"I am evil - stop laughing!"
Harmless Villains in Video Games.— Veigar, the Tiny Master of Evil, League of Legends
- The Clockwork King in City of Heroes is probably the closest it gets to Harmless Villain. The worst he might do to normal civilians is send his minions to steal a watch and some scrap metal, or make a mechanic work on his robots. He hates heroes, but given that a hero smacked him around so hard that he turned into a brain in a jar, that's probably justified. Turned slightly to the side of good with the Faultline revamp and his protection and assistance of some civilians, although the crazy kinda gets in the way of helping.
- Try as he may, Lancer of Deltarune just is not the evil overlord he thinks he is. He’s incredibly friendly, very prone to Poke the Poodle moments, and is ultimately driven by his desire for friends.
- Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Lideal is Greed's subordinate who threatens Gun, but trips and dies several times before he can even do anything.
- Dragalia Lost has Prince Emile, the sixth scion of Alberia. While razing a sylvan village is very much an evil thing for a person to do, it's also the worst he's ever done, as the rest of his time on-scene involved him seeking revenge against Euden for taking Mercury away from him note and failing along the way. Compared to every other evil in the game - an otherworldly eldritch horror; a Wild Card rogue with no loyalty to any side; the research-obsessed second scion out to cure his own body at any cost; the fifth scion who was locked away for very good reasons; a gathering of ne'er-do-wells who are both immoral and amoral at the same time; the actual seventh scion who serves as their effective leader; and both halves of the Church of Ilia, the Northern Church moreso - and that's just the threats in the main story - it only makes sense that Chelle would leave him in charge of the Dyrenell Empire after Morsayati's defeat, effectively neutering its threat outside of Events so that he doesn't get in the way at an inopportune moment.
- Played for laughs in The Elder Scrolls series. In Oblivion, you fight the very villainous and not-at-all harmless Mythic Dawn Daedric cult, which almost manages to destroy the world. Then, a few centuries later, the Player Character in Skyrim can meet a half-crazed fanboy of the Mythic Dawn who collects their old books and ceremonial garments, runs a Mythic Dawn Museum, and dreams of reviving the cult. He's serious about it but laughably incompetent and absolutely nobody takes him seriously except Mehrunes Dagon, Daedric Prince of Destruction and former patron of the Mythic Dawn, who doesn't really like clueless wannabes exploiting the heritage of his most devoted and successful servants.
- Eternal Eden features a series of Bounty Hunter sidequests which has two unbelievably easy fights. One monster, the Caitsith, only has 1 HP, while the other, Odin, only has 10. Both die within a single hit.
- Fallen London: In just about any other setting, a series of highly like-minded Ax-Crazy Psycho Knife Nuts who like to hide in snowmen to ambush people and just generally love to slash throats and cut people up would be a very dangerous sort. In a setting where Death Is Cheap even to the poorest commoner (to the point some Londoners murder each other for fun), and Slashed Throat victims can get up minutes after he's left, Jack of Smiles, formerly known as Jack the Ripper, isn't given anything even close to respect.
- Similar to Murray, the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues has The Toaster, an Omnicidal Maniac obsessed with burning the world. He is limited in his evil quest by being a talking toaster (and that alas, unbeknownst to him, the world has already burned. He gets very upset if you happen to point this out). About the worst he can do, should you not suffer an attack of stupid and stick your hand into his bread slot, is threaten to set you on fire. He is a substantial danger to other toasters, though - provided you bring them to him.
- Fossil Fighters: The Barebones Brigade from Champions aren't exactly what you'd call menacing. Their eeeeevil plans involve such plots as "Pampering girls so they forget to participate in a tournament," and "Fill the hot springs up with powdered gelatin so people get stuck and can't participate." Zigzagged, in that the latter plan would have worked without the hero's interference. Later plans do take a more direct approach, namely shutting off the power and sinking the island, but even then, the plans in question were designed to cancel the tournament without actually getting anyone hurt.
- Pete, as characterized in Kingdom Hearts, is a bumbling oaf who never inflicts any lasting harm on either the characters or the worlds they fight to save, as opposed to Maleficent, who, in the first game, turned the main character and his best friend against one another and led them all down the path that would separate them and the girl they were fighting over for several years, and was likely responsible for the destruction of several worlds. This is also in contrast to his characterization as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in Mickey's Christmas Carol, nearly two decades earlier, where he laughed diabolically as he unmasked himself and sent Scrooge falling into the fiery pits of hell.
- The tougher Pete is more or less the original concept of Pete, who's often as tough as ever when battling Mickey, Goofy, and others in the comics (even today). He clearly thinks nothing of trying to kill our heroes with swords, guns, clubs, and other weapons, and often is only stopped by dumb luck. Or by Mickey Mouse in rare Badass mode, who, while much smaller than Pete, is a fast and clever (if comedic) fighter.
- Kirby's arch enemy, King Dedede, depending on the game. The most evil deeds the king performed without being possessed by Dark Matter was stealing the stars from the sky and stealing food from Dream Land for the hell of it.
- Veigar in League of Legends is so bad at being an Evil Overlord that he generally ends up providing a net benefit to the people he attempts to oppress, since he may end up overthrowing an actually effective villain or taking out some dangerous predators or blowing up a bandit outpost on his way there just out of orneriness.
- Lonely Wolf Treat: Moxie and her fox friends settle near the rabbit village of Frosting because they want to eat the rabbits that live there. However, they are actually too good-natured to kill anybody, so they mostly just chase the rabbits around to keep up appearances.
- Murray, the Mighty Demonic Skull from Monkey Island. Since Guybrush sort-of-accidentally smashed his body with a cannonball, he's stuck as an immobile skull with a great desire for evil and absolutely no capacity whatsoever to indulge it. He's kinda bitter.
- Okage: Shadow King has Evil King Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, or Stan, the Sealed Evil in a Can who's taken over your shadow. He really likes proclaiming how evil and mighty he is, but with one of his first displays of his terrible might being to rescue a cat stuck in a tree, he is not that good at it. Especially with how a bunch of Fake Evil Kings have stolen his power while he was sealed away.
- This became a trend in later Pokémon generations:
- Pokémon Sun and Moon: Team Skull are a bunch of island challenge dropouts who are out to make things more difficult for people doing their island challenges to make themselves feel better about it. Their leader's desire to be seen as a capable trainer despite his failings results in the team getting used as pawns by a much more threatening antagonist, however.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield: Team Yell are the Pokémon universe equivalent of Football Hooligans, basically a bunch of overenthusiastic fanboys for one of your rivals, Marnie, assembled by her older brother to interfere with the gym challenges of other people on her behalf.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Team Star are a group of delinquents enrolled in the school the player attends. They mostly just sit holed up in their makeshift fortresses far away from civilization and only poke their heads out to try and coerce other students into joining. The only reason you fight them is because the mysterious Voice with an Internet Connection who hacked your phone is paying you to do it. The voice claims they're horrible monsters who need to be taken out for the good of society, but you never see any evidence of this. The voice belongs to the team leader, and her real reason for hiring you to take out the team is because sitting holed up in their fortresses all the time instead of attending class is about to get them expelled, and she doesn't want to see that happen to her friends. Not to mention, they were bullied themselves but became just as bad as their bullies after forming Team Star but you find out that that was exaggerated by the former deputy director..
- Wheatley in Portal 2, when he becomes evil after being plugged into the mainframe of Aperture Science. He does pose a genuine and intentional threat...briefly, twice. The rest of the time he's dangerous not from menace but sheer idiocy, his complete incompetence at controlling Aperture Science threatening to destroy the facility in a nuclear meltdown. It turns out he has a reason for being such an ineffective villain: Aperture literally designed him to be stupid so that they could attach him to GLaDOS to keep her from becoming dangerous.
- The Defective Turrets also qualify. They sound very enthusiastic about killing you, but unfortunately for them, they don't have any bullets.
- Mostly due to a serious De-power, Princess C Onnect Redive's Ilya, once a powerful and dangerous vampire who once led massive armies against the kingdoms (supposedly), is basically a nigh powerless little girl with a few ineffective (and not particularly villainous) followers, who counts the heroic protagonist and the Gourmet Guild he is part of as friends. According to one loading screen, she's trying to start a Chain of Deals with a piece of straw and finishing with world conquest.
- Scary Robber Home Clash: Felix and Lester are so stupid and pathetic that they make Harry and Marv from Home Alone look competent. Never Trust a Title is in play since even if they do catch you, they just dangle you by the legs and say they are going to keep you locked up all Summer while they take over your house. This means that your life was never at risk.
- Mysterio, the Spider-Man 2 game version. Sure, he's got like a million robots and can successfully kill people from time to time, but man, what a friggin' loser. And he's got a glass jaw.
- Specimen 1 in Spookys Jumpscare Mansion is a cardboard cutout that will jump out from the wall and jumpscare the player. That’s it. Despite this, according to its CAT-DOS entry it has managed to kill a grand total of 4 people via heart-attack — 4 people who were presumably so unhealthy that a Jump Scare would do them in since its entry also makes a point of describing it as "ineffective against healthy subjects".
- In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Donny Vermillion likes to fancy himself as the face of Emperor Mengsk's unstoppable Propaganda Machine. In truth, he's laughably incompetent at his job; the fact that his star reporter either isn't in on the plan or actually likes Raynor doesn't help. Supposedly, the media is a major weapon for Mengsk, so it's possible Raynor only watches Donny's show because the others are actually good at it. Any efficacy he had in the role is shot in the wake of "Media Blitz", where he learns that Mengsk used the Zerg to destroy Tarsonis and Donny's brother was among the casualties, resulting in Vermillion having a mental breakdown and committed to an asylum. He later returns in the comic "Nature of the Beast" disgraced and jobless as a result of Arcturus' death in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and the events of the comic series saw him eventually deciding to moving away from solely championing Arcturus.
- Duc de Puce, a.k.a. "The Rat", from the Stronghold series. Too Dumb to Live, General Failure, Minion with an F in Evil, Small Name, Big Ego. He's more of an entertainer than a real antagonist.
- Super Mario Bros.: Mario's rival, Wario, in the Mario Sports games, as well as his partner Waluigi. They mostly just act like jerks while trying to ruin Mario's day. Wario was considerably more threatening — downright scary, even — in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's story mode, though still comical.
- While Touhou Project "villains" aren't exactly the ambitious sort, and their plots, if any, are silly at best (with the notable exceptions of Tenshi and Utsuho), they are legitimately powerful and highly menacing when they want to be. The Three Mischievous Fairies, however, don't seem to realise that they are dead last in the hierarchy of Gensoukyou, with even the mostly powerless humans dismissing them, and their laughably harmless schemes fail far more often than they succeed.
- Being the flesh-eating youkai of darkness, Rumia is one of the few unambiguously dangerous characters to encounter for an ordinary human... if not for the fact that her darkness-inducing powers also backfire, leading to her blindly smashing into trees before she can catch any prey. Printed material also reveals
that Rumia sees her human-hunting antics more as an obligation, and is all too lazy to put more than bare minimum effort into it.
- Being the flesh-eating youkai of darkness, Rumia is one of the few unambiguously dangerous characters to encounter for an ordinary human... if not for the fact that her darkness-inducing powers also backfire, leading to her blindly smashing into trees before she can catch any prey. Printed material also reveals
- Zed from Wild ARMs. The worst thing he does is get into fights with the heroes and lose, badly. Because of this nobody takes him seriously as a threat, with the heroes treating him as an annoyance and the villains sending him out as little more than something to distract them. At the very end, he meets a blind girl and switches sides, realizing he'll be much happier protecting her than being his fellow demons' Butt-Monkey.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: When the player first meets them, Zeke and Pandoria definitely come across as this. Due to their Large Ham tendencies and pathetic attempts to try to capture The Aegis, the gang immediately dismisses them as nobodies and try their best to ignore then whenever they cross paths. They even accidentally defeat themselves during their first two encounters with the gang. A far cry from the likes of Mòrag and Brighid, who are treated as serious threats from the start and act the part. Despite this, Zeke and Pandoria make for a surprisingly powerful duo when they get serious, to the point Mòrag compliments and respects their strength, and prove to be incredibly helpful allies once they join the gang.
- Zniw Adventure: Due to the Nobody Can Die nature of the game, Zniw sometimes runs into dinosaurs that probably would attack her, but they decide not to.
- The sleeping Deinosuchus wakes up and gets angry every time Zniw tries to do Palate Propping to it, but the Deinosuchus just spits out whatever is in its mouth and goes back to sleep.
- Some Troodon threaten to eat or attack Zniw, but they never do anything more than make threats and throw a pebble at her.
