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Contractual Genre Blindness
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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.
182. No figuring out the plot and killing the actual villain five minutes into the adventure.
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.
Examples
Anime
Comic Books
- The bad guys in Empowered, by Adam Warren, do this as a survival mechanism. Smack around the hero and leave him (her) tied up and escape with the diamonds? Good show, whatever. We'll get you next time! Shoot the hero? Every other hero will be after you.
Film
- Dr. Evil from Austin Powers is much the same way, although he never really acknowledges that he is obligated to do these things.
Literature
- 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
 .
- In both of the above cases, Contractual Genre Blindness is a clever survival technique. In the case of the Old Count, he knows that deliberately obeying old stereotypes is much better than subverting them and earning the total emnity of the local villagers, who are actually more capable of killing him once and for all than even they know. Evil Harry Dread's continued "I'll be back" survival also works because he abides by the same rules as the heroes. If they killed Harry once and for all, they would be depriving themselves of a future job. As such, Harry is considered a close friend, even though he is still a bad guy.
- In the novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, villain Dr. Impossible does many things because that's what villains are supposed to do, but with a lot of realistic consequences Dr. Impossible dons his supervillain costume to impress the C-list villains at a local hangout, gets beat up and thrown out, and has to change out of his costume in nearby bushes before getting on the local Greyhound bus to go home., Soon I Will Be Invincible website
- Rare heroic example: in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer insists on breaking Jim out in the most elaborate, difficult way possible because "that's how it's supposed to be done." Given all the trouble this causes, you can tell Mark Twain had gotten sick of Tom Sawyer by the time he wrote Huckleberry Finn.
- To elaborate on how idiotic the breakout plan was: one step of it involved moving a boulder into Jim's cell (don't ask). The two boys aren't strong enough to move it in themselves, so Jim helps them. That's right, Jim walks out of the cell and goes back in voluntarily. And then lets himself be locked back in again. Poor Jim...
- The Duke of Ch'in in Bridge Of Birds does this out of fear: tough as he acts, he's still confused and frightened, so he mimics the villains in fairy tales rather than think on his own.
Live Action TV
- 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 the series to suit his new position as Black Ranger (and even lampshading this), and his previous experiences as a Power Ranger.
- In what may be Truth In Television, the actors in the George Reeves Adventures of Superman show actually said that they never noticed Clark and Superman looked the same because they wanted to keep their jobs.
Tabletop Games
- 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.
- also The Infernal Exalted have Acts of Villainy that they can use to loose limit. These include telling their opponents their evil plan, leaving them in a deathtrap, and forcing people into marriage.
Webcomics
- Xykon from Order of the Stick, though he's actually Not So Harmless. He is also very lazy.
- Lord Milligan in 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 Narbonic. As a Mad Scientist you act in a given manner, even though you KNOW it's going to bite you in the tush, precisely because of the insanity.
- 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.
- General Gray, the villain of Issue 5 of Jump Leads. He already ''has'' taken over the world once, but found actually running the world pretty boring, so he abdicated. But he still loves trying to take over the world. So for the past thirty years he's been coming up with outlandish, easily thwartable (and increasing ill-defined) world domination plans.
- Dr. Steve from Sluggy Freelance, though some of that may just be him being completely, batshit insane.
Western Animation
- Seņor 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.
- In fact, it's a tradition followed both by the villains and the heroes.
- So much so that the characters get upset when one villain refuses to follow the rules.
- To be fair, he merely considers it to be good form.
- 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.
- Specifically, it's suggested that the Guild enforces this as a protection measure for both their members and for society at large. An episode where Jonas Jr does not play along has Brock Samson warning him that a psycho with a private army, flying machines and so forth needs to be indulged if only to keep him away from committing real crimes.
- During one instant, Baron Undherbeit and The Monarch are both trying to kill Dr. Venture at the same time. After coming to an agreement to combine their forces, Undherbeit asks if they should run the decision by the Guild first. After a brief pause, they both laugh at the suggestion and decide to 'screw protocol'. However, by the time they have finally decided upon this, all of their henchmen have been massacred by one of Venture's specially built robots.
- Jack Spicer of Xiaolin Showdown.
- Dr. Doofenschmirtz of Phineas And Ferb.
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