History Main / AcademyOfEvil

* [[TropeNamers The Academy of Evil]], from ''VideoGame/CrashTwinsanity'', a private school that literally teaches students to be evil, for the sake of being evil. The series' antagonist, Dr. Neo Cortex, studied here, while his niece was thrown out and had to continue her studies at the Evil Public School.

If there is a good-aligned WizardingSchool, NinjaSchool, or SuperheroSchool, expect them both to be [[RivalDojos rivals]]. May overlap with AllGhoulsSchool, although they're more likely to be DarkIsNotEvil. This will most likely be where villains get their {{Morally Ambiguous Doctorate}}s. See also ThugDojo for a martial arts school that trains its students to be amoral MightMakesRight type villains.Most often it is a subtrope to BoardingSchoolOfHorrors only differing from other subtropes in that it openly advertises and promotes its immoral teachings while a lot of other boarding schools of no lesser horrors keep up a facade of respectability and decency. Also a lot people who are there at least feel at home and it is of no horror to them.

** St. Hadrian's Finishing School for Girls in ''[[ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison Batman Incorporated]]'', which is run by the international TerroristsWithoutACause group Leviathan and trains its pupils to become spies, assassins and depraved seducers. After Batman and an undercover Stephanie Brown took it out, it was restarted by Spyral, and trained its pupils to become spies, assassins, and depraved seducers for ''good causes'', under the new headmistress [[spoiler:Kathy Kane (the Silver Age Batwoman, recently retconned back into continuity)]].

If there is a good-aligned WizardingSchool, NinjaSchool, or SuperheroSchool, expect them both to be [[RivalDojos rivals]]. May overlap with AllGhoulsSchool, although they're more likely to be DarkIsNotEvil. This will most likely be where villains get their {{Morally Ambiguous Doctorate}}s. See also ThugDojo for a martial arts school that trains its students to be amoral MightMakesRight type villains.

[[caption-width-right:340:"And tomorrow, we'll be learning about 'DEF': Destruction, Extortion and {{French|Jerk}} [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Accents]]."]]

* The Luciferian Academy in ''Literature/TheJeremiahSchool'' is one where its students are taught how to dabble in "the unholy arts" that the Bible warns God's people against. Its headmaster is Lucien Morgenstern, who is responsible for killing Peter Stone's parents.

[[caption-width-right:340:"And tomorrow, we'll be learning about 'DEF': Destruction, Extortion and [[FrenchJerk French]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Accents]]."]]

** The Death Eaters tried to make Hogwarts this in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', when it's being run by the Death Eaters -- they change the curriculum to make the Dark Arts and Muggle "Studies" mandatory, making the curriculum all-evil, all the time. It doesn't work on the students except for [[BlackShirt Slytherin House]].
** Slytherin House has this reputation even earlier in the series; nearly all of the Death Eaters came from Slytherin.

* In ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', devils are LawfulEvil outsiders created from mortal soul shells, in a gruesome process that strips the damned soul of its memories and original personality. To help them (re)learn how to infiltrate and manipulate mortal society, promising devils are sent to Offalion, an academy of sorts on Baator's squalid layer of Maladomini. Here senior baatezu put together half-ruined mock-ups of Material Plane locales like marketplaces, temples and palaces, to run intricate scenarios and simulations that prepare devils for upcoming missions. Success means a devil can be sent off on assignment to continue climbing Hell's hierarchy, while failure may lead devils to be demoted into a lower form of baatezu. Sometimes mortals are conscripted to take part in the scenarios as advisors or even wild cards, and those who do so have a chance to learn about the devils' plans for the Material Plane.

* Deville Academy, in the ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'', is a school that takes in poor, young delinquents... and turns them into the best thieves, spies, and killers on the planet. Except for those mutant supervillains.

* The ''WesternAnimation/CoolMcCool'' episode "College of Crooks" has such a school consisting of Cool's regular roster of villains (the Owl, the Rattler, Hurricane Harry, Jack-In-The-Box, Dr. Madcap and Greta Ghoul).

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'', there is the H.I.V.E. ([[Literature/HIVESeries not this one]]), which originally trains super-villains to work as mercenaries, its star pupils being Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth, used by Slade in a very early episode. Later, in the third season, the school plays a much bigger part of the plot, with Brother Blood as the BigBad of the storyline and headmaster of the school. After Blood's defeat, the school is defunct, but Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth form a team called the H.I.V.E. Five (which [[OneExtraMember eventually got six members]]) that eventually joins the Brain's Brotherhood of Evil.

* Royal Pain plans to turn ''Film/SkyHigh2005'' into one of these, turning the students, faculty and alumni into babies and then raising them anew as supervillains. Even before that, the school already has villains, as evidenced by Speed and Lash.

* In ''Animation/HappyHeroes'', the monsters have a school where they learn how to be proper monsters. There always seems to be a lack of funding though...

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}''

* In ''Black Hood Comics'' #9, criminal mastermind Markov started a school for (adult) criminals, teaching them how to fight barehanded, how to evade police capture, etc. He did so out of a simple desire to improve the local criminal landscape, having found the crooks he'd met up to that point clumsy and stupid.
* In ''ComicBook/DeadlyClass'' students are the sons and daughters of fine important figures such as KGB/CIA/FBI agents, GangBangers, Neo Nazis, African Warlords, and South American Drug Cartels just to name a few.

* Oft mentioned in ''Comicbook/JusticeLeagueInternational'' was the Manga Khan School of Melodrama, which taught students how to ''talk'' like a villain.

* ''ComicBook/StarWarsDoctorAphra'': During the ''And the Enormous Profit'' arc, Aphra ultimately sells the [[MacGuffin Rur crystal]] to the "Shadow University". Though they are not shown doing anything particularly evil, the fact that they were included on the attendance list to Aphra's AuctionOfEvil and the fact that the morally grey Aphra says she admires them imply that they are this. They also threaten to expose Aphra's cheating and get her doctorate revoked again if she does not sell the Rur crystal to them.
** The Shadow University returns during the ''Fortune and Fate'' arc, where we learn that they really do operate like a normal school (complete with peer-reviewed dissertations), and where it's reiterated that they have no problem buying clearly stolen artifacts from people like Aphra.

** ''ComicBook/MarvelNoir'': Xavier's School for Exceptionally Wayward Youth in ''ComicBook/XMenNoir'' is a reform school... but Professor X teaches his students how to be better criminals rather than actually reforming them. He insists this is a ploy to gain their trust so they will gradually open up to him and therapy can begin in earnest. In reality, he is developing and studying them to prove his theory that sociopathy is the next stage of human behavioral evolution.
** ''Comicbook/XMen'':

*** In ''ComicBook/NewXMenAcademyX'', the Hellions were another "house" within the Xavier Institute, but still kind of villain-y and rivals to the New Mutants team.

* In ''Fanfic/TheVictorsProject'', the Career tribute schools in District One (District Academy for Excellence in Youth Development or simply, DAEYD) and Two (The Institute aka [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Murder High]]) are seen as this, especially from the perspective of people from outside the corresponding districts. Justified as they teach children to kill other children in the name of money and honor, and those children have an unfair advantage over the other district children.
** Can be downplayed with the training camps in District Four, as the tributes who train there do so in case they're reaped or someone who is sick/disabled is reaped (so they can volunteer for them). They're also observed to not be as AxCrazy compared to One and Two.

* From the ''Film/AustinPowers'' movies; Dr. Evil did not spend six years at Evil Medical School to be called "Mister", thank you very much.

* Royal Pain plans to turn ''Film/SkyHigh2005'' into one of these, turning the students, faculty and alumni into babies and then raising them anew as supervillains. Even before that the school already has villains, as evidenced by Speed and Lash.
* The eponymous school in the 1960 film ''School for Scoundrels'' teaches how to be a nasty manipulative person, but without ever breaking any rules, because rule-breakers risk being caught. [[BasedOnAnAdviceBook Based on a series of spoof self-help books]].
* Film/StTrinians is more an academy of anarchy, but there are classes in various forms of lucrative crime and how to avoid arrest in foreign countries. The students and teachers do seem to be chaotic neutral rather than actually evil.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': Played with with the [[MurderInc Assassins' Guild]] [[SpySchool School]]; while it does still teach the art of assassination, is also considered a prestigious academy for gentlemen and, as of recently, ladies. Another Academy of Evil is discussed in ''Literature/{{Sourcery}}'', though it may not actually exist:

* ''Literature/DoomValleyPrepSchool'': The titular school is a well respected institution and ranked #2 in the world for creating first rate evil overlords, dark wizards, warlords, politicians, assassins, lawyers, and other careers that involve grabbing the world by the throat and taking what you want. It doesn't just teach students to be evil, it teaches them how to be successful at whatever they do. And they'll make sure students learn or die trying.

* ''Literature/EndersGame'': Battle School is on the very dark side of morally ambiguous. On the one hand, they're training commanders to attack an alien race that once attacked them. On the other hand [[spoiler: they plan the complete genocide of the aliens and consider students killing one another an acceptable part of their training]]. The eventual sequels cast Battle School in a different light, showing that while it's quite deliberately teaching "evil values" to many of the students, it's doing so for their ''weaknesses'': the institution was founded to deal with far more important and long-term problems than an unfortunate kerfuffle with an alien race, and a number of its students were destined even before their enrollment to become problems. Battle School is actually finishing them to look really good to their sponsors upon graduation... and then ''fail miserably''. (And in the meantime, using them to help finish the other students in other directions.)
* ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': The dark elven city of Menzoberranzan has one, most elaborated on in R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels (but also appearing in Elaine Cunningham's Liriel novels and the ''Literature/WarOfTheSpiderQueen'' series). Tier-Breche (usually simply called "The Academy") is divided into three sub-schools, Melee-Magthere (for warriors), Sorcere (for wizards) and Arach-Tinillith (for the clergy of [[GodOfEvil Lolth]]). Considering its two functions are to train the students to lethal efficiency in their particular discipline and firmly induct them into a ReligionOfEvil, it's a very scary place. Since the main hero Drizzt is a warrior, his education mostly takes place in Melee-Magthere -- and it's ripe with backstabbing, KlingonPromotion and things like using children to bait monsters for students to practice on. And yet Drizzt's mentor [[DefectorFromDecadence Zaknafein]] adamantly insists that he goes there, because apparently Sorcere ''is even worse''.

*** Slytherin House has this reputation even earlier in the series; nearly all of the Death Eaters came from Slytherin.

* In ''Literature/{{Twig}}'', an academic organization known simply as "The Academy" is the scientific force behind an empire spanning a full third of the known world, with a specialization in [[BioPunk biological modification]]. Weapons projects are first in line for funding, students are subtly encouraged to backstab and sabotage each other, and the Academy has anyone who they suspect knows Academy science when they shouldn't assassinated.
* The Nightmoore Academy of Creator/FrankPeretti's ''Veritas Project'' series.

* The Armed Brain Army Volt in ''Series/ChoujuuSentaiLiveman'' are a cult of super-geniuses who entice promising university students into joining with the offer of obtaining more knowledge. Granted, there isn't anything inherently evil about most of the super science they teach (and it's pointed out several times that if they really wanted to, the students/executives of Volt could [[CutLexLuthorACheck use their research to better the world instead]]) but the students of Volt are actively encouraged to give up their humanities in the pursuit of more knowledge.

* ''Series/TheThundermans'': Max Thunderman wants to go to one of these, but for now he's keeping up the {{Masquerade}} in a suburban public school. And since that's the whole premise of the show...
* There are two that show up in ''Series/Charmed1998'', both called simply The Academy. They focus on turning humans into demons.
* ''Series/OddSquad'': The Season 3 episode "Mr. Unpredictable" introduces Villain University, which is a school where potential villains go to learn about villainy. Orla and Oswald go undercover as villains in order to find out more about the titular villain, who attended Villain University.

* ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'': In response to the heroic Claremont Academy of Freedom City, the villain Taurus launched the villainous equivalent: the Shadow Academy. 3rd Edition adds the Elysium Academy in Sunset Hill, in the West Coast setting of Emerald City; publicly, Elysium is a boarding school for the children of Sunset Hill's residents,who were denied entry into the exclusive Malory College. Privately, it's the West Coast extension of the Shadow Academy [[spoiler:(the residents of Sunset Hill ''are'' retired supervillains, after all; when Taurus reached out with an offer to expand the Shadow Academy, the local baddies jumped at the chance to stick it to Malory College).]]

* The Edgewood Home for Lost Children in ''VideoGame/{{Our Darker Purpose}}'' is a twisted school where the use of arcane demonic rituals and plain physical violence between students are supported by the Administrator, while acts of kindness (like [[PetTheDog saving still-living critters]] from the Cafeteria) are frowned upon and ridiculed... as well as punished.
* Byrgenwerth College in ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}''. While they started out as a regular college of some type, one day they discovered the hidden Pthumerian Tombs below the city of Yharnam. It was their decision to crack open the "Tomb of the Gods" that inadvertently started the city's descent into madness, and it ''was'' a demented former student that started the blood craze (leading to the Vilebloods). The evil part comes in when it's revealed in ''The Old Hunters'' DLC that Byrgenwerth sent Hunters and students to sack a fishing village that was home to a local EldritchAbomination and apparently killed everyone there. Eventually, they split into several factions, the largest of which being the Healing Church. Their decision to keep investigating alternate ways of understanding the Pthumerians' mastery of magic aside from Old Blood (the Fishing Hamlet massacre, research on Insight) brought them into conflict with the Healing Church, and spelled doom for everyone involved. In the modern day, Byrgenwerth is abandoned aside from the dead and the insane. The implication is that most students went their separate ways once the Healing Church started to take off.

* ''VideoGame/ChoiceOfGames'' offers ''Grand Academy for Future Villains'' where you're attending the school that teachers evil masterminds and would-be despots, and is aware of the genres they're being to sent to.

* The Institute of Evil, Nether Academy -- the setting of ''{{VideoGame/Disgaea 3|AbsenceOfJustice}}''. It's literally a school in ''hell'', where demons go to learn how to be properly evil (By their [[PokeThePoodle generally awkward]] standards). Since ''Disgaea'' demons run on BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad, the students they consider honor students are the ones who never attend class or do their homework, while the delinquents are the ones who maintain 100% attendance (even though the teachers rarely bother showing up), and give THEMSELVES homework (which they always complete) since the teachers won't. They also pick up litter. Oddly, the so-called "delinquents" are the only ones who ever get to graduate from the academy, since they run off the same standards as any other school in that regard... In fact, [[spoiler:the previously mentioned delinquents are the first ones to ever graduate, which amounts to be KickedUpstairs. You see, the Academy's objective is to make the students remain paying the tuition for all eternity]]. The UpdatedReRelease ''Absence of Detention'' introduces a rival school, Majin Institute, which is dedicated to training students to become Majins (one of the strongest type of Demon in the Disgaea verse). [[spoiler:It's a SuckySchool that has yet to produce a single Majin and currently only has seven students ''total'' who are nowhere close to Majins.]]

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilZero'': The Umbrella Management Training Facility is what it sounds like: an ornate, mansion-like university of sorts owned by [[EvilInc Umbrella]] to train prospective employees, managers and scientists for future employment, as well as instill within its students fanatical loyalty to the company. Said education does indeed involve [[MadScience Umbrella's signature unethical experiments with viruses among others.]] Additionally, it's situated in the Arklay Mountains of Raccoon City, not far from Umbrella's main Arklay Laboratory. And yes, there is a hidden lab underneath the facility as well, run by a mad scientist (James Marcus) to boot, and to give you an idea of what kind of madmen this place churned out, series supervillain Albert Wesker got his start here alongside G-Virus creator William Birkin, to say nothing of James Marcus using the students as guinea pigs in his twisted experiments. Pretty much the only nice thing to be said about the place is [[EqualOpportunityEvil they'll take anyone regardless of race, gender, or creed]], according to a file found in the ruins of the joint. The school was shut down at some point, and when plans to reopen it were made, they were just as soon scrapped by both the resurrected James Marcus going on a rampage and unleashing the T-Virus in it, and when Birkin set off the facility's self-destruct system, destroying it.
* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'': The Dark Academy certainly appears to be this kind of place, being a perpetually gloomy and rainy schoolhouse crawling with poltergeists and demons that features ghastly phenomena like bloody hand prints that follow you along the wall as you pass through a room. You never get to see the place teaching anything, but as it features witches and mandragoras as enemies and "[[Literature/{{Frankenstein}} The Creature]]" as the level boss, it's safe to assume witchcraft and mad science are on the curriculum.

%%* Evil University in ''Webcomic/{{Adventurers}}''.

* The RoundRobin story ''Literature/DarkHeartHigh'' uses one as a setting.

* Deville Academy, in the Literature/WhateleyUniverse, is a school that takes in poor, young delinquents... and turns them into the best thieves, spies, and killers on the planet. Except for those mutant supervillains.

* The ''WesternAnimation/CoolMcCool'' episode "College Of Crooks," consisting of Cool's regular roster of villains (The Owl, the Rattler, Hurricane Harry, Jack-In-The-Box, Dr. Madcap and Greta Ghoul).
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/DogCity'' had mob boss Bugsy attempt to turn a regular school into this.

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' had the titular character shutting down the M.A.D. Acedemy, which was one of these. Then, in [[WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget2015 the 2015 version]], we have Evil U, which is also one of these.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz intended to open one in "The Swiss Family Phineas". He tried to drive laundromats bankrupt so he could turn them into school buildings.

** "Eggheads" involved Eggman running an impromptu version of this after brainwashing Sonic's friends into evil geniuses like himself.
** "Mister Eggman" revolves around Eggman running to college to get his degree in Evil Science after learning he failed to get the last two credits required.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'', there was the H.I.V.E. ([[Literature/HIVESeries not this one]]), which originally trained super-villains to work as mercenaries, its star pupils being Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth, used by Slade in a very early episode. Later, in the third season, the school played a much bigger part of the plot, with Brother Blood as the BigBad of the storyline and headmaster of the school. After Blood's defeat, the school was defunct, but Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth formed a team called the H.I.V.E. Five (which [[OneExtraMember eventually got six members]]) that eventually joined the Brain's Brotherhood of Evil.

-->''O Perfecto Prep, the perfect school,''\\
''where winning is our only rule,''\\
''there is no team we cannot beat,''\\
''because, you see, we always cheat!''
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Villainous|Cartoon Network}}'': Black Hat has one of these under his name and image, fitting for the greatest villain in the entire Cartoon Network multiverse. Miss Heed and Dr. Flug both studied here in their youth, and apparently villains from other Cartoon Network (including [[WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball Nicole Watterson]] before mellowing out) shows taught or learned here.

%%* Perfecto Prep from ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures''.

*** [[Characters/EmmaFrostWhiteQueen Emma Frost a.k.a. the White Queen]] used to be headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy -- a front for the Hellfire Club that produced the Hellions, rivals to the then-Xavier Institute student body, the ''ComicBook/NewMutants''. When Emma had her HeelFaceTurn, the Massachusetts Academy became a SuperheroSchool, the front for ''ComicBook/GenerationX''.

* ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'': In response to the heroic Claremont Academy of Freedom City, the villain Taurus launched the villainous equivalent: the Shadow Academy. 3rd Edition adds the Elysium Academy in Sunset Hill, in the West Coast setting of Emerald City; publicly, Elysium is a boarding school for the children of Sunset Hill's residents,who wre denied entry into the exclusive Malory College. Privately, it's the West Coast extension of the Shadow Academy [[spoiler:(the residents of Sunset Hill ''are'' retired supervillains, after all; when Taurus reached out with an offer to expand the Shadow Academy, the local baddies jumped at the chance to stick it to Malory College).]]

* ''Literature/TheWitchOfKnightcharm'' features the mythical Scholomance, which as usual is depicted as an underground school where magicians learn to cast evil spells. The protagonist is a good witch who infiltrates the school in order to redeem herself for having been beaten by its pupils earlier, but after she finds out that she's unable to leave, she's forced to find a way to survive the inhuman lessons (and murderous classmates) and to progress through the curriculum without being corrupted by the evil all around her.

--> -- '''Dr. Evil''', ''Film/AustinPowersTheSpyWhoShaggedMe''

* From the {{Film/Austin Powers}}Verse; Dr. Evil did not spend six years at Evil Medical School to be called "Mister", thank you very much.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' featured a school where students were implanted with a mind control chip. One of the classes featured assassination as a viable business practice for getting rid of the competition.

* There are two that show up in ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', both called simply The Academy. They focus on turning humans into demons.

* ''Litearture/TheWitchOfKnightcharm'' features the mythical Scholomance, which as usual is depicted as an underground school where magicians learn to cast evil spells. The protagonist is a good witch who infiltrates the school in order to redeem herself for having been beaten by its pupils earlier, but after she finds out that she's unable to leave, she's forced to find a way to survive the inhuman lessons (and murderous classmates) and to progress through the curriculum without being corrupted by the evil all around her.

* ''Myth/TheScholomance'': a hidden school underneath [[{{Uberwald}} Transylvania]] with {{Satan}} for a headmaster. Students here learn Main/TheDarkArts, including the power to control the weather, but the Devil then keeps one of the students as the class's 'tuition' before releasing the others.

* ''Myth/TheScholomance'': a hidden school underneath [[{{Uberwald}} Transylvania]] with {{Satan}} for a headmaster. Students here learn the Main/DarkArts, including the power to control the weather, but the Devil then keeps one of the students as the class's 'tuition' before releasing the others.