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alt title(s): Evilicious 
Gives lots of energy for you to kill more! Now with 10% less horrible puns"Join the Dark Side - we have cookies"
— T-shirt slogan
Evil doesn't just feel good, it also tastes good. Any Evil Overlord worth his cape will often describe their past evil deeds, current plot, or last kill with taste related adjectives like "Delicious", "Sweet" or "Juicy", and their urge to do evil as a "Thirst", "Craving" or "Hunger".
The Seven Deadly Sins describe materialism and overindulging in earthly pleasures as sinful and wrong, and out of the seven deadlies Gluttony is one of the least glamorous. So when villains use taste to describe evil you just know there's something creepy and ugly about them, no matter how attractive they are. For much the same reasons Lust is why Evil Feels Good, and most villains like to describe their power in tactile and addictive terms like "Strong", "Smooth", and "Intoxicating". This might explain why some villains get Drunk On The Dark Side.
Extra points if they happen to be a cannibal, Serial Killer, vampire, werewolf, zombie, or alien. (Or all of them...)
See also: Finger Lickin Evil, Horror Hunger, Licking The Blade and A Glass Of Chianti. Contrast Being Evil Sucks. Combine with Delicious Distraction for humorous (or horrifying) results.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Comics
- In Lucifer Hell produces a highly addictive drug called Pain, which is distilled from the suffering of the damned (specifically it is masochistic suffering as Lucifer notes early on that all the people in Hell are there because they feel the need to be punished). Exactly what it tastes like is never elaborated on but it is highly addictive.
- When the damned are given hope the taste is spoiled.
Film
- Harry Osborn in the third Spider-Man movie uses this trope in a Double Entendre. After manipulating Peter into thinking Mary Jane has dumped him for Harry, he tells a waitress asking him about the pie he’s eating that it “[Tastes] So good!”
- Supreme Chancellor, and later Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars got powers from the dark side of the Force. Said powers, being fueled by negative emotions, gave him a (rather disturbing) amount of "pleasure" when Anakin and later Luke had their baser emotions tempted by the dark side.
- Hexxus in Ferngully describes spreading pollution, devouring animals and destroying the environment with quasi-sexual glee in "Toxic Love", a Villain Song ode to Evil Feels Good and more so, Evil Tastes Good. Even more evident in the extended version.
Hexxus: Mmmm, sludge! Mm-numnumnum...filth! Mmmmm-mmm! Fumes! Oohhh-ohhh...cack!
- In The Polar Bear King, the Witch infuses her wedding feast with a moderate amount of Evil for her guests (including the Devil himself). Too much evil is apparently fatal.
Literature
- The book Battlefield Earth actually addresses this as a way of explaining why Psychlos are Always Chaotic Evil. They have electrodes surgically implanted in their brains that stimulate their pleasure centers when they do evil deeds; thus, evil literally tastes good to them.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry describes getting a heady feeling from using the Imperius Curse, stronger and more effective than firewhisky.
- In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund finds his first quite literal taste of evil very good, specifically of the White Witch's
drugs Turkish delight.
- Lewis takes pains to point out that it soon not only tastes less good but is actually kind of nauseating... but it's so hard to stop.
- In the Thomas Harris book Black Sunday, the terrorist leader Fasil is eating a rich Swiss chocolate bar, and licking the remaining melted chocolate off his fingertips, admitting that if the Israeli Mosad ever knew of his pecadillo in how much he loved chocolate they'd probably have a means to catch him.
Real Life
- Famously, "Revenge is a dish best served cold" was first coined by Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de La Clos (1741-1803). He originally said it in French in his 1782 book Les Liasons Dangereuses: "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid."
- Re-entered popular consciousness in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This particular usage has been parodied many times since, including in an episode of Freakazoid where a villain, voiced by Ricardo Montalban himself, proclaimed that "Revenge is a dish best served with pinto beans and muffins."
- At the beginning of KillBill this quote is attributed as "an old Klingon Proverb"
- Parodied on The Simpsons by Sideshow Bob: "Revenge is a dish best served family style!"
- Another variation, in the series premiere of He Man And The Masters Of The Universe:
Skeletor: Revenge is like jivare stew; it tastes best served cold.
- Yet another variation from David Gerrold's character "Solomon Short": "Revenge is a dish best served lightly browned with a side of carrots. And maybe with some fava beans and a light Chianti."
- And parodied once again at the start of chapter 21 of Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitors Hand:
"Revenge is a dish best served with mayonaise and those little cheesy things on sticks." Osric the Loopy, planetary governer of Corania (appointed 756 M41,removed from office by the Officio Assassinorum 764 M41)
- Parodied yet another way in Get Fuzzy, where Bucky uses this line on Satchel. To which he replies: "Like gazpacho!"
Video Games
- In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, evil literally tastes good.
- Albedo from Xenosaga has this quote: "AHHHH, YEEEESSS… FEED ME YOUR HOSTILITY, PIERCE ME WITH YOUR HATRED!!"
- GM Yodai Higashizawa in The World Ends With You appears to have taken pointers from Fawful on food-based puns. "The pudding of your despair"?!
- "The proof is in the pudding. The pudding ... of their doom!"
- Akechi Mitsuhide from Sengoku Basara is very fond of eating-related analogues.
Tabletop Games
- Both of version of the Vampire games in the World Of Darkness game lines describe drinking blood as both sensual and delicious, the best and only rush vampires have left.
- Quite a few bits of flavour text in Magic The Gathering cards. An example.
Television
- In Stargate: Atlantis, the Wraith need to drain life energy from others in order to survive. Whether this is evil is up for debate — they have to do so in order to survive, after all. But there's no mistaking the almost-rapturous joy that the Wraith experience while draining others, as well as the incredible pain that their victims go through. (The process is so traumatic that the Wraith actually have to strengthen their victims using a special chemical in order to prevent them from dying instantly of shock.) Most Wraith are also very malicious and sadistic, so certainly this qualifies as an example of the trope.
- Worth noting is one of Todd's lines in a recent episode. While offering the Atlantis crew some food they picked up during a culling, he mentions he hopes the fruits "taste as good as the farmers who grew them."
- An early episode had an unusually droll Wraith comment that "Unfortunately, your last chef proved far more appetizing than the meals he prepared." Although he was a single episode baddie, after a season or so some of the ideas behind that character evolved into the character of Todd.
- At various points in Buffy and Angel, vampires like Drusilla would liken the taste of someone's blood to "cloves and honey", and life force draining warlocks would say it tasted "like strawberries". And Glory described a mind she had eaten as a "nummy treat". On the other hand, when asked what evil itself tasted like, Willow made a face and described it as "a little chalky."
- Sylar in Heroes occasionally describes his acquisition of powers in culinary terms, talking about his "hunger" to "consume" or "sink his teeth into" the "delicious" powers of others. There is widespread fan speculation that he steals superpowers by eating the brains of superhumans.
- Even after the whole "brain eating" thing was explicitly Jossed, the characters continue to refer to Sylar's desire for power as a "hunger" and his process of taking the powers of others as "feeding". Potential victims (the Level 5 Villains) are referred to as a "smorgasboard" and a "buffet".
- In Mike Mignola's short-lived (read: one episode) "The Amazing Screw On Head", the following exchange occurs
Emperor Zombie: You let me down. You went on and on about how sweet the candy was, then told me not to put it in my mouth and got mad at me when I did.
Screw-On Head: If by 'candy' you mean 'ancient forbidden evil' then, yes, I told you not to put it in your mouth.
Webcomics
- Sabine clearly enjoys this trope in this strip of Order of the Stick, where she drains Roy's life-energy. "Four stars! I'll have to recommend dining on you to all my fiendish friends!"
- Later parodied: Two hobgoblins tell a rookie at the granary that they whip the human slaves so that their cries of pain will make the food they're carrying taste more evil... then tell him they're just joking.
- And in this strip, the voices in V's head like the trope as well.
- And brain sucking has all kinds of tastes!
- Also subverted: in the prequel book Start of Darkness, a pre-lich Xykon goes on about his... strange relationship with bad coffee. The first thing he and his minions do after he's been turned into a lich and escaped his confinement is return to the old Greasy Spoon... only for him to find he can no longer taste anything. He flips out.
- If you ask Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater, the only thing better than pie is EVIL pie.
- Absurd Notions, in its earlier years, has a comic annotated with the statement that revenge, like meringue, is sweet and best served cold.
- Parodied in The Adventures of Doctor McNinja when the good doctor visits Sebastian, the vampire that runs the Red Cross in this strip:
Catering Chef: Would you like some baked ziti, sir?
Sebastian: How...innocent is the baked ziti?
Catering Chef: Very innocent, sir.
Sebastian: Yes. I will have the ziti.
- Also parodied a few pages before where Sebastian describes how he feeds a cow dairy products to make it fat, then butcher it, feed the steaks to infants, and then suck their blood. To quote Sebastian, "It is so decadent."
- In Demonology101 a Witness comments that the food at the wedding of Isaac Jenner and Madeline is delicious. Apparently evil doesn't just taste good, it makes a fine shrimp dish too.
Banai: Trust a Jenner to have the best served wedding I've been to in the last twenty years.
- Richard from LFG once drained the soul of a monk. "It tasted like chocolate," he said.
- Khrima took classes on baking evil cupcakes.
Western Animation
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