Obviously Evil / Live-Action Films

You really gonna trust him?! Look at him! He's wearing a fedora!

• 47 Ronin was distinctly unsubtle in its costume design. Lord Kira just oozes evil.
• In Anaconda, Paul Sarone is a creepy, suspicious guy from the start and awfully handy with killing things, but no one suspects him of any ulterior motives until he's already put himself in charge. Jon Voight does everything but cackle with an Evil Laugh or twirl a mustache.
• Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers movies. His frickin' name is Evil. He went to evil medical school! Granted, he's mostly humorously ineffectual, but he's trying...
• In Bumblebee, Agent Burns points out that the Decepticons are you know, named the Decepticons and they'd be crazy to ally with them.
• The Winter Soldier, from the film of the same name, is an interesting use of this trope. Black leather fatigues, hides his lower face in a mask, either Scary Shiny Glasses or dark eyeshadow, a metal arm with an engraved Soviet star, always armed with a BFG... and then he turns out to be, not a villain in his own right, but a Brainwashed and Crazy Bucky Barnes. He ditches everything except the arm in the inevitable Heel–Face Turn.
  • In Civil War, he loses the arm too (though this time not by choice).
  • This trope is Lampshaded in Avengers: Endgame where upon witnessing Hydra members disguised as S.H.I.E.L.D agents in the past, Ant Man wonders how the others never realized they were evil, since they blatantly look like bad guys.
• The Car is a black low-slung thing with heavily-tinted windows and a grill like a snarl.
• In Doctor Strange (2016), Big Bad Kaecilius and his followers all have disturbing purple-black scars around their eyes. Strange even lampshades this by pointing out Dormammu can't be good if he puts nasty black decay around his followers' eyes.
• The Dudley Do-Right movie lampshades this trope with Snidely Whiplash. As a child explaining what he wants to be when he grows up he declares, "Isn't it obvious? I'm going to be the BAD GUY!" Later in the film, Dudley and the Kumquat Chief are speaking to a politician, who questions whether Snidely is the bad guy. The chief replies, "Just look at the way he dresses, DUH!"
• In the first Dungeons & Dragons (2000), the villains Profion and Damodar (though laughably so) are very much Obviously Evil. As if to acknowledge it, Profion is shown wearing an innocuous white robe while addressing the wizard council as some attempt to explain why he's not executed immediately.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme's character from The Expendables 2, Jean Vilain, is the Big Bad of the movie. The name "Vilain" is basically "villain" with a Francophone accent. And the character is in fact a villain with a Francophone accent. Even Ross seems shocked at the idea. He and the Sangs even use a satanic goat as their symbol!
• William Bludworth, the funeral director who appears in Final Destination, Final Destination 2, and Final Destination 5, is Affably Evil in that he deals with death itself and gives the protagonists cryptic clues about how to cheat death (for example, in 2: "Only new life can defeat death.").
• Deconstructed in the 2008 Get Smart, when Max deduces that Dalip is a KAOS agent because "...his face looks like an Easter Island head!" After a moment's thought, he chastises himself for profiling and assumes that Dalip is really a good guy. In fact, Dalip is working for the villain, but only because his wife is being held hostage.
• Glass Onion: Miles Bron is a parody of Elon Musk played by Edward Norton (no stranger to playing smug villains and jerks), who spends every second on screen showing he is a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who doesn't cares about the safety of other people as long as he gets a lot of money and the chance to show it off, and has already destroyed the life of Andi Brand (the real brains behind his operation) a la The Social Network. When the film eventually reveals that Andi has been recently murdered, it takes a little longer to reveal that Bron is the culprit, but it also lays it on so thick that Benoit Blanc is angry at himself for missing it, exactly because he thought that it was too obvious.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Eco-terrorist leader Alan Jonah. Comparative to some of the MonsterVerse's other human Big Bad Wannabes, who seem quite ordinary if not outright charming at first glance and can use this to manipulate others around them; Jonah projects an ice-cold demeanor throughout his screentime (with Charles Dance's Icy Blue Eyes to go with it), even without his very-long rep sheet and infamy, and his wardrobe has quite a militant and/or guerilla look.
• Averted in Halloween. Unlike Freddy, Jason and Leatherface, when Michael Myers is (briefly) unmasked in the climax of the first movie, he's revealed to have an almost angelic face. According to Word of God, Tony Moran's "angelic" appearance is exactly why he was hired for that role. And the scar on Michael's eye wasn't supposed to be as ugly as it turned out to be, but prosthetics got a bit carried away when applying it to the actor's face.
• Voldemort's followers, Death Eaters, in the Harry Potter film franchise are already this dressed in hooded black cloaks and full face masks, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire makes it even more clear with them wearing half-face skull masks and pointed hoods resembling the Ku Klux Klan.
• Ramsley the creepy pale butler from The Haunted Mansion (2003), with Ominous Pipe Organ background music playing in almost every scene he appears in. helps that he's portrayed by Terence Stamp
• Played for Laughs in Hot Fuzz with Simon Skinner. Aside from his moustache, Villainous Widow's Peak and Slasher Smile, he constantly makes murder-related puns, tries to feign politeness in a very superficial and condescending manner, and frequently shows up at crime scenes accompanied by songs referencing the nature of the respective murder. The signs pointing to him being a killer are so blatant that the viewer is left wondering whether it’s just a giant Red Herring. It is, though not in the way one would expect: The film’s actual twist is not that Skinner is a murderer, but that he’s just one of many.
• Doctor Heiter from The Human Centipede, good Lord. "I don't trust...humans." The fact they trusted him and drank a glass of colored water from him is baffling.
• The live action Disney film A Kid in King Arthur's Court gives us Lord Velasco. When a character is first introduced as the king's trusted and loyal adviser, and the very first shot of the movie that he's in shows him as a tall dark man with black robes, a black horse, black hair with white streaks, a sinister smile and ominous background music, it's just insulting to our intelligence. He's like Jafar, except he's not hypnotizing the king, so the king really has no freaking excuse for trusting him.
  Nostalgia Critic: (as Belasco) Did I mention I'm the villain? No? BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE TO!
• The Lord of the Rings
  • Gríma Wormtongue has pale and sweaty skin, greasy black hair, warts, no eyebrows, black clothes and a hunched over posture. Oddly enough, his nickname is actually a backhanded compliment, since "worm" refers to a dragon, meaning he speaks with cunning and persuasion.
  • Most of the villainous characters, such as the orcs, Nazgûl and particularly Sauron's material form, who are all pretty scary to look at and decked out in blackened Spikes of Villainy.
  • Subverted with the Army of the Dead from The Return of the King, a spectral army of decomposing warriors who originally appear as threatening characters and implied villains, but eventually help the heroes during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. The motives are, if ultimately selfish, sympathetic and understandable.
  • What about Gollum? He's incredibly pale and gangrel looking due to being underground five hundred years, his remaining teeth look like small fangs, has a wild look in his eyes and is obsessed with The One Ring and not afraid to try and strangle you. Yeah, that's the guy one would want leading them into Mordor.
  • Would have been subverted by Sauron himself in the final battle, which would take his shining, divine looking Annatar◊ form. However, it was scrapped because canonically Sauron is incapable of using this form anymore.
• Similarly, Dominic Badguy in Muppets Most Wanted is a literal Card-Carrying Villain (though the card reads "International Tour Manager"), who excuses his last name by saying it's pronounced "Bad-gee", which is French for "Good guy".
• Nine Dead: Everything about Coogan's appearance (Porn Stache, middle-aged, chubby, polo shirt, etc.) and Sissy Villain mannerisms just screams "child molester".
• Mr. Brell from No Holds Barred may be one of the most obvious Corrupt Corporate Executives in movie history. He can barely last a minute pretending to be civil before revealing himself as a screaming lunatic, and he's not even convincing when he's 'playing nice'.
• Thade from Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (2001). Seriously, his voice, his face.. everything screams 'evil'.
• The Berserker Predator from Predators. The eyes on his mask glow Hellish-Red, compared to the yellowish glow of all the other Predators. His red-stained dreadlocks don't help much either.
• Nizam in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time qualifies. Let's see. Beard of Evil? Check. Bald of Evil? Check. Black robes and piercing eyes? Check. Played by Ben Kingsley? Check and Mate. Might as well give him a sign.
• The Purge: When a gang comes to your door wearing creepy masks, wielding weapons, and makes it clear that they want to kill one guy and they'll kill anybody who gets in the way, you get this trope.
• The Russians in Red Dawn (1984) — murdering high school students, raping, evil eyes, evil moustaches... evil hats. The Not-China-We-Swear North Koreans from the remake aren't much better.
• Completely averted with Ernie and Bernie in Shrooms. They are extremely odd and come across as more than a little creepy (and are, as mentioned in the Director's Commentary, intended to be the Irish version of backwoods hillbillies), but seem to be fairly nice people (if rather disturbed). However Poor Communication Kills in their case.
• Comedy version in Silent Movie: the evil corporation that wants to buy the good film studio is called Engulf & Devour — owned by two Corrupt Corporate Executives by those names. They even pray to a glowing dollar sign. Their name is a parody of the Real Life mega-conglomerate "Gulf+Western", who had a bad rep back then, too.
• Spiders II: Breeding Ground: Dr. Grbac basically screams "Mad Scientist" the minute he enters the screen. He doesn't help his case either by referring to Alexandra and Jason as "perfect specimens" while pretending to be performing a routine inspection.
• In case calling the Galactic Empire "evil" right in the first film's opening crawl wasn't obvious enough, Star Wars makes sure that you understand who the villains are just by looking at them.
  • Darth Vader wears very large black suit, a menacing cape, and a face-concealing helmet. His name also sounds like "invader," as well as "dark father" in Dutch. His Vader Breath doesn't help.
    • Slightly subverted as Vader is slowly revealed across the franchise to be a tortured and remorseful shell of a man behind the menacing suit, and he even pulls a Redemption Equals Death and becomes a Force Ghost in peace!
  • Stormtroopers are named after Nazis, and their skull-like helmets come with a predesigned grimace.
  • Darth Maul's red and black tattoos, bad teeth, yellow eyes, crown of horns and black outfit make him look positively demonic. The name "Maul" also helps.
  • Darth Sidious has a hideously withered face, yellow eyes, a scary voice, and black robes. His name also sounds like "insidious." Subverted with his Palpatine identity, who looked like a kind politician before getting a face full of (his own) lightning.
    • Well, Palpatine isn't exactly subtle about being The Chessmaster while in his Chancellor identity either, what with his constant kindergarten psychology manipulations of Anakin and his sarcastically mockingly genteel nature. But somehow the entire Jedi Order is still taken completely by surprise when he turns out to be evil... DEWIT!
  • General Grievous has a white, skeletal exoskeleton and a stooped posture.
  • Count Dooku is played by Christopher Lee using the same approach he takes to Saruman, Dracula, Fu Manchu and the rest.
  • For that matter, the Dark Side is called... The Dark Side. Who says only the Sith deal in absolutes? Justified when it comes to the Dark Side: it's a narcotic and delving too much into has the expected devastating effects. But overall, subtlety is not the series' strong point.
  • The Empire goes so far as to give its big ships needlessly brutish and unpleasant names, because of course nobody is going to question what side they're on when they're assigned to the Star Destroyer Tyrant or Virulence. Said ships are also ridiculously large space daggers, just to drive the point home. Also, not to forget that the super-weapon the Empire built to overtly rule the galaxy (and is onscreen used to destroy a planet) is called the Death Star.
• Jonas and his team from Twister, who show up in a long line of black SUVs. They also had the nerve to do something as diabolical as get corporate sponsors for their research!
• Zig-Zagged by Adrian Veight/Ozymandias in Watchmen through clever use of Meta Twist. While it's obvious to a modern reader that Veidt is the murderer/guiding force behind the plot of the original comic, the book first appeared before comics in general became much Darker and Edgier and it was perfectly reasonable for an audience to assume that Veidt was the honest, caring man he seemed to be. Nowadays, a saintly seeming character in a work otherwise full of grim antiheroes sticks out really obviously as the villain, so in the film Veidt becomes a glacial, aloof, sneering megalomaniac who compares himself to Alexander the Great to actually detract the likelihood of his being the culprit from a newcomer's POV — only for it to still be him.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit gives us Judge Doom. The name itself isn't very subtle, neither are the black garbs, the Scary Shiny Glasses, the Classy Cane with the skull on one end, or his blatant Lack of Empathy coupled with Fantastic Racism... but then again, Toons aren't known for their subtlety.
• Azazel in X-Men: First Class. He's designed pretty much like mainstream depictions of Satan.

---