Stupid Evil / Anime & Manga

• The Apostle Wyald in Berserk, a berserker who throughout his second life put so much effort into enjoying himself by being a vicious sadist to the point that he, in his dying frenzy, threatens to kill Griffith, the one person he was absolutely not supposed to kill, hoping to speed the process that would give him a second chance (or a third one if one wishes to take into account his early life). When he's called on it, he mouths off to his superior, Zodd, who tears Wyald in half for being such a moron. He had spent the whole arc acting like a murderous loon, including doing far worse than killing people (including his own subordinates) for the hell of it, even if it made his job harder — this event was merely the one time he made the mistake of doing it to someone who could actually punish him for it.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Basically every foe the main characters have to face, apart from those who are only normal people who have not understood Roanapur, displays shades of this trope. However, there are particularly striking examples.
  • Hansel and Gretel, the insane twins. After being hired to perform an assassination, they proceed to abduct and torture a bunch of random mooks for sport (one of which is one of Balalaika's soldiers, and she is most definitely not happy about that) and then murder the person who hired them, not because he was planning on betraying them, but because they just felt like it. They then decide to go through with the assassination anyway, even after it's pointed out to them that they are no longer being paid (in fact, they already took the money in the process of killing their employer). It should also be noted that their target makes a policy of surrounding herself with some of the most deadly soldiers in the world, is a world-class markswoman in her own right, and is justifiably considered within the series to be the most dangerous woman alive...and the twins try to take her out armed only with an axe. It turns out exactly how you'd expect. Balalaika even lampshaded this, stating that the only way that such an obvious trap would work would be for the target to be so blinded by bloodlust that they would obliviously walk right into it.
  • Chaka, a low-level enforcer for the Washimine Clan, was so needlessly and gratuitously cruel and sadistic that it's truly a wonder that he didn't piss off the wrong people and get himself killed earlier. Among other things, he kidnapped the daughter of his employers with the intention of selling her into sexual slavery (and decided to strip her down to her underwear just for extra humiliation), tried to start a fight with someone who was way above his level just because he really wanted a duel, beat her non-combatant colleague just to try and get her to fight him after she made it clear that she couldn't care less about him, took the person he was going to sell and used her as a human shield, ran off and left a bunch of his men to get slaughtered by Revy and Ginji, shot several of his men just to vent his anger, and then tried to fight Revy yet again. That last one wound up being what got him killed, as while she still had absolutely no intention of fighting him, she was all too happy to turn him over to Ginji, who had every reason to go after him and wound up killing him swiftly and brutally.
• Bleach: Loly Aivirrne. "Let's beat up the human girl our boss specifically told us to not hurt as she is useful to "the plan", for no reason other than we're jealous!"
• Chainsaw Man:
  • Katana Man managed to be outsmarted by Idiot Hero Denji of all people. Unlike the other Devil hybrids, he was The Brute who lacked ingenuity and simply relied on the raw power of his Devil form to win fights. Not only is he strategicially incompetent but he's just plain stupid, considering his hypocritical motivations and general lack of planning. Not much good can be said about a lifelong Yakuza (with superpowers) who's so bad at fighting that he lost to an illiterate teenager with no arms.
  • His grandfather who he sought to avenge was even worse. Not only does he betray Denji when his debt to them isn't even halfway paid off yet, but he and his cronies apparently weren't aware that they would be reduced to mindless walking corpses when they made a contract with the Zombie Devil.
• The buffoonish Genma of Darker than Black has a scene where he uses his Instant Armor powers to dismantle a truck and then amuses himself by beating up the protagonist while transformed into a human mech. This wasn't the brightest idea for two reasons: first, the protagonist was interested in the MacGuffin in one of the trucks, and Genma showed him which one was the decoy; second, when the protagonist starts escaping, Genma's first reaction is to get in the truck to pursue him, but then he does an Oh, Crap! when he remembers he just disassembled his mode of transportation.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Frieza simply cannot resist an opportunity to Kick the Dog or toy with his enemies no matter what. This bites him in the ass when he collects all the Dragon Balls but doesn't know how to summon the dragon to wish for immortality, and all but three Namekians who could tell him how have been killed under his orders. The pinnacle of this comes at the end of the fight with Goku, where Goku decides to spare a just barely Not Quite Dead Frieza by channeling over a small amount of his own energy, enough to let Frieza maybe escape the about-to-explode planet. Frieza promptly tries to use this power to kill Goku—despite the fact that Goku clearly has a lot of power left over, and Frieza couldn't really do much to him even before being bisected. Goku responds by returning Frieza's blast with one of his own, which utterly overwhelms Frieza's attack, while calling him a fool.
  • This is taken up to eleven in Dragon Ball Super, where Frieza goes out of his way to hurt Goku's friends right in front of him and put a bounty on Krillin's head since he knows that killing him would cause Goku great pain. This is despite knowing exactly what happened the last time he pushed Goku to his breaking point. Luckily for Frieza, Goku maintained his cool even after he murdered Piccolo. And then there's him killing Paragus in order to make Broly angry enough to defeat Goku in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
  • Babidi has a very bad habit of killing anyone he thinks he doesn't need anymore. This leads to him killing Spopovich and Yamu when they succeeded in their mission to collect energy. When he learns that they managed to gather enough energy to fill Majin Buu up by half, he has no clue how they did it since he killed them. He also gleefully allows Buu to fight and eat Dabura when he tries to warn him that Buu wouldn't remain loyal and will eventually kill him. To top it all off, he constantly demeans and threatens to reseal Buu, despite having no other protection since he no longer has Dabura around. It leads to his well-earned demise when Buu finally gets sick of taking his bullshit and crushes his skull. It's strongly implied he only lived that long because Buu is smart enough to know rebelling openly would get him resealed but not quite smart enough to figure out how to prevent this. Once Goku points out how much stronger and faster Buu is, "Bye bye Babidi!"
  • Anime-only character Mr. Shu already had successfully prevented Chi Chi from finding out about his sadistic acts towards her son Gohan while acting as a strict teacher by making himself out as the victim and Gohan supposedly the perpetrator when the latter decides to fight back. But rather than continue capitalizing on this, immediately afterward, he decides to insult Goku — Chi Chi's husband, mind you — mocking him as a failure and how he never acts like a father to them. He also decides to whip Gohan right in front of his mother, which ended up making him obviously the guilty one. No mother would want anyone who insults their family like that to stick around, and that includes Chi Chi, who promptly drives him out of her house and tells him to never come back again.
• Elfen Lied has this as a hat for the Diclonii, though it's unclear how much is the result of instinctive behavior and the result of terrified humans making their lives a living hell. Lucy's personality born from instincts and the Diclonii who chose to be evil qualify, as they seek to spread the DNA to cause more of them to born, and to Kill All Humans. The "stupid" part comes from the fact that aside from Lucy, Diclonii are incapable of reproducing, so if they actually succeeded in replacing humanity, it would only lead to their extinction.
• Fairy Tail: During the Nirvana arc, Cobra almost killed Natsu after their battle, despite his injuries, and was set to deliver a fatal blow then and there. And yet Brain still pulled a You Have Failed Me on him, even though he didn't fail, apparently just because he didn't succeed well enough against a "real" Dragon Slayer. Granted, Brain made it clear he intended to brainwash Natsu to his side, but that was nothing that couldn't have been accomplished just by telling Cobra "hey, stop". Mentally gloating about how Cobra and the rest of Oracion Seis were just pawns to him didn't help matters either, and seven years later, Cobra paid him fatally back after he got them all out of prison, with the rest of the guild saying "good riddance".
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]: Caster's first Master, Atrum Galliasta, brags about his alchemy workshop where he sacrifices several kidnapped girls to create magic crystals. Caster points out how inefficient and wasteful this is, demonstrates she can create much larger and more powerful crystals at will and requests that he close down the workshop and release the prisoners. He instead beats her up and mocks her, repeatedly calling her a witch (her Berserk Button). Although he was smart enough to use a Command Spell to order her not to kill him, she simply used her Rule Breaker on herself to undo their contract, then she killed him.
  • Fate/Apocrypha: Astolfo/Rider of Black's initial master, Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillenia, is not just extremely vile, but she's also incredibly stupid. She's only in the Holy Grail War to satisfy her lust on molesting her Servant and violating his honor for nothing but sheer sadism. She rarely to never discusses strategies with her fellow Yggdmillenia family members to improve their chances to win the Holy Grail, she's deliberately keeping her own Command Spells solely to force Astolfo to do a lot of sadism based on her own anger rather than doing something to give the Black faction an advantage. Even stupider, she's doing it in the middle of an open field when no faction has been declared a winner, allowing Mordred (Saber of Red), who doesn't even have a Presence Concealment, to sneak behind her and lop off her head.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, both Lust and Envy fall into this, loving to inflict pain so much that they can't resist "twisting the knife" and antagonizing the heroes, even when it is foolish to do so. This backfires on both of them when they do it to Mustang; while he kills Lust as cleanly as he can, he makes Envy suffer so much that they're running and begging for their life before he's done with it.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: In a maddened fit, Tassilo Vago shoots Maria Pia Armonia in front of Uso, even though her being his hostage was the only thing keeping Uso from killing him. The action is so pointlessly evil that after he kills Tassilo, Uso is left in a Heroic BSoD.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Muruta Azrael doesn't dip into this until his rather terrifying Villainous Breakdown sets in, which begins after the second use of the GENESIS decimates a huge majority of the Earth Alliance Forces. After that, he goes from trying to destroy the GENESIS and keep it from shooting Earth to demanding his forces to fire nukes at the PLANT colonies instead, willing to take ZAFT with him if it means he can satisfy his hateful prejudice towards Coordinators. This is a good one of many reasons that leads Natarle to turn against him.
  • Azrael's successor, Lord Djibril from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, is even worse in his regard, to the point where it's one of his defining traits. He's awful at keeping his racist, hateful impulses in check, and his usual response to a merely perceived threat or betrayal is to apply force. He winds up causing more damage to his own cause this way.
  • Big Bad Ribbons Allmark in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 blows up his own allies, and replaces them with worthless kamikaze machines that are a complete waste of technology and time, and seem to serve no purpose other to make him look even eviler for using such weapons. Most of the atrocities his puppets committed early in the second season, including blowing up a country or two, were committed for no solid reason other than to show how much of a bastard he was.
  • Iok Kujan of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans pretty much excels at this. His standout examples include ignoring McGillis's warnings about a Mobile Armor and deliberately awakening it, which leads to his own men dying, and using weapons of mass destruction on a fleet of women and children who were already trying to surrender to him. It should be no surprise that even his own allies find him distasteful.
• Zorin Blitz in Hellsing, a brute who put so much effort into being a vicious sadist that she tried to target and destroy the Hellsing HQ headfirst without reinforcements (believing that her Vanguard alone can handle the job) despite being explicitly told not to do so until the regular forces meet up with her's as Seras and Integra are untested variables and thus deserve the same scrutiny as Alucard, and spent her time toying with Seras as opposed to outright killing her off and then gloating after having killed Pip right in front of a grieving Seras, failing to stop her from drinking his blood and becoming a full-fledged vampire and subsequently obliterating what remains of her forces. When she's called out on her disobedience by the Major via Schrodinger, he chooses to let Seras eviscerate her, not even giving her a dignified death with a suicide chip activation, for being such a moron.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio Brando zigzags this trope. At first, he wisely makes the decision to stop antagonizing Jonathan and instead pretends to turn over a new leaf to lull him into a false sense of security. However, as a young adult, he poisons George in order to get his inheritance faster, but with the same exact poison he used on his father, leading to Jonathan connecting the dots and exposing him. This also comes off as unnecessary and For the Evulz due to the fact that Dio is already doing great in studying law, could have waited for George to die of natural causes, and could have used George's continued support while he was still alive. However, his actions do lead to him becoming a powerful Stand-wielding vampire due to his crazy luck.
  • Stardust Crusaders: Two words: STEELY. DAN. He has one of the most versatile and inapproachable Stands in the series in Lovers, taking over Joseph's body so that any pain done to Dan is transferred to him, essentially taking him hostage. Dan could have ended Part 3 right then and there, but he's so overly sadistic and impractical with his powers that he wastes time bullying Jotaro and making him do humiliating tasks, like making him polish his shoes with his tongue or stealing from a jewelry store. By the time the heroes get Lovers out of Joseph, it's too little, too late for Dan to regain any sort of advantage, and he ends up begging Jotaro for mercy. Jotaro doesn't oblige.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Keicho Nijimura is looking for someone with a Stand power that can Mercy Kill his father, who's been reduced to a grotesque and nearly mindless shell of a man, but he goes about it in the stupidest way possible. After getting the Stand Arrow and a bow to fire it, he goes about shooting random citizens of Morioh, but there are two problems with that. The first is that if the target doesn't have the potential to develop a Stand, the Arrow will kill them, and the second is that there's no guarantee that if the person survives and gains a Stand power, they can or will help Keicho. As a result, Keicho ends up killing several people and creating several of the enemies of the week, one of whom ends up killing him. Worst of all, the Stand Arrow can guide its user to potential targets, a feature that Yoshihiro Kira, a man with fewer scruples than Keicho but vastly more intelligence, uses to create foes to slow Josuke and the other heroes down without any needless casualties.
  • Golden Wind: Diavolo's insane paranoia and obsession with absolutely nobody knowing anything about him leads him to direct Team Bucciarati to bring his newly discovered daughter to him. While this is pragmatic (as his hit squad had gone rogue and was looking for her), his hit squad had gone rogue because he'd denied them a pay raise and then had two members very brutally killed for trying to find info on him. Then he just had to kidnap Trish from Bruno literally moments before he would've delivered her normally, and in the process driving Bruno to fight back and go rogue, bringing Team Bucciarati with him.
• Aoi Mibuomi in Kakegurui Twin was the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing secondary antagonist. His entire goal was to recruit Mary for his plan to take over the Absurdly Powerful Student Council, but it ends up falling apart when he reveals his sociopathic nature and verbally abuses his fiancee for losing a gamble to her and is surprised when Mary rejects his offer upon seeing this.
• Lady!!: Every year, Saint Patrick's school gives away the prestigous Lady's Crest award to the student that brings the school the most honour. Mary Waverly, who hates Lynn because she blames her for her mother's marriage to Lynn's father falling through, does her best to keep Lynn from winning it. Mary also desperately wants to win the Crest herself, so she decides to sabotage everyone else, including Vivian Spencer, aka the only other person skilled enough to outdo Lynn in horse-racing. When Vivian finds out, she is not pleased and encourages Lynn to go through with the race, and she wins the Crest.
• Duke Otho von Braunschweig from Legend of the Galactic Heroes is an example when you put together a corrupt nobility with a futuristic military. An example? When a protest breaks out on one of his planets, Westerland, he immediately declares the order to nuke the whole planet of 2 million people to death, rendering it uninhabitable. Luckily, Oberstein has the whole thing recorded and broadcasts it to the whole Empire. Even soldiers once loyal to him immediately abandon him, resulting in his eventual death by being force-fed poisoned wine and the downfall of the Lippstadt League. What further increases his stupidity is that he's advised by Ansbach to provide a more proper punishment. His justification is that since it's his planet, he has the right to do it. His reckless actions are even lampshaded by the same adviser, stating how the Goldenbaum dynasty can't survive when it cuts itself apart.
• In My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Catarina Claes was this in the original game. She repeatedly bullied Maria Campbell, the original game's protagonist, for getting close to Catarina's fiance or adoptive brother, depending on the route, even though she has nothing to gain from it. In fact, Catarina's bullying Maria results in her getting exiled in Geordo or Keith's good endings, while her trying to murder Maria gets her killed in their bad endings. When Catarina regains her Past-Life Memories as someone who played the game and realizes what's in store for her, she immediately goes to great lengths to avoid this, even though all she needed to do was not be so pointlessly cruel.
• Naruto:
  • Orochimaru tends to pick up the Villain Ball because of this trope. Case in point: he manages to persuade the Kazekage to help him invade Konoha… and then randomly decides to kill him anyway. Fast forward a couple of arcs later and, as a result of Orochimaru's treachery, the Sand Siblings end up killing three of the Sound Five, who at the time were tasked with delivering Sasuke to him. This ensures that he can't make it in time before Orochimaru is forced to Body Surf into one of his spares, delaying his plans for another three years.
  • Hidan is a bloodthirsty, impulsive idiot whose combination of immortality and Kakuzu's ability to bail him out of compromising situations gives him free rein to indulge in his love of overly long and complicated Ritual Magic that is incredibly impractical for anything other than making people die as painfully as possible, as well as his other love of long-winded shit-talking and boasting before he actually even gets to the killing part. A living, breathing example of For the Evulz, Hidan does a great job at demonstrating just how much he relies on Kakuzu to save him from himself, as each and every time that Kakuzu wasn't directly involved in a fight he started, he got his ass whooped and was rendered helpless until Kakuzu intervened and pieced him back together.
  • Danzo does this as well. We find out he's behind Kabuto's tragic backstory — Kabuto's adoptive mother was one of Danzo's best spies. Kabuto offered to act as his spy as well. Danzo used his safety to guarantee the mother's loyalty… while subtly altering the photographs he sent her of Kabuto so when she met her son as an adult, she didn't recognize him. Why didn't he want her to recognize him? Danzo hoped they'd kill each other because they were too knowledgeable as spies. Keep in mind that both were still totally loyal at this point and he had leverage on Kabuto's mother. Instead, he just set off Kabuto's Start of Darkness. So, in the end, he's out two spies and one has turned on the village. Danzo's downfall was agreeing to spare Sasuke as Itachi would tell him the truth of Danzo's betrayal in exterminating the Uchiha and will come to kill him, Danzo thought he could use Karin as hostage to spare his life but Sasuke cares more for his revenge than her life and shot a energy shot at the two of them, at the end he never acomplished his goal of being hokage when he was the closest, he never deserved that position for his lies and greed
  • Madara Uchiha from start to finish was a global threat as he thought ninjas had to use brute force to make his people thrive, he never admitted his own flaws and he thought of compassion and unity as weakness. He manitpulated Obito Uchiha in becoming a terrorist telling him his team left him to die and he was taking care of him, actually he planned in killing his crush Rin to make him vulnerable to his lies. He used genjutsu on Kurama to make him attack other villages which fueled more Kurama's hatred for humans, and when Obito also used Kurama to attack Konoha, Danzo blamed all the Uchiha and conspired to kill them to save the village. The stupidest idea Madara had was summoning the ten tails beast to make a Tsukuyomi tree that will wrap all the people and animals in the world in cocoons and make them sleep in the utopian lives they want, but he didn't know that the Otsutsuki beings were using the tree to steal all the chakra in the world to expand their immortality and all life in the planet will be extinct if they succeeded
  • Obito Uchiha despite being manipulated by Madara's lies, has a great amount of fault in the global conflict against the villages, the Akatsuki and the Tsukuyomi tree, he could've avoided so much death and destruction if he reflected that Rin, Kakashi and Minato didn't abandoned him on purpose and that Madara was lying about helping him, at the end he got some redemption when he betrayed Madara and helped in sealing Kaguya
• One Piece:
  • Bellamy was little more than a sociopathic bully who terrorized an entire town with his crew with no real reason or goal; he just wanted to push his weight around and be as much of a dick as possible. Of course, he was also operating under the flag of the Warlord of the Sea Donquixote Doflamingo, who was not pleased to find out that he was being associated with Bellamy's idiocy, which led to Bellamy getting stabbed and kicked out of Doflamingo's gang. He got much better over the Timeskip after he Took a Level in Badass and Took a Level in Kindness, to the point Luffy actually considered him a friend and went to town on Donflamingo after the Warlord played Bellamy for a fool and forced him to fight Luffy to the death.
  • Don Krieg is one of the premiere examples of the series. Most of his arc would have never occurred if he hadn't decided to terrorize the staff of the Baratie just to be a dick, and he probably would have kept far more of his crew if he hadn't decided to continue to go after Mihawk just to save his wounded pride even after it was made very clear that Mihawk was light years above him.
  • Caesar Clown embezzles research funds from Big Mom of all people, trusting in his indirect connection to Kaido through Doflamingo to keep him safe. Big Mom is one of the Four Emperors and has a reputation for being inventively gruesome to people who defy her. When Doflamingo goes down, Caesar winds up having to produce the gigantification serum she wanted in two weeks… or else get turned into candy by Perospero's Lick-Lick fruit powers.
  • Jack, a commander under the pirate Emperor Kaido, one of the most powerful men in the world, possesses both an insatiable bloodlust and extreme confidence in his (admittedly impressive) strength that leads him to make many costly decisions that could have been mitigated or avoided entirely if he utilized a little something called "tact":
    • Introduced in the Zou arc, he comes to Mokomo Dukedom, the country on Zou, looking for a specific individual their info said would be there. The residents state outright that they don't know the person he's asking for, but are willing to cooperate with his search in order to avoid trouble. Jack responds by siccing his underlings on them, destroying the country, and torturing them for information that, by all indications, they did not have. In truth, they did know where to find who Jack was looking for, but were determined not to give it up, but Jack never discovered that nor had any hint to it.
    • He goes on to attempt to bail out a newly-arrested Donquixote Doflamingo even after being informed that the odds are objectively hopeless, since Doflamingo's transport fleet is guarded by people who could give his boss trouble, let alone him, and gets beaten to a bloody pulp for his trouble, though he gets away alive.
    • Jack finishes by attempting to kill Zunisha, the gigantic (think particularly huge Turtle Island) elephant for which Zou gets its name, and a single sweep of its trunk later, he loses his ship and only survives dropping into the ocean because he's a fishman, while still utterly paralyzed at the bottom because he's a Devil Fruit user.
    • Ironically enough, the Wano arc shows he's also capable of playing Only Sane Man to Kaido… at least, when Kaido is drunk.
• Overlord (2012): Due to them being literally created to be or by players who were role-playing Card Carrying Villains back in YGGDRASIL, most of the Floor Guardians will default to just murdering everyone unless Ainz gives them very precise and unambiguous instructions not to. Apparently they aren't as capable of learning as he thinks because he makes it very clear that he wants to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but they still cause massacres the moment he takes his eyes off of them. Even Sebas gets in on this in a way by picking a fight with the criminal underground of the kingdom and slaughtering even helpless surrendering mooks, though that's more Good Is Not Nice in his case. The main reason this hasn't really backfired on Nazarick is because they're so much higher-leveled and stronger than just about anything in the New World nothing actually can stop them nor does it really bite them in the ass (since the slaughtering tends to convince the survivors/onlookers to just give up).
• Pokémon: The Series: The Team Rocket trio is so obsessed with stealing valuable Pokémon that they haven't taken the time to even think about Meowth. A Pokémon that speaks human language fluently could be the single most valuable and useful Pokémon in existence: He could solve countless problems between humans and Pokémon, and could give priceless insight on the behavior and mental abilities of every Pokémon to have ever lived (which, in a world with a culture so heavily ingrained with said creatures, would be a big deal). They would go down in history and be amongst the richest people on the planet if only they put Meowth to proper use instead of blindly chasing some kid and his Pikachu.
  • This even gets lampshaded at one point; in Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, a venture as The Mole by Meowth nearly turns into a legitimate Heel–Face Turn after the heroes point out Meowth's talents could easily make him a TV celebrity. However, just on the way to finding some media connections, the heroes start their usual beatdown on Jessie and James, and he just doesn't have the heart to turn his back on them. However in Pokémon Journeys: The Series, the three ended up producing a popular podcast.
  • This include the movie villains that many of them are greedy oportunists that want to exploit the pokemon or steal an ancient and powerful artifact for personal gain, but due to their callousness to the lives of pokemon and nature and their wrecklessness in using those artifacts as weapons, they are causing deadly catastrophies which Ash later has to team up with the legendary pokemon of the week to fix their mess, some which nearly kills the legendary pokemon and would make repremendable harm to the environment with their lack of presence. Some of those villains are the pokemons themselves, Palkia and Dialga almost destroy the universe for a feud
  • In fact, James and Jessie would probably succeed if they just quit Team Rocket altogether. They're ludicrously successful whenever they try a non-evil job or the brief times they call a truce with Ash for one reason or another, but they never learn.
  • Moreover, you'd think the rest of the Team Rocket organization would stop giving the bumbling trio so many exotic, expensive gadgets after maybe the fiftieth time they proved too incompetent to catch any valuable Pokémon with them (although it's implied it may be money from James' estate since he's the son of apparently the richest people in the world).
• The Rising of the Shield Hero: Princess Malty Melromarc is pretty much the human personification of this trope. A Compulsive Liar with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and a bad habit of kicking the dog either out of petty spite or for the fun of it, Malty tends to ruin the lives of anyone she comes in contact with, even when this ends up backfiring in the long run. A truly smart villain would Know When to Fold 'Em after suffering from the humiliating punishment of having their name legally changed to Bitch after their lies are exposed, but Malty still continues to backstab and ruin other people just to get the last laugh, even if some of those people were her allies. Naturally, this makes her hated by everyone who knows her, and by the time she's foiled in her schemes a second and third time and about to receive her punishment, nobody is willing to come to her aid no matter how much she begs since they all know her true nature.
• Sword Art Online:
  • PoH is far too sadistic and bloodthirsty for his own good and simply can't resist "twisting the knife" or opportunities to Kick the Dog, actively antagonizing Kirito and his friends even when doing so ultimately a not good idea. This backfires on him during the Alicization arc, where, after being curb-stomped by a newly-empowered Kirito, he decides to openly mouth off to Kirito that once he logs out of the Underworld, he won't stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he manages to brutally murder them in real life; in response, Kirito traps him in a tree and leaves him to rot in Underworld, swearing that he will never log out from Underworld.
  • Quinella of the Alicization arc is an utter Control Freak, which bites her in the ass when it's revealed that humanity is doomed because she refuses to allow the existence of any military force that isn't under her complete control. This realization is what convinces Alice to turn on her in favor of Kirito.
• Voltes V: Emperor Zambajil of Planet Boazania could be the poster boy for this trope. He wants his nephew, Prince Heinel, dead because he is the true heir to the throne. Zambojil himself ascended to the throne by knocking Heinel's father out of the game through dirty means, and intends to get rid of Heinel by sending him to command an Alien Invasion against Earth. To his frustration, his nephew is actually quite competent at warfare and just won't die. His hatred for Heinel comes off as irrational since the boy has nothing but respect for his uncle, disavowed his own father and never showed any intent of taking the throne from him. Oh, and Heinel's father, who Zambajil had imprisoned and enslaved? He also happened to the be Boazanian Minister of Science and Technology, and his absence causes the strength of the Boazanian military's weaponry to heavily detoriate. Many a fanfic have also pointed out that since Zambajil has no children of his own, killing Heinel would trigger a Succession Crisis. Heinel also graduated at the top of the Boazanian Institute of Military Sciences and Warfare, is the only one competent enough to lead the Earthern Invasion, is a Master Swordsman and an excellent Humongous Mecha pilot. He would be an extremely useful ally to Zambajil, and had he given him his favour, in the series finale Heinel would have successfully thwarted the Voltes Team and killed Kenichi, thus ensuring Zambajil would be able to keep his rule. Zambajil's biggest obstacle was his own narcissism and inability to view others as equals, and as such, he receives a Karmic Death at the hands of Heinel himself. For bonus points, Zambajil makes all his cronies utter an absurdly long greeting before talking to him, which becomes a tad bit inconvient when Gurul tells him that their planet is potentially under attack by Voltes V. Keep in mind even Heinel doesn't do this, and he's literally named after the form of address "your highness".
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Doing at least one thing that ultimately screws them over and would have easily been avoided had some common sense been applied to the equation seems to be a prerequisite for a Yu-Gi-Oh! bad guy to deserve to be called such:
  • Yami Marik has a few bouts of this, most notably when he sabotages Noah's computer system during the Virtual Nightmare Arc, not seeming to realize that destroying it would kill both Yugi and Kaiba, ruining the most vital part of his master plan: gaining their two Egyptian God Cards. (To make things worse, he laughs like a lunatic while doing it.)
  • The regular Marik does something very stupid too (which was the biggest reason his Superpowered Evil Side took over in the first place). First, he puts a counterfeit copy of The Winged Dragon of Ra in Rishid/Odion's deck (given the fact that every other minion who tested it died, it really wasn't smart to have such an important minion have one). Rishid is smart, knows that it would likely be dangerous to use it, and would have beaten Jonouchi/Joey without it, but when it seems likely that everyone will figure out that Rishid is acting as Marik's stand-in, Marik orders him to use it in order to cover up Marik's true identity. Rishid complies, and… it turns out Marik really should have listened to Rishid because the real Ra ended up destroying the fake copy along with blasting both the duelists and Jounouchi managed to win when he shouldn't have…
  • Yami Bakura shows this in his duel against Yugi in one of the final episodes of the series. He uses a card which forces Yugi to discard the same number of cards from his deck as the number of monsters that are on the field, and combines this with another card that eliminates his own graveyard, making him immune to the effect and allowing his monsters to remain on the field as phantoms (without the ability to attack or defend, but still counting as monsters) to cause Yugi to lose the duel by completely depleting his deck. It eventually gets to the point where Bakura could win the duel simply by ending his turn without making a single move, something he even points out, but he decides instead that watching Yugi squirm would be more fun and continues the duel. Yugi is left with only one card left in his deck, but it just so happens to be the exact card needed to defeat Yami Bakura's strategy, which costs him the duel.
  • Amon in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. His ace cards are Exodia the Forbidden One and Exodius the Forbidden Lord. The first grants an automatic win if you can get all five pieces in you hand, while the second is almost completely indestructible and immune to all card effects, and grants an automatic win if it attacks five times. But he becomes so Drunk with Power because of them, he challenges Yubel… Completely forgetting that Yubel was the one who gave them to him. You'd think if anyone would've known weaknesses in these cards, they would, and they do. It ends badly for Amon.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Divine deserves special mention here. After having been tricked into revealing he was responsible for the death of Misty's little brother, he mocks his death. While Misty has her Earthbound God (a lizard-demon the size of a skyscraper in plain view) summoned. Cue Divine getting Eaten Alive as payback.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL:
    • Tron has a habit of giving his henchmen who are his sons, by the way cards that are too powerful for them to control, which cause disasters when played. The first example is when he gave IV a Spell Card called Flaming Hell Blessing to use in a duel against Rio Kamishiro; it won the duel for him, but it also caused a raging fire that destroyed the building they were in. Rio was in the hospital for months recovering; IV managed to get out (carrying Rio to safety before she was killed), but not unscathed. The accident left a scar on his face that never healed.
    • Even worse is the card he gave III to use against Yuma, Angolmois. The true effect of this card is to open a portal to the Barian World, which will basically do the same thing that a black hole does. If it works, it will kill everyone, Tron included (and he doesn't even seem to care; he's laughing his head off as he watches the duel). Fortunately, III came to his senses before that happened, and Yuma was able to win the duel before the full effect occurred.
    • Dark ZEXAL is this through and through. A corrupted Astral forces Yuya to perform "Xyz Change - ZEXAL" with him, with Astral being the one who is fully in control of the body, but the dark corruption causes him to go insane. Dark ZEXAL continues to attack Vector's monster over and over again, since Dark ZEXAL's Hope Ray V is equipped with Chimera Cloth which prevents him from getting destroyed by battle and gets his ATK doubled upon the controller receiving battle damage and allows the equipped monster to attack again. Despite how futile it is to keep attacking Vector's Masquerade Magician which always has 100 more ATK than Hope Ray V thanks to the effect of Extra Hundred, Dark ZEXAL is so drunk by power that he doesn't care that he's slowly killing himself.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: When Sora gleefully gloats about invading and decimating the Xyz Dimension, a.k.a. Kurosaki/Shay's homeworld, instead of playing the game like he should, this angers Kurosaki to the point where he almost kills Sora. Note that at this point, Kurosaki has a monster on his field that's the equivalent to a B-52 Bomber!
• YuYu Hakusho: During the Dark Tournament, Elder Toguro could've killed Kuwabara with one attack and the latter wouldn't have even seen it coming. However, like so many other examples on this page, he decides to partake in a bit of sadism first by taunting Kuwabara about the death of Genkai. This angers Kuwabara and gives him the strength boost needed to win the match. Heck, his own team lampshaded that him taunting Kuwabara was completely unnecessary.

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