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Lawful Stupid Chaotic Stupid
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alt title(s): Lawful Stupid; Stupid Good; Stupid Evil; Chaotic Stupid; Stupid Neutral 
Always consider alignment as a tool, not a straitjacket that restricts the character.
A character who does things that don't make any sense, just because it's a "good" or "evil" thing to do. It's not that they've lost their goal - they're actually true to their good or evil alignment, but at the cost of every survival mechanism developed by humanity.
This goes way beyond being a Slave To PR or Card Carrying Villain. Nor is any of these characters a Knight Templar. A Knight Templar is not Lawful Stupid, but rather Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil - with fanatical devotion to the word of law and absolutely no concern for the spirit.
Also known as Lawful Anal or 'Awful Good,' these people often call themselves Lawful Good, but seem to completely forget about the "Good" part. Rather, they lean toward such rigid adherence to the law that anybody who breaks any law, anywhere, is the enemy. Even saying an unkind word to someone is an act of utter evil, and the Lawful Stupid can and will act as judge, jury, and executioner. They refuse to hide from even overwhelming threats, and believe that letting evil win in any sort of way (by, say, helping the village to retreat from the advancing dark army) is against their alignment.
Woe be to the fellow party member who fails to live up to their almost obsessive-compulsive standards. If the thief so much as jaywalks, Mr. Lawful Stupid will insist on turning him in to the "proper authorities" (regardless of what alignment said authorities actually are), or perhaps even execute him on the spot. Then he'll berate the other members of his
party for "condoning" the thief's behavior, and may turn on them as well. This makes this guy highly irritating, to the point where despite usually calling themselves Lawful Good, they look a lot like Lawful Evil. Or maybe Chaotic Neutral - For newbie D Ms, the best solution is usually a blunt force object applied to the head of the offending character.
In tabletop roleplaying games, it's apparently such a common behavior for paladins (see Leeroy Jenkins) that it seems this is what everyone expects paladins to do these days. When one person attempted to play a "rather quiet, unassuming sort" of paladin, they ended up losing their character sheet because all the other players expected them to do stupid things.
In fact, it's so common that the Dungeons And Dragons Sourcebook Book of Exalted Deeds spends a good number of pages explaining how to be Lawful Good without being a total dimwit. The creators themselves got sick of it.
Lawful Stupid characters often also hold very reactionary attitudes, such as that women should Stay In The Kitchen.
The Messiah taken to its illogical extreme, this type of character stands in contrast to the smite-happy Lawful Stupid. The Stupid Good character is a friend to all living things, unliving things, Always Chaotic Evil things, and so forth. In short, the type who would Save The Villain no matter how many dogs he kicked.
This often extends to such utter pacifism that they refuse to kill or attack anything. They'll attempt to talk down the enemy even as they're charging with swords drawn, howling for their heads. This is the kind of person who would, against all logic, attempt to convince the devil himself that his evil crusade is wrong and that he and his
good counterpart should resolve their differences with a kind word and a handshake. And then gets angry when the logical result happens and the Stupid Good moron ends up as a red stain on the wall.
The other players often see this kind of character as a nuisance, as well, especially if they just want to crack some heads and she won't let them because she doesn't want to make orphans of the ' cute little baby orcs'. Of course, given the pacifistic nature of Stupid Good, this often amounts to little more than finger-wagging and threatening to cry. These
other players should beware though, for occasionally the Stupid Good character is pushed too far and descends into Lawful Stupid mode, calling the party 'evil' for wanting to steal treasure from the ' nice monsters'.
This is, of course, not the way to play a paladin either. They do get those weapon proficiencies and smiting powers for a reason, after all. Suffice to say, though, there are a few settings where this kind of play actually works. Of course, such settings also tend to be so idealistic they crap rainbows and/or home to a blatant Mary Sue.
If becoming good results in Stupid Good, see Good Is Dumb or Dumb Is Good.
The Book Of Exalted Deeds didn't provide so much advice for these players (indeed, they left a paladin to choose between "destroying evil and honouring love" when said love was between two Always Chaotic Evil succubi), but they did indicate a good character could ask "How big is that dragon, and does it have any friends?" with an eye towards knowing if they stand a chance at all. Guess Wizards of the Coast thought it was more important to avoid being Miko Miyazaki than it was to avoid being Piffany.
The logical extreme of the Obviously Evil™ motif. These are the people who seem to think having an evil alignment means doing nothing but evil every waking moment, even out in broad daylight. Like, say, stabbing a peasant while several high-level town guards are watching for no reason other than you were bored. If the other party members are lucky, this sociopathic behavior will extend solely to the NPCs. If the other party members are lucky. The Stupid Evil character is frequently the type who will betray and murder his teammates on the flimsiest of pretenses (even if he'd gain no advantage in doing so), simply because it's EEEEEEVIL.
Oh, and they get angry when they have to suffer consequences for their actions, like guards and bounty hunters after them. It's All About Me. If a Stupid Evil person has a choice between accepting a reward for accidentally finding a dog or killing the reward giver they'll choose killing. (Somehow figuring out how to do both usually requires systematic patience and intelligence that isn't part of being Stupid, although if there's no real benefit to doing so, or that effort could be better spent doing something else, can still fall under this category.)
Similarly, the D&D sourcebook Book of Vile Darkness spent a good while detailing how to run an evil character without being a mass-murdering lunatic; but it does give tips for that, too, since even cartoon supervillainy has its place.
Sadly, if a Computer RPG offers an "evil" path, it's usually Stupid Evil, and it involves committing completely random acts of violence just to get those precious Karma Meter points. Only relatively recently did they start adding options for players who want to play sneaky evil characters, with opportunities to manipulate other characters into doing your bidding, or even pulling a Xanatos Gambit.
There is a subtle distinction between Stupid Evil and Chaotic Stupid. Sure, the Chaotic Stupid character is also likely to Kick The Dog. But he's just as likely to Pet The Dog, Shave The Dog, Paint The Dog Purple, or even Ignore The Dog Entirely To Run Off Chasing Butterflies. In short, the 'true' Chaotic Stupid character is the one who thinks that being Chaotic Neutral means being batshit insane. And by "insane", we mean more Looney Tunes than Hannibal Lecter.
This guy is willing to prove his madness at any time he feels it needs proving, which is all the time. Expect all sorts of "wacky hijinx" from talking in Word Salad to annoying important NPCs with stupid jokes (as well as the other players). While a little comic relief can be refreshing once in a while, the Chaotic Stupid character takes it to a level which threatens to turn the entire game into a farce, or even gets the other party members killed. Suffice to say, the Chaotic Stupid should never be let within ten feet of any sort of magic, especially the type that can be exploded in the middle of the party for multiple d6s of damage. He's also at a risk of suffering from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, but it might not be lethal to whoever he betrayed, since he's as likely to kill them or pull down their pants.
Often overlaps with The Loonie, a player archetype from the famed Munchkin Files. Needless to say, several player's handbooks have attempted to disabuse clueless players of the notion that chaos is a blank check to loosen their screws. Though the Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons guide described Chaotic Neutral as the alignment of "lunatics and madmen", even this was not intended to be Chaotic Stupid. A similiar guide once said of the Chaotic Neutral alignment, "Remember that the chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it." Some people just didn't get the memo, though.
Some True Neutral people are devoted to the Balance Between Good And Evil - They fight only because the forces of darkness grow too strong. The problem comes when they become ''militantly'' neutral; so devoted to not taking sides that they lash out against both Good and Evil without distinguishing between friend or foe. This usually takes the form of always siding with the underdog; the moment one side gains the upper hand, they'll pull a Face Heel Turn to make sure both sides are 'equal'. This can lead to a very unreliable fellow and a Wild Card whose misguided morals lead his former allies to cut him down despite his protests that he was only following his heart.
Stupid Neutral people tend to think of morality as balancing a metaphysical checkbook; any evil deed can be 'cancelled out' by committing an equally good deed. No remorse or atonement is needed; to these people, there is no Moral Event Horizon past which their actions cannot be forgiven by good works (or evil works, as the case may be). In short, these people are the types who will build an orphanage and then 'balance it out' by burning down the orphanage across the street. This pattern of kicking the dog and then stopping to pet it immediately afterwards just results in a very neurotic dog... and a very confused audience.
This type of 'stupid neutral' may occur in Video Games with a Karma Meter that offers no middle ground between 'cackling villain' and 'absolute saint'. So the 'neutral' route, if it even exists, ends up consisting of doing enough good and evil deeds (with no regards to common sense or reason) to balance the meter in the middle. Or, you know, not doing anything, but where's the fun in that?
For more on Lawful Stupid and Chaotic Stupid, check out the LJ post by The Ferrett in which he introduced the terms. However, note that his definition of Chaotic Stupid is closer to our usage of Stupid Evil.
Examples of Lawful Stupid/Stupid Good
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Anime & Manga
- In the Sailor Moon anime, Sailor Moon actually offers the Big Bad of Sailor Moon S the MacGuffin she wanted all along to destroy the world because she refuses to sacrifice anyone. The show actually acknowledges how dangerous this gambit was when the Sailors who were less than thrilled with the world coming so close to assured destruction attacked her after the battles were over. In Sailor Stars she does the same thing for that series' Big Bad, though by the time she actually has to confront her, it is after the Big Bad has killed her entire Sailor Team in combat. It actually works in her universe, but had it been slightly less on the idealistic side of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism, she would have just pointlessly died and failed to save the world in the process.
- The ending of Tenchi In Tokyo has Tenchi act in a similar way. As with Sailor Moon, it works because the world is set up that way. This is one of the reasons the show is not as popular as other Tenchi series, as even Tenchi isn't treated as that much of a pushover.
- Alice from Pumpkin Scissors.
- Dragonball Z's Goku: The only Big Bad he didn't let live (Vegeta), offer to spare (Radditz, Capt. Ginyu, Frieza), or hope to be redeemed and fight again (Buu) was Cell - and even Cell got a free Senzu bean, which he makes up for by nearly letting Cell beat Gohan to death (despite having first hand knowledge that Gohan's Berserk Button was seeing his loved ones in danger, not his own peril).
- Pretty ironic, since he did pile up the corpses in early Dragonball (not Z). Children Are Innocent indeed.
- Somehow, though, Goku usually seems to inadvertently benefit from his Stupid Goodness. For example, if he hadn't gotten himself killed by his foolish offer to Raditz, he wouldn't have been able to come back much stronger to fight Vegeta on equal terms. And after he spared Vegeta, the latter gradually did a Heel Face Turn to become one of Goku's strongest allies. Basically, if Goku had been smarter, the bad guys would've won quite early.
- The other characters tend to notice Goku's Stupid Goodness, though. While Gohan was getting the living crap beaten out of him, Piccolo literally screamed at Goku to take Gohan's place in the fight before his unrealistic expectations of his son's strength got him killed. Indeed, Goku very nearly does, but Cell, being the sadomasochist that he is, decides to start killing Gohan's friends as a way to get him angry enough to fight back.
- Post-Time Skip Rossiu from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann becomes a little bit too zealous in his task of upholding the newly created law, much to the very great annoyance of Chaotic Good Simon. For example, he believes the Grappal are far more advanced than the Gurren Lagann and keeps telling Simon that he must rely on his Red Shirt Army instead of fighting himself, even though, this being a Super Robot show, it's bleeding obvious that Simon's Gurren Lagann is the most powerful mecha in the world.
- Fate/stay night has the stupid good Emiya Shiro, who takes his Stay In The Kitchen attitude to the point of refusing to summon his powerful epic hero Servant to a battle against another servant in which he would surely die without her. Only a Deus Ex Machina saves him.
- While it's generally agreed that Shirou is less than bright, the "Fate/stay in the kitchen!" attitude only really applies in the Fate version of the visual novel, and the anime adaption, which is mostly based off this scenario. In the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel scenarios, Shirou is far less Stupid Good (at one point during the former, Shirou is required to summon Saber to a ploin-shaped situation involving another servant).
- The explanation given for Shirou's behaviour (seen in the Unlimited Blade Works scenario) is that a childhood tragedy completely destroyed his sense of self. He can no longer gain satisfaction from helping himself, only from helping others. As a side-effect, he lacks the limit on Projection magic normally imposed by a self-preservation instinct.
- Vash from Trigun ventures into Stupid Good territory. He's absolutely iron-willed not to ever kill anyone, even if they're coming at him in droves with guns blazing. This gets him in extremely uncomfortable circumstances until he reaches his saturation point when caught in a sadistic choice, and pulls the trigger.
- Vash could be argued as a sympathetic deconstruction of this. He suffers rather heavily to save people without hurting others to the point that when you see his bare chest, it is almost all either scar tissue or metal braces holding it together. As mentioned above, he is willing to kill, but only when he finds himself in a situation where it's either kill the bad guy, or watch his friends die (and presumably the innocents he was mind controlling at the time would like have been killed as well), and he is rather shaken up by the experience.
- Kinnikuman blunders into being Stupid Good a number of times. Some instances it's acceptable, like in the Throne arc when Kinnikuman Super Phoenix deliberately kills his subordinates who have become useless to him. Other times, like saying Warsman was the "better man" throughout their whole fight in spite of blatant cheating and nearly killing him, will make readers bash in walls.
- Emily Sevensheep from Mahou Sensei Negima is not open to discussion with unarmed wanted criminals. It takes both Negi stripping her
of her weapons and her boss telepathically contacting her for her to agree to discuss... for a time.
- Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun from Slayers would certainly qualify at times. Her quest for Justice often leads her to attack the wrong people, accuse her friends (sometimes with justification), and accept whatever people in authority tell her.
- Weed from Ginga Densetsu Weed. Hoo boy.
Western Animation
- Silverbolt in Transformers: Beast Wars is another example of how it's possible to get by with being Lawful Stupid by being stupid lucky (not as an alignment, just "lucky to the point of absurdity"). For instance, he actually helped Blackarachnia open up a tunnel leading to the in-stasis Autobots from the original cartoon.
- Of course, Blackarachnia descends from the Autobots, so it's not like helping her was dangerous (as she'd eliminate herself if she harmed the in-stasis autobots). Shit hits the fan when Megatron finds the tunnel already dug out for him. Still, Silverbolt is definatly Lawful Stupid.
- The Gargoyles are usually quite reasonable, but one time, Goliath, faced with a mighty opponent, decided to use the Eye of Odin. The Eye magnified his power to truly awesome levels—but also magnified his nature, that of a protector and guardian, to the point where he was willing to deceive his charges by pretending there was danger when there wasn't, to ensure they stayed somewhere safe rather than moving on, even if they had nothing that could be called a life.
- In a different sense, Alien X from Ben 10: Alien Force—a being capable of warping time and space, but whose thought pattern has been (and in some ways still is) strangled with debate between two diametrically opposed entities to the point at which the being cannot even move until a decision can be reached. Until Ben came along, they had no tiebreaker.
- Omi from Xiaolin Showdown is Lawful Stupid in regards to promises. At one point, Omi has to team up with one of the Big Bads to stop a race of unstoppable spiders. They do this by combining two Mac Guffins that work together to give infinite knowledge to find a way to stop them. Before doing so, the Big Bad makes him promise to only look for the way to stop them and specifically not to look for "the way to destroy evil forever". In the end, he mentions he "peeked" (apparently it's okay to break a promise but not to gain from breaking it). In later episodes the main group finds themselves in a desperate situation and begin telling him they want him to use the secret. He holds firm that he cannot because it would go against his honor as a monk even when all 3 of them think it would be better to do it anyway but he still refuses (it seems that fellowship and the fate of the world as you know it mean nothing in comparison to a small boy's moral code). The end result is as part of the Big Bad's plan, this divides him from his friends and causes him to go against their safer wishes of not listening to the villain. He ends up temporarily locked in an aggressive mood from this and pledges his allegiance to the villain. Once he returns to normal, he stays with the villain because he made that promise (ignoring his friends' cries of "he wasn't himself"). In the very end they try to make it sound like Omi made the right choice by saying the Big Bad reveals that he knew Omi would peek and swapped what he saw with the secret to destroying good (they completely ignore the fact that without this, he risked everyone's lives and future suffering from evil-doers for his honor and that the world was put into peril a second time because he joined the Big Bad with a reason that equates to a promise made while drunk).
- Arguably Elisa from Dead Space: Downfall, who was more worried about saving the crew than quarantining the ship.
- Seeing how she stopped Dr Kyne, form destroying the ship because they are a about 10 other people still alive (and die anyway) I say she is.
- Hego from Kim Possible. He hides his identity with glasses and a tie, talks on and on, giving the enemy the chance to attack, and follows the rules of hero/villain interaction to the T, even lecturing the other heroes on the 'proper' way to do things while they were all in danger from the villain. If that isn't Lawful Stupid Good Stupid, this troper doesn't know what is. By about halfway through his introductory episode, the heroes competely understand why his little sister turned evil.
- The Stupid Good titular hero of "Dave the Barbarian" is "huge, but a wimp" says the theme song. The episode "Horders and Sorcery" begins with a puppet play of heroics to recruit Mongol Horders.
Dave: Awww, the monster got hurted!
- Xavier from Xavier Renegade Angel is a near-perfect embodiment of this trope.
Comic Books
- This applies to many superheroes in the DC Universe
- Batman. Not only does he never kill a villain, even when if doing so would be for the greater good, he also ruthlessly persecutes any other "Vigilantes" who try to as well.
- It should be noted that the definition of a vigilante is one who acts a judge, jury and executioner, and Batman fears what he would become if he ever crosses that line. Also, if it wasn't for the Cardboard Prison the DCU suffers from most of his enemies would have gotten the chair already.
- The JSA. This can be best seen in JSA: Black Reign, where Black Adam kills the mass murdering dictator who rules Kandaq and takes his place as its rightful ruler. However, the JSA will have none of that, oh no. Black Adam killed people, no matter how evil they were, and he must be brought to Justice. The League invades Kandaq and receive a massive clue bat from the powers that be that they are doing the wrong thing. They chose to ignore it. Not only that, but they are absolutely baffled that the people that Black Adam freed are now standing up to defend him.
Literature
- Mackenzie the half-demon, from Tales Of MU, because of demons being stereotyped as Stupid Evil. She's getting better, though.
- Her Superpowered Evil Side is even more Stupid Evil than her normal self was ever Stupid Good. I guess there is some truth to the stereotype.
- Many of Piers Anthony's protagonists are Lawful Stupid. Doing the "honorable" thing is more important to them than stopping the villain. If they were tricked into giving their word of honor on something then they will keep their word, even if it means allowing the villain to commit evil acts.
- This was subverted in the Mode series, when the villain made a deal where he would let the heroes go free, if they agreed not to stop him. When the leader of the heroes accepted, he blindly believed the hero, because he knew that honor meant everything to him. Honor meant absolutely nothing to the main character and her super intelligent psionic horse, who went along with the plan, and then betrayed the villain the moment they were out of his realm.
- In the Author's Note to one of his books, Anthony defends his characters' Lawful Stupidity as being the right thing to do. In fact, the specific example he was defending was Grey Murphy's willingness to become the evil Com Pewter's servant (if he hadn't found a loophole in his contract), which was a particularly egregious Warped Aesop since it wasn't even Grey who made the promise. It was his parents. Then it turns out that Grey's ultimate resolution to the problem is to reprogram Com Pewter against his will. Failing to honor promises you didn't make is wrong, but brainwashing is fine? Er, okay...
- Eddard Stark from A Song Of Ice And Fire is bound by an inflexible code of honor. It doesn't feel as egregious as might be normal, though. His flaw, in the end, wasn't his code of honor, but his belief that other people are better or more honest than they actually are and that they can be shamed into doing the right thing; he's willing to do the right thing, no matter how hard that may actually be.
- His son, on the other hand, falls into this category towards the end.
- In Twenty Years After, while on the run from the Queen (who wants to throw them in the Bastille), Athos learns that d'Artagnan and Porthos have already been captured. His response is to go to the Queen and ask her to release them, which - surprise, surprise - leads to him being imprisoned too.(And that's not even mentioning the times he stops his friends from killing the villain.)
- The eighth book of the Sword Of Truth series features a culture of people that are so Stupid Good that they won't even defend themselves when The Empire invades and starts with the evaile. When the Designated Hero shows up, some of them even serve as willing human shields for the Bad Guys, because war is bad, mmkay? Too Dumb To Live doesn't even begin to cover it.
- In Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time, Rand al'Thor - and pretty much every other male good guy - has a completely pointless code of honour about not harming a woman, no matter how evil. Which is nonsensical, since every single chapter of the series shows that the women of that world neither need nor deserve protection. This even extends to when a woman is trying to kill him...
- This is taken to such extreme that he lets his mentor and only true Aes Sedai ally GET KILLED because he refuses to kill his past self's psychotic former girlfriend (don't ask) when she becomes homicidal. Despite the fact that she is also threatening the woman he loves.
- Note that this seems to only apply to Rand. Mat and Perrin try to avoid killing women but will do so when necessary and don't beat themselves up for it. Rand has... Issues. And knows it.
- He actually laughs about the idiocy of it all.
- Another example from the same series is Galad Damodred, a character described by his half-sister as a man who "does what is right, no matter who is hurt by it, even himself."
- That said, it's amazing what he can justify to himself when it comes right down to it...
- Obligatory Discworld example: Carrot Ironfoundersson spends a lot of time acting a textbook-version of Lawful Stupid, even going so far as to obey and/or cite laws established long ago, even or especially those that aren't enforced since they're unnecessary but are still around since no one bothered to repeal them. A lot of the time it seems he gets away with his cheerful demeanor in a city like Ankh-Morpork because of A) the sheer force of his crazy notion that everyone's basically decent underneath and B) Silverbolt-level good luck. That being said there is a lot of implication that there is far more to Carrot than meets the eye ("You'd have to be very complex to be as simple as Carrot"), and that he can turn from genially dim-witted to a wall of steel who's just asked you a question you really don't want answered in the blink of an eye. Also, if you try anything funny, he probably could kill you with his bare hands. Not that he would, but that's worth noting, even in Ankh-Morpork.
- Not so much on the obeying of old laws, actually. Or rather, not so much that it makes him Lawful Stupid. He actually uses it to his advantage repeatedly, especially in the older books, before he gets a reputation for shenanigans of that nature (in Men At Arms he successfully manages to force Mayonnaise Quirke to stand down after the Night Watch has been forcibly stood down, because of an old law that was never repealed regarding the formation of citizen's militias after the breakdown of law and order, which he manages to successfully prove has occurred).
- Commander Sam Vimes, however, is one of the few different ways to successfully play Lawful Good without venturing into Lawful Stupid territory and Carrot does seem to be learning from him. Vimes is is one of the most underhanded, cunning people in fiction, yet he is still a legend across the Disc for his commitment to justice. There are some laws and rules he refuses to break, because he knows that once you break a rule for a good reason, it's much easier to break it for a bad one.
- Among the other things that Carrot does that astounds Vimes and Angua is that his first action on Angua going missing is to report it to Vimes before going off to find her.
- There's a motivational poster floating around the internet with a sketch of Vimes by Paul Kidby and the caption, "This is how you play Lawful Good you bastards."
- Ha, I found the image [1]◊.
- Averted by the main character in The Deed Of Paksennarion, which was written explicitly as a guide to being a Paladin without being Lawful Stupid, because the author was tired of constantly running into Lawful Stupid paladins at conventions.
- Two words: Liu Bei. Worse yet, he combines it with Moral Dissonance (ironically against his own Stupid Good at times) and Values Dissonance. And he's the main protagonist for at least the first half of the book, people.
- Eve Forward's Villains By Necessity has the Balance Between Good And Evil central to its plot, but supports this mostly by populating the side of Good with Lawful Stupid Knights Templar, with some Stupid Good lackeys for variety, which has the unfortunate effect of undermining the premise. Notably, one such Stupid Good lackey, the centaur bard Robin, eventually clues in and performs a Heel Face Turn to side with the "Evil" protagonists, and the Black Knight called Blackmail turns out to be a legendary paladin who has sided with the protagonists for the sake of saving the world and in disgust at his former Nakama's Lawful Stupid behavior.
- The Balance Between Good And Evil is somewhat justified in that if the balance goes too far out of whack the entire world will just turn into a giant white space. Or black space. And this may in turn cause a domino effect for other worlds.
- Most of the good guys in the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to some extant except Mhoram ans covenant himself but especially the Seareach Giants whosubmit to genocide because of something they had no control over
- And the Haruchai in ever single trilogy.
- Notably averted (in regards to both Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good) by Michael Carpenter and the other Knights of the Cross in The Dresden Files. The Lawful Stupid seems to come from how Michael is a devout Christian and the closest thing to a paladin in the series, and often makes his opinion on Harry's practices (from using magic and consorting with spirits, to having sex outside of marriage) known and disapproves of some of Harry's less moral actions, and general antipathy toward religion. Nevertheless, he never pushes his beliefs on Harry, recognises him as a good man who strives to do what is right to the best of his ability, and is Harry's closest friend and ally. Harry himself describes Michael as genuinely righteous and humble, and says that looking into his soul made him weep. The Stupid Good seems to come from how the Knights show a desire to redeem the Knights of the Blackened Denarius (an order of thirty people who have made a pact with Fallen Angels), constantly offering them the chance for redemption and refusing to kill one at one point. The aversion comes from how they only do this if a Denarian surrenders its coin containing the angel, and are otherwise quite willing to fight and kill them (they also show no problem with unequivacally evil or chaotic creatures). Michael points out that the Christian God is about forgiveness, and that mercy is what sets the Knights above those they fight (one of the Knights themselves is a proof example of how that attitude actually works). Also, at one point, one of the Knights makes a deal with a Denarian, fully expecting betrayal. The only reason he did it was because he knew it to be the only way to save Harry, whose life he valued more (plus, he was dying of cancer).
- While not Lawful Stupid, Harry does suffer from Honor Before Reason, something he acknowledges. On the other hand, even Archangels seem to agree with Harry's way of doing things.
- King Arthur. So determined to bring about this new Rule of Law idea that he lets himself be used by evil people in the guise of upholding the law.
- In some of the spinoff-Halo books, there is a small faction of The Covenant called The Governors of Contrition. While the normal Covenant place a large emphasis on the the works of the [[Precursors Forerunners]] being holy, the Governors of Contrition take it to a huge extreme. They even consider The Flood (a plague that turns people into space-zombies) to be worth embracing because it was created by the forerunners. Even the normally ridiculously dogmatic Covenant realize this is madness.
- Arguably Percy Weasley in Harry Potter.
Video Games
- The guards in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. When the player is arrested, his options are Pay Fine/Go to Jail/Resist Arrest, but if an NPC commits a minor crime (some are programmed to steal food if their hunger drops too low) the only options the guard gives them are Fine/Resist. If they have no money, they are forced to resist, so guards will routinely kill a man for stealing bread, and not even bother to clear away the corpse.
- One rather cruel example can crop up if you have the paladin Keldorn in your party in the D&D-based game Baldur's Gate II. If you accept his offer to visit his home, you'll find that his wife has been cheating on him out of loneliness and concern for their children, as Keldorn is always off crusading. The most obvious thing to do is to let him follow the 'lawful' path and report his wife's infidelity to the authorities, which results in her permanent incarceration, the execution of her lover, and his two daughters hating him forever. Keldorn himself is more than happy enough to take a 'good' alternative that involves talking with the lover (who willingly steps down if Keldorn faces him) and reconciling with his family - although this causes him to leave the party.
- The player does not have to actually lose Keldorn, by giving him a day with his family and then asking him back into the party. On the other hand, Keldorn rejects the idea that one of the members of your party, a drow, can be redeemed and will eventually fight with her.
- The game has a traditional example in Anomen, who vies for paladinhood and won't shut up about how far above everything else this places him. Compare:
Anomen: A dank cesspool of base corruption if ever there was one. Why, if not for the Order, the Gods would surely smite man for such sins!
Keldorn: Where men gather, a bustle of chaos ensues. I would save them all, if I could.
- Note that this distinction is highlighted when Keldorn and Anomen are together in your party. Intra-party dialogue will often have Keldorn lecturing Anomen on his arrogantly narrow and unforgiving brand of goodness. Whether Anomen humbly learns from the example or just becomes more of a stubborn hardass is influenced by the player. If he goes too far down that second path and fails forever to attain paladinhood, he can become straight-up evil out of resentment. Eventually he and Keldorn will try to kill each other.
- Keldorn's lectures make it all the more jarring when he refuses to believe Viconia the drow can be redeemed. Evidently, when he said "I would save them all, if I could." He meant to add "Except the drows."
- Arguably some of Jaheira's actions (at least after Khalid's death) tend toward Stupid Neutral, though she is somewhat good in concealing this.
- The enormous Ranger Minsc deserves a honorable mention, but doesn't fit on this article's scale. After too many blows to the head he's good and stupid separately.
Minsc: Evil, meet my sword! Sword! Meet! Evil!!
- Keiichiro Wachizuka of the Last Blade series of fighting games. As a member of the Shinsengumi during the Meiji era, he often let his personal morality, a relic of the age of Samurai, get in the way of his better judgment... which wasn't that good to begin with. He's also an Arrogant Kung Fu Guy who seems to think he's never wrong.
- Beatrix, and Steiner from Final Fantasy IX are supposed to be Lawful Good, but instead come off as lawful stupid, Beatrix helps The Empire destroy two cities, and massively damage a third simply because the Queen is an evil nutcase. Steiner wants to return the Rebellious Princess who wants to escape her evil mother, and doesn't seem to notice the whole evil nutcase part. It's only after the Queen attempts to kill her own daughter does Beatrix even think of rebelling, and only after the Queen nearly does so does she rebel.
- Also done in the giant tree near Freya's hometown where the residents try to talk to the Queen's soldiers into not fighting, which doesn't work since the soldiers just rush in and slice them. Somewhat justified since the residents lived in peace for years and kind of forgot how to fight since they abolished the arts of war, but even then...
- Steiner was in denial. Beatrix had no excuse.
- Beatrix is Lawful Neutral, her primary motivation being service to her kingdom. Tolerating expansionist policies is a part of the job description. Only after Brahne's madness becomes clear does she even think of defecting and even then only to best serve her kingdom.
- Adell from Disgaea 2 constantly insists on fair fights and keeping promises. This would be all well and good if it wasn't for one teensy weensy little fact: everyone within a 100 mile radius is a Genre Savvy hellspawn willing to milk this for all its worth. Rozalin spends quite a deal of time wondering how this kind of behavior hasn't killed him already. Of course, his attitude actually leads him to achieve heroic victory, so WHO is the Genre Savvy one in the end?
- To some people, Seraph Lamington of Disgaea 1 can come off as Lawful Stupid or Stupid Good.
- Lord Theodore, head of the Knights of Mirsaburg in Romancing Sa Ga: Minstrel Song, is Lawful Stupid to the core. Sure, the corrupt nobility deserves his scorn, but Theodore is utterly convinced that he's the only one who's right, ever. He clings so rigidly to his idea of chivalry that at one point, he jails and plans to execute one of his most loyal knights... because they were slashed in the back. After all, the knights never run away, and even though he was clearly ambushed by monsters, without a witness to vouch for him, Theodore automatically assumes that he broke his vow and should die for cowardice. In fact, when the enemy pulls a Fake King plot, it works well mainly because it seems perfectly in-character for him to declare war on one of his allies just because she disagrees with him.
- In The Conduit, you can listen to a radio transmission of a Straw Feminist saying that the alien invaders who have destroyed Washington DC and killed countless innocents come in peace, and all the fighting was caused by an angry, male-dominated government.
Web Comics
- Miko Miyazaki in the webcomic The Order Of The Stick is part Lawful Stupid, part Knight Templar, and occasionally parodies both. This strip is a good example of the former.
- Hinjo, and apparently most of the other paladins of the Sapphire Guard, are subversions, as they act normally, rationally, and without being condescending. They also don't like Miko, and she is sent on away missions so they don't have to deal with her. ("often for months at a time") Hinjo does have his moments of self-righteousness from time to time, but he's mostly a decent, rational and practical man.
- However, the Sapphire Guard's willing adherence to their founder's promise not to investigate the other Gates, no matter what, can be seen as Lawful Stupid.
- Likewise, Roy, the leader of the titular Order is Lawful Good but very savvy and originally willing to use trickery in the service of the greater good. (And attracted to Miko until he realizes how Lawful Stupid and spiteful she is.) Later in the series, he is rebuked by a lawful good angel for being willing to use such underhanded methods.
- In the same breath, though, the angel commends him because in spite of his tendency to use Chaotic means to achieve Lawful ends, he keeps trying to stick to being Lawful Good, that, since he's not a being of pure Law and Good like said angel, it's not even remotely reasonable to expect him to be able to behave like one all the time. In short, Roy, like Sam Vimes, is an example of how to play Lawful Good without playing Lawful Stupid.
- If it's possible to deconstruct a way some people play Lawful Good in an RPGT, Miko is it.
- In the print edition of the comic ("No Cure for the Paladin Blues") Rich Burlew, the author of The Order Of The Stick, writes in his commentary about Miko that this was intended. See chapter 5:
Rich Burlew: Miko Miyazaki may be the single most controversial character I have yet created for OOTS. Within days of her introduction, fans were beginning to chose sides as being pro-Miko, anti-Miko, anti-anti-Miko, or what have you. I can't take credit for all of this; the paladin is perhaps the most controversial character class in the game. People feel strongly about paladins - they either love them or hate them, with few occupying the middle ground. Personally, while there is always a place for the shining knight in fantasy roleplaying, I believe that the class as written actually encourages a type of dysfunction within roleplaying groups. I think of it as the Police Syndrome, wherein one player feels entitled by the rules to actively police the other members of his or her group. [...] In many ways, Miko Miyazaki is the incarnation of those hard feelings. [...] Miko is also the result of me asking myself: "Can a Lawful Good character be the villain - and still be lawful good?" [...] There was a general outcry about how Miko wasn't the only possible way to portray a paladin that lasted some time, to which I say: Well, obviously. [...] Miko is not the one and only way to play a paladin; if anything, she's one of the WORST ways to play a paladin. [...] Miko is a person who has been raised in a strict military society believing that she was given the power of the gods to punish evil, with very little of her extensive training devoted to social interaction or manners. [...] The very concept that other people don't need to do as they're told is foreign to her, which is how her Lawfulness most strongly represents itself.
- Celia has recently become increasingly Flanderized as a Stupid Good Pollyanna, though she does at least have enough sense to fight when she or her friends are in imminent danger.
- On the other hand, Celia's reaction to the unnecessary killing of orcs could be interpreted as being the Only Sane Man; she reacts like a real person to real deaths, not like an RPG character. Her inability to recognise that Greysky City is completely evil is another matter, though...
- Celia's Stupid Good tendencies were subverted in this strip with her rather ruthless reason for not wanting to abandon Belkar.
- Mentioned in The Wotch: Anne, you have permission to strike before the heroic banter next time.
- Kore the Dwarven Paladin from Goblins takes this to an extreme - he kills anyone who even has contact with evil out of fear that the taint will lead them to become evil themselves. The fact that he somehow still manages to keep his paladin powers, even though he's taking Lawful Stupid so far that he's actually evil is foreshadowed as a major plot point.
- Also from Goblins, but in quite a different flavor, you have Fumbles, who becomes so desperate to "make things right" (after he does something very, very wrong) that he lets his sense of justice completely overthrow his sense of survival. And get it in a headlock. And while Fumbles starts off with the idea that he can do it without involving the rest of his team, the comic is very good about showing that his actions have long-lasting consequences, and affect everyone he cares about, in large part because they also care about him.
- And yet again from Goblins, Big Ears the paladin manages to avert this nicely, which is rare for a paladin, as they are usually flanderized into one of these if they don't start out as one. He instead follows instead closely to what a lawful good paladin should be.
- DM Of The Rings lampshades this when the players refuse to act in this manner.
- Piffany from Aaron Williams' Nodwick. Mein Gott, Piffany.
- The Gods Of Arr Kelaan has Mike lampshade a subversion of this after catching a thief.
- The Dewitchery Diamond mage from El Goonish Shive looks to be coming from the Lawful Stupid direction by his own monologue.
- Helix, the robot from Freefall definitely qualifies as Stupid Good but it sometimes works out as it causes him to derail Sam's more Chaotic Stupid schemes.
- Pretty much everyone in the Dimension of the Lame from Sluggy Freelance is Stupid Good - so pacifistic that one mage attempted to heal a demon that was attacking her friends, and that they can be convinced that throwing food at the demons is as bad as the demons eating people alive. Torg ends up describing them as "not as good as they think they are."
Table Top Games
- Planescape describes "lawful over good" approach as a characteristic of entire plane of Arcadia (between LG and LN). It's primary plane of influence of the Harmonium faction. AD&D Player's guide to the Planes:
...the Harmonium believes that peace is a better end than war. [...] If it takes thumping heads to spread the truth, well, the Harmonium's ready to thump heads. Sure, there may not be peace right away, but every time the Harmonium gets rid of an enemy, the multiverse is that much closer to the universal harmony it was meant to have.
- "Elder Evils", a book from the 3.5 edition of Dungeons And Dragons, features a canonical example of a Lawful Stupid alignment in the form of Obilgatum VII, an extraplanar robot who wants to free the sentient Weapon Of Mass Destruction/Eldritch Abomination Pandorym. Is it because Obligatum is a Omnicidal Maniac? No, it's actually because the
dumbasses wizards who called the thing to the material plane in the first place were somewhat deceptive. Obligatum is presented as an enemy of the party, because he is one of a clockwork race called the Inevitables, whose sole function of existence is to keep the multiverse running according to law. His specific division enforces major contracts. The wizards in question made quite a major contract with Pandorym, then broke it by imprisoning it for umpteen aeons and preventing it from completing its own end of killing all gods...or even returning from whence it came. Ironically, there's another, far more powerful branch of the Inevitables that would take a very dim view of what Pandoryrm was contracted to do in the first place. However, since the gods took it into their own hands to smite the idiot mages who started the whole thing, they didn't have to act...at least at that time. The scenario presented makes no mention of this branch of the race coming into conflict with Obligatum; presumably there is an override to prevent a race war between them where they never interfere with the business of another Inevitable if it is "first to the scene"?
- All Inevitables cleave very close to this trope actually. I mean there's even one Inevitable that will kill you for the crime of living too long.
- A more straight version of the trope is Kelemvor Lyonsbane, the god of the dead. He's supposed to be a good guy, and an improvement over his predecessor. And indeed, he does not go out murdering mortals for the pleasure of it; he instead sees to it that all pass in their time. But then there's this wall in his domain, called the Wall of the Faithless. Whomsoever dies without having worshiped a god (even just paying lip service, though they get their own punishment, as being False) has his soul merge with the wall, slowly and painfully destroying him until there's no mind or personality left. People who live in areas where there is no religion featuring gods to worship are bound to end up there - even if they have no other option. You can give money to the poor, make clothes for the orphans, be the nicest person around, and if you do not worship a god, you're just another brick in the wall in the end. Same goes for followers of Ao the Overgod, though he is specifically mentioned as not responding to either mortal or deity. Kelemvor does nothing about the wall, accepting its Disproportionate Retribution. He could replace the wall with something less horrible, he just chooses not to. The jerk is clearly biased in favor of god-worship.
- What about agnosticism?
- There's no agnosticism because the gods can be proven to exist, and the people really truly believe in them (most people, outside of Clerics, Paladins, and other divine spell casters, actually worship multiple gods). In addition, there are no areas in the Forgotten Realms where there are no gods.
- Of course, people from cultures that do not worship gods suffer the same faith as Atheist. So not only are the people of the realm expected to worship a god, or suffer a fate worst then death, but you have to make sure thing your worshipping is actually a god. Worshipping any other type of apparently divine being is also ticket to the wall. If you live in some backwater village that never had a priest of any religion visit it? Well, it's wall for you!
- It bears mentioning, however, that gods in the setting require worship to maintain their power and energy. The Wall of the Faithless is less punishment for atheism than it is the stick of the gods' carrot-and-stick approach with mortals. Parts of the world where there are no religions have no gods concerning those parts of the world, though other deities can and will interfere when those parts of the world impact the deities' portfolios and interests.
- That would make this extortion more than a carrot and a stick. Carrot and a stick would be "if you don't worship me then you'll miss out on cake!" While extortion is "Do it or else."
- He tried to make a better solution. It didn't work and the other gods nearly threw him out.
- During Kelemvor's phase as a Lawful Good deity, he did do away with the Wall. Ao himself (the overgod) came down hard on Kelemvor's case for doing so, as it threatened to break down the Realms-with no threat of the Wall, many mortals felt no need to worship, and the power of the gods threatened to tumble. After Ao's intervention, Kelemvor turned Lawful Neutral, returned the Wall to its prior (and current) state, and distanced himself from his humanity-such are the demands of godhood.
- The problem was not as much specifically in removing the Wall as rewards involved in his attempt to recreate all the Outer Plane in his domain. If he just threw unclaimed petitioners to Outlands to whatever fate they'll find, hardly anyone would object.
- Though atheism is a less tenable position in a world where gods are known to exist. The "What about the parts of the world where there aren't any religions?" part may be a bit of Fridge Logic, though.
- Funny part here is Kelemvor's own stance on religion while he was mortal. He couldn't find a slightest trace of faith even after seeing several avatars in action.
- Another Lawful Stupid moment from Kelemvor is present in Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of The Betrayer. He claims he can't deal with the spirit eater cruse because it would be overiding another god (this appears to be a moral rather then physical issue) nevermind that said god is more or less dead, but Kelemvor is said gods successor.
- Prior to the Book of Exalted Deeds, 2nd edition D&D had The Complete Paladin's Handbook. While it admitted that the notion of a paladin-king is romantic, but rare because rulership often requires compromising personal ideals, it also covered territory in how not to be Lawful Stupid. In one example, a paladin finds himself unfortunately (and by his own free will) bound to serve three commands of an evil priest. In the first, the priest tries to get information on those who oppose him, leading the paladin to respond with a whole lot of half-answers, culminating in the priest insisting "if you tell me nothing, I will assume I'm correct" and the paladin simply replying "you may assume whatever you wish." Finally, the priest sends the paladin to bring back the head of a nobleman, his most hated enemy. The paladin returns with the nobleman's head. And the rest of him, all in one piece. With a couple hundred men-at-arms, none of whom are too happy with the priest.
- The same book had, however, many Lawful Stupid rules. For example it's unthinkable for a paladin to retreat from battle unless his side is severely outmatched (at least outnumbered 2 to 1). Thus using such tactics (such as retreating to continue the fight on more advantageous terms, to trick the enemy side into comitting some tactical error, or for whatever strategic reasons) are clearly against a Paladin's ethos. What to do if he's just ordered to disengage without an explanation?
- The same book also forbade Paladins from associating with evil characters, failing to realise that a) It's not because the guy is evil that he can't serve good (by helping save the world for example) b) That the mere presence of a Paladin will limit how much evil the evil party member can do. c) That the presence of a paladin leading by example could perhaps lead said evildoer to abandon his evil ways and turn neutral or good? The Paladin's Handbook even suggested Paladins should avoid associating with a party mostly composed of neutral characters. Lawful Stupid indeed. The book insisted that Paladins could only stick around such groups for as long as absolutely necessary, and then that they should part ways ASAP.
- And then BoED dives into it, from playing with Virgin Power (no references to "12 Year Old Gamer Girl" template from Bride of Portable Hole. Seriously.) and funny redemption rules (Vision of Heaven spell, huh) to more fishy telepathy overhearing (saints only!) and "Bad poison - good poison" parts...
- The Trope Overdosed Tabletop Game Warhammer 40000 has a few examples of this.
- Many Chapters of Imperial Space Marines suffer from this. Some of them decry any form of stealth as cowardice; others refuse to retreat even when strategically or tactically viable out of a sense of martial pride; and others still refuse to field psykers, work alongside aliens, or even ally with anyone else at all because of deeply-held suspicions and prejudices. The Space Marines' holy book, the Codex Astartes, actually discourages this sort of behavior and contains all sorts of useful and varied tactical advice; however, adhering too closely to the Codex Astartes can cause a Chapter to enter Lawful Stupid territory from the other direction. An example of this second type is the Ultramarines, who exiled Captain Uriel Ventris and forced him to become The Atoner after he used slightly unorthodox tactics against the Tyranids.
- Made worse because their own Primarch (and writer of the Codex Astartes) Roboute Guilliman went against it a number of times, mostly when fighting the Alpha Legion. Marneus Calgar, their current Chapter Master, used unorthodox tactics fighting the Tyranids as well because the Codex Astartes had nothing on them.
- The Ultramarines are probably the number one victim of Accentuate the Negative because of this. The Codex Astartes was not considered a document of holy significance in Guilliman's time. In fact, the Emperor specifically tried to promote atheism throughout the Imperium. Marneus Calgar came to the conclusion, upon reflection, that he was being Lawful Stupid and that Guilliman never intended for the Codex Astartes to be this way. So, in conclusion, in the grim darkness of the far future there's always room for Character Development.
- The Monodominant faction of the Inquisition are, as a group, fanatically devoted to the letter of Imperial law and dogma, to the point that they are considered xenophobic and reactionary even by the xenophobic and reactionary standards of the Imperium. Monodominants fervently believe that only genetically pure and religiously faithful humans deserve to exist, and that everything else - aliens, daemons, heretics, malcontents, traitors, and mutants, up to and sometimes including the psykers that the Imperium needs in order to continue functioning - needs to be killed with fire. Other Inquisitors tend to consider the Monodominants bombastic, closed-minded, and self-defeating, and note that their pogroms and witch hunts tend to bury more answers than they uncover (and, less importantly, tend to kill a lot of innocent people in the process). The Monodominants usually respond by loudly accusing their detractors of heresy and attempting to kill them (with fire).
- Another great example of Lawful Stupid space marines comes from the later Dawn Of War Expansion Packs. In Dark Crusade the Space Marine Blood Ravens and the Redshirt Army Imperial Guard both have orders from their superiors to claim the planet resulting in two armies fighting "for the Emperor" against each other. The Guard fighting for their home world, the marines willing to opliterate them to be on the safe side regarding heresy and mutants. Soulstorm tops it by also adding the Church Militant Adepta Sororitas.
- In the World Of Darkness RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse, members of the Children of Gaia tribe can be Stupid Good at times. The dichotomy of peace-loving werewolves is certainly interesting, but some of these hippies would sooner talk politics over tea with the creatures they're supposed to kill.
- The worst part is the tribebook for the Children of Gaia seems to encourage this portraying them as the hippies of Werewolf with no real pragmatism to counterbalance their idealism.
- On the other hand, the other Werewolf tribes tend to take Lawful Stupid to gory new heights. If they so much as think someone is tainted with the slightest bit of evil, GROWLSLASHKILLBITEMAIMKILLSLASH...
- In the Worldof Darkness game, Hunter: The Reckoning, several groups of hunters seemed to fall exclusively into the realm of Lawful Stupid (Zeal) or Stupid Good (Mercy.) This was meant to refer to the extremes in philosophy of the groups, but this troper remembers a specific instance, where his GM - a fan of the Zeal virtue - heavily penalized this troper's Redeemer for actively defending herself instead of just letting the monsters kill her.
- To be fair, anyone with a virtue rating higher than 7 becomes incurably insane and the Vision caste are, by design, meant to guide the others in looking at the bigger picture. So the issues with the Zeal and Mercy castes are more crippling overspecialization than anything. Furthermore, anyone who does anything has some horrible retribution waiting for them anyway.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle gives us Lord Mazdamundi of the Lizardmen, who has ruled that all species have to go back to within the boundaries set for them 20 000 years ago by a race who disappeared when Chaos first came to the Warhammer world. Part of this involves putting all of the elves back on Ulthuan - high elves, dark elves, and wood elves. The main downside to this? High elves hate dark elves, dark elves hate high elves, and wood elves hate everybody. The culture of the elves would be reduced to burning ruins within a year. Throw in the fact that Elves are manning many of the ex-Lizardmen anti-Chaos wards outside of Ulthuan...yeah, this makes standard Lawful Stupid look clever.
Live Action TV
- The Ancients, infamous Neglectful Precursors from Stargate SG-1, would rather let the galaxy be conquered by Scary Dogmatic Aliens (who would then promptly turn on them) or, worse yet, have all life eradicated by replicating killer robots, than violate their Prime Directive of non-intervention. Also note how they "justified" descending Daniel Jackson yet letting Anubis remain half-ascended.
- They justified letting Anubis hang on to Ancient powers and knowledge as a punishment for Omala Desala, whom he had tricked into helping him ascend (helping others ascend being an Ancient no-no). So they're not just Lawful Stupid, they're maliciously vindictive.
- Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek Voyager has occasionally been Lawful Stupid. Several times she has refused to take an opportunity to get the ship home because it would require going against the "values" of the Federation. This isn't always a bad thing, mind - the Federation was envisioned as a near-idealistic society, so it would have some values worth keeping to - but it grated on some viewers after a while. And, of course, if she had, the show would have been over. Was Lampshaded in an episode, where a holographic simulation shows the Maquis taking over Voyager, because of their frustration over Janeway's Lawful Stupid tendencies. In "Madame Captain's" defense, though, the Prime Directive seemed to require Lawful Stupidity of Starfleet officers.
- The Next Generation was not immune to Lawful Stupidity. For example, Picard and Worf regard violating the prime directive (or using subterfuge to intervene without violating it) worst than letting a species go extinct when their planet is about to blow up. See the episode involving Worf's human half-brother.
- Also of note is the episode where only at Data's strong insistence do they decide to trouble themselves to help from another planet about to explode.
- The episode of Enterprise manages to one-up the above examples, as they doom a whole sapient species to death by genetic defect, despite having already developed the cure (They just decide not to distrubute it.) They do this because Archer envisions that there will be some directive against it in the future.
- The Alliance in Firefly combines both Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good into one "oppressing you for your own good" package. The entire Unification War was brought about because the Alliance decided it wanted to bring "civilization" to the Border and Rim worlds, and only their form of civilization would be accepted. At the same time, the Alliance also had several other projects running to bring order and control, such as an airborne drug that reduced entire planetary populations into docile pacifists ( that had the side effect of making most of the people simply lay down and die, and triggering psychotic berserk violence in the remainder) and also had a fun little secret side project to produce insane psychic assassins from children.
- Najara in Xena Warrior Princess runs around with her band of converts fighting warlords and bandits. Those she defeats are given one chance to convert and the join her band ("see the light"), or else she kills them, instead of turning them into the authorities for trial.
- In Red Dwarf episode Demons and Angels the characters meet their good and evil duplicates. Their 'high' selves are so naive and trusting that they don't realise they are being deliberately shot, stabbed and crushed, and the High Kryten thinks a grenade is a 'welcome gift'.
- Karl "Helo" Agathon. Ruins a potential method of either destroying or at the very least slowing down the Cylons to an appreciable degree because of his self-righteous nature. He also managed to avoid any punishments or reprimands. He's a particularly annoying case of Stupid Good.
- Highlander The Series had a guy who called himself Methos (not the real Methos played by Peter Wingfield) who wanted all Immortals to lay down their swords, embrace peace, and help little old ladies across the street at every opportunity. He didn't last through half the episode, getting decapitated by the ep's Villain Of The Week.
- Peter Petrelli ("Adam is my friend. I can’t let you hurt him.") and Hiro Nakamura (Why don’t you just kill the bad guy when you have the chance? "I can’t kill somebody begging for forgiveness. It’s against the bushido code.") of Heroes.
- In Doctor Who, the Doctor can seem to veer wildly between Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good on occasion, particularly in the new series; he can ruthlessly dispatch and / or punish relatively minor foes or those who break his rules based on a belief in "no second chances" (such as leaving Adam stuck with a piece of futuristic technology in his head for attempting to profit from futuristic technology, or denying Britain a 'golden age' by manipulating the ousting of Harriet Jones from office after she ordered the destruction of a fleet of defeated alien invaders, something which went against the Doctor's efforts), whilst at the same time demonstrating an at-times almost boggling level of compassion and attempts at mercy towards foes whose sins have been much, much worse (such as attempting to forgive and / or rescue both The Master and Davros, each genocidal maniacs with raging God complexes and an overall body-count well into the billions by this point). It's worth noting that those in the second group tend to be long-time recurring foes with Joker Immunity.
Real Life
- Another real life example: Cato the Younger, a Roman statesman and senator in the first century BC. So committed to the ideals and laws of the Roman Republic that he aided in its demise, by consistently blocking any and all reform, forcing radical action. Many deeds stand out, but one example: After Julius Caesar's victory in the civil war, Cato and Metellus Scipio continued the resistance in North Africa. When Caesar came to hunt them down, it was suggested that Cato, as the oldest and most experienced general there, take command. Cato refused on the grounds that he was only a praetor and wasn't of high enough rank. So the less competent Metellus Scipio took command, and the army was promptly massacred by Caesar.
- Internet example: Homebrew on the Wii has been quite popular among the hardcore crowd and they complain when Nintendo releases a firmware update that blocks homebrew. The people who are against homebrew will brand the homebrew users as evil pirates that only care about stealing games and hurting Nintendo since they broke the rules, even if the homebrew user never uses homebrew to play games illegally! This in turn causes homebrew users to defend themselves and say that they all don't use homebrew to pirate games and flame the people who are defending Nintendo, which causes the defenders to hit back just as hard since in their eyes, "once a pirate, always a pirate." Hilarity Ensues.
Film
- Colonel "Bat" Guano of Dr Strangelove tries to stop Group Captain Mandrake from robbing a vending machine to get money for a pay phone. Given that Mandrake is trying to call Washington with the recall codes to stop the impending nuclear holocaust, Guano's attitude isn't really the most sensible. He does give in, but with the stern warning that Mandrake "will have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company."
- Robocop is subjected to this in the second movie, in a deliberate bid by the evil corporation to make him so useless that they can justify scrapping him. They decide to make him a more positive social role model by giving him over three hundred new Directives that he's forced to obey, including "Pool opinions before expressing yourself", "Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility", and "Don't run through puddles and splash other pedestrians".
Examples of Chaotic Stupid / Stupid Evil
Film
- In the first Highlander film, The Kurgan's joyride-rampage through New York, wherein he drives down the wrong side of the road, singing New York New York while playing chicken and running over pedestrians, served no purpose other than a hilarious classic moment in comedy history.
- This editor greatly prefers the Alternate Character Interpretation, which says that The Kurgan knows that MacLeod is about to kill him and becomes insane. From that point of view, the car scene is far more scary; indeed, this editor got chills when he started to sing.
- Um, when was the Kurgan ever sane?
- Lets face it, barring decapitation, Kurgan was never in any significant danger driving the way he did as he is an immortal, the whole point was to scare the hell out of MacLeod's girlfriend and in that regards, he succeeded very well indeed. Even if he had an accident, he will survive.
- The shown-in-movie-theaters version of Dune, wherein the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen would have little rubber plugs put in people's bodies so he could "pull the plug" on them and bathe in the spurting blood whenever he felt like it.
- Evil Bill and Evil Ted from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. They try to run down cats while steering their time-traveling phone booth, just because.
- Francis Begbie of Trainspotting strays into this territory frequently, given that he insists not only on being a violent and often sadistic brawler, but often doing it within plain sight of people who are liable to call the police or remember his face. At one point, after kicking in a man's head and accidentally slicing open Spud's hand, he stands right in front of the bar and various shocked witnesses and demands that Renton take at least a minute to "bring me a fukken ciggareh" before even considering leaving.
- In Antz, how does Mandible expect any work to get done once all the worker ants are drowned?
Comic Books
Western Animation
- The villains in Captain Planet And The Planeteers sometimes seemed to pollute the world for the sheer fun of it. The only one with an obvious reason was the Corrupt Corporate Executive who knew he could make money by doing it.
- Well, him and Duke Nukem (no relation), whose physical condition was such that he thrived on radiation.
- Ever walk down the street in an American city? This is Truth In Television
- And then there are the places that make the grungiest city in America look like a surgical suite.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, Admiral Zhao of the Fire Nation invades the capital of the Water Tribe; while there, it's revealed to him that there are spirits present and that harming them will have dire consequences for the world - not just the Water Tribe, the whole world (Fire Nation included). So what he does he do? He decides to kill one of the aforementioned spirits for no other reason than spite and pride. He of course dies a Karmic Death when he once again chooses spite over common sense.
- In the Grand Finale of Transformers: Beast Wars, Megatron picks up the Villain Ball by deciding to kill the entirely helpless human village before the armed Maximals, and was attacked while waiting for it to recharge. To add insult to injury somehow the attack failed, and it appeared the only ones who died were Quickstrike and Inferno.
- Transformers Animated's Wreck-Gar is highly suggestible, which makes him very insane.
- And utterly hilarious to watch. "I DARE to be stupid!" indeed.
Table Top Games
- The old World Of Darkness games had at least one faction in every playable race that was frequently chosen by players of Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid characters. These groups had a tendency towards extreme violence, madness, and generally being Darker And Edgier than the other factions of that race. Whether or not these factions were inherently Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid is debatable, depending on how awesome you believe a given faction to be.
- Vampire: Any member of the Sabbat for Stupid Evil, especially the faux-transhumanist Tzimisce. The Malkavian Clan was pretty much only ever played as Chaotic Stupid, as players went out of their way to play "wacky" insane people. One of the most notorious, a character that would only say the word "fish", led to the term "fishmalk" for any such character.
- Werewolf: The Black Spiral Dancers, and Werewolf-related entities like the Fomori.
- Mage: The Nephandi for Stupid Evil, Marauders for Chaotic Stupid. Curiously, the more popular choice over both was the Lawful Stupid Technocracy.
- Drow elves in most D&D campaign settings. Being forced to live underground, surrounded by swarms of magic-eye-beam-firing, mind-controlling, acid-spewing and other nastiness-causing beasties? Sure, why not worship an insane demon and turn your own civilization into a darwinist nightmare so you expend three-quarters of your energy fighting yourselves?
- Chronologically, it was another way around. So the reason to worship Lolth is survival, because worst foes are their own kin and she limits bloodshed to viable level.
- Justified Trope in Drowtales. They only have enough food for half of their current population to eat comfortably!
- The Dragonlance setting of D&D also had the Kender, who were halflings with an unique blend of fearlessness and a habit of
kleptomania "borrowing things", which made them the perfect excuse for Chaotic Stupid behavior in the wrong hands (so much that they were frequently considered The Scrappy of the setting).
- Warhammer 40000 has examples of this one, too.
- The forces of Chaos (appropriately enough) make some pretty questionable tactical decisions from time to time, including sacrificing hundreds of their own cultists for purely symbolic reasons (as opposed to sacrificing hundreds of cultists for perfectly practical reasons, like summoning daemons, bigger daemons, and really really big daemons to attack their opponents). In addition, infighting between various Chaos factions has spelled the ruin of more than one attack on the Imperium.
- Many of them also seem to have a tendency to kill, maim, rape and burn random people just for the hell of it. If you're very lucky, they'll do it in that order; of course, in the grim darkness of the far future, you are never that lucky.
- A particular example: Kharn the Betrayer is such a bloodthirsty, frothing Ax Crazy that even his fellow Ax Crazies don't want to get anywhere near him. This is because he has a tendency to slaughter friend and foe alike when his blood is up. At one point, when the World Eaters (Kharn's legion of Chaos Space Marines) were attacking an enemy force of Emperor's Children (another Legion of Chaos Space Marines), a blizzard so terrible even the genetically-enhanced and daemonically-powered Super Soldiers couldn't take it descended and forced both sides to retreat into shelter. In a fit of rage, Kharn burned the World Eaters' shelters to the ground and proceeded to run around in a psychotic frenzy, slaughtering anyone that came within chainsaw-axe range. The World Eaters suffered such horrendous casualties (mostly self-inflicted) that they were never again able to take the field as a unified fighting force, and are now reduced to fighting alongside other Chaos warbands as shock troops. This is represented in the tabletop game by Kharn's special rules: if you roll poorly to hit in close combat, where any other character would simply miss, Kharn instead hits someone on his own side.
- Don't forget diverting shock troops in extremely rare and strong armour, even by space marine standards, from a strategically important battle to take out an enemy propaganda station run by a dozen unarmed monks, then annihilating it from orbit while the shocktroops are still inside. Chaos commanders seem to have a collective inferiority complex or something.
- The Orks also tend to dip into Chaotic Stupid territory a lot, mostly due to their biological and psychological need to fight constantly and be generally belligerent. One particularly egregious example involved an Ork warlord with a burgeoning WAAAGH! behind him, whose fleet got caught in a temporal loop and arrived back where it started, before it actually left in the first place. The warlord proceeded to track down and kill his past self, "reasoning" that this would allow him to own two copies of his favorite gun. The time paradox and general chaos that resulted stopped the whole WAAAGH! dead in its tracks.
- Dark Eldar love torturing stuff. Technically, they do have a reason, as they do it so that an evil god their ancestors ended up creating won't eat their souls, but let's face it, they just love torturing people for fun (especially when you consider that doing stuff like that created the thing in the first place). So much so, in fact, that their vehicles are designed for swooping in, grabbing prisoners, and zooming off into the sunset at the expense of all else — including armor and crew & passenger protection, though not necessarily firepower.
- While the Monodominants are traditionally the Lawful Stupid faction of the Inquisition, the Recongregators and Istvaanians tend to find themselves in Chaotic Stupid territory from time to time. Recongregators believe that the Imperium has grown corrupt and ineffectual, and needs to be reorganized and revolutionized in order to survive. Istvaanians believe that the Imperium's greatest leaps forward have all stemmed from conflict, and actively seek to promote conflict and discord in the name of strengthening the Imperium. Both of them typically end up wreaking all sorts of havoc and generally destabilizing the Imperial system — which, bear in mind, is the only thing standing between humanity and a galaxy full of hostile aliens and daemons waiting to feast on its corpse. Needless to say, many other Inquisitors find the actions of the more extremist Recongregators and Istvaanians to be very disconcerting.
- Intentionally employed in the Paranoia XP RPG system, where all of the player characters are supposed to be stupid evil and the "plot" is just an excuse to put them all in one room while they try to out-backstab each other. Not only that, but they're all at the mercy an omnipresent lawful stupid NPC, Friend Computer, so that have to try get away with being stupid evil while acting like they're lawful stupid.
- The Skaven of Warhammer Fantasy are very much Stupid Backstab. While this serves a useful purpose in ensuring only the strong survive, this isn't saying much since Skaven take the We Have Reserves and Zerg Rush approaches; on the other hand, their tendency to turn every minor engagement into a five-way leadership battle is pretty much the sole reason apart from sheer troop inadequacy that they haven't taken over the entire friggin' world. Seriously, in one of the Gotrek And Felix novels, Thanquol could have won by page 200 if he hadn't been sending the heroes to eliminate his rivals out of fear for his position. Head, meet desk. I know you'll get along.
Video Games
Live Action TV
- The Master of Doctor Who seems to want to take over the universe for the fun of it. In "Logopolis," he not only accidentally kills octillions of people, he draws attention to himself by randomly killing a policeman and The Doctor's companion's aunt. This is caused by extreme Flanderization he went through soon after his first appearances.
- The Rani calls him on this: she just wants to rule one planet, beneficently if she can get away with it—-but what are you going to do with the Whole Universe?
- The new series attempts to rectify this by making the destruction of his homeworld and his species in the Time War the motivation to take over the universe, and giving him a Freudian Excuse as motivation for his more psychotic actions. Its success is debatable. Although he still enjoys killing lots of people just for the hell of it.
- An alternative interpretation is that he was driven insane as a child by looking into the eye of harmony.
- Sylar and Elle of Heroes. Elle is bored on their first
mission date and decides it would be fun to kill the rental car guy... Sylar gets one too after killing four people in broad daylight and then not even trying to hide all that blood.
Web Comics
- Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater, who puts the "sociopath" back into Heroic Sociopath - and removes the "heroic" for good measure. His apparent solution to every problem is "kill everyone, starting with the people I hate", and it seems the only reason he hasn't put this plan into action is that he doesn't know where to start.
- He also has a flowchart.
- Kary is also this, considering she blows up her own minions just for fun and to prove that she is evil. Later, she blames the Light Warriors for killing her minions despite admitting that it was all her fault.
- Subverted in the RPGamer comic Knights Of The Dinner Table, where player Sara Felton becomes evil because of a cursed object, but acts, as she points out, definitely not Chaotic Stupid. And she likes it.
- In another Knights Of The Dinner Table strip, though, the characters run afoul of the god Thor; when Thor appears to avenge the insults to his name (guess who insulted him), Bob and Dave and Brian immediately start attacking him despite BA (the Game Master) pointing out that Thor is impervious to all mortal weapons, has infinite hitpoints, etc. Sara immediately has her character run away, and convinces Brian to have his character do the same. Bob's and Dave's character die shortly afterwards, with Bob and Dave bitterly complaining that they don't understand why. So Yeah. Chaotic Stupid.
- Then again, Bob and Dave have a corner on Stupid Whatever, with Dave slightly dumber, and Bob meaner...they probably thought that Thor was a type of gazebo.
- Richard the Warlock in the webcomic Looking For Group. He is utterly baffled when others object to his proposals for torture and carnage. Just check out this video clip...
- Compared to Black Mage and Richard, Heroic Sociopath Belkar Bitterleaf from Order Of The Stick is a mild example. He is willing to, after deliberation, save a paladin's life... for a chance to kill wantonly once more. Of course, compared to the first two, the Marquis de Sade seems mild.
- However, he's recently had a vision/hallucination of Lord Shojo which has seemingly convinced him to avoid this: namely that if he's a bit more selective with his carnage and act as if he's playing by everyone else's rules he can get people to stop hating him and possibly even get them to do what he wants.
- The "fake" Character Development is actually real development because it turned him from stupid evil into actual chaotic evil. Sure, he's still a homicidal maniac but now he has the restraint to not kill people so blatantly as to ruin the chance to kill even more people later. After all, Character Development isn't necessarily for the better.
- Belkar is literally evil because he's unempathetic- when Vaarsuvius cast a wisdom-boosting spell on him, he swore off evil and needless killing. Then V dismissed the spell and he ran off to kill things.
- Elan sometimes veers off into a rare example of Chaotic Good Stupid, with actions such as trying to persuade the gods to add a hand puppet to their pantheon. Although it's hard to tell if this is overplaying the chaotic part of his alignment, or just being a Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Sailor Nothing does a great Lampshade Hanging on Chaotic Stupid with the Yamiko, as lone-Punch Clock Villain-in-a-race-of-dog-raping-psychos General Cobalt finds out the hard way...
- In Dresden Codak, Dmitri plays a Stupid Evil "Dark Kantian" as a parody of Kant's Lawful Stupid philosophy.
Truth In Television
- Mentioning the Divine Marquis, the Real Life Francoise Donatien de Sade was more Chaotic Stupid than Stupid Evil: his view was that most of the evils in the world came out of the conflict between personal desire and social acceptability, and that the best thing for everybody's mental health would be for everyone to have the freedom do whatever they wanted with (or to) each other at any time. He then decided that he would illustrate such freedoms personally by performing the most outrageous sexual acts that came to mind (not just sadism, either, though it was what he was best known for), or writing about fictional characters doing so whenever he couldn't himself.
- Arguable. Most of de Sade's writings were satiric exaggerations of various personality archetypes, deliberately intended to shock and horrify. In his private letters he demonstrated a very different character, for example speaking for women's rights more than a century before it became fashionable. His sexual tastes included bisexuality and sadomasochism (he enjoyed being at both ends of the whip), but he never committed atrocities even near to those he wrote about.
- This troper once had a roommate once who was a bit De Sade in his philosophies. He'd repeatedly talk about scenes of violence he'd personally witnessed and how awesome they were and then be confused when everyone else got uncomfortable; then, when he'd follow up with dead baby jokes, he'd get even more confused when no one wanted to talk to him at all anymore. He also, apparently, expressed that it was a fantasy of his that walking up to people in the street and punching them at random was socially acceptable, apparently unaware that A)like most such fantasies, people would be perfectly open to punch him as well as vice versa, and B)it once was okay to do exactly that, but everyone eventually realized that getting punched sucks and they made rules about it so it would stop happening. A friend once described him as "making an effort to be socially unacceptable, then getting angry when society doesn't accept him."
- Real Life example: teenage Satanist-wannabes who are in it to scare their parents/classmates/teachers and (potentially) get laid.
Close Truth In Television
Literature
- The Forsaken from the Wheel Of Time series pretty much ran the areas they were in charge of during the Age of Legend into the ground because the only thing they were capable of doing was fighting. Asmodean, a relatively weak Aes Sedai, was made one of them because he only did things like kill all of his musical rivals, instead of feeding everyone to trollocs. When they were released from their prison they didn't do much better. Most of the times they are seen holding the Idiot Ball are because they don't seem to understand that they can hold off on being evil for one day. Rahvin allows Morgase to escape because he's too busy brainwashing people so he can have sex with them, and Sammael does such a poor job running Illian that the nobles hand the country to Rand as soon as he kills Sammael.
- And all the less important Darkfriends (anyone who pledges himself to serve the Ultimate Evil) are even stupider. They spend slightly less time committing evil than their Forsaken masters, but only because they're too busy dying like flies. If they're not being ordered off into suicide missions or being executed for failing other impossible tasks, they're being stabbed in the back by their rivals or casually tortured and killed just for being in the wrong place when somebody important has a temper tantrum. And to add to the Stupid Evil of it, they all earnestly believe that they'll get the immortality and infinite power they were promised even though the Ultimate Evil hasn't given that to anyone in over three thousand years.
- There are implications that they were picked by the Dark one *precisely* for being people with huge issues. Being a manifestation of Pure Evil it doesn't seem like he has conventional motivations in mind really.
- Draag, the Dark Paladin in Game Night by Jonny Nexus plays Stupid Evil to the hilt, as his answer to nearly every problem is either A. Pull out his evil sword DeathSinger and stab it or B. Pull out his evil sword DeathSinger and torch it. The opening chapter has the GM/God of the world having to rewind time several times as Draag first stabs a gatekeeper before he can tell them the riddle they need to solve to get past, and then stabs the gatekeeper after he delivers the riddle, but before they can answer. Then, once they do solve the riddle, he kills the gatekeeper anyway.
- Although most of the time she's merely a more aggressive force for good if for no other reason than sheer contrariness against people who just so happen to be the antagonists of the book, Agnes Nitt's alternate personality Perdita can occasionally be a little bit Chaotic Stupid. In one book it mentions that Perdita believes rules, by virtue of being rules, are oppressive and stupid and have no place in a perfect world, and table manners, for example, are merely there to stop interesting and smart people (read: her) from having fun, while Agnes takes the view that rules are often there for a reason and is, to continue the example, philosophically against being hit by other peoples' cabbage.
Web Original
- This sometimes pops up in Survival Of The Fittest with non-players who refuse to attack anyone under any circumstances (at least one person has died because they refused to defend themselves) or with players who attack everything in sight no matter what it is, and disregarding whether they can even win the fight or if they'll benefit more from an alliance or at least not picking a fight.
- 1,250 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG, Things Mr. Welch can no longer do in an RPG 501-1000, ...1001-1250:
122. The paladin's alignment is not Lawful Anal. 651. My alignment is not Sarcastic Good. 742. Apparently Chaotic Angry and Neutral Hungry aren't real alignments either. 863. Even if there is no alignment in Traveller, giving feuding TL1 tribes TL12 weapons and putting the results on PPV is just wrong. 1059. Even if the villain is Lawful Evil, slapping a cease and desist order on him isn’t going to work.
Anime & Manga
- Lord Djibril from Gundam SEED Destiny, usually comes off as Too Dumb To Live (meaning he's stupid and evil but not Stupid Evil), but crosses over that line with the two dumbest things one could possibly do in a serious war epic:
- He entrusts one of his most powerful Gundams to a mentally-handicapped girl, and
- he attacks his own allies in a war he's losing very badly for no apparent reason.
- Hansel and Gretel, the vampire twins from Black Lagoon. After being hired to preform an assasination, they proceed to abduct and torture a bunch of random mooks for sport, and then to murder the person who hired them. Not because he was planning on betraying them, but because they felt like it. And then decide to go through with the assasination anyway, even after it's explicitly pointed out to them that they are no longer being payed. And did I mention that the person they were hired to assasinate makes a policy surrounding herself with some of the most deadly soldiers in the world, is a world-class marksmen in her own right, and is justifiably considered to be the most dangerous women currently alive? Or that they try to take her out armed only with an ax? Unsurprisingly, things don't work out too well for them.
- Though to be fair to the kids, they have one hell of a Freudian Excuse for being so completely batshit insane.
Examples of Stupid Neutral
Video Games
- Probably the best example is Neverwinter Nights and its expansions and sequel. It is damn-near impossible to keep a True Neutral alignment because there never is a neutral option to dialog, so you're acting either as a jerk (evil), a loony (chaotic), the messiah (good) or a robot (lawful), and to try to keep a balance there will make you invariably a Schizophrenic with Split-Personality Disorder (or just the later).
- It's not difficult at all. Of course, this means you have to play a completely flat character that only does mundane jobs for money
- In Fallout 3, the Impartial Mediation perk gives you 30 bonus points to the Speech skill (an extraordinary amount) as long as your Karma level is Neutral. Since, once again, Karma is a scale between good and evil, with no specifically "neutral" actions, you will probably be forced to randomly steal stuff or give to charity to maintain a balanced Karma.
Table Top Games
- This is the MO of the Rilmani of Dungeons And Dragons. They're anthropomorphic personifications of the Balance, and will take steps to ensure that balance.
- Should be pointed out that the Rilmani are literally MADE out of neutrality, physical embodiment of Balance as a platonic concept. This tends to screw over most exemplars in the sanity department (Modrons are Lawful Stupid, Slaadi Chaotic Stupid, it seems to get less stupid with the celestials and fiends though)
- Early editions of the game strongly suggested that this is how druids (who were always supposed to be true neutral) should behave, basically stepping in to support whichever side is weakest in any given situation. 3rd edition relaxed things a bit by requiring druids to be only partially neutral, implied that their previous methods (flip-flopping one's agenda and allegiances) fostered chaos more than anything, and suggested that true neutrality was more about detaching oneself from concepts of ethics and morality than about maintaining an arbitrary balance.
- Mordenkainen the Mage is the original incarnation of this trope. He bizarrely believed that the forces of good, evil, law and chaos would all screw the world up if they were unquestioned, so he ensures that no side is ever more powerful than its counterpart.
- Nix from Queen'sBlade isn't the stupid one, rather her stave, the Funikura is essentially an unstable piece of work that can either destroy a village or kill the evil leader of said village. Needless to say, she sticks with it.
- Rounding out the Warhammer 40000 Inquisition examples: the Amalathian faction are the ultimate conservatives, believing that the Imperium as it currently exists is the Emperor's divine work, and that mere mortals have no right to interfere with His divine plan. As such, the Amalathians fight to preserve the Imperium in its current state, despite all its lumps and imperfections. At their most extreme, the Amalathians will even fight to keep corrupt or ineffectual leaders in power, simply to avoid the inevitable shakeup associated with replacing those leaders, even in the face of an ensuing crisis that requires effective leadership. As you can imagine, Amalathians and Recongregators don't get along very well.
Web Comics
- The Archdruid in Dungeon Crawl Inc. He's an evil antagonist (despite technically being neutral at this point) specifically because...good is somehow too prevalent in the world.
Western Animation
- The Neutral Planet from Futurama - "Can we trust him?" "I don't know, but my gut says 'maybe'." and "Live Free or Don't"
- "If I die, tell my wife 'Hello'."
- At least with villains, you know where they stand.
- Equinox, a vigilante on Batman The Brave And The Bold. He tries to kill Gorilla Grodd for his crimes, but into order to "maintain the balance," he tries to kill the Question at the same time.
- Based off of Libra, from the main DC Universe, who also "maintains the balance," but what that translates to is "giving the baddies some wins."
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