Spikes Of Villainy - Television Tropes & Idioms

Go ahead, guess whose side he's on.

"Look at the spikes he's wearing! He's gotta be evil!"

— Shadow Hearts: Covenant

"My spiked shoulder plates are no match for his blade festooned finery!"

— Nodwick

The opposite of the Frills Of Justice. An evil character, particularly his armor, will be covered in a mass of spikes, blades, horns and/or spines that would make a porcupine jealous. Also expect black armor, if not blood-red.

Much like a porcupine or a cat puffing itself up, the idea is to make sure the audience knows that this person or group is highly dangerous. Others might think it just looks cool. Oddly enough, such spikes or blades are almost purely ornamental. It's in fact very rare for them ever to be actually used in combat, despite the fact that they're usually sharp enough to pierce flesh. The main exception is if they are found on a video game enemy, in which case they stand a very good chance of foiling would-be Goomba Stompers.

A Sub Trope of Dress Coded For Your Convenience.

May be complemented with Chained By Fashion, Fangs Are Evil, and armor mounted Femme Fatalons. Most likely used by a Tin Tyrant.

Not to be confused with Spikes Of Doom.

Samurai are however exempt from this. Since historically Samurai did wear impressive headgear decorated with horns, spikes, rings and whatnot, likewise regardless of whether they are noble or evil, their depictions in pop culture are all likewise.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Played very straight in the third Season of Yu-Gi-Oh GX where Yuki Judai dons a fearsome-looking black armor, complete with sharp, highly noticeable spikes protruding from the back◊ during his time as Haou, an overlord obsessed with eliminating evil from the world by utilizing evil's own methods against it.
In Akira Tetsuo's hair is short and close cropped during the early parts of the story, while when he becomes a full blown villian his hair becomes notacably larger and much spikier.
Literally every single mook in Fist Of The North Star. Just to drive home the point that these are bad people that the hero can splatter all over the place without karmic repercussions, most of them also wear mohawks, kick puppies, and use language that, in Japanese, is the rough equivalent of saying the word "fuck" nine times in one sentence.
The Dark Cures in The Movie of Yes! Precure 5 switch out the protagonists' bows and pastels for dark colours and angular, even pointy accents on their clothing. (Amusingly, Cure Rouge's counterpart apparently missed the "dark colors" memo, and basically looks like a sharper-edged version of Cure Rouge.) The real Precure 5, in contrast, gets a Frills Of Justice upgrade.
Inverted in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where anything that vaguely resembles a spike-shaped drill automatically means good; this is partly because Simon used to be a driller, and partly to show all the sheer Badassitude of the Gurren Brigade.
- Played straight with Lord Genome's Lazengann, which also uses drills that are more jagged and spike like than any of the good guys.
- Of course, this is because most of the good guys are using mechs they stole from the bad guys.
The Zeons from Mobile Suit Gundam. The massproduced Zaku II mobile suit used by the Mooks as well as the limited production Gouf have spiked Shoulders of Doom as one of their most memorable features. This starts to thin out towards the end of the series as the aging Zakus are replaced by the more powerful Rick Doms & Gelgoogs (both spike-free, though the latter do have rather pointy shoulders). This trope shows up now & then in later Gundam shows, especially if they feature a mobile suit that is an Expy of the Zaku. It's also worth noting that the Zeon don't always qualify as villains. Their leader may be a cryptofascist lunatic, but many of their soldiers can be quite pleasant (which can & usually is played for all the drama it's worth).
- Honorable mention: Dozle Zabi, general of Zeon. His customized uniform has huge spikes on his shoulders. He is also arguably evil: just before he is killed by the protagonist, an evil demonic aura can be seen coming out from him.
  - You mean the guy that went out in an experimental suit to buy time for his wife and kid to escape?! I'll go with NO (especially compared to the rest of his family)!
  - This is actually a bit of Fridge Brilliance when you read the novels. One of Amuro's biggest flaws is that he doesn't fully understand his emerging Newtype powers & often misinterprets the psychic signals he recieves. In fact, in the books this is what ultimately leads to his death.
Eris from Slayers once only wore free-flowing and modest robes. That was until her Face Heel Turn, whereupon she promptly dons Spikes of Villainy.
- Naga the White Serpent has shoulder guards with Awesome But Impractical Spikes of Villainy; a Running Gag in the OVA has her stabbing herself in the face each time she raises her arms to cast Freeze Arrow.
The spiritual prequel to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (which very few people know about) had Chrono as Nanoha's rival and the requisite spikes on his armor. In the TV series he still has the spikes, but is a good guy.
Some of the low level akuma in DGrayMan have lots of spikes sticking out of them.
Hiruma from Eyeshield21 has a very pointy appearance overall, from his hair to his ears to his fangs. Even his nose is pointy. The idea was to give him a demonic appearance. It works.
Inverted in Fullmetal Alchemist - most of the time, anyway. Al's armor is massive and spiky, and he's a sweet, innocent kid.
- Played with whenever Ed decides he's going to transmute something to make it "more badass."
In Naruto, Pain has a bunch of spiky piercings in his face. There's also the ones in the faces of all his other bodies. It's recently been discovered that they are made of special materials that act as receivers controlling said bodies from a remote location.
- For that matter, most of the second stage curse seals tends to be pretty pointy.
Haseo from .hack//GU series started out like this◊, and then he became like this◊, and in the movie adaptation, he became like this◊. And he's the good guy.
Luciano Bradley in Code Geass has a Knightmare absolutely covered in spikes, which he apparently used to tear his way through the Moral Event Horizon for the bloodier grass on the other side.
Oda Nobunaga has these in the Sengoku Basara anime and video game. In case the Ominous Latin Chanting, evil cape, red and black color scheme, thunder and lighting, repeated skull motif and Norio Wakamoto didn't clue the viewer in that he's Obviously Evil.
Kendappa-ou gets a wardrobe upgrade towards the end of RG Veda that involves some extremely pointy shoulder plates. It coincides nicely with The Reveal that she's working for Big Bad Taishakuten.

Comic Books

The Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The weapons were conceived when someone wondered what it would be like to have cheese graters on their arms.
Doomsday from Superman.
- Another someone who is fond of killing Superman: alien bounty hunter/mercenary Lobo. Mass murderer, miscreant, and dedicated wearer of leather and spikes. Quite appropriate for a space biker, too.
Rachel Summers of the X-Men wore a spiked red Spy Catsuit as the uniform of the mutant-hunting Hounds in her native Bad Future.
X-Men villain Stryfe wears a spiky armored costume.
- To get an idea just how invested Stryfe is in this trope, his spikes have spikes on them.
New Wonder Woman villain Genocide has spikes all over, including a band of them where her eyes should be.
Darth Krayt in Star Wars: Legacy.

Film

Godzilla both uses and subverts this one: the man himself is fairly spiky, and ranges from Bad Ass villain to Bad Ass Anti Hero to child-friendly Super Hero. Anguiras, the spikiest monster of all, is almost always good, and functions as Godzilla's Sidekick at times. Gigan, meanwhile, is always evil, has spikes for hands, a spike on his head, spikey wings, and a buzzsaw in his stomach. And Big Bad King Ghidorah is only slightly spiky.
- Destoroyah is quite spiky, and he's definitely one of the more evil monsters.
Nero's◊ ship◊ in the Star Trek reboot. Ironically, the ship is a simple mining vessel in its original time period.
Transformers in the movie series seem to have a lot of spikes. Although both Autobots and Decepticons have them, Decepticons seem to have more (and Megatron is made up of precious little but spikes).
Obligatory Lord Of The Rings examples: After the Witch-King moved into the fortress of Minas Morgul, he evidently did some redecorating, cause the place looks like the Minas Tirith (good guys) fortress with — you guessed it — gigantic spikes bolted on. Of course, there's also Sauron himself, who is kitted out in armour that can only be described as spiketacular.
Pinhead in the Hellraiser series has a face full of spikes.
The aptly named 'Spike' in Gremlins 2.

Literature

In Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, one race of aliens, the Affront, like to adorn their war spaceships with huge spikes and blades.
The Shrike in Dan Simmon's Hyperion novels is a cryptic three meter tall killing machine constructed entirely of razor-sharp metallic spikes and blades. It's named after a bird that impales its prey on spikes.
In the Mutant Chronicles novelizations, the Dark Legion cover their vehicles and firearms with spikes. The spiked weapons (often poisoned) are similar in function to a bayonet, and make it hard for an enemy to grab their weapon in close combat. The vehicles...??
Lampshaded in David Eddings's final book of The Elenium trilogy, when they find the temple of the Big Bad guarded by warriors in heavily spiked and hooked armor. The knights seeing them laugh because they are so ornate that they would interfere with weapons use. It turns out that they were created because the Big Bad was intimidated by the appearance of heavy armor, but did not understand it. Besides, it turns out the guards weren't intended to fight anyway.

Live Action TV

The Shredder in the live action TMNT films has spikes that mutate along with him. In a subversion, Toka the mutant snapping turtle has spikes, but is less evil and more...dumb and gullible.
In Doctor Who the Daleks have Spikes Of Villainy in their DNA. It certainly explains them being Always Chaotic Evil.
- Just remember, Thal DNA would have the same structure; it's for the whole planet Skaro.
In Juuken Sentai Gekiranger, Rio's true form as the GenJuuOu and his four followers, the ShiGenshou are covered in a ridiculous amount of spikes and gold.
I think this is a good place to mention Firefly's reavers.
Anything to do with the Shadows in Babylon 5. Even their ships all look like big black spiky nightmares... Even their planet-killer, unveiled in season 4, works by firing big spikes from orbit into a planet that then destroy it from the inside out.

Professional Wrestling

The tag team The Road Warriors/The Legion of Doom was well known for the spiked shoulder pads they wore as they entered the ring. In fact, these, along with their strangely-painted faces, punk-style hair, and tree-trunk-like builds made for 100% grade-A Nightmare Fuel for at least one editor. Of course, the entire look stayed intact long after their Heel Face Turn.
- Who can forget them breaking off a spike and sticking it into the eye of Dusty Rhodes?

Tabletop Games

Dungeons And Dragons, naturally, has a lot of this.
- There are several types of devil that have spikes growing out of their skin.
  - With a particular one of note being the Spined Devil who is literally a winged mass of spikes.
- The Lord of Blades in the Eberron setting of Dungeons And Dragons has blades all over his body.
- King Obould, an orc warlord in the Forgotten Realms setting, wears spiked full plate. he started as a villain and has since become an Anti Villain, and possibly a secondary protagonist as well. A subversion occurs with dwarvish battleragers, who are, if not good, then on the good guys' side, and also wear spiked armor.
Pretty much all of Chaos in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000. They actually use the spikes to impale the heads of slain foes/victims and eventually make a gruesome trophy rack. At least one Chaos army book has included "Spiky Bits" as a piece of equipment that makes its bearer more effective in combat. That guy up there in the picture? He's a good example.
- See also Da Orcs in both series, but to a lesser extent.
- The Dark Elves/Eldar go for more of a bladed look.
- The Lizardmen can rival Chaos in the spikes department though, especially because pretty much all of their melee weapons are spiked clubs... though they're not as evil.

Video Games

Speaking of Orcs, the Horde in Warcraft held onto this for the first couple games, then became a subversion when pretty much the entire race pulled a Heel Face Turn, and kept the spikes.
- Also used and subverted by World Of Warcraft, some of the Warlock armor sets had spikes on them, which is to be expected as they use the powers of demons. Some of the more morally-neutral classes' armor have them also, as does armor which is not class-specific. They all look cool, but it makes you wonder about Blizzard...
- GU Comics believes the definition of epic by Blizzard coincides with spikes...
- The recent expansion took this trope to new heights with Saronite, a metal made from the blood of an Old God, everything that's made of it looks very evil and spiky.
- The demonic Felguards have spikes on them growing from everywhere. That includes 3 huge spikes on the back (presumably the reason why they don't wear chest armor) and one horn on the forehead.
Bowser in Super Mario Bros. His Giga Bowser form in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl takes this and runs with it, pumping his spikiness up to Kaiju levels.
- Boom-Boom and the Koopalings of Super Mario Bros 3 had similar spikes.
- In Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Bowser's horns are his equivalent to Mario & Luigi's Badass Mustaches in that they have their own stat which are basically the Luck stat of the game.
Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat.
Sigma from Mega Man X added spikes to his armor after his Face Heel Turn.
Enthusiastically embraced by City Of Heroes with the expanded costume elements added in the release of City of Villains, including all manner of clothing pieces featuring horns, spikes, chains, barbed wire and other pointy bits. Additionally, one of the Veterans' Rewards badges gives the player access to a special set of high-tech spiky bits.
- And ironically enough, these costume parts are equally accessible to heroic and villainous characters.
  - Maybe not completely ironically.
Ashnard of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance took Spikes Of Villainy to a whole new level◊. Not to mention the big spiky dragon he rides, who subverts it by actually being a good guy stuck as a dragon due to Psycho Serum.
- Inverted in Shadow Dragon. Ja(ei)gen is good guy who has prominently tall spikes on his epaulets.
Final Fantasy IV both uses and subverts this trope: Dark Knight Cecil has spiked armor and wields darkness—but when he becomes a paladin, he keeps the spikes. White mage Rosa also has spikes on her...well, I guess it's armor. Interestingly, Kain's armor is spike-free.
- Well, lack of spikes reduce air drag while leaping. The only spike a dragoon needs is the one that's about to go deep into some poor sap's skull.
  - Every Final Fantasy until the ones helmed by Tetsuya Nomura subverted and played this trope straight: Villains and heroes alike had dark, spiked armor. The Warrior of Light even has a devil-horned helmet.
  - That also happens to look completely badass.
Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl's antagonistic group, Team Galactic, had a headquarters with large Spikes Of Villainy on both sides. (The spikes were white, though.)
Overlord takes this one very literally: As you do evil deeds, and your Corruption Level rises, you literally grow spikes and spines all over your body, particularly on the shoulders, which get bigger as your villainy increases. Your Dark Tower follows suit, though you can adorn it with a lot of nifty spiky things even if you stay (relatively) good. If you go evil, it just seems to spontaneously grow them.
- Similarly, the tower that acts as your base in Black And White starts out with several flat, blunt rays spreading out from the bottom. As you become more evil, the tower turns black and the rays curl up into wicked spikes.
Jin Saotome from Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness, better known for his Marvel Versus Capcom appearances, is a good guy with spikes on the shoulders of his outfit.
The Shake King in Wario Land Shake It had this, with the standard evil overlord spiked beard (with viking horns), spiked bracelet type things and the like.
Given how the Dwarves of Dwarf Fortress act at times, it's no wonder that everything they decorate ends up menacing with spikes of wood or basalt or dwarf bones.
Wolf O'Donnell from Star Fox wore spiked shoulder pads in his later appearances. In Super Smash Bros Brawl, his claws are almost long enough to count as well.
While not actually a villain, Sonic's Werehog transformation in Sonic Unleashed has spikes on his shoes.
The People's Liberation Army of Venezuela in Mercenaries 2 is basically equipped with Vietnam-era vehicles with spikes and barbed wire all over everything.
Lechuck, in his Pirate God form, in Tales of Monkey Island: Rise of the Pirate God.
Wodan Ymir from Super Robot Wars wears spikes on his armor and is on the Shadow Mirror side and he is Sanger's Evil Counterpart. However, he's not 100% evil.
Wolfgario the Ravager, leader of the enemy army in Mitsumete Knight, has horns on his helmet. Subverted in that he's not an evil man, just a guy consumed by a thirst of revenge for the country who wronged him.

Web Animation

The Head of Square Enix from Super Flash Bros's Decline of Video Gaming flash movie series is merely a person with spiky anime hair, a dress shirt and random spikes sticking out from under his arms to make him look evil.

Web Comics

In the fantasy spoof comic Nodwick, Yeager the warrior once bemoans upon an evil adventuring party, "The accessories on their warrior! My spiked shoulder plates are no match for his blade-festooned finery!"
- They do have their use, however.
Although he's one of the good guys, Gil receives some epically spikey shoulder pads as they were the only clothing on hand at the time. Even the hat has spikes of it's own.
The Chaos Land Raider in Turn Signals On A Land Raider.

Web Original

Lord Darigan of Neopets and his followers are common villains in Site Plots.

Western Animation

The original design of Avatar The Last Airbender had Fire Nation characters, especially in regards to Prince Zuko, sport, spiky, red armor◊. This was scrapped and even came to receive an internal Take That in the actual series when Sokka mocks the fact that the Water Tribe has Fire Nation uniforms that are almost a century out of date by sproinging the spikes on the shoulders. The current armor still has spikes on the scary masks the Faceless Goons wear, and Aang actually uses one to cut the rope tying his hands after beating the other guards.
- Another parody came when the Gaang was in a weapon shop and Aang was wearing a ridiculously large set of armor◊ that even has a spike with a buzzsaw in it. It was even accompanied by a metal riff (which is incredibly out of place in this series).
Metalocalypse's Dethklok have this kind of design on their vehicles and other accessories. "Dethfone", a cell phone designed by them while drunk, has so many spiky bits that it's almost impossible to use without poking out one's own eye. Murderface uses it to kill a monster.
- Justified, in that Metalocalypse is a send-up of black metal and its fans, and both fans and performers really do dress like that.
Baron Ünderbheit in The Venture Brothers has these on his armour.
Aku, the Big Bad of Samurai Jack, does this massively. He's spiky, he puts up spiky towers, even his original pre-humanoid form was growing fields of spikes out of the ground...
Not only does Vilgax have a bunch of spikes on his armor, but his land vehicle of choice is essentially a giant, spikey ball with spike launchers that pop out of the sides.

Real Life

Truth In Television: a whole bunch of reasons have been given for the big ole' hat-spike which came to define Germany from Bismarck up to WW 1. None of them hold up to any sustained analysis except one: "It looked badass." Now, being German does not of course make one a villain, but real-life examples always stretch it and really, if you want to avoid a Historical Villain Upgrade, you shouldn't go around with a spike on your head.
- The "big ole' hat-spike" is referred to as the Pickelhaube, and was, mind you, likely inspired by Russian designs, and is still in use in Sweden among other places.
  - The "big ole' hat-spike" has a perfectly valid purpose, namely turning aside overhead sabre-slashes.
Oakland Raider fans.
Viking horn-helmets are kind of a historical Dead Unicorn Trope. They did exist, but were only worn in pagan rituals, not when burning down monasteries. Also, the only helmets with horns that have been found are dated as being from the late Bronze age, or at least 300 years before there were vikings.