Hate Sink / Literature

"[Simon] Legree is introduced not for the sake of vilifying masters as a class, but for the sake of bringing to the minds of honourable Southern men, who are masters, a very important feature in the system of slavery, upon which, perhaps, they have never reflected. It is this: that no Southern law requires any test of CHARACTER from the man to whom the absolute power of master is granted".

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (can be found here)

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Hate Sinks in Literature.

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Sub-pages

• The Bible
• Harry Potter
• Sword Art Online

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• Nineteen Eighty-Four:
  • In-Universe example. Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood, actually has two minutes of each day devoted to members of the Party unleashing their fury on him. It's heavily implied that Goldstein doesn't even physically exist, but was instead fabricated by the highest echelons of the Party with the specific purpose of becoming a Hate Sink for its lower-ranking members (thus allowing them to direct their pent-up frustrations about their terrible living conditions away from the Party itself). O'Brien even admits to having authored part of "The Book", which is essentially Goldstein's manifesto, himself.
  • O'Brien is this for the readers. There is really no redeeming quality about him and his entire motivation is power for the sake of power.
• Acid Row: Fay Baldwin isn't a villain per se, but she's intentionally written to be a thoroughly unlikable woman who plays a central role in triggering the riot, mostly because of her own spite and stupidity. She looks down her nose on everyone, though especially her patients; while she occasionally makes good points, she goes about it in such a judgemental, patronising way she just ends up annoying or offending people. Fay ultimately cares more about proving herself right than the well-being of her patients. She also tends to take out her frustration over never having a long-term relationship and children on some of her patients, which much of the time manifests as blatant slut-shaming and misogyny.
• Akuyaku Reijou No Nakano Hito (aka The One Within The Villainess) has Pina, the Star Maiden and game protagonist. Or, rather, Rina, the transmigrator who reincarnated in Pina's body. Despite claiming she's only "making the story go the way it's supposed to," she's selfish, spoiled, spiteful, and manipulative, only caring about sleeping with as many boys as possible (much to the real Pina's horror, as she's trapped within her body and unable to do anything to stop her body being used like this), bankrupting the national treasury demanding lavish gifts, and horribly ruining the lives of anyone she can't control. Flashbacks reveal she was like this even before coming into the game's world, having been expelled for her persistently vicious and nasty treatment of classmates.
• The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes:
  • Laurie, Abby's mother's old friend from college, is an obnoxious and self-righteous Holier Than Thou Straw Vegetarian who criticizes and berates the Hayes family for not eating organic food at every single opportunity, even though they're letting her and her daughter stay at their house for free. Her Establishing Character Moment is turning her nose up at the special lasagna and cherry cobbler (formerly her favorite foods) that Abby's mother made to welcome her because they're unhealthy. She also forces Abby to babysit her bratty and out-of-control daughter Wynter for several hours every day while not bothering to pay her a cent, despite having more than enough money to do so. It is very satisfying when Abby's parents finally find out about her making Abby babysit Wynter for free and put their foot down, telling her it's not acceptable. (Oh, and how did they find out Laurie was doing this? Because she screamed at Abby when she found chocolate bars in Wynter's sleeping bag, accusing her of "betraying an innocent child's trust" and "giving her lifelong scars".)
  • Victoria, the rude, snotty Alpha Bitch in Abby's grade who makes Brianna look tolerable. Even though Brianna does almost nothing but brag about herself, she doesn't go out of her way to bully others like Victoria.
  • Ms. Lee, a one-shot substitute teacher who hates children and constantly yells at Abby's fifth-grade class for supposed infractions. When taking roll, the first thing she does is mutter, "Why don't children have normal names anymore?", and when Hannah asks Abby for a pencil before a test, Ms. Lee's reaction is to yell at them and threaten to give them both zeroes if they don't be quiet.
• American Psycho:
  • Patrick Bateman, a soulless corporatist who butchers people for both fun and to vent his own superiority complex. Even if he isn't actually killing anybody, he's still a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic asshole who enjoys fantasizing about it. A rare example of a Hate Sink being the main character and narrator of the story.
  • Patrick's coworkers aren't much better, given that they spend their entire pagetime talking about superficial nonsense while spewing sexist remarks.
• Imperial Radch:
  • Ancillary Justice has Seivarden Vendaai fill this role in the first part, before the main villain is introduced. She's from a rich noble family, treats everyone else like they're dirt under her feet, and when, at the start of the novel, she has lost everything and has to be rescued by Breq, she's still insufferably arrogant and refuses to do any work at all, until Breq makes it clear she won't tolerate this behavior. After Breq saves her life by jumping down a bridge from which Seivarden has fallen out of sheer stupidity, and breaks all the bones in her own body just to save Seivarden, Seivarden gets a bit more tolerable. The reader doesn't so much want to see Seivarden fail (at this point, Seivarden does not have any goals, unless you count the next drug dose as such) as she just wants Breq to get rid of her and continue her journey alone. Later in the trilogy, however, Seivarden does become both more useful and a more likeable character, and even manages to kick the habit; although she's still very much a flawed person, she is at least aware of this and seems to be working on it.
  • Raughd Denche in Ancillary Sword. It says something that her public persona is a smug, bullying Alpha Bitch, and that's her best self; she is later revealed to also be abusive to her romantic partner and totally indifferent to any suffering caused by her actions.
    Tisarwat: Raughd Denche. Raughd. Denche. Is a horrible person.
• K. A. Applegate all-but-admitted in a 1997 FAQ that she wrote Sixth Ranger David of Animorphs to be this kind of character, describing him in a post-book FAQ as a "weak, rotten human being◊". The problem with this example as compared to most other characters of this type is that David is a child of 12 who loses his family in a single night and suddenly finds himself surrounded by strangers who don't seem to care about him or even like him very much. He commits one of the darkest acts in a series full of them, but when you're talking about a series where one of the main heroes orders the execution of over ten thousand helpless sentient beings, it's hard for some to hate him as strongly as the other examples on this list.
• Arc of a Scythe:
  • Among the New Order Scythes introduced in Thunderhead, Scythe Brahms is the most unlikable. He's a slimy, lazy, cowardly Scythe who kidnaps and psychologically tortures his gleaning targets by playing Brahms' Lullaby before gleaning them. When Rowan targets him and tries to force him to change his ways he instead goes on to be worse. He throws his lot in with Scythe Rand and aids her in her plan to try and kill Scythes Anastasia and Curie in order to make Goddard the MidMerican High Blade. He gleans Rowan's father, forcing his whole family to listen to the Lullaby and it's clear that he will continue to glean his family. He lures Rowan into a trap so Rand and Goddard can get their revenge on him by executing him in front of the World Scythe Counsel. This is all in tandem with him being a Jerkass who lets his dog crap on his neighbor's lawn and tries to solicit Rand for sex under the pretense of comforting her over Goddard rejecting her.
  • Scythe Goddard slowly devolves into this as he commits more and more atrocities under the hypocritical guise of helping the Scythedom. His revival and rise to Overblade of North Merica only make him less likable, losing the charm he had in the first book and making him even more smug, petty, and cruel. His backstory doesn't make things any better, he murdered his parents and destroyed two space colonies because they made the Scythedom useless and he wanted power within the Scythedom.
• Bazil Broketail:
  • Glaves has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, he's just an utterly selfish, cowardly asshole.
  • In the short time we get to know Dook prior to his death, there is nothing remotely likable about him. He's just a greedy man catching dragons to sell, who he knows are likely to get eaten.
  • Penbar is a crazy fanatic who executes people for having any ideas of their own or willingness to have some joy and fun in their lives. That's all that can be said about him.
• The Beginning After the End: Part of the reason the novel is Darker and Edgier than most Isekai works is that it is known for having some extremely hateable antagonists. Not only do these antagonists tend to commit very reprehensible actions and atrocities without any remorse, but oftentimes they are near-untouchable by the protagonists, even in a direct confrontation as they are way above them in the power scale.
  • From the moment he was introduced, Lucas Wykes was always a haughty and arrogant Jerkass prone to underhanded tactics. His actions in the Dire Tombs led to a near-complete Total Party Kill, he hired mercenaries to kill the survivors in order to cover up his actions, and thanks to his corrupt family's influence he was let off almost scot-free for his actions with his only penalty being the loss of his adventurer's license. If that were not enough, Lucas would continue to torment Arthur in their time in Xyrus Academy even though Arthur took extensive precautions to prevent Lucas from recognizing him. His vileness reaches its nadir during the attack on the academy, in which Lucas ends up massacring several students and faculty all out of his petty desire to get back at Arthur, on top of threatening to desecrate the incapacitated Tessia to his face. Little wonder that Arthur decides to stop holding back and use the full extent of his powers to give Lucas a graphic yet well-deserved death for having eluded justice for so long.
  • Where to begin with Jasmine's father, Trodius Flamesworth? For starters, he was an Abusive Parent who controlled his family's lives and reputation with a near-draconian grip. When Jasmine failed to manifest any fire magic, he had her sent away viewing her as a failure. However, it is only once the War Arc begins that Trodius engages in some truly reprehensible actions. Namely, in spite of presenting himself as a figure of authority, Trodius begins acting like a Dirty Coward in that he sequesters his house and their associates in the Wall to avoid the fighting. Not only that, but he also turns out to be a General Failure who carelessly sends the troops under his command to their deaths. In fact, his refusal to drop the Wall on the horde of Alacryan mana beasts leads to the death of Arthur's father Reynolds. If that was not enough, even though Arthur has Trodius imprisoned for his failures in the aftermath, he gets released by the Alacryans after the war and becomes a collaborator to them, willing to sell out his own people to save his own skin.
  • Uto. His introduction has him inflicting a Cruel and Unusual Death upon the Lance Alea Triscan wherein he graphically mutilates her, severing her limbs and blinding her before slaughtering her helpless soldiers. Uto is an unabashed Sadist who is only in it For the Evulz and revels in the suffering he inflicts upon others. Arthur, who discovered the dying Alea and bore witness to her fate, naturally takes it very personally when Uto shows up again at the start of the War Arc. Even though Arthur has succeeded Alea as a Lance at that point, he is still barely able to hold his own against Uto when they come to blows, and it is only thanks to the intervention of Scythe Seris Vritra that Arthur gets to live to see another day.
  • Cadell Vritra. The very first member of the Vritra Clan to appear in the novel, Cadell is responsible for the death of Arthur's Parental Substitute and surrogate grandmother Sylvia, an act that would traumatize the young Arthur. At the end of the War Arc, he reappears leading the Alacryan forces in the taking of the Council Castle, forcing the Dicathians into hiding. In the aftermath, Cadell executes the entire Council by impaling them on spikes to Make an Example of Them. All this time, Cadell is an Invincible Villain due to being the strongest of the Scythes, as well as being a Sadist who enjoys inflicting Cold-Blooded Torture upon his victims. Suffice to say, after Arthur Came Back Strong, his rematch with Cadell during the Victoriad proves to be a cathartic moment as he finally makes Agrona's right-hand pay for all the suffering he inflicted upon him by burning him alive in front of all of Alacrya.
  • The Big Bad of the novel, Agrona Vritra. For starters, he invades Arthur's homeland of Dicathen and conquers it, in the process causing the deaths of many of Arthur's loved ones. Not only that, but it turns out he was responsible for the reincarnation of not only Arthur, but also his childhood friends Nico and Cecilia whom he had Reforged into a Minion through Mind Rape. In the case of the latter, he even had Arthur's Love Interest Tessia captured to act as Cecilia's vessel. Not to mention, but Arthur has been almost powerless to stop him as Agrona is an Invincible Villain whose plans have almost always gone the way he wanted, on top of being an Asura which puts him above Arthur in terms of raw power.
  • Speaking of Agrona, let's not forget his opposite and the one responsible for his Start of Darkness, Kezess Indrath. Despite appearing to be an aloof but well-intentioned ruler bent on preserving order in the world, Kezess is a callous Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who hides behind the excuse of The Needs of the Many to cover up his own pettiness and desire to maintain his rule, only to come off as a massive hypocrite in the process. He committed genocide upon the ancestors of Arthur's family, ordered the destruction of Arthur and Tessia's childhood home, and attempted to purge much of Arthur's remaining friends and family in Dicathen for slighting his pride. All the while, Kezess is wholly unrepentant of his actions and fails to show any sort of empathy with those caught up in the fallout.
  • In turn, Windsom. As Kezess's Mouth of Sauron, Windsom is little more than a carbon copy of his master and an outright Yes-Man to him. What really makes him despicable is the fact that his internal monologues reveal just how little he cares about the lessers, bordering on outright Humans Are Insects territory. He accompanies Taci when Kezess sends the latter down to exterminate the Dicathian resistance to declare to them that they have outlived their usefulness to his master, and later on when Aldir defects Windsom brings a group of Asuran soldiers that Aldir had trained in the past to apprehend him, forcing him to slaughter them. When Arthur confronts Windsom about the various atrocities he has been complicit in, Windsom shows no remorse.
• Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies has a host of antagonists, yet most are portrayed as too complex to be considered truly despicable. The one character who has absolutely no redeeming factors is Renata's sycophantic elitist friend Harper. Harper attempts to turn the whole school against one of the main characters and her son for supposedly attacking Renata's daughter, despite not having a single scrap of evidence. She obviously believes that she'll come across as a crusader for justice, but ultimately she just seems like a drama-hungry shrew.
• Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World: Tokinada, the Big Bad, is purposefully written to be as despicably evil as possible. He's the only Bleach villain to be a Card-Carrying Villain, and his every action is done because It Amused Me. He may attempt to justify it by saying he's correcting a mistake from Soul Society's past, but everyone knows better, including him.
• Blood Meridian: Although pretty much all of the main characters are some of the worst people you can imagine, "White" Jackson stands out because his one and only character trait is that he's extremely racist, and while many of the other members of Glanton's Gang are racist themselves (they have been hired to kill indigenous people, after all), none are as petty about it as he is, and pretty much all of his pagetime is him complaining about having to work with the African American member of the gang, "Black" Jackson. Because of his bad attitude, when he's decapitated by Black Jackson early on in the gang's journey for mouthing off one too many times, nobody objects.
• Bravelands:
  • An Olive Baboon named Stinger (Formerly known as "Seed") is very popular at his introduction. He was well-liked by fans and characters In-Universe. However, fans develop an intense dislike for Stinger after Thorn Middleleaf (One of the protagonists) discovers that he assassinated their former leader Bark Crownleaf in order to usurp her. When Thorn confronts Stinger on his findings, Stinger threatens to end the former's life if he stands in his way. Stinger is true to his words when he turns lion cub, Fearless Gallantpride against Thorn by scapegoating Thorn for his (Stinger's actions). Fearless buys into Stinger's deception and would've killed Thorn had Sky Strider not intervened. After Sky and Loyal unsuccessfully attempt to convince Fearless that he's fighting on the wrong side, Fearless returns to Baboon Island in order to warn Stinger about Loyal and Sky, however Stinger's true colors become apparent to Fearless when he finds that he took Nut as prisoner and mistreated the latter while he was in the troop's captivity. However, it's only after Stinger reveals that he killed Snarl Fearlesspride and confirms Loyal and Sky's revelations that he (Stinger) is in league with Titan (another primary antagonist of the book series) that Fearless realizes in shock that it was Stinger who had betrayed him and Brightforest Troop not Thorn. Fearless subsequently disowns Stinger and storms off to reconcile with Thorn. Near the end of Blood and Bone Stinger is finally defeated, when Sky Strider tosses him into the lake Baboon Island is located on where the Baboon is subsequently torn apart by crocodiles. Both fans and Bravelands characters rejoice at Stinger's downfall and agree that Stinger Crownleaf got was he deserved.
  • Titan Tiatanpride is introduced at the beginning of Broken Pride as a major villain in the first arc. He kills Fearless's father, Gallant by allowing his cronies to assist him when it becomes clear that Titan can't beat Gallant in a one-on-one match. He then sends Cunning after Fearless and Valor to eliminate Gallant's heirs. Fearless manages to escape, but his sister is captured and taken into the newly formed Titanpride as a prisoner. Titan was a power-hungry lion who was brutish, arrogant, and dishonorable. He is subsequently killed in the final book of the first arc.
• The Camp Half-Blood Series:
  • Gabe Ugliano from Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Wicked Stepfather of Percy. He's implied to have abused his wife Sally and is shown to be abusive towards 12-year-old Percy. Pretty much his only positive quality is that he accidentally saved Percy from monsters by smelling so bad they wouldn't go near him. By the end of the first book, Sally uses Medusa's head to turn him to stone and sell him as a statue.
  • The Heroes of Olympus has Octavian, a descendant of Apollo and the augur at Camp Jupiter who also happens to be ambitious and power-hungry enough to do anything to become praetor, whether that's going behind Renya's back to usurp leadership, recruiting criminals and dangerous monsters to his side, or being willing to betray and kill his fellow Romans^note It's heavily implied he was the one who killed Gwen. He also hates Greek demigods to the point of wanting to go to war with them, and finally tries to destroy Camp Half-Blood and Gaea with onagers so he can claim the glory for it without having to do any work. When his clothes get snagged on the ammunition, causing him to accidentally launch himself and get killed along with Gaia, nobody mourns his death at all, and even his bodyguard doesn't bother to warn him about his snagged toga.
• Carrie: In the original book, we got Chris Hargensen and Billy Nolan; Chris is the sociopathic Alpha Bitch in her school, who holds a personal grudge towards Carrie for getting her suspended when she was punished for bullying her; Billy is Chris' abusive boyfriend and a violent thug who gets in on Chris' scheme to humiliate Carrie. Out of Carrie's subsequent victims, these two had it coming the most (aside from Margaret White). Ironically, Tommy and Sue, who actually cared about Carrie, receive more blame for Carrie's killing spree than either Chris and Billy.
• In The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, Marcy's father is a terrible husband who constantly fights with his wife Lily to the point where she appears to be taking drugs to cope and is abusive to his two children, calling his teenage daughter fat, stupid, and ugly (leaving her with severe self-esteem issues as a result), and harshly scolding his four-year-old son for sucking his thumb and playing with his teddy bear. It's quickly obvious to the reader that he doesn't even like, let alone love his family. Especially when Marcy tries to get her family to sit around the dinner table and discuss things like a normal family, her father's response is, "I work hard all day for this family, I don't have to talk to all of you too, do I?" as if talking to his wife and children without screaming at them is a strenuous chore. He also uses Marcy as a scapegoat for nearly everything that goes wrong in his life, including Lily spending less time with him and more with their children, his fighting with Lily that he always initiates, and Marcy's attempt to initiate a simple family discussion going horribly wrong. One has to wonder why he decided to get married and have children in the first place if he hates having a family so much, outside of a possible Shotgun Wedding. From start to finish, he has zero redeeming qualities and it's obvious that he's meant to be despised by the reader more than any other character. The only good thing that can be said about him is that by the end of the book, he's been convinced to more-or-less leave Marcy alone and has achieved an uneasy peace with her, but he's still far from being any kind of family man. The ending shows Lily is starting to stand up to him and making a life for herself, foreshadowing the possibility she may hopefully leave him and take Marcy and Stuart with her.
• While some Chris Crutcher novels have outright villains and others don't, a consistent presence in all of them is a Hate Sink character, typically taking the form of a smothering, close-minded authority figure who restricts the personal freedoms of the teenage protagonists in some manner. Examples include the Smug Snake assistant principal in Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes who deliberately engineers conflicts between students he doesn't like so he can punish them both, the jingoistic, hypocritical history teacher in Deadline, and the heroine's authoritarian, uncaring adoptive father in Losers Bracket who wishes to completely isolate her from her biological family.
• Cthulhu Mythos: While most Eldritch Abominations are too alien to be hateful, the same cannot be said for these despicable Gods of Evil.
  • Nyarlathotep is the most vile Outer God in Lovecraftian lore for being an eldritch sadist who enjoys his time driving mortals and civilizations to madness and ruin. If he isn't busy with his cosmic crimes, he's not above being a petty bully to lesser beings.
  • The Defiler/Y'golonac is one of the few of his kind that can be regarded as truly evil, being a cosmic Serial Rapist and Serial Killer that has absolutely no problems with defiling and murdering anyone he gets his hands on.
• In Deadhouse Gates, the second book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Chain of Dogs (a massive host of refugees marching across the continent) is constantly being attacked by enemy armies, but our viewpoint character for these sections of the story never gets more than a few glimpses of the enemy leaders. Without a face or personality to put to them, it's hard to dislike the armies of the Apocalypse on a personal level. Instead, we're invited to vent our loathing upon a group of whiny nobles within the Chain of Dogs, who protest the commander's actions at every turn, are openly cruel to their servants, and get a lot of their fellow refugees killed through incompetence.
• Dragon Bones has high king Jakoven. The heroes never meet him in person, but we get to see how he regularly appoints men to become Queen Tehedra's lovers, then kills them for petty reasons, are told that he sleeps with young males, who may be underage, and took a fifteen-year-old boy, whose parents were killed by his soldiers, to his bed. The man, now thirty, secretly detests him. Oh, and one of the Queen's lovers he kills is a cousin of the protagonist. He also refuses to send soldiers to defend one of the countries under his rule, in the cold-blooded tactical plan to take care of the invasion/bandit problem only when it starts to get closer to his home. The actual villain, i.e. the one who needs to be fought by the heroes, is a rather cool Smug Snake, and not nearly as hateable as king Jakoven.
• The Dresden Files has Detective Jerome Rudolph. While initially portrayed as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold during his time in the Special Investigations unit, Rudolph became a ladder-climbing Obstructive Bureaucrat after being moved to Internal Affairs. Blaming SI for holding back his career, he harasses Detective Murphy every chance he gets, attempting to have her kicked off of the police force, eventually succeeding in Changes, despite having his life saved by Murphy and Harry Dresden at least twice. He is also shown to be far richer than someone in his career would be expected to be, and it is hinted that he is taking bribes from someone. Even after getting Murphy kicked from the force, he continues to hound Murphy and Harry in hopes of getting them arrested. He reached his most loathsome in Battle Ground (2020), where his suspicion of Harry and his nonexistent trigger discipline resulted in him fatally shooting Murphy. While the series has no shortage of more evil villains, you will be hard-pressed to find any other Dresden Files character anywhere near as despised.
• Ephemeral Prince has Rizec, who performs several vile actions such as destroying the original Sabine out of spite for its rulers, ordering Zuan to trick Soan into eating Xiri, subjugating the demons, setting a trap for Snowe's party, and killing Hiante. The first two actions resulted in the Starts Of Darkness of all the prequel's villains and indirectly caused most of the problems in the series. He feels no remorse for his misdeeds, to the point where he gloats about how he spared the rulers of Sabine in order to make them suffer more and how he could potentially force Xiri to kill his own home.
• Even Though I'm a Former Noble and Single Mother:
  • Alice Ragdoll, maiden name Alice Earlgrey, is the biological younger sister of the titular character, Shirley Earlgrey. Since they were both children, Alice, with her family's sanction, absolutely brutalized her elder sister, knowing Shirley was expressly forbidden from fighting back. Not content with that, she schemed to steal Albert, the crown prince, away from Shirley, and succeeded, by falsely accusing Shirley of many things, including Shirley brutalizing her when both were children, as opposed to the other way around, and tempting Albert into an adulterous tryst with herself. Alice is also entirely unfaithful to Albert, having so many men share her marital bed, that her bedroom might as well have a revolving door. She serves as the Freudian Excuse for many villains when it's revealed she used hypnosis magic to warp their minds, after luring them into her bed. She is also a petty, vindictive, entitled parasite who expects the best things in the world, for no effort on her part, and woe if the servants can't get them to her fast enough, even if she changes her whims without notice. When she hears that Albert sired daughters with Shirley and wants to make said daughters his heirs, she agrees to help him take custody, just so she can ship them off to the most physically and morally repulsive nobles she can find, just to spite Shirley for having things she can't.
  • Emperor, former prince, Albert himself is nowhere near as charming as he thinks either. After being betrothed to Shirley for eight years, he accepts, at face value, with no evidence whatsoever, aside from some Crocodile Tears, that Shirley is guilty of a great many crimes, and has her taken to a dungeon to be tortured into confessing them, even though it was utterly impossible for her to commit the crimes in the first place. As he's putting Shirley through a Kangaroo Court, he openly admits that he's butt-hurt that she's a better swordsman, scholar, and mage than himself, even being more popular with the people, due to her charity and kindness. The very instant Shirley is taken away to the dungeons, he marries Alice, the accuser, whom he admits he had an affair with. Ten years after Shirley escaped the dungeon, and the country, he learns she bore twin daughters. Rather than make entreaties to try and make amends, he repeatedly uses mind-control curses on said daughters to try and kidnap them, purely so he can use said daughters as heirs, damn their consent or well-being. Deluding himself into thinking he's done nothing wrong, he drives his people to abysmal poverty, just to slate the desires of his adulterous wife, and refuses to leave Shirley and her daughters alone, bringing his nation to the brink of war, and can't, for the life of him, understand why Shirley and her daughters want nothing to do with him.
• Since there's no real villain in Flight 116 Is Down by Caroline B. Cooney, the audience gets to focus their hatred on Darienne, a selfish passenger who ends up being completely unharmed in the crash. Heidi and Patrick work hard to save the crashed plane's passengers while Darienne stands around doing nothing but complaining and being useless, yet she tries to take credit for saving people at the end. Even Patrick loses his cool when Darienne gets too much to handle.
• Flip-Flop Girl by Katherine Paterson has Vinnie's mother and grandmother. Although they mean well most of the time, they cause most of the problems in the novel by completely neglecting Vinnie in favor of her younger brother Mason because they believe he's been traumatized into becoming mute over the death of his and Vinnie's father (actually, he's faking it because he enjoys the tons of extra attention he gets, which should be obvious to everyone but them). As a result, Vinnie's mother and grandmother don't just neglect her in favor of pampering Mason like a little prince, but seemingly expect her to put up with all the problems in her life without a word of complaint, and are quick to scold or punish her whenever she acts out. Despite her not being that much older than Mason (she's 9, while he's 5) and also going through a rough time (she is dealing with her father's recent death while having trouble adjusting to life at her new house and new school), they seem to expect her to simply handle the situation by herself with the maturity of a much older child. Their incompetence is a major source of frustration for both Vinnie and the reader.
• A Frozen Heart, a tie-in novel to Disney's Frozen, introduces the King of the Southern Isles, the abusive father of Prince Hans. While Hans himself commits actions that are inexcusable in the film, this novel depicts him in a more sympathetic light by comparison. His father is an emotionally abusive and sociopathic tyrant who is feared and widely despised in his entire country for destroying homes and arresting (possibly killing) people for not providing enough favors or criticizing him. He's also shown to be an abusive spouse to his wife, who is left in a fragile state due to years of childbirth. Except for Hans, who decides to become his gofer as a way to escape home for good and harbors little to no loyalty to him, and Lars, who takes pity upon Hans, most of his sons are all heavily loyal to him and do what he asks, though it's implied they act out of fear as he despises any form of compassion or kindness. He exists solely to make Hans look tame in comparison.
• The Girl Next Door: Ruth Chandler is a woman who has taken her nieces Meg and Susan in after their parents died. Believing that all women are whores until proven otherwise, Ruth starts starving and emotionally abusing Meg, escalating to physical when she fights back. Threatening to turn her wrath on Susan if Meg resists, Ruth has her sons lock her in their basement and regularly torture her. As Ruth and her sons convince other neighbourhood kids to join in on the violence, she starts allowing the boys to rape Meg. After a young boy named David tries to stop Ruth, she has him thrown in the basement so she can kill him later, after which he learns that Ruth has been molesting Susan. David escapes, kills Ruth, and alerts the police, but Meg dies of her injuries before paramedics can arrive.
• Quite a lot of what makes Goosebumps scarier to read as an adult is digging deeper into how many of the adults and children exemplify the sins of human nature. But Alexander from Deep Trouble, Tara Webster from The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Mr. Saur from Say Cheese and Die — Again!, Vanessa from Chicken Chicken, Brandon from Headless Halloween, Micah from Revenge R Us, and Conan Barber from Monster Blood II, III and IV are probably the worst examples.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi has Jin Guangshan, leader of the Jin Sect. While nearly all of the other villains have some kind of reason for why they are or are at least entertainingly evil, Jin Guangshan is nothing but a spoiled, hedonistic, womanizing asshole who uses, abuses, and ruins everyone around him at his leisure. It's notable that when his manner of death is uncovered, everyone agrees it was horrible, but nobody actually cares beyond it being proof of how vicious the one who plotted it actually is.
• John Green's novels, being Teen Dramas, don't have true villains, but that's not to say there aren't loathsome people about:
  • An Abundance of Katherines has Colin Lyford (aka "Other Colin" as the hero's name is also Colin), probably the closest thing to an outright villain Green has written. He's the big man on campus in Gutshot, Tennessee and current boyfriend of heroine Lindsey Wells, even though he used to bully her in elementary school. He's also been cheating on her with her best female friend, and gets found out when he's caught doing the do with her in the middle of a graveyard.
  • The Fault in Our Stars has Peter Van Houten, Gus and Hazel's favorite author. When they actually get to meet him, they discover that he's an exceedingly unpleasant drunkard who insults them for having cancer and refuses to tell them any of what they want to know about his book. Unlike the preceding, however, Van Houten gets a Freudian Excuse.
  • Looking for Alaska has Kevin, a Rich Brat student at Culver Creek who makes his entrance by nearly drowning protagonist Miles as Revenge by Proxy against his roommate Chip, whom Miles had only just met that day. An Escalating War between his crowd and the heroes ensues.
  • Paper Towns has Jase Worthington, Chuck Parson, Becca Arrington, and the rest of the popular crowd who betrayed Margo Roth Spiegelman and in doing so kick off the plot.
• His Only Wife: Afi's uncle, Tͻgã Pious. He is petty and a cheapskate, often insisting on the duty the Ganyo family (Afi’s in-laws) has towards him as Afi's "father". But when Afi's actual father did die and she and her mother were evicted from their home, Pious left them out on the street despite having room in his home. Despite that, he quite often talks about himself being like a father to Afi. He is also a neglectful parent to his younger children. He has a flush toilet inside his home but does not allow anybody other than himself to use it. Then he changes his mind and allows the others in the family to use it... for a monthly fee.
• Honor Harrington: Certain members of the political factions opposed to the Queen make rumblings from time to time through the books, but in War of Honor, after they have managed to take control of the government, it really starts to manifest itself. The High Ridge government begins making ill-advised, short-sighted decisions (drawing down the navy since the fighting's stopped, but not rescinding the wartime taxes since the war's still on among others) that nobody, outside of their own political offices, think are a good idea. Over the course of the book, they manage to set themselves at odds with the Queen (though that actually happened in the previous book), completely frustrate the Republic of Haven officials they're supposed to be negotiating with by not really negotiating, completely alienate many of their allies, to the point that there is genuine concern that one of them might jump ship to Haven's side, and present such a weak image of the Star Kingdom that the Andermani emperor thinks it's a prime opportunity to move on territorial ambitions he's had for years. Even the science team they have searching for an additional wormhole terminus feels little more than contempt for them. In addition, they are all high-minded, arrogant, petty individuals who attempt to silence Honor, one of their most vocal critics, by trying to catch her in an infidelity scandal, and bench officers who don't agree with their naval policies. At the end, when all their missteps finally blow up in their faces, Queen Elizabeth III coldly demands their resignation, and they are unceremoniously replaced by a new government with little lament from the populace.
• Paris of Troy in The Iliad is possibly the Ur-Example. Even though the epic tells the story of the Trojan War mainly from the Greeks' point of view, the Trojans generally don't come off as evil, and Hector and Priam are in some ways portrayed more sympathetically than their Greek counterparts Achilles and Agamemnon. Paris, on the other hand, is nothing more than a useless, philandering, cowardly jerk who refuses to take responsibility for causing the whole conflict to begin with. When he duels Menelaus in one book, everyone, Greek and Trojan, hopes Paris will be killed.
• In the Midst of Winter: Frank Leroy, the father of the child Evelyn cares for. He beats his wife, has no love for his disabled son, and cheats on her brazenly with his son's physical therapist. On top of that, he is a Human Trafficker.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? has these two members of the Ishtar familia:
  • Goddess Ishtar herself resents the fact that Goddess Freya is viewed as far more beautiful and elegant than herself. To spite the latter, she frames her for unleashing a bunch of dangerous monsters in the town and sets up shop in the pleasure district to run it like a mafia. She creates a system of forced prostitution, kidnapping both women (to serve as prostitutes) and men (to serve as "clients" against their will). She also traffics in slavery and has her slaves suffer the same fate. Then, for a cheap power-up, she sacrifices the slaves into a deadly ritual, taking and destroying their souls to boost her forces for total war on Freya. Lastly, she has her slaves beaten half-to-death, and rapes them herself, to remove all ability they might have to refuse whatever she might order of them. The last straw is when she has Bell kidnapped and threatened with rape twice.
  • Phryne Jamil is a giant toad-like woman who has deluded herself into thinking she's the most beautiful woman to ever live, even more than both goddesses of beauty. She enjoys beating her fellow familia members half-to-death whether Ishtar orders her to do it or not, and also does the same to whoever crosses her, especially those men who escape her "affection". Said affection consists of kidnapping men either off the street or in the Orario dungeon, dragging them to a torture chamber in the basement of the Ishtar estate, pumping them full of terror and aphrodisiacs, and then torturing them until she gets bored, leaving them a broken, bloody, and permanently impotent mess. She not only happily chains up Haruhime and tries to kill her in a Human Sacrifice ritual, but slaps her around for the tiniest resistance, real or imagined.
• Island Beneath the Sea: Horténse Guizot marries Toulouse Valmorain and spends years trying to conceive a son to usurp her stepson Maurice (she is horrible to him), to no avail because Valmorain is too attached to his son, and because she keeps giving birth to daughters. She is a Mean Boss to all the slaves, whipping Tete and trying to send her off to work in the fields. She pressures Valmorain unsuccessfully into selling Rosette, Tete's 7-year-old daughter and his Child by Rape and much later, instigates Rosette's imprisonment and eventual death.
• It: It is an ancient, vile monster hailing from the Macroverse. Arriving at Derry millennia ago, It awakens every 27 years to feed on Derry's children, salting their flesh with fear. Killing Georgie Denbrough as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, It continuously harasses the Losers Club, including taking sadistic delight in relishing Bill's guilt over his brother's death, and views itself as the supreme being. Even when its views are challenged after its first defeat at the hands of the Losers, It devotes the next 27 years calculating revenge to rectify it. When the Losers defeat It for the final time, It spends its last moments as a Dirty Coward desperately bargaining for its life, revealing It to be just a hollow bully who needs fear to keep itself ticking.
• Charles from Jade Green is a perverted alcoholic who has a thing for teenage girls. The Title Character herself is the one that is actually causing the problems in the book, as she is haunting the house following her demise. It then turns out that Charles was the actual villain, and that Jade Green was trying to protect Judith from him.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries:
  • In Killer Blonde, the more you see of SueEllen Kingsley, the more it becomes clear why someone would want to kill her.
  • Vic Cleveland from Death By Pantyhose was an abusive, blackmailing weasel who treated everyone around him like dirt.
  • Everything Mallory Francis does in Pampered to Death will make the reader want to strangle her themselves before the killer actually does.
• Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge in James and the Giant Peach are both dreadfully abusive towards the title character and have no redeeming qualities. One of the book's most notable moments of Black Comedy comes when they meet a well-deserved Karmic Death consisting of being flattened by the peach that they tried to make money out of.
• The James Bond novel Thunderball has a Hate Sink in Pierre Borraud. He's on SPECTRE's ruling panel as Number 12, but is established as a loathsome man who raped a hostage SPECTRE kidnapped in exchange for money. Thankfully, SPECTRE's head honcho Ernst Stavro Blofeld dealt with his misconduct severely by having him zapped in his chair during the SPECTRE board meeting, sending a warning to the other members that he won't tolerate ill-discipline. In one of his rare Pet the Dog moments, Blofeld even refunds half of the ransom money to the victim's family to compensate for Borraud's devious behavior.
• Et je prendrai tout ce que j'ai à prendre, by Céline Lapertot: Charlotte's father, beneath his loving facade, is in truth a narcissistic pervert who abused his own wife Mathilde so much he turned her into a Broken Bird before the story even starts. Introduced giving Mathilde a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown because he had a bad day at work, he punched his daughter Charlotte and locked her up in the cave because he felt his control over her was slipping. The cave became Charlotte's bedroom for 10 years, during which her father constantly abused her, threatening her into not saying anything to her grandparents in a fatherly tone, beating her up and ripping to shreds one of her books when her grades worsened or forcing Charlotte to watch as he destroyed her old bedroom (that he constantly changed to fit Charlotte's tastes). When Charlotte befriended Guy, her father found out and attempted to rape her when she had shown the slightest bit of defiance.
• Jurassic Park (1990) has Dennis Nedry. He has a reasonable motive for betraying the park (he was overworked, underpaid, and at least in the novel the higher-ups blamed him for the inevitable glitches and bugs that emerge from one guy having to build a complex system from scratch), and in the movie, he's a Laughably Evil Large Ham, but this doesn't make Nedry less of a greedy, selfish, and all-around unpleasant Smug Snake who carelessly puts lives at risk for money, giving us a human antagonist to root against.
• The King Killer Chronicle has Ambrose Jakis. While the ostensible Big Bads of the series are the Chandrian, they remain an enigmatic, looming threat whose motives and identities are major driving mysteries of the series. Ambrose, on the other hand, is a petty, sexist, bullying, smug jackass who goes to every conceivable length imaginable to make The Hero, Kvothe's, life a living hell. The levels of spiteful deeds he engages in range from trying to get Kvothe expelled from school and getting him fired from his job, all the way to poisoning him, torturing him with malfeasance, and ordering a hit on him, all the while hiding behind his wealth and connections to make sure he never gets any permanent comeuppance.
• Loveless: Lloyd, the former president of Pride Soc, who is shown as an aphobic jock-type character. He's also against the inclusion of other so-called "internet orientations" and the expansion of the social activities beyond things that one would associate with the ClubKid lifestyle. He gets his karma when Georgia, after accepting her sexuality, deliberately spills her drink on him when he makes an acephobic remark.
• Madicken by Astrid Lindgren has two examples in the second book of the series.
  • The mayor's wife is a painfully stuck-up Rich Bitch, who believes that she's above everyone else in their small town. She begins a stupid vendetta against Alva, Madicken's family's housemaid. Her husband is also clearly hen-pecked, and she basically forces him to fly with an airplane, despite that it's clear that he's too scared to do it, which causes him to have a Potty Failure out of fright while up in the air.
  • Madicken's school headmaster is hated by all the children because he's so mean and gruff. Not to mention that he's politically incorrect by modern standards, with his rigid views on how girls should behave and his tendency to let rich kids get away with more than poor kids. But he passes the Moral Event Horizon by humiliating and caning a poor girl, who had stolen his wallet. And to make the situation even worse, he does all of this right in front of her classmates. Madicken acknowledges that stealing is wrong, but it's made clear that the punishment was too severe for the crime.
• In the Magic: The Gathering Kamigawa trilogy, Choryu. He is selfish, entitled, arrogant, smug, and cowardly. When he finally gets his, most readers will want to do a little happy dance. Then they either stop when they find out just how horrifying his fate really is, or they dance anyway because he really was just that insufferable.
• Busqueros from The Manuscript Found In Saragossa. Smug and infuriatingly clingy, his unwanted "help" always brings more bad than good (if it brings any good at all), yet he still claims he is indispensable for the viewpoint characters' plans and schemes, and he will not take "no" for an answer.
• Masks of Aygrima: Grute is the only boy in the prison Mara is put into. He acts lecherously towards the girls, nearly raping one of them and taking joy in their discomfort. He later kidnaps Mara, planning on taking her to a slave mine to trade for better treatment. Finally dying while trying to rape Mara, he's a perfect example of the kind of people that have no place even in the Autarch's brainwashed kingdom.
• Matilda has two examples:
  • Matilda's dad Harry is a neglectful and abusive parent. He sells people defective cars in his Honest John's Dealership, openly insults Matilda for reading books, and is working with car thieves.
  • Agatha Trunchbull is a horrible Dean Bitterman who shows sadistic pleasure in hurting people. She abuses the children in such violent ways that adults don't believe them, doing things like throwing a girl by her pigtails, tossing a boy out the window for keeping M&Ms in her mouth, and forcing a boy to eat an entire cake. It's later shown that she had murdered her brother-in-law for his inheritance and adopted his daughter Jennifer Honey. She's shown to be terrible to Miss Honey, having broken her arm in the past, almost drowned her, and forced her to live on a pitiful allowance. While the film version downplays her Hate Sink status by making her more Laughably Evil, she's still entirely loathsome.
• Colin from the Mostly Ghostly book series (which incidentally, is written by R. L. Stine, the same author of the Goosebumps series) is Max's abusive older brother that has a habit of humiliating and injuring him. He crosses the Moral Event Horizon rather quickly when he threatens to feed Max's pet bird to their aggressive dog.
• Nevermoor: There are plenty of villains in the series, but Jessica Townsend has outright said Inspector Flintlock is the only one she wrote to be utterly loathsome with no redeeming qualities. A xenophobic cop, he spends the entire first book trying to prove Morrigan is an illegal immigrant in the Free State so he can deport her. She is in the country illegally, but as the other characters continually point out, it was quite literally life or death, and if she's sent back, she'll almost certainly be killed. Flintlock doesn't care and talks about immigrants in a way that indicates he sees them as less than human. Bear in mind, Morrigan is eleven. He's utterly despised, in-universe and out, for being an utter bigot who represents everything that's wrong with law enforcement.
• Night Huntress:
  • Halfway to the Grave: The primary parties involved in the Human Trafficking network are power-hungry individuals motivated by self-interest.
    • Hennessey puts on an act of being a gentleman, but in reality, runs a vicious human trafficking network that keeps women, especially the impoverished, as livestock and brood mares, subjecting anyone who would betray him to the cruelest of fates. Hennessey regularly allows his clientele to sexually abuse the women under his control, as well as feed on their blood. Identifying Cat as his attempted murderer, Hennessey has her grandparents killed, then takes her mother hostage to trap her.
    • Governor Ethan Oliver colludes with, and frequents, the human trafficking network, using its services for his own personal gain. Having originally used the brothels to rape women, Oliver arranges for the human trafficking network to make derelict women disappear so that he can claim to have cleaned up his state and bolster his political career, further intending to continue the process if he is elected President.
  • One Foot in the Grave and At Grave's End: Max Williams, the estranged brother of Don Williams, is the former FBI Agent turned vampire, who seduced, then psychologically tormented Justina Crawfield, claiming himself to be an unholy demon. Subsequently walking out on her and their child, his actions drive Justina to be an abusive parent to their daughter, Catherine "Cat" Crawfield. Disdainful of his half-breed daughter, Max makes multiple attempts on Cat's life, culminating in his decision to torture Cat and threaten to sexually assault Justina.
• Night of the Assholes: In a world where being an asshole is like a zombie virus, no character in the book is more of an asshole (in the conventional sense) than Ellen. Everything she says or does is based around her own ego and an almost pathological contempt for the world around her. All she ever does is judge or insult Todd and Barbara and their decisions, preferring to hide out in the house's enormous grandfather clock. She mocks Barbara for accepting Todd's lint-covered sandwich after denying her any of the candy she had in her purse. Her relationship with her husband Harold is clearly abusive, with her calling him a child at several points, speaking for him, and generally ordering him around like a repeat target of a high-school bully. The only redeeming quality she seems to have is that she cares for the well-being of her daughter and even then she keeps her under constant sedation because the Hate Plague had turned her into goddamn Adolf Hitler and created a massive risk in all of their survival by keeping an asshole with them in the house.
• Northanger Abbey: John Thorpe is James Morland's friend and a boorish Gold Digger who seeks to marry Catherine Morland, mistakenly believing her to be a rich heiress. Desiring to have Catherine all to himself, Thorpe makes repeated attempts to sabotage her attempts to make friends with the Tilney family, making shameless lies to force her to spend time with him. Thorpe also lies to General Tilney about Catherine's wealth to get him to drive up his own prospects. When this backfires with the General pushing Catherine towards his son Henry, Thorpe slanders Catherine to General Tilney by projecting his own situation onto Catherine's family, prompting him to throw Catherine, who is staying with the Tilneys at this point, out of the house in the dead of night. A shameless liar who talks of nothing but carriages and horses and speaks with crude language, John Thorpe is the closest thing to a Big Bad in Jane Austen's novels.
• Nory Ryans Song: Lord Cunningham is the cruel, domineering landlord who owns the land that Nory's family and various others farm, takes away vital possessions or has them Sentenced to Down Under when they fail to pay rent, and makes no secret of the fact he wants to turn them all out and destroy their homes so that his sheep can graze where they were.
• Peter Quint of Greg Egan's short story Oracle. Unlike Jack Hamilton, who is a Tragic Villain who easily could have become Stoney's friend instead of his enemy, Quint is a sadist with state backing. He is so petty-minded and parochial that he assumes that anyone with a foreign name is either a fascist or a communist, and is completely oblivious that he himself would fit in better in a totalitarian state than in a liberal democracy because he enjoys torturing his prisoners. How does he torture Stoney? By locking him in a cage too small for him to stand up straight or find any comfortable sitting position, for days at a time, only letting him out once a week to coerce labor out of him. There is no intellectual discipline that he doesn't treat with the utmost scorn and contempt, and when Stoney suggests legalizing victimless crimes so that they can't be a national security risk, Quint is as offended as if Stoney had suggested legalizing treason — not out of any moral principle, but because if that were done, then Quint's job would no longer be necessary. If that were not enough, he is also a casual misogynist — the narration states that neither he nor anyone else in the civil service would find a smart and outspoken woman attractive. After Stoney escapes and has his name cleared, Quint pursues him like Inspector Javert, only to be effortlessly dispatched by Stoney and his lover. Ultimately, he serves as the perfect example of the kind of anti-intellectual bully that Egan assures us will no longer exist after The Singularity.
• The Orphan Train Adventures: For most of In the Face of Danger, there is No Antagonist, but the most hateable character is Ada Haskill, a snobby British woman who is neighbor to Megan's adoptive parents. The first thing she does is criticize the Browders' decision to adopt Megan, an Irish child, and talk about how the Irish are all dull-witted and lazy, while Megan is standing right there. While it's understandable that she feels out of place living on the Kansas prairie, being a City Mouse, she doesn't even try to adapt to her new lifestyle, letting her husband do all the work while she lies in bed and moans about how life was so much better in the city. She never bothers to thank the Browders for their neighborly generosity towards her and doesn't give them a thing in return.
• Överenskommelser has three characters, who are just there to be hated. Wilhelm Löwenström is an extreme Domestic Abuser, his son Edvard is a serial abuser sociopath, and as if that wasn't enough, we've also got Carl-Jan Rosenschiöld, a sick and twisted combination of the other two. These three men share a view on women, which is just disgusting even by the standards of the era (the 1880s), so they actually think that a man has the right to mistreat a woman in any way he can think of. And as much as Beatrice, the story's female protagonist, becomes the most obvious victim of their abuse and their schemes, many other people are eventually harmed as well. Even other men in the story are repulsed by them.
• The Pearl, set in a poor fishing village, have the resident doctor, a Fat Bastard Dr. Jerk who's openly racist to the locals, refusing to treat baby Coyotito, son of protagonist Kino, after Coyotito got stung by a scorpion, outright stating it's not his business to "treat insect bites in little Indians". The moment Kino found the titular treasure, a pearl as large as a goose's egg and reputed to be priceless, the doctor immediately makes a visit to Kino's household, insisting that baby Coyotito needs to be treated, and injects an unknown medicine (although not stated, it's implied to be mildly poisonous) into the baby and saying he will come back for a second visit, after Kino had sold the pearl. What's even worse is that the doctor simply vanishes from the story at that point and doesn't receive any comeuppance for what amounts to extortion.
• In Please Bully Me, Miss Villainess!, Yvonne Smollett is described as an In-Universe example of this, as the villainess of the otome game where the story is set. She mercilessly bullies protagonist Elsa Dorothy, since she's angry at Elsa for stealing her fiance away and goes so far as to make a deal with demons to kill her. Her endings involve her being sentenced to death or exile, with the latter being an option for those who don't want to kill her, and she never shows any remorse for her crimes, even wanting to frame Elsa to bring her down as well. Since the actual story is a "Reborn as Villainess" Story, Yvonne ends up averting this trope and becoming a sympathetic protagonist.
• In Ragtime, we have Willie Conklin, the racist Jerkass fire chief who trashes Coalhouse Walker's car. His crime of vandalism is small potatoes compared to the serial murder and arson spree Walker gets up to after becoming the novel's Big Bad, and he's completely unconnected to the murder of Walker's wife (done by a mob of unnamed characters, so hard to hate) that spurs his descent into villainy. Nevertheless, the reader is invited to hate Conklin over Walker, as the novel goes into great detail explaining Walker's motivations and how he became the way he is, while Conklin is and apparently always was just an asshole.
• While a mild example, Mrs. Kemp from the Ramona Quimby series is one of its most unsympathetic characters. Since Ramona has to stay at her house every day after school, she takes advantage of the situation to make Ramona babysit her granddaughter Willa Jean for free, and always blames Ramona when Willa Jean breaks something or makes a mess, because she's older and "should have stopped her" or "should have known better". (Never mind that Ramona is a young child herself.) While she does this a lot, she has a major Kick the Dog moment in Ramona Forever — when Willa Jean breaks an accordion that was a gift from her Uncle Hobart, not only does Mrs. Kemp blame and punish Ramona but openly shames and humiliates her in front of Uncle Hobart when he comes back. This stings Ramona so badly that she later cries when recounting the incident to her family at dinner.
• The Relic has Agent Coffey. Mbwun, the creature behind the murders at the museum, is more a Tragic Monster just trying to survive by this point so you can't really hate it. Coffey is a jerkass agent who wrestles control of the investigation from Special Agent Pendergast and his bull-headedness leads to events at the museum getting even worse.
• In Renegades, Frostbite and Gargoyle seem almost designed to be hated. Frostbite, in particular, is the worst example of a Smug Super, putting herself on a pedestal above anyone with weaker powers and constantly mocking Nova, calling her ability as The Sleepless as no ability at all. Her introduction has her torture Ingrid in an attempt to make her lash out, which would give her the excuse to arrest her - and it's implied that this isn't the first time she did that. Even in-universe, her fellow Renegades hate her.
• La République des imberbes, by Mohamed Toihiri : Guigoz is the main protagonist of the book. Based on Ali Soilih, Guigoz manipulated a far-left group into giving him complete power in the Comoros after their coup d'état. Guigoz proved to be a dictator through his Zazis commandos, ordering brutal punishments against anyone who criticized him, dissolving all political parties, and forbidding witchcraft and "sorcery" while having several "sorcerers" as advisors. Upon their advice, Guigoz sacrificed 7 seven-year-old kids. Guigoz also manipulated the Comorian youth into joining his ideas leading them to commit murders, thefts, horrors, and rapes, thus becoming Zazis. When his advisors told him that spirits were angry and required three sacrifices, including one person truly close to Guigoz, Guigoz tricked his friend and advisor Lulé Ben Katil into killing two people before having him executed. When a group tried to rebel against Guigoz in Iconi, Guigoz went to the village and hid in his car while an onslaught happened, resulting in the deaths of 11 people at the scene and 100 other people executed under Guigoz's orders.
• In The Reynard Cycle Tybalt, the Token Evil Teammate from is a selfish, callous, Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. Whenever he gets even remotely close to petting the dog, he finds another one to kick.
• Most of the antagonists in David Weber's Safehold are at least somewhat honorable and reasonable, and even the Group of Four are mostly trying to make sure that the world doesn't burn while they clutch all the power they can. And then you have Zhaspahr Clyntahn, whose list of vices seems intended to make the audience want to see him lose in every conceivable way. Even one of the characters meeting him thinks that realistic villains shouldn't be so obvious.
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, despite dabbling in both Black and Grey moralities as the series goes on, still manages to include a few characters that are either utterly devoid of redeeming features or burn through their allotted supply of goodwill through repeated displays of staggering incompetence.
  • Mr. Poe may be well-meaning and sympathetic to the Baudelaire orphans, but his utter incompetence is enough to make both the orphans and the audience groan with frustration. He constantly falls for the villain Count Olaf's obvious disguises, treats the Baudelaires like toddlers, and repeatedly puts their safety at risk due to not being able to see through Count Olaf's plans. It says a lot about him, as well, that he once delivered the Baudelaires to another guardian (who, obviously, is killed soon by Olaf) and the only thing that mattered to him to choose to take them there was not the guardian's potential competence or anything similar, but merely that the guardian was the closest option at the time.
  • Vice Principal Nero is the tyrannical and abusive head of Purfrock Prep. Utterly convinced of his own musical genius despite all evidence to the contrary and running a bizarre and nonsensical punishment system that sees students punished for failing to attend his violin recitals even if they've been put into involuntary lap-running exercises at the same time, Nero is little more than a Psychopathic Manchild given absolute power.
  • Carmelita Spats, introduced in the same book as Nero, is the typical inexplicably popular Alpha Bitch school bully who sets out to make life hell for the Baudelaire orphans simply because she can. When she reappears several books later adoption by the villainous Esme Squalor has turned her into a budding sociopath spoiled rotten.
  • Perhaps it's because we know so little about them, but the Man With Beard But No Hair and the Woman With Hair But No Beard are never described as anything other than emitting a palatable aura of menace. As the highest rank we see of the villainous side of the VFD schism they are Greater Scope Villains of the entire series and implied to have a hand in everything misfortune to happen to the Baudelaire orphans, either directly or indirectly, and a great many others besides.
• The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin: Saeros is a racist Elf in King Thingol's court who resented the presence of Turin as a ward of Thingol. One evening Saeros made insulting remarks about Turin's people, causing Turin to injure Saeros. The next morning, Saeros attempted to murder Turin over the last night's events, provoking Turin into stripping him and accidentally killing him by running him off a cliff. When Thingol heard of what Saeros had done, he pardoned Turin, while it was stated that Saeros would be held in Mandos, the land of the dead, for a long time due to his misdeeds.
  • The Silmarillion: Ar-Pharazôn from the Akallabêth was the nephew of the King of Númenor, Tar-Palantir. When the king died, Ar-Pharazôn forced the king's daughter to marry him, considered an act of great evil and usurped the throne of Númenor. When Sauron declared himself King of Men, Ar-Pharazôn took it as a challenge to his ego and resolved to make Sauron serve him, which backfired when Sauron charmed his way into Ar-Pharazôn's council, persuading Ar-Pharazôn to worship Morgoth, instituting a Religion of Evil which practiced Human Sacrifice. Sauron eventually persuaded Ar-Pharazôn to take Valinor, the land of the Gods, by force, and Ar-Pharazôn's choice to lay claim to Valinor doomed Numenor when Eru separated Valinor from the rest of the world and caused Númenor to be lost beneath the waves. While the rest of Númenor is mourned for its loss of a golden age, Ar-Pharazôn is not, and he is condemned to linger in the world until the end of time.
• Caelan from Skulduggery Pleasant is a blatant knockoff of Edward Cullen: a morose, brooding vampire who lusts after the female protagonist, Valkyrie Cain, to the point that he sees himself as her guardian angel and wants to control her life. He is hated by pretty much every other character (even the other vampires), his obsession is frequently mocked, and he's eventually killed by the very person he was so in love with.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Joffrey Baratheon himself fills this role eminently by being bar-none the most depraved and sadistic little shit in a series full of them until he's killed in the third book. Even In-Universe, only Cersei mourns his death.
  • Walder Frey, who makes no attempt to hide what a degenerate, vile scumbag he truly is to everyone around him. The only reason people continue to tolerate him is that he holds an important strategic point between the North and the Trident. When he and his family commit the most appalling and most craven of crimes by breaching the Guest Right, everyone except the Boltons and Lannisters (who are already both extremely hated by that point) in the continent wants to see him and his entire family dead. In fact, it seems, Tywin planned on the Freys being an in-universe Hate Sink from the get-go. While people understood Tywin engineering the Red Wedding because he was at war with the Starks, they loathe Lord Frey and his family for carrying out Tywin's plan, because, by doing so, they broke one of the most sacred laws of the realm.
  • Ser Gregor Clegane, "the Mountain that Rides". He's a Blood Knight known for his cruelty and brutality who enjoys torture, murder, and rape. He also kills Ensemble Dark Horse Prince Oberyn Martell when Oberyn tries to avenge his sister, who was raped and murdered by the Mountain. Fortunately, Oberyn had the last laugh.
  • Ramsay Bolton, the psychopathic Torture Technician and Serial Killer bastard son of Roose Bolton is undoubtedly the evilest Bolton in the series, which is quite an accomplishment.
• Survivor Dogs: Whine is the original Omega of the Wild Dog Pack and is the least well-liked dog in the pack. He's a gonk who blackmails Lucky into getting Mulch demoted to Omega because Whine's too weak to get higher in the pack's hierarchy by normal methods. Afterwards, Whine still tattles on Lucky anyway, resulting in Lucky being temporarily exiled. Whine's biased against pet dogs, even though it's likely either he or his parents were pets, and he also agrees to kill the Fierce Dog pups. Whine likes to talk about others behind their backs and pretend he's better than others, but he's a Dirty Coward when confronted with danger. Near the end of the first arc, Whine joins the enemies, the Fierce Dog pack, but eventually they kick him out too.
• In The Thrawn Trilogy, Grand Admiral Thrawn is far too magnificent to be hated, and the other villains of the trilogy aren't too far behind. This leaves all the hatred of the readers for Borsk Fey'lya, a corrupt, selfish, Jerkass of a senator who seems to take pleasure in being an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
• To Kill a Mockingbird: Bob Ewell is a redneck who spends so much of his welfare money on booze that the sheriff allows his family to illegally hunt so his children do not starve. After one of his daughters, whom he is implied to sexually abuse, befriends a local black man, Bob beats her senselessly and frames her friend for it. While the man is convicted because the jury is racist, his lawyer makes a fool of Bob in the courtroom, so Bob tries to murder his children.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin: Simon Legree is a slavedriver who remorselessly abuses his slaves with reckless abandon. When the titular Uncle Tom refuses to bend to Legree's will, Legree doubles down on his efforts to subjugate Tom. Harriet Beecher Stowe deliberately wrote Legree as a treatise against the idea of humans as property.
• Warcraft Expanded Universe
  • Of Blood and Honor has Barthilas. Despite being Tirion's subordinate, he shows Tirion no respect and eagerly turns on him when Tirion is put on trial for disobeying orders to save the life of Eitrigg, an orc. While Tirion's old friend Uther and wife Karandra have justifiable reasons for opposing him, Barthilas is entirely unsympathetic, and even Uther doesn't think much of him. When Barthilas goes too far in badmouthing Tirion, Uther gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech saying that after everything Tirion has accomplished, "he certainly deserves more than to be harangued by an unseasoned boy like (Barthilas)."
  • Lord of the Clans has Aedelas Blackmoore, the Big Bad. He runs an internment camp for defeated orc prisoners, and after killing the honorable orcs Durotan and Draka, he takes in their infant son to raise as his own. Blackmoore's ultimate goal is to use Thrall as a pawn so Blackmoore can lead the orcs in a rebellion against Lordaeron. When Thrall lays siege to Durnholde, Blackmoore has Taretha executed, both for betraying him and to spite Thrall, resulting in Thrall killing Blackmoore. There are sympathetic characters on both sides, but Blackmoore is vile and irredeemable.
  • Tides of War features Malkorok, The Dragon to the increasingly villainous Garrosh. He's a former Blackrock assassin from the Old Horde who becomes Garrosh's personal hatchet man and is apparently responsible for murdering a few dissidents by blowing up a tavern. The fact that Garrosh associates with people like Malkorok is generally shown as proof that his moral character is slipping.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Socks and Ruby, from the manga The Rise of Scourge, are extremely petty and unsympathetic. They start off saying to Scourge (then a kitten named Tiny) that "unwanted kittens get drowned or killed" and they egg Scourge on to venture into the wilderness where he meets a young Tigerpaw. Scourge gets savagely beaten to the point of almost dying until Bluestar stops it. When Scourge returns from the beating, Socks and Ruby scoff at him and they claim he should have died and chide him for entering the wilderness in the first place, when it was their goading that did that. As far as awful siblings in the series go, these two are in a class of their own, and indirectly started Scourge's rise to power and subsequent Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. When they get abandoned by their humans, Scourge has them exiled.
  • Darkstripe is Graystripe's evil older brother and a bully to non-Clan cats. He starts the series as Tigerstar's top enforcer while taunting Firestar (formerly Rusty) with "Once a kittypet, always a kittypet" despite however many times Firestar proves his loyalty to the Clans. He truly begins to sink low after it's revealed he tried to poison Sorrelkit for seeing him meet ShadowClan's deputy Blackfoot. Then Tigerstar orders him to execute Stormpaw and Featherpaw, both halfClan cats and children of Graystripe, his own brother, and a RiverClan cat named Silverstream. When Stonefur, the current deputy of RiverClan, and also a halfClan cat defends them, he is murdered by Darkstripe and Blackfoot together. During the fight against BloodClan, Darkstripe tries to kill Firestar out of sheer malice, despite the fact he is fighting on the side of Tigerstar's killer saying "Nothing matters, all I want is to see you dead." Showing no remorse for any of his actions, and only fearing death when it happens, he was truly one of the most despicable of Tigerstar's minions.
• In The Water Margin, a story known for its Black-and-Gray Morality, it is impossible to hate on the outlaws, no matter how many Kick the Dog deeds they do, due to their tragic backstories and being more or less Forced into Evil. However, to make sure that the readers will someone to root against, Gao Qiu, the corrupt and loathsome prime minister of Emperor Huizong and the main source of opposition towards the outlaws, is created (or at least fictionalized) to be utterly despicable without any hint of sympathy. By butt-kissing Huizong, Gao rose from a street urchin into a position of power matched only by the emperor himself, and in the meantime used bribery, incrimination, and even murder to get whatever he wants, eventually ruining enough lives to create a peasant rebellion. One of his victims was Lin Chong, a perfectly innocent man who he framed simply so his wife could be up for grabs, and when he found out Lin has been exiled, he does whatever he can to have him killed (Lin's wife is forced to commit suicide). After the bandits were acquitted by the emperor, Gao sends them to their deaths fighting the Liao Dynasty and Fang La. Even worse is how he gets away with all his crimes in the end, killing the leaders of the bandits out of petty jealousy then talking his way out of punishment. The other Song government officials also deserve a mention, though to a lesser extent than Gao.
• Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River: Howard. Being a lawyer in an engineer and manager setting such as the Bureau of Reclamation, rumor has it that he was installed there by politicians in order to sabotage the Bureau's operation. He's also described as having a terrible relationship with other characters, to the point that Grant wishes that he'll be eaten by a bear during his vacation in Yellowstone National Park.
• Cassie's father in Wintergirls is a cold-hearted, unloving, authoritarian parent who is all but stated to be the cause of her self-esteem issues and emotional instability. He never has a moment where he shows that he cares about her, and is always berating her for not being perfect. When her pet mouse died, he told her to stop crying over it because he was watching a baseball game; when a boy snapped the back of her bra in fifth grade and she beat him up, her father yelled at her and punished her instead. The only thing he appears to worry about is making her look perfect so he can have a trophy child to show off to other parents, and he doesn't care a bit about her well-being outside of that. He also never seems to show any regret for the way he treated his daughter (though, to be fair, he doesn't actually appear that much, so we don't know how he really feels). It's not a huge stretch to think that his reaction to her death may not have been "My God, What Have I Done?" but "Oh no, 18 years of emotional and financial investment just went completely to waste."
• In World War Z, you can't hate the zombies but you CAN hate Breckenridge Scott, an asshole pharmacist company owner who made tons of money scamming people into buying his untested products meant to keep people from turning into zombies. He openly brags about scamming people out of their money, says they were stupid for not checking to see if they actually worked, and laughs when he hears that most of his buyers wound up infected.

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