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Made of Evil
"Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs."
Supreme Being, Time Bandits

The bad guys aren't just bad, they are Bad! The concentrated, physical manifestation of it to be precise.

Somehow, the villain's physical body is made up of a tangible form of Evil. If you cut them, they will "bleed" Evil, and severed limbs or cuts to the torso won't reveal skin, muscle, bone and organs but a uniform dark material. These villains are, unsurprisingly, not human; or at least, not anymore. They may be an Anthropomorphic Personification of Evil, a God of Evil that is made up of their portfolio rather than be an organic/'divine' being in control of it, a Pure Energy Being made of The Dark Side, or the Ultimate Evil. Normal humans can become Made Of Evil if they spend years being really evil and get dosed with Phlebotinum. An everyday good person may have the darkness in their heart forcibly ejected to make The Heartless, or an Enemy Without. Commonly, they are Emotion Eaters who feed on negative emotions, perhaps even being a God of Evil who runs off of / is the source of these negative emotions. If the villain is the personification of any single certain aspect of evil, he or she is an Embodiment of Vice.

When we say "Evil", we don't just mean "Made of immorality", but just about any not-nice emotion, concept, and elemental power, such as: Darkness, Death, Decay, Hate, Sin, and Unholiness. This makes them very similar to physical ghosts; they form a kind of "negative energy" Ectoplasm (of evil) that is nonetheless completely tangible and is completely, indivisibly evil to its smallest fermion (of evil). Unlike physical ghosts, this "evil" tends to remain tangible until (and sometimes after) the Made Of Evil being is killed. Understandably, because Good Hurts Evil, expect them to be highly vulnerable to Depleted Phlebotinum Shells, scream "It Burns!" and suffer Glamour Failure in the face of holy relics, and at times have a Weaksauce Weakness to The Power of Love and The Power of Friendship... unless they are so evil they create a Cross Melting Aura, of course.

When killed, they usually "decompose" into a black, oily substance (of evil) or thick black smoke (of evil) before fading away. If they were a Walking Wasteland (of evil), expect there to be No Ontological Inertia as flowers spring and the world lights up at their death; though the specific spot they die or are interred will become a cursed, haunted place. That said, killing them is often easier said than done, since they're the Evil equivalent of Jello, they don't have any vital organs (of evil) to hit, and can sometimes even regenerate From a Single Cell (of evil). Characters are strongly advised that even the ashes of Evil are not a toy, because touching, eating, drinking, or wearing anything made from pure evil will not end well. May be an example of As Long as There Is Evil.

Compare and contrast For the Evulz, which is a reason a villain gives for doing evil, typically phrased as "because I can" and "because I enjoyed it". This differs from Made Of Evil because they are not actually compelled to do evil because they are a physical manifestation of it, but because they want to.

The Good Counterpart is Made of Good.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Berserk: The Idea of Evil is the reason the Berserk universe is such a crappy place to live: as long as people believe something is responsible for the evil, it exists.
  • Depending on interpretation, the Minotaur in Tekkon Kinkreet embodies Black's inner darkness.
  • The mazoku in Slayers are beings of pure chaos that, as in the trope, feed on negative emotion, power black magic, and want to see the world returned to the Sea of Chaos. Fantasy RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons are an admitted influence on the setting, so it's possible they draw inspiration from that game's demons, etc.
  • In Bakugan, Mag Mel's armor is revealed to be this. Code Eve created it from the evil of former Big Bad Emperor Barodius and sealed him inside of it.
  • Janemba from Dragon Ball is made out of all the evil that was sucked out of the residents of Hell in order to purify their souls.
  • In Inu Yasha: The Shikon Jewel is a balance between this and Made of Good — hundreds of demon souls and one priestess soul are sealed within it.

    Comicbooks 
  • The Guardians of the Universe (masters of the Green Lantern Corps) expelled all the evil from themselves in a similar manner to the race that created Armus in the Star Trek example below. Eventually, it took over the body of the guy who trained three different Golden Age heroes.
  • Mephisto once took an interest in Christ's Crown, New York, a horrible place with a dark and bloody history. Mephisto gathered power from the accumulated evil in Christ's Crown and used it to create his "son" Blackheart.
  • Super Sonic in Sonic The Comic he is made of the pure evil Chaos Energy of the Chaos Emeralds.

    Films — Animated 
  • Heavy Metal had the Loc-Nar as a connecting theme between stories. It could (at will? only sometimes?*) kill on touch, reanimate the dead, and cause volcanoes to erupt... in addition to tormenting teenage girls.
    Loc-Nar: Look at me. I am the sum of all evils.
    *The first rule of the Loc-Nar is never touch it while it is glowing.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. When he appears at the end of the movie, he is literally MADE of Jenova cells. He even bleeds it when cut. And when Cloud defeats him the excess Jenova cells making him up discorporate, leaving a beaten Kadaj behind.
  • The Phantom Toll Booth The Movie has the Demons Of Ignorance combining into a blue demonic chimera of all the worst evils known to man.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 'Mr. Shadow' in The Fifth Element is a moon composed of negative emotion.
  • Time Bandits by Terry Gilliam has Evil as the main antagonist. Once destroyed, a single piece/rock of him is overlooked in the cleanup, when Kevin's parents pick it up (after he warns them not to) they get vaporized.
  • In the 1980s Flash Gordon movie, the henchwoman General Kala's corpse visibly deflates and smokes as it turns into an oil spill.
  • Azrael in Dogma has his chest smashed in to reveal a chewy centre of seething black ichor. Of course, he is a demon, so it kinda makes sense...
  • The Neverending Story: The Nothing is made up of children's losing of imagination and unwillingness to believe in Fairy Tales (at least in the film version).
  • Halloween's Dr Loomis believes Michael Myers is this. It would explain his ability to come back from each increasingly over-the-top death.
    "I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong ... I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil."
  • The 'Mathmos' in the movie Barbarella is an seething psychedelic lake of slimy evil beneath the city Sogo.
  • The "mood slime" in Ghostbusters II is composed of negative human emotion. However, the fact that it feeds off emotion allows the Busters to convert several batches of the stuff into positive mood slime that is Made of Good.
  • Palpatine from Star Wars. Word Of God is that Satan was one of his inspirations, and he is completely unrepentantly evil. He gets even worse in the EU, and was apparently born evil.

    Literature 
  • In The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien explains that Morgoth is not only the God of Evil, but is responsible for diffusing his essence into all parts of the physical world, thereby giving an elemental evil spin to all particles of matter and creating the problem of, well, evil. By weakening himself and corrupting ordinary matter to serve his purposes, "all of Middle Earth itself is Morgoth's Ring". Fortunately, his own body is not Made of Evil he is merely trapped in it.
  • The titular mini-black-hole in Angelmass balances the 'angel' particles it emits by becoming demonic itself.
  • The Big Bads in The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were living avatars of evil who grew stronger in the presence of despair, rage and so forth. "I grow fat on your fear" isn't just a metaphor with them.
  • The Black Thing in A Wrinkle in Time is declared to be Evil, the Powers of Darkness.
  • The Way Of Kings: Although we don't have much information about them, the monsters that Dalinar confronts in one of his visions of the past bleed black smoke when wounded and dissolve once dead. They certainly sound like they're made of evil.
  • The Shadows in the Firebird Trilogy gain their name from their appearance (when not possessing a human): they are dark, nearly invisible, representing the fact that they are evil given form. Unlike many other forms of this, they are insubstantial and thus unkillable, although they can be kept at bay by prayer.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Big Bad of Lost is said to be this. One character describes him as "evil incarnate."
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Storyteller":
    Andrew Wells: This whole thing... is being orchestrated by something called "The First." It's made up of all the evil in the whole world.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Armus, the eponymous skin in "Skin of Evil", is a being made up of an entire civilization's discarded negative thoughts and emotions. He killed Tasha Yar and was one of the few beings that the emotionless android Data felt should be destroyed without question.
  • Apparently just about every enemy the Power Rangers used to fight was this trope. When purified of evil at the end of the sixth season, most simply crumbled to dust.
    • Except Rita and Zed, who turned into a yuppie couple.
    • And Divatox.
  • Subverted in Charmed. For the first four seasons, the Big Bad behind just about every evil being the Charmed Ones went up against was called The Source Of All Evil. Four years of Villain Decay later, however, and it turns out that "Source Of All Evil" is really just a title, and anyone in charge of the demonic underworld gets to call themselves that. The actual Source isn't the demon leader in question, but rather an amorphous force that gets inherited by whoever is currently in charge of the Underworld at the time, and gradually takes them over from the inside out.

    Tabletop RP Gs 
  • In Dungeons & Dragons 2nd and 3rd editions, demons and the like are made of evil, and angels are made of good. Devils are also made partially of law, while demons are made partially of chaos. Similarly, slaadi are made of pure Chaotic Neutral and modrons of pure Lawful Neutral, a concept even more nebulous than being made of good or evil. Basically, any native of the Outer Planes is a physical embodiment of the ethical and moral principles they represent, given fleshy form. Anyways, this means fallen angels and risen demons still count as their original alignments for spell effects and Detect Evil.
    • In 3rd edition, any being with a subtype of 'evil' consisted in part of evil. Most of them were fiends (IE, outsiders with the evil subtype), which covers demons and the like, but there were exceptions.
  • Demons in Pathfinder are born from the sins of evil souls, in contrast to the Devils, which is what those evil souls become when they die.
  • The Warp in Warhammer 40K is made of all the emotions in the galaxy good and bad, but there's more bad than good. The Chaos gods have "good" traits that have been warped and amplified so much that to human sensibilities they become evil. For instance, Nurgle is a Friend to All Living Things— heavy emphasis on the ALL; Papa Nurgle loves his cute little parasites and pathogens, yes he does!

    Videogames 
  • The Persona 2 version of Nyarlathotep is an Eldritch Abomination literally born of Humanity's collective evil, absorbing every evil ("evil" defined as "with the intent of causing any form of harm to anyone, even yourself") act, thought and desire. As Long as There Is Evil, he is an undefeatable mass of concentrated madness, woe, and discord, eternally hungering for more power.
    • In the second game, there is also a toxic liquid named Kegare - the ancient Japanese word for "sin" or "filth", extracted by the New World Order from their followers in their seminars. Supposedly the process "purifies" the attendees. It is literally concentrated evil.
  • The Soulless God Oumagatsu in Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is a monstruous battleship/Evangelion hybrid designed to feed upon the rage, fear and hate of the entire Capital. Later on, a single soul full of hate would prove enough to power the machine.
  • The elementals in MARDEK RPG: Chapter 3 include a Dark version. Due to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, these are actually the least powerful elementals you encounter. The bestiary says that they don't attack so much as leak energy when disrupted, and that if they sit around too long they may crystallize and become Onyxes.
  • In Mother, Giygas was an alien with psychic powers and a particularly sharp hatred of humanity. By the time Earthbound rolls around though, his hatred and power has grown to such a degree that it literally destroys his physical body and turns him into a floating, indistinct entity of pure evil.
  • Final Fantasy V gives us X-Death/Exdeath/Exodus/whatever they're calling him this week. He's what happens when one demon too many is sealed within a tree and said tree somehow transforms into an ambulatory would-be world conqueror.
  • Final Fantasy IV gives us another example: "I am Zeromus... I... AM... THE HATRED!"
  • In Ōkami, every villain disperses into a dark, malevolent cloud (with glowing evil eyes) once beaten, and flows back to the Final Boss. Which is pretty fitting, considering Yami is the source of all Evil/Darkness in the setting. Interestingly, one sub-boss, Red Helm, has it in his backstory as having spontaneously sprung from the spilled blood of Orochi, a bigger bad.
  • As is repeatedly stated in Kingdom Hearts, the Heartless are really just walking bags of malevolence without any true minds of their own.
    • Vanitas fits this even better than the Heartless. He's literally made from Darkness.
  • Dark Chips and Nebula Gray from Mega Man Battle Network are made entirely of negative emotions somehow encoded as data.
  • The Dark Star and Dark Bowser in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.
  • The "Dark Presence" in Alan Wake qualifies for this; it's mysterious, almost unknowable, and has to attach itself to human shapes in order to be percieved at all.
  • Most of the Dark Gaia creatures in Sonic Unleashed seem to qualify. They're an ancient evil that seems to be the embodiment of negative emotion, causing sadness and anger everywhere, and when defeated, they dissolve into some kind of black-purple stuff and disappear. The exception are creatures possessed by Dark Gaia, such as The Dark Gaia Phoenix and Sonic himself, as they had a physical body to begin with.
  • It's not certain how much of Azazel from Tekken is tangible hatred and malice, but it's definitely the vast majority of its form, seeing how inciting worldwide strife and horror was Jin's desperate gambit to give Azazel enough of a physical form to become killable.
  • The monsters of Silent Hill are literally physical manifestations of different aspects of negative emotions (or events) created by the town itself, or Alessa, while she was still around.
  • Noob Saibot from Mortal Kombat is the leftovers of when the first Sub-Zero (from the original game and Mythologies) died and had his soul hurled into the Netherrealm, turning him into a wraith. His whole existence is entirely defined by hatred and scheming, as anything honorable that the original Sub-Zero might have had (which wasn't much to begin with) was purged.
  • M. Bison from Street Fighter himself isn't really Made of Evil but the power he uses (Psycho Power) is described as being pure negativity as energy. Negative thoughts, emotions, and general hatred manifests itself as this force.
  • The protagonist of Prototype is composed entirely of biomass infused with the Blacklight virus. It's the main reason he can take so much punishment: he has no bones to break or organs to rupture. Taken even further when it's revealed that he is the Blacklight virus.
  • Whenever "Sephiroth" from Final Fantasy VII shows up in the game before the Final Battle, it's actually a clone made of JENOVA cells, which is as close to being Made Of Evil as one can get in the setting. The actual Sephiroth is also made entirely of JENOVA cells when he appears near the end, since his original mostly (he was infused with JENOVA cells as a fetus) human body was destroyed when he fell into the Lifestream in the backstory.
  • In Ocarina of Time, the phantom boss of the Shadow Temple appears to be a dark energetic shadow, both when it first appears and when it's killed.
  • All of the Prime Evils and the Lesser Evils of Diablo. No exceptions! Hell, the Big Bad himself became the game's equivalent to Satan.
  • The Lords of Shadow in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. While their bodies started out physically human, they are being animated by the evil their original selves left behind when they ascended to Heaven. Having pure evil in place of a true soul seems to have had a detrimental effect on their bodies as well — only one of them seems to be able to maintain a fully human-looking disguise and all three have monstrous true forms.
  • The dragons in Dragon Valor are the evil in the world, and if a human has enough evil in his heart, he will turn into a dragon.
  • In Both "Dark Cloud" games the Big Bads have this feature and were created by The hate of a particular person due to war and Discrimination.
  • The Nasuverse has an odd example with its incarnation of Angra Mainyu. He was originally a normal guy whose fellow villagers wanted evil to have a physical form they could pin blame on, and thus sacrificed him and began treating him as a God of Evil. Thus he's Made of Evil without actually being evil. When someone summoned him as "Avenger" in the Third Holy Grail War, his death and subsequent reabsorption by the Grail caused it begin granting the wish he embodied, resulting in its corrupted state during the events of Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero. Fate Hollow Ataraxia actually features Avenger fighting his own physical manifestation.
  • In World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, the Sha fit this to a T. They are manifestations of negative emotion found in various places around the continent of Pandaria.
    • The Ashbringer (an incredibly powerful holy sword) was created from a crystal that was originally so evil that merely touching it turned a paladin's hand into a withered husk.
    • Likewise Saronite is essientially this as it's the hardened blood of Yogg-Saron.
  • The main antagonist of the Soulcalibur series is not a man but rather a spirit of the cursed weapon Soul Edge. After being taken into battle time and again, all the bloodshed imbued what was a normal sword with a wicked, sentient spirit that would corrupt anyone who touched it into becoming a soul-draining slave for the sword. The sword's spirit (which is currently bound to a suit of armor so it may exist in reality) is Made of Evil.

    Web Originals 

    Webcomics 
  • Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater fits this description. A conversation between him and the external physical manifestation of everything evil he has ever done went something like this:
    Manifestation: Hey, here's a question. I feel a complete contempt for everything and the overriding need to burn the world. Is that normal?
    Black Mage: Are you filled with regret that, eventually, there won't be more world to burn?
    Manifestation: In the back, yeah.
    Black Mage: That sounds like my atrocities all right. Perfectly normal.
  • In The Adventures of Shan Shan, Karmavores are concentrated Karma — which is contrasted with virtue.
  • In The Order of the Stick, the Snarl is composed of "deific frustration and rage".

    Western Animation 


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