History PunchClockVillain / Literature

* Probably most of the Capitol citizens who work for ''TheHungerGames'' as stylists, beauticians, escorts, etc. They may be involved in the politically oppressive annual murders of teenagers, but they didn't establish them, they don't rule Panem, and in the grand scheme of things, are basically just government employees.

* Derk from ''DarkLordOfDerkholm'' is this trope in the extreme. He's a completely sweet and loveable wizard whose only wish is to work on his [[MixAndMatchCritters experimental creatures]], but due to the extremely oppressive "boss" of his ''entire world,'' he's forced to play the BigBad in his world for "tourists."

* After [[spoiler: Voldemort's Death Eaters take over the Ministry of Magic]] in ''HarryPotter and the DeathlyHallows'', the [[spoiler: normal Ministry workers become this. They publish anti-[[{{Muggles}} Muggle]] propaganda and persecute Muggle-born wizards]], even if they don't believe in it themselves.

* After [[spoiler: Voldemort's Death Eaters take over the Ministry of Magic]] in ''HarryPotter and the DeathlyHallows'', the [[spoiler: normal Ministry workers become this. They publish anti-[[{{Muggles}} Muggle]] propaganda and persecute Muggle-born wizards]], but only because they have no choice.

* In ''ToKillAMockingbird'', Scout-as-narrator explains that children of lawyers often assume that whatever colleague their parent goes up against in court is a bad guy, only to be mystified by the sight of them acting like friends when court's not in session. By the time of Tom Robinson's trial, Scout and Jem have outgrown this, and they're familiar enough with the prosecutor, Mr. Gilmer, to recognize and appreciate the tricks he employs, all in the spirit of a fair trial. [[InnocentInaccurate Neither of them is quite old enough to realize]] until the guilty verdict that that's not what's going on this time, and for the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman, no one's bothered hitting any punch clock.

* The summoner-for-hire Binder from the ''DresdenFiles'' book ''Turn Coat'' mostly just wants the bounty on [[spoiler:Morgan]]. He doesn't have anything against Harry personally, it's just that he happens to be on the other side of the issue. [[spoiler:Harry lets him get away for this (and other) reason(s).]]

* Some of the ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' novels which focus on people working for the Empire embrace this trope. ''StarWars/{{Allegiance}}'' has five stormtroopers whose consciences eventually override their willingness to take orders, though admittedly they didn't have a choice about leaving. ''DeathStar'' is about a collection of people working on, well, the Death Star. A trooper, a gunnery officer, a cantina operator, a couple of convicts, a surgeon, a pilot, a librarian. It's also about Admiral Motti, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Darth Vader, so it's partly a VillainProtagonist novel, but the other characters all assumed the Death Star would never be used on an inhabited world. As the surgeon tells Leia while he's treating her after torture, [[ResignationsNotAccepted he can't leave]].

** Aziraphale and Crowley, an actual Angel and Devil respectively, consider fundamentalists and Satanists as a Vietnam veteran would consider a civilian who walks around wearing camo.
** Arguably, Crowley himself. His job as a demon is to tempt mortals into sin and bring about Armageddon, but when he isn't working, he just likes to feed ducks in the park. He just likes humanity too much. Aziraphale is the same way, but in a different direction: he's an angel who's untruthful and lazy. Similarly with the nuns, he has a throwaway thought about Satanists who weren't crazy murderers, but did their rituals and went on being otherwise normal people.
*** Then there's the fact that he didn't fall so much as [[PokeThePoodle Saunter vaguely downwards]].

* Some of the recent ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' novels which focus on people working for the Empire embrace this trope. ''StarWars/{{Allegiance}}'' has five stormtroopers whose consciences eventually override their willingness to take orders, though admittedly they didn't have a choice about leaving. ''DeathStar'' is about a collection of people working on, well, the Death Star. A trooper, a gunnery officer, a cantina operator, a couple of convicts, a surgeon, a pilot, a librarian. It's also about Admiral Motti, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Darth Vader, so it's partly a VillainProtagonist novel, but the other characters all assumed the Death Star would never be used on an inhabited world. As the surgeon tells Leia while he's treating her after torture, [[ResignationsNotAccepted he can't leave]].
** The gunnery officer who actually hit the final button to fire the superlaser was one of the main characters. He is immensely humanized; we learn that what he'd always wanted was to fire the biggest gun, that he sort of cheated in arm wrestling because a tendon had been torn and reattached in a stronger place, that he backed up his fellow gunners. He also followed orders. [[EarthShatteringKaboom The prison planet]], well, it was inhabited almost entirely by convicts, but some of them had been political prisoners or wrongfully convicted or guards. He saw Alderaan, though, as his personal MoralEventHorizon, making him one of the biggest mass-murderers ever, bringing him misery beyond his wildest dreams. He was the one saying "Stand by" when the Death Star was in range of Yavin - he knew that if he refused they would just get another gunner and give him a death mark, but he desperately didn't want to fire again and was fervently hoping that something would come up. And it did. Poor bastard.

* While some of the [[EvilWitch Black Ajah]] in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' are genuinely evil, many actually joined it only for the opportunities of power it gave, and are not particularly keen on that whole world-destroying stuff.

* In several place, Literature/TheBible mentions tax collectors as among the most disliked members of society. Back then they were considered little more than thieves employed by the government, Which means this trope is OlderThanFeudalism.
** Offset by the fact that tax collectors were known for taking what was owed the government, and then taking whatever they felt like, meaning that they were little more than thieves employed by the government.
*** That is, when they actually WERE employed by the government. The Roman Empire often made use of "Tax Farming," the practice of selling the authority to gather tax moneys. The purchaser could squeeze people as hard as they liked under the tax laws, and any extra they got was profit. This practice was common in Europe through the Middle Ages, and is likely the cause of the heavy taxes often mentioned in Robin Hood and similar stories.

* ''Literature/TalesOfKolmar'' has the villain hire mercenaries to go after someone. She is defended by an ex-mercenary who sees through their attempts to get casually close and warns them that they can leave now and it'll be fine, but if they go after her they're all dead, and urges the youngest one to leave the profession. The mercenaries do go after their target and are repelled, losing several of their own. After that, shaken, the youngest one decides that he's had enough and quits, and all the older mercs are actually pleased for him, but they won't quit a contract. [[spoiler: All of them get killed.]]

** Not quite a villain but Professor John Hicks - er, Hix, Head of the Department of necro- er, Post-Mortem Communications, is required by University Statute to commi ''Moderately'' evil acts. These include pressuring people to attend community theatre productions.

** Not quite a villain but Professor John Hicks - er, Hix, Head of the Department of necro- er, Post-Mortem Communications, is required by University Statute to commit evil acts.
*** ''Moderately'' evil acts, at least. Like pressuring people to attend community theatre productions.
** Heck, both the Thieves Guilds and Assassin's Guild are made up of punch clock villains; the former exists because Vetinari believes that if there's to be crime, it should be organized, sees off-hours thievery as one of the greatest offences against the guild rules, and makes a habit of helping beggars and taking in orphans. The latter provides the best education and tailoring on the disc, and its members are perfectly average aristocrats and the like who just, every once in a while, get paid to kill someone. Just business, I'm sure you understand.

* This is a huge part of the premise to Salman Rushdie's ''Literature/HarounAndTheSeaOfStories''. BigBad Katham-Shud's henchmen are all unimpressive clerks who are doing very boring-looking jobs that just happen to be ruining imagination as we know it. Subverted by Katham-Shud himself, who ''looks'' like a Punch Clock Villain but is more of a CardCarryingVillain.

** Not quite a villain but Professor John Hicks - er, Hix Head of the Department of necro- er, Post-Mortem Communications is required by University Statute to commit evil acts.

** Heck, both the Thieves Guilds and Assassin's Guild are made up of punch clock villains; the former exists because Vetinari believes that if there's to be crime, it should be organized, sees off hours thievery as one of the greatest offences against the guild rules, and makes a habit of helping he beggars and taking in orphans. The latter provides the best educaion and tailoring on the disc, and it's members are perfectly average aristocrats and the like who just so often, every once in a while, get paid to kill someone. Just buisness, I'm sure you understand.

* In ''TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', the cops towards the end of the book are "a couple of intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially!"

* Sergeant Zim and the other Boot Camp [=NCOs=] from the book ''Literature/StarshipTroopers''. While not technically evil, their job is to make sure that the 90% who can't cope with being in the M.I. or don't want the franchise bad enough drop out as early as possible. It is stated that the suffering they induce is too impersonal to be the work of a bully, that "Basic training is made AS HARD AS POSSIBLE, and for good reasons", and that all [=NCOs=] are decent (by NCO standards) to the ones who are left, when they know they are going to hack it.

** Not quite a villain but Professor John Hi[[strike:cks]]x Head of the Department of [[strike:necr]] Post-Mortem Communications is required by University Statute to commit evil acts.

** Arguably, Crowley himself. His job as a demon is to tempt mortals into sin and bring about Armageddon, but when he isn't working, he just likes to feed ducks in the park. He just likes humanity too much. Aziraphale is the same way, but in a different direction: he's an angel who's untruthful and lazy.

* As did Randall and a passing customer in ''{{Clerks}}'', considering the deaths of civilian contractors on the half-built second Death Star. Although it's played with, as the passing customer -- with reference to a friend of his who took up a contract on a house owned by a high-profile mobster that the customer himself warily passed on and got gunned down in a drive-by shooting as a result -- notes that on some level even the contractors and non-military staff had to be aware of what they were getting into, even if they chose not to acknowledge it; it ''is'' essentially a massive death ray for a fascist empire they're building, after all.

* Lampshaded in {{Ivanhoe}}. It is noted that the Templar guards will execute Rebecca in a heartbeat but will not allow Bois-Guillbert to sexually harrass her ''before'' her sentence.

* Sergeant Zim and the other Boot Camp [=NCOs=] from the book ''StarshipTroopers''. While not technically evil, their job is to make sure that the 90% who can't cope with being in the M.I. or don't want the franchise bad enough drop out as early as possible. It is stated that the suffering they induce is too impersonal to be the work of a bully, that "Basic training is made AS HARD AS POSSIBLE, and for good reasons", and that all [=NCOs=] are decent (by NCO standards) to the ones who are left, when they know they are going to hack it.

* ''PrisonersOfPower'' aka ''Inhabited Island'' briefly explores the chilling effect of thу serious play on this trope. A captured insurgent sneeringly tells his interrogators that their hate and passion makes them ineffective at cracking him, because it's just to easy to see them as enemies who must be defied. Now when he had been tortured by some small-time drones who didn't give a shit about him or the reasons he'd been tortured for and showed more passion at filling the accompaning paperwork or cursing their wretched pay than at sawing off his arm, ''then'' he'd been absolutely terrified.

* Derk from ''DarkLordOfDerkholm'' is this trope in the extreme. He's a completely sweet and loveable wizard whose only wish is to work on his [[BiologicalMashUp experimental creatures]], but due to the extremely oppressive "boss" of his ''entire world,'' he's forced to play the BigBad in his world for "tourists."

* In In {{Literature/Apollos Grove}}, a mercenary band attacks the temple of Apollo at Delphi in order to kidnap the Oracle. The captain of the band kills a temple priest without a second thought and threatens to massacre the entire temple group. But he does so with no hostility, explaining that everything he's doing is a business decision. He also urges the priests to bury their dead colleague, as he died with courage and conviction.

* In In {{Literature/ApollosGrove}}, a mercenary band attacks the temple of Apollo at Delphi in order to kidnap the Oracle. The captain of the band kills a temple priest without a second thought and threatens to massacre the entire temple group. But he does so with no hostility, explaining that everything he's doing is a business decision. He also urges the priests to bury their dead colleague, as he died with courage and conviction.

* ''InhabitedIsland'' briefly explores the chilling effect of this trope played seriously. A captured insurgent sneeringly tells his interrogators that their hate and passion makes them ineffective. Now when he had been tortured by some drones who didn't give a shit about him or the reasons he'd been tortured for, ''then'' he'd been absolutely terrified.