Basic Trope: A character (usually a villain) refuses to do something horrible or does good things not out of the goodness of their heart, but because it's detrimental (or useful) to their interests.
- Straight: The city of Cort surrenders to Emperor Evulz, and he orders that the inhabitants be spared and be allowed to keep its mayor so it would give other cities the incentive to surrender.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz ends up doing massive amounts of good accomplishing his goals. After all, his troops need good roads to travel efficiently and the trade funds them, good supply of medical care and giving it away gets him their loyalty and demonstrates a great deal of intelligence. Only his questionable but expedient actions make him qualify as a villain. Without those he'd be nearly saintly.
- Evil Versus Oblivion
- Downplayed:
- Evulz makes it clear that he would prefer to break his enemies by talking and then let them live their misery but if his enemies are serving as immediate obstacles to his goals and he needs to focus on other matters, then he will kill them.
- Evulz is an open Blood Knight, but only spares the civilians because they wouldn't be a good fight anyways.
- Evulz gives his perceived enemies quick deaths instead of wasting time torturing them, because it's a waste of his time and torture doesn't get good information anyways.
- Evulz is a Noble Demon because it makes himself feel better.
- Evulz is only pragmatic to a certain extent. He tells his troops not to shot innocent bystanders, but when he sees his hated nemesis Bob, he tries to gun him down despite putting civilians at risk.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk
- Justified:
- Evulz is an Anti-Villain who is disgusted by more Stupid Evil antics of other villains.
- Evulz is a Villain with Good Publicity and needs to keep it that way.
- Evulz is a pragmatist. His society is set up around doing the extreme that needs to be done, for which most view him as evil, but he's by no means going to do anything negative just for the hell of it.
- Evulz can only do so much evil before the civilians will either revolt or get wiped out.
- Evulz has a far greater goal.
- Evulz just wants to avoid accusations of being a Hypocrite, so he always outright admits that he doesn’t do bad things purely out of pragmatism rather than conscience.
- Evulz knows that if he does any needless violence or cruelty, then many people that have been mistreated by him will join his enemies, and the civilians will refuse to support him.
- Inverted:
- Evulz destroys the city of Cort even after they surrendered, which makes the other cities prepare themselves to defeat Evulz when he arrives.
- Hiro is willing to Shoot the Dog if it benefits the greater good.
- The Hero refuses to do a good deed because it’s “not practical”.
- Necessarily Evil
- Subverted:
- Evulz claims he's only sparing the people of Cort to make other communities surrender, but it's really because he isn't as evil as he claims.
- Evulz appears to be ready to spare the people of Cort, then slaughters them.
- Double Subverted:
- Evulz really was doing it for pragmatic reasons, but eventually realized that playing the part of Noble Demon would give him more leverage and decided to pretend his "real" reasons were moral all along.
- Evulz let Cort surrender only because Evulz knew they were feigning surrender.
- Evulz really does want to spare those who have already surrendered, but also thinks that any Evil Overlord with a brain would do so.
- Slaughtering the people of Cort was an idea of one of Evulz's Stupid Evil subordinates, whom Evulz executes.
- Parodied: Evulz never actually does anything evil at all, and in fact donates regularly to charity and helps old ladies cross the street, but keeps up with the Evil Gloating as he does so, gleefully pointing out to anyone who will listen how these acts of kindness totally further his evil goals.
- Zig Zagged:
- It's hard to tell whether or not Evulz is acting out of pragmatism or genuine goodness, with plenty of evidence for both.
- Evulz is highly intelligent, but he has a bad temper that drives him to acts of Stupid Evil. As such, how pragmatic his plans are depends on how frustrated and overly sadistic he's feeling today.
- Sometimes Evulz has a selfish motivation to do good deeds, and sometimes he doesn’t.
- Averted:
- Evulz does unspeakably malicious things For the Evulz.
- Evulz is a Stupid Evil Card-Carrying Villain.
- Alternatively: Evulz is genuinely disgusted by some of the more heinous acts other villains have taken.
- Enforced: The fandom is infamous for tearing apart Stupid Evil. The executives know their audience well, affecting the plot accordingly.
- Lampshaded: "Mr. Mayor, I may be a brutal conqueror, but I'm not a fool".
- Invoked: Evulz has studied the behaviors of other villains to see where they went wrong, and resolves not to make any of their mistakes.
- Exploited:
- When the heroes point out Evulz could make more money by going legitimate, he does so, and ceases to be a threat to the heroes.
- Evulz's advisor appeals to his sense of practicality to restrain him from crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
- Defied: Evulz is a crazed, sadistic lunatic who ''loves'' being a crazed, sadistic lunatic. When told that he could be pragmatic in sparing them, he acknowledges that he could be; he's just choosing not to be.
- Discussed: "One reason Evulz is so dangerous is because he doesn't do evil deeds when there's no point".
- Conversed: "Finally, a movie villain who acts rational!"
- Deconstructed:
- Evulz is such a Slave to PR, and the other villains mock him for it.
- Evulz being so willing to spare people who aren't a threat to him makes him seen as a lesser threat than someone who will commit genocide.
- Even after all of the pragmatic or even helpful things Evulz does, the people he conquers still hate his guts and treat him as a tyrannical evil overlord because he still did something pretty evil.
- Because of his false reformation, when Evulz finally turns good for real, nobody believes him and suspects it’s just another plot.
- Reconstructed:
- Evulz has shown that he's Eviler than Thou and verbally rips through the rest of them on how Stupid Evil Card Carrying Villainy is, proving that he's closer to his goals than anyone else.
- Not being Stupid Evil means that he willingly follows the "unwritten rules" of the setting—rules that prevent anybody who considers himself "good" from applying This Means War! and go full-on "Scorched Earth" on his organization. As such, every decision he's done follows a tenet of ultimate pragmatism: his assured continuous survival. And the fact that he continues to live on—maybe even becoming the Series Mascot or an Ensemble Dark Horse—where every other villain buys the farm from the Knight Templar hordes is all the gloating he needs.
- Evulz' conquering is matched with an equal amount of legislation, bringing much-needed leadership and reform to conquered lands. Evulz is seen as a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst and The Good King at best, even though all his leadership was merely in the interest of more power.
- Played For Laughs: Evulz is essentially a humanitarian, but the heroes considered him a criminal mastermind by shouting "That monster, how dare he feed those starving orphans and build houses for the homeless!"
- Played For Drama: Because of how cunning Evulz is, and because he doesn't play the Villain Ball, the heroes have a hard time facing him without ruining their own image as well.
- Played For Horror: There is some spooky juxtaposition between the "good" things Evulz does for the sake of pragmatism and the horrifying things he does for the sake of evil, and his apparently delusional belief that these things balance out his cosmic karma checkbook, thus showing that the most competent villain around is an unbalanced lunatic.
- Implied: Evulz is not as evil as he could be, but it is never explained why.
The only reason I'm creating a link back to Pragmatic Villainy is that it serves my purposes.
