Basic Trope: The villain mistreats his minions regularly.
- Straight: Bob treats his minions like trash.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob makes his minions do all the work while not paying them, and kills them for any small mistake or none at all.
- Charlie is a worker who works 16 hour shifts, sleeps in his office, is paid two cents an hour, and never sees his family. He confronts Bob, genuflecting so hard that he's practically kissing the floor, declaring that, With All Due Respect, the pay is garbage, working conditions are worse, employees are dying left and right and leaving even sooner, and so on. Bob is not amused.
- Using various aliases, Bob manipulates his employees into joining multiple factions and fighting in an entirely pointless and bloody conflict for his own personal amusement.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is very kind and generous to the minions who earn his favor, but losing his favor can have deadly consequences.
- Mean Boss
- Justified:
- He has chosen incompetent minions who can't get a single thing done right, and then abuses them to make sure they don't want him to succeed, because he secretly wants his evil schemes to fail.
- Bob is just a Jerkass.
- Bob is a sociopath that suffers from a severe Lack of Empathy, therefore he cares little about the lives of his minions.
- Bob is incompetent and has zero rapport with his minions, so he's compensating by being a tyrannical asshole.
- Bob is a Complete Monster.
- Bob climbed the rank to his current position by killing his various bosses, and assumes his minions have the same ideas.
- Bob believes in motivating his minions with the threat of violence or death.
- Bob has a Hair-Trigger Temper.
- Inverted:
- Benevolent Boss
- Bob's minions treat him like trash.
- Bob is a Psycho for Hire who takes sadistic pleasure in selling out his employers.
- Subverted: While Bob seems like a horrible boss right now, he takes a level in kindness and becomes a better boss as time goes on.
- Double Subverted: Except he didn’t really take a level in kindness. He just seemed nicer than the typical jerk of a boss/how he was in the past, but secretly he abuses all of his staff behind their back, while pretending to be a better person.
- Parodied:
- Bob constantly fires some of his staff, every single day, by murdering them in ridiculously elaborate ways, for the slightest mistake.
- Bob viciously mauls one of his minions to death because they didn't add any sugar to his tea.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob acts like a Benevolent Boss most of the time, but will become a Bad Boss if his subordinates repeatedly fail at certain tasks or if things are falling apart. Nonetheless, he rewards successful minions, you just don't want to get on his bad side.
- Bob is an incredibly cruel boss, but when people start complaining en masse, he tells them to write a petition for change: if enough people sign, he'll work on improving. The petition is submitted, and Bob fires everyone who dared to sign it.
- Averted: Bob behaves in a respectful and professional matter with his minions, or at least doesn't abuse them.
- Enforced: "We need to show that Bob is a really bad person"
- Lampshaded: "Geez, I'm your minion, not your slave! All right, I'm your slave too, but you still don't have to shout at me all the live-long day!"
- Invoked: Bob feels like he has to act like a Bad Boss in order to keep his minions in line.
- Exploited:
- The heroes ask if the minions really enjoy working in such a negative environment, trying to provoke a Mook–Face Turn.
- Daniel uses the same tactic as above to gain the support of Bob's employees, so his usurpation of power goes swimmingly and without resistance.
- Defied: Bob treats his employees with respect and dignity, and even rewards them when they do something right, in order to avoid having them turn against him.
- Discussed: "Ugh, why does every villain have to treat their minions like crap? Maybe if they show them some respect they might actually succeed in their evil plans!"
- Conversed: After a meeting at which Alice yelled at some of her minions for screwing up, she talks to her personal assistant, Bob, asking if she had been too harsh with them.
- Deconstructed:
- One of Bob's minions betrays him at a crucial moment due to past mistreatment. This leads to said minion offing Bob at that moment, becoming the new boss in turn.
- Bob's minions get so fed up with his mistreatment towards them that they eventually break off and desert him either randomly or in a time of need, rendering Bob in either being at a disadvantage or ranting about how his minions didn't respect him at all.
- Bob has trouble recruiting new minions due to his reputation, leaving his forces severely weakened.
- Bob hates what's he's become on his way to the top and takes it out on his minions, starting a Vicious Cycle that fills him with even more self-loathing and loneliness.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob's minions are more afraid of him than the enemy, making them extremely fearsome in combat.
- The Dragon Ascendant becomes twice the tyrant his boss was, leading to more revolutions in turn while leaving the trend in place.
- The kind of threat you have to be in order to keep the loyalty of minions who are scared shitless of you is investigated.
- Implied: None of Bob's minions are willing to say their master's name.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob punishes his minions for the most minor of transgressions to the point of Comedic Sociopathy.
- A random Mook asks a dumb question, and Bob responds by nonchalantly killing him.
- Played For Drama: Bob's minions are so terrified of him that they often discuss getting rid of him or simply running away, feeling it's only a matter of time before they incur their boss's wrath.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Bob is a Mole in Charge and Good Running Evil/vice versa. If it looks like he's trying to kill off all his minions and drive his organisation into the ground...it's because he is.
Get back to Bad Boss, or your fired!
