Hate Crimes Are a Special Kind of Evil

Bigotry and intolerance based on race, religion, economic status, gender, orientation, and various other factors are unfortunate parts of reality that have been part of humanity since the beginning of recorded time. As fictional works hold a mirror to the real world, acts of hatred and intolerance are often presented as Values Dissonance due to how a work has aged and how past views have been discredited, or as An Aesop about the evils of judging people based on what should be inconsequential differences. One of the most shocking and uncomfortable methods of putting these evils on display is a hate crime: when a person or group is unjustly targeted for what or who they are, when those traits do not harm or involve others (and even if they do, going above and beyond with cruelty).

Merely having a character with prejudiced views does not qualify for this trope. The following criteria must be met:

1. Someone must be harmed, physically or financially (emotional trauma, while unfortunate, isn't necessarily a criminal act).
2. The act must be motivated by a desire to harm someone based on factors usually inherent to the victim, often traits that are merely personal, harmless, or cannot be changed (i.e., the color of one's skin).
3. Finally, the person who perpetrated the crime must not be redeemed by the story's end, and indeed, will often show no remorse for their actions, even when caught.

As the definition of a hate crime will vary nation by nation and era to era (if any legal term for it even exists at all), this trope is not limited to the technical, legal definitions of hate crimes. Acts of physical violence, including sexual assault, destruction, theft, larceny, or murder, as long as it is due to those causes listed above, will be considered hate crimes for the purpose of this trope.

This is an Equal Opportunity Trope. If, in the story, a person is targeted for their race or religion, etc., it does not matter if the character attacked is in a majority population, or a minority one, only the reason they were targeted. Boomerang Bigots are still guilty of hate crimes, even if they are targeting members of their own community, if their bigotry is their motivation.

Don't expect these characters to reform by the end of the story. Most times, they won't even recognize their own evil. Unlike the Noble Bigot, who can, with some Character Development, be brought to see the error of their ways, the villain who engages in hate crimes is typically seen as irredeemable by the audience. Hate crimes are frequently a hallmark of the Politically Incorrect Villain, who will either be or be protected by a Bigot with a Badge.

This trope also has a darker side; due to bigotry and hate crimes being perceived as so unforgivably evil, this incentivizes villains to disguise their actions with "gentler" terms or gain the help of Unwitting Pawns who refuse to see their actions as "hate crimes".

This trope is also partly responsible for the prevalence of Politically Correct History in Period Pieces. What we would consider hate crimes today were standard fare and often even enforced by law, thus most "likeable" characters are Exceptionally Tolerant because otherwise, they'd seem monstrous.

Super-Trope to Homophobic Hate Crime. Compare Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil, Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil, Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil, and Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil. The latter two also commonly overlap, given that slavery and/or rape are very well-known forms of hate crimes. Frequently overlaps with Van Helsing Hate Crimes.

The Politically Correct Villain is perfectly willing to do any other kind of evil, but draws the line at bigotry.

Because history is replete with very glaring instances of social standards and values redefining what is or is not acceptable, No Real Life Examples, Please! (books, movies, or Theater about real incidents are permitted, provided they are labeled as Historical Fiction in their appropriate folders, such as Films or Literature).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Armitage III, Jessica Manning is an artist who is outed as a "Third", humanoid gynoid capable of giving birth, which is at odds with the current Feminist government of Earth. She is seized in front of her model (and implied lover) Jenny, and murdered by a lynch mob. As a point of contrast, Jenny is shown grieving for Jessica, mourning her loss, while the people who murdered her are a faceless mob.
• In one episode of Kino's Journey, Kino visits a nation where the wars between them and their neighboring nation are now settled by seeing how many members of an indigenous tribe can be killed by the competing armies. The people targeted had nothing to do with the war between the two nations, and are targeted because they aren't part of either nation and also incapable of defending themselves against the superior weaponry their oppressors possess. Though little is said, it is clear that these two nations have Kino, who rarely if ever expresses a moral judgement of the nations traveled through, disgusted.
• Radiant: Konrad de Marbourg. He orchestrated a plan in secret to have a sorcerer use her abilities to stir up Rumbletown's fear of the "infected" and whip the people into a violent frenzy to unleash them on immigrants because they are "cockroaches soiling his town" (even going so far as to try and sacrifice natives in the process). Eventually, both he and the entire town are told the truth and called out on their actions by said sorcerer.
• Space Battleship Yamato 2199 has a warden of a Gamillas prison planet viciously beat a Zaltian soldier named Nolan, considered a 2nd class citizen, for merely saying he was a loyal soldier of the Gamillas fleet. He likely would have killed him, but Nolan is spared when Yuki Mori, whom the Gamillans have kidnapped mistaking her for Yurisha of Iscandar, intercedes on his behalf. Also, her intercession kept Wolf Frakken, Nolan's commanding officer, from belting the warden. Frakken is noted for not sharing the racist views of most Gamillans regarding those without blue skin. The warden is never redeemed and only halted the beating because he believed that Yuki was a superior being.
• The Testament of Sister New Devil: Zolgia and Belphegor are Serial Rapists who believe that women have no worth aside from being sexual toys. Both demons' greatest delight is to capture attractive women and subject them to sexual torture, especially women already claimed by a Master-Servant pact. They abuse the function of the pact which causes the servant pain and increased sexual arousal if they "betray" their masters, molesting them until the agony of the magic completely shatters their minds and makes them a lifeless vegetable. At that point, they're free to rape them as much as they please, dispose of them after they get bored, and then find another. At the same time, the woman's master will be Mind Raped by a false fantasy of making love to their slave while she's being violated in reality, and if he's especially "lucky", he'll be Forced to Watch. No one, except for utter monsters who think the same as they, even remotely likes Zolgia or Belphegor, with Belphegor even intentionally adopting Zolgia's methods after his death simply because he believes that this is the only proper way to treat women, and that it'd be a shame if the "playground" went to waste.

Comic Books

• Marvel Universe:
  • The Red Skull (a Nazi that was considered even worse than Hitler) is a villain that most human supervillains will refuse to work with or will even attack themselves. For example, the crossover Acts of Vengeance had multiple villains team up with each other to take on each other's archenemies. At one point, Red Skull and Magneto team up with each other, until Magneto (a Holocaust survivor) turns against Skull to avenge the family and friends he lost in concentration camps during World War II.
  • In the 1996 Holiday Special, one of the stories sees Kitty Pryde returning to her hometown in Illinois to spend Hanukah with her mother. She passes by a burned-out church and laments its destruction because even though she herself is Jewish, she always thought the building was beautiful. She discovers someone inside, a young girl named Anita, who is looking for a locket her late father gave her. She reveals to Kitty that the church was burned down by a racist group because it was a predominantly black church. Kitty, both Jewish and a Mutant, sympathizes and tells the girl the story of Hanukah in an effort to comfort her, starting with the desecration of the Temple. Anita takes the message, initially, that people will always burn down houses of worship for others. Kitty then points out the miracle of the oil, and then, the two find the locket, which is out of reach beneath the rubble. Kitty decides to reveal herself as a mutant to Anita, phasing through the rubble to get to the locket. Though initially shocked, Anita doesn't respond with fear to Kitty's mutant status. The destruction of the church is treated as a horrible thing, and the culprits are not redeemed or excused, but the story shows that different people can come together to combat their hatred with friendship and hope.

Films — Animation

• Frozen II: Elsa learns that her grandfather King Runeard started the conflict between the Northuldra and the kingdom of Arendelle when he murdered their leader in cold blood because of his suspicion of magic.

Films — Live-Action

• Playing with this trope is one of the main themes of American History X.
  • On one hand, after being sent to prison for horrifically killing two black gang members in an act of racially-motivated Disproportionate Retribution, Derek's Character Development includes renouncing his Neo-Nazi ties and convincing his younger brother Danny to do so too, a clear redemption arc.
  • On the other hand, Henry, a black teen Danny taunted earlier in the movie, re-enters the film right at the very end to murder Danny, making both Danny and Derek's efforts at reform (one of Derek's main reasons for changing his ways was to prevent Danny from following a similar path) ultimately hollow.
• Final Destination: The series' incarnation of Death appears to have a particular hatred towards racists.
  • In The Final Destination, when Carter is preparing to burn a cross on George's lawn, Death causes his truck radio to start playing "Why Can't We Be Friends?"; then it kills him in a manner not too dissimilar to how racist lynch mobs would execute their victims.
  • In Final Destination 5, Death does the same thing to Isaac, an idiotic sleaze who tries to invoke a Happy-Ending Massage at an Asian parlor after other visitors point out that he's not at a brothel. Isaac's head is crushed by the same Buddha's statue he previously sneered at.
• Saw 3D: Hoffman abducts a gang of Neo-Nazi skinheads in a trap made by himself, instead of him setting up one of the original Jigsaw traps that he was given control over after John's death.
• Schindler's List: Historical Fiction, though based on the accounts of those who survived, the film is replete with numerous examples of hate crimes.
  • The emptying of the ghettos, with some taken prisoner, and others being executed, based on their Jewish heritage.
  • SS officer Amon Goeth is particularly sadistic. When a Jewish woman with a degree in engineering tries to explain that the foundation for a building was incorrectly poured and would crack, Goeth orders her shot, despite her pleading that she's only doing her job. Then he orders that the current foundation be torn down and repoured per the woman's specifications. At one point, Schindler tries to explain the concept of mercy as power to Goeth, and for a very short while, it seems like the speech had inspired him, only for him to decide that he didn't see the power in mercy and start shooting at Jews from his window. Goeth never reforms and is hanged for his crimes.
  • Schindler actually convinces other members of the SS not to commit further crimes, as they'd been ordered at the fall of Germany in the war to execute the Jews before fleeing. This is one hate crime that Schindler is actually able to avert, though he breaks down in the end over the lives that he wasn't able to save.
• Twilight Zone: The Movie: An example that draws the conclusion that casual racism is not far removed from an actual hate crime. One of the segments has a man spouting racist and anti-Semitic comments at a bar before he is set on a journey through the Twilight Zone where he is confronted by numerous racist groups at different points in history, each of whom sees him as the object of their hatred, such as the KKK seeing him as a black man, or a group of Nazis seeing him as a Jewish man. The story ends with him being put on a train bound for a concentration camp, the extreme end point of the very comments he was making in a bar. ^note In the original draft of the story, he would have been redeemed, saving two Vietnamese children from a group of soldiers and learning the value of all life. Unfortunately, a tragic accident on the set took the life of the main actor for the segment, Vic Morrow, as well as the two young children who were to feature in the scene, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, necessitating the Downer Ending for the segment where the man is not given a chance to redeem himself.

Literature

• A constant background theme in Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon that shows how utterly irredeemable the non-human races are is that they see humans as "inferiors," and it's perfectly okay to kick them around for laughs, to hunt for sport, torture, and murder, just because the vast, vast majority can't fight back. Light, the protagonist, always puts his vengeance quest on hold when he learns this happened and goes after the perpetrator(s) (who usually attack him first anyway) and delivers graphic vigilante justice.
• Flawed: During the first book, Celestine becomes a member of the Flawed, a Fantastic Underclass marked by red armbands and brandings due to committing specific acts deemed as making a person too flawed to exist in normal society. It's technically still illegal to commit crimes against them, but the hatred for them is so pervasive that people do it regardless. Celestine, who believed in the good of the system based on her dedication to logic and reason at all times, is given a shocking wake-up call about the world when four kids from school kidnap and torture for their own amusement. Those kids immediately go from being portrayed as sympathetic characters to some of the most unpleasant in the story. Celestine is even reluctant to feel bad for them when she finds them drugged out of their minds in the hospital along with everyone else who knows about her illegal sixth brand.
• It has at least three examples:
  • At the beginning of the novel, set in the current time frame in which it was written, a gay couple is attacked, and one of them, Adrian Mellon, is thrown off of a bridge. While the titular monster finishes him off, no one readily knows that. The police detective investigating the crime is specifically noted in the text as being opposed to the gay community, but even more disgusted by the young man who had orchestrated the attack, whom he wanted to beat to a pulp.
  • Later in the book, but earlier in the chronology, was the fire at the Black Spot, a nightclub frequented by black servicemen. It was burned down by a group calling itself "The Maine Legion of White Decency". While it is implied that It manipulated the racism of the citizens of Derry to do so, it is also implied that It was only able to do so because those feelings existed in the first place.
  • Oscar "Butch" Bowers was a racist thug who murdered the chickens on Will Hanlon's farm and was caught trying to carve a swastika on Hanlon's property. Will Hanlon confronted Butch directly, but by this point, it is already clear to readers that Butch was irredeemable. No tears are shed when his abused son Henry kills him, though Henry was hardly doing so for altruistic reasons, and isn't any better than his father—among Henry's own acts of evil is killing the dog of Will's son Mike by feeding him poisoned ground beef.
• Paranoid Mage: The primary Law Enforcement agency, tasked by its charter to protect Earth from supernatural threats, GAR, has long ago forsaken its charter and actively appeases various supernatural factions who see humans as livestock to farm or wild game to hunt for sport. GAR also treats its "duds" (children born of mage houses who can't use magic) as second-class citizens, on a good day. Protagonist Callum Wells takes extreme exception to this practice, starting his "criminal" career repelling a vampire armed invasion in the peaceful town of Winut by destroying four vampire nests with extreme prejudice, the first for kidnapping Clara Langley using mind control, and the remaining three after seeing the GAR mages involved helping the vampires hide the bodies of their victims. Then, while on the run, stumbles upon a group of fae, and some shifters, engaged in a Wild Hunt. He utterly annihilates everyone involved to rescue the two innocent hikers who were promised their freedom if they managed to survive until sunrise. The fae king ruling over those involved broke this promise by letting GAR hold them captive. Callum responded to that by breaking them out and smashing the infrastructure of the facility that was holding them, turning them over to a different fae king, who kept the spirit of the promise, making it impossible for GAR to go after those hikers ever again.
• Warrior Cats: Tigerstar was always the Big Bad of the first series and his hatred of non-Clan cats was well-established, but for a while, his treachery could just be seen as Ambition Is Evil, especially when his cruelty was targeted primarily at ThunderClan due to his exile and his hatred of Firestar. His true nature is revealed in "The Darkest Hour" after he merges ShadowClan and RiverClan to form TigerClan. He forces Leopardstar to hold four cats prisoner for being Half-Clan, including her loyal deputy Stonefur, and then tries to make Stonefur kill two innocent Half-Clan apprentices to prove his loyalty. It's the first real moment in the books where his acts weren't just about his own ambition and pride, but rather a targeted act of discrimination, proving that for all his potential, Tigerstar needed to be stopped.

Live-Action TV

• The Boys: New member of The Seven, Stormfront, joins the team as a "Take-no-shit", "Tell-it-like-it-is" superheroine that becomes a social media darling and gains a number of fans for her provocative and hilarious memes, often poking fun at acceptable targets (and team leader Homelander). It's later revealed that she is a literal Ageless Nazi whose end goal is to steer American public opinion towards fascism and white supremacy. In addition to supporting the standard Nazi war crimes, Stormfront is shown to have framed and maimed an innocent black man for crimes he never committed. Onscreen, she tears down a traumatized Starlight for being raped by their teammates, murders a community of African-Americans, and tortures and kills an Asian man when out of the public eye, spearheads a master plan to stop non-whites from getting access to the Super Serum, and murders a child's mother in front of him because he "belonged with [their] kind". Her vile actions make her the enemy of almost every character in the story, especially after her identity as a Nazi is exposed. Even Homelander, the man she loves, has to publicly disavow her in order to salvage his reputation as a superhero, and an in-universe movie has to change her role to that of a villain, resulting in a Troubled Production because the public will not accept a literal Nazi being portrayed in a positive light. Vought International CEO Stan Edgar later has trouble selling a variant of Compound V to the Department of Defense because of her, since the public now associates Compound V with Nazis and it has become politically radioactive as a result.
• Criminal Minds: Being a crime procedural show, actual hate crimes show up from time to time.
  • One episode has a gay man luring in and killing other gay men because of a deep-rooted self-loathing.
  • In the episode "The Tribe", a man wants people to believe that a series of grisly murders (including skinning the victims), were conducted by a group of Native American Activists, hoping to trigger a race war between Native Americans and Caucasians. A number of his victims belonged to a group known as the "American Defense Unit", and when his attacks failed to generate the race war he was looking for, he and his followers took ADU weapons to make it look like that group had attacked the Natives Americans, going after a school on a nearby reservation. He is caught and stopped by Hotchner and a member of Apache Reservation's police force, John Blackwolf.
  • "Fear and Loathing" is played with. The unsub is targeting black teenage girls (and in one case, the girl's white ex-boyfriend), there was a swastika at the last crime scene, and one of the girls received a "racist note" shortly before being killed. All of this riles up racial tensions in the community to a frenzy and ultimately leads to the black police chief being killed by a white citizen who saw a non-uniformed black man poking around the neighborhood (investigating a tip) and assumed he was a criminal. However, both the unsub and note writer (different people) were black. The unsub was a run-of-the-mill serial killer who targeted black girls because that's who he found most attractive (which the team notes as standard serial killer logic, at least in-universe), and the note came from the white boy's other black ex-girlfriend who wanted him back, so she was trying to threaten the victim, but race wasn't the reason. However, they both played into the media's assumptions of hate crimes so they could fly under the radar. Despite seeing through these charades almost immediately, the BAU still fell into problems by not taking this trope into account. They somehow thought that stepping into a racially charged situation and announcing the killer was black was going to make the situation better, as if those tensions would simply dissipate.
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: A procedural show, hate crimes come up from time to time.
  • "A Little Murder". A "little person" (As Grissom instructs the crew to refer to the victim and his fellows to be sensitive) is murdered. The murderer is revealed, in the end, to be another "little person", the father of the victim's fiance. The fiance was a child of two "little people" and still turned out to be of average height. But the victim was, as her father put it, "Dragging her back into that world" noting that any children they had stood a good chance of being little people as well. Grissom actually refers to the murder as a hate crime, stating that the killer, Kevin Marcus hated himself.
• Doctor Who:
  • Any murder or act of violence by the Daleks is inherently a hate crime, as the Daleks are a Xenophobic race whose sole purpose is to eliminate ALL life that isn't Dalek (and even a few versions that ARE, if they're deemed too impure.)
  • "Rosa", a Historical Fiction episode, has a time traveler named Krasko who is so violently racist that he's trying to undo the Civil Rights Movement. He has been outfitted with an implant that keeps him from killing anyone, so his plan is to zap Rosa Parks back in time so that she won't be there for her historical moment.
  • "Demons of the Punjab", another Historical Fiction episode, at the behest of her companion, Yaz, the Doctor takes her current group to the past to learn a bit of history about Yaz's family. They arrive on the border of India on August 17, 1947, the day before Partition, and Yaz's grandmother, Umbreen, who is Muslim, is about to be married to a Hindu man named Prem. This confuses Yaz, as she knows Prem is not her grandfather. Prem, it turns out, is murdered by his brother Manish, angry at him for not supporting Partition and being engaged to a Muslim woman.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • One episode saw a gay man raping, robbing, assaulting, and eventually murdering other gay men. ADA Barba sought a hate crimes enhancement. The perp's lawyer argued that her client could not be charged as he was a member of the group he supposedly hated. Barba claimed that her client hated a specific subset of gays, those who could pass as straight when her client could not.
  • "Hate" was one of the earliest SVU episodes about a hate crime; its killer not only murders but overkills an Arab woman from his neighborhood, then continually antagonizes the detectives about their own backgrounds and supposed lack of patriotism. His defense that he can't control his hate as it was conditioned by his father leaving his mother for a woman he met in Iraq and his mother's own hateful reaction to that is widely seen as weak and he loses his case, sending him back to jail...where he shows he probably really can't control his hate as he immediately attacks another inmate and is stabbed to death in the resulting brawl.

• Oz: There have been a number of prisoners who have been sent to Oswald Correctional for hate crimes in combination with murder or aggravated assault, most of them members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Interestingly, some of the Muslims have also been convicted for hate crimes.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Cardassians had oppressed the Bajorans for a very long time. This resulted in a few incidents of hate crimes by both sides, both during and after the occupation ended.
  • In the episode "Duet", a Cardassian named Marritza has altered his appearance and feigns being the cold monster who ran a forced labor camp, Gul Darhe'ell, who was guilty of war crimes against the Bajorans. When he's finally revealed as Marritza, a mere file clerk, he tearfully tells Kira that he took on this role to try and force Cardassia to own up to its sins, that he used to go to bed in that camp at night, weeping to the sound of the torture his own people were causing, feeling horrible for the people who were suffering, and calling himself a coward for not doing anything about it. Kira, who has been hostile to him while believing he was Darhe'ell, now is sympathetic to him and arranges for his release. He is immediately murdered in front of Kira by a fellow Bajoran.
    Kira: [broken-hearted] Why? He wasn't Darhe'ell! WHY?
    Kainon: He's a Cardassian. That's reason enough.
  • Nowhere is the Cardassian occupation mentality put more on display than in the episode "Waltz", when Gul Dukat goes on a rant to Sisko, unironically claiming that he wasn't evil.
    Gul Dukat: From the moment we arrived on Bajor it was clear that we were the superior race, but they couldn't accept that. They wanted to be treated as equals, when they most certainly were not. Militarily, technologically, culturally — we were almost a century ahead of them in every way. We did not choose to be the superior race. Fate handed us that role and it would have been so much easier on everyone if the Bajorans had simply accepted their role. But no — day after day they clustered in their temples and prayed for deliverance and night after night they planted bombs outside of our homes. Pride — stubborn, unyielding pride. From the servant girl that cleaned my quarters, to the condemned man toiling in a labor camp, to the terrorist skulking through the hills of Dahkur Province — they all wore their pride like some twisted badge of honor.
    Sisko: And you hated them for it.
    Gul Dukat: Of course I hated them! I hated everything about them! Their superstitions and their cries for sympathy, their treachery and their lies, their smug superiority and their stiff-necked obstinacy, their earrings, and their broken, wrinkled noses!
• Survivor: In Game Changers, Varner infamously outed Zeke in a fit of adrenaline and a last-ditch effort to save himself from being voted off, calling him "deceptive" for lying about being trans. After a silent moment of shock, every single contestant tore into Varner using a personal attack to save himself and for using Zeke's personal information as ammunition for a game show. Even Jeff Probst condemns Varner for this tactic, as he tells Varner that he had just left major repercussions for the LGBT community and further points out that Varner didn't just out Zeke to 6 people, he outed Zeke in front of millions of viewers. When the weight of his words finally hit him, Varner could only hang his head in shame as Jeff simply told Varner "We don't need to vote, just grab your torch". It should be worth noting that Varner was guilt-ridden for what he did and was on the verge of tears for outing Zeke, the two have long since buried the hatchet and Zeke appreciates Varner's guilt for what he did.
• The West Wing: In the aftermath of the season one finale, where the President and Josh are nearly killed, it's eventually revealed that the shooters were West Virgina White Pride and that Charlie was the target because of his relationship with Zoey. Toby's seen shootings before but doesn't understand why he's all set to personally declare war on the KKK; it takes the President to explain that what he witnessed wasn't a shooting, it was a lynching.

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls: The various Elf races of the Elder Scrolls are infamous for committing a multitude of hate crimes which ultimately lead to bloody war, and often even the destruction of kingdoms and entire races.
  • The Ayleids that enslaved humans during the Merethic Era of Tamriel were a monstrous society of elves that regularly beat, tortured, and sacrificed their human slaves — sometimes to channel dark magic or appease their Daedric gods... but just as often, simply because they could. Their Empire was toppled by an uprising led by Saint Alessia, the first Empress of Tamriel, and were so monstrous that they forever damaged Man-Elf relations for eons after, with humans continuing to antagonize and pursue them throughout Cyrodil until the Ayleids basically went extinct.
  • The Snow Elves had an uneasy truce with human Atmoran settlers in the early days of Skyrim. Then came the Night of Tears, in which the Snow Elves stormed an entire human city and slaughtered all but two people simply because they felt humans were an inferior race. The two survivors fled back to Atmora and later returned with an army of Five Hundred Companions, driving the Snow Elves from Atmora and creating a heavy anti-Elf sentiment in Skyrim that still persists thousands of years later.
  • The Dunmer (Dark Elves) practice slavery, in particular, enslaving the Khajit and the Argonians, considering them to be lesser races. Playing as either of those races in The Elder Scrolls Online gives the player a first-hand account of how vile and cruel some Dunmer can be (and this is during a time in which slavery is technically "banned" as part of the Ebonhart Pact). In general, most of the most vile and heinous of these characters wind up killed, humiliated, or otherwise punished by the player.
  • The High Elves and their government on Sommerset Isle lean into heavy fascist ideologies:
    • The First Aldmeri Dominion was created as an attempt to spread Altmer (High Elf) leadership across Tamriel, and even though Queen Ayrenn forbade violence or other prejudice, the player continually stumbles across rogue Aldmeri who try to secretly slaughter, enslave, or "reeducate" other races behind the leadership's back which (as one of Ayrenn's most trusted aides), it is your duty to eliminate.
    • The Thalmor are a faction of Altmer that not only believe in Elven supremacy but their religious doctrine flat out demands the destruction of mankind and all their gods to escape the prison of mortal flesh and regain the Elves' ancient immortality. The Third Aldmeri Dominion was created by the Thalmor strictly to crush every other race in Tamriel, especially humans. In addition to genocide, they are known for their cruel and horrific use of torture on captives, to the degree that one former captive, Ulfric Stormcloak, develops an intense hatred of Elves and starts a civil war in Skyrim when the Empire and the High King refuse to stand against them.
• Fallout: Of all the various factions in the wasteland, the one that is so morally bankrupt and vile that all traces of it are wiped out in later games is the Enclave. While there are many, many supremacist groups throughout the franchise, many of them are groups who can realize the error of their ways (the Master's Army), only got that way later in the games (the Brotherhood of Steel), or are so minor that they hardly matter (Tenpenny Tower). The Enclave, however, was built on an entire platform of genocide — they slaughter without remorse or regret, especially targeting super mutants and ghouls, but their definition of "mutation" extends to most of humanity. In the two games they appear, they are the main antagonists with the goal of no less than wiping out all creatures who have even a hint of mutation, to the degree President Richardson flat out tells the protagonist of Fallout 2 that they aren't considered human. By the time of Fallout: New Vegas, the Enclave have been completely wiped out, with the remnants remaining having completely integrated into wasteland society and younger generations viewing their history as an embarrassment.
• Manhunt: The Skinz are a white nationalist gang who target and lynch non-white people and the gang itself is composed of white power skinheads, neo-Nazis, neo-confederates, and the Ku Klux Klan. Lionel Starkweather, the director of the snuff film industry that has conscripted James Earl Cash into their films, absolutely hates this gang and praises Cash whenever he kills them.
• Metro: Of all the factions in post-apocalyptic Moscow, the ones that just about everyone hates and despises with equal measure are the Fourth Reich who are, naturally, Nazis. Their main goal is to purge anyone with mutations or deformities (such as short height), whom they immediately brand a "lesser race" and either enslave or exterminate them, but the books also state that they still kill non-whites and non-Russians. The game Metro: Last Light also indicates that they torment and beat their own people if they aren't violent or cruel enough.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:
  • Rosa van Attre is a Nilfgaardian noblewoman who starts a flirtatious interest in the protagonist Geralt and challenges him to a series of duels hoping to improve her swordfighting. At the end of her quest, she is accosted by a group of northern citizens with a grudge against the Nilfgaardian invaders. Though Geralt puts a stop to it (either talking the men down or killing), Rosa quickly demonstrates a seething hatred for "Nordlings" and cruelly states her intentions to have all such "dregs" killed. Afterwards, Geralt, who has helped, befriended, and even slept with people who have committed mass murder, rape, and other crimes, completely washes his hands of Rosa and goes his separate way.
  • King Radovid is a human supremacist who shows complete contempt for not only monsters and nonhumans species but also mages and any other humans with even a whiff of anything unnatural about them.^note One of his standard tactics being to "tolerate" some people like Dwarves or Witchers, only to eventually turn against them too once they've eliminated the more pressing targets. He is portrayed as one of the vilest and most despicable characters in the entire story, with the ending in which he wins the war against Nilfgaard being considered an unofficial "bad end" as the city of Novigrad becomes a hellscape of witch hunts, torture, and mass executions. By contrast, the side mission in which he is dealt with is riddled with Catharsis Factor, wherein several characters whom he has crossed, betrayed, or maimed (including Geralt and the sorceress Philippa) trap and assassinate him.

Visual Novels

• Juniper's Knot: Twice over. The Fiend tells the Boy how her Only Friend, upon the villagers learning she was involved with the Fiend, was beaten and raped to death. The Fiend, in retribution for her lost friend, killed everyone in the town, guilty or otherwise.

Web Videos

• Every Man Hybrid: HABIT has always been a cruel monster, but the true depths of his evil are revealed when he points out in one episode that he used to work with the Nazis. It was later revealed that not only was he a Nazi, but he was possessing and controlling Josef Mengele.

Western Animation

• The Big Bad of The Owl House, Emperor Belos, turns out to actually be a witch hunter named Philip Wittebane who was originally born and raised during the 1600s and the Connecticut Witch Trials—when hatred, fear, and suspicion of witches and desire to kill them was at its peak—and entered the Demon Realm in search of his brother, where witches (who, in this series, are a separate humanoid species rather than just humans who practice magic) are the primary inhabitants. His centuries-long Evil Plan that he tries to implement during the course of the series is an attempt to commit genocide against the entire population of the Boiling Isles because he believes that all witches are inherently evil and sinful. Though this viewpoint originally spawns from the environment Philip grew up in, it's made clear numerous times that there's so much selfishness and self-righteousness mixed into his motivations that he's way too far gone and has committed atrocities far too vile for him to be redeemed, and Belos's final fate is being snuffed out by Raine, Eda, and King once and for all after the latter two and Luz defeat him.
• The Simpsons: "Homer Badman" has Homer being accused of sexual harassment by his babysitter Ashley Grant, who mistakes Homer's action of pulling a valuable gummi off her rear end as groping. This leads to Homer being labeled and harassed all over the media as a social pariah with protesters camping over their lawn and following him to his job to voice their opinions.
  Talk Show Host: "It's okay; your tears say more than real evidence ever could."
• South Park: Eric Cartman has been all over this trope. He's been responsible for two attempts at genocide, once against Jews after viewing The Passion of the Christ, and once against "Non-Gingers" when Kyle and Stan, in an effort to teach him a lesson, used makeup to make him think he was "Ginger". When they reveal this to him prior to him attempting to execute them, he fakes a moral epiphany and calls off the genocide. Cartman's hate crimes may be Played for Laughs, but no one in the audience would believe he is redeemable.

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