An Always Chaotic Evil nation of Evil Brits in a fantastic version of Europe.
• In the Andrew Vachss Burke book Strega, Burke is forced to speak civilly to a self-proclaimed pedophile with a "semi-Brit" accent. Said pedophile becomes an occasionally recurring character. At least until Dead and Gone, where he turns out to be behind the plot to kill Burke, was actually faking the pedophile thing, and gets killed offscreen.
• In The 39 Clues book series, the Kabras are the most evil of the main characters, especially the mother, Isabel. The children, Ian and Natalie are more mean than evit, when compared to her, especially when considering that they are only as ruthless as they are because that was how they were raised and how their mother expects them to act.
• In The Dresden Files, more than a few of the villains have British accents. This, however, is justified by the fact that a lot of the old monsters come from the Old World and the headquarters of the White Council is in Edinburgh, suggesting that Britain is an unusually magical place. Also, there's the fact that Britain, until comparatively recently, ruled the largest empire the world has ever seen, suggesting that an upper-class British accent (which is still considered a marker of wealth and power) might have been adopted as more convenient.
  • The stand out is probably Nicodemus, who is specifically noted as sounding British and plays this trope to the hilt, with all the expected associations of Wicked Cultured, Affably Evil (verging on Faux Affably Evil at times) and even indulging in a spot of tea once.
  • Binder is a subversion in that he isn't particularly cultured (coming off more as a Nouveau Riche London Gangster than anything else), nor particularly evil; he is a Consummate Professional whom, more often than not, gets hired by the bad guys, but he is strictly in it for the money and calls his employers out on excessive cruelty and needless collateral damage more than once.
• The In Death series: A number of the murderers turn out to be British. Then again, as the author Nora Roberts is American and of Irish descent, she will happily make use of this trope.
• The Day of the Jackal. The Jackal is British and an urbane Professional Killer. Or is he? At the end of the novel, Her Majesty's Government point out there's no proof, given his multiple identities, that he was ever British in the first place.
• Leonard Cunningham from InCryptid is the heir apparent to the Covenant of St. George. He's usually pretty Affably Evil, and is one of the nobler villains in the series, teaming up with Antimony to destroy the Crossroads, but he's still a Fantastic Racist whose goal is to exterminate any species he deems "monsters", sapient or not.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: Spencer Dalworth VII, the killer from Death of a Bachelorette.

Live-Action TV

• American TV seems to love this trope in its presenters of reality shows where ruthless people have to sort the wheat from the chaff quickly and efficiently. Simon Cowell, for instance. Gordon Ramsay's no-nonsense approach to failing hotels and eateries made him a household name. Kitchen Nightmares spawned a knock-off, Restaurant: Impossible, presented by Robert Irvine: a British chef/entrepreneur who comes across as colder, nastier and more ruthless despite not losing his temper and never swearing once. You would not want to cross him or disobey.
• BBC America is running with this trope, September is Accent of Evil Month, all month long they will be showing movies featuring an Evil Brit (Die Hard with a Vengeance with Jeremy Irons, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Alan Rickman, Star Trek: Generations with Malcolm McDowell and Superman II with Terence Stamp).
• In the fifth season of 24, Chechen terrorist Vladimir Bierko has a cultured, James Bond villain-style British accent (he's played by British actor Julian Sands).
  • Season 3 gives us former British Special Forces operative Stephen Saunders.
• Alias
  • Julian Sark had a mostly British accent. The character was actually Russian-born, educated in the UK, and who had spent a lot of time in Ireland. In-universe, his accent was described as Irish-influenced British. The actor is actually American who faked a passable British accent.
  • Lauren Reed was American-born but raised mostly in the UK. This enabled her to be a US NSA operative and the daughter of a US senator while having a "British" accent. The actress is actually Australian.
• The Angie Tribeca episode "Inside Man" features a British gang that robs banks by pretending to be chimney-sweepers, each with a heavy Cockney accent and wealth of British slang. One of them speaks so indistinguishably that a detective stuffs bubble gum in his own mouth in order to emulate his accent. The thug then spits out his own gum and speaks clearly.
• Arrow has two examples.
  • Edward Fyers is the head of a mercenary company that opposes Oliver and his allies on the island. While Only in It for the Money, he's also a Sociopathic Soldier that hides his cruelty behind a facade of politeness, as well as an RP English accent.
  • The Dodger is a con man that straps bombs to hostages, all with a stiff British accent.
• A few of the Downbelow gang leaders in Babylon 5 have thick British accents and stood out as particularly nasty customers.
  • Then there was the episode "Comes the Inquisitor", where the title role was played by an American affecting an accent that apparently could even fool genuine Brits. Justified as the character in question was Jack the Ripper — what else would he be but British?
• An episode of the original Battlestar Galactica in which a bunch of boys living in a forest were cute tow-headed American boys until they defied Starbuck and Apollo and became evil British boys! Then, when they had learned their lesson and were forgiven, they turned back into cute adorable American boys again (the fact that the mute sisters who lived with them had no purpose other than housework (forest work?) isn't better...).
  • Patrick Mcnee was the voice of the Cylons' Imperious Leader and also the villainous Count Iblis (which was noticed by Baltar and indicated that Iblis, who is essentially the series's version of Satan, had influenced the Cylons).
• Gaius Baltar from the re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica is played by James Callis, who is British. Most of the cast speak in American or Canadian accents — even Jamie Bamber (Apollo), who is also British, puts on an American accent for the show. This can lead to surprise on the part of the fans when he uses his normal accent for interviews...
  • Lampshaded when James Callis put on a Yorkshire accent to demonstrate his poverty-stricken origins on Aerelon.
  • Which is weird for two reasons: 1. His 'fake' Caprican accent sounds like none of the other (North American) Capricans. 2. His 'posh' accent sounds more like Estuary English i.e. it sometimes sounds 'posh' but sometimes sounds slightly 'Cockney'.
  • Ironically enough, Jamie Bamber's Real Life wife (who is also British) plays one of the doctors assisting Cottle in Galactica's medical bay but uses her original British accent. The show has used actresses from New Zealand (Lucy Lawless) and Australia (Stephanie Jacobsen) who also use their native accents.
    • Since Caprica started, things have gotten a bit murkier since Clarice Willow speaks with Polly Walker's native English accent (not terribly different from Callis's, although Walker is from Cheshire). At first, this lent credibility to the theory that the planet Caprica has lots of different accents—and then, we discover that Clarice was born on Sagittaron—and none of the Sagittarons on BSG spoke with British accents either.
  • Jamie Bamber is actually half American, though it is true that he grew up in Britain.
  • According to the commentary on the movie Razor, everyone got to use their real accent for the most part to imply variety in the Colonies. The only reason Bamber didn't use his British accent was to make him sound like Commander Adama to imply their familial relationship, which they needed all the help they could get on, considering the actors were different ethnicities (Olmos being an emphatically-brown Mexican and Bamber being as white as they come; Bamber also dyed his naturally sandy hair dark brown and Olmos wore blue contact lenses to return the favor, covering his brown eyes).
• Blade: The Series has the series Big Bad, Marcus van Sciver being originally from London but having lived in Detroit for over a hundred years. Despite this, he still has a clear British accent. This could be deliberate on his part, as a number of much older vampires including the Purebloods he despises (e.g., Overlord Rusk) have adopted American accents.
  • Neil Jackson, playing van Sciver, proceeds to play a one-shot villain in Stargate SG-1 using the same accent.
• Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of the "working-class thug" type, before the Heel–Face Turn and Badass Decay.
  • Other examples include Drusilla, Gwendolyn Post, and other Watchers. Averted with Giles, until he becomes an anti-hero in "The Gift".
  • Neither Spike nor Drusilla are actually played by Britons, despite having very convincing accents.
• Gilroy from Burn Notice is the "evil limey mastermind" for most of the second half of season three. He's also rather... friendly with his partners in crime.
• The Cape has two characters named Peter Fleming AKA Chess and Scales. Peter Fleming speaks English with a posh British accent. Scales speaks English with a Cockney accent. Peter Fleming is the evil Big Bad of the show. Scales is the thuggish evil The Dragon (possibly graduating to another Big Bad) of the show.
• Charmed: Whenever Piper and Leo's baby son Wyatt is turned evil by something, his future adult self's accent inexplicably changes from American to British.
• A recurring villain for a season of Chuck is a Russian criminal mastermind named Alexei Volkoff, played by Timothy Dalton with a British accent. Later turns out to be justified as Volkoff is actually a British guy brainwashed to think that he's a Russian criminal mastermind. Later on, his mantle as the Big Bad and the Evil Brit is taken by his daughter.
• Though it's hard to judge 'evil' in a show as all over the place as Community, one of the few characters to cross the Moral Event Horizon is apathetic, alcoholic English psychologist Ian Duncan.
  • Season 4 introduces Toby, a horrible manipulator and intended kidnapper, and Professor Cornwallis, who sinisterly toys with the study group and is infamously inappropriate to young women.
  • The Evil Brit streak is broken in Season 5 by Magnitude.
• Dead Ringers parodied this with a sketch where Arnold Schwarzenegger needs a "Token British Bad Guy" to be the villain of his new action movie, causing both Alan Rickman and Ian McKellen to show up for the role and getting into a fight over it. The eventual winner was BRIAN BLESSED.
  • A subsequent iteration of the sketch had Rickman and McKellen (still in their action movie villain personas) competing to be the Evil Aristocrat in a Jane Austen-style romance.
• Lila in season 2 of Dexter. She's obsessed with the title character, gets a colleague of him falsely accused of rape, and tries to kill both Dexter and his two stepchildren in a fire. The final episode of the season, in which she is the main villain, is even called "The British Invasion".
• Lady Cassandra from Doctor Who has many of these traits, complete with a xenophobic disdain for everyone and a Posh accent being played by Zoe Wanamaker no less. This is made even more explicit in her second appearance in "New Earth" in which she possesses Rose because she thinks she fits her eugenicist views as part of her revenge plot, being portrayed in a more straightforward fashion as a white supremacist. She does this to force Rose into becoming the thing she claimed to hate the most in Cassandra; an elitist supremacist villainess.
• Baron Harkonnen from the Dune miniseries was given a distinctly British accent, and in fact is actually portrayed by a British actor. Also a bit odd, considering the fact that a Russian accent/Russian actor might have made logically more sense given the fact that his first name is "Vladimir". And the last name, Harkonnen, is (if anything) Finnish. And they're not even supposed to be speaking English, that language is supposed to have been dead for over 10,000 years.
• In Elementary, Sherlock's love interest Irene Adler is an American, as she was in Doyle's original story. When she turns out to be the evil Moriarty, she also turns out to be British.
• Crichton seemingly draws inspiration from this trope in Farscape when he has to imitate a Peacekeeper, while the series adopts it wholeheartedly with the character of Scorpius.
  • Scorpius sounds more posh/cultured Australian than British to British audiences. Clearly, Wayne Pygram is doing a "villain" voice, but it's not a British accent by any means.
  • Presumably the reason Crichton uses that (atrociously bad) British accent is that most of the Peacekeepers use British accents, though most are played by Australians (as is everyone that's not John Crichton).
  • It's also possible that as a Pop-Cultured Badass, movies have taught Crichton to equate villains with British accents as always being ridiculously hammy! This definitely would explain with the sheer gusto in which he goes into full Large Ham mode whenever he impersonates a Peacekeeper!
• Suspect and double-crossing "businessman" Badger of Firefly is this, being essentially your typical London Gangster — in SPACE!
• In FlashForward (2009), Simon is in charge of the secret project that led to the blackout, played by Dominic Monaghan.
• Heroes:
  • Adam Monroe (an immortal conman who made his start in 17th-century Japan) and Daniel Linderman (an Affably Evil, twinkly-eyed mob boss). Though Adam is actually played by an American. Linderman seems particularly blatant: his whole backstory and position are completely rooted in the US, but he's gotta be British, cuz he's big-time super-evil.
  • More recently Edgar (sort of, he's not quite evil as much as misguided, and has doubts in regards to Samuel's plans) and Samuel too, although Samuel's accent changes constantly, sometimes within the same episode or even the same scene.
  • Samuel is American (born in Arizona) but his accent is used to show how well-travelled he is and all the different places he has been in.
• In the British miniseries Jekyll the trope is inverted by having the boss-level baddies represented by Americans (albeit using British actors with poor accents).
• Legend of the Seeker: The series seems to invoke this with having Darken Rahl speak in a high-class English accent (while of course he's not actually British, nor is his actor, the New Zealander Craig Parker).
  • This accent is not duplicated by other characters playing D'Harans, except for John Rhys-Davies (Welsh) playing his father Panis Rahl in disguise.
• Charles Widmore on Lost (the actor's from New Zealand, but the character seems to be British). After he was given the villain role in season 4, things have become a whole lot more morally ambiguous...Lost, however, also has several Brits among the heroes (Charlie, Charlotte, Penny, Desmond, maybe Naomi).
• Vex is definitely the evilest character seen so far on Lost Girl and yep, he has a British accent.
• Dr. Zachary Smith on Lost in Space was never specifically said to be British, but he most definitely fits the "vaguely upper-class" stereotype with his pompous personality, refined way of speaking, and haughty manner.
• Major Crimes. Jamie Bamber's character during a guest role in the episode "Open Line" playing an uber-sleazy photographer who was such a Jerkass (among other things, he witnessed the murder being investigated but didn't call the cops as it would have revealed that he'd been spying on the victim) that the team was actually disappointed that he was technically innocent of the crime in question, but thrilled when they nailed him for manslaughter for setting things in motion.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil (2015): In season 3, Wilson Fisk's replacement for James Wesley is Felix Manning (Joe Jones), a British fixer whom Fisk tasks with strongarming and threatening people, and also serves as Dex's handler.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): David Tennant uses the Estuary English accent he used as the Tenth Doctor to portray Kilgrave.
  • The Defenders (2017): Élodie Yung puts on a posh British accent when playing Elektra, who turns evil after being revived by the Hand.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Brenda Holland has the American stereotype for a "wealthy and snobbish" upper-class British accent, and she's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who manipulated May into unwittingly feeding her research into cruel experiments on animals, as well as being the reason why May had to go on the run after she found out the truth and committed cyberterrorism against Holland's company in retribution.
• Once Upon a Time: Mr. Gold, Rumplestiltskin's human Storybrooke counterpart, keeps Robert Carlyle's Scottish accent. There are a few other British-accented villains as well, but they're usually from works actually set or created in Britain; of course Cruella de Vil or Mister Hyde is going to be British. (The Wicked Witch of the West also having a British accent, though, makes less sense, especially as nobody else from Oz even within the series does.)
• Raven's Home: Chelsea's ex-husband Garrett is a cheating Gold Digger from Britain.
• Inverted by BBC Sherlock's Dubliner Moriarty. Justified in that the name "Moriarty" actually is of Irish origin^note His sidekick in the books is named "Moran", another Irish surname, which makes you wonder if Conan Doyle was indulging in some national stereotyping of his own....
• Sisters. Georgie's psychologist, who convinced her that she had been molested by her father, convinced her to turn her back on her disbelieving family, then convinced her that they needed to have sex to help her get over her newfound sexual fears, was of course, British (as was his actor, who presumably either couldn't or wouldn't do an American accent.)
• Major Zod on Smallville has a heavy British accent. It actually makes him difficult to understand on occasion. (Unless you're British.)
• Stargirl: Zigzagged with Richard Swift (AKA The Shade), who speaks with a refined British accent and is played by Jonathan Cake. He's initially assumed to be evil, only to turn out to be trying to stop someone even worse. He even admits that he may be a bad guy, but he's a far cry from true evil. In fact, while the pilot episode shows the Shade dragging off Dr. Mid-Nite, seeming to his death, in fact, the Shade was trying to protect him and accidentally ended up trapping him in the shadow world.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In one episode, Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories comes back in holographic form to menace the crew. However, he was played by an American actor who miraculously affected a stunningly believable British accent (Daniel Davis later used the same flawless British accent in The Nanny). Justified in this case by the fact that, well, it's Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories — what else would he be but British? Downplayed when it becomes apparent that this Moriarty is really not all that evil or ruthless, with his main motivation being simply the right to exist.
  • David Warner plays an unashamedly evil Cardassian who had no qualms about torturing (physically and mentally) Captain Picard.
  • Patrick Stewart's usually warm English tones gave Locutus an extra edge of menace when he was assimilated into the Borg collective during "The Best of Both Worlds".
  • Averted by Picard himself though.
• Star Trek: Picard: Romulan siblings and Zhat Vash operatives Narek and Narissa have a British accent when they speak in English, and it's an indicator to the audience that they're the villains.
• Crowley, crossroads demon and eventual King of Hell, in Supernatural. It turns out that he was Scottish while human, so maybe the English accent is due to the body he's possessing or something he picked up over centuries.
  • Season 12 featured an entire organization of Evil Brits in the British Men of Letters, an intelligence group that will do anything to maintain order.
• Superman & Lois: Morgan Edge has a refined British accent (which Lois once offhandedly suggests is fake, possibly as a nod to the fact that the pre-Crisis Edge was American) and presents himself as a business tycoon trying to help a small town when in reality his plans are a lot more sinister. It turns out that he's not British at all. Not even human. He's Superman's older half-brother Tal-Rho from their mother's first marriage. His accent comes from the fact that his pod landed in Britain, where he was captured and tortured for a few years, picking up the accent from them.
• Walker, Texas Ranger:
  • The main villain of Season 6's "In God's Hands", Kroeger, appears to speak in a heavy British or Irish accent. While he and his gang were pursued by Walker and Trivette during an armed robbery, engaging the latter Ranger in a shootout, he was responsible for firing the bullet that injured 6-year-old Danny McGee, which Trivette took the rap for, causing him to be placed on administrative leave, until Walker proved what really happened.
  • Victor Drake in Season 9's "Blood Diamonds" was born in Liverpool in 1963, right at the same time The Beatles hit it big and speaks in a heavy British accent. Drake is an arms dealer whose background includes smuggling chemicals to Iraq to make nerve gas and now sitting on the Top 10 of the FBI's most wanted list. He was trying to sell weapons to a rebel group in Sierra Leone, and caught on to Walker and Trivette's cover when the latter Ranger assumed the identity of a deceased diamond smuggler (who was later revealed to be a carrier of a deadly Ebola virus) to trick him into a trap, leading up to both Rangers being killed, but it was nothing more but a bad dream Alex was having, until Walker reveals he was about to undertake the investigation from that dream.
• Warehouse 13's Big Bads so far have been the non-specifically British MacPherson of season 1 (Scottish name, Welsh actor, RP accent), the English and female HG Wells of season 2 and Charlotte DuPrix of season 4. There has also been, Benedict Valda though it turned out it was just in Pete's head and Alice Liddell. When HG's mind was rewritten, so she could have a chance at a normal life, she gained an American accent. There's also Paracelsus, who is supposed to be Swiss but is played by Anthony Head with a British accent.

Music

• Thomas Dolby's track "The Devil Is an Englishman", from the soundtrack of the Ken Russell film Gothic.
• Many Irish rebel songs (of course!)

Professional Wrestling

• William Regal sticks out from other British Pro wrestlers as even when the fans take his side, he refuses to let anyone refer to him as anything but a "Dirty rotten scoundrel with hate in his heart!"
  • Even Regal became the lackey or The Dragon for one of the most glorious monarchs to reign in the squared circle: King Bookah (Booker T)! He comes complete with a Queen, a fighting Irishman, and a nice parodic fake accent. Booker's not British...
• Dave Taylor, who has as much in-ring talent as Regal but a bare fraction of the charisma, plays the same gimmick.
  • Regal and Taylor formed a stable in WCW called the Bluebloods. They had a manager named Jeeves and were joined by Bobby Eaton Earl Robert Eaton and Doc Dean at various points. Eaton was more famous as half of The Midnight Express and part of The Dangerous Alliance, and Dean was used as a jobber before and after his affiliation with them.
• WCW's Norman Smiley, a black Englishman. After several years as a jobber, he broke out as a heel with a great deal of pride in his national heritage and catch wrestling skills.
• Sha Samuels, a UK-based indy wrestler, uses the hooligan version of this trope as his gimmick. He's also very fond of meat pies.
• For that matter, Scotsman Drew McIntyre, especially in the first half of 2010. He's never really been a good guy, but around that time, he threw temper tantrums over all his losses, would whine to the boss to get the losses revoked, would throw his weight around because he was apparently "The Chosen One", and went "officially" undefeated for six months.
• In classical old-time British wrestling (the sort of spit-and-sawdust stuff that up until the 1980s was shown on ITV just before the football results), the principal villains were not British: Giant Haystacks was an Irish traveller, and Kendo Nagasaki's persona was as a mysterious Japanese determined to gain revenge for WW2. In keeping with the ethics of the 1970s. two other real villains were the Calypso Boys - West Indians whose dirty tricks aroused such racist sentiments that ITV demanded they not appear on TV - the reaction they provoked was too extreme even for a TV station happy to give us Love Thy Neighbour as an acceptable sitcom.
• Katie Lea Burchill (known as Winter while she worked for TNA) is almost universally a heel no matter what company she's working for.
• "Sweet" Saraya Knight has admitted that when she steps on foreign soil, it's mostly to "play", and Saraya's idea of playing is pulverizing throats, kidneys, scalps, hair, and anyone foolish enough to not wear a cup. Despite this, Britani Knight insisted the crowd of SHIMMER were only against her and Saraya because of "prejudice". Never mind that even though there were in Chicago (USA) one of their opponents was Portuguese and they were initially welcoming till the Knights produced a knuckleduster. Paige has mostly avoided this on WWE television, however.
• Even by Progress Wrestling standards, "The Villain" Marty Scurll elevates this trope to gloriously hammy heights. Scurll has gotten so popular he's even carried over his act to Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
• Neville, after his 2016 return at Roadblock: End of the Line, became this upon claiming that the fans only cheered for him because he was "too small or vulnerable". Come 2017, he would later proclaim himself as the "King of the Cruiserweights" and stated that 205 Live is not 205 Live without him.

Radio

• The Goon Show featured the entente cordiale of Evil Brit Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (whose voice was based on George Sanders) and Evil Frenchman Count Jim Moriarty as villains in most episodes. Other characters also could fit the pattern, especially Major Dennis Bloodnok, but sometimes even Wallace Greenslade, the announcer.

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Simon is a British-born lad living in America, who occasionally slips back into his native accent. He doesn't fit the trope, being a jerk at worst, but his evil alternate personality, the Dark Dragon, is a thoroughly vile villain with a Cockney accent that's much thicker than the one that Simon has.

Stand-Up Comedy

• Colin Quinn's Long Story Short has the description and the Anthropomorphic Personification of England which fits this trope to a tee.
  "The British Empire at its peak controls one-quarter of the world's population and landmass. This, by the way, is a small goddamn country. So how did they do it? It wasn't military might, it was contempt."
• Discussed by Eddie Izzard, wherein he notes American enemies tend to play the movie villains; as a result of the revolutionary war, the Death Star from Star Wars is thus filled with British people.
  Izzard: The Death Star? Just full of British actors opening doors and going "Oh, I'm— oh." "What is it, Lieutenant Sebastian?" "It's just the Rebels, sir. They're here." "My God, man! Do they want tea?"

Theatre

• Hamilton plays it straight and possibly parodies it with King George III, who gets a ridiculous evil laugh and is the only principle whose songs are structured like Beatles-esque Britpop. However, the American-born enemies Hamilton makes in Act II, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, are aversions.

Toys

• Transformers franchise:
  • Megatron in both Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Animated has a vaguely British accent.
  • Every Megatron played by David Kaye (Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Armada, Energon and Cybertron) all have an accent that oozes danger, brilliance and magnificent bastardy of an order barely conceivable. Guess what nation of the planet Earth it is eerily familiar to...
  • Beast Machines also has the Diagnostic Drone, Obsidian and Strika affect this particular accent.
  • Also, in the original cartoon Shockwave had a David Warner-inspired British accent. His Animated equivalent (who has the same VA) retains this and his Autobot double-agent identity of Longarm has an American accent.
  • Predaking from Transformers: Prime has an English-Ghanaian accent when he starts to talk, courtesy of voice actor Peter Mensah. He's actually one of Megatron's most noble subordinates, but definitely not someone to provoke.
  • In The Transformers (IDW), Mad Scientist Brainstorm is written with a British accent and mannerisms by The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye author James Roberts (himself British): he uses phrases like "silly old sod" and "taking the piss", and at one point some confusion arises because "MARB" (Mobile Autobot Repair Bay) and "MAAB" (Mobile Anti-Assault Battlesuit) sound the same when he says them. He's an Autobot, but one of the most ethically murky, with a career that went from "aiding sinister government brainwashing conspiracy" to "building over-the-top superweapons to Troll the ethics committee at Kimia" while also being a Decepticon double agent, although a sympathetic one who tried to avoid giving away anything actually harmful and was mostly dealing with them to get the resources he needed for his main project.

Video Games

• Subverted in The Saboteur. Sean certainly doesn't like Bishop, since Sean is strongly hinted to be an Irish Nationalist. Bishop himself is most definitely secretive and dodgy and doesn't give the player too much reason to trust him. But in the end, he and the SOE are the most solid and powerful allies you have once Santos sells you and La Résistance out to the Nazis and things go to hell in a rocket-powered handbasket.
• The imperiously domineering Isabella "Ivy" Valentine from the Soul Series and femme fatale for hire Christie from Dead or Alive (both voiced with the applicable RP accent) are both great examples of the Evil Brit stereotype where it's used to enhance their sexy personalities. Ivy does pull a Heel–Face Turn after her first appearance (and was Obliviously Evil even then) but retained the frosty attitude. Averted with Street Fighter's Cammy White — she's one of the good guys.
• In the RTS RUSE, Nazi General von Richter talks with a British accent, with only the mildest hint of German influence, although his aide-de-camp talks in English with a thick, almost comical, German accent. It is subverted though, as Colonel Campbell is actually British (with an appropriate dialect), and on the goodie's side.
• Archibald Grims from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation is a particularly Ax-Crazy Wicked Cultured version of this. One of his ancestors in a side manga was this as well.
• Metal Gear:
  • Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid is an egregious example because his good twin — or at least, as close to one as one can get, if even that, if Psycho Mantis, Liquid Snake's, and Meryl Silverburgh's statements are to be believed) was raised as an American. According to canon (at that point) they were both half-British biologically. Possibly justified as Liquid mentions having trained with the SAS. It's possible he picked up the accent during that time, along with his affinity for fox-hunting.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots reveals that the leader of the Patriots was Major Zero, who started them, ironically, because of his admiration of an American patriot. Whether he starts out as a villain is ambiguous, but from the 1970s onward, he fits.
  • Naomi had an upper-class English accent in the original Metal Gear Solid (it was dropped for the remake and her appearance in MGS4), and while not really evil (just vengeful), she created Foxdie. Her accent comes from her being from Rhodesia, an ex-British colony. At least one parent of hers was probably British, or of British descent. Of course, she has very little memory of her parents and was raised by a globe-trotting German mercenary based in America.
  • The opening chapter of 4 sees you going up against a whole army of them - Praying Mantis. Not that you're likely to know they're at all British.
  • According to the Japanese MSX manual for Metal Gear, Machinegun Kid, one of the Outer Heaven mercenaries that fought Solid Snake, was formerly a member of the British SAS.
  • Strangelove from Peace Walker is a subversion. Although she does serve the villainous team, the Peace Sentinels, at first, she herself is not exactly evil, as she simply has her own reasons for serving them (which is reviving The Boss), and makes it entirely clear that she does not actually care for Coldman's goals in regards to Peace Walker.
• In grand Star Wars tradition, in Knights of the Old Republic many Sith have British accents (including coincidentally, a Sith lawyer who sounds exactly like Liquid Snake). Averted with Bastila though, who is both a Jedi and an ally to the Player Character. Although it becomes more pronounced when she falls to the dark side, wherein she starts to sound almost exactly like Naomi.
  • In Empire at War, every Imperial soldier who has a ground vehicle, or space troops other than Broadside pilots, is above the rank of grunt who flies a TIE fighter has a British accent.
  • In Rebel Strike, most of the Rebels have American accents. The only exception is Sarkli. Would anyone like to guess which of the Rebels leaves the Alliance for the Empire and becomes the final boss?
  • Battlefront II almost lampshades this. As well as the commanders of Star Destroyers being typically well-spoken, one of the characters (played by an American voice actor) is listed in the credits as, 'Smarmy British Palpatine Ally'.
  • Apparently the upper-class English accent is actually a Sith Empire accent as of Star Wars: The Old Republic, acknowledged to such an extent that an undercover Imperial Agent is told early on to 'drop the accent' in the duration of his/her mission. The Empire also has characters with Welsh, Scottish, and Irish accents. Apparently, the Sith Empire is the UK.
• Helga, the authoritarian leader/dominatrix of the New Order Nation in Revolution X. As part of some reverse-psychology campaign, she barks out rhetoric in a cockney accent while dressing like a hooligan herself, despite calling for the ban of all rock music in general and Aerosmith in particular. The ending reveals her to be an alien in a biker jacket, which makes even less sense. Played by Kerri Hoskins of Mortal Kombat fame, complete with a black wig and bad accent.
• Tomb Raider:
  • Inverted in Tomb Raider I, ye olde 1996 entry that started it all. Lara Croft is our heroine, a sophisticated British Gentlewoman Snarker, facing off against Jacqueline Natla and her mercenary henchman Larson Conway - who are loud and brash Texans. The other baddie is an annoying Frenchman Cowardly Boss.
  • Possibly downplayed for Lara herself, given some of the criticisms of the later PS1-era titles which came to a head in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. On top of killing monsters and criminals, Lara also wreaked havoc on the local wildlife and killed policemen and security guards while in the process of trying to clear her name for a murder she didn't commit.
  • Inverted in Tomb Raider: Legend where Lara Croft is British, while villains Amanda Evert and James Rutland have American accents.
• Errol from the Jak and Daxter series.
  • Gol and Maia seem to straddle the trope a bit. Gol's accent is a sort of hybrid, but Maia's accent is, initially, American (albeit with a few British pronunciations) - by the end of the game she's speaking with a completely English accent.
  • Krew also has a British accent, as does his daughter.
• Saints Row:
  • You can give the Villain Protagonist of Saints Row 2 a Cockney accent.
  • Matt Miller from Saints Row: The Third, though in the following game he repents after the Boss spares his life. His entire gang has the accent, as a matter of fact.
• This trope, coupled with the fact that Warhammer 40,000 was developed in the United Kingdom, is the reason most characters in Dawn of War II and other Warhammer games usually speak with British Accents; everybody is evil, so everybody speaks like a Brit. Orks are mostly Cockney, while the other factions' accents tend to lean more towards RP.
• Fallout:
  • The magnificent Tony Jay as the Lieutenant in Fallout.
  • According to Word of God, Starter Villain Allistair Tenpenny from Fallout 3 traveled to the Capital Wasteland from postwar Great Britain but adopted a fake upper-class accent in order to look more impressive. He's also one of the few characters in the series to have the "Very Evil" rating on the Karma Meter, as he was a Retired Monster who was known to do some pretty heinous things back in the day but now limits himself to shooting passersby from his balcony.
• Uncharted LOVES Evil Brits. In Drake's Fortune, you have Gabriel Roman, even if his Dragon, Atoq Navarro, ends up killing him so Navarro can take El Dorado for his own purposes. There's Harry Flynn in Among Thieves. And in Drake's Deception, you have Marlowe and her Dragon, Talbot, with a bit of the game even taking place near and in their secret lair in England. Subverted with Charlie Cutter who is an ally of Drake and was only working for Marlowe as a mole.
• Red Faction:
  • In Guerrilla, Samanya has an apparently inexplicable British accent (well, I say 'British') on a planet populated mostly by Americans. That's your first clue as to the fact that she's a Marauder and the leader's sister (the leader also speaks with a similar British accent), although the trope is eventually subverted as the Marauders are allies for the last few battles and the villains are all American.
  • Adam Hale of Armageddon is a more vanilla example.
• In Age of Empires II, the Brits are almost always the bad guys, regardless of whether they're fighting William Wallace, Joan of Arc, or William the Conqueror. With the exception of one scenario in the expansion pack (Agincourt), you never get to play as them
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Subverted in Assassin's Creed. Despite his name, one may expect Robert de Sable to be British, as he works directly under Richard the Lionheart of England, but, both historically and in-game, he is French. Played straight with Maria Thorpe, the personal steward and right-hand woman to Robert de Sable only to be quickly subverted again in Bloodlines when she falls in love with Altair and gives birth to his son after the Third Crusade had ended.
  • With Assassin's Creed III taking place during The American Revolution, Evil Brits will be in abundance; however, Templars and allies to Connor have been stated to be on both sides of the conflict, to avoid comparisons to a certain other one-sided depiction of the Revolution. Worryingly, not one piece of media shown so far has actually shown Connor attacking anything other than the Redcoats.
    • Interestingly, the two top New World Templars that Connor is gunning for are Charles Lee and his own father Haytham.
    • Connor spends a good chunk of the game shaking off this mindset and eventually considers his former Revolutionary allies to be no better than the Redcoats since they also ultimately screw over his people for their own interests.
  • Jarringly done with the French Templars in Assassin's Creed: Unity despite coming from another country where English isn't even the main language and previous games using French accents for French characters.
  • While the Templars are an international organization who will recruit from any country, throughout the games it's implied that a large part of their power base is in Britain; they back the British Empire throughout the Colonial Period (the Assassins back the French) and London is indisputably their territory until the events of Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
  • Technically they're not British but Flavius Metellus / The Lion and Lucius Septimius / The Jackal of Assassin's Creed Origins certainly fit the bill since they have RP accents just like every other Roman character in the game and they're both members of the proto-Templar Order of the Ancients. Flavius in particular was not only responsible for killing Bayek and Aya's son Khemu but led the couple to go on a journey of revenge that gets them entangled in the messy, complicated world of Ancient Egyptian and Roman politics which leads to the formation of the Hidden Ones, the original incarnation of the Assassin Brotherhood.
  • Subverted with King Alfred the Great in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Although he is certainly British and serves as the main antagonist of the game he's actually an Anti-Villain that wants to protect England from Norse invaders unlike most examples of the trope on the list.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising plays this straight with Hades and Arlon who, while not actually British, have distinctly British accents, Dark Pit has a slightly British tint to his voice at times.
• The Helghast from the Killzone series have mostly British accents and are just Nazis IN SPACE! Though it's a little bit odd considering that the Helghast's homeworld of Helghan was colonized mostly by oppressed space settlers who were fleeing from the "oppressive ISA" and claim to be fighting for their freedom. Does anybody notice any similarities between the Helghast and a certain real-world former colony?
  • Zero Punctuation takes offense with Killzone 3 because not only are the Helgahst Evil Brits, they speak with a Cockney accent, which Croshaw gets annoyed with. It's easier to accept evil upper-class Brits, but Cockneys? Unforgiven.
• Mass Effect 2 has Zaeed. Bounty Hunter extraordinaire, a very skilled warrior... And also not giving a shit about burning alive some civilians to get his stuff done and letting his Blue Suns soldiers getting killed due to him being a piss-poor tactician and a Bad Boss. Though he will be softened up as of Mass Effect 3, especially if he's alive during Citadel DLC.
  • The second and third games give us the quarian Admiral Daro'Xen. While she may not do anything particularly evil in any of the games, it's more or less established that she's an unstable sociopath with an unhealthy obsession with controlling the geth. While two other admirals, Zaal'Koris and Han'Gerrel, have British accents, they aren't exactly evil but acting that way due to desperation considering the poor living conditions of their people since they were ejected from their homeworld and wanted to reclaim it back; Koris is kind of a Jerkass in 2 but if you played the cards right, he will vouch for you if you want to reconcile the Quarians and the Geth and revealed to be A Father to His Men and a Reasonable Authority Figure, while Gerrel is a pleasant and friendly General Ripper who, if he can't be reined in, will either exterminate the geth or get the entire Migrant Fleet wiped out. He even tried to blow up a Geth Dreadnought while you and your squad are still inside.
• Inverted, then played straight in Portal 2. Wheatley (voiced by British comedian Stephen Merchant) follows you around for the first portion of the game and guides you through the facility. While his advice isn't always helpful, he's generally very nice towards Chell... Up until his Face–Heel Turn at the end of Chapter 5, where he's hooked up to GLaDOS's body and becomes Drunk with Power, effectively corrupting him to the point of insanity. From that point onward, he takes GLaDOS's place as the main antagonist of the game, and fills the role of Final Boss.
• Titanfall has a shade of this. The IMC speak mostly in British Accents and are the evil corporation oppressing the poor colonists... Gee, this sounds familiar.
• The first voice you hear in Baldur's Gate 2 is David Warner's emphatically evil Jon Irenicus, complete with British accent.
• In The Orion Conspiracy, at least one character speaks English with a British accent. Captain Shannon, happens to be evil as well as speaking English with a posh British accent.
• Played up with the Penguin's appearance in Batman: Arkham City. Not only does his British upbringing show, but he also has the accent and the word usage to back it up. Makes sense, since he preferred hanging out with London Gangsters instead of upper-class boys when he was at boarding school.
  (while trying to shoot Batman with Mr. Freeze's cannon) Stay still, you wanker!
• Nexus from Warzone 2100 speaks with a British accent, despite the setting of the game and all of its other voice actors being American.
• The Chancellor of Rheinland in Freelancer was voiced by the late Tony Jay and leads the increasingly aggressive Rheinland nation ( except not really, since he's dead and taken over by an alien infestation seeking to plunge the human colonies into war to weaken them). This trope was almost certainly in mind, considering every other Rheinlander that actually is a character has a faux-German accent and the Player Character (who grew up in Bretonia and therefore should sound at least somewhat British) sounds American.
• In Wildstar, the Cassians of the Dominion all speak with British accents while the humans of the Exiles all have American/Southern accents. However, this trope gets subverted or downplayed with various Cassians; such as Toric Antevian, competent and dutiful bureaucrats, and humble commoners.
• Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War features two aces from a villainous Germanic country with inexplicably British accents, one with a working-class Cockney (Grun 1), and one with a more posh accent who evidently runs a very profitable business (Indigo 1)
• Superintendent Pendrew in Sleeping Dogs (2012). Awareness of this trope as well as its prevalence in the aforementioned Hong Kong kung fu movies (which this game lovingly homages), has made many a player go "Evil!" immediately after the character's very first line.
• The Stanley Parable: The Narrator acts like a total villain at times, even trapping you in the building in one ending so he can watch you squirm and eventually die. This villainy comes complete with evil chuckling… however, he helps you in some endings.
• Roger Bacon of the first Shadow Hearts (actually his former pupil Albert Simon) plays this to a T, complete with sharing a spot of tea with his minions while scheming, tossing dry British wit at "rival" baddies, and being a proper gentleman even in the midst of dooms-day scenarios, hell, ESPECIALLY in the midst of dooms-day scenarios! though ultimately subverted when we find out he was going to put it all right when he was done.
• Jin Kisaragi from BlazBlue was born in England, though he was raised and lives in what resembles Japan, and his personality comes in two modes: "Deadpan Snarker Straw Nihilist" and "Creepy Incestuous Katana Crazy Psychopath", though he does get better. Hades Izanami is an even more blatant example, being the Big Bad of the series, and even having a British accent to boot.
• Majid Sadiq, the main antagonist of Splinter Cell: Blacklist is an ex-MI6 British-Pakistani terrorist with a fitting Received Pronunciation accent to boot.
• A Hat in Time has Mustache Girl, who has a British accent, as well as The Conductor if you side against him in the Battle of the Birds, being a Scottish example of the trope.
• Far Cry
  • Far Cry 4 has Pagan Min, the (apparent) Big Bad and tyrant ruler of the Himalayan nation of Kyrat. Pagan is ethnically Chinese, but he speaks with an English accent and however friendly he comes across as to Ajay, he's still a brutal despot to the Kyrati nation. The accent makes sense when you learn that Pagan had an English mother and was born in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony. Ironically, Pagan's voice actor Troy Baker is neither English nor Chinese- he's Caucasian American. Also, given later reveals in the story, Pagan is a Lighter Shade Of Black compared to the Golden Path leaders Ajay puts in power.
    • Also Yogi and Reggie, a pair of villains who drug Ajay and send him to the Shannath arena to compete in Gladiator Games. That said, they're not really that evil, and never do anything evil again for the rest of the game, apart from repeatedly testing their drugs on him. Also, you can't really tell from their accents whereabouts in England they're from.
  • Dr. Carlyle in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon speaks with the natural English accent of Robin Atkin Downes, and he's a viciously hammy Englishman who pits Sergeant Rex Power Colt against cyborg soldiers and Blood Dragons while cackling over the PA. Too bad his mistreated female AI kills him offscreen before we ever get to meet him, though.
• The English dub of Valkyria Chronicles has the imperialistic, war-mongering, spouse-battering Maximillian as the only character in the game to speak with a British accent. The two sympathetic members of his Triumvirate^note The only overtly villainous one- Gregor, is given a thick German accent, Jaeger and Selvaria by contrast, have American accents much like the rest of the heroic cast.
• The Hierarchy of Universe at War, at least when not speaking in their own, incomprehensible language. A notable exception is Orlok which gives you an early hint that he is the one shred of morality and compassion that exists within their ranks.
• Since Battlezone (1998) takes place in a secret interplanetary Cold War the choice of antagonist was obvious. However the US and Russia have put aside their differences by the time of the sequel, so cue General Armand Braddock.
• Skies of Arcadia: Valua is modelled on a mixture of Imperial Spain and Victorian Britain, and the game draws heavily on the British Evil Colonialist archetype for a rogues gallery of coldly self-interested intellectuals, self-absorbed upper-class fops, and honourable old gentlemen who are too loyal to the corrupt system they serve to change it. The capital of Valua is a twisted exaggeration of Charles Dickins' Gilded Age London, where fat and complacent uptown rich live in splendid luxury while the other half live in smoggy, industrial sprawl which literally never receives sunlight under clouds caused by rampant pollution. The Valuans' foreign policy is basically to conquer all the other lands (Nasr, Ixa'taka and Yafutoma) using their superior navy and technology and squeezing resources and wealth out of them.
• Inverted in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which is dubbed in the UK like the rest of the series; while the heroes have a variety of British accents with their Blades having American accents, all the main antagonists (the Organization of Torna, plus Praetor Amalthus) have American accents.
• Sunset Riders: Sir Richard Rose.
• Resident Evil: Albert Wesker's accent is hard to pin down, which might make sense in hindsight, as it's unclear where he's originally from and he was raised as part of an Umbrella eugenics project, which could've involved a lot of moving around throughout his childhood. However, a general rule of thumb during the series is that his evilness increases in direct proportion to his Britishness as the series goes on. Very, very fake, exaggeratedly delicious Britishness.

Visual Novels

• The Great Ace Attorney: Jezaille Brett serves as Player Character Ryunosuke Naruhodo's first taste of the British Empire. A Foreign Exchange Student to Japan who witnessed the first case taking place, Jezaille quickly sets herself up as an enormous piece of work when she reveals she speaks Japanese fluently, but refuses to because she's just that racist. True to form, she's soon revealed as the murderer, and an utterly remorseless one at that. Jezaille then smugly informs the court that due to Diplomatic Impunity, there's nothing they can do to her. In the second game of the duology, "Jezaille Brett" turns out to be a totally fake name. Her real identity is Asa Shinn, a Professional Killer hired by the Big Bad to commit that very murder.

Web Animation

• Inanimate Insanity: Taco, who eventually drops her comic relief dimness, and steals the prize which MePhone confirms to be a decoy.

Webcomics

• EVIL has Vincent Kahn, the resident assistant, who is of the cockney variety. He is also one of the nicest characters in the series.

Web Original

• Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation starts his review of Killzone 3 with a lengthy (and surprisingly straight-faced) rant against this trope
  Pardon me for being predictable, but I am now going to complain about how all the bad guys in Killzone are British - because someone should be pissed about this, and it might as well be me. I stood up for the Russians when I reviewed all those fantasy Cold War wank games, and I don't even know any Russians. I'm fine with that thing where the main villain is a posh British guy because let's face it: Cooing at rainbows sounds evil if you do it in a posh British accent. It is only when you make all the evil soldiers Cockney that you enter the prejudiced parade. Cockney doesn't sound evil, it sounds honest and cheeky-chips lovable. You can't picture Dick Van Dyke hiding in the bushes in a park popping children's balloons with a blow-pipe. You might say that I make too much of a fuss, but someone in the dev-team at some point said to themself: "We have a race where every individual member is so morally bankrupt that the player feels perfectly justifiable splattering them painfully against the scenery. Now, how do we bring that across with some sort of vocal short-hand?" And the most bitter pill to swallow is this: They all look like Nazis. We helped defeat the Nazis!
• In Gantz Abridged, the titular Robotic Psychopath is introduced with a British accent, but then immediately switches to a mechanical voice (think Steven Hawking).
• The upcoming Sims machinima Project EYEris features the antagonist Officer Bernard played by, you guessed it, a guy with a British accent. Oddly enough, said character doesn't actually look'' British.
• Diamanda Hagan herself is Irish. ... er... Hagastanic, but she likes to point out this trope whenever it enters a movie she reviews.
• The villainous Viceroy from Chadam has a British accent, and is the only character to have one.
• The Noedolekcin Archives: Kirk Odd is a malevolent entity responsible for the Nickelodeon broadcast errors, and he talks in a low, British accent.
• The Nostalgia Critic's review of Dreamcatcher had Mathew Buck guest-star as the "inexplicably British villain" in a parody of the British accent used in the movie. This exploits Malcolm's biggest fear - not of Buck or his actions, but of this trope specifically.
• SCP Foundation: The short story "The Young Man" gives the origin of SCP-106 as a corporal in the British Army in World War One. That's not to say he Was Once a Man, however...
• On this very Wiki, some Troll launched a trope page called British Nazis to convince people that British people are Always Chaotic Evil, while at the same time praising Scottish people for their "candid" portrayal of English people as absolute bastards in Braveheart. British Nazis has since been reactivated as an actual trope having Putting on the Reich villains be played by British actors.
• "Accent of Evil" by Dr Geoff Lindsay goes into some of the subtleties of this trope. In particular, because Received Pronunciation is the accent of authority, it can also be for mentor characters, e.g. Obi Wan Kenobi from A New Hope, or Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings.

Western Animation

• Mad Mod (pictured) in Teen Titans (2003) plays this to a T, though he's a mostly comical villain rather than a serious threat (and at one point it's remarked that even real British people can't stand him). Stereotypes, mania, and ridiculous antics ensue.
  • He also speaks with a faintly Liverpudlian accent rather than the typical villainous RP.
  • Brother Blood, one of the major Big Bads, also speaks with an aristocratic, vaguely British accent, despite being voiced by American John DiMaggio.
  • One-off villain Malchior from the episode "Spellbound" had an English accent, although he was intended to be an ancient spirit.
• It isn't clear why supposedly Cajun master-of-disguise Zartan had an English accent on the G.I. Joe cartoon series. It is clear that he was a villain.
  • Zartan lived in the Bayou. The cartoon never tells us where he originally came from, but he and all the Dreadnoks have British accents.
• Parodied on Monkey Dust in their version of Anne Frank's Diary. Yes, the young Irish girl is holding out for the American love interest Johnny to save her and her family of line-dancing drunks. Meanwhile, in Berlin, England, English Hitler is planning to capture Anne Frank and marry her. Needless to say, Johnny and the gang end up beating up Adolf for President Churchill.
  • Monkey Dust did it again in their version of "The Crusades". A group of American Knights are shipped off to the holy land to rescue the Holy Grail from British-accented Saladin (or, as they call him: "Say-leddin! You English bastard!"). Along the way they use every trope from every Action film ever, and a great many humorous anachronisms. The film is dedicated to "all the Americans who died during the crusades".
• Averted in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Jason Isaacs plays the first season's Big Bad Admiral Zhao as a Fake American, seemingly to specifically avoid the most villainous man seen at that point in the Fire Nation also being the only Englishman. At this point, we hadn't seen Ozai or Azula...
• Family Guy: explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that Enfant Terrible Stewie has a British accent when born into an American family.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Anti-Cosmo. Accent, posh, outfit, FANGS! He's a textbook example. In fact, many fans have portrayed him as a vampire.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Evil mastermind Ra's Al Ghul has a cultured British accent, courtesy of David Warner.
  • David also voiced the Lobe from Freakazoid! - also an Evil Brit, as much as a comedic villain with an exposed brain for a face can be anyway.
  • David pops up again as Alpha, a major Big Bad in Men in Black: The Series.
  • David's also Nergal, Lord Angstrom, The Archmage and so on.
  • In Batman: Under the Red Hood, Ra's' cultured British accent is provided by Jason Isaacs.
  • Also in this continuity, The Mad Hatter actually is British this time around. (Batman refers to him as such in "The Worry Men".)
• Terrence from Totally Spies!. Even though his brother Jerry is a good guy.
• Most British characters on Phineas and Ferb are good, but there is an alien villain named Mitch that has a British accent.
  • Ferb briefly becomes this in the Star Wars special after getting hit with Darthenschmirtz's Sith-inator.
• The extraterrestrial but yet still-so-British Killface on Frisky Dingo.
• The Kim Possible villain Monkey Fist is a British Lord... and one of the few villains who is genuinely nasty on a regular basis.
  • A less prominent example is golf-obsessed Scotsman Duff Killigan.
• Looney Tunes' Marvin the Martian started out with a nasally American voice, but then was given a snooty, sort-of upper-class English accent. This trope is so naughty, he could just pinch it!
• Megabyte of ReBoot has a British accent, voiced by the late Tony Jay. Tony Jay's voice was made for this trope. Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and before that Beauty and the Beast showcases Jay's voice at its Evil Brit best.
• David Ogden Stiers often played either this or the "snooty Brit" in his voice acting roles, including the Penguin in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman and Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas.
• Peep the pickpocket in Jimmy Two-Shoes, though his accent is Cockney rather than anything distinguished.
• Emma Frost from the X-Men comics is usually Race Lifted to British in any animated version, whether or not they reflect her canonical Heel–Face Turn.
  • Though the few mentions of her accent in the comics have made it clear that it is one of the many fake things about her.
• Jackie Chan Adventures had an evil Englishman named Valmont, who was the boss of the Dark Hand crime syndicate. The show seemed to like this trope, as about several other minor villains happened to be British as well.
• In The Boondocks episode "The Fundraiser", it turns out that World's Ultimate Chocolate, a company that produces chocolate bars for school fundraisers, is actually an English crime syndicate, that sends out hired thugs to harass schoolkids for daring to sell their chocolate independently.
• Jem has got Jetta, the pathologically lying saxophonist with criminal connections from Britain who joins the Misfits in the second season. She's regarded as the Token Evil Teammate of a band that was already considered the bad guy group of the show. She's the only Misfit who's tried to scam her bandmates, as seen in Britrock, where she convinced her parents to help her convince Pizzazz she was British royalty by promising that they could bilk her out of millions. That episode helped provide something of a Freudian Excuse by showing that Jetta grew up in a lower-class British home, and the fact that her parents were willing to go to such lengths to make money (and had already assumed the worst when Jetta contacted them), it's easier to understand what drives Jetta.
• Katz from Courage the Cowardly Dog is this and one of the scariest villains on the show.
• Discussed on Daria, after Ms. Li makes an announcement over the intercom:
  Jane: Is that the voice in my head that tells me to kill and kill again?
  Daria: No. Satan's voice is lower and he has an English accent.
• Being a spirit, Zarm on Captain Planet doesn't really have a nationality...but still falls under this trope due to Sting voicing him in his first 4 appearances (continued by David Warner and Malcolm McDowell).
• Droners: The Sirens wear costumes that evoke modernized victorian motifs or uniforms that wouldn't be out of place in your average Verne-inspired Steampunk story, and speak with British-sounding accents. They're also among the usual "evil" teams.
• Emperor Belos from The Owl House has a British voice actor and speaks with a Britsh accent. It's also revealed part way though season 2 that he's actually a British colonist from 1600s Connecticut, and his outdated sensibilities play a direct role in his motivations and goals.
• The Legend of Tarzan: Clayton's death in the original movie has lead to its legacy episode "Tarzan and the Gaunlet of Vengeance", where his younger sister Lady Waltham commits a misguided vengeance against Tarzan, thinking that the latter was the one who killed her brother (even though that was completely an accident done by Clayton himself). Thankfully, by the end of that episode, she changed her ways once Tarzan saves her from the black panthers Nuru and Sheeta, feeling remorseful for her vengeance.

---