Basic Trope: A villain engages in evil purely for its own sake.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz commits various acts of villainy and dog-kicking without any rhyme or reason, the only explanation being because he can.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz plunges the universe into a living Dystopia only for the sake of perpetrating Dystopia itself, even when everybody, including himself, suffers in it.
- Emperor Evulz is always running a colossal Xanatos Gambit, and generally goes about his goal like a Chessmaster. The objective? Bring pain and misery to every possible being in the planet, all for his enjoyment's sake.
- Stupid Evil
- Complete Monster
- When his team of researchers, physicists and mathematicians finish building a viable method of paradox-free Time Travel, Evulz proceeds to go backwards through time and set forth every atrocity in history, from The Holocaust to football riots, for no reason at all, and he will change history only in the circumstance that his actions will compound the already existent evil in the universe.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a jerk who does things like littering and petty theft for no reason.
- Bob acts like a jerk because he likes annoying people.
- Bob is a Psycho for Hire who doesn't work for free, but chose the lifestyle over more profitable uses of his talents because it was more fun.
- It Amused Me
- Bob kicks the dog for a giggle.
- Justified:
- Evulz is the Anthropomorphic Personification of evil or otherwise made entirely and unrepentantly evil by magical means.
- Evulz is a sociopath or sadist or both.
- Evulz likes to hurt others because it makes his life look so much better in comparison.
- Evulz is a Card-Carrying Villain and prefers to be recognized by such actions.
- Evulz is a Misanthrope Supreme.
- Evil Feels Good
- Evulz suffers from Chronic Villainy, and couldn't be anything else but a person who commits meaningless and spontaneous evil.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Evulz claims to be doing evil for its own sake, but actually has much more mundane motives for his Evil Plan.
- It Amused Me
- Evulz claims he murdered someone just for the fun of it. In reality, he actually did it because the victim was aware of other crimes Evulz had committed, so he didn't want those to be revealed.
- Double Subverted: Evulz is captured and explains the logical reasons for doing the horrible things he did... but towards the end of his confession, we find out his underlying goal: to maximize the amount of suffering he's inflicted.
- Parodied:
- Evulz' sporadic acts of gratuitous villainy never go beyond minor annoyances and ridiculously innocuous felonies.
- "Emperor! Why must you commit such horrible atrocities upon our people?" Beat "Huh... that's a good question. I've never thought about it like that before."
- The inverse of the above: "Emperor! Why must you commit such horrible atrocities upon our people?" "Because I'm evil!" "Oh, wow, I hadn't actually considered that. I sincerely apologize for raiding your castle and will be on my way now."
- Zig Zagged: Evulz cares for orphans deeply and loves them all, but still blows up orphanages because he loves to see explosions. However, he led all the orphans out first and that orphanage was an unstable building that needed to be demolished. Blowing up the bus all the orphans were on, however...
- Averted: Emperor Evulz has a fairly logical motive, like money.
- Enforced: “How do we make our bad guy truly evil? Let's make him a sadist!"
- Lampshaded:Bob: How does killing people at random accomplish anything?
Evulz: Killing is evil and therefore evil was accomplished. I mean HELLO! My name is literally "Evulz"!
Bob: You Monster! - Invoked: Evulz doesn't blow up orphanages, but Bob mentions that he knows so little about Evulz that he may well do so.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz, a Chessmaster with a greater plan in mind, sets up a simple yet baffling crime as a distraction for his enemies.
- Defied:
- Emperor Evulz declares that he's not a sadist who does heinous things for his own amusement; he's either a Well-Intentioned Extremist, a villain who has standards, or someone who prefers to engage in Pragmatic Villainy.
- Bob refuses to do evil things even if he thinks that evil things are automatically fun just by "virtue" of being evil.
- Discussed: "How do I know if he's lying about why he did it or is just plain crazy? Sane people don't have goals like 'murder as many people as I can'; there's always at least some claim to the moral high ground."
- Conversed: "Why does it seem like all of the villains in that show seem to lack a coherent motivation besides 'kill as many people as possible'?"
- Deconstructed:
- It goes to show how insane and messed-up Evulz is.
- Evulz has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever that will make him justifiable and appealing to any faction, thus the heroes and well-intentioned extremists are free to team up and do whatever it takes to destroy him.
- Doing evil is the foremost of Evulz's motives, beyond lesser flaws like Greed, Pride and Wrath, which leaves no moral quandary as to whether he should be killed or not.
- Since Evulz really has no motivation for what he's doing, his character becomes boring and uninteresting.
- Evulz's reason being because he "can" doesn't hold up to the protagonist, who gives him a Breaking Speech that tears that "reasoning" apart.
- Evulz gains literally nothing from his unrelenting drive to do evil for evil's sake — he doesn't feel pleasure, he doesn't have any messages to spread, he believes in nothing, and all of the people he has destroyed have long since become kind of a blur so it's not even that he has an enemy he loves to piss off. Doing evil for him is like washing his teeth or taking a crap — it's not only work, but it's boring work.
- Evulz commits atrocities because it's the only thing that makes him feel something, which is better to him than feeling nothing at all.
- Evulz would have literally gotten away with (a lot of) murder if he had not tried to be cute about it, most importantly that dumb-ass "I did it for kicks, brah!" manifesto that got the jury either angry or afraid. It's the villainous equivalent of "don't be a dick" writ large.
- Evulz's unrelenting drive to do evil all day, every day ends up getting in the way of the plans of his fellow evildoers who try to obtain something (anything, be it political recognition or eggs for breakfast) from their efforts. This directly leads to his downfall, because his fellow evildoers decide to eliminate him or at the very least refuse to ally with him anymore because he is a complete idiot who cannot be trusted at all, even by those who don't normally care about that "trust" thing.
- Evulz's unrelenting compulsion to commit pointless and petty evil is used to demonstrate just how nihilistic and self-destructive his character is, that the only thing that can assuage the hole in his soul is mindless destruction, and taking revenge on a cruel world.
- Reconstructed:
- But even if he enjoys others' sufferings, he also enjoys his own.
- The same philosophy, belief system or ideology driving Evulz' love of evil is what Evulz wants to see more in the world.
- Evulz is skilled at concealing his true goals and motivation and appealing to whatever he perceives will work in getting someone to go along with his plans.
- Evulz disdains rules and others for adhering to them, so in his mind others must deserve his treatment.
- So Evulz is so "boring" that he is a Generic Doomsday Villain, and even he hates himself for this. Good to know. Not that it'll save you if he gets his hands on you.
- Played for Laughs:
- Evulz, obsessing over wanting to do as much evil as possible just for the sake of evil itself, steers far into Stupid Evil and Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat territory.
- Laughably Evil Comedic Sociopathy.
- Played For Drama: Bob struggles to maintain his faith in humanity upon seeing Evulz engage in evil for evil's sake.
- Played For Horror: You're about to die because some asshole thinks it'll be cool to kill you. That is pretty freaking terrifying.
- Implied: Evulz doesn't seem to have any logical motivation, and often is self-defeating.
Back to For the Evulz, because I hate doing good.
