Evil Is Petty / Comic Books

When no one was looking, Black Manta stole a foot-long. He stole a foot-long. That's as long as 12 inches. And That's Terrible.

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• In Peter Bagge's Apocalypse Nerd, after McNeely Vile, a commune set up by a bunch of engineers from Seattle, is destroyed by a roving Native American gang, Dylan McNeely, the son of the late founder of Mcneeley Vile, teams up with another survivor of the massacre, and two rednecks to enact brutal revenge. Specifically, revenge on the residents of the nearby women's only commune that beat him up after they caught him using them as "imagination fuel".
• The DCU:
  • Aquaman: Black Manta will go to great lengths to murder and abuse anyone who associates themselves with the aquatic hero. When he learns that Aquaman has returned after a long period of absence, he kills everyone in the butcher shop that he was working at for being happy at the news, blows up his house, and goes back to tormenting his archenemy. And, as seen in the page image, he stole a guy's Subway sandwich and refused to share with Ocean Master.
  • Batman:
    • This is, quite often, the reasoning behind the Joker's less horrifying crimes. In a way, it just makes the Joker seem even worse as he truly sees no difference between throwing cream pies, robbing a museum, and brutal, torturous mass murder. To him, it's all just part of the joke.
    • The Penguin likes to style himself as an aristocratic gentleman, but in reality, he's really just a thug who deals with the inferiority he feels because of his stunted appearance by lashing out at every possible slight, both real and imagined. This is the main focus of Penguin: Pain and Prejudice, which shows how Penguin murdered his abusive father and brothers, and in adulthood, systematically destroys the lives of anyone who angers him for any reason, such as a man who bumped into him at a nightclub and called him fat before he realized who he was talking to and desperately apologized, and a coroner who was chewing gum while removing the body of the Penguin's mother from her bedroom.
    • Batman: Crimson Mist: When we see the Scarecrow, he's out killing the former Jerk Jocks who bullied him in high school.
  • The Flash: This is Eobard Thawne / Professor Zoom's defining trait.
    • Thawne is addicted to using his Time Travel powers to get what he wants and abuse people he feels have slighted him. He once crushed on a woman and, as a consequence, went back in time to erase her husband and every man she had ever dated from history just to keep her all to himself. When she still rejects him, he goes back in time and does something that leaves her catatonic into the present day.
    • Once he realizes he can't kill the Barry Allen (the second Flash) in the past without disrupting his own timeline (Barry is his inspiration), Professor Zoom begins an anonymous reign of terror over the Barry's childhood, seeing just how far he can go while keeping his history intact. In addition to eventually killing Barry's mother, and framing his father, we are shown shots of him erasing his best friend from existence, leaving Barry a friendless child. But there's also shots of Professor Zoom pushing him downstairs, causing him to miss a catch in baseball and blowing his homework away. Professor Zoom's dickery has reached memetic levels in the fandom, especially because of instances like those last two.
    • At one point the Flash asks him outright why he keeps tormenting him and Thawne says it's the only time Barry pays attention to him. His campaign, at least in that continuity, started because he overheard Barry repeat a motivational phrase to someone else and immediately decided that meant the moment they shared together where he said that to him was a lie so he's been tearing him down ever since.
    • In The Button, Professor Zoom breaks into the Batcave and beats Batman up. In the process, he finds a letter that Bruce's father Thomas Wayne (the alternate version from Flashpoint) had written to him. He rips it up, commenting he knows it was Thomas' last gift to his son.
    • Flash #750 shows that he's not above using his time travel abilities to go back to Jay Garrick's time and whisper in his ears that he'll be forgotten.
  • New Gods: Darkseid abundantly qualifies for this trope. Examples include forcing his minions to murder their pets, murdering (or trying to murder) relatives of his enemies for foiling his Evil Schemes, executing his minions for speaking out of turn, and setting free his slaves... and putting them in charge of the next batch, just so the hero can watch them become as cruel as the old slave drivers.
    • Mister Miracle (2017) takes the cake, though. The series culminates with Darkseid offering Scott Free a ceasefire in the war between Apokolips and New Genesis, even giving up the Anti-Life Equation, and all Scott has to do is... hand his newborn son over to Darkseid to be tortured and raised as his heir, thereby recreating the most traumatic event in his life, this time in the role of the father. When you're willing to give up universal domination to hurt one man in a way that only you can, petty doesn’t even begin to cover it.
  • Superman:
    • Lex Luthor has many moments where he indulges himself in petty acts of evil and cruelty. He once frequented a diner for a week so he could court a particular waitress. Then he offered her a life of fame and luxury if she would be his lover. But he drove away in his limo before she could make a decision, leaving her to ponder opportunities lost. Just something to amuse himself with.
    • In The Death of Superman, he strangles his female martial arts instructor, just because she knocked him down during a sparring session. It's also a case of him being able to demonstrate his superiority over Superman (who'd just been killed fighting Doomsday), as now he can freely commit crimes on a whim without having to worry about Supes making him pay for it. Post-Crisis Luthor is depicted as a petulant asshole who holds grudges against anyone who even slightly challenges his authority.
    • He also frequently addresses Clark Kent as "Mr. Lois Lane" and openly puts the moves on Lois and/or makes disparaging comments about Clark's masculinity right in front of them, just to be an irritating dick to two people whom he dislikes.
    • Taken to new lows in The Black Ring. Luthor gives up omnipotence and the chance to give everyone in the universe eternal bliss — all because one of the conditions of keeping that power is that he can't do anything negative with that power such as, say, destroying Superman. To Luthor, godhood is meaningless if he can't use it to crush his greatest foe.
    • Luthor's entire grudge against Superman is proof of his pettiness. He's all but admitted that the only reason he hates Supes with such a passion is that Superman is the first person he met that is both more powerful than he is and completely unwilling to bend to his will. The fact that he's the world's greatest hero and has inspired others to defy Luthor only galls him more. Supes has called him out on this complete waste of his potential multiple times to no avail.
    • He takes this to new levels in Action Comics #1050 where he traps the knowledge that Clark Kent and his son Jon are Superman under a psychic suggestion that could kill anyone affected by it all because Clark never told him of his origins when they lived in Smallville.
    • In his Pre-Crisis origin story, How Luthor Met Superboy, Lex befriends Superboy and develops a Kryptonite antidote. Then his top secret science project is destroyed when his lab burns down, and he becomes convinced that Superboy started the fire out of jealousy. Instead of just destroying his antidote and never talking about it, Luthor mixes a special batch, gives Superboy a sample, lets him fly between Kryptonite meteorites unharmed, and then reveals it was merely a temporary antidote only to laugh in Superboy's disappointed face.
    • In Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, he frames Bruce Wayne for murder when Bruce cuts all ties between Wayne Enterprises and the U.S. Government in protest of Luthor becoming president.
    • In 52, he turns off the superpowers of several superheroes that he created while they are in mid-flight, killing them and causing lots of collateral damage, when he finds out that the process that gave them superpowers won't work on him.
    • The Super Dictionary: And he once stole forty cakes from the school bake sale in his youth because the school administration wouldn't let him enter a fission-powered toaster in the science fair!
    • In Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, Luthor crosses into almost Stupid Evil with his pettiness and obsession, destroying two of his own greatest creations (the Science Spire and Hope), as well as undoubtedly costing himself millions upon millions of dollars. The reason he does so? To make Superman look bad. Superman is not impressed in the slightest.
    • Adaptations of Luthor, particularly in animated settings like the DC Animated Universe, also tend to involve this. However, it must be noted that the page quote comes not from Luthor, but from the Flash during a "Freaky Friday" Flip with Luthor and trying (ineptly) to disguise himself as Luthor.
    • Brainiac is another incredibly petty Superman enemy. In Superman: Brainiac, right after Superman defeats him, he commands his ship to fire a missile at the Kent Farm. Superman ruined his home, so he wants to destroy his. In other words, Brainiac attempts to murder an elderly couple who never did anything to him and that he has never met because their foster son defeated and humiliated him.
    • In Many Happy Returns, Supergirl enemy Xenon is so obsessed with killing all different Supergirls that he doesn't care whether killing Earth-One Kara Zor-El will end The Multiverse.
    • In Action Comics #309: The Untold Story of Argo City, Kara is following a lead to find her missing parents. However, the criminals exiled to the Phantom Zone ruin her chance to locate her parents' whereabouts out of spite.
    • In Supergirl (2005), Who is Superwoman? and The Hunt for Reactron, Reactron attempts to rape and kill Kara several times, murders her parents and blows her planet up... because she had the gall to defend herself and beat him down when he first attacked her.
    • The Great Phantom Peril: After apparently driving Superman out of his city, Faora Hu-Ul amuses herself by flying around at super-sonic speed and shattering every window in Metropolis. Later, when the remaining Phantom Zoners are released from the Zone, they utilize their godlike powers to destroy a Superman statue and engage in other acts of petty urban vandalism.
    • In The Unknown Supergirl, Lesla-Lar is a well-off scientist, whose research has been recognised and awarded and who has no trouble finding work, including movie roles. And still she sets out to ruin Kara's life, whom she does not even know, only because Supergirl will receive way more acclaim and praise than Lesla ever got when she goes public.
    • The Coming of Atlas: If you are a LexCorp employee and you happen to use company resources to help Superman, no matter the reason, not only you will be fired on the spot, but also your ex-boss will do everything he can to ruin your job prospects afterwards.
    • The Girl with the X-Ray Mind: Villainess Lesla-Lar has absolutely no reason to mess up with Lena Thorul other than her being Supergirl's friend.
    • The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor: Sam, an inmate in Metropolis' penitentiary, wastes a stash of cash which he had hidden away, and which he could have found of use after leaving prison, on hiring a criminal gang to gaslight into insanity the widow of the agent who put him in prison.
    • The Phantom Zone, When the pack of Kryptonian criminals escape from the Zone, most of them proceed to carry forward General Zod's global conquest scheme. Az-Rel and Nadira, though, leave the band in favor of smuggling bystanders.
    • In Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom, Darkseid says Maelstrom he will never love her back, but he will consider making her his personal slave if she kills Superman. When Desaad asks why he is entertaining her dellusions, Darkseid answers her suffering will be greater if he feeds false hopes.
    • The Leper from Krypton: After discovering some impersonator has been replacing him since he left Earth, Superman checks if some Phantom Zoner has escaped. Neither of them has left the Zone, but Jax-Ur contacts him to specifically say they could actually tell him who his replacement is, but they will not do so because seeing him distressed is more entertaining.
      Jax-Ur: Superman! We're contacting you mentally through the Phantom Zone viewer! We could tell you who has replaced you...But squirm, baby! Squirm!
    • The Death of Luthor: At the start, Luthor wants to kill Supergirl because she is his nemesis' powerful ally. After being saved by her, Luthor wants to kill Supergirl because his hubris cannot take the fact that he has been beaten by a teen girl.
    • In "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining", Emerald Empress has managed to capture and put five members of the Legion of Super-Heroes in a static field. Rather than killing quickly her worst enemies, she proceeds to slap them one after another just because it amuses her.
    • Sleeze, the New God in charge of porn. Darkseid banished Sleeze from Apokolips because he thought a god of porn was too petty to play any part in his schemes to conquer reality. It says something when Darkseid thinks you are too petty. His lowest moment came when he had total mental control over Superman and Big Barda, another powerful New God, and instead of forcing them to do any number of terrible atrocities against the human race, he made them star in a porno just because he can and to see her poor husband's (Mister Miracle) reaction.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: Cheetah (Priscilla Rich) is so annoyed at other women getting attention when she's not that she'll murder them over it. This includes times when she specifically and intentionally created the situation that brought attention to the woman in question.
• East of West: Archibald Chamberlain is smart enough to generally avoid this in favor of Pragmatic Villainy, which proves to have been a good attitude when he finally does indulge in a bit of petty spite (shooting Solomon first in a Mexican Standoff despite having secretly emptied his gun beforehand) and it near-immediately gets him killed; by wasting his first shot on a harmless old man for the sake of gratification, Chamberlain leaves himself wide open for his other, actually dangerous enemy, the Ranger, to shoot and kill him.
• Iznogoud: When Iznogoud first sees the current owner of the title object in "The Unlucky Diamond" seemingly begging on a street corner, he is not amused:
  Iznogoud: A beggar!? I thought I'd outlawed begging, it encourages charity!
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Avengers:
    • Sometimes, Ultron's deeds are for little to no more reason that he's trying to get back at his "dad". Case in point, Annihilation: Conquest, where Ultron explains his grand plan: Take over the Kree Empire, create the perfect organic-mechanical hybrid, go home and rub it in Hank Pym's face (and then, presumably, take over Earth).
    • In the future seen in Ultron Forever, having long taken over Earth, and indeed everywhere, Ultron's recreated the Avengers as his own personal guard. No-one's quite sure why, but they all figure it's one last insult.
  • Captain America: The Red Skull has some pretty grand and horrifying ambitions, but he always takes the time to stop and be a total dick to his most loyal followers just for the hell of it. It all comes down to the fact that the Skull hates everything in existence. If he can't cause widespread misery with plans that threaten the world and beyond, he'll happily settle for petty acts of cruelty, like eating food in front of starving children.
  • Daredevil: In the Born Again arc, after being told that Matt Murdock is secretly Daredevil, whose actions have barely impacted the profit of his previous crimes, and even though he is unsure of this information, The Kingpin dives headfirst into this, going above and beyond to ruin Murdock's life to confirm it, and sacrificing his calmness and methodical approach (the factors that made him such an intimidating and effective villain in the first place) for his vendetta against Daredevil.
    • This trope always gets the Kingpin. It's not enough to win, he has to make people suffer. Not advisable when your targets include a psychotic military expert, a man that can bench press a car, and a legal genius who is well versed in martial arts. This contrasts with his otherwise polite and cultured persona and shows that for all of his intelligence and cunning, he is still just a street thug.
    • As much as he talks of never letting his emotions get the better of him, the Kingpin can take a slight to an insane level. When a waiter at a restaurant hands him the check (unaware Fisk's dinners are always comped), the Kingpin orders an underling to track the waiter down and ensure the hand that held the check is mangled beyond repair.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Doctor Doom may act exactly like a Magnificent Bastard of an Evil Overlord with delusions of grandeur and adhere to the appropriate conventions of nobility and respectability to go with it, but it doesn't change the fact that he's still an arrogant prick who's spent half his life obsessively trying to kill his old college pal Reed Richards for being smarter than he is and whose attempts to Take Over the World, overthrow governments, and gain supreme powers are all motivated by the desire to prove that he's smarter than Reed and rub it in his face. He's an Insufferable Genius who wants the chance to yell "nyah nyah nyah nyah!" at the object of his jealousy. This is directly contrasted to his bombastic, overblown persona as an aristocrat because that's how he imagines a great man to be.
    • The Skrull Emperor. When Reed Richards thwarts his plan to get revenge on the Fantastic Four by making it look like Sue and Johnny's father has gone evil, the Emperor has him sent back with a bomb strapped to his chest, forcing Franklin to leap on it to stop it killing his children. Meanwhile, decades later in Secret Invasion it turns out one of his motivations for invade Earth is simply because Reed turned four of his people into cows.
  • The Mighty Thor: Loki (prior to his Heroic Sacrifice and subsequent reincarnation) is the self-described God of Mischief. He has the same lofty ambitions of any other typical Evil Overlord — conquer everything, kill the hero, etc. — but his hobbies include torturing helpless fish for fun◊. Loki's reasons for his mischief are also rather petty: they are all rooted in his inferiority complex due to his Frost Giant heritage, lack of martial prowess (relatively speaking) in a society of warrior gods, and his conflicting feelings of hate and love towards his foster brother Thor.
    • In a storyline in Alpha Flight, Northstar was led by Loki to discover his "true origins" as a member of a fairy race brought to Earth and went to the land to find "his people." However, the new writers retconned this with Northstar discovering that Loki was just lying for kicks — Northstar was human after all.
  • Secret Invasion: As much as the Skrulls try to hide it behind religion or for mankind's benefit, a good part of Veranke's motivation is also just petty spite, and to that end she is willing to throw away any number of her people, who were not in great straits when they came to her, just to screw with the heroes's heads a little.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Max Dillon/Electro could solve the global energy crisis and become a beloved and very wealthy man if he had any forethought or ability to let go of grudges. As it is, he's stuck in a cycle of robbing banks and getting his ass kicked by Spider-Man and/or Daredevil because he tried to get revenge on them for the last ass-kicking they gave him, and so on.
    • Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin started off with a plan to take over the criminal underworld of New York by killing Spider-Man and gaining a rep. By his second appearance, he was in it just to kill Spidey, but even that changed. For the next forty years, he existed for the sole purpose of screwing with Peter, going so far as to orchestrate The Clone Saga just to mess with his head. If he committed that much effort into taking over the world, he probably would have become a major Marvel villain much earlier than Dark Reign. During Dark Reign he also hires the Taskmaster to raid Tony Stark's vault and retrieve... a photo of Tony as a child with his parents. The only photo Tony had of said parents, which he gleefully burns. The Taskmaster is so boggled and enraged that Norman wasted so much time and money in getting the intel to raid Stark's vault just to steal and destroy a childhood memento that he told Osborn he would never work for him again.
    • Eddie Brock, the first Venom, is a good example. His reasons for wanting to kill Spider-Man vary by medium (usually involving losing his job), but they're usually extremely petty, especially because in most versions, it's his own damn fault. Later writers usually try to work around this by depicting his firing as the breaking point of a life filled with pent-up frustration to at least better frame his vendetta. The symbiote itself is less petty; it wants Peter dead because he rejected it once he found out it was alive and wanted to make their bond permanent, but Peter also nearly killed it in the process, and the symbiote was said to be driven insane by its bond with the already-unstable Eddie.
    • In the infamous One More Day arc, Mephisto makes a deal with Spider-Man to erase his and Mary Jane's marriage from the timeline in exchange for Aunt May's life. He doesn't even want Spider-Man's soul since that would be a Heroic Sacrifice, nor does he have any sort of complex Evil Plan in the works — he just doesn't like the fact that Peter and Mary Jane are happy together. It would later be retconned that he was actually trying to make sure that Peter and MJ's daughter was never born, as she could grow up to defeat him. Mephisto was just as petty when he went after Silver Surfer back in the day. He didn't attack him because of some master plan or because Surfer had done something to him. He just couldn't stand the Surfer's nobility. For a hell lord, Mephisto is pretty petty. He also tricked a hapless bartender into agreeing to become his personal living immortal inkwell because the guy had the balls to ask for a tip. This after he spent the night talking about all of the various irons he has in the fire that led to Fear Itself among other things.
  • Thanos:
    • The cosmic villain usually indulges in grand scale-crimes as part of trying to court Death. Then there's that one time he personally turned up every year on the birthday of an Unlucky Everydude named David and did something horrible to him, which is usually monumentally petty. Sometimes, it's relatively minor, like taking baby David's blanket while he's asleep or stealing the 16-year-old David's phone and sending his girlfriend a horribly abusive message to break them up. Other times, he's murdering David's father, killing his cat,^note David originally assumed that Thanos got him fired that day, but he actually wasn't involved that time. burning down the grad school he'd previously gotten into, and even killing everyone who turned up to his 21st birthday party. When Thanos comes to him at the tiny, filthy apartment he's living in, David states his assumption that every tormented birthday he's had has been part of some big plan to break his will and ensure he's Driven to Suicide and prepares to tell Thanos just why he doesn't let it break him, despite the fact that by then, he's The Pig-Pen and fairly miserable... and Thanos responds by casually insulting him, wrenching out a water main and flooding the apartment, and smugly remarking that the Titan will see him next year.
    • That same issue has another story where Thanos helps an old lady across the street, but not out of the goodness of his heart. Instead, he deliberately did so in order to stop the bus coming down the street, preventing a fateful meeting between two women which would have resulted in them going on to fix many of the world's problems and usher in a bright future for humanity. Instead, the bus being late caused one of them to live a life of utter mediocrity. And when she's laying on her deathbed, Thanos returns and uses his powers to show her the life she almost had before he interfered, causing her to die shortly after from sheer hopelessness.
    • Another time, he went out of his way to crush a single flower, just because it brought people hope.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • All-New Ultimates: Bombshell has been turned into a living puppet, and Diamondback uses her to go to the Ultimates' base of operations. But before that, she makes her take a detour to an ATM and remove all the cash from her debit cards.
    • The Ultimates:
    • Can you believe that Those Wacky Nazis shot down a plane filled with Camel cigarettes? Kowalski can't.
    • The Red Skull not only forced Petra Laskov to kill her husband with a pair of scissors, then tossed her baby out the window and had his men gang-rape her, he also then stole every bit of food in her house. This stands out more to Nick Fury than the other stuff.
    • The Ultimate Spider-Man version of Norman is just as bad as the original, with his final battle with Peter Parker (until his and Peter's resurrection) eventually breaking down into a full-on Motive Decay invocation.
      Peter: What's the plan, Osborn? I'm dying to know... what next? You kill me, then what next?? Your son you killed won't magically come back to life!! Your world as captain of industry won't magically go back to the way it was!! And your hair... won't magically come... into fashion!
      Norman: But you'll be dead.
    • Ultimate X Men: When Cyclops temporarily joins the Brotherhood, Magneto asks him to refer to him as "father" at Wanda's poetry recital, purely to be a dick to Pietro.
• X-Men:
  • Sabretooth is most famous for his truly grisly acts of evil, including a wanton love of slaughter and casual cannibalism. However, he can also be a truly colossal dick. All he really wants out of life is an endless string of opportunities to make Wolverine miserable and gets the same kind of joy out of following Wolverine into a diner and eating the pie he just ordered, then wandering off, as he gets from setting up an elaborate ploy to make Wolverine kill all of the bastard children he'd unknowingly fathered. Under Chris Claremont, at least, he also makes it a hobby to find Wolverine every year, on Wolverine's birthday, and do whatever he can to make sure that day is miserable for Wolverine. Most of the time, he settles for "only" beating Wolverine into a coma. And then there's the time he did this◊.
  • Mystique is just as bad as Sabretooth when it comes to this as she cannot go a minute without screwing someone over and betraying her allies and children for the umpteenth time simply because she gets a massive kick out of it and even admits to it. She once murdered a bunch of people and pinned it on a young mutant to teach her “a valuable life lesson”, pretended to be one of Wolverine’s girlfriends and slept with him, recorded it, and sent it to said girlfriend causing them to break up and at an early point in her history Mystique was so pissed at Ms. Marvel foiling her schemes she pretended to be Carol to fool her then boyfriend Michael and then beat him to death as Carol. There’s also her abusing her children Rogue and Nightcrawler out of infuriation over them not obeying her wilfully ignoring the fact she’s given them ample reason not to trust “mama”. Her mistreatment of Rogue in particular is extremely petty as it’s inferred she just hates the fact that Rogue loves other people rather than just her and Destiny and actively tries to sabotage Rogue’s relationship with Gambit, just because. Sadly Destiny herself gets in on the action in Krakoa, as seen when her new son-in-law Gambit correctly points out the reason she loathes him is simply because her daughter genuinely loves and trusts him with no strings attached, unlike with Rogue’s relationship with her moms — at which Destiny makes a strangle gesture and mutters “Hate. You.” as Gambit walks away.
• Rat-Man (1989): Janus Valker can't stay good for a single minute. It's not just killing people out of boredom, ruling a shadow corporate agency, and hunting his heroic nemesis. He likes to cripple laboratory assistants, ruin careers for very slight (or imaginary) reasons, and starve houseplants. On purpose. Now, the comic's hero has an obsessive compulsion to kill cats and cripple noisy children, but still...
• Rick and Morty (Oni): Rick's old drinking buddy has been dethroned and imprisoned by the new queen that Rick told him not to marry. Rick risks not only his own life but Morty’s as well^note (the aliens on this planet are very germ-phobic and he's inoculated Morty with dozens of infectious diseases to sneak by them) just to deliver a letter to the king telling him that he told him so.
• In The Sandman (1989), Desire of the Endless still finds time to destroy the lives of completely random mortals. For example:
  "You see that lady in red? Over there? Go and talk to her, have a passionate weekend during which both of you make love until you're sore and bleeding. Then, without knowing why, refuse to see her again. She'll phone you up, and hang around your house. When you ask her to leave you alone she'll just cry and not say anything — look at you with hurt eyes and follow you around. Eventually, this will make you so angry you'll find yourself needing desperately to make her say something. To make her react. To hurt her. To get her eyes out of your mind. After that, it will be just a matter of time."
• Scott Pilgrim: The League of Evil Exes, who were all romantic partners of Ramona Flowers at one point. They attack any guy who shows an interest in Ramona to control her love life. the League's founder and leader, Gideon Graves, is probably the worst of them, as shown in his Motive Rant; He already had 6 past girlfriends whom he put into stasis, wanting Ramona to be the seventh. When Ramona left him, he went on a bender and posted a drunken rant on Craig's List. He was legitimately surprised when he got replies, but that didn't stop him. Subverted in the anime, all the exes get Adaptational Sympathy with the show fairly pointing out as unhinged and petulant as they are, they exes are still people who were heartbroken by Ramona — who has to concede that she was a poor girlfriend and selfishly cruel to a bunch of people who opened their hearts to her.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Various incarnations of Dr. Robotnik/Eggman across different continuities indulge in this; despite their much loftier ambitions, they just can't resist indulging in unnecessarily cruel and petty acts just because they can.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) incarnation of Eggman is among the most blatant examples, both before and after the Cosmic Retcon:
    • He once listened to Mina Mongoose's songs on the radio and ended up so annoyed by her music that not only did he have his mooks destroy all of her memorabilia and jam the airwaves in his territories so no one could listen to her in them, but personally hired Nack the Weasel to assassinate her. All because he couldn't get one particular song out of his head.
    • Most damning of all is the ending of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide. The Cosmic Retcon, and the residual chaos energy of the Super Genesis Wave shattering Mobius, could have been prevented had Eggman not deliberately interfered with Sonic's Chaos Control restoration attempt out of spite; as far as he was concerned, if he couldn't have the universe his way, then he wouldn't let Sonic have it at all.
    • During the Shattered World Crisis, which again is entirely Eggman's fault to begin with, he actively interferes with the Freedom Fighters' attempts to repair Mobius, purely because he wants the planet to be put back together on his terms, not theirs.
    • The original prime version of Robotnik was also revealed to have an emergency program installed that, should he ever come to a point that he knew Sonic and the Freedom Fighters would definitely overthrow him, it would activate all his resources to destroy the entire planet in essentially a genocidal Rage Quit.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) version isn't much better:
    • In issue 18, he chooses to attack Cream's hometown specifically not because of any strategic merits, but simply to Kick the Dog because Sonic often passes through and some of his friends live there.
    • In issues 31 and 32, he whips up a Humongous Mecha and attacks Spiral Hill Village in the middle of the gang throwing a party to celebrate the destruction of the Metal Virus. Even when Sonic returns and helps them fight it off, Eggman decides he still wins because he crashed and ruined their party.
  • Sonic the Comic: During his time as the Emperor Scientist of Mobius, Dr. Robotnik was prone to such things as having his Mecha-Mooks attack areas of the planet he already owns just to prove that he could.
• Tintin: "Flight 714" has the villains acting like this. When Lazlo Carreidas sneezes off his hat Allan kicks it round and finally jams it over Haddock's head so he can't see. Carreidas also has a very life-long list of petty little crimes done amongst his more standard ones as a Corrupt Corporate Executive, and has a sophisticated Spy Cam set-up in his private jet that he uses solely to beat people at Battleship.
• Getaway from The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye is not only convinced he's worthy to be Prime, but also hideously insecure and reacts to even minor slights with utter rage. At one point he throws a horrific temper tantrum and smashes up his office because someone didn't answer his call. Later he tries to murder Riptide because the latter insulted his intelligence and when his Dragon complains about how needlessly cruel he's acting, Getaway responds by forcing the poor guy to kill an innocent person for no other reason than to put him in his place. Thunderclash manages to piss him off just by existing, as Getaway is almost self-righteously jealous of him and makes every excuse to hurt Thunderclash.
  • In the sibling series, The Transformers: Robots in Disguise (or more accurately the part of the line dubbed Till All Are One), Starscream is like this — as one would expect given that 'Scream's reputation for weasely behavior has been more or less intact for thirty years. He's self-aware about it, at least.
    Elita One: Starscream, we're reading a large number of ships off our bow. Do you really want to waste time and resources you don't have fighting your friends?
    Starscream: I think you underestimate the depth of my pettiness.
• In The Umbrella Academy, The Reveal that Vanya always had powers but was brainwashed into forgetting them puts Monocle's already-horrible abuse into a new light. He didn't neglect her because she was a Muggle, but because she was the only child he couldn't control on his own. He had to order Allison to help him subdue Vanya, a sting to his ego he didn't forget for over a decade.
• Watchmen:
  • Edward Blake aka The Comedian along with being an Ax-Crazy sadist and rapist is disgustingly petulant, as seen when he brutally beats up and attempts to assault Sally Jupiter for just scratching his cheek when he was propositioning her. Also when Hooded Justice beats the shit out of him for said attempted rape, the Comedian salty at being defeated insinuates that Hooded Justice is gay, which while judging by HJ’s reaction is correct — is no less pathetically petty.
  • Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias is a subtle showcase of this, overlapping with Not So Above It All. For all his grandiose, well-meaning and opulent motivations and schemes, a good amount of the reasoning behind his Well-Intentioned Extremist actions is actually quite petty. When Veidt first became a superhero after years of training he ran into the Comedian on a case who kicked his ass. This loss left Ozy bitter and massively soured any heroics he did after as he now perceived the day-to-day crimefighting as hollow, aided by the Comedian’s gloating at the Crimebusters meeting that with looming threat of nuclear doomsday Veidt will be “the smartest man on the cinder”. In response to all this, Veidt concocts a plan that will prevent America and Russia going to war by killing three million people in New York and staging it as an alien invasion and as a bonus kills the Comedian personally when he finds out. Yes that’s right, he killed millions of innocent lives to achieve peace partly because one asshole in the past made him look foolishly inadequate and weak as a Science Hero and Self-Made Man.

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