History ForTheEvulz / Literature

* In L. Don's ''Literature/DrawingAVeil'', Ellie and Amina are walking to school and find a bird's nest with a chick in it lying on the ground. While Ellie ponders how to save it, Amina simply steps on it and grounds it beneath her boot. When a shocked Ellie asks her why she killed it, Amina just smiles.

* Croup and Vandemar from ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}}'' appear to have this motivation. They kill people horribly on a professional basis and are quite proud of this. For recreation, they kill people even more horribly. Croup also eats works of art.

* As recounted in his ''Literature/{{Confessions}}'', a young Augustine and his friends stole pears from a stranger's property and threw the pears away. They didn't need or use the pears, they had nothing against the pear, nor did they have any ideological reason to do so. The only reason they did it was for the sake of doing what was not allowed.

* In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', a member of the Inner Party admits that unlike the older totalitarian movements of the early 20th century such as the Nazis and Communists, who still clothed their rhetoric as fighting for a utopian cause, the Party of Oceania is openly nihilistic and completely unapologetic that it isn't looking forward to improving the world, only seeking [[DespotismJustifiesTheMeans power for the sake of power]], [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans oppression for the sake of oppression]]. Notably, this is the same reason why the nameless prole woman sings: just for the sake of singing.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', the villain has a slave who is magically compelled to obey him. One would assume that poor slave wants to break free and do a HeelFaceTurn, but no, apparently it is the other way round and the villain keeps the sadistic urges of the slave in check, who would torture random people for the evulz, while the villain has a more thought-out plan.

* Mord's motivations for destroying the protagonists' lives in ''Literature/NjalsSaga'' are opaque at best. Granted, Icelandic Sagas never discuss a character's motivations directly, but in Mord's case, they're particularly obscure. Gunnar is is own kinsman - Mord's mother even owed him a significant favour - and Njal's family never did anything to Mord except make him pay their legal bills in the suit that resulted from Gunnar's death. Certainly nothing to justify the cold, methodical way in which he destroys them, along with various patsies and collateral damage on the way.

-->'''Sheriff Ed Tom Bell''': "He'd killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasn't no passion to it. He'd been datin' this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin' to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was goin' to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't."

* The protagonist of ''Literature/TheBlackCat'' starts hurting people and animals around him For the Evulz or, as he himself puts it, in the "spirit of [[BoldInflation PERVERSENESS]]". Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's definition of 'perverseness' in this context is an odd supposed psychological motive (but perhaps related to negative suggestion) that goes a step further than For the Evulz, inspiring not just morally wrong acts harmful to others, but any kind of irrational and wrong acts even just harmful to oneself; inspiring one to do anything they shouldn't just because they know they shouldn't. The protagonist [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals hangs his pet cat]] ''because'' he knows that it's just about the worst thing he could possibly do.

-->''There seemed to be little he could do at this point. Except, of course, destroy Endor -- he could do that. It was a small act, a token really -- to incinerate something green and living, gratuitously, meanly, toward no end but that of wanton destruction. A small act, but deliciously satisfying.''

** King's novel ''The Milkman'' was [[Main/OrphanedSeries never finished]], so the two stories culled from it in ''Literature/SkeletonCrew'' stand as an example of this. No explanation is provided as to why Spike Milligan ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan not this one]]) does what he does, and so we have to settle for the simplest explanation: He just likes hurting and killing people.

* Nearly every villain in every Creator/DeanKoontz book ever written. Some notable examples: Edgler Vess from ''Intensity'' is a self-proclaimed homicidal adventurer who loves to kill just for the sheer intensity of it, and Vassago from ''Literature/{{Hideaway}}'' kills people so that he can be reincarnated as one of the demon princes in Hell (it's not clarified what he would gain from it).
* Appears and is {{discussed|trope}} several times in Creator/CSLewis's works:
** In ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'', {{Satan}} himself is portrayed as this. While he has real (and deeply [[OmnicidalManiac malicious]]) ambitions, when he can't move directly toward them, he's just as happy torturing small animals or tearing up the turf, so long as he can hurt something. When Venus' Eve is around, he's eloquent, logical, and persuasive, but when she's not, one of his favorite pastimes can be summed up by this exchange: "Ransom. Ransom. ''Ransom''. Ransom." "What?" "Nothing. ... Ransom."
** {{Averted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters''. The preface to later editions notes avoidance of "the absurd fancy that devils are engaged in the disinterested pursuit of something called Evil (the capital is essential). Mine have no use for any such turnip ghost. Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. The first is fear of punishment... Their second motive is a kind of hunger." Averted again inside the letters themselves, which deal with the attempts by a devil to tempt a man to damnation from within C.S. Lewis' own eschatology. Screwtape, a senior devil, advises his junior Wormwood that big, bad, horrible evil is not the best option. He wants the petty, small, low-grade denial of Grace and Salvation - just enough to damn a man, but not enough to make him willful and defiant enough to repent.
--->''"It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."''
** In ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis offers a theological {{Deconstruction}} of the trope: It is possible to do good simply for the sake of doing what is right, but nobody does evil simply for the sake of doing what is wrong; evil deeds are merely the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. Even sadists don't commit cruel acts just because they are bad, but because they gain pleasure from them; but seeking pleasure is not bad in and of itself, only the way they get it is bad. "Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness."
* Organizations with essentially the same motives as ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'''s Party are a recurring element in the satirical horror novels of Creator/BentleyLittle. ''The Store'' is about a UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}}-esque retail chain that goes far out of its way to be as oppressive and cause as much unnecessary suffering as it can; ''The Association'' is about a homeowner's association that does the same; ''The Policy'' is about an insurance company that does the same.

* The protagonists of Creator/MarquisDeSade's ''Literature/The120DaysOfSodom'', as well as many of the men in the prostitutes' stories, like to rape, torture, murder, financially ruin, and otherwise harm innocent people, for pleasure. His other books feature protagonists with this motive as well, although sometimes they will also give a more philosophical rationale to support it, though usually that still boils down to cruelty, murder etc., for its own sake, just with some "justifications" like "[[TheHedonist pleasure is good no matter what]]" or "[[WhatIsEvil morality is an illusion]]".

** King's novel ''The Milkman'' was [[Main/OrphanedSeries never finished]], so the two stories culled from it in ''Literature/SkeletonCrew'' stand as an example of this. No explanation is provided as to why Spike Milligan ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan not this one) does what he does, and so we have to settle for the simplest explanation: He just likes hurting and killing people.

* ''LightNovel/FateZero'' has a cast full of characters that fight for various ideals, but the EvilDuo of Ryunosuke Uryu and the Gilles des Rais do what they do for the sake of their MadArtist streaks and for the sake of evil. Gilles des Rais manages to humanize this trope somewhat in that the death of his beloved Joan of Arc broke him so much that he snapped and became a serial killer to cope with the pain, but eventually and slowly began to love killing by the time he's summoned into the nineties when the story takes place, [[spoiler:though in death, he realizes he never should have become a serial killer and lived ForTheEvulz]]. Ryunosuke on the other hand just loves killing and always has, and worse than that, loves killing children and turning [[MadArtist peoples' bodies into art]]. Ryunosuke technically has an ideal in that he loves death, even [[spoiler:being happy at his own death]] but he fully admits that he knows what he is doing is considered evil and loves it. Worse than that, he thinks God should like him for it since God must be amused by both the "heroes and villains" in the world.

* Anton Chigurh from ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'' is a strange {{subver|tedTrope}}sion, as he kills people based on the toss of a coin just to confirm [[BlueAndOrangeMorality his own bizarre set of morals that make sense only to him]]. At one point, he tries to shoot a bird simply out of idle spite.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' has some minor villains who seem to be along just for their own sick pleasures. The worst ones would be the huge rapist knight Ser Gregor Clegane (among countless other atrocities sickening in nature), the inhumanly cruel outcasts in the Brave Companions, a.k.a. the Bloody Mummers, sadistic Ramsay Snow/Bolton who has torture, rape, flaying and hunting women on his resume, among other atrocities and the heartless boy-king Joffrey Baratheon, who practically revels in his power and prefers to make people fear him. This is deconstructed, as performing senselessly evil acts doesn't work in the long term, [[spoiler:Joffrey executing Ned Stark starts a war with the North]], and the evil acts of many of the worst characters come back to bite them (the Bloody Mummers are being hunted down for their atrocities). Especially since in the end it's revealed he's powerful enough to return the Gods to Kadath with no effort at all.