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You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his Red Right Hand.
On a gathering storm Comes a tall handsome man In a dusty black coat with a red right hand.
There are heroes and then there are villains. And the audience needs to know which is which, even before anyone gets to Kick The Dog or Pet The Dog or does anything involving the dog. The hero, in order to be properly heroic, will be sickeningly handsome. The villain may be good-looking as well, but if they are, they will often have some type of physical defect or tip-off to his monstrous nature.
Often, the defect will be vaguely Satanic. Fritz Lang was fond of these, as is the James Bond franchise. Kids' cartoons usually use slightly off-white eyes and teeth in their villains, presumably doubling as a less Anvilicious reminder for kids to brush. Supernatural critters often have specific forms of Glamour Failure inherent in their evil nature, think Fangs Are Evil and Femme Fatalons, which they often use to intimidate enemies and prey.
Related to Good Scars Evil Scars, Scary Shiny Glasses and Mind Control Eyes. If this appearance also comes with labored breathing or a cough, it's Vader Breath. Of course, you should be more scared if you don't see the villain at all. A White Haired Pretty Boy and an Evil Albino will typically fall under this category. Contrast The Grotesque, whose outer deformity hides an inner goodness, although Grotesques may occasionally be given a Red Right Hand, usually symbolic of their struggle against inner evil or madness. May be justified with depicting the villain as having become evil because of being bullied or mocked for the deformity in question. (the best known example of this is probably Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon)
Interestingly, the phrase "red right hand" originally comes from Paradise Lost, and actually refers to God's vengeful hand (the devil Belial uses it this way in Book II).
Many evil shapeshifters have one as well, a telltale sign that they aren't who they say they are. Of course, the scariest and most effective shapeshifters and puppet masters are the ones that avoid this trope.
In heraldry, a red right hand denotes either the province of Ulster or a baronet's status , although that probably has no direct connection to this trope. Nobody likes baronets, after all.
Not to be confused with a Red Right Ankle. For the more blatant examples, see Obviously Evil.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Ralph Werec in Soukou No Strain is a creepy albino with a scar across his eye, which turns pink when he's angry. However, when he was sane, his skin was less pale, his hair was blond and more meticulously hair-gelled, and he didn't have the scar.
- The Noah from D.Gray-Man look normal in human form. In Noah form, they have a line of cross-shaped marks across their foreheads.
- While only Allen can see it, all Akuma are powered by a bound human soul protruding from their bodies.
- Um. Played with with Allen, whose left arm is twisted and red, with a big cross on the back of his hand and occasionally a will of its own. His parents abandoned him because it was so freaky. Subverted, though, in that not only is he a wonderful person, the scary arm is actually a holy weapon for destroying Akuma.
- Scar of Full Metal Alchemist has a Tattooed Right Hand, which was a sign of his early evilness.
- The Homunculi all have their Ouroboros tattoos, as well.
- Haji of Blood+ is a weird example, in that he's both a good guy and the only chevalier (read: vampire spawn) in the series to constantly maintain a human appearance, while simultaneously being the only one to also constantly retain a sign of his inhumanity (which, incidentally, is a red claw in place of his right hand). His true form is also pretty tame compared to the other chevaliers shown; while they maintain a flawless human appearance until they morph into horrible batlike monstrosities, Haji's is basically him with bat wings growing out of his back.
- In Hellsing the evil Nazi Doctor known only as the Doctor has a sixth finger. However, it's not very noticeable unless you pay much attention to his hands.
- Played with when Seras gains her shadow-arm.
- Though they aren't necessarily evil, the host of the tailed beast in Naruto all have some sort of physical traits of the beast. Naruto has the whisker marks on his face (which get bigger as he used the Kyuubi's power), Gaara had the black rings around his eyes, the host of the two-tailed cat has cat-like eyes, and Killer Bee has two marks in the shape of ox horns on his left cheek.
- The left hand of the titular character of Hell Teacher Nube is actually a sealed Oni, Baki, which replaces the left hand he lost fighting said Oni. Most of the time, it looks like his regular hand wearing a black leather glove; when his students are threatened by spectral horrors, he will reveal it as a monstrously large, dark red hand with visible tendons and black claws. However, he constantly seeks a way to seal it permanently, as only the influence of his childhood teacher prevents the Oni from taking over his entire body.
- Most of the villains in Berserk have something of the sort, even if they don't start as demons. Father Mozgus, for example, has an unnaturally flat face (revealed to be the result of him slamming his face into the ground two hundred times every day during his daily prayers). Guts, having a touch of Genre Savvy, sometimes marks his enemies by looking for this sort of trait.
- Towa Kannagi from Mermaid's Saga is a White Haired Pretty Girl that always keeps her right hand heavily bandaged. What's under there isn't so much a hand as it is a mottled, pulsating claw she received after drinking mermaid's blood. The constant physical pain it leaves her in (not to mention her forced isolation because of it) has left her more than a little deranged.
- Inu Yasha has Naraku, whose incarnations are marked by a spider-shaped scar on the back.
- Red Left Hand in the case of Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh GX.
- Ryo Takatsuki of Project ARMS has a literal Red Right Hand, which is a nanite-based AI prosthetic known as the Jabberwock. When the hand starts spreading over the rest of the body, run...now.
- Kallen Kouzuki in Code Geass has the Guren, a Knightmare with a silver right arm that blows up enemies with red-glowing microwave radiation. Like the Blood+ example, however, Kallen is essentially good even though she's on the "terrorist" side of the war.
- In Darker Than Black, it's fairly obvious that we shouldn't trust Wei or Maki, even though a big deal isn't made about it. More explicitly, the Red Eyes Take Warning effect that accompanies a contractor using their powers is definitely a bad sign.
- A villain with a literal Red Right Hand (though it's far from the only characteristic that identifies him as evil) is Devimon, the first Big Bad of Digimon Adventure.
- You Higuri's manga Cantarella features a possessed Cesare Borgia with a color-vague demonic arm, which eventually had to be lopped off to stop him from becoming an avatar of Satan. Mind you, while the explanation is textbook Red Right Hand, the arm subplot seems to have been included entirely so that Cesare's faithful servant had an excuse to tie him to the bed.
Comic Books
- Satan as portrayed in The Sandman had an aura of Grecian beauty, but his hair kept forming little horn-shapes. His resemblance to David Bowie upped the creepiness level yet further.
- The Sandman featured another character, the nightmare called The Corinthian, who had to hide his eyes behind opaque sunglasses when he walked among humans, because instead of eyes he had two tiny mouths with actual teeth, which he used to eat the eyes of his victims to learn anything they had seen.
- That was secondary most of the time. Usually he just did it because he wanted to. He had a special preference for male eyes.
- Hellboy actually has a gigantic red right hand made out of stone, called the "Right Hand of Doom", which not only symbolizes his destiny as a force of evil, but is actually evil independent of Hellboy — it's supposed to free the Dragon, Ogdru Jahad, and set off Armageddon, whether or not its bearer likes the idea. Hellboy himself is certainly not a villain, but he does have to fight the evil within himself.
- He also has a dusty black-ish coat. This editor heard somewhere that Hellboy's appearance and character are in part inspired by the song.
- The Hellboy film even used a cover of the Nick Cave song quoted above in the soundtrack.
- One Legend Of Zelda comic book has Link's hand turn red when he takes the Triforce of Power. Sure enough, he soon discovers that With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
- In the Dick Tracy strips, the most famous enemies are the grotesque ones and their hideousness reflects the fact that almost all of them are unrepentant murderous scum.
- Herr Starr, the Big Bad of Garth Ennis' Preacher, starts with a nonfunctional right eye and five scar lines around it. As the series goes on, the "redness" only increases: He gets his left ear shot off, a nasty (and phallic) line is cut into his scalp, he loses his right lower leg to cannibals and his penis gets bitten off by a dog. Crosses The Line Twice when he says "My cock is in the bitch's mouth. And not in a good way."
- Batman's rogue's gallery has three big examples of this. The Joker is often depicted with a permanent freaky grin on his chalk white face, The Penguin has a distinctly birdlike appearance (sometimes including flippers for hands), and Two-Face has half of his face horribly scarred by acid.
- The French comic book Le vagabond des limbes once featured this - Axle, the hero, spends most of the series looking for Chimeer, a mysterious woman that is obviously in love with him, and upon failure to have God himself locate her Axle puts him to the task of creating her. The resulting bloody pile of randomly fused red flesh seems to be the source of the hero's truly memorable horrified stare... but no! There is the unmistakable arm and voice of Chimeer coming out of it, and her arm is the only thing not red and horrible! This is obviously a subversion as the newly created "Chimeer" is genuinely in love with Axle and only means well...
- Superman: Yes, Lex Luthor, yes, mechanical right hand. Ironically enough, from his kryponite ring (of hate). Also, Bald Of Evil.
- In X-men Reverend Stryker finds the remains of a Sentinel from the future and uses the robot's glowing PINK hand as a glove and an apparent weapon. He dies before he gets to use it. Just goes to show you need to get a real red hand. No one respects you with a pink one.
- DC Comics' Heroic Fantasy hero Claw the Unconquered had a literal demonic hand, hidden under a red glove to reduced its evil influence on him.
- Dr. Doom, whose face is so horribly scarred that is never shown.
- Ghost Rider, who has a skull on fire to show what a Badass he is.
- Conan's ally Fafnir Hellhand twice lost his arm, and twice had it replaced with a demonic substitute that had a will of its own.
- Watchmen. Former stage magician turned criminal mastermind Moloch has pointed, satanic ears.
- Hideaki's right hand man from Silent Dragon has a pair of cybernetic arms that are designed to look reptilian and dragonlike.
- The pirate-turned-Imperial officer who caused the deaths of Wedge Antilles' parents, Loka Hask, had a Corellian limpet◊, basically a sort of eyeless octopus, latch on to his face◊ when Wedge blew up his ship. He never has it removed, and it just sits there covering one eye and ear◊, appendages going into his nose and mouth◊. Even if it had devoured a good amount of his face, you'd think he'd just have it cybernetically rebuilt, but no. No one ever mentions it. It's just there as a visual aid to his Complete Monster status.
- Delak Krennel, who later featured in the novels, had a literal prosthetic right hand that glowed red. Card Carrying Villain to the core.
- Captain Semtin has obvious, creepy prosthetic eyeballs and mechanical thingies in his ears. He abandons some of his soldiers on Ryloth, which has local rules that offworlders with no influence or transportation get sold into slavery. The soldiers promptly switch sides.
Film
- As mentioned above, most James Bond villains, most notably Dr. No, who had mechanical hands, Jaws, who had metal teeth, Scaramanga's superfluous third nipple, and Le Chiffre, who bled out of his eye. (He also did that cool thing with card chips.) One of the most literal is Red Grant of From Russia With Love whose nickname besides referencing his allegiance to the Soviet Union, refers to his unpleasantly red skin tone which indicates the evil behind otherwise handsome features.
- In Devils Advocate, in which Al Pacino literally played Satan, his hair kept moving into hornlike shapes.
- Azrael, the secondary villain in Dogma, has little tiny horns.
- In the movie Mystery Men, Casanova Frankenstein has creepy fingernails.
- The bad guy in Taxi Driver had similar fingernails.
- Kevin the cannibal, from Sin City, had claws. And then there's Yellow Bastard, which should be pretty self-explanatory.
- The six-fingered Count Rugen from The Princess Bride, as well as his albino assistant. In the book, though not the film, Vizzini was a hunchback, as well.
- Doctor Strangelove. His right hand tried to strangle him and would compulsively do a Nazi salute. Unusually for this trope this is played entirely for comedy.
- Rankel, Ming's vizier in the 2007 remake of Flash Gordon, wears a long robe that obscures his legs, and does not walk, but rather glides along the floor. Additionally, and less subtly, he has a glass plate on his head which exposes his brain. In a twist from the usual, though, it seems he's going for a Heel Face Turn, or has been plotting like The Starscream
- Deformed superhero Darkman restores his left hand before his right, and spends a few scenes with the right completely devoid of skin. Shortly thereafter, he has something of a nervous breakdown.
- In the X-Men movies Mystique can look like anybody she feels like, but she can't cover up the scars Wolverine gave her in the first movie. Also, her eyes occasionally flash yellow.
- This is contrary to the comics, where she has total control over her physical appearance, but Wolverine can still identify her because she can't mask her scent.
- This rule also applied in the first movie, causing the almost-love scene in X-Men 2 to break continuity
- Not to mention the scars were in the wrong direction. (= vs ||| )
- It's more likely she put them there on purpose during that scene to mess with him. This troper doesn't remember seeing them on her in any other scene in either X2 or The Last Stand.
- In John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995), readers of the books of hack horror writer Sutter Cane go insane and develop strange physical afflictions, like a second pupil in their iris, or bleeding from their eyes. And berserk homicidal tendencies, of course. Over the time, these minor affliction develop into serious bodily mutations- including tentacles, distended jaws, and reversible joints.
- The main villain of the third Death Note live action Alternate Continuity film, L: Change The World, has a cloudy blue left eye. This editor noticed it and immediately made the correct guess that he was the Big Bad.
- 2007's Beowulf gives Grendel's Mother the power to assume the pleasing form of Angelina Jolie, but she has a prehensile and whiplike ponytail, as well as humourously high-heeled feet.
- 300 gives us the Persians. ALL the Persians, and in a very Narmful way. Beginning with portraying the Corrupt Church as full of inbred pedophiles, it moves on to things like grenade-tossing necromancers, the traitor Ephialtes, who's a hunchback, Uber Immortal and Fat Executioner, who look like those boss characters that take forever to kill and who actually manage to be Narm and pure, distilled awesome at the same time, Xerxes's kajillion wives, who include amputees and lesbians, and good ol' seven-foot tall, transvestite, terrorist Xerxes himself, who managed to piss off Iran. Apparently, nobody told Frank Miller and Zak Snyder that Persians are a real ethnic group, and probably don't take kindly to being portrayed as subhuman.
- Um, Ephialtes was a Greek, as were the Corrupt Church of inbred pedophiles.
- Darryl Revok, the villain of Scanners, has a very noticable scar on his forehead, from where he once drilled a hole in his skull to let the voices out.
- The Wicked Witch of the West and her iconic green skin.
- Dr. Rotwang from Metropolis has a mechanical right hand.
- Davros has a mechanical right hand, after the original was shot off. He can fire energy bolts from it.
- Simply put, Orlok.
Literature
- The main villain of Derek Landy's novel Skulduggery Pleasant literally has a red right hand — that is to say, there is no skin on that hand, only muscle and bone. He can use this to channel a torturous killing curse.
- The second and third books have Billy-Rae Sanguine, who has two black holes where his eyes should be. Creates a particular dissonence, since he is otherwise a fun-natured (albeit Ax Crazy) Texan. Also the Faceless Ones cause the faces of those they possess to melt in a manner which destroys all of their features, the source of their name.
- In the books, Hannibal Lecter had six fingers on his left hand (later in the series, he had the extra finger removed because it made him recognizable) and maroon eyes. Creepy.
- The title character of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch has horizontally slitted metal eyes, metal teeth and a mechanical right arm: all physical signs of his metaphysical transformation into something very other than human.
- In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, the villain Mr. Teatime is described as "quite pretty," except for his eyes: one is blank glass, while the other (considered far more disturbing) is yellow-white with a pinpoint pupil.
- T. H. White does this with Mordred in The Once And Future King, and explicitly makes a comparison to Richard III.
- Saint Dane's chilling ice-blue eyes in The Pendragon Adventure
- Dumbledore's left hand is blackened and scarred after trying to remove one of Voldemort's curses. But Dumbledore is decidedly on the good side. It does represent his moral failings, though.
- Peter Pettigrew, on the other hand - er, no pun intended - sacrifices his hand to reconstitute Voldemort. He gets a beautiful silver hand in payment. But the hand is loyal to Voldemort only and ends up killing Pettigrew when the latter is forced to stay his hand out of a debt to Harry.
- Similarly Harry Dresden in the Dresden Files has one of his hands blackened and useless for several books. It eventually gets better, more or less. What fit this trope about it, though, is that there was one area of his hand that wasn't burnt. And it was shaped like Lasciel's seal.
- Jander Sunstar, vampire hero of Vampire of the Mists novel, got permanently scarred (in some sources up to the bone) hand after wielding the holy artifact of Lathander against another vampire, Strahd Von Zarovich.
- Lord Foul's eyes look like "yellow, carious fangs", betraying his true nature. Signficant in that his usual form is all but concealed but for those eyes, and when revealed but for them he looks pretty noble.
- In the Keys to the Kingdom series, Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, and Drowned Wednesday have all been corrupted and are significantly diminished.
- And then there's the Skinless Boy, which isn't an entirely accurate name, but is close enough.
- Cinder of the Chandrian in The Name Of The Wind is a White Haired Pretty Boy with solid black eyes. He also has a nightmare-inducing grin.
- Outcast of Redwall features Swartt Sixclaw and his son Veil, who each have an extra digit on their left paw. Veil also ends up with a literal Red Right Hand, and red left hand too. He's tricked into staining them with beetroot juice in a trap set to find a poisoner which plays on his temporary Out Damned Spot mentality.
- In Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu, a young and horrifically injured girl falls victim to this trope: a withered and nigh-useless hand, missing one eye, besides the fact she's traveling with a foreigner who brought magic items from a distant land while in the company of great wizards. While this troper has not yet read anything which would be Spoilericious for our purposes, it seems clear the residents of the island of Gont have certain expectations of a Red Right Hand.
- The titular character of the Vampire Hunter D series has a parasitic creature that takes the form of an obnoxious, ugly little face in the palm of his (left) hand. The symbolism is of a hero with inner demons.
- In J. Michael Reaves Fantasy novel The Shattered World, the evil sorceress Ardatha has made a pact with a demon, with transformed her left hand into the likeness of a demon's hand, with claws and black scaly skin. The hand is the source of great magical power, supplementing Ardatha's own considerable power, and can glow with unholy fire. It's a source of both pride and terror for Ardatha.
- Emperor Jagang of the Sword Of Truth series is pretty thuggish looking anyway, but it is highly unusual and disturbing eyes which mark him out as something special and evil. They are totally gray, with no irises (though you can still tell when he is focusing on you apparently), with murky shapes moving across the gray.
- In the Deltora series, the shapeshifting Ols must always travel in pairs, and have a mark on their body that they can't get rid of. And when you get to suspecting every pair of twins (and twin-like sorts) they come across... well, maybe you don't stop to think that the pairs don't have to look anything like each other.
- A bogeyman-ish torturer in the Seventh Tower series has half of his body replaced by a living mass of shadow. Of course, this is thanks to his boss removing that half of his body in the first place to ensure his loyalty, but that's hardly a burning issue to the people whose minds he's wrecking through their nightmares.
- Sandor Clegane, the Hound from A Song Of Ice And Fire is distinguished by one side of his face being grotesquely burned. Needless to say, Sandor is not a nice man, even though he is morally conflicted.
- Sandor is the way he is partly because of his hideous burned face. Most people can't even look at him. Even though he is a sad and very bitter man who will kill anyone hid masters tell him to, Sandor has goodness in him (evidenced by his treatment of Sansa). A truer villain example is Sandor's brother Gregor, who is responsible for burning his face. Gregor is a monstrously huge guy, easily distinguishable for his size. Arguably, Gregor's behavior is also caused by the Red Right Hand; no one has ever stood up to him because of his huge strength, and he probably suffers from terrible headaches caused by gigantism.
- The book version of The Phantom Of The Opera has Erik's deformity cover the whole face, in that it makes his head look like a skull.
- Inverted in the Warhammer 40000 novel Grey Knights, where the Allking of Sophano Secundus and his retainers appear normal at first, but only reveal their Chaos mutations once the truth is guessed at.
Live Action TV
- On The League Of Gentlemen, Serial Killer brother-sister couple Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup both have piggy noses. There's also Monster Clown Papa Lazarou's blackface makeup, which is later hinted to be his actual skin colour.
- On Supernatural, both demonic possessions and shapeshifters are indistinguishable from the real thing except for occasionally discolored eyes.
Music
- Lupe Fiasco's concept characters all have these. "The Cool" has a skeletal right hand, "The Streets" has glowing dollar signs for pupils, and "The Game" has dice for eyes and breathes out crack smoke.
- The music video for Rammstein's song "Ich Will" has this - the band members perform a robbery, and most of them have a physical defect to show them to be the bad dudes - club foot, plastic hand, blind in one eye.
- Laura Branigan's "Self Control" has a character with two red hands who tempts and seduces the singer.
Mythology
- In old English myth, the barghest could look like anything, but it would always have glowing red eyes.
- In many old English folktales, the devil could take any form, but couldn't disguise his clubfoot/cloven hoof.
- The original ghouls of Arabic lore had a similar deal, only they couldn't hide their cloven hooves.
- The somewhat less evil (though still dangerous) hulder of Norse legends looked like ordinary people, except that they had little cow tails. If they became "good," their tails would drop off. (Some versions also gave them a hollow back.)
- Similarly, Kitsunes can't hide their tails, or in some variations, their tiny paws instead of feet. In some Chinese versions of the same concept, this inspired foot binding.
- In folklore of India the Rakshasa, tiger-headed demons, can masquerade as humans, but their hands always point the wrong way (palms up instead of down, and their thumbs point outwards).
- In Eastern European folklore, the werewolf will have fur growing beneath his skin in his human form, fur that becomes visible when you cut him.
- In Jewish folklore as well as some Eastern European traditions demons and vampires look like normal people except that they have bird's feet.
Tabletop Games
- The Tzimisce from the Old World Of Darkness do this to themselves using their unique ability of "Vicissitude", AKA "Fleshcrafting".
- In the same universe's Demon: The Fallen, the character Harvey Ciujilo (a.k.a. the demon Hasmed, a recurring character in the setting) has one normal eye and one eye full of blood and pus, referred to as his "Evil Eye".
- In the New World Of Darkness, Freaks and Mutants are types of Slashers, though some may lean towards The Grotesque.
- Marks of Chaos in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 start as this, and may become full-on One Winged Angel.
- Although the Soul Drinkers are good guys, many of them still have mutations from a close call with Chaos, providing a constant reminder of how close they came to damnation. Luckily, they have uses for them - Sarpedon stabs people with his eight spider-like legs, for example.
- In both Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 there is a deity called Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God. In 40K, the Avatar model is usually shown with a blood-dripping left hand.
Theater
- One of the paragons of this is Shakespeare's Richard III, who has a whole set: hunchbacked, with an atrophied arm, one leg shorter than the other, and born with all his teeth already in place. So this is Older Than Steam.
- Almost literal in Friedrich Durenmatt's The Visit, in which Claire, the villain, has an artificial hand and foot to symbolize her inhumanity.
Toys
- Bionicle has Takanuva gain one when his light is drained, his right hand having shadow powers. The mix of light and shadow in him during that period creates a lot of conflict inside.
Video Games
- The Prince/The Tall Man of Chzo Mythos has no skin on either of his hands.
- In Baldurs Gate II, the player must take a side in a mob war between a regular crime syndicate and a creepy lady with red eyes and a soft voice. Simply to drive the point home, she will only agree to meet you at the local graveyard, at midnight. Also, she has fangs. And not the nice kind.
- In an expansion to Neverwinter Nights the player can opt for the Pale Master prestige class; one of the features of this class is that after a number of levels, the player's right arm is replaced with a skeletal arm which can kill foes with just a touch.
- Nero from Devil May Cry 4 has the Devil Bringer, a red-and-blue-with-glow demonic right forearm that can project a spectral hand for powerful attacks. He attempts to hide it from others at first, but it is eventually known to all. It proves instrumental in defeating the villains and his love interest learns to look past the deformity and accept him for who he is.
- Trias the angel from Planescape: Torment looks precisely as a being of pure good should... But his wings have burned away and been left a charred, skeletal frame.
- Chiaki in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne gets one after she undergoes her Evil Makeover. See it here.
- Morphs in Fire Emblem 7 look completely human, except their pale skin and golden eyes give them away. One such character even earnestly believed herself to be human, but her appearance gave her away.
- Don't forget Sho Minamimoto having a black left hand and in his second incarnation, TWO black arms due to his being half Taboo Noise in The World Ends With You. How could you zetta sons of digits forget this one?!
- And how about KOF's Rugal Bernstein, who gets a cybernetic hand and eye?
- Wolfgang Krauser also bore an X-shaped scar on the top of his head. Geese Howard gets no more than a small scar on his chest due to the events of the end of Fatal Fury 1... which isn't even visible unless he removes his shirt.
- Hitting the obscure, Doll Master from Threads Of Fate had a massive, evil right hand of death.
- In the second Ace Attorney game, Justice For All, the final case's Big Bad is your defendant, Matt Engarde. He looks innocuous enough, until he pulls The Reveal, which consists of giving himself a phone call, pulling back his hair to reveal scars on his eye, and pulling a glass of brandy out of nowhere just to swirl it around while grinning evilly.
- In the final case of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Kristoph Gavin has a scar on the back of his hand that looks like a skull when he flexes his fingers a certain way.
- In the Soul Calibur series, Nightmare has a bulky demonic right arm that is passed on to anyone he possesses.
- Saren's mechanical arm is a pretty good hint that he may be allied with the race of mechanical villains.
- In the Geneforge series, canister addicts have pale, glowing skin and eyes.
- In Infamous, Kessler has a mechanical gauntlet covering his entire right arm, presumably to enable the long-range energy blast he uses in his boss fight. His Psycho Ex Girlfriend Sasha basically has Cthulhu for a tongue.
- I don't know if this was the same in the old version, but in Tomb Raider Anniversary, the first time you see Natla, you know she'll be the villain. The really really long nails are a dead giveaway. Did I mention they were bright red, too?
- You don't really need any sort of hint concerning the Overlords of the Overlord series, what with their spikey, face-concealing helmets, the Shoulders Of Doom, clawed gauntlets, etc. all quite obviously screaming "villain" from the CD cover. But considering the title, do you even need the hint?
Webcomics
- Charby the vampirate has the author having a right red hand (complete with black spikes and claws!) added to the author's sexy and nice self portrait in the first page to remind everyone she draws a wickedly evil webcomic that kills characters off AFTER they've been around long enough for you to get attached.
- In Comedity one of Garth's personae, number 47, literally goes by "The Red Right Hand" and while not strictly evil is all of Garth's violent tendencies embodied. Hello again, Natalia.
- Dominic's older brother is missing most of the flesh from one arm and the bottom half of his face due to his screwing around with necromancy.
Western Animation
- In an episode of The Simpsons, a cigarette company executive has horns which he tries to pass off as a football injury. He also occasionally turns into a gigantic red demon.
- Mozenrath, a villain in Disney's Aladdin television series, gave up the skin and muscles of his hand for magical powers, leaving a skeletal hand. He's furious that Aladdin got "easy" power through his Genie, as opposed to the sacrifice he made.
- Most of the villains and villainesses in Jacob Two Two have poor dental hygiene and off-white eyes. Those that don't are unbearably clean Smug Snakes.
- A one-shot Dungeons And Dragons villain, Cyrus, had a literal red hand. (It eventually turned out that an entire half of her body was like that, but her hand was her only visible deformity for most of the episode.)
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, Zuko's scar and hair are used to mark him as a bad guy.
- However, after turning good, he changes his hair to make his scar look less ugly.
- Azula, on the other hand, is obsessive about her personal appearance, and has clawed fingernails in the Second season, before her arrival at Ba Sing Se.
- Bato, one of the Southern Water Tribesmen has a large red burn on his right arm and hand. (Probably from an encounter with a Firebender) He however, is a good guy.
- Both Combustion Man's right forearm and lower leg are prosthetic.
- Blackwolf, the scenery-chewing villain of Ralph Bakshi's 1970s sword-n-sorcery opus "Wizards," takes this to such an extreme that he is almost The Grotesque. His skin is grey, his eyes are blood red and glow in the dark, and - inexplicably - both his arms are bare bones between wrist and mid-bicep.
- Skeletor. He has a skull for a head, people.
- Who doesn't?
- Most don't have just a skull for a head though... they tend to have things like skin, muscle, and hair wrapped around it in some fashion or other.
- Doctor Blight, one of the major Captain Planet villains was perfectly normal, even icily attractive...until she moved her fringe, and we saw that all the face around her left eye was hideously burned. All the other villains took this so far as to become grotesques (Verminous Skumm was literally a rat-man) except for Zarm, who was a standard evil overlord, and Looten Plunder, who was a Smug Snake crossed with a ''Corrupt Corporate Executive', though the fact that his suit was trimmed with what appeared to be zebra skin might count as an eco-sensitive version of this trope.
- Phantom Limb from The Venture Bros has both arms turned into invisible glowy dispensers of death.
- His legs, too.
- And "something else" that The Alchemist decided to keep at the end of season 2.
- In fact, a lot of minor villains from The Venture Brothers fall into this trope. Baron Ünderbheit has a prosthetic iron jaw and hideous grey skin. Scaramantula has a scar or birthmark shaped like a spider on his face and eight fingers on one hand. Brainulo (a hyper-intelligent time traveller from the future) has a grotesquely swollen, bald head covered in little blinking lights. Even the Monarch, while otherwise normal-looking and even handsome, has long antenna-like eyebrows.
- Spoofed in the episode "Now Museum, Now You Don't", where, in a flashback, Scaramantula assembles a Fraternity of Torment of villains who were spurned by society due to their deformity. Dr. Venture Sr. infiltrates them disguised as a stereotypical Chinese/Japanese villain with a supernumerary nipple (on his chin).
- Shego on Kim Possible has pale green skin and can shoot green plasma from her hands.
- In Inspector Gadget, most of the time all we see of Dr. Claw is a gauntlet.
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