Always Chaotic Evil - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Mazoku, from Slayers. Given that they literally feed on negative emotions, they have a lot more reason to be this way than most examples of this trope.
- Also, they are pretty much demons, whose stated goal is to end existence. It's just how they were created. Oddly enough, the Dragons, servants of the gods, are oftentimes morally ambiguous. This moral ambiguity is a major point of the entire 3rd season. Throw in that Xellos, a Mazoku, can sometimes be friendly and helpful when not actively trying to end existence, you get a fair amount of moral ambiguity. At one point Xellos helps save the world, because he doesn't want the Mazoku from another dimension to do it, Xellos and the Mazoku of the ''Slayers'' dimension want to do it themselves.
  - Of course, in the original novels, it's revealed that everything Xellos said or did was to manipulate the party into inadvertently going along with Hellmaster's plans. Including when he was being apparently friendly and helpful.
  - Played utterly straight with trolls and other monsters (it is based on D&D, after all).
Subverted and played straight with the demons in Chrono Crusade... depending on which version you're reading/watching. In the manga, this seems to be the case at first (with Chrono being the only exception), but it turns out that the Sinners are more complex than that, and even the demons are more lawful evil, in the sense that most of them are simply following orders in a corrupt culture that can't even remember how they got that way in the first place. In the anime, thanks to some over simplifying of much of the plot and cast, this trope is played straight with only very few exceptions.
The crows in Princess Tutu are shown this way — justified because they're characters escaped from a fairytale. They're so evil that even their blood can affect a character's personality.
In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, you can pretty much count EACH and EVERY member of Blue Cosmos/LOGOS to be an irredeemably evil racist bastard.
- But since Blue Cosmos is, by the period the series take place in, very clearly shown to be an organization of such people, completely gone off track from it's original purpose, this shouldn't be a surprise. LOGOS just exists to keep wars happening because hey, it's good for business.
- There's not a single decent Zanscare soldier in Victory Gundam. That's even more jarring if we think that most Gundam series usually try to depict war as shades of grey, without "good" or "evil" factions.
  - Not quite- the Zanscare army is usually portrayed as being heartlessly and irredeemably monstrous, but there are exceptions to that, the most outstanding example being Mathis Walker.
The New Blood, or at least those directly related to Sicks in Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro. They intentionally bred for the longest time so that the most evil would be the one to reproduce. Eventually they actually became an entirely separate species according to Sicks.
Lampshaded in Kyou Kara Maou! After it is revealed to the main character that he is really a demon lord and must seek out his ultimate weapon:
Yuri: ... a holy sword that you need to defeat the last boss.
Wolfram: A holy sword?
Yuri: It's not?
...
Gwendal: Of course it's a demon sword!
The youma from Claymore, who live entirely to eat humans.
The Diclonius from Elfen Lied are suggested to be hardwired to cause destruction among humans, though their behavior may also be influenced by the inhumane treatment they received at the hands of humans.
In Soul Eater the witches are genetically predisposed to cause destruction, and indeed it forms the basis of magical power in most cases. There is one case where a witch's magic can only be used creatively (i.e healing), and she is an outcast because of it.
- The fact she is intending to use this magic to essentially brainwash the chaos out of a young witch currently innocent of any wrong-doing whatsoever furthers the suggestion that the the destructive 'way of magic' is genetic and not something that a different upbringing away from witch society could change (contrast to Black Star, a 'good guy' who was the child of parents who turned into Chaotic Evil kishin, was brought up in Death City, yet is assumed by many to be dangerous simply because of his background).
Hollows in Bleach are considered to be an entire race of "evil spirits", driven to eating anything living or dead (including each other). Their more evolved "Arrancar" counterparts have been portrayed as having different dispositions, ranging from Lawful Evil (Zommari) to Neutral Evil (Grimmjow) to Neutral Good (Nel).

Close Anime & Manga

In The Tale of Despereaux, even the narrator states that rats are always greedy, dirty, unheroic, and terrified of the light. They are, with the exception of Rascuro who falls to the dark side for a while after he tries not to be Always Chaotic Evil.
Mulan portrayed Huns this way; or at least an army of bandit raiders was, who you would hardly expect to be gentlemen anyway.

Close Films — Animation

The aliens from Independence Day.
- Debatable, they're not invading the planet and killing off the native species for the hell of it, they need our natural resources and we just happen to be in the way. They're more like locusts than anything else.
300 was criticized for portraying the Persians this way although it is justified by the Unreliable Narrator.
Some critics have accused Crash as portraying Asians this way. Everyone else gets developed and a message is that stereotypes is bad... the Asians get almost no lines, yet what we do see of them show that they're all criminals.
The film Taken seems to treat Albanians this way, with one translator acting as an exception that proves the rule.
- Though the fact that the film deals with only one gang of Albanians — slavers at that — may disqualify it.

Close Films — Live Action

Both used and subverted in the Lone Wolf franchise. Those beings created directly by Naar, the God of Darkness, such as Agarash and the Darklords, have his essence in place of the souls that living creatures possess, accounting for their Always Chaotic Evil nature. Their servants, such as the orc-like Giaks, are evil only because they have never had any other choice, having been bred and used as warrior-slaves for generations. They do not know love, kindness, or compassion because they have never seen it, and readers are swiftly led to feel pity for them even as they kill and torture their way across the heroes' homelands.
- Also, anyone described as "swarthy" is not to be trusted.

Close Gamebooks

All Philistines encountered in The Bible were shown to be evil.
- Wrong, King Abimelech was kind to both Abraham and later Isaac, and shown mercy by God.
  - King Abimelech wasn't a Philistine. He was the king of Grar (whoever they were). The Philistines came to Canaan only in the Judges period.
- This trope is defied in Revelation, when it speaks of the great multitude of the redeemed, coming from every tongue and tribe.
- And of course David's personal bodyguard of Philistine soldiers...
- Their not shown so much as evil as they regular enemies of the israelies. The Bible is more fair then it seems.
- The most famous subversion was the story of the Good Samaritan. In which a Samaritan (the enemies of the Israelites) helps the protagonist.
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we have a race which is Always Lawful Stupid, the callous and bureaucratic Vogons. Douglas Adams came up with a justification for this which was put into the movie; the Vogon homeworld is covered in plants that fly up and whack you in the face whenever you have an idea.
- Those were indigenous flora? I thought those were an instituted social control mechanism. In the book, the Vogons' primitive nature due to Evolution's disgust with the creatures as they crawled out of the oceans. Now the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax — they were about as evil as one could get in Hitchhiker.
  - Those things can't be flora, can they? In any case they looked and sounded like pure metal.
- And ironically not nearly as dangerous as the amiable but misguided Krikkiters. Even if they were just cleaning up the Armorfiends' mess.
Subverted repeatedly in Animorphs:
- The Yeerks are built up as a monolithically evil species who enslave other races because they're dicks. However, we later learn that Yeerks without hosts are almost blind and deaf, and can only swim about feebly in small pools; thus, the fact that they possess other species is understandable, if not commendable. Later still, we encounter Yeerks who do not agree with enslaving other species and either enter a voluntary commensal relationship, or live out their lives in Yeerk Pools. Eventually, in the far future, they generate artificial bodies to live in which have no minds of their own.
- Taxxons are vicious, cannibalistic monsters who are constantly in the grip of an absolutely irresistible hunger, and who apparently voluntarily submitted themselves to Yeerk domination. However, they are also intelligent, and there is a group of rebels on their home world fighting against the Yeerks. Their vicious nature is a result of evolving on one of the harshest planets in the galaxy. In the end, they all morph into pythons and live out their lives as animals to escape the constant hunger.
- Even the Howlers, who were created by the series' God Of Evil to kill all other races, turn out to not be entirely evil. They simply don't know any better than to kill, apparently never realizing that other species actually had sentience. When Jake and the others infect the Howlers with their own memories, they're forced to realize their actions are wrong, and wind up trying to kiss other species rather than annihilate them.
- The Hork-Bajir seem evil (they look like dinosaurs with knives stuck all over them), but once we meet free Hork-Bajir they turn out to be peaceful and good-natured.
The Sranc (and similar races) in R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse are Always Chaotic Evil to the point of routine canine injury.
- They're referred to as "weapon races" on several occaisions, and its stated pretty specifically that the Consult used a combination of magic and stranger things (that is, science) to create them. We see one of the races' perspectives, and they're basically sex-crazed intelligent dogs who get off on violence — exactly as their creators intended.
The good witches of L. Frank Baum's Oz books were a subversion of witches as Always Chaotic Evil.
- As well, in The Film Of The Book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch's guards are expected to be the Mook version of this trope, but once Dorothy defeats the Witch, the guards thank her and praise her. This doesn't happen in the book, as it was explicitly stated that the Wicked Witch had enslaved the Winkies (the people of Western Oz).
Averted and subverted in most of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Several races in his science fiction novels appear to be evil, but on closer inspection it is usually revealed that they are evil because of some aspect of their culture rather than anything inherent. The vicious nomadic Green Men in his Martian novels turn out to be violent because their culture disdains affection and families and actively punishes parents who try to treat their children lovingly or even find out who their children are (they lay eggs and randomly shuffle them before they hatch). The cannibal men of U-Gor in the seventh Martian novel turned to cannibalism out of desperation because their President Evil enforced policies that led to starvation. The hideous Coripies from the Pellucidar novels are antisocial and violent because they kill women who have a lot of children to control their population, making women hate their children and men avoid sexual relations with any woman they like. The Mahar of Pellucidar seem to be evil at first, but turn out to have a sense of justice and honor.
- Also, the Mahar don't know humans are anything other than animals, since they are totally deaf and communicate through telepathy, and thus can't hear human speech. The resident Absentminded Professor claims it's not really telepathy, they just project their thoughts through Another Dimension, but the distinction is lost on me. (Admittedly, totally missing human tool-using and such, even for a Paleolithic culture like most of Pellucidar, seems pretty Too Dumb To Live for a species which is supposed to be at least as smart as humans, probably smarter....)
The countries and, thus, races in the Belgariad are dramatically stereotyped: the Drasnians are sneaky Chaotic Neutrals or Chaotic Goods, while the Arends are all brash to the point of stupidity and definitely belong somewhere in a pseudo-medieval hierarchy. The bad guys are split into a number of groups, but can all be described simply as "bad guys".
- In the sequel series, the Malloreon, however, the author takes great pains to humanize at least some of the bad guys, usually by adding them to the protagonist's adventuring party. At that point, the Angarak nations get more distinguished by their individual hats than the fact that they're evil.
  - The author handwaves this by having the "races" be the product of selection by the gods: Chaldan, god of the Arends, values courage over brains. So when he got to select his chosen people, he picked accordingly, and things got predictably out of hand from there. Likewise, the Angaraks were "bad guys" in large part because they were driven to it by a bad god who wasn't pushing them in the sequel, being dead.
The dark elves (a.k.a. moredhel, aka Brotherhood of the Dark Path) from Raymond E. Feist's Midkemia series are presented as ruthless, murderous and unscrupulous. In an interesting twist, they are literally of the same blood as the eledhel, the High Elves of the series. It's explained that their differences are solely cultural, and that their cruel tendencies are mostly due to the lingering influence of their former dragon rider masters, the destructive Valheru. They're shown to have grey areas and Proud Warrior Race Guy as well as Noble Demon tendencies. Occasionally a moredhel will leave his or her people and join the eledhel, after which he or she is considered an eledhel.
- The Pantathians are snake-people who are described and shown to be alien and destructive in their very natures, with no chance of redemption (Even a Pantathian that's hatched from its egg literally minutes earlier will attack any non-Pantathian on sight). But they're justified by having been created by an evil mistress as minions.
- Not to mention the various extradimensional creatures, such as the demons and the Dread, neither of which have ever been shown doing anything besides trying to destroy the world and devour all life.
  - They're justified by being too alien to life on our plane to coexist peacefully with it.
- The Dasati in the Darkwar subseries are introduced as Always Chaotic Evil, to the point that their society hunts down and kills their own pregnant women and children to ensure that only the strongest will survive their attacks, and there is a doctors and healers. However, we quickly learn that there is a secret society known as the White that is working to reform their culture, and they are not irredeemably evil.
- The one race in the Riftwar-verse that is utterly and irredeemably evil is the Valheru, a.k.a. The Dragon Lords. Beings of nigh-godlike power, who ride dragons throughout the multiverse, looting whatever worlds capture their fancy, and killing and eating all manner of other creatures, including each other. While not sadistic, the Valheru are power-hungry, completely immoral and so powerful that they cannot be allowed to be free... well, anywhere.
  - Though the novels themselves point out that the Valheru aren't so much evil as they are other- they come from a time when good and evil were meaningless concepts, unlike the modern world, and as such can't really be allowed free rein anywhere in it because they upset the balance of the universe just by doing what Valheru do (which is to say, whatever they please).
In the Redwall series, the species of a character alone will (almost) always tell you if they're good (mice, moles, shrews) or evil (rats, ferrets, stoats). Even one of the evil species who was raised in Redwall turns out bad, because it's apparently In The Blood. Cats seem to be the only species to avoid this, as there are examples of good and evil cats in the series.
- Veil in The Outcast of Redwall turns good at the end of the book. However, he dies from it. Bryony's theory is that he turned bad precisely because it was expected of him; he was always accused of theft when something went missing and generally treated like a bomb about to go off by the rest of the Abbeydwellers, so he started living up to their expectations out of spite.
- Then there's Blaggut from The Bellmaker, the only vermin who isn't evil from the moment of his entrance. He's a decent guy who gets manipulated by his traditionally-evil captain. Eventually, he strangles the captain to death for having murdered the abbey's Badger Mother, and then leaves Redwall out of guilt. It's established that he pays it regular visits afterward, and the Dibbuns are very fond of him.
- And Romsca, though she doesn't last very long either.
- The biggest exception to this rule is at the end of Marlfox, when almost all of the rats under the Marlfoxes' control do a Heel Face Turn and become peaceful.
  - Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall series, has explained on his website that most of his animal creations are based on the mythological interpretations of the animals — wolves and foxes are sly and clever creatures, badgers are noble and proud, and birds such as sparrows are based on the author's personal observations of sparrows in his back yard.
- Notably parodied by Something Awful.
The various Shadowspawn from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time are a case of the "artificially created to be evil" variety, being genetically engineered to be the Dark One's slaves.
Have you ever seen a Deep One that wasn't evil or Cthulhu-allied, even in Cthulhu Mythos works not written by HP Lovecraft?
- Neil Gaiman played with this in his short story A Study in Emerald. However, it does acknowledge the evil-alignment at the end, when it is implied that the detective-hero is not actually Sherlock Holmes, but his antagonist, who is working against the evil he perceives in the Elder Gods, is Sherlock Holmes.
  - Considering that it's blatantly stated that the Old Ones eat people, and that the peace they brought to the Earth is one of terror and subjugation, I'd say he's not playing with it that much.
- It doesn't help that Lovecraft treats actual races in a very similar manner (read the descriptions of the cultists in The Call of Cthulhu for a fine example), besides creating several inbred communities in rural America and the infamous fishmen of Innsmouth, who stand out as an ugly, racist metaphor concerning immigrants. The entire basis of Lovecraft's horror is set firmly upon the idea that anything alien or different is terrifyingly evil and he was apparently rather open about his xenophobia, even going so far as to tell his Jewish wife that he thought mixed marriages were a bad idea.
- To answer the question: Yes, in The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.
Quigs in D.J. MacHale's The Pendragon Adventure take the form of a Territory's most fearsome animal, and are always out to kill any Travelers that may try to enter.
Subverted in China Mieville's The Scar. The Grindylows are set up like this, but it is revealed they are merely zealous defenders of hearth and home.
The Mijaki in Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy that had to be contained with their own land so they wouldn't overrun the world, which of course they do.
The Dead in Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy. They were originally humans, but have been reanimated. They'll suck the Life out of anything even if they aren't allied under a necromancer. Being an animated, twisted sin against the cosmic order will do that to ya.
The Urgals from Christopher Paolini's The Inheritance Cycle seem to be this. Apparently they've hated humanity from the get-go (and vice-versa) and when Galbatorix tries to convince his subjects that the Urgals weren't actually evil, just misunderstood, absolutely no one believes him. The Urgals are presented as primitive, monstrous creatures that have no issues with killing and will do just about anything to get what they want, which seems to be death to all the other races.
- Subverted later in the series, when we learn that Urgals have organized society and were misled by Galbatorix; they start helping the Varden after they realize what a screwup the whole arrangement was.
- The Ra'zac are this trope playe straight.
The Posleen from John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata stories at first seem to be this, they are a voracious Horde Of Alien Locusts that loot worlds and eat their inhabitants. However it is later revealed that they are genetically engineered super soldiers created by a long-gone alien race and are merely following their programming. Individual Posleen even show some level of nobility when they are viewpoint characters. Michael O'Neal, Jr even comments that he does not hate the Posleen, but if he ever runs into their creators he'll really hate them.
R.A. Salvatore plays with this trope in his Forgotten Realms books. Denizens of the Abyssal planes fit the trope; drow mostly stay true, with one very notable exception (and a small group of Chaotic Good drow that end up dead); orcs were monolithically portrayed as such until Obould showed up and started civilizin' the lot.
The Koloss in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. Justified horribly in the third book: it turns out that Koloss are humans who have been horribly mutated and brainwashed by Hemalurgy.
Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.
- As a devout Catholic who believed in the concept of spiritual salvation, the idea of an entire race of irredeemably evil creatures was one of Tolkien's major sticking points with his own work. He spent much of the latter part of his life as a writer trying to justify it. In the end, he never did come up with an explanation that satisfied him.
- The makers of the movie trilogy were concerned that the idea of a race being evil by definition seemed racist, claiming that at Tolkien's time people didn't mind such stuff. Hence, the extra scene where Uruk-Hai are bred from eggs in the earth in Saruman's dungeon. This is not mentioned in the book, but is one of the author's earlier drafts for their origins, as an attempt at the "artificial origin" justification.
- This particular explanation of Tolkien's Orcs can be seen as an exploration of child abuse and slavery, especially when these concepts are institutionalized. While the Orcs may be considered a "species" with distinctly different genetic traits than their Elf ancestors, they do NOT possess a "culture" except what they have acquired almost by accident. They are less an "evil race" than they are a race that has been warped by external forces into a source of cannon fodder (with apologies to the previous troper). Perhaps the saddest and most frightening thing about Orcs and Trolls is that we can never know what they were like before Morgoth and Sauron got their hands on them.
  - According to the books, orcs were elves before they were tortured and twisted by Morgoth, and trolls were created by him as a mockery of the Ents.
- Another idea was that orcs are generally just primitive tribes and are "evil" precisely because of Sauron's/Morgoth's magic. After The Ring is destroyed, they scatter in all directions.
- The Easterlings, Haradrim, and other so-called "Evil Men" were also not as evil as they looked. In fact, it is implied that they only serve the Big Bad because of lies and promises made to them (and never kept).
  - In the Third Age (and thus LOTR), yes (and also because many of those people are in Sauron's "sphere of influence" much more than the West is). In the First Age, it's different: it's implied that the original humans fell to Morgoth, but not why. The evil Men come from cultures which never rebelled against Morgoth, whereas the good Men rebelled and fled to the western end of Middle-earth.
  - Supplementary material had the last two Wizards starting rebellions against Sauron in their homelands, so it's not that the Haradrim, Easterlings and others had no good ones, it's that the good ones were busy dealing with problems in their own lands.
- The orcs themselves were not inherently evil, it's simply that they never were given the opportunity to be anything else. They were raised in a culture that encouraged hoarding and individualism, and the differences between them incited the violent tendencies bred into them by years and years of the same lifestyle. In an orc culture, cooperation is a bad idea because it lessens your own chances of survival in a dangerous situation (i.e. leave your partner to the wolves and escape on your own).
  - And Tolkien was generally quite good at giving individual orcs distinct (while still evil) personalities — they are an evil species, not the same individual reproduced over and over again. Ugluk, for example, is a very different "person" from Grishnakh. Uruk-hai seem to be a bit more uniform, but that could well be the result of Saruman's mind-controlling voice more than anything.
- Haradrim and other Men who were called "fallen" were tricked into obeying Sauron, probably much as the Numenoreans fell centuries earlier.
The "Trolls" in Apocalypse Troll by David Weber. Though only one is technically featured, the rest are described as just as psychopathic, manipulative and omnicidal. They're really robots, but with the apparent ability to choose not to kill everything in their path — they just choose to do so, most of the time.
- Unfortunately, they're not robots. They're human brains, often cloned when "fresh" ones are unavailable — and guess how they get the fresh ones — which are then tortured horribly to the point where all they want to do is kill in revenge for being made into what they now are. Given the choice, which they do not have, they'd turn on their masters in a heartbeat. Then go back to killing humans because it's "fun". Their creators, nicknamed the Kangas (and guess what they look like) are psychopathically xenophobic because of their religion that states that anything appearing as a non-Kanga is the Devil in another disguise.
Defied in DragonFire; one of Leetu Bends' contacts is a bisonbeck Reverse Mole, who has done a Heel Face Turn.
The Yuuzhan Vong are initially introudced as being pretty much pure evil down to the last warrior, but it turns out that they're caught up in the stranglehold of a Religion Of Evil that is manipulated by their insane leadership. Over the course of the later books we're introduced to Vong who are more human, for lack of a better word, and in the end a lot of them wind up doing a Heel Face Turn or committing suicide when they find out that the gods they were fighting for were either horribly misintrepreted or (in one case) didn't exist at all.
- That said, they're still Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
- Yeah, but that's a cultural thing (due to living under a Religion Of Evil for milennia). There's nothing in the Vong's genetic makeup that causes them to be evil, and several of them are given sympathetic POV's later in the series (Nen Yim, Harrar, Vua Rapuung — even Nom Anor to an extent). Jacen explicitly says they're no better or worse than humans would be under the same situation.
In the Warrior Cats series, ShadowClan is always branded as this by everyone (particularly ThunderClan). Despite the fact that the only ShadowClan cats who were ever truly evil were Brokenstar and Clawface.
- The more recent books have subverted this with ShadowClan being nothing more than a rival Clan, and most opposition coming from WindClan instead.
- Also subverted with Bluestar's Prophecy, where ThunderClan faces the most opposition from RiverClan, and never had to deal with ShadowClan. It seems that different Clans end up being seen as "evil" depending on the political atmosphere (ThunderClan was actually branded as evil for a while early in Bluestar's Prophecy after their unprovoked raid on WindClan camp.
Played straight in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant with the Cavewights (though it is established that they weren't always evil), and subverted with the ur-viles. Despite their name, the latter are less evil than alien and inscrutable, and are allied with the Big Bad only to advance their own ends. In the second and third series, they apparently decide that helping the heroes advances said ends better. Unfortunately, as they either can't or won't speak English, we're not entirely sure what those ends are...
There are probably more examples in Perry Rhodan than anyone would care to mention here, but just in the newest arc (which started only a few weeks ago) there is a race of Big Bad (who can't really die) who have genetically grown really bad mooks at their disposal, in almost unlimited quantities.
The Grik in Wayne Alexander's Destroyermen series although "always Lawful Evil" would be more accurate and in the third book the Alliance meets a member of a different but related species that's not evil.

Close Literature

In Babylon 5, the Drakh approach this trope. They are portrayed as universally obsessed with exacting "revenge," at all scales from Mind Rape to genocide, over all other races for the departure of the Shadows. The species has no internal "good guys," deeper motivations, or other redeeming qualities.
- How would you feel if someone told your gods they sucked (meaning you suck for worshipping them) and made them abandon you?
- It's worth noting both that their isolationist culture is the main obstacle for any chance of peaceful resolution. Also, their revenge isn't aimed against all the people or races of the galaxy — they actually tried to seek help from the Minbari when their homeworld was destroyed, but turned against them when they realized just how big a part they played in defeating the Shadows.
Subverted in Brimstone; the escaped souls are often evil, and one would expect them to be, but, in fact at least a few were shown to have been genuinely good people who made horrific decisions, or in at least one case, were doing what they believed to be the best, only to then be judged by another religion's values, after dying.
- The show Reaper, which has a similar premise, has an episode introducing a soul who was fighting to control murderous impulses. He eventually acknowledged that the best thing was for him to go back to Hell until he sorted himself out.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, this applies to vampires, who lose their human souls (and thus sense of right and wrong) along with their humanity. Interestingly, this isn't true of other kinds of demons, especially in Angel and the later seasons of Buffy; some are always evil, but some may be neutral, and there are apparently even "good demons" dwelling on other planes of existence.
- This is an unusual case because even though the show's vampires are explicitly Always Chaotic Evil, Buffy the Vampire Slayer gives many of them engaging and unique personalities, undercutting the usual (narrative) reason for this trope, which is to provide a supply of faceless evil mooks who can be killed without Moral Dissonance.
Doctor Who has a few of these, although they usually they have a reason. For example:
- The Daleks: Mutated aliens in travel machines who are only capable of hate and negative emotions due to being bred that way by Mad Scientist Davros. They simply are made to believe Daleks are a supreme race and everyone else deserves to die. They're Space Nazis (in the serial "Genesis of the Daleks" we learn that Davros "removed the brain cells of the conscience" from the proto-Daleks — a feat that would be, to put it mildly, challenging). In fact, the Daleks are so evil that when one of them realizes he's developing a conscience he decides to commit suicide.
  - In the "The Evil of the Daleks", a sub-species of "Good Daleks" is created by the Doctor infecting them with the "Human Factor"; that is, human emotions and a sense of conscience. This results in a full-scale civil war between the two factions which allegedly destroyed the entire species. Terry Nation, the Daleks' creator, had planned to license them out to a US network for their own show, and expected that they would not be available for Doctor Who for the foreseeable future. (The idea went nowhere.) When the Daleks eventually returned five years later some dialogue was filmed explaining that the "Good Daleks" had been wiped out, but this was edited out, leaving their canon fate ambiguous.
  - A story in Doctor Who Magazine's Eighth Doctor comics, Children of the Revolution, was all about the Doctor and Izzy meeting the Human Factor Daleks, who survived and were hiding peacefully in the oceans of a planet about to be colonized by humans. The story ends up with the entire Dalek colony sacrificing themselves to stop the Big Bad, though.
- The Cybermen: The originals had lost all their emotions due replacing almost all their body parts with machinery and couldn't see why someone wouldn't want to "Become like us". The new series' version is closer to the Daleks, but still have the desire to convert instead of just killing everyone. (Arguably more Always Lawful Evil.)
- The Sontarans: Proud Warrior Race Guys who worship war; they're all clones of one guy, churned out by the trillions to fight an endless war. And they fit into this trope as being Always Lawful Neutral, since their actions always have a military objective and hence are not good or evil at face value.
  - Until you consider that several times, said military objective was to conquer planet Earth to use as a staging point, despite Earth being 1) already inhabited and 2) not even remotely connected to the war. Yeah, wiping out an entire species just so you can use its planet to build an army? Jumps straight into Lawful Evil and kicks the Moral Event Horizon on its way past. Not that the Rutans are any better.
The Reavers in Firefly. It's never quite explained why they don't kill/rape/eat alive each other, even though they travel in such massive groups.
- As revealed in the movie, Serenity, Reavers are infected with a chemical agent that in .01% of the population causes uncontrolled aggression. Given that Reavers mutilate themselves for no reason at all, the idea that they don't rape/kill/eat/rape each other is probably due to the fact that other Reavers wouldn't care about having it done TO them. On their home world, they didn't attack the 99.99% who simply became overly passive most likely because the "Passives?" wouldn't have given a crap either way.
The Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1. Thoroughly justified in the RPG supplement on the System Lords, where it's described as a stacking effect of the circumstances of their evolution, their genetic memory, and their use of the sarcophagus. The Goa'uld queen Egeria, the progenitor of Tok'ra, spawned an entire subrace of My Species Doth Protest Too Much.
- Episodes of the actual series Stargate SG-1 offer this explanation, as Sam Carter explains that the Sarcophagus steals your soul. Daniel Jackson then demonstrates this by continuing to use the device.
- This is also repeatedly emphasized in episodes of the show like "Crossroads" and "Absolute Power". As Daniel notes, being a Goa'uld is like being "born with the memories of a thousand Hitlers."
  - Researching the device more thoroughly, Daniel eventually revised that as simply causing madness and addiction. A bit less colorful than stealing the soul, but same net result.
- Speaking of Egeria, though, she seems to be the one major exception: she would have to have been born with the same genetic memory as all other Goa'uld, and instead of becoming a System Lord, she chose to create the Tok'ra instead. There's also Lord Yu.
  - Yu was still Chaotic Evil, he was just slightly more reasonable than the others, and his senility made it easy for his First Prime to manipulate him into doing "good" things.
  - He was Chaotic Evil by the time of the series. It's implied several times that he may not have been that bad when he was younger.
  - Furthermore, Yu appears to have a very strong concept of honour. The fact that he is senile means this honour is rather arbitrary in application.
  - Egeria broke with the other Goa'uld during early days, when the species wasn't yet so entrenched in Chaotic Evil. There have been other turncoats since then, but not in the last few centuries.
  - Another possible explanation for her defection was her status as a Goa'uld queen rather than a regular Goa'uld. The show does make distinctions between queens and non-queens and seems to imply in some places that queen Goa'uld are more capable of breaking through the heritage of their genetic memories. Even though it's still really, really hard.
- Though the Goa'uld actually are Neutral Evil. Only Anubis is really Chaotic Evil and Ba'al could even be set as Lawful Evil.
  - Ba'al, Heru'ur, Cronus, and Tanith (the smug bastard) are more Neutral or Lawful than anything else. Nirrti and Anubis are Chaotic Evil, but then Anubis is an unusual case to say the least, and Nirrti becomes a renegade even amongst Goa'uld.
With the occasional episodic exception, the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis also fit this trope. While their treatment of humans is explained by the fact that we're essentially tasty cows to them, they're still excessively sadistic about it. Their dietary needs also fails to justify the fact that they're also consistently dickish towards each other as well.
- There isn't enough food to go around, hence all of the fighting between the Hives. Their dietary needs are exactly why they fight each other.
  - Even without the whole "war over food" thing, Wraith society seems very ruthless and survival-of-the-fittest oriented. I.e. the Klingon Promotion seems widely accepted, and Queens are often shown treating their subordinates like dirt. Not that there weren't historical human cultures that largely shared these values.
- They seem to have dialed it back slightly in the last couple of seasons of the show, with slightly less Large Ham gloating from some of the Wraith characters. Also, in "The Queen" the Wraith Commander expresses concern over the lives of his men, and even about the lives of enemy Wraith.
- In the episode that introduces "Todd", it's implied that we simply know too little about Wraith Culture — so they come across as worst than they really are. It's possible that while ruthless, the war over food and constant hunger might have driven the wraith a bit more irritable and thus a bit more eager to kill each other, even within the same faction, if only because it'll mean more food for everyone involved.
Men in each and every Lifetime Movie Of The Week. No exceptions.
The Borg in the later Star Trek series.
- Averted with Jem'Haddar who actually are a Proud Warrior Race which is genetically engineered to obey the founders, which is what forces them into evil role.

Close Live Action TV

Male Jotuns, western dragons, harpies and many others make this trope Older Than Dirt. But then, in those days, folks often characterized their human enemies the same way.
- Don't we today?
In many myths, ghosts only wish to inflict pain on the living even if they were good people in life.
- Likewise with vampires — at least in the older stories. Today, there is often more variation.

Close Mythology

The trope name comes from Dungeons & Dragons, which originally had a similar phrase in the stat sheet of every monster in the game, denoting their alignment. In later editions, this was relaxed, and now the only races who are always one alignment or another are those who are somehow "tied" to good or evil, such as demons, angels, and other spiritual creatures. Of course, mortal "bad guy" races are still marked as "usually chaotic evil" (emphasis ours).
- To an extent, this trope is justified by the fact that the gods who are created them are also Chaotic Evil according to D&D cosmology.
- The Drow of the Forgotten Realms setting and the Draconians of the Dragonlance setting are classic examples of "evil races". However, as the plot went on, individuals arose — specifically, Rule Of Cool scimitar-wielding (and heavily parodied in just about every single fantasy webcomic, due to his being heavily copied by virtually every fanboy at one point or another) Drizzt. Initially based on fanboyism, entire counter-cultures have arisen of differing alignment (as the page quote points out). In the Realms, most "good" Drow are the worshipers of Eilistrae, a goddess of the moon and hunt, whose (almost-Always Female) clerics worship their goddess by performing a sword dance naked.
- The Eberron campaign setting for D&D 3.5 has gone so far as to explicitly discourage the use of the alignment section of a monster's stats, even for those who are "tied" to a certain alignment. This troper has had great fun backstabbing a good-aligned party with a silver dragon Magnificent Bastard Big Bad. The core book also makes clear that "evil" does not equal "kill on sight" — the tavern owner overcharges for draft and cheats on his wife; are you gonna put the sword to his neck like you would with Lord Dark Von Doompantsington XIII?
- Players themselves seem to like subverting Always Chaotic Evil tropes (or embracing them) simply because the "evil" races and cultures are much more interesting than the generic "protagonist" races.
- On the other hand some GMs think player characters are inherently chaotic evil.
- As GM and Dungeons & Dragons translator Andrey Lensky wrote long ago:
  ... my experience suggests: write in Monster Manual that among 100 cambions one is Good, and this one will get into adventure.
- Interestingly, under 3e/3.5e, demons are Always Chaotic Evil, even when they aren't — sort of. It's possible, although incredibly rare for a demon to have an alignment other than Chaotic Evil, but chaos and evil are such an integral part of their being that, for magical effects, they still count as Chaotic Evil in addition to whatever their actual alignment is. Devils work the same for Lawful Evil, and the various celestials work this way for various flavors of Good. Since these creatures are essentially alignment concepts given life, it is rather hard to change them.
Warhammer Fantasy is fairly dark for fantasy setting, though not quite the to the extent of Warhammer 40000. There are actually a few good guys. Evil races include Demons, Beastmen, Orcs, Goblins, Undead, Skaven and Ogres. Also, one of the few times in which the "chaotic" part of Always Chaotic Evil plays a part, as pretty much every evil race can be traced back to mutations caused by Chaos, which is a powerful force in the Warhammer world.
- Not that 40K is immune... Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, anyone?
  - The Tyranids are not evil, just hungry...
  - Actually, that pretty much describes the Warhammer Fantasy Ogres, too. They're mostly known for trying to eat anything that doesn't move fast enough to not be eaten. In a setting where the sides are strictly divided into Order and Chaos — and even amongst those sides, the factions rarely see eye to eye — ogre mercenaries will work for anyone as long as they get fed and paid — which they mostly use to get more food, as they're an entire race of Big Eater Extreme Omnivores.
The Starfire wargame has the Arachnid Omnivoracity, who are not only vicious colonizers, they eat any sentients they come across, and breed the survivors like cattle— insead of using, say, cattle, which are surely easier to control and fight back less. The game's creators wanted an enemy that was simply an enemy for emnity's sake, who could not be negotiated with or sympathized with, and against whom genocide was a sympathetic option; and they got just that in the David Weber/Steven White novels based on the game.
Carrying on from the HP Lovecraft example up in Literature, many, many creatures in Cthulhu Tech are invariably sociopathic mass-murderers. For example, the Dhohanoids are almost invariably driven violently insane by the Rite of Transfiguration.
Rifts uses this trope about as much as everyone above, but also provides the interesting case of the Faustians in the Phase World setting: An Always Chaotic Evil race that got on the wrong side of a war against an Evil Empire even worse than them, forcing them to run to The Consortium of Civilized Worlds to survive. Being exceptionally Genre Savvy that day, the CCW put the Faustians on a rather strict probationary membership, leaving the Faustians to harsly police their own bad sides. If even one of them pulls off any large-scale villainy, they all get booted out and right back into the waiting fangs of the Empire.

Close Tabletop Games

Lampshade Hanging in Star Control II: the Ilwrath position themselves as supremely evil. If the player confronts them over this ("If your actions are judged by your society as correct, aren't you, in fact, good?") they tie themselves into a logical knot before deciding to attack the player for being annoying.
Originally, the monsters that the title brothers of Super Mario Bros. fought were just generally evil. (Indeed, Bowser's original title was Daimaō or "Great Demon King.") However later games with Role Playing Game tendencies have Monster Towns with the implication that the ones who joined Bowser are just jerks. Bowser himself has gone through considerable Villain Decay, although in most of the RPGs, he's on your side for his own reasons. (and let's not enter Go Karting With Bowser...)
In general, in most old action video games (Metroid, Mega Man, The Legend Of Zelda...), the enemy races rarely ever have any good counterparts, at least none that you ever see. In fact, for many of these old games anyone (and anything) visible aside from the player is evil.
- Even in those games, there are subversions: Metroid featured the baby Metroid of the second and third games, Mega Man eventually had Proto Man, and even the very first game in The Legend Of Zelda series had a few Moblins go AWOL and ask Link to leave them alone in exchange for a few Rupees. IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY.
- Also nicely subverted in Zelda's Twilight Princess, where the Aesop was that not everything that looks evil necessarily is; the Bulblins certain seem to all be annoying little goblins who kill you just for the heck of it, but you eventually find out that King Bulblin, the Recurring Boss, is actually quite intelligent. After you beat him at Hyrule Castle, he defers to you as a Worthy Opponent.
  King Bulblin: Enough. I follow the strongest side!... That is all I have ever known.
  Midna: Link... He... he spoke.
  - This troper was getting the sense that something wasn't quite right there about halfway through the game, given his insistence on fighting Link mano a mano whenever possible where most villains would just send in more Redshirts.
The first two Warcraft games used to have the monster races being more malicious, the main example being the Orcs. As the games progressed, the Orcs became likable protagonists with their own culture. The canceled game and book Lord of the Clans explains how the Orcs redeemed themselves and became a proud warrior race, while the Warcraft 3 manual states that they had been corrupted by the Burning Legion. The Scourge (and the Burning Legion) became the bad guys for the game, while the Horde and the Alliance even band together to defeat them.
- In another example, the Eredar were originally represented as an irredeemably evil race of demons who corrupted the mightiest warrior among the Titans into the Big Bad and enslaved the Orcs. Inexplicably, they became a race of honorable beings who were corrupted by the Big Bad's own festering corruption. This happened through a Ret Con in the World of Warcraft Expansion Pack Burning Crusade, after the third game and its expansion as well as four books and a trilogy presented them as completely evil. The creator of Warcraft, Chris Metzen, has admitted this was something of a train wreck, but sticks by his decision.
- Interestingly, though, the monster races are still often depicted as quite menancing in art work and the like, the Tauren in particular often being portrayed as mindless monsters charging savagely into battle, when they are arguably the most peaceful of the playable races. Many of the quests and conversation in World of Warcraft will gives the impression the profiliration of good and evil is hardly defined by race at all.
  - However, many enemy races, particularly the Gnolls, the Harpies, the Troggs, nearly all demons, the Naga, and the Murlocs, are (almost) Always Chaotic Evil. Most of them have individual exceptions or motivations.
  - In fact, the only race now portrayed as always, 100%, truly malevolent are the Nathrezim, whose evil corrupted Sargeras. Even Varimathras turned out to be plotting with the Burning Legion against Sylvanas. Well the Old Gods seem to be purely evil, but they may not qualify as a "race".
Kamal Re'x, the leader of the Hierarchy's invasion of Earth in Universe at War gives this trope as an excuse for their actions — it's "their nature." Given that he's giving this excuse to a Hierarchy military commander who staged an ultimately unsuccessful rebellion after cynically tiring of its corruption and its constant senseless warfare, it doesn't exactly ring true, however.
Final Fantasy XI has the player start off thinking that all beastmen are scum, but then has you find out that most of them are fighting the player races for various reasons. The Quadav are only in conflict with Bastok due to the fact that Bastok kinda tried to take over the Quadav's homelands, and have since been in constant combat with them over land and resources. Then there are the Goblins, who are less evil and more willing to do anything to make a buck.
The Gnosis of the Xenosaga series appear at first glance to be a fairly typical all-evil, human slaying alien race. The truth turns out to be a bit different than that, but they're still all homicidal to the end.
In the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, Poison type Pokémon (with the sole exception of Bulbasaur) are eeeeeeevil.
- This also goes for Ghost types. All together now: Gengar is a dick. With a Poison bonus to boot. Pure Ghosts are at least capable of treating you nicely as long as you are useful to them. For instance, giving them your money, or...
  - However, Gengar and Skuntank do get a slight Heel Face Turn before they disappear.
  - Also, Croagunk, in the second game, is part Poison and is part of the guild. And in the first game, Medicham is a Psychic/Fighting cross. The "Poison and Ghost types are evil" thing doesn't seem to apply to recruited Pokemon, either.
  - There's also Duskull of the Duskull bank in the second game, who's creepy, but not actually evil.
  - Also in the second PMD, Dusknoir. Just when you thought the trope had met its match, he turns on you and tries to kill you.
Subverted in Chrono Trigger, where the Mystics seem to be chaotic evil at first, but it's later shown that without Ozzie's influence they can live at peace with the humans.
- Though it could be argue that they were never evil, they just weren't on the side of the humans. It wasn't good vs evil, just one side vs another, even if they did use undeads and other "evil" things.
Both played straight and subverted in Mass Effect. The Krogan are biologically-engineered murderers who don't do much aside from kill and breed, and the Batarians, though only actually appearing in the downloadable Bright Down the Sky mission, are portrayed as a race consisting entirely of slavers and pirates. However, both feature examples (Wrex for Krogan and Balak from Bring Down the Sky) of characters who are at least not entirely stereotypical of their races. Additionally, possibly as a lampshading, one optional conversation in the game revolves around one character's realisation that aliens aren't monolithic in their traits.
- The books do show the Batarians in a much better light, they just hate humans a lot.
- Two things about the Krogan, the only biologically engineered Krogans are the ones made by Saren(it's just less likely to see regular ones because they spread out around the galaxy after the genophage hit them), and they can't really breed thanks to the genophage. Also the Krogan scientist who made the altered ones in the first place may count, considering the few lines he has when you're trying to kill him he just wanted to help his race reproduce because they lack the means to without outside help.
Subverted in Disgaea. Although the demons in this series openly claim they're Always Chaotic Evil, Dark Is Not Evil and Poke The Poodle come to mind in this series. They're closer to Chaotic Neutral than anything else.
Dragon Quest games often subvert this by having friendly NPCs of the same species of randomly encountered monsters, such as Guest Star Party Member Healie in Dragon Quest IV and an entire town in Dragon Quest VIII.
The Elder Scrolls actually averts this for the most part, as none of the various races and creatures are inhenrently evil, not even the Vampires. Daedra are probably Always Chaotic Neutral, though.
- Well, it was like this. Oblivion had necromancers act like this for no really good reason, other than to fill out the Mages Guild plot.
Fable has Hobbes, who are actually rather genial to people who join up with them... and happen to reproduce by transmorgifying children. Yeah, eep.
The Super Mutants were portrayed as this in the first Fallout, mainly because their creator was the Big Bad. In all subsequent games, however, they're just as capable of good or evil as any other race.
The Brutes and Prophets from Halo.
- The Prophets are Always Lawful Evil, and that may only be the result of the only Prophets ever characterized in any depth are the three that know without a doubt that humanity must die for the good of the Covenant.
Lurkers in Jak and Daxter started out like this. They underwent a Heel Face Turn by Jak II, however.
- Only to be replaced by Metal Heads and promptly disappear from the series.
The Cragmites of the Ratchet And Clank universe are shown to be this.
- The Blarg from the first game may also qualify, though they have sympathetic motives and are appearantly being manipulated by their leader, Chairman Drek.
The Bydo from R Type are this trope taken to its logical extreme: they are composed of all the most evil and base instincts of mankind, utterly incapable of feeling anything Good whatsoever. And they are portrayed completely seriously. Let the thought of that sink in a moment...
Most of the creatures you can recruit without resorting to torture in Dungeon Keeper are like this. Oddly enough, there is a hero-aligned Horned Reaper in the final mission of the first game, a creature who is often depicted as being the granddaddy of ALL the evil creatures in the game.

Close Video Games

The Dimension of Pain demons from Sluggy Freelance are quite openly evil, even using the phrase "How evil" as the highest form of praise. Their hatred of anything good is taken to comedic extremes, from being unable to stand the smell of flowers, to being called "dysfunctional" if they don't fight enough with their family, to considering a relaxing massage a form of torture. Despite this, many of them still manage to have their own distinct personalities. They may all be evil, but, like with human beings, greed and stupidity usually get in the way.
- Many of the named characters among them seem to act evil towards humans, but not to each other. Others are humorously evil (or something) even amongst their own kind, for example eating each other randomly.
The major theme of the D&D-based webcomic Goblins is pointing out that usually Chaotic Evil really does only mean usually... as well as exploring the root causes behind this, and whether it's even true (which while debatable in real life ethics is stated to be so in the rulebooks). To this end the protagonists have run across a surprising number of evil humans and other typically good or neutral races while their typically chaotic or evil compatriots are either neutral, good or driven to evil.
The Order of the Stick delves into it as well, to the point of Deconstruction. Unlike Goblins, however, the setting is close to entirely consistent with the D&D source material. Out of several arcs involving a stuffed up Knight Templar Paladin who "generously" gives the main character Roy time to "improve" his behavior, but eventually he gets her guard down by apologizing — then condemns her for her own faults. This is similar to the way in which "evil" races are treated while the sociopathic serial killer in the troupe is occasionally given a free pass because he's a halfling (often harmless and jovial and cute) — or more likely because overall he does more good than harm, even if not quite intentionally.
- Subverted in a short series of strips in which the Order meets a group of teenaged goblins who are good-aligned — for the explicit reason that it cheeses off their parents, who are Evil. "Listen to me, young man, you will drink the blood of the innocent and you will LIKE IT!"
- Redcloak's entire character arc from Start of Darkness can be seen as a Deconstruction of this trope: The goblins are formally designated as Evil Cannon Fodder by the gods, which doesn't sit too well with him when his family is slaughtered by crusading paladins. His ultimate goal is to give his race equal standing among the other major species of the world, but he slowly takes more and more horrific actions pursuing his plan to do so — thus becoming the very thing that he objects to being labeled as. Is he evil because goblins are inherently evil, therefore, or because he has been designated as such?
  - Powerfully subverted recently, as a Call Back to when Vaarsuvius killed the Dragon of the cave to claim the Starmetal inside (which was also subject to a Lampshade Hanging of Color Coded For Your Convenience). But now, years later (real time), the dragon's mother is still alive and out for revenge; as it turns out, the dragons were a very tragic family: the father was killed by adventurers, and the younger dragon was the only thing the mother, who was going out of town for a few days, had to remember him by. Then the dragon goes on some sadistically extreme lengths for revenge.
  - Mama Bear or not, the dragon is still chaotic evil precisely because she's going through sadistically extreme lengths for revenge. So this instance generally plays the trope straight instead of subverting it, but adds some backstory as a Continuity Nod and to keep it from just being a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere needed to shove V off the slippery slope.
  - If you thought the dragon was taking disproportionate revenge? What V did was literally a few hundred times worse.
Rats are Always Evil in Freaks N Squeeks. It goes with What Measure Is A Non Cute — most of the cast are mice, with the similarly small and cute shrews standing in for Jews.
- From a real mouse's point of view, real rats would be Always Chaotic Evil, as they're quite happy to kill and eat mice.
Demons in Dan and Mabs Furry Adventures are repeatedly stated to be Always Chaotic Evil by seemingly-reliable sources... but the Demonology 101 pages state that this is not actually the case, just the popular perception of them and most other Creatures.
- Cubi, on the other hand — which are not actually demons in the setting — are quite explicitly stated not to be in the comic itself, despite reputation — the evil ones just get all the press, because torturing or seducing people makes for a more exciting story than helping sick children.
- The fae, on the other hand, seem to be Always Chaotic Neutral.
Some of the early humor of Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic depended upon this concept, as the comic has its roots entirely in older editions of D&D. For example, when the beholder Bob cheats on his goblin girlfriend Gren, he tries to justify it by pointing out that he's evil. Gren points out that they're both Lawful Evil, and goes on to cheat on Bob extensively, as is her right as the wronged party, under goblin law. Most of the monster characters are so Affably Evil, though, that it sometimes feels jarring when they get around to doing some really bad stuff.
Tech Infantry as the Bugs, created as a living biological weapon by one race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to use as a Redshirt Army against a race of alien Body Snatchers who are themselves very much Always Chaotic Evil. And any organization in this universe with "Security" as part of its name is pretty much guaranteed to be evil.
The Challenges of Zona has the Orc stand-ins the Urtts, who Word Of God assures us are all just plain evil, and we shouldn't give any pity to the ones maimed, charred and dissected by the Heroes. Yes, even their half-human bastards.
- Actually it's stated both in the comic and in the background material that some hybrids, especially those raised within the Snake Clan are able to overcome the taint
Elves in 8-Bit Theater are all racist, genocidal narcissists whose history has been described as a lovesong to bloodshed and themselves. Their arrogance is also unjustified, as they prove to be no better than other races (for example, having technology on par with other races despite a 9,000 year head start), something that Black Mage and Red Mage tell Thief, the Elven Prince. Their national anthem begins "We're a race of total bastards."
- The other races aren't much better. 8-Bit Theater is a Crapsack World, after all.
Parodied by way of Not So Different in this comic by Lore Sjöberg.
In Harkovast, the Nameless Race cannot speak or think but are described as being constantly marching to war. They have yet to appear doing anything other then attacking people, and are generally killed without mercy by the stories heroes.

Close Web Comics

Averted for many traditional "monster races" in Tales Of MU, especially the subterranean elves (don't call them "Dark Elves", and "Drow" is a serious racial slur up there with "spider jockey" and "cowl head") who simply have a bad reputation due to cultural misunderstandings. Played more straight with Demons and Ogres, as well as mermaids
Deconstructed in The Salvation War. The society in hell actively encouraged Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, You Have Failed Me, We Have Reserves and Shoot The Messenger. The result was an inefficient and unstable society that collapsed once it came under external pressure. Lampshaded on several occasions by baldrick defectors.
This trope is comprehensively picked to pieces in The Return where it's revealed that Succubus (Succubi? Succubae? Help me out here people) culture is possibly more complex and multidimensional than human culture and from their point of view it is humanity that borders on Always Chaotic Evil.
Orion's Arm: Worried that the descendants of Earth(Humans, artificial intelligences, cyborgs, the genetically engineered, etc) think too much alike due to their creators' inherent bias, a group of AI created the Bitenic Squids, a highly diverse specie with every newborn member being a blank slate. Those that can function in the wider world are all completely selfish and without empathy, and go insane easily.

Close Web Original

On The Fairly Oddparents, the anti-fairies are, or at least believed to be, this. It's been stated that one is born for every fairy, and the newest one born, Foop, came strait out of his mother as an Card Carrying Villain. It's also been said by Wanda that every genie is a Jackass Genie. So far, nothing has come up to contradict these claims.
The Decepticons in most version of the Transformers.
Both invoked and averted on Gargoyles. All races portrayed onscreen (humans, gargoyles, fae, and New Olympians) are shown to have both good and evil members, but Demona views humanity this way, and the Quarreymen portray gargoyles like this in their recruiting campaigns.

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