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Advertising
- Skeletor in the 2014-2015 "Happy Honda Days"
commercials is genuinely interested in helping you save money on a new motor vehicle. Now if you can excuse him while he steps out to crush He-Man...
Asian Animation
- Huo Haha from Happy Heroes works for the antagonists Big M. and Little M. and clearly shows interest in helping them find the elemental staffs in Season 8 so that the Supermen can't use them to wake up the president, but he has a heart of gold and will take into account the feelings of others. He often accomplishes this through trivial things such as apologizing for his Evil Laugh since he thinks the Supermen might be scared by it.
Comic Strips
- Scary Gary: The Evil Conscience is life-sized with a suit and tie, and has a pretty friendly introductory conversation with Gary, although it ends on a bit of an awkward note.Gary: Where’s the angel?Evil Conscience: He didn’t share my vision, so I ate him.
Podcasts
- The Adventure Zone: Balance: John, the source and avatar of the Hunger, which consumes entire realities, is pleasant and polite, even playing chess with Merle, and enjoying their conversations. He also kills Merle repeatedly, and his goal is to eat all of reality so he can undo the laws of the universe.
- The Magnus Archives:
- Michael Crew is a servant of the Vast, and has cheerfully screwed up countless lives in it's service- but when Jon confronts him, he remains a very polite host until he's asked a question he finds prying. And even then, he still answers the question and doesn't make his attack on Jon fatal.
- Oliver Banks remains pleasant and cordial, even after giving in to his status as an Avatar of the fear of death itself.
- Helen becomes this, after she replaces her former captor and becomes the new incarnation of the Distortion. She's friendly and sometimes even helpful to Jon and the rest of the Archive's staff- which doesn't mean she won't willingly throw away her humanity and embrace her new status as a part of the Twisting Deceit, trapping and terrifying humans just as she herself once was.
- In Sequinox, several stars come off like this. Part of it comes off as them trying to awkwardly work human concepts into their conversations despite not understanding how any of them work. Antares is happy that she gets to talk to people instead of just destroying the planet right off the bat. Sargas is very polite when he tells the students of Vertumnus to turn over the Sequinox girls or else he'll kill everyone.
- During the Gemini arc when the girls land in a gothic horror-themed dimension, Vampire!Ethan is this. He's very cordial to the group, allows Harmony to stay in a wing of his home when she's chased there, and eats as few humans as possible. That being said he mainly allows the group inside because they're monsters, as is Harmony, and he does believe that he's "owed" humans to eat.
- Welcome to Night Vale: Lauren Mallard, the NVCR program director from StrexCorp. She seems to be a genuinely sweet, bubbly young woman, and Cecil describes her as "a delight" and "the kindest, most gentle manager we have ever had at this station" (although, to be fair, that's not saying much). But she takes a rather sinister interest in knowing the names of Cecil's loved ones, which he becomes wary of.
- Baron Ragoon in Hello, from the Magic Tavern is the ruler of a minor domain just over the mountains fro Hogsface. He comes across like a small-town mayor with a strong interest in keeping order, expanding infrastructure, increasing employment, and reducing Foon's ridiculously high rate of child mortality. He is unfailingly polite and welcoming, and invites our heroes to live in his pleasant realm. He's also an open, devout supporter of the Dark Lord whose plan to reduce child mortality to have wild animals kidnap children and put them to work, and he found a wife by abducting a woman and killing her fiancée and family. Chunt is surprised that somebody so nice could be so evil; Arnie points out that there's a difference between being nice and being polite.
- Also, the protagonists' counterparts in the mirror universe are just as friendly and easy-going as the main universe (or more so in Chunt's case), but casually discuss conquering Foon in the name of the Dark Lord over a tasty meal of fresh human flesh.
- Unwell Podcast: Silas has several polite interactions with Lily, and offers her both advice and brandy at different points, despite being someone Lily's family has been trying to keep at bay for generations, as well as setting his dogs on two campers.
- Brimstone Valley Mall: All the main characters, save for Misroch, fall under this, being demons working for Hell who nonetheless are fairly likable people. They all also play with Minion with an F in Evil, since most of them view the whole "damning souls" thing as just a job, and not one they're in a particular hurry to do.
- Hornblas was a Magnetic Hero and an all-around Nice Guy before he went missing; hardly anyone has a single bad word to say about him. As of the first season finale, he's no longer a demon, instead working for Heaven, implying the "affable" won out over the "evil."
- Asmoraius and Belzagor are fairly friendly and approachable individuals who aren't afraid to pick fights with humans who irritate them, and have no problem killing anyone who finds out they're demons. Stay out of their way, though, and they're generally quite nice.
- Xaphan is a wide-eyed Naïve Newcomer who is too sweet and enthusiastic to be considered truly evil. She'll lead souls into temptation if she's told to, but she'd much rather play an arcade game or eat a hot dog at the mall.
- As of the first season finale, the good-natured Perky Goth Trainee has sold her soul and become a demon, but is still clearly the same friendly girl she's always been. She just serves one of the Princes of Hell now.
- Satan Herself is a Reasonable Authority Figure, at least from what little we see of her in Season One. She even gives the gang some free drink tokens at the Y2K Party.
- Relative Disasters: John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion, Illinois, was a faith healer and con artist, but he was described as a genuinely warm, friendly, grandfatherly type of person.
Radio
- Old Harry's Game:
- Satan zigzags this trope and Faux Affably Evil. To most people, he's faux affably evil, often utilizing Exact Words or even outright lying to make them think he's about to give them what they want right before torturing them. To other supernatural beings, and the handful of humans he genuinely respects, he's this; he'll still torture them if they become annoying, but when he's not doing so he's fairly friendly and can sometimes even act as a caring presence.
- Thomas is introduced as a Faux Affably Evil Corrupt Corporate Executive. However, over the course of the series, the Prof and Scumspawn manage to reform him somewhat; he's still evil, but he's closer to this trope.
- Gary, Satan's initial top demon, is quite polite despite his love of cruelty.
- God is respectful of those he speaks to, generally willing to listen to reason (provided you don't question whether there are other gods), wishes his angels were more able to lighten up and have a laugh, and frequently sends people to Hell for little to no reason.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation:
- The mileage on whether the Foundation is evil varies wildly (often from entry to entry), but the Foundation itself can be considered this, as they are most often portrayed as Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti Villains who often engage in genuinely evil actions for the sake of protecting humanity from the paranormal.
- Within the Foundation, the Ethics Committee can be considered this; they are the ones who decide what is and isn't ethically acceptable for the Foundation to do on a case-by-case basis. While they do try to be as ethical as they can, "ethical" here is entirely relative to the situation; these are the people who invented Procedure 110-Montauk, after allnote . The Ethics Committee orientation sums this up best; the Foundation isn't evil, but sometimes they have to do evil things, and the Committee has to decide when to be humane and when to be evil.Remember this: the Foundation is not evil. We do not torture people "just because". We are against unnecessary cruelty. Which means somebody has to decide when cruelty is necessary. And that somebody is us.
- Cao Cao in Farce of the Three Kingdoms. He's generally being completely sincere.
- Bill Seacaster from the Fantasy High campaign of Dimension 20. He's a ruthless pirate who fully admits he'll go straight to Hell when he dies, and has killed and robbed countless people with zero remorse. But he fiercely loves his son, doting on him and encouraging him every step of the way, and is a genuinely outgoing, cheerful kind of guy. He treats his son's friends as part of his family immediately upon meeting them, and takes it upon himself to give them some training when he realizes they don't really know how to fight or defend themselves. He even handles it with good grace (more or less) when Fig politely calls him on some thoughtless (but completely unintentional) sexism.Bill: I'm an old dog, but I can learn new tricks. And I speak in a little bit of an archaic vernacular. I appreciate you having the courage to check me on something, that was honestly not alright. AND IF YOU SPEAK OUT OF TURN AGAIN, I'LL SLIT YA LIKE A FISH!
- Several characters from Six Chances are this. First, there's Francis Foxman, a mafia head, who gladly watches children beat the living crap out of a traitor for vengeance but who also refers to everyone by Mr and Ms. Then there's the pirate captain Maria who gladly welcomes people she's conquered onto her crew with a smile all while saying that they now belong to her.
- In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dr. Horrible isn't even all that evil at first, and he starts out wanting nothing more than respect.
- In Pay Me, Bug!, Hu Mavis is a Commodore in service to The Empire of the Radiant Throne. He's also a pretty nice guy when you get to know him. Grif once lamented that they could have been good friends if they weren't on opposite sides of the law.
- Seiji from Only Villains Do That doesn't actually want to be the Dark Lord. Since he doesn't have much choice however, he can at least be nice about it.
- Sweet Dreams: Lolana is a centuries-year old Polynesian owner of a popular candy shop who seduces people in order to later on kill and eat them to maintain her immortality and ensure they stay forever with her. However, she is really pleasant and nice to her lovers even after revealing her true nature, genuinely cares about them, goes out of her way to ensure they die painlessly when she has to kill them and only uses them as last resort, eating child predators instead when she can.
Unsorted
- The Heaven Cycle has its own share of villains—namely Jango Marley and Mason Summers—who are very polite, charming individuals who are also willing to manipulate, harm, or even murder the applicants of the P.A.R.A.D.I.S.E. program and other civilians to achieve their goals or acquire what they desire.
- The Kindness of Devils has Lucifer and Mammon overall, both of whom are technically evil for being morally-shady Devils and for defying God, despite how kind and friendly they are. Some other villains in the series also qualify.
- The Dreams of Lonely Stars has Thomas Nero, a seemingly benevolent and friendly man with a tragic backstory. He's also the leader of the cult of Cthulhu who's trying to end the whole world.
- And to All a Good Night has Krampus, a charismatic Friendly Enemy who respects Hardestadt. He's also trying to destroy Christmas and put several children in harm's way.
- Hero House gives us an example in Megatron, of all people.
- The Never Mythos has Draynak and Welter Faye, the former of whom is a courteous, polite deity trying to destroy the Teraverse while the latter is a seemingly friendly man who is so obsessed with the City that he's willing to murder his own associates.
- In the Web Serial Novel A Practical Guide to Evil, this seems to be one of the distinguishing traits of the Black Knight. Though the mask slips a bit in Summerholm when Catherine makes a scene.
- If you've read the flashbacks for him, you can see it's not a mask. He is just a really nice person unless it contradicts what he's planning. His mind has repeatedly been described as "cold gears" logically grinding the world to dust
- Legatum:
- The Road to Hell... has several orc soldiers who are very friendly and easy to talk to, despite their brutish nature. Many of them are also okay with slaughtering and/or raping innocent human beings and other sentient creatures just because it's "acceptable" within their community.
- Scrambled Egg has Sonya, an understanding and amicable dark mage who's trying to use a deity to destroy the whole world.
- SF Debris: Borg drones are mostly little worse than disgruntled office workers who greet a returned Seven of Nine by discussing a promotion one of them received, contrasting with the Voyager crew, who are mostly kind of assholes.
- Tails Series:
- Tails of the Bounty Hunter has Rellis Rottili, a jovial big-time mobster who helps the protagonists find various leads on their journey to dismantle a galactic Cartel organization.
- Tails of the Space Gladiators has several prisoners within the Gladiator Detention Facility who are all convicted of some crime ranging between larceny, rape, murder, etc. All of them still act like regular civilians who can easily befriend one another.
- Max Walker in Billy Birmingham's 12th Man comedy albums is affable, but willing to commit violent and obscene acts in a misguided effort to get back his position in the commentary team. Far from objecting to the way Birmingham portrays him, the real Walker is an unabashed fan.
- Allegedly, one way of escaping the Japanese ghoul Kuchisake Onna is to invoke this trope by telling her that you have somewhere else to be and don't want to be late. According to this legend, she'll respond to this by apologizing for interrupting and excusing herself politely.
- Similarly to the above, the Hulder (also known as Huldra or Skogsrå, depending on which part of Scandinavia you are in) is a forest spirit who will take the shape of a beautiful woman (albeit with a cow's tail or a back like a hollow tree) and lure men to their doom. However, if you manage to figure out she is a Hulder and politely point out the flaws you found in her disguise ("Excuse me, miss, but your tail is showing" is the traditional phrasing), she will not only let you go, but handsomely reward you.
- The Ninja from Ask a Ninja.Thanks for your question! I look forward to killing you soon!
