Characters / The Bad Guys (2022)

See here for tropes related to the characters in the book series.

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The Bad Guys

Tropes shared by the whole group

• Adaptational Badass: In the books, the gang were mostly just petty thugs and didn't going into operations with a whole lot of pre-existing skills to speak of, and awkwardly stumbled their way into becoming legitimate badasses. In the film, while still very goofy and chaotic, they're shown to be a very successful band of thieves well before they reform.
• Adorable Fluffy Tail: Mr. Wolf is a scruffy, kind of handsome and a criminal mastermind...who hides a softer, even Adorkable side. Early in the film, we see there's some good in him when he starts wagging his big wolf tail after he gets called a "Good boy".
• Affably Evil: With the exception of Snake, all of them are very nice for a group of criminals, and even Snake gets some Pet the Dog moments.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Mr. Wolf wagging his tail like a dog is justified, since wolves are closely related to dogs. It's more egregious when Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Shark, and Ms. Tarantula "wag", with Shark and Piranha's fins, Webs's abdomen, and the tip of Snake's tail all wiggling back and forth.
• Anthropomorphic Shift:
  • Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha are given more humanoid bodies, turning their tail fins into legs and their pectoral fins into arms with mitten-like hands. As revealed in interviews, this was because animating them with fins would be too taxing on the animation team.
  • Ms. Tarantula is given a more anthropomorphic design in contrast to Legs, her book counterpart. She's designed almost as a centaur-esque build, with a more defined body and head, along with a pair of arms in addition to her eight legs. However, if one takes actual spider anatomy into account, her arms, in actuality, would be her pedipalps. Incidentally, her buck teeth also serve as a stand-in for chelicerae, making her a surprisingly accurate anthropomorphization of an actual tarantula.
• Anti-Hero Team: They gradually become this over the course of the movie, and fully make the transition when they stop Marmalade's schemes.
• Asshole Victim: Marmalade uses them as scapegoats after he steals the meteorite, though given they were actually unrepentant thieves faking being good to steal the Golden Dolphin from him, he was basically Framing the Guilty Party. The only reason them getting back at Marmalade for beating them at their own game isn't Protagonist-Centered Morality is because at that point, their collective Heel–Face Turn had solidified.
• Becoming the Mask: Their reformation was supposed to be an act to help them avoid jail, but gradually becomes the real deal.
• Both Sides Have a Point: After their failed second heist of the Golden Dolphin, Wolf and Snake get into a massive argument over the former wanting to go good all along and ditching the heist at the last minute. On one hand, Wolf is right in that the gang can and should aspire to be more than the monsters everyone sees them as. On the other hand, Snake is rightfully angry as Wolf had lied to his friends and hamstrung them into a redemption they never asked for.
• Caper Crew: The roles of the Bad Guys in heists are:
  • Mr. Wolf: — The Mastermind. The leader of the crew, he's the one that holds the heists together for plans. He's also The Pickpocket and The Driver.
  • Mr. Snake — The Safe-Cracker. Called a "Houdini with no arms", he is able to break into safes with ease.
  • Mr. Shark — The Distraction. Using his mastery of disguises, he draws others away from the major action, or uses his disguises to slink into the action.
  • Mr. Piranha — The Muscle. Despite being one of the smaller members of the team, he is short-fused and powerful, packing a strong punch.
  • Ms. Tarantula — The Hacker. She stays behind the scenes and uses her tech skills to shut off cameras and get into systems.
  • Diane — The Gadget Guy and the Partner In Crime. Following allying with the Bad Guys, she assists their redemption heist by helping Wolf with mission planning, as well as supplying her own more advanced gadgetry. Being the Crimson Paw, she's also the Legendary Thief.
• Card-Carrying Villain: They proudly revel in their reputation of being master criminals.
• Cool Shades: They each sport a pair. In the opening chase, they wear them after their car stops in front of the police headquarters to taunt Chief Luggins.
• Criminal Found Family: They are this to each other, as the rest of the world sees and treats them as monsters. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake are the parental figures.
• Dark Is Not Evil: They're a criminal gang of predator animals and feared by all, but they're not evil, which becomes more apparent as they reform for real and stop Marmalade.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Big Bad Wannabe. They — especially Wolf — aspire to become the greatest criminals of all time. But in truth, they had all only lead criminal lives because that had been the expectation placed on them by society, not because they had wanted to. Their plot to cement their legacy by faking their reformation blinds them to the red flags that Marmalade was setting them up as patsies for his own heist, and ultimately leads them to pull a Heel–Face Turn when someone finally shows them moral support.
• The Dreaded: Due to being an infamous gang of wanted criminals, as well as scary animals in and of themselves, any civilian in a 10-mile radius will immediately book it the moment they step in.
• Embarrassing Animal Suit: As part of their "goodness" makeover, Marmalade has them dress in adorable animal kigurumi during the Sunnyside mission.
  Ms. Tarantula: Well, there goes our street cred.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Just because everyone treats them like monsters doesn't mean they actually are monsters.
  • While they will go on a high-speed car chase that endangers several people, they never actively go out of their way to hurt people.
  • Despite the fact that they are infamous for stealing a lot of valuable loot, they still pay for their food at restaurants and tip generously .
  • Wolf, Tarantula, and Piranha are all visibly freaked out when Shark eats Snake for not sharing a push pop.
    Snake: Totally worth it!
  • They won't steal from charity. Despite the gala raising $1 billion, their only target is the Golden Dolphin.
  • When Wolf decides to genuinely turn good, everyone else is heartbroken about how he's basically abandoning them, especially Snake. Wolf orchestrating some self-reflection makes them see otherwise however.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • They may be very competent as criminals, but the moment Marmalade tries to have them act like a good person would, they don't have a damn clue, to the point where, when they see a kitten up a tree, they think that what a good guy would do is smack it, skin it, stab it, sauté it, or sing to it.
  • They are also so used to everyone being afraid of them that, when people start to love and cheer for them, they are initially confused and put off by it.
  • Snake is the worst offender under this regard, as he continuously tries to deny that selflessly giving his last push pop (and last possession in general) to Shark to cheer him up is a good action.
  • It ultimately ends up Deconstructed however since when Diane explains things to Wolf in a more identifiable way, he starts to undergo an epithany rather quickly. When Wolf in turn orchestrates a Good Feel Good epithany for the rest of the group in a situation they can identify with, they in turn all reform even quicker, suggesting it was not just that they didn't understand good, but they were not taught it in a relatable enough way.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They're a Caper Crew of Card-Carrying Villains that just call themselves "the Bad Guys".
• Faction Motto: "Go bad or go home."
• Falsely Reformed Villain: Their scheme after being caught in the Golden Dolphin heist: feign going good so they can stay criminals. It later becomes genuine.
• Five-Man Band: The Bad Guys are a team of five criminals who specialise in grand heists. Mr. Wolf, a skilled mastermind and pickpocket, leads his four colleagues and close friends in committing several crimes. The crew is filled out by Mr. Snake, Mr. Wolf's close friend and expert safecracker; Mr. Shark, a Master of Disguise capable of fooling anyone; Ms. Tarantula, the resident hacker; and Mr. Piranha, who is the best of the group at beating people up. It expands to a six-man band when Diane, aka. the Crimson Paw, and the cat joins them.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Mr. Wolf (phlegmatic), Mr. Snake (melancholic), Mr. Shark (sanguine), Mr. Piranha (choleric), and Ms. Tarantula (eclectic).
• Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: In contrast to the books, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Shark, and Mr. Piranha are given shoes in this iteration, giving them a full outfit. In the case of Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha, it's because they actually have the feet to wear shoes this time.
• Furry Reminder: When they wag/move their body parts, they remind the audience that they are indeed animals.
• Good Animals, Evil Animals: They're representatives of animal species popularly depicted as monstrous or disgusting. Mr. Wolf states that the gang was forced into crime because society associated them with evil, implying there's Fantastic Racism involved as well.
• Good Feels Good: Mr. Wolf is the first to experience this after accidentally helping an old woman who turns out to be Marmalade orchestrating the entire plot, but the rest of the gang gradually come to learn this too.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Mr. Snake and Ms. Tarantula are only wearing a shirt, since they can't fit into normal pants.
• Hero with an F in Good: Their main problem when trying to fake their reformation: they're terrible at doing good. Ordinary things like saving a cat from a tree, helping an old woman cross the street, or sharing a push pop are all incredibly difficult for them, much to Marmalade's exasperation.
• Hidden Depths: As shown with "Good Tonight", they are unexpectedly good when it comes to music and showmanship. In particular, Mr. Piranha proves to be very good at singing and Mr. Wolf at dancing, with Webs, Snake and Shark all demonstrating talent with instruments.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite being blusterous criminals who thrive on their reputation as cool scary villains, it was forced on them. All five members have moments of trying to socialise and even be downright friendly in public during the opening (met with the expected panicking masses), and within their own circle they clearly care about each other. This ends up playing into their Heel–Face Turn which proves rather quick as soon as each member realises they can become good people. Wolf is the first, though Webs, Shark and Piranha in particular Heel–Face Turn instantly when they make the connection.
• Indy Ploy: The Bad Guys' big trump card over Marmalade. While their initial plans tend to be clumsier in action and often met with roadblocks they didn't anticipate, the group are good at thinking up new solutions on-the-fly.
• Interspecies Friendship: All five members are of different species.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Shark and Wolf are exceptions, but everyone else fits this.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Since he saved the Cat from the tree two times, Wolf forms a special bond with it, and the video shared on social media shows the rest of the gang doting on it too.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Given they were actually unrepentant thieves who planned to use Marmalade in their Falsely Reformed Villain scheme to steal the Golden Dolphin from him, Marmalade's own gambit is just beating them at their own game and Framing the Guilty Party. This is especially the case for Snake who planned to eat him afterwards.
  • Near the end, after they, minus Wolf, return to their hideout to find it ransacked, they realize how much it sucks to be the victim of a heist.
    Mr. Piranha: Now I understand what it feels like to have things stolen from you! I don't like it! I REALLY DON'T LIKE IT!!
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The gang is eventually revealed to be this compared to Marmalade.
• Licked by the Dog: The cat Mr. Wolf saves from the tree quickly takes a liking to him and the rest of the gang.
• Lovable Rogue: They may be criminals with no respect for authority, but they're all lovable in their own ways.
• Mixed Animal Species Team: Much like in the books, the Bad Guys are a team of robbers which consists of different animals - a snake, a shark, a tarantula, a piranha, and a wolf as the leader.
• Moral Myopia: They think stealing and heists are awesome, taking pride in all of the crimes they've committed in the past. However, when the law finds their hideout and repossesses everything they've stolen, the gang (minus Wolf) are shocked and angered that the wealth they accrued "fair and square" has been stolen back, as if they were the victims rather than the perpetrators. Piranha even lampshades the irony of the situation. Fortunately, this development teaches them why being a thief is morally wrong and fuels their genuine Heel–Face Turn.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Throughout their Falsely Reformed Villain act, they are willing to perform genuine good deeds to maintain the facade, even if they are initially inept about it. At the Gala, they perform to help raise almost $1 billion in charity in order to keep their scheme to steal the Golden Dolphin secret. However by this point, Wolf has started to feel sincere goodness from their actions and Heel Face Turns for real out of guilt.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Each of them is from a species that has been vilified through pop culture.
• Redemption Promotion: While they were cunning thieves and manipulators as bad guys, they were still very much a Big Bad Wannabe, with Marmalade outgambitting their Falsely Reformed Villain act for his own evil means and the Crimson Paw outclassing them as thieves in nearly every way. Upon having a real Heel–Face Turn however, Wolf and Snake end up marvelously sabotaging Marmalade with their own Batman Gambits, while the whole gang rescue and cover for Diane, the actual Crimson Paw, when they prove to be Not So Invincible After All.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Despite all of them reforming by the end of the film, their personalities don't change much; they instead learn how to use their existing skills for good.
• Secret-Keeper: They learn Diane was once the Crimson Paw and elect to keep it a secret, with Wolf even stopping her from telling the truth to Chief Luggins to clear the gang's names.
• Smarter Than They Look: Diane dismisses them as sloppy wannabes initially due to their reckless showboating and clumsy execution, never anticipating they would actually manage to get past all her security proceedures during the Good Samaritan ceremony and nearly walk off with the Golden Dolphin. Part of this stems from the fact that Diane was a Consummate Professional as the Crimson Paw, the Bad Guys are relatively more clownish and less methodical, but excellent improvising on the spot. While Diane comes to respect this and teams up with them, Marmalade makes the same mistake twice over, especially with Snake.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: They revel in being badass criminals, though are revealed to only take the role from lifetimes of feeling rejected and insecure. The first time someone dresses them down as such, they are left crushed, indirectly setting off the cogs to their Heel–Face Turn.
• Species Surname: Their code names all follow the format of Mr./Ms. [their species] to give this impression. Unlike the books, their given names are never revealed.
• Tattooed Crook: Both Mr. Shark and Ms. Tarantula have tattoos.
• Technician vs. Performer: The Performer to Diane's Technician. Their overall flair, art of manipulation, impressive team synergy and ability to work around backfires makes them impressive if chaotic criminals, and comes key to outsmarting Marmalade in the end. As Diane notes early on however, they are also incredibly reckless and unprofessional in action, getting caught by Luggins several times due to blunders or distractions, as well as being only a fraction as physically capable as Diane was as the Crimson Paw.
• Terrestrial Sea Life: Both Mr. Piranha and Mr. Shark, who are able to walk on land with no breathing apparatus.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: The main justification they give for their villainy: society saw them as bad, so they decided to be exactly what everyone expected of them.
  Mr. Wolf: We were never given a chance to be anything more than criminals. But these are the cards we've been dealt, so we might as well play them.
• Two Girls to a Team: Following Diane becoming The Sixth Ranger, her and Webs pose as the two women in the group.
• Undying Loyalty: They're one another's only friends in a world that's terrified by them, so they always stick together no matter what, even when things are going south and one or more members could easily leave the others behind and book it to save their own skin. Wolf, Webs, Shark, and Piranha give up their chance at clearing their name to get Mr. Snake back, even though they still think he's a traitor, and even if Snake seems to have initially subverted the trope by betraying the gang and joining Marmalade, he was actually still on his friends' side all along. They demonstrate their newfound closeness to Diane in the end by similarly pulling this trope and taking the fall to protect her identity.
• Unwitting Pawn: They try to make Marmalade into this by faking their desire for reformation, only for them to find out too late they were pawns in his scheme.
• Villain Cred: Not only do they obsess over being seen as the coolest villains out there but, compared to Diane and Marmalade's derisive nature towards other criminals, the Bad Guys tend to hold peers in their field with some level of respect, even straight up fanboying over the Crimson Paw.
• Villain Protagonist: They're a group of career criminals and the central protagonists of the film.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Though they, at times, get on each others' nerves (and, in the case of Mr. Shark, eat the others), the gang obviously cares about each other very much, to the point of literally driving their car off a cliff to rescue their friend who seemed to have betrayed them.

Mr. Wolf

"I’m the villain of every story! Guilty until proven innocent, and even if by some miracle we did change, who’s gonna believe us?"

Voiced by: Sam Rockwell (Film)^{Foreign VAs}Pierre Niney (European French); José Posada (European Spanish); Manolo Cardona (Latin American Spanish); Matsuya Onoe (Japanese); Andrea Perroni (Italian); Björn Bengtsson (Swedish), Michael Godere (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday, DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing)

The smooth-talking leader of the gang, a pickpocket grey wolf.

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• Accidental Hero: He attempts to pickpocket an old lady, but she trips on the stairs as he's reaching for her purse, pulling him along with her. So as to not get caught, he helps pull her up.
• Accidental Truth: When he tries to feign redemption, he pretends it's all Marmalade's idea and not his, but as he finds out the hard way, all of it really was Marmalade's idea.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the books, he’s drawn as scruffy and googly-eyed with a slightly loose suit, making a lot of goofy and slightly ugly faces. The movie makes him sharply-groomed, yellow-eyed, and more conventionally attractive with a trimmer suit.
• Adaptational Heroism: While he's a villainous master thief, it's never mentioned whether Wolf has ever tried killing and eating people like he did during his time as a bad guy in the books. Yet, at the same time...
• Adaptational Villainy: Wolf in the books is genuine about turning his and his friends' lives around and going good from the start, even if his colleagues were nowhere near as eager. In the film, however, Wolf wants him and his gang to turn "good" just so they can get the police off their backs. However, it eventually becomes genuine in the film as well.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the books, Wolf only met Agent Fox after his Heel–Face Turn and took a quick fondness to her. In the film, Diane appears as a Hero Antagonist while Wolf is a prideful villain, with both waging war after a few petty insults. Though they do still become close in this take, especially since Wolf's Heel–Face Turn is heavily caused by Diane, they still partake in rounds of playful banter and even occasional flirting.
• Ambition Is Evil: He wants to go where almost no criminal has ever gone before and successfully steal the Golden Dolphin so him and his gang can go down in bad guy history... and to stick it to Diane.
• Aside Glance: After his initial fourth wall break at the start of the film, Wolf will occasionally glance at the viewer throughout the movie.
• Ass in a Lion Skin: At the Golden Dolphin award ceremony, he disguises himself as the wealthy Mr. Poodleton.
• Attention Whore: Fancy suits, flashy car, cocky attitude, and big and loud crimes in broad daylight: it's clear that, if he's going to be an outcast, he wants to be the most infamous outcast to ever live (with emphasis on the "famous" part). His main goal throughout most of the film is for him and his gang to go down in criminal history. Also, when deciding to redeem himself, initially his main motivation is the love good guys get from the public. However, as he learns to be genuinely selfless and heroic, he needs attention less and less, and in the end, he turns himself in to protect Diane even though it means being an unsung hero, showing how far he's come.
• Badass Boast: "We may be bad, but we're so good at it." Said after he successfully evades a huge swarm of police cars after prolonging the opening car chase just for fun.
• Badass Driver: He drives the gang's getaway car for the chases, and he's damn good at it, effortlessly evading hundreds of cops in the opening sequence. This is demonstrated even further in the climax, where he's able to keep up with Marmalade's helicopter despite thousands of brainwashed guinea pigs ripping apart the highway around him.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: His primary outfit is a fancy white suit.
• Baddie Flattery: When his gang is arrested at the Golden Dolphin ceremony and are being taken away, as a last ditch effort to avoid jail, Wolf starts complimenting Governor Diane for not only successfully capturing the Bad Guys, but also perfectly understanding how insecure and pitiful they really are. He then begins using his smooth-talking and exploiting a bit of Meaningful Echo so that Diane and Professor Marmalade give him and his gang a chance at "redemption".
• Batman Gambit:
  • After being caught in the Golden Dolphin heist, he plays on Marmalade's ego by saying it would take a miracle worker to reform him and the gang, then suggests Mother Teresa, goading Marmalade to try reforming them. Ironically, it turns out later that it's Wolf being played here.
  • He pulls a positive one on his entire team by leaving a single push pop in the fridge after their hideout is emptied by the police. He knew that Snake was good way deep down and that, push come to shove, he would shared the push pop with Shark for the very first time, convincing the entire gang that they can and should turn good.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • With Diane, Wolf sees her only as an Asshole Victim in his scheme at first, but Diane's genuine kindness and empathy win him over. When the gang is framed for a crime they didn't commit and she helps break them out of jail and stop Marmalade's scheme, Wolf repays her kindness by stopping her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • With Marmalade, Wolf just sees him as a smarmy, annoying politician he's trying to manipulate, but following Marmalade commenting on Wolf's great potential, Wolf reforms for real at the charity gala and hands him the Golden Dolphin. This ends with Marmalade double-crossing Wolf.
• Being Evil Sucks: Once he starts getting a taste of what being good is like, he starts having doubts about staying a feared criminal. This culminates in him failing to turn off the lights to steal the Golden Dolphin at the gala, as he can't bring himself to betray the newfound trust and respect he has. He's crushed when Marmalade turns the world against him again.
  Mr. Wolf: I'm tired of being scary! I'm... I'm tired of being an outcast!
• Beneath the Mask: His suave, charismatic exterior when committing crimes disguises his bitter resentment of how the world sees him and his friends as villains. When Diane accuses him of being too gutless to redeem himself, a riled Wolf lets his frustration loose, ranting about how the world will seemingly never give him a chance at being good.
• Berserk Button: At this point he's embraced being seen as the bad guy and is damn proud of how good he is at being bad, so it infuriates him when someone dares imply he's an incompetent villain. He is so provoked by Diane calling him and his gang insecure, pathetic, and sloppy on TV that part of the reason why he wants to steal the Golden Dolphin is just to spite her. He later gets just as angry when she calls him gutless in spite of his life of rule-breaking.
• Be Yourself: With his suave exterior, he's only able to get Diane to be just slightly less skeptical about his change of heart, and the second time he tries to use his charm on her, it doesn't work in the slightest. Diane only starts to trust him for real (and possibly have feelings for him) once Wolf fully and angrily opens up about his pent-up frustration over people being biased against him, showing he's not as happy with the villain's life as his cocky Gentleman Thief attitude suggests.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Of the main group, he is the most adamant on putting them in the history books as biggest, baddest criminals on the planet. However while Wolf is a crafty enough leader, he's largely an arrogant Opportunistic Bastard who relies on his teammates or winging hasty tactics to cover the holes in some of this schemes, and gets easily Out-Gambitted by the more devious and cruel super villain, Marmalade. Ultimately, Wolf lacks even the true drive to be a proper villain, and is the first to pull a Heel–Face Turn when Diane convinces him he has the power to turn over a new leaf.
• The Big Bad Wolf: He references himself as this based on how others around him see him. His introduction includes a pile of children's books with the Big Bad Wolf as the antagonist.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: He's swanky, manipulative, and wears his Card-Carrying Villain legacy like a badge of honour. However, for all his hubris and underhandedness, Wolf does genuinely want a chance at being anything more than just a hated villain. He ultimately defects for real when he realises even one person believes he can change.
• Blue Is Heroic: He wears a navy blue tuxedo during the fundraising gala to honor the reformed Bad Guys, and this is when he has his definitive change of heart.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: The person most passionate about stopping this cunning criminal mastermind is a hulking bulldozer of a police chief, Misty Luggins. Played With, as, when it comes to skills, Wolf has his fair share of brawn too, while Luggins isn't complete Dumb Muscle like she may seem, and, when it comes to morality, Luggins is the craziest brand of "Good", while Wolf eventually ditches the "Evil" altogether.
• Brainy Brunette: He has greyish brown fur and is The Strategist of the team.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the opening police chase, he introduces himself and the gang to the audience. In the novelization, it's depicted as a habit of him narrating things when he's feeling confident. He does it again at the very last scene of the movie, this time asking the audience if they're less afraid of him and the gang now that they've spent some time together.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Diane's emotional support and faith in Mr. Wolf inspires him to reform for good.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: When talking to Diane disguised as Mr. Poodleton, he compliments her for fighting back against the dastardly Bad Guys, although unsuccessfully, and later comments on how they are bound to go down in criminal history. Diane thinks he's joking and starts laughing, and he awkwardly laughs along.
• Canine Confusion: Wolf wags his tail like a dog whenever he feels good from doing good. In real life, wolves don't actually wag their tails to express happiness, but submissiveness. According to Mr. Piranha, he also drinks toilet water.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: While "perverted" is a stretch, he nevertheless has no problem using "the Clooney" to try and charm Diane onto his side. Then, at the gala, after he is implied to have started having feelings for her, he nervously tries to avoid her (it probably doesn't help that he is planning to betray her that same night). This nervousness soon fades away, however, when Diane asks him out for a dance.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Don't mind us, just robbing this place."
  • "So long, suckers!" followed every time by Wolf not evading said suckers.
• The Charmer: He's very suave, and even wins the skeptical Diane to his side with his charisma.
• Chick Magnet: At the gala, many girls ask him to take selfies with them, and he certainly endears himself to Diane.
• Coin Walk Flexing: He does this with Diane's diamond ring after he steals it from her. In a later scene Diane turns the situation around by stealing her ring back from Mr. Wolf and doing the coin walk with it as well to prove to him that a wolf and a fox are not so different.
• Color Motif: Yellow.
  • For most of the movie, Wolf is mostly associated with darker hues of yellow, from his eyes, which often look ochre from the weak lighting, to his gang's hideout, which is covered in stolen, golden loot.
  • This changes to brighter yellows when he turns good for real by the end of the gala. At the party, he's surrounded by bright, yellow stage lights, even dancing on a heart-shaped yellow floorlight with Diane at one point, and the lighting there makes his eyes a much lighter hue than in any other scene. This even extends to when she's revealed to have been the Crimson Paw, as her outfit is accented with yellow stripes. The new car she gets him at the end of the film even has yellow racing stripes.
• Conflicting Loyalty: By the end of the charity gala, the plan to steal the Golden Dolphin again has gone without a hitch, and all that remains to do is for Wolf to push the button and turn off the lights. However, in the crucial moment he hesitates and is split between going through with the hit and squandering all the newfound love he has, especially Diane's, or reforming for real, betraying his gang and Criminal Found Family in the process. He picks the latter, though finds a way to get the gang in on the happy ending too.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo:
  • He is initially the Cynic to Diane's Idealist. He believes there's very little hope for him and his gang genuinely turning good and no hope at all for anyone to believe them even if they did. Diane, on the other hand, has faith in them, and motivates Wolf to turn his life around, not for the sake of popularity, but just so him and his friends can have an happier life. This contrast is best shown when Diane and "Mr. Poodleton" look at a modern art sculpture: Wolf dismisses it as a pretentious pile of garbage, while Diane sees the true beauty of the work, as, from certain angles, it casts the shadow of an elegant swan.
  • After redeeming himself for real, he becomes the Idealist to Snake's Cynic, as Wolf believes him and the gang can and should become good guys, as the amazing feeling of being good makes it worthwhile, while Snake is completely disillusioned with them being able to be anything but the Bad Guys.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's witty, smug, and loves snarking. It helps him bond with Mr. Snake and, later, Diane.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Mr. Wolf is a deconstruction of the entire concept of Evil Is Cool. Make no mistake, Wolf is a suave badass, a brilliant leader, and a charming Gentleman Thief, but he uses his effortless skill and exaggerated swagger to hide his deep unhappiness in life. It's clear that, to him, being a cool villain is only the second best thing to being a good guy, an option that the world never gave him. Due to this, he goes out of his way to invoke Evil is Cool as much as possible with his stylish suits, smooth exterior, and flashy heists, his want to live the awesome villain life sometimes making him go out of his way to make things riskier for himself and his gang. Being a cool villain is all he has, so he's beyond enraged when Diane successfully and mercilessly pinpoints the Bad Guys' hidden insecurities and flaws, to the point where Wolf decides to steal the Golden Dolphin, a suicide mission for criminals, so as to prove Diane wrong and make sure his gang and him go down as some of the greatest thieves of all time. Throughout the film, he understands that being good feels much better than being a badass, but ultimately unhappy bad guy, and he quickly picks the good side once Diane gives him the option for the first time in his life.
• Defrosting Ice King: At first, he has nothing but contempt for Diane Foxington, as he sees her as nothing but a snobby goody-two-shoes who looks down on him and his gang, and the disdain is very much mutual. As the movie goes on, however, the two find out they aren't so different at all, and they hit it off, culminating at the gala, where the two have one long Ship Tease as they dance together. The newfound trust Diane has for him becomes the main reason why he doesn't go through with the second Golden Dolphin heist and reforms for real. In the end, Wolf and Diane are now willing to sacrifice their own lives for one another, and Wolf is the one of the two that manages to do so, turning himself in so Diane's secret identity is never revealed.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • When being arrested at the Golden Dolphin ceremony, Wolf's hasty plan to con Diane and Marmalade at giving the gang a chance to reform hinges on the gang being able to fake it. But the gang had been career criminals for so long that none of them know the first thing about doing good, and their antics almost land them back in jail.
  • During the charity gala, at the spur of the moment, Wolf calls off stealing the Golden Dolphin at the Gala out of guilt and makes his Heel–Face Turn a genuine one to please Diane. However, the gang's leftover animated graphic Calling Card still plays during the time of their intended getaway, thus still making clear to everyone that they were up to no good. This is exploited by Marmalade as it further implicates them for his own theft of the meteorite.
• Dog Stereotype: His Mr. Poodleton persona fits the rich, sophisticated and snooty poodle stereotype.
• Drives Like Crazy: He's able to evade the police during car chases by pulling off incredibly risky stunts that would probably kill him and the rest of his gang if he wasn't so much of a Badass Driver. Sometimes, even Piranha is terrified by Wolf's driving.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first scene in the film is him and Snake having a snarky Seinfeldian Conversation over what food they prefer to eat while sitting at a diner before the camera pans over to the rest of the restaurant-goers smooshed against one another in the corner, absolutely terrified of the duo, who treat this like a Tuesday and even poke jokes at the terrified crowds. Wolf establishes himself to be not too bad a guy when he leaves his pay at the counter and leaves a tip and seems to overpay by a little considering how little Snake ate, even if he could easily dine and dash since all the staff is also hiding away, terrified. After scaring more people while nonchalantly walking down the street, Wolf and Snake enter a bank, and the former calmly reassures the panicking people inside that he and Snake are "just robbing the place'' before running out the window with the loot and booking it with his car. Even before Wolf starts introducing himself to the audience, you already have a pretty good idea of just who he is.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Wolf will eagerly rob banks, steal from museums, and pickpocket passerbys, but dining and dashing? That's going way too far.
  • He is put off by Snake's love for eating innocent guinea pigs, but only because he finds them too cute for his personal taste, and doesn't personally object to Snake eating them.
  • He is genuinely shocked when Shark swallows Snake whole for not sharing a push pop with him, along with Tarantula, Marmalade, and even Piranha.
• Evil Eyebrows: His evil demeanor is complemented by a pair of large, sharp eyebrows, with the left one even having a subtle notch.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: At one point, he makes a morbid joke that he's still carrying the kitten with him because he's "saving him up for later". Other times in the movie, it's more literal, as Wolf makes some very lame puns.
• Evil Is Angular: He has pointy ears, spikey cheek fluff, and a long, angular muzzle.
• Evil Is Bigger:
  • A tall wolf criminal, he completely dwarfs the small, adorable guinea pig philantropist Professor Marmalade. This is completely Inverted, however, as Wolf redeems himself and becomes a good guy while Marmalade reveals himself to have been Evil All Along.
  • Downplayed with Diane, who's a bit shorter than him and far more heroic.
• Evil Is Petty: He's initially this towards Diane, as part of the reason he wants to steal the Golden Dolphin is to spite her after she trash-talks him and his gang. Luckily, he sheds this throughout the film as he and Diane warm up to each other and, by the end of the film, he cares for her to the point of turning himself in so she doesn't ruin her own life for him.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Sam Rockwell gives him a deep, slightly gravelly voice just this side of New Yorker.
• Evil Virtues: Even prior to his Heel–Face Turn, Wolf is incredibly affable, and has a deep sense of camaraderie for anyone he works close with. This in fact chains off his turn to good, since as soon as Diane becomes close enough to him to count as a friend, he is unwilling to betray her.
• Expressive Ears: His ears flap, twitch, and fold based on his emotions.
• Expy: An elegant, laid-back, and charming Loveable Rogue who's the leader of a band of thieves. He is always well-groomed and well-dressed, is very tall and slim with long spindly limbs yet large hands, has a one-sided rivalry with an obsessed law enforcer, and is also somewhat of a ladies' man. All of this, paired with the uncannily similar body language they share, makes Wolf one of the main reasons this movie is considered a Spiritual Adaptation of the Lupin III franchise.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Pride. He thinks very highly of the Bad Guys' track record as cool villains and a compulsive showboater, meaning he is very easily goaded into a vendetta against Diane when she insults the group in public, nearly getting the group arrested after dragging them into a very high risks theft. Even when Wolf thinks a way out of it, he never once suspects he might get outgambitted, leading to Marmalade to reveal his own evil scheme and use the Bad Guys as patsies.
  • Impulse. He repeatedly makes decisions on-the-fly and without the consent of the rest of his teammates. While some of these, due to his penchant for Indy Ploys, do turn out to be for the better, some also complicate matters or cause conflicts for dragging everyone along against their will. Best demonstrated when he quickly decides to make the Bad Guys' Heel–Face Turn legit on the spot, which gets them framed by Marmalade and causes a serious row among the group, only resolved because of Wolf's improvised Batman Gambit for them and Diane. Noticeably in the climax, Wolf still takes a daring risk, but consults with the team first, ensuring they have his back.
• A Father to His Men: Sincerely cares about his whole group. When he makes his Heel–Face Turn, he systematically arranges it so the others will all turn good as well, knowing their behaviour off by heart, and even when it seemingly fails for Snake, he straight up risks his life and reputation to get him back. This ultimately extends to guest members like Diane and the cat later on.
• Foil: To Diane. As Diane herself notes, they aren't so different, both being cunning, smooth talking thieves who, in spite of their massive egos, had a change of heart. However Diane is a loner who quickly turned to good a while before the movie out of self reflection, Wolf is a gang leader who reluctantly turned good out of camaradarie to Diane and his teammates. Diane is concise, physically fluent professional that uses high tech gadgetry, but bad in the face of rare errors, Wolf is a crafty manipulator with a relatively more clumsy and crude skillset, but can improvise well with whatever he has at the time. Diane offers moral support to Wolf, Wolf offers companionship and loyalty to Diane. As a result of Character Development on both ends, the two end up meeting in several areas characterisation wise by the end of the film.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: He is the only character who speaks directly to the audience throughout the film. The only other character who acknowledges this is Snake, and even then indirectly, grumbling Wolf telling the audience about his birthday is "Not relevant".
• Freak Out: He briefly has one when getting lowered into the death trap, but when the gang comes to rescue him and get distracted, he goes along with them. Diane, meanwhile, is still having one.
  • A rather Downplayed example, but when Shark rips off the roof of his car, Wolf yells "HEY! THAT'S MY CAR!"
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: At the Gala, the Bad Guys are all set for the final stage of the heist to nab the Golden Dolphin. Wolf however, has started to bond with Diane and, knowing going through with it would mean ditching her and destroying their new friendship, hesitates and then hands Marmalade the Dolphin.
• Gentleman Thief: He's well-groomed, polite, affable, and a master thief.
• Good Counterpart: He becomes one to Marmalade by the climax of the film. Both are cunning if arrogant manipulators who play off the personalities of others (in particular, their will to do good) to make them do their bidding, however while Marmalade dupes and exploits both Diane and the Bad Guys for his own selfish purposes and then cruelly tries to dispose of them, Wolf, following his Heel–Face Turn, grows from an unwittingly toxic leader to a Magnetic Hero who uses gambits to enlighten his allies for their own well-being, and is rewarded with their Undying Loyalty in return. Even before turning good, Wolf is A Father to His Men and knows how to bring the best out of his teammates' capabilities (also specifically defecting so as not to betray his new friend Diane), while Marmalade just barely makes his pawns bungle into the right places for his means (as demonstrated by his own "heist" for the Bad Guys that nearly jeopardises the whole scheme), and ultimately has not even his official minion Cuddles' loyalty.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: His dastardly grins are complemented by big yellow eyes with dark red pupils and large, menacing eyebrows, while the heroic Diane Foxington has smaller eyes with dark green pupils, thin eyebrows, and cute eyelashes.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: Wolf has dark brown, spikey, and slightly unkempt fur, while Diane has light orange, much rounder, and slightly tidier fur.
• Gratuitous English: He has a habit of this in both the Italian and Japanese dubs. In the former, for instance, he comments "Respect" when someone pulls off an impressive feat of thievery (like Shark stealing the Mona Lisa dressed as her).
• Guile Hero: After his Heel–Face Turn, he is still a crafty manipulator, but to the benefit of his teammates, bordering on Eccentric Mentor. Best shown when he orchestrates his entire team's Heel–Face Turn by simply leaving a push pop in the freezer.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: A rare case of the trope that is also the ringleader of the gang. He initially sets up the Falsely Reformed Villain act so the Bad Guys can get another chance to steal the Golden Dolphin, though after doing good deeds to proving their good name and bonding with Diane, he becomes unwilling to betray her, and decides to abort the heist at the last second and make the Bad Guys' Heel–Face Turn a real one.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: As he later makes clear, Wolf doesn't like being treated as "the villain of every story" and does have genuine urges to be seen as a good person. However he is still very prideful of how cool and competent the Bad Guys are as villains.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: While Wolf is not the most physically or intellectually remarkable criminal among the Bad Guys, and especially Diane and Marmalade, he proves to use this trope with swift precision, being a very shrewd and nuanced Magnetic Hero when he finally turns to good who appeals specifically to his team's relations to inspire them to join him. Even towards Diane, who is his own Positive Friend Influence and prevents his scheming getting the group framed by Marmalade, it is Wolf that manages to incite loyalty between her and the rest of the team, which ultimately prevent her getting manipulated, exposed and/or killed as a result of Marmalade's scheming. The guinea pig's downfall was a group effort via Diane and the Bad Guys' phenomenal talents, though it is Wolf' "goodness" that brought them all together and made sure all of them got out in one piece.
• Heel Realization: He’s initially mad at Diane for publically mocking the Bad Guys and organizes the Golden Dolphin heist to one-up her. However, when Diane reveals her Hidden Heart of Gold and that she actually supports him reforming, Wolf is taken aback and slowly begins to atone for real. This culminates at the Gala, where Wolf realises he can't go through with the heist, knowing it would mean destroying his new friendship with Diane, backstabbing the one outside force who actually believed in him.
• Heroes' Frontier Step: His isn't saving the old lady from falling over, as it was just him salvaging a failed attempt to rob her. His real HFS is saving the cat from the tree, unprompted and on his own.
• Hero with an F in Good: He's a little better than his friends with regards to this, if only for turning good a little quicker than them, but even with the best intentions in mind, he can't express what he's doing very well or why. "Good feels good", but very frequently it means sticking to his limited skill-set: being a Badass Driver and smooth-talking people to get away and reduce harm rather than outright explaining himself.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Mr. Snake.
• Hidden Depths: Both Diane and Marmalade make the assumption that Wolf is merely a blusterous pitiful criminal that can be easily outsmarted, though Wolf turns out to not only be a savvy and resourceful thief, but also a compassionate and precisely nurturing leader, along with being the most conflicted and emotionally intelligent of his gang. Diane witnesses this and gains an affectionate respect for Wolf, though Marmalade underestimates Wolf's impact until it is too late.
• Improbable Weapon User: When running away from the police after being framed for the theft of the meteorite, Wolf, at one point, takes down three policemen at once by shaking two wine bottles and shooting them with the corks and the streams of wine. He then takes out a fourth cop by forcefully handing him the bottles.
• Indy Ploy: Wolf's gut notion planning ends up setting off all the cogs that ruin Marmalade's plan. First after starting to get reservations about staying a bad guy, he sets up Batman Gambit with the rest of the gang so they will Heel–Face Turn as well. Then later, when the group are framed at the Gala, he quickly improvises in a chase against the cops to give Diane proof of his genuine reformation. Both the other Bad Guys and Diane come through, with interest.
• In-Series Nickname: "Wolfie", by Webs. Also, Snake calls him "buddy" at one point.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Mr. Snake, who is 26 years older. Possibly. ^note There was discussion of a cut flashback scene involving Snake and Wolf at school together, and the directors still want to use the scene in the future even though the movie is complete, which suggests the possibility that their mugshot birthdays are fake. The birthdays they picked are also the birthdays of people on the art team, so they could just be Easter Eggs that aren't meant to be taken seriously.
• Interspecies Romance: A strongly implied one with Diane, a red fox.
• Irony: Marmalade forces him to wear an embarrassing sheep onesie, making him a literal wolf in sheep's clothing, when Wolf is actually the complete opposite: a scary-looking Card-Carrying Villain with a Hidden Heart of Gold.
• It's Personal: He decides to steal the Golden Dolphin to stick it to Diane for bad-mouthing him and his gang as sloppy and insecure has-beens. Both Snake and, unwittingly, Diane warn him of how bad an idea it is to make it personal. Ironically it gets turned around when he and Diane bond and he realises he cannot go through with it and defects for real. Making it personal was the downfall to Wolf's criminal career, though not in the way anyone expected.
• Karmic Jackpot: Originally only using the gang's redemption as a ploy, Wolf decides to reform for real, giving the location to his hideout to clue in Diane, as well as utilising a Batman Gambit to instigate a Heel–Face Turn for the rest of the Bad Guys. Following this, Diane turns out to be the hyper competent Reformed Villain, the Crimson Paw, and busts them out of jail, Shark, Pirahna and Tarantula are reformed in time to rescue the two when they are captured by Marmalade, with Snake's Fake Defector ploy finishing off the remainder of Marmalade's plan. Oh and the grapple gun escape that constantly flops? It finally works to save their lives.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Wolf becomes this to the cat after saving him from the tree twice, and becoming his new owner at the end of the movie.
• Laser-Guided Karma: During the dance at Marmalade's gala, he gives Diane her diamond ring back, showing his commitment to being good, and when the Bad Guys are framed for stealing the meteorite, he tells her the position of their hideout and loot as a proof of his good faith. The result: she's the only person to realize something's wrong, leading to her breaking them out of jail and helping them take down Marmalade.
• The Leader: He's the founder and leader of the Bad Guys, and the one who masterminds all the heists.
• Lean and Mean: He is tall and very slim, as well as a dastardly criminal mastermind before his redemption.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His love for showboating leads to him pulling unnecessary stunts that even Piranha thinks are crazy. He never quite loses this trait, as shown when he runs his car off a broken bridge to make an impossible jump during a climax, but since it's to save Snake, the group are all for it this time, and he at least goes in with a backup plan that saves them all when it fails.
• Light Is Not Good: He wears a bright white suit and is a career criminal. He gradually switches to Light Is Good, as he becomes heroic by the film's end.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's very fast and athletic and, while he doesn't fight much in the film, he nevertheless is clearly no weakling, even being able to carry Shark's entire weight.
• Love Redeems: The newfound trust Diane has for him and the feelings the two develop for each other are two of the main reasons Wolf gives up stealing the Golden Dolphin and decides to finally go good.
• Made of Iron: During Marmalade's training, he is hit by a truck at full speed and is sent flying before splattering to the ground. Not only does he not die immediately, he's perfectly fine in the next scene.
• Magnetic Hero: His Character Development has him graduate from a Manipulative Bastard into this, being apt enough at appealing to other's personality traits to convince them to take his side. He pulls a Secret Test of Character that causes a rapid Heel–Face Turn for the rest of his allies, and he also wins over and turns Diane, the retired Crimson Paw who originally mocked the gang's sloppiness and showboating, into their 11th-Hour Ranger.
• Meaningful Echo: He's a master at using these. He partially convinces Diane and seemingly Marmalade to give the Bad Guys a second chance by turning their speeches on the goodness inside everyone right back at them. At the end of the film, he repeats Diane's "Not So Different" Remark on wolves and foxes after redeeming himself for good.
• Mirthless Laughter: A few times.
  • When Diane calls him gutless, Wolf snaps and angrily laughs during the following rant.
  • While his facial expression doesn't make it obvious, as the mysterious ninja makes their appearance (by beating up a guard), Wolf goes "What?" and has an undertone of confused laughter.
  • When the gang is abandoning Wolf, he calls out to each of them, but they all walk away. When calling out to Shark, he nervously laughs while doing so. Shark walks away anyways.
• Motive Decay: Deconstructed. He initially goes after the Golden Dolphin to spite Diane for underestimating the group. Even after he starts bonding with Diane however, he still attempts to continue with the heist to cement their legacy. But by time of the big moment, Diane has straight up become his Morality Pet, and he finds himself unable to betray her.
• Mr. Fanservice: Downplayed. Despite being much better-looking than his book counterpart, he lacks the typical physique you would expect from this trope, and his only Shirtless Scene is very brief. He makes up for it with his suave behavior and charismatic nature.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: You'd expect someone of his build to have trouble carrying a very large carp, yet Wolf is able to support the weight of a great white shark. Special mention also goes to him being able to walk off being hit by a truck at full speed.
• My Instincts Are Showing: Being praised as a "good boy" by the old lady after stopping her from falling causes his tail to start wagging, much to his embarrassment.
• Nice to the Waiter: In the opening diner scene, he compliments the service, pays in full, and leaves a tip, even when the staff and other customers are cowering in fear from him and Mr. Snake. This is the first sign that Wolf is not as bad as he seems: he will steal from banks or museums, but conning small businesses out of money? That's just too low, even for him.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sam Rockwell appears to be doing his best George Clooney impression.
• Noble Wolf: The more heroic wolf tropes slowly come into play as he reforms: he's loyal, brave, protective, and determined.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: He loses his laid-back attitude and vents out all his pent-up frustrations on the world judging him for being a wolf the moment Diane claims he won't change because he's "too gutless".
• Not So Above It All:
  • When a brawl breaks out between the Bad Guys due to Snake not sharing a push pop with Shark, Wolf just walks away nonchalantly and scoffs at them being "animals". Later in the film, however, we see that Wolf can get even more feral once he's provoked enough, which Marmalade eagerly exploits.
  • Wolf is usually the main voice of reason among the gang alongside Webs, but when Shark is too busy dancing to the rhythm of his tingle to save Wolf and Diane from Marmalade's deadly trap, Wolf is smiling and nodding along to Shark as well.
  • If we're to believe Piranha, this sophisticated evil mastermind has a habit of drinking toilet water.
  • He completely nerds out when seeing Diane's arsenal of gadgets.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Wolf is an okay planner to some level, but his and the group's execution almost never runs perfectly. He is even called out by Diane for their sloppiness. Wolf's bigger niche is equipping himself with enough resources and banding together enough talented peers to act as failsafes, and generally being swift at improvising with whatever is close by to do the rest. Notably while Diane, Marmalade and even Snake are all more concise and elaborate Chessmasters than Wolf, they are all left helpless and in panic whenever something doesnt' go as planned, while Wolf manages to at least stumble his way out of most of his roadblocks.
• Outgambitted: He recurrently tries to manipulate the gang's way into being top-tier criminals, though keeps getting outplayed:
  • After Diane badmouths the Bad Guys on live TV, he decides to steal the Golden Dolphin as payback. While the gang do actually outsmart Diane and her own plan to trap them, Wolf's Good Feels Good "tingle" orchestrated by Marmalade still gets the Bad Guys caught before they can leave with the Dolphin.
  • Following this, as a contingency plan out of jail, he manipulates Diane and Marmalade into enabling the Bad Guys' Falsely Reformed Villain scheme. They go through with it, but Diane ultimately goads a genuine good streak out of Wolf, leaving him unwilling to steal the Golden Dolphin from her, while Marmalade is revealed to have used the Bad Guys as patsies for his own scheme.
  • He finally achieves this trope after Marmalade foils and captures him and Diane when they try to stop his heist. However by this point, Wolf had orchestrated the other Bad Guys' own Good Feels Good epithany, leading Webs, Shark and Piranha to rescue them, and Snake to dupe Marmalade as a Fake Defector.
• Out-of-Character Alert: In contrast to him proudly talking to Diane in disguise at the museum, during the charity gala, he gets nervous when she waves at him and he walks away. This alerts Diane that something's wrong, making her try to get closer to him. Wolf's reformation is setting in despite attempting to steal the Golden Dolphin again, and looking at her makes him feel ashamed at what he's about to do.
• Percussive Pickpocket: How "Mr. Poodleton" steals Chief Luggings' ID at the Golden Dolphin ceremony, apologizing afterwards for the "accident".
• Positive Friend Influence: He's on the receiving end of this from Diane, who sympathizes with him and motivates him to change his and his friends' lives for the better by turning good like she did before him, and the new relationship between the two is one of the main reasons Wolf finally turns good for real. Once he reforms, he has this influence on the rest of the gang, who he convinces to turn good with a Batman Gambit.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • His first "good" action in the film, saving an old lady at the Golden Dolphin ceremony from falling down the stairs, is done simply so he doesn't get unwanted attention, and he only happens to save her because he was trying to steal her purse. However, the tingle he gets from the "old lady" thanking him kickstarts his redemption arc in the film, as he becomes genuinely heroic and selfless because of how good it feels to go good.
  • He doesn't like the idea of eating cute little guinea pigs... because they're small and barely a meal.
• Pride Before a Fall: He establishes himself as incredibly assured of the gang's superiority as a criminal gang. However, Diane mocks the Bad Guys on live TV, his attempt to steal the Golden Dolphin as payback ends with them getting caught, and his attempt to improvise out of it by manipulating Marmalade ends up with the gang being his patsy instead.
• Purple Is Powerful: He wears a purple tie when disguised as the sophisticated and wealthy Mr. Poodleton.
• Rage Breaking Point: He comes very close to having one while watching Diane's speech trash-talking them. He stutters while saying she knows nothing, and then growls with disgust. By the time he switches the TV off, he's shaking with anger.
  • As revealed in his conversation with Diane, he has a lot of pent-up rage at how the world sees and treats him, which he masks by acting like a smug, cocky criminal.
  • After he and the gang are framed for the theft of the meteorite at the gala, in the prison transport, after Marmalade reveals his evil plan brags about how "the big bad wolf got outsmarted by a little piggie", Mr. Wolf snaps and lunges at him. Had it not been for the chains holding him back and Marmalade opening the transport doors for the world to see, he would've mauled the guinea pig.
  Mr. Wolf: You little pouchy-cheeked RAT! I'LL KILL YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME?! YOU'RE DEAD!
• Real Men Wear Pink: He wears pink boxers decorated with hearts.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: As best seen in close-ups, Wolf's pupils are a very dark shade of red. They look particularly red and especially scary when Wolf absolutely loses it and tries to maul Professor Marmalade for manipulating him.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • The affable and more laid-back Blue to Snake's abrasive, aggressive, and far more outwardly villainous Red.
    Mr. Wolf: [to a terrified crowd about Snake] Sorry folks, I'm switching him to decaf.
  • To Diane, however, he's the shamelessly evil Red Oni with plenty of pent-up frustration, while she is the far more reasonable Blue. They switch roles eventually, with Diane as the Crimson Paw being the Red to Wolf's Blue as she excitably gets back into the game while he's the level-headed career criminal in his element. Then it switches again with Wolf as the headstrong Red who needs to chase down Marmalade and make things right with Snake to Diane's once-again reasonable Blue.
• Savage Wolves: After being sophisticated and civilized for most of the film, he devolves into this as he snaps over Marmalade's betrayal. He looks absolutely feral, and it's clear he wants to tear the guinea pig apart with his own fangs.
• Scars Are Forever: Played with. Wolf's left eyebrow has a small notch in it. The scar that caused it had long since healed, but that portion of his eyebrow never fully recovered.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: When he's not forced to wear a prison uniform or a kigurumi, he opts for well-tailored suits.
• A Sinister Clue: Mr. Wolf is a master thief and left-handed. Ironically, this is only shown after he reforms, when he writes the hideout location on the Charity Gala map.
• Sinister Schnoz: Being a wolf, he has a very long muzzle and a large nose. This is especially noticeable compared to the more heroic Diane, who, as a fox, has a much shorter, more elegant muzzle.
• Smarter Than They Look: Both Diane and Marmalade view him as an inferior Smug Snake initially, believing they can easily dupe him. However, both their plans nearly fall apart because he and the other Bad Guys get a lot further in stealing the Golden Dolphin than they anticipated. Wolf is also apt at playing off others' personality traits, and unlike the former two, his ego, while equally sizable, does not stem from being a one-man unit, and he can swiftly make plans based on the abilities of associates. While Diane buys into none of his sweet talking, he does effectively use her own words against her, causing her to self-reflect and take a more empathetic approach, and he is swiftly able to convince her and the other Bad Guys his change is sincere with a few subtle gestures, in turn leading to Marmalade's downfall.
• Smug Smiler: He usually sports a smug, confident grin.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: He's a smug and laid-back snarker who is best friends with Mr. Snake and later starts hitting it off with Diane Foxington, both of whom are even more sarcastic than he is. Needless to say, it results in endless back-and-forth snarking between them.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He almost always talks in a calm, laid-back, and polite tone, even when he's stealing everything in sight.
  Mr. Wolf: Don't mind us, just robbin' this place.
• Sticky Fingers: During the Golden Dolphin heist, he can't help but pickpocket nearly everyone he passes. This leads him into almost being caught trying to steal the old lady's purse. Marmalade uses this against him twice, first when disguised as the aforementioned old lady, and later by planting an obvious trap in his compound with the Golden Dolphin, as he knows Mr. Wolf won't be able to resist trying to take it.
• The Strategist: His role in the gang, along with being the leader. He is always coming up with elaborate heists where each and every one of his friends' talents are allowed to shine.
• Street Smart: Wolf is reasonably intelligent but outshone by technologically gifted characters like Webs and Diane, or more elaborate schemers like Marmalade or Snake. However, he's the most crafty with any simple implement he has in a quick pinch. It's for this reason that Wolf is The Leader and The Strategist of the group, due to being the most concise at using the abilities of everyone and everything. Best demonstrated when Diane is trying to figure out Marmalade's plan via an elaborate satellite hacking system. Wolf solves the last piece of the puzzle for her by slapping the Gala fundraiser map on top of her map, revealing the charity services he is targeting. There's also him Heel Face Turning all his teammates in a matter of minutes with a push pop.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: He's this with Diane. While no slouch in strength either, Wolf mostly relies on his strategic intelligence, smooth-talking, and driving skills, while Diane is a complete badass who can effortlessly take down dozens of trained policemen on her own. Played With as, again, Wolf pulls off some impressive physical feats too, and Diane is absolutely not lacking in intelligence either.
• Sweet Sheep: He does his first true good action, saving the kitten up the tree, while wearing a sheep onesie.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He's a tall, dark-furred, well-groomed, and charming Lovable Rogue.
• Took a Level in Idealism: Initially, he has little to no faith in his and his gang's ability to reform for real, and has even less faith in people believing them if they did. With help from Diane as well as various moments that show him how good it feels to do good, he not only decides to really go good, but is optimistic that his gang should follow in tow so they can all have better lives as good guys, which puts him at odds with Mr. Snake.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Prior to his Heel–Face Turn, Wolf, while still caring about his teammates, is prone to reckless decisions and coersing the group into dangerous schemes. A large part of his Heel–Face Turn is also learning to be a Positive Friend Influence and make better decisions for the whole group, as well as fully consulting with them before setting them out.
• Tranquil Fury: When Snake says that in this world, you're either scary or scared in response to Wolf insisting they could change, Wolf in turn responds with a calm "Oh yeah?", but the tone in his voice and his facial expression show that he's ticked off by Snake's comment.
• Unwitting Pawn: While the whole gang gets manipulated by Marmalade into being his patsies, Mr. Wolf is the biggest victim of this, starting with saving the "old lady".
• Villain Has a Point: It was all to manipulate Marmalade and Diane into giving him and his friends a second chance so they can feign redemption and get the police off their tails, but he's completely right about it being rich of Marmalade and Diane to have all their inspiring speeches on the good inside all of us and then not give a single chance at redemption to social outcasts forced into villainy. Even a very skeptical Diane has to admit he has a point.
  Wolf: (grins innocently) Pardon me, Governor, but a wise person once told me "Even trash can be turned into something beautiful."
• Villain in a White Suit: He's an infamous criminal mastermind whose outfit of choice is a light beige suit and white shirt.
• Villainous Valour: Even as a criminal, he always has the bravery of a Noble Wolf. He's a thrill-seeker and a Badass Driver who isn't afraid to pull off extreme stunts to escape the police, and he's very loyal to his gang and always ready to put his skin on the line to save them. Once he reforms, he starts using his courage and determination to do good.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • He's a cocky criminal mastermind during his showoffy heists and a sophisticated Deadpan Snarker even around his closest friends, but is hiding some very deep insecurities on being forced into villainy by society's prejudice. After Diane motivates him to turn his life around and turn good, Wolf is then left all alone in Marmalade's garden, with the only other creature around being the kitten, stuck on the tree again. Then, Wolf displays a hidden, much kinder and even vulnerable side and, through great empathy and gentleness, manages to successfully bring the cat down and even befriend him. Unwittingly to Wolf, however, Marmalade takes away the "In the Dark" part by secretly filming Wolf's good deed and posting it to social media.
  • Done again when the group are putting up the final touches of their heist, with the public completely oblivious and Diane eagerly ready to pardon them. Despite the plan being all set for them to run off with the Golden Dolphin, Wolf doesn't have the heart to betray Diane after bonding with her, and sincerely goes on with the ceremony instead of setting off the trap. However again the "In the Dark" part does not apply to the rest of the group, who are shocked and hurt that Wolf abandoned them.
• When He Smiles: The moments where his cocky grin is replaced with a genuine, heartfelt smile are few and far between, but they're there.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: He's a sly, devious pickpocket of a wolf, and his yellow, almost ochre eyes are the first warning that you shouldn't trust the guy. That is, at least, before his redemption, after which his big, yellow eyes look just adorable. In particular, during the gala, when he fully turns good, the lighting makes Wolf's eyes especially bright, and it makes him all the more endearing.

Mr. Snake

"Out of all the people in the world, I hate you guys the least."

Voiced by: Marc Maron ^{Foreign VAs}Ole Ornered (Swedish), Chris Diamantopoulos (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday)

A sarcastic safe-cracking Burmese python.

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• Abstract Eater: Played With, in that he loves eating Guinea pigs because he's symbolically eating "pure goodness" when he eats a Ridiculously Cute Critter, rather than literally.
• Age Lift: While in the books, Mr. Snake and Mr. Wolf are revealed to have been Childhood Friends, Mr. Snake is about 26 years older than Mr. Wolf in the film, as seen on their mugshot boards.^note There was discussion of a cut flashback scene involving Snake and Wolf at school together, where the directors still want to use the scene in the future even though the movie is complete, which suggests the possibility that their mugshot birthdays are fake. The birthdays they picked are also the birthdays of people on the art team, so they could just be Easter Eggs that aren't meant to be taken seriously.
• Balloon Belly: Mr. Snake sports one of these when he manages to swallow an entire roomful of guinea pigs, stomach bloating grotesquely to almost the height of Mr. Wolf himself.
• Batman Gambit: How he gets one over on Marmalade — he realizes that Marmalade is more cynical than him, believing nobody can fundamentally change at all. Naturally, this meant when Mr. Snake visited him and claimed to want to work together on the heist, Marmalade took it at face value.
• Big Eater: He has a HUGE appetite, so much so that he carries two slices of bread with him wherever he goes in anticipation of making a sandwich. When tasked with saving a laboratory full of guinea pigs, he proceeds to gobble them all up and swallow them whole.
• Birthday Hater: He hates birthdays and refuses to acknowledge his own. It's because when he was a child, no one ever came to his parties. For him, his birthday is nothing but the reminder that the world sees him as a monster and nothing else. He seems to be getting over this in the epilogue.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: An interesting subversion; he prefers it that way, and the fact the gang keep reminding him of it in the beginning actually hangs over his head for much of the film. He's got a fairly decent Freudian Excuse for not liking it, however.
• Adaptation Species Change: He's an Eastern brown snake in the books, but a Burmese python in the movie.
• Bright Is Not Good: Despite being the grimmest member of the dastardly Bad Guys, he's also, ironically, the one with the most colorful design, with a brown, almost yellow body, a red and white Hawaiian shirt, and a white hat with yellow frowny face pins.
• Character Catchphrase: "Yup."
• Crazy-Prepared: He always carries two slices of bread on him, in case there's a small animal he can eat.
• The Cynic: He believes he and the rest of the gang are Beyond Redemption, which puts him at odds with Mr. Wolf.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: The Cynic to Wolf's Idealist. Wolf has always been more optimistic than Snake, such as when Snake has many more doubts about stealing the Golden Dolphin, but it becomes especially pronounced after Wolf turns good for real: Wolf believes the gang can and should turn good and start a better life, while Snake has no hope whatsoever in them ever being anything other than bad guys and the world ever being anything but terrified of them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Snake is a master of sarcastic remarks second only to Ms. Tarantula.
• Dented Iron: His right fang has its tip broken off.
• Disappointed in You: When Snake gets ahold of the code for the Godlen Dolphin during the gala, the code is 12345. You can practically taste his disappointment in how idiotically simple it is.
• Does Not Like Spam: Among the many reasons he gives for not liking birthdays, Mr. Snake admits that he doesn't like cake to Wolf's bafflement, despite his Sweet Tooth. When the Bad Guys throw him a small party anyways, he encourages the others to eat the cake while he goes to the fridge for different food.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He is a complete misanthrope who, out of anyone in the world, only trusts his four teammates, with Wolf being his true best friend. Therefore, when Wolf decides to turn good without consulting them, the whole gang feels betrayed, but Snake is particularly wounded.
  Mr. Snake: Out there, I'm just a scary, good-for-nothing...monster! Yeah. But nothing compares to having the one guy - the one guy - I thought I could trust...stab me in the back.
• Evil Laugh: A sinister chuckle. Played with in that his most notable moment of laughing is revealing he was a Fake Defector — and thus a Guile Hero at that point in the film.
• Evil Old Folks: Born on July 2, 1965, if the film takes place in 2022, then Snake is 57 years old and the oldest Bad Guy by a long shot, something his teammates won't let him forget.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Even moreso than Wolf. It reminds you that he's a villain and a snake.
• Fake Defector: After ditching the gang, he feels the tingling again. He then has the idea of using his ditching to trick Marmalade into letting him join him, allowing him to sabotage his scheme from within.
• Fatal Flaw: His love for his Trademark Favorite Food, Guinea pigs.
  • When Wolf suggests stealing the Golden Dolphin, Mr. Snake is adamantly against the plan because every thief who tried that heist failed and never stole again afterwards. He only agreed to the heist because the recipient of the Golden Dolphin is Professor Marmalade, a Guinea pig he could potentially eat.
  • When Marmalade has the Bad Guys break into an animal testing lab to rescue the Guinea pigs as part of the group's rehabilitation, Mr. Snake immediately goes to eat every single one, ruining the team's efforts to appear reformed.
• Freudian Excuse: He's the most bitter member of the Bad Guys because he was ostracized throughout his entire childhood as a monster, to a point where no one ever acknowledged his birthdays. As the oldest member of the gang, he's the one who's had to endure this treatment the longest.
• Gratuitous English: In the Italian dub, even more so than Wolf. In particular, Italian Snake keeps "Yup" as his catchphrase.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Mr. Wolf.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite not having fingers, Snake absolutely shreds on the electric guitar during the Gala for Goodness.
  • Snake's go-to niche as a heist member is his physical versatility, making it to the surprise of everyone when he proves possibly a more elaborate manipulator and Chessmaster than Wolf or even Marmalade.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite being rather sarcastic and greedy, he still redeems himself by pretending to join Marmalade so he can use the mind-control helmet to destroy the meteorite.
• Hypocrite: A more knowing, well-intentioned example. He believes Wolf deliberately went behind the gang's back to ditch them, leading to a very nasty falling out when Wolf admits that the gang just might be holding him back in a fit of rage. Snake later has to do the exact same thing to get one over on Marmalade — after he rejects his tingle, he gets it again just a few moments later, and decides to pretend to join up with Marmalade so he can use his mind-control helmet to destroy the meteorite. He has to do this all behind the gang's back, knowing that if he fails, he could lose them as friends forever.
• Ignored Epiphany: When the rest of the gang reaches redemption, Mr. Snake refuses to and storms off, even though he feels the tingling himself . A moment later, he feels it again, and this time, it's not ignored.
  Snake: *angrily restrains his tail wag* No! No! NOOO! WE'LL! ALWAYS! BE! BAD GUYS!!!
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Mr. Wolf, as he's 26 years older. Possibly.^note see the note on the entry for Age Lift for details
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's irritable and the most openly villainous member of the gang, but when push comes to shove, he truly cares for his friends above anything else.
• The Lancer: To Mr. Wolf.
• No Man Should Have This Power: After his Heel–Face Turn, Snake aims specifically to destroy the meteorite rather than simply take it and sabotage Marmalade's heist, straight up telling the others that the thing was too dangerous even for his liking.
• Obsessed with Food: The first thing he thinks about when he sees other animals is what they taste like. He can get rather passionate on the topic of meat too, such as when he gushes about how good guinea pigs taste.
• One-Person Birthday Party: Lampshaded by Mr. Snake as the reason he hates birthdays.
  Mr. Snake: You wanna know why I hate birthdays, Wolf? Do ya? When you grow up a snake, nobody shows up to your party.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He loves guinea pigs as a dish. When the less-than-engaging "good guy heist" by Marmalade turns out to be for a laboratory filled with countless guinea pigs, Snake's normally-dry enthusiasm rises tremendously, to the confusion of the other members.
  Shark: I've never seen him so chipper. Has he been meditating?
• Pet the Dog: After the other Bad Guys (except Wolf) return to their lair to find all of their loot has been plundered, after teasing Shark several times with a push pop, Snake finally lets Shark have it all to himself. This leads to a direct plot development; the fact that Snake did something nice for somebody else no strings attached proves that even the nastiest of the Bad Guys can do good. Snake doesn't take it well, at first anyway.
• Prehensile Tail: He uses his tail to hold stuff rather often. Not only that, he uses it as a makeshift hand to express body language at numerous points such as the beginning diner scene where he drapes the lower half of his body on tables which looks like a human leaning his arms on it.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's the aggressive, abrasive, and shamelessly villainous Red to Wolf's much more laid-back, affable, and elegant Blue. Unlike most examples, however, Snake can be the voice of reason between the two, like when he initially opposes Wolf's arrogant goal of stealing the Golden Dolphin.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: After (apparently) betraying the gang for Marmalade, once he becomes a liability, Marmalade kicks him out of the helicopter, intending for him to fall to his death.
• Right Hand Vs Left Hand: While his Fake Defector scheme with the decoy Meteorite does foil Marmalade, it also complicates Diane and the Bad Guys' own plans to take back the Meteorite, as well as leaving its mind control waves active long enough for the guinea pigs to attempt the charity heist.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Manly Man to Mr. Shark’s Sensitive Guy. Mr. Snake is shown to be very grumpy, and acts aggressively when he argues with Mr. Wolf on the prison island and then attacks him after Wolf’s Wham Line. Shark, by contrast, at least warns Snake that he’s going to get aggressive before he fights him over the push pop. Shark also cries more easily than Snake does.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: A lot of his cynical, selfish personality can be traced back to how he's been viewed as an outcast all his life — if nobody gives a crap about him, he doesn't see why he should give a crap back.
• Snakes Are Sinister: The most genuinely sinister member of the group. Subverted by the end; he does have a good heart, he just expresses it differently.
• Stomach of Holding: He doesn't immediately digest everything he eats and can use his stomach to store things, such as an alarm clock, as demonstrated in the opening sequence; and about 200,000 guinea pigs, as demonstrated during the lab heist.
• Sweet Tooth: He appears to prefer sweeter items in his diet. He upends an entire container of sugar into his coffee in the diner scene, and push pops are one of his favorite foods, one that he loves to taunt Mr. Shark with. However, he's not a huge cake fan.
• Token Evil Teammate: Among a gang of criminals, he's acknowledged as the most cheerfully unrepentant and ill-tempered member of them all. It's how he's able to sell his Fake Defector act.
• Trademark Favourite Food: Guinea pigs. Justified, he's a snake and snakes eat rodents.
• Villainous Glutton: During the mission to Sunnyside, instead of saving the whole room of guinea pigs, he eats all of them; they can still be seen squirming inside his body. According to his police file shown during Wolf's monologue, he once ate an entire pet shop's worth of smaller animals. Then tried to eat the shop's owner. Then the doctor who was trying to save the owner. Then the police officer who tried to arrest him for the previous, and the police dog who tried to save the officer...
• When He Smiles: He is usually grumpy or sinister. However, he does shine a genuine smile when he's left alone looking at the gang's pictures. More poignantly, he shows this when he experiences the tingle for the first time before immediately trying to deny it, and finally when the gang rescues him.
• Whole Costume Reference: He wears the bucket-hat-and-Hawaiian-shirt combo made famous by Hunter S. Thompson and his Author Avatar, Raoul Duke.
• Worth It: He shouts "Totally worth it!" from inside Mr. Shark's stomach after denying him a push pop and getting swallowed whole in retaliation.

Ms. Tarantula, aka "Webs"

"Time to turn this baby on beast mode."

Voiced by: Awkwafina ^{Foreign VAs}Mikaela Ardai Jennefors (Swedish), Mallory Low (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday)

A redknee tarantula, and an expert hacker with a sharp tongue.

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• Ace Custom: Her miniature laptop. It can plug into any computer system, allowing her to hack almost anything, has multiple screens that fold out from the back, and has four extra keyboards that flip out on either side when needed, which she can use with her spider legs.
• Adaptation Name Change: Her book nickname "Legs" is changed to "Webs" here.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Her book counterpart is recruited in the second book, after the gang has begun their reformation. Here, she's part of the team from the start, before the gang reforms.
• Adaptational Modesty: A constant joke of Legs, her book counterpart, was the fact that he would eschew clothing. Even though Webs is only a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, wearing a hoodie and headphones without anything else, this is still far more than what her book counterpart wears.
• Adaptational Villainy: Legs, her book counterpart, was already reformed when he joined the gang. Here, Webs is part of the gang before their reformation, using her hacking skills for elaborate heists and evading police. Perhaps as a Mythology Gag however, she is the first to undergo the Good Feels Good epithany after Wolf.
• Boyish Short Hair: The hair on her head is styled to look like a pixie cut.
• Bright Is Not Good: Her orange hair is very vivid, and her hacking activity involves a lot of brightly colored LED lights and screens.
• Calling Card: She likes to leave taunting animated graphics on her victims' screens after a successful hack. This comes back to bite the gang when Marmalade frames them for stealing the meteorite, and her calling card goes off automatically despite them not having stolen anything.
• The Cracker: Her role in the team, to the point the WPSST system is specifically designed with protocol against her hacking skills.
• Deadpan Snarker: Perhaps the most sarcastic member of the team, as shown when she runs into some technical difficulties during the Golden Dolphin heist.
  Mr. Wolf: Try rebooting!
  Ms. Tarantula: Oh my gosh, you fixed it!
  Mr. Wolf: Really?
  Ms. Tarantula: NO!
• Defeating the Undefeatable: It is implied she is the one member of the Bad Guys whose niche Diane can't quite match, given Webs shocks her by both neutralising her booby trap for the group (one designed specifically to override her), and later by her ability to hack the heist trucks' navigational systems.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She, too, is shocked when Shark kinda eats Snake alive.
• Gender Flip: Her counterpart in the book series is male, but was made female for the movie. This was a pragmatic change, since the girls in the books could be easily trickled into the series, but everything had to happen at once for a movie.
• Hidden Depths: For a Card-Carrying Villain, Webs cares about the environment, going so far as to vote for Diane Foxington because she approved of her stance on climate change.
• Hackette: She’s a female spider who’s the hacker of the eponymous group.
• Hollywood Hacking: Her specialty. There's no attempt at making her hacking look realistic. This is best epitomized in the truck chase, where she manages to not only hack the navigational systems of the trucks, but manages to get them to drive themselves back to the places they were stolen from.
• In-Series Nickname: "Webs" by the gang. Another alias, "Mata Hairy", appears on her rap sheet.
• Ink-Suit Actor: "Webs"' face bears a resemblance to her voice actress Awkwafina.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When hacking the WPSST proves to be more difficult than she anticipated, she switches her laptop to "Beast Mode", making four extra keyboards extend from it, then strikes a tarantula attack pose as she hacks it with brute force.
  Ms. Tarantula: Eat it, WPSST!
• Mission Control: During the Golden Dolphin heist, she becomes this once she takes over the security office, monitoring the gang's positions on the security cameras and keeping everyone up to date.
• One of the Guys: She gets in on the group's antics and childlike scraps on multiple occasions, and if anything supplies the largest amount of banter.
• Only Sane Woman: She's The Smart Girl of her group and the people around them, and is more focused and tactical than Wolf throughout the film. Downplayed as she's just as goofy and has the same stumbles about being good as the rest of the group, requiring Wolf's prodding (however subtle), and her intelligence is largely fidelity to her book's counterpart, and she was a male. (The Bad Guys became much more competent good guys when he joined them, in the film where she's there from the start, they are already semi-efficient bad guys).
• Pet the Dog: While she is a criminal, she mentions voting for Diane during her election because she liked her climate change policy.
• The Reliable One: While she gets in on the groups' bumbling several times, she's generally the most consistent and grounded in her individual field of expertise, not being as childish and clumsy as Shark and Pirahna or as chaotic and impulsive as Wolf and Snake. Even after Wolf defects, Webs proves dependable to him, as she and Shark respond instantly to Wolf's Good Feels Good Batman Gambit and Heel–Face Turn along with him.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the only female member of the gang, unless you count Diane.
• Spiders Are Scary: She's a tarantula (a kind of spider) and, despite her cute appearance, a gymgoer freaks out when he sees her running on a treadmill.
• Tattooed Crook: She has two tribal tattoos, one on her left arm and the other on the back of her neck.
• Taught by Experience: She's entirely self-taught, both by her own hands-on experience and from YouTube tutorials.
• Techno Wizard: She can hack anything, from traffic lights to a high-tech security system specifically designed to counter her.
• Tomboy: A boyish voice, a hacker, her head's hair looking like a pixie cut, wearing a suit to the gala... (she was once going to wear a dress and bow in a deleted scene.)
• Tomboyish Voice: She has a very raspy voice, courtesy of her voice actress Awkwafina.
• Tsundere: A platonic example. She's snarky and brash, but she cares about her friends a lot.

Mr. Shark

"I forgot we had those push pops. Man, my tummy is rumbling like a kraken right now!"

Voiced by: Craig Robinson ^{Foreign VAs}David Lenneman (Swedish), Ezekiel Ajeigbe (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday)

A master-of-disguise great white shark.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: He's not as sarcastic or violent as his book counterpart.
• Aww Look They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite getting into childish spats with Snake several times, he is sincerely touched when the latter finally gives him a push pop, enough to incite his Heel–Face Turn. He is also shown glomping Snake during several of the group's uplifting moments.
• Balloon Belly: When Mr. Snake denies him a push pop for a second time, Shark angrily retaliates by eating him whole, bloating his belly.
• Berserk Button: He hates being denied push pops. Mr. Snake loves tormenting him by doing exactly that.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Downplayed, in that he is a criminal until he and his teammates change their ways. However, he is still Affably Evil, and acts like an excited child when Mr. Snake presents him with a push pop. When he's denied one, though, he flies into a rage and attacks Snake, with one such incident resulting in Shark swallowing Snake whole.
• Big Brother Instinct: He Security Clings Webs and Piranha during the Crimson Paw's ambush in prison, even shielding them from the latter when they approach them. It turns out to be Diane, but a sweet gesture all the same.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Compared to Snake and the others, who give Wolf the cold shoulder after he joins Diane, Shark just looks sad and hestitant to leave him, pacing between them for a while before joining the others.
• Disguised in Drag: He's perfectly comfortable dressing up like a woman when necessary. He once disguised himself as the Mona Lisa, and during the Golden Dolphin heist, he's disguised as a woman.
• Disproportionate Retribution: When Mr. Snake doesn't give him his Push-Pop, Shark beats him up the first time and swallows him whole the second, to the shock of everyone else.
• Gentle Giant: While he's still a criminal, he's also the most Affably Evil of the gang. Tellingly, he has the most signs of genuine goodness after Wolf, he's the most reluctant to leave Wolf after the group break up, and the rest of the group's Heel–Face Turn is pivoted by Snake finally doing something kind to him.
• Hidden Depths: As comedic as his Paper Thin Disguises are, they are often aided by his ability to replicate the neccessary talents of the figures he poses as:
  • While posing as a roadworks instructor, he conducts the work crew to drop their construction in perfect time and formation to assist the Bad Guys' robbery getaway.
  • He managed to steal the Mona Lisa disguised as the Mona Lisa, which involved sitting on display with photo stillness so no one could notice the difference.
  • During the Gala, as the Bad Guys utilise a music number to cover up their heist, Shark fluently plays multiple instruments throughout the song.
  • Perhaps most brilliantly in The Maraschino Ruby short, where, when posing as the group's lawyer, he shows a fluent knowledge of legal measures, and ends up turning Chief Luggins' dupe around on her by noting that her entrapment plan was actually an arrestable felony.
• Inelegant Blubbering: When the Bad Guys sans Mr. Wolf return to their hideout and find that all of their stolen goods have been repossessed, Mr. Shark begins crying about how much they've lost. More significantly, it's enough for Snake to take pity on him and give him a push pop, which incites all of them to give up their criminal lifestyles.
• Informed Ability: Played for Laughs. Mr. Wolf boasts about how good Shark is at disguising himself, but all of his disguises do a terrible job at hiding his animal attributes, much less make him look like the person he's trying to impersonate as. Despite this, all of them work, somehow.
• Instant Convertible: Turns Wolf's car into one of these when chasing down the hijacked armored trucks, just so he can throw Piranha at them. To his credit, he does at least ask Wolf if he has insurance before doing it.
• Large Ham: His idea of a subtle distraction consists of suddenly throwing a table across the room and shrieking that he's going to have a baby, all while wearing a red gala dress. Subtle indeed.
• Manchild: Mr. Shark is shown to be the most immature and childish member of the group due to his tendency to cry like a baby especially when he finds out that his team’s hideout was repossessed and stripped of all their goods. He also has a very childish fascination with push pops.
• Master of Disguise: His role on the team, either to cause distractions or to get into highly secure areas.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: He's the biggest of the team, and at one point, he rips a car roof off with his bare hands.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Mr. Shark's disguises are obvious to the audience, as even when he's disguising as other animals or personas, he is still very clearly a shark. Despite this, the only people who seem to be able to see through it are the rest of the crew.
• Refuge in Audacity: His whole disguise gimmick runs on this. His greatest heist involves stealing the Mona Lisa disguised as the Mona Lisa.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Sensitive Guy to Mr. Snake’s Manly Man. When disguised, Mr. Shark sometimes dresses in drag. He also cries more easily than the rest of his teammates, and is at best Affably Evil...until the third act of the film, when he and his teammates pull a Heel–Face Turn. By contrast, Snake puts on a tough exterior over his good heart, and uses people’s fear of him to scare them for fun.
• Simple-Minded Wisdom: Shark proves quite emotionally intelligent in the third act where he and Webs respond near instantly to Wolf's Good Feels Good gambit for the group, straight up spelling out the epiphany to Snake and undergoing a very rapid Heel–Face Turn.
  Shark: *elated* You...you did a good thing! For me! Snake! YOU! The worst one of us!
• Sweet Tooth: His love of push pops says a lot about his appetite.
• Tattooed Crook: He has a tattoo of a heart reading "Mom" on his left arm.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He loves push pops, going into a rampage whenever he's presented and denied one.
• Volumetric Mouth: At its maximum extent, his mouth can be as big as his entire face.

Mr. Piranha

"Crazy is what I bring to the party, chico!"

Voiced by: Anthony Ramos ^{Foreign VAs}Pablo Cepeda (Swedish), Raul Ceballos (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday)

A Bolivian red-bellied piranha and the short-fused "muscle" of the gang.

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• Amazon Chaser: After seeing Diane in action as the Crimson Paw, the rest of the group are in shock, while Piranha just has an excited, smitten grin.
• The Baby of the Bunch: He is canonically the youngest member of the crew, and it shows. As he is more naïve and doesn’t take things as seriously as the rest of the Bad Guys.
• Badass Adorable: He's the second smallest member behind Webs, an easily excitable oaf, has adorable stubby hands and feet and is also a Pint-Sized Powerhouse that the gang uses whenever they need large groups of trained officers to be taken care of.
• Bait-and-Switch: When the gang accidentally scares a cat they're "rescuing" into climbing even higher up a tree, Piranha admonishes them for this and says that he'll save it himself. Instead, Piranha jumps up into its face and yells "WHAT'S UP, PAPA!?", which just frightens the cat even more.
• Berserk Button: Implying that he can't do something correctly is a quick way to get him riled up, as shown when Tarantula mocks that he can't help Wolf, as a "grandma", cross a road.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may be a small, adorable goofball, but he's the gang's muscle for a reason.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "SURPRIIIIIIIISE!!!!" Generally followed by a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • "Sorry!" Whenever he farts.
• Chekhov's Gag: He tries to sing "Happy Birthday" to Mr. Snake, who stops him by blowing out the cake's candles early. Later, when Marmalade asks the Bad Guys what to do when they see a cat stuck in a tree, all of them say they should harm it in some way, except for Piranha, who answers that they should sing to it. These foreshadow Piranha's talent for singing, which turns out to be useful when distracting everyone at the gala during their second heist.
• Cloudcuckoolander: A fair amount of his lines hint that he's not entirely there, often talking about unrelated things during conversations.
• Comfort Food: Mr. Piranha's go-to comfort food is beef and bean burritos. In the opening, he's seen eating one in a flashback, and later is eating two of them when the gang arrives at their hideout.
• Comically Missing the Point: Upon seeing Marmalade's lamp modeled after the love crater meteorite, Mr. Piranha can only comment on how it looks like a butt, to the indignation of the former. This ends up a Running Gag, with even other characters annoying Marmalade by getting in on it.
• Gasshole: When he gets anxious or stressed, he farts.
• Gratuitous Spanish: He occasionally includes Spanish words in his dialogue, especially "chico/a".
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: He's the most unhinged and violent member of the gang, which is why he acts as the muscle.
• Hidden Depths: He has a very good singing voice, as demonstrated when he sings "Good Tonight" at the gala. He sings again in A Very Bad Holiday, this time singing a Christmas song over on the radio.
• National Animal Stereotypes: Mr. Piranha speaks with Gratuitous Spanish, as befits a South American species of fish.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He attempts a dramatic escape from the charity gala with the grappling hook. The hook misses the overhang and hits Mr. Shark on the head, knocking him out and getting the gang captured.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Sort of. His dorsal ridge resembles a little mohawk, complete with a bit that looks like a short ponytail when viewed from the side.
• Pinocchio Nose: It's practically impossible for him to tell a lie, because he farts whenever he gets nervous.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He's the second-smallest member of the squad, yet regarded as its greatest fighter.
• Piranha Problem: He's the most actively violent member of the gang. In the opening chase sequence, he bursts out of a police car's glove compartment and attacks the driver, causing a massive pileup. In the Golden Dolphin heist, he uses his small size to sneak around and knock out anyone that might blow the heist.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: When the Bad Guys are caught in their failed guinea pig rescue mission, Piranha is rapidly punching one of the rodents in his hold.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He's the only one who doesn't complain about wearing an animal onesie.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Beef and bean burritos. He's seen eating one before being attacked by six thugs and again while in the elevator ride to the hideout. Might explain his nervous farts.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: He has bright yellow sclera, though they're a different shade of yellow from Mr. Wolf's.

Government and Police

Diane Foxington (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

^{Click to see her Crimson Paw outfit.}

"This is a chance to write your own story, to find a better life for you, and your friends."

Voiced by: Zazie Beetz (Film) ^{Foreign VAs}Cecilia Wrangel (Swedish), Bryce Charles (DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing)

The governor, a red fox who takes personal interest in the Bad Guys' reformation. Formerly the Crimson Paw, she used to be a skilled and infamous thief who retired from a life of crime with the distinction of never having been caught or exposed.

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• 11th-Hour Ranger: She joins the Bad Guys after their redemption kicks in at the climax.
• The Ace: As the Crimson Paw, she basically has all of the Bad Guys' skills rolled into one, though she appears to be just above being a Jack of All Stats without veering into Master of None. She also has so many useful gadgets at her lair that one might mistake her for an expert spy.
• Action Girl: As the Crimson Paw, she's a complete badass. She single-handedly breaks into a maximum security prison and fights off hordes of guards to rescue the Bad Guys.
• Action Politician: She's a governor with excellent hand-to-hand combat skills.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Her book counterpart isn't introduced until the third book, in a scene equivalent to her breaking the guys out of prison. In the movie, however, she is introduced early on, before the events that equate to the beginning of the first book, even being the main reason Wolf (and ultimately the other Bad Guys) turn good in the first place.
• Adaptational Job Change: Her book counterpart is simply an independent secret agent leading a Distaff Counterpart team to the main characters. Here she is instead a reformed criminal turned governor.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Though of similar professional mindset, Diane loses her straight-faced demeanor more often than Agent Fox and is much more playful and flawed to broaden her chemistry with the main group, to the point where she can be just as goofy as them. Also, similar to the film's Wolf, while she is resentful of her past as a villain, she is still prideful about how competent she was as one.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her book counterpart has blonde fur to match her blonde ponytail, whereas Diane's fur is closer to natural red fox fur colors and she lacks the Furry Female Mane.
• Adaptation Name Change: Her book counterpart Agent Fox's name is later revealed to be Ellen. Curiously, the name Diane is in fact given to one of the chickens the Bad Guys saved in the second book, now turned Supreme Court Judge, thus the movie Diane is a Composite Character of Agent Fox and another political figure that would support the gang in the early parts of their Heel–Face Turn.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Due to appearing earlier than Agent Fox did in the books, Diane starts off a Hero Antagonist for the group pre-Heel–Face Turn, getting into playful banter with Wolf. Ultimately Diane's growing bond ends up the actual pivot for Wolf turning good in the first place. Additionally, both flirt with each other with equal vigor, while Agent Fox only started reciprocating Wolf's crush on her in later books.
• Adorable Fluffy Tail: Being a vixen, she sports a huge, fluffy tail of her own. However, her tail somehow disappears when she dons her Crimson Paw suit.
• Always Someone Better: As the Crimson Paw, she is a far better thief than the Bad Guys, even initially considering them sloppy before warming up to them. She managed to do heists on her own rather than rely on a team, has fighting skills superior to Piranha, as demonstrated when she effortlessly defeats the entire police force guarding the prison, has access to better equipment than the team, and could have effortlessly stolen the Golden Dolphin on her own before her change of heart, whereas the Bad Guys barely manage to do so and then get caught a few moments afterwards. As good guys and allies, the Bad Guys do even the scales a little better, with their on-the-fly craftiness and synergy helping Diane during several roadblocks, making them closer to Technician vs. Performer, though Diane remains the more seasoned and talented agent individually.
• Animals Not to Scale: Unlike the rest of the animal cast, who are all accurately-sized, Diane Foxington, a fox, is human-sized and not that much shorter than Mr. Wolf, a wolf. Were she the size of a real fox, Diane wouldn't be just shorter than Wolf, he would be able to hold her like a kitten!
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Girl: A downplayed case, Diane is a Nice Girl for the large part, though this was following a Heel–Face Turn from a master criminal. Much like Wolf, she's still not at all humble about her feats and abilities as a thief, and one of her first acts as Governor is to start a public vendetta with the Bad Guys, believing she could easily outsmart a "sloppier" peer. Since the Bad Guys would have stolen the Golden Dolphin from right behind her if not for outside interference, it is clear that while Diane is incredibly competent, even that's not as much as she thinks she is.
• The Atoner: After being revealed to have formerly been the Crimson Paw, she tells Mr. Wolf her move to politics was motivated by a desire to make up for her criminal career. She also sees reforming Wolf as a form of atonement, giving him a guiding light she wishes she had.
• Badass Adorable: She's a cute vixen with a pretty face and an endearing personality, and also a martial artist armed with countless gadgets who went down in criminal history before reforming and becoming a governor. Even after years of no training, she single-handedly takes down all the guards in a high-security prison with her bare hands and suffers no damage aside from a single, small tear in her suit.
• Badass Driver: Through use of her transforming motorcycle, with which she demonstrates fluent stunt driver abilities during the big chase with Marmalade's heist.
• Badass in Distress: When they first attempt to steal the meteorite, due to Wolf's Sticky Fingers, she and him are captured by Marmalade and left to die in a death trap. Thankfully, Webs, Shark and Piranha arrive in time to save them.
• Bait-and-Switch: When the gang first set up their Falsely Reformed Villain plan, it seems like Diane, who clearly doesn't fall for it, is going to work on exposing and sabotaging them throughout the movie. That indeed seems to be the plan in her following scene, only it turns out to be Reverse Psychology, and Diane instead takes the more nuanced approach of convincing Wolf to turn good for real.
• Big Damn Heroes: After the gang is arrested, she breaks into the prison and frees them.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: Even more so than Wolf. She starts off as seemingly just a priggish Hero Antagonist for the Bad Guys to take revenge on. It later turns out that not only does she genuinely believe in redemption (so long as the person in question is genuine about it), but she has a personal reason to; being the retired Crimson Paw. Wolf's relationship with her goes from petty enemy to kindred spirit as a result.
• Big Good: The real one of the movie, as opposed to Marmalade, who only pretends to be. As Governor Diane Foxington, her understanding and empathy do more to encourage Wolf along the path to redemption than Marmalade's patronizing lessons ever could. As the Crimson Paw, she can kick ass with the best of them, it's her intervention that gets the Bad Guys out of wrongful imprisonment, and it's thanks to her help and her arsenal of gadgets that they're able to stop the cruel mastermind.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Reconstructed. Diane is a Reformed Criminal and genuinely is quite intelligent, with a textbook knowledge of heists. However, this leads her to believe she can easily outsmart and apprehend other criminals as Governor. Since her success was largely based on her physical prowess and high tech gadgetry, her attempts at a Battle of Wits against the Bad Guys ends with them nearly stealing the Golden Dolphin from right behind her twice, and Marmalade duping her just as easily as Wolf for his own heist. Her master strokes in the film are using her emotional intelligence to Heel–Face Turn Wolf for real, and later using her fighting skills to break the Bad Guys out of prison.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Her emotional support and faith in Mr. Wolf inspires him to reform for good.
• Caught by Arrogance: Sort of. It is Wolf's bungling that gets them caught by Marmalade, though Diane being overconfident enough to wear the stolen Zumpango Diamond as a ring gives Marmalade hard evidence that she is the Crimson Paw. it is only by Marmalade's own arrogance and the ensuing Disaster Dominoes that she avoids being publically exposed.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The Crimson Paw, that criminal briefly mentioned near the start of the film who was the only one to attempt to steal the Golden Dolphin without getting caught and vanished afterwards? It’s her.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: As the Crimson Paw, though fox-themed instead of cat-themed.
• Coin Walk Flexing: After revealing she stole her ring back from Mr. Wolf, she rolls it between her fingers twice before tossing it back to him.
• Condescending Compassion: Diane is a genuinely virtuous person, though in terms of dealing with the Bad Guys, especially Wolf, she is snarky and acerbic about giving a second chance to otherwise unrepentant Card Carrying Villains. However, as Diane and Wolf come to open up more around each other and she realises the gang's genuine camaraderie, her smugness fades and she becomes more sincerely empathetic.
• Cool Bike: She has a fast, sleek motorcycle that can be disguised as a briefcase.
• Commonality Connection: She's able to relate to Mr. Wolf, as wolves and foxes have a shared history of being villainized.
• Composite Character: In the absense of the rest of the International League of Heroes, Diane seems to take aspects from not just Agent Fox but other members as well, such as Agent Kitty Kat's sarcastic temper and Agent Hogwild's eccentric flirtatious energy and attachment to bikes. As mentioned above, Diane is also the name given to a chicken turned Supreme Court Judge in the books, making the name representative of a member of power who supports the Bad Guys in both takes.
• Consummate Professional: Part of her initial dislike for the Bad Guys is due to how brazen and open they are on their heists, seeing them as sloppy due to exposing their faces to the city. In contrast, she managed to keep her identity a secret, owns far better equipment, and has skills that equal or surpass the Bad Guys in each of their fields of expertise. She does loosen up and come to respect the Bad Guys as Smarter Than They Look later on, ultimately combining her methodical approach with their more spontaneous ones.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • During the Good Samaritan Awards, she makes conspicuously clear she knows the Bad Guys are going to try some revenge scheme for her earlier trash talk. It is revealed she has the Golden Dolphin guarded by the "Wolf Piranha Snake Shark Tarantula" (or "WPSST") Protection System, itself guarded by multiple protocols specifically designed to offset Webs, who just barely overrides it all in time.
  • While gearing up to steal the meteorite, she grabs the briefcase-motorcycle and the magnetic interceptors, both which come into play in stopping the heist later, even though there isn't any specific indication she would need them.
• Crippling Overspecialization: She can mirror all five of the Bad Guys' abilities to some level or arguably better. This made her an Invincible Villain as the Crimson Paw. However as such, Diane is so used to plans going flawlessly that she has no backup when something actually goes wrong, reduced to a Freak Out in both cases the Bad Guys and Marmalade outplay her. She noticably works around this weakspot when she teams up with the Bad Guys, who are far more used to hiccups, allowing her to congregate and synergise with them when the heist sabotage initially doesn't work.
• Cunning Like a Fox: In her life as a criminal, she was an expert at sneaking and thinking on her feet. Invoked, as her guilt over playing into the Foul Fox stereotype pushed her to reform.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: She's the Idealist to Wolf's Cynic, having faith in the latter's ability to reform for real when even he has no hope of being able to. This is best shown in the different ways they look at a sculpture at the Golden Dolphin ceremony: while a disguised Wolf dismisses it as pretentious abstract garbage, Diane is able to look past surface appearances to see the real meaning of the statue, as from a certain angle, the grotesque "pile of garbage" casts the shadow of a beautiful swan. Eventually, Diane helps Wolf become an Idealist as well.
• Dark Secret: She was once the Crimson Paw, a notorious and successful criminal. She wants to keep her past buried, not just because the truth would land her in jail, but also because she enjoys her work as governor and wants to do good.
• Deadpan Snarker: She eventually warms up to Wolf and his gang, but even then, they're not safe from her endless sarcasm.
  Diane: Come on, what have you got to lose?
  Mr. Wolf: I dunno, my dignity?
  Diane: [raises her eyebrows at him and looks down at his sheep onesie] Yeah. Well, that ship has already sailed.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype. Of the Always Someone Better trope. She had a flawless streak as the Crimson Paw, mirrors nearly all the abilities of the Bad Guys solo plus with more concise equipment and strategies, and has the smug awareness of her competence to go with the trope. However she never poses as direct competition for the Bad Guys due to having become disgusted by the criminal occupation and retiring before the film started. Even when she clashes with them on the side of authorities, she assumes the fact she was the most skilled in her field means she can easily defeat any other criminal as a hero, leading her and Wolf to both humiliate themselves and get easily duped by Marmalade, with Diane recurrently struggling from lack of a contagency plan that she never needed before (compared to the Bad Guys' more blundering but expert improvisational tactics). Ultimately, Diane chooses to connect and accept her similarities to supposed-inferior Wolf rather than rival him, this unexpected kindness chaining off his Character Development and granting Diane a real friend to confide in so that she can begin her own healing process.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: At first, Diane Foxington is virulently contemptuous of the Bad Guys and opposed to the experiment to reform them. When Mr. Wolf shows the first signs that part of him wants to genuinely change, she starts becoming nicer with him and more supportive. She eventually becomes his main support in his redemption, his implied Love Interest, and the post-reformation gang's Sixth Ranger.
• Distaff Counterpart: While Diane seemingly starts off a professional on the opposite side of the law from Wolf, following both their Character Development, it becomes apparent they share a lot of characteristics, being cocksure, smooth talking Loveable Rogues turned Magnetic Heroes. Diane being a fox even makes her close relation to Wolf's species, both being canidae.
• The Dreaded: As the Crimson Paw. She's a legend among criminals and, among the police and citizens, she's even more infamous than the Bad Guys. Despite Marmalade's years of being a beloved philanthropist who stopped wars, helped endangered species, and assisted in the recovery of the meteorite disaster, everyone turns on him and he's thrown into jail the second he's framed as the Crimson Paw.
• Elaborate Underground Base: She has a base set up under her home, with a path to it from the garage. It can also be entered via a hidden elevator in her fridge.
• Everyone Has Standards: She may have had a low tolerance for the Bad Guys' antics originally, but she understands how much they mean to each other, and is empathetic to the possibility of Wolf's reforming isolating him from the others, believing they should all aim for a better life together. This set a clear difference in behavior between her and Marmalade, who tempts Wolf into thinking the rest of the group are holding him back.
• Expressive Ears: Not to the same degree as Mr. Wolf's, but her ears do fold back based on her emotions.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: She has a piercing on her left eyebrow, but not on her right one.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Pride. It is downplayed since she can back up her bragging and, as the Crimson Paw, was the best thief in the world. However, even by her level of prowess, she pushes her luck throughout the film. As shown with her conversation with "Mr Poodleton", due to her own experience, she initially doesn't see the Bad Guys as serious threats and mocks them on TV, unwittingly setting off the whole plot and nearly losing the Golden Dolphin during the Good Samaritan Awards. Marmalade also figures out her identity because she was brazen enough to wear the stolen Zumpango Diamond as her personal ring (and even traded it to Wolf on one occasion). The only things stopping her cockiness from catching up to her are Wolf interrupting her Heroic Sacrifice and Marmalade getting caught with the ring, implicating him as the Crimson Paw.
  • Complacency. She's a Consummate Professional that has never been caught, and as a result underestimates any strategy besides her's and doesn't bother to make any back up plan. This gets her into trouble on both occasions she is finally outsmarted, having never had a plan get outdone before and thus having no idea how to improvise around it, leaving her panicing helpless until an outside force saves her. This tends to be exclusive to the strategic end of things however, on the physical end, she's a nimble fighter and stuntsman even in a pinch.
• Foil: To Marmalade, in multiple ways:
  • Both are well-known public figures monitoring the Bad Guys' reformation. Diane is a former criminal who, with some convincing, wants the Bad Guys to have a better life, while Marmalade is not only a Villain with Good Publicity, but also only pretending to reform the Bad Guys for his devious purposes while driving a wedge between them.
  • Both are later revealed to be villains, but in different ways. Diane is a Reformed Criminal driven by self reflection to make up for her past, while Marmalade is cruel, unrepentant, and arrogant in his master scheme. Both also team up with members of the gang in the third act. While Diane is humbled and comes to see the gang as friends and equals, earning their loyalty, Marmalade sees Snake as just another pawn to backstab, and gets Laser-Guided Karma for underestimating him.
  • Also to Wolf. As Diane herself notes, they aren't so different, both being cunning, smooth talking thieves who, in spite of their massive egos, had a change of heart. However, Diane worked alone and had to figure out how to be good on her own, while Wolf has her support in his reformation journey but is conflicted about his friends. Diane is concise, physically fluent professional that uses high tech gadgetry, but bad in the face of rare errors, while Wolf is a crafty manipulator with a relatively more clumsy and crude skillset, but can improvise well with whatever he has at the time. Diane offers moral support to Wolf, Wolf offers companionship and loyalty to Diane. As a result of Character Development on both ends, the two end up meeting in several areas characterisation wise by the end of the film.
• For the Lulz: According to Wolf, after one of her old heists she returned the stolen object solely so she could steal it again 'for fun'.
• Foxy Vixen: She's a beautiful, feminine fox with curves and Hartman Hips, which are especially noticeable in her Crimson Paw outfit.
• Friendless Background: Implied. Despite her status as a universally beloved Governor, the public is oblivious to her real identity, and according to her flashback and creator notes, she reformed alone and with no emotional support to guide her. She also implies she suffered the same species discrimination the Bad Guys suffered before turning her life around. Her reward for supporting Wolf and the other Bad Guys during their own Heel–Face Turn is finally having True Companions and Secret Keepers she can confide and heal through.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Her secret lair and gadgets are far more elaborate and high tech than the Bad Guys, bordering more on super-spy material. Examples include a blow torch disguised as a lipstick and a suitcase that transforms into a motorbike.
• Genki Girl: She's normally quite controlled and no nonsense in public, though as Wolf slowly brings out her real self, it becomes evident that, similar to him, she's much more exuberant and even child-like when not playing to the crowd. Her mugshot after The Reveal she is the Crimson Paw is even a traditional big genki-ish smile.
• The Glasses Come Off: As the Crimson Paw she wears no glasses, and she takes them off deliberately when she confesses her identity.
• Good Animals, Evil Animals: She's a red fox, a species typically portrayed in media as thieving tricksters and vermin. Like the Bad Guys, she grew up under suspicion of being a "tricky fox", which led to her living up to the stereotype as the Crimson Paw.
• Good Counterpart: Like Wolf, she is one to Marmalade. Both are double-life beloved authority figures that vow to spread goodwill throughout Sunnyside. However, while Diane has similar hypocrisies and over-focus on a "good" public persona as Marmalade initially (especially due to being a prideful Reformed Criminal), her intentions and desire to change are quite genuine, and when called out she does reassess and become a sincere good influence. Marmalade by contrast, willfully admits in private that he does not believe any of his spiel, only in it for the publicity it gives him and to help him manipulate the city as a means to set up heists. Even as both Eviler than Thou lone-wolf criminal agents against the Bad Guys, Diane comes to respect them and does show a candid sense of loyalty and a very competent teamwork ethic later on, leading them to stick up for her and adopt her into the group, while Marmalade remains imperious to all peers beneath him, seeing everyone else as a mere pawn to manipulate or betray, costing him all his popularity and support.
• Good Is Not Soft: When rescuing the Bad Guys from their frame up, she beats up and knocks out every police officer in their prison, including at least two just trying to run away (likely so no one will overhear her conversation with the gang revealing her identity afterwards).
• Graceful Loser: At the end climax, Diane realises she has no way to vindicate the Bad Guys without implicating herself as the Crimson Paw and finally being caught, destroying her reformed career. While visibly choked up by this, she willfully decides to do this anyway, though the Bad Guys prevent her from doing such.
• Gun Twirling: She twirls a grappling hook gun this way at her hideout.
• Hartman Hips: She has a pear-shaped figure, giving her a more feminine appearance when she's next to Mr. Wolf.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: She left the criminal life because she resented being a ruthless stereotypical villain and wanted to atone. Upon The Reveal however, she's still as much a braggart as the Bad Guys are in terms of her actual Villain Cred as the Crimson Paw.
• Heel–Face Turn: A former thief who loved every second of her criminal life, the shame of having conformed to the stereotype of the cunning fox made her abandon her evil ways and become an honest politician to make up for her past. She is noticeably the only character in the film to have redeemed herself all on her own, while Wolf partially needed her as a Positive Friend Influence and the rest of the Bad Guys had Wolf as theirs.
• Hero Antagonist: She's initially presented as this, being a savvy politician trying to stop the gang for good. This gradually fades away as she becomes one of their biggest supporters, even when Marmalade turns the rest of the city against them.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After stopping Marmalade's plot, the gang is accused of the theft of the meteor. Diane tries to explain that they're innocent for this, even though it'd mean confessing that she was the Crimson Paw, and thus completely and utterly destroying her new life. Thankfully, the Bad Guys refuse to let her make that sacrifice, and they find another way to prove their innocence.
• Hidden Depths: As shown in the "Good Tonight" number, she shares Wolf's fluency in dancing.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Initially, Diane comes off as an arrogant Hero Antagonist who sees the Bad Guys as has-beens and only grudgingly agrees to their redemption scheme after they're arrested. The first instance Wolf vents frustrations over his villain image and a sincere desire to be good however, Diane becomes more empathetic and begins to bond with Wolf (for guarded reasons that become clearer later in the movie). Given Wolf originally only plotted the Golden Dolphin heist to spite her, this curveball takes him aback to the point that he can't go through with it and pulls a Heel–Face Turn for real, unwilling to betray someone who supported and believed in him when no one else would.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: She wears the Zumpango Diamond, which she stole during her Crimson Paw years, on a ring. Because it doesn't have the same shine while in the ring, nobody suspects it's the legendary diamond. Marmalade is shocked at how brazen it is, but Mr. Wolf is amused.
  Mr. Wolf: You gotta be kidding me.
  Diane: What? I'm sentimental!
• Hypocrite:
  • Her behavior in the first act of the movie becomes this once her past as the Crimson Paw is revealed to the audience. She belittles the gang during the press briefing, and after they're caught attempting to steal the Golden Dolphin, she's vocally against giving them a second chance. This is despite her being a Reformed Criminal herself and having said earlier that "even trash can be recycled into something beautiful". Even though she correctly suspects their "desire to reform" is a lie, when Wolf sends her back her words right back at her, she concedes.
  • In an example leaning more towards Hypocritical Humor, she kept the Zumpango Diamond, one of the jewels she stole and was even cocky enough to wear it as a ring in public. After previously berating the Bad Guys for being not just unrepentant criminals, but careless and arrogant ones, in particular their "compulsive showboating", Wolf is particularly smug towards a flustered Diane when this gets her called out by Marmalade.
• Implied Love Interest: She and Mr. Wolf don't do anything explicitly romantic, but their interactions have a lot of flirtatious subtext behind them. This climaxes at the charity fundraiser, where the two dance together and end on a tile of the love crater meteorite, which happens to be shaped like a heart, but that's as far as it ever goes.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Her pink dress comes Neither of her dresses come with no straps to hold it them over her chest, seeming to stay up through tightness alone.
• Informed Species: A mild example. She's meant to be a fox (if her surname wasn't a giveaway) but her incredibly bright orange fur, shorter muzzle and the way her ears stand up make her look more like a Welsh corgi than a fox. It doesn't help that her bushy tail (another physical trait popular among foxes) disappears halfway through the movie.
• In the Hood: Her Paw outfit comes with a hood and mask designed to hide her species, since it likely wouldn't be good to associate her with the (seemingly) only other fox in Los Angeles.
• Interspecies Romance: With Mr. Wolf. Light interspecies flirting, at least.
• Karma Houdini: She is the only criminal not arrested for her crimes by the end of the movie, having successfully retired from crime without ever getting apprehended, with Marmalade later framed for her tenure as the Crimson Paw. To her credit, she does try to turn herself in, though the Bad Guys stop her and take the fall for her instead. For a bit of balance, the events of the film do curb her arrogance over this trope some, and the cover-up costs her the one stolen item she kept for herself, forcing her to go fully legit just like the Bad Guys did.
• Kick Chick: As seen when she breaks into the prison, her fighting style relies heavily on kicks.
• Lady in a Power Suit: Her usual attire while doing her job as governor. Mr. Wolf even mocks it when he vents to her about being seen as a monster by a prejudiced world.
  Mr. Wolf: Of course you wouldn't know anything about that, with your Little Miss Perfect power suit!
• Laser-Guided Karma: Similar to the Bad Guys' example, Diane's run as Governor is constantly sabotaged by thieves. The Good Samaritan Award is ruined after the Golden Dolphin is nearly stolen (by the same criminals she trash talked on TV), while the Gala is ruined after the Love Crater Meteorite is successfully stolen by Marmalade, with him also performing a heist to steal the charity funds raised at the event. He later also mockingly pickpockets Diane of the Zumpango Diamond that she stole before. While most of these are retrieved, the Diamond is given back to authorities after Marmalade unwittingly frames himself with it.
• Leitmotif: She gains one after revealing herself as the Crimson Paw, a tune played on an Indian bansuri flute.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Sort of. She is the Positive Friend Influence to the Bad Guys, though Diane herself undergoes subtle Character Development from her time with Wolf and the other Bad Guys, starting off a hypocrite who had forgotten her own roots, and dangerously overconfident from her achievements as the Crimson Paw. The events also clue her in to being Unwitting Pawn to Marmalade before it is too late, and being The Sixth Ranger to the gang gives her some True Companions she can be herself around at last, having spent most of her atonement alone.
• Magnetic Hero: She is the larger reason Wolf turned good for real over Marmalade, breaking their conflict to show she could relate to him, and her support and friendship leaving Wolf unwilling to backstab her. Atoning the leader of the Bad Guys led to the rest of the group ultimately defecting as well.
• Memento MacGuffin: The diamond ring she wears is revealed to be this: the stone in it is actually the Zumpango Diamond, a priceless artifact she stole in her time as the Crimson Paw. Despite having given up her life of crime, she kept the diamond for sentimental reasons. Marmalade takes it from her, but when he's caught with it, he's mistaken for being the true identity of the Crimson Paw, leading to his arrest.
• Mirror Character: She is practically a more seasoned version of Wolf that has already underwent her Heel–Face Turn; a smooth talking Magnetic Hero and Badass Driver whose double identity makes her just as manipulative and savvy. Taken further than in the books, since Diane tends to mirror Wolf to a fault, retaining a lot of her own prideful and dubious qualities from being an even more successful former villain, and being on equal footing in terms of dry wit and an almost childlike sense of mischief.
• Morality Pet: Along with being his Positive Friend Influence, Diane ends up the reason Wolf can't bring himself to commit crimes anymore, knowing that going forward with stealing the Golden Dolphin would mean betraying and abandoning her.
• Ms. Fanservice: A beautiful Foxy Vixen with Hartman Hips who wears nice dresses twice and is shown to be very flexible, even before the reveal that she’s the Crimson Paw.
• Ms. Vice Girl: Diane, despite some hints of being Reformed, but Not Tamed, has adapted to a scrupulous lifestyle quite well, being a fairly competent politican and generally being a sincere Nice Girl and the Bad Guys' Positive Friend Influence in most circumstances. However she still struggles frequently with her pride over how successful she was as the Crimson Paw, which leads to several moments of her nearly blowing her cover by being overconfident, hypocritical, or just acting like a childish braggart.
• My Greatest Failure: She sees her time as the Crimson Paw as this for giving in to stereotypes about foxes being deceitful, thieving tricksters.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Despite her sarcasm, she's clearly charmed by Mr. Wolf even before he resolves to change. Most of their interactions come off as flirtatious on both sides.
  • She's fully reformed from her life as a criminal, but that doesn't mean she's above wearing a diamond she stole in her past life as a ring. After all, she's the sentimental type.
  • While she regrets her criminal life, she is still just as prideful of her Villain Cred as the Bad Guys are of their's. Her public announcement against the Bad Guys is practically in the style of a schoolyard Pretender Diss. That the Bad Guys still at least manage to get the Golden Dolphin from around her are an early warning sign that Diane is a bit too confident in her abilities.
  • While dancing with Wolf at the gala, she drops the serious politician attitude altogether, and her dances with Wolf come off as either provocative or even goofy — some of them she even laughs at while still doing them.
  • When she prepares to steal the meteorite from Marmalade with Wolf, her eagerness to feel the thrill of stealing once more is almost child-like.
  • She's giving Wolf a Death Glare after he gets them caught by Marmalade. After said diamond gets her identity discovered by Marmalade however, it quickly changes into an "Oh, Crap!" Smile. Maybe she's not one to complain about carelessness.
    • Just the fact that she walked around wearing the spoils of one of her most famous heists, the Zumpango Diamond, on her finger speaks to her own pride and arrogance, no matter how much truth there was to her claims of it being sentimental.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Mr. Wolf claims that she, a red fox, has no idea what it's like to always be seen as the bad guy. Diane reveals she's snagged her ring back from Mr. Wolf, and says wolves and foxes aren't so different as she tosses the ring back to him.
• Not So Stoic:
  • She's cool and collected for the majority of the film, but absolutely freaks out at Marmalade's death trap, especially when Shark and Piranha are too distracted by their "wag" to save her.
  • While not to the same ferocity as Wolf, she is also livid with Marmalade for playing her the whole time. Earlier in said scene when he gloats that he even knows she's the Crimson Paw, she growls and struggles furiously in her bonds.
  • Despite the importance of getting out of time in leaving Marmalade's house, she's amused with the rest of the team at Wolf snagging the cat and giving it its own sunglasses.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Just as Wolf is preparing the final steps of the heist at the Gala, he catches Diane smiling adoringly at him (in fact the character image above), the two having now become close. This is too much for Wolf, and he aborts the scheme to turn good for real rather than hurt Diane.
• One-Man Army: She takes on every police officer in S.U.C.M. by herself, and all she suffers is a slightly torn sleeve.
• One of the Guys: Post-Character Development, she is 100% in on the Bad Guys' goofy chemistry and banter.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Invoked. Her Crimson Paw outfit does a great job at masking all of her fox features (a hood to hide the ears, a mask to cover her muzzle, and her tail is hidden), but somehow, none of the guards see and make the connection that she's the governor after she removes her mask in plain sight when revealing herself to the gang.
• Positive Friend Influence: Her being able to relate to Mr. Wolf proves to be a huge influence on his reformation.
• Pretender Diss: A lot of her mockery of the Bad Guys as unoriginal comes from being an absolutely unstoppable Classy Cat-Burglar herself at one point.
• Psychological Projection: Following The Reveal, it becomes evident a lot of her earlier distain and insults towards the Bad Guys were venting her own emotional conflicts about being a former criminal. After Wolf revealed a similar level of insecurity however, she accepted their similarities and became more empathetic.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Implied; she wears a pair with her suit, but not with her formal dresses, nor does she wear them as the Crimson Paw. When she's about to confess to Chief Luggins about her being the Crimson Paw, she takes her glasses off.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She’s initially angry with Mr. Wolf for the gang's failure at Sunnyside, and is considering calling off the program and sending them to jail, but when Mr. Wolf vents his point of view of how the world sees him, she comforts him, showing him that she knows how he feels and even tells him that she genuinely wants him and his friends to have a better life.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: During an interview after the Bad Guys' latest robbery, she mercilessly annihilates their Evil Is Cool power fantasy and (correctly) mocks them as a bunch of insecure, frustrated, arrogant, predictable, and self-loathing has-beens. The gang isn't too happy, as Diane successfully delivered an armor-piercing blow: they're used to being seen as villains, but they want to be treated like cool villains.
• Redemption Demotion: A downplayed justified example. As a thief, the Crimson Paw held the legacy of practically being an Invincible Villain that never got caught. As a heroic agent, she is still highly competent like before, but the fact her opponents are no longer just Sunnyside's bumbling police and instead equally calculating criminals leads her to get outgambitted repeatedly and even suffering her first capture, ultimately relying on teamwork with the Bad Guys. This is also likely as much a Drama-Preserving Handicap, as Diane being as unstoppable as a hero would completely render the Bad Guys' character arc null.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: She has undergone genuine reformation and is a professional, beloved governor. However, she can still show arrogance about her life as the Crimson Paw, and is willing to break rules if she believes it's for the greater good. Her experiences with the Bad Guys and Marmalade make her relatively more humble, but she remains a cocksure anti-heroine, as she herself puts it:
  Diane: I'm still me, I'm just... Me on the right side.
• Reformed Criminal: She was previously the Crimson Paw, a(n in)famous criminal who was never identified or caught, and who suddenly disappeared after failing to steal the Golden Dolphin. She explains to Mr. Wolf that she got sick of being a criminal and turned her life around to do good in the world.
• Reverse Psychology: After their screw up with the guinea pig heist, Diane threatens to call Luggins on them and lashes out at Wolf for being too gutless and prideful to make use of their second chance, causing Wolf to angrily snap back at her, pointing out he's been "the villain of every story" his whole life and even if they did go legit, no one would give them a fair chance anyway. Diane merely reacts amused by this outburst and immediately softens, heavily implying she was bluffing and just wanted to coax some sign that Wolf legitimately wanted to change.
• Samus Is a Girl: The Crimson Paw was never captured or identified, and both the gang and the pokice believe the Paw is a man. They're shocked to find out it's actually Diane. However, Wolf's description of her includes the fact that one of her aliases was "the Queen of Cons", so maybe it was always known the Crimson Paw was a girl. This, however, is contradicted further by the fact that Marmalade, a man, is believed to be the Crimson Paw with no questions asked, so maybe her alias was "the King of Cons" or something similar, but Wolf changes it when describing her because now he knows for a fact that she's female.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: She wears a blue open-back dress during the gala.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: She's a fox with red fur and green eyes who's invested in the Bad Guys reforming.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's an elegant, classy governor who's also a former master criminal with impressive combat skills.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: She had very little prominence in the trailers and marketing, likely as to not give away her role in the film's third act. No official marketing materials mention the name "Crimson Paw" either.
• The Sixth Ranger: By the climax of the film, Diane has fully immersed herself into the Bad Guys' group dynamic and by the end of it is ready to join them in whatever adventure comes next.
• Slave to PR: Diane can only take action in private, part due to being Governor and also because revealing too much of her skills and savviness as a criminal risks revealing she was formerly the Crimson Paw. The Bad Guys take the fall for her in the end because they believe Diane needs to keep her job and reputation.
• Smarter Than She Looks: Because she's an authority figure, the Bad Guys repeatedly underestimate her initially. She saw through Wolf's disguise at the Gala, stole her ring back from him after he initially plucked it off her, and immediately recognizes Wolf's attempt to charm her as 'The full Clooney'. On an emotional level, she also takes Wolf's words to heart and demonstrates, despite his expectations, she's not a shallow virtue signaller like Marmalade, and genuinely believes in change and redemption. It is this huge misjudge of character that results in Wolf completely reconsidering his scheme.
• So Proud of You: She says it to Wolf at the end when he stops her from doing her Heroic Sacrifice.
• Spanner in the Works: "Believe it or not, I'm rooting for you, Wolf." Unlike Marmalade, who's using the entire idea of reforming the Bad Guys as a cover, Diane actually believes they have a chance to turn their lives around following her heart-to-heart with Wolf. It's enough; Wolf's Heel–Face Turn takes effect because of her, and his last-ditch effort to show he's really changed helps her see through Marmalade's scheme and allows any of the third act — and Marmalade's downfall — to happen at all. Her later sabotage of Marmalade's heist also leads to him stealing her ring and unwittingly framing himself as the Crimson Paw, sealing his defeat.
• Species Surname: Foxington.
• Still Got It: After breaking into the prison island and taking out all the guards to free the gang, she boasts that she's still the best bad guy, only to notice a tear in her sleeve and getting annoyed. Her confidence is restored moments later when they manage to escape.
  Diane: Nope, I'm still the best! Just like riding a stolen bicycle.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: She spent a lot of time and effort becoming a beloved governor so that she could atone for her past crimes and subvert the stereotype of foxes being sly thieves. Due to this, she initially resents the Bad Guys for fully indulging in villainy and proving their species' stereotypes right. When she takes this up to Wolf, he loses his patience and tells her off in return, saying that even if he and his friends did change their ways, she wouldn't believe them because of her "Miss Perfect" power suits.
  Diane: I gave you an opportunity! A chance to show the world that you're more that just a scary stereotype! But you're too proud or too gutless to take advantage of it!
  Wolf: Gutless?! I'm gutless?! I'm sorry, have we meet? I'm the villain of every story! Guilty until proven innocent, and even if by some miracle we did change, who's gonna believe us, huh?
• Sudden Anatomy: Inverted with her tail, which mysteriously disappears when she's in her gala dress and, later, her Crimson Paw suit. This was probably done so animating Diane's dance and fight scenes wouldn't be a nightmare, but still, one must wonder how she manages to hide such a large and floofy tail!
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She's this to her book counterpart, Agent Fox, rather than being a straight adaptation like the rest of the cast. Both of them are the Love Interest of Mr. Wolf and provide him with a good, level-headed person to communicate with as he reforms. While Agent Fox is a former thug that became good and founded a top-secret hero organization, Diane is a former thief who became disgusted with her lifestyle and became governor to make up for her crimes, later doubling as The Sixth Ranger for the Bad Guys. To further this, some early concepts had Diane as a human, making her an even vaguer retake on Agent Fox.
• A Taste of Defeat:
  • During the Golden Dolphin ceremony, Wolf manages to dupe her into giving them security access, then the gang makes it past her "WPSST" Protection System and steal the Golden Dolphin from right behind her. While Luggins' forces stop them, Diane is visibly irritated about them outsmarting her and ruining the ceremony.
  • Marmalade ends up the first person to capture her and discover her identity as the Crimson Paw against her will (the former was admitedly Wolf's fault, though the latter was down to her own cockiness with the Zumpango Diamond).
• The Tease: During their dance, Diane whaps Wolf with her dress. He laughs and she giggles in response.
  • Just before the dance, Diane adjusts his collar and says she hoped he'd ask her to dance.
    • She does this again as she reveals her real hideout to a bewildered Wolf.
  • When Wolf questions Diane bringing a grappling hook, given how well it went with him, she tells him to wear clean underwear, "just in case~".
• Technician vs. Performer: The Technician to the Bad Guys' Performer. As the Crimson Paw, Diane is incredibly concise, physically fluent, relies on better gadgets, and is generally far more savvy and less clumsy in action than the Bad Guys, which left her in general a far more successful and unstoppable cat burgular. Due to this and her Consummate Professional approach however, she underestimates the Bad Guys' on-the-fly manipulations and improvising, viewing them as sloppy, leaving her shocked and in panic when they succeed in stealing the Golden Dolphin, lacking any sort of contingency plan should her plan actually get outdone. She ends up a perfect ally for the Bad Guys with her experience and Crazy-Prepared custom blending swiftly with their Indy Ploys.
• Tempting Fate: Diane knew her earlier undermining of the Bad Guys would earn a retaliation, though was fine letting them crash and burn by pulling a revenge scheme. This results in the Bad Guys actually outsmarting her security precautions and nearly running off with the Golden Dolphin, as well as giving Marmalade an opportunity to start his own heist.
• Undying Loyalty: By the end of the film, she has become so close to Wolf and the other Bad Guys that they have to stop her from exposing herself as the Crimson Paw in her last desperate bid to clear their names.
• Universally Beloved Leader: She's so beloved by her constituents that even Webs, a career criminal, voted for her. The only people who don't like her are Mr. Wolf and his gang, though she did mock them and put down their skills on TV for all the city to see, and even they come around to her by the film's end. (Marmalade on the other hand might still hold a grudge.)
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her public dressing down of the Bad Guys kicks off the entire main plot, with the gang's revenge heist giving Marmalade the opportunity to unknowingly drag them into his own scheme via his reformation plan.
• Waif-Fu: Despite having zero muscle mass and being a slim Foxy Vixen, she's able to fight off multiple much larger guards with zero problem.

Chief Misty Luggins

"Keep running, Wolf! One of these days, your luck is gonna run out!"

Voiced by: Alex Borstein ^{Foreign VAs}Charlotte Ardai Jennefors (Swedish)

The hot-tempered chief of police.

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• Actor Allusion: Perhaps not intentional but this isn't the last time Alex Borstein played a Fiery Red Head.
• Brawn Hilda: Obviously female, but that doesn't stop her from being incredibly muscular, top-heavy, and deep-voiced. She's not as ugly as some other Brawn Hildas, but she's still rather plain-looking.
• Break the Haughty: By the end of the Maraschino Ruby short, she almost got arrested for trying to trick the Bad Guys into stealing the titular jewel using a decoy, and the only way to avoid jail is to issue a public apology. When we see her next, she's sobbing her eyes out in her office...and then she reads that the real ruby was returned to the museum, and realizes that the Bad Guys must've pickpocketed her to return it themselves.
• Canon Foreigner: She's the only named and voiced character with no book counterpart.
• Character Catchphrase: Whenever the Bad Guys do something bad, expect her to tell the cops to "Get them!"
• Da Chief: She's the chief of police, and the one most eager to put the Bad Guys away for good.
• Determinator: Very much so. To the point where in the opening chase with the Bad Guys, she shoves her baton on the gas pedal and jumps out of her car to try and catch them.
• Dirty Cop: Downplayed. In the Maraschino Ruby short, she's willing to attempt entrapment to catch the Bad Guys, but A) she doesn't seem to realize that what she's doing is illegal, and B) she lets her fellow officers know that she has the real jewel, and likely never intended to keep it.
• Expy: The Inspector Zenigata to Wolf's Lupin III. They both have boxy builds, one-track obsessions with catching their targets, and an army of loyal officers at their beck and call.
• Fiery Redhead: She has orange-red hair and is the most aggressive member of the force.
• Frame-Up: She tries to frame the Bad Guys for the theft of the Maraschino Ruby.
• Given Name Reveal: While her last name is clearly visible on her badge, her first name is revealed when her ID card is shown during the Golden Dolphin heist.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: In the end, she's shocked to see the Bad Guys surrendering themselves to her authority rather than running away after foiling Marmalade's plot. Not only does she not understand that they want to take responsibility for their numerous other crimes, but she also doesn't pick up that they're covering for Diane so she won't have to confess to being the Crimson Paw.
  Luggins: WHAT?! Y... you're turning yourself in?!
• Hair-Trigger Temper: She seems to have quite of a temper. Her "Keep running Wolf!" scene shows this the best.
• Hero Antagonist: Although a little on the crazy side, she's a dedicated law enforcement officer and initially the gang's primary opponent, pursuing them throughout the movie.
• Heroic Build: She has a larger, bulkier build than the other humans.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Her routine failures to capture the gang have driven her a little nuts, and she's willing to take comically huge risks to catch them.
• Hidden Depths: Falling for the gang's disguises aside, she has an incredible eye for detail. She recognizes the Zumpango Diamond immediately (something not even Mr. Wolf could do), which implicates Marmalade as the Crimson Paw.
  • She also knows how to make candy. As demonstrated in the Maraschino Ruby short, she uses her eye for detail and this skill to make a near-perfect replica of the titular ruby.
  • In addition, she seems to love music. She wanted to play the piccolo when she was a child, and she has a blast jamming to "Good Tonight".
• Hidden Heart of Gold: During the Good Samaritan Award Ceremony, when a disguised Wolf bumps into her (to steal her ID), she cheerfully brushes it off and tells him he's fine. Later on, when a disguised Shark asks where the restrooms are, she helps him in the same cheerful manner. When she's not chasing after the Bad Guys, she does care about the welfare of common people.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: In Maraschino Ruby, she plants a fake ruby and taunts the gang in the newspaper in an attempt to entrap them into stealing it so she can catch them in the act. It blows up horribly in her face; the gang sees right through her ploy, instigates their own false arrest over an allegedly stolen push pop, proves their innocence, and then nearly gets her arrested for the entrapment. Mr. Wolf then offers to drop the charges if she retracts her statement, then steals the real ruby from her while she's on the phone and returns it to the museum, humiliating her.
• Inelegant Blubbering: After her scheme in the Maraschino Ruby short falls through, she's crying in her office when one of her subordinates walks in to try and cheer her up.
  Luggins: (bawling) We almost had them!
• Inspector Javert: She's begun to dip into this in Maraschino Ruby, where she's still so convinced that the Bad Guys are evil that she steals the titular ruby in an attempt to bait them into committing another crime.
• Large and in Charge: The largest human in the film and the chief of police.
• Large Ham: Drinking game: take a shot every time she talks in a calm tone or makes subdued movements. By the end of the film, you'll be stone-cold sober.
• Mean Boss: Played for Laughs. At the Good Samaritan Award ceremony, she tells her subordinates that if the Bad Guys succeed in stealing the Golden Dolphin, her career is finished, and she has every intention of bringing the subordinates down with her.
• No Indoor Voice: In the scenes where she isn't shouting loudly, she's instead shouting quietly.
• Not So Above It All: When Mr. Piranha starts singing "Good Tonight" at the gala, she initially just stands with her arms folded. Then her hips start wiggling to the beat, though she catches herself and composes herself. By the end of the song, she's finally given in, grooving out in wild fashion.
• Police Are Useless:
  • She and the rest of the police force have spent years trying and failing to capture the Bad Guys, and only succeed during the Golden Dolphin heist when the gang's escape utterly fails.
  • When Marmalade frames the Bad Guys for stealing the meteorite, neither she nor the rest of the police question it, to the point where she ignores Mr. Wolf pleading their innocence. This reaction is justified, though. Case in point: would you instantly believe in the innocence a bunch of notorious criminals that have been committing crimes for years?
• Primary-Color Champion: A variant, she has red hair, and wears a blue uniform.
• Properly Paranoid: She expresses the most skepticism of the Bad Guys' redemption, and spies on them throughout the charity fundraiser, which is fairly valid because they really are feigning their reformation and are planning to steal the Golden Dolphin a second time. The gang's plan nearly succeeds when Luggins lets her guard down, and only fails because Wolf has a last-minute genuine change of heart.
• Smarter Than You Look: Early on, she looks like Dumb Muscle, having failed to catch the gang many times in her career and easily falling for their disguises. However, she understands that Mr. Wolf is trying to manipulate Marmalade to have a way out of jail by "turning good", and by the end, she does realize Diane is keeping a secret from her when she insists the gang didn't steal the meteorite, and only backs off when they turn themselves in. She also immediately recognizes that the meteorite is a mere clap lamp, as well as the Zumpango Diamond when it falls out of Marmalade's pocket, implicating him as the Crimson Paw and throwing her off Diane's trail.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: She's had the Bad Guys on her radar for years as their infamy and their stolen riches grew in equal measure, but has never successfully caught them. Even their capture after the Golden Dolphin heist is short-lived when they're sent to Marmalade's compound to reform instead of jail. She finally gets to arrest them properly at the end, but only after they turn themselves in, something which she didn't actually expect.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: She finally gets to arrest the Bad Guys in the end, but only when they decide to turn themselves in. Moments later, she also arrests Marmalade when he's implicated as the Crimson Paw.
• Top-Heavy Guy: A Rare Female Example of this trope. Her lower body is notably smaller than her upper body.
• Tragic Dream: In her victory speech, she mentions that as a child, she always wanted to play the piccolo. But, with her hands being too big and strong to handle one, she opted for law enforcement instead.
• Victory Is Boring: Subverted. She relishes the moment she captures the Bad Guys after the first failed heist.
  Luggins: I just realized I've devoted my entire adult life to putting you in jail. You are my purpose. Without you, who am I? Ah, just kidding! This is the best moment of my life! It's the end of the Bad Guys.

Secondary Characters

Tiffany Fluffit

"The nefarious fivesome has finally been captured. And I, Tiffany Fluffit, am first on the scene."

Voiced by: Lilly Singh ^{Foreign VAs}Ellen Bergström (Swedish), Zehra Fazal (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday)

A local news reporter.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Even with disregarding the Adaptation Species Change for the movie, the book version of Tiffany, as seen in colorized adaptations of the series, is blonde. Meanwhile, the character in the movie has black hair.
• Adaptation Species Change: She's a cat in the original books, but a human in the film to fit with its themes of prejudice.
• Ambiguously Brown: Her ethnicity is unspecified, but it's possible that she's of Indian descent given that she's modeled after her voice actress Lilly Singh, who is Indian-Canadian.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Along with the species change, she now looks somewhat like an animated version of her voice actress.
• Kent Brockman News: She has a very clear bias towards those who have power — especially Marmalade — and echoes their beliefs, meaning all of her reporting on the Bad Guys is slanted against them. That said, when Marmalade is revealed to have the Zumpango Diamond, she immediately turns on him, accusing him of being the Crimson Paw.
• Meaningful Name: "Fluff" is often used as a derogatory term for news reporting that's superficial, which basically describes Tiffany's whole reporting style.
• Tagalong Reporter: She has a habit of showing up wherever major events are happening. This includes the finale, where she reports on both the Bad Guys turning themselves in and Marmalade being arrested on suspicion of being the Crimson Paw.
• Wild Card: She doesn't have any allegiance to any factions in the story. She just provides commentary, whether positive or negative, on whoever she happens to report on, whether it be the Bad Guys or Professor Marmalade.

The Cat

Voiced by: Frank Welker

A little orange tabby kitten who lives in Marmalade's compound until Mr. Wolf saves him and adopts him.

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• A Dog Named "Dog": Like the rest of the Bad Guys, the cat is just called "the cat." Or as Wolf called him once, Kitty.
• Cat Up a Tree:
  • He's introduced being stuck in a palm tree as part of Marmalade's "goodness training", with the gang tasked to save him. Their first attempt is disastrous, but Wolf's second attempt works.
  • He's up the tree again during the meteorite heist. This time, Wolf just calls out to him, and he leaps into Wolf's arms.
• Cool Shades: Wolf gives him his shades after he rescues him from the tree again, and later in the mid-end credits, the cat receives his own shades.
• Cute Kitten: Once he warms up to Mr. Wolf, he fully qualifies as this in his interactions with the Bad Guys, whether it's nibbling his fingers, nuzzling noses with him, or rubbing against him.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Well, cat instead of dog, but he's terrified of the gang when they first attempt to save him, which is while they're faking their reformation. It's only when Mr. Wolf later shows him genuine kindness that he begins to trust them.
• Furry Confusion: He's an animal like the main characters, but isn't anthropomorphic himself.
• Gender Flip: In the movie novelization book, the cat is female, while it's male in the film.
• Licked by the Dog: He warms up to the whole gang once he's rescued, but is especially affectionate towards Mr. Wolf.
• Team Pet: He becomes this to the Bad Guys after Wolf takes him from Marmalade's compound, accompanying them when stopping the heist and saving Mr. Snake. Diane looks after him while the gang's in jail, and he comes with her to pick them up in the mid-credits scene.

Villains

Professor Rupert Marmalade IV (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

"There is a flower of goodness inside all of us, just waiting to blossom."

Voiced by: Richard Ayoade ^{Foreign VAs}Kim Sulocki (Swedish)

A wealthy guinea pig. Initially introduced as a beloved philanthropist who oversees the Bad Guys' reformation, he's later revealed to be setting them up to take the fall for his own ultimate heist.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the books, he is an unkempt, lab coat-wearing mad scientist guinea pig with twitchy eyes and tiny pupils, who also has an even uglier true form. Here, he has a nice hairstyle, larger and softer eyes, and much tidier clothing. He becomes more unkempt after his true nature comes to light, though, though he cleans up quickly when seen by the common citizens.
• Adaptational Mundanity: In the books he is an actual alien disguised as a guinea pig. This is never brought up in the film, though the creative team stated the metorite serves a Mythology Gag and potential Sequel Hook for that twist. His crimes are also lower scale, he is merely after money and self indulgence rather than world domination.
• Adaptation Personality Change: In terms of how he handles being cute. In the books, he absolutely abhors being called cute, to the point of it being one of his motivations on becoming a villain. His movie adaptation, meanwhile, heavily exploits the fact that society considers him cute, playing it up for manipulation, and enjoying it to at least some sincere degree in terms of the limelight it brings him.
• Adaptation Species Change: In the books, he is eventually revealed to be an alien invader. The movie keeps him as a guinea pig, instead having him use a meteorite in his plan to allude to his counterpart's extraterrestrial connections.
• Adorable Fluffy Tail: Subverted with Professor Marmalade who, as a guinea pig, is absolutely adorable, but lacks a tail. This lack of a tail is used as subtle foreshadowing that he's actually full of shit, as he talks about how doing good deeds makes "his tail wag"; since he has no tail, upon rewatch we can tell he's lying so as to relate to Mr. Wolf and manipulate him.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Figuratively at least, not only does he outgambit the Bad Guys' plans to use him by making them scapegoats in his own scheme, but he exists as the one person to apprehend the previously undefeated Crimson Paw and figure out her identity without her intentionally revealing it. He even suppasses her track record, having successfully worked under the guise of an even more beloved celebrity for seemingly just as long. Consequently, Diane's run-ins with Marmalade end up evaporating a lot of her Always Someone Better smugness towards the Bad Guys. This ends up Deconstructed when Marmalade's own overconfidence allows the Bad Guys and Diane's combined efforts to outplay him, and then him framing himself up as the Crimson Paw while Diane walks free.
• Bad Samaritan: He has done work to end wars, hunger, and climate change, and the entire plot is him trying to teach the Bad Guys into becoming the Good Guys. He's just playing them so they will be the fall guys for his heist of the Love Crater Meteorite, and in reality, he's worse than any of them could ever be, planning to steal from charities raised in his own name. Bonus points for the whole plot really starting when he was about to receive the Good Samaritan Award.
• Bait the Dog: He baits Mr. Wolf into thinking he believes the gang really can become model citizens, only to reveal later he was setting them up as patsies for his own crimes all along.
• Batman Gambit: As part of his plan to frame the gang for stealing the meteorite at the gala, he counts on them not truly being reformed and attempting to steal the Golden Dolphin at the same time. Even before that, he relies on Wolf being enamored by the tingle for the team to fail the Golden Dolphin heist, even pointedly making reference to Wolf's 'tail wag' when speaking about how he feels when performing good acts, halting Wolf from leaving the building right as they're on the cusp of completing the heist, and thus letting them be "rehabilitated" by him.
• Berserk Button: He gets increasingly frustrated with the Bad Guys referring to the Love Crater Meteorite as a "butt". Even during his evil rants after The Reveal, he petulantly breaks the sinister mood to correct them every single time.
• Big Bad: He's revealed to be the film's true main antagonist after he frames the gang for stealing the meteorite.
• Big Good: He's initially presented as one, an all-loving philanthropist that has done enormous good in the world. However, it's an act so he can commit crimes while being above suspicion.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sweet guinea pig on the outside, cruel, sadistic and manipulative monster on the inside.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: He probably should've stuck around to make sure Wolf and Diane were shredded to pieces in his trap.
• Break the Haughty: He goes from a smug criminal publicly beloved as a philanthropist to a screaming, angry little rat in the back of a police vehicle, with his compound in ruins and precious meteorite vaporized.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Being a puny guinea pig, Marmalade obviously relies on manipulation and schemes to get the job done. This gets Deconstructed during the climax however, as when Diane and the reformed Bad Guys begin outsmarting him and tearing apart his scheme, he increasingly resorts to blind wrath, attacking Wolf's car with his brainwashed army in a rage and then throwing Snake out of the helicopter as a bargaining ploy.
• Bullying the Dragon: He manipulates both the Bad Guys and Diane for his needs (with full knowledge the latter was the Crimson Paw) before double crossing them and leaving them to their fate, complete with premature Evil Gloating in both cases. While he may have gotten away with either individually, he never anticipates that both sides might form an alliance as a result of his scheming, leaving him with six very talented and vengeful criminal agents tearing apart his plan.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Once he drops the act, he reveals he's more of one than the Bad Guys; he not only revels in his criminal lifestyle, he actively gets a "tingle" from admitting he cares about nothing and no one but himself, as well as reveling in the feeling of being viewed as a good guy.
• Cassandra Truth: In the end, he's left trying to deny that he's the Crimson Paw, and he actually isn't. Seeing as he's been exposed as the meteorite thief, however, the police and the media aren't in any mood to believe him.
• The Chessmaster: He manipulates the Bad Guys, especially Wolf, into doing things just so they can be the patsies for his heist. To wit, he manages to spin the two major heists of the gang into something that serves him without them realizing.
• Condescending Compassion: Even in his good guy facade, his arrogance constantly slips through, openly telling the Bad Guys he is doing a favor for them.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He’s a philanthropist who plots to steal the proceeds from his own charity fundraiser and uses the Bad Guys as fall guys for his crimes.
• Create Your Own Hero: His decision to use the Bad Guys to take the fall for his own crimes ends up being what finally pushes the whole gang to do a genuinely heroic act: taking him down. It's because of him that Mr. Wolf begins the Redemption Quest that eventually spreads to the others. It also leads Diane to unretire as the Crimson Paw, albeit now for heroic purposes.
• Cute Is Evil: Something he exploits. Because people won't expect a cute little guinea pig being evil, he takes this to his advantage, using his charm as a cover-up for his true motives.
• The Cynic: He firmly believes that nobody is capable of changing.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: The only person who can lay claim to capturing the Crimson Paw (if largely through the fault of Wolf's Sticky Fingers) as well as seeing through her disguise with the Zumpango Diamond to figure out her identity. If not for the Bad Guys' intervention, Marmalade would have very easily killed her.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • He frames the Bad Guys for a crime he committed, with his plan hinging on two things: himself being above suspicion, and the gang being unsympathetic enough that no one would take their word over his. But, Mr. Wolf had truly reformed and bonded with Diane, who immediately realizes something's up, leading to her breaking the gang out of jail and tearing his plan apart.
  • He also doesn't account for the possibility that the other Bad Guys might come around to Mr. Wolf's belief that they can change for the better, which means while he's prepared to lure Mr. Wolf and Diane into a trap, he wasn't expecting the rest of the Bad Guys to mount a rescue.
  • He promotes his charity runs via novelty maps given away at the Gala. This ends up giving Wolf and Diane a clue to what exactly his guinea pig heist is targetting in advance.
  • Later, his damaged helicopter prevents him from making a clean escape with the meteorite, so he tries to use his status as a Villain with Good Publicity to claim he was saving the meteorite from the gang and is going to safekeep it at his compound. This last-second attempt to save face costs him everything; the meteorite is exposed as a fake, and him carrying the Zumpango Diamond in his pocket implicates him as the Crimson Paw, leading to his arrest.
  • He doesn't even consider that Mr. Snake, a previous cohort he betrayed, might hold a grudge and be a Fake Defector, letting him handle the mind control helmet to celebrate their new partnership. This lets Mr. Snake switch the meteorite for the lamp, setting up the dominos that lead to Marmalade's fall.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • He makes the Bad Guys take the fall as the ones who stole the meteorite. Later, he is falsely charged as being the Crimson Paw because he conveniently has Diane's stolen diamond with him when his schemes are revealed.
  • Due to the enormous amount of virtuous actions he committed to maintain his public image, he ended up doing far more good than harm to Sunnyside, even compared to the other redeemed protagonists. Even in the film's scheme alone, he causes five infamous criminals to reform, resultantly leading them to raise almost $1 billion under his charities which, since his heist was thwarted, ends up donated to the intended destinations.
• Establishing Character Moment: When he is introduced as someone whose goodness is "second only to Mother Theresa", he first says that there's no need for such comparisons, since "it's not a competition"... but then adds that if it were, "it would be more of a tie". While it doesn't expose anywhere near the full depths of his vileness, it immediately lets the viewer know he's a shallow and prideful person who uses his supposed goodness as media bait.
  • Later, he has another one when he's preparing to receive the Bad Guys at his home and he puts on a very gaudy ring. Were he a true philanthropist who cared primarily about doing good, he'd have no real need for open and blatant displays of his wealth. This suggests that he values appearances more than substance.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Although he's definitely no saint, he's still disturbed when Shark swallows Snake whole because he wouldn't share a push pop.
• Evil All Along: He never intended to reform the Bad Guys; his true intention is to steal both the meteorite and the charity money from his fundraiser and pin the blame on the gang.
• Evil Brit: Like his voice actor, he has a British accent, and is the true villain of the movie.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He never believed the Bad Guys could ever genuinely want to become good guys. In fact, his plan hinges on the gang acting like they were turning good just to trick everybody later. His inability to realize people can change leads to his downfall.
• Evil Counterpart: For both Wolf and Diane following their Heel–Face Turn. All three use a good guy persona to hide their criminal agenda, however while Diane's turn to good is genuine (and Wolf's eventually is), Marmalade is a Villain with Good Publicity. Marmalade is a Manipulative Bastard who exploits and backstabs others for his own selfish purposes, while Wolf and Diane take on Magnetic Hero traits and inspire others to turn good out of selfless reasons. Even in terms of hubris, Wolf and Diane are self loathing atoning villains who nonetheless are compulsive braggarts from how competent they were at it, while Marmalade believes goodness and redemption is all phony and gets his "tingle" from being evil, but will be deemed no less than equal to Mother Teresa for his accomplishments as a philanthropist.
• Evil Feels Good: He gets a "tingle" when he admits to caring about no one but himself.
• Evil Gloating: He gloats twice, first when the gang is arrested at the Gala, and later after he captures Mr. Wolf and Diane sneaking into his compound.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • After successfully framing the gang for stealing the meteorite, he meets them in the transport just to rub it in, and when he catches Mr. Wolf and Diane trying to sneak into his compound, he steals Diane's ring.
  • His plot to steal from his own charities isn't because he needs the money, but just because he enjoys doing evil things.
• Exact Words: "All eyes will be on you tonight, not me." It initially seems to be him reminding the gang to act their best at the Gala, but later revealed to be literal: with everyone focused on the gang, he can easily manipulate things behind the scenes so he can steal the meteorite and frame the gang.
• Expository Hair Style Change: Once it's revealed that he's actually evil, the tuft of fur atop his head goes from neat and tidy to messy and frazzled-looking.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: He's a cute little guinea pig that's eventually revealed to be far more evil than the Bad Guys ever were. He's well-aware of this, and weaponizes his cuteness to avoid suspicion for his misdeeds.
  Marmalade: When people look up "bad" in the dictionary, do they see a sweet, adorable guinea pig? No.
• Failed a Spot Check: He is so adamant on getting back the (fake) Meteorite from Diane and the Bad Guys that he fails to notice his mind control waves are still working without it in his laboratory, something the latter even lampshade shouldn't be possible.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • His pride. He could have easily walked away with the meteorite scot-free after the Bad Guys get framed for stealing it at the gala and kept his true nature hidden from them, but he instead stops to gloat and show them his true colors, thus giving them a personal reason to stop him. Furthermore, when he lifted the Zumpango Diamond from Diane's ring, he could have kept it secure at his compound or used it to have her exposed; instead, he pockets it and keeps it on him just to spite her, which leads to Chief Luggins assuming that he's the Crimson Paw.
  • His cynicism. Since he believes that what you see is what you get and doesn't believe a word of his own "flower of goodness" rhetoric, Marmalade completely blinds himself to the possibility that Snake had secretly turned good and faked his betrayal of Mr. Wolf to double-cross him and blow up his mansion, revealing him as the meteorite thief.
• Faux Affably Evil: That all-loving philanthropist persona? It's only when someone is watching, and even then, he's very smug and condescending without any real shame. It's not until he tries to frame the Bad Guys for his heist of the meteorite — and doesn't hide it enough in front of Diane — that it ever breaks; after that, he's too far gone to hide it anymore.
• Flaw Exploitation: Zigzagged. Marmalade does use Wolf and Diane's arrogant rivalry as an opportunity to start his gambit, though it is more specifically Wolf's desire to do good that he ultimately exploits to culminate it. The trope gets used against him in the end, with Snake mercilessly exploiting his overconfidence to sabotage him behind his back.
• Foil:
  • To the Bad Guys themselves, as they're all criminals. The Bad Guys' main targets in the film are either banks or valuable artifacts (with small-time pickpocketing on the side), they wear their villainy on their sleeves, and while they're fine with scaring or subduing those who get in their way, they never kill anyone. Marmalade's scheme involves stealing charity money meant for schools and hospitals, he manipulates his public image to make people love and trust him so he has an alibi for his crimes, and he attempts to kill Mr. Wolf, Diane, and Mr. Snake. The Bad Guys are predatory animals who are good people deep inside, but feel like society won't give them a chance to prove themselves. Marmalade is an adorable guinea pig who is deeply loved by the public, but he is selfish and vile to the bone and commits horrific acts simply because Evil Feels Good.
  • For Wolf in particular, as both are arrogant manipulators who put on an altruistic image to hide their secret motives. However while Wolf is A Father to His Men who reroutes his decisions multiple times out of guilt or concern for his teammates and Diane, Marmalade is The Unfettered who will backstab, mind control and even murder his associates to get what he wants. Even in terms of their manipulation, Wolf is a team motivator who plays off his allies' character strengths, while Marmalade is a liar that exploits their weaknesses. Both also meet their defeat to prevent the Crimson Paw's arrest, though while Wolf willingly covers for her to protect Diane, Marmalade unwittingly gets framed as her from an act of petty cruelty to her.
  • To Diane, as both are well-known public figures monitoring the Bad Guys' reformation. Diane is a former criminal who genuinely wants the Bad Guys to have a better life, while Marmalade is not only a Villain with Good Publicity, but he's also pretending to reform the Bad Guys for his schemes while also driving a wedge between them.
• For the Evulz: He has all the money, legitimacy, and power he could ever want, but he still wants to steal from his own charities for the cruel thrill of it.
• Frame-Up: He steals the meteorite from the Gala and frames the Bad Guys for it. It doesn't help that the Bad Guys were planning on stealing the Golden Dolphin at the same time, and thus after the theft is discovered their calling card automatically plays on the screens, even though they didn't actually go through with it.
• Framing the Guilty Party: He ends up doing this to himself in the end — for all the crimes he got away with, he didn't actually steal the Zumpango Diamond (or more accurately only stole it from the original thief). However, when it falls out of his pocket, Chief Luggins is quick to conclude that Marmalade's the Crimson Paw, and he gets arrested.
• Gone Horribly Right: His entire plan rides on Wolf self sabotaging the group's Falsely Reformed Villain scheme by turning genuinely good. However before getting double crossed, Wolf also makes several gestures of repentance to his friends based on his reformation, leading Diane to bond with him and be willing to help him, and the other Bad Guys to be inspired into a Heel–Face Turn as well. While Marmalade was savvy enough to take precautions against Wolf and even Diane retaliating, he wasn't prepared for a whole team of reformed bad guys taking apart his scheme from different ends.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Subverted, as he's revealed to be far worse than the predator-species Bad Guys ever were. While the Bad Guys are Affably Evil Card Carrying Villains, Marmalade is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who's not only more willing to use lethal force than the Bad Guys, but will steal money meant for charities.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • He manipulated Mr. Wolf into turning good to pose as his Unwitting Pawn, unwittingly creating The Hero that forms the team that takes him down in the end.
  • Just to be petty, he steals Diane's diamond ring when he captures her and Mr. Wolf and puts the diamond (sans ring) in his outer jacket pocket. In the end, when the chief of police helps him out from under the fake meteor, the same diamond falls out of the pocket and implicates him as the Crimson Paw.
  • He recruits Mr. Snake after framing him and the gang, and allows him to use the mind control helmet. Mr. Snake uses the opportunity to make the brainwashed guinea pigs switch out the meteorite for the lamp replica, spray-painted to look like the real thing, then later blows up the real meteorite, destroying Marmalade's compound and revealing him as the meteorite thief.
  • He unwittingly reveals the fake meteorite by applauding himself, causing the lamp's light to switch on and off.
• Humiliation Conga: First, the gang foils his Evil Plan to rob the charity money and destroys his mind-control helmet. Then Mr. Snake is revealed to have double-crossed him, and destroys both the meteorite and his compound, revealing him as the thief to a live TV audience. Then the Golden Dolphin trophy knocks the lamp over, which falls on top of him. Then the impact from the fall knocks the Zumpango Diamond out of his pocket, which implicates him as the Crimson Paw on live television. That last one's the final thing that completely guts his credibility and leads to his arrest.
• Irony: Most of the film has the characters remarking how making a heist personal is typically bad for the criminal. They're mostly right... Marmalade's own heist of the meteorite is played with on both ends: making it personal is bad for him, as he's the main villain who's just revealed his plans to talented and determined criminals, and it allows the Bad Guys to have a personal reason to take him down with a few heists of their own.
• It's All About Me: If you aren't named Professor Rupert Marmalade IV, then don't expect him to genuinely care about you at all. He even admits that he only ever cared about what was good for him, not about what's good for the sake of good.
• Jerkass: Even before he’s revealed to be a villain who outright admits to deriving pleasure from being evil, he takes a smarmy, condescending attitude towards the Bad Guys, which he disguises with a superficially sweet tone of voice. After he gets outed as the film's true antagonist, he drops any pretense of politeness and gleefully mocks the gang whenever he can.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He coaches Wolf and the other Bad Guys and successfully earns them the public's trust, and during the Gala, he places them in spotlight while his charities make huge earnings. All this at the time suggests that Marmalade, for all his hubris, is a genuinely compassionate figure who earned the Golden Dolphin, to the point Wolf can't go through with stealing it and even hands it to him personally as a showing of respect. Only straight afterwards it is revealed it was all a gambit so the Bad Guys would take the fall after he stole the Meteorite for his own evil scheme.
• Lack of Empathy: For starters, he has zero issue betraying Snake and trying to make him fall to his death while his friends watch.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • He frames the gang for stealing the meteorite as part of his heist plan. In the end, after being revealed as the meteorite thief, he's framed as the Crimson Paw, leading to his arrest. The best part is that it's entirely his own fault. He recognized Diane's diamond ring as the famous Zumpango Diamond, which had been stolen by the Crimson Paw years before and that Diane kept out of sentimentality. Marmalade takes the diamond itself (not the ring part) to be petty; it's his possession of it that causes him to be framed as the Crimson Paw because there is no rational explanation why he could possibly have it that would in any way be remotely legal.
  • He manipulates people to ensure no one catches on to his evil side. Mr. Snake deceives him in turn to destroy the meteorite and his compound with it.
• Laughably Evil: Make no mistake, Marmalade is a conniving unrepentant bastard, but his camp deadpan banter courtesy of Richard Ayoade overall make him a humorous antagonist, all in the form of a diminutive little guinea pig no less.
• Mad Scientist: He wants the meteorite for use in a Mind Control helmet, presumably of his own design.
• Malicious Misnaming: When revealing his true nature to the gang in the prison transport, he mockingly calls Mr. Wolf "Wolfie", a nickname only Ms. Tarantula calls him.
• Manipulative Bastard: He manipulated many people into believing he was a compassionate philanthropist and, while in drag, fooled Wolf into believing he was a helpless old lady. He also tricked the Bad Guys into thinking he wanted to redeem them. However, he never truly intended to reform them, and was only using them to take the fall for his own crimes. When Mr. Wolf snaps at him, he tricks the public into thinking he was being attacked.
• Mask of Sanity: He may look like a cute and innocent guinea pig, but beneath that, he's an unhinged maniac that's only out for himself.
• Master Actor: Before his credibility is ruined, he fooled countless people into thinking he's an all-loving philanthropist.
• Mister Big: He's a wealthy philanthropist with a lot of good PR who happens to be a tiny guinea pig.
• The Napoleon: He's a guinea pig who is smaller than the rest of the cast, and as part of his unpleasant behavior, he also has a short temper.
• Narcissist: He's condescending, egocentric, manipulative, lacks empathy, and has shades of Never My Fault. He also has a grandiose sense of self-worth, even seeing himself on par with Mother Teresa in terms of the good he's done in the world. Later, he claims that the saying "experience is the best teacher" is wrong...because, obviously, he is the best teacher.
• Moral Myopia: He's perfectly fine with stealing nearly a billion dollars of charity money raised in his own name for schools and hospitals, but flies into a rage when it's stolen from him.
  Marmalade: No, no, no! That's my stolen money!
• Never My Fault: The moment his "perfect heist" goes awry, he immediately blames Mr. Snake.
  Marmalade: What use are you if you can't anticipate their next move?!
  Mr. Snake: Oh, so it's my fault?!
  Marmalade: Yes!
• Non-Action Big Bad: He has his assistant and brainwashed army of guinea pigs do all the work for him. Justified, as he's a guinea pig.
• Not His Sled: While him being evil is lifted directly from the books, he's not an alien in the film.
• Not Me This Time: Invoked, as his Evil Plan relies on framing the Bad Guys for the theft of the meteorite by exploiting their negative reputation just as the public is starting to see them as changed people. It gets turned around on him in the end however when he is framed for being the Crimson Paw.
• Oh, Crap!: He's horrified when he realizes Snake switched the meteorite for a disguised lamp — and then used the real one to blow up his compound, which reveals that he was the one who stole the meteorite and framed the gang.
• Pragmatic Villainy: While he's done numerous good deeds, none of them are out of genuine kindness. Moreover, they serve to give him the public image of a saintly philanthropist.
• Put on a Prison Bus: He is arrested at the end of the film when he is accused of being the infamous thief, the Crimson Paw. He did commit a number of crimes and definitely deserves to be arrested, but interestingly, he is being accused of the wrong crimes. What will happen to him after his arrest remains to be seen.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": He has a habit of shouting this whenever things go awry.
• The Redeemer: He portrays himself as this, promising to reform the gang after they're captured. It's all an act.
• Resourceful Rodent: A villainous example. He's a guinea pig (i.e. a kind of rodent) who has zero qualms getting his paws dirty, including via manipulating others.
• Rich Bastard: He's wealthy enough to own a mansion, his ego is bigger than it, and he has no genuine compassion for anyone.
• Sarcastic Confession: He doesn't sound sarcastic when he says it, but on a rewatch, the sarcasm is clear when he appears to fall for Wolf's Batman Gambit after their initial arrest.
  Marmalade: But it was my idea.
• Sequel Hook: While his extra terrestrial background is not brought up in the film, the meteorite was deliberate used as a Foreshadowing for a potential sequel, meaning in all likeliness Marmalade will return if one is ever made.
• Shadow Archetype: He mirrors the worst qualities of the three most spotlighted protagonists, and if they had retained their obsession with being the most unstoppable bad guys the world had seen rather than gaining their drive to turn good:
  • Marmalade is one to both Wolf and Diane, all being overconfident, manipulative and sometimes hypocritically flawed lead operatives who use a good guy public image to hide their criminal backgrounds, however Marmalade has neither the virtues of Wolf or Diane that made them desire to be genuinely good people (Wolf's camaradarie and Diane's self reflection respectively), only feigning them to get what he wants. While Wolf and Diane humbled and came to bond and respect each other (and both stepped in when the other finally pushed their luck too far), Marmalade remained a Smug Snake who cauld not anticipate his own mistakes and was left with no backup due to his own selfish ego. Even more so, Marmalade is brought down by the near-misses both suffered even after turning good (having Snake turn on him after betraying him, and getting caught with the Zumpango Diamond after carelessly holding onto it respectively).
  • He is also one to Snake himself, as he demonstrates the same cynicism about the world and its shallow views of its species, and if Snake had finally forsaken his friends and other redeeming qualities to be full-on the vicious, backstabbing predator everyone thinks he is. During the climax of the movie, it appears that Snake has actually done just that and rejected his "tingle" to became Marmalade's kindred spirit, only not really, he was faking it to help his friends undercover, showing he still mirrors Marmalade's underhanded talents, but used for good.
• Smug Snake: He's cunning and manipulative, but it's clear that unlike the Bad Guys, he's unable to comprehend that he may be capable of making a mistake.
• The Sociopath: He pretends to be a Nice Guy, lacks empathy, shows shades of Never My Fault, and cares for nobody sans himself. He also has a grandiose sense of self-worth, exploits others, manipulates almost everyone around him, and is fine with backstabbing others.
• Suddenly Shouting: An inversion. The thing that tips Diane off as to him not being what he seems is him panicking at Mr. Wolf seemingly trying to maul him in the police car and almost hyperventilating on the ground, only to snap right back to his normal, chipper, sentimental public persona the moment a camera is trained on him for an interview.
• Super Gullible: He's all too quick to believe that Snake wants to work with him, despite having manipulated and used Snake and his friends (and gloated about it) just hours before.
• Supervillain: His real occupation, doing the same criminal activity as the gang but on a far vaster scale with unique gadgets.
• Too Clever by Half: The first half of the film shows him to be an amazing chessmaster, able to dupe the Bad Guys and even fool and catch out Diane, herself the undefeated Crimson Paw, while maintaining a flawless public image of a beloved philanthropist. Even Wolf admits Marmalade has the capacity to outdo either of them as the greatest criminal ever seen, however, it ends up subdued by the fact that Marmalade has become incredibly arrogant about it, gloating at his victims and opponents anytime he thinks he can get away with it and even being complacent enough to allow Snake onto his team (Marmalade does backstab him quickly in, though never suspects Snake might have still been able to outgambit him in that amount of time). He also never anticipates that, while he is a more far menacing and elaborate criminal than the Bad Guys and the Crimson Paw, they might still be able to dismantle his plan as heroes.
• The Unfettered: As a foil to both Wolf and Diane, whose consciences caused them to Heel–Face Turn (and even as villains, had limits in what they would do), Marmalade will gleefully backstab and even murder to get what he wants. Even how he mirrors their choice of targets reflects this, both the Bad Guys and the Crimson Paw tended to only go after valuable artifacts and jewels which often lacked tremendous collateral damage, Marmalade targets charities.
• Villain Ball: He makes several ill-advised decisions in favor of Evil Gloating which come back to bite him.
  • First, he decides to taunt Wolf over having set up the redemption arc of the movie for his own gain, letting Wolf know that Marmalade set them up. If he hadn't done that, the Bad Guys would have had no motivation to stop his plans.
  • He can't help but brag about how he stole the meteorite, even if he frames it as how the Bad Guys stole it. His enthusiastic and detailed description clues Diane in on him knowing far more than he seems to.
  • He eagerly accepts Snake's offer to work together just for the opportunity to rub it in Wolf's face, allowing Snake to sabotage his plan from within.
  • Finally, he can't help but taunt Diane with the knowledge that she's the Crimson Paw by taking her most famous piece of loot, the Zumpango Diamond that she wore as a ring, for himself. His possession of the diamond causes him to be misidentified as the Crimson Paw at the end of the climax since the never-identified thief was the last known individual to have it.
  • Leading up to this, despite having now having evidence to implicate Wolf and Diane as criminals and have them arrested, he chooses to kill them. (This is a zigzagged case, since Diane proved she could very easily trash and escape Sunnyside's maximum security prison earlier, killing her there and then while she is restrained would count as being a No-Nonsense Nemesis. Though being a Card-Carrying Villain, Marmalade chooses to kill them both via a slow cartoony Death Trap, and doesn't keep his eye on them, allowing the other Bad Guys to rescue them).
• Villain Team-Up: He recruits Mr. Snake to help him complete his scheme — a fatal mistake.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's a cruel, dangerous criminal that's also a publicly adored philanthropist.
• Villainous Breakdown: His breakdown starts when Mr. Snake destroys his compound, revealing him as the one who actually stole the Love Crater Meteorite, and gets worse after he's implicated as the Crimson Paw.
  Professor Marmalade: No! No! I'm not the Crimson Paw! Sh-She's the Crimson Paw! She's the Paw! I'M THE FLOWER OF GOODNESS! NO!!
• Villainous Crossdresser: Doubles as Disguised in Drag; he dresses up as an old lady to manipulate Wolf and kick off his Evil Plan.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • He's pretty chummy with Mr. Snake after the latter's apparent Face–Heel Turn, letting him handle the mind control helmet and openly referring to him as his "partner." True to form, this doesn't last, even without taking Mr. Snake's true colors into account.
  • Cuddles is the one minion that Marmalade never betrays or mistreats, with them shown enjoying commensing their scheme together. Ironically, even Cuddles seems smart enough to abandon Marmalade when he is no longer on the winning end however.
• Villain Has a Point: He warns Wolf that his friends are holding him back in his Redemption Quest. This was only to poison Wolf's mind into betraying the other Bad Guys to help his own scheme, but it was true that had he followed the others' encouragement, he would have stayed a criminal, stolen the Golden Dolphin and destroyed his friendship with Diane, thus lost the one ally that could bail them out after Marmalade framed them. Of course what Marmalade didn't anticipate is that in response, Wolf, rather than just turning his back on his friends for good, would orchestrate their own Good Feels Good epithany so they would all Heel–Face Turn with him.
• Virtue Is Weakness: He sees Wolf's Evil Virtues as mere weakspots that make him a servicable pawn, particularly his Good Feels Good epithany and his close bonds with his teammates. Naturally, both of these end up biting Marmalade in the end, though it was underestimating Wolf's "greatest weakness" that really done him in.
• We Have Become Complacent: He's a far deadlier manipulator and criminal than the Bad Guys and even Diane that has been successfully playing the world for ages, but he takes his Evil Gloating to even more exaggerated levels when he thinks he's pulled it off. He gloated about his plan to the Bad Guys, broke character to play to the cameras in front of Diane, and later stole her ring as a quick insult. Had he maintained some subtlety he likely could have won.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: He manages to knock out and capture Wolf and Diane when they first attempt to steal the meteorite. Cue the slow moving death trap. And yes, he even leaves the room after activating it.
• Wicked Cultured: His luxurious modern-era compound impresses even the Bad Guys.
  Shark: Bro's got taste, okaaay.
  Snake: Wow, almost makes me wanna be cute.
• Wicked Pretentious: He is more accurately such as the movie goes on (and even earlier has implications of being such) as most of his classiness is only to disguise his own evil doings and enhance his own reputation. Marmalade's childish ego ends up taking his plan apart in the end, particularly when self applauding himself reveals that Snake used his own meteorite lamp to deceive him.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once he's done with Mr. Snake, he kicks him off the helicopter, intending for him to fall to his death.

Cuddles (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Professor Marmalade's trusted assistant.

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• Bald of Evil: The top of his head is bald, and he faithfully serves Marmalade during his heist, including controlling the death trap to attempt to kill Wolf and Diane.
• Canon Foreigner: He's exclusive to the film canon and has no book counterpart. Although, he filled in Nathan's role.
• Dirty Coward: The last we see of him, he supposedly slinks away when it's revealed that the "meteorite" is actually the lamp, leaving his boss out to dry.
• Flat Character: He has little to no characterisation besides being Marmalade's doting butler, and doesn't even have any speaking lines outside a deleted scene. His total lack of personality and self-interest likely speak for Marmalade's preference in associates (though amusingly even he knows to ditch Marmalade in the end).
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Cuddles is always seen wearing glasses and he contributes to Marmalade's big heist.
• The Jeeves: He faithfully serves Marmalade in everything, from driving him around in his limo to dressing him, and even assists in his billion dollar heist. Of course, his loyalty has limits, such as when it's clear that his boss has lost.
• Light Is Not Good: He wears a bright white suit and is perfectly happy to do Marmalade's evil bidding.
• Nonstandard Character Design: His design is completely off compared to other humans, with his head and limbs being narrow and his body thick and wide like a brick.
• Only One Name: He's never mentioned having a last name, only called "Cuddles".
• Opaque Lenses: His glasses' lenses are completely black, and his eyes are never seen.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The moment the meteorite Marmalade stole back from the gang is revealed to be a decoy lamp, he ducks out of sight in the helicopter cab and disappears.
• Secret-Keeper: He's the only one who knows about Marmalade's true intentions from the beginning.
• Slasher Smile: He's shown to be happy to assist in his boss' crimes, and when ordered to do something heinous, he will be doing it with a very deranged smile on his face.
• The Voiceless: He doesn't speak at all throughout the film, and is the only named character to never speak. He has a handful of lines in some deleted scenes however.
• Walking Spoiler: Mentioning anything about his role in the film spoils that Professor Marmalade is evil.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: The last he is seen, he is slowly sinking out of sight in the helicopter as Marmalade's plan starts to get unravelled in front of the police.

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