History Characters / DiscworldVillains

* EvilCounterpart: Is this to Granny Weatherwax.

* FairyGodmother: An evil one who cares less for the well-being of others and more for making things like stories. (Or possibly a godmother like a god''father'' - do as she says and you won't get hurt.)

* HappinessIsMandatory: Lilith turns Genua into a sparkling clean city full of blankly smiling citizens by dint of torture and execution. This ''could'' be read as a TakeThat to Disney World

* NotSoDifferent: In regard to Moist, dancing between this and NotSoSimilar, with the two recognising each other for what they are at a mere glance, and the book's climax being decided in Moist's words by them essentially arm-wrestling over who's the bigger bastard. The crux of the difference is that Moist genuinely does have a conscience of sorts and is appalled by the idea of actually hurting people, having apparently sincerely believed that his style of conning never really hurt anyone (and being horrified when Mr Pump [[BreakingSpeech lays out exactly why this is emphatically not the case]]). Gilt, by contrast, is devoid of any form of conscience.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Leonal is a particularly strange example of this. After spending the entire novel driven to mutilate himself out of guilt and tormented by his sinister wife, he finally [[spoiler: stands up to her, stabbing her to death before committing suicide to escape his madness. It was a prop knife so none of it stuck, but when he happens to die moments later from a slip and fall he soon comes back as a ghost. He's overjoyed at the chance to spend his afterlife haunting the castle, free from his sinister bride and guilty conscience.]]

* PirateParrot: Not actually a pirate, but he dresses like one and keeps a cockatoo called Alphonse, which says "Twelve and a half percent!" repeatedly. [[spoiler:He gives it to Moist after deciding to flee Ankh-Morpork before getting captured by Mr. Pump.]]

* HeelRealization: [[spoiler: Defied. Granny ''attempted'' to invoke this, but Lady Felmet is fully aware of how evil she is and is in fact proud of it]].

* AllCrimesAreEqual: In Lilith's Genua, thieves are beheaded on the first offence (under the logic that while cutting their hands off keeps them from stealing again, cutting their heads off keeps them from ''thinking'' of stealing again).

* AristocratsAreEvil: Somewhere between leaving home and becoming a fairy godmother, she acquired a title.

* EvilIsHammy: [[spoiler:Subverted, to Granny's immense rage. Lily spent her whole life convinced that she was the good sister who was putting the needs of others over her own, and, so convinced of her own martyrdom, thus made herself a very understated and sinister foe. To Granny, who knew for a fact who was the good sister and who was the bad, this is almost a greater sin than any of Lily's actual wrongdoing, because Granny would have at least enjoyed it, making whole [[ChewingTheScenery banquets of her surroundings]] and being bad enough to even top the legendary Black Aliss, who (when in Lily's role) could keep multiple stories going at once in the same place.]]

* GoodWitchVersusBadWitch: [[GoodIsNotNice Granny]] vs. [[LightIsNotGood Lilith]]. The personalities are a bit unusual for the roles they take in this battle, and Lily thinks ''she'' [[WrongGenreSavvy is the good one]].
* HappinessIsMandatory: Lillith turns Genua into a sparkling clean city full of blankly smiling citizens by dint of torture and execution. This ''could'' be read as a TakeThat to Disney World

* EvilIsPetty: Part of being an elf. Just before going to fight Magrat, she alters her appearance to look like the "ideal" Magrat, the one she wishes she looked like (and, apparently, how Verence has always seen her) just to further twist the knife in. Granny takes note as one expert in "professional nastiness" to another.

* KickTheDog: When we first meet him, Salzella appears to be a fairly normal guy, if with a very cynical sense of humor. However, his true colours shine through a bit when he mocks Agnes for her weight behind her back.

* ClassicalMovieVampire: Count von Magpyr pointedly ''doesn't'' look like this. The Old Count ''does''.
* ContractualGenreBlindness: They consciously avoided this and took care to eliminate their weaknesses, but their attempts backfired, see above.

* FullyEmbracedFiend: The Old Count. When the Count [[spoiler:tells the town of Escrow that the Old Count's bodycount was way worse than his, the villagers point out that the Old Count, while a monster, was unapologetic about it and never expected them to be grateful for 'only' going so far like the Count does.]]

* NobleDemon: The Count views himself as this, [[WrongGenreSavvy but he's horribly wrong]].

** The Old Count inverts this and reminisces about some of the people who have killed ''him'' in front of their descendants.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Despite his polite facade, he's an EvilUncle to the core.

* VisionaryVillain: He has the aim of uniting the various duchies and small kingdoms of the Sto Plains into one large, single kingdom that lasts for a hundred years. [[spoiler:When he dies, Keli is given this task to ensure the timeline remains more or less on course]].

* BewareTheSillyOnes: He has very childish mannerisms and his frustration with his underlings can be comical...but he's also a complete psychopath who will kill anyone he feels like the moment he no longer needs them and nearly becomes a RealityWarper.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Started out as an orphan taken in by the Assassin's Guild. He then became a murderous psychopath with an extremely high bodycount and ultimately comes ''very'' close to becoming a RealityWarper and existencial threat to the world itself.

* RealityWarper: What Teatime would've become had his plan succeeded: by being able to control what every child on the planet believes, Discworld's belief shaping reality rule would allow him to reshape it however he pleases.

* EvilIsPetty: A lot of their grievances, while driven by their being at the bottom of the Ankh-Morpork hierarchy, are less about "oppression" and more frustration that other people are better off than they are. For one, Brother Watchtower has the Dragon incinerate his brother-in-law's cart out of spite, while Brother Doorkeeper targets a vegetable seller for irritating him. This is, in fact, entirely the reason Wonse recruited them - he wanted easily-led idiots with "stomachs full of bile" who could be talked into doing what he said.

* ImperfectRitual: The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night are trying to summon a dragon, and the cult leader orders the brethren to find magical objects to sacrifice. They come up with really low grade magical junk, like a still-fizzing letter from a bar and an amulet the SnakeOilSalesman swore was magical (though, oddly enough, for once he seemed to be telling the truth). It doesn't seem to cause any problems except that they can only summon the dragon for a few seconds at a time before the magic runs out.

** To most people in Uberwald, since he's a nigh unkillable sadistic psychopath rendered even harder to actually hurt by the fact that silver isn't mined in Uberwald, leaving only fire as a weakness. Even his own mother, who thinks he's a thick sack of potatoes, is too scared to assert herself.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Behind the sometimes-polite and cheerful facade is a sadistic murderer who takes pride in hurting others and hunting people like sport. Best shown when he pretends to be sporting with Vimes in offering him a chance to win four hundred crowns, then quickly shows his angry side when Vimes brings up Angua.

* GroinAttack: From Gaspode. Until he's killed, it's the one thing that actually seems to hurt him/slow him down - or at least, make him jump straight up.

* ShapeshifterModeLock: Apparently a common birth defect in werewolves. Angua had a human-shaped sister and a wolf-shaped brother; Wolfgang killed the former and chased off the latter.

* FauxAffablyEvil: The polite and chummy facade is surprisingly convincing, right until he stabs you - or unless you make sure to have a good look in his eyes...

* TheDreaded: Much like Vorbis, he commands the obediance of a gang of thugs and torturers by scaring the crap out of them. Even the Ankh-Morpork army know better than to question Swing or his thugs. [[spoiler:Carcer is still able to exploit this even after Swing's death]].

* GreaterScopeVillain: Technically this to Carcer - while Carcer's the primary antagonist of the book, Swing is one of the biggest reasons, if not ''the'' biggest, why past!Ankh-Morpork is such a shit place to live. Nevertheless, he mostly stays resigned to the background at least to begin with.

** On the other hand, he's also smart enough to recognise the sheer threat that Vimes-as-Keel potentially presents, pointing out that in about a ''week'', Vimes went FromNobodyToNightmare. At first, he was a new Watch Sergeant, then he gained the absolute loyalty of the City Watch and a fair chunk of the Regiments, took over a quarter of the city, neatly cut off the rest of it from its main supply lines, comfortably thwarted every attempt to dislodge him including with actual ''siege engines'', and razed the Particulars to the ground. And he could just as easily turn on Snapcase (and would), so Snapcase does the practical thing and tries to have him discreetly killed. His colleagues are appalled at his behaviour, but none of them suggest his reasoning is ''wrong''.

* FantasticRacism: He seemed to view the goblins as cheap and exploitable labour.

* SmallNameBigEgo: Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin, big time. They believe they are absolutely the latest, greatest thing in crime and that Ankh-Morpork's underworld is full of lily-livered amateurs. They never catch on that Ankh-Morpork is to evil and corruption what guns are to bullets and the only reason the city's criminals no longer try to upset the status quo is that is they're up against two of the most fearsome forces on the Disc: Vetinari's intelligence and [[TheFettered Sam Vimes's dedication to the law]].

* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: After he figures out the plot against the Patrician, William gives his father some of the jewels taken from Mr. Pin, essentially repaying the cost of raising him and buying himself out of the family, but Lord de Worde tells him to keep it because William is [[NotSoDifferentRemark "most]] ''[[VillainRespect certainly]]'' [[NotSoDifferentRemark a de Worde"]].

* VillainRespect: A very brief one, but he and Vetinari both play Thud and share a glance when Horsefry, one of Gilt's stupider associates, dismisses it on the grounds that "the dwarfs always win" (when one Thud expert in the next book remarks that among the best players, the feeling is that the balance is actually marginally in favour of the trolls), one that the narrative sums up as, "I may hate you and your personal philosophy to a depth not previously believed possible, but I will at least give you the credit of not being Crispin Horsefry."

* IdiotBall: Gryle grabs it with both hands [[spoiler:during the assassination attempt on Moist]]. First of all he eats seven pigeons on the way there and gives himself food poisoning. Despite presumably living in a city overrun with pigeons for some time, he's apparently forgotten how to curb that instinct. Worse, he then blatantly announces his presence to Stanley for absolutely no reason, giving Stanley time to react and hit him with a sack of pins. Both these decisions are jarringly out of character, as acting the same way on any of his numerous other missions would almost certainly have gotten him killed.

* TheRedBaron: Remembered as "Mad" or "Psychoneurotic" Lord Snapcase.

* UncannyValley: In-universe, there's something unspeakably ''off'' about him that gives other wizards, who habitually study Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, a case of the Screaming Willies. [[spoiler:And that's before the Things get their tentacles into him.]]

* TheDreaded: Even the Ankh-Morpork army know better than to question Swing or his thugs. [[spoiler:Carcer is still able to exploit this even after Swing's death]].

* SmugSnake: For all his plotting and smug sense of superiority, he is quickly reduced to ranting and raving when his plans begin to come undone. [[spoiler: Even when he manages to oust Rhys Rhysson while the Low King is away in Ankh-Morpork in ''Literature/RaisingSteam'', the strain of trying to hold his powerbase together while Rhys is speeding along on Iron Girder back to Uberwald to reclaim his throne sends Ardent into near hysterics.]]

* VileVillainSaccharineShow: The Discworld series isn't ''all'' laughs, but Swing is by far one of the reasons that ''Night Watch'' is among its darkest stories, and he is never played for laughs, [[spoiler:at least before his death]].

* ShadowArchetype: He provides a good idea of what Vimes might be if it let his nihilism and berserker tendencies take over.

* BoomerangBigot: [[spoiler:Ideas Taster Dee. Dee hates the fact that there are dwarfs who are openly female. The primary reason is that Dee is jealous ''they'' could do it while ''she'' can't]].

** To Angua, most prominently, to the point where she uses him as an example of why she's so flighty and so scared of going bad, and Vimes compares the two of them, noting that they're poised the exact same way... except that Angua's default is 'flight', and Wolfgang's is quite different. He is quite literally what she would be if she lost her conscience.

One of the two villains of ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'', Wolfgang served as the more obvious of the two {{Big Bad}}s. He is a dangerous werewolf, and Angua's brother.

* ImpoverishedPatrician: He is the thirty-seventh Lord d'Eath and has to borrow money to pay for even a simple funeral for his father. His primary motivation is rage over these circumstances, and thus it's this trope itself that gets the plot going.

* RightfulKingReturns: Much like Wonse before him, though unlike Wonse, Edward is sincere in his belief and actually had found the "rightful" king.

* BalefulPolymorph: [[spoiler: Lily turning the footmen, who we spent a while getting to know and sympathize with, into beetles. And stepping on them.]]

* TheAce: Deconstructed. He's excellent at everything he attempts, but only because his civilisation is so stagnant that the standards for almost every activity have declined hugely.

* {{Corpsing}}: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it subversion towards the end, when [[spoiler: Andre, the Cable Street Particular who'd been investigating the goings-on at the opera house, mentions that Salzella's cooling body needs to be dealt with]].

* HorrifyingTheHorror: He's even able to make an Igor feel uneasy, which says a lot.

* KnifeNut: Carcer is ''never'' unarmed.

* BigEater: Eats seven pigeons in one night, which comes back to bite him later.