Manipulative Bastard / Western Animation

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• Roger Smith from American Dad!. In the episode "The One That Got Away", to get revenge on Sidney Hauffman for using his credit card, he completely ruins every aspect of his life from his job, his garden, his pigeon friends, his fiancée, and his apartment... only to find out that Sidney is one of his personas who has taken on a life of its own.
• Amphibia:
  • Sasha Waybright is introduced imprisoned, having manipulated her fifth guard into abandoning his post. Throughout her first episode she teaches captain Grime how to earn his soldiers' loyalty and hard work by offering them false praise. Flashback shows that back on earth she was an Alpha Bitch who was always pushing her friend Anne around. Even after Anne stands up to her in the season finale, Sasha continues her manipulations into season 2, playing the role of The Atoner so that Anne and Marcy will take her and Grime to the king where they can enact their planned coup. She finally sees the consequences of her actions when Anne refuses to listen to her the one time she was actually telling the truth, which leads to a series of events that culminate in Anne and her found family being sent back to earth with no way back and Marcy being stabbed, possibly lethally. Afterward, Sasha becomes The Atoner for real, using her manipulative skillset to become a heroic rebel leader.
  • King Andrias proves an even more skilled manipulator than Sasha, having spent around three to four months making Marcy trust him and see him as a fatherly and kind man even before his introduction. After his introduction, he has the three girls go on a quest that supposedly will restore the power to the music box so they can go home, but actually is aimed as taking away their Chosen One powers so they can't pose a threat to him, all the while telling Marcy just enough to make her dance after his pipe. Even after he reveals his true colors, he continues with the manipulation by revealing an Awful Truth about Marcy to sow discord between the girls.
  • Ironically averted with The Core, Andrias' master, a Transhuman Abomination containing the mind of, among others, his father. While the Core can make Andrias follow its orders without question despite his better judgement, this is more a case of Andrias being indoctrinated since childhood. When the Core tries to manipulate Anne, Sasha and Marcy, it falls flat every time. It calls Anne "dumber than a bag of rocks" to undermine her confidence, only to have Anne outsmart it immediately after. It tries to taunt Sasha with a "Not So Different" Remark, which she ignores as she has gone through enough Character Development to know it's false. Finally, it tries to keep Marcy trapped in a simulation of her greatest wish, but she sees through and defies it.
• The Creeper from Animalia. One of his favorite methods includes fake crying to trick the heroes.
• Arcane:
  • Silco is an excellent master of manipulation as he can be an exceptionally charismatic man able to play into people's desires or emotions to get them to do what he wants.
  • Played with regarding Mel Medarda. The moment Jayce is given a seat on the Council, she wastes no time in manipulating him socially, professionally, and sexually to get what she wants and broaden her own power and influence. She even sports a certain gleeful disposition as he descends further into political corruption. That being said, she is ultimately a benevolent person as she truly wants what is best for him, Piltover, and Zaun. Her manipulations aren't just the most efficient way of getting what she (and Jayce) want, but also the most assured way that they'll get to keep their heads. She had realized a long time ago that underneath the gold, glitter, and veil of Piltover's "march of progress" is a Crapsack World that demands utter ruthlessness simply to survive, and even outright villainy to see your ambitions manifest, no matter how just they may be.
• Arthur: D.W. Read can often be quite the manipulative little bitch; quite a few episodes in the series have her get exactly what she wants at the end by tricking others (usually her titular older brother). A notable example of her manipulativeness is in "Prove It", in which she intentionally makes up several false scientific "facts" and sells them to other kids with the intent of bothering Arthur into taking her to a science museum. Even Brain is unable to refute her "facts" despite knowing that she's lying! Oh, and did we mention that this whole scheme was pulled off by a four-year-old? It should also be noted that she shows no remorse whatsoever over the fact that she had to knowingly lie to other kids and screw them out of their money to accomplish this. Her manipulative side mostly disappeared after the characters' personalities were Flanderized in later seasons, but Season 18's "The Pageant Pickle" sees that side of her make a comeback when she uses Crocodile Tears to trick Arthur into humiliating himself in front of her preschool spring pageant's audience.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Princess Azula, no question. As she puts it: "I'm a people person." In "The Crossroads of Destiny", when she successfully turns the Secret Police in control of the capital of the kingdom her nation has been at war with for a century against its leader, Long Feng, he says that she beat him at his own game. Her response?
    Azula: Don't flatter yourself. You were never even a player.
  • Hama deserves a mention here as well. She endangered Katara's friends just to get her to practice bloodbending.
  • As does the "very smooth" Jet, on the Well-Intentioned Extremist front. In the first episode he appears in, the only one of the Gaang he doesn't completely sway to his side is the Properly Paranoid Sokka.
  • Azula's old man Fire Lord Ozai fits the bill as well. During the Day of Black Sun, he even deploys a manipulative tactic against Zuko at the exact same time that Azula is employing a similar one against Sokka. However, that's nothing compared to the event he describes, which involved manipulating his wife into killing his father for him, and then banishing her. That's how he became Fire Lord in the first place. Ozai really proves he's where Azula gets it from in the graphic novel trilogy The Promise, taking place after the show's conclusion, in which he constantly is able to manipulate Zuko from behind bars.
• Big City Greens: Chip Whistler becomes this in the climax of "Reckoning Ball", in which he manages to use the Greens' kindness and innocence and makes them believe he's changed and sorry for his actions against him, so he can take over for his retiring father and carry out his revenge without any interference from him. The Greens realize the truth by the time of "Friend Con".
• Dave from Code Monkeys tends to fall into this territory sometimes, most notably in the Drunken Office Party episode when he gets Jerry to believe he is responsible for all the horrible things he (Dave) actually did at the Office Party. The whole episode Jerry is racked with guilt and is insulted, physically attacked, thrown up on trying to make up for what he did. He even considers quitting. Because Jerry believes he broke Dave's arm he gives him his ticket to Hawaii and thanks him for being such a good friend. It is only at the end of the episode he realizes Dave was behind it all and the things happening to him were happening because Dave was with him and he happened to be caught in the crossfire. Several of the people he offended were made up and Dave gets go spend two weeks in Hawaii while it all blows over.
• The Crumpets: In "Amenez-zique !", one member of a popular male music duo crashes his helicopter outside the Crumpets' house. Caprice, who is a big fan of the duo, gets involved in rescuing him, who is left with Identity Amnesia after waking up. She explains to him that they've been in a romantic relationship. Hoping to keep him as her "ideal boyfriend", she hides him in her bedroom, altered his clothes and hair to match her own colors, and gives him a different name. Caprice's cousin Cordless, who also took part of the rescue, feels anxious due to his guilt for assisting her scheme despite his initial opposition. At one time when the amnesiac man gets left unattended, the Trickster Twins tell him that he had robbed farmers (influencing him to steal Pa's basket of strawberries) and that he was a bartender.
• Vlad Masters/Plasmius from Danny Phantom does this all the time, especially with the main character whom he likes to play up the similarity between the two in order to get him on his side.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: Dick Dastardly does this to the other members of the Vulture Squadron in "Home Sweet Homing Pigeon". He plays on the emotions of Klunk, Zilly and Muttley, who are about to be discharged, so they'll stay and help him chase Yankee Doodle Pigeon at least once more. After too many "once mores", the three have had it, so Dastardly gets them to sign his memory book. The joke is on them: Dastardly tricked them into signing re-enlistment forms for four more years.
• Lord Viren from The Dragon Prince is an excellent people person. Throughout the second season, he manages to get three of the four other members of the Pentarchy on his side with a stirring speech, and he only fails to convince the last one because she lost her mothers to war and refuses to enter another — and even then, he moves her to tears with a heartwrenching story about said mothers. He later phrases Ezran's order to dismiss most of the army in a way that makes sure the remaining soldiers are undyingly loyal to him. His skill is only further enhanced when collaborating with his elven patron, Aaravos, a full-blown chessmaster.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy. While other characters like Jimmy and Sarah also have manipulation skills, Eddy is the only character in the show to manipulate every main character in the show. Scamming people is his main shtick, after all.
• Futurama: Zoidberg apparently acts pathetic to make sure people don't bully him.^note This may extend to taking a little bullying now to save a lot later. This means that, conceivably, every time Zoidberg has ever seemed pathetic, he was pulling this. And this is Zoidberg. That's 98% of his screen time.
• Gargoyles:
  • At the risk of sounding redundant, David Xanatos, master of the Xanatos Gambit and resident Magnificent Bastard.
  • The Archmage takes the cake in the three-part episode "Avalon". He convinces the weird sisters (who don't like mortals telling them to do anything) to do his bidding, while showing his past self the steps needed to obtain unlimited power. When he finally gets his power, he attacks the humans and Gargoyles on Avalon, but spares them so that they can go and get Goliath to help them. With Goliath in the battle, the Archmage can now exact his revenge for supposedly killing him.
  • Thailog's a definite example as well — he's at least as good as Xanatos, and possibly better. Demona's got a manipulative streak as well, but as usual she's her own worst enemy, and her bad temper and bouts of genocidal insanity often wind up shooting her in the foot at key stages.
• Generator Rex:
  • Rex has no knowledge of Van Kleiss' past due to the Nanite Event, so Van Kleiss takes advantage of this and taunts him with bits and pieces of information (at one point using a brief comment to get Rex to hesitate for one second so he could get away), telling him that he won't give him all the info unless he joins his side. He also manipulates and uses his own minions (and they are aware of it, and he's aware that they know and doesn't seem to be bothered by it). He's also now trying to drive a wedge of mistrust between Rex and his brother Caesar, and it seems to be working a little. His plans are also primarily Batman Gambits.
  • Rex himself can also be one at times, when he needs to be. The Big Bad even compliments him on it in one episode.
• Pete on Goof Troop prides himself on tricking the people around him into doing his bidding or giving their things up to him by exploiting their weaknesses. His neighbor Goofy is really dumb so he just tells him Blatant Lies. If he's attempting to trick Goofy's ambitious son Max, he will often try to entice him with false promises and then take it back. His own sweet, vulnerable son PJ? The way to go is guilt-trips, intimidation, and false or out of reach signs of affection, all the way. Then there's his job...
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Helga G. Pataki is this in the episode "School Play". When Helga learns that Arnold will be playing Romeo, she wants to be Juliet but gets stuck as 4th understudy — so, only in the unlikely event that all four girls (Rhonda, Sheena, Phoebe and Lila^note who's aware of what Helga is up to and willingly gives up her spot for Helga) were to all drop out, would Helga be able to play Juliet. It just so happens Helga can be such a Manipulative Bitch.
  • In the same episode above, Lila proves she also has this capability. After all of Helga's attempts to trick Lila into giving her the Juliet role fail, Lila reels her into confessing her secret love for Arnold as the reason she wants the part. Lila doesn't even blink before casually responding to Helga's bombastic declaration that she "Always figured she might've liked Arnold."
  • In another episode, Helga's older sister Olga was going to give up her amazing life to marry her boyfriend, who's equally amazing. Problem is, he's a total liar who wins over everyone he meets with false tales of bravado, even if some of them really don't make sense. Helga isn't fooled for one minute and exposes him privately.
• The Stingers from Jem are so manipulative that one of their songs, "Mind Games", is even about it. All three Stingers are quite intelligent and manipulative — Riot and Minx with their sex appeal while Rapture with her New Age schemes — but cast aside people once they've met their goals. There are some implications that their reasons for being manipulative is due to being poor Street Musicians (and whatever else with Minx and Riot, as their pasts were never explained) however it doesn't give them an excuse for being so manipulative.
• Kaeloo:
  • Mr. Cat, the show's main antagonist, is absolutely brilliant at manipulating people into giving him what he wants. In some cases, it's really not even clear what his goals are until the end of the episode, which reveals that he was pulling off a scheme to benefit himself.
  • Stumpy is one in Episode 128. He manages to trick Kaeloo into giving him money on four different occasions, and then, taking Mr. Cat's advice, goes on TV and makes up a fake story about his life so people will feel pity and donate money to him. He plans to use the money in question to buy video games.
  • Kaeloo herself has her moments. For example, in "Let's Play Courtroom Drama", she pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit by threatening to leave Smileyland in order to get Mr. Cat to confess to the crime.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • Being a chessmaster and the successor to Azula in the Magnificent Bastard department, Amon continuously plays everyone like fiddles. Even Lin Beifong and Korra admit that they played right into his hand after his terrorist attack on the Pro-Bending arena.
  • Tarrlok is a Manipulative Bastard par excellence. Apart from Tenzin, he's got the whole United Republic Council on a string — their sole purpose seems to be supporting whatever Tarrlok is proposing. He cleverly takes advantage of anything and everything that might help him gain more power. Through his smooth talking and media play he manoeuvred even Korra into joining him (albeit temporarily). After Lin Beifong's resignation, he virtually took control of the metalbending police and began imposing his iron-fist régime on the city.
  • Kuvira to Bolin. Everyone clearly sees that she is an ambitious, power-hungry conqueror, but Bolin believes her to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Kuvira is taking full advantage of his idealism to keep him on her side. This is most prominently shown near the end of "The Coronation" where she tells Bolin that she wishes to avoid conflict, then cryptically reveals to Suyin that she's going after Zaofu afterwards. Eventually, Bolin sees through the ruse and attempts to defect, but fails.
• Legion of Super Heroes (2006) has a few, some of the biggest examples being Dr. Londo (during his son's Calling the Old Man Out routine, he mentions that he uses everyone), Brainiac, Imperiex and Alexis Luthor.
• Tangier in Littlest Pet Shop (2012), a modeling dog who hates rookies entering the pet photography circuit. When Russell joins, Tangier repeatedly plays Oliver, the photographer, against Russell while playing himself up to be polite and helpful to maintain Oliver's favor. Tangier is only undone because he respects Zoe as a fellow veteran, not realizing Zoe doesn't share the same attitude as him.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Hawk Moth's modus operandi is taking advantage of people's negative emotions to turn them into supervillains so they can deal with whatever/whoever caused their negative emotions in the first place, in exchange for them bringing him Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculouses. Typically this makes him an Opportunistic Bastard who simply waits to pounce on instances of strong negativity, but on several occasions he has used his civilian identity to deliberately set up events to upset people so they'll be vulnerable to Akumatization. In the finale of Season 3, he executes a gambit to deepen Chloé's growing resentment of Ladybug and successfully convinces her to become his ally willingly.
  • Chloé Bourgeois has picked up a few tips on how to be good at manipulation from her father André Bourgeois. She frequently takes advantage of her social status to get out of trouble for things she did and get her schoolmates in trouble instead.
  • Lila Rossi is so good at manipulating people that in just a few minutes, she manages to turn the entire class against Marinette, of all people. Summed up by this exchange:
    Lila: I only tell people what they want to hear.
    Marinette: It's called lying!
    Lila: There's nothing you can do about it, anyway. People can't resist when they hear what they like to hear.
  • Lila's most impressive accomplishment by far is managing to manipulate a supervillain Hawk Moth created specifically to kill her, who is driven by that sole desire, into not only agreeing to spare her life, but also agreeing to kill Ladybug for her. It's so impressive that it makes Hawk Moth not want to kill her anymore and instead want to team up with her.
  • Adrien's cousin Félix Fathom from the episode of the same name, who takes advantage of Adrien's kindess to ruin his relationship with his friends purely out of spite. At the end of the episode, he gives a very sincere-sounding apology to Adrien for what he did, but doesn't actually feel any remorse and was merely taking advantage of his cousin's feelings once again in order to get an opportunity to steal his uncle Gabriel's wedding ring (which was his overall goal to begin with).
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • Rarity is extremely skilled at getting people (especially males) to do what she wants through skilled application of her abundant charm and her ability to read personalities.
  • Sweetie Belle, albeit young, has shown serious potential and could be considered a Manipulative Bitch In Training and might as well have her older sister on a cross and strings. This is the face of a filly who will play you like a violin if given the chance.◊
  • Discord is depicted in stained glass window images controlling ponies via puppeteer strings (something we actually see him sort of do) and in the episode itself generally plays everypony for fools. By the end of the first episode he appears in, he's successfully manipulated and broken the mane cast through his mind games and manipulations.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom", we have the G4 version of Tirek, who manages to play Discord like a fiddle!
  • Diamond Tiara is great at manipulating others, especially for a filly. Apparently, manipulating others is her cutie mark talent. It's not.
  • In "Viva Las Pegasus", Gladmane retains his amazing array of talented performers by playing off duos against each other, leaving them too distracted by arguing to make plans to leave. Unfortunately, he included Flim and Flam in this, and they promptly Kansas City Shuffle him out the door.
  • Cozy Glow turns out to be the best one on the entire show. Apparently, it's her cutie mark talent (along with being The Chessmaster).
• The Owl House:
  • Emperor Belos is this in every instance he's shown. Whether it's by telling people what they want to hear, twisting the truth just enough that it doesn't become a lie or just outright lying, Belos will inevitably manipulate people to do his bidding. Woe to anyone who makes deals with him: once he has what he wants, he will not bother with keeping his end of the bargain unless it helps him manipulate people even more. Part of it is due to Belos actually being a witch hunter from the 17th century and seeing the witches and demons of the Boiling Isles as Always Chaotic Evil, and therefore seeing it as beneath him to honor any deal he cares to make with them. The rest of it is that Belos is so deluded in his belief that he is the hero that he sees all of his actions as righteous, no matter how vile they really are: if he has to lie and kill to reach his goals, then lie and kill he will. Even as he finally finds himself cornered in the finale, Belos makes up a lie on the fly about how all of his evil deeds were committed because a curse forced him to. Luz doesn't buy it for a second.
  • A lesser example would be Kikimora. In "For the Future", she completely has Boscha under her thumb and manipulates her into making poor decisions as the leader of New Hexside, while constantly reminding Boscha of her failure to save her friends from the Collector. Luz notes that she's just replicating Belos' techniques on a smaller scale, and calls her out for not even being original.
• Pepé Le Pew: The glass case scene in "For Scent-imental Reasons" ends with Pepe putting a gun to his head and supposedly killing himself after Penelope says that she's not coming out because he stinks. Penelope is so distraught that she unlocks the case and runs out — into his still-alive arms. Turns out the whole thing was a trick to get her out, and he missed.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • Him is easily one of the biggest ones. He acts like a Manipulative Bastard to everyone, but mostly to Bubbles, as two episodes of the original series involve Him torturing and manipulating Bubbles by using her sweetness, naivete and her extreme emotions to destroy her and her sisters and in one case break them up. But what else would you expect from their world's equivalent of Satan?!
  • Mojo Jojo in the movie, which is the girls' origin story. He gets them to believe he's on their side before showing his true colors. It's all downhill from there for him, though.
• Aku from Samurai Jack has a terrible case of this. Taking the form of a beautiful woman and making up a fake sob story to gain Jack's trust? Check. Threatening to destroy a scientist's village if the scientist does not build robotic assassins for him? Check. Kidnapping a sentient android's pet dog and threatening to kill it if the android doesn't hunt down Jack? Check. And he always ends up betraying or screwing his marks over somehow. He destroyed the time travel artifact Jack was seeking. He used the robots the scientist created to destroy the scientist's village. The android's dog is probably already dead. To top it all off, he feels absolutely NO remorse for doing any of these things and in fact takes great pleasure in letting his victims know just how foolish they were to trust him.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • This is Shadow Weaver's entire deal. Her most dangerous trait isn't her magical skill, it's her manipulation. Even people who should, by rights, know better, can be sucked in by her deceptions, as shown when Catra brings her sorceress guild badge in return for feigned kindness. When she switches sides, she turns her attention to Glimmer, who begins to fall under her influence even though she knows full well from Adora how Shadow Weaver operates.
  • Catra turns out to have learned quite a bit from her. From getting Entrapta to switch sides to deceiving Hordak, she gets a lot of mileage out of well-chosen lies until it all burns down around her ears thanks to Double Trouble.
  • Double Trouble is probably the master, though. DT uses shapeshifting and a keen understanding of others to raise hell, and even when they're Out-Gambitted, they still get what they're after. They play the Rebellion like a fiddle from "Flutterina" to "Mer-Mysteries", and then after Glimmer hires them, it takes them less than two episodes to utterly break the back of the Horde by luring their forces into a trap, pressing Hordak's Berserk Button and sending him after Catra, and then taking Catra out of play with a Breaking Speech that leaves her almost catatonic.
• Despite the series being known for its incompetent or even stupid characters, The Simpsons actually has a surprising number of Manipulative Bastards, though very few come across as being completely unlikable or evil... a rare thing to have accomplished, the fact is that most of the cast dabbles in deception on more than one occasion. In fact, more than 90% of the cast could be considered in this category.
  • Mr. Burns is an obvious choice. However, many seem acutely aware of Burns's evil ways, so sentiments may vary here.
  • The Mayor of Springfield, "Diamond" Joe Quimby, makes his living being a Manipulative Bastard. He's a satirical politician, after all — though one must admit, even in the somewhat morally confused world of The Simpsons, many of Quimby's actions are particularly bad. Even the incompetent Chief Clancy Wiggum, whom Quimby seems to have under his thumb, holds a thinly veiled desire to see Quimby answer to karma. Not without moments of sympathy, but a Manipulative Bastard no less.
  • Being a comedic center of a lot of villainous staples, Sideshow Bob has dabbled in the art of the manipulative bastardry on more than one occasion.
  • Krusty the Clown, Springfield's resident celebrity, will do almost anything to keep his fame and fortune in check. Much like Quimby in a sense, Krusty in a way makes his living off of being a Manipulative Bastard.
• South Park:
  • Eric Cartman has manipulative abilities to a near-frightening quality. Although many of his victims are indeed gullible simpletons, his ability to persuade people en masse is still shocking. Even those familiar with his methods get dragged in by his way with words.
    • In "The Passion of the Jew", he manages to form a Neo-Nazi organization out of fans of The Passion of the Christ and lead them on a march chanting anti-Semitic slogans and they never get the slightest idea of what they were nearly dragged into!
    • Cartman also convinces everybody that ginger kids are soulless monsters in "Ginder Kids". In order to teach him a lesson, Kyle, Kenny and Stan make him up as a ginger. Unfortunately, Cartman's xenophobic nature doesn't change one bit; all that changes is who he's prejudiced against. He rallies all the ginger kids into a sect and begins an extermination of non-gingers in a drive to make sure that he is not a minority. Mere moments before the extermination commences, Kyle reveals the truth to him. He then has seconds to devise an inspirational speech that usually Stan or Kyle would make. His audience notices his change in tune and press him for some time, but in the end, Cartman still manages to pull the lie off by manipulating the gingers into joining him in a corny improvised song-and-dance number about loving your fellow man, despite their appearance or skin color.
      Kyle: You are such a manipulative asshole, Cartman.
      Cartman: [whispering] Yes, but I'm not gonna die!
    • One of Cartman's proudest moments (for him) is in "Cartoon Wars, Part II". He sets off to have Family Guy taken off the air with his Game Face on, ready to spout a sob-story to the writers, the likes of which he's done many times before. Just another job, right? Then he finds out that it gets a little more complicated when you have to pitch a sob-story to Manatees. And yet he still manages to manipulate a TV executive into not wanting the Manatees to push him around — when the guy had previously been making a fortune out of allowing them to do so. Anybody can push around humans. He manipulated sea-mammals. No wonder that this is his next line:
      Cartman: I did it! I... AM... GOD!
    • There's also his utterly unsympathetic deconstruction of one of the nannies in "Tsst". He skillfully convinces her that her psychological techniques are working on him, then turns the situation on its head and tears into her brutally by not simply mocking her lack of children, but mocking her ability to judge people. She walks out on her first day in near-hysterics. Then Supernanny is brought in... briefly. We don't see what he does to Nanny Jo, but three days later she's shown utterly broken in an asylum, eating her own excrement and sobbing the phrase, "From hell. It's from helllll!"
    • In the "Coon and Friends Trilogy", Cartman befriends/tames Cthulhu. Yes. That Cthulhu.
  • Leslie Meyers, the Big Bad of Season 19, proves to be just as manipulative as Cartman, if not more so. She got Jimmy to help her escape from the news anchors who were keeping her in captivity. As soon as she finds a computer, she beats the hell out of Jimmy and starts sending advertisements through it. After she's done there, she sets her sights on manipulating Kyle.
  • One of the Big Bads of Season 20, Lennart Bedrager, manages to rival both Cartman and Leslie in terms of manipulativeness. He gains political power in Denmark despite not actually being from there, manages to convince his new subjects to create a database that can expose the internet history of everybody on Earth (which causes enough global tension to potentially start World War III), all to get a laugh.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Slade definitely goes here. Manipulating others and making them suffer for it is what he does best. Unfortunately, he cannot see outside of his big plans, so his manipulations usually come with a price.
  • Malchior from the episode "Spellbound" is a Sealed Evil in a Can who pretends to be a tragic wizard while complimenting Raven and teaching her powerful magic, but he only saw her as a means to free him from his spellbook and tosses her aside once he's free.
• Total Drama:
  • Alejandro from World Tour is a spectacular case. He's masterminded more eliminations than any other villain on the show, and the kicker? Not one person on the remaining cast in the season knew he was evil (except for Heather), and those that do find out don't last long or don't find out until it's too late to do squat.
  • Heather is quite manipulative herself in the first season, but her spark fizzles out afterward, due to everyone now being fully aware of how vile she is and thus never putting even an ounce of trust in her in later seasons. As a result, this makes her attempts at genuine sincerity difficult for others to believe in (such as her attempts to warn others about how much of a threat Alejandro is).
  • Julia attempts to be one post-merge but while she's definitely the second half of the trope, the first part needs some work since her social game blatantly sucks to effectively do so:
    • Her first attempt involves conspiring others into voting off Chase while pretending to ally with him as a Romantic Wingman so Emma would hate him even more. This could not have backfired in so many ways with Ripper being unconvinced and planning to vote for her instead, becoming Bowie's mutual Arch-Enemy for the rest of the season after double-crossing him and worst of all, Emma actually getting back together with Chase which would have spelled her doom if it weren't for Raj and Wayne needing to be hospitalised. It's no wonder she switched tactics to focus solely on winning immunity.
    • Despite their initial team-up (Mostly out of desperation at the time), Julia fails to convince Millie and Priya in allying with her no matter what she tried. When asked to give one good reason why they should, she can only come up with having an all-girl finale if they vote off Bowie that will get absolute social media reach which left them completely unimpressed and instead secretly ally with Bowie on account of not being Julia. Priya even calls her "a first-rate backstabber and a second-rate schemer".
    • However, she's more successful in informing Emma about Bowie voting out Chase and lying about joining the "Nerd Girls" (Priya and Millie) to vote either one of them out. This drove a wedge between Bowie and Emma which culminated in the former ending their friendship and the latter being sent home.
    • Her manipulation skills improve significantly however in the next season where she's able to orchestrate the eliminations of several big threats of the game:
    • She manages to trick Nichelle (who took over as the new challenge beast this season) into quitting the show by putting a fake Hollywood contract on her bed.
    • She gets her arch-enemy Bowie eliminated as revenge for him causing her last season's elimination by managing to convince everyone else (besides Raj and Wayne) that Bowie was the actual mastermind behind hers and MK's cheating plan, a scheme that also saves her only ally in the game in MK from seemingly certain elimination after being highlighted by Chris for their cheating stunt.
• Transformers:
  • In Beast Wars, Megatron managed to convince Silverbolt (the noblest individual Optimus Primal has ever met) to become a Predacon when he first met him. Later, in Beast Machines, he plays on Rattrap's insecurity about his now useless robot mode and gets him to help him out for a night. After infecting all the Maximals except Optimus with a virus that causes discord, he gets Optimus to consider (admittedly, for like five minutes) that Megatron's vision of forced harmony might be the way to go.
  • Tarantulas in Beast Wars was about as talented. More than once, he dupes Quickstrike into betraying Megatron, and once even gets him to go along with a plan that would negate both him and every other Transformer (but Tarantulas) from existence.
  • The version of Megatron in Transformers: Animated is able to (in no particular order) convince Isaac Sumdac that he's an Autobot and to never mention his name to the Autobots, get the Constructicons on his side with a story of "Autobot oppression" and a couple drinks, get Bulkhead to build him a space bridge by being the only person who seems to believe he isn't a complete idiot, talk Omega Supreme right back to Cybertron rather than killing him, and even manage to convince Starscream to join him in conquering Cybertron together after Starscream takes over Omega Supreme and has Megatron at his mercy.
• Trollz has Mica and his girlfriend Shale, who exploit Sapphire's crush on Mica and fake Shale breaking up with him to use her for their own means.
• Valtor in Winx Club stands out amongst the series' other villains for being this. In addition to being an immensely powerful sorcerer, many of his plots involve manipulating others, such as using Countess Cassandra and her desire for the Solarian throne to brainwash King Radius of Solaria, or taking advantage of Diaspro's jealousy towards Bloom to have her brainwash Sky.
• Prince Phobos from W.I.T.C.H. is very good at this (though his ego and laziness keep him from being as good at it as he could be), and his Dragon Cedric has his moments, but Season 2's Big Bad Nerissa is even better. It's even implied that Nerissa was behind Phobos' rise to power to begin with. She's certainly The Chessmaster in Season 2, right down to planning the defeat of both the Knights of Vengeance and the Knights of Destruction.
• Chase Young from Xiaolin Showdown. His main goal during his Season 2 debut is to manipulate Omi into joining the Heylin side. When that didn't work, he took matters into his own hands and concocted a complex plan that led to Omi's eventual Face–Heel Turn, but against his will. Chase is even classified as a Magnificent Bastard because of this.

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