Basic Trope: An evil character cannot understand the motivation of good characters and thus fails to predict their actions.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz does not believe in true altruism, so he is unprepared when Jesse sacrifices himself for a small village of people Jesse doesn't even know, and this leads to the Emperor's downfall.
- Exaggerated:
- Emperor Evulz does not understand the concept of common courtesy to your inferiors, so he is unprepared when Jesse's use of "please" and "thank you" leads to mass Heel–Face Turn actions on the part of his minions.
- Emperor Evulz fails to comprehend why people would rebel against him if he keeps them working for him out of abject fear.
- Emperor Evulz fails to understand why someone wouldn't cross the Moral Event Horizon.
- Emperor Evulz imprisons Jesse. When Emperor Evulz sees Jesse say "thank you" to a guard after he gets a bowl of gruel, Emperor Evulz' head explodes from confusion.
- Emperor Evulz is a Complete Monster with little to no understanding of anything good despite having its knowledge. This means that whenever Jesse uses his powers to revive the villagers killed by Evulz, Evulz goes on a rant and devises a plan to Kill All Humans, which ultimately leads to his well-deserved defeat when the entire human race starts rallying against him.
- Downplayed:
- Emperor Evulz knows there's a "pattern" to goodness he can use to predict heroic movements accordingly. However, as he only analyzes the heroes' actions and doesn't understand the core values, he sometimes miscalculates about, say, whether a hero will pull a Heroic Sacrifice when he dangles a Sadistic Choice or try to Take a Third Option. Good Is Not Dumb and doesn't give up easy, after all.
- Evulz does not understand the hero's good actions or the reasoning behind them, which The Hero may even point out... but this happens to never get in Evulz's way and his evil schemes carry on as planned until the hero manages to actively foil them.
- A Jerkass can't comprehend why Jesse's so nice all the time, even to people who are rude to him.
- Emperor Evulz believes that people can be nice, but only to someone close to them. As such, he believes Jesse won't risk his friends' lives to stop him because of The Needs of the Many, or even bother to care about strangers without some personal gain.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz is a Sociopath who can't empathize with other points of view. He genuinely believes that underneath their goody-goody exteriors, the heroes are just as self-centered and greedy as he is.
- Evulz is actually the avatar of a malevolent AI that literally was not programmed to understand altruism, only selfish motives.
- It's Psychological Projection. Evulz sees other people as corrupt because he is corrupt, and it's easier to justify doing bad things to people if you can convince yourself that you're actually paying evil unto greater evil when you Kick the Dog.
- Emperor Evulz has grown up only seeing the worst and evil of the world, so when the hero or someone else does something virtuous, he can't understand why when others in the world did nothing but bad and evil things around him when he was growing up. This is doubly so if the hero grew up with the same bad things happening around them, and triply so if despite doing heroic things people still treat them terribly and never show any gratitude other than just worthless thank you’s and the Hero is still treated just as badly if not worse than before and is even walked over as if they were just a mat. Emperor Evulz might even be confused why the Hero continue saving the sorry people’s butts if they do nothing but take advantage of the Hero’s moral compass, virtues, kindness, and compassion.
- Emperor Evulz cannot understand good because he fundamentally needs to view his evil actions and the malice behind them as inherently correct and justified. If he were to face the reality of his actions, all of his past evils would be put under question, and that kind of self-reflection is absolutely terrifying to someone as frightened of consequences (and his own guilt deep, deep down) as him.
- Inverted:
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil.
- Evulz sets up a Batman Gambit counting on Jesse to sacrifice himself to save the village, but is caught off-guard when Jesse selfishly decides to save himself instead.
- Subverted:
- Emperor Evulz appears to have believed that Jesse wouldn't sacrifice himself, but it was actually a Batman Gambit specifically designed to make Jesse take the Heroic Sacrifice route, so that the Emperor's next plan can continue without interference.
- Evulz ridicules Jesse's notion of morality, but understands it enough to see that holding an innocent village hostage against Jesse walking into his trap will work out. He just views goodness dimly because it means you aren't willing to make practical choices.
- Emperor Evulz is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who views 'Jesse' as a villain and doesn't believe that Jesse is capable of good.
- Emperor Evulz is surprised by Jesse's sacrifice, but not because he can't comprehend good, but rather he can't understand why Jesse didn't Take a Third Option.
- Double Subverted:
- But the Emperor didn't count on Jesse's sacrifice inspiring several ill-assorted villagers to take up the cause of freedom themselves and eventually defeat him. They were supposed to be permanently cowed by Jesse's horrible fate.
- Yes, Jesse would take the bait and be lured into a trap, but that doesn't mean he can't make his own plans and derail Evulz's scenario. He understands that morality exists, but his contempt towards it means he never realized that Good Is Not Dumb.
- Evulz lives by an unusual moral code and is unable to comprehend more socially acceptable notions of good. The only reason Evulz thought it was moral was because it meant that Jesse was willing to take a risk "for once in his life".
- Parodied:
- Emperor Evulz is baffled by concepts like opening the door for people whose arms are full, not just throwing food wrappers on the sidewalk, petting small animals, and so forth.
- Evulz has such difficulty comprehending good that he doesn't even understand the dictionary definition of "good".
- Evuls hires a tutor to teach him how to be good, in an attempt to understand it. However, even after being explicitly instructed to Pet the Dog, Evulz kicks it with the force of a thousand suns, and looks baffled when the tutor tries to explain what he did wrong.
- Evulz can read Jesse's acts of good just fine, but his own goodness utterly baffles him. He'll say he Pet the Dog because it was Pragmatic Villainy, even when everyone else could tell that he was simply being altruistic.
- Evulz can't tell the difference between putting on a nice sweater and actually ''being'' nice.
- Zig Zagged:
- Evulz understands some good actions and doesn't understand others.
- Harile isn't technically good or evil, and as such cannot understand what motivates Jesse to constantly risk his life to help others when it doesn't even benefit Jesse.
- Evulz believes that Humans Are Bastards in a world where Rousseau Was Right. Because of this, he rationalizes all of his Pet the Dog moments as Pragmatic Villainy no matter how many leaps of logic he has to do.
- Evulz is a Tautological Templar who views himself as being good despite either not being able to comprehend it or even viewing good traits as being a weakness.
- Averted: Emperor Evulz has a normal understanding of how good people think and has a good idea of how they'd act in any given situation.
- Enforced: The executives demanded to add a scene about Emperor Evulz not understanding / looking down on "goodness" (i.e. the values of Moral Guardians) to show how "evil" Emperor Evulz really is.
- Lampshaded: "You just don't get it, do you, Emperor? Normal people don't think only of themselves, or of what personal gain they get from something."
- Invoked: Jesse goes out of his way to help random people while he is a fugitive so that he wouldn't be where Evulz would expect him.
- Exploited: Jesse sets up a Batman Gambit that relies on Emperor Evulz not thinking as a "good" person would.
- Defied:
- Discussed: "I fear the master is setting himself up for a… disappointment, if he thinks that the rebels will not stick by their principles in a crisis."
- Conversed: "Yep, Emperor Evulz fell into the old 'assume the hero is just as evil as I am' trap in this episode."
- Deconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz's inability to understand the viewpoint of "good" also extends to other viewpoints as well, making him an incompetent ruler who only sustains his throne through violence and fear. He has to constantly expand his empire as his mismanagement has ruined the economy and impoverished the land.
- Emperor Evulz's inability to understand good and morality has made him completely lose his sanity and become even more threatening than he has ever been before.
- Emperor Evulz's inability to comprehend goodness has made it impossible for him find any chance of redemption; because he crossed the Moral Event Horizon, it doesn't even matter anyways, since he's unable to turn back and have a happy and normal life.
- Emperor Evulz's inability to comprehend goodness made it impossible for him to appreciate any love or kindness towards him; as such, any victory will ultimately be hollow.
- Reconstructed:
- While his narcissism and failure to understand selflessness is shown to make him a Bad Boss and a poor economist, he is still able to instigate a reign of terror productive enough to fund his evil schemes, and by appealing to people's selfish instincts, he builds up a powerful (if not particularly loyal) network of lackeys.
- The insane Evulz is a terrifying opponent, but his actions are vicious even by the standards of the Mooks, who leave in favour of preserving their own hides. Evulz is powerful, but alone, and that ultimately secures his downfall.
- Evulz has an unnatural view of morality because he himself is artificial in some way and innately driven toward evil by his creator. The protagonists kill him as an act of mercy and go on to prevent someone like him from emerging again.
- Due to his warped mind, Evulz is perfectly fine with substituting love with either material comforts or the opportunity to make people suffer. He believes that his victories are as substantial as everyone else's.
- Played For Laughs: Emperor Evulz goes on a game show to win the MacGuffin prize that'll help him rule the world. But due to the categories revolving around petting dogs and diabetes-flavored subjects, he ends up losing and makes himself a laughingstock to the whole viewing world.
- Played For Drama: Evulz and the hero discuss redemption prior to their final battle, but it's quite clear throughout the tense conversation that Evulz is not going to accept the offer — he seems bewildered by the advantages of being good, seeing them as useless.
- Played For Horror: Evulz is the kind of man who once heard the line "there are no two more harmful words in the English language than 'good job'" and has taken it to its most logical extreme — killing people once they are done with their job and torturing those that he wants to improve, just because he doesn't understand that there is such a thing as "constructive criticism".
You can go Back to Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, though I can't imagine why you would want to. There's nothing in it for you, after all.
