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Every day, the sharks are fed at least two employees who had incurred the displeasure of the president.
Mal: No. I'm... sure that he was a very bad man.
A criminal kingpin or other villain establishes just how bad he is by callously mistreating his own henchmen, sometimes outright maiming or killing them — and usually for trivial reasons. Why anyone goes on working for this guy is unknown. His behavior sometimes breeds Starscreams or annoys/scares off his mooks into joining the winning (or at least less dangerous) side, but sometimes it has no effect... and sometimes you're left wondering why anyone would work for him in the first place.
Contrast with Benevolent Boss. Never ever ever try With Due Respect on this guy.
See also:
In some cases it's not the Big Bad, but a more vague force of evil that slaughters its own. For those cases see Artifact Of Death.
Examples:
Film
- Darth Vader. Vader points out that his own boss, Emperor Palpatine, is "not as forgiving as I am." The secondary material frequently verifies that claim in great detail.
- Tarkin once had a stormtrooper spaced (in a suit to keep him alive) and left to spiral into Carida's atmosphere and incinerate for insinuating that he and Admiral Natasi Daala were having an affair. Even though they were.
- That's nothing. Emperor Palpatine had Bevel Lemelisk (who made the crucial mistake of designing the air shaft in the Death Star) killed in horribly gruesome ways, then cloned him and brought his mind into the new body to kill it again...over and over and over. Lemelisk's last words, when the New Republic executed him, were a resigned "Just make sure you do it right this time."
- First cause of death: being eaten alive by piranha beetles. They got progressively worse from there.
- Another one was getting dipped in molten copper. When he had the nerve to ask Palpatine why copper in particular, the latter responded it just what the smelter was using that day.
- This characteristic of Palpatine is parodied in the 3D animation video It's hard to be a Stormtrooper 4
 , where Palpatine stops by to put some of his men back on schedule. The stormtrooper protagonist moves a crate out of his transport ship. Vader tells Palpatine that they are already working as fast as they can, to which Palpatine responds "Maybe this will motivate your men..." and is apparently starting up his Force Lightning. The stormtrooper protagonist is obviously worried by this... until Palpatine's Force Lightning strikes the crate he just moved, causing a side on it to come down, revealing the crate is filled with Lego Death Star sets.
- Willie Bank in Oceans 13 treated all of his employees this way, even his right-hand woman, tearing up the thank you card to a one-of-a-kind gift.
- Which is why it's awesome that he's brought down by his employees (the hostess, the unknowing Sponder, the table people who probably knew something was wrong when people were willing right and left but didn't give a shit, etc.)
- Brad Wesley from Road House. He beats the stuffing out of one of his Mooks for bleeding too much, and sure enough, the guy still shows up to work for him every day.
- Casanova Frankenstein in the movie Mystery Men makes the point to the heroes that he is willing to kill his own men for no reason, just to show how tough and insane he is.
- Subverted in the first Blade movie: Big Bad Deacon Frost asks a lieutenant, whose losing and subsequent regrowing of arms has been something of a Running Gag throughout the movie, to hold out his hand, ostensibly to test the sharpness of Blade's Cool Sword by cutting his arm off.
Deacon Frost: [examining Blade's sword] Hold out your arm, Quinn. Quinn: Why, man? 'Cause they're-they're, like, all better. Deacon Frost: Hold out your arm. Now. [trembling, Quinn does so; Frost takes aim with the sword] Quinn: Deak, I... [Frost raises the sword... and lowers it] Deacon Frost: Just kidding. [chucks Quinn on the shoulder] Quinn: [laughing uproariously] He was fucking with me, man! He was, like...
- Siegfried in the 2008 Get Smart film is a bad boss, and the film seems very much aware of this trope. In his first scene, he promptly shoots one of his men who questions what seems to be a pointless part of Siegfried's plan (blowing up a warehouse for no apparent reason after stealing stuff from it). This behavior actually has consequences for the bad boss, however, as at the end of the film he's thrown out of his getaway car and off a bridge by his own Dragon after threatening and insulting the guy and his wife repeatedly. He also continually insults his right-hand man Shtarker, who tells the other goons, "I'd quit, but he's married to my sister."
- Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective, as demonstrated when a drunk henchman sets off his Berserk Button by calling him a "rat."
Ratigan: Oh, my dear Bartholomew... I'm afraid that you've gone and upset me. You know what happens when someone upsets me. (rings bell to summon his Right Hand Cat)
- Don't forget when Fidget suggested for them to cast off excessive weight of their dirigible in order to go faster (He was thinking of tossing their hostage overboard, so he isn't exactly nice guy either), Ratigan complied... by throwing him overboard. Note: Fidget is a bat with a crippled wing.
- Hans Gruber from Die Hard:
Gruber: Blow the roof! Mook: But Karl's up there! Gruber: Blow the roof! (Blows up the roof)
- Ironically, blowing up the roof probably saved Karl...
- The Big Bad Taha Ben Mahmoud from Banlieue 13 is a trigger-happy boss. So trigger happy that his thugs are only in it for the massive money he has. When his hacker minion told him his accounts have been emptied, said minion left and the rest gun Taha down. Even then, he utters this Facing The Bullets One Liner:
Taha: You all are a bunch of useless dipshits.
Mooks proceeds to gun him down while he points his hands like guns to them.
- Cliffhanger. One of the mooks is injured during the mid-air robbery.
"What do we do with him?"
"Send him to the nearest hospital." (throws mook out of the airplane)
- Commander Kruge from Star Trek III, who kills his lousy tactical officer when the guy overperforms, destroying a vessel instead of disabling it. The Klingon Promoted guy who takes over knows better than to mess up similarly.
- Shao Kahn of Mortal Kombat Annihilation is very much the Bad Boss, getting rid of Rain and later Jade for having disobeyed or failed him.
- Clarence Boddicker from Robocop when one of his men is shot in a bank heist upon finding him he asks him "Can you fly Bobby?" he then has him thrown onto a police car that way persueing them.
- In The Witches, The Grand High Witch comes up with this little poem:
A witch who dares to say I'm wrong
Will not be with us very long.
- In Conan The Barbarian, Thulsa Doom demonstrates his power by ordering one of his worshipers to leap to her death with a gently worded, "Come to me, my child".
- Zorin machine guns a group of his own employees in A View To A Kill.
- Kill Bill has several. Bill starts the series by ordering the assassination of a runaway employee...AT HER WEDDING, collateral damage accepted and expected. Budd's boss at the bar he worked at exemplifies a typical, non-murderous yet irrational and petty Bad Boss. O-Ren Ishii has a psychotic bodyguard, a chaotic, often masked, biker gang of thugs, and a merciless Berserk Button.
- Actually, O-Ren's not a bad boss at all. She laughs good-naturedly along with her army of Mooks, and they're willing to die for her. She's perfectly willing to accept criticism from the other Tokyo crime bosses... as long as they don't disparage her Chinese or American heritage. Then all hell breaks lose.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Adelai Niska, a psychotic crimelord introduced in the Firefly episode "The Train Job," makes a point of showing his new hires the beaten, bleeding body of... his nephew. Indeed, after the crew of Serenity renege on their deal with him after learning that the job in question was denying the citizens of Paradiso some much needed medicine and put his Dragon Crow through the ship's engines, Niska takes revenge by capturing Mal and Wash and putting them to the torture in "War Stories," prompting a furious Castle Storm by the rest of the crew to get them back. Of course, many crimelords in all genres and even (gasp) Real Life make a point of being cruel to perceived enemies.
- The Master of Doctor Who has a persistent tendency to kill anyone who even remotely qualifies as a henchman. Notable examples include his first appearance where he kills a mildly disobedient henchman with a plastic chair, and his most recent appearance where his first act as Prime Minister is to gas his entire cabinet. The only discernible reason he does this is because he's just that twisted.
- He kills the cabinet because they betrayed their parties to join him. He doesn't hold with traitors, despite betrayal being his modus operandi.
- The insane Emperor Cartagia on Babylon 5, who, among other things, kept the severed heads of advisors who gave "unappreciated" advice, in a room all their own, and killed his court jester for making the wrong joke. Not to mention his plan of ascension to godhood, which involved the destruction of the entire Centauri Homeworld and, by extension, the (near-)extinction of the Centauri race. He was, of course, completely out of his mind.
- Angelus in the second season of Buffy. He gets amazing enjoyment out of emotionally torturing Spike despite the fact that the last time we saw him (before he became Angel) the two still got along quite well.
- The Master was also terrible, probably made worse over being trapped underground and powerless and unable to take his frustration out on anyone but his own servants. He overused You Have Failed Me and snapped at his servants constantly. He mellowed out a bit after everyone except The Anointed One died.
- Yogoshimacritein in Go-onger. Not because he uses the Quirky Miniboss Squad as human shields—twice—or fires them at our heroes as missiles—or even because he indiscriminately fires in their direction, but because he fires RIGHT THROUGH THEM to hit our heroes.
- Admiral Helena Cain of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. A sick, twisted bitch, even by Battlestar standards. For instance, her original XO refused to give a near-suicidal order - her response was to shoot him in the head in front of the entire CIC.
- Although she's never outright killed anyone, on 24, Erin Driscoll (the boss of CTU) is by all accounts a horrible, horrible boss. This is a literal example of a "bad boss." She starts out by firing Jack from his job at CTU (even though his actions saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people) because she thought he was a drug user. She then (in the space of 12 hours) fires one of the two halfway competent programmers in the building, makes bad decisions, gets security to taser an employee (then forces her back to work), orders Jack to stop his rescue attempt of the Secretary of Defense (which he ignores anyway), tells a grieving man (who just found out his mother is dying) to suck it up and go back to work, and finally ignores her schizophrenic daughter's pleas for help, as Driscoll is keeping her confined in the CTU medical wing. The fact that the Secretary of Defense pulls rank and asks her to leave is a sigh of deep relief.
- The Seattle-based sketch comedy Almost Live once did a bit set in an office where the bad-tempered bully of a boss gets promoted, and his replacement is, literally, a box of snakes. Eventually the box gets promoted as well and replaced with the greatest horror of all: a guy who sells Amway.
Comic Books
- The Joker, and (to a lesser degree) most of Batman's adversaries. Batman The Animated Series eventually addressed this, as the Joker became increasingly strapped for cash because potential thugs were all too scared to work for him. Specifically, he once pushed a henchman into the path of an oncoming truck for asking a simple question about their plan, shouting "Mind your own business!" He did that after he explained it to him. Though, to be fair, Joker is insane. He probably did it because he thought it would be funny. Heck, that's why he does most of what he does! This is hilariously lampshaded in "The Man Who Killed Batman", where a thug asks an obvious question only to get pushed into the ground and attacked by the Joker's pet hyenas. Harley Quinn gives a bored sigh and announces: "I'll get the mop."
- Joker is arguably even worse in the movies. In Burton's Batman, he ices all of the mobsters he's just bullied into working for him on the imaginary advice of the dead guy he just fried with a handbuzzer ("Grease 'em now? You're a vicious bastard. I'm glad you're dead!") and later shoots his most loyal henchman, Bob, for no other reason than he's pissed that Batman stole his balloons. ("Bob? Gun.") The Dark Knight has a Joker who takes it to even greater extremes in the opening scene ("No, no, no. I kill the bus driver") and later uses one of his own goons as a humanoid bomb.
- Superman: Lex Luthor flip-flops on this. Some interpretations show him as a deeply caring boss and humanist (or at least smart enough to keep his underlings well-managed), others as a mastermind willing to kill and use anybody near him. Then again, he has enough money to get away with a lot of mistreatment:
- One example in Superman The Animated Series, when Brainiac kidnapped him and was threatening everyone present he abandons his right hand woman Mercy to her death, leaving Superman to save her. To her credit, she eventually rebels and uses Lexcorp (which he legally gave her when sent to prison, so she'd return it) for herself.
- In the first movie, it's implied that Lex is so mean nobody but the dimwitted Otis and Miss Teschmacher would work for him. He does, after all, direct a missile toward Ms. Teschmacher's mother's house as a distraction for Supes though anywhere would've worked. Out-of-story, this is to give her a reason to remove the Kryptonite Lex was using against Supes. In-story... no reason but pure meanness, and she'd served him well thus far.
- However, that missile could as well be due to Otis' mistake.
Otis: I reset the first vector heading to 38, the second one to 67, and the third one to 117.
Lex: And the fourth one?
(...)
Lex: The third one goes to 11, Otis. And the fourth one to 7.
- Showcased in the first Justice League episode starring him as the villain, "Injustice for All". His "leadership" of the Injustice Gang consists mostly of him yelling at his subordinates for their failures and name-calling. The Gang only puts up with his crap because he keeps offering more and more money. Somewhat justified since he did recently discover he had contracted terminal Kryptonite-induced cancer and wasn't in a particularly patient or forgiving mindset as a result.
- The titular character of Leonard Le Genie is a sadistic, abusive boss to his assistant Basile, though it is occasionally shown that, if given the chance, Basile would be even worse.
- In the most recent Aquaman series, Black Manta is one of these to the henchmen serving as crew on his submarine as they monitor Sub Diego. Admittedly, for such a cruel guy he's oddly calm and forgiving here; the worst he doels out is a severe verbal thrashing at his underlings for talking too loud on a stealth mission.
Western Animation
Anime and Manga
- The Digimon anime has Myotismon (Vamdemon). Between minions he's killed for failure or for no apparent reason once he was done with them, and the fact that both his resurrections required the deaths of others, Gatomon (Tailmon), the one who turned against him, is the only minion of his known to have survived working for him. Not to mention the torture and beatings Myotismon gave.
- Puppetmon was nearly as bad, killing off minions who annoyed him even slightly. At least Metalseadramon and Machinedramon's reasons for killing Scorpiomon and Warumonzaemon made some sense.
- Millions Knives from Trigun tops Myotismon for lack of empathy towards employees — none of his servants exit the anime alive, as he views them as garbage like all the other humans. Caine in the anime and Dominique in the manga even kill themselves rather than face the penalty for failure.
- Then there's his Dragon, Legato, who is strongly implied to do quite a few of the murders for failure and has a bit of an issue with Midvalley in the manga. His coin gimmick even implies that he intended for all the members of the Gung-ho Guns to be killed before his final confrontation with Vash (which might make him even worse than Knives in some way, they're the same species as he is and all). Interestingly, manga Legato himself is an extraordinary "victim" of Knives's cruelty, as his zeal earns him a broken spine and Knives tells him that he doesn't care about his loyalty and will kill him as soon as he stops being useful.
- Not to forget Master Chapel in the manga. This is all the more aggravating since he's a kind of substitute father to several of his henchmen.
- Powerful enemies on Dragonball Z tend to be extremely cruel and apathetic when it comes to anybody working under them, which includes everybody from Piccolo, to Vegeta, to Frieza. Frieza was specifically bad at this; every time he happened to have a mood swing (which was quite frequently, considering that he was a sadistic Omnicidal Maniac), one or more of his henchman would find themselves vaporized instantly. This seems to be mostly in anime, though. In the manga he's less kill-happy, though no less sadistic.
- Gates from Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid had a penchant of killing his subordinates at the drop of a hat, just to show how much of a raving lunatic he was.
- Though he doesn't exactly have what could be called "henchmen," Light Yagami of Death Note kills or tries to kill almost everyone who helps him throughout the series. A Justified Trope, since Light tries to keep his identity as a mass murderer a secret from the police, and every person that knows who he really is poses a security risk. Misa devotes her entire life to serving Kira, even to the point of undergoing rather painful interrogation, shortening her lifespan twice, and pretty much giving up any notion of a normal life for him and he still treats her like dirt and manipulates her for all she's worth.
- That's because according to the creator Light loathes Misa with all of his being viewing her as a prime example of people who don't deserve to live in his new world. Indeed he plans on gleefully killing her the instant she is no longer useful.
- Xanxus from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Enough said.
Webcomics
- The villain Xykon in Order Of The Stick takes this trope to a ridiculous extreme, commenting at one point, "Sacrificing minions... is there any problem it can't solve?" Then again, he's undead, and he can turn dead people into undead zombies who bend to his will. So, for the most part, he can get away with it. To a lesser degree, his Dragon, Redcloak. He even kills his own brother. Redcloak eventually realizes that hobgoblins are goblinoids too, though.
- Kary from Eight Bit Theater is frequently killing her own minions for her own amusement.
- Minions At Work: No layoffs, but "Of course I'm going to have to eat a few people."
- Hannelore's mother in Questionable Content. Imagine a wealthy New England business woman who runs her international conglomerate like she's Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Complete with firing a minion. Into a volcano.
- For some Drowtales readers, Zala'ess Vel'Sharen crosses the Moral Event Horizon when she delibaretely sends a team of minions (including her own adopted daughter, a new recruit who had saved her daughter's life, and several starving slaves) on a suicide mission just to make another clan look bad.
Video Games
- Luca Blight from Suikoden II sets the bar for this trope, punishing and/or killing any of his men for so much as hesitating in battle or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and having no qualms about needlessly sacrificing his own men. An example of his inhumanity is in the beginning of the game, where he, in order to justify starting a bloody war with a neighboring nation, betrays and slaughters his own completely innocent youth brigade. The only regret that he has towards this unbelievably heinous act is that he himself didn't participate in the massacre, in order to practise his swordsmanship, and his men are still willing to sacrifice their lives for him, even when Luca Blight faces utter and complete defeat.
- Under the same vein as the Joker, Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI would gleefully take the chance to kill any of his own men, just for the sake of amusement. Of course, this wasn't even just limited to his own henchmen. Even being in the same organization as Kefka was a death sentence, as General Leo and Emperor Gestahl discovered, or being on the same planet as he is, thanks to his Omnicidal Tendencies.
- Dragon Quest VIII featured Don Mole, a character in charge of some moles who stole some treasures the hero needs to retrieve. The moles are all quite fond of him, despite the fact that his music is so terrible that it causes them to go into paralysis.
- Both played straight and subverted in Disgaea. Prinnies, in the Netherworld at least, are treated as easily replacable slaves/cannon fodder that face horrible work conditions for minimum wage (this is how it's supposed to work, though, as, Prinnies are usually in Hell for being rat bastards). The subversion is with Kricheveskoy and Laharl. Accounts from the vassals, particularly Etna, imply that King Kricheveskoy was actually a very good boss, which is part of the reason why Laharl's Bad Boss tendancies don't to go over very well with them - Well, and because they know that Laharl doesn't really have the heart to do worse than snark at them for it.
- Etna, on the other hand, has no such issues. She can - and, as any of the Prinny Squad can tell you, WILL - abuse her Prinnies for any reason at all. When her level tanks as a result of a summoning she helped botch, the Prinnies take that as the perfect opportunity to seek new management. Yukimaru even points out how badly they're willing to fight just to stay out from under Etna's heel.
- If you don't immediately kill every Helghast you come across in Killzone 2, you'll hear from some soldiers about how Colonel Radec executed some of his own men for dress code violations.
Tabletop Games
- Commissars in Warhammer 40000 pretty much exist for this purpose. When something horrific and sanity-blasting is to the troops' front, the easiest way to ensure they stand their ground and fight on is to put something scarier behind them. Ditto the Ork Bosses. The source material states that the only reason Ork armies stay together is the fact that the 'boyz' fear their Boss more than the enemy. To be perfectly fair to the Ork bosses, they aren't 'bad' so much as they are paragon examples of their own species' hat — that is being a Blood Knight. If the boss isn't around to crack a few heads and yell curses at his underlings, they'll start fighting each other instead of the enemy. Some bosses carry "bosspoles" around solely for the purpose of killing insubordinate Orks.
- The Ork example is perhaps best (and most hilariously) exemplified in the Dawn Of War expansion packs with da Ork Warboss Gorgutz 'Eadunter, who kills a random Ork in nearly every single cutscene in which he features, including detonating his own base with his boyz still inside (except for a lone survivor who compliments him on his intelligence).
- Note that in such novels as Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts and Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain books, commissars featured as main characters are invariably more reasonable and humane. However, all of them kill for failures of discipline at some point, and minor commissarial characters — such as Kowle in Dan Abnett's Necropolis and Tomas Beije in Mitchell's The Traitor's Hand — fulfill the role more closely.
- The short fan story K59 shows a particularly harsh example, with a Commissar who is brought to the Inquisitors for executing way too many soldiers in his career for anything, up to a politician for organizing a truce with the Tau. He was also known to have killed his own mother because she didn't show for his graduation ceremony on the grounds that she MAY have been a heretic. He nonetheless justifies his actions as necessary and useful in some ways for the Imperium's survival.
- And this is inverted with the Catachan jungle fighters who regularly kill their own commissars. In this case it's because they are styled after Vietnam soldiers and even have a special rule that requires the player to roll to see if his commissar is killed by his own soldiers. The Death Korps however are all fanatical to the point of reversing the relationship between Commissar and Imperial Guardsmen.
- It should be noted that the commissar's job is not "just shoot people". It's to keep morale up and to make sure the officers are doing their jobs properly - if shooting them is the best choice, such as if the squad they're supposed to be leading fails a morale check, then so be it. In Duty Calls, one of the Ciaphas Cain books, a minor character is noted to be a former commissar who was sent to a penal legion because he cracked under the pressure of battle and started shooting some of the men under his command for failing to salute an officer while they were under an artillery barrage.
- Also; the enemy they're against literally uses The Dark Side against them. Humans who get away with behaving in a manner normal Commissars would kill them over tend to turn into monsters who kill everybody very, very quickly. It's a Crapsack World.
- The Computer in Paranoia is not just a bad boss to the entire Alpha Complex, it's an insane paranoid one, and the human-staffed bureaucracy under it reflects this at every turn.
- This is a traitorous lie spread by mutant commie traitors. The Computer is your friend, citizen. Report immediately to your nearest Termination Booth.
- The philosophy of the color Black in Magic The Gathering is basically summed up as Power At A Price. It's willing to do anything to win... and sacrificing monsters/it's minions is a common cost to play spells and abilities. Other colors have the sacrifice a creature cost too, but it's less often and their "flavor" changes by color. For Red it's carelessness, for White self sacrifice, and for Green it's natural selection.
- Not uncommon in D&D adventures, fanfics, etc.; demon generals and other epic - level Always Chaotic Evil types often slaughter their own minions for thrills, sport, or out of frustration. Most of the lower - level Always Chaotic Evil types are Explosive Breeders relative to comparable good aligned races, in order to counter their high mortality rate. In fact, in Planescape the bottom level planar mooks spontaneously reincarnate.
Real Life
- The 18th century Pirate Blackbeard (Edward Teach) shot his first mate Israel Hands in the knee under the table at dinner. When asked why, he said "if I did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who I am."
- Many Real Life dictators end up like this, and with good reason. It would be very bad for them if one of their subordinates turns out to be Eviler Than Thou, so they frequently come up with excuses to kill anyone who might one day become a threat.
- In the case of Stalin however, he purged his entire army and those that didn't get sent to the firing squad usually winded up in a labour camp in Siberia. This cost him a war and very nearly lost him another.
- Came back to bite him in the ass eventually. Stalin was up all night drinking with his cronies, and when he went to bed, he left orders not to be disturbed. He had a stroke, and it was almost a day before anybody worked up the nerve to check in on him. By then, it was much too late.
- Reflected in a grim humor Russian by-word:
victim of an undeserved punishment: But why?!
punisher: Had there been a reason - would've snuffed you to begin with!
- Allegedly Hitler was said to have expressed an opinion that if Germany couldn't win WWII, the German people deserved to be destroyed.
- The six most horrific bosses of all time, brought to you by cracked.com. Most of them pull some pretty spectacular Karma Houdinis.
- L Ron Hubbard (who succumbed to madness and drug abuse) and Dave Miscavage, whose paranoia began spiraling out of control during the Lisa Mc Pherson case. Many former Scientologists recount tales where he would beat people for real or percived failures (many of those brought on by cutting staff to the bare bones but still demanding high output), hurl full water bottles near female staff, and once made senior executives play musical chairs for their jobs (the losers would be sent to far-off "missions"; married couples would be separated).
- James Cameron is widely regarded as one. He is frequently described as egotistical and cruel, frequently yelling at people (even at Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he went to the bathroom before shooting a scene from True Lies!), and abusing his crew with anything, from working through meal breaks to spending too much time in water sets (people getting sick during The Abyss and Titanic were common). As early as the first Terminator, shirts written "You can't scare me...I work for James Cameron" were common in his sets (while shooting T2, there was also "Terminator 3? Not with me!"). Titanic star Kate Winslet stated she only works with Cameron again for "a lot of money".
Web Original
- Deathlist, the unstoppable supervillain in the Whateley Universe. While he loves his boss Chessmaster (literally, as it turns out), and he treats his Sabretooth minions as if they were his own children (they may be, in some sense), he is perfectly willing to gut anyone else. When the general of the Syndicate warriors irritates him, he tells his second-in-command to make said general a target of opportunity.
- Whilst not being totally, indiscriminately abusive to his henchman, Danya, Big Bad of Survival Of The Fittest, has his moments. He enjoys tormenting Dorian, one of his subordinates, to the point of deliberately giving him tasks (such as taking over the daily announcements) that he can't do/hates. A more severe example was when three of the terrorists screwed up in V1 (they accidentally broadcasted their reading of a Slashfic across the PA system on the island). Danya put them on the island to get killed too. Oh, and had their vocal chords cut out.
- Meet ''The Mastermind'', possibly the single worst example of a Bad Boss you can experience in five minutes. The guy holds meetings with his flunkies just to have an opportunity to execute the first person who speaks up.
- "I am Marik Ishtar, I like to take control of people's minds and dress in highly effeminate clothing. Also I have an irrational hatred for Gummi Bears. I'm pretty much the worst boss ever."
- If fanfics count as "Web Original", we can add Brute High-Chieftain Torikus to this list, what with casually (and brutally) killing those who fail him or even bring him bad news from the front. Of course, it's been established in canon Halo works that most Brutes are like this.
- From Professor Brothers the titular characters' boss is one of these. Aside from being over-bearing, intimidating, and unforgiving he even pranks them in various mortifying ways.
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