Blond Guys Are Evil - Television Tropes & Idioms

Blond hair in the morning, Elevens take warning.

"In Hollywood, blond guys have two choices: Dye your hair brown, save the world and get the leading lady. Or keep it blond and work on your bad guy face."

— J.R. Antrim Vs. Evil Blond Men

Fair-haired guys in media almost always end up evil. Especially noticeable if they are compared to a nice dark-haired guy, or if they are opposite ends of a Love Triangle.

If they're not evil, they're still jerks, although they may or may not be nice underneath, and they usually lose. Where a Betty And Veronica usually has a blonde Betty and a dark- or red-haired Veronica, a male version of this setup will do the reverse.

Given that blond heroes were not rare in films 40 or more years ago, this may be a Cyclic Trope, albeit with a longer cycle time than that for female "bad hair colors". That said, it has certainly become a much more prevalent trope in the days since World War II. On the other hand, it may be more simple: popular kids are jerks, and so are all cheerleaders. Blonde is a suitably desirable hair colour for both, therefore...

In Anime, this can be explained by all Japanese having black hair and the country's extreme institutional xenophobia. Having blonde hair is a visual shorthand for being an Evil Foreigner.

Compare White Haired Pretty Boy.

Examples

Anime

General Blue from Dragonball.
In Tokyo Mew Mew, Ichigo chooses sweet black-haired Aoyama Masaya over blond Jerk With A Heart Of Gold Shirogane Ryou. In an aversion, Kisshu, the Stalker With A Crush and obvious suicidal choice, is green-haired.
Char Aznable, the probable trope-maker for White Haired Pretty Boy, was in fact blond, demonstrating how these two tropes are related. Most of his many, many Expies are also blond(e).
General Peters-Stahl, one of the few outright villains in Scrapped Princess. Also worth noting is that Cz, the only Peacemaker who is supposed to be sympathetic, is also the only one that isn't blonde.
Shin from Fist Of The North Star gets bonus points for being talked into it by Jagi, another blonde. And it also has Souther/Thouther/Souza. The series also has a black-haired Big Bad, though: Raoh.
- That's just in the first anime, though. Raoh is blonde in the video games, and the newer OVA series.
Johan, of Monster, is handsome, blond, blue-eyed, and absolutely terrifying.
Chrono Crusade has Joshua Christopher, a blond, blue-eyed boy who's manipulated by the White Haired Pretty Boy into becoming one of his minions after he puts on a pair of demon horns (which also drive him absolutely insane). However, the series also has Father Remington, another blond man who might be one of the the most genuinely good characters in the series.
Mello from Death Note is a mafia terrorist since he was fourteen, armed with guns in leather pants. Not to mention taking extreme measures to get what he wants, including kidnapping a little girl to the point where she is traumatised enough to enter a catatonia-like state, unable to contact the outside world, move, or generally show signs of life except breathing or a beating heart.
- Don't forget Light Yagami, who has reddish-blond hair, despite being ethnically Japanese.
Hiruma from Eyeshield 21 is positively demonic in appearance, and waves his Hyperspace Arsenal around like it's nothing at all... except he's one of the primary protagonists.
Although he's amusingly psychotic to the point where it's hard not to like him to an extent, Ladd Russo from Baccano would most definitely fall under this trope. I mean, come on. He shoots a small child's head off and constantly threatens to kill his girlfriend, among other things.
- Graham Spector might fall under this trope too, though sometimes it's ambiguous whether he's blond or an Evil Albino ... or even whether he's evil or just plain crazy.
Played with in The Prince Of Tennis. Kevin Smith is an angry, bitchy, aggressive American boy who is an absolute Jerk Ass for quite a while... who comes from a broken family with a negligent father, also blond. When he's defeated and comes to terms with himself, he shows a sweeter side, though not losing his strong temper completely.
Naruto himself averts this, as he's the hero, but Deidara of the Atatsuki does not.
- Considering Naruto's personality, he may well be a Phenotype Stereotype parody of an American (although I admit that's an odd idea).
Code Geass plays with this trope with Schneizel El Britannia (pictured above): although for a long time he doesn't do anything truely evil, and could even be considered as pretty nice, his blondness helps setting up his status as an antagonist for Lelouch and validating his Informed Ability as an opponent Chess Master. Toward the middle of season two, he does start doing some really evil actions, such as using FLEIA against Tokyo and Pendragon, however the jury's still out on whether that makes him worse than Lelouch or not.
- Code Geass also has Prince Clovis and V.V.. The former is an insecure wreck who commits mass slaughter to cover his screw ups, the latter is just plain insane. The trope is utterly averted with the mediocre but kind First Prince Odysseus and with Gino Weinberg, the cheery and noble Knight of Three. And don't forget the Charles di Britannia was blond before age turned his hair white.
Krad in DN Angel, who is also a prime example of Light Is Not Good thanks to his angelic appearance and utterly sadistic personality.
Cain from Trinity Blood is blond, angelic looking and a complete evil bastard.
Three words: Fushigi Yugi's Nakago.

Comic Books

Ozymandias in Watchmen
- What are you talking about, he literally saved the world! The deaths of tens of thousands of people was just an unfortunate side-effect.
Eddie Brock aka Venom in Spider-Man.
- Most useless spoiler tags ever.
Notable exception: Superhero Connor Hawke is blond and a pretty nice guy. His dad, Oliver Queen alias the Green Arrow, is a hero, but he is often portrayed as a bit of a womanizing jerk, so he fits the trope.
See also these two Flare comic pages: the debut of the Dash and page 200.
The only physical difference between The DCU's Impulse and his Evil Twin Inertia is their hair; Impulse has brown hair, Inertia's blond.

Film

In The Princess Diaries, Josh is a blond jock that Mia's crazy about in the beginning. Michael is her best friend's nerdy brother (and brunette). Josh breaks her heart, and she ends up with Michael. Bet you never saw it coming.
- And then the books recently shot it to pieces. Michael ends up going to study in Japan for a year and Mia breaks up with him, for complicated reasons, and gets into a Will They Or Wont They situation with an Ascended Extra character, J.P., who is of course blond.
In The Devil Wears Prada (The Movie, at least), Andy's boyfriend, Nate, is a sweet dark-haired chef. Christian is a blond writer. Andy and Nate break up, and she rebounds with Christian. He then turns out to be a jerk.
Averted in Legally Blonde, where the only blonde characters are amiable, naive girls. All the men (including Elle's jerky ex Warner and good guy love interest Emmett) and the one really bitchy girl are brunettes.
In American Pie, the four main guys are all dark-haired and (somewhat) sympathetic. And then there's Stifler.
- Though to be fair he mellows over the films and by American Wedding he is clearly a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold.
James Bond faces muscular blond henchmen in regular basis, starting with Red Grant in From Russia With Love. Then they just keep coming: Vargas (Thunderball), Hans (You Only Live Twice), Eric Kriegler (For Your Eyes Only), Necros (The Living Daylights) and Stamper (Tomorrow Never Dies). Bond himself is now blond and somewhat more of an Anti Hero ( although people complained enough about him being blond to warrant him dying it to black).
Roy Batty (though not a blond guy, but ridiculously human robot) in Blade Runner.
- Describing him as 'evil' would be pretty harsh. He's at least an Anti Villain.
Talbot (Josh Lucas) in Ang Lee's Hulk.
Any villainous character played by Dolph Lundgren, but specifically Ivan in Rocky and the badnik in Universal Soldier.
- It's probably also worth noting that the only two antagonistic boxers that Rocky faced who were white were both blond, the other being Deceptive Disciple Tommy Gunn.
About 80% of all the characters Mark Rolston has played. (The other 20% were just assholes)
Lt. Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky from Top Gun.
- The end of the movie seems to suggest otherwise, or perhaps the character merely transitions to Deadpan Snarker.
Jake Busey and his father, Gary, are both ash blond, and both play bad guys fairly regularly.
Averted by Leonardo Dicaprio in most of his films.
- Then again, some people apparently think he's a complete asshole in Real Life.
  - He's blond? His hair always looked more brown/red to this troper.
Probably the reason Robin Williams bleached his hair for One Hour Photo.
Applied lightly in the film Made of Honor where the brunette (and American) Tom wins the girl, and the Scottish blond Colin loses her. We say applied lightly because Colin is portrayed as quite a nice guy aside from not being very good at sharing cake.
Genesis from Suicide Club is horribly evil, and happens to be the only blond in the whole damned thing.
The TV movie She Cried No starred Mark-Paul Gosselaar as a blond frat boy who rapes innocent freshman Candace Cameron.
Possessive ex-boyfriend who won’t accept that it’s over Cole Whittier (Robert Prescott) in Bachelor Party (1984), versus witty and easy-going brunet Rick Gassko (Tom Hanks).
In Reservoir Dogs, Mr Blonde is evil.
- The only blond character (well. This Troper can't work out what colour Tim Roth's hair is.) is Nice Guy Eddie. Total Jerkass.
Subverted in The Princess Bride The Dread Pirate Roberts is supposed to be a fearsome villain, but Westley is the hero, and the brunet Humperdink the villain.
In Never Back Down, brunette Jake Tyler fights Ryan Mc Carthy, who's fond of luring people to his home under false pretenses and savagely beating them.
The Karate Kid, Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio), battles Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka, career Evil Blond Guy) for the affections of fair-haired Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue). Johnny sweeps the leg, but Daniel still wins in the end.
In The Dark Knight, brunette Batman battles blond baddies. The Joker's hair is so greasy it looks dark, but he's definitely blond. Like Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent suffered two terrible losses and assumed a new identity. But while Batman dedicated his life to fighting crime, Two-Face tried to kill a cop's innocent child.
- Uh, the Joker's hair is kind of... green. The blond factor comes from the fact that it's Heath Ledger, who's really more of a light brunet. And Harvey Dent didn't start out that blond'n'evil either- more like a Marty Stu.
  - This troper thought that Harvey Dent was an interesting subversion of the trope - the angsty, brooding dark-haired hero mopes as his love-interest takes up with a blond, popular, media-savvy politician who wears his idealism on his sleeve. Surely the blond rival must be a superficial jerk, incapable of truly loving the heroine and only affecting high principles for show? No, turns out he really is a courageous, noble, if somewhat vain man, and a better match for the girl than the hero until the poor blond man gets broken to pieces in the most horrible way.
Justin Long is Accepted by Blake Lively after she realizes she's in another Hollywood love-triangle where the blond guy turns out to be a jerk.

Literature

In the Angels Unlimited series, the antagonist, Brice, has a bleach-blond mullet. After he goes back to Heaven, he still dresses in black, but he cuts off the mullet, spikes it, and only dyes the tips blond. I guess it'll have to do.
Draco and Lucius Malfoy.
Joker from the Read Or Die series.
Not evil, but Sam Spade sure is an asshole.
- Note that, while Spade is portrayed in the book as looking like a 'blond Satan', in movies he is almost always a brunette and much more sympathetic.
In the Sword Of Truth series the Big Bad of the first and second books, Darken Rahl, is blonde. For some reason, so seem to be all other "full-blooded" people of his evil empire.
- However, in later books, it's discovered that the vast majority of those people aren't evil, they were just loyal to an evil man. Once the protagonist takes control, they're firmly on the side of good, with many lamenting that they were under the heel of such a lunatic before, making this a subversion in the long term.
  - Or a Ret Con.
Subversion: A Song Of Ice And Fire seems like it's pulling one of these with Jaime Lannister, but in later books it's revealed that he isn't evil, but rather extremely disillusioned and bitter, and after losing his hand he starts to go down a path to redemption.
- Played straight with Tywin Lannister, however. And most of the other Lannisters, including Joffrey and Cersei, if she were male. Subverted with Tommen, who's just a sweet little kid, and Tyrion, who's just snarky, though most characters think he's evil.
The Time Traveler's Wife invokes this trope twice over: while neither Ingrid nor Gomez (the blonde romantic rivals to the central couple's brunette Henry and redhead Clare) are bad people, the former is needy and confrontational and the latter is offputtingly glib and cynical (and has a weird Communism fetish). Neither Henry or Clare view them as legitimate contenders in the Love Dodecahedron (although Henry and Ingrid dated before he met Clare).
"My name's Teatime. What's yours?"
- Also, Wolfgang von Uberwald, who has more blond hair than the rest of the examples put together.

Live Action TV

Prince on [[Lexx]] epitomizes this trait.
- The show also has the [[magnificent bastard]] Schlemmi (later Fifi), also a blonde.
Spike. Before the Himification.
Although Gene Hunt, from Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes isn't exactly evil, he's racist, sexist, homophobic and violent.
- "You say that like it's a bad thing."
Notable exception: The Fifth Doctor.
Averted in the Sci-Fi channel TV version of Flash Gordon; the blonde guy is the very much heroic and idealistic hero, who's borderlining on The Messiah. Then again, the other blonde on the show is the evil villain... Ming the Merciless... So Yeah.
Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensai from the second season of Heroes, a blonde European guy running around Feudal Japan, who ends up going bad... in a big way.
Barney on How I Met Your Mother. Specializes in doing horrible things to women before or after sleeping with them.
Rita's abusive, drug addicted ex-husband Paul is portrayed as blonde on Dexter.
Vim Fuego/Alan Metcalfe from The Comic Strip Presents... episode Bad News has a huge rock-star mane of blond hair, and while he isn't evil he is arrogant, obsessed with his own talent, violent, not above fraud, and ARROGANT.
And while he isn't evil either, Prince Wendell of The Tenth Kingdom is certainly arrogant, stuck-up, pompous, and a true jerk to Tony (not that he doesn't deserve it from time to time) and Wolf for the first half to two-thirds of the miniseries, up until he gets it rubbed in his face that wolves aren't the evil monsters he believes them to be and eats a major portion of humble pie after realizing he's failed to pass his test of kinghood. Humorously, even the dog he is turned into by his Wicked Stepmother is a golden retriever. (And it's being stuck in this form and losing his human self that contributes greatly to his change for the better.)
Edie's new husband on Desperate Housewives is fair-haired, pale eyed, and extremely creepy. There was no doubt he was evil from the second he appeared onscreen, even though it has yet to be revealed what he is actually up to.

Music

"Jessie", from Rick Sringfield's music video of "Jessie's Girl", is blond.

VideoGames

Gilgamesh in Fate/stay night and Fate/zero, President Evil back in the good ol' days and one half of an Evil Duo. However, when Black And Grey Morality moves in, he becomes more Necessarily Evil. Did we mention that he's a Stalker With A Crush too, thus enabling him to hit every interpretation on the page? No? Well, now you know.
Notable exception: Link is blond in several incarnations.
Geese Howard, the first SNK Boss. There's also Rugal Bernstein, the successor to the mantle. Interestingly enough, Geese is killed by a blond guy, Terry Bogard, and his son Rock is blond (with red eyes to boot). The Big Bad of Mark Of The Wolves, Kain R. Heinlein, also has red eyes and long blond hair. It's not a coincidence, or anything; Kain is Rock's Evil Uncle, and Geese's brother-in law. Poor Rock. He knew Kain was half-evil, but then he found out the other half was evil, too...)
Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid.
- Especially bad since Solid Snake, to whom Liquid is supposedly genetically identical, has brown hair.
  - There are two possible explanations/justifications to this, depending on what part of the canon you believe. Either Solid Snake dyes his hair dark, or Liquid's is naturally bleached from his different background after his 'birth'.
  - Or it could be an expression of recessive genes, because it is stated that the two have different phenotype expressions in spite of having the same genetic makeup.
  - Solid Snake has the recessive genes, meaning he would have blond hair if this were true.
  - There is no such thing as 'recessive genes', only dominant or recessive allels. And it was revealed in MGS 4 that neither of them is better or worse, Liquid was lied to in order to wile him into a confrontation.
In Gears Of War, the blonde squadmate is also The Jerk. Although this may be partially due to him also being The Smart Guy. The hero is also very much The Jerk, and the two characters often butt heads over essentially which one is the bigger Jerk.
The Big Bads of Tomb Raider (and the remake, Tomb Raider: Anniversary), Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, and Tomb Raider: Legends have all been blondes or platinum-blondes.
Inverted in the RPG video game Fable, where having a good alignment makes you blonde, having a neutral to moderately evil alignment gives you dark hair, and being extremely evil makes you bald (with horns. and flies.).
The aptly named Mr. Blonde in Perfect Dark. Yes, it's a pseudonym, and as a matter of fact he's not really blond; the reptilian aliens musn't have been trying very hard, because they all use the same holographic disguise.
None of the all-blond Branstein clan in the Super Robot Wars franchise are actually evil, although you are nominally fighting against Maier and Elzam at the beginning of Original Generation, Rai is kind of a jerk, and Elzam is an Aloof Big Brother (and A CHAR).
The Silencer from Crusader is revealed as blond in a rarely-seen death animation. A half-subversion in that he is the protagonist, but even if he isn't evil is far too willing to carelessly shoot unarmed surrendering civilians for any reason.
In Tales of Symphonia, Kvar or Yggdrasil.
- Also, the Ferines in Tales of Legendia. Then again, they could just be "misunderstood".
Both used and subverted at times in the Final Fantasy series
- In Final Fantasy VIII, the protagonist, Squall, has brown hair while his rival-turned-evil Seifer has blonde.
- In Final Fantasy VII, IX, X, XI, and XII the hero is blonde-haired. The villain is a typical White Haired Pretty Boy in the first two, and has black hair in the last two (or three, depending on who you think is the real real villain in X).
- In Final Fantasy VI, the villain Kefka is an Ax Crazy blonde. However, many of the male protagonists are blonde, as well.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Kain is shown to have blonde hair in the game's ending (it's the only time his helmet is removed). It might be argued that Kain isn't really evil, but as Golbez noted, those that were taken over by Zemus/Zeromus had evil in their hearts. Kain's jealousy over Rosa loving Cecil and not him is what made him willing to turn against his friend. Also, he doesn't have a problem with using brute force to get something done—-he says as much to Cecil when Rydia is unwilling to go with them after Mist is burned.
Walter. Sullivan. This is a guy who also happens to believe an apartment is his mother.
Kristoph Gavin in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Averted with Klavier, who, even though his position as prosecutor makes him an antagonist by default, is a really nice guy and very friendly to Apollo and Trucy.
Albert Wesker, William Birkin, Alfred Ashford, and Jack Krauser are some of the only blond-headed guys in the Resident Evil universe, and yup: they're pretty darn evil. In fact, the only blond who's not a bad guy is Jim Chapman from the Outbreak titles, but he's a black guy who dyes his hair.
Yuber from Suikoden is this trope and a bag of chips.
Kazyr, one of Overlord Ulgar's evil henchmen in Popful Mail.
The blond Prince Zephiel in Fire Emblem 6 is the opponent to Redheaded Hero Roy and to his gentle half-sister Guinevere.

Webcomics

Averted in Sluggy Freelance, where both of the main male heroes are blondes.
The website hosting the Nukees comic also includes a page dedicated to SUSBEC: tracking evil, eyeless blondes, mostly male.

Web Original

The titular Dr. Horrible from Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog.
- Subverted in that Dr. Horrible, despite his name and "villain" status, acts far less evil than the "hero", Captain Hammer, who has dark hair.
Mostly averted in Survival Of The Fittest, but played straight with Bobby Jacks of V3. Inexplicably - he's black, mark you, with no reason given for his unusual hair colouration.

Truth In Television

Real Life example: Jeffrey Dahmer.
- And Bernard Goetz.
  - And Eminem.
Notably subverted by Adolf Hitler and much of his inner circle.
- Who nevertheless considered blonde as the ideal of Aryan beauty. The pseudo-Aryan ideal of blonde hair and blue eyes and its association with Nazism may be at least partly responsible for the trope. See the Malfoys and all their talk about "pureblood".

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