Sane Boss, Psycho Henchmen

"I am a master of broken monsters."

— Horus lamenting how of the eight Traitor Patriarchs, only Peturabo can be relied on; Horus Heresy

This trope is for when a villain seems to have most of their mental faculties together, but many of their underlings are nuttier than squirrel poop. A competent villain will be able to keep them all on a leash to be sure that they don't end up endangering their Evil Plan. Otherwise, it can backfire horribly. However, the plan may be to cause chaos, so they hire as many troublemakers as possible to stir things up. After all, if one Psycho for Hire doesn't do the trick, you might as well get a bunch of them. This can even be because the villain can't find people willing to carry out their plan, so they have to go to people who would do things like that without blinking or even for fun.

The main aspect is that the main villain is the Only Sane Man (for all intents and purposes), and they need a group of lunatics in their ranks for a reason. Depending on the goals, the villain can still be a Bad Boss to them if they screw up one too many times, but they could just as easily be encouraging their acts of destruction, maybe hinting at the idea that they're not as sane as they seem on the surface.

Note that this trope is generally for a boss having multiple psychos under their command. While there can be examples with just one psycho henchman, having at least two psychos under the boss's command will qualify it more for this trope.

Compare More Despicable Minion and Carnival of Killers. If the Henchmen have Undying Loyalty towards their boss in spite of their craziness, then they are a Psycho Supporter. Overzealous Underling can be a result of this, and in turn, this may result in a Beleaguered Boss. Depending on just how crazy their henchman are, you can also compare Conservation of Competence and Surrounded by Idiots. And if the boss is actually good to his underlings, then this can be a case of Friend to Psychos.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Spy X Family: The Red Circus terrorist group, led by Billy Squire, takes a pair of school buses taking the first-grade students of Eden Academy, the school attended by the children of the country's political and financial elite, hostage. While Billy only wanted to take the children hostage in exchange for the freedom of other members of the Red Circus, Vadim, one of his henchmen planned to ram the bus into a government building and set off a large bomb he brought on board. After the Secret Police kill the members taking the other bus hostage, Billy weighs his options, while Vadim thinks of his contingency plan, to set off the bomb when the SWAT team storms the bus. Anya reads their minds and after she convinces Billy that he didn't mean for things to go this far, he orders that they should turn themselves in to the authorities before anyone gets killed, and even takes a gun from Vadim when he used it to threaten Anya. After Billy and the other members get off the bus, Vadim drives off, but is stopped by two police armored cars. When he staggers off the bus using Anya as a Human Shield, Martha, Becky's nanny/butler/bodyguard and a woman in her mid-sixties, jumps over the police barricade and zaps Vadim with a tazer before he could get away.
• Pop Team Epic: In the first season episode "The Dragon of Iidabashi - Pipi's Revenge", Pipimi and Popuko became in these roles when they met in jail and made an alliance (licking a lemon to sealing it) and so they became a Yakuza and her Japanese Delinquent henchman, respectively.

Comic Books

• Justice League of America: One of their adversarial teams is the Injustice League, a villainous group that includes among its ranks foes from the heroes' respective Rogues Gallery. In this case, whenever Superman is leading the JLA, the billionaire and industrialist Lex Luthor assembles the Injustice League to oppose them. In many incarnations, Luthor employs the Joker as a member, who is known for being criminally insane. In addition, other well-known psychos such as Cheetah, Solomon Grundy, and (Depending on the Writer) Gorilla Grodd are among the ranks from time to time.

Fanfiction

• The Bridge: Word of God notes that this was the exact plan of Bagan. He wanted minions that would do what he needed from them easily, so what better way to do that than get people in his forces that would do horrible things on their own? Among his ranks are Gaira (a mutated cannibalistic psychopath), Hedorah (a Walking Wasteland who only lives for destruction), and King Ghidorah (a serial planet-destroyer).
• Dungeon Keeper Ami has to take quite a lot of "lesser evil" options, and her selection of employees is no exception. Her closest advisors are trusted friends who support her efforts to be a good influence on the world, but beneath them are a motley crew of Blood Knights, Combat Sadomasochists, cannibals, magical Mad Scientists, worshippers of evil gods, or any combination of the above. She isn't thrilled about any of it, but she does need the help and recognises that they're less dangerous to the world if they're working for her than if they're just running loose.
  She didn't want a murderous psychopathic beast like him! He had slaughtered so many of her goblins! The more rational part of her insisted that she wanted to see him in Wemos' employ even less.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: After the Wolf's victims are brought back as hideously mutated champions of the Chaos gods (a Combat Sadomasochist, a mindless berserker, etc.), he makes his contempt for them clear, beating down any attempts at rebellion and assigning them to humiliating roles instead of letting them fight (watching the supplies of wine for Ramsay, being apprenticed to Sven for Littlefinger).
• War of Remnant: A RWBY Anthology: Salem is transformed into an Affably Evil Well-Intentioned Extremist, so she is rather nice to her subordinates and genuinely wants to rebuild a better world. However, most of the members of her inner circle are not as noble as her. The possibly the worst of them, Dr. Arthur Watts, is a petty and egomaniacal narcissist who will kill anyone in his way to spite Ironwood and Pietro. He openly admits he'd start a war without Salem. The Wendigo is a Grimm/Human hybrid who is a serial village slaughterer in his spare time and is excessively sadistic with his kills. Cinder Fall initially had a bit of Adaptational Nice Guy treatment and believes in Salem's cause, but her disfigurement by Ruby causes her to start being more sadistic and vindictive like her canon counterpart. Tyrian is still as Ax-Crazy as in canon. He's a former Serial Killer who fanatically worships Salem like a goddess and is implied to be Hearing Voices. Blackheart, while being the weakest of the faction, is still a Card-Carrying Villain who revels in villainy. Hazel is the Only Sane Man of Salem's direct subordinates.

Film — Animated

• Despicable Me: Gru is a highly competent and intelligent villain, while his Minions, while not psychotic per se, are hyperactive, easily distracted, and prone to doling out slapstick violence, usually on themselves.

Film — Live-Action

• Mad Max
  • First seen in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior with Lord Humungus, a warlord who wants the oil refinery and chase the group of survivors who already got it as a lair, and commands a gang of renegades even crazier than him, especially The Dragon Wez, a psycho punk who wants them dead, especially when his protegee The Golden Youth is killed by one of them.
  • The formula reappeared in Mad Max: Fury Road with Immortan Joe, a tyrannic warlord who has under his command the "War Boys", a group of kamikaze riders that are all crazy and don't hesitate to put their bodies on the line to get Joe's work done. Indeed, one of the main characters is Nux, a War Boy who got captured by Furiosa but later changed his ways thanks to Love Redeems.

Literature

• KonoSuba: Played for laughs, as is typical for the series. When Kazuma has his final showdown with the Demon King, they share a brief moment of camaraderie when the latter mentions what a headache his so-called Demon Generals were. To whit, Wiz often stole things from the castle armory to stock her "shop" (due to her long-standing desire to be a shop-keeper), Vanir enjoyed winding people up to savour their negative emotions, Verdia was a Covert Pervert despite his knightly ways... This was part of the reason why the Demon King was perfectly content to allow Wiz to leave and set up shop in Axel so long as she continued to maintain the protective barrier around his castle: it was just one less headache for him to deal with.
• Overlord (2012): Ainz is the only human (originally) among the Guardians of Nazerick, who used to be NPCs given a short backstory and personality by the players who designed them. Because all these players had severe social issues, every denizen of Nazerick (except one or two) hates humans or at least views them as inferior. The Guardians also look up to Ainz as a living god and model their behavior on what their perception of him would want, even planning a campaign of world domination based on a single sentence he said that he only finds out about three seasons later. Once he does learn about it, he tries to steer things in a more positive direction by creating a kingdom where all species can live in peace.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Tiwyn Lannister tends to have many unstable warriors among his ranks. The stand-out examples are the Clegane brothers. Especially Gregor, "the Mountain that Rides," is a hulking brute that spends his time raping and murdering everything he can find. Most of the Mountain's Men are a group of other soldiers who tend to share Gregor's fondness for Rape, Pillage, and Burn.
  • The Brave Companions are a group of psychos who often work for others more stable than themselves. While briefly working for Tywin, they also worked for Roose Bolton who, while still The Sociopath, has more of a grasp on Pragmatic Villainy.
• Vorkosigan Saga: Aral Vorkosigan and Bothari are an unusual case; Aral was a hero and Bothari, who worked as his guardsman for over 20 years, was insane and guilty of several war crimes. Bothari had been working for Ges Vorrutyer, who was a sadist and deliberately exacerbated Bothari's insanity. But when Bothari rebelled against Vorrutyer and saved Cordelia's life Aral felt he owed Bothari a debt. He hired Bothari as a guardsman in part because he felt that a structured military life would help Bothari deal with his mental issues.

Live-Action Shows

• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar, being Super Prototype Orc who kept many of his Elvish features intact, has the advantage of retaining his intelligence and ability to stand in the sun. He is an Affably Evil Anti-Villain who was capable to outsmart from Men to Maiar and stay at the top. He is the chieftain of the Orcs, who are feral, animalistic and absolutely morally abhorrent, but still quite loyal to Adar.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000: It's pointed out that during the Horus Heresy, the Primarchs who flocked to the banner of Horus were the twisted, damaged, or deranged like Ax-Crazy Blood Knight Angron, Disproportionate Retribution incarnate Perturabo, and Konrad Curze and his Pay Evil unto Evil All Crimes Are Equal form of "justice". In the Horus Heresy books, Horus even laments that all his brothers he actually wants on his side oppose him, while those under his command are barely functional monsters.

Toys

• Transformers: While Megatron's sanity varies according to the continuity, he at the very least commands the Decepticon army. However, since he doesn't particularly care what the Decepticons get up to as long as they do their jobs, that means there are a lot of Sociopathic Soldier and Psycho for Hire types among their ranks. Some notable examples include the Stunticons (who all have mental issues and so their combined mode Menasor is a berserk beast rather than a warrior), Fangry (who has such a Hair-Trigger Temper he's been known to mouth off to much more powerful and dangerous Decepticons), and Misfire (a Decepticon who loves to shoot but has aim so terrible that it has been joked he would miss a starship if he was shooting from inside it).
  • From the original toyline, the Firecons are a trio of fire-breathing Decepticon warriors. Cindersaur is a pyromaniac who loves burning things (and is implied to have suffered brain damaged due to inhaling too much toxic smoke), Flamefeather is such a violent idiot that he can't (or won't) be bothered to identify whether whatever he's attacking has an Autobot or Decepticon insignia... and poor Sparkstalker, their nominal commander, is a bona fide criminal genius whose actual area of expertise is breaking into secure computer files. Sparkstalker spends most of his time trying to make sure the other two idiots at least point in the right direction, sometimes having to physically grab them by their heads and turn them around to do so.

Video Games

• Dragalia Lost: The Agito is led by their No-Nonsense Nemesis leader Nedrick, who has a Well-Intentioned Extremist goal of granting non-royal people the ability to form dragonpacts, who generally deals with his opposition swiftly and in a calm, composed manner, and is portrayed as cold, pragmatic, but also rational in conversations with other characters. The Agito themselves who work under him, however, are a Carnival of Killers who fight for very distinct yet strange and obsessed standards and are more than willing to murder those who represent what they hate. They also have poor teamwork abilities, which all of them acknowledge and only work as a group for pragmatic reasons. Nedrick is fine with this situation mainly because their strength means he doesn't have to look out for them, not valuing much in genuine friendship either. This turns out to also be invoked by the masks the Agito wear, which not only amplifies their power but their own negative emotions and resentment to the point where it has a role in their madness and bloodlust, though they all still used the masks willingly.
• Fallout 3: The Point Lookout DLC has Professor Calvert, a mad scientist-turned-Brain in a Jar who plots to take over Maryland, lead a local band of lobotomized tribals who worship him as a god. Though in actuality, the professor was merely using a holographic projector as well as his telepathy to communicate with the tribals, who then mistook his appearance as a manifestation of a powerful spirit. Calvert lampshades this by telling the Lone Wanderer that while he's fortunate enough to have living agents to carry out his plan, he is also frequently frustrated by their misinterpretation of his orders as religious instruction.
• This is the relationship between Geese Howard and Billy Kane in Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series, with Geese being a Super Mob Boss who's an Aikido expert, and is a more focused villain centered into get Southtown in his hands, and Billy being his bodyguard who's a vicious punk who can demolish every person who's against his boss. Also in the KOF series, the henchmen place is interchangeable with the Wild Card psychopath Ryuji Yamazaki, and sometimes with Billy being the boss in the cases where he represents Geese in tournaments.
• Final Fantasy VI: The main villain of the first part of the game is an ambitious monarch named Emperor Gestahl, who is waging war against a race of magical beings called Espers. He is helped by his more erratic and unpredictable court jester Kefka Palazzo.
• Fire Emblem Fates: Xander is the comparatively sane crown prince of Nohr. One of his two personal retainers is Peri, a psychotic young woman who enjoys killing.
• Half-Life: The Black Ops are a group of Sociopathic Soldiers who seem to take too much pleasure in taking out the alien invasion. While Dr. Breen may be a Corrupt Corporate Executive, he isn't ordering the deaths of everyone in the facility for fun since it's all for a goal either to actually help or use it to his advantage. The Black Ops are just a group of sadistic slaughterers.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: The two representatives of the Shadow Thieves, Axel and Moire, have this dynamic if you end up working with them. Moire, the henchwoman, orders you to go on a one-man crimewave throughout the Docks District, and getting her approval requires starting fights with anyone whose actions are a threat to the guild's activities and coercing the city watchmen into taking bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye. She then orders you to burn down the watch post as a display of the guild's power. Axel, the boss, turns out to be Affably Evil and an advocate for Pragmatic Villainy when you meet him, chews you and Moire out over the fact that burning the watch post down has started a war between the thieves and the authorities which he desperately wanted to avoid, and insists that you take your orders directly from him in future so you aren't helping Moire cause any more chaos.

Web Video

• Pop Cross Studios: In Spider-Bat: Night of the Six, (part of Christian's series making unusual fusions of DC and Marvel characters) Dr. Pamela Octavius (a fusion of Poison Ivy and Dr. Octopus), despite being a criminal mastermind seeking revenge on Spider-Bat, is by far the most level-headed and pragmatic of the titular villain team. Her supporters are all varying levels of violent, mad, and plain eccentric. Clayvolt (Clayface/Electro) is a wannabe actor turned electric clay monster obsessed with carrying out acts of villainy just to get an audience. Waylon Systevich (Killer Croc/Rhino) is a fight-relishing brute. Norman Fries (Mr. Freeze/Green Goblin) is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who can turn into a deranged, bomb-throwing cryokinetic goblin. And by far the worst is Arthur Kasady (The Joker/Carnage), an Ax-Crazy Sadist and Serial Killer who gleefully puts off actually killing the Spider just to torture him for as long as he likes, causing him and his boss to butt heads.
  Pamela Octavius: Finish him already! The longer he has, the more time he has to come up with a plan!
  Arthur Kasady: You said if I joined your little band, I could have my fun! So let me have it.

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