Evil Redhead

To be honest, her hair isn't always red.

"They called him Malpelo, which means 'evil-haired', because he had red hair: and he had red hair because he was a bad, malicious boy, with every promise of growing up into a first-rate rascal."

— Rosso Malpelo ^note  evil-haired red

Some heroes are redheads and we all know that Redheads Are Ravishing. By contrast, there are also Evil Redheads. These are characters who are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. (Not to imply that heroes can't want evil redheads.)

This trope is Older Than They Think — red hair was supposedly a mark of a witch and favored by Satan himself. In the Balkans, people unfortunate enough to be born with red hair were said to be doomed to rise as vampires when they died, if they weren't vampires already. In some parts of Eastern Europe, babies born with red hair were once common targets of infanticide.

Bullies in school media often have red hair because of the temperamental redhead stereotype. Note the dovetailing with the Violent Glaswegian, though that seldom overlaps. Contrast Redheaded Stepchild, wherein the redhead is despised but not necessarily evil, as well as the growing tendency over the past few decades for heroes to have red-haired romantic interests, especially green-eyed ones.

May be used to visually demonstrate the difference between this character and the blond or dark-haired hero.

Also see A Sinister Clue, another indicator of evil stemming from an ancient superstition.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Baccano!'s Claire Stanfield straddles the line between this and redheaded Anti-Hero, as a red-headed Ax-Crazy Heroic Sociopath in a Black-and-Gray Morality universe. It doesn't help that he's a complete Wild Card.
• Villain Protagonist Rebecca "Revy" Lee from Black Lagoon has dark red hair that matches her personality.
• Hattori Hanzō of Brave10 is far different than his real-life counterpart. He has red hair, red eyes and is the primary villain in the first series, with a particularly sadistic streak to him.
• While not necessarily on the enemy side, Broken Blade's Girge is a full-on Sociopathic Hero. Not to mention his golem's color, and Blood Knight title. What's wrong with this guy?
• Sir Luciano Bradley, the Knight of Ten, from Code Geass has red-orange hair, but he's an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who has a few screws loose, and is a Psycho for Hire and The Sociopath who really enjoys killing people For the Evulz. His deranged insanity also applies in the sexual field as well, as he forces the Valkyrie Squadron to wear erotically revealing outfits, and even threatened a girl to rape and torture her when she was a POW. He ends up being done in by that same girl, a fitting end to his villainy.
• Makima of Chainsaw Man is Ambiguously Evil from the start but is the Deuteragonist of the series... until her true identity and motivations as the Control Devil are revealed, and she settles into the role of Big Bad.
• Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland was raised a monk, but due to suffering extreme sexual and physical abuse from his fellow monk as a child, and his pet kitten dying on him, he became an insane murderer where he kills people in order to "save" them. He also has a crush on one of the protagonists, Nagi Kengamine, to the point where he kills the man's pregnant wife and temporarily makes him go berserk by convincing him that he has no hope in becoming a family man and that all of his happy memories are fake.
• Death Note: Villain Protagonist Light Yagami is the only Japanese person in the series to have light brown hair, which can look reddish depending on the lighting of an environment. When he is feeling particularly malicious, his hair is colored blood red for the viewer.
• Principal Gakuencho from the first Devil Hunter Yohko OVA, who wants to assist a demon queen with taking over the world, and who is hot for students to boot.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Recoome of the Ginyu Force is very flamboyant and a former ballet dancer, but he's a member of a mercenary group hired by Frieza to go after Goku and his loved ones. Recoome in particular is willing to go after Goku's 4-year-old son Gohan, beat him up, and try and snap his neck, which sets Goku on the warpath.
  • Bojack from the Android/Cell Saga-era movie Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound is more of an orange-head, but he's a villainous alien with the goal of universal conquest. Notably, he intended to "thank" Goku for freeing him by pursuing and killing his family and friends. When the latter transforms, his hair actually gets redder. His minions (Zangya, Bido, Bujin, and Kogu) are the same race as him, and almost as mean.
  • Subverted by Android 16, a red-mohawked Nice Guy and Gentle Giant who loves nature, but sees Goku as his Arch-Enemy even after making a Heel–Face Turn. His compassion is what makes his death at the hands of Cell all the more powerful, as seeing Cell brutally murder him causes Gohan to go Super Saiyan 2.
• Lucy from Elfen Lied could possibly count as a homicidally Tragic Villain Protagonist example of this trope. Though she is more specifically a hot-pink head.
• Sawa Nakamura from The Flowers of Evil is a redheaded student with destructive and sociopathic tendencies that stemmed from living as an outcast in a very isolated town... though it goes without saying that her reputation is warranted. For one, she calls people "shitbugs", has a profound lack of empathy, and her relationship with the protagonist, Kasuga, has shades of Domestic Abuse. It's subverted with the reveal that her hair might be dyed, as a Time Skip shows her with long black hair.
• Subverted in Free!. While not evil, Rin Matsuoka serves as the antagonist of the first season. At least up until his Broken Tears moment in the finale. He later Takes a Level in Kindness and gets pretty easy-going and cheery (while still blunt and proud at moments).
• Mayo Sakaki from the third Fushigi Yuugi OVA. She's a bitchy Jerkass who constantly tries romantically pursuing her P.E. school teacher, who's already married and can't stand her, and her relationship with the priestess protagonist Miyaka is full of nothing but selfish and petty hatred. She even steals Miyaka's unborn baby and tries to erase the girl from existence out of sheer spite.
• Future Diary:
  • Gasai Yuno has bright pink hair and is a psychopathic, insane Yandere who's willing to kill those who get between her and Yukiteru, and take extreme measures in keeping the objects of her affections "safe". Subverted in the ending, but before that, GodDeus help you if you try to separate her from her Yuki.
  • There's also Takao Hiyama, a teacher at Yuki's school who's secretly a Serial Killer, and his long, red hair is one of the few things not covered by his murder gear.
• Akakabuto from Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin, whose name means "Red Helmet", is named for the red patch of fur on his head.
• Hello! Sandybell: Downplayed with Kitty. She's a Spoiled Brat from a well-off family with red hair and constantly antagonizes Sandy. When Sandybell gains the affections of Marc, she becomes absolutely livid and her bullying increases.
• Goki, The Mole from the manga series Kagerou-Nostalgia. A nearly emotionless killer completely in thrall to the Big Bad, he convinces the heroes that he is one of them (not hard given his status as the Reincarnation of one of their former allies) and proceeds to murder their leader before defecting back to the villains. He appears to get some regrets about this later though.
• While not so much evil as "egotistical", flame-haired Maaya Nanako of Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho claims to be leading male Kaname's Unlucky Childhood Friend. His memories of her are not at all pleasant.
• Lady!!: Mary Waverly has reddish-pink hair and is a self-absorbed Smug Snake who lives for bullying little Lynn. One of her Establishing Character Moments is kicking her cat, who's nothing but sweet to her, when she's mad. In the second season, Mary becomes full-on evil as she tries to push the Russell family to bankruptcy by using her grandfather's power to stop them from receving payments they're owed and manipulating Lynn into staying away from the Lady's Crest.
• Yuriannu Faithful from Linebarrels of Iron is one for the villain team, who also engages in purposeful sexual tension with the hero and has a Sexy Secretary alter ego.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Vita and Nove are both shown to be vicious, aggressive foes before their Heel–Face Turn — then they become vicious, aggressive allies... though they aren't really evil, as Nove is more of a Perpetual Frowner while Vita is just a Tsundere who's really heavy on the "Tsun" side of the scale.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch:
  • The first shown member of every Quirky Miniboss Squad is a redhead (Izuuru, Sheshe, Fuku). Also twisted with Sara, whose natural colour was bright orange but changed to black.
  • Aside from Fuku (who never attacks the Mermaid Princesses directly, anyway), the first real member of Michel's Winged Ones who shows up is Lady Bat, who also has burgundy red hair.
• Momomi Minoi, the Cute and Psycho Yakuza Princess from Mezzo Forte, fits quite well. One of her recreational activities seems to be casually murdering her father's employees when they fail to meet her expectations... and that's just when she's having fun. If someone actually tries to get in her way, she will do her best to ensure that they experience far worse.
• Ilulu from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has magenta hair and is the first genuinely antagonistic dragon in the series (though she later undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and becomes more of a Rose-Haired Sweetie).
• Gundam
  • Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has the original two "this trope" in Haman Karn and Reccoa Londe. The former is more pink-haired than anything, but is the leader of Neo Zeon, as well as the Big Bad of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ. The latter is a traitor of the Anti-Earth Union Group who joined the womanizing, manipulative Paptimus Scirocco after feeling spurned by her friends in the AEUG and then being captured by the Titans.
  • After War Gundam X has Ennil El, a sultry local Vulture captain who comes into a few clashes with the cast of the Freeden through Garrod Ran, whom she forms a grudge towards after he rejects her advances. After losing her own Vulture in battle with the Freeden, Ennil allies with numerous unsavory types to try and take the Freeden — more specifically, Garrod — down. Surprisingly, she eventually befriends Toniya Malme, another member of the Freeden crew, and later even buries her grudge against Garrod to join the heroes. She survives as well, and is implied to hook up with Roabea Roy as well.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: "Evil" is a strong word, but 14 year old Flay Allster is the closest thing to one. Flay starts off as a prissy, hateful bigot who hates Coordinators. After her father is killed by ZAFT, she turns her prejudice and hate on Kira Yamato, whom she blames for not saving her dad because he didn't want to fight his own kind. While initially still labeled a protagonist, she sinks to incredibly low depths to get Kira to kill as many Coordinators as she can, hoping he'll die in battle. She does eventually begin to develop, get past her ignorant bigotry, and regret her actions, and eventually expresses her desire to apologize to Kira for being so horrible to him. Too bad she gets a Heel–Face Door-Slam in the form of death...
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00:
    • Ali Al-Saachez is red-haired and one of the most evil characters in the series. For one, he was once a "freedom fighter" who recruited child soldiers to fight in the name of "God", even though he's an atheist who just wanted an excuse to carry out acts of terrorism. In the present day, he comes to blows with Celestial Being — mostly Setsuna, who was one of the kids fooled into following Ali's crusade — because he is an instigator of war and chaos, and even turns out to be The Dragon to the series' Big Bad, Ribbons Allmark. He is also a huge Blood Knight and one of the best pilots in the setting, making him alone one of the biggest — and most personal — threats to the heroes throughout the entire series.
    • Nena Trinity, an Expy to SEED's Flay Allster, also counts, though she's more batshit insane than anything else. A brazen, selfish girl who cares for no one but herself and her brothers, Nena is responsible for destroying an entire wedding procession out of boredom. She inadvertently causes the death of her brothers — and herself 5 years later — because of this blatant, senseless act of violence.
    • Patrick Colasour, though he's more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain than truly evil.
    • Bring Stabity and Devine Nova both fit this trope to a T, being Innovator pilots with red hair who serve roles as The Brute and frequently clash with Celestial Being's Gundam pilots.
• Nao Yuuki of My-HiME, being an Ineffectual Loner and Dark Magical Girl, counts, though she's more "amoral" than outright evil. In the third volume of the manga, she actually assists the other HiMEs by luring Nagi into a trap after their escape from a cavern deep underneath Fuuka. Of course, she says that she's not doing it for them.
• Naruto: Jiroubo is a sadistic orange-haired brute.
• One Piece:
  • Eustass Kid, who starts impaling people with glee once he's in the New World.
  • Gecko Moria also fits this trope, being the main antagonist of the Thriller Bark arc, or at least in his original coloring in the manga. The anime gave him purple hair.
  • Vinsmoke Ichiji, the oldest son of the royal Vinsmoke family and Sanji's oldest quadruplet brother, was born with red hair despite both of his parents being blond-haired. He's also The Evil Prince who shares his father's Darwinist beliefs in the strong ruling over the weak and royals not serving anyone, and even joined in his younger brothers' vicious bullying of Sanji for being compassionate. However, there's a reason why he's evil: He and his younger brothers were experimented on in utero against their pregnant mother's will by Judge, who wanted his children to become strong, ruthless warriors by irreversibly removing their empathy. The mother, Vinsmoke Sora, desperately tried reversing Judge's modifications by consuming a dangerous drug to save her sons but ended up saving only Sanji. Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji only have a shred of empathy left.
  • There are quite a few members of the Charlotte family with varying shades of red: Oven and Basskarte have fire-colored hair, Katakuri has maroon hair, Cinnamon and Mobile are dark brunettes, twin sisters Galette and Poire are fuschia-haired, and Marnier's hair has darker/lighter red-violet colors. All of them are fanatically loyal to their mother, Big Mom/Charlotte Linlin, a pink-haired ruthless pirate queen who, whenever she craves something, goes on a hunger rampage during which she destroys everything and kills everyone until she gets it.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Jessie, the self-appointed leader of Team Rocket, is a mild example: a villain who works for a criminal organization, she's hot-tempered and morally dubious, but arguably too decent at heart to qualify as evil. Her hair also becomes less "red" and more "purple that's on the red side" from Gold and Silver onward, though it had a hint of purple even at the start.
  • James' fiancee (and Jessie's inexplicable doppelganger) Jessebelle is a stronger example: She's controlling, violently abusive, and, going by the things she keeps in the basement, has a penchant for torture, while lacking any apparent positive qualities whatsoever. Her hair's also a more pure red than Jessie's, and although it also became more purplish on her second appearance, it remained red enough to qualify for this trope.
• Played with for Kyouko in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. She's the only redhead in the cast and is easily the most amoral and violent, but Sayaka's influence causes her to evolve into more of an Anti-Hero. She was originally an overtly heroic person like Sayaka, until her Deal with the Devil convinced her religious father that she was an evil witch, and he killed himself and the rest of her family. After that, she decided to be completely selfish to avoid hurting people she cared about... by not having any.
• The Ranma ½ anime gets an episode full of this trope. When Happosai splits Ranma's male side and female side into two different people, the female side turns out to be evil to the core. The glowing eyes, floating red hair, and supernatural powers certainly don't hurt in making her seem any less sinister.
• Touga Kiryuu in Revolutionary Girl Utena. He tricks his sister Nanami into thinking that they were not blood siblings and that he never loved her, even though they were merely adopted into the same family and Nanami was too young to be able to remember. Also, he gets his friend Saionji expelled from school and burns the exchange diary right after Saionji entrusted it to him.
• Malty Melromarc from The Rising of the Shield Hero is a particularly big example. She begins by framing Naofumi Iwatani of raping her after stealing pretty much everything he has to his name. She keeps going up by manipulating Motoyasu into making a lot of stupid decisions that only cause further problems for other people, sells several of her party members into slavery, plots with the Corrupt Church to kill her entire family so she can become Queen, and rounds it up by joining (or forming) a group that aims to destroy everything in the world, just because she can't handle being beaten. In the original Web Novel, it's because she's the incarnation of a Goddess Of Evil that is also behind the Waves of Catastrophe that precipitated the summoning of the Four Heroes.
• Himura Kenshin, the titular protagonist of Rurouni Kenshin, was once a legendary assassin named "Hitokiri Battousai", who killed several men before the Meiji era. He turned away from that life, though, and seeks to atone for his actions because, in his words, the alternative was committing Seppuku. For every person that tries to kill him, there's many more who are inspired by his heroic deeds.
• Sailor Moon pulls this one on multiple occasions.
  • The Dark Kingdom arc/Classic season's Big Bad, Queen Beryl.
  • The Black Moon arc/R season's first member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, Rubeus.
  • The Dream arc/SuperS season:
    • VesVes the Tamer. At least she has the excuse that the Quirky Miniboss Squad to which she belongs is themed after the colours of the Senshi. She also Heel Face Turns into Sailor Vesta in the manga.
  • Galaxia has gold-blonde hair... which fades into blood red. In the anime, her hair turns completely red when she is fully corrupted by Chaos in the Grand Finale and becomes "Chaos Galaxia", making her even more vicious than she already was.
• Sa Sakujun from The Story of Saiunkoku is... not a nice person. He serves as a red-headed Shadow Archetype to Shi Ryuuki, both being intelligent men, except Sa is willing to manipulate people if they get in their way, and has a hard time understanding the concept of caring for someone other than himself.
• Starzinger: Prince Gaima, the son of King Gyuma, has fire-red hair that reaches his waist, and serves his abhorrent, oppressive tyrant father. He views Princess Aurora as an Arch-Enemy, and comes close to ending her when she's separated from the others and left at his mercy.
• Fiery Redhead Princess Rubina from UFO Robo Grendizer subverts the trope. She was the loyal daughter of Big Bad, so you would expect that she would fulfill the trope, right? Wrong. She was loyal to her father but she did not approve of his actions either, and she was the only person who ever called him out on it. She also tried to convince both sides to stop the war and find a peaceful solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, it did not work very well for her...
• Q-vier from Valvrave the Liberator is a Cute and Psycho Dorssian Child Soldier who is such a Blood Knight that he enjoys killing both military and non-military personnel to satisfy his own bloodlust. His violent methods were responsible for killing off one of the Valvrave pilots' girlfriends Aina when a Drossian assault on New JIOR got out of hand because of him.
• Voltes V:Accidental example. Heinel is referred as a blonde by his character designers (like in the Roman Robo Anime Climax Selection), but at certain points of the anime, it appears to be ginger or a ginger-blonde colour.
• Amon Garam from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is a glasses-wearing villain who is more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist in that he wanted to create a world without poverty and unfairness. However, while his intentions were pure and he has no inner darkness in his heart, he still ended up betraying his own morals in order to create the ideal world he wanted, so ultimately he ended up embodying the unfairness he sought to erase by betraying and manipulating his allies.

Art

• Capocchio, the clear aggressor in Dante and Virgil in Hell, is shown with hair red as Hell. Fitting for a representation of anger and violence.
• Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: Lucifer, the most prominent element of the artwork, sports reddish ginger hair. Curiously enough, on further inspection, so do almost all of the non-fallen angels.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Pamela Isley, alias Poison Ivy, is a villainous Redhead In Green.
  • Hush, one of Bruce's childhood friends, who took The Only One Allowed to Defeat You route in Detective Comics #846.
• Chastity is the redhead of all of Chaos! Comics's band of Heroic Sociopaths.
• Bera from Helheim, who effectively destroys an entire village in her war with a rival witch.
• Clash from Jem and the Holograms (IDW) has multi-colored hair with red as the main color. She is not "evil", but she's the character who has done the most violence, attempting to seriously injure Jem, which even The Misfits disagree with.
• "Red" Gurdy Pickens, the recurring villain of B.A.'s campaigns, in Knights of the Dinner Table.
• Captain America: The Red Skull's daughter Sin is a redhead and completely Ax-Crazy.
• Lillie McGurty in Runaways, though her villainy didn't really start until after her hair had turned grey. Ironically, one of the biggest victims of her obsession turns out to be herself, as her machinations in the present were ultimately responsible for the events in 1907 that caused her to become bitter and lonely in the first place.
• Lucifer's hair is red most of the time in The Sandman (1989) and in his own comic. Of course he isn't exactly evil in them, but more like a rather amoral Anti-Hero.
• Based on the cover art and the video game, Scott Pilgrim's ex-girlfriend Envy is one, though they made her blonde in the movie. To be fair, her "evilness" isn't so clear-cut, as we learn what an Unreliable Narrator Scott is.
• Sin City: One of the female assassins in the Wallenquist mob is a Femme Fatale redhead named Mariah. Much like her colleague Blue Eyes, that trait is highlighted in the otherwise black and white comic.
• Fiona Fox, the Love Interest of Sonic's Evil Counterpart Scourge, in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) after her Face–Heel Turn. Not only her hair is red, but also her fur.
• Spider-Man:
  • Carnage's alter ego Cletus Kasady has red hair and was a Serial Killer serving eleven consecutive life sentences before being infected by the Carnage Symbiote.
  • Norman Osborn, the first Green Goblin, is described as having reddish-brown hair and is a very evil supervillain.
• Stabbity Bunny: Issue #1 has Larry, a fat, red-headed man who kidnaps Stabbity's owner, Grace. When her ransom is paid, he decides to kill Grace so he doesn't have to do time for her abduction.
• Superman:
  • Supergirl's enemy Blackstarr — whom the titular heroine fights in her second solo book — is a redhead, Nazi super-villain.
  • In A Mind-Switch in Time, red-haired Euphor gradually becomes evil after absorbing too much negative emotion.
  • In Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen (2019), Julian, Jimmy's brother, puts a hit out on Jimmy and, failing that, attempts to kill him himself to get his money.
  • Before Lex Luthor started sporting a Bald of Evil, he was a Fiery Redhead. Why he's bald depends on the continuity you're reading or watching. Pre-Crisis a lab accident made him go bald and he blamed Superboy, later incarnations don't really give a reason why he's a chrome dome. This is best exemplified in the Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths relaunch, where he at one point pretended to be his own son while he was living in a clone body, and he was red-haired alllllll over◊.
• The Ultimates: Black Widow, a traitor of the team that kills Hawkeye's family and Jarvis.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Giganta, supervillainess with growing powers and foe of Wonder Woman, is a redhead.
  • Villainess Queen Atomia is a redhead who likes to overwrite people's physical forms and minds to make them her slaves.
  • Mona Menise is a redheaded spoiled brat who quickly turns to murder if she doesn't get her way.
  • The second Cheetah was a redhead, and while she was brainwashed into her villainy, she was also a dangerous murderer in that guise.
  • Zara, an Arabian cult leader.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Genocide is a redheaded Anthropomorphic Personification of genocide.
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Tomas Byde was already a redhead before he gained his illusion and necromancy powers and became a villain, but the new powers came with brighter, more red hair that glows when he's using his necromancy.
• X-Men:
  • The Dark Phoenix Saga: Dark Phoenix is simply redheaded Jean Grey on too much power or a confused godlike being, depending on the story/retcon/ret-retcon. The way she's thought of more for that one arc than for her decades of being a hero before, and after it is a trope of its own.
  • Belasco, the red-haired, devil-horned sorcerer who stole Illyana Rasputin's childhood.
  • Mystique's adoptive daughter, auburn-haired Rogue, starts out as a villain.
  • Inversion: Thomas is the evil member of the Cassidy family. Sean and Theresa are red-haired and heroic, while Black Tom has black hair.
  • Madelyne Pryor goes through a Trauma Conga Line^note abandoned by Scott Summers, attacked by Mr. Sinister, learns that she's a clone of Jean Grey, and that Scott and Jean are now a couple. Ay ay ay., then a Face–Heel Turn that has her make a deal with N'astirth the demon to become the evil Goblin Queen and helps bring about the Inferno story arc.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm subverts this with Maddie Pryor. While she's initially a villain, she's a Punch-Clock Villain at worst and completely devoid of malice, created and raised with purposefully Blue-and-Orange Morality by Sinister to act as his ultimate weapon and bodyguard, so she genuinely doesn't know that things like Mind Control are wrong. Plus, she has a bucket-load of programming in her brain to press the reset button whenever she undergoes visible Character Development. When she finds out the truth (that she's actually Jean Grey's stolen twin sister) and rediscovers some of the suppressed Character Development, carefully nurtured by Gambit, she turns on Sinister and pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
• Matt from Death Note is often portrayed as this in fanon; in the anime series, Matt's hair is brown, in one video game it's light blue, and in the manga, his hair color is undefined. However, whether or not he's really evil depends on whose side you're on.
• Kainatrol in Futari Wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon has deep red hair and a red colour scheme, and is probably one of the more evil members of the Etherium and certainly the least likable. Even the first on-screen victim of her Mind-Control Eyes, Mia, has red hair.
• The evil alchemist and serial killer Harmonia Pie in His Recipe For Love not only has red hair but in the exact shade of red as her decidedly Nice Girl descendant, Pinkie Pie.
• The red-headed Becky Lynch is one of the main villains in The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, delighting in killing people and being a smart-ass.
• Downplayed in Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!. Alexis Lois "Lexi" Luthor is the granddaughter of the infamous Lex Luthor and the heir to his company. She isn't shown to be evil per se and claims that her family has long since left supervillainy. On the other hand, she's certainly amoral, slipping Izuku thinly veiled threats, effectively stalking him by dredging up all of his personal details through her connections, and not caring if people get hurt by an out-of-control robot that she's more than capable of stopping. All that matters to her is that she's entertained and that she gets one step closer to making the world revolve around her.
• The Encanto fanfic Past & Future has Victoria Madrigal, who has orange hair. Victoria is also an abusive spouse and mother, kidnapper, and murderer.

Films — Animated

• Queen Ariana in Barbie as the Island Princess has bright red hair and plots to murder King Peter and his family for exiling her family to a pig farm following an assassination attempt. To achieve this, she married an elderly king whom it's implied that she killed and had a daughter (whom she's neglectful at best towards) for the sole purpose of marrying her off to Peter's son. In the film proper, she bribes a guard to kill main character Ro and her friends by knocking them into the ocean and poisons the kingdom's animals so they'll starve to death in an endless sleep.
• In Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation, Dark Heart's human form is a boy with bright red hair. (A form of Color-Coded for Your Convenience, since he also has red clothes and eyes, red being the main color of whatever form he takes.) He makes a Heel–Face Turn at the end, though.
• One of Cinderella's bullying evil step-sisters in Cinderella, Anastasia, is a redhead. Subverted in that she later makes a Heel–Face Turn over the course of the film's two sequels.
• Prince Hans in Frozen has auburn hair, and takes advantage of Princess Anna's loneliness and naïveté to manipulate her into marrying him so he can take over the throne of Arendelle.
• Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer: Cousin Mel is red-haired and tries to get all of Santa's money in a lawsuit because she hates happiness.
• Buddy aka Syndrome, the main villain of The Incredibles, has bright red hair that's styled in a flame-esque way.
• Kent Mansley, the paranoid government agent in The Iron Giant, has red hair and blue eyes.
• Sunset Shimmer (pre-Heel–Face Turn, anyways) from My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, though she also has yellow streaks.
• Quest for Camelot has the Big Bad Ruber, with shoulder-length reddish-orange hair and green eyes, who wants to take over Camelot and plunge Britain into eternal warfare.
• The Rescuers features Significant Green-Eyed Redhead Madame Medusa as the Big Bad. She's an abrasive, greedy woman who kidnaps a little girl to force her to enter a dangerous cave and fetch a valuable diamond, verbally abusing her all the while.
• Sheila Broflovski in South Park Bigger Longerand Uncut. While she's generally just a Fiery Redhead, in this film she takes that trope into full-on Knight Templar Parent territory, causing the United States to declare war with Canada and personally shooting Terrance and Phillip dead, the latter of which fulfills a prophesy that allows Saddam Hussein and Satan to rise to Earth and take over the world (though she didn't intend that last part).
• The Stabbington brothers in Tangled are a pair of thugs who start out attempting to steal the royal crown with Flynn, before teaming up with Rapunzel's abusive mother Gothel in a scheme to get Rapunzel back under Gothel's control and Flynn/Eugene executed.
• From the perspective of players of Fix-It Felix Jr., the titular character of Wreck-It Ralph is this, as the premise of the game is that he wrecks the Niceland apartment building and Felix has to fix it. Outside of his day job, though, he's a Nice Guy.

Films — Live-Action

• Alice in Wonderland (2010): The Red Queen, a vindictive and petty woman who has her subjects' heads chopped off left, right and center for crimes such as stealing a bit of cake.
• Chucky from the Child's Play franchise is a serial killer who used Voodoo to transfer his soul into a redheaded doll, continuing his killings while searching for a human host to take over the body of.
• In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, there's a scheming female boss who tries to seduce Billy and is a Jerkass to Kate. She ends up being trapped in Spider Gremlin's web. Guess who saves her bacon.
• Holidays: Grainne of St. Patrick's Day is a Creepy Child who's in a sinister pagan cult that impregnates Liz without consent. Liz begins to qualify as well as she acts more and more deranged as her pregnancy progresses.
• James Bond: ** SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in Thunderball — so evil she's even immune to James Bond's legendary bedroom charms!
• Lil from Red-Headed Woman is a gold-digging vamp who breaks up marriages without the slightest pang of conscience.
• Revenge (2017): Main antagonist Richard had reddish-brown hair and a lot of freckles. He is an adulterer who tries to murder his mistress when she plans to report that she has been raped by one of his friends because it would be bad for his image.
• The School for Good and Evil (2022): Lady Lesso of the School for Evil is a red head. She even tortures Sophie's hair with an axe.
• Star Wars:
  • General Hux from The Force Awakens. Played with, but ultimately affirmed, in The Rise of Skywalker, where he betrays the First Order. It's not a Heel–Face Turn, though — he's not doing it because he wants the Resistance to win, he's doing it because he wants Kylo Ren to lose.
  • Emperor Palpatine. He was red-haired before his hair went white, and is the main villain of the whole series, who corrupts Anakin to serve as his lieutenant before seizing control over the Republic, turning it into the genocidal, speciesist Empire.
• Theresa & Allison: Allison has dark red hair, and it turns out is The Corrupter to her lover Theresa, who despite her resistance is lured into killing a captive human with her.
• Randal Graves of The View Askewniverse could fit in here somewhat. Although he isn't technically evil, he thinks nothing of spitting water in customers' faces, ordering porno titles in front of children, manipulating his best friend into horrible but brilliant verbal traps, indirectly destroying several of said friend's romantic relationships, and generally causing chaos and frustration wherever he goes. And when he's not in black and white, he is titian-haired (dirty red-blonde).
• What Keeps You Alive: Jackie is red-haired and a ruthless, homicidal sociopath.

Jokes

• A joke where a man wearing a hat sells his soul to the devil in exchange for all his earthly desires to be granted. Years later, the devil returns to collect, only for the man to remove his hat, revealing a magnificent flame-red mane. The joke, of course, is that gingers have no souls.

Literature

• Area 51: The Airlia all have fiery red hair, and are uniformly malicious.
• The Chronicles of Amber: Brand, who wants to destroy the universe and remake it in his own image. To be fair, the rest of his family has its own moral issues, though by the end, some of them have made some progress toward outgrowing it.
• Morgan Le Fay in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The narrator, when explaining why she imprisoned and tormented a man:
  He had said she had red hair. Well, she had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: One of Amarantha's most noted features is her red-gold hair and she's a ruthless, sadistic tyrant.
• Celia Madden of The Damnation of Theron Ware, though perhaps "evil" might be a bit strong, as "bitchy" serves just as well. But it still counts.
• In The Day of the Triffids, the protagonist is fired upon without provocation by a nameless gang leader with red hair. He later shows up in an armoured vehicle as "Torrence", representing a despotic feudal "government" trying to extend its influence over Britain. He shows up again in Simon Clark's sequel, The Night of the Triffids, 25 years older but still with some red in his hair, and a successful despot with some really nasty secrets.
• In Good Omens, a woman first introduced as Scarlett and later Carmine "Red" Zuigiber is a Fiery Redhead who deals in weapons and seems to cause violence through her mere presence. She's eventually revealed to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of War, first of the Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse.
• Grognon from "Graciosa and Percinet" becomes the Wicked Stepmother of Graciosa and repeatedly tries to get rid of her, using methods such as ordering her to be beaten, abandoning her in the woods, and imprisoning her.
• The House of Night: Elliot from Marked is a pretty big asshole and later becomes an undead Fledgling.
• In I, Coriander, Arise insists that Coriander must be evil because of her red hair — "All these curls, red as the flames of Satan! This is vanity, this is pride."
• In the Illuminatus! trilogy, Satan prefers redheads and they explore this trope in depth. It's a reference to old folk-beliefs. It works because the Black Mass participants believe it should. In an inversion, one of the participants is a protagonist who is taking his first steps in his path away from social conventions toward illumination. He and the redhead get some good sex out of the deal and get to meet Malaclypse the Elder disguised as Satan disguised as Billy Graham.
• All Shades (Evil Sorcerers possessed by spirits) from the Inheritance Cycle have red hair. Even becoming a Shade turns the being's hair red.
• In Jeeves and Wooster, this is one of the reasons Jeeves advises Bertie to steer clear of Bobbie Wickham.
  Jeeves: I would always hesitate to recommend as a life's companion a young lady with quite such a vivid shade of red hair. Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
• Middlegame: Erin was raised to be a ruthless assassin and has strawberry-blonde hair that one character, seeing her for the first time, immediately likens to faded bloodstains, "like the aftermath of slaughter". Subverted with her Heel–Face Turn.
• Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: Ruin, the personification of entropy, chaos, and destruction — while usually either shapeless or impersonating people — physically manifests as a redheaded man. Notably, the mind of Ruin (separate from the power) was actually once a man named Ati, and a note in The Way of Kings indicates that Ati was a nice guy before he became bonded to the power and it warped his mind. So his evil had nothing to do with being a redhead and his physical body was essentially completely irrelevant. We don't even get to see his physical form until he's already dead.
• My Sweet Audrina: Vera, Audrina's cousin and half-sister, is a very unpleasant person, even as a child; she is constantly trying to get Audrina in trouble and is an Attention Whore, is a good example of a Vamp, and for extra evil orchestrated Audrina's rape.
• In keeping with his fox motif, Mr. Croup from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a psychopath with lank, red hair.
• Lampshaded in the short story "Nobody Here But—" by Isaac Asimov, where the protagonist suspects that his girlfriend is bitchy just because she has to live up to her red hair.
• Fagin, the ruthless leader of a gang of child thieves in Oliver Twist.
• In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, the genie tries to invoke this, abusing Ginny for having "hair like hell". She ignores it.
• Roussette in Madame d'Aulnoy's Princess Belle-Etoile is a redhead with two younger sisters — one brunette and one blonde. Roussette becomes jealous of her sisters because they married princes while she only married an admiral, leading her to make a Face–Heel Turn and side with her sisters' evil mother-in-law.
• Attorney Arcinas of Smaller & Smaller Circles borders on this. His hair is dyed nearly raspberry-red, although he's less evil and more of an arrogant Glory Hound who is willing to risk lives in his quest for fame.
• Melisandre of A Song of Ice and Fire is an marginal example. As a Knight Templar priestess who worships a fire-themed god and often recommends human sacrifice by burning, she's regarded by many characters as an Evil Chancellor. However, she's also firmly committed to fighting the overtly evil Others, believing that the brutal actions she recommends are necessary for the greater good of humanity. Ultimately, her morality is somewhat debatable.
• In the Andrew Vachss novel Strega, unlicensed private eye Burke does a job for the titular character, the crazy flame-haired relative of a Mafia boss, who wields a mysterious power over men. It later turns out that the Mafia boss molested her as a little girl; when Strega told her father, she was beaten for telling "lies", teaching her an early lesson in power that she later puts to use.
• Talking to Dragons, Book 4 of Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, has a redheaded fire-witch (fire-witches in general are prone to red hair) who likes turning people into statues and uses torture to power her spells.
• Played with in Trash of the Count's Family, where the redheaded protagonist Cale is a hero... his enemies have a difficult time believing that though and consider him outright evil.
• The ghost of Peter Quint from the Victorian novella The Turn of the Screw, who the main character thinks has come back from the dead to try and corrupt the small boy she's been charged with watching over. Of course, the ghost may just be in her head. Apparently, at the time the novel was written, it was quite common for red-haired characters to be portrayed in this villainous way.
• Victoria from The Twilight Saga is a bloodthirsty, ruthless vampire, with fiery red hair to match.
• The Unicorn Trilogy: While many people certainly believe that all redheads are evil witches, Tanaquil is unequivocally good, and her mother Jaive is eccentric and cold, but not particularly evil. The closest this trope gets to being played straight is in Tanaquil's Evil Counterpart Tanakil and even then she's proven to be less 'evil' and more 'very troubled'.
• Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles: The yandere-like Armand arguably fits the bill.
• Isosceles, one of the evil witches from Warren the 13th, has long red hair.
• The Witch of Knightcharm: A student witch named Brynne is part of Lily's gang and acts as the gang's lookout, warning them when someone is coming so they know when they can and can't get away with bullying the other students. She's also a redhead.
• Bliss from The Women's Room. She's racist and anti-Semitic, has an affair with Adele's husband Paul, and she and Paul conspire to make Mira take the fall for her, leading to Adele growing colder towards Mira. However, it can be argued that she's just another victim and that she's not 'evil' so much as ruthless, jaded, and trying to survive in a harsh world.
• The Lone Power from the Young Wizards series often appears as a young man with red(dish) hair.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad zigzags this:
  • In an inversion, to play Villain Protagonist Walter White, Bryan Cranston dyed his naturally reddish hair a duller brown shade to represent Walt's bland existence before the character turns to a life of crime. Later in the first season, after starting down the road to evil, Walt shaves it all anyway once he starts losing hair during chemotherapy. But you can still see the red in his facial hair, which he grows into a goatee starting in the third season.
  • Once Walt and Jesse get their meth business going, two of their customers — a trailer-dwelling couple, the man nicknamed "Spooge" — play this straight in their brutal violence (toward their dealers and each other) and their neglect of their poor little son. Inversely, said kid's hair is even more vividly red than his parents'.
  • Patrick Kuby, a former Boston police officer played by Bill Burr, serves as hired muscle for Amoral Attorney Saul Goodman.
• In Burn Notice, one of the most vicious female characters (and definitely the youngest vicious character), Eve, is played by redheaded actress Aviva. Fiona comments that she's the first natural redhead she's seen since leaving Ireland.
• Criminal Minds has some red-haired UnSubs, like Karl Arnold, aka The Fox, a serial killer and rapist who sneaks into the homes of his psychiatry patients and forces them to treat him as their father before killing them and their entire families.
• Dexter: The title character is a sociopathic serial killer who grew up with bloodthirsty tendencies and directs his murderous urges at other serial killers since they "deserve it".
• Doctor Who: In the revival episode "Amy's Choice", the villain of the week is played by red-haired actor Toby Jones. And considering that he's a twisted manifestation of the Doctor's self-loathing, it looks like the Doctor got to be ginger after all.
• Edna from Downton Abbey, who manipulates everyone she meets (but doesn't fool Mrs. Hughes for a second).
• Joey Caruso from Everybody Hates Chris is a redheaded bully who serves as the main antagonist of the show.
• Jimmy Murtha (played by Joe Pantoliano) from the short-lived EZ Streets is a violent redheaded mobster.
• In Firefly, we have Saffron. Or Yolanda. Or Bridget. No one's sure what her real name is, we just know she has red hair. And that she's a con woman who, while she prefers theft, con games, and treachery to outright murder, considers it more a difference in style than an actual rule.
• Game of Thrones: Melisandre is a Knight Templar priestess of a fire-themed god who practices blood magic, advocates human sacrifice by burning, and generally serves as an Evil Chancellor to Stannis. However, she seems to believe that her actions are necessary to save humanity from the White Walkers, and from what we've seen of them, she may in fact be right.
• Garth Marenghis Darkplace has the hero battling evil Scotsmen, with his own hair turned red after a killer bagpipe attack. Fortunately, his personality is not affected (probably because he's already a bigoted Jerkass).
• Gotham has the psychopathic, mother-killing carny Jerome Valeska and his twin brother Jeremiah.
• H₂O: Just Add Water features red-haired Charlotte who, while she starts out behaving pleasantly enough, soon shows to be a Manipulative Bitch and a very controlling and jealous girlfriend, and by the end of Season 2 outright attacks the three main leads, apparently wanting to kill them.
• Justified has the Crowes, an extended family of poachers, smugglers, and ne'er do-wells, most whom have red, or at least red-tinged, hair. Individual members include Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Dewey; his opportunistic thug of a cousin, Daryl; Daryl's crooked paralegal sister, Wendy; and their psychopathic brother Danny, whose actor joked that Season 5's message is "don't mess with gingers."
• The Nomad from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has long red hair hidden under her helmet. She is a female cultist of Sauron from Rhûn, and killed the heroic leader of the Harfoots, Sadoc Burrow.
• Peggy from Married... with Children — at least if you believe Al about her role in destroying his life by forcing him into marriage. She expects him to be the sole breadwinner of the family without even doing any housework in return, instead just sitting around on the couch all day watching TV and eating Bon Bons. She'll even steal from others if his hard-earned cash isn't enough.
• Melrose Place: Kimberly Mancini pretty much swings back and forth between this and Fiery Redhead. When she's sort of normal, she's the latter. Other times, she commits some pretty horrible acts of violence.
• In NCIS, McGee is wooed by a North Korean-employed red-haired assassin, played by Lindy Booth. Booth seems to have the seductively evil redhead down pat.
• Once Upon a Time: Zelena, possibly the only example of the Wicked Witch of the West (aside from the original W. W. Denslow illustrations) being portrayed with anything other than black hair. Later inverted after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Budnick from Salute Your Shorts has bright red hair (the other main characters all have blond, brown, or black hair) and is by far the most scheming and manipulative person at Camp Anawanna.
• Smallville: Prior to her Heel–Face Turn, Anti-Villain and Well-Intentioned Extremist Tess Mercer.
• Spellbinder Ashka from, well, Spellbinder is a redhead and also a power-hungry, cunning, vicious bitch.
• On Succession, Shiv — the only daughter in the central family of Villain Protagonists — has strawberry-blond hair and is the most ruthless and calculating among her siblings.
• Supernatural:
  • Abaddon, the last of the Knights of Hell, throws Hell into a civil war because she wants demons to stop bribing mortals for their souls and just outright take over the world.
  • Then there's Rowena, a powerful centuries-old witch and abusive mother to the boy who would grow up to be Crowley.
• Played with Lydia on Teen Wolf, particularly in "Lunatic". Way to blatantly manipulate Allison and Scott.
• In The X-Files episode "All Souls", Aaron Starkey is quite literally Satan incarnate.
• The Young Ones: Three brunettes, one ginger, all unpleasant. Still, guess which one is the most violent and destructive.

Music

• The sinister Thin White Duke from Station to Station had red hair, like many of David Bowie's other stage personas (including less nasty characters like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane). How scary is the Thin White Duke? Ultimately, he turned out to be Bowie's last stage persona because the guy got Lost in Character and started losing his grip on reality. In other words, the Thin White Duke became an honest-to-God Enemy Within, and Bowie decided to give up Alter-Ego Acting (along with cocaine) because he didn't want to risk that happening again. Also note that in contrast with the usual stereotype of the Fiery Redhead, the Thin White Duke is creepy in part because he's so inhumanly cold.
• Garbage's Shirley Manson sings in a rather evil fashion. Well, she did get tapped to play Catherine Weaver, after all.
• This was Danny Elfman's stage persona during his Oingo Boingo days. He looks so cheerfully demonic that you have to wonder why he wasn't cast as The Joker.
• Songs: Ohia's "Coxcomb Red" is about being in love with one. Molina's estranged wife was a ginger, so it's likely the song is about her.
  Your hair is coxcomb red
  Your eyes are viper black...

Religion & Mythology

• Rumour has it that red hair was considered a positive factor in selection to become a druid — this may account for the malign reputation of red-headedness amongst those cultures that were hostile to Celts. (And probably among the Christian missionaries too.)
• The Bible:
  • It's a common folk belief that many evil figures in scripture, most notably Cain and Judas Iscariot, had red hair, despite there being no textual evidence of this. In Medieval times, when most of the population was illiterate, stained-glass windows in churches would tell various stories from the Bible in picture form and red hair was used as a shorthand for evilness since it evoked the image of fire and Hell. To quote I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, "Judas is carrot".
  • Esau is described as having red hair at birth; the Talmud describes him as an extremely evil person.
  • Inverted in Robert Graves's King Jesus, where Jesus has red hair, this being one of the eight "signs of royalty".
  • Zig-Zagged with most depictions of Mary Magdalene, who is generally portrayed with red hair and (countertextually) depicted as Hooker with a Heart of Gold, so it depends on one's view on the profession.
  • Subverted by David, whom Samuel is reluctant to appoint king because of his red hair, which was associated with violence and bloodshed until God tells him that David would shed much blood, but it would be that of Israel's enemies.
• At least one painting of Classical Mythology's Pandora, the woman whose curiosity brought diseases into the world, gives her fiery red hair and a scary look on her face.
• Older Than Dirt: The ancient Egyptian pantheon has the god Set, best remembered for hacking his brother Osiris into bits and scattering the pieces about the world. And then there was the attempted schtupping of Horus...sheesh. He was depicted as being a redhead — or at least red-furred, since he was usually depicted with the head of an unidentifiable animal. There is some speculation about which one, but it resembles an aardvark — which don't have much fur on their heads anyway.

Pinball

• Bally's Mata Hari pinball depicts the title character as a redheaded German spy.
• In Psycho Pinball, the "Trick or Treat" table has a Wicked Witch with a full head of (unkempt) red hair.

Professional Wrestling

• Although she was very popular for most of her career, Lita in her last year and a half in WWE, after she cheated on boyfriend Matt Hardy with Edge, leading to a Real Life Writes the Plot Face–Heel Turn.
• Miss Maulie, a pinup lady affectionately nicknamed "Man's Ruin".
• Almost all the regular redheads of Ring of Honor are evil:
  • Veda Scott wasn't evil at first, just cowardly, but fear is the path to the dark side.
  • Taeler Hendrix describes herself as "gingerlicious and delicious" and wanted to see a complete HOT takeover of ROH.
  • Maria Kanellis played it straight in her first Heel run with the promotion, distracting anyone while The Kingdom does the dirty job. Averted in her second run, where she was a Reasonable Authority Figure as a Face.
• Sir Oliver Humperdink, a manager and heel during the 1970s and 1980s, combined this with Beard of Evil. Some of his ring names, such as Red Sutton or Rooster Humperdink, reflected on this.
• Sweet Nancy dyed her hair red for her ruda run in the International Wrestling Association.

Radio

• Old Harry's Game:
  • Thomas, the most loathsome human in Hell, has red hair. Which means that, as for all redheads in the setting, there are Nephilim somewhere in his family tree.
  • It's hinted that Satan himself is one; given that all descendants of angels are redheads, it stands to reason that all angels are as well. Satan himself claims that only the junior angels have red hair, and he had golden hair as an archangel — but of course he's been demoted quite a lot since then.

Tabletop Games

• In Pathfinder, Chelaxians born with bright red hair are considered to have some sort of fiendish influence. Given the kind of country Cheliax is, this is usually treated as a gift. The most notable example is Ileosa Arvaxni, later Arabasti, who ended up becoming a genocidal tyrant and all-around monster.

Theatre

• Macavity the Mystery Cat from Cats is stated to be a "ginger cat", and he's the main antagonist of the musical.
• Heathers: Heather Chandler, in the original off-broadway production at least. She's a ruthless, manipulative Alpha Bitch who picks on people she herself even admits never did anything to her.
• Macbeth: Given their origin, the "dead butcher and his fiendlike queen" are generally portrayed as redheads.
• Because of the association with Judas, Shylock of The Merchant of Venice was originally portrayed as a redhead, which was generally a common trait of Greedy Jew-style villains.
• Sweeney Todd:
  • Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber who kills his customers and disposes of his bodies by having them baked into meat pies, was a redhead in the book. Modern depictions tend to run more toward Looking Like Cesare, though.
  • Many depictions of Yandere Stepford Smiler Mrs. Lovett have her as a redhead.
• The Big Bad The Mad Hatter from Wildhorn's musical Wonderland has reddish-brown hair.

Theme Parks

• Universal's Halloween Horror Nights:
  • Lady Luck is an attractive evil spirit who plays games of chance with people, killing them and eating their remains if they lose.
  • Jack the Clown is an undead Monster Clown serial killer with bright orange hair who loves murder and torture more than anything.

Toys

• Monster High: Alpha Bitch catgirl, Toralei Stripes. Her crowning moment is stealing Cleo's routine at fearleading camp as revenge for not being allowed to rejoin the school team after walking out on it.

Video Games

• Captive (RPG Maker): The protagonist is a redhead and turns out to be the one who kidnapped and killed all the people in the basement. Downplayed as she did it to cure her dad's illness.
• Castlevania:
  • Walter Bernhard from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. And damn, does he ever have fun with the "evil" part.
  • Subverted in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin: Stella and Loretta are redheaded twins (though occasionally coloured with violet hair), but they're just Brainwashed and Crazy.
  • Played with in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness; Isaac is completely nutters, but it's heavily implied that, half the time, Dracula is driving or at the very least co-piloting him. Isaac's a willing "passenger", but still...
• Bob Page, the Big Bad of Deus Ex (and Greater-Scope Villain of its prequel games). Oddly, in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, his hair appears to be black, though this could be due to in-game lighting — his concept art still has very dark auburn hair.
• The Devilish Hairdresser is (usually) redheaded. Being the Devil, she's a naughty trickster whose main goal is to ruin the Angelic Hairdresser's day by spoiling her client's looks.
• In Dicey Dungeons, Lady Luck, the sadistic host of the dungeons who enjoys seeing her contestants suffer, has a full mane of cloud-like scarlet hair.
• Etna of Disgaea has red hair and, being not just a demon but one of the crueller and more irresponsible demons at that, probably qualifies as "evil" no matter how amusing she is about it. Especially if you ask her beleaguered minions, the Prinnies, whom she regularly uses as impromptu artillery.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind's Tribunal expansion has Almalexia, the redheaded former member of the Dunmeri Tribunal. She undergoes a Face–Heel Turn as her sanity deteriorates from the loss of her godhood. She reaches full-blown Ax-Crazy status by the end of the expansion's main quest.
  • Skyrim:
    • Cicero, the lunatic jester/deadly assassin in the Dark Brotherhood questline, has red hair under his jester's hat.
    • The Draugr, undead cursed thousands of years ago for serving the dragons and dragon cults, tend to have red hair and beards.
• Far Cry:
  • Dah from Far Cry Primal plays with this. He's a member of the Cannibal Tribe known as the Udam, and is first introduced as an enemy of the Wenja tribe whom Takkar must defeat, and he has short red hair (on his chin, since he's a Bald of Evil). However, Defeat Means Friendship in his case, and after Takar spares his life and brings him to the Wenja village to teach them how to create rot bane, they end up becoming friends.
  • Jacob Seed from Far Cry 5. Apart from being The Dragon to the leader of an Apocalypse Cult, he's also a Sociopathic Soldier and a Social Darwinist who favours brainwashing people into becoming killers, in addition to using Savage Wolves as attack dogs. Jacob is notable for being the only Seed brother with red hair, instead of brown. He's also a Redhead In Green, being a former soldier.
• Tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem portray the enemy units as having red armor and hair. For specific Fire Emblem examples:
  • Michalis from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light is The Evil Prince who murdered his father for the throne of Macedon and sided with The Dolhr Empire with opposition of his two sisters, Minerva and Maria.
  • Prince Julius from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is a redhead possessed by the evil dragon god Loptous. He approves of abducting and sacrificing children to Loptous and other such fun. He got his hair color from his father Arvis, who is more of an Anti-Villain.
  • Gangrel from Fire Emblem: Awakening is a red-headed, mad, tyrannical king of Plegia who wants to see the Kingdom of Yllise razed to the ground.
  • Miklan from Fire Emblem: Three Houses shares his little brother Sylvain's light red/orange hair, and terrorized him during their childhood before becoming a murderous bandit leader as an adult.
• Friday Night Funkin': Mommy Mearest, the Girlfriend's murderous mother, is a demonic ex-pop star with dark red hair. She's just as insane as her husband, forcing a musical battle against Boyfriend atop a moving vehicle on a highway during the week "Mommy Must Murder" — famously finishing her level with "M.I.L.F.", which as of this writing is one of the toughest songs in the base game.
• In Grandia II, the wings of the evil god Valmar get implanted into the golden-haired Ellena, creating her red-haired Superpowered Evil Side, Millenia. Subverted in that Millenia isn't really evil so much as The Unfettered, and she pets enough dogs to qualify as fully good by the end of the game.
• Right-Hand Man from the Henry Stickmin Series counts as this, given his red eyebrows and mustache. Especially in his Cyborg form. He's the, well, right-hand man of the leader of the Toppat Clan, a large criminal organization.
• Erol from Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3 is the commander of the Krimzon Guard and the tyrannical Baron Braxis's right-hand man. However, most of the time, his hair is hidden by his helmet.
• Tiamat from Last Scenario (although she was a good person before an ancient power took over her mind).
• Axel from Kingdom Hearts, a member of the villainous group Organization XIII who eventually develops into an Anti-Villain.
• Flamberge from Kirby Star Allies is one of the Three Mage-Sisters, a trio of Magic Knights in service to the Big Bad, Hyness. She's a literal Fiery Redhead, and she gets first crack at Kirby and friends while fuelled by vengeful rage after they defeat her closest comrade, the icy Francisca. Ultimately a subversion, though, once the Mage-Sisters become friends with Kirby.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • All the Gerudos, though they're just thieves. Most of them appear to be Punch Clock Villains if not Brainwashed and Crazy, and they aren't villainous at all in Four Swords Adventures and Breath of the Wild.
  • The one out-and-out evil Gerudo is Ganondorf (and some still-redheaded incarnations of his bestial form, Ganon) from various The Legend of Zelda games. In Breath of the Wild, it's all that's left of Ganondorf in Calamity Ganon.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has Chancellor Cole, who has red hair with a Villainous Widow's Peak and mustache and is revealed to be evil early in the game.
  • He's not explicitly stated to be evil,^note since there isn't much canon information about him but there's something just plain off about the Happy Mask Salesman of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Especially noticeable when you tell him you can't give him Majora's Mask yet. The manga adaptation implies that he orchestrated the events of the story for unknown purposes.
  • Yuga of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds sports fancily-curled red hair and is an Evil Sorcerer who goes around turning people into paintings for his Evil Plan. Makes sense, since he is apparently the Lorulean counterpart of Ganon(dorf). Fittingly enough, he even fuses with Ganon and bequeaths his red locks to the latter.
  • Demon King Demise of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. His hair is literally flaming. Fittingly, Ganondorf is his reincarnation thanks to his Dying Curse on Link and Zelda.
  • Zant, the villain from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, is revealed to have red hair like all Twili,^note most of whom fall under Dark Is Not Evil but most of it is obscured by his balaclava.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: Yomi Hellsmile has bright red hair, and is the Obviously Evil Caligula controlling the law in Kanai Ward as the Director of the Peacekeepers who doesn't care for the victims of his despotism. He is the one directly responsible for Kanai Ward becoming a dystopia out of every antagonist in the game, and he makes no attempt to hide this fact.
• Neverwinter Nights: Aribeth has reddish hair (much more apparent from her portrait than her character model), though she is only evil for about half of the first campaign and you get to choose whether she stays evil in Hordes of the Underdark.
• Triumph Studios seems to love playing with this trope in their Overlord series of games, as Rose, one of the mistresses of the Evil Overlord protagonist from Overlord I, is a redhead. In Overlord II, all three mistresses have hair colors that are various shades of red. However, Rose and Kelda (the most redheaded of the mistresses) are actually non-evil (Rose believes in Order and Kelda is the Victorious Childhood Friend) and arguably the Only Sane Women of the setting.
• Moira O'Deorain, one of the playable Overwatch characters, has red hair. She's a geneticist who does everything For Science! and doesn't worry about ethics. She's currently working for the terrorist organization Talon.
• Pico's School has Cassandra, who instigates the plot by shooting up her school.
• Pokémon:
  • Silver, The Rival in Pokémon Gold and Silver/Crystal, is a Jerkass Social Darwinist who abuses his Pokémon and bullies the player. He gets nicer by the end though.
  • Maxie, the leader of Team Magma in Ruby/Emerald (in Sapphire, the latter helps the player). His entire team is themed red and wants to cause a drought to get rid of the oceans and thus expand the world's landmasses.
  • From Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum there's Mars, a female member of Team Galactic's Quirky Mini Boss Squad. Jupiter may also count, although her hair is more of a purple shade. Their team's goal is to cause The End of the World as We Know It so their leader Cyrus can remake it in his image.
  • The remakes Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver updated the sprite design for the criminal organization Team Rocket's executives and gave them all names. One of the female execs, named Ariana, is red-haired.
  • Lavanna and the Team Dim Sun admins in Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia all had red hair, and the organization wants to put every Pokémon in the region under their command.
  • The Team Plasma grunts (male and female) from Pokémon Black and White are all redheads, and the team is an Animal Wrongs Group that wants to liberate Pokémon from "cruel" trainers through any means necessary. Some do a Heel–Face Turn after the group fragments, but the remaining grunts are still redheads, they just wear different costumes from before.
  • Most members of Team Flare in Pokémon X and Y have red hair, and they're a criminal syndicate that exploits Pokémon for money. Lysandre in particular has a massive mane that makes him look like Ganondorf if he discovered Rogaine, and his ultimate goal is to create a beautiful world by destroying every Pokémon and human not part of Team Flare.
• Rule of Rose has Diana, an Alpha Bitch who takes part in tormenting the protagonist Jennifer.
• Red from South Park has the hair colour her name implies, and three of her five cards in South Park: Phone Destroyer give off some serious villainous vibes:
  • Alien Queen Red from the Sci-Fi theme, who is a Shout-Out to the Alien Queen from Aliens: Genocide, wants to take over the planet, and her summon quote implies a very unpleasant fate for her victims:
    Alien Queen Red: You seem fertile for impregnation.
  • Dark Angel Red from the Mystical theme is a Fallen Angel with a red and black colour scheme and voice lines like "Hail Satan!" and "Darkness will consume you!".
  • Changeling Red from the Superheroes theme is a shapeshifting supervillainess whose card art depicts her pulling a Kill and Replace and who mocks the forces of good in a very card-carrying way.
• Street Fighter IV: Akuma's appearance just screams Obviously Evil and his powers are very much of demons. While he does have a code of honor when it comes to killing opponents, it's a very skewed one, and he's still not a nice guy in the slightest.
• Bowser from Super Mario Bros., the most iconic villain of the franchise. He constantly comes up with various schemes and plots to either defeat the Mario Bros., kidnap Princess Peach, take over the Mushroom Kingdom (or the world or the universe), or all three at the same time. Despite being a Koopa, he still has some hair. But he's also unwittingly contradicted his evilness at times helping his enemies as an excuse to get his way.
• Subverted with Axel Almer of Super Robot Wars. He's an honest Evil Redhead in Super Robot Wars Advance, as well as the GBA version of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2. However, in the subsequent remakes, he's more or less a Noble Demon, not outright evil... then he pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
• Tales Series: Potentially subverted in Tales of Symphonia. Late in the game, it is revealed that Zelos Wilder was a spy all along. However, just prior to the boss fight, he defects back to the heroes' side. If you choose to talk to Kratos in an event prior to this revelation, though, you kill Zelos instead and Kratos takes his place.
• Lara's evil doppelganger in Tomb Raider: Underworld. Her hair color is bloody crimson and she serves as The Brute to Natla.
• Trauma Team: The "Raging Bomber" is revealed to be a woman named Sandra Liebermann. When the player finally sees her in person, she's holding an airport hostage with bombs strapped to her chest, and her general appearance can only be described as "Ax-Crazy".
• Lady Harken from the original Wild ARMs subverts this. She starts out as a member of the Quarter Knights, sporting flowing red hair and red armor. The subversion comes from the fact that she is really Elmina Niett, a former knight of Arctica and implied Love Interest for Jack, a genuinely good character who was willing to sacrifice herself if it meant Jack (Garrett) could get to safety.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Dahlia Hawthorne in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations. She directly killed two people, tried to kill two more, and drove a man to suicide, all to either cover up her earlier crimes or take revenge for being stopped from committing them. Especially notable since this character is highly implied to have dyed her hair, as the rest of her family has dark hair and she herself is also shown to have dark hair on a childhood photo.
  • There's also Sōta Sarushiro/Simon Keyes from Ace Attorney Investigations 2, who is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• Danganronpa Zero implies that the Danganronpa series's Big Bad Junko Enoshima, who is obsessed with spreading despair and turned her class into a Brainwashed and Crazy terrorist group, naturally has red hair and red eyes, which can be seen in her Ryoko persona, although she normally bleaches it strawberry blonde.
• Dennis from Double Homework is a Narcissist and Evil Nerd who tries to bed girls through trickery, manipulation, and Blackmail.
• Subverted with Rena from Higurashi: When They Cry. In the first arc, Onikakushi-hen, she seems like an example, as she stalks and tries to murder Keiichi. However, it's later shown that Keiichi was paranoid and hallucinating Rena was after him. Rena is normally a sweet girl unless under the Hate Plague or if you seriously mess with her loved ones.
• Miho from Liar Liar is a redheaded Serial Killer and the accomplice (and eventual girlfriend) to the Villain Protagonist.
• Tsukihime: Neither is entirely evil per se, but Vermilion Akiha and Kohaku are both red-haired, yandere, psychopathic characters, and both have rather unsavory goals.
  • Akiha is "evil" here precisely because her hair is red, even.
  • Kohaku is essentially the poster girl for Stepford Smiler, Break the Cutie, Emotionless Girl, and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.

Webcomics

• Bob, of Bob and George, is a literal fiery redhead: His hair is red, his powers are fire-based, and when he's really pissed off, his hair tends to burst into flames. His place in the comic tends to swing between Heroic Comedic Sociopath and outright villain.
• Ctrl+Alt+Del's Manipulative Bastard Christian has dark-reddish-brown hair and a soul patch to boot.
• In Girl Genius, pretty much the entire extended Valois family has been seen to have the same shade of red hair. Although not all of them are quite as evil as others, most fall into this category one way or another just because of their scheming and backstabbing. Out of the confirmed redheads:
  • Aaronev is a former redhead (considering someone mistook his redhaired son for him) who has killed multiple girls, including his own daughter, in an attempt to download the mind of his former love interest into a new body.
  • Martellus has kidnapped Agatha and altered her bodily chemistry so she is forced to stay near him at all times so that he can force her to marry him, and has tried to kill Tarvek and Gil multiple times.
  • Xerxsephnia isn't quite so bad, but is still triple-crossing Martellus, Gil, and Agatha so that she can discredit Agatha and trick Gil into marrying her.
  • Tarvek is technically a protagonist but is still not exactly the best role model, having double-crossed and betrayed multiple protagonists and antagonists, with most of his "good" actions being calculated to his benefit.
  • Violetta is the White Sheep of the family but is still a trained assassin and isn't too shabby at political intrigue either.
• Magick Chicks: While it may not be Cerise's natural hair color (she dyes it), the trope most definitely applies. From the moment the Hellrunes transfer to Artemis, her actions become progressively darker — from merely plotting to take over the Coven, to trying to take over their new school. It culminates in Cerise betraying Melissa and Jacqui by outing them as witches, then trying to kill them along with the student council.
• Psycho for Hire Valentino from Marilith. In her defense, she was made a psycho killer in a gulag.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Belkar Bitterleaf generally looks bald in most panels, but look at the close-ups or his feet: He's a stubbly Chaotic Evil redhead.
  • Pompey, Vaarsuvius's second Evil Counterpart in the Linear Guild, has bright red hair — part of his being an evil opposite to V involves the fact that V wears red and has purple hair while Pompey wears purple and has red hair.
  • While he's only made a few appearances in the comic, the Norse deity Loki is a literal Fiery Redhead and is identified as being Chaotic Evil. On the other hand, he seems pretty nice and gets along well with Thor.
• Hwaryun from Tower of God. While she is a pretty laid-back person who can even forgive Bam for cutting out her eye in self-defense, she is part of a conspiracy. That means that she was well aware of the cruelties that was ahead of our cute little protagonist and even contributed to these plans.

Web Original

• The MS Paint Fan Adventure Alanna has Tristan, primary antagonist and confirmed murderer. Later in the story, Alanna finds a half-empty bottle of red hair dye.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, Duchess Vaetris L'andariel of the Eastern Horde and her sister Nina are quite evil and ambitious villainesses who have red hair. It runs in the family.
• Minilife TV: General Red of the X-Team has bright red hair and is part of a terrorist organization dedicated to eliminating individuals with special powers.
• One Not Always Right customer refuses to be served by a waitress wearing a pentagram necklace. The (black-haired) waitress goes to the back, removes the necklace, and comes to find the customer all smiles, going on about that horrid red-haired heathen who just tried to serve them. The customer's husband just looks tired, evidently going through this scene any time they eat out.
• Rats SMP: The Janitor, a human NPC feared by the entire mischief of rat protagonists for being able to capture them as long as he can see them, unlike other humans who have to chase the rats themselves. He's also seen unleashing Misplaced Retribution on the rats on at least one occasion, and is one of the few humans with practically zero redeeming qualities.
• RWBY:
  • Jerkass and resident bully Cardin Winchester.
  • Notorious criminal Roman Torchwick, whose hair is closer to a dark orange.
  • White Fang leader and Faunus Supremacist Adam Taurus.
• Survival of the Fittest: While not an actual redhead, Maxwell Lombardi has dyed red streaks in his hair. And given that he is one of the few killers in V4 to actually enjoy killing...well, he fits.
• In the audio drama Zoolaplex, antagonist and irredeemable scumbag Charles Wickman has spiky red hair.

Western Animation

• On Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Music Meister is a redhead as well as a Card-Carrying Villain who proclaims himself to be "the maestro of villainy".
• Ed Wuncler III from The Boondocks is a destructive criminal who's prone to impulsive outbursts of violence.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers:
  • Greedly sports a distinctive red mohawk and is not a very nice man.
  • Plunder is auburn-haired and has no scruples against poaching, bribery, and threatening or outright attempting to murder anyone who won't fall in line with his plans.
• Lenore from Castlevania seems like the kindest of Carmilla's sisters, at least compared to Striga's Blood Knight, Morana's Torture Technician, and Carmilla's Ax-Crazy Faux Affably Evil, but she's still fully complicit in their plan to conquer a large region of land and turn the people into livestock. She shows her true colors in full at the end of the season by tricking Hector into sexual slavery and normal slavery.
• C.O.P.S. (Animated Series): Dr. Badvibes is a Mad Scientist who makes diabolical machines and gadgets for Big Boss's gang of Crooks.
• The Wicked Witch in Cyberchase has bright, flaming red hair. In fact, it could be considered orange.
• Spectra's human form in Danny Phantom is a redhead, and she's a Vain Sorceress who causes despair and depression in people so she can feed off of it to keep herself young and beautiful.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • Sarah is Ed's spoiled, violent, and ill-tempered sister.
  • Lee Kanker, Eddy's bullying and brutish Abhorrent Admirer.
• Vicky, the Big Bad and Babysitter from Hell from The Fairly OddParents!. Chip Skylark writes a song about her titled "Icky Vicky".
• Lilo & Stitch:
  • Mertle Edmonds is a bratty rich girl who bullies Lilo for being weird and serves as a minor antagonist in some episodes.
  • Experiment 627, who has red fur all over him and is designed to be incapable of turning good.
• Looney Tunes: One of Bugs Bunny's major enemies is Yosemite Sam, a Trigger-Happy, easily angered Jerkass.
• Abraham Kane from Motorcity is protagonist Mike's primary adversary and runs Deluxe with an iron fist, outlawing any sort of personal freedom in the name of safety and security.
• PAW Patrol has Sid Swashbuckle, a pirate thief with blood-red hair.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • Princess Morbucks, who is probably the best example of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!.
  • Blossom's two Evil Counterparts, Brick of the Rowdyruff Boys and Berserk of the Powerpunk Girls (who is a comic-only character).
• Eva Medal, the Big Bad military leader/Corrupt Corporate Executive of The Prince of Atlantis, has bright scarlet hair.
• Recess:
  • Randall Weems is a Stool Pigeon who snitches on the other kids for his own benefit, being obnoxiously smug about it all the while.
  • Ashley Q. is a member of the Ashleys, a group of rude, spoiled rich girls who look down on the other students.
  • Kurst the Worst is an aggressive bully who steals from the school cafeteria.
  • Gelman is also a bully, though unlike Kurst he only targets one victim at a time. He's feared and hated around the school for this.
• Subverted with The Hex Girls from Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost. Thorn's black hair is highlighted red and Luna is a dark-skinned redhead. Shaggy and Scooby originally fear that they're evil vampires, but it turns out they're just normal Perky Goths.
• Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons is a murderously egotistical and Wicked Cultured homicidal maniac who has made it his life's goal to murder Bart Simpson and Krusty the Clown.
• South Park:
  • In the episode "Ginger Kids", where Cartman is convinced that "gingers" (pale, freckled, red-headed kids) are monstrous, Children of the Corn-like abominations. In what would have been a surprising example of Hypocritical Humour were we speaking of anyone other than Eric Cartman, after his friends try teaching him a lesson by making him up to look like a "ginger" while he sleeps, Cartman soon decides that "his people" are the master race. And since this is Cartman we're talking about, he's attempting genocide before the end of the episode.
  • The Ginger kids return in "200" and "201" and demand the town hand over Muhammad so they can obtain his ability to not get ripped on. It is revealed that a now Ax-Crazy Scott Tenorman is their leader. He justifiably wants revenge on Cartman for making him eat his parents and puts him through an ordeal much like the one the Joker puts Commissioner Gordon through in The Killing Joke.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Bounty hunter Aurra Sing features a red topknot on an otherwise bald head, and she enjoys violence and killing.
• Kelly from Stōked. "Evil" is a bit of a strong word for her, but she is a huge Jerkass who only dates rich boys for their money and takes pleasure in humiliating the employees ranked below her.
• Montana Max from Tiny Toon Adventures is a selfish, greedy rich kid who enjoys using his massive wealth to make everyone else miserable.
• Total Drama:
  • Revenge of the Island has its Big Bad in the form of the devious and unscrupulous Manipulative Bastard Scott.
  • Scarlett, a massive Bitch in Sheep's Clothing with a cruel and psychotic personality hidden under her seemingly reserved and intellectual one.
• On Xiaolin Showdown, the series's initial Big Bad, the ancient sorceress Wuya, has red hair in her physical form and is immensely cruel and wicked.

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