Parakewl from Tower Of God. He demands that people sacrifice themselves for him, cares more about his scores than his comrades' deaths and after insulting everybody and fucking everything up, he demands to be saved because his dream is superior to those of the others.
Ryoki Tachibana from the manga Hot Gimmick. Although he's obsessed with Hatsumi he's usually far too up himself to ever do anything as pointless as care about her. His response to most of her (considerable) problems is "forget it, just focus on me".
The Homunculus Greed of Fullmetal Alchemist is, well, the embodiment of Greed, and therefore wants everything for himself and anything he does is for the sake of either himself or his own gain. He hates Wrath for killing his underlings - not because he particularly cares about them, but because they're his. Later, when a reborn and amnesiac Greed unknowingly kills off the last of them, he regains the memories of his old manifestation, as well as the memory of his former underlings and what happened to them, triggering him into an explosive rage at the fact that his "possessions" were taken away from him.
He doesn't treat his underlings as expendable and he's about as humane as could be hoped for as an Artificial Human formed from the evil impulses of an Eldritch Abomination.
This incident is also the cause of his Heel Face Turn and transformation into a Noble Demon by the end.
He later also subverts this when someone calls him out on his supposed 'desires', causing him to admit that all he really wanted were friends. In truth, his greed encompasses the need to have friends. He's just greedy like that.
Envy also falls into a version of this, given that it loves to sadistically harm people, but complains about others not fighting fair on the occasions where they get the better of it. For instance, when Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye fail to be impressed with Envy's Shapeshifter Guilt Trip, Envy scolds them for their lack of humanity, because they didn't hesitate before shooting their friends.
Pride shows some of this too. He berates Greed for betraying their "family" and then shortly afterward devours his "brother", Gluttony to absorb his powers while Gluttony cries out in agony.
Oddly enough, Zolf J. Kimblee seems to be a notable aversion of this. Despite being a sociopath, he has a remarkable appreciation for other humans. He sees the people that he kills as just that - people - and sees it as his duty to remember all of their faces. He even makes the effort to save Edward Elric near the end because he'd decided that Edward was superior to Pride, who was trying to use him as a vessel after discussing how inferior humans were. Still a sociopath, but surprisingly focused on others around him.
The primary antagonist of the 2003 anime version can be seen as an example as well. Despite trying to pass herself off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, it is pretty obvious that Dante is only motivated by her own selfish desires. She has ruined countless lives for the sake of her own immortality and tries to justify it by saying that humans should accept that life isn't fair. Once her plans backfire in her face, she throws a hissy fit.
The anime version of Envy is as bad or worse than its original counterpart. A Beta Test Baddie and textbook case of The Resenter, he'll kill anyone he meets for daring to have it better than he does.
Kirino from Ore No Imouto Ga Konna Ni Kawaii Wake Ga Nai seems to believe that the world revolve around her navel, and that's it's up to others to make it so she gets her way, and that they should be berated about it and thankful to her.
Mazinger Z: Why Big Bad Dr. Hell wants to Take Over the World? Because when HE was a child and young man everybody abused HIM and nobody respected HIM or acknowledged HIS genius, and HE considers the whole humanity must pay for it -even though most of the people tormented him when he was a child would be old or dead when the series began- and kneel before HIM. Also, when he attended college, he befriended a Japanese exchange student called Juzo Kabuto (who looooong aafter would create Mazinger-Z) and fell in love with another exchange student named Yumiko. When he found out they were engaged, he convinced himself they pretended to be his friends while planning to backstab him. He genuinely believed EVERYBODY was out to get him (long before they WERE).
Unless your name is Mokuba, don't expect Seto Kaiba to show you anything other than cold indifference. Unless Mokuba has been kidnapped, Kaiba has shown he has no problem at all standing back and watching Yugi and company save the world while he mutters insults under his breath.
Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z certainly fits, specifically around the Androids/Cell arc. He was technically on the good guys side, so a few guys would find his attitude irritating. Even Bulma, who had a child with Vegeta, found his personality grating, but she had a whole 7 years to deal with that later.
The first example we see is Orochimaru, one of the most powerful ninja in the first half of the series. To him, everything is about furthering his own goals and he will sacrifice anything for it. He adopts orphans, manipulates them, experiments on them and eventually has them killed when they're of no more use to him. Anything that he doesn't value is worthless unless it gets in his way, in which case he destroys it. If something goes wrong, you can expect that Orochimaru probably had a hand in it out of pure selfishness and dickery.
This trope defines everything that's necessary to know about the Uchiha clan in general. The clan's founder started a generations long feud when his brother was chosen to be the successor of the Sage of Six Paths over him. For a few select examples:
Madara is an even bigger case than Orochimaru. Madara was mad because his clan wanted to stop fighting the Senju clan, then he was mad because HE didn't get to be Hokage, and then he was mad because he felt his clan didn't respect him enough. When he began going blind, he took his brother's eyes, though whether or not this was by force is intentionally unclear. Madara is a little more debatable because he seems to honestly believe he was doing the right thing for his clan, but he completely ignores their wishes. While it turns out Tobi was lying when he said he was Madara, the real Madara is apparently behind the Moon's Eye Plan, aka 'Brainwash the world into doing what I want.'
Then, there's Sasuke, relative of the latter and student of the former. He takes the cake by outright admitting that he's being childish and impulsive... and doesn't care. Despite his reputation, he actually starts out as a lesser example. While he does abandon Konoha in favor of Orochimaru because he doesn't think he'll be able to become strong enough to kill Itachi while there, he doesn't kill Naruto when he has the chance, even though doing so would have unlocked the Mangekyo Sharingan. After Shippuden starts, he starts heading downhill and when he finally meets up with Itachi and after Itachi's death, he takes a flying leap off the slippery slope. He immediately sacrifices his teammates when it becomes inconvenient to save them, attacks the Kage Summit and tries to kill everyone there in his effort to get to Danzo, and then once Danzo is dead decides to kill every single person in Konoha because he believes that the Uchihas (who it turns out were wiped out to preempt them starting a civil war) were wronged in some way and that everyone in Konoha is mocking them by simply existing. In short, not only has his selfishness been turned Up to Eleven, he's gone absolutely nuts.
Played with in the case of Itachi. He sacrificed his family, his home, his reputation, basically everything, to protect the Leaf and avert the civil war his family's coup would have caused. But he also kept his younger brother alive and repeatedly mind-raped the kid, forcing him to grow up into a bitter obsessive lunatic for reasons that are subject to change at any given moment. To date it's been narrowed down to either because he wanted to die at Sasuke's hands (which he didn't, making his efforts totally meaningless) or because he (allegedly) loved the Sauce too much to kill him.
And last but certainly least. Tobi, or Obito, has shades of this. Is he really doing this to create a better world? Or is he doing this so he can see his beloved Rin again? Also note he outright admitted he started the Fourth Shinobi War because Rin died.
Mayo Sakaki from Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden. Miaka was bratty and immature, yeah, but at least she had good intentions; Mayo was a pure, rotten self-centered bitch.
Ouran High School Host Club's Tamaki seems to have this attitude, but then goes through major character development it turns out he's always been The Messiah... while still happily bragging about how awesome he is.
Tamaki is very self centered but he's also insanely interested in EVERYONE because they're different from him. That's what makes him closer to The Messiah. While half is interest in other's lives come from how he finds it fascinating, he also does it with rather pure intentions. (Like his love of pleasing ladies comes from his self image of a prince, but a prince wants to make ladies happy...it's rather circular)
From Liar Game, Yokoya only cared about benefitting himself. He doesn't care if his own teammates who allied with him get money or if they go further into debt.
Honey Hunt has the protagonists (Yura) famous celebrity parents, Yukari and Takayuki. But especially Yukari who is hardly at home for her daughter and is very selfish. In all of her interviews she lies and says that she and Yura are close and spend much time together as a result of Takayuki being abroad so often, when in reality she is just as cold and distant as Takayuki. Also, immediately after showing up after being away from home for about a half a month, Yukari coldly announces that she and Takayuki are getting divorced before telling Yura that she can go wherever she wants. Also, while Takayuki was having an affair she was having one of her own with Yura's neighbor and crush, Shinsuke. When Yura finds out about the affair Yukari's response is to smile, declare that Shinsuke likes her more than Yura, that she's going to allow Shinsuke to live with her in a mansion she had bought, and that Takayuki had a baby with his mistress so neither he nor Yukari will have time to look after Yura anymore. She then demands that Yura leave the house. It's eventually revealed that she and her husband were only together for the sake of their careers and their images, they didn't love each other. The two of them even agreed on a rule with each other that they would stay married as long as they hide their own adulterous affairs. After she decided to divorce Takayuki because the press found out about his affair, however, it is shown that she has no intentions of taking care of Yura and merely cared about repairing her image in the eyes of the public because they had originally thought she was the "ideal mom". Seriously, poor kid.
Souma and Sakurako from Sakura Gari. Initially, it seems as if It's All About Me with them, and that they'll do whatever it takes to get what they want even if they hurt/kill others in the process. They get better, somewhat, by the end though.
Sayaka from Princess Princess. It doesn't matter to her if she ends up hurting people in the process or if Tooru doesn't feel that same about her. It's all about her and having Tooru for herself. Thankfully, she gets better.
Gankutsuou: Although Baron Julian Danglars maintains that he only wants his daughter to be happy and that everything he does is for her sake, he clearly cares more about money and himself rather than his own daughter (or wife for that matter).
Lina Inverse in most incarnations of Slayers; while she does take the time to help others (and save the lives of many if necessary), the true reason she often falls into grand adventures in the first place is so she can acquire money among other things, and will manipulate/leave behind her companions for her own sake. Her greed is immense - in one Non-Serial Movie, she destroys a restaurant because she loses the sardine they offered her - which she stepped on herself.
His reasons have more meaning than Lina's do, but Zelgadis also slips into this at times in regards to changing his body back to normal.
Prussia from Axis Powers Hetalia. He calls himself 'Ore-sama' (a narcissoid way of saying 'I' in Japanese). He likes to remind himself how awesome he is, and he tells the others to praise him, and bow down to him. It's also known that he kept diaries since he was formed; all of the entries start with "I am so cool", "I was so cool today", or something along those lines.
The English translations of various comics have him refer to/introduce himself as "the awesome me", which has become a frequen phrase in fanon.
When May Wong walks into Kaleido Stage in the second season, she's amazed and pissed off that no one but her sees how wonderful and perfect she is and haven't handed her every lead roll over the current star who worked for everything she has. She gets better, but she'll really make you want to jam your thumbs in your eyes for about a dozen episodes.
Leon is the same, in a subtler and colder way. He believes his skill makes him so important he demands script changes and special treatment at the drop of a hat. It turns out he even puts his costars out of commission when he decides they are not worthy of being his partner. If he deems them unworthy, there's no point in them ever continuing to perform. And he actually does that to May herself, seriously injuring her shoulder... which is actually the first step to her Character Development and change of attitude. It'll take Leon WAY more time to defrost.But since he's a white haired pretty boy, fangirls aren't half as hard on him as they are on May.
Miyu Greer and Alyssa Searrs from Mai-HiME have a variation of this, in that they believe it's all about them: they believe that no bond could possibly be stronger than the one they share with each other, and as a consequence of this, they have no problem with hurting other people for the sake of their syndicate's Utopia Justifies the Means plans. When they are the ones being wronged, though, they lament the injustice of it all.
Nao is also purely motivated by self-interest in both the manga and anime. In the anime, she uses her powers to exact revenge on men for the robbery that killed her father and left her mother comatose, and later, on those who she blames for her losing her eye. In the manga, she mainly goes along with the fight against the Orphans so that she can break rules without being held accountable.
From the follow-up series, Mai-Otome, Tomoe epitomizes this. Her main motivation for committing evil deeds is in order to get closer to her long-time crush, only willing to follow the rules (apart from facilitating attempted rape and murder) so long as she benefits from it. Even when she's offered to become one of the Big Bad's soldiers, she isn't as much interested in serving him as she is in using her new-found abilities to impress Shizuru and crush her rivals.
Griffith from Berserk did initially seem to care at least a bit about his group of mercenaries, particularly Caska and Guts, and generally treats the other members kindly enough, but eventually, achieving his dream is the only thing he cares about, so much so that he sacrifices the entire Band of the Hawk to a group of demons, in order to become one himself. The first thing he does with his newfound power and body is rape Casca in front of Guts, presumably just to spite him for daring to leave him. Never mind that Guts had fairly good reasons for doing so, Griffith just didn't understand, or if he did, didn't care.
Earlier when Guts tried to leave Griffith's service, how did Griffith respond? Did he thank Guts for his hard work and wish him good luck? Nope. Griffith was so incensed that Guts would want to leave him that he tried to kill Guts. Guts was the closest thing Griffith had to a real friend.
Claw from Kimba the White Lion. The main reason he wants to take over The Kingdom of the White Lions is so that he could do whatever he wants.
Soul Eater has Black*Star, who frequently proclaims himself the hero (it's Badass Bookworm Maka), insists upon the whole cast/plot relying upon him (long before he had the skill to back up such a claim), and justifies any deviation from this (e.g. 'allowing' Maka to fight Crona for him) as him simply being a 'great' man and warrior. His single-minded attitude recently allowed him his own heroic piece; being the one to rescue Kid from the Book of Eibon. In a different kind of series, he would be the hero.
In The World God Only Knows, Keima comes to the conclusion that the MacGuffin Girls he's seeking are not just girls he's met in the past, but specifically those closest to him (a childhood friend and girls in the same class and/or grade level). He goes so far as to suggest that finding these girls is the reason he was chosen as a spirit hunter in the first place. Narcissistic as it sounds, however, events have so far supported his hypothesis.
Lelouch from Code Geass suffers this to an extent; rather than himself, however, he tends to place more value on the lives and desires of people he cares about (like his friends, but especiallyhis little sister). Rather infamously, at the end of the first season, he completely abandons La Résistance because his sister is being held hostage, and in his absence they collapse.
The human race in The Animatrix short The Second Renaissance. All the machines wanted was peace with the humans, but no, machines are just tools that exist to serve humanity, so the machines make their own society but their economy becomes better then theirs. The humans can't have the "tools" making them look bad, so they decide that it would be a good idea to go to war with them.
Jose Porla, the guildmaster of Phantom Lord from Fairy Tail. He decides that no other guild is allowed to be as strong, or heaven forbid stronger than his, and sees Fairy Tail growing in strength as an insult. He decides they must be destroyed, and goes about it in the most sadistic way possible by attacking three unsuspecting members to goad them into attacking, nearly killing their master to break down their spirits, kidnapping their newest member (which admittedly he was hired to do by said member's father), and then when she is rescued goes to destroy the guild if they don't give her back, knowing full-well that Fairy Tail is a guild of Nakama and will never do it. All of this because of HIS EGO!
Although it seems doubtful, the Huckebein family in Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force also show these symptoms. Every single page in each chapter, they seemed to indicate to readers that they were superior in every way. So far as they dominate the whole story.
A Cruel God Reigns: Greg. He does what he does to Jeremy because he thinks that he has every right. Why not? Everyone loves him...
Comic Books
In Legion Of Super-Heroes, the serial killer Roxxas arrived on planet to kill Legionnaires and spotted another villain, Mekt Ranzz, Lightning Lord. He offered to share the kills. Unbeknownst to him, Mekt had reformed and was there because his brother and sisters were Legionnaires; first he appealed to Roxxas to stop, and then joined the fight against him. When Roxxas downed all his foes, he kicked Mekt and complained that he would have shared.
In another strip, she read a book of Christian prayers and noticed how frequently the expression "mea culpa" was used. She then proceeded to stay up reading it all night trying to find a prayer that allowed her to pass guilt on to other people to no avail.
In yet another strip, she is shown reading about grisly murders and crimes on the newspaper and referring to it as "reading about what a good person [she] is" (by comparison).
When Mafalda reads some statistics about what will happen in the event of nuclear war, particularly how many people will die indiscriminately, Susanita laments how disgusting it would be to die with random strangers, essentially comparing it to sex.
The series 52 deals with the "missing year" of DC comics between the Infinite Crisis and the One Year Later storylines. In this timeframe Superman has lost his powers and is living life as Clark Kent while a new superhero, christened Supernova, has stepped in as the new protector of Metropolis. Lex Luthor, however, is convinced that Superman is Supernova, simply in a new disguise. Why would Superman do this? Why would he create a new identity, give himself new powers and sever all ties with friends and allies? Why go to all this trouble? To toy with Luthor.
Once he got his powers back, Superman proceeded call Luthor out about his claims of Superman "holding humans back". Pointing out that while he was gone, Luthor had spent the entire year obsessing over him rather than doing anything useful.
Superman: Where's the cancer cure, Lex?
Luthor has always been like this. He smashed a chair over Doomsday's inert body because he didn't kill Superman, gave away his baby daughter to gain control over Brainiac 13 tech and hired someone to frame Bruce Wayne because he cancelled contracts in protest of Luthor's presidency.
Lex may just be the trope codifier for this one. He is so incredibly self-obsessed that he has formed this view that any and all actions taken to destroy Superman, whom he views only as a threat to him, is justified so that he can be Earth's saviour, even though he couldn't care less about anyone who gets hurt in the process and it's clear it's all only for his own sense of pride.
In the Silver Age, Superman made an enemy in Luthor because the former accidentally destroyed the latter's research in creating life, which Luthor assumed is deliberate because he thought Superman was jealous of his genius. The fact that Luthor lost his hair from the lab accident was treated as a casuality. Post-Crisis, Luthor became a villain because Superman caused him to lose his hair. This says a lot about how much Luthor's characterization changed over the years.
Cassandra Nova from Grant Morrison's run on X-Men. A psychic parasite who accidentally became Professor Xavier's stillborn-but-not-really twin sister, Cassandra believes that the universe is still the womb she shared with Xavier, in which she has to completely destroy him in order to be "born." Therefore every living being she encounters is either not real or a mindless drone Xavier conjured up. This lets her commit psychological torture, wreck an interplanetary civilization, and initiate a genocide with pure sociopathic impunity.
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Doctor Doom, the man even goes as far as to rename the capital of Latveria after himself. He also thinks everyone is inferior to him.
The original Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne. He cares for nothing but himself and irrationally blames Barry Allen for everything wrong in his life.
The graphic novel Asterios Polyp does an interesting treatment of this: Asterios is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who hogs the spotlight and flashbacks to the days when he was married showed that his wife certainly felt that he smothered her at times by having to be the center of attention and make everything about his issues, but he's not quite this. He does have the heart of gold after all, and throughout the course of the story he learns to be better. Obnoxious and unlikable Jerk Ass theater director Willy, on the other hand, who is sometimes presented as being Not So Different and who shamelessly attempts to seduce Asterios' wife really is this, and will use, abuse, and then discard people and projects according to his whims.
Darkseid has a tremendous ego even for a God of Evil. His entire goal is to make everyone and everything an extension of himself. His vision of the future is to essentially turn all creation into an everlasting monument to himself.
Played subtly in Ultimate Spider-Man. Norman Osborn is convinced he's the most important thing in the lives of everyone he knows. He believes he's the single greatest threat Nick Fury has ever come across when he's really just a particularly annoying blip on Fury's radar. He also thinks that Peter Parker looks up to him like a father and needs his guidance, then when Peter attacks him is sure that Fury twisted him against him. Twisting it even further, he believes he owns Peter, having made the spider that bit him (even if the incident that created Spider-Man was a total accident). This means that he has the right to force him to do whatever he wants and kill him if he refuses.
616 Osborn as well. As this quote illustrates:
"My father used to say to me, "it's not all about you." I told him I was working on it."
- Norman Osborn, Dark X-Men #4
Inverted in My Little Pony Micro Series Issue #2 . In the end, Rainbow realizes that turning her own attitude around isn't enough; she needs to instill happiness and inspiration in everypony else.
Invoked in Gotham Central, where Renee Montoya's brother believes that she is actively trying to hurt their parents by being more concerned about herself instead of them regarding what her homosexuality would do to them if they found out.
Robin calls Sasuke out on this in the DC/Naruto crossover Connecting The Dots while taunting him. When Sasuke drops into a rant about how "No one knows my pain." and losing his clan, Robin shuts him up by pointing out that in the DC universe, that is considered getting off lucky.
Sasuke: "Oh? And what about losing your entire clan? Do you know what that is like?"
Robin: "No." (shrugs) "Do you know what it's like to lose your entire planet? Your entire species? Neither do I, but I know plenty who have, and none of them are as big a loser as you are." (laughs). "So you've lost a lot. But have you ever sacrificed something? Or do you just think you deserve everything outright? Cause seriously? That's like a little baby whining for toys he can't have."
Eridan in Hivefledwas so terrified of not being normal that he managed to convince himself that sex was supposed to be unpleasant rather than confront his Asexuality.
Checker Monarch, the Big Bad of Getting Back On Your Hooves. She outright tells her minion Helping Hoof that she doesn't care who gets hurt by her actions, so long as it doesn't effect her. The Diamond Dogs she hired as her minions ultimately prove to be less selfish than she is! This stems from her Social Darwinist worldview that the strong rule the week: since she can manipulate everyone around her with her special talent for Manipulation, she's the strongest, therefore she can do whatever she wants. Justified, as she's based off of real life sociopaths, and thus a Narcissist.
Naruto:Asunder: Naruto has this to say to Madara about the Uchiha/Senju feud:
"Oh I know your story. Your clan decided to start a blood feud because "Daddy" didn't take you out for ice cream. You Uchiha really need to learn how to grow up. The world is way more than about you idiots."
Cori Falls's renditions of Jessie and James are good at making each other's angst all about themselves; the two biggest examples are James in "Thorns of the Rose", when Jessie is obviously upset about something and all he can do is cry over how she supposedly doesn't love him anymore, and Jessie in "Blood on the Moon" when James's bad mood makes her weepy and insecure even after she starts chastising him for it!
In Antz, General Mandible justifies sending soldiers loyal to the Queen on a suicide mission against a peaceful termite colony just to get them out of the way, assassinating said Queen, and flooding the ant colony to kill off the "weak" workers by claiming it's "for the good of the colony". Near the end, his own second-in-command Cutter has had enough of Mandible's murderous ways and sides with the heroes, saying it's "for the good of the colony". Mandible snaps and screams "I am the colony!", revealing it was all about his satisfying his own ego.
Syndrome aka Buddy Pine in The Incredibles. As a boy, he constantly pesters Mr. Incredible and implores him to let him be his sidekick. When he tries to show his skills, and almost gets killed doing so, the resulting damage leads to a widespread Super Registration Act which forces Mr. Incredible into retirement and hiding. Yet years later, Syndrome still has the gall to say he got the short end of the stick.
In Megamind, even after everyone believed Metro Man was dead, Hal seemed to think it was an appropriate time to invite Roxanne to his party. His selfishness is made worse by gaining superpowers.
In Spirited Away, after Chihiro has pried a job out of Yubaba, over relentless and vicious attempts to intimidate her out of asking, Yubaba laments her promise to employ anyone who asked for a job: it makes her have to be so nice all the time, and she really hates that.
Also, the bathhouse employees could count. They don't care that a strange spirit has somehow taken up residence in the bathhouse and is demanding all of the food and water. He's getting them gold! And they only start to be careful around him after they realize that he might eat one of them.
Wreck It Ralph: The phrase "going Turbo" originated when the racing game character Turbo got jealous of a new game stealing his popularity, so he abandoned his game to join the other one, getting both games decommissioned. He so greatly considers himself more important than anyone else that he invades another racing game, Sugar Rush, making its intended main character (Vanellope) a bullied glitch, and takes over her role as ruler of the game, so that he has yet another chance to be a popular and victorious racer as King Candy.
Film - Live Action
The main character of Little Sweetheart is a sociopath, so this is a given.
At the end of Brazil, the protagonist is tortured by his old friend and informational retrieval specialist, Jack. As he begs for mercy, Jack angrily calls the protagonist a "stupid bastard" for putting him in the position of being associated with a dissident.
Magneto calls Wolverine on this (lampshading the obvious to fans) in X2...
Magneto: Mystique has discovered plans of a base that Stryker's been operating out of for decades. Only we don't know where it is. We thought one of you might.
Wolverine: The professor already tried [to look for hints about Stryker in my mind].
Magneto (sighs): Once again, you think it's all about you.
It's also a callback to the first movie, when everyone is certain that Magneto is trying to kidnap Wolverine, only to discover that he's actually after Rogue
Wolverine: What do you want with me?
Magneto:You? My dear boy, whoever said anything about wanting you? *glance towards Rogue, cue Oh Crap expression from her and Wolverine*
Waldo Lydecker of Laura is so full of himself, even when he flashes back to Laura's old life, it's through the filter of how great he is.
Citizen Kane: Kane’s philosophy of life is to be loved in his own terms. Lampshaded spectacularly:
Kane: [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me. Susan:I see. So it's you who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me. [laughs] I can't do this to you? [odd smile] Oh, yes I can.
In Iron Man 2 as the NYPD haul him away, Hammer accuses Pepper of trying to "pin [the blame]" for the Hammer Drone attack on him (while simultaneously complimenting her on her ruthlessness). This, despite the fact that the Hammer drones going rogue, resulting in millions of dollars in property damage and dozens of casualties, was basically entirely his fault. While he didn't specifically intend to cause what was going on, he illegally broke Vanko out of prison and gave a known mechanical genius and psycho access to all his technology, all just to further shady-at-best business practices. The most charitable option is that his plans have Gone Horribly Wrong.
Literature
In Harry Potter, Voldemort complains that his Death Eaters lack loyalty to him, but he has none to them, making Draco try to assassinate Dumbledore despite because of the pain his danger causes his parents, and murdering Snape for power. He's a narcissistic, sociopathic dictator and doesn't care about any of his Death Eaters.
There's also a little character named Lockhart who had ... a big ego. His idea of a Defense Against the Dark Arts test contained only questions like "What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?" and "When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?"
Also, Dudley, Petunia, Marge, and Vernon Dursley. Of the four, Dudley is the only one who becomes less self-centered by the series' end.
Barty Crouch, Jr. boasts that he and he alone was faithful to Voldemort. Apparently Bellatrix, who was proclaiming her loyalty to Voldemort while Crouch, Jr. was begging innocence, doesn't exist in his little world. Crouch, Jr. also seems to take for granted his mother and Winky's pity for him.
In Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn novel Malleus, Cherubael sets up an elaborate plan to get Eisenhorn to free him. It involves the death of several innocents, including some that Eisenhorn has to kill in self-defense. When Eisenhorn reimprisons him, Cherubael laments the gross injustice of it.
In CS Lewis's The Great Divorce, a damned soul manages to convince himself that he has made great sacrifices for his wife, because he once let her use the last stamp to mail a letter when he wanted to mail a letter, too.
Uncle Andrew most certainly would count as well. He makes his first appearance by tricking Polly into being teleported to another world which, by his own admittance, he knows absolutely nothing about, and then starts guilting Diggory into going there as well. At one point, he launches into an explanation of his experiments and is annoyed when Diggory shows concern first that Andrew didn't obey his godmother's wishes and destroy the magic powder and then over the guinea pigs used for the initial experiments (which Uncle Andrew said exploded like "little bombs"). In fact, he even says that it was fine that he killed a number of helpless animals, because "that was what they were for!" When Diggory continues to ask about where Polly went, Uncle Andrew replies "How you go on about that! As if it mattered!" When Diggory asks why Andrew didn't just send himself to this other world to see what it was like, he outright states that he doesn't want to put himself in danger. And when Diggory is afraid to send himself to an unknown place, Uncle Andrew reminds him that Polly could be starving or drowning or being killed by wild animals. By this point, Diggory wishes he were tall enough to punch his uncle. Later, an explicate parallel is drawn between Andrew and Jadis. Oh, and when they're all in Narnia, all Uncle Andrew thinks about is his own safety (willing to abandon his own nephew, Polly and a cabbie to get home) and how he can profit from the place. When Diggory asks if Narnia might hold something that would cure his mother, Andrew rudely replies that it's not a pharmacy.
The father of the Moomin family is one of these. It is most evident in the two books where he's a reasonably main character (The Exploits of Moominpappa and Moominpappa at sea), but it turns up in the other books as well.
Skulduggery Pleasant, Feltcher Renn, albeit one of the more pleasant and likeable examples once Character Development takes hold. The fact that he's The Last Living Teleporter means that the plot of the third book is more or less dependent on him, and also that every major power in the magical world desperately wants him to work for them. This feeds his ego pretty strongly, but it's toned down in his later appearances.
It's implied most Teleporters are like this, probably because the advanced techniques of Teleporting are only possible if a Teleporter accepts the premise that their powers don't move them through space, but they stand still and their powers allow them to move the world, in essence, the Universe revolves around them.
Fletcher has no problem with this concept.
In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand, a daemon kills a trooper in front of Cain and talks of how she will transform the planet into a warp gate to allow daemons to run wild. When, with the help of Jurgen's "blank" abilities, Cain goes to kill her, she objects: "It's not fair!"
The villain of Duty Calls turns out to be like this. He actually complains that, in the face of a tyranid attack, when he shot some civilians for trying to get their children onto his escape vessel, the others "got quite abusive". Cain observes that this must have been distressing for him, and he appreciates the sympathy.
In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel First Only, Flense attacks Gaunt for killing his father, but his complaints are that he, personally, lost his estate and family name, and had to rise up in the world like any common trooper.
In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40000Ultramarines novel Nightbringer, Taloun complains to the Space Marine Uriel that he has lost thousands of man-hours of production owing to bombs. Uriel wonders how many men he had lost, and whether he cared.
This is 40k. Those men only mattered to the Imperium inasmuch as they work for its defense; the loss of a million men is considered a good trade if it will keep a manufacturing planet for one more day. The loss of 20 men at one factory is irrelevant next to the loss of the thousands of man-hours of munitions they would have built.
Objectivist hero Richard Rahl becomes like this about mid-way through the series, all while apparently wearing a massive set of irony blinders.
In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40000Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Braxton is enraged that the primarch keeps him waiting, because keeping people waiting is what he does to other people, to demonstrate his superior status. Keep in mind he's thinking this about a Primarch, one of the gene-sons of the Emperor Himself, who is essentially a Physical God.
A particularly bad example is in Breaking Dawn. Throughout the series, Bella is terrified of vampires who drink human blood and thinks that the Cullens are great because they don't. When human-killing vampires show up to do favors for her though, she's just peachy with them. (Yes, there's one scene where she's mildly bothered that her guests are committing murder, but that's it).
The Big Bad of Mercedes Lackey's Jinx High understands the magical law of karma ... specifically she understands that when others do wrong, it leaves them open for her to harm them. The idea that she might be subject to this same law doesn't even occur to her.
In her defense, she's actually not entirely subject to it: her body-switching magic has allowed her to let the karmic consequences land on someone else's head while she escapes scot-free, several times. One of the saddest things about the series coming to an unplanned and abrupt halt after Jinx High is that her ultimate escape at the end and its consequences (notably, that Diana Tregarde has entirely unknown to her actually killed an innocent person in the villainess' stead) are never, ever addressed.
Warrior Cats: Hawkfrost, since it seems his main motivation in trying to rule the forest, is the fact that he believes that he, and only he, is capable of leading the Clans properly, also how he constantly addresses the crowd at Gatherings, even though he has no right to.
In Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood is deeply self-absorbed, considering her feelings (whether positive or negative) absolutely irrepressible and in the process disregarding common politeness and the feelings of others; when circumstances force Elinor to confess that she too has been unhappy, Marianne breaks down in Tears of Remorse, forcing Elinor to comfort her again, and continues to wallow in her own unhappiness - with added guilt, now - rather than provide emotional support for Elinor. It takes near-death to smarten her up. Granted, she's a teenager, but it's a major contrast with Elinor, who's 19 and displays more responsibility and consideration for others than many people much older than her.
Unicorns as well, although not to quite such a disturbing degree as Haggard. They're explicitly stated to be sort of vain, because they're incredibly beautiful, extremely magical, and fully aware of both those facts. However, they don't actually do anything to anyone on this ground.
In Terry Pratchett's Making Money, Pucci Lavish. It would be inaccurate to say that she confesses at the climax — "confessing" implies admitting to doing wrong. She's considerably closer to bragging.
Tiffany Aching of The Wee Free Men is a heroic example. The Fair Folk kidnapped her obnoxious baby brother and are invading her country, and now It's Personal. It's hinted that "turning selfishness into a weapon" like this is a major source of power for witches.
The Gentleman with the thistle-down hair in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. He is convinced he is a great friend of Stephan Black despite his complete obliviousness to Black's feelings, and as a Fisher King, he has turned his land into a sad and dismal place, a derelict manor on a windswept moor surrounded by a dark leafless wood, with the remains of ancient battles rotting outside. The fairy inhabitants spend their time in endless balls, they have "idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties." Fittingly enough, he ends up dying at Stephan Black's hands, for what he thought was a favor.
No one else was quite real to Pavel Young. That was especially true for women, but it applied to everyone else around him, as well. He lived in a universe of cardboard cutouts, of human-shaped things provided solely for his use. He had no sense of them as people who might resent him — or, indeed, who had any right to resent him — and he was too busy doing things to them to even consider what they might do to him if they got the chance.
Betelgeusians can be a bit like this in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In Mostly Harmless, Ford refers to making a "great personal sacrifice" - he lost a pair of shoes. And they were really nice shoes, and they were his.
Arthur: I think we have different value systems. Ford: Mine's better.
Zaphod.
Trillian: Can we leave your ego out of this? This is important.
Zaphod: Hey, if there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.
To put a finer point on it: One book introduces a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex, which drives the victim insane by showing them just how tiny and insignificant they are compared to the rest of existence. Zaphod walks away from it just fine because, as he sees it, what it showed him was that the universe really does revolve around him. On the other hand, at the moment he was in a miniature Universe designed to completely envelop him, so the fully-functional Vortex did work perfectly-in the worst way imaginable.
The eponymous character in Oscar Wilde's short story "The Remarkable Rocket."
"What right have you to be happy? You should be thinking about others. In fact, you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy. It is a beautiful virtue, and I possess it in a high degree."
Emperor Ublaz Mad Eyes is under the impression that it's perfectly reasonable to slaughter dozens of innocents and even as a last resort threatening to tear an Abbey to the ground. Just to get himself a pink pearl to finish decorating his crown.
The Hunger Games: Katniss's prep team, who comment on what they were doing when they saw someone die in the games.
In Catching Fire, they wail over her. Though when Cinna deals with them, they at least pull out when they start crying again.
In Aaron Allston's Galatea In 2 D, Kevin. Out to ruin Donna and Roger's lives out of envy. Laughs at the way his first discovery of Art Initiates Life killed a bunch of painted men. Taunts his Mook Red with the possibility of letting his beloved Penny die and makes him beg, repeatedly, before he saves her. Instead of just killing his opponents, locks them up somewhere with monsters that will kill them if they close their eyes — preventing Roger from using his powers but ensuring they will die of sleep deprivation. Takes advantage of a truce flag to try to kill Roger. Sees a random piece of good art, checks the name so that he knows who to ruin. And when the heroes have attacked him all out, he demands that Roger explain something he did — Roger owes him it, for this attack.
In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet and Lydia Bennet suffer from this; while Mrs. Bennet is perceptive enough to note that without husbands her daughters face a lifetime of ruin upon the death of their father, her primary concern seems mainly to be self-involved whining about how this will affect her. Similarly, her favourite daughter Lydia (who takes after her mother in many ways), on running away with Wickham, writes a giggly letter expressing how much fun she's having and what a laugh it'll be to be married to Wickham without any concern for the fact that she might be putting her family's fortunes at risk through her actions. Mr Bennet suffers from this too: his failure to keep his wife and younger daughters' behaviour in check puts Lizzy and Jane's romantic prospects in jeopardy, and creates a bit of a monster in Lydia. Also, he fails to even try to marry Mary off to Mr Collins, even though she is plainly suited to him (lampshaded in the 90s BBC adaptation and recent film), and would secure his wife's future.
Daisy, Tom, and Jordan from The Great Gatsby, to the point where Daisy accidentally kills Tom's mistress and Tom's solution is to let Daisy's Love Martyr Gatsby take the fall, manipulate his mistress' husband into killing Gatsby, and leave all this unpleasantness behind them. Jordan would have viewed the spoilered bits as light entertainment.
This trope is the theme of The Great Gatsby. During Gatsby's funeral, Nick is disgusted to see that only one person shows up. Gatsby spent a lot of money throwing lavish parties, which a lot of people attended and enjoyed, yet only one cared enough to show up. A particularly nasty bit had one of Gatsby's regular guests call up the mansion. Upon hearing about the funeral and being asked if he would attend, the guest casually states that he might, but he wasn't even aware that Gatsby had died and just wanted to ask if he could get a pair of shoes that he'd left over there.
The novelization of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith gives Count Dooku this characterization. He views all beings in two categories: assets and threats. Everyone who is not of use to him falls into the latter category.
In the same novelization, part of the reason Anakin Skywalker killed Padmé Amidala, his wife, was because he refused to see her actions, and Obi-Wan Kenobi stowing away in her ship, as anything but an attack on him. Waking up in the suit, he realizes that he was thinking with this trope. But it's far too late to turn back; even he knows he's jumped off and down the slippery slope.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...
Heather Babcock from Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd is a non-villainous example of this. She isn't mean, and actually goes out of her way to do nice things for other people, like rescuing Miss Marple after a nasty fall or taking in a homeless family. However, she is incapable of recognizing that her actions affect other people or that what something means to her might not be the same for other people involved. The primary example of this was that when she got sick, she didn't recognize that the doctor's instructions to "Stay in bed and don't go out to meet people" might not have been just for her benefit...
In And Then There Were None, Anthony Marston embodies this trope, seeing a hit-and-run accident which caused the death of two young children merely in the light of losing his driver's license.
Torak. It's pointed out at least once that his brutal, almost sadistic actions make perfect sense if one accepts his premise that he's the sole reason the universe exists. He originally stole the Orb of Aldur because it was inconceivable that such a powerful magical gemstone could belong to anyone but him. Then he killed half of mankind in a catastrophic seismic upheaval with said Orb when the forces of everyone else came to take it back. A lot of bad things can happen when the one espousing this viewpoint is a God of Evil.
Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: A number of villains have shades of this. In particular, Rosemary Hershey from the book Sweet Revenge is all about this trope! She doesn't want to share with anyone, she hires ugly people just to make herself look beautiful, and when things go wrong (and they do) she blames Isabelle Flanders and everyone except herself. She caused the deaths of three people to ruin Isabelle and take everything Isabelle held dear, including her fiance Bobby Harcourt. She displayed no remorse for those deaths. However, it turns out later that she blocked out a number of details related to the deaths, and once she remembers them, they stay in her mind, causing her to lose sleep and wreck up her precious ego and sanity. When Bobby makes moves to divorce her (another blow to her), at one point she calls him demanding to know why he didn't turn on her security system on his way out of her house. Bobby points out "Why is it always about you and what you want?"
The Phantom of the Opera: Arguably, everyone in the original book by Gaston Leroux, except Christine, the Persian and Madam Valerious:
Raoul: After Christine murmurs: “Poor Erik!”
At first, he thought he must be mistaken. To begin with, he was persuaded that, if any one was to be pitied, it was he, Raoul. It would have been quite natural if she had said, "Poor Raoul," after what had happened between them. But, shaking her head, she repeated: "Poor Erik!" What had this Erik to do with Christine's sighs and why was she pitying Erik when Raoul was so unhappy?
Erik, After his Love Redeems scene, meets the Daroga, who asks him (repeatedly) about the murder of Count Philippe:
"Daroga, don't talk to me ... about Count Philippe ... " … "I have not come here ... to talk about Count Philippe ... but to tell you that ... I am going ... to die..."
Mme. Giry:
"Mme. Giry. You know me well enough, sir; I'm the mother of little Giry, little Meg, what!"
This was said in so rough and solemn a tone that, for a moment, M. Richard was impressed. He looked at Mme. Giry, in her faded shawl, her worn shoes, her old taffeta dress and dingy bonnet. It was quite evident from the manager's attitude, that he either did not know or could not remember having met Mme. Giry, nor even little Giry, nor even "little Meg!" But Mme. Giry's pride was so great that the celebrated box-keeper imagined that everybody knew her
Moncharmin: Excerpt from the (exceptionally long) "Memories of a Manager":
"A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager's office, when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farm-house and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted: " 'Come and cut him down!'
In Teresa Frohock's Miserere An Autumn Tale, Catarina interprets everything Lucian does as a slight to her, regarding it as treachery for him to escape after she had tortured him and had him crippled for life.
In John Hemry's Paul Sinclair novel A Just Determination, Sinclair's first impression of Garcia is this, but while the ship is underway, Garcia is furious while investigating a death, and Sinclair deduces that it could not reflect on Garcia personally so he must be care about something besides himself.
Patrick Hockstetter in Stephen King's It. Despite being the minion to the sadistic bully, Henry Bowers, Patrick Hockstetter is so profoundly psychopathic that he murders his own baby brother by suffocating him with a pillow because he suspected that maybe... JUST MAYBE... he could be as real as him. In his solipsistic world view, only his mind exists and everything else around him are just realistic facsimiles, and thus are merely tools to amuse him at will, however he is just SANE enough to know that bringing too much attention on himself will get him locked up in the Mental Institution (one of his few real fears) and contents himself with horrifically torturing pets and animals by locking them up in a broken refrigerator in the junkyard to watch them slowly die, among them an adorable puppy he kidnapped from a nearby family. Ironically, the chapter devoted to him is merely a dozen or so pages long before his utterly gruesome yet well deserved Karmic Death at the hands of the titular Monster Clown. It's even called "The Death of Patrick Hockstetter".
The Point in Flatland sits content in the 0th dimension thinking about himself. Indeed, he is unable to comprehend there may be something besides himself because zero-dimensional space consists of only a point.
In Sarah A Hoyt's Darkship Thieves, Thena's father. At one point, Thena makes a plan to escape him that centers on the key fact that he will regard losing control of her as no different from her death.
Griffin in The Invisible Man thinks only about what he can get from others using his invisibility — up to wanting to establish a reign of terror just because (he thinks) he can — and gets enraged at anyone making things difficult for him, even though they usually have some reasonable cause for questioning or trying to stop him. Dr. Kemp, the hero of the story, explicitly says that "he is mad, he is pure selfishness" after hearing him tell his story from his own point of view.
Crell Moset in the Star Trek Novel Verse. A doctor who performs unethical medical experiments throughout his career with the Cardassian military, he consistently places his own emotional desires above any and all other concerns. He refuses to recognise the pain of others if it serves his intellectual curiosity or contributes to the advance of his scientific reputation. He even seems to believe that the inhabitants of a planet his people were occupying were selfish for taking back their world before he could finish his work there.
A staple of many characters in PG Wodehouse novels, particularly the friends and family of Bertie Wooster. Even the more sympathetic characters can fall into it from time to time — the distinction, generally speaking, is that the sympathetic characters can occasionally be made to see reason (before or after the disaster is complete), while the unsympathetic ones never bother to listen to anything that isn't 100% to their liking.
Also criticized by British statesman Lord Chesterfield in Letters To His Son: "People of an ordinary, low education, when they happen to fail into good company, imagine themselves the only object of its attention; if the company whispers, it is, to be sure, concerning them; if they laugh, it is at them; and if anything ambiguous, that by the most forced interpretation can be applied to them, happens to be said, they are convinced that it was meant at them; upon which they grow out of countenance first, and then angry." (letter 186)
The title character of Madame Bovary embodies this trope.
Word Of God states that this is the one unifying characteristic of the Dark One and all his followers in The Wheel of Time.
The heroic characters' creed in Atlas Shrugged is "I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine" — meaning, while they exempt themselves from the responsibility of caring about or helping others (which they frequently do anyway), they assert no one has the right to exploit others for personal gain, or obtain anything for themselves by force, fraud, or coercion. This is their definition of "selfishness" (independence + honesty).
The Fountainhead likewise condemns "second-handers," which includes people who put concern for others before themselves andManipulative Bastards and Corrupt Corporate Executives who exploit others or use force, fraud, or coercion for personal benefit; the protagonist claims the latter aren't "selfish" by his definition of the word.
Live Action TV
Two and a Half Men: This arguably applies to everyone, but especially Evelyn, the two brothers' mother. She frequently reacts to news that affects anyone except her with "Do you have any idea what you put me through?!"
Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. Damon openly admits he's selfish in season four. Damon tells Elena that he would save Elena over any of her loved ones any day of the week, even if that means that Elena's loved ones die "Because I am that selfish".
Klaus. He is extremely selfish and only cares about his power, his goal and his agenda.
The Cat from Red Dwarf actually makes a logical argument that the world revolves around him. It finishes with The most exciting things that have ever happened to me, have been whenever I was in the room! This is apparently the default attitude of his species.
Rimmer is just as bad. "Lister, I just saw your future self die! Wait, what are you so horrified about? I'm the one who had to watch it."
In the Doctor Who episode "Boom Town," Margaret Blaine Slitheen tells the Doctor that, on one occasion, she could have murdered someone to benefit herself, but didn't. The Doctor points out that there are a lot more people that she has murdered.
One episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent had this as the Villain Of The Week's weakness. He betrays everyone who helps him but expects complete loyalty from his "allies". To this end they simply make him think his latest accomplice is planning to betray him, causing said accomplice to realise how dangerous he is and turn to the police for help.
In the Heroes Volume 3: Villains finale, Sylar personifies this trope. He says that Angela is a monster because she was willing to kill her husband, blow up New York, and worst of all, hurt him by making him think he had a family.
Possibly justified in that by making him think he had a family, she was really just using his mommy issues to trigger his season-one persona of rampaging powers-Darwinist lunatic. Since the bomb didn't go off and her other crime involved just one (attempted) murder (which even that was technically to protect Nathan Petrelli, since the dad did try to off Nathan Petrelli, and was also responsible for crippling Nathan's ex-wife Heidi), this could technically be the worst of her crimes as it culminated in a lot of deaths. Still, I don't think the writers deserve the credit that statement implies: logic in a season three script.
Nathan Petrelli too. This was at its peak in season one but never quite disappeared. He treats his mother (Who just lost her husband of four decades) as an inconvenience, talks down to his brother and openly insults his career choice before offering him a job that he even admits is solely for his benefit, and is willing to let Lindeman destroy New York so he can become President in the future. In season three, he puts all his friends and his family in danger and nearly ruins Their lives to sort out his own guilt for working with his dad (Who wasn't exactly selfless either), which he screws up royally. After a while, You've got to wonder why Peter ever looked up to such a selfish jerk.
Although not a villain- Sea Change doesn't really have any villains- Jules, the daughter of the mayor. She's selfish to the point of everyone being disgusted, like the bit in "Balls and Friggin' Good Luck", where everyone's getting ready for the ferry, and she whines, "This is so awful! How could Jerome do this to me?" when he was the one who committed suicide, and she's acting like she's the one who is most affected, without considering his family, which is worse when you consider the next scene, which is the inquest, and Jerome's mother and almost everyone else is bawling their eyes out.
Although it was subverted later when her mother is talking to her father about how Jerome might have deliberately crashed, and she starts talking about how she sometimes thinks about suicide, and what she wants at her funeral, until her mother snaps and says, "Julie Ann Jelly, I'm sorry that Jerome Hall's death has temporarily taken attention away from yourself! Now would you please stop grandstanding!" So good.
In Monk, it's been said that Adrian Monk has to make an issue personal in order to exert more self-control over his world.
Ally McBeal. Actually treated sympathetically by the show; when asked why her problems are so much more important than everyone else's, she responds "because they're mine" while angsty music plays in the background.
Sieg, the Sheltered AristocratImagin from Kamen Rider Den-O starts off extremely arrogant, referring to everyone around him as servants; in fact, his two catchphrases are "Advent; the one who stands above all" and "The world revolves for my sake". Once he gets owned by Hana (verbally and physically), he mellows out and starts acting more benevolent, but still does it in arrogant fashion.
Tendou Souji of Kamen Rider Kabuto makes a play at this, particularly with two lines of his grandmother's wisdom. One is his Catch Phrase: "Walking the Way of Heaven, I am the man who rules over all." The other may be more of a lampshading: "The world revolves around you. ... It's fun to think like that."
Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory takes "the world revolves around me" as an axiom.
Leonard: Sheldon, not everything is about you.
Sheldon: <Pause> I don't follow you.
Cordelia, in the first season Buffy episode, "Out of Mind, Out of Sight", after noticing that all of the victims have a connection to her:
Cordelia: This is all about me! Me, me,me!
Xander: Wow! For once she's right!
This is Cordelia's whole schtick until she starts getting Character Development in the second season, whether she's complaining about the trauma of hitting a cyclist with her car (and the cyclist wanting it to be all about their leg), shushing her companion as a motormouth for almost getting a word in edgewise, or (as above) realizing that the Monster of the Week is targeting her. (All this is even funnier when considering what happens to her on the spinoff.)
In Spellbinder, Spellbinder Ashka sabotages Regent Correon's suit to get him exiled after he loses the Wizard Duel. Then she destroys a book of technological secrets that would've drawn her world out of prolonged stagnation and barbarism so as not to jeopardise her position in power. Then she tricks Paul's father to build her a new powersuit and as a token of gratitude she locks his entire family in an electrified cage and leaves them there to die. In the sequel she steals a valuable mask that is also an interface of a super-computer that governs a whole country, thus leaving it defenceless against an invading horde of barbarians.
Jane in Coupling. When we see her under "Captain Subtext" mode, all of her dialogue is translated as "Let's all talk about me! Me... Me... Me!"
Victorious: Trina has a vain and narcissistic ego.
Trina: So she said "You think you're better than everyone else" and I said "Well, yeah, pretty much."
While not to the same extent as her sister (because let's face it, who is?), Tori can be pretty selfish as well.
Big Time Rush: James Diamond is essentially a male version of Trina. Gustavo can also be like this as well, considering how greatly he thinks about his music and never thinks he needs relaxing.
In Ugly Betty, Betty briefly dates a musician who has this attitude. When he begins to show off his new song for her on a date, she has a trippy hallucination of him singing a song consisting of nothing but "Me me me me me!" Hilariously, the actually chorus of the song turns out to be "The only one I can depend on...is me."
In Supernatural Lucifer suffers from this, with several characters pointing out that his motivation is the cosmic equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum for not getting his way.
Tracy and Jenna on 30 Rock. Liz has her moments of this too. And Jack. And... okay, everyone not named "Kenneth".
Noah's Arc: Noah seems to fall into this regarding relationships, and occassionally catches himself (or is called out on) not really giving as much focus to his friends' relationship issues while they are expected to drop whatever they are doing to tend to his. Its highlighted at the end of one episode where Ricky just went through a breakup and is clearly depressed, and Noah calls him to complain about the "emergency" of Wade wanting to go house hunting with him.
House has been accused of this, for many, many reasons.
Radiguet from Choujin Sentai Jetman. He wants to take everything for himself, even from fellow elites. Or boss (be it Juza or Tranza, if it means an Enemy Mine with the Jetman, he'll do it to reclaim his superiority)
From Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, we have Basco Ta Jolokia. He will betray everyone and do anything to get what he wants. Yes, that include threatening to kill a wounded child which he was very willing to do. In fact, his catchphrase is: To gain something, you must throw something else. Said 'something else' can be anything that didn't belong to him in the first place.
Shows up all the time on Survivor, especially with jury members in the final episode: many reflect on their time in the game and conclude that they were Too Cool to Live, and their questions for the Final Two/Three revolve around getting the finalists to suck up to them.
Naonka from the Nicaragua season is one of the more extreme examples. Immediately after winning a challenge, she announces her intention to quit the game. After a few minutes on this subject, the host gets back to business and gives the winning team a choice: one member can give up reward (which includes food) to get food and shelter for the tribe. Naonka, even though she'll be fed that night at the Loser Lodge if once she quits, makes no move to give up the reward and talks to the Confession Cam about how she doesn't care, she wants food now. She spends the rest of the episode talking about how awesome she is (even though she's quitting because the experience is too hard) and how she knows she would've won if she stayed (not a chance; she was being carried to the end because she'd be easy to win against).
On Community, this is the usual attitude of the study group (e.g. thinking that a professor ignited a protest against them so that they could learn about different perspectives of history). It doesn't earn them any favors with the rest of the student body, who are tired of the group hogging the spotlight all the time.
Keep in mind, however, that this is from Season 4, who, after the firing of former showrunner Dan Harmon, seem to regard 'previous characterisation' as "that thing that we killed and hid in the basement".
Rachel Berry: accuses Mr Schue of giving other students solos purely to punish her; sends a rival to a crackhouse instead of an audition to avoid losing her top spot in the club.
Finn: lies to Rachel to get her back into glee so he can get a music scholarship; yells at Kurt in front of the whole club for not telling him about Kurt's father's heart attack before anyone else, less than 24 hours after it happened.
Sue Sylvester ...everything she says and does, really.
Mr. Schue gets accused of this when he focuses too much on his own personal musical preferences and not what is best for the students. He did start the Glee club partly to relive his glory days and will occasionally slip into behaving like it is all about him. Having to deal with Sue and Rachel usually knocks him out of it.
Mitchell of Being Human gets regularly called out on this. He focuses on how miserable and guilty he feels and forgets all the people he killed and the suffering of their families. It might actually be a survival trait for vampires as those who are too emphatic would be prone to suicide or exposing the Masquerade.
It is a vampire trait, if they stop drinking blood their empathy comes back. Remembering all the evil you've done is one of the hardest things about staying clean.
Friends: Rachel suffers badly from this because of her doting parents. It was well-managed in earlier seasons when she was aware of how spoilt she was and balanced with a scared naiviete. However in later seasons, she becomes more confident and downright arrogant showing little regard for anyone else's problems.
Special examples are trying to crash Ross's wedding even though she'd rejected him barely a season before, stealing Monica and Chandler's engagement night because they were happy and she wasn't, and later forcing them to come to her baby's birthday party even though they'd recently discovered they couldn't have children, were going through the stressful adoption process and wanted to take a weekend away to deal with it.
On The Big C, Rebecca has a rather selfish reaction to Cathy revealing that she has cancer:
Rebecca: You will be my first real friend with cancer. I will be forever changed.
Cathy:(dryly) Hopefully for the better.
Lex Luthor goes this way as Smallville progresses, allowing his obsessions to dominate his life, and refusing to accept the blame for any of the disasters he's caused. He blames his father, Clark, Lana, and anyone else he can, has dozens of skeletons in his closet, but takes anyone else keeping a secret as a personal betrayal, and tries to control the lives of everyone around him, never understanding why they might have a problem with that.
Walt, from Breaking Bad, says this word-for-word in S4E6, Cornered.
Walt in general had this problem in season three and four, because his cancer's gone into remission and mobsters are threatening to kill him. It's an unusual contrast to earlier seasons Walt when he was all about doing crazy shit to provide for his family before he died.
It gets even worse in season five. By the sixth episode of the season he flat out admits that he's continuing to cook meth in order to build an empire. He even tells Jesse that "this business is all I have left", despite the fact that the reason he's lost most of what he had at that point was due to his desire to continue cooking.
Obsessive collector Kivas Fajo in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Most Toys". In order to expand his collection, he abducts and fakes the death of a Federation officer (specifically, Data), then tries to force Data to comply with his whims by threatening to murder his own subordinates, at one point killing his assistant of 14 years, then dismissing her death with "there's always another Varria". Had O'Brien been 5 seconds slower with the transporter, Data would have inflicted an agonising Ironic Death on him with the same model of disruptor he'd used on Varria. Nobody in or out of universe would have put much effort into mourning him.
Kwame in Tinsel. He is shocked that Angela would break into his office and steal back her medical files - the same medical files that he's been blackmailing her with and that he stole from her doctor's office in the first place!
Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl was always this from the word go, but in season five she turned it Up to Eleven - which is one of the reasons why she went from fan favorite to a character most people dislike.
Eunice Higgins from The Carol Burnett Show and its spinoff, Mama's Family always had to be the center of attention, partly due to being The Unfavorite in Mama's eyes. She even tried to upstage her own brother at his wedding. Ultimately, she moved to Florida the day before her son, Bubba, was supposed to be released from juvenile hall without telling him, and forcing him to live with Mama.
This is Rick’s default state on The Young Ones. To best illustrate, his reaction to finding out in the series finale that both his parents suddenly and mysteriously died? "The selfish BASTARDS! I was going to spend the whole summer with them!"
Leverage: The mark in "The First Contact Job" is a failed inventor who puts his name on everything his company produces, even toilets, in an effort to get his name everywhere he possibly can. Naturally, the Leverage team uses this against him in their con.
This, along with being a Knight Templar, is one of Brenda Leigh Johnson's defining character traits on The Closer: her investigation is more important than honesty (not only with potential suspects, but also her fellow cops), more important than other investigations, and more important than the law itself. And if you are not with her, then, by God, you are against her.
Amy Duncan on Good Luck Charlie. No wonder Teddy freaks out when it's claimed in one episode that she's acting like her mother.
Dawson's Creek: Oh god Dawson, a thousand times Dawson. He's so fixated on 'reflecting' life in his movies he fails to notice the real people. Hardly an episode goes by without him bringing someone else's problems back to him. Especially disgusting as while his parents adore him, Joey's mother is dead and her father is in prison, Jack and Andie's dad walked out on them, Jen's parents abandoned her and Pacey suffers horrible abuse from his whole family. Three guesses whose issues get the most attention.
The last example concerning Pacey is especially bad. Despite being 'best friends' their whole lives, Dawson completley misses the emotional degregation Pacey's father puts him through and dismisses it as 'kidding around'. In contrast Jack takes one day to figure out the situation and sympathise with Pacey. Seriously, where was Dawson's head for the last sixteen years?
Everyone on Will and Grace has their moments, but especially Jack and Karen.
Will: Grace, this is not about you.
Grace: Yes it is, it is always about me.
Thea Queen from Arrow once told her brother that what she went through the five years he was on a deserted island was every bit as bad as what he went through. She had to deal with the deaths of her brother and father and was neglected by her mother, but she was still a rich, pretty, popular girl who spent her days in a mansion being waited on hand and foot. Oliver, meanwhile, had to watch his father kill himself to save him, bury his decaying corpse, and then spent five years on the run from people trying to kill him.
Morgana Pendragon from Merlin While she does have terrible things happen to her, and the world actually is out to get her, she also manages to make the death of her best friends father all about her. At one point she joins the druids, and when she is informed that her decision has put the lives of many innocent people on the line she still refuses to return home because she was unhappy there. Both examples are from when she was still considered on of the good guys.
The Bohemian Rhapsody is a condemned murderer's self-pity. Never once do we hear the narrator express remorse for the murder; he's only sorry he got in trouble for it.
The Decemberists' "The Rake's Song": the Rake murdered his entire family just because he was bored with raising children:
"And that's how I came, your humble narrator, To be living so easy and free, I 'spect that you think that I should be haunted, But it never really bothers me."
Oh come on, you're not giving him enough credit. He wasn't bored - he was actively horrified that he'd ever allowed himself to be in a position that hampers his rakish ways.
The Sisters Of Mercy song I Was Wrong (and really most of their Vision Thing album) veers off in this direction: "Pain looks great on other men, that's what they're for."
Marshall Mathers aka Eminem put out a wonderful Ear Worm called "Without Me"
Now this looks like a job for me so everybody just follow me
cuz we need a little controversy,
cuz it feels so empty without me
Obscure New Zealand jazz group Hot Club Sandwich have a song all about this, entitled 'Let's Talk About Me'
Let's talk about me (Let's talk about me)
I'm much more interesting than you
Let's talk about me (Let's talk about me)
My life is fabulous, it's true
Let's talk about me (Let's talk about me)
It's something that we all should do, come on
That's enough about me, let's talk about you
What do you think about ME?
The "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" shows the narrator getting increasingly sociopathic, from getting mad that the news interrupted The Simpsons to report a horrific earthquake, to lamenting the fact that a friend who owed him five bucks just got killed in a car accident and he'll never see the money again, to bending the tip of his really nice knife when he stabbed his boss in the face.
And then I'll plaster my face up all over the place
See, I'm gonna win the human race
See, I'm gonna make the world a better place... <beat>
For me.
Austrian pop star Falco's song "Egoist".
The whole world turns around me
Cause I'm just an egoist
The person who's closest to me
Is myself, I'm an egoist
Pink, the protagonist in Pink Floyd's The Wall, has a Double Standard where, especially with his emotional wall (the "bricks in the wall" preoccupy him to the point that he doesn't consider anyone else's feelings), he abuses his wife, (when not ignoring her), and sleeps with as many groupies as possible on the road, but feels betrayed when he calls her and hears a male voice on the line. Already feeling contempt for his audience and bitter at his dysfunctional, war-affected past (and affected by some kind of drug his greedy managers inject him with to do a show, leaving him "comfortably numb"), he leads, or imagines he leads, some kind of fascist, Nazi-like rally onstage, leading to chaos and ostracizing and imprisoning everyone in town he disapproves of.
Jonathan Coulton's song, "The World Belongs To You" is directed at someone who apparently believes this:
They said it's you
Who puts the gravity in the ground
They said it's you
Who all the stars revolve around
Scientists were wrong
And you suspected all along it might be true
The world belongs to you
The Metallica song "My World." "God it feels like it only rains on me."
Newspaper Comics
All three main characters in Candorville do this from time to time—Susan and Lemont because their problems are so great, Clyde because he's just self-centered. None of them have anything on Roxanne, though—she has never shown concern for any individual human being other than herself and her son with Lemont, and the latter is more a means of guilt-tripping Lemont than someone she really cares about.
Calvin, taking it to extreme levels in his naivete. It comes up all the time, but perhaps the clearest example was when he used advanced cardboard box technology to create multiple identical copies of himself and was amazed and outraged when instead of doing all his work for him they all did whatever they damn well pleased and got him into trouble repeatedly. He has also remarked that the world owes him everything for the simple fact that he made it a better place by being born, and that he's tired of everyone being so selfish and only thinking about themselves when they should focus on him.
What may set some kind of a record is when two time-travelling versions of Calvin decide to gang up on the Calvin between themselves in time, blaming him for being lazy and not doing the homework assignment neither of them is going to do either because they want to get it by time travel. They threaten to beat him up to make him do it until he points out they're going to suffer from it too because they're him. In other words, it's not even just all about me at the expense of everyone else, it's all about me at this moment at the expense of me at other times.
To his defense, he's six, which would explain his lack of perception in such issues.
Lucy van Pelt, who like Calvin has the excuse that she's a child. She's nothing but cruel to the other kids, yet expect them to treat her like a queen at all times. If she does something wrong, than it's Never My Fault. If there's a grievance against her, either real or perceived and usually perceived, she responds with a Megaton Punch. Most people, no matter how self-centered, would deny that they think the world revolves around them, but when Lucy is told in so many words that it does not, she is shocked at such an absurd suggestion.
At one point, studying history, Sally Brown is astonished to learn how many people existed before she was born. She feels sorry for them, because it can't have been much fun without her in the world. When Charlie Brown comes back from being lost in the woods, her reaction is "I suppose you'll want your room back?"
J.J. of Doonesbury - to the point where she somehow made the funeral of Widow Doonesbury (Mike's mother and her former mother-in-law) all about her forgiving Mrs. Doonesbury for the mean things she said about her over the years. For bonus points, she says this in front of Alex, her daughter (and Mrs. Doonesbury's granddaughter).
Professional Wrestling
In the WWE, this was Batista's new gimmick in that EVERYTHING had to be about him. His entrance? Every other light in the arena going off and a single spotlight being focused on him as he walked to the ring. Is he not in the World Championship match going on? He would run in and beat the crap out of both participants for daring to not have him in the match. If he cuts a promo, he will say this line at least twice.
In TNA, Dixie Carter's decision to fire Abyss. She was shown bullying General Manager Eric Bischoff into enforcing her wishes, which is admittedly her right as his superior. The problem here is that she wanted to fire Abyss not because he has been randomly attacking and trying to kill high-profile wrestlers (such as his assault on then-TNA Champion Rob Van Dam, forcing Van Dam to vacate the title), but because Abyss took Dixie hostage in front of the TNA "Impact Zone" (what TNA calls its in-studio fan base) and reduced her to a sniveling wreck on national television. She even orders it to be public just to humiliate Abyss just as he did her. She's already been put into harm's way before (via Fortune, which led to her husband Serge being assaulted in an attempt to come to her rescue) and she didn't bother to at least suspend them. Abyss's actions aside, this makes Dixie comes across as caring more about herself and how she appears than the well-being of her employees. When she talked to RVD about his match, the discussion was "I want you to beat him for what he did to me! ...Oh, and to you, too!"
Subverted in that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were actually working Dixie; they were the ones that had Abyss become an Ax Crazy monster, carve up Rob Van Dam, warn maniacally about the coming of a force called "They"/"Them" that was telling him to do everything, and finally grab Dixie in order to frighten her into signing a contract Bischoff presented and said was for the firing of Abyss following Bound for Glory…but was actually for them to take over the company. Ironically, this trope built the motivation behind not just Hogan and Bischoff, but everybody involved in their Massive Multiplayer Scam.
For example, Wade Barrett ruined two groups as a leader/mouthpiece by this trope. First was The Nexus, who he risked his own contract to get on the show at first and treated as equals in various ways including promo time, but as soon as opportunity came to control and humiliate John Cena he turned Nexus into his anti-Cena group and had fun enslaving Cena for a few months while nothing else was happening for the group. This led first to David Otunga being The Starscream, then the entire group revolting and throwing him away for CM Punk. Fortunately, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater preferred him to the cult-directing Punk, so they and Ezekiel Jackson joined him on Smackdown in the Corre. He insisted that they were equals, there was no leader, and he had learned his lesson, but then a #1 contender battle royal popped up and he said the Corre would be helping him win and it all deteriorated from there. Within two months, Jackson was kicked from the Corre and Slater and Gabriel disbanded it, all because of Barrett's insatisable ego and greed.
Doesn't end there, though. Slater and Gabriel stayed partners and friends after the end of the Corre, but that only lasted a couple of weeks. They fell out and became this trope themselves, with Slater saying in pre-match promos "I want my spotlight, cause I'm the One-Man Rock BAND, baby!", whereas Gabriel was actually working on a Heel Face Turn while the hook of his then-new theme song, "All About the Power", which within a month was transferred to Otunga and Michael McGillicutty in their final period as the New Nexus (and is still Otunga's theme today), says this exact line three times within fifteen seconds.
The tenure of John Laurinaitis as General Manager of both Raw and Smack Down may have been supposedly based on the idea of "People Power", but as evidenced throughout his run, that was nothing more but a blatant lie, as Laurinaitis used his power to benefit his own personal gains and to trample anyone who got in his way.
CM Punk's 2012 Face Heel Turn has him doing this, demanding everyone show him respect while showing everyone disrespect. When The Rock came out to rescue John Cena from a beatdown by The Big Show, Punk angrily assaulted The Rock, accusing him of disrespecting him by "hogging the spotlight from him". He'll often interrupt other people's promos and matches, saying they're hogging the spotlight.
Generation Me. Despite being a tag team and brothers, Max and Jeremy Buck say this line constantly, and make it clear that they would sell each other out in a heartbeat to get ahead.
Stand up Comedy
Brian Regan had a joke about people at dinner parties who spend too much time talking about themselves.
Brian: Me! Me! ME! MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Beware the Me-Monster.
Tabletop Games
The Beholder race from Dungeons & Dragons, combined with a heaping helping of Fantastic Racism. A typical Beholder's world view: It is the pinnacle of creation and the perfect reflection of the Great Mother that spawned their race. Other Beholders of the same breed are tolerable inferiors who have their uses. Beholders of other breeds are disgusting abominations against nature that must be destroyed on sight. Anything that's not a Beholder is barely worth considering — either flies to be swatted when they become a nuisance, or potential slaves. For added fun, although the difference between Beholder breeds is sometimes quite large, other times it can be things so minuscule that nothing that's not a Beholder would even notice. The Beholder with slightly bumpier skin or a different number of teeth is as much a hated inferior as the one who has flame-based powers instead of the standard Beholder suite or has a differing number of eyestalks.
In fact, at least one splat claims that every single Beholder is technically its own breed, and siblings will soon attempt to kill each other over, say, a particular spot or mole.
And the Great Mother? Whose true appearance could solve this issue with a single glance? Any Beholder who sees the Great Mother sees a perfect copy of themselves. It doesn't help that she's completely insane, and is trying to displace all other forms of life with mirrors of herself.
Liliana Vess is the most extreme of this. Even Sorin Markov feels responsibility to the people of Innistrad.
The Eldar of Warhammer 40000 will go to any lengths to preserve their dwindling race. To them, the lives of billions of other races aren't nearly as valuable as a single Eldar. Their situation is so dire (they are the favorite prey of the Slaanesh, the Chaos God of Squick that they created) and their numbers so few that this extremely ruthless attitude is the only way they can delay their extinction.
Malfeas in Exalted is a particularly impressive example. The Demon City has to suffer a psychic fracture to comprehend that other people might exist independent of His goals and desires.
Only in the grip of true madness can Malfeas consider the terrible possibility that the universe might contain more perspectives than his own.
His fetich soul (a sort of living Soul Jar) Ligier is very similar: his Motivation boils down to "share my glory with all of existence," while his Intimacies (the things he cares about, whether positive or negative) are all related to the things he's created as an Ultimate Blacksmith. In other words, as a matter of game mechanics, he literally does not particularly care one way or another about anything that is not directly related to himself.
In Vs System, one of The Jokers cards speaks this. "Enough about me. Let's talk about me!"
Theatre
Lulu of Shine: A Burlesque Musical has a number with this title.
Glinda ("It's Gah-linda!") acts like this in the beginning of Wicked.
The villainess Lady Jacqueline Carston lampshades this trope in her hilarious song Thinking of no one but me in the comedic musical Me and My Girl.
The Book of Mormon has Elder Price. The first song he and his nerdy missionary brother, Elder Cunningham, sing together is even called, "You and Me (But Mostly Me)".
Dr. Weil, the utterly despicable Big Bad of the Mega Man Zero series. It all started with how he, and he alone, thinks humans deserve to rule the Reploids, and single-handedly triggered the Elf Wars. Later, he is given a Fate Worse Than Death that is technically escapable. Then he starts taking over the world, and making people suffer just because they all made him suffer. As Weil puts it:
Dr. Weil: Justice!? Freedom!? Worthless ideals! You Reploids are just machines, but you started a war a long time ago in the name of freedom! And humans! Look what they did to me! Driving me away while spouting the word "justice!" Zero, would you insist on saving them!? Controlling the Reploids is nothing! The destruction of all mankind is only fleeting!
Dr Weil is arguably a deconstruction of this trope. His actions are absolutely reprehensible, and his mindset makes it worse. This is the main reason why he's officially the most evil villain in the series.
Possibly Wario in Wario Land and Wario Ware, although he's also heavily obsessed with monetary gain. Most of his enemies are like this as well, which is probably why he's never really portrayed as the villain.
Similarly, the villains from the Mario And Luigi series, the first and third games in particular. Cackletta starts out more or less like any normal villain, but turns into this roughly when she takes over Bowser's body to become Bowletta. Fawful is already in this in the first game (he has a literal camera crew with spot lights and speech before his boss battle), but by the time of Bowser's Inside Story, has gone straight off the deep end, with his face on every object in sight (statues, floors, trains) and the entirety of Bowser's minions treating him as a celebrity under mind control.
Final Fantasy IX has Kuja, who robs the whole bakery. The motivation for his Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: He was informed that he was mortal and thus would die soon, and he found it utterly unfair that the rest of the universe was allowed go on existing without him. Naturally, something had to be done to correct this grave injustice.
God Of War, has Kratos, a man who killed a pantheon rather than admit that maybe, just maybe, something was his own damn fault. Most evident in the second game, when he starts doing the exact same thing that Ares did, i.e. the thing that prompted the gods to help Kratos kill him. Then he claims that the Gods of Olympus betrayed him by stopping him. This gets called out in the third game, where Hermes gives him a Breaking Speech on how his path only leads to destruction and Kratos undergoes a slow Heel Realization. Also lampshaded in the first game, where it's shown in a flashback that his wife Lysandra refused to believe that his brutality was for "the glory of Sparta" as he claims, telling him that he does it all for his own personal glory.
Mouri Motonari from Sengoku Basara. What we have here is a guy who claims himself to be 'The Child Of The Sun', commands a battalion of devoted soldiers... that he considers disposable pawns, and will kill when it's beneficial to him, then takes all the glory for himself (to be fair, he does come up with 100% of the strategies). His goal is to Take Over The Land. And while others have pretty righteous reasons for doing this, Motonari does it for himself only.
It is taken Up to Eleven with Zanza from Xenoblade, the local Jerkass God who is utterly incapable of acknowledging the value of anything that isn't himself, and is constantly using his power to destroy and rebuild the universe because fuck you.
To be fair, he does have a reason: because if his people leave him behind, he'll run out of food and die. So while he dies have a reason for his dickishness, it still comes back to him.
Arl Howe from Dragon Age: Origins, who was also The Resenter. He betrayed his best friend, Bryce Cousland, and slaughtered most of his family before throwing his lot in with Teryn Loghain. When questioned about this later by a human noble PC, he has the audacity to claim that Bryce was a traitor because he made frequent trips to Orlais. Throughout the conversation, however, he reveals that he was simply resentful of the Couslands' success. As shown in the Awakenings expansion, Arl Howe's actions end up bringing shame to his family and his children end up as pariahs. Even his Famous Last Words are an example of this trope.
Maker spit on you … I deserved more …
And Marjolaine too. Marjolaine betrayed her disciple and lover under the belief that Leliana would EVENTUALLY betray her, and then tried to sell out her own country to Harwen Raleigh.
When you meet her in the main game, she still thinks it's all about her. If you try to tell her that Leliana has moved past her betrayal to help fight the Blight she angrily dismisses you and insists otherwise. Marjolaine actually believes she is more important than the freaking Darkspawn.
Tales Of The Abyss main character Luke starts out this way. Anything that does not involve either himself or Master Van is boring and unworthy of his attention. A large part of the story focuses on his transition from a self-centered, spoiled brat into a self-sacrificing hero.
Tales Of Destiny 2 has Barbatos Goetia, who ended up being written out of history for his utter lack of sympathy towards both his comrades and enemies, using the former as tools to gain more glory for himself. When he's revived by the Big Bad, he's perfectly willing to travel through time for the purpose of killing the heroes of the first game on the promise that he'd be made into a hero if he did. He maintains this mentality to the very end, where he opts to commit suicide rather then be defeated by the party, on the basis that he views himself as the only one worthy of taking his life.
Prince Laharl from Disgaea is, by his vassals' accounts, a self-centered brat with a massive entitlement complex. For example, he didn't expect to actually pay his vassals, since he'd have to share his allowance. He eventually shapes up (a little) when he realizes that they won't work for or respect him otherwise.
His vassal Etna is not above it either. She's perfectly willing to send her minions on suicide missions to satisfy her Sweet Tooth, and barely pays them anything. In the second game, she joins the party after an incident where she screws them over by giving them a fake ingredient For the Evulz. This backfires when their ritual inadvertently causes her power to vanish, then she proceeds to demand they fix her problems for her despite being the one at fault. However, she later opens up to Hanako after she shows interest in her, and eventually takes in and trains her to become a Future Badass Demon Lord after the two grow closer together.
After the sheltered princess Rozalin is accidentally summoned, she initially does this when she demands Adell focus entirely on her needs. She gets over it over the course of the story after befriending Adell's siblings, seeing the effects of her father's curse on the world, and being touched by Adell's commitment to his promise.
Walnut from Phantom Brave. His entire strategy as a Chroma Oxide is to cheat other Chromas and steal their payments, and repeatedly supports his view with claims about "money rules the world" and "only the strongest survive", yet feels severely mistreated when the people he cheated, who are usually stronger than him since they tackle the things he won't, punish him for it. He develops a very one-sided rivalry against Marona because she defeats him, because she's making progress without having to stoop to his level, and because she befriends his ill sister Castile, making her genuinely happy (while he left to get money for her medical bills, thus making her lonely). Eventually his attempt to ambush Marona on the Island of Evil leads to the release of the Big Bad, Sulphur. (Admittedly no one had any idea that would happen.)
Pokemon Black And White: The first hint that Ghetsis's motives may not be wholesome is when he slips up in a speech at Castelia City. He is quick to correct himself, but for the observant, the damage has already been done.
Jon Irenicus from Baldur's Gate2 to a horrifying degree. He was like this even before his soul was stripped away. Irenicus endangered the lives of his entire race by trying to siphon the power of the Tree of Life in his bid for godhood; an act so heinous and sacrilegious that the Elven Queen Ellisime (who was his lover at the time) tore away his immortal elven soul and banished him with the Elven gods' blessings. Irenicus considers them monsters for taking away his soul and doesn't even acknowledge that maybe he had it coming what with nearly killing his own species. It gets worse when the lack of a soul caused him to develop a Lack of Empathy as well. Irenicus doesn't see people as people anymore after that point. To him, they are just tools to be exploited, slaves to be worked to death, experimental subjects, or targets for revenge.
He needed some prodding by his much more empathy-lacking sister Bodhi before he started this kind of mindset.
Rift - Prince Hylas comes to mind as while this isn't necessarily the primary motivation for the rest of House Aelfwar departing to join up and work with Greenscale's life plane, it certainly is for him. When his lover left for war and returned as one of The Messiah, he spurned her for no other real reason than that he and the other High Elves were no longer the Vigil's favourite.
What Andrew Ryan says of himself through the creation of his underwater capitalist paradise Rapture in the firsttwoBioShock games. He even believes that it is the nature of all humankind to think this way, telling the protagonist "In the end, all that matters to you is you, and all that matters to me is me."
Same can be said for Zachary Comstock and the creation of Columbia in Bio Shock Infinite.
Alex of Golden Sun. When you encounter him in The Lost Age after adding Piers to your party, he's quite offended that you found a new Water Adept who actually cares about your mission enough to, you know, tag along and help you himself... and then he reveals his hypocrisy by introducing you to his new allies. And then he double-crosseseverybody, including Karst and Agatio. Lampshaded mercilessly by Jenna and Sheba after just about every cutscene featuring Alex.
James Tobin from ''In The1st Degree. Yvonne Barnes states that Tobin is completely full of himself, and that he ended up blaming his business partner Zack for all his problems. Interestingly, it is stated that he slept around, and that he was likely cheating on his girlfriend Ruby. However, the minute he finds out that Zack and Ruby had a one-night stand, he flies into a terrible rage and decides that he has to murder Zack. Yes, he thinks it's okay for him to cheat, but it's not okay for his girlfriend to cheat. What you have here is a man who lives and breathes this trope.
In World Of Warcraft Garrosh demonstrates this sometimes. Baine Bloodhoof calls him out on the fact that his chief concern over killing Baine's father appears to be that he lost honor by doing it with a weapon he didn't know was poisoned.
While true, this isn't one of the best examples for Garrosh. Cairne Bloodhoof is the one that first suggested the duel, and the one who first seriously suggested it be to the death. Cairne knew damn well what he was getting into, and Garrosh is honestly shamed by the fact that he only won the fight because his weapon was poisoned without his knowledge or consent. His attitude here is less self-centered and more unable to understand that Baine holds any real resentment over a very public affair that was very much Cairne's own choice. There was always the chance that Cairne wouldn't be the winner right from the start.
The Boss (player character) after he stops being a mute from Saints Row2 onwards is so much full of himself (or herself) that they cheerfully murder anyone who so much as suggests they might have become corrupt and have not even the slightest compunction about sacrificing others to save themselves. They either finally start to grow out of it in Saints Row 3, or shed all their redeeming qualities and become thoroughly corrupt, depending on the ending.
TerumiYuuki / Hazama from BlazBlue shows great case in this. So what if he has to be hated in order to exist? He enjoys the suffering he has to inflict on people in order to ensure that they hate him, and he often goes out of his way to Break the Cutiefor the simple sadistic enjoyment of doing it. His belief is that the whole world is a lie, the only truth is despair and he's going to show it to the world, whether they like it or not. The problem: Nobody else thinks like that except him. The non-problem: He may be powerful and cunning enough to show it, anyway.
In Dwarf Fortress, the two most popular topics for necromancers to write about seem to be themselves and literary criticism of the books they wrote about themselves.
Handsome Jack, the Big Bad of Borderlands 2, is so full of himself that despite his numerous atrocities and enjoyment of them, he thinks he's the good guy. The first time he claims this to the player(s) is followed by an anecdote about how he once carved a man's eyes out with a spoon in front of his family, the memory of which causes him to burst into laughter.
In City of Heroes, flame-wielding "hero" Flambeaux embodies this trope, to the point that when neither her team mates nor the public give her the love and attention she deserves, she undergoes a Face Heel Turn. Her subsequent acts of (usually petty) villainy include trying to bomb a tabloid's offices for saying mean things about her.
Several characters in the Ace Attorney series, including Redd White, Richard Wellington, and Dahlia Hawthorne.
The world of Fate/stay night and everyone in it belongs to Gilgamesh. He'll kill anyone he thinks needs killing. He'll allow a self-admittedly evil man to kidnap, betray, and murder, because the victims were worthless scum anyway. But if someone goes around the city killing its citizens without his permission, well, that's a disgusting crime. Oh, Gilgamesh also eats the souls of forsaken orphans for magic energy, thinks that a little genocide would improve what he sees as a global overpopulation problem, and brutalizes, humiliates, and would-have-raped Lawful GoodLady of War Saber in a grotesque parody of courtship. In short, the "Good" part of his Word Of GodChaotic Good alignment is practically impossible to swallow. Possibly the real reason The Corruption had no effect on him was because he was ALREADY rotten inside.
He doesn't amuse himself only with evil, however. He's also de-aged himself to play soccer with a bunch of kids who needed an extra teammate. He might be too bad to be Neutral, but even Evil, he's not pure evil.
This also applies to Lord El-Melloi of Fate/zero. He fully expects the world to be handed to him on a platter and everything to always go his way. When Kiritsugu is battling him, he is naturally going to be the winner, because he's a prodigy! Things don't go well for him at all. But the whole time he's losing, he doesn't even realize it, because for him, the world works by giving him stuff and letting him always triumph. This also taints all his relationships, to the degree that he cannot understand his Servant's (entirely selfless) agenda and think he's hiding something because he thinks everyone else thinks like he does, and believes his fiancée loves him even though she despises him and their Arranged Marriage. In the end, Kayneth's one and only selfless act — sacrificing his Servant and bowing out of the Grail War to save his fiancée's life — leads directly to his death as Kiritsugu has both of them shot immediately afterwards.
Regina's aunt Kria spells it out here, she doesn't think about what others think about her because that means that their opinions matter.
Angelika of Our Little Adventure shows traits of this, though she's one of the protagonists...
A less amusing example would be Angelo, one of the main villains in the story. This attitude also extends to many of his followers, with Toby being the most blatant example in this miniarc here.
The DVD release of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog contains a commentary track entitled "Commentary: The Musical". One of the songs in the musical is actually titled "It's All About Me", and consists of small sections sung by each of the extras in the production, explaining how it really is all about them...
There is a song from The Batterys Down in which a Jewish 13-year-old sings about how her bat mitzvah is all about her, so everybody better practically worship her.
The Order of the Stick: Nale, more than anyone, is a firm believer in this trope. What matters most to him isn't necessarily the end result, or the methods used, but that he wins and that the opponent knows he was the one to do it. This contrasts him with both his brother, a selfless hero who cares deeply about genre conventions. Their father Tarquin also acts this way, not even understanding why murdering people for the few he cares about would bother them.
In the Start of Darkness prequel book, when Right-eye and Redcloak are trying to determine why Redcloak wasn't affected by a magical disease, Xykon interupts with a "Well, that's great, but if we can steer the topic back to where it belongs, namely me..."
Homestar Runner gives us the now legendary Strong Bad, whose self centered-ness is rivaled only by his self-perceived awesomeness.
Least I Could Do: Rayne Summers suffers from this, and at one point had to get his friend to explain said friend's impending wedding in a way that makes it about him.
The Nostalgia Chick pays little attention to any feelings or problems that aren't her own. It's not clear whether she even notices them or just doesn't give a crap.
A number of reviewers on That Guy With The Glasses fit that description as well. The cast commentary for Suburban Knights has them lampshade how selfish and hate-filled their characters all are to each other, although Doug's own commentary calls attention to how they're more like a fucked up but caring family and how Joe still sat down after his Big "NO!".
Nodwick had the main cast complaining about lack of standard adventure hooks coming their way, only to later become exactly this sort of thing... for another group — and, again, complain about it.
Yeagar: We're adventurers, too! Don't leave us like this!
Fighter of the other group (to the wizard): If I ever act like them, I hope you'll put a magic missile through my ear.
In Nazo Unleashed, this is Nazo's motivation for wanting to destroy the Master Emerald, since he can't stand the thought of being Always Second Best compared to a simple rock.
Eric Cartman from South Park. For example, the Imaginationland episodes had him not caring about the possible destruction of all imagination by evil characters or by the US government's nuke. Instead, he just cared about proving that he won a stupid bet so that Kyle would have to suck his balls.
Satan in the episode "Hell on Earth 2006". The main plot is about him trying to host the perfect Halloween party. He wants a Ferrari cake to be wheeled into the room at midnight, but the Three Murderers accidentally smash the cake when they pick it up from the shop. Because they murdered all the bakers in the shop, they have to bake a new cake themselves, but they make it a different car model so they can bring it back in time. When they finally get back with the new cake, Satan is disappointed that it's not a Ferrari. When his minion says the guests are still happy, Satan screams, "It's not about the guests! IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!" This prompts a My God, What Have I Done?, when he realizes he's acting like those spoiled 16 year old girls in those reality shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" that the episode was parodying.
Bender from Futurama is like this, frequently singing songs with "Bender is great" in the lyrics and forcing Egyptian slaves to build a colossal statue of him that says "remember me!" repeatedly.
In case you don't know who the robot's talking about when he (repeatedly) invokes this trope, he always ends his this-trope-invoking statements with "...me, Bender."
At least he had learned his lesson by the time of Kronk's New Groove, at which point he's downright selfless.
How bad is his narcissism? The opening theme for The Emperors New School involve him claiming the trope title twice (once he had nameless guards #4, #7, #13 and #57 sing "EXACTLY" after he said it, and the other was because the lyrics mentioned his friends), and his name being spelled out twice. Once just because he liked it so much the first time.
Starscream, from Transformers, in every incarnation, in every timeline. His Moral Myopia is so acute that despite being the Trope Namer of treachery, he has blown up in fury at anyone else's attempts at betraying, nay, even insulting Megatron.
Energon Starscream doesn't have this trait at all, then again his links to the character were mostly created by the English dub (in the Super Link original edit he is "Nightscream" and linked to the character merely by appearance).
Even more so is Megatron, in most continuities his primary rule in the Deceptions, is do what I say, or taste my blaster.
Azula. When things start to fall apart she goes nuts. She does have some desire to prove herself to Ozai although Ozai couldn't care less. Though it is implied that part of the reason she goes nuts is that she realized her friends actually meant something to her, and cannot deal with the realization that their betrayal indicates that she was unworthy of their trust.
Zuko after his banishment was obsessed with capturing the Avatar to restore his honor, so much so that he helps Aang escape from Zhao even though he's an enemy of the Fire Nation. Zhao himself (who is also incrediby self-centered) calls Zuko out on putting himself before his nation; hypocritical, but Jerkass Has a Point. The sad thing is that Zuko genuinely cared about the Fire Nation before his banishment and that love for his people (and probably a wish to prove his worth to his father) is what got him into trouble in the first place.
Even sadder is the possibility that Zuko still cares genuinely about the Fire Nation after being banished, in the sense that he did not wish Fire Lord Azula on them.
Bobbi Fabulous in Phineas And Ferb. Lampshaded in his I Am Song, predictably titled "Fabulous" in which one of the lines is "It's all about me!" Ironically, the song was started by Phineas to convince him that his former band mates needed him for a concert. "It's all about you" comes before "It's all about me." Over the course of the song he grudgingly acknowledges the flattery until he admites that, yes, it is all about him.
Candace tends to fall into this a lot. She'll ditch friends and family alike to spend time with Jeremy, and she'll drop anything for yet another chance at her ill-advised and arguably spiteful self-appointed mission of busting her brothers. Even with that aside the beginning of "Candace's Big Day", when she criticizes her aunt's marriage plans because they didn't involve her, take the cake. Even her own mother nearly called her out on that one.
Candace: What about my needs?
Teen Titans: In "Titans East Part 2" Robin accuses Cyborg of being this and Robin does likewise.
Angelica from Rugrats. Demonstrated when she calls a daytime talk-show host to explain that she's worried about a new sibling and throws the phone in the garbage when he explains the world doesn't revolve around her. Justified in that she's a toddler.
Most of the characters in Family Guy fall into this trope at one point or another, especially in the later seasons.
Due to her being the Butt Monkey and Woobie, Meg rarely has this anymore. And when she does, it's entirely justified.
In earlier episodes, prior to overly sadistic reinventions of the rest of the cast, Meg acted as a much less provoked Bratty Teenage Daughter however.
Meg: I can't believe you would put your family before your own daughter!
Tom Tucker displays the trope in spades. His home is filled with pictures of himself, he carried a huge poster of himself to hang up on the wall when he went to the mansion with the others, and nearly all of his conversations are about him.
The majority of scenarios and problems caused by the cast in American Dad also usually revolve around this trope. Roger is almost this trope at its most intensified. He will walk over, victimise or outright kill for the most minor indulgences or offenses on his behalf (It is possible he has this attitude towards humanity due to being a parody of The Grays however).
In one episode everyone gets sick of Roger being a self-centered asshole and calls him on it, so he completely changes his ways and becomes self-sacrificing and friendly—and nearly dies as a result. As it turns out, if his species doesn't express their metaphorical bile, it becomes literal bile that builds up and poisons them. One wonders exactly how they managed to work together long enough to found advanced mathematics, let alone the space program that put Roger on Earth.
In another episode, he's so fixated on getting the birthday party he wants that he tells Stan and Francine to forget about their own son (who's been aged up to an old man and doesn't want to go back) so they can work on the party.
Gorillaz bassist Murdoc Niccals. The song "Murdoc Is God" should be a sufficient warning sign.
In All Star Superman, Clark Kent is interviewing Lex Luthor in prison when the Parasite escapes and attacks him to drain his powers, which have become supercharged due to extra exposure to the sun. Parasite is clearly draining the energy from something, since he is growing in size, and he keeps shouting about the strength and power he is sensing, explicitly comparing it to the sun, but Luthor never realizes that he himself is not the target. Even after Parasite has been defeated, by a fortunate earthquake that happened to save Clark Kent just in time, Luthor rants and beats his unconcious body, explaining that this is the penalty for daring to challenge Luthor.
Peggy Hill of King of the Hill is a huge egomaniac who thinks she's right about everything even things she has very little knowledge of and thinks she can do no wrong, and if she's involved in something she will often completely take over it, and often takes credit for others ideas.
While all four of the main characters from Xiaolin Showdown have displayed various degrees of self-centered-ness, and Raimundo even defected to the Heylin side for all of two episodes (to say nothing of the villains), the winner by far is Omi... which is why he doesn't actually get to be The Chosen One. Raimundodoes.
The titular hero of Nick Jr.'s Mike The Knight suffers from a bad case of this, even though the aesop of every episode (or at least one of the aesops) ends up being that it isn't all about him.
Discord from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is this. Perfectly willing to screw other ponies over with his god-likepowers just to get a good laugh, but falls into a hissy fit when things don't go HIS way despite his love of chaos and confusion. He's the Evil Counterpart to all the Elements of Harmony, and thus Generosity, so it makes sense he'd be self centered.
There's also Rainbow Dash, who can't seem to have a single conversation without mentioning how awesome she is at least twice. Though to be fair, she's the Element of Loyalty because she's able to put her own desires aside when someone important to her needs her. Nightmare Moon offered her her life's dream in exchange for betraying her friends, and she turned it down with nary a moment's hesitation.
Similar to Rainbow Dash, Rarity has her self-centered moments (most notably in "Sonic Rainboom," where it's taken to its most extreme and lasts most of the episode), but ultimately never fails to demonstrate why her friends are lucky to have her.
The Warden from Superjail, the Psychopathic Manchild in charge of his own colossal prison where he can torture its billions of inmates to indulge in his own bizarre fantasies. Was willing to throw a Littlest Cancer Patient into the incinerator because her youth reminded him of his old age, once monitored everyone's dreams (including his loyal subordinates) with his Dream Machine out of fear of a prison riot (which happens anyway), and in an alternate future declared global war on the earth and enslave all its people to make his jail into a large franchise. Even the Super Jail! wikipedia page for his personality synopsis doesn't hesitate to point out that the Warden has committed all of Hotchkiss' seven deadly sins of narcissism and has exhibited many, if not all, the traits related to it.
Penelope Lang from Atomic Betty. In an alternate future where Maximus had conquered Earth and Betty's identity was known to the people, making her a hero and motivation to the rebels, Penelope STILL stubbournly holds on to this trope, denouncing Betty as a "loser" like always, not taking part in any of the rebels' plans, yet still demanding their attention and protection.
Qilby from Wakfu, season 2. The reason for his horrific betrayal of his people and gigantic body count? He tries to coat it in grander terms, but it still boils down to being really bored. When called out on this by his victims, he accuses them of not considering his feelings.
Gravity Falls: Both Grunkle Stan and Pacifica Northwest display this trope.
Brainy Smurf best exemplifies this trope in The Smurfs episode "Brainy's Smarty Party" where he throws a party that's all about him.
