"In case you were still wondering, yes, he's THAT fat! He's ORCA! He's horrific!"
— Sharona Fleming, Monk: "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"
Gluttony (Gula), one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
There are the villains who provoke moral outrage. Others are funny or even somewhat likeable. Some arouse carnal desires. A rare few inspire twisted admiration. And then, there's pure disgust. That's what this guy — and it's very commonly a guy — is for. He consumes. He devours. He gives nothing back. Meet: the Villainous Glutton.
The Villainous Glutton tends to run visually opposite to the Lean and Mean character. He will usually be a very bulky Fat Bastard, although not necessarily obese; his eating habits symbolize his Greed and lust for power, rarities, food, or whatever else he may be after. In some cases, some sort of powers may be the source of that bulk, too; alternately, the character may be muscular, but the drawing style will still usually result in a clearly "fat" look. While the Villainous Glutton is often played as an Evil Counterpart to the Big Eater, his consumption can be purely symbolic.
Typically Large and in Charge, and very prone to karmic Death by Gluttony.
Historically, this was a favorite charge of historians trying to tarnish the name of a political enemy. The Romans were particularly fond of the tactic, with emperors like Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and Elagabalus described as hosting massive and extravagant banquets—usually to highlight their immorality, frivolity, and unfitness to rule. Similarly, Charles the Fat, the last Carolingian emperor, was first given that nickname by a historian three centuries after his death.
If the Villainous Glutton also eats in a way that's just plain disgusting, he's got Jabba Table Manners and is likely a Fat Slob; if his meal consists of endangered species or something similar, it may be an Exotic Entree. If the villain's overindulgence is portrayed as wasteful, it's also a case of Wicked Wastefulness. See also Adipose Rex (specifically for obese monarchs), Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit, and Seven Deadly Sins. Contrast Fat Bastard (a character who really is fat and is a Jerkass, but may or may not be an actual villain) and Gonk (an anime trope usually played for a combination of Squick and Comic Relief).
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Fan Works
- Ask Jappleack has Appelox, a reality-eating monster who desires to consume the multiverse by devouring entire planes of existence.
Music
- The Evillious Chronicles series by Vocaloid producer Akuno-P aka mothy features a one, fittingly, in the Gluttony song, Evil Food Eater Conchita
, sung by Meiko. Duke Banica Conchita, a rare female, fairly attractive example of this trope, desires for only the most gruesome foods in the world. Okay, her tastes are bizarre, but why is she a Villainous Glutton? It's because when her chef asks for leave, she eats him instead, and soon following him are the maid and servant. When there's nothing left, she finally eats herself. Expanded on further in the tie-in novel, which reduces the villainy of her eating the chef but slowly details her descent into a monster willing to wage wars with undead soldiers instead.
Music Videos
- The Supermodel Villain Protagonist of the video for Best Friend by Foster the People is shown to be constantly eating other women alive throughout the video. And while she's mainly doing this to absorb these women's attractive features, when she is swallowing her last victim alive, we see her Overly-Long Tongue licking the poor woman's desperately kicking legs, implying she enjoys the taste too.
- While her trim physique and status as Ms. Fanservice and a Lust Object might not make her seem like it at first, the Giant Woman in Miserable turns out to be this as the boys in the band find out the hard way, much to their horror.
Myths & Religion
- The Moabite King Eglon in The Bible is described as being very fat—so fat, in fact, that the Hebrew hero Ehud who killed him could not extract his sword.
- The demon Beelzebub is considered in Demonology as the Patron Demon of Gluttony and one of the Seven Princes of Hell.
- Aboriginal Australian Myths: Has Tiddalik the frog, who drank all the water in the land and refused to share with any of the other animals, basically just to be a dick. They only managed to get their water back when Nabunum the eel managed to make him laugh, causing all the water to spill from his mouth.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Eating is the biggest vice of beholders; according to the 3rd edition Sourcebook Codex Anathema, they actually don't have a sense of taste, but take pleasure from enjoying the physical texture of foods, especially crunchy live prey like humans. Because they can watch themselves eat with their long eyestalks, they also enjoy vibrantly colored food. And they eat a lot of it — up to 200 pounds in a single sitting.
- In the 3rd Edition, there are Famine Spirits, incredibly powerful undead beings who can eat more in a day than fifty men can eat in a week. They were so named because the appetite of one of them could literally cause a famine in a populated area if it was left unchecked.
- Also, there are nalfeshnee, demons that are just below balors in terms of social rank in the Abyss and actual power, who are often depicted like this, especially in the 4th Edition, where they are given a background. They were descended from the Waddling Legions, soldiers spawned by a powerful Primordial who was slain during the war between the Primordials and the gods. His minions devoured his corpse (they saw this as a respectful gesture for some reason) and as a result, absorbed his power, becoming the powerful nalfeshnee. The same source states that their gluttony is legendary, as is their tendency to treat other beings as food. They tend to group other beings in three categories, "Fit to eat" (which is most other creatures, including weaker demons), "Fit to use" (which is any being weaker than they are that is inedible to them for some reason), and "Fit to serve" (a small group reserved for beings that are obviously more powerful than they are, at which point they quickly turn from egotistical blowhards into groveling cowards.)
- The primary trait of hill giants in 5th edition, having been simply "bigger ogres" in previous ones. They spend their spare time eating anything edible, their idea of entertainment involves cramming as many living beings into their mouths as possible, and their leaders are always the fattest and most gluttonous members of their kind.
- In 5th Edition, gnolls have become this, having become even more closely tied to Yeenoghu, the Demon Prince of Butchery, than they were before, they now exist only to kill and eat humanoid victims. Yeenoghu himself is also one, as his only goal is to kill and eat every other sentient being in creation.
- Leviathan, Lord of The Fifth Hell, takes a more nuanced approach to this. Despite his enormous size, his hunger is for memories and information; which he extracts using his psychic powers.
- Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen has Fewmaster Gholcag, the ogre leading the Dragon Army's attack on Vogler. She's messily chowing down on a barrelful of stolen fish when the party encounters her, and she keeps eating even as she orders her soldiers to kill them.
- In the Dark Sun setting, there were undead monsters called faels, who only existed to eat, and demanded food from anyone who encountered them, violently lashing out at anyone who denied them food or interrupted their feasting.
- In the 3E Ravenloft supplement Van Richten's Guide To The Walking Dead, the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins pursue an undead beast called Glutton of G'henna. This ravenous ghoul-like creature broke into houses or barns and ate every scrap of food there, whole livestock included; it could be tracked cross-country by the large bite marks it left behind in trees and boulders. While it did eat people, or parts thereof, if they got between it and food, it was not a man-eater by preference.
- In Scarred Lands, one of the Titans was Gaurak the Glutton, who may have devoured all life in the world (only for his fellow Titans to repopulate it so he could do it again) if the gods had not defeated him by yanking out his hundred teeth and burying him underground. Many of his worshippers are also Villainous Gluttons; they become creatures called fatlings, disgustingly obese and bloated mockeries of the humans they once were.
- In Nomine has Haagenti, the Demon Prince of Gluttony, whose whole reason for existing is to consume everything in his path and convince humans to do the same.
Be careful, or you might lose an arm. Mmmmm. Arm. - The beginning of Haagenti's character description
- Vampire: The Requiem features a bloodline of the Ventrue known as the Macellarius. The bloodline flaw is that anyone inducted in gains a large amount of weight fairly quickly, impairing physical function. The upside? They can consume food again. And they do a very good job of consuming human flesh to add a little variety to all the blood...
- The tyrannical emperor who appears on many Yu-Gi-Oh! cards is proven to be one on this card.
- Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- Devotees of the dark god Slaanesh can be found engaging in every form of hedonism, gluttony included. A notable example is the wizard Glutos Orscollion from Age of Sigmar, who grew tentacles just to feed himself. Another is the Mistress of Spite from 40,000, a daemon prince who ascended for emptying entire worlds of food and people.
- In Warhammer 40,000, the C'tan were driven by nothing but a desire to consume. At first they fed on radiation from stars. Then the Necrontyr approached them and gave them new bodies in the hopes that the C'tan would give them an edge in their war against the Old Ones. The C'tan, now more intelligent and aware of the universe around them while still being the gluttonous beings they always were, manipulated the Necrontyr into swearing fealty to them. Once the terrible pact was made, the C'tan promptly turned the entire race into the robotic Necrons, feasting on their lifeforce and souls in the process. It was then that they realized how much more appetizing souls were than radiation and dedicated themselves to devouring the souls of every living being. In the end, this defining trait of the C'tan led to their downfall. Supposedly, Cegorach the Laughing God manipulated one of the C'tan into eating others, which caused a downward spiral of infighting and cannibalism that reduced the power of the C'tan to the point that the Necrons were able to shatter and imprison them. The C'tan did not learn anything from this: even after being shattered and made into slaves by their former slaves, they still want to eat everyone.
- In Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, this one of the core defining traits of the Ogres. They are entire race of enormous fat humanoids that live only to kill and eat. For them any sort of meat will suffice, be it from other races, or each other.
Web Animation
- The Snake from the final webisodes of Lobo (Webseries) symbolizes a snake glutton who digests tons of food for six weeks. A major scene is in which he ate a combo meal number 2 93 times.
Webcomics
- The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom): Cthulhoo, whose gluttony and tendency to eat large quantities of mortals is Played for Laughs. Sort of.
- Jack (David Hopkins): The Vorshes are Gluttony personified. They are vicious demonic cannibals but in a subversion are extremely emaciated, and cannot gain any enjoyment from their food.
- The Order of the Stick has the Empress of Blood, an incredibly obese red dragon who seems to do very little other than eating. Her warlord explains that she does so because she's confused correlation with causation and thinks that larger dragons can cast more powerful spells because they're larger. In fact, they can cast those spells because they're older, which is also the reason they're larger.
- The Beast Legion: Sglutton is an obese and ruthless Shadow Nexus slave Master.
- Girl Genius: The Beast of the Rails is a sapient, Heterodyne-built train that consumes all metal it encounters to convert it into part of itself and bombastically declares:
I want to travel the world and see the rich diversity of wonders which fill it — and consume them! HaHaHaHaHaHA!
- Heartcore: Royce enjoys himself the finest meals on a daily basis along with daily birthday cakes. His signature sin is Gluttony after all. It is a miracle that he has managed to stay in shape during his hundreds of years of gorging himself with one-man buffés.
- The Demiurge Nadia Om from Kill Six Billion Demons is a female example of this trope. In her case her gluttony isn't just a personal one; she is a Planet Looter who constantly strips entire worlds bare for foodstuffs, slaves, and luxuries to sate herself and flaunt her power to her Decadent Court. She also constantly consumes fruit grown from Human Resources in order to remain young and beautiful, requiring ever more of it to keep her youth. She displays Jabba Table Manners when eating it.
