Troperville
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Haley: Hey, wait a minute - aren't dark elves evil? Nale: Oh, my, no. Not since they became a player race. Now the whole species consists of nothing but Chaotic Good rebels, yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin. Haley: Evil kin? Didn't you just say they were all Chaotic Good? Nale: Details.
A common conceit of the sci-fi and fantasy genres (and especially games of those genres) is the notion of not a clan, not a city, but an entire race of bad guys (who may also be Card Carrying Villains) who brag about how evil they are. How, exactly, these folk have unanimously embraced one ethos (especially one so detrimental to the survival of the group), when humans have been known to kill each other over how many fingers are used in a ritual blessing, is both unknown and inconsequential — simply put, races are Always Chaotic Evil because it would be a really boring show if Kirk had to interview every Klingon he met before punching them out.
Often this alignment is justified by the evil race being explicitly artificial in origin rather than natural, so their nature is determined by the evil individual who creates them as slaves/warriors/etc. Expect the national dress to be Spikes Of Villainy and black leather, the reason for keeping pets to be kicking, and their language to be Black Speech.
The Defector From Decadence typically comes from this stock, usually with some qualifier. Having an ancestor from such a race usually qualifies a character's evil (or potential for it) as being " In The Blood".
It's quite common for a fantasy Big Bad to have an Always Chaotic Evil race at the ready to use as Mooks. It's usually justified as an arrangement among the various Powers That Be.
Undead, Demons or anything referred to as a monster (especially in an RPG) is almost always chaotic evil.
See also Planet Of Hats, What Measure Is A Non Human, and Scary Dogmatic Aliens. Compare Lawful Stupid Chaotic Stupid. Should not be confused with Chaotic Evil.
Contrast Always Lawful Good.
Examples
Anime
- 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 Dn 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.
- 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...
- Actually, there are some sympathetic Zanscare soldiers. Two. Just two. In the whole series. All the others are psychos who should be in a straightjacket instead of a military uniform.
- Subverted in Devil May Cry The Animated Series, where Dante's efforts succeed in redeeming a few of the demons he encounters.
Comic Books
- Marvel Comics have always been bad about this, particularly in the 1980s. The most egregious example is The Brood, who are depicted as inherently, irredeemably corrupt and corrupting — largely due to their method of reproduction. Sympathetic Skrull and even Dire Wraith characters have shown up in the Marvel Universe
, but never a sympathetic Brood. Strike that: The Planet Hulk storyline introduced a Brood character as one of the Hulk's allies that got progressively more sympathetic during its run. It's still the most prominent exception so far, and rather ax-crazy. Not the sole exception, though.
- Hannah Connover was a full-blown Brood Queen who decided to be non-evil thanks to the personality of her human host. Her Broodlings would count as non-evil after that point too, since they've got a telepathic link with her and are completely devoted to her.
- Conversely, the Silver Age DC Universe avoided this trope on a regular basis. The numerous alien races encountered by Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League were almost invariably shown to have made a choice in their cultural path. Of course, those choices tended to lead to either Crystal Spires And Togas or Space Nazis, but it was never depicted as Always Chaotic Evil — and either kind of society could make the transition to the other, if the right (or wrong) choices were made.
- Further, it was recently revealed by the leader of the Brood that they're not just Always Chaotic Evil, but rather so paranoid about extinction that they're willing to sacrifice anything to reproduce. So, Always Chaotic Evil with a side of Chaotic Stupid and quasi-Freudian Excuse, then. (Seriously, how many of their number have been slaughtered during one of their many attempts to convert Earth into a breeding ground? They wouldn't have had to worry about extinction until they actually started attacking.)
Film
- Mulan portrayed Huns this way.
- The aliens from Independence Day
- 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.
Literature
- This goes all the way back to at least Tolkien and The Lord Of The Rings, making it Older Than Television.
- Interestingly, the makers of the LotR movie trilogy were concerned that the idea of a race being evil by definition is too blatantly racist to get away with 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, added to imply that the orcs are robots/clones/minions and hence do not have "race" status.
- In the Lord of the Rings prequel The Silmarillion and possibly also in the Lord of the Rings book, it is stated that the evil overlord Morgoth (to whom Sauron was only a lieutenant) created the first Orcs from enslaved Elves that were tortured and warped into this horrendous form. The movie mentions this briefly.
- The book consistently refers to the Orcs as being 'spawned' rather than born - hence the scene in the film, no doubt. However the book makes it clear that Orcs breed. A goblin child is mentioned by Gollum in the Hobbit and the book itself says Orcs reproduce like Men and Elves.
- 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.
- It's worth noting that Tolkien started writing the books during World War 2, so the notion of a race or country that's just plain bad likely came from Nazi Germany.
- Though Tolkein himself adamantly denied that he had any analogies or allegories in mind when he wrote The Lord of the Rings.
- 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 of canon 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.
- 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).
- Let's put it this way: Have you ever seen a nig... I mean Deep One that wasn't evil or Cthulhu-allied, even in Cthulhu mythos works not written by HP Lovecraft? This is something that should have been subverted some time ago by a clever writer, but if it has I haven't heard of it.
- Actually, Neil Gaiman played with that in his short story A Study in Emerald. Although 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.
- Literary/Movie subversion: In the film version of 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. Less an example in the book, as it was explicitly stated that the Wicked Witch had enslaved the Winkies (the people of western Oz).
- And let's not forget another subversion: Glenda, the Good Witch of the North.
- In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, we have a race which is always lawful evil, the callous and bureaucratic Vogons.
- Actually, Adams gave as the Vogons defining traits (aside from being ugly) 'stupid and bureaucratic' which would make them a most likely candidate for Lawful Stupid status.
- The countries and, thus, races in the Belgariad are dramatically stereotyped: the Drasnians are sneaky Chaotic Neutrals or Goods, 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". It's still a great series, once you look past it.
- 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.
- As this troper recalls, 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 (aka 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 in culture and that their cruel tendencies are mostly due to the lingering influence of their former dragon rider masters, the destructive Valheru. Subverted in that they are shown to have grey areas and Proud Warrior Race Guy as well as Noble Demon tendencies. However, played straight with the Pantathians, the snake-people who are described and shown to be alien and destructive in their very natures, with no chance of redemption. And yet again, they're fanatics who just want their Valheru mistress back.
- Yet, the Pantathians are justified somewhat by having been created by an evil mistress as minions. Though in that respect, the Valheru may count, as only with Tomas' influence is Ashen-Shugar not evil.
- The Valheru aren't evil, just utterly amoral. More Chaotic Chaotic than Chaotic Evil.
- 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 apparently it's In The Blood. Cats seem to be the only species to avert this entirely, 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.
- 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. He turns out to be the one vermin that survives a Heel Face Turn.
- 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 and very humorously parodied by Something Awful.
- Quigs in 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.
- The Sranc (and similar races) in Second Apocalypse are Always Chaotic Evil to the point of routine canine injury.
- 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.
- Also played straight (after a fashion) with mermaids
- The Howlers, the murderous servant race of Crayak in Animorphs, fit into the artificial category. Partial subversion: as Jake find out when he morphs into one, the Howlers are in fact all childlike and don't realise what they're doing, perceiving killing as a fun game to play.
- 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.
Tabletop Games
- The trope name comes from Dungeons And 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 Always 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 fact that drow are much prettier than, say, a bugbear or mindflayer undoubtedly plays a part in this.
- The Draconians had a legitimate reason for being evil, as they were created by the goddess of evil by corrupting good dragon eggs, for the sole purpose of making Mooks. However, as time went on, new generations of Draconians began adopting neutral stances, and a few "throwbacks" adopt the stance of their dragon ancestors. In addition, the good guys realized that the corrupting ritual used on good dragon eggs could be used in reverse by purifying evil dragon eggs. The result of this was the very rare (in theory) subspecies of "Noble" Draconians, which were always Good.
- As part of the transition to Fourth Edition, they dropped a bridge on Eilistrae and removed the good Drows (except for Drizzt of course) by turning them back into Dark Elves.
- 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.
- Interestingly, in AD&D 2nd ed, this trope was averted or downplayed in the Planescape setting, since race was not a sure-fire method of figuring out someone's alignment or their disposition towards the party. You might run into a good yugoloth (who ran a shop in Sigil) or an evil high elf (common enough). Even if the character or NPC was evil, you couldn't always do anything about it, since either it would be a crime or the person in question would be far more powerful than you.
- 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 [1] embracing them) simply because the 'evil' races and cultures are much more interesting than the generic 'protagonist' races.
- On the other hand some G Ms think player characters are inherently chaotic evil.
- Everyone in Warhammer 40000 is Always Some-Kind-of-Evil. Anyone who isn't evil gets enslaved, raped or gobbled up by a Cosmic Horror. Really evil folks get offered a job by the slavers, rapists and Cosmic Horrors. The job itself may involve slavery, rape or getting eaten.
- That's not really true, though. While the Imperium as an organization may be Lawful (not Chaotic) Evil, the fluff - and especially the novels - makes it pretty clear that the vast majority of Imperial citizens are, well, just people. The Imperial Guard, who make up the bulk of the Imperial forces, are presented as being just soldiers doing a job, essentially no different from their real-world counterparts.
- Hey, what about that time my space marine lobbed a frag grenade over a large crowd after my speech to have them disperse? I got away with that easy! (I'm not sure whether I received a warning for that after the Lieutenant's report or if the warning was in Paranoia.)
- To further put this in perspective, the three factions in setting that even somewhat count as "good guys" are: a group of genocidal ultra-bigoted theofascists so corrupt and inefficient their nastier factions kill thousands with rounding errors; a group of manipulative bastards dedicated solely to their own survival at any cost; and communists who want to forcibly induct everyone else into their society, a position their enemies claim is little better than slavery. (Each of these sides does have a "Better" and "Worse" faction though.)
- The Imperium actually claims the Tau position is blasphemy. Considering they have Gods and heresy can doom a world to demonic infestation, this is a big charge. The Imperium itself has slavery inside it (either because they are evil, don't care or more likely because with millions of systems you can't watch 'em all).
- It's not that everyone is Always Chaotic Evil in the 40k universe. It's just that anyone who isn't doesn't last five minutes.
- 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.
- Both used and subverted in the Lone Wolf franchise. Those beings created directly by Naar, the god of darkness (basically, Ahriman) 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.
Live Action TV
- 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', basically 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 forseeable future. (The idea went nowhere. [2]) 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.
- 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.
- 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 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, deliberately withheld the genetic memory from her offspring, resulting in 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.
- 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.
- Though the Goa'uld actually are Neutral Evil. Only Anubis is really Chaotic Evil and Ba'al could even be set as Lawful Evil.
- 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.
- Actually, it's been said that 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.
- 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.
Videogames
Webcomics
- 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.
- 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. Over several arcs in a specific episode involving a stuffed up Knights Templar Paladin trying to do her best, the main character Roy is given time to improve his behavior while coddling up the adversary, but eventually 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).
- 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!"
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