Oddly enough the reveal that he wasn't a Magnificent Bastard is something of a Pet the Dog moment as he wasn't willing to sacrifice his daughter to further his plans.
Masaya Wadou is this in Witchblade, on top of being a Corrupt Corporate Executive. This is his undoing because he tries so hard to be a Magnificent Bastard, but he keeps fucking up royally because as Badass Normal Reiji Takayama puts it, "He's always looking for shortcuts." This winds up biting him on the ass in an cruelly ironic way.
Makoto Isshiki in RahXephon, for whom this trope is partly named after (he's nicknamed "White Snake" because of his albinism and scheming). At first he's a typical Smug Snake, but in the second half of the story turns into a madman.
It runs in his family, judging from Babhem.
Enrico Maxwell from Hellsing is a massive jackass who enjoys forcing Integra Hellsing to say "please" to hand her over an important file - even when his direct superior -the Pope- ordered him to give her the file in compensation for a massive gaffe one of his men (Alexander Anderson) commited. He later becomes a full Knight Templar and tries to have his army kill all Protestants in London for the sin of not being Catholics.
In a much minor degree, the Gundam-homage successor to Maxwell, M'Quve.
Quattro from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S enjoys manipulating and controlling people, belittles both enemies and allies, and does this all with a sickeningly cutesy appearance. The fact that her role as support means she's usually hiding somewhere safe from her enemies while she's condescending to them doesn't help her case. Her eventual (non-fatal) fate at the business end of the titular character's staff was a very satisfying scene.
And now from Force, we have Cypha, who takes this trope Up to Eleven. The few times she doesn't have a smug look on her face, it's almost completely impassive.
Arguably, Orochimaru from Naruto. Sure, he's evil and fairly skilled, but he leaves a lot of the planning to his Enigmatic Minion. Also a literal example, what with his theme being snakes.
Gato of the Land of Waves arc loudly complains when Zabuza and his followers fail to kill Tazuna, despite them being stronger than him or any of the other men he has in his employ, and tries to kill both Zabuza and Team 7 after their battle in order to save money, showing considerable arrogance, overconfidence and disdain for his allies. Unfortunately, he doesn't count on the injured and Heel Face Turned Zabuza having enough strength and skill to kill him.
Frank Archer from the anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist is the epitome of a Smug Snake; a ruthless sociopath who orchestrated heinous catastrophes for the sake of bettering his own image and publicity. His boss, Dante is no better, being an egotistical, bodysnatching bitch who while quite intelligent, fails to earn the audience's respect or admiration, due to her selfishness, pettiness, willingness to destroy entire countries just so she can live a little longer, and attempts at taking over one of The Hero's two Love Interests (already a huge Woobie due to what she and her babyhad gone through) so that she can sleep with him. Said hero is her ex-boyfriend's fifteen year old son. She treats her subordinates like crap, and is ultimately killed when The Dog Bites Back. Literally.
In the manga and Brotherhood versions, Pride takes this trope and runs with it. He's a condescending little prick with all the ego you'd expect from the living embodiment of arrogance, and almost no redeeming qualities.
In both series, there's Father Cornello from the first and second, or third episodes, depending on the series. Quite arrogant despite being a mere puppet of the Homunculi, and not impressive psychically compared to the rest of the cast, it's quite satisfying watching his scam fall apart right before his death.
Half the Death Note fandom sees LightYagami as a Magnificent Bastard. The other half sees him as just a high-functioning Smug Snake. Unlike many on this list, Light is very bright, but his A God Am I complex, infantile Freak Outs ("he got me!"), borderline sociopathy and tendency towards kicking dogs, can and do cost him the sympathy of many, while his sheer ego, and tendency towards underestimating his opponents can sometimes derail his plans and ultimately do get him killed. As in the Beckett example below, Light is incredibly smart, but not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
Kyousuke Higuchi the Third Kira, is a more traditional example, being arrogant without reason, none-too bright, totally unsympathetic and fully convinced that he is The Big Bad, despite being Light's puppet.
Gauron from Full Metal Panic!. Treating both allies and enemies with disdain? Check. Always speaking in a sarcastic tone, ending it with a smirk? Check. Loves to bug the protagonist and take advantage of his moral insecurity? Check. Overconfident that his plans will go exactly the way he wants? Check.
The novels reveal that he did know quite a bit more about what was going on than most people in Amalgam and Mithril thought, and that sort of justified his disdain for their ignorance. Also, his overall plan did go exactly the way he wanted it — he's the Death Seeker of the series, remember?
Leonard Testarossa also qualifies. While his smarts and charisma should, theoretically, allow him to avoid this trope, he's got too much of a superiority complex and kicks a few dogs too many for his own good. (Specially poor Kaname, considering how he beat her up when she and Sosuke aknowledged their feelings for each other)
Lampshaded in the later novels by Kaname herself (despite her Damsel In Distress status), who points out that sad and tragic past experiences do not give you an excuse to "play with the fates of other people, and flaunt a smile while you do it."
Yuri Killian became one of these toward the end of the first season of Kaleido Star, enacting a complicated revenge plot against Kalos Eido, his former boss, for the death of his father Aaron several years ago. While he succeeds in buying out Kaleido Stage and forcing most of its stars out (all the while taunting them about how they'll never make it big without him), attendance under Yuri's management dwindles rapidly because of people complaining the shows aren't as fun as they used to be. As a final insult, his ex-partner Layla Hamilton sees what he's done, attempts to fight back and finally gives him a hard slap to the face for assuming everything was Kalos' fault even after he learned that Aaron's death was genuinely accidental, and Kalos had been trying to make up for it ever since.
Yuri actually is one of the few Snakes who actually has a Heel Face Turnand works hard to become The Atoner. Even if he goes too far in Leon's case...
Kazamatsuri Hayato from Gilgamesh, perhaps portrayed as a complete asshole in an attempt to make Evil Matriarch Kageyama Hiroko look more sympathetic in comparison.
Akihiko Kurata, the Mad Scientist from Digimon Savers, is incredibly manipulative, condescending, and selfish, and his habit of situating himself well out of harm's way until he's absolutely sure of success makes him even more infuriating. This is somewhat made up for by his extreme cowardice, which makes the times when things actually go against him very satisfying indeed.
Tomoe Marguerite from the anime version of Mai-Otome spends a lot of her time plotting against Arika and her friends (and eventually the whole of Garderobe Academy), attempting to bump them all off in an effort to get Shizuru to notice her. Her inability to control her pride and keep her hatred for Arika in check prevent her from succeeding with anything bigger than small-time crimes, though she still winds up as a Karma Houdini in the end, mainly due to her accomplice taking full responsibility for everything Tomoe did in the first half of the series (and nobody keeping close tabs on either of them).
The manga incarnations of Nagi in both Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome are far less Affably Evil and manipulative than his anime counterparts, though he is much more proactive in opposing the heroines, rather than plotting from the background. In both cases, he gets beaten pretty badly (twice in the former).
Nagi from the Mai-Otome manga partially subverts the trope by being the only version of Nagi in the mangas or animes to make a Heel Face Turn and actually reveal himself to be a semi-decent human being. He actually dies in a Heroic Sacrifice defending the main hero! It is, however, only a partial subversion, because for most of the series, he was a complete ass.
Millions Knives from Trigun. Missing throughout the entire anime except for a few scenes, we're expected to take him seriously when we see him sitting down in a field sipping a glass of wine? Even though his Dragon had nearly mentally crippled Vash, Knives lost to him in the span of an episode!
Job Trunicht from Legend of Galactic Heroes is particularly notorious for throwing an entire interstellar nation under the bus for personal gain, multiple times. In an unusual example, he's actually aware of what a slimy scumbag he is:
Trunicht:Democracy isn't really all that remarkable. You can just look at me, Fleet Admiral. Someone like me can hold power and make others live and die as he likes. If that isn't a flaw of democracy, then what is?
One Piece both plays it straight and subverts it. There are plenty of Smug Snakes who rather satisfyingly get their asses handed to them by the Straw Hats, which makes them lose everything. The subversion comes from the fact that said snakes end up better off from said asskicking. Look no further than Wapol who after he was defeated by the Straw Hats and blown away from Drum island ended up starting a toy company, became a multi-millionaire, and married a model. Also, Helmeppo, who after the defeat of both him and his father, re-evaluated himself decided to seriously pursue the profession of a marine officer with Coby.
Some end up better off, but many do not. Kuro ended up forced to be a pirate again, the last thing in the world he wanted to be. Arlong lost his empire and was caught by the Marines. On the other hand, Eneru got exactly what he wanted (his own moon kingdom, meaning he's the only major One Piece villain who actually won,) and then there's the ones who win a little and lose a little, like Moria who lost his ship and his zombies but got to keep his position and had his defeat covered-up by the government ( (at least until he got told "You Have Outlived Your Usefulness" by Doflamingo). It seems that the ultimate fate of a One Piece villain is left up to fate (and the whim of Oda) and being evil is no guarantee of comeuppance.
Eneru also wanted to annihilate Skypeia, which he only managed to do partially before he got beaten down. So...3/4 victory?
Mr. 3 is probably the best example, primarily because he constantly harps about his tactics, when he's weaker than Mr. 4, chronically overconfident and cowardly, and not even as smart as Crocodile. He'd like to be a Magnificent Bastard, but he's far too arrogant and not as clever as he thinks.
Helmeppo's fate isn't particularly grating, though, due to a Heel Face Turn (he's basically trying to clean up his act, and he wants to restore his family's good name... by recapturing his fugitive dad).
Jean Gedoo from Geneshaft has all the ego of being the valedictorian in his class (and Yugihair), with the "best genes" for leadership. Granted, he wasn't bad tactically, but he was far too obsessed with asserting and proving his worthiness, to the point that he would do very cruel things simply because he felt that someone - anyone - did not acknowledge his perfection...or simply because he was perfect and thus beyond judgment. That he had a problem with Mario Musicanova really grated.
All of the Chinese high eunuchs from Code Geass, who possess practically zero merits or skills of any kind and sell out practically everyone in their own country for their own benefit, while planning to either kill or marry off a lonely girl for exactly the same reason. Their deaths in particular are oh-so-satisfying to watch.
There's also Mao, who is played as a Smug Snake at first... until you learn what his deal is.
Jonathan Glenn from Brain Powerd probably thinks himself a Magnificent Bastard... and that's just his first failing! A combination of overconfidence, Kick the Dog moments, and the fact his manipulations never really go anywhere (plus, he later allows himself to become Baron Maximillian's pawn) gets him a place in this trope and makes him one of the most unsympathetic characters in the series.
To be fair though, this is much less true in the Magnificent WorldOV As. In that continuity, he may have a big ego, but he can easily back it up with tactical genius and sheer will power. While still not as magnificent as he sees himself, it makes him seem less like this trope than he does in the Wanderers anime series, which takes his ego Up to Eleven and severely downgrades his strategic abilities so that he looks more like an Ineffectual Sympathetic VillainJoke Character.
Haruo from History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, a fair weather friend with an ever-present arrogant smirk on his face who enjoys getting Kenichi into trouble (for example, by spreading the news of his victory over Tsukuba, which made Kenichi a target for Ragnarok). A lot of readers would like nothing better than crossing the pages of the manga and punch his teeth in...
And he actually has snake tongue!
Of course, he really is a Manipulative Bastard, and even Kenichi's masters admit that he has genuine strategic talent, and eventually he does become an asset to the team (kind of). He still has no fighting skill and an ego the size of a zeppelin, but still...
As the series progresses, Haruo does start to demonstrate some honest dedication to his "minions" — even going so far as refusing to abandon them even in desperate situations and making decisions with the welfare of his group as a whole, leading even many of the masters of the series to observe that he has some very real leadership qualities. To top it off, he is slowly but surely sliding into Magnificent Bastard territory, even if his sense of style is...unique.
Mikoto from Flame of Recca. While her first credentials show her to be a Complete Monster, her fight with Fuuko cements her as a true Smug Snake, starting from the usage of crocodile tears, slow poisoning (while gloating on how she likes seeing life fading away), and finally, scoring a default victory through silencing the referee (who was about to declare KO), knocking Fuuko out and won over a ten count. As Raiha coined, it's not her physical strength that makes her a Jyuushinshu, it's her slyness. Even Joker noted that he is really doubtful about how Mikoto ends up in the Jyuushinshu ranks. While still smuggy, she starts softening up when she got into a relationship with Mokuren. But that ends very pitifully for her.
Goryo of Muhyo and Roji prides himself on his tactics, even though his grasp of magical law is inferior to Muhyo's. Despite (technically) winning the contest against Muhyo, Goryo's plan to corner Ark fails miserably, forcing Muhyo to come to his aid. Goryo is also largely unlikable because his business model frequently involves Kick the Dog moments.
Kashmir from Overman King Gainer is a pompous ass who uses underhanded tricks to try to defeat the Yapan Exodus. He succeeds once making it so that a Dome that the Exodus stopped at is damaged forcing them to join the Exodus which causes distrust and hatred which is the main source of Kashmir's plans (it also backfires when several of them form a second squad under former Siberian Railroad member Adette). All other plans fails at which point Kashmir who is the worst recurring mecha pilot in the series than gets his ass kicked.
The condescending jerk Haraguchi from Genshiken. This is especially displayed in the manga, where he picks up one of the Genshiken's new comic releases, thumbs through it, and gives it back. When he could have gotten it for free.
The Gundam franchise has numerous Smug Snakes in it including:
Ribbons Almark is an interesting case of a character starting out as a straight Magnificent Bastard... but being unable to keep up with the rest of the field as the characters evolved, he began to rely almost exclusively on a supercomputer to counter everything his opponents had. Effectively, this led to his degenerating into a nasty Smug Snake towards the end, with some geniunely horrible moments (Anew Returner, anyone?).
Chigusa Tsukikage, the Big Bad during the Kyoto arc of Mahou Sensei Negima!. She acted all superior despite the fact that she's a Dirty Coward who hid behind a Human Shield (Konoka, her captive) whenever an enemy got near. In fact, when the inevitable happened and all her plans came crashing down around her in a spectacular manner, Chachazero, the Ax CrazyPerverse Puppet of Evangeline, appeared before her and called her out for all of her cowardly actions before giving her an ignoble defeat: Scaring her so badly that she fainted. And as though emphasizing her "feels a lot more important than she actually is" nature, the three minions she hired and lorded over in the Kyoto arc (Koutarou, Tsukuyomi, and Fate) all turned out to both be stronger and a lot more plot relevant that Chigusa herself was in the grand scheme of things.
Of course it turns out Kurt thinks he's a lot better at manipulation than he actually is, sending him right back into this trope, if only because he underestimated the Nakama's surveillance capabilities and didn't account for their informant from the future, although to be fair, he really had no possible way of knowing about that last one. As such, he pulls a Heel Face Turn and joins Negi's group, and then he re-joins Ala Rubra.
Kurotowa in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind fits this trope to the letter. Actor Chris Sarandon, who provided his voice in the English dub, even says he based his whole performance around the character's persistent sneer.
In Monster, most of the villains who aren't Johan or in some way redeemable. Kristof, Dr. Heinemann and Blue Sophie are the better examples.
Luppi, the replacement sixth Espada in Bleach was a smug snake in a big way; convinced of his indisputable superiority to his predecessor (Grimmjow), overestimating his skills in his fight with Hitsugaya, leering on Rangiku as they fight and threatening to kill Orihime because he was injured in a diversion to cover for her abduction. Eventually, he gets killed in one shot by Grimmjow.
Eighth Espada Szayel Aporro Grantz is also a Smug Snake in addition to being a Complete Monster; he considers himself an infallible genius and the "perfect being" despite the fact he only managed to get the advantage he had over Renji and Ishida by studying both of them and setting things up in advance to put the odds drastically in his favor when they fought. His arrogance takes a major blow when Mayuri Kurotsuchi reveals he completely outmaneuvered him scientifically, and Szayel to swearing, stomping, and screaming like a spoiled child when nothing is working. When he tries crossing his final and most heinous Moral Event Horizon ( raping Mayuri's "daughter" and liutenant Nemu to forcibly impregnate her with himself so he can come back to life, which kills her), he winds up suffering a horrific Karmic Death because he underestimated the depth of Mayuri's own preparations ( he gave Nemu a strange poison that took effect when Szayel Aporro used her to revive himself). Rather tellingly, despite Mayuri's own rampant sociopathy, Szayel disgusts him.
Big Bad Aizen himself also qualifies, despite being introduced as a Magnificent Bastard. Despite his impressive introduction, it soon becomes clear that Aizen's smooth talking and Gambit Roulette fetish are covering up his use of a godlike power as a crutch; once he truly takes the stage as Big Bad, instead of manipulating from the shadows, his Evil Plans end up getting his entire army killed for a fleeting to nonexistent tactical advantage, forcing him to do the entire job himself. This results in Yamamoto, Urahara (thrice, and once alongside Isshin and Yoruichi), and Gin all outmaneuvering him, which he only overcomes through having literal Plot Armor saving him from numerous life-ending attacks, including being disintegrated on the molecular level by his own Dragon. Finally, when he's achieved his ultimate form and refuses to shut up about how powerful he is, Ichigo shows up and defeats him easily because Aizen underestimated him.
Iwamoto and Akashi from Yu Yu Hakusho are what happen when you combine this with Sadist Teacher. They're always cooking up schemes to get Yusuke and Kuwabara expelled, but in the end always get thwarted by Yusuke and Mr. Takanaka.
To a greater extent, Gonzou Tarukane, the hideous crimelord who imprisoned and tortured poor Yukina. He thought he had everything under control but in truth, he never even remotely stood a chance against Sakyou's Xanatos Gambit. Gonzou was doomed from the start because he thought the Togoru brothers were working for him when they really worked for Sakyou. The Oh Crap when he realizes he's been Out Gambitted has this trope all over it.
There's also Rishu in the Dark Tournament arc. He thought his match against Kuwabara was in the bag due to the manipulations (read:bribery) his sponsor carried out. Oh how wrong he was.
Tenzen in Basilisk sees himself as a Magnificent Bastard but doesn't live up to it, making a number of embarrassing mistakes as well as horrifying atrocities. He gets himself killed several times over.
Unsui of the Juppon Gatana from Rurouni Kenshin. During his time in the series, Usui always seemed to have the one-up on his fellow Juppon Gatana members, and most definitely fit the smug part of the Smug Snake, more than willing to mock and belittle his foes by pointing out how he could see through them with his "Mind's Eye". His apparent reason for joining the Juppon Gatana was to be able to kill Shishio if he ever had the chance. But in his fight with Saito, he was faced with the fact that his true reason was to put up the appearance of still trying to defeat Shishio, and hiding his dishonour. Usui became even angrier when Saito pointed out that Shishio knew this and was playing him like an instrument. And then, when Usui tried to hold on to the shred of dignity he had left, Saito mopped the floor with him.
Dorchenov from Metal Armor Dragonar is this, combined with The Starscream. A petty, arrogant and cowardly militaristic bully with an It's All About Me attitude who sacrifices his own soldiers without a care in the world, but nevertheless seems to think he's an incredibly BadassMagnificent Bastard. Unfortunately for him, it is pretty clear that he's a simpleton who is only dangerous because he's in a position of power - it is telling that even when his plans go the way he wants, it is only through brute strength or a stroke of dumb luck.
Ren Sohma from Fruits Basket. She's beautiful, sexy, sly, manipulative... and not just despicable, but in the end, very incompetent. She has to manipulate her desperate niece Rin to get her late husband Akira's box (and Rin then fails and is horrifyingly "punished" by its owner, Ren's much hated and abused daughter Akito), is humiliated by Shigure when he tells her he only had sex with her because she looks like an older Akito, and once her plans crumble she's left as pretty much as an Empty Shell of her former self.
Touga Kiryuuis very handsome, charming and manipulative — but ultimately, he's a horrendous Jerk Ass even to his sister Nanami, and he can't hold a candle to the realMagnificent Bastard of the series, Akio Ohtori.
Gouda of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a quite intelligent man, but he has a massive inferiority complex which makes him quite a Smug Snake. He really likes to grate on people and put them down, and the protagonists get an idea of his plan fairly early on precisely because he's the kind of person that wants recognition of his cleverness.
Jose Porla, the leader of rival guild Phantom Lord in Fairy Tail. Sneeringly arrogant, condescending, self-centered and, above all, incredibly petty, thinks himself a lot smarter than he actually is and is utterly unable to keep his massive ego in check - the whole reason for his attacks on Fairy Tail and the whole mess that ensued was simply the fact that he was jealous of Fairy Tail's popularity. Despite trying to keep up an Affably Evil facade when things go his way, he quickly loses his cool and throws childish temper tantrums as soon as his plans get even slightly derailed. It is telling that, while he's obviously the strongest member of Phantom Lord, his BadassDragon Gajeel comes across as a much more credible threat. Of course, since Jose is such a lowlife, his Villainous Breakdown cum Humiliation Conga at the hands of Makarov are a wonder to see.
From the same arc, we have MonsieurSol of Jose's Element Four, who was sure he could get the upper hand on Elfman by psychologically torturing him, first by reminding him of his Dead Little Sister Lisanna (okay, she wasn't dead, but nobody knew that...) and then by forcing him to watch as Elfman's other sister Mirajane was getting the life squeezed out of her. Oh, howwronghewas.
Goose from Baccano!. He's so incredibly arrogant that he goes so far as to say that the police would be stupid to try and stop him from murdering the senator's daughter and leaving her body on the side of the road just to scare him into releasing his boss from prison. Not only that, but he says all of this, right in front of the senator's wife and daughter. Really this (paraphrased) exchange sums it right up.
Goose: (To Mrs. Beriam) Our plan is to get Master Huey out of jail. The police would be stupid to try and stop the train and arrest us. Once we reach the city border we're going to kill your daughter and leave her body on the side of the tracks. Don't be stupid enough to offer yourself as a sacrifice. This way, Senator Beriam will have no choice but to give in to our demands. I know this isn't going to be much comfort but I'll shoot her myself
His "boss", Huey, isn't exactly innocent of this either.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba was a classic example during his time as the Big Bad. After his Heel Face Turn he becomes a better person, but his Jerkass behaviours and unbelievable arrogance keep him as an Antiheroic take on this trope. His stepbrother, Noah Kaiba, stepfather Gozaburo Kaiba, and former business associates, The Big Five play the trope to the hilt, as do Bandit Keith Howard, Weevil Underwood, Siegfried von Schroeder, and Marik Ishtar. The latter's Superpowered Evil Side averts the trope, as he's far too psychopathic to really have an opinion of himself
Arguably the bigger Smug Snake during Kaiba's time as the Big Bad wasn't even himself—it was Mokuba. He challenges Yugi three times, each time extremely smug, despite him being nowhere near Yugi or Kaiba's skills, and prone to freaking out any time things seemed to go wrong for him. Then again, considering it's implied that he acted like that so his brother would like him again, he might be considered a sympathetic Deconstruction.
Eva-Beatrice of Umineko no Naku Koro ni is incredibly arrogant as she treats her allies poorly whenever they fail to entertain her and acts like a total jerk any time that she feels safe, and not to mention she gets reduced to a screaming mess when things don't go the way she wants them to.
Comic Books
The fourth Hobgoblin was a B-rate villain who stole the costume and gear of one of the more formidable foes in Spider-Man history, and eventually the original Hobgoblin came out of retirement to kill the guy with the seven page losing streak for his wannabe aspirations.
At least two characters from Jack Kirby's Fourth World mythos fit the trope: Desaad, Darkseid's majordomo/torturer, and Glorious Godfrey, Darkseid's PR man.
The Wizard from Fantastic Four is a good example. He thinks very highly of himself, but really he is just a fourth rate Dr. Doom wannabe with lamer motives, lamer tech and a way fewer accomplishments. He is dumb enough attack the Fantastic Four, a group that defeats Dr. Doom and Galactus on a regular basis, by forming a group called the Frightful Four and having the Trapster, a loser villain with a glue gun who used to be called "Paste Pot Pete", as a member.
One of his more recent appearances involves him breaking into the Baxter Building with a new Frightful Four during a period where the Fantastic Four are suffering a downturn in their public fortunes and aren't expecting him, giving them a beat-down, and then broadcasting it all over the world to gloat about it. Yes, that's correct — his 'greatest triumph' is essentially a case of kicking someone when they're already down. And even then Reed essentially lets him do it so that he'll leave without threatening Reed's children, and so that the Four can deal with him later.
Straddling the line between Comics and Literature, Ysanne Isard of the X-Wing Series. She's not quite as good as a Magnificent Bastard, she's quite manipulative, she's the head of Imperial Intelligence and aware of the various things being planned, and many of her plans seem to hinge on letting the New Republic win an Imperial planet. Brentaal IV, she put a hopelessly incompetent admiral in charge so that opinion would turn against Sate Pestage and she could have him assassinated; in the process the planet was lost and the best Imperial pilot since Vader switched sides. Coruscant, she infected with a nasty virus and left to the New Republic. The New Republic found a cure. Then, well, here's a passage where another of her people defects.
"Madam Director Ysanne Isard, I regret not being able to bring you this message personally, but not that much. In the time I have been associated with you I have found you to be sociopathically self-centered, prone to irrational and impulsive reactions to situations, and prey to a preference for appearance over substance. I have no doubt these affectations were seen as skills by the late Emperor, and indeed may have enhanced your ability to comply with his orders, but by no means are these traits that make for great, or even adequate leadership."
Note, however, that the cure was the whole idea. She planned for that, hoping to bleed the New Republic for the cure, and even conquered the planet with the cure! She just failed to anticipate the New Republic beating her out, and the plan to bleed them out...basically being a Gambit Roulette in itself.
A non-villainous example: Gladstone Gander, as created by Carl Barks. Though not actively evil, he is the biggest douchebag in the Disney comics◊ and openly embraces the opinion that his improbably high luck makes him better than anyone else in the world. He especially loves deriding his cousin Donald Duck, taunting him into contests that Donald can't win and often stealing Daisy away by making him look look bad in the process. It's only a very rare, deliberate attempt to use his luck to help others that save him from being a total rat's ass, and even there we can tell he's doing it largely so those others will admire him.
Morlish Veed of Star Wars Legacy is a brilliant military leader, but his political skills leave a lot to be desired (largely due to overconfidence brought on from aforesaid military victories). Lucky for him that his girlfriendis a genuine Magnificent Bastard - or maybe not, if she ever decides she doesn't need him anymore.
Actually, they turned on each other. Later, as Morrigan Corde, she stunned him, told him that Nyna Calixte sends her regards, and fired a killing shot point-blank in his head. What a major relief that was.
The Controllers of the DC Universe become these in the prelude of Blackest Night. Their egos rival those of the Guardians' but where the Guardians succeeded in upholding order in the universe (not so much recently but you get the idea) the Controllers' every attempt has failed miserably. During their expedition to retrieve the orange light of greed they make boasts about being as powerful as the Guardians themselves. Then Larfleeze eats them.
Grayven, the third son of Darkseid, who is as treacherous as Desaad, as prideful as Darkseid himself...and even less competent than Kalibak. Nearly every scheme he masterminds fails miserably yet he still truly believes it is his destiny to overthrow Darkseid. Let's put it this way: Darkseid holds Kalibak in higher regard than Grayven.
Roque Ja/Rock Jaw from Bone. He hates rat creatures, dragons, and the valley people, and insists on knowing what side of the war the Bones are on, saying everyone must be on one side, even though he appears not to be on a side himself. When asked about this, he just tells them, "You arehardlyin a position to be asking questions..." and in his first appearance, appears to be a villain since he is taking the Bones to Kingdok and the Hooded One just because he expects a reward. But, then, Kingdok humiliates him for pretty much no reason, prompting Rock Jaw to attack him to the point where everyone thinks he's dead. Then, he acts like a villain again, but this time it's only because he has made a deal with the Hooded One that benefits him. In his final appearance, he is one of Thorn, Fone, and Bartelby's obstacles on their way to The Crown of Horns. However, he ultimately lets them go by uninterrupted this time, probably because he might actually want them to end the war and stop the Lord of the Locusts. This, and the fact that the Hooded One has basically already freed the Locust herself, meaning there would be no reward and therefore no reason for turning them in. So, yeah, he hates everyone and only acts for his own interests.
Norman Osborn, particularly in Dark Reign. He's a successful Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard, yet cannot roll with the unexpected, and is—quite literally, thanks to his Green Goblin persona—his own worst enemy. He may have successfully capitalised on his Villain with Good Publicity status, but that doesn't change the fact that he's still irrational, hugely arrogant, misogynistic, and prone to Villainous Breakdowns at the worst possible moments. He's able to effectively displace the real Avengers and replace them with his own team, but simply cannot hold it together for long. He fails to control Dr. Doom, is used by Loki for his own ends, relies increasingly on brute force to keep his team intact, and is ultimately humiliatingly defeated by Captain America and Iron Man.
Incredible Hulk villain The Leader is a textbook Insufferable Genius with an ego the size of a planet. Unlike many of the villains on this list he is capable of learning from his mistakes, and has been the Big Bad of multiple arcs, but his arrogance and obsession with the Hulk continue to undermine his plans, no matter how hard he tries to rectify that.
AIQ Squared in All Fall Down is this to absolutely everyone.
Film
LeChiffre in Casino Royale is a Smug Snake, albeit a very competant one. He's a mathematical genius who displays tremendous grace under pressure during poker games and is gifted at intimidating his opponents but pretty soon the cracks in his shell appear larger. When things start turning sour for him, he immediately starts to lose his cool. Like Light Yagami, he's highly intelligent, but not quite so clever as he thinks himself to be. His entire plan throughout the film is just to pay off debts he got himself into with the world's terrorists by betting the wrong way with their money which shows his overconfidence and as Bond says "all he gets in return is a name he already has." He still wears a suit damn well though.
The criminal Waingro in Heat displays a smug expression whenever committing an low act like killing a guard during a heist for staring at him and enjoying a pie afterwards, murdering a underage prostitute or betraying his former colleagues to a common enemy.
The arms smuggler and film's protagonist Yuri in Lord of War is the epitome of the Smug Snake. An Honest John that refuses to confront the vehemence of his guilt and crimes by arguing that "I just sell guns, I don't pull the trigger". He taunts an honorable and idealistic weapons inspector, Valentin, by using the letter of the law to divert its spirit. Though by the end of the film he's still at it, he has everyone and everything he loves crumble around him. Interestingly, his character is essentially an amalgam of several real-life arms dealers.
The Chamberlain in The Dark Crystal infuriates his rivals with a simpering croon, like a mother trying to soothe a child. Though he's stripped of his rank and banished, his guile and persuasion are still impressive, and get downright creepy when he meets the Gelflings.
The Proposition has Eden Fletcher, played by David Wenham speaking through his nose, and very intentionally meant to inspire the audience's hate. If Darth Sidious from Star Wars and Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter got married and had a baby, and the baby grew up and took lessons at Eton in Being a Hateful Snob, it would still fall far short of Eden Fletcher. Even more infuriating than his cold-blooded perception of justice (100 lashes for a retarded 14-year old? Why the hell not?) is his status as Karma Houdini.
The James Bond film The Living Daylights features General Koskov, an effective villain who so very much wants to be a Magnificent Bastard, but doesn't quite make it. In his favour, though, he does come equipped with one of the best EvilPlans in Bond movie history.
Vice-Counsel DuPont, the Big Bad in Equilibrium, who seems to be far, far too smug for someone who's supposedly emotionless (a clue that he isn't taking his Prozium, and earns himself a suitably anticlimactic Karmic Death for it.
Theron in Frank Miller's 300 (or the movie version thereof, at any rate). A wannabe political manipulator in a city-state full of warriors, Theron's manipulations succeed in delaying Sparta's march to war for a time, but he quickly gets his comeuppance when Queen Gorgo runs him through with a sword in front of the Council, which coincidentally exposes his Persian bribe money, thus exposing him as a traitor.
The movie Divorce, Italian Style has the Villain Protagonist Don Fefe (even the name is less than magnificent) who throughout the film plots to lure his ugly wife into adultery so that in keeping with traditional custom, he can kill her and her and her lover with impunity and marry his beautiful cousin. Outside of the loathsome nature of this plan, he is less than clever in carrying it out (finding himself in an odd position of being jealous of the wife he didn't give a damn for) and the movie ends ironically by implying that his new wife, the cousin, will be begin cuckolding him almost immediately.
Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3 is, at least initially, a slimy, unctuous creep who sucks up to Jameson to advance his own career prospects, is a bit too creepy-stalkerish with Gwen Stacy, the 'girl he intends to marry' (although Gwen is quick to point out that they've only ever been out for a coffee once) and ends up manufacturing a photo of Spider-Man robbing a bank to frame the superhero and secure a staff job at the Bugle. Then Peter exposes his fake, he loses his job, and Gwen breaks up with him — and then he meets the Venom symbiote...
Any of the villains who aren't Hans (and maybe Simon) from the Die Hard movies. But since The Villain Makes the Plot, their presence doesn't deter from most fans' enjoyment of the films.
Fracture also shows a good contrast between an a Smug Snake and a Magnificent Bastard, (or perhaps, considering how he screws everything upat the end, a much more high-functioning Smug Snake). The former is a smarmy prosecutor who believes he has gotten a completely open-and-shut case, and consequently has not bothered to do his job properly. The latter is a murderer who believes he has made himself untouchable despite the case against him seeming to be bulletproof, and is not worried about showing how totally confident he is. The reason you are almost rooting for the murderer is because his arrogance comes from having planned everything very carefully, rather than smugly assuming he's going to win. The fact that he's played by Anthony Hopkins certainly helps.
Although at first he appears to be on the hero's side, the gameshow host in Slumdog Millionaire is as smug as can be, and seems absolutely insulted by Jamal's success throughout the movie.
Paul Sarone from Anaconda. In addition to being a Magnificent Bastard, you could probably count the times that smug smile leaves his face on one hand. If you were missing a thumb.
Klytus from the 1980 Flash Gordon. Also Wicked Cultured, but with a strong dose of aristocratic snark. Occasionally loses his cool, but always has a bored, sneering dismissiveness for his opponents or a sleazy "with pleasure" for his boss—yet he badly overestimates how cowed Prince Barin is and gets thrown onto spikes for his trouble.
Louis Renault from Casablanca, although Louis is really just too cool to remain a bad guy through the whole picture, so he reforms at the end so he and Rick can fight Nazis together.
Both main mobsters in the The Dark Knight Saga (Falcone and Maroni) are examples of this. They're clever guys who've managed to keep a very nasty city under their control for a long time, but they're just not competing in the same league as the real supervillains in town... and yet, Falcone is clearly the most arrogant and condescending villain in Batman Begins, while Maroni is at least ONE of the most arrogant and condescending villains in The Dark Knight, second only to the Joker if even him. (And really, Joker is in more of a position to be condescending ANYWAY.)
Doctor Emma Temple of The Ring Two, a smirking, utterly insensitive psychiatrist. Samara uses a Jedi Mind Trick on Dr. Temple to make her commit suicide, which on the one hand is the least gory death in the series, but may be the most humiliating as it implies Temple is so Weak Willed Samara can totally dominate her with a thought.
Colonel Zaysen from Rambo III. The Agony Booth recap gives an absolutely perfect distillation of this trope:
Zaysen will not go down in history as one of cinema's greatest villains, sad to say. He has all the tools: A decent sneer, a nasty sadistic streak, and a taste for chess to give him a cultured James Bond villain aura. But he never really becomes a character. Instead, the script has him simply go through the motions and expects that to be good enough.
The aptly-named Justin Hammer from Iron Man 2. While he is a massively rich military industrialist, and not above the odd bit of sceming, he comes off as an unbeliveable douche and a vaguely pathetic shadow of Tony Stark: his Hammer Tech weapons fail utterly, he can't cobble together an Iron Man suit knockoff to save his life, and it's pretty obvious that he's being played like a fiddle by Ivan Vanko. Hell, even his trophy girfriend is one of Tony's cast-offs.
It's pretty telling that when it comes down to Hammer versus the crazy murderous Russian, the audience tends to root for the latter.
This could apply to Tommy O'Shea, the Big Bad of Death Wish V:the Face of Death. A slimy, Irish mobster, he always manges to escape prosecution because he has a mole in the D.A's office but once Kersey gets his sights on him, he acts like its' a minor annoyance. Even when his dragon Chicki warns him not to underestimate Kersey, O'Shea is far too confident in his plans. Sadly, his overconfidence proved to be his undoing, as he wasn't savvy enough to realize he was a villain in a Death Wish movie and therefore, doomed.
Grima Wormtongue as portrayed by Brad Dourif in the film adaptation of ''Lord of the Rings''. He's slimy to the core, talks to everyone with an annoying sneer in his voice, and didn't prepare even nearly large enough a guard to ward off a small band of heroes who happen to be good fighters, not to mention apparently not remembering to tell his guards why they needed to take Gandalf's staff. (The book, in contrast, makes clear that the doorwarden doesn't trust Grima further than he could throw him — he lets Gandalf get away with bringing his staff because he believes that Gandalf means well for the Rhorhirrm, but that Grima does not.)
Gaff in Blade Runner. Everything he says is some kind of sarcastic remark, and it's clear that he knows much more about Deckard's situation than he's letting on. Unusual in that he's technically on the side of the 'good' guys, though in a film that deals mostly in Gray and Gray Morality it's often hard to tell.
Lord Coward in Sherlock Holmes, who seems to spend most of the movie standing around looking rather smug with little reason to be. He does notably attempt to shoot Holmes when he gets the chance, but still fails miserably.
Jabba the Hutt in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Han offered money instead of his captivity and Jabba refused to listen; when Leia and Luke warned Jabba that they could defeat him, Jabba and his minions did not take them seriously at all. Even when being led to the Sarlacc Pit Luke said "this is your last chance; free us, or die." Jabba and his minions STILL refused to take them seriously. Jabba was offered so many warnings, and so many chances for alternatives, that for him to still keep ignoring them made his Karmic Death all the more satisfying.
In Jabba's defense (and who ever thought they'd hear that) he'd heard it all before. He'd had dozens, maybe hundreds of others in exactly the same place that the heroes were in, and clearly he had come off the better of it each time. In various EU works, he actually is more of a Magnificent Bastard than Smug Snake.
But as far as the movies themselves go, no context is given for this dismissive approach. Also, note that "free us, or die" comes AFTER Luke manages to defeat the Rancor; this should give Jabba some indication that Luke could be a potential threat. Even if he was a Magnificent Bastard before this, that doesn't rule out the possibility that he has turned into a Smug Snake since. (Note that even Palpatine, who was clearly a Magnificent Bastard in the prequel trilogy, showed signs of turning into a Smug Snake in Return of the Jedi.)
And while we're on the subject of the prequel trilogy, how about General Grievous? In the Interquel mini-series, Grievous was a bonafide badass, slaughtering several Jedi at once and almost taking several prominent masters' heads for himself, including Ki-Adi-Mundi. The guy even fought MACE WINDU to a standstill. Cue Revenge of the Sith and a helping of Badass Decay courtesy of George Lucas, and we get a Smug Snake whom "is actually doing the doing the twirly-finger thing", to quote Rifftrax, and is handed his ass after a brief saber fight by Obi-Wan later...
Also, while not as obvious an example as Jabba, Admiral Motti's "this station is now the ultimate power in the universe" remark comes across as fairly arrogant in any context, but especially in light of what happened near the end of the movie.
Palpatine is especially smug during his duels with Windu and Yoda, and pretty much throughout Return of the Jedi.
Chad in In the Loop likes to think he's negotiating his way up the career ladder in the U.S State Department and effortlessly out-manoevreing those opposed to in. In reality, he a toadying little worm who is completely ignored by Linton Barwick, who's ass he tries desperately to kiss (Linton doesn't even remember his name), and is regarded by everyone else as a slimy little creep.
Inglorious Basterds has Major Hellstrom and, more unconventially, a rare 'good guy' example in Bridget Von Hammersmark who is utterly disdainful of her allies but doesn't seem much (if at all) smarter.
Eli Sunday from There Will Be Blood is a charismatic religious fanatic who presides over a cult in the small American town where he resides. While his ambition is to be commended, he is nevertheless a hyptocritical bully whose faith in God crumbles when faced with adversity. When confronted with a bigger bully than himself in the form of raging Daniel Plainview, he is reduced to crying and screaming while begging for his life.
Shattered Glass presents Stephen Glass as one of these; he initially comes off as a humble, self-effacing and charming guy, but the longer he keeps it up and the longer we watch him we realize it's all just an act he uses to manipulate people, and the more we realize he's actually just a slimy, weaselly creep.
The douche-tacular Captain Styles of the USS Excelsior in Star Trek III. He basically exists for Kirk to tap-dance rings around.
Draco Malfoy. He gets better, but not before being completely broken.
Draco's dad Lucius is one too (apparently being a Smug Snake runs in the family). He's very smart and has the polish of a Magnificent Bastard, but his arrogance and certainty that he can get away with anything lead to some sloppy mistakes. By the end of the series both Malfoys turn out weirdly pathetic after they are forcibly shown that a Complete MonsterEvil Overlord does not a good houseguest make.
Voldemort himself, with an emphasis on the "Snake" part of Smug Snake. Voldemort has all the resources a Magnificent Bastard could ever want, but nooooooo... his circuitous plans fail utterly at basic logic, and while he is clearly trying for Magnificent Bastard he comes off as a third-rate Dastardly Whiplash. ***Justified by the fact that his making so many horcruxes left him decidedly... unstable. The young Tom Riddle is shown to have been a much more smooth and successful schemer, largely because he knew how to keep a cool head and didn't yet look like a monstrous snake-human hybrid. At any rate, whenever anyone talks about any version of Voldemort's genius, they're generally referring to his magical genius, which is unquestionable, rather than his tactical genius, which as has been mentioned above is rather lacking.
Artemis Fowl from the book series of the same name is certainly a genius but his snarking is usually outdone by most of the other characters, he is physically weak and most of his plans fail to him either having a crisis of conscience or due to his own overconfidence and incompetance. In short, for a criminal mastermind, this guy is overrated.
Minerva Paradizo from Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony is trying to be a Magnificent Bitch and would be as she's easily as clever as Artemis and significantly more ruthless however she is obedient to her patronising and overprotective father, is easily outwitted by Artemis and suffers Villainous Breakdown when her own Dragon rebels against her.
In Skulduggery Pleasant, Davina Marr is a patronising, ageist, sadistic Stepford Smiler and Complete Monsterwho makes Dolores Umbridge look like Mother Teresa. Whenever she appears, you want to climb inside the book and punch her in the face. Nevertheless, she's an unwitting pawn in someone else's diabolical plan, spends most of book 5 unconscious and is unceremoniously killed while tied up and begging for her life.
Queen Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. Overestimation of her own cleverness is one of her main character traits. There's a prophecy that just about everything that could possibly go wrong in her life will, so her ruthless methods are understandable, yet her incompetent attempts at manipulation and power-grabbing alienate almost every one of her allies and could well lead her to the terrible fate predicted in the prophecy.
Really this could be the hat of the entire Lannister house, even the more clever members of the family who qualify as Chessmasters in their own right are still so odious and preening it's hard to root for them. Lord Tywin's character in the TV series exemplifies this. Jaime gets better, and Tyrion for all his faults seems more like an Anti-Villain.
Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish seems like a Smug Snake to most of the other characters, but this is a smokescreen to hide what is actually a subtle Magnificent Bastard, who has apparently single-handedly organized the War of Five Kings as well as the assassination of two kings, while simultaneously organizing the rise of a new queen... his protegee Sansa Stark.
The trope is also subverted by the eunuch Varys, who wears his Sissy Villain persona as a mask to operate behind the collective back of the Deadly Decadent Court.
In every appearance of Viserys, the book contrasts his attitude ("You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?") with the reality: he's a spineless, pathetic little man who bullies his sister Daenerys because there's nobody else even close to being weak enough to let him get away with it. When Dany develops enough strength to resist him, Viserys mentally collapses and gets himself killed within a few pages.
Theon Greyjoy could be the poster boy for this trope. At least until A Dance with Dragons, where Ramsay Bolton has tortured him into insanity - he's a thoroughly broken shell whose mind slides between his current identity as 'Reek', Ramsay's completely subservient and terrified slave, and his former identity, Theon, who bears little to no resemblance to his former self.
In the Dragonlance novels, Quarath, the Evil Chancellor to the leader of the Corrupt Church fits this model. His own ambitions for power and wealth are compared to the epic confrontation between actualMagnificent Bastards Raistlin and Fistandantilus of which Quarath is completely unaware. Ended up being squashed by a pillar as his temple collapsed when his master pisses off the gods that Quarath had pretty much stopped believing in by this point.
In the later War of Souls trilogy we get Morham Targonee, Lord of the Night, who despite his impressively evil sounding title is basically a scheming accountant who happened to be in the right place at the right time to seize power. When the local Dark Messiah shows up and steals his job, she punishes him in what is perhaps the worst way a Smug Snake can experience- by forcing him to realize his own cosmic insignificance before killing him.
Cosmo Lavish from the Discworld novel Making Money is basically an obsessed fan-boy of Vetinari, who is an actual Magnificent Bastard. He tries extremely hard to be just like Vetinari, trying to get his old clothes and practising his eyebrow-raising. He eventually goes crazy, thinking he really is Vetinari, and gets committed to an insane asylum, which apparently has a whole ward dedicated to people who think they're Vetinari. His sister, Pucci Lavish, isn't much better.
Lord Hong from Interesting Times is another, though less funny and less pitiful, example. He is, admittedly, awesome by analysis and the Big Bad of the novel, so not a pure specimen. He does, however, exhibit the trademark snarky attitude, overconfidence and pre-failure breakdown.
There's also the Supreme Grand Master, a.k.a. Lupine Wonse from Guards! Guards!, who vastly overestimates his own power in summoning and controlling the dragon which terrorizes Ankh-Morpork, in that he can summon it but has no means to control it.
The emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, in War and Peace. The characters take up at least a third of the book talking about, predicting the actions of, or plotting against him. When Prince Andrei and later when Balashov, an emissary of the Russian emperor, finally meet him, they're both struck by how disappointing he is compared to his reputation. He's purposefully portrayed this way.
The title character of A Coffin for Dimitrios is a good fit, being a clever schemer, but such an unpleasant treacherous thug that he's completely unlikable. Also notable is that he ends up addicted to the same drugs he sells, something which would never happen to a Magnificent Bastard. Interestingly, the character might have been an inspiration for Keyser Soze of The Usual Suspects, who by contrast is definitely a Magnificent Bastard.
Vidal Vordarian from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. He wants to run Barrayar, but is effortlessly and unintentionally defeated in his attempt to do it legitimately by Aral Vorkosigan. So he tries a coup, but fails to capture the true heir or assassinate the Regent. He gets the ruling council to go along, but only at obvious gunpoint. And then he loses his head to Vorkosigan's wife. His "greatest" achievement is his implied rape of the dowager Empress, who he marries (again, obviously by force). Smug Snake indeed.
He doesn't actually marry her. He just announces their engagement.
Frederick Chilton from Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, who comes across as a bully as head of the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In Silence he makes the key mistake of handing Hannibal Lecter over to people who don't understand how dangerous he can be, which gives Hannibal the opportunity to escape.
Paul Krendler of the same series definitely qualifies, though it only becomes noticeable in Hannibal. In many ways he's far more of a Smug Snake than Chilton was on his worst day. Like Chilton, he gets his comeuppance at the hands of Lecter.
Prince Regal in Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. A spoiled, petty, selfish youngest prince, he is obsessed with ruling and having power while being completely incompetent as a ruler. Like the example of Cersei above, he is much less clever than he thinks he is.
Uriah Heep in Dickens' David Copperfield is one of literature's most notable smug villains; he has the ability to make the term of address "Master Copperfield" seem insincere, and is always wittering on about how "humble" he is. Naturally, he's planning to swindle everything away from the other characters.
Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, whilst not exactly a villain, is rather smug and slimy, with a rather vast (and largely unearned) self-regard that makes him believe that Elizabeth Bennet is rejecting his marriage proposal out of some feminine desire to string him along when she's rather explicitly stating that no, it's because she doesn't like him.
Duke Telrii from Elantris is an example of the "thinks he's a Magnificent Bastard" type, though he winds up little more than a pawn of the book's real Magnificent Bastard, Hrathen. King Iadon from the same book is also an example- he turns out to be a lot smarter than Telrii (and a lot smarter than he lets on), but his vision is simply too narrow to let him accomplish anything of real significance.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu are obvious ones, and Cao Cao has shades of it when he's opposing the nominal protagonist, but even Liu Bei has his moments of snake-ness in the eyes of a modern audience. (But that What the Hell, Hero? reaction is probably intentional, as the author was suffering from Executive Meddling.)
Yuan Shu is probably the biggest example of the book. He declares himself the emperor with only the Imperial Seal to back up his claim, and thus alienates pretty much everybody. Not to mention his petty villainy while a member of the Coalition against Dong Zhuo, withholding food from ally Sun Jian's army to keep Sun from gaining too much glory.
Cugel the Clever, of Jack Vance's Dying Earth books, while he lives on the border between this and being an actual Magnificent Bastard, usually leans towards the Smug Snake side, being a complete sociopath, and nowhere near as clever as he imagines himself. And he's the protagonist, folks.
The Dresden Files has a lot of these, a couple of whom (such as Lord Raith) are also Complete Monsters. But of particular note is Quintus "Snakeboy" Cassius, a Denarian who is not only a clear-cut example of those trope, but a literal example as well.
Simon Lovelace from The Bartimaeus Trilogy is a perfect example, though he was smarter than the average Snake.
John Mandrake also counts. Actually, most of the wizards do.
It was his smug, oily certainty that infuriated her. Ray had mastered the art of speaking as if he were the only adult on the planet and everyone else was weak, stupid, or insolent. Under that brittle exterior, of course, was the narcissistic infant determined to have his own way. Neither aspect of his personality was particularly appealing.
Lord Straff Venture of Mistborn is a comparatively competent Smug Snake, being a skilled long-range Chessmaster and the most powerful nobleman in The Empire apart from its Physical God leader. At the same time, though, his arrogance, lack of skill in immediate, detailed manipulations, and the numerous petty and vile traits he shows in his interpersonal relationships keep him out of full Magnificent Bastard range.
Vizzini from The Princess Bride. Although he certainly is clever, and recognizes his weaknesses, he has a colossal ego and treats everyone, even his own henchmen, like dirt. His arrogance also prevents him from recognizing that The Man in Black would never pull his battle of wits unless he knew he would win, and that there was no sure way of guessing which cup had the poison. There's a reason he's the former Trope Namer for Out Gambitted.
Two villains from the Forgotten Realms trilogy Counselors And Kings stand out. Lord Procopio Septus is a canny and ambitious politician, but he's shortsighted and very proud, which make it possible for him to be Out Gambitted comparatively easily if you know what you're doing. Dhamari Exchelsor, though he puts on a friendly facade, is a treacherous and venal little man often compared to a weasel or ferret both in terms of appearance and demeanor. He's sneaky, but he's too petty to have a real Magnificent Bastard's grasp of the big picture.
Ironically Dhamari did at one point artificially turn himself into something approaching a Magnificent Bastard- upon capturing an amulet enspelled to protect it's wearer from him, he wore it himself, and was protected from himself, causing him to become much more cunning, manipulative, and successful. Once he lost it, though, it was a quick trip back to Smug Snake-hood.
Fulbert from the French novel Malevil. He's an evil priest with a tiny, weak Corrupt Church and a 0% Approval Rating. The only reason he isn't overthrown is because he tricked everyone into giving him the food and weapons, he sits in his fortified manor where nobody can touch him.
Gustav Fiers, aka The Gentleman from the Spider-Man novelisations, The Sinister Six Trilogy. He certainly thinks he's a Magnificent Bastard, and looks and acts the part, being an excellent Manipulative Bastard and Chessmaster, and Man of Wealth and Taste who successfully manipulates the whole of the Sinister Six, has evaded law enforcement for years, and refers to himself as an "investor in chaos". Yet he fails to earn the audience's respect due to his contemptuous attitude and his unpleasant personality, utter heinousness (only his genuine affection for his equally monstrous brother, Karl, keeps him off the Complete Monster list), and underestimation of Spider-Man, The Chameleon, and Dr. Octopus put him squarely in this trope.
Count Olaf of A Series of Unfortunate Events is a huge one. He has some pretty Paper Thin Disguises (to the Baudelaires, at least) and he constantly remarks about how evil and cunning he is. Also, he suffers from plot-relevant Villain Decay and he clearly lacks common sense (seeing as he asks the Baudelaires to buy some roast beef with their fortune when he knows they're not eligible yet).
Philonecron from The Cronus Chronicles. He considers himself an evil genius, and treats everyone he meets like dirt, but is defeated by two middle-school kids.
In Death: Some of the murderers are definitely this. A notable example is Dr. Waverly in Conspiracy In Death. He is so arrogant and has such a God complex that he simply assumes one of his security droids will handle Roarke easily. He clearly doesn't know Roarke at all. He happily gives the names of the people he's been working with to Eve while he's got a hostage. He had been conducting experiments on regenerating human organs with a serum. He used sidewalk sleepers and poor people as guinea pigs, and the experimentation resulted in their deaths. He flies into a pompous speech about how this serum can be used on any organ, and eventually will be used on bone, muscle and tissue, which will eventually result in perfect human beings. Oh, and he'll get to decide who will be part of the survival of the fittest, and he boasts that the world will be a better place without the dregs that weigh it down. However, when Eve turns the tables on him, he gets scared, and begs for his life. Yep, he thought he was so great and smart...but he wasn't.
In general, as soon as a bad guy says something about how they're going to take down or hurt Roarke easily, you know s/he will be put in this category. The Dirty Cop Jerry Vernon from Judgment In Death is a good example. He gets in Eve's face about the fact that she is looking for dirt on him, and he brags about how he is going to sue her and bleed that rich husband of hers. Please note that no one bleeds Roarke. If s/he tried, he would squish that person like the bug s/he is.
The Idiot features Ferdyshchenko, who establishes himself as a thoroughly smug snake in one scene and doesn't do much else for the rest of the novel. At a party, Ferdyshchenko proposes a bizarre parlor game where all the participants confess the worst misdeed they ever committed. His confession was a story about stealing 25 rubles (for no reason whatsoever) from a house he was a guest at, then allowing a maid to take the blame for the theft, ultimately resulting in said maid being fired. From the way he tells his story, it's clear that he expects his listeners to be impressed with him—upon realizing that his story had exactly the opposite effect, he gets pissy and stays that way for most of the evening.
Live-Action TV
Lyn Peterson from Torchwood: Miracle Day is one hell of a Smug Snake. She's very sexy and seems pretty powerful at first, arresting Rex Matheson and the Torchwood team as soon as they arrive on US soil, but her incompetance soon becomes clear when her attempt to poison Jack Harkness is easily exposed and Gwen Cooper incapacitates her with a single punch. She proves herself a good fighter when she assaults Rex, but he still manages to defeat her by breaking her neck. Given that everyone on Earth has lost the ability to die, she remains alive but disturbingly yet strangely comically, now has her head on backwards.
This trope describes every single villain from 24, and surprisingly, a fair number of the good guys as well.
Ashes to Ashes features the satanic character of DCI Jim Keats, a Smug Snake who would be a Magnificent Bastard if he didn't lose his temper quite as much.
David Platt from Coronation Street beleives himself to be a Magnificent Bastard, with his wicked schemes of Disproportionate Retribution. However since he constantly makes the mistake of messing with people who easily wiped the floor with him, like Charlie Stubbs, Jason Grimshaw and Gary Windarss, it often blows up in his face. Not to mention the constant temper tantrums. Or the time he tried to blackmail Tracy Barlow (who is quite a qualified Smug Snake herself) into sleeping with him, she actually laughed it off.
Dakota Fred from the Discovery Channel seres Gold Rush easily qualifies, acting like a douchebag when working with the Hoffmans in the first season, then backstabbing them and buying the claim out from under them in season 2, forcing them to find another site to mine.
The Sheriff of Nottingham of the BBC series Robin Hood seems to count himself a great Magnificent Bastard, but in practice his evil works tend to be rather too easily foiled by Robin Hood's men to be considered the work of a true evil genius. Furthermore, his 'la-di-da-di-da!' catchphrase, often uttered as a sign of impatient indifference in response to threats concerning the meddling of Robin Hood and his men, is much too unctuous, awkward, and obnoxious to be a distinctive of a true Magnificent Bastard.
Captain Kevin Darling in Blackadder Goes Forth, a snotty little creep who, working safely behind the battlelines as General Melchett's adjutant officer, has made it his life's mission to make sure that Blackadder doesn't escape the trenches of World War One. He's loathed by Blackadder for obvious reasons; however, despite (or because of) all his sucking up, the General can't stand him either, at one point informing Darling that he regards him as a son - just not a particularly well-liked one.
To say nothing of The Black Adder himself, Prince "Snivelling Worm" Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, who thinks himself quite the Magnificent Bastard, while his contemporaries regard him with a mixture of pity and contempt. His various throne-usurping schemes either fail spectacularly, end up biting him in the ass, or both. Thankfully, his descendants gained several layers of Magnificent Bastardry, presumably from their (unseen) matriarch.
Lilah Morgan from Angel was a true Magnificent Bastard, but eventually she had to die and be replaced, and that replacement was Eve. As Poor Man's Substitute for Lilah, Eve inevitably came off as a Smug Snake, but the writers seemed to realize this, and put her through a series of events that had the effect of breaking the cutie. They were of the opinion that she would be more interesting if she got some Character Development that such that she would no longer be driven by slyness and cool disdain (as she started out), but by fear, anger, and a Minion Shipping romance with Lindsey.
Lilah herself only slowly evolved into a Magnificent Bitch; for most of her run on show (arguably until as late as the second half of Season 3) she was definitely a Smug Snake, even ending up with a promotion - and thus her life - solely because Lindsey contemptuously tossed it away.
Of course, the true Smug Snake in Angel was Gavin Park. Gavin believed himself to be the next Lindsey McDonald, a Magnificent Bastard who could arguably be called Angel's Archenemy (well, he would argue that he could), but he just wasn't the man, lawyer or villain that he'd replaced.
The Master of Doctor Whodevolves from his usual Magnificent Bastard status unnervingly often, the most egregious examples being in the Made-for-TV Movie, in which his grand evil scheme was to... not die, and in the episode "Logopolis" in which he wipes out a large part of the universe and octillions of people because he didn't do his homework.
In fact, a lot of serials with the Master as the main villain can be described less as "the Master is trying to take over the world" than as "the Master is up to yet another dumb scheme that's likely to get out of control and cause The End of the World as We Know It." Or indeed, as " the Master has a scheme to not die". Guys spends a lot of time cheating death even for a Time Lord, it's kind of his thing.
Many Cardassians are also Smug Snakes. Dukat is one, through and through while fancying himself a Magnificent Bastard. Just listening to him talk about how he feels the Bajorans should have loved him like a father while he oversaw their enslavement and the strip-mining of their world, is disgusting to the series' protagonists and highly amusing to Weyoun. Dukat even has moments where he is on the side of the heroes until he takes an opportunity to serve himself to everyone else's detriment.
Dukat's right hand and successor Damar was also a pretty Smug Snake until he decided to rebel and fight back against the Dominion.
Kai Winn is the queen of Smug Snakes, especially in her first appearance. Five minutes of listening to Louise Fletcher cloak herself in "the-Prophets-forgive-you-for-being-a-filthy-unbeliever" self-righteousness, and you'll be itching to leap through the TV screen and punch the smug out of her.
She and Weyoun actually meet and have a Smug-off in late season five. Watching each of them get a taste of their own medicine should be deeply satisfying, but it's more likely to make you feel unclean...
Dave Hester from Storage Wars fits this, acting like a complete prick and having a near-permanent smirk on his face that makes one wonder why the other bidders don't knock his teeth out.
What's worse? He's, generally, WINNING...mostly because he 1. Has a good eye for the REALLY valuable stuff, and 2. Has a shitload more money, and more money to burn.
G'Kar during the first season of Babylon 5 and especially in the pilot movie.
Also, Mister Morden, with his ever annoying arrogant smile. J. Michael Straczynski points out in the commentary that he specifically loved the actor for how unlikeably smug he made the character come off: "Look at that guy! Don't you just want to hate him?"
The audience wasn't the only one who hated him.
Vir:'"I want to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and put it on a pike, as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this.
Alfred Bester was like this in his first number of appearances as well, both smug and unsuccessful, but JMS noticed the threat of Villain Decay and averteditoh so hard with his later actions.
Most of the series' one-shot antagonists come under this trope.
I dare anyone to get through season 4 without wanting to punch Allison Higgins, ISN reporter and face of Clark's propaganda machine. One wonders if she's a Stepford Smiler.
Speaker of the House Haffley from The West Wing is an example of the "failed Magnificent Bastard" variety. He often tries to use the Republican majority in Congress to be irritatingly obstructionist to Democratic president Bartlet. However, often when he is most confident is when he fails terribly (such as when his attempt to cut the budget leads to the government going broke and Haffley look stupid, or when his pulling a vote on stem cell research to interfere with Democratic campaigning leads to Matt Santos tricking him into thinking the Democrats had left when they didn't).
The former example almost works; the government shutdown cripples the United States and the public blames Bartlet... until a Crowning Moment of Awesome where Bartlet walks to Congress to discuss the matter with Haffley - unfortunately for Haffley, he's unprepared for this, his Smug Snake instincts kick in, and he ends up leaving Bartlet sitting in a corridor whilst he tries to figure out what to do. This backfires on him badly when Bartlet merely leaves, making Haffley look incompetent, arrogant and uncaring, causing public opinion to swing into a serious backlash against him and forcing him to eat crow and accept Bartlet's budget terms.
An infrequent recurring character called Larry Claypool represented the 'slimy-but-low-level Obstructive Bureaucrat meets Amoral Attorney' kind; a lawyer for a right-wing organisation that frequently sought to embarrass the President by muckracking, he often issues subpoenas to the characters requiring them to testify about issues that will cause embarrassment to the President and his staff, and comes off as smugly as possible whilst doing so. He's frequently described as an idiotic, pompous blowhard, but a dangerous one since he has the unerring ability to find things that might cause serious damage to the administration in his muckraking.
Malcolm Dietrich in season two of Murder One was a very, very obvious attempt to replicate the magic the show had with Richard Cross, the Magnificent Bastard from the first season. For whatever reason it just didn't work, though undoubtedly at least part of this was due to not being able to score as good an actor as Stanley Tucci, who had played Cross.
Brad Bellick in the first season of Prison Break practically embodies this trope. As a corrupt correctional officer, he certainly acts all "magnificent-y bastard-y" like. He deals with former mob-boss Abruzzi, has a history of inmate abuse, insults Ax CrazyMagnificent Bastard "T-Bag" in his face and interrupts Michael's plans quite often. But at the same time he is unattractive, obnoxious, sleazy, importunate, cowardly... You catch my drift.
Agent Kim from season 2 is another notorious example, lording and sneering over our heroes while being generally inept in almost all of his endeavors, then getting done in by the most unlikely of culprits.
And let us not forget Don Self after he was revealed to be The Mole. Where Bellick had at least some sense of magnificence, this guy is just too annoying to like.
Trymon in the TV series adaptation of The Colour of Magic. Ungarnished ambition, oily hair, and being played by Tim Curry all result in a decidedly un-magnificent Bastard.
Almost any character played by Tim Curry qualifies as this. He is to this trope what BRIAN BLESSED is to Boisterous Bruisers.
Heroes: season 3 Big Bad Arthur Petrelli: between his ludicrous amounts of power, constant dog-kicking and smug, smarmy tone throughout it all.
Eric Doyle, the creepy puppet-master from season 3 also qualifies. Creepy and smarmy, he's the kind of villain audiences just love to hate.
Grunchlk of Farscape, a bloated, scheming, greedy merchant with a nasty habit of overcharging his clients and betraying them should a better offer appear. In the episodes he appears in, just about every single character despises him with a passion, especially Scorpius, who takes great delight in stabbing him in the back of the skull with a Mind Control probe and forcing him to eat two of his own fingers.
Farscape also gave us Commandant Grayza; a smug, vindictive and generally repulsive Peacekeeper who wasn't nearly as smart as she thought she was, and eventually got completely owned by the Scarrans before being removed by her own lieutenant for incompetence.
Prince Clavor from the "Look At The Princess" trilogy: a whiny, posturing and thoroughly smug little bastard that wants the throne of the Royal Planet for himself- but probably wouldn't have been able to string half of his plan together without Scarran help. And he pays for it throughout the story: his mother plots to keep him off the throne, his fiance plans to assassinate him if he ever takes power, Crichton slaps him about... finally, the Scarran ambassador decides that control over the Royal Planet isn't worth another minute of Clavor's smugness, and fries the bastard alive.
In Survivor, we have Richard Hatch, Boston Rob, Edgardo & The Four Horsemen, Coach, and Russell Hantz, although the latter tends to be a cross of this and Entitled Bastard.
Richard Hatch and Boston Rob don't count since they both backed up their arrogance by actually winning(albeit it took Rob four times in order to do so. He was definitely a Smug Snake in his first season, but during All Stars he took the leap into Magnificent Bastard territory. Richard on the other hand has always been shown as being very smart). The other examples mentioned above(as well as manymany others on the show) are, however, justified.
In the American Version of Big Brother Jessie was sooooo full of himself. And in the recent Season, Enzo practically has this written on his forehead.
Charles Miner from American version of The Office replaces Michael and responds to his eccentricity with realistic exasperation. However, his time in charge is largely characterized by appointing his employees with mismatched roles, bullying Jim at any chance he can get, and being all-around smug.
Bobbi Barret, the wife and manager of comedian Jimmy Barret, ends up like this in an episode of Mad Men. Jimmy had previously insulted the wife of the owner of Utz potato chips, which he was doing a commercial for. Don Draper takes most of the episode negotiating with Bobbi to get him to apologize. After the two end up having sex (don't ask) Bobbi agrees to a dinnertime apology. But Jimmy spends all his time at the dinner hitting on Don's wife. When Don takes Bobbi aside, she says that according to Jimmy's contract he doesn't have to apologize, unless, of course, Don gets them more money. So Don shoves his hand up her dress and says that if he doesn't, he will ruin Jimmy. Jimmy apologizes. One word: OWNED
Pete Campbell is pretty much constantly this, although he does get somewhat better about it as the show goes on.
Lester from Primeval is a curious case, he starts off as an archetypal Smug Snake, but it is revealed that this is more a Jerk Ass Facade than anything else, his awesome powers of Sarcasm really shine through in season 2 when he is given his own Smug Snake nemesis in his assistant and Starscream wannabe, Leek and by season 3 his return from a 10-Minute Retirement is given a Standing Ovation, and yet all the time he retains his aura of smug self-satisfaction. A rare heroic Smug Snake perhaps.
In Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, Drew Lansing (a.k.a. Kamen Rider Torque), one of Big Bad General Xaviax's lieutenants, fancies himself both an expert manipulator and fighter. Eventually, he proves lacking in both areas.
While we're on the subject of Kamen Rider, this trope would not be complete without mention of Houjou, from Kamen Rider Agito. He spends the entire series trying to undermine the G3 crew in multiple ways, from guile-ing his way into becoming the G3 Operator, to proposing a competing powered armor system, to trying to capture Agito just to render G3 obsolete. The worst part is, every time his shit gets shut down he only seems to get worse.
Strange that no one has yet mentioned Benjamin of Jekyll. His comeuppance was most satisfying.
The members of the Fellowship of the Sun in True Blood tend to follow this trait. Filled with empty smiles and holier-than-thou attitudes, this vampire-hating church isn't above kidnap, murder or rape of ordinary people whose only crime is having a sexual relationship with a vampire, all while declaring their good intentions and other propaganda. Especially annoying, since many (most?) vampires of the show would most definitely deserve staking, but you couldn't root for these people to do it even if you wanted to.
Pretty much every Big Bad from Power Rangers has at least one scheming lackey utterly convinced that they are superior to the remainder of the universe and willing to backstab anyone in their way. This usually ends with them being converted (if brainwashed into snakedom) or, much more often, exploding violently by either side's hand.
Being set in a world of power-crazed politicians, The Thick of It has a fair few. Julius Nicholson and Steve Fleming both consider themselves to be Magnificent Bastards but they also have big egos and tend to foil their own devious plans by bragging about them.
While not really a villain, new med student Cole in season 9 of Scrubs fits the bill. Due to his wealthy family contributing tons of money to the school, Cole sees himself as "untouchable" no matter what he does, always has a smug smile on his face and a smarmy tone in his voice, and is involved in an emotionally unhealthy relationship with Lucy. Recent developments indicate he may have a decent side to him but even this might be further manipulation.
In The Vampire Diaries, the modern Jonathan Gilbert. Smug, sadistic, and smarmy, a lot of viewers consider him the only villain they're really wanted to die as soon as possible.
Both Vern and Omen of Dark Oracle have severe Smug Snake tendencies, with both being arrogant, self-centred, quickly offended, and prone to wildly overestimating their own abilites. Of the two, Omen is the most serious threat, as he almost has the power to back up his bragging; both eventually Heel Face Turn and, in Omen's case, lose most of the Smug Snakeness.
Bela Talbot of Supernatural, a thief and dealer in occult items, was intended to be a Chaotic Neutral foil to the Winchesters. Unfortunately, she was so disdainful and so treacherous (she sells their location to an enemy, steals the Colt, sets up the boys for arrest by the show's Inspector Javert, and finally tries to kill them) that even her tragic backstory couldn't earn her sympathy from the Winchesters — or most of the fandom.
Morgana from Merlin walks around with a perpetual Evil Smirk on her face, even though every single one of her plans to kill Uther, Arthur and Merlin have completely failed.
Rick Flag of Smallville is a competent schemer (at least so far) but his fondness for Cold-Blooded Torture, Sociopathic Soldier status, and 1960s-ish supervillainy keep him here, especially when compared to Lex Luthor and Lionel. He's slimily arrogant, viciously vile, and at least partially insane: he's a Badass Normal who's spent so much time around superheroes that he self-identifies as one. Lx-3 (Old!Lex), an Axe Crazy clone of Lex Luthor might count as well, as he has all of Lex's cunning and superiority, and none of his style.
Lots of one-shot villains count as well, as does Regan Matthews, a slimy Corrupt Corporate Executive who served as Lex's Dragon throughout Season 8. Arrogant, condescending and just plain unpleasant, he was nevertheless unusual for a Smug Snake as his defining trait was his Undying Loyalty to Lex.
Many, many criminal defendants from the various Law & Order shows.
Some of the defence attorney's more than cross the line into Smug Snake. Mike Cutter debateably started out as an Antiheroic variant.
In Deadwood, you can practically see the trail of slime behind E.B. Farnum as he skulks around town, engaging one poorly thought-out scheme after another.
Cy Tolliver appears to be covered with a sickly layer of slime too.
This is why short-lived BBC sitcom Prince Amongst Men didn't work — the title character was a Smug Snake, when he needed to be a Magnificent Bastard. Not only that, but the creators missed the point that we sympathise with, for example, Blackadder because the world really does seem out to get him and he's just fighting back. Gary Prince's world seemed to be incredibly on his side, to the point where he was pretty much a Jerk Sue.
The Law & Order/Homicide: Life on the Street crossover "Sideshow" features Independent Counsel William Dell, a clear No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Kenneth Starr. During the course of the two-parter, he abuses his grand jury subpoena power, lies to police, commits blackmail, derails a major character's judicial appointment, cons defendants with bogus immunity agreements, sabotages a plea bargain between the Baltimore prosecutors and a key witness, and finally gives full state and federal immunity to a murderer so he can secure uncorroborated (and probably false) testimony implicating the President in his crime. When confronted at the end of the episode about his decision to torpedo a murderer investigation for political gain, he accuses McCoy and Danvers of being "petty" and "savage" in their lawyering, because "the stakes are so damn small."
Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear tackles any task or challenge on the show with the attitude that it will work because he says it is going to, even if his co-presenters warn him otherwise. Which makes it all the more hilarious when things go horribly wrong as a result.
Uncle Teddy AKA Flosso from Flash Forward should be the poster boy of this trope...or not. He is a Fat Bastard who smokes a lot, is a Card-Carrying Villain, has people killed without a qualm, thinks he is so smart, and bullies Simon around. However, he gets his comeuppance when he has Simon come with him, just the two of them, reveals Simon's professor's corpse in a car trunk, and tells Simon to comply and that this is his last warning. In a Crowning Moment of Awesome, Simon says "I'm calling your bluff! You need me too much!" The look on Flosso's face at that point was priceless. Simon shoves Flosso down to the ground and presses on the windpipe of that Fat Bastard. He smokes a lot, so he suffocates rather quickly and dies. Get this, it is pointed out that Flosso was just a middleman! It sort of makes you wonder what the people he works for are like. You will learn to hate this guy in one episode. He totally deserved to get killed off.
Criminal Minds: Being a show about Serial Killers more than a few of the villains are like this, especially those that suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. George Foyet, The Boston Reaper, and a Recurring Character in Seasons 4 & 5, is one of the best examples, being a total sociopath and Complete Monster who suffers from Lack of Empathy, It's All About Me, and an ego the size of a blimp. He takes offense at the idea that anyone would dare to try and stop him, torments Hotch for no better reason than his incredibly petty ideas of Revenge by Proxy, is killing people for the fame more than anything else, and takes such a sadistic delight in everything he does that it's impossible to admire him, despite his undeniable Evil Genius. The poster boy for this trope, however, is probably the Season 2 Final Boss, Frank Breitkopf. While he has more sympathetic qualities than The Reaper, Keith Carradine plays him with such slimy arrogance that it's impossible to like him, or even admire him. He comes off like an evil college professor: you are going to learn something, no matter how painful it might be.
Who Wants to Be a Superhero: Dr. Dark is intentionally played as this in the second season. He talks in a raspy voice and spends his screentime boasting about how evil and brilliant he is. Then when his big plan in the second season fails, he confronts the superheroes personally and gets beaten up in a fight that lasts about a minute and a half.
Not only does Lisa Niles from General Hospital fit this to a T, she gets bonus points for being a total psycho. She seriously believed that killing Robin would make Patrick fall in love with her. Of course, all her attempts to off Robin failed. Most recently, Lisa fell into a coma after accidentally sticking herself with a syringe full of toxic drain cleaner that she meant to use on Robin.
Laurie Foreman from That '70s Show, who was the only somewhat major character with no redeeming moral qualities, a general smugness about her, and was intentionally made this way, with the characters themselves lampshading it.
Dr Seth. Griffin from St. Elsewhere started out this way, particularly when he tried to pit fellow first year residents Carol Novino and Susan Birch against each other. Birch ends up taking the fall for a patient death for which Griffin was responsible and is kicked out of the residency program.
Villainous CIA representative Clyde Decker from Chuck, most definitely. He's always seen with a smug, shit-eating grin, and frequently discusses about a big plan meant to take down Chuck and his allies. However, it turns out, that Decker himself is just a pawn in a larger plan by Daniel Shaw to bring down Chuck as we find out "Chuck Versus the Santa Suit".
Triple H calls himself the Cerebral Assassin, and usually tries really hard to come off as a Magnificent Bastard, but in full Heel mode, he's always a Smug Snake. He respects nobody, he always loses it whenever he's not in control, and tends to react erratically when things don't turn out the way he plans them. Combine that with the fact that fans believe he uses his Real Life pull to always have things go his way, plus his idolization of the truly magnificentRic Flair, just accentuates his total smugness.
Dr. Stevie, who uses every trick in the book to either hurt Abyss, or try to turn him into his puppet. While slightly effective, his big flaw is that he keeps pissing off the wrong people. For example, he bribed Kevin Nash $50,000 to attack Abyss. Nash succeeded, but Dr. Stevie refused to honor their deal...
John Bradshaw Layfield spent his entire main event push as this. Despite being WWE Champion of almost a year (a fact he reminded everyone of constantly), the man couldn't win a match cleanly to save his life. Nevertheless, JBL constantly weaseled his way out of title matches via underhanded tricks whenever he couldn't beat the guy... which was just about everybody he fought. It finally took God Mode Sue on the rise John Cena to finally take the belt from him.
Wade Barrett from The Nexus is slipping into this Trope more and more as he loses control of his own stable.
With The Nexus long gone, Barrett would try to recreate it on SmackDown with "The Corre", a stable where everyone was supposedly equal, with no leader figure present. However, Barrett's ego again brought an end to the stable, as his fellow equals in The Corre had enough of him.
Several wrestling managers such as Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette and Jimmy Hart fall into the trope quite well as being managers, they have to rely on their mouths to do the talking. And they do that well.
Chris Jericho, specifically during his last heel run.
Michael Cole, since his Face Heel Turn. The crux of his character now is that Cole is one hell of a braggadocio, often trumping his superiority and victories (one of them being at WrestleMania against fellow announcer Jerry Lawler*
Though that was from meddling by the Anonymous RAW GM...
), as well as being "The Voice of The WWE". However, Cole ends up being humiliated spectacularly in various ways by superstars like John Cena, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and even Jim Ross.
John Laurinaitis.
Tabletop Games
In Warhammer, most skaven seem to have this as their Hat, with the ones at the top usually being full fledged Magnificent Bastards.
The same can be said about the Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000, as well as a majority of Imperial Governers and Chaos Sorcerers.
Among the Skaven, Grey Seer Thanquol from the Gotrek and Felix novels takes the cake and eats it. He appears as a would-be Big Bad in what seems like half the books, always having his schemes foiled by the titular pair of heroes. At one point he finally gets them in his claws, only to realise they have no idea who he is. Cue the Villainous BSOD.
Duke Rowan Darkwood from Planescape thinks that he is fated to conquer Sigil. He is wrong.
Pokémon Black and White brought us a literal smug snake in Snivy, the Grass-type starter Pokémon. As if its actual name doesn't make the point clear enough, it quickly started being called "Smugleaf". And it only gets smugger throughout its entire evolution line. There's a reason its final evolution Serperior is nicknamed "Smuglord", and its actual name certainly makes the point too. Even its Pokédex entry agrees.
Ken Sugimori has stated that Snivy's personality was meant to be similar to that of European (particularly French) nobility, so that's pretty much why.
Ghetsis, also from Black and White. It feels so refreshing when he goes from his usual arrogant douchebaggery to a massive temper tantrum when you defeat him and wreck his Evil Plan.
In an actual good guy example, strange as it sounds, Advocat from Grim Grimoire could probably manage being a Magnificent Bastard if he really tried. He is, however, well aware that he has little to gain from either side winning and so spends most of the game flirting with the female students, throwing around pithy comments and generally remaining smug and condescending. Amazingly, he still manages to be the most helpful character in the game, mostly out of vague amusement at the main character's own faltering steps into Magnificent Bastardhood.
Zetta from Makai Kingdom is another good guy example, though far less sympathetic and Played for Laughs. Despite declaring himself the "Most badass freaking overlord in the universe" about once a scene he spends most of the game totally powerless, surviving mostly on the charity of people he regularly insults. The game levels things out by making him a regularly mocked Butt Monkey.
And then there's King Drake III, whose smugness could probably clog up a black hole. It goes hand in hand with him being a Harmless Villain, ensuring that nobody takes him seriously. Pram ends up booting him out of his own netherworld off-screen and nobody cares.
Rosencrantz from Vagrant Story is a smug bastard all the way, who thinks he has the secret of Lea Monde all figured out...and then Ashley whips his ass, and hardly anyone seems to care. Rosencrantz has to yell yield, and even Ashley mocks him for it. Not only that, but the game's real Magnificent Bastard gets a shot. After Rosencrantz has ambushed Sydney and Ashley, Rosencrantz demands Sydney name him his heir. Sydney calls him a "worm", and Rosencrantz chops off Sydney's arm. Sydney, bleeding Black Blood, stands up and reattaches his arm. He then demonstrates to Rosencrantz that not only is the man not immune to Sydney's magic like he thought (by making him think he was holding Sydney's severed hand), but Sydney had been manipulating him the entire time. And in the end, Sydney doesn't even kill Rosencrantz. He lets a giant six armed statue of Kali do it for him. Truly, in case you had forgotten the real Chessmaster and Large Ham in the story, Sydney does not fail to remind you that he was eating the scenery first.
General Sarrano from Bulletstorm is a walking bottomless pit of arrogance, foul language, callousness, and pure evil. He uses soldiers like Grey and Ishi to carry out genocide and assassinations and then pretends to be angered by the casualties left in their wake after they take down his prized warship near the beginning of the game. He also more than implies a desire to sexually violate Trishka, the daughter of a man he had assassinated by Gray and Ishi years earlier.
Dahlia Hawthorne from the third Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game counts. Sure, she's beautifully scheming and leaves a trail of bodies in her wake, but none of her Evil Plans actually succeed. Dahlia's equally evil mother, Morgan Fey has the same problem
Dahlia's status as this was likely intentional, given that Mia and Phoenix actually get rid of her by pointing out what a failure she is. Ironically, she actually did more harm than some of villains who are closer to qualifying as Magnificent Bastards, like Matt Engarde. It could be argued that this is Truth in Television. The chances of being caught for a crime exponentially increase every time a murder or similar crime is committed. Expert criminals will want to avoid this by minimising the targets, causing less harm. An example follows: Manfred von Karma used someone to kill a person just to wreak revenge on Miles Edgeworth. On the other side of the scale, Joe Darke had no real criminal plans whatsoever and became a mass murderer.
Even moreso is Luke Atmey, who acts condescending to Phoenix for the entire chapter until he's caught.
Also, Redd White from the first game and Richard Wellington from the second.
Erol is pretty much the Draco Malfoy of the the Jak and Daxter series - he's a smug, arrogant Jerk Ass who is in Jak's face nonstop from the moment his character is introduced. He gets even worse after his "death" and resurrection as a cyborg in the third game.
Stratos from Sacrifice is close, so close to being a true Magnificent Bastard, summoning a plane-eating demon and using him to sow discord between the gods of the realm, unraveling their ancient ties and compounding their mutual distrust by worming himself into their graces and playing them up against each other before switching sides and stabbing them in the back (and being voiced by Tim Curry also helps, if only for the VA cred). Unfortunately, unless the player allies with him in the end (by which point you should knowhe's playing you as well), his lack of control over said plane-eating demon comes back to bite him in the ass. His appearance of an inflatable balloon with a smiley face on it and his rather overt aspirations of monotheism also deduct somewhat.
Stratos will be offed by Marduk if you side with Persephone, James or Charnel. If you side with Pyro... you barge in to his realm and pop 'is head off.
Kevin from Xenosaga not only supplies (and initiates in others) epic quantities of angst, he does this while taking his shirt off a lot and speaking in a measured, patronising tone that assumes everyone but him is very, very stupid. As a result, the moment when weedy Unlucky Childhood Friend Allen finally stands up to him is definitely a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Tohru Adachi, the true killer of Persona 4 is every bit the Smug Snake Ikutsuki was. While his inital scheme, which involved manipulating Namatame into committing the rest of the killings and leading the heroes into a wild-goose chase against himwas quite clever, he quickly devolves into the personality of a Smug Snake when the heroes discover his plan and give chase after him, whereby his true personality as a mocking, arrogant Nietzsche Wannabe is finally revealed. Also, in further true Smug Snake fashion, it turns out that he himself is being manipulated by higher powers beyond his control, who are in turn being controlled by an even greater power. In other words, the puppet of another puppet. Furthermore, also spoiled his seemingly clever scheme not once, but twice throughout the game. The first one is easy enough to miss. When Naoto is reading off the list of victims found in Namatame's truck, he simply states "Whoa. That solves everything." Without even possibly even knowing what Naoto is talking about. The second time is much more obvious. When he cries out "Namatame was the one who put them all in!" He supplies all the evidence the heroes need to prove he is the killer.
Zexion from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. He is very overconfident in his strategic and manipulative abilities, but none of his schemes work out like he wanted them to. Appropriately enough, he winds up being (indirectly) done in by the game's realMagnificent Bastard, Axel.
With a few exceptions, pretty much every villain from the Atelier Iris series, the biggest example being Mull. His Expy, Crowley, was thankfully a lot closer to being a Magnificent Bastard, but still didn't quite make it.
Most of the non- and post-Dracula villains in the Castlevania series, such as Graham Jones in Aria and the cult leaders in Dawn, come off as Smug Snakes vainly attempting to fill the Count's shoes o' evilness. Also, Walter in Lament Of Innocence, primarily because his motivation for doing evil was being a bored, unkillable vampire asshat. Can't get much more smug than that. They all have a distinct tendency to get effortlessly manipulated by Dracula and pro-Dracula minions such as Death. Mostly-averted by tragic-backstory-vamp Brauner, and Isaac, who's far too...entertaining (read: flamboyantly gay and bat-shit-insane) to qualify.
Dmitrii Blinov from Dawn of Sorrow at least makes an effort, pulling of a combination of I Surrender, Suckers and My Death Is Just the Beginning, before coming back to life and successfully copying Soma's Power of Dominance in a surprisingly successful gambit. He was more of a "Magnificent Bastard in the making", right up until he ended up dying again.
From Order of Ecclesia comes another partial-aversion: Barlowe does a fine job of hiding his true allegiance to the Dark Lord, effortlessly manipulating Shanoa into obtaining Dominus so that, by using it, she can resurrect Dracula. And, when he reveals his True Colors, he isn't that smug about it, just real effin' crazy. Not to mention that he ends up resurrecting Dracula anyway even after being defeated.
Nicholai from Shadow Hearts: Covenant tries so hard to be a Magnificent Bastard. He's charismatic, scheming and utterly selfish, and loves to taunt you from just outside your reach. He sets up deals with every evil faction in the game so that whoever remains standing at the end, he should achieve his goals. He even contracts the power of a god! Unfortunately for him, he doesn't quite count on Yuri kicking the crap out of everyone, his sudden romantic infatuation with Karin makes him look dorky, his plan to release the Malice of Apoina Tower comes off as petty revenge, and he ends up getting completely outmanoeuvred by someone even more scheming. Not to mention the completely undignified way in which he finally bites the dirt.
Shinji Matou from Fate/stay night. In all three routes ("Fate", "Heaven's Feel", and "Unlimited Blade Works") he's shown as an overconfident idiot who tries to win through manipulating more powerful characters such as his servant Rider, Gilgamesh and Sakura and it alwaysturns out badly (and sometimes bloodily) for him.
In reality, he's being manipulated, by his grandfather Zouken. This is most obvious in Heaven's Feel (where his actions form most of the impetus for Sakura's gradual Sanity Slippage, culminating in his eventual death and her Freak Out), but is also true in the other two routes.
Gilgamesh is this as well. Oh, sure, with his enormous strength and power he could easily have become a much more successful villain, but he's just so damn egotistical that it winds up costing him dearly in each route he appears in, particularly in the UBW route, where he foolishly underestimates the power of Shirou in the end.
Any Zelda villain that gets Hijacked by Ganon tends to end up a Smug Snake.
Vaati in Minish Cap comes off as a Smug Snake as well, with his digitialized "Mmmhm mhm" laughter, it doesn't help when one realized He used to be an itty bitty Minish, taking away a good chunk of his 'evil aura' - Minish Vaati is just too cute!
The Big Bad of Skyward Sword, Lord Ghirahim, acts really smug around Link, thinking that a human like him can't stand up to a demon. After Link beats him twice, he stops acting like this and does not hold back in their third and final fight.
Dr. Wallace Breen of Half-Life 2 fame. Acting as the puppet governor for the Combine, Breen keeps spouting out propaganda about the good intentions of "our benefactors" throughout the game (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) as well as making disparaging remarks on how Dr. Freeman "has created nothing". He is not even above threatening the transhuman Combine soldiers with "permanent off-world assignment" as a punishment for failure or, for that matter, the entire human race with extinction if they do not comply. He also seemingly betrays his own Mole within La Résistance, Dr. Mossman, refusing to make a bargain for Dr. Vance's life. Breen keeps gloating about how Freeman will be "destroyed in every way possible and even some ways that are essentially impossible" even when he is about to escape through the Combine portal. He is apparently killed as Freeman damages the dark fusion reactor, causing the portal to collapse.
Alternate Character Interpretation suggests he genuinely believes that sucking up to the Combine is the only thing that will stop them from wiping out mankind. The resistance believes Gordon is the only thing that will stop them.
Grand Maestro Mohs from Tales of the Abyss is a high-level member of the Corrupt Church with designs to plunge the world into all-out way "for its own good". He's also a Villain with Good Publicity (even amongst some of your party members), and legally untouchable because he never touches anything directly. He is as such free to spend most of the game's story smugly plotting on the sidelines and looking down at both ally and enemy without suffering any personal backlash, even after performing the game's arguably biggest Kick the Dog moment by killing Ion. He's finally killed after devolving into an Ax CrazyOne-Winged Angel.
Previously, there's also Saleh from Tales of Rebirth. To sum it up, this guy is presented as a Badass member of the Kingdom's Elites, but all he does is approach the heroes, taunt them, and basically do nothing. Later on, after being lectured by Tytree, he comes in denial that there is no way that the human heart can defeat him. So what does he do? Taunt the team even more rather than kicking their ass. Add to the fact that he's all doing it For the Evulz, he's as smug as you can get.
Duminuss, as depicted in the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation series, has had a number of grand schemes blow up in her face due to not thinking them all the way through.
Archibald Grims from the same series considers himself a Magnificent Bastard, and does manage to force Elzam to kill his own wife in the backstory. In the game proper, however, he's little more than a Card-Carrying Villain who likes to "accidentally" shoot civilians For the Evulz. He even invites one of his subordinates for a spot of tea... And even screws that up by using a teabag, and explaining that he only drinks red tea because he's eviland it looks like blood.
Gary Smith from Bully is the Failed Magnificent Bastard + Villain Sue type of Smug Snake. For his Smug Snakery to work, it requires 1) that everyone in the game take everything that comes out of his mouth at face value, 2) putting aside the fact that he has a reputation as a sociopath and common sense says ignore him, 3) that protagonist Jimmy spends most of the game insisting that going after Gary "has to wait" rather than going after him. And then, most importantly, 4) whenever Gary makes an appearance, all protagonistic figures must lose all ability to take action, period, and devolve into a stuttering stammering mess until Gary is done talking and has left the area.
Sakaki from the .hack//G.U. trilogy is a classic Smug Snake who has moments of true Magnificent Bastard-hood (notably his complete and total manipulation of Atoli), but he has more arrogance than skill, failing to comprehend how dangerous it is to use AIDA, and managed to get the entire population of an MMORPG out for his blood after he somehow managed to convince CC Corp to give him Administration rights, and decided to host a Player Killer Tournament to trap Haseo.
Sengoku from Yakuza 2 is an epic Smug Snake, from his gold suit and retro sunglasses all the way to his totally camp personality and permanent toothy smile. Spending his time blackmailing your contacts and minor allies into turning on you, he proves so irritating that he eventually ends up being taken out by his own Dragon and thrown off a building. You can't help but thank him for the service...
Both Waylon and Admiral Greyfield in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Waylon fights on Greyfield's side against your army just because he feels like it, and Greyfield's fully convinced that anyone who doesn't conform to his worldview doesn't deserve to live anyway.
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising has the appropriately-named Adder, who fights dirtily, has utter contempt for most of his enemies (and tries to persuade the one he does respect to join Black Hole) and revels in the crushing of civilians. Every defeat you inflict upon him is wonderfully cathartic. Contrast with his superior, Worthy Opponent Hawke, who tempers his villainy with competence and a healthy respect for his opponents.
This gets turned on it's head when, at about 10% HP he uses "Wrath of Frostmourne" and procedes to blow yourraid apart, going into a monologue about how his entire plan from the start was taunting you into chasing him and crafting you into an ultimate general for his undead army. Were it not for Tirion Fordring busting out of his ice prison, he would have succeeded.
He gets little development or even screen time, but Angelo from Baldur's Gate probably qualifies based on the one scene. He's Sarevok's lackey who takes over the local law-enforcing mercenary company when Sarevok's plans to get its real leaders out of the way go into motion. When you are arrested for murders you were either framed for or goaded into actually committing by Sarevok, he's more than happy to glibly pronounce you the death sentence for a list of imaginary charges besides murder, clearly enjoying the abusing of power. He even gets a potential Kick the Dog moment in that if you mouth off to him in a way that manages to actually annoy him, he'll have a random party member killed on the spot. He's even annoying in the final battle, as he charges you and starts somehow exploding in fireballs repeatedly.
Even more so, Isaea Roenall in the next game. He oozes it. "Don't take it so hard, I'm just... better than you. Oh, and feel free to lodge a complaint with the proper authority. That would be... me." He too abuses his military position to get away with anything, including kidnapping one of your party members when she doesn't want to go trough with their arranged marriage.
Luckily, the ensuing quest lets you bring him down in flames. This is very satisfying.
Also Edwin, a party member. His dialogue clearly indicates that he thinks he's a Magnificent Bastard and he almost never shuts up about his masculinity and being a Red Wizard. Problem is, he doesn't realize that he's one of the designated comic relief characters...
Let's not forget "Baron" Ployer, an ex-slaver that was exposed and humiliated by Jahiera and is now plotting a harebrained revenge scheme; Galvarey, a corrupt Harper that seeks to use the PC's status as a Bhaalspawn as a bargaining chip to increase his status; and Dermin, Jahiera's former mentor who was in on Galveray's schemes and is just as bad as he was.
Ramon Salazar from Resident Evil 4 fits this trope to a tee. He's a smug elfish character, who constantly condescends Leon Kennedy by calling him by his last name and ensuring that the next trap will surely kill him. The further Leon gets into the castle, Salazar starts to lose his smug sarcasm, and yells "JUST DIE YOU WORM!". Hell, the last battle with him is so annoying and deliberate, several players simply use the one-hit kill rocket launcher to be rid of his irritating ass.
Ricardo Irving from Resident Evil 5 is the spiritual successor to Salazar, except taller and with an even more irratating boss battle. An arms dealer with zero scruples or loyalty, he happily seeks to profit by selling biological weapons to the highest bidder, even when that highest bidder intends to kill off nearly all life in the world.
Ozwell E. Spencer, Big Bad and The Man Behind the Man to the whole series is one of these as well. He wanted to be a god, but had no idea how to go about doing it, so he hired the various Evil Geniuses who make up the antagonistic characters, and let them research at will, hoping one of them would create a way for him to achieve his godhood. In a series full of brilliant or horrifying bad guys with One-Winged Angel forms that are the stuff of nightmares, Spencer stands out as an Evil Cripple and The Man Behind the Curtain, who waits far too long to put his plan into action, and eventually sees it hijacked by his former protege, Albert Wesker. Smug, condescending, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, the old man is one of these to the end.
Duke Snakeheart from Final Fantasy Tactics A2. As if his name didn't give it away, he's a smug bastard who thinks he has it all planned and tries to do things his way, in spite of the other Duelhorn members objecting his actions. In the end, he admits to being the one that leaked Duelhorn's battle strategy and poisoned the girl Maquis saved for no apparent reason. In fact, during the fight, he says that he trusts no one but himself. He only questions the error of his ways once you defeat him.
"Queen" Valentina from Super Mario RPG shows many traits of your classical Smug Snake, including an over-inflated ego as well as a penchant for treating her underlings (specially her fat, feathered punching bag of a dragon Dodo) and just about everyone she encounters with as little respect as possible.
Everybody not on the Tokugawa side in Samurai Warriors sees Ieyasu as a Smug Snake.
Just about every significant villain in Baten Kaitos Origins, with the exception of Baelheit himself has a tendency to trip over this trope at one point or another, mainly because of their tendency to rely on advanced weapons/magic as a crutch to take out people far stronger than them, then act completely flabbergasted when it finally doesn't work. Pretty much all arma-users also seem motivated exclusively by arrogance, until their various heel face turns, and even Wiseman seems totally convinced that his magic is the most powerful force in the universe until the very end of the game.
And in the end, his schemes don't matter. Because the Ankharan Sarcophagus he spends the whole game trying to get not only never had an Antidevelluvian he could commit diablerie on, but the mummy has long since been switched out for a bomb set to blow on whoever opens it.
King Shagall from Fire Emblem: Geneaology of the Holy War is so this trope it isn't even funny, throwing an innocent man in the dungeon and then later having him killed simply for trying to suggest that, uh, maybe starting a war might be a BAD thing?
Also Sonia from Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword, who believes herself to be the most powerful mage and heartlessly manipulates her husband, the guy's family and her adoptive daughter Nino to please Lord Nergal. While she is a powerful Dark Action Girl, her arrogance is such that her daughter's partner Jaffar would rather have a Heel Face Turn than obey her orders, and in the end either Limstella simply leaves her to die in disgust, or Nergal finishes her off.
Pablo, Riev and specially Valter from The Sacred Stones. The first one only thinks "Money, Dear Boy" and tries to bribe everyone in his way; the second is a Sinister Minister worshipping a Dark God without reason at all, and the third is a monstrousBlood Knight who wants either to bloodily kill Ephraim or keep Eirika as his Sex Slave.
Narshen from Sword of Seals fits this trope almost perfectly.
Lekain from Radiant Dawn is almost capable enough to be mistake for a Magnificent Bastard. A high-ranking member of Begnion's Senate, Lekain arranged the Serenes Massacre and assassinated the previous Apostle, placing Sanaki, whom he thought he could easily manipulate, on the throne in her place (while making sure Sanaki's half-sister/the real heir did a dissapearing act). He's also The Man Behind the Man to Izuka and Naesala, and it gets to the point where if something bad happened to a character it was probably Lekain's fault. However, at the end of the day, he's a Big Bad Wannabe and an Unwitting Pawn of Sephiran the game's real Big Bad. Not to mention that the business with Sanaki really backfired on him.
Strider: Matic is one heck of a smug snake especially in the manga for his kick the sheep affair
In The Trapped Trilogy series of Adventure Games, Dan McNeely is memetically known as one due to the incredibly smug sneer he's voiced with. While the creator probably meant for him to be a Magnificent Bastard, the rather plot holed writing diminishes whatever guile or cunning he can demonstrate, leaving only the smugness apparent.
The Guardian from the Ultima series, at least in Ultima 7: The Black Gate. He constantly taunts, insults and annoys the Avatar in feeble attempts to scare you off, all the while you uncover his plots, undermine the Fellowship, gather plot coupons and smash the prism generators. Even though he's fully aware of everything you do he never bother to alert the Fellowship to the fact that you are not their friend, his own Dragon Batlin keeps treating you like a clueless dupe right up until you try to interrogate him with the prism cube, and when you finally pull out your ace and foil his plan, he's downright shocked that you were able to stop him.
Jazz from the first two Wing Commander games. At first he just appears to be a smug asshole, but the realityisconsiderablyworse.
Amon from the Lufia series. He's the Sinistral of Chaos, making him the most qualified to become a Magnificent Bastard when compared to the Sinistrals of Destruction, Death, and Terror. Unfortunately, he's also the second of four Sinistrals. This means that he doesn't show up until the heroes have become strong enough to kill the God of Destruction, and he's not high enough up the ranks to be the Big Bad or even The Dragon. He generally gets off one good plan, and then gets defeated quickly enough to get the real Big Bad more screentime.
Idura from Lufia II, and especially the remake Curse of the Sinistrals, manages to completely overshadow Amon in this regard. He's just as overconfident, but doesn't have the justification of being a God. Instead, he spends most of his time laughing while kidnapping babies and girlfriends. Appropriately, he develops a rivalry with the Boisterous Bruiser of the team, and most of his "brilliant traps" are overcome with brute force.
Given how much backstory and justifications he's been given in the canon of Dragon Age, fans are still arguing whether this applies to Loghain, but one of his lackeys, Arl Howe is a golden example of this trope. Not only is he overconfident, arrogant and rude towards the PC, he even crosses the Moral Event Horizontwice on the very basic game that plays out to all origins and completely vaporizes it in Human Noble origins:you find out that Howe earned his title as Teyrn of Highever by slaughtering the former noble's family, despite them being his old friends. That incredibly smug smile and Tim Curry's voice only strengthen his position as one of the meanest characters (and as the most satisfying bossfight) in the whole game.
Arl Howe is so bad that after his death, the player can overhear a conversation regarding his funeral between two nobles, one of whom had been a friend of Howe's in their youth. The other noble asks why he isn't going to the funeral and if he'll let Howe go unmourned, to which the friend replies that the only thing worth mourning is that Howe didn't die years ago.
Sister Petrice of Dragon Age II, a backstabbing, conniving fanatic whose attempts to start a war with the Qunari from behind the scenes keep getting derailed by her utter contempt for her would-be accomplices and her inability to shut up about her racist beliefs at the most crucial moments.
Hazama/Terumi from BlazBlue might as well be the poster boy for smug snakes. The man is constantly associated with snakes, almost never stops disregarding even the biggest threats around him as he is confident they can do nothing to stop him, his weapon is a chain with a snake head called Ouroboros which is a symbol traditionally represented as a snake biting its own tail, and at the end of Continuum Shift, Takamagahara actually refers to him as "The Snake". However his smugness is entirely justified in that he learned what's going to happened by using magic to retain knowledge of every single possible loop. Not even otherwise omniscient Takamagahara could do that.
Vincent from Silent Hill 3. He has a case of Heel Face Revolving Door around Heather and Claudia and spends his time not only allying with either of them, but also snarking them.
Quite a few in Mass Effect. Sovereign is very competent, but isn't above Evil Gloating when he finally meets Shepard. If you don't invest in Charm/Intimidate points, Saren comes off as one too (again, however, a competent one). In the sequel, we have Warden Kuril.
Captain Shannon from The Orion Conspiracy turns out to be this. He had some potential for Magnificent Bastard. He murdered Danny by having a concussion charge blow up, damage Danny's spacecraft, and it falls into a black hole. Shannon had a wife, and he blames the main character Devlin for her death. Danny's death accomplished two things...1. It got to Devlin and hurt him, and 2. It made Devlin come to the space station, where Shannon would be able to deal with him on his terms. Then he hideously murdered Kaufmann to frame Devlin. He had Devlin tossed into a makeshift prison, and said that he would hand Devlin over to the authorities once they arrive. It is revealed later that Shannon planted a bomb in the shuttle that Devlin was going to be transported in, and that it would have blown up once it got two kilometres away from the station. Fortunately, Devlin escaped the prison before that happened. Then Shannon personally confronted Devlin, held him at gunpoint, and smugly (ha, ha!) confessed to the murders and the reasons for committing them. Too bad for him he did not count on Meyer (who he was on bad terms with) overhearing the confessions and jumping him.
Lt. Blake and his boss, Captain Perry, in Heavy Rain would have this kind of attitude around Norman Jayden. Count on the likes of Dr. Adrian Baker and Mad Jack.
Fear Effect presents Madame Chen. She is a pimp who runs a brothel behind a restaurant. She is a Complete Monster and a Card-Carrying Villain. She can literally turn into a demon, and happily admits to being "a bitch from hell" (literally and figuratively) when Hana calls her that. She never changes her attitude, even when Hana kills her off and she ends up in hell literally and figuratively. Okay, she did give Hana a doll that allowed Hana to meet her literal inner child, but it didn't seem to redeem Madame Chen at all.
L.A. Noire has a lot of corrupt officials and cops of this, but Roy Earle takes the cake since he's a Karma Houdini.
Henry Leland from Alpha Protocol is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who spends the entire game smugly debriefing you of your misadventures. While he is also Affably Evil, it's clear the main reason for this is because he thinks he's already won and is now just taking the time to politely rub it in your face. Unless you take his offer of We Can Rule Together, Mike outplays him quite handily.
Daimyo Kubota is an always plotting, Genre Savvyaristocrat. Almost everything he does to try to usurp Hinjo's position is just plain hateful, culminating in him ordering the assassination of a pair of former commoners who were promoted to nobility. The wife is pregnant. When the plan fails, he murders his own number two with poison just to give himself time to escape. When he's captured, he plans to use his good publicity to avoid justice and humiliate Hinjo. Fortunately, right after he outlines the above plan, Vaarsuvius, not wanting any more distractions from the main plot, disintegrates him. His status as a Smug Snake is cemented by the fact that he just doesn't stack up against Big Bad and Complete Monster Xykon and his long-term planning henchman Redcloak. He's also horribly naive, and thinks taking the city back from Xykon will be a trivial matter.
Likewise, Nale, leader of the Linear Guild and Elan's Evil Twin, isn't nearly the Magnificent Bastard and evil mastermind he likes to think he is; Vaarsuvius points out that most of his plans, which he likes to think of as works of genius, are in fact rather trite and cliched (if nevertheless somewhat effective), and he has the tendency to come off as being rather smug rather than magnificent. Elan and Nale's father, General Tarquin, a genuine Magnificent Bastard, more or less confirms this when he is insulted by being compared to Nale:
"Your brother was a disorganized buffoon who cared more about satisfying his own ego than any realistic plan for world domination. All he ever cared about was that everyone knew HE was the victor, even when the situation called for keeping a low profile."
Tsukiko is an incredibly Vain Sorceress who believe she's the heroine of some Twilight-esque novel with Xykon as the dashing undead love interest. Worst, she actually believes she can treat Redcloak like dirt and constantly get away with it, up to the point of replacing him as Xykon's Dragon. Redcloak ultimately demonstrates that she's very, very mistaken on every count, and way over her head.
Faz in Shortpacked is a toadying, nakedly ambitious sycophant with a permanent smug expression and a tendency to openly plot against and undermine the people he works with. Absolutely no one in the store, including his boss, particularly gives a damn about his continuing existence or welfare.
Faz: Your thoracic diaphragm heaving in anger is not unlike how I picture your anatomy during our inevitable lovemaking.
If you need even more evidence of his Smug Snake status, just read his entry on the cast page: "Shortpacked!'s most annoying recruit has an infuriatingly smug grin you'd love to remove with a grenade launcher."
It doesn't help that he also comes off as a slimier Casanova Wannabe when trying to convince Amber to sleep with him, including pulling out the Kinsey Graph when Amber said she was a lesbian (Long story)
Vriska Serket of Homestuck. She's a spiteful, conniving, BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH with a serious case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. She also would like to think that she's the best Troll, but really isn't capable of manipulating anyone without resorting to Mind Control, and usually ends up being manipulated herself by other characters' Batman Gambits
. He takes the smug-snakeness to the extreme by acting smug even though his "enemy" is the adult but childish Torg who will inevitably just do something like give him a wedgie (or even tell him to do it himself) and send him scuttling away. Only in the third parody did he actually manage to rise to the status of a real adversary for a while... and even that was at the expense of getting a video put up on YouTube of him sayinghe thought a ferret was sexy-cute.
Umbria/Zaedalkaah from Our Little Adventure. She believes herself to be a skilled liar and cunning calculator, but most of what was actually going in her favor is simply luck. She used to be an extremely powerful demon, but has been reborn into something considerably less powerful. It doesn't make her act any less entitled however...
Web Original
The Game Genie, from The New Adventures of Captain S, could well be the smuggest snake who ever smugged. Pretentious use of the royal we? Check. Unseemly obsession with squirrels? Check. Annoying laugh? Check. Having to be rescued by NES after finding out the hard way that he isn't all-powerful outside of Videoland? Check. And finally, meeting what is possibly the most undignified end ever(being trapped in a cartridge, then being drowned inside said cartridge by a can of soda)? Check.
Edward Salinas, the evil politician in lonelygirl15.
Victor Danya could easily be an example. Arrogance? Check. Mocks the students whenever he can? Check. Doesn't foresee things like two different successful escape plots? Check. Multiple Kick the Dog moments outside of the whole "abducting students" thing? Check. However, how much he fits this trope depends on who's writing him.
Maxwell Lombardi of version four is quite the arrogant sort. On one hand, he's the top killer on the island (in fact, he is the one character with the most kills in SOTF history). On the other, well, he lets his arrogance get the better of him at times to say the least. Although this is one of the main criticisms of Maxwell's characterization, his handler confirms his overconfidence getting the better of him to be intentional.
Sidney Rice of SOTF-TV seems to be an example, based on her overall attitude towards the game. Her Establishing Character Moment? Pointing a gun on a kid and proceeding to mock him seemingly for laughs, not even bothering to just shoot him and be done with it. Naturally, she gets interrupted by Jonas Jeffries, an Uzi, and a meme-worthy one-liner. She tries something similar with Karen Ruiz later on which she doesn't survive.
Starscream in all of his incarnations. Fancied himself the smartest, most cunning and handsomest Decepticon. When he wasn't complaining to Megatron about how he would've defeated the Autobots eons ago, he was openly plotting ways to top the slag-maker. All of his schemes failed miserably with at least one or two nearly destroying the earth. He was far more interested in becoming the Decepticon leader than leading them effectively in the rare moments when Megatron was out of the way.
Except The Unicron Trilogy where Starscream did not act like a Smug Snake
Speeking of The Unicron Trilogy Thrust from Transformers Armada practically IS this trope
Disney
Both Prince John and his actual snake servant, Sir Hiss (who is pictured above) from Robin Hood are prime examples of this trope.
Gladstone Gander in the DuckTales cartoon. See the comics section.
Though Gladstone's Smug Snake characteristics were notably more subdued in his animated incarnation than in the original comic books. The episode "Dime Enough For Luck" even goes so far as to portray him in a fairly sympathetic light.
Prince Charming, in Shrek the Third, manipulates the other villains telling them that if they join him, they will all get their "happily ever afters" when all he really wanted was for them to help him get what he wanted, which was the throne for himself.
Also Lord Farquaad in the first movie and Rumpelstiltskin in the fourth.
Phantom Limb from The Venture Bros.. The effect is almost certainly intentional.
The Monarch would be this if he wasn't actually a capable threat who merely devotes himself to annoying Venture. Frankly, pretty much every villain on The Venture Bros. fits this trope, with the possible exception of the ones who don't have enough self esteem for the "smug" part, and maybe the Sovereign, who usually appears to have enough on the ball to qualify as a Magnificent Bastard.
The nudist aliens from the Futurama movie Bender's Big Score. You'd think that scamming the entire Earth and forcing its population to the outskirts of the solar system would make them Magnificent Bastards, but no. Maybe if they didn't do everything, everything, in the most profoundly annoying way possible (and also if they didn't look the way they do, eeuuuugh). But that's spammers for you.
Slade from Teen Titans. He's a creepy guy, but his manipulations leave a lot to be desired (such as telling Robin that he enjoyed fighting his friends.) It's mostly because he can't understand or control the heroes as much as he'd like to. And the fact that he's widely perceived to be a pedophile doesn't help. He has his moments of magnificence though, especially after becoming Trigon's henchman.
It is worth noting that unlike some other Smug Snakes, Slade does learn from his mistakes. After getting his butt kicked by the whole team, he makes sure that he never winds up fighting them all at once again (at least until he gets superpowers of his own) and after his manipulations of Robin failed because they hinged only on their being Not so Different, he systematically deconstructed the mind of his next apprentice, Terra (and turns her into a person puppet without her knowledge if that fails). Unfortunately, he's never able to lose the old Villain Ball (sometimes being a sadistic sociopath is a problem), and therefore never crawls out of full Smug Snakehood, though he does get better towards the end (see his Crowning Moment of Awesome against Trigon's demon warrior.)
Other Teen Titans main villains, such as Brother Blood from Season 3 and The Brain from Season 5, also count. Both are very threatening, but their inflated egos prove to be their undoing in the end.
Admiral Zhao from Avatar: The Last Airbender. While he was capable of great feats of firebending power and brilliant tactical decisions, his lack of self-control and anything resembling humility just made the viewership wish that Aang and/or Zuko would pile drive him into the nearest hard surface. Repeatedly.
Seriously, the asshole tried to kill the moon for no reason other than to assuage his own vanity. And even if his plan had actually worked, it's fairly likely that it would have just gotten him offed by Ozai, as killing the moon hurts the Fire Nation as much as it does everyone else.
No, Ozai considered Iroh a traitor for saving the moon.
Not really. FireLordOzai was probably just glad to have an excuse to dispose of his annoying big brother, and that Iroh stopped Zhao's plans was more about preventing their conquest of the Northern Water Tribe than about the moon (the Fire Lord would certainly present it as such if asked). While Ozai is himself a Smug Snake to boot, he's at least a little cleverer than Zhao and likely would have offed him once the full force of the negative effects kicked in. 'Course, this without him taking into account that he promoted the egotistic asshole to Admiral in the first place. Go figure.
Kind of made better when you realize that you can Ironic Echo his own words at the screen as the Ocean Spirit Drags him under.
* Zhao: You should have chosen to accept your failure, your disgrace! Then, at least you could have lived!
And just to hammer the point home, the kids even got Genre Savvy about his smugness. One episode had Lucas, Nick and Jessica mess up his plan by simply pointing out how painfully obvious it was, which caused him to lose his head and attack.
The Almighty Tallest Red and Purple of Invader Zim. Being, well, the tallest of the Irken people, they're both very smug and full of themselves. Unfortunately for their credibility, the only reason Zim is "invading" Earth is because their attempt to get rid of him backfired.
Looney Tunes mainstay Wile E. Coyote had a handful of cartoons where he faced off against Bugs Bunny, and not only talked but took to smugness like a fish to water. His outlook on life is best summed up by his speech to Bugs in their first outing together, "Operation: Rabbit."
Wile E.: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wile E. Coyote, genius. I am not selling anything nor am I working my way through college, so let's get down to basics: you are a rabbit and I am going to eat you for supper. Now don't try to get away, I am more muscular, more cunning, faster and larger than you are, and I am a genius, while you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten, so I'll give you the customary two minutes to say your prayers.
Lydia, the villain of Barbie and the Diamond Castle believes herself to be the only one worthy of being a muse, and treats everyone else accordingly.
Eddy of Ed, Edd n' Eddy would fit into this category, being a slimeball schemer for the most part.
Alluro in ThunderCats is so smug, he'll lounge on his enemies' tank waiting for them to return, and his actual method of combat is to attempt to psyche them out into thinking they can't possibly win against him. As he's taller, broader-shouldered, and more muscular than any other cast member, he could probably handle himself quite well in a fight, but he never actually gets physically involved, and so his psyche-out attempts always wind up backfiring.
Seen literally in an RAF Cold War instructional film warning of the dangers of HISS (Hostile Intelligence ServiceS) represented by a smug cartoon snake with a Fake Russian accent. All his dupes were naturally caught by the vigilant RAF police, but the evil HISS would just go on to the next victim.
How did this page make it so far without mention of Jafar? He thinks he is very clever, and does manipulate the heroes quite a bit, but in the end his lust for power prevents him from thinking through the consequences of his actions, specifically that being a genie would force him to live in a lamp and grant wishes, which proves to be his undoing. He even has a bit of a snake theme going on.
Unlike most of these smug snakes, Jafar graduated to a Magnificent Bastard in the second movie.
Gibbs of Titan Maximum, despite being both Dangerously Genre Savvy and the Only Sane Man is this due to his incredibly smug nature and the fact that his victories are pretty much invalidated by the fact that his opposition is a team of incompetent jackasses, thus mostly succeeding more out of their own failures than anything else.
Troy from Titan Maximum might also count. "T-R-O-Y! Why? Because I rock!"
Lucius Heinous VII on Jimmy Two-Shoes fancies himself a Magnificent Bastard and feared Evil Overlord, but more often than not he's outwitted by his employee Heloise. He also treats everyone around him like garbage, including his Yes Man Samy and his Dragon Molotov. But what do you expect from someone whose basically Satan?
This list would not be complete without a mention of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, who sometimes takes Smug Snake to a ridiculous extreme. For example, one episode involved a plan on Burns' part to block sunlight from reaching Springfield, and a town hall meeting was held about it. During the meeting, the town was being shown what Burns' oil drilling operation did to Bart's pet dog, who was shown needing to use wheels just to walk down the hallway. Burns walks in at EXACTLY this moment, and, with a big smirk on his face, says this:
Burns: Oh those wheels are squeaking a bit. Perhaps I could sell him a little oil.
However he met his downfall at the fact he was too impulsive. As he later admits in the second of the two parter, nobody could touch him so he felt like he could do anything. He spots Maggie holding a lollipop and decided to act something he wanted to do earlier: steal candy from a baby. During the struggle, the gun he was holding slip out of his holster and into Maggie's hand, accidentally going off and shooting Burns.
Accident nothing, it is quite likely from her Little Miss Badass role in the show that Maggie did that on purpose. It would not be the only time she deliberately shot someone. It is also quite likely that it was not about his trying to steal candy from her so much as everything else she did (note her angry facial expression in the town hall meeting right after what Marge said; Maggie seemed to understand on at least some level what is going on, which would fit right into her Wise Beyond Their Years portrayal.
No mention of Sideshow Bob. He is educated and indeed clearly a mastermind. But Bob is such a showman that more often then not, his schemes fail because he either misses a small clue or just loves to be theatrical in his work.
To be fair, a lot of these small clues are easily missed. For the most part, Bob has very clever schemes; it is more often a matter of circumstance that they tend to fall apart. He does show SOME signs of being a Smug Snake, but is a very ambiguous example, and most definitely less of an example than Burns.
Blaineley from Total Drama Island. Has a very inflated image of herself but isn't in the same league as Heather or Alejandro when it comes to manipulation and ruthlessness.
Justin from the previous season also qualifies. He boasts about being a great, manipulative strategist but it turns out that he's The Brainless Beauty whose manipulations rely soelly on his good looks. When his face gets damaged, he barely poses a threat.
Reggie Bullnerd is an example of one who is very clearly stupid but thinks he's smarter than he is anyway.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003's Fast Forward Season, we get Darius Dunn, a Manipulative Bastard and a master of deception who is surprisingly so arrogant that he berates his goons whenever they fail him, and doesn't take well to the Inuwashi Gunjin no longer willing to serve him, nor does he take well to the firewall set up by Cody to keep information about his time window a secret from everybody. He even throws a hissy fit when he finally loses his control over the Gunjin themselves.
