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You're a supervillain. Your efforts are supposed to be foiled by your ambition and hubris. Failure is the surest sign of success.

-The Green Grocer's henchman played by a black pawn, Terror Island theorem #092

Apparently, there is such a thing as being too Genre Savvy. Genre Savvy villains are evil, and they know it. For every complicated villain with abandonment issues that has a chance to redeem themselves, there are ten Card Carrying Villains out there who are just in it because they love being villains.

But what happens when you have a Genre Savvy villain who understands that to be a good villain, you have to be Genre Blind? You're left with a villain stricken with Contractual Genre Blindness. This is the man who captures the hero and uses overly complicated Death Traps, not because it's the smart thing to do, but because it's what a villain is supposed to do.

While usually reserved for a Genre Savvy Card Carrying Villain, this trope does reach out into the realms of the Affably Evil, the Punch Clock Villain, the smarter Harmless Villain, and the Deadpan Snarker who gives up and "plays along."

Slave To PR to the extreme. Villains who say "Screw it" to this policy instead become Dangerously Genre Savvy.

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Examples:

• In what may be Truth In Television, the actors in the George Reeves Superman show actually said that they never noticed Clark and Superman looked the same because they wanted to keep their jobs.
• Señor Senior Sr. from Kim Possible is a paticularly Genre Savvy old man who took up supervillainy as a hobby and has since adhered to Contractual Genre Blindness.
• Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies is much the same way, although he never really acknowledges that he is obligated to do these things.
• In the Discworld novel Carpe Jugulum, the old Count de Magpyr explains that for various reasons, it's better for vampires to display stupidity (big open windows, easily breakable furniture) and get killed every so often, than to become tyrants by living forever.
  • Evil Harry Dread in The Last Hero is constrained by the Dark Lord Code of Honour, later defined in this Pyramid article.
• Lord Milligan in the webcomic Casey And Andy is textbook evil, with many jokes and Lampshade Hangings on it. When asked about the benefits, he points out the ability to use the Standard Female Grab Area.
• Everyone in the webcomic Narbonic.
• In The Venture Brothers, most supervillains are members of the Guild of Calamitous Intent -- a Weird Trade Union whose bylaws obligate them to behave in this manner.
• Jack Spicer of Xiaolin Showdown.
• Jesse and James expressed this in the early seasons of Pokemon, alongside some Lampshade Hanging:
  James: Why didn't we try this before?
  Jesse: We had to fill up the half-hour!
• The main cast in Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu literally fall under this trope because they're trying to maintain the Masquerade when they know that Haruhi is a very Genre Savvy godlike being, and if she expects a trope, that trope will manifest; however, if she knows this, there's a very real risk of her destroying the universe. (Possibly just Earth. The domain of her power is left kind of vague.)
• As evidenced by the title text, The Green Grocer's henchmen in Terror Island, who mostly give said Card Carrying Villain advice in how to be a villain.
• Xykon from The Order Of The Stick, though he's actually Not So Harmless. He is also very lazy.
• In Exalted arguably most raksha would fit into this although it would be quite posible for them to be wrong about what genre they're in.
• Particularly applicable to Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, where the White Ranger shows up at the same time that another character suddenly starts dressing in white. Somehow, Tommy fails to suggest looking for somebody who has changed his clothing style, in spite of changing his own wardrobe earlier in PR:DT to suit his new position as Black Ranger, and his previous experiences as a Power Ranger.

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