Basic Trope: The villain is averse to political incorrectness.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz is a cruel tyrant, but he shows a good deal of disgust towards sexism, racism and homophobia. Any minions of his who express such views are shunned at best and severely punished at worst.
- Exaggerated:
- Emperor Evulz runs a Political Overcorrectness Dystopia where anyone who makes any bigoted statement will be nabbed by the Secret Police and brutally re-educated or punished.
- Emperor Evulz is an Equal-Opportunity Evil who will torture, enslave, rape, and kill anyone and everyone, regardless of race/sex/gender/religion, who stands in his way. He dreams of creating a global regime based on fear, suffering, wanton cruelty, and total dismantling of conservative moral values. But at least he respects other people pronouns.
- Downplayed:
- Evulz occasionally bristles with discomfort when his minions make a bigoted statement.
- Bob is a politically correct Jerkass.
- Bob is from an older outdated time, but he's fair for his day.
- Evulz practices Equal-Opportunity Evil and will work with the heroes to take out Nazis, but otherwise doesn't care about causes of equality beyond keeping his own ranks in order.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz is Lawful Evil, Wicked Cultured and has lines he doesn't cross.
- Emperor Evulz runs an Equal-Opportunity Evil Empire and being able to recruit all the people he can get regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation is fundamental to him.
- Emperor Evulz knows that having an image of tolerance and diversity will make people view him as a "lesser of two evils", so he cultivates an image of him as a progressive person to hide his sinister plots.
- Evulz doesn't care about such petty things like race or sex; just oppress (or kill) everyone equally!
- Political Correctness Is Evil, so of course Evulz is politically correct.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- One mook accidentally utters a racist word in the presence of Evulz, but he doesn't punish it.
- For all his public sanctimony, private recording out Evulz as appallingly misogynistic.
- Evulz doesn't really care about gender, race or creed, despite being against racism, sexism, homophobia and drugs. He just Hates Everyone Equally; if you piss him off, you will die horribly without an exception.
- Double Subverted: ...Not immediately, anyway; he takes the mook out of the room and then berates him.
- Parodied:
- Evulz is an Equal-Opportunity Evil leader who makes a point of leading his evil Five-Token Band on missions and equitably distributing his ill-gotten gains throughout his empire, such that viewers of a more socially liberal bent might think he's actually The Hero.
- Evulz continuously bugs the hero by complaining every time the hero does something that could remotely be seen as discriminatory.
- Zig-Zagged: Evulz rebukes some bigoted words and actions that he notices, but not all, and why he lets any go or not isn't established.
- Averted: Nobody says anything politically incorrect around Evulz, so we never learn whether he is this.
- Enforced:
- The creators want a way to help the audience sympathize with Evulz.
- Or the creators want to show that being politically correct doesn't automatically make Evulz good.
- Bob's character arc is at least partly about him becoming more respectful of a certain group, and this trope's a great way to make a Foil.
- Lampshaded: "Just because I'm the bad guy doesn't mean I need to maintain extant hierarchies for the sake of it."
- Invoked: "I can't just allow bigotry in my ranks. I have a reputation to uphold!"
- Exploited: Bob appeals to Evulz's politically correct nature to help him make a Heel–Face Turn.
- Or Bob deliberately taunts Evulz with offensive terms to distract him.
- Defied: Evulz is openly hateful towards people of many ethnic groups and religions, women, non-heterosexual, and gender-nonconforming people.
- Discussed: "Yeah, Evulz may be an inclusive guy and all that, but you're still a villain that wants to Take Over the World, and basic decency doesn't really excuse your actions".
- Conversed: "Evulz is such a despicable villain, but at least he draws the line at discrimination. It almost makes me wish the series doesn't end with his defeat."
- Implied: Bob makes a politically incorrect statement, which makes Evulz act strongly toward it, or his Dragon cautions him against it.
- Deconstructed: Evulz's reputation as a "progressive" villain makes people more sympathetic to him, which he exploits for his own purpose. By arguing for social justice, he turns the populace against the not-as-progressive heroes and has the populace turn against their own saviors. Evulz further preys on the people's need to appear more progressive, and uses virtue signaling and cancel culture to enslave people and turn them on each other.
- Reconstructed: Then along comes Killemall, a Satisfied Street Rat who will take all of the money from everybody that gets in his way, but most definitely is what Evulz is just pretending to be (doesn't steals from already poor people because that is just too mean, provides receipts so he won't steal from people twice a month, uses proper pronouns, makes sure to not touch women in inappropriate places, hands over 25% of his "income" to charities and politically-progressive organizations (and they are not tax-deductible, so he is doing it out of the goodness his own heart), and acts where Evulz just talks… even if that means performing the occasional massacre of bigots), so when the heroes inevitably reveal Evulz's falsehoods Killemall won't be dragged down into that mess.
The villain supports LGBTQ+ rights? Huh, guess that clears them of trying to Take Over the World. We gotta go back to Politically Correct Villain and find out more.
