%%Image Pickin' thread did not produce a picture: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1302799567068366000
%%Please start a new IP thread if you'd like to suggest a pic.

->''Sooner or later, humans will kill off all [[OurElvesAreBetter Aen Seidhe]], all [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarves]] and all [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnomes]]. Then they'll start murdering each other. Your kind knows no other way, it's in your genes. You'll keep killing each other until only one remains: the strongest among you. A thousand years from now, a dim-witted human barbarian will climb to the top of a pile of bones, sit down and proclaim: "I win!"''
-->-- '''[[RebelLeader Iorveth]]''' and his view on humanity, ''[[VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings The Witcher II: Assassin of Kings]]''

Humans Are the Real Monsters is a SpeculativeFiction trope where humanity’s [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] is defined as or viewed by extra-terrestrial races ( and [[FiveRaces nonhumans]]) as humanity’s most violent characteristics and most nefarious motivations. "The Age of Formal Imperialism [[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE]] with humanity as the EvilEmpire." if you prefer.

In a distinct contrast to humans, races which humans impose themselves onto are either [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien sufficiently advanced]] enough to where anything they could ever want or need is made immediately available to them (thus making greed and violence sound redundant to them) or have achieved a state of equilibrium with their surrounding environment which leaves them perfectly content. Either way, this generally gives an alien race a more empathic or more peaceful outlook and worldview than what humans understand and seek to attain. If these alien races ever attack humans, it will likely be either a reactionary measure to a previous transgression on the humans' part against them or a preemptive strike out of fear that humans will cause them harm at the first opportunity they get. In the event that enough of the galaxy is in a panic over humanity, they may even form an AntiHumanAlliance and possibly put HumanityOnTrial.

This trope generally comes in two distinct varieties, but the basic point is the same.

* Humanity in the future is an EvilEmpire characterized by a vast military complex with goals typically involving colonizing planets where other sentient alien races are already residing with plans to subjugate and/or exterminate those who already call the place home and extract any minerals and resources present for all their worth, or…
* Sentient aliens [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill come to Earth in peace, but humanity seeks to take advantage of them]] in an effort to acquire and learn more about their technology for humanity’s own gain.

In all cases, humanity will show characteristics of the AbsoluteXenophobe to one degree or another; no matter how sincerely an alien race may state its intentions to do good or seek peace, human authority will treat the aliens as an enemy that is [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman not worth our attention as being viewed as equals]].

Why? For [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism cynics]], this is human history in a nutshell. Throughout the ages, human civilizations have been motivated by both viciousness and greed, having fought countless wars, colonized lands that were already inhabited by other people, treated those inhabitants as second-class citizens (at best), sold them into slavery or [[ShootEverythingThatMoves slaughtered them]] (at worst), and stripped lands bare of their precious minerals and resources for their own wealth and benefit. On top of this, until we haven't exactly been the most kind or respectful to other life forms on our own planet. It is very hard not to be deeply ashamed when considering what happened to the Dodo, for example. Not to mention the still-ongoing debate on whether or not we we are responsible for the extinction of our fellow hominids such as the Neanderthals.

On a lesser scale, human individuals, like [[ConMan Con Men]], may try to swindle clueless aliens who don’t know much at all about Earth and take advantage of them. These steps usually involve the human fraudulently representing himself as a leader, dignitary, or benefactor from Earth before scamming any aliens who believe him for all they are worth.

Any human characters who sympathize with the aliens and take their side are usually people who have been mistreated by or subjected to the abuses of humanity’s status quo in the past ({{Mutants}} are very a popular choice for this), or people who have been thrust into an unordinary situation that causes them to view things from a different perspective and challenge their originally held notions about the actions of their human comrades and superiors.

Do note that any humans who are monsters are humans who commit evil willingly and ''knowingly''. When humans are heavily blamed for doing bad things but are not aware of the full consequences of their actions, this is something that can be attributed to ''thoughtlessness'', rather than maliciousness, and for that, see [[HanlonsRazor Hanlon’s Razor]].

When aliens come to Earth and view humanity’s history of violence against one another as a matter of uncivilized, primal savagery, that’s HumansAreMorons.

When aliens try to invade Earth, expecting an easy conquest, and getting their collective asses handed to them, that's HumansAreWarriors.

When a story is told from an animal's perspective as it watches humans abuse Earth's own environment and/or the animal kingdom, that’s HumansAreCthulhu.

When humans are doing anything else that is unfavored by sentient races, see HumansAreFlawed.

In political works, this trope may be invoked to argue that HobbesWasRight.

Note: when a ''{{villain}}'' holds a Humans Are The Real Monsters viewpoint, it's usually reserved for {{Straw Nihilist}}s, {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s and [[KnightTemplar Knights Templar]]; it wouldn't work if the villain in question is already a [[AxCrazy crazy maniac]] who [[KillAllHumans just wants to kill people]] unless the point is to make them a {{hypocrite}}.

See also: HumansAreWarriors, HumanityIsSuperior, HumanityIsInsane, HumansKillWantonly, WhatMeasureIsANonHuman and HumansAreMorons.

Compare: CrapsackWorld, where the other species probably won't be any good either.

Contrast: HumansAreSpecial, HumansAreGood, AliensAreBastards.

[[noreallife]]

----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: General]]
* In many ZombieApocalypse works, fellow humans are a ''far'' greater danger than the zombies themselves. They are more like obstacles than being the primary threat. This is especially true of works that use the traditional slow, shuffling zombies, more recent works that tend towards the more cynical end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism (''TheWalkingDead'' being a good example), and online massive multiplayer games with large potential for {{Griefing}} (prime examples including ''DayZ'', ''UrbanDead'', and, yes, even ''{{Minecraft}}''). It's common enough that the trope was word-for-word both lampshaded and mocked in ''VideoGame/Left4Dead''.
* Some books and museum exhibits sometimes say this after asking the question "What is the most dangerous animal of all?". Some even feature a mirror along with the answer.
* {{Green Aesop}}s all come down to one thing; humans are wrecking the planet.

though many of humanity's faults in this regard could be applied to ''any'' animal, intelligent or otherwise, that has an unfair advantage over everything else in its environment.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: {{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* ''Manga/DragonBall Z'' had an entire episode called ''The Evil of Men'' near the middle of the Buu saga. It explores how even we non-powerful humans can be just as cruel as the monsters Goku and co fight on a regular basis. Case in point: A gang of thugs arrive to shoot up Buu and Mr. Satan (who is in the process of rehabilitating Buu) and shoot Bee the puppy. Later, one of them comes back and shoots Mr. Satan point blank in the back and runs off. Sure Buu saved him in time (and saved the puppy in the first attack), but witnessing this cruelty unleashed his evil side, and thus, the entire rest of the Buu saga is the world paying the price for what those men did.
* ''Manga/ElfenLied'' makes a point of showing how inhuman and amoral humans can be. At times it seems the diclonii -- mutants who are feared for their murderous tendencies, and abused accordingly -- are [[TheWoobie more human than the actual humans]]. Considering the violent psychic dismemberment the diclonii are capable of, that's saying something.
* In marked contrast, StudioGhibli's ''PomPoko''. Some fans call it "FernGully with a Brain". Some of the Tanuki believe that all humans are bad and they argue for open warfare against the humans - and even then, they have a hard time fully committing to this as finding food would be a great deal harder with no garbage bags to rummage through. Other Tanuki argue that the humans are simply unaware that Tanuki are real and can be reasoned with. [[spoiler:After the Tanuki take the gamble of going public, it turns out that this is indeed the case and the humans are happy to come to a compromise with the creatures, setting aside parkland for them to live in. Their default humanoid forms [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute are cute looking]] is a real help but no body makes pets of them.]]
* Similarly, ''PrincessMononoke'' (also by StudioGhibli) ''appears'' to be taking this stance, as it also takes place in a threatened forest populated by animal spirits. Then [[SubvertedTrope it turns out that the humans aren't all bad, and the animals can be pretty dickish]]. It turns out every side was being manipulated by outside forces, who in their own way are just trying to get by, ultimately stating that RousseauWasRight.
* ''SpiritedAway'' (again, StudioGhibli) features a bath house that serves supernatural beings whose view of humans ranges from worthless to bastards to interesting to ''[[ToServeMan delicious]]''. That the bath house's workers need to take human form in order to serve their customers can be seen as punishment, irony, or something else. It also goes both ways - a spirits are also greedy or decadent.
* ''PonyoOnACliffByTheSea'':Ponyo's dad makes it very clear that he thinks humans are bastards, and has been storing up potions to teach humanity a lesson (or something); ironically, his wife, the AnthropomorphicPersonification of the ocean is a lot more easy-going. In the end he reveals he doesn't want to harm humans too badly [[spoiler: because he allows his daughter to choose to become one.]]
* ''BlueGender'': Man is ruining the planet due to technological excess and overpopulation, [[GaiasVengeance and so nature sends]] [[BigCreepyCrawlies the Blue]] to forcibly knock humanity back to the Stone Age or the Bronze. The problem is that at the time of the show's events, humanity knows it's ruining the planet and is trying to fix things... an effort Gaia is ''actively sabotaging'' with The Blues. Example: A colony ship (to ease the overpopulation) is destroyed. The Aesop being that Humans can live in harmony with nature, as long as they're not abusing tech.
* The manga series ''Manga/{{Parasyte}}'': The only way nature can curb human devastation is to introduce a new apex predator to the biosphere to keep humanity in check. [[TruthInTelevision This is real life nature works.]]
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', while slavery affects all species/races, [[FishPeople fishmen]] and [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent merfolk]] are the prime target and face [[FantasticRacism very heavy discrimination]]. Up to 200 years ago, they were seen as just another type of fish.
* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''
** Chapter Black arc is [[spoiler: a deconstruction. The nutshell is that human have the capacity for great good and great evil.]] Sensui, the arc's villain, [[spoiler:was a Spirit Detective who held Humans and Demons in views of [[BlackAndWhiteMorality black and white]], until he crashed a gruesome party that had Humans themselves slaughtering Demons and [[BloodBath bathing in their blood]] [[ForTheEvulz for the hell of it]]. Because of this, his view became gray [[BrownNote until he saw the Chapter Black videotape]]- a divine recording of every atrocity humanity had ever committed; you name it, it's got it. Then he harbored a {{plan}} to go to the Demon World and repent for his killings, conveniently covered up with the SplitPersonality disorder he [[GoMadfromTheRevelation got as an aftereffect of the party and the tape]] to orchestrate a slow, painful genocide for all of humanity to experience.]] This is evidenced by a creepy mind-reading with him chanting about how much he'd love to have them all as dead meat. However, this is not the whole story. Koenma points out [[spoiler: there is a Chapter White which has every act of human kindness. The two are about the same length and should only be seen together to ascertain a balanced view of humanity. Chapter Black is "just a one-sided argument"]]
** It comes up again in a side-story toward the end when Yusuke, serving as a private Spirit Detective, investigates a case at Keiko's school involving a demon haunting the school. It turns out that it's actually a scheme perpetrated by two of the alleged victims to force the third victim off the team due to the others not liking her attitude, and claiming it's the only way to deal with her because she's an athletic scholarship student. After Yusuke sells Keiko's uniform to someone online (who turns out to be his mother) when she refuses to pay because Kurama did most of the work in solving it, the narrator declares that "Humans are as bad as demons- possibly even worse!" This is PlayedForLaughs when the author's editor points out "But [[spoiler:Yusuke's part[[hottip:*:having one extremely powerful ancestor centuries ago]] demon]]."
* The BigBad in ''Anime/SoulTaker'', [[spoiler:Kyosuke's sister Runa]] feels this way after [[FreudianExcuse bad stuff happened]]. In the end, the villain puts Kyosuke in a bind: fight to save humanity who are ungrateful bastards and hate him since [[spoiler:he's technically an alien]] or let them all die and live happily and eternally with the BigBad. Kyosuke naturally turns down both offers, [[TakeAThirdOption takes a third option]], shows the villain that there IS [[spoiler:[[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman measure to a non-human]]]] and saves the day.
* ''RosarioToVampire'':
** This seems to be a widespread sentiment among {{Youkai}}, though most of it stems from good ol' FantasticRacism; many of the more sympathetic ones question their views after being confronted with a positive example of humanity, and the most rabid anti-human faction practice their [[KickTheDog puppy-punting skills]] on their fellow nonhumans so much that they come off as blatant {{hypocrite}}s.
** This is what [[FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire Moka Akashiya]] first thought of humans before she met her human LoveInterest. After seeing how she was teased and bullied because of her [[BullyingADragon vampire origins]] when she was a kid, [[KidsAreCruel who could blame her]]? Ruby and her adoptive mother thought this as well until they met him.
* TheProtagonist of ''WolfGuyWolfenCrest'' thinks humans are bastards or at least [[HumansAreFlawed incredibly petty]]; it doesn't help that he's a certified DoomMagnet and he's surrounded by the most horrific {{delinquents}} at school. He acknowledges that his narrow view of humans makes him just as bad.
* A main theme point in ''Inugami'', where inugami (wolves with amazing [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/inugami/v01/c000/84.html abilities]]) are sent by a mysterious voice in their heads that says "gaze upon man". An inugami named 23 makes friends with a kind human named Fumiki, and his subsequent encounters with humans influences him into seeing humans as friends. The other inugami, Zero, sees humans as an example of this trope, since most of his encounters with them have involved violence.
* ''Manga/PokemonSpecial'' When Lake Valor [[spoiler: blows up]], most of the Pokémon in the surrounding areas adopt this attitude as a result. When Pearl tries to catch a pissed Buizel and unsuccessfully pleads to it that he wants to stop the ones responsible, Crasher Wake points out that the wild Pokémon don't understand anything that's going on beyond the fact that they know that humans were responsible for disrupting their natural habitat.
** Episode 19 of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' has a group of Tentacool and (one of them evolves after Team Rocket tried to capture them), that attacked the humans because Obaba (not to be confused with the one from the episode before this one) wanted to build a hotel resort on their nest. However, Misty, with the help of a Horsea, manage to convince them that not all humans are bad people.
** Mewtwo's reason for wanting to KillAllHumans in ''PokemonTheFirstMovie'' is this trope. He reached this a conclusion when the ones that he was exposed to cared more about what he was than who he was. [[spoiler: When Ash performs a HeroicSacrifice to stop the fighting between the clones and the original Pokémon, Mewtwo is genuinely surprised that a human would give his life for them and stops the whole wipe out humanity plan.]]
* ''{{Slayers}}'' usually don't go here but in ''Slayers Premium'' sentinent octopi cast the CurseOfBabel on humans for this reason. In the ending scene [[spoiler: The assistant healer had, after the demon that the octopi had been mistakenly worshiping as a god is destroyed, admitted to the whole town that they were wrong to hunt the sentient sea-going cephalopods and eat them. However, she then declared that the town's economy was mostly built on their reputation for delicious octopus-based dishes, and suggested that, rather than having the humans go on hunting and eating octopi, the octopi just start cutting off their tentacles [[GoodThingYouCanHeal (which regenerate)]] and letting the humans have them for meat instead, a suggestion that the octopi agreed with. This works out best for both sides because the octopi are no longer killed and the humans avoid an economic collapse.]]
* Lampshaded at the end of the [[{{Kikaider}} Kikaider 01 OVA]] where the android Kikaider "takes the final step to humanity" by becoming capable of performing evil acts despite his conscience.
* This is how [[FauxAffablyEvil Diva]] views humanity in ''BloodPlus.'' [[FreudianExcuse Well, you would think the same thing if you were used as a lab rat]].
* [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in ''KimbaTheWhiteLion''. While the series started off with a terrible first impression of humanity with [[EvilPoacher Viper Snakely]], there are some good-hearted humans like Roger Ranger and his uncle who become friends with Kimba.
* In episode 10 of '' {{Upotte}}'' when Genkoku pleads with the girls and the [=AK=] faction to stop fighting Nanayon (an anthpromorphic [=AK=]74) points out that humans are ones creating guns in the first place.
* ''Anime/TheAnimatrix'': Played with.
** Humans start the RobotWar purely out of FantasticRacism (the robots literally came before humanity bearing flowers and open arms) and that the robots locked humanity in the Matrix purely as self-defense against genocide and attempting to give them an utopia which human minds did not want.
** In the present day, they create a device to show the machines that not ALL humans are/were bastards and that they wish for peaceful co-existence. It also gives them free will to decide whether or not to fight alongside the humans or continue the war at all. [[spoiler: It ends with the deaths of the humans involved and the machines sent to destroy them, leaving the machine all alone to decide his purpose now...]]
* Tiir and many [[EvilEye Cursed Eye]] bearers from TheLegendOfTheLegendaryHeroes view humans this way. Though [[MoralMyopia Tiir isn't much better at times]] and [[spoiler:the protagonist eventually convinces him that not ''all'' humans are bad]], it's easy to understand how they came to think that way to begin with, living in a CrapsackWorld where FantasticRacism is rampant. Tiir says the trope title almost word for word, after recounting an incident where thirty-eight of them were slaughtered in the name of "monster extermination".
--> '''Tiir''': Who are the real monsters here?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* "FunnyAnimal" Comics in particular features this trope often. To wit:
** The main villain Lord Hikiji in the comic ''UsagiYojimbo'' is the ''only'' human in a world of anthropomorphic animals. He's the reason [[spoiler:Usagi has that scar above his eye, and has no master, no father, and ninja problems]]. WordOfGod states that the author regrets showing Hikiji.
** Similarly, antagonist Doctor "Eggman" Robotnik was the only human in ''ArchieComicsSonicTheHedgehog'' series for a while, and even today most games place his role in the storyline above all the other law-abiding humans.
* In an early issue of AlanMoore's run on ''Comicbook/SwampThing'', Jason Woodrue gains Swamp Thing's power over the Green and decides to take its revenge on animals and humans, who have been abusing plants for far too long. [[spoiler: Then Swamp Thing himself shows up and points out that, although humans do abuse nature, if humans and animals were gone, there wouldn't be anybody to convert the gases that the plants themselves needed to survive.]]
* Humans in ''ElfQuest'' are, at first, simply The Enemy as far as the elven protagonists are concerned: cruel, [[HumansAreMorons idiotic]], ugly, superstitious and xenophobic, and they've been like this as long as any Wolfrider can readily remember. This is later qualified when greater exposure introduces them to the concept that some humans can be friendly (and the Gliders have basically a tribe of 'tame' humans living at the foot of their mountain), but by and large the elven policy remains to keep avoiding human attention where possible.
** Interestingly enough, the creators of ''ElfQuest'' first got together when Richard Pini replied to a letter by Wendy Fletcher in ''SilverSurfer,'' in which she complained about that comic's supposed use of this trope. The two of them corresponded for a while before finally meeting and marrying, and the rest is history.
* ''ComicBook/AvengersForever'' is a clear case in Marvel Comics; a whole story run on the premise of Time Lords trying to prevent the timelines with bad futures where humanity becomes an evil empire and conquers the universe.
* Given that the average human in the MarvelUniverse seems to look at (and treat) [[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} mutants]] with the same level of [[BullyingADragon rationality and compassion]] that the white Southerners of the 1930's treated blacks, or, as Magneto often lampshades, like how the Nazi Party in Germany treated Jews in 1938, it's no wonder why mutants continue to flock to {{Magneto}}'s camp even after the man has been depowered. ''[[NotSoDifferent On the other hand]]'', Magneto has his own MasterRace propaganda and there are plenty of mutant villains. On a third hand, everyone in the story be they hero, villain, or {{muggle}} is still human.
* ''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk'' doesn't get treated nicely by your average citizen, and certainly not by the army. Granted, his destructive potential is immense and he has [[HairTriggerTemper a temper problem]], but the incarnation he's mostly known for is for the most part much like an animal. In fact, a lot of the destruction he causes is often because [[BullyingADragon he was provoked]]. In his Merged Hulk incarnation, he travelled to a dystopian future ruled by an evil, insane version of himself called the Meastro. There he explains his backstory and how his world came to be and how humans destroyed each other through a nuclear armageddon. He remarks to his past self, "For as long as I remember, it was the humans that called ''us'' the monsters. In the end, they brought their own destruction. ''Me'', a monster? I wasn't even in their league".
* Handled...interestingly in ArchieComics' ''Comicbook/SonicTheHedgehog'' series. The Mobius equivalent of humans, Overlanders, were portrayed as violent thugs, [[GreenAesop more interested in conquering and destroying nature than living with it like the Mobians]]. They also waged a global war against the Mobians...which they lost. [[spoiler: Inverted in that it was a ''Mobian'' conspiracy that started the Great War. Most of the race was destroyed right after Robotnik, ([[EvenEvilHasStandards who even the Overlanders viewed as a monster]]), took over.]] [[spoiler: Later we learn that Mobius was created when humans captured, killed and dissected alien emissaries. The aliens reacted poorly to this and proceeded to use a weapon to wipe out/mutate all life on Earth.]] Ever since the ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' adaptation, Overlanders/humans have been shown in a better light.
* In the comic book adaptation of the ''VideoGame/{{Dofus}}'' game, [[OurDemonsAreDifferent the race of Demons]] were a mostly {{Punch Clock|Villain}} Evil race, until a pair of human brothers (orphans whose parents were murdered, and spent years as victims of abuse by their peers and teachers afterward) made their way to their dimension, and introduced the Demons to such concepts of human evil as [[YouKilledMyFather murdering parents before their children]] and other such cruel torments. The Demon King was ashamed to see that humans could outdo his own kind in the ways of Evil, and ordered the brothers to train his people.
* A major theme of ''Wandering Star.'' The future Earth of the series is a CrapsackWorld with a reputation for violence. The [[TheFederation Galactic Alliance]] needed Earth to fight the Bono Kiro because of that unique reputation. Throughout the story, Cassie, TheProtagonist, encounters prejudice from aliens who see all humans as an uncivilized, backward, warlike species.
* The reason Larfleeze hasn't left Earth after ''BlackestNight'' is because LexLuthor told him that humans are greedier bastards than he could ever hope to match, and that life on Earth is all about owning things. After spending more time on Earth, Larfleeze has come to agree with Luthor...and he loves Earth for it.
* In GrantMorrison's ''SevenSoldiers'', it's revealed that [[TheFairFolk the cruel and vicious Sheeda]], who decimated the {{utopia}}n civilization of Camelot millions of years in the past and who are the BigBad of the series, [[spoiler:are evolved humans from the far, ''far'' future when the sun has turned into a red giant. To sustain their dying society, they plunder past civilizations.]]
* Zigzagged in ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'': All humans have the ''potential'' to be monsters, with the protagonist pointing out that however horrible the [[NotUsingTheZedWord Infected]] are, they never do anything that ordinary humans cannot also do. Surprisingly thought-provoking, given that this is a series that's nothing but {{Gorn}}.
** The two sequel series confirm this; each has a non-infected human that gives the Crossed a run for their money in the sick bastard department but lacks the excuse of having caught a psycho-virus.
* Batman forces Darkseid to release Supergirl into the heroes' custody by threatening to destroy his planet. Darkseid commends him on such a ruthless maneuver, stating that it was believable coming from him (and would've failed were it done by a certain Kryptonian and Amazon) because humans are renowned for killing their own kind in order to win.
* In ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', the worst threats to the survivors of the ZombieApocalypse are other survivors. Sometimes it's more HumansAreMorons.
* ''NemesisTheWarlock'' is all about an alien AntiHero defending his people and others against a fascistic AbsoluteXenophobe human empire.
* In the ECComics story "The Monsters!", highly advanced aliens make FirstContact, describe horrible mutants begotten by exposure to atomic radiation, and depart immediately after leaving two of them behind: a man and a woman.
* In the ''Creature Commandos'' stories in ''Weird War Tales'', Lt. Matthew Shrieve is the only non-monster in the group; the only normal human. However, Shrieve is by far the most monstrous of them all -- he's a hateful man who is frankly disgusted by the "freaks" he commands, and there is no low he's not willing to stoop to in order to win. The Creature Commandos proper share his resentment; after all, turning them into monsters was his idea in the first place!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
%%* Humanity and all of its sub-species in ''FanFic/AeonNatumEngel''.
* In ''FanFic/TheReturn'' this is [[AlwaysChaoticEvil humanity's hat]] and [[MugglesDoItBetter why they're still alive]].
* In general ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' FanFic that involves humans features this trope in one way or another. Even if the humans aren't actively malevolent, they'll still be brooding over how embarrassed they are of humanity's evil, or become an unwitting gateway through which evil and corruption enters the pony universe.
** In one series titled FanFic/TheConversionBureau it's flat-out stated that the ponies, both those born as ponies and the 'converts', teach this to the humans they're trying to recruit into [[SuperiorSpecies their superior culture and race]]. Many Conversion Bureau fics show that the methods of "ponifying" someone removes their "human nature" and reconfigures them into ponies.
** Another fic, ''FanFic/TheThessalonicaLegacy'', subverts this nicely. The humans are violent, warlike, and sometimes outright murderous compared to the ponies, but it's because they [[HadToBeSharp had to be in order to survive their harsher universe,]] putting them more in HumansAreFlawed territory than here.
** FanFic/{{Article2}} [[AvertedTrope averts]] this. Although the human character in the story, Shane, is aggressive and rude to the ponies on many occasions, this is treated more as a difference in cultures and neither species is shown as inherently superior. It is also pointed out ''multiple times'' that Shane is just one person, a soldier, and in a very stressful situation, so it's not really fair to use him as proof of any faults in humanity as a whole.
* In ''FanFic/TheManWithNoName'', [[Series/DoctorWho the Doctor]] goes on one of his famous rants when he finds out what the Alliance did to River's brain.
* In ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7170477/1/Renegade_Reinterpretations Renegade Reinterpretations,]]'' a MassEffect fanfiction, the human race's first contact with the wider galaxy happened much earlier, and with the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Batarians.]] Humanity spends the next hundred years playing catch-up, and is only able to survive by stooping to the barbarians level. In this timeline, Cerberus are viewed as ''heroes'' for experiments that even the ''canon'' Cerberus would have thought appaling. Once Humanity decides to go on the warpath against the Batarians (and is capable of doing so), the Citadel offers to make humanity a member race, give them reparations, money, land, medicine, technology, and all former Batarian territory. All they had to do was '''NOT''' invade the Batarian Homeworld. Humanity's response? "They went to the trouble of looking up what the largest fleet in the galaxy had been so they could surpass it by a time and a half."
* {{Deconstructed}} in ''Fanfic/NoHoper'' when [[TheHouseOfNight Nerferet]] [[CulturalPosturing argues this about how humans oppress vampyres for no reason.]] In response [[Manga/DeathNote Light]] lists dates and details of all known vampyre attacks.
* Fanfic/WeightlessMassEffect'': Shepard preferred other species (turians in particular) to her own. At once point, she flat out said 'I hate humanity' to Karin. Her greatest enemy in this story, according to WordOfGod, is her own disbelief in the value of her species. As [[spoiler: Nihlus]] said ''"He had never, in all his travels, seen a species so cruel to its own children."''

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film - Animation]]
* ''Disney/{{Bambi}}'': The sole sign of human interaction with deer is a gunshot. However, the aversion of this trope is enforced. WaltDisney pointedly refused to make the hunters larger characters because he would have had to show them as two-dimensional villains given their actions.
* ''TheIronGiant'' is a subversion. A pair of hunters shoot a deer that the titular Iron Giant had been watching, but they are not characterised negatively at all, and the scene is used to show the Iron Giant first learning about the concept of death. Most humans are either flawed but decent or reasonable. To drive the point home, the human protagonist is the Iron Giant's MoralityChain.
* In ''Disney/{{Dumbo}}'', Dumbo's mom is separated from him and chained up in a cage because she gave a bratty human kid a (well-deserved) spanking for harassing Dumbo.
* ''WesternAnimation/CatsDontDance'' is a parable in which animals are PaperThinDisguise minorities trying to break into show business and humans are the racists of Hollywood, keeping them out. [[spoiler: The ending epilogue shows the humans invert this eventually because the animals become movie stars.]]
* ''HappyFeet'' has a doubly- FamilyUnfriendlyAesop. The penguins think humans are monsters. Fair enough; this is typical for sea creatures. The double-warping comes in the ending, with its giant dance-off. It heavily implies that the ''only'' reason the humans are even ''considering'' preserving the Antarctic ecosystem is because of its '''entertainment value'''.
** On the other hand, it seemed a lot of the people in the ensuing montage were using it as political ammunition to put conservation laws in effect they'd already wanted.
* TheMovie version of ''Film/OverTheHedge'' sums up everything that's wrong with humanity in one word: Suburbia.
** [[ComicStrip/OverTheHedge The comic strip]] it's based on is this way too. Whereas the movie compresses most of its cynicism into a single sequence (which comes off as good-natured ribbing) and one recurring nasty character, the strip has it as an underlying theme.
* The rats of ''{{Ratatouille}}'' believe this, exemplified in Remy's father. [[spoiler:Remy himself thinks that opinion is rubbish and that the [[HumansAreMorons humans are just ignorant]], since rats have traditionally been pests, and most of the humans aren't monsters.]]
* ''TheSecretOfNIMH'' is a tough case. On is harsh in its depictions of humans performing animal experimentation on rodents. However, the rodents benefit it from it because they become ''more like humans''. They can read and do math and design buildings and harness electricty. This was the goal of the experiments. The biggest threat to TheProtagonist and her family is a farmer whose unaware that an adorable IllBoy is in his fields.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpiritStallionOfTheCimarron''
** Depicts a white man owning a wild horse as equivalent to slavery because TheProtagonist is the horse and not the human. [[spoiler: This human is a GracefulLoser because he comes to see the horse as a WorthyOpponent.]]
** The Native Americans of the same film are shown in a more sympathetic light, but the titular stallion still doesn't like being trained. The other horses do but they prefer the Native Americans to the Settler.
* ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'' takes the misguided point of view. The dentist believes that he has rescued the lame Nemo from the dangers of the reef rather than separating him from his father, and the main antagonist is a slightly hyperactive little girl who doesn't realize that if she shakes the bag too hard she'll kill the little fish inside. [[HanlonsRazor It's clearly ignorance rather than malice]]. Then again, when one of the sharks earlier in the movie hears about Nemo being "kidnapped" he says disgustedly, "Humans. Think they own everything."
* ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' is a PlayedForLaughs version. While the monsters don't show any signs that they consider the human race evil or malevolent, they do consider humans extremely dangerous and go to any lengths necessary to keep themselves safe from them when producing energy from them by scaring children. The basically consider the human race living nuclear power.
* ''OpenSeason'' depicts open warfare between a band of beleaguered forest animals and a pack of obnoxious redneck hunters.
* ''WatershipDown'' Holly's flashback to the first warren's destruction but reversed when the farmer's daughter saves Hazel from the farm's cat.
* Zig Zagged in ''WesternAnimation/OnceUponAForest''. The village elder, who was caught in a trap when he was younger, warns them about humans and is not surprised when toxic gas devastates the forest. The reason for the toxic gas is a human littering with a glass bottle which blew a hole in a tank trunk. The truck driver, by contrast, has an OhCrap reaction and runs to get help. [[spoiler: At the end of the film, help arrives. Humans in scary Hazmat suits have come in to clean things up, surprising the elder.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/BattleForTerra'' plays with this trope. The Earth is destroyed and what's left of the human race is forced to live in a military fleet which invades the peaceful title planet. While they are doing this by force and goal to the kill all the aliens they are portrayed as simply desperate. [[spoiler:If you want to know why don't they just live together, the humans and terrans don't breath the same air]]. Further played with in that the President and his council are {{Reasonable Authority Figure}}s who want to explore all options before they go with genocide, but a coup happens with a [[TyrantTakesTheHelm General]] who advocates an "us or them" position.
* In ''HotelTransylvania'', CountDracula believes this (as do all other monsters), but he's proven wrong.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film - Live Action]]
* In the ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' series, it's usually the humans' attempts to exploit the aliens for profit that set the plot in motion.
** In ''Film/{{Alien}}'', [[spoiler:the MegaCorp expects a crew member to be impregnated.]]
** In ''Film/{{Aliens}}'', [[spoiler:Burke tries to impregnate Ripley with an alien.]]
--> '''Ripley''': "I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."
** ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'' follows as a result of the second, [[spoiler:but Company members arrive and try to cash in on the aliens.]]
** In ''Film/AlienResurrection'', it's the military that is tinkering with alien genes to create weapons.
** Downplayed in ''Film/{{Prometheus}}''. The worst humans seen are more selfish and/or pragmatic than anything else and the rest are pretty decent. The ''alien'' on the other hand (the Engineer, that is) isn't just a monster; he's the most evil character in the entire franchise. However, this is certainly the view of the Engineers themselves, who seem to believe in something fundamentally wrong with humans that needs to be wiped clean.
* JamesCameron's ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' is a perfect example of this trope played with. The human [[MegaCorp RDA]] are intruding on Na'vi land and destroy the home of the Omaticaya tribe in order to acquire {{Unobtainium}}, and follow a rigid, aggressive schedule for this. On the other hand, the RDA tries to negotiate with the Na'vi, and even when they do attack they try to be "humane" first (i.e. hitting the Na'vi with gas and trying to intimidate them into leaving) and avoid [[KillSat bombing them from orbit]] because they want to minimize local casualties. Then the gloves come off, RDA destroys Hometree, killing hundreds of Na'vi in the process. When the Na'vi assemble an army for war, the RDA tries to destroy the Tree of Souls to break their spirit. Selfridge, the corporate head of the RDA, reacts to destroying the sacred Na'vi site with the same apathy that one would associate to accidentally swatting a fly, though he does appear significantly more disturbed when they take down Hometree. In fact, he and the other officials look downright ''horrified'' at the violence, and [[spoiler: go out gracefully at the end, following the Na'vi victory.]]
** In the case of Selfridge, He likely was simply indifferent to the Na'vi, as many real-world humans are to animals, without being malevolent or sadistic.
** Quoritch is a standard [[{{GeneralRipper}} Colonel Ripper]] in the end. It seems that after the escape of Jake's gang, Quoritch takes over control at the RDA base, ThePlan to destroy the Tree of Souls is his brainchild.
** Jake Sully and his gang are a inversion of this trope; showing there are humans who are not only truly sick of the atrocities committed by their corporation, but also actually work to stop it with their own power.
** The movie provides quite a disturbing meta-example. Humans in-universe may be unwilling to resort to outright genocide or orbital bombardement, but such suggestions arise in movie reviews and discussions with alarming frequency.
* ''Film/{{District 9}}'': A ship full of aliens gets stuck on Earth after it breaks down over Johannesburg. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Humanity pens them into a concentration camp while the nations bicker over who has to take care of them]]. Eventually, a MegaCorp is entrusted with the aliens' welfare, and takes control of their ship away from them, arbitrarily restricts their reproductive rights, denies them the use of alien names and exploits the technology on the ship for their own use. Let us list the ways Humans Are The Real Monsters aside from the aforementioned squalid concentration camp and tech stealing:
** Whenever they find an alien nest in D9, they [[KillItWithFire torch it with a flame thrower]] and laugh at the popping noises that the alien larvae make as they boil.
** They set up a firing range and they shock the [[spoiler: main character (who is the only human who can use alien tech)]] to get him to pull the trigger on the gun they strap him to. Then they bring in a new alien gun and repeat the process many, many times in order to test the effects of each weapon. Cries of "I'll pull it! I'll pull it!" are ignored, and they ''never once'' see if he'll keep his word and pull it without the shocks.
** The [[MegaCorp MNU]] literally uses the aliens as target practice. They test weapons against living aliens to judge their effectiveness.
** They spread BlatantLies about the aliens that most people take at face value. One being that the aliens don't care for their young. [[spoiler:They love them just like a mother loves her child]] Have a poor grasp on the concept of property [[spoiler:It has more to do with the fact that most of them are starving, and have a perfectly good grasp of it]]. Yet another is that as a species they enjoy destroying things (tying into their lack of the notion of property) and cite the fact that a group of them derailed a train, supposedly for fun, as evidence. [[spoiler:The alien "Christopher" comments on his blog that in reality the group of aliens were an organized resistance group who derailed the train as an act of sabotage directed against the South African government, which had hired MNU to administer D9, in retaliation for repeated abuse by MNU. Although they started to enjoy it, what with the whole "''not telling people why they did this, so people just think they did it for lulz''".]]
** Gangs from Nigeria move into D9 to get the alien weapons, for which they trade food to the starving aliens at exorbitant prices, unless they decide to simply take the tech, kill the alien, and then sell the alien's organs as a sort of "herbal remedy" that they claim cures all illnesses. TheLeader of the human gangs seems to believe that eating the aliens will one day allow him to use their technology, though he also seems to enjoy it too.
** When the human main character [[spoiler: starts turning into an alien after a concentrated dose of AppliedPhlebotinum]], his fellow humans plan to dissect him ''while alive and conscious'' in order to learn how to give all humans [[spoiler: the ability to use the alien tech (which only activates for the alien's biology, including the main character's hybrid form).]]
** Our main protagonist is the one good one, right? No, he's no more sympathetic to the aliens until [[spoiler: he begins mutating. His motivation is more "save my own ass" than "ForGreatJustice," though he does come to care beyond that as time goes on.]]
** Basically, it's a rare movie whose ending leaves many viewers saying they ''hope'' that word gets back to the aliens and they come back and [[AlienInvasion death-ray the crap out of humans]].
* In the French-Canadian cult TV show ''Dans une galaxie près de chez vous'' (In a Galaxy near you), it was already established that earthlings (read: Humans) were {{Jerkass}} morons who wrecked their own planet. In the two movies, we see: Plot Device anglophones [[AssPull coming from nowhere]] threatening to exterminate a tiny civilization of cave-dwellers already terrorized because of the ''sounds'' of an underground waterfall, Aliens vomiting at the simple mention of the word "earthling" and a failed WriteBackToTheFuture attempt because of ''ridicule in the internet''. To be fair, the only ones in the crew who never have a Jerkass moment is the [[DumbIsGood dumb-as-rocks pilot]] and ([[OedipusComplex outside of the reveal episode]]) the [[HalfHumanHybrid half-alien]] radar operator (who is played by one of the head writers, and, in later seasons, is dangerously entering in MarySue territory) and both like to use the [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Constantly Backstabbing]] scientist as a punching bag ([[ButtMonkey like everyone else for that matter]]).
* The major theme of ''Film/KingKong'' is that man is the monster.
* In the original version of ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951'', an alien shows up and tries to give humanity a machine that would allow for interstellar communication. And how do the humans respond? ''By shooting him.'' After he recovers he spends some time observing humanity and eventually decides to show he means business by disabling all human technology on the planet (with a few exceptions, he left alone planes in flight, hospitals, and the like) for a short period of time. Then the humans shoot him ''again,'' this time killing him. He gets better, scolds them for being so violent, and essentially says that if humanity keeps this up the interstellar community will have no choice to put them down in order to prevent humanity from carrying its warlike ways out into space. Both the original and [[Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008 the remake]] try to paint human actions as [[HanlonsRazor irresponsible, rather than outright evil]]. See also: HumansAreMorons.
* The aliens in ''ItCameFromOuterSpace'' (1953) believe humanity's xenophobic response to their hideous form will inevitably lead to conflict, so they attempt to repair their spaceship secretly. Unfortunately their covert actions only increase the belief among the protagonists that the aliens are up to no good. Ironically while both aliens and humans are seen acting out of fear and suspicion, neither side is portrayed as particularly unreasonable or malevolent under the circumstances.
* ''PlanetOfTheApes'': Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.
** Luckily the later movies even this out, the apes are using ApeShallNeverKillApe as an excuse to do as bad to humans (if not worse than) what the humans did to them, and later prove they're just as bad as the humans.
*** Lampshaded when one ape crosses the MoralEventHorizon, and others find out about it. A human observes that they "just joined the human race."
* Creator/EdWood naturally [[{{Narm}} overdid it]] in ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace'', with an alien screaming, "All you of Earth are idiots! You see? Your stupid minds, stupid, stupid!"
** That would be HumansAreMorons. The Humans Are The Real Monsters, too, but that's because they opt to fight and kill the aliens who are only trying to warn them about the dangers of creating the "solarbonite bomb."
*** [[TooDumbToLive Then again]] the aliens' plan of warning was a ZombieApocalypse.
* This is the basic premise of ''{{Deadgirl}}.'' Human behavior is far more depraved and horrifying than any scary monster the imagination can conceive. The victim in the movie is a zombie.
* ''ReturnOfTheLivingDead 3'' has the humans torturing the zombies so cruelly that it almost has the viewer rooting for the zombies.
* ''TheHappening'', aside from the whole "plants are pissed at us" thing, has a very subtle passing reference to the trope. Right after the unfortunate scene with the lawnmover, the protagonists run past a billboard advertising homes. Set on top of the billboard is a smaller line: "You ''deserve'' this!"
* Agent Smith in ''Film/TheMatrix'' gives TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Morpheus in which he claims that humans are more similar to viruses than mammals, because they exploit the world and drain it of all possible resources rather than ''instinctively'' seek out a natural equilibrium with their environment.
** Of course, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species this claim is pure bullshit.]]
*** Except that invasive species are usually introduced into a separate ecosystem by the actions (either consciously or by accident) of humans, while a migration to an entirely new habitat in amounts that are relevant are usually very difficult for a species in the wild. Besides, population dynamics take care of the rest (too many carnivores who nearly extinguish their prey species? Mass extinctions for the carnivores who have nothing to eat, followed by a regeneration of the prey species' numbers, rinse and repeat). There is obviously no instinctive harmony drive in animals, so that part is bullshit, but due to the self-regulating nature of ecosystems, there ''is'' an overall balance - which humans tend to fuck up. So, while Agent Smith's reasoning is scientifically wrong, the point somewhat stands.
** Later, ironically enough, [[spoiler: Agent Smith becomes a computer virus in all but name]].
* This trope is the ultimate nature of George Romero's Living Dead series. The ZombieApocalypse is, more than anything, a way to provide pressure on the humans, who ultimately turn on each other.
** ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead'': Faced with walking, flesh-eating, corpses outside, the humans inside are too busy bickering and quarrelling with each other to mount any credible defense. The sole survivor, who makes it through the night only by luck, is promptly shot and nonchalantly dumped on a fire as yet-another zombie by people who can't be bothered to check he's still alive.
** ''Film/DawnOfTheDead'': Humans are so quarrelsome and irresponsible that they cannot mount any coordinated offensive against the living dead. The protagonists prefer to mindlessly hole up inside a mall and just let the world go to hell outside.
** ''Film/DayOfTheDead'': The last remnants of humanity are just animals trapped in a cage. The scientists and civilians just want to drown themselves in hedonism one last time, the military are depicted as psychotic maniacs, and the most sympathetic character is a zombie that has been given some semblance of human intelligence back.
** ''Film/LandOfTheDead'': Arguably the most {{Anvilicious}} of depictions, where one gets the sincere feeling that we're supposed to be rooting for and sympathesing with the ''zombies''.
** ''Film/DiaryOfTheDead'': Awkwardly shoehorns it in as the final comment from a surviving main character.
** ''Film/SurvivalOfTheDead'': The most subtle of them all, and could almost be argued as being free from it, except for the fact we once again see a cluster of survivors wiped out because they're too busy squabbling even in the face of a ZombieApocalypse.
* The humans in the film version of Film/StarshipTroopers are brainwashed fanatics living in a fascist dystopia moving out into the galaxy and [[BugWar slaughtering the Arachnids]] for territory to expand into. Then again, in this case the Bugs aren't any better.
** Note that the only one of those things that isn't in the book is the fascist dystopia, and Creator/RobertAHeinlein considered [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar genocidal expansionism]] a necessity.
* In ''TheReturnOfHanuman'', most of the divine beings in Swarglok wouldn't dare to reincarnate to Earth because in the modern times Earth is dangerous, with dangerous humans. Despite of that, Hanuman still believes that there are [[HumansAreGood nice people]] remaining on Earth.
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by [[TheMuppets Kermit]] in ''The Muppet Musicians of Bremen'' after he intruduces the four protagonists, the titular animal musicians, and the antgonists, their abusive owners.
--> '''Kermit:''' (to the viewers) "You may have noticed that the heroes in our story are all animals, and the villains are all people. I hope none of you takes that personally."
* In ''Film/TheFifthElement'' Leeloo despairs when she learns about the human race's tendency to inflict horrible things onto themselves (specifically World War 2) to the point of her seeing no point in helping them escape destruction, but then decides otherwise when Corben professes his love for her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* According to Creator/LFrankBaum's . . . odd elaboration of the SantaClaus legend, ''The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus'', this was drilled into young Claus' head by his [[TheObiWan mentor]], the Great Ak.
* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' is the purest possible example of this trope. The characters' failure to govern themselves is merely a symptom of a deeper problem. Many of them come to fear an alien "beast" that threatens their society. However, when [[spoiler: the pig-head of Simon's vision says the monster was within the boys all along]] and later when [[spoiler: the survivors are "rescued" by a military ship]], it becomes clear that the book is an allegory of the idea that the root of conflict between people is their own inherent corruption.
* A ''lot'' of early American sci-fi has this theme. Any number of Creator/RayBradbury stories qualify (including, of course, ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles'').
* Creator/OrsonScottCard:
** The ''Homecoming'' series is built on this trope: Humanity were such bastards that [[CrystalDragonJesus the Keeper of Earth]] more or less chased us off to the stars, and genetically altered the populations to receive signals from The Oversoul (super-computers designed to steer mankind's development away from weapons of mass destruction and other planet raping tech). Harmony's Oversoul outright states that he meant to last for a millennia or so before preparing for a trip back to Earth. Humans had been on Harmony for around 50,000,000 years and were no better than when they first arrived. Of course, this was only half of the [[AnAesop Aesop]]. The full Aesop was "since humans can't be any better by their own devices, they just have to trust in God."
** This theme also appears in his ''[[Literature/EndersGame Ender]]'' novels. The moment humanity thinks an alien species ''might'' be a threat, the first instinct is to kill it. This was why Ender [[spoiler:stopped all transmission from the Ansible on the Piggys' home planet, when they discovered that the virus infecting them could wipe out whole ecosystems]]. To be fair, humanity never initiates the bloodbath in either case. [[spoiler: The buggers killed hundreds of thousands of people in an orbital bombardment and the piggies brutally murdered two of the humans that were assigned to interact with them, while their homeworld contains a virus capable of destroying planets with no known cure]]. We do, however, attempt to end each conflict via xenocide.
* Mentioned in EoinColfer's ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' books -- [[TheFairFolk The Fae]] blame having to move into underground cities on humans expanding, and constantly call humans "mud people", which just happens to be a real-life ethnic slur. Overall, the trope doesn't really apply, although this case isn't made explicitly -- the human villains often don't know who's helping Fowl or are brainwashed, and more often than not, the actual villains are other fairies.
* Creator/BruceCoville's ''{{My Teacher|IsAnAlien}}'' series as well as the ''RodAlbright'' series both use this trope: aliens are aware of Earth but refuse to interact with humans because they consider them to be barbarians. It is revealed that one of the aliens in the "My Teacher" series invented television to keep people stupid so they couldn't advance technologically any more. We're so bad Bruce had to introduce [[spoiler:the pain and minor brain damage implied in cut-off telepathy]] to explain why we are as we are. We're also apparently the only species to do things like have homeless people, while most of the other aliens can't even understand the concept. It basically stops just short of actually having the aliens scratching their heads at this whole "capitalism" thing.
* In Creator/RoaldDahl's ''TheBFG'', the title character tells human girl Sophie that humans are just as bad as giants because "humans are the only animals that kill their own kind" (which isn't even close to being true, incidentally). This is part of a fairly long and {{anvilicious}} conversation about how humans suck. Much of Dahl's work for both children and adults reveals a misanthropic streak. At the extreme, we find ''Fantastic Mr. Fox'', which has a plot only inasmuch as it enables him to elaborate on the physical and mental grotesqueness of the three farmers and/or the noble brilliance of the fox they harass (since they're clearly too greedy to grudge him a chicken or two).
* In Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer's ''Venus on the Half-Shell'' every alien race points out that humans smell awful. So humans create a huge industry of special deodorants. Wondering why humans smell so bad to other races, some of whom smell like a sewer, it is pointed out that human morals stink, so that makes our smell stink. Yes, it's a strange book.
* Inverted in the Bill Peet children's book, ''The Wump World''. If you read the part in the opener for this trope about mankind's chance to be such bastards on other planets via interstellar travel, the blue-skinned aliens in the book have us beat.
* Dr. Seuss described how Once-ler's factories messed things up in ''Literature/TheLorax''.
* DavidGemmell makes this point at least once per novel. In ''Stormrider'' he has one character, explain that a human witch has the ability to cultivate and grow and spread the magic in the world, but that the sum total of her ENTIRE LIFETIME of work and toil can be consumed by a single day of war.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein sometimes used this in his stories, although he tends to view it as a virtue:
** ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel''. The Three Galaxies federation puts HumanityOnTrial for their lives. Humans are considered potentially dangerous because of their innate savagery and extremely high rate of evolution and scientific/technological development.
** ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'': Human beings are described as highly aggressive and expansionistic, with a strong will to survive. Heinlein makes the case that this is moral behavior. Though he also states that humanity has to be taught morality.
** [[AuthorAvatar His most popular hero]] Lazarus Long is described as a mild bastard. But one that should be respected and admired. Quite a bit of MoralDissonance is seen when he commits crimes that we are told to admire him for, but Long would kill anyone else who did them.
* In Creator/StephenKing's ''TheCell'' one character described humans thusly "At the bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What [[CharlesDarwin Darwin]] was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle."
* Not really avoided in Creator/RudyardKipling's ''Literature/TheJungleBook''; but in the main Mowgli stories, it's clear that the animals would rather just ignore humans. (Mowgli himself, however, comes to feel this way about the villagers who take him in and then drive him out again, except for Messua, the woman who adopted him and the only one to oppose his expulsion.) "The White Seal", on the other hand, gets downright {{anvilicious}} about it.
* A recurring theme in the works of Creator/StanislawLem.
* Creator/CSLewis' ''Out of the Silent Planet'' and the rest of the [[TheSpaceTrilogy Cosmic Trilogy]]. The idea is that there are several inhabited planets in our solar system, but Earth is the only one where [[spoiler:Original Sin took place. This caused our world to fall out of communication with the others -- we are the titular Silent Planet]].
** Moderated somewhat by the fact that [[spoiler: redemption happened too]]. ''Perelandra'' implies this had [[HumanAliens other effects]] as well.
** Bonus feature: Both pro and con of this are extrapolated fairly strictly (i.e., [[RecycledInSpace Once More, With Aliens]]) from Literature/TheBible.
* The ''WarchildSeries'' by Karin Lowachee has this in droves. For a sampling: [[spoiler: There are pirates who engage in human trafficking, a pirate captain who is probably a pedophile, a war between humans and aliens started because humans tried to take the aliens' moon by force (and massacring a bunch of aliens in the process), a government more interested in bigotry and bureaucracy than peace, soldiers who willingly engage in torture, etc.]] Even the most sympathetic characters still [[spoiler: end up slitting someone's throat, rebelling from the central government, and executing suspected terrorists without a trial.]] Humans are bastards indeed.
* In ''AnimalFarm'', humans are portrayed as the corrupt nobles of Tsarist Russia, more or less. The pigs, who represent the leaders of the Communist revolution, eventually start emulating the humans as they become more and more corrupt. The AnimatedAdaptation made this even less subtle, ending the film with a BolivianArmyEnding.
-->'''GeorgeOrwell:''' ...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.
* Creator/TerryPratchett plays with this in his ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels. Sure, a lot of human characters are bastards, but instead of just leaving it at that, he often probes the question of ''why'' humans act that way, especially in his later, more philosophical books. Furthermore, there are more than a few non-human characters who are just as much bastards as humans can be; in the novel ''Discworld/FeetOfClay'', Commander Vimes is quoted as saying "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're ''not'' a nasty small-minded little jerk."
** Collectively, humans in Discworld exhibit traits from the whole spectrum, being bastards included, and it seems that it's all pertaining to a theme of HumansAreSpecial.
** Played closest to straight in ''Discworld/TheAmazingMauriceAndHisEducatedRodents'', especially when Keith [[spoiler: pretends to]] feed the ratcatchers rat poison.
--->'''Ratcatcher''': This is inhuman!\\
'''Keith''': No, it's ''very'' human. It's extremely human. There isn't a beast in the world who'd do it to another living thing, but your poisons do it every day.\\
Even here, rats are perplexed by the idea that you shouldn't eat a dead rat. Well, except for the green wobbly bit; [[ComicallyMissingThePoint obviously you shouldn't eat that]].
** One of the clearest illustrations of this trope occurs in ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' when the dragon, having just conquered the city, learns a good deal of human history by probing someone's mind. It's shocked and more than a little disgusted to find that there is nothing it can do to people that they have not, at some point in history, ''not already tried on each other''.
--->"You have the effrontery to be squeamish. But we were dragons. We were ''supposed'' to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape--we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality."
* In ''Literature/GoodOmens'', the demon Crowley contemplates telling his superiors that they might as well shut Hell down and move to Earth, since humans are far more creatively evil than demons could ever be. He then decides against it since they often turn around and be stunningly good in the next moment. Often with the same people involved. He fully admits that their behavior confuses him.
** This is after he gets a call congratulating him on the Spanish Inquisition, ''which he had nothing to do with''. After he realized humans cooked the whole thing up themselves [[INeedAFreakingDrink he went out and got]] '''[[INeedAFreakingDrink real]]''' [[INeedAFreakingDrink drunk]].
* The ''OldMansWar'' series explores the concept. In ''The Ghost Brigades'', a scientist who defected to an alien race angrily pronounces humans as arrogant, elitist bastards who are deliberately refusing to sign a universal peace accord for no reason but superiority issues. However, the end of the book makes it clear that the scientist was only giving half the issue - the aliens are asking for some truly jawdropping accommodations for their "peace", and several other species are against it. ''The Lost Colony'' further reveals that the aliens behind the accords are real pricks, and that humanity (while pretty arrogant) isn't all that bad in the end. The overall balance of the series shows humanity as flawed, but not monstrous.
* In ''Literature/GulliversTravels'', the final voyage has Gulliver land in a place where he encounters the Yahoos - mindless, crude beasts that are ''visually indistinguishable from humans''. To the point that the "enlightened" (and horse-like) Houyhnhnms eventually forbid him from staying because he's too much like them. They try to use moral threat as a FreudianExcuse, but they're obviously not really afraid of Gulliver's baser moral tendencies. This moral contradiction makes the Houyhnhnms even bigger bastards than anybody, but Gulliver is so wrapped up in his newfound misanthropy that he doesn't notice (or probably doesn't want to).
* Another fine candidate for the title of magnum opus of fictional Human Bastardry is an illustrated science fiction novel entitled ''ManAfterManAnAnthropologyOfTheFuture''. TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, the well-to-do people of the world set off to leave Earth and colonize other worlds. Before they do, they use [[LegoGenetics genetic modification]] technology to physically alter the people who weren't able to afford the trip, changing them to survive in different biomes. Time passes and we get to see how the mutated humans gradually evolve over the eons after being left to their own devices - and then, suddenly, a race of PlanetLooters invades Earth, enslaves the mutants, and strips the planet of its resources. For their next trick, they wipe out all life more complicated than bacteria. [[spoiler:Those invading "aliens" were actually the unrecognizable descendants of the '''humans''' who'd left Earth millions of years ago. Dude...]]
** This is all the more jarring considering that the author, natural historian Dougal Dixon, never before addressed this issue so {{anvilicious}}ly. His previous illustrated novels mostly avoided it by taking place in alternate timelines where there were no humans at all (there are hints of GaiasVengeance as the setup for ''After Man'' -look at the title- but that's as far as it goes).
** Just to be clear, the genetic engineering wasn't ''forced'' on those left behind, and it was actually done in a belated guilt-trip attempt to replace the many, many species humans had already wiped out. And the ones who eliminated virtually all life at the end [[spoiler: had long since forgotten their origins on Earth, let alone that they were distant relatives of the creatures they were destroying]].
* MarkTwain's satirical essay ''The Lowest Animal'' takes the claim that humans are the "reasoning animal" and totally destroys it by showing mankind's hatred towards each other and everything else.
** Twain also argued for the (continued) genocide of the Native Americans, on the basis that the white man had lied and betrayed and screwed them so many times, and so thoroughly, that they would (justifiably) never trust whites again. Therefore, the only course of action left was to give up any remaining illusions of not being utter bastards, and finish what they'd started.
* Often comes through in ''TalesOfMU'', which focuses on the lives of non-human students at a university with FantasticRacism. Not that the merfolk, ogres, (surface) elves, or kitsuyokai are any better.
* Many of S.L. Viehl's s-f novels fall into this category. The vast majority of "Terrans" are rabid xenophobes: Extraterrestrial sentients are only allowed on Earth under very limited circumstances, certainly aren't allowed to ''live'' there, and will generally find it [[FantasticRacism an unpleasant place]]. And if you're discovered to be a HalfHumanHybrid [[spoiler:(or a clone)]]...''heaven help you''.
** They will also send a fleet to sterilize your world if they find out you're harboring a [[spoiler:human clone]]. Somehow, the humans seem even more monstrous than the [[LizardFolk Hskt-skt]].
* A constant theme running throughout Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''. Reaches an early peak with the ship's crew that forces Prendick off the boat and leaves him to die in the middle of the ocean. Moreau's creations of demihumans he and Montgomery dominate isn't so sweet either.
* Author TadWilliams seems to be fond of this trope with the ''MemorySorrowAndThorn'' series and the ''Shadowmarch'' series. [[TheFairFolk Faerie]] races exist in both: in the former it is the Sithi (immortal elves), while in the latter it is the Qar. In both instances, humans attempted to carry out a campaign of genocide against the kingdom of Faerie for no other reason except they wanted the land or they thought the Faeries were evil. In the ''Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn'' series, the BigBad is a dead Sithi prince who gave his life defending his people against human invaders and now wants his revenge. Unfortunately, it seems he's willing to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy the world]] to do it, so even the remnants of his people rally to fight him. [[spoiler:His final undoing? The one human who actually bothers to ''apologize''.]]
* Robert Zubrin's ''The Holy Land''. Earthlings and non-Earthlings disagree on who are the 'humans', but this trope applies to either and both of them regardless.
* In the DavidWeber authored ''Literature/{{Bolo}}'' books there is direct neural interfacing between Bolo commanders and the later model Bolos [[TankGoodness (Battleship size self-aware tank)]]. A Bolo has a warrior personality but nobody had realised how much the safeguards had inhibited its ferocity until they saw the first Bolo-Human mental fusion go into battle. Humans have no inhibitory safeguards.
** It's worth expanding, the Bolos with the Human Mental fusion end up going on a generations long genocidal war against a larger alien empire. Thousands of worlds, Trillions of humans and aliens, and only a few million survive on a few very backward planets.
* In ''The King of Beasts'' by Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer, an alien scientist shows a visitor how he's cloning several now-extinct animals. At the end, he shows one he had to "get special permission to raise." The visitor is shocked, and begins to ask-and is confirmed-that it's a man. Then again, the scientist seems to pity the growing human, since it'll be "all alone."
* In the ''Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon'' series, humans are bastards because of the Krundai. They are pacifistic carnivores, and hit upon the idea of breeding food that kills itself, so they shaped humanity into being the most savage, self-destructive species they could.
* In ''Literature/TheActsOfCaine'', humans are bastards. Well, to be exact, the metaphorical psychomorphic deity-incarnation of humanity is a bastard. But the [[AntiHero human hero]] who achieves [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu its humiliating defeat]] is also a [[SociopathicHero bastard]], so in this series humanity doesn't look good at the individual or species level.
* {{Subverted|Trope}} (the Qu), played straight (the Gravital) and everything in between in Nemo Ramjet's ''All Tomorrows''.
* In ''Literature/TheKillingStar'', by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, an alien species annihilates humanity with relativistic kinetic weapons before we even encounter them. They had been observing humans, and had discovered that our technology was nearing the point where we could build relativistic kinetic weapons ourselves, so they wiped us out on the off chance that we ''might'' decide to wipe them out. Why does this story qualify under the Humans Are The Real Monsters trope? Because the authors made it quite clear that we would have done ''exactly the same thing to them'' if our roles had been reversed.
** This does qualify [[AliensAreBastards the aliens as bastards]], though (if we're the same as them, they're obviously the same as us).
* In ''Run to the Stars'', by Michael Scott Rohan, we get the following exchange, after Kirsty and Ryly discover that the world government has sent a missile to wipe out a just-discovered alien species:
-->'''Kirsty''': "There must be millions of inhabited worlds out there, whatever the experts spout. Some like us, some not. Sooner or later one of them's bound to track back our communications overspill and find us. What then? Under the bed? If that missile hits the target, we'll have tae hide. Shrink back into our own wee system, never make a noise, never stir outside it. What if any other race ever found out what we'd done? Then we'd never be safe. They'd never trust us. Not for an instant. There's bound to be some of them who think like you, Ryly. We'd be giving them grand evidence, wouldn't we? They'd wipe us out like plague germs and feel good about it!"
-->'''Ryly''': "Unless... Unless we got them first. At once, on first contact. A pre-emptive strike, before they could possibly have a chance to find out about us. Hellfire, isn't that a glorious future history for us! A race of paranoid killers, skulking in our own backwater system when we might have had the stars! Clamping down on exploration, communications, anything that might lead someone else to us and make us stain our hands again with the same old crime... Carrying that weight down the generations. What would that make of us?"
-->'''Kirsty''': "Predators. Carrion-eaters - no, worse, ghouls, vampires, killing just tae carry on our own worthless shadow-lives."
* Creator/AlanDeanFoster moderates this in his trilogy ''The Damned''. Humans appeared in a world where all life would be impossible by the standards of most aliens, and we went through some unpleasant evolutionary contortions to survive, but if we last much longer without outside interference, we'll achieve peace. Unfortunately, outside interference is coming -- and by book 3, after a thousand years as CannonFodder in an interstellar war, the humans are less "human" psychologically than the aliens are.
* In Stross's ''Literature/SaturnsChildren'', the humans can't create artificial intelligence on their own, so they build machine analogues to human brains, then raise them as children and teach them what they need to know to fulfill their eventual robotic function, then record and duplicate a snapshot once they've learned enough. ''But wait!'' That produces people, who might resent slavery, so on top of that they hardwire a version of Asimov's Laws, to make them good little obedient slaves. ''But wait!'' That still leaves the inner person able to figure out loopholes, and isn't nearly bastardly enough, so to ensure that they cringe away from any thoughts of rebelling, they resurrect good old-fashioned slave-breaking techniques, and make rape and abuse of the adolescent robots the next level of conditioning.
* Done in a harshly {{anvilicious}} fashion in a NeilGaiman short story, "Baby Cakes", where humanity suddenly realizes that it has made most of the various animal species extinct, and bemoans the fact that now we have nothing to perform medical tests on, no meat to eat, no source for products like leather and such. But, the text says, humanity is clever, and we figured a way out of that, by using the least productive members of society to replace all that: babies. The end of the story notes that now the babies seem to be gone, but humanity is clever. We'll figure a way out of this...
* One of the themes in StephenieMeyer's ScienceFiction novel ''Literature/TheHost'', where the invading aliens are kind, pure creatures who regard humans as animalistic and vicious. Kind of ironic, since the aliens are [[AndIMustScream imprisoning the humans in their own bodies forever]]...
* The Dark Ones in ''Literature/NightWatch'' take this as a basic tenet, though the Light Ones disagree. Case in point: the Light created Communism to try and improve humanity. They claim it was subverted by the Dark, but the Dark maintains they didn't do anything, and humans simply went on a destructive path as a result of their own natures.
** Update: the experiment with Communism was indeed sabotaged, by none other than [[BigGood Gessar the Brightest]], head of the Moscow Night Watch. He revealed later that he had foreseen that the experiment would've been successful and indeed propelled the technological level of humanity but eventually would've lead to a [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]-esque world division into three constantly warring blocks and, most importantly, exposure of the Others and their subsequent extermination. So yes, basically it's implied that even given a perfect world, we'd screw it up.
* Subverted in ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' series: Despite managing to turn the most horrific war in galactic history into the boring and hard-to-understand game of Cricket, using the incredibly profane word [[PardonMyKlingon "Belgium"]] as the name of a country, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking housing the worst poet in the galaxy,]] humanity is just implied to be primitive, although the rest of the Galaxy ''has'' shunned Earth for Cricket.
* In Sergey Volnov's ''Army Of The Sun'', humanity has conquered and enslaved any alien race they happened to come by, imposing their culture and customs on them (apparently, some aliens didn't look too kindly on the introduction on the concept of [[WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove love]] to their emotionless mating practices). The novels describe the galaxy after the empire-wide [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters rebellion]], which resulted in an alien-dominated galaxy, where humans are treated as second-class citizens. Interestingly, the novels make the reader feel more for the humans, even though it is clearly stated that humans were anything but kind to their alien slaves. In fact, the only races that they treated more or less fairly were HumanAliens, as they happened to look almost exactly like blacks, whites, and Asians. Then again, the aliens don't exactly treat humans kindly either, still remembering the days of TheEmpire. On the other hand, hardly anyone ever mentions the positive aspects of the [[TheEmpire Earthstella Empire]], such as technological uplifting, introduction of [=FTL=] travel (only one other race managed to develop it on their own), unified language, interstellar economy, and turning a bunch of isolated species into a galactic community.
** Only one alien dockworker nostalgically remembers the days of TheEmpire, when the spacedock was bustling with ships and work was always available.
* A rather nasty science fiction novel by Charles Pellegrino, ''Flying to Valhalla'' is built around the theory that a species looks out for itself only, destroying all competitors. This includes humans, which they go on to prove, whether they want to or not.
* Lampshaded in SMStirling's [[TheDraka Draka]] series. The Draka ''admit'' that they're bastards, and frequently upbraid the Alliance for its hypocrisy in not owning up to the bastard deeds of their own history: "We couldn't exterminate our aborigines, the way the Yankees did."
* UrsulaKLeGuin's novella ''The Word for World is Forest'' features humans descending upon the forested planet of Athshe, harvesting the valuable lumber and terrorizing and enslaving the native inhabitants.
* Tarrou, of ''Literature/ThePlague'', holds the worldview that evil is inherent and natural in humans:
-->''I know positively–-yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see-–that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him. What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest-–health, integrity, purity (if you like)-–is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.''
* In ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' the Planet of Sphinx is a subversion where humans come to a planet inhabited by NobleSavage creatures called treecats and instead of tearing the planet up, they go to lengths to keep it clear of development, and form friendships with them. One of them bonds with the title character who of course is an exponent of [[HumansAreWarriors another trope about humans]].
* A rare occasion when this trope is played in positive (kind of) light occurs in a short sci-fi story "Cage" by B. Chandler. A group of astronauts are marooned on a distant planet and then captured by aliens. Humans are treated well but are not recognised as sentient beings. The obvious solutions, like making right triangles out of twigs, fail to impress the aliens. However, later humans discover some small vermin scurrying around their cage and decide to capture it and keep it as a pet. The succeed, and right afterwards the aliens let them go with apologies. What can better serve as an evidence of intelligence than an ability and readiness to put other beings in cages?
* The galactic empire of ''Literature/BillTheGalacticHero'' has a war-based economy that has to be sustained by seeking out new alien races with which to do battle. The aliens are treated well at first until the humans trump up some faux pas for the ambassadors to make which is made into an excuse for all-out interplanetary war.
** They are currently engaged in a war with a race of LizardFolk called Chingers, who are portrayed in the media as man-sized scary reptiles who will "marry your sister". In fact, Chingers are about 1-foot tall but incredibly strong thanks to them being born on a 10g homeworld. However, they were a race of pacifists until humans attacked them. Since then, they've learned to fight and spy pretty well, to the point where TheEmpire is ''losing'' the war.
* Creator/HPLovecraft played with this a bit. While not directly adressing the trope, he noted that among his [[EldritchAbomination gods]] there is one who is the most human of them all - Nyarlathotep. You know, the most malicious, manipulative and outright sadistic one.
** He's also the only one who seems to actually notice humans and treat them as something even worth playing with. To the rest, if they notice humans at all, they aren't even worth the equivalent of burning with a magnifying glass.
* Invoked several times in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', especially when Ax learns about things like the Holocaust - though very few of the aliens consider humans ''complete'' bastards, and most alien species are acknowledged to have a bit of bastard in them too (the Pemalites and the Hork-Bajir are the only races that are truly morally superior, and that's because [[spoiler: they were genetically engineered to be kind and peaceful and to be stupid and docile, respectively]]). The Yeerks do have an attitude of "it's not like humans are so perfect anyway", along with the "you're our meat" thing, though.
** In the Andalite Chronicles Elfangor is surprised to learn that humans fight wars with one another. However the Andalites are not much better given that they [[spoiler: attempt to wipe out the human race in order to get the Yeerks]] twice.
* AM, BigBad and [[AIIsACrapshoot sadistic AI]] of the short story ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' definitely believes this. The story's protagonist ends up proving him wrong by [[FelonyMisdemeanor murdering all of his companions.]] It's better than it sounds-- they were [[MercyKill Mercy Kills.]]
* British statesman Lord Chesterfield in ''Literature/LettersToHisSon'': "In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and, knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable. And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers much superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field. Abhor a knave, and pity a fool in your heart; but let neither of them, unnecessarily, see that you do so." (letter 60)
* In Creator/PoulAnderson's ''Literature/AfterDoomsday'', the destruction of Earth is unprecedented, making the evidence that humanity did it all the more painful. [[spoiler:At the end, when the survivors are pondering whether humanity should go on in face of this, they learn they were framed.]]
* Averted in ''TheManWhoFellToEarth'' and its movie adaptation, because [[spoiler: according to Thomas, his people would likely have treated a human visitor as badly as Earth's people treated him]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* As a whole, ''Franchise/StarTrek'' - especially ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration the Next Generation]]'' - posits a world in which humans ''were'' bastards, and rarely loses the opportunity to lecture their 20th-century viewers on how far we still have to go. Good news, though; we get better. In fact, we're even sorta charming, especially to advanced races who gauge others for 'potential'.
** Even so, in one episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Quark the Ferengi lectures Commander Sisko about how ''his'' species never practiced slavery or genocide (particularly {{anvilicious}} as it's already established that Ferengi not only did keep slaves but ''still do'' (sort of) - anyone who goes into debt they can't repay is legally enslaved to their debtor. This also ignores the extreme sexism his race continues to practice). He also tells Nog in "The Siege of AR-558":
--->"Let me tell you something about Humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."
** The Vulcans are a more extreme example of former bastards. They often act condescending to other species, but the subtext is often that they realize that since they were bastards, other species can benefit from logic as well, and often get shirty when they don't. A young Tuvok from Voyager was once shown complaining about humanity always expecting other species to be like them, apparently not recognizing a classic ''Vulcan'' move when he sees one.
** The jabs at humans that [[TheSpock Spock]] and other [[StrawVulcan Vulcans]] like to make via examples from human ''history'', however, go uncalled-out, even though all indications are that Vulcans were just as bad in their own early history. Spock himself admitted that Vulcan, like Earth, had its warring colonizing period that was considered brutal even by our standards, and that some Vulcans [[spoiler:(you might know them as Romulans)]] still hold to their warlike roots.
* Given [[RousseauWasRight the kind of person]] JimHenson was, he usually had a more thoughtful take on this issue. To wit:
** ''FraggleRock'' stands dedicatedly on the "humans are misguided" side. Uncle Traveling Matt quickly dubs us "the Silly Creatures", which really says it all. On the few occasions Doc threatened the FiveRaces, he did so without realizing it (shutting down the pipes in his house shuts down the water supply for the Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs). [[spoiler:When he finally meets Gobo face-to-face, he's careful to take this sort of thing into consideration.]]
*** Most behaviors that Traveling Matt observed in humans weren't silly at all -- not even, in many cases, the way he misinterpreted them. For example, he thought paperboys fed hungry houses. The main exception is that when humans noticed him, they apparently mistook him for one of them.
** Not really avoided in ''TheMuppetShow'' or its movie spin-offs. As far as the biggest bastard Kermit ever met is concerned, RogerEbert said it best: "As soon as Kermit gains legs, he meets a human with an unsavory use for them."
** The famous anti-hunting rendition of "For What It's Worth" featured little woodland animals singing about "a man with a gun over there", and periodically ducking under cover as trigger-happy human hunters blundered through the scene, firing at everything that moved.
** [[spoiler:And then promptly subverted at the end when the hunters reveal they were trying to bag ''construction equipment''.]]
* ''Series/DoctorWho'', particularly the revival series, sways between Humans Are The Real Monsters, HumansAreIdiots, Humans Are Misguided But Well-Meaning, and even on occasion Humans Are Absolutely Frickin' Awesome, sometimes within the same episode. Which is probably as close to reality as you can get really, since humans generally show capacity for all of these things, depending on all kinds of factors.
-->'''The Doctor:''' [[HumansAreMorons Humans have got such limited little minds]]. I don't know why I like you so much.
-->'''Sarah Jane Smith:''' Because you have such good taste.
-->'''The Doctor:''' That's true. That's very true.
** Remember the Ood from "The Impossible Planet" / "The Satan Pit"? We get treated to this trope in a later episode "Planet of the Ood". [[spoiler:The humans who found them isolated the Ood Brain (the core of their ''hive mind'') and after an indefinite amount of time started to hack off the Oods' hind-mind (the external chunk of brain sticking out of their face that govern personality) and replace them with translator orbs.]] Of course, not ''all'' humans are bastards: there are still people protesting against the slavery.
** In ''The Christmas Invasion'', after Harriet Jones has the retreating Sycorax ship blasted into smithereens, the Doctor is so angry that he briefly seems to lose all respect for humans in general: "I should have told them to run, as fast as they can, run and hide, because the monsters are coming: the human race!"
** In the third season finale, the creatures that the Master uses to terrorize the planet, literally decimate the population, and enslave the human race turn out to be [[spoiler:the human race from the future.]]
--->"The human race. Greatest monsters of them all."
*** Even more of a downer when you realize these are the same humans that the Doctor gave such a giddy "humans are indomitable" speech about in an earlier episode of the finale.
** In "The Doctor's Daughter", humans are far more violent than the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Hath]].
** A prime example in "Midnight"--no one knows that the MonsterOfTheWeek is, or what it can do. It's possessed a woman, and the humans trapped in with her start discussing what to do. If the Doctor weren't there to talk them down, they would have thrown her out of the train they were on. When it possesses the Doctor, they ''almost throw HIM out.'' All because they were scared.
** In "The Beast Below", it's revealed that the engine for Starship UK is actually [[spoiler:a [[SpaceWhale Star Whale]], the last of its kind]]. In order to keep the ship afloat, [[spoiler:the whale is regularly tortured. The Queen chooses to forget this every 10 years, as she believes the alternative is to doom the entire population by releasing the whale from captivity.]]
*** Worse, each year every citizen would go into a room and find out the awful truth. They would then get a vote: Forget or Dissent. The first button caused the last few minutes to be erased from their memories, allowing them to live in blissful ignorance. The second button [[spoiler:dropped them into the basement to be fed to the Star Whale]]. Children who fail in class are also treated to the latter, although [[spoiler:the Star Whale doesn't want to eat them]].
*** Amy overcomes this trait after first succumbing to it. Despite the seemingly impossible situation, [[spoiler:she realizes the Star Whale's fondness of children is what led it to Earth in the first place, and if she frees it from prison, it will stay for the children's sake]].
** ''Doctor Who And The Silurians'' is practically made of this trope. Despite all the Doctor's best efforts the humans' greed, stubbornness and fear sends the situation spiralling out of control, culminating in the Brigadier murdering an entire race of hibernating people. While the Silurians wanted to destroy the humans at least as much, they do show nobler tendencies, as the Old Silurian is the only morally respectable character aside from the Doctor and Liz and even the young Silurian's choice to sacrifice himself for the good of his people contrasts with the petty, selfish and emotional reactions of the human characters.
*** In fact, pretty much every appearance by the Silurians throughout the series will at least invoke this trope once or twice.
* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' spinoff ''{{Series/Torchwood}}'' uses this trope too. Perhaps the most disturbing example is the episode ''[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E6Countrycide Countrycide]]'', which is notable as [[spoiler:the only episode in the {{Whoniverse}} not to contain any science fiction elements (other than Jack's immortality and a few pieces of Torchwood technology, both of which are incidental to the plot). The villains are human cannibals who engage in horrifying acts purely ForTheEvulz]]. However, it is brought out on a truly large scale in ''TorchwoodChildrenOfEarth'' and ''TorchwoodMiracleDay'', where the primary antagonists that the Torchwood team must deal with are really evil humans, with the alien threat being more of a catalyst than a core issue.
* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'': While the Cylons definitely hold that view towards humanity, at least in the first couple of seasons, Cylons are pretty much better than humanity at everything. Including self-righteous hypocrisy (given they make statements like "humans don't respect life like we do" after exterminating most of humanity in a nuclear holocaust and about to gun someone down).
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': While Sam and Dean usually fight supernatural monsters, the first season episode "The Benders" involves humans who hunt down other humans for fun, the second season episode "Houses of the Holy" involves a man with dead bodies in his basement, an email-using pedophile, and an attempted rapist, all of whom deserved their instant death, and the third season episode "Sin City" features a demon talking to Dean about how much humans suck. The fourth season episode "Family Remains" involves a man who raped his daughter and then shut the resulting twins away under the house, where they became animalistic scavengers. "The Benders" and "Family Remains" are notable for being the only episodes so far that don't actually involve anything supernatural, just urban legend-like events of a mundane sort. Dean: "Demons I get, people are crazy."
** Interestingly, Lucifer believed that Humans Are The Real Monsters and was furious that God showed more attention to those "murderous hairless apes" than to someone who was perfect and wonderful, [[SarcasmMode like him]].
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' seems to be going this route with the overriding conflict between [[spoiler:Jacob]] and the Man in Black/[[spoiler:Smoke Monster]]:
-->'''MIB:''' They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
-->[[spoiler:Jacob]]: It only ends once. Everything that happens before that...is just progress.
* Subverted in an episode of the 80's ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' revival, when aliens arrive on Earth and announce that they seeded the planet with humans ages ago, but now [[spoiler:they are destroying us because they were attempting to breed warriors, and we aren't ''big enough'' bastards]].
** The original ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone Twilight Zone]]'' is rife with this trope. In ''The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street'' as well as in ''The Shelter'' a suburban town tears itself apart after a perceived invasion/attack. ''The Eye Of The Beholder'' and ''Number 12 Looks Just Like You'' highlight our superficial views on aesthetics (''TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside''). ''Third From The Sun'' shows our repetitive barbarous irresponsibility (with a hint of ''NuclearWeaponsTaboo''). ''I Shot An Arrow In The Air'' shows our hatred and evil tendencies in the face of death. ''The Rip Van Winkle Caper'' shows how greedy we can be even with our "friends". ''The Little People'' shows ''DrunkWithPower'', and perhaps the best example of this trope; ''People Are Alike All Over'' where [[spoiler: alien benefactors who shower gifts upon an earthling reveal their demeanor as a ruse when they abduct him for exhibition in a martian zoo]] (''FaceHeelTurn'')
*** RodSerling's other series ''NightGallery'' had an episode where a professor is teaching the students to hurt one another. [[spoiler:The class are robots. There was a global war and the world needs to be repopulated. The robots aren't being taught to be assholes, they were being taught to be human]].
* Shown a couple times in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', especially in the episode "A Human Reaction" where John returns to Earth and the government immediately imprisons and kills both D'argo and Rygel to study alien anatomy. The entire episode paints a particularly bleak picture of the human race. Possibly subverted in that [[spoiler:it is actually all an engineered environment made by aliens that are using John's memories and knowledge of the human race to judge how humans will react to aliens. Apparently John doesn't have too much faith in humanity.]]
** [[spoiler: Somewhat justified in the season 4 episodes dealing with several of the humans' reactions and the crew's interactions when they actually do reach Earth.]]
** Subverted/inverts another trope at the same time. [[spoiler: Sebacians aren't ScaryDogmaticAliens. They're genetically engineered humans]].
* In an episode of ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', Brainiac claims that humans are worthless and trying to save them is a waste of time. To prove it, he causes a blackout (one that affected ''airplanes in flight''), and everyone except for the main characters goes completely nuts: rioting, looting, ''sending a car through a building''. Clark Kent exhausts himself running around the city trying to keep the peace, until his friend Chloe tells him to just find Brainiac and defeat him.
** Clark starts thinking this when [[spoiler: Davis Bloom proves that he is pure evil ''after'' he had been cured of his Hulk-like transformations into Doomsday.]]
* Byron from season 5 of ''Series/BabylonFive'' is convinced Mundanes Are Bastards, that when telepaths engage in actions such as murder and MindRape, it's only because mundanes have pushed them to it. However, this is obviously not the case, as he and his people end up doing plenty of horrible things out of a sense of entitlement, and Byron's statements probably made things worse with ideas of "we deserve this" and "it's ''their'' fault, not mine".
** When humans [[spoiler: dig up a Shadow Battle Crab on Mars, they look at its horrible blackness that induces internal screaming]], and immediately think "Hmm...how can we make this work for us?"
** To be fair, [[spoiler: Shadows are even more misguided then humans, but are not inherently evil (though they may look it).]] Humans on the other hand just have an affinity for power, even if it wasn't earned.
* On ''Series/{{Angel}}'' Angel goes on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge, determined to take down the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart once and for all. He finds an elevator he thinks will take him to W&H's "Home Office" and their senior partners. On the way down seemingly to Hell, the ghost of W&H lawyer Holland Manners appears telling him his fight against them and evil itself is pointless. The elevator doors open to reveal they are still on Earth and that Earth ''is'' the home office. It is because evil lives in the heart of every human being. This revelation completely demoralizes Angel.
* In ''Series/SirArthurConanDoylesTheLostWorld'', the AffablyEvil [[LizardFolk humanoid lizard]] Tribune keeps humans as slaves and occasionally eats them. Yet, he claims, "To kill is in our nature. To pull the wings off a fly... that's a human thing."
* Semi-subversion in {{Mongrels}}, the [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist animal characters are as bad if not worse]] than the humans, with the possible exception of Nelson.
** In episode 5 Kali decides that the human race needs to be wiped out after her date is shot in a pigeon culling. Her plan involves breeding a master race of "pigeox" [[spoiler: and when it turns out to be a normal pigeon with red feathers she tells [[TheSociopath Vince]] to eat it]].
* In ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'', the character Seamus Harper is a human who grew up on Earth. Earth in this 'verse has been invaded by both the HordeOfAlienLocusts Magog and the genetically-engineered Nietzscheans. As Harper tells his alien shipmate Trance Gemini in one episode, the Nietzscheans were worse because they were human. Granted, not that they ''just'' were capable of even more oppressive, creative cruelty than the brutal monstrosity of the Magog, but that the fact that, despite their superior attitude and holding themselves apart like a different race entirely, they are not another species and that makes it worse.
** In another episode, Harper wonders aloud if Castalians (a genetically-engineered human variant that breathe water) eat fish or if it would be like humans eating monkeys, and Captain Dylan Hunt points out that humans ''have'' eaten monkeys, [[IAmAHumanitarian and other humans]].
* [[spoiler:HG Wells]] in ''Series/{{Warehouse 13}}'' comes to this conclusion after her eight-year-old daughter was murdered.
-->'"Open your eyes, Myka! Have you seen the world in which you live? The divide between rich and poor! Hunger and famine! War and violence and hatred all flourishing beyond control! Indeed, men have found new ways to kill each other that were inconceivable in my day, even by fiction writers!"
* In OnceUponATime , Giants see humans like this. They turned out to be right, because [[spoiler: Two humans fool the one giant that believed that humans are not only violent, ambitious creatures into giving a way the location of the beanstalk and thus allowing them to wipe most of the giants for treasure and beans]].
* A common theme in CharlieBrooker's ''Series/BlackMirror''. Depending on perspective it's technology that is creating lack of empathy between fellow made or it simply allows humanity to be bastards a lot easier.
** In ''The National Anthem'' the British public pressure the Prime Minister to have sex with a pig in order to save a princess.
** In ''White Bear'' a signal has transformed 9/10 of the population into "Observers" leaving the remaining 10th to do whatever they please, and the please to cause misery. [[spoiler: Then it's revealed there was no signal and that these people are enjoying the torture of a criminal.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* The music video for [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI Do the Evolution]] showcases humanity's evil actions throughout history, though it also implies that life on Earth in general has always been naturally savage and brutal.
* Parodied in ''Robots'' by FlightOfTheConchords. Robots have annihilated all humans for this trope, but one of the lieutenants notes that they did the same thing as them by killing them.
-->Captain, do you not see the irony, by destroying the humans because of their destructive capabilities, we have become like... do you see... see what we've done?
-->Yes.
-->...So?
-->'''SILENCE! DESTROY HIM!'''
** [[DisproportionateRetribution "After time we grew strong, they gave us cognitive powers/ They made us work far too long at unreasonable hours!"]]
* One of the major themes of Music/TheProtomen's [=CDs=], especially the first one.
* Ayreon does this to great effect in ''Unnatural Selection'' from ''01011001''.
-->''We gave them feelings, what did they sense?''\\
''Shout at the world in their defense.''\\
''We gave them science what did they do?''\\
''They built a bomb and they used it too!''\\
''We gave them wisdom, what did they learn?''\\
''Wore out the planet and made it burn!''\\
''We gave them armor, what did they make?''\\
''Nuclear weapons for their own sake!''\\
''We gave them insight, what did they see?''\\
''Vanquish the noble, enslave the free!''\\
''We gave them wisdom, what did they seek?''\\
''Destroying all that's within their reach!''\\
''We gave them language, what did they say?''\\
''They put the planet in disarray!''\\
''We gave them dreams!''\\
''And what did they dream?!''\\
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Is_the_Bastard Man Is the Bastard]]. That is all.
* {{Devo}}, ''Beautiful World''. Especially the video. Actually, most of the band's work tends to involve this trope in one form or another.
* [[{{Supertramp}} Crime of The Century]] (The song, and maybe the album) is likely this, or some group jumping the MoralEventHorizon.
* Although it's not directly stated, and [[MoralGuardians not that the media cared]], but ''[[Music/TheRollingStones Sympathy for the Devil]]'' strongly suggests that the Devil in question is humanity itself.
* The Music/EgoLikeness song "Song for Samael" certainly seems to imply this:
-->''And man is just a child''\\
''Defective and diseased''\\
''And I grow so fearful for their kin''\\
''As I watch the sickness breed''\\
''Some will find them worthy of salvation''\\
''But to what end?''\\
''I've seen a man rape his only child''\\
''And murdered one who he called a friend''\\
''Samael''\\
''Meet me at the Red Sea''\\
''Samael''\\
''Meet me at the Red Sea''\\
''There are too many thieves in the kingdom''\\
''I will give you the key''\\
''Will you take care of this for me?''\\

** They use this trope again in "Funny Olde World":
--> ''Hey there demon!''\\
''I hear you had a revelation''\\
''That it's out of your hands''\\
''Whether or not we deny our own salvation''\\
''But I don't blame you''\\
''For being torn at either side''\\
''This world is really not all bad''\\
''Beneath our vanity and pride''\\
''And you don't tempt us''\\
''We forge our own paths and our own ways''\\
''And you can't possibly hurt us''\\
''Worse than the way we hurt ourselves each day''\\

* ArchEnemy's "Beast Of Man" uses the page quote in its lyrics.
* Pick a Music/HeavyMetal song, any of them, and chances are it's about this.
* Pick a Cattle Decapitation song and chances are that the lyrics will inevitably be some form of this trope. Travis Ryan really, really hates humanity.
* One interpretation of [[TheMegas]] songs "Fly on a Dog" and "Just Another Machine" are that Megaman has decided that even if he could [[BecomeARealBoy]], he wouldn't want to because humans are bastards.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
* When [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent merpeople]] are concerned, expect a subversion as well. Granted, humanity has had a conflicted relationship with the oceans, but it's usually only mer''men'' that exhibit any misanthropy as a result of it; [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch it doesn't seem to stop mermaids]] from [[InterspeciesRomance seeking out human boyfriends]].
** The InterSpeciesRomance between human and merpeople is a modern thing; in traditional tales, all merpeople hated humans.
* Definitely inverted in the earliest writings of Greek mythology, where the ''gods'' are the ones who are [[JerkassGod bastards]]: they greedily hoard power, bully the all-but-defenseless humans, and [[DisproportionateRetribution respond with self-righteous homicidal vengeance when some human offends them in any way large or small]]. In the more satirical stories, the gods will come off as {{Alpha Bitch}}es or {{Jerk Jock}}s who get their comeuppance at the hands of plucky, crafty humans. Only as Greek society became more civilized - and, therefore, more liable to preach respect for traditional authority - did the gods begin to be depicted heroically, and their punishments of mortals begin to seem somewhat justified.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''NineChickweedLane'': Monty, who is either {{God|IsEvil}} or just [[AGodAmI a very eccentric human]], has decided that he's disappointed with humans and (after contemplating wiping us out with [[TheVirus a nice little plague]]) wants to improve this by evolving humans into [[BodyHorror cockroaches]].
-->'''[[CloudCuckooLander Thorax]]''': When you say you're going to rethink your creation of humanity, in what respect are you going to do so?
-->'''Monty''': Only in the respects that command their waking thoughts and actions. Their [[SevenDeadlySins covetousness and lust]]; their [[RaceTropes intolerance]], [[DirtyCoward cowardice]], [[ColdBloodedTorture hatred]] and [[ForTheEvulz cruelty]]; their [[CorruptChurch sanctimony]], [[TruthAndLies mendacity]] and [[{{Criminals}} thievery]]; and [[RealityTV their intense, feckless voyeuristic love of mediocrity]].... At least for starters.
-->'''Thorax:''' That may be an extreme way to portray them.
-->'''Monty:''' [[YouSuck It's the only way they portray themselves.]] Read a newspaper.
-->(A little later)
-->'''Thorax:''' So... Are you pretty much resolved to efface humankind from the face of the planet?
-->'''Monty:''' Only to the extent that they are [[AtomicHate resolved to do it to each other.]]
-->'''Thorax:''' Perhaps, on the whole, you should adopt a different standard for [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Armageddon.]]
-->'''Monty:''' Good point. [[HelpHelpThisIndexIsBeingRepressed It's difficult to live up to (humanity's) level of ferocity.]]
** This storyline could also be interpreted as GodIsEvil, especially since Monty plans his first human-to-cockroach transformation with the unborn baby of [[KickTheDog the nicest characters]] [[spoiler: who also happens to be an ex-nun and whose baby-daddy is an ex-priest]]. It's made especially creepy by the fact that Monty is discussing wiping out/mutating humanity ''[[StepfordSmiler with the calm demeanor you'd use to pick groceries]]''. [[spoiler: Monty is later called out by a bunch of the characters for both his plan and the fact that he can't use H/his powers to find some missing clothes (Thorax: "Monty, you and I are quits.") Monty eventually reveals to the mom-to-be that he wasn't really going to do it, and the whole thing probably a SecretTestOfCharacter for the other, um, characters.]]
* ''CalvinAndHobbes'' played this up quite often, with the sentiment usually voiced by Hobbes. Sometimes, however, Calvin himself would experience the CulturalCringe. One strip which showed him becoming disgusted at the garbage that other humans had thoughtlessly discarded in the woods, ends with him ''stripping off all his clothes and walking naked through the forest with Hobbes'', proclaiming "I'm with you." In its own absurd way, it was a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.
* ''ComicStrip/{{Pogo}}'': "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
* An alien on ''PricklyCity'' has decided to call off his invasion because he doesn't want to catch whatever we have.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Religion]]
* Christianity states this is the whole reason for the Incarnation and Sacrifice of {{Jesus}}. Paul even yells at other Christians for [[{{squick}} having sex with their stepmothers]] (1 Corinthians 5)
* Literature/TheBible delves into this territory at times, especially in the Old Testament.
** Seriously, the Bible (at least for those whose religions follow it) ''does'' answer the question of why bad things happen to good people: namely, [[StrawNihilist that bad things ''don't'' happen to good people because there's ''no such thing'' as good people.]]
* [[NewAge New agers]] often believe that there are many alien races out there watching over humanity, but are withholding assistance because we're too violent and nasty to each other and aren't PerfectPacifistPeople like they are.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]
* [[TheEmpire The Imperium of Man]] of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' is a xenocidal, fanatical, corrupt, racist, mass-murdering apparatus. However, in the context of the setting, it's [[IDidWhatIHadToDo justified and thus avoid the complete monster label]] because [[AliensAreBastards pretty much every other species is just as bad]], if not ''worse'', and without the Imperium's harsh rule mankind would be doomed to slavery, extinction, or [[FateWorseThanDeath Fates Worse Than Death]].
** The fandom's preferred "good guys" are the idealistic Tau (collectivist imperialist aliens often accused of brainwashing by fans and Imperial humans alike) and the arrogant Eldar (who will gladly kill a million Humans today to save one Eldar a century from now). All the other races are much, much worse: the daemonic legions of Chaos are largely psychotic, the Tyranids want to eat the galaxy, the soulless Necrons want to end the existence of souls, the battle-loving Orks go on jihads for ''fun'', and Dark Eldar ''literally'' get off on inflicting and receiving pain. Essentially, no matter how insanely vicious the Imperium gets, you'd still cheer them on. These are people who use other people for machinery, commit genocide and human sacrifice, and just generally run a totalitarian police state in which you can be killed for thought crimes. They have a branch of the government AND whole sections of planets devoted entirely to torture (church worlds-dungeon section). It is best not to read this series if you get easily depressed.
** Psykers have always been a grey area, however. No matter how much they may be detested daemon magnets, the fact remains that the Imperium simply could not function - even with the Emperor at full strength - without them, as they're utterly vital for both communication and navigation. Same goes for the three-eyed Navigator corps. Not to mention that the Emperor is himself a psyker, the most powerful to have ever lived.
* ''TabletopGame/TheWorldOfDarkness'' series seems to hold to a viewpoint best described as follows: "Humans are Bastards, but frankly, compared to the rest of reality, they're small-timers." Both ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' and ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken'' come close to playing it straight, while ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' comes close to subverting it (Prometheans admit humans have their flaws, but desperately want to ''be'' them because they know Prometheans are far worse), while ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' subverts it outright (''Dancers In Dusk'' states few things rekindle a changeling's much-needed faith in other people then visiting a stranger's dreams for the first time).
* In the expanded ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' core setting based on ''{{Greyhawk}}'', Humanity's creator deity is [[http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041203a Zarus]] who claims to be the first human, a LawfulEvil Deity of bigotry and human supremacy. This in a world where every other core race's primary deity is good aligned. Worse yet, he's a greater deity, meaning he has a flipping ton of worshipers, all of them human.
* In the ''Innistrad'' block of ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', the entire plane is crawling with horrible monsters eager to prey on humans. Some humans adapted [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=222903 by becoming the worst monsters of all.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* Creator/WilliamShakespeare, ''Theatre/RichardIII'':
-->No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity, but I know none, therefore am no beast.
* A classic example from the Threepenny Opera: "What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed. Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance, in keeping its humanity repressed. And for once you must try not to shriek the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts."
[[/folder]]


[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''[[TwentyTwentySeven 2027]]'': Titan will reference this if you [[spoiler:initate the Vladmir ending.]]
* In ''StrangeJourney'', most of the humans and demons are mostly cool with each other. Humans from your investigation team tend to go somewhere between LawfulNeutral and TrueNeutral, and the demons swing in a true diverse fashion, with virtually all alignments represented. Then again, demons like Mitra appear. Turns out, Captain Jack and his all-too human pals are way, ''way'', '''''w[[RuleOfThree ay]]''''', too on par with Mitra for comfort, butchering demons (and by their willingness to torture and kill Jimenez, humans too) to create their own demon army. Especially when it turns out Jack and co. are OnlyInItForTheMoney.
** ALL of the demons (or near all of them) are very quick to point out that while the Schwartzwelt is essentially a [[HellGate hell on earth]], all of it is modeled on humanity's being a race of bastards with the innate instinct and talent for killing (Especially killing other humans). The more wild/bloodthirsty demons clearly state how awed they are by that aspect of humanity with a grudging respect/obvious distaste.
** After a while, having ''every single demon'' you try to negotiate with asking "Why do humans suck so much?" gets tiresome... (Though they also like to ask, "Nice suit! Where'd you get it?", so...)
** A [[WildMassGuessing popular theory]] has it that the cosmic error which transformed God Almighty into [[GodIsEvil the uncaring bastard He is today]] exists because humans want a God that represents them (instead of, say, a caring and compassionate ruler). Considering [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve how powerful]] [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly human belief is in this setting]], this is a distinct possibility.
* ''VideoGame/{{Persona}}'' games gave us the AnthropomorphicPersonification of this trope in Nyarlathotep - an entity literally created as [[TheHeartless the dark, destructive side of the collective unconscious]], [[MadeOfEvil a monstrous entity born of Humanity's hatred, fear and despair]]. [[AsLongAsThereIsEvil He will exist as long as Humanity does]]. He has been known to [[OmnicidalManiac indulge in omnicidal plans]]... [[VideoGame/{{Persona2}} and he has been]] [[TheBadGuyWins known to win]].
** Of course, He of the Thousand Masks takes his name from a Lovecraftian EldritchAbomination who just likes to mess with sapient life.
** Though there is also Philemon, The Crawling Chaos' rival who believes humanity can become enlightened.
*** Although Philemon himself may embody this trope even better than Nyarlathotep, in his own way -- you kinda expect the personified essence of humanity's evil to be a total asshole, but you don't quite expect his opposite to be the dick Philemon acts like.
** The third and fourth games, however, focus on subverting this - the protagonists associate with those around them, discover the core of strength that lies at the heart of humanity, and use it to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu smash in the face of an ungodly monstrosity]]. Heck, this is made ''explicit'' in ''Persona 4'', where the final boss [[spoiler:reveals she was using three people to test humanity - one representing despair, one representing destruction, and one representing hope. ''You'' were hope, and as you finish her off, she declares, "Children of man... Well done!"]]
* The ''Franchise/DeadSpace'' games do this ''all the freaking time''. In a setting where the Universe is dark and cold and deserted, and the only [[AbsentAliens alien life]] we've found are horrifically reanimated dead bodies trying to kill everyone, human beings still manage to hold the title of "[[HumansAreBastards biggest assholes in the Galaxy]]". ''Not one game'' goes by without some douchebag betraying you, fanatically worshiping the Necromorphs and Markers, trying to brutally suppress something or other by killing many innocent people, or all of the above.
** And in a few situations, it's even shown that much of that is ''[[GoodIsNotNice necessary]]'', or at least [[WellIntentionedExtremist justifiable]]. Humans have reached a peak, and civilization is quickly circling the drain. The betrayals and coverups are part of an [[GovernmentConspiracy Government effort]] to revitalize humanity with [[ImportedAlienPhlebotinum alien technology]], and even the fanatical [[ChurchOfHappyology Unitologists]] are led by a misguided belief that, though humanity has failed to survive, some kind of evolution could save everyone. [[spoiler: Even though it doesn't and they're completely wrong]].
** The [[VideoGame/DeadSpace3 third game]] reveals that [[spoiler:humanity is merely following the same pattern every other race in the galaxy that preceded it followed. Every race became victims of entropy, limited resources, and the temptation of the Brethren Moons' Markers and destroyed themselves.]]
* Given how prevalent this trope is, it's worth noting that Konami's ''{{Suikoden}}'' series averts it--the kobolds are largely portrayed as personable, but elves and dwarves tend to be ''very'' arrogant and xenophobic, and although most of the villains have been humans, it seems to be because they're more numerous rather than because there's fewer bastards in other races.
* A recurring theme in the ''{{Lunar}}'' series:
** In ''VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar'', the Goddess Althena finds that humans depend on her too much, and she decides to spread her power among them in order to [[spoiler:live as a regular human; in this case, it's Alex's VictoriousChildhoodFriend Luna]]. While she disliked the fact that they depended on her a good deal, she believes that [[HumansAreSpecial they can live fully without her and are capable of great things.]] Ghaleon believes in this trope in full force and thinks that humanity needs a god.
** In ''VideoGame/LunarEternalBlue'', Zophar, [[GodOfEvil the god of destruction]], also believes in this. [[MysteriousWaif Lucia]] doesn't directly fall under this trope, but being an EmotionlessGirl who is a servant ([[EpilepticTrees or something]]) to Althena that is required to sleep on the abandoned Blue Star for thousands of years gives her the impression that Althena alone is the only one capable of keeping Lunar at peace and in line. CharacterDevelopment ensues as she adventures with [[TheHero Hiro]] and the others, and she, too, begins believing in [[HumansAreSpecial the opposite trope.]] [[spoiler:Even ''Ghaleon'', the former BigBad, returns realizing that the human strength that Alex had and that Hiro has are special.]]
* Subverted in the ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' series. Humans are bastards, sure, they run [[VideoGame/UnrealTournament bloody sport competitions]]... but the Skaarj, a race of violent, xenophobic, savage reptiloid BeePeople who believe all races besides Skaarj are inferior and exist solely to be reduced to slaves or wiped out for their amusement -- or both at once -- are bigger bastards by far.
* While it doesn't have this theme ''per se'', the [[AllThereInTheManual racial backstory]] in ''DungeonSiege II'' doesn't exactly put humans in a positive light. It says that the human race has a dual nature, but it only mentions the negative, not the positive; it says that humans are [[BloodKnight extremely violent]].
** To be fair, there's the Dryads. You'd think that a race of attractive plant girls who have an innate connection to nature would be some of the nicest people around, right? Guess again. Most Dryads are quite militaristic (more so in ''Broken World''), and are unusually suspicious of other races, especially the Half-Giants (though the Elf Amren seems to be on good terms with them). Plus there's that Ring of Submission they have, which senses your intentions before you've even thought of them and then [[AllCrimesAreEqual does painful or even fatal stuff to you accordingly]]. For a race that doesn't like government, that's a pretty fascistic way to treat your prisoners.
*** Thankfully, there is an exception: Taar. She actually is one of the nicest people around and isn't all that fond of the Rings of Submission (which explains why she's glad to remove the player character's). In addition, since as of ''Broken World'', the Overmage is dead and peace is slowly but surely returning to Aranna, only time will tell if the other Dryads will also lay off the testosterone.
* This happens a lot in ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}''. For example, Arcturus Mengsk is a MagnificentBastard at best and a Machiavellian despot at worst. Kerrigan is at first horrified when she's left behind, but when she gets turned into a Zerg, she actually ''[[EvilFeelsGood enjoys it]]''. Plus a lot of Terran missions revolve around CivilWarcraft. By the end of the ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}'' storyline, there's only one good Terran left among the notable ones: Jim Raynor. Thing is, there are only two other races and they are pretty much the same, give or take.
** Or to be exact, the Zerg overmind desires to kill/infest the human colonists... and the Protoss attempt to stop this by burning the worlds... while the people are still on it. The Protoss burn them not because it's the only way or even the best way, but because they found humans distasteful but didn't have an excuse to remove them until the Zerg came along.
** ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' does a much better job of showing Terrans as a mostly good race, it highlights Acturus Mengsk's VillainWithGoodPublicity, while following the exploits of a force mostly made up of idealists. [[spoiler:The General that follows Valerian Mengsk is also willing to work with Raynor with no real objections.]] This is because the game is about how even when things look darkest, there is always the light of hope.
** Furthermore, both ''Brood War'' and ''Starcraft II'' shows that humans and protoss at the very least are NotSoDifferent. The existence of a Dark Templar society and the Tal'Darim shows that the Protoss are just as prone to factionalism as the Terrans. Both races are slowly learning to distinguish friend from foe (The Khalai protoss respect Raynor's service to Aiur and skill as a commander, but still are hostile to the Dominion and the UED, while the Tal'Darim and the Dominion are hostile to all other factions, Terran and Protoss alike.)
*** The books that introduced Arcturus's son Valerian show him as a pretty decent guy with a passion for history, while his father only focuses on the practical. About the only thing the father and son can talk about is Valerian's collection of antique swords, which Valerian sees as art and Arcturus sees as weapons. This is likely because he was mostly raised by his mother, while Arcturus was busy defeating the Confederacy and setting up his empire.
* ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' shows many humans who are pigheaded and prejudiced against races they view as "savage", and if a racist character shows up, it's more likely than not to be a human. But like other examples on this list, the other races in the world have their own prejudices, ranging from the orcs refusing to accept their role in the atrocities of the first two wars and hailing their "heroes" from said era, the high elves blaming the Alliance (that they left) for not saving them and continuing to practice magic despite the destruction it's caused and the Forsaken seeking to KillAllHumans, more than a few gleefully.
* [[TheFairFolk The fairies]] in the world of ''{{Drakengard}}'' subscribe to this viewpoint. The protagonist only ever meets two fairies, one of which is the king of fairies, and both of them, besides being [[SmallAnnoyingCreature annoying]], feel this way towards humans to the point of being racist. Humans are big, dumb, ugly, smelly, stinky idiots to the fairies who can never get anything right and always destroy the forests to feed their infernal greed. Caim's dragon is also of this prejudice, but then again, dragons being arrogant and looking down on humans has pretty much [[DeadHorseTrope been done to death.]]
* ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' [[{{Anvilicious}} doesn't beat around the bush about it]]. Ever. Particularly blatant when the planet brings a [[OrganicTechnology nature-based]] empire from a [[AlternateContinuity universe where the dinosaurs didn't go extinct]].
** At least in this case the problem didn't seem to be blamed on humanity being evil, but that humans were heavily influenced and manipulated by [[EldritchAbomination Lavos]], who uplifted mankind to the top of the ecosystem for its own purposes: to eat it.
** They are also called out by the Dwarves who kill the faeries because humans accidentally poisoned their home. Clearly accidentally poisoning someone's living place is worse than actual genocide. Really the only people who has any right to call out humanity are the demihumans of Marbule as they never tried to kill anyone else.
*** This gets especially jarring when the human heroes are misblamed by the fairies they just saved from the genocidal dwarves. Dwarves blaming humanity for their need to wipe out the fairies to settle on a pretty large island is already InsaneTrollLogic (especially if you consider that their GreenAesop is completely broken by the fact that they use smoking ''{{steampunk}} tanks''). The fairies pulling the Humans Are The Real Monsters card in front of their saviors, completely blaming the dwarven invasion on them instead of, you know, the dwarves however is completely mind-boggling.
*** In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' every race got a chance to be a bastard, with the Reptites and Mystics waging wars in different time periods with the intent to wipe out humanity for ill-defined reasons. Even if humanity committed atrocities in the backstory that's a little extreme. The nature-based empire from ''Cross'' was the evolved form of the Reptites from ''Trigger'' which, to exist, likely killed off all the humans in their own timeline where Lavos never landed. Of course, it's humans that defeat Lavos and SaveTheWorld in the end (albeit with help from non-human allies.)
* And that is not the only example to be found when it comes to the Franchise/TalesSeries. In fact, this is a major theme of ''VideoGame/TalesOfRebirth'' (along its FantasticRacism), but the message is not "humans are bastards" as much as it's "all people, Humas and Gajumas, are bastards period". They hate each other because they do, and both do pretty nasty things to each other (some Humas refused to give medicine to a Gajuma woman while she was dying ''in front of her daughter'', and some Gajumas chased an old couple out of town, forcing them to live in the middle of a desert filled with monsters). They get better... sort of. [[spoiler:The end of the game implies that they keep on being douches, but at least [[ThePowersThatBe the powers in command]] are doing something about it]].
** Duke did have this view in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'', although the Krytians were ''just as'' guilty as humans were of summoning [[EldritchAbomination the Adephagos]]. And not ''all'' of the Entelexia were good, after all. In VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss, humans were bastards but only to the replicas - which all had an UncannyValley effect on the populace. (Well think about it...if someone who looked and sounded ''exactly'' like your dead friend showed up ''at your friend's funeral'', you probably would be a bit freaked out too!)
** ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'' uses something like this as a plot twist. There are two types of people on that world, Ferines, the people of the sea, and Oerines, the people of the land. The game highly drops a lot of hints that one of them wasn't exactly native to the world. Naturally, you assume after seeing the technology in The Legacy that [[spoiler:the Ferines weren't native]]. However, it's revealed in a surprise twist that [[spoiler:It's actually the ''Oerines'' who are the aliens who came to the world in The Legacy, not the Ferines! They don't need land - they live in the water after all.]] Despite that in the past, one of the Human Groups Were Bastards, but so were the other to get revenge, and in that only ''some'' were bastards. (Quite a bit of the [[spoiler:Ferines]] even want to start opening up peace talks again, once the Raging Nerifes was calmed down and replaced with the alter ego, the Quiet Nerifes, later called the Great Nerifes.)
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'', also full of FantasticRacism, its starts out having you think that Half-Elves, in the form of Desians (who are running Human Ranges all accross Sylvarant) are the bastards and the humans are victims here. But because of their treatment by the Desians and how the Desians, who I remind you are half elves, treat humans, humans are bastards to half-elves. You slowly start to see how much humans can be bastards as the game goes on and the party reaches the parallel world of Tethe'alla. The Tethe'allans know of the parallel Sylvarant, and do whatever they can to make sure Sylvarant keeps going into decline to keep their world flourishing, buts not the main story point. Skip to deeper in the game [[spoiler: It turns out that the reason half elves are bastards is because the angels who command the half elves are bastards, and the reason the angels are bastards, is because the big bad: Mithos Yggdrasil has deemed them so 4000 years before the game begins when Mithos' older sister Martel is killed by humans, which in turn makes him an evil obsessed with reviving his sister, insane bastard.]] Sadly, this is just the story, I haven't started on the individual characters who are straight bastards, and there are a lot of them, even if some don't seem like it when you first meet them.
*** It should be noted, though, that pure-blooded elves were also plenty racist to half-elves, casting them out of their HiddenElfVillage ([[spoiler: Genis and Raine]] aren't even allowed in when you first visit.)
*** Then you fast forward to ToS: Dawn of the New World, where racism still lives on, though its just toward half-elves, but after the worlds we fused in the last game, the Tethe'allans and Sylvaranti are bastards to eachother...then you realize that the Symphonia games are prequels to Tales of Phantasia...yeah.
* Humans in the PC game series ''AgeOfWonders'' almost always have leaders whose favorite pastimes include leveling elven forests, siding with demons and orcs for more power, and enslaving lesser races. This is despite the fact that they technically have a "Neutral" alignment.
** In the sequel, however, they're mostly being manipulated by a vindictive Water Wizard.
* The Therions (anthropomorphic animals, ranging from lion-men to gazelles to rhinos to panthers) of ''JeanneDArc'' deeply resent mankind, a hatred stemming from how the very humans they assisted in the Demon War turned on them and corralled them all up in a tiny warren just outside Paris (where, previous to the war, the Therion kingdom extended all over Europe.) In fact, the few Therions that assist Jeanne and her cause are a minuscule exception to the rule.
* The LucasArts adventure game ''The Dig'' [[LampshadeHanging hung a lampshade]] on this issue. When one of the characters tentatively points out to a friendly alien that not all humans are as [[RousseauWasRight nice]] as they are, the alien cheerily replies that that's okay, since all relatively young species are like that, and anyone who wants to pick a fight will just be [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien squashed like bugs]].
* Dracula from ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania}}'' likes to toss out this accusation to whatever Belmont he's fighting, usually starting by mentioning that the only reason he's up and about is that some human woke him again. But the Belmonts are generally full of righteous fury and in no mood for discussing the idea, so not much comes of it.
-->''What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!''
** In some games it's explicitly stated that Dracula's continuous resurrections are not just because of individual Dracula-cultists resurrecting him, but that human malice and greed in itself allows him to continuously come back even when it isn't his will to do so. This may be more AsLongAsThereIsEvil rather than an endemic thing, however.
** He is also guilty of stimulating the trope. Consider the purpose of the titular ''Dracula's Curse''/''Curse of Darkness''. Death's backstory in ''Judgment'' outright states that he is "sowing wickedness" in human hearts to help bring Dracula back.
** Dracula does have a FreudianExcuse relating to this trope, having lost at least two beloved wives to human cruelty. The death of the first in the crusades one led him to renounce his humanity and declare war on God, and the death of the second one to a witch-hunt caused him to extend that war to humanity. His reincarnation follows down the same path if the player lets his girlfriend die.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. The Espers lived in a lush and fertile world in peace and harmony with themselves and their surroundings despite the fact they can use their magic powers for destruction, while the humans drain the power of the Espers into delicious whiffs of magic purely for warfare and personal gain, going as far as to modify their own bodies with a sickening blend of their own technology and their magic extracts of the Espers. The two largest human cities in the game, [[WretchedHive Zozo]] and [[SceneryGorn Vector]], are also completely terrible places and both have little to no redeeming qualities within them whatsoever.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''. [[GeniusLoci The Planet is a living being]] that every single life form protects and loves, ''except for the vast majority of humanity''. See, humans like to dig holes to suck out the very LifeForce of the planet, mess with genetics to make monsters, and kill each other, ''in addition'' to polluting the environment around them. So, when the Planet's natural protectors (the [=WEAPONs=]) are activated to respond to the very real threat of the Planet's extinction, do they go after the EldritchAbomination that desecrates life with its very presence? No, [[GaiasVengeance they go straight after human population centers and attempt to reduce them to ashes]], in some cases succeeding, ''just to reduce the amount of human beings on the Planet''.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some non-human eager to remark on how power hungry we are, with a distinctly condescending and pitying tone. What nobody seems to mention is that while humans love to start their wars, they're also the only ones able to stop them, precisely ''because'' they're willing to wield power against power.
** Also used with a Viera after the battle with one of the Judges in the frozen mountainside. Most of the people are injured or dead and some of the humans are begging a Viera to help them, but she refuses because she sees the humans as nothing but power hungry maniacs who kill everyone, including their own. It isn't until a few sidequests later that she sees the true good in humanity and decides to help the survivors.
** The game either tries to mitigate this or is hopelessly hypocritical in that at least half of the other races (besides Viera) are not just criminals, but scum sort of criminals like slavers. And the Viera themselves are basically just a reskin of ''Enterprise'' era Vulcans in their manner.
* Shows up again in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII''. Your party spends a good chunk of the game on the run from the EvilArmy while everyone else on Cocoon hates and fears you, even little kids. The populace of Cocoon even support complete Purges of residential areas where L'Cie have been spotted due to their extreme paranoia concerning anything Pulse related. To be fair, most of them only act this way because they believe Pulse L'Cie are horrible monsters that want to destroy everything they know and love. Furthermore, [[spoiler: the Fal'Cie are the ones actively nurturing the populace's worse traits to lead them to destroy themselves]]. The only human portrayed to be a total bastard is Jil Nahbaat. [[spoiler: Dysley's a bastard too, but he's disqualified since he isn't human.]]
* ''Lineage II'' also has this to an extent. While the other races are pure and beautiful children of the elements, humans [[http://www.lineage2.com/background/legends02.html were made from the corrupted remains of each]], and upon their creation, were immediately recognised as scum by everyone save their twisted creator.
** This is quickly subverted in that the humans were enslaved by the other species and treated like trash for being second best at everything. Which won them the war in the end. ""So. Is it not ironic that the lowest creatures of all, the humans, ultimately attained ownership of the land? But that is the result of human will. Even the gods did not imagine that humans would ever become rulers of the earth."
* At the end of ''PhantasyStarII'', all the disasters turn out to be caused by [[spoiler:earthlings, who, having stripped Earth of all its resources, have arrived to purge all life from Algo and take it for themselves. The BolivianArmyEnding doesn't leave much hope they can be stopped, either.]]
** Except that [[spoiler: [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu the fourth game implies that they lost. Very thoroughly. They didn't try again after Mother Brain's annihilation]].]]
* The entire point of B.B Hood in ''VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}}'' is to exemplify human evil compared to that of monsters and such.
* In the ''StarControl'' universe humans are hardly one of the evil races, but they have had their... poor moments. They designed a race of super-intelligent clones, the Androsynth, then declared them inferior and put them into manual labor. This backfired rather spectacularly when the Androsynth, being more intelligent than your average Joe, still invented hyperspace travel before the humans, escaped, and eventually joined the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, hoping for some sweet revenge.
** Oh, and humanity also managed to collectively alienate the VUX by insulting their appearance in the first contact - ironically, humans look just as attractive to the VUX as the other way around (VUX is sometimes treated as an acronym for "Very Ugly Xenoform"). This would lead to a massive political crisis and, indirectly, to the VUX joining the Ur-Quan as well as, isolated, they could not match the Hierarchy. So out of 7 races in the original Hierarchy, humankind is responsible for two. Unsurprisingly, the Alliance (which humans were members of) eventually lost the first war.
*** ...And the VUX example is subverted when we learn that [[spoiler:the "won't forgive you because of [[http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/The_Insult The Insult]]" is an excuse, but the ''real'' reason is they find us so repellant that they never even considered ''not going to war with us''.]] So really, humans may be foul-mouthed bastards, but the VUX are just {{jerkass}}es.
* Heavily subverted in ''VideoGame/SoulNomadAndTheWorldEaters'' with Nereids (Juno in particular). Their view on humans is more like Humans Are Untrustworthy rather than full on Humans Are The Real Monsters. An extra level of subversion kicks in as unlike many examples of this trope, they're more willing to judge on an individual basis. The ones that pass are seen as potential mates. Despite being on opposite sides, Throndyke is still respected as a good man anyway.
** Played straight since according to the official site humans are largely responsible for the tradition of war and conflict on Prodesto.
* Subverted and parodied (in a straight manner) in ''Elven Legacy''. The main characters, who are elves, will often (oh so often...) go on a rant about human bastardness, while at the same time acting either in equally bastardly manner or topping humans by quite a bit. Most blatant when the protagonist accuse humans of arrogance for daring to think elves would be humble enough to surrender their weapons and meet with their lord.
* Humans' potential for Bastardry is the ''reason'' the Aerogaters and Inspectors attack Earth in the ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' games in which they appear: The Aerogaters wish to turn us into brainwashed soldiers, while the Inspectors fear us becoming a threat, and try to keep us under control.
* Most of the sentient races in ''GuildWars'' are pretty bastard-y in their own ways, but the Charr see the humans as this for driving them out of Ascalon more than a thousand years ago.
* In the ''ToeJamAndEarl'' series, where humans and other earthly life aren't wantonly malicious and "unfunky", they're still ''weird.'' Friendly ones in the series include the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Wiseman in a Carrot Suit]] and the Soul Sisters -- a trio of black women who speak only in gospel song. In ''ToeJam & Earl 3'', you can convert most initially hostile Earthlings... such as chickens with army helmets and egg-firing mortars, and CreepyChild little girls with seemingly demon-possessed teddy bears. See? Weird.
* A major plot point in ''ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'', where humans have triggered an industrial revolution with dwarven technology acquired by Arcanum's richest businessman [[MeaningfulName Gilbert Bates]]. As a result, the Forest of Morbihan has been transformed into the Morbihan Plain over a few short years, and the most industrialized city, Tarant, is also one of the most polluted. Members of other races such as [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarves]] and [[OurElvesAreBetter elves]] theorize that because humans have relatively short livespans, every action they take is motivated by the fear of their impending deaths, and they do not live long enough to see the consequences of their actions.
* Revealed in one dialogue during ''VideoGame/MegaManZero 3'', stating that humans of the dystopian Neo Arcadia only indulge themselves in food and comfort, letting the authorities do the thinking for them while regarding the conflicts [[TheHero Zero]] and [[BigGood Ciel]] have been fighting as mere daily news on the televisions. In ''Z4'', Zero also further condemns humans fleeing from [[BigBad Weil's]] iron fist as cowardly beings who would do nothing about their refugee leader getting kidnapped just to avoid another war. It is not until [[TheDragon Craft]] blows up the city do humans finally wake up with terrible pain in their minds.
** Dr. Weil also implies in Zero 3 that Humans innately feel that ruling all the eye can see and making others work for them is the ultimate joy for them, and believes that no Reploid could ever understand this joy, although Zero [[KirkSummation counters]] this by stating that he doubts any decent human would understand Weil's viewpoint, either.
* VideoGame/{{Prototype}}. The story is about a [[TheVirus viral infestation]] that threatens Manhatten and potentially the world. The citizens' only "hope" is Blackwatch, an ''army'' of bastards who kill both infected and healthy people. You later learn that your character [[spoiler: is not really Alex Mercer. The real Alex unleashed the Blacklight Virus out of pure spite and died before the game began. The Alex we know is actually a personification of the Virus itself that copied Alex's genetic makeup. The Virus is absolutely ''disgusted'' that ''it's own creator let it loose on the world'' and spends the entire game essentially trying to save the world from it's own infestation and is even willing to sacrafice itself for the planet. When the EldritchAbomination who was created specifically to destroy the world ends up being the most sympathetic and heroic character in the game, you ''know'' Humans Are The Real Monsters.]]
** In the [[VideoGame/{{Prototype2}} sequel]], Mercer's growing disgust with humanity's flaws [[spoiler:drives him to become a DarkMessiah bent on uniting the entire world into a HiveMind so he can end all conflict.]]
* Casually tossed here and there in ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising''. Palutena notes, when talking about Magnus, that humans are fundamentally driven by desire, using the mercenary as an example. [[spoiler:Hades gets humans to go to war with themselves to an insane degree by spreading the rumor of the Wish Seed. This draws the ire of the nature goddess Viridi, who begins attempting to annihilate humankind for their greed, violence, and wastefulness.]] It's ultimately subverted in that the other sentient race, the gods, are shown to be just as bad, if not worse.
* How humans in the MassEffect universe may be seen by the other races. Within 30 years, humanity has rapidly expanded and forced our way to the top of the galactic government which has existed since we were in our bronze age.
** Some of the human factions and characters easily qualify as this, especially Cerberus.
** Inverted in the sequels. In Mass Effect 2, [[spoiler: its revealed that despite the fact that a Reaper attacked the in-universe equivalent of the U.N. headquarters, the Council refuses to take any steps towards preparing for the imminent Reaper invasion. Cue Shepard going 'rogue' and working with Cerberus.]] In Mass Effect 3 this is taken even further. [[spoiler: Its revealed that the Salarians DID take Shepard's warnings seriously but not seriously enough to push the Council into action. The Turians only took Shepard's warning seriously after the invasion began and, assuming he survived the events of Mass Effect 2, recruit Garrus as a 'Reaper expert'. The Asari not only ignored Shepard's warnings, its revealed that they were concealing a fully operational Prothean data beacon not only capable of warning about the Reaper threat but containing vital information to building a weapon that could defeat the Reapers. AND this is on top of the fact that the Asari have effectively ruled the galaxy for centuries, which one of your teammates will point out. To add insult to injury, this is the same galaxy ruling species that passed laws forbidding withholding Prothean technology.]]
* The villains of the Orochi Saga in TheKingOfFighters , namely the aforementioned Orochi, (ancient Japanese snake-demon/deity)and his followers, strongly believe this. To them, humans have ruined their world&the environment, though aside from that, they don't consider them all that great in general, to the point where they believe humankind should be annihilated. (Though part of this may also be that they serve a higher power, 'Gaia', but regardless of whether or not they're being influenced, this is still what they believe.) The Edit-Team ending even outright states that while Orochi still needed to be stopped, humanity still wasn't that great either, and that we were partially to blame for Orochi's purpose being twisted into what it became. Still, some of our heroes (as in, the various teams,) acknowledge this to an extent, though they don't think that humanity is completely un-redeemable.
* Another work of SNK's, ''VideoGame/TheLastBlade'' (technically set in the same universe, but in the 1860's in Japan), has a similar villain. Kagami is one of four individuals that were gifted with powers by the four Japanese Gods, with Kagami representing the phoenix, but with time, Kagami grew disgusted with humanity, and with that belief in mind, got to work opening the Hell Gate, with the intention to suck Earth into Hell. In the sequel however, he's reborn, (after being sucked into Hell's Gate in the first game,) and by the end, after being forced by the God's into service once more, decides to personally give humanity a second chance.
* Being in a CrapsackWorld, everyone everywhere in VideoGame/TheWitcher could be called a monster, whether its humans for oppressing nonhumans, elves for creating their own terrorist army that kills civilians and steals from hospitals to fight this oppression, or witchers themselves for taking just about any job if it pays since the decline of the monster population they were originally built to fight. However, the end of the game sums it up pretty well [[spoiler: when Geralt is about to kill the BigBad Jacques De Aldersberg with his silver witcher's when Jacques knocks away his steel one with magic. He protests saying, "But... that sword... it's for monsters." Geralt's response is to silently stab him in the throat with it.]] While the Witchers' silver swords are more suited for killing supernatural creatures and their steel swords more suited for killing humans, Geralt believes that "both are for monsters."
* The backstory for browser game ''Paladog'' has humans filling the world with so much evil that the gods are forced to destroy the world and create a new one with critters as the dominant species. Under the rule of the critters, the world becomes a utopia almost entirely devoid of violence... until TheLegionsOfHell invade it because they couldn't manipulate the crittier's minds like they could humans.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', humans have done some terrible things. Currently, many elves are former slaves who still have second-class citizen status and lives in city slums. Their Dalish cousins are forced to constantly live a gypsy-like lifestyle and move their camps every few months or so. They still remember their old civilization, which was wiped out by KnightTemplar humans because the elves refused to worship Andraste. Slightly subverted in that the elves also had their bastard moments, such as their first civilization trying to conquer humans. Then there's the Tevinter Imperium, where the ruling magisters can do whatever they please.
** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'', due to continuing mistreatment by overzealous Templars, many Mages are forced to resort to BloodMagic to either try to escape or simply protect themselves. However, this only creates a vicious circle as the Templars use this as proof that they need to tighten their choke-hold over the Mages. Eventually, the events at the endgame push the Mages too far, causing every Circle in Thedas to rise up and [[ThisMeansWar declare all-out War!]]
** Also, Darkspawn.
-->'''Sebastian''': "What do the Dalish teach about the creation of the darkspawn? I mean the Chant of Light says it was the hubris of magisters trying to compete with the Maker. But you don't believe in the Chant of Light...or the Maker. What do you believe?"
-->'''Merrill''': "Well, we don't get into many details but we're pretty sure it's the humans' fault."
* Shows up as graffiti in the "Dead Air" campaign of ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' ("WE ARE THE REAL MONSTERS!"). Also mocked right after ("Have you been outside JACKASS!!"). They really miss the internet.
** Shows up again in "The Passing", as a piece of commentary on bathroom graffiti. "I flushed it 50 times and now it DOESN'T WORK!","You IDIOT! YOU ARE THE REAL MONSTER"
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIV'' has a particularly nasty example in the Fou Empire, which [[spoiler: not only has been launching wars against the rest of humanity (fueled by [[FantasticNuke Fantastic Nukes]] fueled by ''people from those areas that have been tortured to the point of insanity first'') but goes into a full-scale war against ''their own founding emperor and KingInTheMountain GodEmperor''--who just happens to be an immortal draconic PhysicalGod that their ancestors summoned and buggered up the summoning ''so'' badly that it literally split the god across time and space.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'', GentlemanAdventurer Sir Hammerlock asks you to investigate why the giant Crystalisks (giant tripedal rock-like creatures with [[AttackItsWeakPoint crystalline formations on their legs]]) have become so violent, when they were previously quite docile. It turns out that the Crystalisks did not particularly appreciate having their crystals "mined" off of them by workers from the Dahl Corporation, since without those crystals, the Crystalisk dies. [[ChainReactionDestruction In a prolonged and explosive manner]]. As the Crystalisks are [[NighInvulnerable highly resilient]] to small arms fire, things get [[CurbStompBattle very messy]] for Dahl, and the Crystalisks now regard just about ''anything'' as a potential threat to be exterminated with extreme prejudice.
-->'''Sir Hammerlock:''' Have you heard my speech about how [[DiscussedTrope humans are the real monsters]]? Seems appropriate.
** To twist the knife, you hear one sympathetic Dahl employee's ECHO where she plays with [[AndCallHimGeorge Blue]] (A [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever rather large Crystalisk]]) with her hat telling Blue to wait a moment. She ends up getting killed by her boss when she tries to defend them.
--> (growls heard in background) "BLUE! Not now. Here, here's my hat. Follow the hat. (laughs) That's a good girl. Oh yeah we met a large one down here. She's very friendly. We call her Blue becaus... (clears throat) Um, as I was saying..."
* This shows up a couple of ways in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe''. In ''Sword of Seals'', dragons and manaketes were driven out a millenium ago in a brutal war known as "The Scouring" and ally with the game's human BigBad, who decided that humanity should be wiped out because [[FreudianExcuse his dad kept trying to kill him]]. The second (prequel) game, ''Blazing Sword'', reveals in its prologue that ''humans'' were the ones who began The Scouring and does not take an approving tone. Bizarrely, the second game never remarks upon the fact that the human heroes of The Scouring are treated with religious reverence, not even to say that history is WrittenByTheWinners, [[spoiler:and portrays the two that are still alive as very good and wise people]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* The ''[[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick Order of the Stick]]'' prequel book ''StartOfDarkness'' does this, with humans killing off goblins and other races solely for being classified as evil, even if they weren't doing anything. However, the goblin Redcloak, whose village was slaughtered by human paladins and went on to become TheDragon, shows himself to be just as bad in his own way, with his hypocrisy and less-than-balanced view of humans being brought up both in the book and in the on line strips.
** Tsukiko uses this as justification for her necrophilia in [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0700.html this strip]]. Humans are the antithesis of undead. But Humans Are The Real Monsters. Therefore, [[YouFailLogicForever undead must be good.]]
* Many (to most) furry-themed webcomics with humans in them (or even in the history of the world-setting) portray humans as essentially AlwaysChaoticEvil, with the furry characters suffering persecution such as slavery, hate crimes, being relegated to the status of animals despite clearly being sentient and capable of speech, etc. at the hands of said humans. There may be one or two humans that aren't cruel, bloodthirsty, and rapacious as a sort of token attempt at fixing the BrokenAesop, but not always. It's rather easy to do with furry comics which are a ''prime'' method of using the FantasticRacism theme.
** In ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'', whenever humans show up they're generally portrayed as the equivalent of SealedEvilInACan (and once, literally). The inhabitants of the furry world often make disparaging remarks about how stupid our world is in comparison to theirs (in which sentient creatures constantly slaughter and devour each other without so much as a hint of remorse or guilt), and in fact portrays humans as so evil that introducing a single one into the K universe almost ''destroyed the world''.
*** Actually, ''Kevin And Kell'' has disproven the theory that the mere presence or awareness of humans has an adverse effect on instincts. It's that characters moving between the worlds throw at least one of them off balance. Once the balance is restored, you can pay as much attention to humans as you like and not lose your instincts. In fact, it turns out that [[http://www.kevinandkell.com/2009/kk1017.html the animals are equally destructive to their own environments]]. It's promptly subverted in the next strip...
** BlackTapestries at first shows this, with pretty much the main antagonist thinking that all Humans Are The Real Monsters, even though at a later point, the Kaetif (anthros) are shown to be ''just as'' vengeful as humans are.
** In ''Webcomic/{{Jack}}'', the BigBad [[spoiler: isn't Satan, but a human that has become the personification of Envy. However, he's the only remaining human in Hell -- it is assumed the rest have redeemed themselves and have moved on.]]
** ''TwoKinds'': The only humans ever shown are [[KnightTemplar Templar]] who seem to be AlwaysChaoticEvil with plans kill all of one race and [[spoiler: turn the other race's brains into mush and enslaved them]] or perverted ''slave traders'' (the latter is actually a pretty nice guy though). Most fans have a TakeOurWordForIt mindset.
** {{Newshounds}} has [[CerebusSyndrome gotten really bad]] about this trope.
** When humans appear in TheKennyChronicles they tend to refer to Tarnekis as animals or rant about how they are a danger. Of course Tarnekis were created by pirates (who they are implied to have killed) and some of their ships were stolen (though the Ballyhoo was bought).
* ''Lost the Lead'' is very, very guilty of this.
* ''{{Goblins}}'' seems to have this a lot, where the perfectly nice goblins and other "evil" humanoids are always being persecuted by the bastardy PC races.
* ''{{Terinu}}'''s race was wiped out by the humans, after it was discovered that [[spoiler: they were the power source of the BigBad]]. Made worse because Ferin are inherently adorable critters.
** [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute Oh, so if they were ugly you wouldn't care?]] Plus [[spoiler: the BigBad isn't very nice as well what with enslaving races and making them their power source]]
* In ''[[http://kameira.deviantart.com/art/ZENITH-Page-62-115166354 Zenith]]'', Zenith suffers a HeroicBSOD after getting shot at by humans and his MamaBear dying because of them... well, sort of [[MyGreatestFailure Zenith's fault]] for not [[MadeOfPlasticine being a man]] and [[MadeOfIron dealing with]] a [[ImprobableAimingSkills shot at his fin]], but the [[MiniatureSeniorCitizens other dolphins of the steel harbor]] tell him YouDidEverythingYouCould.
* ''SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' had a particularly good example as to ''why'' [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1670#comic Humans Are Bastards]]
* Played for laughs in ''[[{{Nedroid}} Beartato and Reginald]]'' with [[http://nedroid.com/2009/08/nobody-knows-the-troubles-ive-seen-except-beartato-since-i-just-told-him/ Space Reginald's reaction to Earth]].
* MoonCrest24: Conversed by Aleck von Zander, and appears to be the reason for his FallenAngel status, as he preaches that vampires were forced to protect something they didn't believe in.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* In the world of ''TheAccount'', a podcast audio drama, one-third of the humans in the Midlands turned into an army of psychopaths and got exiled to Earth. No one quite knows why. Now that they're trickling back in, and apparently sane, they're treated somewhat gingerly by the natives.
* ''{{Cradleland}}'' takes place on a planet populated by TransplantedHumans. Their ancestors were slaves [[spoiler: who were sold to [[AliensAreBastards aliens]] by humans on Earth during the MiddleAges]].
* The eponymous ''[[DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog Dr. Horrible]]'' laments that [[HumansAreMorons most humans are sheep and can't think for themselves]]. Obviously, only a complete overhaul of the system can fix this problem. Captain Hammer really only exemplifies this trope.
* ''[[http://www.rogermwilcox.name/stories/gaea.html Gaea's Rising]]'' features cute, lovable, intelligent robots that humanity wants to wipe out, just because the robots don't want to be slaves.
* Whenever WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic runs into this trope in a film (almost always with a helping of GreenAesop), the review cuts to a newsreel-style condemnation of man's evil, complete with clips from the movie and an old-timey voiceover. It's finally subverted in the previously mentioned ''OnceUponAForest'', where the voiceover finally gets sick of the trope, announces most humans are alright, and showcases how much more dangerous ''animals'' are.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YZtJdaN_l4 If Balloons Could Talk]], then apparently humans would do all sorts of things that hurt and terrorize them just for the sick pleasure of hearing them cry out in horror and agony.
-->''A pair of human hands hooks a balloon up to wires that conduct electricity''
-->'''Balloon''': [[LampshadeHanging You'd never bother to do this till I could scream back!]]
-->''The hands insert the plug into the outlet and the balloon cries out in pain''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAnimalsOfFarthingWood'', played straight in the first season, where humans are either evil hunters, foolishly ignorant, or completely apathetic as to how their actions are hurting wildlife. Balanced out a bit in the second season, with the arrival of the Park Warden as a human ally.
* Ah, but then there's Hugh Harman's ''PeaceOnEarth'', which you must [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8OYvHPpGDY see for yourself]] as no description we could give you would suffice. While beautifully animated and notable (even admirable) for its pro-peace message delivered in the middle of wartime, several Tropers agree that this merry Christmas (!!!) short is also easily the magnum opus of this trope.
** Plus there's the part where the little squirrel kid says "I sure am glad there's no more men around". Most. {{Anvilicious}}. Line. Ever.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'', Demona believes this trope and attempts to recruit Brooklyn after a bad incident with a biker gang by giving him a tour of unpleasant incidents around New York. However, after Brooklyn realizes Demona is a backstabbing megalomaniac, he realizes he had been manipulated. It turns out that Demona is also a genocidal murderer [[spoiler:who betrayed her own clan]], there are other gargoyle antagonists in later episodes, and plenty of humans in the show are good people. As for the "lesson," when Brooklyn describes it to Goliath, he dismisses its damning nature with his inimitable authority as a "half-truth that Demona has thoroughly embraced, but it's not the whole truth." Goliath also states in the 5-part pilot that "There is good and evil in all of us, human and gargoyle alike."
** ''Gargoyles'' overall has a nuanced view of this trope that makes it about as hard to pin down as in real life. After all, the thing that sets off the whole series is basically one of the humans of the castle trying to ''help'' the gargoyles (by forsaking his fellow humans), only for it to backfire in his (and their) face spectacularly; so you could take it either as "humans are good, bad, and everything in between", or "humans are bastards even when they try to be good", depending on how cynical you felt like being that day.
* ''Literature/ThePlagueDogs'', based on a book by Richard Adams of ''WatershipDown'' fame (see below), is pretty {{Anvilicious}} about mankind's cruelty to man's best friend.
** While both versions of the tale are as depressing as hell, it's interesting to note that the cartoon has an even more of a DownerEnding than the original book. [[spoiler:In the film, the dogs are heavily implied to have died at the end, whereas they go live with a nice "Master" at the end of the book.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' spoofs this trope in the ShowWithinAShow ''The Scary Door'': a scientist declares that he's "combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals ([[CatsAreMean a Lion]], [[BigCreepyCrawlies Scorpion]], and [[ThreateningShark Shark]]) to make the most evil creature of them all." A human then emerges from some sort of cloning tube, and just in case that's too subtle, declares, "[[{{Anvilicious}} It turns out it's man]]" in the most undramatic and dull way possible, just to parody the ham handedness of the way the point is often made by [[Series/TheTwilightZone other shows]].
** Making this even more hilarious, this actually is the plot of an episode of ''TheTwilightZone'', with ''Futurama''[='s=] version just getting straight to the point.
** Also, subverted when Fry and Leela get superpowers. After fighting a villain known as "The Zookeeper", Fry declares that "the most dangerous animal of all...is the Zookeeper!"
** To Quote Professor:
-->Also Animals never had a war. Who's the real animal?
* The third episode of ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' both provides an example and subverts this trope in a matter of seconds. Upon witnessing rioting and looting, WonderWoman comments that perhaps her mother was right about humanity being savages. A moment later, GreenLantern is shown helping a couple of burly, typically biker-type individuals rescue two children from underneath some debris.
* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', Wan Shi Tong, the knowledge spirit in the shape of an owl has come to believe this of humanity, saying that the only reason humans ever come seeking information is so they can use it to destroy others.
** This is interesting because it provides a subtle and uncommented piece of evidence against this: While Sokka does indeed use the planetarium to figure out how to get an edge up on the Fire Nation, and pissing Wan Shi Tong off royally, the archaeologist the gaang is traveling with decides to stay behind in the sinking library, presumably trapped forever, because he just wants to be able to learn for knowledge's own sake.
* This is one of the main themes in the animated film ''{{Felidae}}''. It's both played straight and subverted in regards to humanity's relationship with animals (particularly cats in this case). On the one hand there's Gustav ("Gus"), Francis's dim-witted yet otherwise good owner. On the other hand there's Pretorius, a scientist who experiments on cats while trying to create a special tissue-bonding glue. Most of the cats die horrible deaths, and Pretorius becomes a rambling alcoholic because of it. The only surviving cat, Claudandus [[spoiler:brutally murders Pretorius and later develops a burning hatred against humanity]].
** Likewise, one of the cats, Felicity, believes that all humans are good stating that only humans would be kind enough to give a blind cat like her a home. Ironically, it's heavily implied that it was due to humans experimenting on her in the first place that she's blind.
** [[DeadpanSnarker Bluebeard]] at first believes that it's a human causing the murders stating that only a human would do something so cruel to a cat. Of course, it turns out to be a cat (IE:[[spoiler:Pascal/Claudandus]]) committing the murders rather than a human. He also refers to humans under the slang term "[[FantasticRacism Can-Openers]]", believing that humans are only good for opening cans of food for cats.
** Francis gets into an argument with Claudandus, asking about the good men. Claudandus yells back "No! NO! There aren't any good men! They're all bad! ALL OF THEM!" Claudandus is even spitting as he yells this. Obviously, Claudandus's argument is flawed, because Francis's owner is a good man.
* This trope, as it relates to animals, is spoofed in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' where Death goes on a date with a woman who works at a pet shop. She insists that there'd be no more wars if people were more like animals, and he says "What are you talking about? Animals fight all the time!"
* In ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGummiBears'', the Gummis are in hiding because humans were too determined to get their hands on their technology.
* ''VideoGame/DantesInferno: An Animated Epic'' - A major point Lucifer tries to make to Dante's captured wife's soul, Beatrice. Trying to convince her that mankind is forever destined to fall into hell by their weak minds and free will, he pushes the point further by filling her head with images of mankind's greatest atrocities throughout time, one of them an image of AdolfHitler and his empire, which suggest that Lucifer can foresee the future.
* The trope name sums up Zim's outlook in ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'', although the humans are more guilty of standing in the way of Zim's plans for world conquest than being truly evil.
** With a few exceptions, [[HumansAreMorons pretty much all humans in the show are too stupid or lazy to be evil]].
* The villains of ''{{Terrahawks}}'' justified their plans of conquest by saying that the humans opposing them had a bloody history full of things a lot worse than what they were doing.
* One ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' short has Tom waiting in line to get into Heaven, as a "conductor" lets recently deceased cats onto the train if they were good. At one point he calls out several names, and we cut to see a dripping wet sack, which opens up as several kittens scamper out. The conductor sadly shakes his head and mutters "Some people..."
* PlayedForLaughs on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', although it is more that the {{Adults|AreUseless}} are TooDumbToLive. Examples include "Prehistoric Ice Man" ("sometimes, what's right isn't as important as what's profitable"), "Here Comes the Neighbourhood ("And I want to assure the nation that is watching that South Park is not a town of prejudice or bigotry"), and "Pinewood Derby" (where the Earth is cut off from the rest of the universe because the people are not worthy of joining the intergalactic community). Anyone looking for a straighter version need look no further than Cartman.
* Implied in the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhgOAR4Xq4Y "Bolero" sequence]] of ''WesternAnimation/AllegroNonTroppo'': Life on a distant planet evolves out of a [[ShoutOut discarded]] [[TheGodsMustBeCrazy soda bottle]]. Eventually, apes (who are [[DarkIsEvil masses of black, sketchy fur]] compared to the brightly-colored cartoon animals and have [[RedEyesTakeWarning red eyes]] set in [[BlackEyesOfCrazy black sclera]]) are revealed as cheating bastards who don't follow the animals' evolutionary path [[spoiler: and eventually mess up the planet by creating war, religion, and destructive cities. By the end they have evolved into humans but on the inside they're still vicious, unsatisfied animals.]]
* Ever notice that most of the antagonists on ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' are humans? Mostly Montana Max and Elmyra Duff but the only sole exception to this is Mary Melody, in fact there is a better owner for Furrball than Elmyra was.
[[/folder]]

----