Humans Are Bastards - Television Tropes & Idioms

Vandread. Take much of the below and combine it. Then they started sending out fleets of killer robots to harvest their own colonists on other worlds for their organs; in the case of the protagonists, their reproductive ones. Note that the main characters are human as well, though, just a few generations removed.
Elfen Lied makes a point in showing how inhuman and amoral almost every human seems to be - and the "almost" is quite significant in the sense that he's about the only human who isn't like that. It goes to the extent where it can be argued that the diclonii - mutants that are feared for their murderous tendencies - are more human than the actual humans on account of how badly they're treated.
- Then the manga ended with it turns out all diclonii's have a Always Chaotic Evil side, it's was just a matter of time befor it comes out, it doesn't matter if they were treated nicey their whole life, they will turn evil and kill everyone, thus they needed to be killed off
  - ..."It doesn't matter if they were treated nicely their whole life, they will turn evil and kill everyone"? Does that mean that Nana was just some illusionary character this troper made up in his head while reading the series?
  - No, but since when does a Broken Aesop make sense?
In marked contrast, Studio Ghibli's Pom Poko is a subversion. Some fans call it "Ferngully with a Brain". Some of the Tanuki believe that all humans are bad and they argue for open warfare against the humans - and even then, they have a hard time fully committing to this as finding food would be a great deal harder with no garbage bags to rummage through. Other Tanuki argue that the humans are simply unaware that Tanuki are real and can be reasoned with. After the Tanuki take the gamble of going public, it turns out that this is indeed the case and the humans are happy to come to a compromise with the creatures, setting aside parkland for them to live in. Of course, the fact their default humanoid forms are cute looking is a real help.
Similarly, Princess Mononoke (also by Studio Ghibli) appears to be taking this stance, as it also takes place in a threatened forest populated by animal spirits. But thenit turns out that the humans aren't all bad and the animals can be pretty dickish
Spirited Away features a bath house that serves supernatural beings whose view of humans ranges from worthless to bastards to interesting to delicious. That the bath house's workers need to take human form in order to serve their customers can be seen as punishment, irony, or subversion.
Blue Gender serves this up with a side of Broken Aesop: Man is ruining the planet due to technological excess and overpopulation, and so nature sends the Blue to forcibly knock humanity back to the Stone Age (Or at least the Bronze). The problem: At the time of the show's events, humanity knows it's ruining the planet and is trying to fix things... an effort Gaia is actively sabotaging with The Blues, to the point where the effort to build a colony ship (to ease the overpopulation) are destroyed. The Aesop being that Humans can live in harmony with nature, as long as it's on nature's terms. Arguably an inversion of the trope.
- Well, it's less that and more that nature doesn't like humans relying entirely on technology. The main characters were able to use their mecha without going insane, for example, because they were still somewhat in touch with nature.
This trope is Light's motivation in Death Note. He's not terribly far wrong, given what we see in the series.
Naru Taru is all too keen to show what kind of terrible suffering and cruelty humans inflict on one another, be they adults or teenagers or even sixth graders. In fact, humans are so far beyond redemption that in the end of the manga, every person on the planet barring the main character and her dark counterpart is killed off when one girl snaps and goes on a destructive rampage with her shadow dragon. At the very least, this manga will convince you that school bullies and city gangsters are pure scum, in no uncertain terms.
The children in Infinite Ryvius start off as top-class students, but turn on each other with incredible viciousness as soon as they're deprived of adult supervision. By the end of the series, the Ryvius has collapsed into a brutal dictatorship, with self-appointed "enforcers" beating up anyone they please in the name of maintaining order while total anarchy rages wherever the enforcers are absent.
Yu Yu Hakusho. While this is somewhat seen in the Dark Tournament ( Thanks Sakyo, and your unholy plan to change the ecosystem!), the Chapter Black expands upon this to a new level. Sensui, the latest villain, was actually a Spirit Detective who fought for mankind and held Humans and Demons in views of black and white, until he crashed a gruesome party that had Humans themselves slaughtering Demons for their blood for the hell of it. Because of this, his view became gray, until he saw the Chapter Black videotape- a divine recording of nearly every atrocious event humanity had ever committed; you name it, it's got it, which then had him harboring a plan to go to Demon World and repent for his killings, conveniently covered up with his Split Personality disorder he got as an aftereffect of the party and the tape as a plan for slow, painful genocide for all of humanity to experience. This is evidenced by a mere creepy mind-reading with him chanting about how much he'd love to have them all as dead meat.
- Subverted: Koenma points out there is a Chapter White which has every act of human kindness, the two are about the same length and should only be seem together. Since Chapter Black is "just a one-sided argument"
Now And Then Here And There has a total of one adult character who does not beat, torture, starve, rape, kill, or give weapons to children. Of course, in this series, it's only the adults who are bastards.
- Two if you count Kazam, who consistently treats the kids (or at least Sara) with kindness, although belonging to the army of said magnificent bastards doesn't help his image much.
The Big Bad in Soul Taker, Kyosuke's sister Runa feels this way after bad stuff happened. In the end, the villain puts Kyosuke in a bind: fight to save humanity who are ingrateful bastards and hate him since he's technically an alien or let them all die and live happily and eternally with said Big Bad. Kyosuke naturally turns both offers down, takes a third option, shows the villain that there IS measure to a non-human and saves the day.
How exactly has Jigoku Shoujo managed to stay off this list? There is at most one character per episode who is not a twisted monster (discounting Ai and her companions, naturally). The whole point of the series seems to be that humans will always be evil to each other, and so Ai & Company will always have work to do.
The manga series Parasyte seems to believe in this Trope so much that the only way that the horrible damage humans wreak on the environment can be lessened is for nature to introduce a new Apex predator to the biosphere to keep humanity in check.
The protagonist of Wolf Guy thinks humans are bastards or at least incredibly petty; it doesn't help that he's a certified Doom Magnet and he's surrounded by the most horrific delinquents at school. Subverted when he acknowledges that his narrow view of humans makes him just as bad.
Ponyo's dad makes it very clear that he thinks humans are bastards, and has been storing up potions to teach humanity a lesson (or something); ironically his wife, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the ocean is a lot more easy-going. In the end he reveals he dosen't really want to harm humans to badly because he allows his daughter to choose become one.
- During interviews for this movie, Miyazaki stated that he wouldn't mind a world without humans.

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"Funny Animal" Comics in particular tend to be lousy with this trope. To wit:
- The main villain Lord Hikiji in the comic Usagi Yojimbo is the only human in a world of anthropomorphic animals. He's the reason Usagi has that scar above his eye, no master, no father, and ninja problems.
  - He's not the only human, just the only human who remained after the characters went from "any living things (except horses, lizards, and one puppy) are people" to "only mammals (with one exception) are people". The one exception is a giant snake, who happens to be Lord Hikiji's 2nd-in-command. The only other human with a speaking role was really a flesh-eating demon.
  - It should be noted, however, that Stan Sakai has said he regrets making Hikiji human, which is one reason why the character is rarely seen. Though this is probably more to do with wanting an all-animal cast than wanting to avoid this trope.
- Similarly, antagonist Doctor "Eggman" Robotnik was the only human in the Sonic The Hedgehog series for a while, and even today most games place his role in the storyline above all the other law-abiding humans.
Calvin And Hobbes brings this theme up a lot. One particular strip reveals that Calvin might have gotten his misanthropic viewpoint from his parents, albeit for different reasons. Calvin's parents don't like people because they feel that manners and politeness are declining, whereas Calvin himself doesn't like people because of humanity's conflicted relationship with nature. As he says in one strip, "I think the best sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us yet".
This troper wants to know how Pride of Baghdad avoided being added into this category. Four lions living in the Baghdad zoo get bombed on, talk to a turtle who whines on about how human pollution killed his entire family the last time there was a war going on, and in a particularly Anvilicious ending, They're all shot dead at the end by American Snipers. Yes, all of them, even the cub who was born and raised in captivity. Okay, we get it, war is hell, but Truth In Television aside, was that really necessary?
- To be fair, who wouldn't be scared shitless at the sight of four lions and shoot them on sight? It's clearly shown that the soldiers were afraid of being attacked by the lions, making them more misguided than bastards.
  - To be even more fair, at the very end of the book there is the coda which states that it's a true story and four lions did escape from the zoo and were killed. On the next page, there is the simple line that 'There were other casualties as well.' For whatever else the book may have meant, they were also making the point that while many people knew the story about the lions, nobody paid much attention to the humans who died.
- Also, the animals are shown not to be much better than the humans. While escaping the zoo, the lion cub is nearly kidnapped by a troop of monkeys, and before she arrived in the zoo, one of the lionesses was raped by another lion.
  - Gang-raped. By four lions. And let's not forget the grizzly bear who effectively starved a chained, captive lion to death and menaced the escaped lions as well.
The Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind manga flips back and forth between whether Humans Are Bastards or Humans Are Good. Even the manga's ending is based on this since Nausicaa destroys the old technology that was ensuring the survival of humanity at the cost of thousands of years of conflict, humanity has to live or die based on what the current humans do. There is no guarantee they will or not. Even Miyazaki is rather ambiguous about this - his interviews on the subject mention both the good and evil of humanity and the Earth. Apparently the subject was so dear to him that he made Princess Mononoke entirely to go over the ideas again and blur the line even further.
Every single comic made by Jhonen Vasquez. Interestingly, Jhonen is a fairly cheerful guy in real life, which may indicate that this is just the brand of humor he likes as opposed to a statement. He's also stated that he doesn't mean to make fun of any one group in particular, pointing out that you can find a bit of nastiness in every sub culture.
In an early issue of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Jason Woodrue gains Swamp Thing's power over the Green and decides to take its revenge on animals and humans, who have been abusing plants for far too long. Then Swamp Thing himself shows up and points out that, although humans do abuse nature a bit, if humans and animals were gone, there wouldn't be anybody to convert the gases that the plants themselves needed to survive.
In The Punisher one-shot "The End," Frank Castle's last surviving act in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear war is to wipe out the architects behind said war - the only known surviving humans in the world. After killing them, he explains his actions simply by saying "The human race. You've seen what that leads to."
Humans in ElfQuest are, at first, simply The Enemy as far as the elven protagonists are concerned: cruel, Too Dumb To Live, ugly, superstitious and xenophobic, and they've been like this as long as any Wolfrider can readily remember. (To be fair, they're also still very much in the stone age at that point and that generation of Wolfriders hasn't gotten around much.) This is later qualified when greater exposure introduces them to the concept that some humans can actually be friendly (and the Gliders have basically a tribe of 'tame' humans living at the foot of their mountain), but by and large the elven policy remains to keep avoiding human attention where possible.
Given that the average human in the Marvel Universe seems to look at (and treat) mutants with the same level of rationality and compassion that the white Southerners of 1930's treated blacks, it's no wonder why mutants continue to flock to Magneto's camp, even after the man has been depowered.

Close Comic Books

The Joker in The Dark Knight espouses this part of his nihilist philosophy in a way that is beyond Nietzsche Wannabe. Basically that people are bunches of schemers that only panic when things go "against the plan". He even sets up a "social experiment" where he puts the fates of groups of civilians and prisoners in each other group's hands. And then subverted, when he is proved to be completely and utterly wrong And though he did prove his point with Harvey Dent, he couldn't with Batman, who disappoints the heck out of the Joker by sparing his life in the end, not to mention taking the blame for Harvey's crimes in the end, preventing the Joker from achieving ultimate victory.
District 9. A ship full of aliens gets stuck on Earth after it breaks down over Johannesburg. Humanity pens them into an apartheid style concentration camp while the nations bicker over who has to take care of them. Eventually, a Mega Corp is entrusted with the aliens' welfare, and takes control of their ship away from them, arbitrarily restricts their reproductive rights, denies them the use of alien names and exploits the technology on the ship for their own use. Let us list the ways Humans Are Bastards aside from the aforementioned squalid concentration camp and tech stealing:
- Whenever they find an alien nest in D9 they torch it with a flame thrower and laugh at the popping noises that the alien larvae make as they boil.
- They set up a firing range and they electrocute the main character (who is the only human who can use alien tech) to get him to pull the trigger on the gun they strap him to. They then bring in a new alien gun and repeat the process many, many times in order to test the effects of each weapon. Cries of "I'll pull it! I'll pull it!" are ignored, and they never once see if he'll keep his word and pull it without the shocks.
- The Mega Corp literally uses the aliens as target practice. They test weapons against living aliens to judge their effectiveness.
- They spread blatant lies about the aliens that most people take face value (what with no Internet in 1982). One being that the aliens don't care for their young. They love them just like a mother loves her child Have a poor grasp on the concept of property It has more to do with the fact that most of them are starving, and actually they do seem to have a perfectly good grasp of it, for the most part. Yet another is that as a species they enjoy destroying things (tying into their lack of the notion of property) and cite the fact that a group of them derailed a train, supposedly simply for fun, as evidence. The alien "Christopher" comments on his blog that in reality the group of aliens were an organized resistance group who derailed the train as an act of sabotage directed against the South African government, which had hired MNU to administer D9, in retaliation for repeated abuse by MNU. Although they started to enjoy it, what with the whole "not telling people why they did this, so people just think they did it for lulz".
  - Describing the relationship between the aliens and their young with "They love them just like a mother loves her child" is itself bastard-y.
  - I would love to hear you describe it, since they're a One Gender Race so Christopher gave birth to his son.
- Human gangs move in to D9 to get the alien weapons in exchange for food that they sell to the starving aliens at exorbitant prices, though just as often the human gangs simply take the tech, kill the alien, and then sell the alien's organs as a sort of "herbal remedy" that they claim cures all illnesses. The leader of the human gangs seems to believe that eating the aliens will one day allow him to use their technology, though he also seems to just plain enjoy it too.
- When the human main character starts turning into an alien after a concentrated dose of Applied Phlebotenum, his fellow humans plan to dissect him while alive and conscious in order to learn how to give all humans the ability to use the alien tech (that for some reason only works for the aliens, but works for the main character in his hybrid form).
- Long story short, this is probably the only movie that leaves many viewers wanting humanity to suffer under a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge in Alien Invasion form.
  - Which is implied at the end. They'll be back...''with reinforcements.''
  - Wouldn't committing genocide (yes Kill All Humans is an act of genocide) for the actions of MNU just show the aliens are no better than humans, (even worse really since you know GENOCIDE) and go against the story which is about Apartheid, really it would be like blacks killing every white person on the planet because of Apartheid. Then again, the aliens were largely shown to be just like humans in terms of personality, so that might not be unexpected.
  - Technically, what MNU was doing to the aliens could be seen as grounds for war; genocide would be a smidge too far, but if the aliens were to come back, they would definitely be justified in holding MNU (and possibly their nation of origin; this Troper forgets if that was mentioned) accountable for their actions.
  - Well the whole planet can just blame everything on MNU's South African branch (because it is all there fualt), and since they're just a Mega Corp not a nation (although they did control the city)
Hellboy II's backstory has the humans waging war against the elves and the other magical races, nearly driving them to extinction. This prompted the elves to create the Golden Army, which decimated the humans so badly that the elven king was horrified and negotiated a peace. As long as humans stayed in their cities, the elves would stay in the forests. Guess what the humans have been doing for the past few centuries? Not to mention when the BPRD are forced to officially go public, the general populace begin heckling its non-human members and make fun of Hellboy, despite the fact that he's the one thing standing between them and A Fate Worse Than Death at the hands of numerous Cosmic Horrors.
- Which is weird since in the first movie, no one cared and before Hellboy went public he poses with people, etc. And of course there is the comic were the only people who hate him have a good reason (the whole Hellboy might end the world thing)
- Basically everything Prince Nuada says in the royal court is made of this trope: "The humans... the humans have forgotten the gods, destroyed the earth, and for what? Parking lots? Shopping malls? Greed has burned a hole in their hearts that will never be filled! They will never have enough!" And later, King Balor: "The Golden Army? You cannot be that mad!" Prince Nuada: "Perhaps I am. Perhaps they made me so."
In the French-Canadian cult tv show Dans une galaxie près de chez vous (In a Galaxy near you), it was already established that earthlings (read: Humans) were Jerkass morons who wrecked their own planet. In the two movies, we see: Plot Device anglophones coming from nowhere threatening to exterminate a tiny civilization of cave-dwellers already terrorized because of the sounds of an underground waterfall, Aliens vomiting at the simple mention of the word "earthling" and a failed Write Back To The Future attempt because of ridicule in the internet. To be fair, the only ones in the crew who never has a Jerkass moment is the dumb-as-rocks pilot and (outside of the reveal episode) the half-alien radar operator (who is played by one of the head writers, and, in later seasons, is dangerously entering in Mary Sue territory) and both like to use the Constantly Backstabbing scientist as a punching bag (like everyone else for that matter).
This is a major aspect of the film Godzilla. Let's see here, humans made the atomic bomb. Humans used the atomic bomb for purposes of war. Humans test more powerful versions of the bomb. Guess who ends up mutating and waking up a VERY pissed-off radioactive dinosaur?
- In the original, interestingly, the A bomb is portrayed in a mixed light. On one hand, it woke Godzilla. On the other hand, the scientist who invents the next A-bomb is a hero whose invention is needed to save the day. And lets face it. Godzilla is a bastard too.
  - Well, yeah, of course Godzilla is a bastard. But the point is he wouldn't be half the city-wrecking bastard that he is if someone didn't drop a mushroom cloud on him.
- It's the same with the movie King Kong, the whole point is that Man is the monster.
In the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, an alien shows up and tries to give humanity a machine that would allow for interstellar communication. And how do the humans respond? By shooting him. After he recovers he spends some time observing humanity and eventually decides to show he means business by disabling all human technology on the planet (with a few exceptions, he left alone planes in flight, hospitals, and the like) for a short period of time. Then the humans shoot him again, this time killing him. He gets better, scolds them for being so violent, and essentially says that if humanity keeps this up the interstellar community will have no choice to put them down in order to prevent humanity from carrying its warlike ways out into space.
- To be fair it's mostly because the humans are afraid and paranoid (doesn't help that a yellow radio is adding fuel to that fire), and most are good people who just let that fear control them. This is about the Cold War after all.
Then there's the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, where humanity is so evil that when the aliens show up and state their intent to slaughter us all to save the trees, it's portrayed as wrong for us to fight back.
- Not as wrong, just as futile. Violence does no good, and all that. If the humans had been willing to negotiate right from the start instead of talking with their guns, things would have turned out different.
- When asked about their history it turns out, they messed up their planet too.
  - Which presumably gave them such a strong incentive to protect all the habitable worlds in the cosmos. Though they could have thought of a better option than a gray goo nanomachine plague designed to essentially sterilize the planet's surface save for the animals and plants, though. Talk about overkill...
- Worse, there was the kid who was always talking about how they should just wipe out the aliens because they might be dangerous, as if to show that Humans Are Bastards from birth. In the end, I'm not buying Klaatu being talked out of destroying humanity... "humans are that bad" seemed to be the point of a good deal of the film.
The aliens in It Came From Outer Space (1953) believe humanity's xenophobic response to their hideous form will inevitably lead to conflict, so they attempt to repair their spaceship secretly. Unfortunately their covert actions only increase the belief among the protagonists that the aliens are up to no good. Ironically while both aliens and humans are seen acting out of fear and suspicion, neither side is portrayed as particularly unreasonable or malevolent under the circumstances.
BattleRoyale shows that both teenagers and adults can be horrible. The premise is that to keep kids in school, the government kidnaps entire classes of kids and turns their lives into a game: Kill or be killed. The last student of about 40 to survive is allowed to leave the island and be free. While the adults are the ones that begin this contest and do nothing to stop it, many of the teenagers that are put in the situation enjoy it and go on killing sprees against their prior classmates.
Planet Of The Apes: Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.
- Lucky the later movies even this out, the apes are using Ape Shall Never Kill Ape as an excuse to do to humans (if not worst) then what the humans did to them, and later prove they're just as bad as the humans.
Ed Wood naturally overdid it in Plan Nine From Outer Space, with an alien screaming, "All of you of Earth are idiots!"
Boondock Saints, anyone?
In Se7en, John Doe's belief in humanity's worthlessness and evil is what drives his murders.
Untraceable's entire plot is this. A madman sets up people in torture devices that only activate when enough people log onto a website with a webcam streaming video of the condemned prisoner. Millions of people log onto these sites to watch people be tortured in extremely gruesome ways.
- it also attempts to sets up a Real Life example with the tie-in site killwithme.com, whose front page has the warning "Visiting this site could cause harm to innocent people. Do you still want to enter?", and a You Bastard message for those who click Yes. Currently, 86% of visitors are said to have clicked Yes.
This is the basic premise of the movie deadgirl. Human behavior is far more depraved and horrifying than any scary monster the imagination can conceive, and the victim in the movie is said movie monster: a zombie.
Outlander; kinda. The main character Kainen is from an ultra high-tech civilization in outer space, who just happens to look human and crash-lands in the Norse era along with the Moorwen; a bloodthirsty alien monster that begins killing off the local Viking population and what is revealed to have been the creature to kill Kainen's wife and son. Further into the movie, we learn that the Moorwen has a very good reason for being pissed off. Kainen and his people wiped out it's entire species, just for another planet to colonize and that part of the reason the Moorwen killed his family and is killing humans, is for revenge. Despite the fact that the thing is mercilessly killing everything... you can't help but feel a little sorry for it. If they hadn't nuked it's species, it wouldn't be pissed as hell, it wouldn't have killed Kainen's family, it wouldn't have stowed away on a leaving ship that crashed to Earth and it wouldn't have started a killing spree with the locals.
Return of the Living Dead 3 has the humans torturing the zombies so cruelly that it almost has the viewer rooting for the zombies.

Close Film

According to L Frank Baum's... odd elaboration of the Santa Claus legend, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, this was drilled into young Claus' head by his mentor, the Great Ak.
A lot of early American sci-fi has this theme. Any number of Ray Bradbury stories qualify.
Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series is built on this trope: Humanity were such bastards that The Keeper of Earth more or less chased us off to the stars, and genetically altered the populations to receive signals from The Oversoul (super-computers designed to steer mankind's development away from weapons of mass destruction and other planet raping tech). Harmony's Oversoul outright states that he meant to last for a millenia or so before preparing for a trip back to Earth. Humans had been on Harmony for around 50,000 years and were no better than when they first arrived.
- Of course, this was only half of the Aesop. The full Aesop was "since humans can't be any better by their own devices, they just have to trust in God."
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books are awful about this: humans as a race seem to exist just to make the world a living hell and drive the faeries underground. The Fae constantly call humans "mud people", which just happens to be a real-life ethnic slur.
- On the other hand, a lot of the villains are corrupt, vain Faeries. This just makes the Faeries hypocrites, and is more than balanced by how the title character is a human proto-Magnificent Bastard.
- This troper always assumed that the Faeries were speciesists with a distorted view of humanity and its history, the latter having been brought on by centuries of isolation; this reading is at least somewhat supported by the sympathetic portrayal of Artemis and the other human characters, excepting the occasional human villain.
- Which, given who they are, they would be bastards. A software giant with mob connections? The Russian Mafia? Shock horror when they aren't nice people.
  - A rich Italian child genius who wanted to capture a kind and thinking creature just to prove she could? Although she does back down when someone points this out to her. The insane Chinese guy, not so much.....
  - And of course, the rich and bored group of Extinctionists. Killing because you're afraid you might run out of resources when among you likely have to be amongst the wealthiest .01% to join? Add to this the lavish and wasteful way each extinction is carried out, and you've pretty much justified every belief they have against us
Bruce Coville's My Teacher series as well as the Rod Albright series both use this trope: aliens are aware of Earth but refuse to interact with humans because they consider them to be barbarians. It is revealed that one of the aliens in the "My Teacher" series invented television to keep people stupid so they couldn't advance technologically any more.
- We're so bad Bruce had to introduce the pain and minor brain damage implied in cut-off telepathy to explain why we are as we are.
- We're also apparently the only species to do things like have homeless people, while most of the other aliens can't even understand the concept. It basically stops just short of actually having the aliens scratching their heads at this whole "capitalism" thing.
In Roald Dahl's The BFG, the title character tells human girl Sophie that humans are just as bad as giants because "humans are the only animals that kill their own kind" (which isn't even close to being true, incidentally). This is part of a fairly long and Anvilicious conversation about how humans suck.
- Much of Dahl's work for both children and adults reveals a misanthropic streak. At the extreme, we find Fantastic Mr. Fox, which has a plot only inasmuch as it enables him to elaborate on the physical and mental grotesqueness of the three farmers and/or the noble brilliance of the fox they harass (since they're clearly too greedy to grudge him a chicken or two).
  - Perry Bible Fellowship has an interesting spin◊ on the "greedy farmer" notion.
In Philip José Farmer's Venus on the Half-Shell every alien race points out that humans smell awful. So humans create a huge industry of special deodorants. Wondering why humans smell so bad to other races, some of whom smell like a sewer, it is pointed out that human morals stink, so that makes our smell stink. Yes, it's a strange book.
William Faulkner's As I lay Dying.
David Gemmell makes this point at least once per novel. In Stormrider he has one character, explain that a human witch has the ability to cultivate and grow and spread the magic in the world, but that the sum total of her ENTIRE LIFETIME of work and toil can be consumed by a single day of war.
William Golding's Lord Of The Flies uses a group of stranded children as a microcosm to illustrate this theme.
Robert A Heinlein sometimes used this in his stories, although he tends to view it as a virtue:
- Have Space Suit — Will Travel. The Three Galaxies federation puts Humanity On Trial for their lives. Humans are considered potentially dangerous because of their innate savagery and extremely high rate of evolution and scientific/technological development.
- Starship Troopers. Human beings are described as highly aggressive and expansionistic, with a strong will to survive. Heinlein makes the case that this is moral behavior.
  - Not particularly moral, but rather inevitable: the point made is that if we don't act like that, someone else will, and suddenly there aren't any humans left to debate the issue...
- His most popular hero Lazarus Long is described as a mild bastard. But one that should be respected and admired. Quite a bit of Moral Dissonance is seen when he commits crimes that we are told to admire him for, but Long would kill anyone else who did them.
Not really avoided in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book; but in the main Mowgli stories, it's clear that the animals would rather just ignore humans. "The White Seal", on the other hand, gets downright Anvilicious about it.
A recurring theme in the works of Stanisław Lem.
- Well, not really bastards. We just think our species is nearly perfect. Until we see a species with much better evolutionary luck and with a more mature civilization.
C. S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet and the rest of the Cosmic Trilogy. The idea is that there are several inhabited planets in our solar system, but Earth is the only one where Original Sin took place. This caused our world to fall out of communication with the others — we are the titular Silent Planet.
- Moderated somewhat by the fact that redemption happened too. Perelandra implies this had other effects as well.
- Bonus feature: Both pro and con of this are extrapolated fairly strictly (i.e, Once More, With Aliens) from The Bible. This makes this trope Older Than Dirt.
The Warchild Series by Karin Lowachee has this in droves. For a sampling: There are pirates who engage in human trafficking, a pirate captain who is probably a pedophile, a war between humans and aliens started because humans tried to take the aliens' moon by force (and massacring a bunch of aliens in the process), a government more interested in bigotry and bureaucracy than peace, soldiers who willingly engage in torture, etc. Even the most sympathetic characters still end up slitting someone's throat, rebelling from the central government, and executing suspected terrorists without a trial. Humans are bastards indeed.
Every single character in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, even the hero is a multiple murderer who later on carries a necklace of ears around his neck. The only possible exception is The Judge, as though he's the worst of the bunch, there's a suggestion he's not human.
In Animal Farm, humans are portrayed as the corrupt nobles of Tsarist Russia, more or less. The pigs, who represent the leaders of the Communist revolution, eventually start emulating the humans as they become more and more corrupt. The Animated Adaptation made this even less subtle, ending the film with a Bolivian Army Ending.
- You can get less subtle than "...it was impossible to tell which was which"?
  - Yes, but only by engraving it on the underside of a 16-ton weight and dropping it on the audience.
Terry Pratchett plays with this in his Discworld novels. Sure, a lot of human characters are bastards, but instead of just leaving it at that, he often probes the question of why humans act that way, especially in his later, more philosophical books. Furthermore, there are more than a few non-human characters who are just as big bastards as humans can be; in the novel Feet of Clay, Commander Vimes is quoted as saying "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk."
In Good Omens, the demon Crowley contemplates telling his superiors that they might as well shut Hell down and move to Earth, since humans are far more creatively evil than demons could ever be. He then decides against it since they often turn around and be stunningly good in the next moment. Often with the same people involved. He fully admits that their behavior confuses him.
The Old Mans War series explores the concept. In The Ghost Brigades, a scientist who defected to an alien race angrily pronounces humans as arrogant, elitist bastards who are deliberately refusing to sign a universal peace accord for no reason but superiority issues. However, the end of the book makes it clear that the scientist was only giving half the issue - the aliens are asking for some truly jawdropping accomodations for their "peace", and several other species are against it. The Lost Colony further reveals that the aliens behind the accords are real pricks, and that humanity (while pretty arrogant) isn't all that bad in the end. The overall balance of the series shows humanity as flawed, but not monstrous.
In Gulliver's Travels, the final voyage has Gulliver land in a place where he encounters the Yahoos - mindless, crude beasts that are visually indistinguishable from humans. To the point that the "enlightened" (and horse-like) Houyhnhnms eventually forbid him from staying because he's too much like them. They try to use the threat of Moral Dissonance as a Freudian Excuse, but they're obviously not really afraid of Gulliver's baser moral tendencies. This moral contradiction makes the Houyhnhnms even bigger bastards than anybody, but Gulliver is so wrapped up in his newfound misanthropy that he doesn't notice (or probably doesn't want to).
- Come now, Gulliver could have stayed if he'd let them neuter him. In the original book anyway.
  - Considering how the book uses Gulliver's blind worship of any society he lands in as a method of satirising values Swift found repugnant, it's rather obvious that this trope was not the theme of the fourth voyage. Despite this, there's a Broken Base in literary criticism debating whether the book is a misanthropic view of the world or not.
  - The real question seems to be whether Swift intended Gulliver's admiration of the Houyhnhnms to be ironic or not, since it clearly went both ways at certain points in the book. The answer to this question is by no means obvious. In fact, when this troper first read the book, he was very badly fooled into not noticing the hypocrisy of the Houyhnhnms.
Averted in the short story They're Made Out of Meat, which explores the possibility that aliens may be both less and more like us than we often assume. The way they're more like us than usual? The two alien protagonists are closed-minded, prejudiced bastards who are unwilling to accept anything outside the realm of what they expect.
Another fine candidate for the title of magnum opus of fictional Human Bastardry is an illustrated science fiction novel entitled Man After Man. Twenty Minutes Into The Future, the well-to-do people of the world set off to leave Earth and colonize other worlds. Before they do, they use genetic modification technology to physically alter the people who weren't able to afford the trip, changing them to survive in different biomes. Time passes and we get to see how the mutated humans gradually evolve over the eons after being left to their own devices - and then, suddenly, a race of Planet Looters invades Earth, enslaves the mutants, and strips the planet of its resources. For their next trick, they wipe out all life more complicated than bacteria. And The Reveal that stands confidently in the ranks of Nightmare Fuel? Those invading "aliens" were actually the unrecognizable descendants of the humans who'd left Earth millions of years ago. Dude...
- This is all the more jarring considering that the author, natural historian Dougal Dixon, never before addressed this issue so Anviliciously. His previous illustrated novels mostly avoided it by taking place in alternate timelines where there were no humans at all (there are hints of Gaias Vengeance as the setup for After Man -look at the title- but that's as far as it goes.)
- Just to be clear, the genetic engineering wasn't forced on those left behind, and it was actually done in a belated guilt-trip attempt to replace the many, many species humans had already wiped out. And the ones who eliminated virtually all life at the end had long since forgotten their origins on Earth, let alone that they were distant relatives of the creatures they were destroying.
Mark Twain's satirical essay The Lowest Animal takes the claim that humans are the "reasoning animal" and totally destroys it by showing mankind's hatred towards each other and everything else.
There's so much of this in the novel Three Bags Full that it damages the intriguing sheep-detective-story premise. The sheep characters aren't even aware of the concept of mutton, yet they're ridiculously condescending towards humanity.
Often comes through in Tales Of MU, which focuses on the lives of non-human students at a university with Fantastic Racism.
- Not that the merfolk, ogres, (surface) elves, or kitsuyokai are any better.
  - Humanoids Are Bastards, maybe?
Many of S.L. Viehl's s-f novels fall into this category. The vast majority of "Terrans" are rabid xenophobes: Extraterrestrial sentients are only allowed on Earth under very limited circumstances, certainly aren't allowed to live there, and will generally find it an unpleasant place. And if you're discovered to be a Half Human Hybrid (or a clone)...heaven help you.
A constant theme running throughout HG Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. Reaches an early peak with the ship's crew that forces Prendick off the boat and leaves him to die in the middle of the ocean. Moreau's creations of demihumans he and Montgomery dominate isn't so sweet either.
Author Tad Williams seems to be fond of this trope with the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series and the Shadowmarch series. Faerie races exist in both: in the former it is the Sithi (immortal elves), while in the latter it is the Qar. In both instances, humans attempted to carry out a campaign of genocide against the kingdom of Faerie for no other reason except they wanted the land or they thought the Faeries were evil. In the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, the Big Bad is a dead Sithi prince who gave his life defending his people against human invaders and now wants his revenge. Unfortunately, it seems he's willing to destroy the world to do it, so even the remnants of his people rally to fight him. His final undoing? The one human who actually bothers to apologize.
Robert Zubrin's The Holy Land. Earthlings and non-Earthlings disagree on who are the 'humans', but this trope applies to either and both of them regardless.
In the David Weber authored Bolo books there is direct neural interfacing between Bolo commanders and the later model Bolos (Battleship size self-aware tank). A Bolo has a warrior personality but nobody had realised how much the safeguards had inhibited its ferocity until they saw the first Bolo-Human mental fusion go into battle. Humans have no inhibitory safeguards.
- It's worth expanding, the Bolos with the Human Mental fusion end up going on a generations long genocidal war against a larger alien empire. Thousands of worlds, Trillions of humans and aliens, and only a few million survive on a few very backward planets.
In a short story which I forgot the title of, an alien scientist shows a visitor how he's cloning several now-extinct animals. At the end, he shows one he had to "get special permission to raise." The visitor is shocked, and begins to ask-and is confirmed-that it's a man. Then again, the scientist seems to pity the growing human, since it'll be "all alone."
Subverted, inverted and played straight in Titan, the book on the Fighting Fantasy world. Humans are generally a good/neutral race, and they tend to be the race that spawns the great heroes of the world, however they also have the greatest potential for evil, even more so than Always Chaotic Evil races like Orcs and Dark Elves.
In the Callahans Crosstime Saloon series, humans are bastards because of the Krundai. They are pacifistic carnivores, and hit upon the idea of breeding food that kills itself, so they shaped humanity into being the most savage, self-destructive species they could.
In The Acts Of Caine, humans are bastards. Well, to be exact, the metaphorical psychomorphic deity-incarnation of humanity is a bastard. But the human hero who achieves its humiliating defeat is also a bastard, so in this series humanity doesn't look good at the individual or species level.
Subverted (the Qu), played straight (the Gravital) and everything in between in Nemo Ramjet's All Tomorrows
The Book Of Lord Shang notes that "The guiding principles of the people are base, and they are not consistent in what they value."

The book series Animorphs plays around with this. One of the reasons the Andalites look down on humans is because of how ruthless and bloodthirsty we can be.

Nineteen Eighty Four gives us a world where all the high-ranking officials are heartless monsters who torture people in the worst ways imaginable if they so much as think contrary to them.

Close Literature

As a whole, Star Trek - especially the Next Generation - posits a world in which humans were bastards, and rarely loses the opportunity to lecture their 20th-century viewers on how far we still have to go. Good news, though; we get better. In fact, we're even sorta charming, especially to advanced races who gauge others for 'potential'.
- Even so, in one episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Quark the Ferengi lectures Commander Sisko about how his species never practiced slavery or genocide (particularly Anvilicious as it's already established that Ferengi not only did keep slaves but still do - anyone who goes into debt they can't repay is legally enslaved to their debtor). He also tells Nog in "The Siege of AR-558:"
  "Let me tell you something about Humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people – as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."
  - Not a fair comparison - especially if you take the Ferengi culture in its own context instead of from a human viewpoint. The Ferengi see profit as the end-all and be-all of their culture; what you describe is a form of indentured servitude, not slavery - and as with everything in the Ferengi culture - if any Ferengi finds a way to make a profit, he can make his way up to the top of the heap in an instant, buy his freedom and anything else that he wants. On Earth, however - slaves were considered property, with no rights whatsoever, and everything they had and were was considered the property of the owner... including their families. The Ferengi were nothing like humans when it came to slavery.
  - Then there's the time travel episode where Quark speaks contemptuously of past humans because they knowingly buy and expose themselves to poison (nicotine), despite numerous references to Ferengi using "beetle snuff" and other drugs.
  - Again - not a fair comparison. The Ferengi culture is a textbook example of caveat emptor, and everyone knows it beforehand. (Look at the pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, and what happens to Harry Kim.) They'll tell you that it's not good for you - and expect you to understand that if you want to use it (even though you know that it's bad for you), they'll sell it to you because if they don't, you'll buy from someone else. Also, your argument makes no sense when you consider that it was the Ferengi who invented synthehol...
- The Vulcans are a more extreme example of former bastards. They often act condescending to other species, but the subtext is often that they realize that since they were bastards, other species can benefit from logic as well, and often get shirty when they don't. A young Tuvok from Voyager was once shown complaining about humanity always expecting other species to be like them, apparently not recognizing a classic Vulcan move when he sees one.
- The jabs at humans that Spockand other Vulcans like to make via examples from human history, however, go uncalled-out, even though all indications are that Vulcans were just as bad in their own early history.
Given the kind of person Jim Henson was, he usually had a more thoughtful take on this issue. To wit:
- Fraggle Rock stands dedicatedly on the "humans are misguided" side. Uncle Traveling Matt quickly dubs us "the Silly Creatures", which really says it all. On the few occasions Doc threatened the Five Races, he did so without realizing it (shutting down the pipes in his house shuts down the water supply for the Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs). When he finally meets Gobo face-to-face, he's careful to take this sort of thing into consideration.
  - Most behaviors that Traveling Matt observed in humans weren't silly at all — not even, in many cases, the way he misinterpreted them. For example, he thought paperboys fed hungry houses. The main exception is that when humans noticed him, they apparently mistook him for one of them.
- Not really avoided in The Muppet Show or its movie spin-offs. As far as the biggest bastard Kermit ever met is concerned, Roger Ebert said it best: "As soon as Kermit gains legs, he meets a human with an unsavory use for them."
Doctor Who, particularly the new series, sways between Humans Are Bastards, Humans Are Idiots, Humans Are Misguided But Well-Meaning, and even on occasion Humans Are Absolutely Frickin' Awesome, sometimes within the same episode.
The Doctor: Humans have got such limited little minds. I don't know why I like you so much.
Sarah Jane Smith: Because you have such good taste.
The Doctor: That's true. That's very true.
- Played painfully straight in the new series episode "Midnight".
- Remember the Ood from The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit? We get treated to this trope in a later episode Planet of the Ood. The humans who found them killed the Ood Brain (their hive mind) and after an indefinite amount of time started to hack off the Oods' hind-mind (the external chunk of brain sticking out of their face that govern personality) and replace them with translator orbs.
  - To be fair, in that same episode we are shown the Friends of the Ood, a group of humans who tried to defend and liberate the Ood even without knowing they were having their brains chopped off.
  - In The Christmas Invasion, after Harriet Jones has the retreating Sycorax ship blasted into smithereens, the Doctor is so angry that he briefly seems to lose all respect for humans in general: "I should have told them to run away, because the monsters are coming: the human race!" The fact that two men were killed in cold blood by the Sycorax Leader - whom the Doctor slew beforehand - is apparently no excuse for such Disproportionate Retribution. And then of course there's the Toclafane - the horrifically cannibalised ultimate form of humanity who sought to take over from their past relatives and rule a new empire for 100 trillion years - no matter what damage was done to the universe in the process. And who's to say that once that era was over, they wouldn't go back and do it again? Endlessly? As the Master put it: "The human race. Greatest monsters of them all."
Battlestar Galactica. Sure, the Cylons' hands aren't exactly clean here, but you just try sitting through "Pegasus" or "Taking A Break..." without wishing they'd just nuked all the humans in the first place.
- Then re-watch episodes like "The Farm" and remember the Cylons more than balance it out.
- Less of a Humans Are Bastards and more of a The Cylons (and Baltar) Think Humans Are Bastards, in this troper's opinion. Sure, most of the characters are crazy, but they're not acting maliciously, most of the time. Unless they're Zarek.
- All Cylon bastardry is an extension of human bastardry. The Cylons were created by Man... Tory attempts to justify her own new take on life with just that argument (oddly enough fitting in with Cavil's viewpoint), with Tigh essentially telling her going down that road of justification is pointless by that stage in both species existence.
Supernatural: While Sam and Dean usually fight supernatural monsters, the first season episode "The Benders" involves humans who hunt down other humans for fun, the second season episode "Houses of the Holy" involves a man with dead bodies in his basement, an email-using pedophile, and an attempted rapist, all of whom deserved their instant death, and the third season episode "Sin City" features a demon talking to Dean about how much humans suck. The fourth season episode "Family Remains" involves a man who raped his daughter and then shut the resulting twins away under the house, where they became animalistic scavengers. "The Benders" and "Family Remains" are notable for being the only episodes so far that don't actually involve anything supernatural, just urban legend-like events of a mundane sort. Dean: "Demons I get, people are crazy."
- Of course, when it comes to supernatural, it's more a case of EVERYTHING is a Bastard, even the angels. At least the demons are honest about it...
Torchwood did an episode like this as well, with supposed alien activity revealed to be caused by a degenerate clan of "normal" human cannibals. (This is just the most blatant example of an attitude that runs through the entire series.)
- Subverted somewhat in the "Children of Earth" miniseries: the politicians and government officials are bastards (mostly, anyway), while the public at large are Innocent Bystanders, some of whom refuse to stand by and do nothing.
  - I'm sensing some misantropic tendencies in Mister Davies
Subverted in an episode of the 80's Twilight Zone revival, when aliens arrive on Earth and announce that they seeded the planet with humans ages ago, but now they are destroying us because they were attempting to breed warriors, and we aren't big enough bastards.
Summed up by a character in Dollhouse as "People are mostly crap." Most of the rest of the series is pretty much a confirmation of this.
Shown a couple times in Farscape, especially in the episode "A Human Reaction" where John returns to Earth and the government immediately imprisons and kills both D'argo and Rygel to study alien anatomy. The entire episode paints a particularly bleak picture of the human race. Possibly subverted in that it is actually all an engineered environment made by aliens that are using John's memories and knowledge of the human race to judge how humans will react to aliens. Apparently John doesn't have too much faith in humanity.

Close Live Action TV

Parodied in The Humans Are Dead by Flight Of The Conchords. Robots have annihilated all humans for this trope, but one of the lieutenants notes that they did the same thing as them by killing them.
- Silence! Destroy him!
  - "Doo!" "No!" "Pew-pew."

Close Music

When merpeople are concerned, expect a subversion as well. Granted, humanity has had a conflicted relationship with the oceans, but it's usually only mermen that exhibit any misanthropy as a result of it; it doesn't seem to stop mermaids from seeking out human boyfriends.
- These two tropes may well be connected...
- Then again a large number of mermaids tend to wind up eating, drowning or enslaving men who respond to their charms. Let's face it, merfolk are bastards.
  - Damn our society's obsession with wanting everything to be Darker And Edgier.
  - Merfolk were bastards to begin with, the later depictions of sweet mermaids who only want to hang out with humans are Adaptation Decay. Same is true for most fairies.
  - The Fair Folk isn't the dominant trope in modern times, but back when Fairy Tales were being written it was the norm.

Close Mythology

Nine Chickweed Lane: Monty, who is either God or just a very eccentric human, has decided that he's disappointed with humans and (after contemplating wiping us out with a nice little plague) wants to improve this by evolving humans into cockroaches.
Thorax: When you say you're going to rethink your creation of humanity, in what respect are you going to do so?
Monty: Only in the respects that command their waking thoughts and actions. Their covetousness and lust; their intolerance, cowardice, hatred and cruelty; their sanctimony, mendacity and thievery; and their intense, feckless voyeuristic love of mediocrity.... At least for starters.
Thorax: That may be an extreme way to portray them.
Monty: It's the only way they portray themselves. Read a newspaper.

(A little later)

Thorax: So... Are you pretty much resolved to efface humankind from the face of the planet?

Monty: Only to the extent that they are resolved to do it to each other.

Thorax: Perhaps, on the whole, you should adopt a different standard for Armageddon.

Monty: Good point. It's difficult to live up to (humanity's) level of ferocity.

This storyline could also be interpreted as God Is Evil, especially since Monty plans his first human-to-cockroach transformation with the unborn baby of the nicest characters who also happens to be an ex-nun and whose baby-daddy is an ex-priest. It's made especially creepy by the fact that Monty is is discussing wiping out/mutating humanity "with the calm demenor you'd use to pick groceries". Monty is later called out by a bunch of the characters for both his plan and the fact that he can't use H/his powers find some missing clothes (Thorax: Monty, you and I are quits.) Monty eventually reveals to the mom-to-be that he wasn't really going to do it, and the whole thing probably a Secret Test Of Character for the other, um, characters.

Close Newspaper Comics

The famous anti-hunting rendition of "For What It's Worth" on The Muppet Show, which featured little woodland animals singing about "a man with a gun over there", and periodically ducking under cover as trigger-happy human hunters blundered through the scene, firing at everything that moved.
- And then promptly subverted at the end when the hunters reveal they were trying to bag construction equipment.

Close Other

In almost any other setting, The Imperium of Man of Warhammer 40000 fame would certainly qualify, being a xenocidal, corrupt, racist, mass-murdering apparatus. However, in the context of the setting, pretty much every other species is just as bad, if not worse, and without the Imperium's harsh rule mankind would be doomed to slavery, extinction, or more gruesome fates.
- The fandom's preferred "good guys" are the Tau (collectivist imperialist aliens often accused of brainwashing by fans and Imperial humans alike) and the Eldar (who often would kill any number of the enemy, if it meant saving a few Eldar several centuries down the line). All the other races are much, much worse. Tyranids want to eat the galaxy, Necrons want to end the existence of souls, Orks go on jihads for fun, and so on. Essentially, no matter how insanely vicious the Imperium gets, you'd still cheer them on. These are people who use other people for machinery, commit genocide and human sacrifice, and just generally run a totalitarian police state in which you can be killed for thought crimes. They have a branch of the government AND whole sections of planets devoted entirely to torture (church worlds-dungeon section). It is best not to read this series if you get easily depressed.
- A common misconception amongst fans less well versed in the lore (an rife amongst fanfic writers), is that the Emperor of Mankind was some sort of a nice guy, who actually wanted everyone to get along. The truth is, however, that the Emperor told his subjects that it was mankind's destiny to rule the stars, and they were to cleanse the galaxy of absolutely EVERYTHING that was not human. This included psykers, mutants and ab-humans. The "modern" Imperium tolerates psykers, suggesting that the Emperor would likely think that they are not being harsh enough.
  - Which was ironic since the Emperor himself was kind of a psyker.
  - And we can't forget that the Emperor only got everyone to get along by conquering them.
  - Yeah the Emperor was a dick, and fact that many psykers, mutants and ab-humans are needed for the Imperium to work... plus the Imperium isn't as anti-xeno as most people think (there is a reason why minor aliens races are still around)
  - Anyway while the Imperium as a whole is this trope, most humans are just normal people just tring to live in the crappest setting ever.
The Other Warhammer has Humans as one of the nicest races, not like that's really hard. Even the Chaos humans are rather noble compared to other Chaos forces (Beastmen, Daemons and Dwarfs). Plus no one can out-evil the Skaven.
The World Of Darkness seems to hold to a viewpoint best described as follows: "Humans are bastards, but frankly, compared to the rest of reality, they're small-timers." Werewolf (both versions, but especially the old one, The Apocalypse) comes closest to playing it straight, while Promethean comes closest to subverting it (Prometheans admit humans have their flaws, but desperately want to be them because they know Prometheans are far worse).
According to a certain review (contains NSFW language) of FATAL, "Between Red Zone Cuba and FATAL... we have solid evidence that humanity wasn't going to amount to much anyway."

Close Tabletop RPG

A classic example from the Threepenny Opera: "What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed. Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance, in keeping its humanity repressed. And for once you must try not to shriek the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts."

Close Theatre

Most of the primary villains in Crash Bandicoot are human scientists who experiment on animals and damage the environment.
Given how prevalent this trope is, it's worth noting that Konami's Suikoden series averts it—the kobolds are largely portrayed as personable, but elves and dwarves tend to be very arrogant and xenophobic, and although most of the villains have been humans, it seems to be because they're more numerous rather than because there's fewer bastards in other races.
Subverted in the Unreal series. Humans are bastards... but the Skaarj, a race of violent, xenophobic, savage reptiloid Bee People who believe all races besides Skaarj are inferior and exist solely to be reduced to slaves or wiped out for their amusement — or both at once — are bigger bastards by far.
While it doesn't have a Humans Are Bastards theme per se, the racial backstory in Dungeon Siege II doesn't exactly put humans in a positive light. It says that the human race has a dual nature, but it only mentions the negative, not the positive; it says that humans are extremely violent.
- To be fair, there's the Dryads. You'd think that a race of attractive plant girls who have an innate connection to nature would be some of the nicest people around, right? Guess again. Most Dryads are quite militaristic (more so in Broken World), and are unusually suspicious of other races, especially the Half-Giants (though the Elf Amren seems to be on good terms with them). Plus there's that Ring of Submission they have, which senses your intentions before you've even thought of them and then does painful or even fatal stuff to you accordingly. For a race that doesn't like government, that's a pretty fascistic way to treat your prisoners.
  - Thankfully, there is an exception: Taar. She actually is one of the nicest people around and isn't all that fond of the Rings of Submission (which explains why she's glad to remove the player character's). In addition, since as of Broken World, the Overmage is dead and peace is slowly but surely returning to Aranna, only time will tell if the other Dryads will also lay off the testosterone.
Live A Live has this during the medieval chapter, as noted by the former hero Hash, then later by Oersted, after being tricked into killing the king. In the case of Hash, he reveled in being called the Hero of Lucretia for saving the queen twenty years prior to the chapter's beginning, but became disgusted with humanity when he was just as quickly discarded and mostly forgotten. Oersted, on the other hand, witnessed humanity's bastardry first-hand. After being tricked, he finds that everyone has now abandoned him and considers him a demon, his only remaining ally is dragged away to be tortured, and is blamed for the death of said ally who expends the last of his power to set Oersted free. Oh, then he finds out that his best friend Straybow betrayed him to this fate because he was jealous. As one final kick in the nuts, after he kills Straybow, the princess he'd been trying to save the whole chapter reveals she was in love with Straybow the entire time, then kills herself in pure grief. Is it any wonder he went on to become essentially The Devil?
This happens a lot in StarCraft. For example, Arcturus Mengsk is a Magnificent Bastard at best and a Machiavellian despot at worst. Kerrigan is at first horrified when she's left behind, but when she gets turned into a Zerg, she actually enjoys it. Plus a lot of Terran missions revolve around Civil Warcraft. By the end of the Star Craft storyline, there's only one good Terran left among the notable ones: Jim Raynor.
- Hey, better Zerg then being possibly be recaptured as a Terran survivor and brain rewired again to serve your new emperor.
  - It is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself. Sorry, I Always Wanted To Say That.
- The books aren't much better.
- To be fair, other two known races are pompous or intent on killing everyone else, so humanity's not that bad, relatively.
- Or to be exact, the Zerg overmind desires to kill/infest the human colonists... and the Protoss attempt to stop this by burning the worlds... while the people are still on it. To be fair you only have a few good Protoss characters- the ones who decide killing humans to stop the Zerg is a bad idea. It doesn't stop Tassadar from giving a "get out of my way or I will make your pathetic ships burn" speech.
- The Protoss method of dealing with Zerg-infested Terran worlds by burning them was not because it's the only way or even the best way, but because they found humans distasteful but didn't have an excuse to remove them until the Zerg came along.
- Also, about 75% of every Terran campaign is spent fighting against other Terran factions, with the whole "Zerg" thing being little more than background noise. However, when the UED actually sets its eyes on the Zerg for once, they plow right through the swarms and capture themselves an Overmind in just a handful of missions. Make of that what you will, considering the super-advanced Protoss got spanked.
  - Two Words: Psi Disruptor. It's specifically stated in the last UED mission that the Disruptor essentially allowed their forces to walk unopposed right up to the baby Overmind's doorstep
War Craft shows many humans who are pigheaded and prejudiced against races they view as "savage", and if a racist character shows up, it's more likely than not to be a human. But like other examples on this list, the other races in the world have their own prejudices, ranging from the orcs refusing to accept their role in the atrocities of the first two wars, the high elves blaming the Alliance (that they left) for not saving them and continuing to practice magic despite the destruction it's caused and the Forsaken seeking to kill all humans, more than a few gleefully.
- Of course, the addition of grayer and more evil humans is added Character Development for the third game and beyond. Before, the humans (and other Alliance races) were clearly the good guys, and the orcs were Always Chaotic Evil (this got handwaved as the effect of corruption from the Burning Legion).
  - It should be pointed out that it is hinted in the new expansion that the Humans are literal Bastards: they are the mutated offspring of Titan Magic and the Old Gods' "Curse of Flesh"
- Uh, the Orcs HAVE accepted their atrocities from the first two wars. They are an Atoner Race now, its just that some racist humans in the Alliance refuse to let the grudge go and end up becoming what they fought in the first two wars-committing their own atrocities.
  - Then again, with guys like Garrosh having prominent positions, not everyone may be repentant.
The fairies in the world of Drakengard subscribe to this viewpoint. The protagonist only ever meets two fairies, one of which is the king of fairies, and both of them, besides being annoying, feel this way towards humans to the point of being racist. Humans are big, dumb, ugly, smelly, stinky idiots to the fairies who can never get anything right and always destroy the forests to feed their infernal greed. Caim's dragon is also of this prejudice, but then again, dragons being arrogant and looking down on humans has pretty much been done to death.
Averted in Skies Of Arcadia. The Silvite Elders believe the humans still planetside are evil and deserve to die... But instead of giving the usual "you're right, but let's save the world anyway" message the heroes stand up to them and boldly tell them that they have no right to commit genocide just because they think society doesn't live up to their standards. Having recently played Chrono Cross, which plays this trope relentlessly straight, the reaction of the characters in Skies of Arcadia had this editor cheering.
Speaking of which, Chrono Cross doesn't beat around the bush about it. Ever. Particularly blatant when the planet brings a nature-based empire from a universe where the dinosaurs didn't go extinct. Humanity proceeds to beat the crap out of it. You hear that, you genocidal menace of a Dragon God? You lose. So hard.
- At least in this case the problem didn't seem to be blamed on humanity being evil, but that humans were heavily influenced and manipulated by Lavos, who uplifted mankind to the top of the ecosystem for its own purposes (To eat said ecosystem). So we're not world-wrecking monsters, we're just minions of a world-eating monster. That's a bit better... ish...
- They are also called out by the Dwarves who kill the faeries because humans accidently poisoned their home. Clearly accidently poisoning someones living place is worse than actual genocide. Really the only people who has any right to call out humanity are the demihumans of Marbule as they never tried to kill anyone else.
Tales of Phantasia makes subtle hints at this trope with at least one event of abuse of the planet's mana. This is eventually followed with a complete twist ending, revealing that Dhaos, the main antagonist, was only trying to take the planet's mana (which they didn't need) in order save his own, dying planet. By defeating Dhaos, they doomed his world. Dhaos's original plan was to wait for the Mana Tree to make a new Mana Seed and use that to create a new Mana Tree for his world. No negative effect on our hero's world. Then Midgard freaks out and starts preemtively building Magitek weapons, which kill the mana tree when used. Instant war, because Dhaos has to take them down to keep the tree from dieing so it can make a tree. What's worse, the Cute Witch Arche keeps trying to point out that Dhaos is acting exclusively in self-defense. Everyone shuts her up until its to late. You end up spending 4 Japanese side-games dealing with the fallout.
Humans in the PC game series Age of Wonders almost always have leaders whose favorite pastimes include leveling elven forests, siding with demons and orcs for more power, and enslaving lesser races. This is despite the fact that they technically have a "Neutral" alignment.
- In the sequel, however, they're mostly being manipulated by a vindictive Water Wizard.
- The main protagonists also happen to be humans, but they rarely lead other humans. Also, humans are of neutral alignment.
  - The neutral alignment being much more open to 'not being good' than actual good. See: Only good aligned can actually feel compassion
The Therions (anthropomorphic animals, ranging from lion-men to gazelles to rhinos to panthers) of Jeanne D'Arc deeply resent mankind, a hatred stemming from how the very humans they assisted in the Demon War turned on them and corralled them all up in a tiny warren just outside Paris (where, previous to the war, the Therion kingdom extended all over Europe.) In fact, the few Therions that assist Jeanne and her cause are a minuscule exception to the rule.
The Lucas Arts adventure game The Dig hung a lampshade on this issue, when one of the characters tentatively points out to a friendly alien that not all humans are as nice as they are. Said alien cheerily replied that that's okay since all relatively young species are like that, and anyone who wants to pick a fight will just be squashed like bugs.
Dracula from Castlevania likes to toss out this accusation to whatever Belmont he's fighting, usually starting by mentioning that the only reason he's up and about is that some human woke him again. But the Belmonts are generally full of righteous fury and in no mood for discussing the idea, so not much comes of it.
What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets!
- In some games it's explicitly stated that Dracula's continuous resurrections are not just because of individual Dracula-cultists resurrecting him, but that human malice and greed in itself allows him to continuously come back even when it isn't his will to do so. This may be more As Long As There Is Evil rather than an endemic thing, however.
- He is also guilty of stimulating the trope. Consider the purpose of the titular Dracula's Curse/Curse of Darkness. Death's backstory in Judgment outright states that he is "sowing wickedness" in human hearts to help bring Dracula back.
Final Fantasy VII. The planet is a living being that every single life form protects and loves, but humans. No, humans like to dig holes to fetch the very soul of the planet, mess with genetics to make monsters, and kill each other. Not strange at all that sometimes the planet sends huge monsters to kill humanity.
- Though, to be fair, most the good ones were picked off by a Cosmic Horror millenia ago.
  - To be more fair, those weren't technically humans either.
  - Speaking of that, said good ones were pretty much thrown under the bus by humans, who ran for safety and left them to be slaughtered by Jenova. Needless to say, that decision came back to bite them in the ass (to say the least). Even though he he changed his motivation, they were still pretty much hosed.
And in Final Fantasy XII, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some non-human eager to remark on how power hungry we are, with a distinctly condescending and pitying tone. What nobody seems to mention is that while humans love to start their wars, they're also the only ones able to stop them, precisely because they're willing to wield power against power.
- Also used with a Viera after the battle with one of the Judges in the frozen mountainside. Most of the people are injured or dead and some of the humans are begging a Viera to help them, but she refuses because she sees the humans as nothing but power hungry maniacs who kill everyone, including their own. It isn't until a few sidequests later that she sees the true good in humanity and decides to help the survivors.
Lineage II also has this to an extent. While the other races are pure and beautiful children of the elements, humans were made from the corrupted remains of each, and upon their creation, were immediately recognised as scum by everyone save their twisted creator. This troper took great satisfaction in seeing the scum of the world conquer them all later on.
At the end of Phantasy Star II, all the disasters turn out to be caused by earthlings, who, having stripped Earth of all its resources, have arrived to purge all life from Algo and take it for themselves. The Bolivian Army Ending doesn't leave much hope they can be stopped, either.
- Except that the fourth game implies that they lost. Very thoroughly. They didn't try again after Mother Brain's annihilation.
The entire point of B.B Hood in Darkstalkers is to exemplify human evil compared to that of monsters and such.
In the Star Control universe humans are hardly one of the evil races, but they have had their... poor moments. They designed a race of super-intelligent clones, the Androsynth, then declared them inferior and put them into manual labor. This backfired rather spectacularly when the Androsynth, being more intelligent than your average Joe, still invented hyperspace travel before the humans, escaped, and eventually joined the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, hoping for some sweet revenge.
- Oh, and humanity also managed to collectively alienate the VUX by insulting their appearance in the first contact - ironically, humans look just as attractive to the VUX as the other way around (VUX is sometimes treated as an acronym for "Very Ugly Xenoform"). This would lead to a massive political crisis and, indirectly, to the VUX joining the Ur-Quan as well as, isolated, they could not match the Hierarchy. So out of 7 races in the original Hierarchy, humankind is responsible for two. Unsurprisingly, the Alliance (which humans were members of) eventually lost the first war.
  - ...And the VUX example is subverted when we learn that the "won't forgive you beacuse of The Insult" is an excuse, but the real reason is they find us so repellant that they never even considered not going to war with us. So really, humans may be foul-mouthed bastards, but the VUX are just Jerk Asses.
"WE ARE THE REAL MONSTERS!"
- "NO THAT'S THE ZOMBIES! I HOPE YOU ARE DEAD NOW!!''
  - I miss the internet...
Soleil (or Crusader of Centy in the US) starts off with an intro video showing monsters emerging from a cave, complete with evil sounding music that looks very sinister. The game starts with you gaining your dead father's sword and being encouraged to go off adventuring and do your part to rid the world of the evil monsters. As the game progresses you learn that the monsters might not all be evil. When you travel to the past you find a group of monsters trying to claim sanctuary in a church and then being utterly slaughtered by soldiers. At one point in the game God himself declares that Humans are Bastards and decides to destroy the entire world as punishment.
Heavily subverted in Soul Nomad with Nereids (Juno in particular). Their view on humans is more like Humans Are Untrustworthy rather than full on Humans Are Bastards. An extra level of subversion kicks in as unlike many examples of this trope, they're more willing to judge on an individual basis. The ones that pass are seen as potential mates. Despite being on opposite sides, Throndyke is still respected as a good man anyway.
- Played straight since according to the official site humans are largely responsible for the tradition of war and conflict on Prodesto.
Mao's opinion of humans in Disgaea3. Mostly due to Super Hero Aurum. He gets better.
Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2. He gets better.
Subverted and parodied (in a straight manner) in Elven Legacy. The main characters, who are elves, will often (oh so often...) go on a rant about human bastardness, while at the same time acting either in equally bastardly manner or topping humans by quite a bit. Most blatant when the protagonist accuse humans of arrogance for daring to think elves would be humble enough to surrender their weapons and meet with their lord.
Humans' potential for Bastardry is the reason the Aerogaters and Inspectors attack Earth in the Super Robot Wars games in which they appear: The Aerogaters wish to turn us into brainwashed soldiers, while the Inspectors fear us becoming a threat, and try to keep us under control.
Mega Man just loves this trope. Honestly you can't go a single game outside the original series without some villain bickering about how much we screw things up, and will subsequently plot to take over/destroy/rebuild/purge the world as a result.
This is the motive of The House Of The Dead 2's Big Bad: he believes humanity is an enemy of nature and as such inflicts a zombie outbreak upon it. In The House of the Dead 4, it's revealed that he has no intention of killing humans; rather, he "only" wishes for them to "revert to their natural state." Most likely, he means for humanity to be kicked off the top of the food chain and to live just like any other mammal.
Most of the sentient races in Guild Wars are pretty bastard-y. Humans are the worst objectively, but that's mostly because they're the most numerous
- The Charr are probably the worst. They turned Ascalon into a blighted wasteland, they eat humans (and like referring to humans as "meat". Even the friendly ones do this!). Their leaders pretty much sent the female Charr back to the kitchen (this backfires on them massively a few generations after Eye of the North), and so on
  - A selection of the Charr hero Pyre Fierceshot's quotes (keep in mind, he's one of the "good" Charr!):
  - "My father was a great soldier. Without him, Ascalon would not be the smoldering ruin it is today. I will honor his memory."
  - "Never eat something that isn't twitching."
  - "When I was a cub, my grandfather used to light a flame under a moa bird's feet and watch it squawk. If we don't get moving soon, I'll introduce you to him."
  - "Yes, mouse. Your people will retake their homeland... when they can eat ash and sleep in flame."
  - "Humans. Bah! Your limbs rip apart so easily."
  - "You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I beat you with until you understand who is in command!"
- And then there's the Asura This is part of their official description, by the way:
  - Inventors, scientists, and spellcasters of every stripe, the Asura consider many other races beneath them—and are not afraid to tell them so at every opportunity.
  - They're pretty much bastards across the board, some worse than others
In the Toejam And Earl series, where humans and other earthly life aren't wantonly malicious and "unfunky", they're stll weird. Friendly ones in the series include the Wiseman in a Carrot Suit and the Soul Sisters — a trio of black women who speak only in gospel song. In Toejam And Earl 3, you can convert most initially hostile Earthlings... such as chickens with army helmets and egg-firing mortars, and Creepy Child little girls with seemingly demon-possessed teddy bears. See? Weird.
The human deathknight Charna in Heroes of Might and Magic 4 is described as being capable of evil that 'even the demons balk at'.

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The Order Of The Stick prequel book Start Of Darkness does this, with humans killing off goblins and other races solely for being classified as evil, even if they weren't doing anything. However, the goblin Redcloak, who's village was slaughtered by human paladins and went on to become The Dragon, shows himself to be just as bad in his own way, with his hypocrisy and less-than-balanced view of humans being brought up both in the book and in the on line strips.
Many (to most) furry-themed webcomics with humans in them (or even in the history of the world-setting) portray humans as essentially Always Chaotic Evil, with the furry characters suffering persecution such as slavery, hate crimes, being relegated to the status of animals despite clearly being sentient and capable of speech, etc. at the hands of said humans. There may be one or two humans that aren't cruel, bloodthirsty, rapacious complete monsters as a sort of token attempt at fixing the Broken Aesop, but not always.
- In Kevin And Kell, whenever humans show up they're generally portrayed as the equivalent of Sealed Evil In A Can (and once, literally). The inhabitants of the furry world often make disparaging remarks about how stupid our world is in comparison to theirs (in which sentient creatures constantly slaughter and devour each other without so much as a hint of remorse or guilt), and in fact portrays humans as so evil that introducing a single one into the K&K universe almost destroyed the world.
  - To drop the anvil: When Martha Fennec becomes a human, she starts to have a never-before-seen urge to use her money to pollute. And, for some poorly explained reason, the mere thought of the concept of humans appears to disable everyone's instincts. So Yeah.
  - Actually, Kevin And Kell has lately disproven the theory that the mere presence or awareness of humans has an adverse effect on instincts. It's that characters moving between the worlds throw at least one of them off balance. Once the balance is restored, you can pay as much attention to humans as you like and not lose your instincts. In fact, it turns out that the animals are equally destructive to their own environments.
  - And then in the very next strip does a Take That at humanity, with Kell speaking wonderingly and in confusion about "some species".
- In Jack, the Big Bad isn't Satan, but a human that has become the personification of Envy. However, he's the only remaining human in Hell — it is assumed the rest have redeemed themselves and have moved on.
- To be fair, most furry webcomics avoid having humans in them altogether, either because they want to avoid the drama this trope causes or because it's simply easier to suspend disbelief when everyone in the comic is a furry.
  - Think about it, if there's both humans and furries, what made them evolve differently? Why are there furries in the first place? If they all just poofed into furries at some point why didn't those remaining humans?
  - Subversion: This doesn't always apply to fantasy or cyberpunk settings, Two Kinds (Awizard Did It) and Batman Beyond (genetics) both have furries alongside humans for believable reasons.
  - Speaking of Two Kinds, the only humans ever shown are Templar who seem to be Always Chaotic Evil with plans kill all of one race and turn the other race's brains into mush and enslaved them or preverted slave traders. Most fans have a Take Our Word For It mindset
- Lost the Lead is very, very guilty of this.
  - In Lost the Lead, the only shown human was best friends with a furry picking on the lead not because she was a furry but because she was a girl who liked video games.
  - Still works, since he was just there to be a dick.
Goblins seems to have this a lot, where the perfectly nice goblins and other "evil" humanoids are always being persecuted by the bastardy PC races.
- More or less they just flip the alignments
Terinu's race was wiped out by the humans, after it was discovered that [spoiler: they were the power source of the Big Bad]. Made worse because Ferin are inherently adorable critters.
In the web comic "Zenith", Zenith suffers a Heroic BSOD after getting shot at by humans and his Mama Bear dying because of them... well, sort of Zenith's fault for not being a man and dealing with a shot at his fin, but the other dolphins of the steel harbor tell him You Did Everything You Could... So Yeah...

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Bambi - C'mon, don't make me say it. As a whole, Western Animation with animal characters tends to be bad about this but "Bambi" is the best known example.
- And even then, if you sit down and watch the movie again, "Bambi" is not as bad as some of its successors. For one thing, Walt Disney pointedly refused to make the hunters larger characters because he would have had to show them as two-dimensional villains given their actions.
- Yet these anonymous hunters are considered so evil for doing their jobs that the film institute had "Man" from Bambi in the top 20 movie villains of all time.
  - This is even subverted in The Iron Giant- a pair of hunters shoot a deer that the titular Iron Giant had been watching, but they are not characterised negatively at all, and the scene is used to show the Iron Giant first learning about the concept of death.
In Dumbo, Dumbo's mom is separated from him and chained up in a cage, all because she gave a bratty human kid a (well-deserved) spanking for harassing Dumbo.
- To be fair, they didn't see everything that happened. The ringmaster just saw her spanking the kid.
Ferngully: The Last Rainforest - On the villainous side, humans built a big-ass tree-cutting machine to clear whole swathes of the forest for the wood. On the stupid side, said tree-cutting machine wound up releasing Hexxus when it turned his tree into stacked boards.
- You forgot doing every "experiment on animals" bit of Science Is Bad stuff that could be thought of on Batty, apparently just for shits & giggles.
  - Well, Batty sang about them all, but all I remember him saying they did to him sounded like they just tried to replace his sonar with radar and see what he'd do with it.
  - I remember hearing him talking about being "brain fried, electrified, infected and injectified, vivisectified and fed pesticides" and the part of the song that was cut out is pure Nightmare Fuel. Batty is mentally unstable, and I refuse to believe it's only because someone put an electrical device on him. More horrors happened to him inside that laboratory. The only reason why Batty doesn't have scars everywhere is because this is a G-rated movie.
- The fact that at the beginning they were marking trees implies that it wasn't intended to be clearcutting.
  - To this troper, the marks were obviously targeting aids for the Leveller's computer; before it cuts down Hexxus's tree, we see a screen in the cab as it targets the mark and waits for confirmation.
Open Season depicts open warfare between a band of beleaguered forest animals and a pack of obnoxious redneck hunters.
Cats Dont Dance is a bit of a parable in which animals are Paper Thin Disguise minorities trying to break into show business and humans are the racists of Hollywood, keeping them out.
The Animals Of Farthing Wood, played straight in the first season, where humans are either evil hunters, foolishly ignorant, or completely apathetic as to how their actions are hurting wildlife. Balanced out a bit in the second season, with the arrival of the Park Warden as a human ally.
Happy Feet has a doubly- Family Unfriendly Aesop. The penguins think humans are bastards. Fair enough; as stated above, this is typical for sea creatures. Well, then the hero learns later on that humans really are bastards. Once again, although this is a bit warped, we've seen it before. The double-warping comes in the ending, with its giant dance-off. It heavily implies that the only reason the humans are even considering preserving the Antarctic ecosystem is because of its entertainment value.
- On the other hand, it seemed a lot of the people in the ensuing montage were using it as political ammunition to put conservation laws in effect they'd already wanted
The Movie version of Over The Hedge seems to sum up everything that's wrong with humanity in one word: Suburbia.
- The comic strip it's based on is pretty much this way too, but moreso. Whereas the movie compresses most of its cynicism into a single sequence (which largely comes off as good-natured ribbing) and one recurring nasty character, the strip has it as a major underlying theme.
It's disconcerting seeing humans from the rodent point of view in Ratatouille. Not least that horrible shop window. Luckily Linguini and Colette are there to prove not all humans are rat hating scum.
- The horrible shop window is REAL. That store in Paris actually exists, and is actually like that. I kid you not.
The Secret of N.I.M.H. is pretty harsh in its depictions of humans performing animal experimentation on rodents. Of course, the rodents seem to benefit from it, but then the humans try to track down the now-intelligent rats in order to eliminate them.
Spirit Stallion Of The Cimarron depicts a white man owning a wild horse as equivalent to slavery. Seriously. The Native Americans of the same film are shown in a more sympathetic light, but the titular stallion still doesn't like being trained.
Unusually for a Western Animation, Finding Nemo takes the misguided point of view. The dentist believes that he has rescued the lame Nemo from the dangers of the reef rather than separating him from his father, and the main antagonist is a slightly hyperactive little girl who simply doesn't realize that if she shakes the bag too hard she'll kill the little fish inside. It's clearly ignorance rather than malice.
Ah, but then there's Hugh Harman's Peace on Earth, which you must see for yourself as no description we could give you would suffice. While beautifully animated and notable (even admirable) for its pro-peace message delivered in the middle of wartime, several Tropers agree that this merry Christmas (!!!) short is also easily the magnum opus of this trope. Bonus: Nightmare Fuel for Christmas! (One Troper saw it as a little girl for the first time in the middle of a collection of more typical holiday cartoons, it was her first encounter with this issue being addressed so directly, and let's just say she had a lot to think about while everyone else was eating cookies and singing "Jingle Bells.")
- Plus there's the part where the little squirrel kid says "I sure am glad there's no more men around". Most. Anvilicious. Line. Ever.
- They be dead in a week...
In Gargoyles, Demona believes this trope and attempts to recruit Brooklyn after a bad incident with a biker gang by giving him a tour of unpleasant incidents around New York. However, after Brooklyn realizes Demona is a backstabbing megalomaniac, he realizes he had been manipulated. It turns out that Demona is also a genocidal murderer who betrayed her own clan, there are other gargoyle antagonists in later episodes, and plenty of humans in the show are good people. As for the "lesson," when Brooklyn describes it to Goliath, he dismisses its damning nature as a "half-truth that Demona has thoroughly embraced, but it's not the whole truth." Goliath also states in the 5-part pilot that "There is good and evil in all of us, human and gargoyle alike."
Plague Dogs, based on a book by Richard Adams of Watership Down fame (see below), is pretty Anvilicious about mankind's cruelty to man's best friend.
- While both versions of the tale are as depressing as hell, it's interesting to note that the cartoon has an even more of a Downer Ending than the original book. In the film, the dogs are heavily implied to have died at the end, whereas they go live with a nice "Master" at the end of the book.
Watership Down itself was pretty heavy-handed on that too. In the film, Holly's flashback to the first warren's destruction was serious Nightmare Fuel.
- Also subverted at one point, when the farmer's daughter saves Hazel from the farm's cat
Used and surprisingly subverted in the obscure animated movie Once Upon A Forest. An accident with a truck full of toxic gas drives away the animal inhabitants of a forest, and the kids set out to find a cure for their dying friend. The village elder, who was caught in a trap when he was younger, warns them about humans. But at the end of the film, it's the humans who come in to clean things up, surprising the elder.
Some have accused WALL-E of depicting this trope, it's actually partly subverted: Yes, humanity wrecked Earth by turning it into a huge garbage dump, but at the end, humanity (with a little help from the robots) decides to rebuild, and the end credits hint that they succeeded. In fact, the only human who shows even the slightest signs of being a bastard is the Buy 'n Large CEO, and he just didn't know that Earth would be safe to live on again in 700 years. And let's not forget that the villain himself is a ''friggin' robot.''
- The writer of the movie also insisted that his intent was to tell the story of the last robot on Earth, and the pollution angle was simply a plot device to allow him to do that. But nobody believes him.
  - Considering that every other story in media these days has an ultierior message to tell (usually along these lines of this very trope) besides the main story, why in the world would they? A movie simply meant to be fun? Prepostuous!
While the live action The Matrix movies stick with heroic humans battling evil machines to keep the box office gross up, the Wachowskis apparently felt free to tell the real story in The Animatrix, where it's revealed that not only did humans start the Robot War purely out of Fantastic Racism (the robots literally came before humanity bearing flowers and open arms) and that the robots locked humanity in the Matrix purely as self-defense against genocide (and not to mention attempting to give them an utopia which human minds did not want), but that humans continue to do evil, twisted things to the robots in the "present day" of the series, tricking them and brainwashing them into thinking humans are their friends, and thus turning them into cannon fodder.
Futurama spoofs this trope in the Show Within A Show The Scary Door: a scientist declares that he's "combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals (a Lion, Scorpion, and Shark) to make the most evil creature of them all." A human then emerges from some sort of cloning tube, and just in case that's too subtle, declares, "It turns out it's man" in the most undramatic and dull way possible, just to parody the ham handedness of the way the point is often made by other shows.
The third episode of Justice League both provides an example and subverts this trope in a matter of seconds. Upon witnessing rioting and looting, Wonder Woman comments that perhaps her mother was right about humanity being savages. A moment later, Green Lantern is shown helping a couple of burly, typically biker-type individuals rescue two children from underneath some debris.
This is one of the main themes in the animated film Felidae. It's both played straight and subverted in regards to humanity's relationship with animals (particularly cats in this case). On the one hand there's Gustav ("Gus"), Francis's dim-witted yet otherwise good owner. On the other hand there's Pretorius, a scientist who experiments on cats while trying to create a special tissue-bonding glue. Most of the cats die horrible deaths, and Pretorius becomes a rambling alcoholic because of it. The only surviving cat, Claudandus brutally murders Pretorius and later develops a burning hatred against humanity.
- Likewise, one of the cats, Felicity, believes that all humans are good stating that only humans would be kind enough to give a blind cat like her a home. Ironically, it's heavily implied that it was due to humans experimenting on her in the first place that she's blind.
- Bluebeard at first believes that it's a human causing the murders stating that only a human would do something so cruel to a cat. Of course, it turns out to be a cat (IE:Pascal/Claudandus) committing the murders rather than a human.
  - He also refers to humans under the slang term "Can-Openers", believing that humans are only good for opening cans of food for cats.
This trope, as it relates to animals, is spoofed in an episode of Family Guy where Death goes on a date with a woman who works at a pet shop. She insists that there'd be no more wars if people were more like animals, and he says "What are you talking about? Animals fight all the time!"
- Not with nuclear arms! You can't hug your children with nuclear arms!
  - Unless you have a nuclear family. Sorry, I couldn't resist.
The Upcoming movie Battle For Terra plays with this trope. The Earth is destroyed and what's left of the human race is forced to live in a military fleet which invades the peaceful title planet. While they are doing this by force and goal to the kill all the aliens they are portrayed as just desperate if you want to know why don't they just live together, the humans and terrans don't breath the same air.

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In the world of The Account, a podcast audio drama, one-third of the humans in the Midlands turned into an army of psychopaths and got exiled to Earth. No one quite knows why. Now that they're trickling back in, and apparently sane, they're treated somewhat gingerly by the natives.
The eponymous Dr. Horrible laments that most humans are sheeple and can't think for themselves. Obviously, only a complete overhaul of the system can fix this problem. Captain Hammer really only exemplifies this trope.

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This was expressly mentioned by the late George Carlin during his "Life Is Worth Losing" special. Right after mentioning the "interesting personal choice" of suicide, he mentions murdering for personal gain, (or pleasure. Sometimes it's just fun,) genocide, cannibalism, necrophelia, and assassination. Or more importantly, who it is we assassinate...
There's at least one zoo out there with a 'The most dangerous predator on Earth' exhibit that features a nice big mirror.
- No one else look in this mirror!
- Going back to sea creatures: the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa, has such a mirror. Complete with a massive wall full of "man is killing the seas" factoids.
In a word: Darfur. An atrocity by itself, but to look to the deeper horror, you have to look at the reason. It is cows and plants. Two ethnic groups (Arabs and Africans) are all but identical in religon, culture, apearance, and almost everything else except for one difference. Arabs are herders, and Africans are farmers. This, and this alone, is the reason these people are killing each other. If this isn't High Octane Nightmare Fuel, then this troper has absolutely no idea what is.
- Economics 101? Herding and farming are completly incompatable ways of life, and the culture that goes with each lifestyle is wildly different. This is resource warfare at its most basic, and the herders are in the wrong, period, because herding is one tenth as efficient as farming (meat isn't murder... it's just very extravagant)
- Most african tribes revolve around herds rather than plants. However, if you want an example that will truly chill you, look up the political punishment of "necklacing", reserved for africans who have betrayed their communities in some (usually political) manner. Basic rundown: fill a car tyre with petrol, place around neck of victim, light.
  - Rwanda also applies here.
There was this one experiment in psychology (can't remember the name) that involved a doctor, a guy on an electrical device behind a window, and the test subject. The test subject was told by the doctor to push a button, which sent a painful electric shock into the other man, the intensity of which increased with every push of the button. However, only the first shock was real, the man was an actor who simulated escalating amounts of pain. The idea was to show that people would obey any random guy in a lab coat, in this case, keep pushing the button even when the guy behind the window is in obvious pain. But as I recall, there was one subject who kept it up even after the doctor told him to stop...
- The Milgram experiment?
  - Milgram's experiment was slightly more complex than that. Hearing, seeing and even sitting next to the shock victim did little, but most people would not continue if left alone in the room; they only went up to the highest level when a researcher (read: an authority figure) was standing next to them, effectively exerting pressure and shifting responsibility. Milgram himself was weirded out by the results - he'd intended to test whether Germans were "naturally crueler" than Americans (guess why), and instead discovered that it really is all about following orders. The Stanford Prison experiment, on the other hand... wow.
  - To wit: the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to be a two week-long experiment designed to see what would happen if you placed power over one group (prisoners) into another group's hands (the guards). It was supposed to last two weeks, but actually lasted only six days, because the guards almost immediately started abusing their power and showed genuine sadistic tendencies. For just one example: there was a riot on the second day.
No mention of The Holocaust? For shame!
- Probably due to two reasons: (a) Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment, and (b) the demonization of Those Wacky Nazis making it easy to feel that they somehow weren't actually human beings themselves. (Of course, they were...and so their regime does in fact provide us with one of the more chilling examples of the trope.)
  - The fact that there are other examples in this section that are almost as bad and the Holocaust example repeatedly gets deleted under grounds of the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment implies something else entirely about those who enforce it.
Just for the record, the only way we are worse than animals is that we kill for ideological reasons, every other reason we kill is not unique to us.
- Dolpins: kill for lulz, also love gang rape. Ants: go to war, enslave other insects, commit mass murder. Lions (and dozens of other animals): Males will kill baby lions (so they can have sex with their moms), wasps: lay eggs in other bugs which will pop out Aliens style, the list goes on.
  - You know it's easier to just say we're the only ones that feel bad about being bastards.
The War Nerd had this to say about Columbians, but it will apply equally well to the rest of us: They kill in uniform or out, home or away, on the street or the battlefield. Equal Opportunity Slaughter: men, women, children, dogs — if it moves, they'll kill it. For any reason. For no reason. For money, for fun, for the Revolution, for the Counter-Revolution, for practice.
The Otherkin Movement has a subgroup of human-haters who hate humans not only for their violent acts against nature, but also for being closed-minded enough to ignore anything that even remotely seems "weird" or "impossible" as if it doesn't exist, never has, and never will. You can guess which side of the argument this troper is on.
- This is the reason why the Internet hates furries so much.
- Pretending weird or impossible things don't exist is not an uncommon reaction.
- Anyone who thinks people are too skeptical obviously isn't familiar with the success of cults and bullshitting politicians. If anything, people have the opposite problem.
People killing albinos in Tanzania to sell their bodies for witchcraft. Perfect human greed and ignorance at its finest.
While most extinct or endangered animals are simply unfortunate results of human necessary needs such as lessening habitat (deforestation for more human settlement), hunting to feed large populations(bush meat), and dangerous conflict (hurting livelihoods by killing farm animals), alot of other reasons humans used to make most animals go extinct or threatened are simply horrible crimes.
- Killing the last remaining tasmanian tigers to extinction based on the utterly unfounded belief that they poached their livestock (one of the very last remaining specimens in a zoo in the early 1900s was thrown in a trashcan after it died)
- Hunting the Great Auk for their eggs to make crappy trinkets and their feathers to make fancy pillows. (the last pair of great auks were strangled and their last egg smashed under the boot of a bunch of superstitious blokes)
- China killing various exotic animals such as tigers and bears just to make medicines and herbs that won't even work shit (don't forget during Mao Zedong's rule, he declared tigers, wolves, and leopards and other "pests" enemies of the people and several "anti-pest" campaigns started.)
- Alot of hunters in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho ban the reintroduction of the formerly persecuted gray wolf simply on the grounds that it would deplete their precious hunting game.
  - The actual argument is that these aren't the native wolves of the past, but a subspecies from the north who are almost twice as big as the natives were, and are a much bigger strain on the game population then was intended.
- The Passenger Pigeon, a bird numbering in the billions going extinct due to over-extensive hunting beyond necessity.
  - Deforestation was a major cause, depriving the pigeons of food. Turns out that fragmented forests do not support the large flocks of passenger pigeons very well. Audubon thought that it wasn't hunting that would harm the pigeon but the loss of the forest. It would seem that the species would be in trouble even without the large-scale hunting.
  - The last member of the species (a female) died in captivity. (At least it gets proper memorial where this occurred)
- To say nothing of the megafaunal extinctions that took place pretty much worldwide during the Pleistocene. Suspiciously, they always tended to occur soon after humans arrived.
  - Should be noted that some research indicates that the declines could have begun before humans arrived.
This horrific incident which happened recently in the news. A 15 year old girl was gangraped outside a school for two and a half hours. There were twenty witnesses, and apparently ten of them participated. None of them called the police. The girl was found semi-conscious under a bench.

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