Straight Edge Evil

"I don't myself drink or smoke, Mr. Bond. Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behaviour and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smouldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils? Pah!"

— Auric Goldfinger, Goldfinger

A sister trope or Sub-Trope of Pure Is Not Good, this is when a villain lives a temperate and orderly lifestyle, free of drugs, tobacco, alcohol, illicit sex, and other such vices. Such a villain will probably be Lawful Evil and keep to a schedule, complete with moderate exercise. Maybe you can trip them up by exploiting their dependence on a schedule, but that's a maybe. You're dealing with someone who truly understands moderation, and happens to be evil.

This could be a conscious choice, to function at peak efficiency by keeping their mind clear and free from distraction and addiction; it could also just be their natural temperament (making them a good contrast to a Hot-Blooded hero or any passionate protagonist).

Often a trait of a Knight Templar or The Fundamentalist. See also Villainous Valour, Evil Virtues, Churchgoing Villain, Family-Values Villain, Evil Vegetarian, and No Love for the Wicked. If he spends his spare time getting jacked in the gym instead of wallowing in hedonism then you also have Kingpin in His Gym. Compare Smug Straight Edge and Even Evil Has Standards. Contrast Mr. Vice Guy, a good character with significant vices, and Straw Hypocrite, which will occur if the villain indulges in licentious activities he denies his minions or the citizens under his tyranny to enjoy. In the case of drug dealers who fail to uphold this rule, see Getting High on Their Own Supply.

This trope is very much Truth in Television. Abstinence, self-discipline, and orderly living can make a saint, but it can just as well make a monster.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

noreallife

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Claude "Torch" Weaver from Black Lagoon is the only one in the series who doesn't cuss or drink. He also enjoys setting things on fire, one of those things having been his wife.
• Light from Death Note.
  • His disciple Mikami also leads a fairly healthy lifestyle, up to and including a gym membership. In fact, Mikami is so Straight edge that the one moment he strays from his strict schedule is what tips off the antagonists and allows them to win.
  • Mello counts as well if one considers him to be evil. He is a highly organized mob boss who, unlike other members of his gang, never indulges in any substance other than chocolate, and never shows any interest in the women who hang out with the others.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, in order to show how much Kokushibo forsaking his humanity was a complete conscious choice to preserve what he most cherished as a human: martial arts prowess, Kokushibo's personality and conduct essentially remained the same even as he reversed roles, simply changing from once hunting demons to preserve humanity, to preying on humans to preserve his demonic self. To note, he essentially became an evil samurai: Kokushibo is strictly loyal to Muzan not out of shared ideals or sadistic commonality, but simply due Muzan being his demon lord and so whatever his master says, goes; Kokushibo remains focused on perfecting his swordsmanship just as he did as a human, but as a demon he has all the time in the world to do so without aging. That's why his death ended up being such a dark realization, Kokushibo knows he betrayed his companions and humanity for a prolonged life where he consciously corrupted everything he had, becoming a human-devouring monster, for a long life that brought no real benefits at all since the swordsmanship he held dear died with him, leaving nothing behind.
• Mayo Sakaki from the 3rd OVA to Fushigi Yuugi. She doesn't drink or use drugs, her grades are at least average, she's one of the best players on the Yotsubadai girls' basketball team, and she is presumably a virgin. (Although she does become pregnant out of wedlock at the age of 16, it is a Mystical Pregnancy, not the result of sex on Mayo's part.) Yet she very nearly destroys an entire universe just to get her Happily Ever After with Tamahome.
• GUN×SWORD has Ray Lundgren, Van's Ax-Crazy occasional partner. Although he's shown with a sake cup, he reveals that he just drinks water from it.
• Yoshikage Kira from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable gives a long-winded speech explaining that he doesn't smoke, only occasionally drinks, and has a meticulous routine that ensures a full eight hours' sleep. By his own admission, his biggest priority is to simply "live a quiet life". His definition of this, however, includes using his Stand to murder young women and use their disembodied hands as his "girlfriends", and killing anyone who stumbles across his secret.
• Jirou from Kamisama Kiss. Hilarity Ensues when he starts falling for the heroine Nanami, leading to a Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny situation.
• Johan Liebert from Monster. He is never seen drinking or smoking. Even when he's in a bar with a glass of alcohol, he's never seen drinking. The only time he is seen drinking is to prove that the wine he's sharing isn't poisoned.
• Chiri from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is straight edge (her Hot for Teacher tendencies notwithstanding), and eventually turns into a complete psycho over the course of the series.
• In Sword of the Stranger, the Blood Knight Luo Lang refuses to use the pain-dulling drug used by the rest of his mercenary band.
• In the 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pegasus drinks juice from a wine glass instead of alcohol, being a Psychopathic Manchild. Interestingly inverted in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light, where he's shown drinking wine after his Heel–Face Turn.

Comic Books

• Diabolik and Eva Kant have only one vice, and it's debatable it's actually a vice: they have a lot of (offscreen) sex without being married (not that they could marry even if they cared). This gets more notable when you realize that Ginko, the Hero Antagonist, has two: his own having sex outside of wedlock with Altea (again, YMMV), and he smokes.
• The Flash: Captain Cold, archenemy of the Flash and leader of the Rogues, forbids his crew from using drugs and vices like them. When he found out that Mirror Master was using cocaine, he beat the crap out of Mirror Master and forced him to quit using. This is justified, as Cold is a strict professional who runs a tight ship; it's difficult to pull off heists if half your gang is whacked off their skull on drugs. He also knows how to play public perceptions of "supervillains", and believes that once they start dealing, they'll be seen as a much bigger problem. Additionally, he has the Freudian Excuse of having had an alcoholic father who used to beat him, so he despises addicts and considers them weak.
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac hates drugs and sex. He HATES them.
  Johnny: "[When I tried to tell her I wasn't going to rape her] I said 'lady, I wouldn't rape you with a ten-foot pole.' But now that I think about it, if I had to do it... I'd use that pole."
• Depending on the Writer, the Joker from Batman. Though both Ax-Crazy and incredibly hedonistic in attitude, he generally just doesn't care about things like drugs or drinking (especially in comparison to 'sane' supervillains like Lex Luthor or the Penguin), and occasionally considers sex (or romance in general) a distraction. Of course, his Joker gas exposure is probably not straight edge.^note Some writers have noted or at least theorized that his poison immunity means he can't enjoy the buzz of booze or drugs anyhow.
• Teen Titans villain Godiva is an international mercenary who is a vegetarian health nut who doesn't drink or smoke and who claims to spend a small fortune in making sure her henchmen are eating the proper amount of vegetables three times a day. And she'll kill people for not eating right or smoking in her presence. After torturing Danny Chase's father, she then offered to get him some milk explaining it's good for the bones.

Fan Works

• Zaheer from The Legend of Korra, as seen in his entry under Western Animation, canonically has tendencies in this direction as it is. Fanon, furthermore, tends to interpret him as a vegetarian (which is, admittedly, a logical extension of his Air Nomad Foreign Culture Fetish), completely single-target for P'Li, and the only Red Lotus operative who won't touch alcohol (although, considering his voice actor, that last may instead be an allusion).
• Spytand Malice from Heroes of the New World stands alone among Kaido's top-ranking officers in that he indulges in none of the usual vices of the Beast Pirates, choosing to be The Workaholic rather than engage with drugs, booze, or women. Many of his compatriots mock him as a killjoy, but Kaido and King both appreciate his dedication to his work.
• Yoshikage Kira is this in canon, as seen in the Anime section, and when he ends up in hell in A Peaceful Afterlife, it actually creeps out his demon neighbors that he never engages in any of hell's usual vices, to the point where they stage an intervention to tell him to start doing drugs or something, because no one who's really that clean gets to hell, and his straight-edge habits are being taken as him being Smug Straight Edge. Three guesses how this ends for them, first two don't count.

Films — Live-Action

• In 22 Bullets, mob boss Tony Zacchia tells off one of his underlings for smoking in his house.
• Frank Lucas in American Gangster refuses to live the ostentatious lifestyle of his peers. Justified, in that this helps him avoid police attention. In fact, the one time when he lives up to the gangster stereotype, wearing a flashy fur coat that his wife got him, ultimately leads to Ritchie noticing him and his subsequent downfall.
• Zig-zagged in American History X. While Derek initially dislikes drugs for their association with minorities and his self-righteous belief that drug use is somehow beneath the dignity of his race, it's his dislike of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang for what he perceives as their hypocrisy in dealing drugs with the Mexican Mafia that starts him on the path to his Heel–Face Turn.
• At the very beginning of American Psycho, it's established that Patrick Bateman takes very good care of his health and hygiene. He uses all kinds of expensive products to keep his skin clean, smooth, and to prevent aging. He exercises like mad, quoting that he can do up to 1,000 crunches. And he eats a very strict diet. The trope is zig-zagged though, as when Patrick isn't working out, he's out indulging in Hookers and Blow with his fellow yuppies. He is also possibly a sadistic serial killer.
• In Conspiracy (2001), Nazi official Adolf Eichmann is a very composed man who doesn't indulge in the foods or cigars prepared for the attendants at the villa and is reluctant to drink on duty until Heydrich orders him to.
• Dr. Raymond Cocteau from Demolition Man. As the mastermind for the city of San Angeles, he has placed bans on the consumption of sugar, meat, smoking, physical sex (electronic sex is fine), and even swearing. The only person at complete odds with him is Edgar Friendly. Even Simon Phoenix, the Ax-Crazy psychotic criminal Cocteau tries to manipulate into murdering Friendly, gets irritated by Cocteau's beliefs, describing him as "an evil Mr. Rogers."
• Both Don Vito and Michael Corleone in The Godfather are shown to be conventional family men with few if any personal vices - they aren't womanizers or heavy drinkers, they refuse to have anything to do with a racket that involves illegal narcotics, and they all go through the motions of religious faith by having their children Baptized.
• In Gotti, the HBO film version from the '90s, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano is made fun of by John Gotti and the other mob members for being a faithful husband. He doesn't go "clubbing" or have any mistresses, which is considered a perk and a right in the mafia world. And he turns in early after a job is done to be with her. This doesn't stop him from killing his brother-in-law after he messed up on a job for them.
• The Hunger Games: In the movies, President Coriolanus Snow is the only character from the Capitol without any bizarre mannerisms or fashion accessories (until Plutarch in Catching Fire). He's said to be "above that."
• James Bond
  • In Thunderball there is Vargas, The Dragon of Big Bad Emilio Largo.
  Largo: Vargas doesn't drink. Does not smoke. Does not make love. What do you do, Vargas?
  • For Your Eyes Only has Eric Kriegler who (according to Bibi) doesn't smoke, only eats health food, and doesn't seem interested in women (to her disappointment). Justified given that he's a biathlon champion, but he's secretly a KGB assassin as well.
• Kingsman: The Golden Circle features three:
  • Poppy, despite running the biggest (and technically only) drug cartel in the world, doesn't touch the stuff herself and punishes any of her henchmen who does. She's killed by an overdose of heroin with an accelerated version of the virus she planted in the drugs.
  • The president of the United States, who's willing to let millions of drug users around the world die — including people that only took a drug once, people using marijuana for medicinal reasons, children who were born affected by a drug, and his own Chief of Staff — just so he can say he was the president that won the war on drugs. As soon as the Kingsman release the antidote, said Chief of Staff exposes his crimes to the public and gets him impeached and arrested.
  • Whiskey, who tries to sabotage the mission to get the antidote and in the end attacks Harry and Eggsy, all because he agrees with the president that the world's better off without drug users. He at least has a Freudian Excuse: his pregnant wife was killed in the crossfire between two meth-heads trying to rob a convenience store. Eggsy and Harry feed him to Poppy's grinder in response.
• Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter usually kills the women he finds sexually attractive.
• Demonstrated through the criminal trio in the 1992 thriller One False Move. In one of their hideouts, Ray and Fantasia make out while snorting coke stolen from gangsters the trio recently murdered. The third robber, Pluto, just watches them in silent disgust.
• In Robin and the 7 Hoods, Dirty Cop Deputy Potts only ever drinks cocoa, despite the film being awash in bootleg booze.
• Hob, the child Dragon of Cain in RoboCop 2, is the only one of the main trio of the Nuke cult not Getting High on Their Own Supply, which he uses to usurp control of the gang away from Cain after he's hospitalized.
• Angela of Sleepaway Camp becomes this by the second film in the series, as a result of failed attempts to "cure" her after she went on a rampage due to being bullied at camp. It has to do with her learning to hate "bad campers", but somehow not realizing that the worst kind of camper is one who murders the other campers...
• Doyle Lonegan from The Sting. Either celibate or Ambiguously Gay, a sober country-club-member banking gentleman whose only vice is poker ...and he cheats. Also, his real money comes from his numbers racket, and he won't hesitate to murder anyone who cons him out of a single payment from a single runner on a single day of it.

Literature

• After the Revolution: The Heavenly Kingdom bans anything heavier than coffee for its inhabitants, and is an expansionist Christo-Fascist state who persecutes and publicly executes minorities and forces its willing black and Latino inhabitants to become Brain in a Jar Wetware CPUs for Attack Drones.
• General Sarov, the Renegade Russian villain from the third Alex Rider book Skeleton Key, permits himself one vice — a small cup of coffee per day.
• Animorphs book #35 gives us the Controller William Roger Tennant, a talk show host and philanthropist, who is described several times as irritatingly perfect. And deep down inside is a frustrated warrior sick of maintaining this easy-going friend-to-all charade.
• In the third Artemis Fowl book, the villain is Jon Spiro, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who never smokes (he does chew and suck on the end of a cigar, but never lights it), and hardly ever drinks non-decaf coffee. It's implied that this is because he's a health nut, and strictly follows his doctor's orders. Artemis himself, as a Villain Protagonist, never smokes or drinks either, though that may be more to do with him being a teenager.
• Ivy Starnes in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand liked this trope (Rand herself had an amphetamine habit and was a chain smoker, as are many of her heroes). Lampshaded by Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead.
• Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock. He's revolted by sex and the idea of opening himself up to another person and similarly scared of the loss of control involved with drugs and alcohol. He doesn't even gamble, even though protection for bookies is part of his racket. Sharply contrasted with the drunken, Really Gets Around hedonist Ida Arnold.
• Ian McDonald's The Broken Land has a villain who drinks lots of herbal tea.
• The eponymous organization in COLD is a religious criminal group that wants to get rid of the crime and drugs in the United States, but it also wants to replace its current democratic government with their own fascist one.
• Mamoulian from The Damnation Game. Described in the book as a "puritan," he is revolted by sex and gore and, while in a casino, forsakes alcohol for distilled water. Of course, this doesn't stop him from allowing and ordering his undead minions to commit depraved and horrific acts of torture, murder, and even undead-on-corpse sex.
• The Demon Headmaster - The eponymous Headmaster is a humorless, almost robotic figure, and his entire reason for being is to try and make everyone else like him.
• Discworld:
  • Vorbis from Small Gods is an ascetic religious man who truly believes in his holy war, or so he believes right up until judgement. He takes his asceticism so far it becomes a form of ostentation — for instance, he only consumes water and stale bread. If given fresh bread (as his servants once attempted) he will wait for it to go stale before he eats it.
  • Vetinari may also be an example, though he's a benevolent dictator rather than a straight villain. (Benevolent in the sense of the Inquisition, mind.) As far as anyone can tell, his biggest self-indulgence is having mimes thrown in a scorpion pit, which even his rivals consider one of his good points.
  • Quite a lot of Pratchett's villains of the "smug authoritarian bureaucrat" type are this. As well as the most glaring example above, they also include Trymon in The Light Fantastic, Wonse in Guards! Guards!, and Captain Swing in Night Watch. Then there's Nuggan, who is more or less the god of being Smug Straight Edge. His worshippers are forbidden from eating garlic, mushrooms, and chocolate, which even the other gods think is a bit much.
  • Mr. Pin of the New Firm in The Truth, to contrast his Addled Addict partner Mr. Tulip, is described as treating his body like a temple, even if it is a rather misshapen one. His only vice that he regards as a vice (as opposed to a job skill) is occasionally smoking cigars.
• "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone from The Dresden Files is impeccably polite, usually well turned out, Affably Evil, actually lowered crime rates by consolidating all crime in Chicago under himself, Wicked Cultured, and Wouldn't Hurt a Child. Anyone trying to...well, let's just say, you don't want to. He is a criminal lord, after all.
• The Dwarf: The titular dwarf is repulsed by pretty much everything, including but not limited to drunkenness, religion, art, human emotion, and his own body. As a part of this, he refrains from all forms of human interaction not immediately necessary, gags at the thought of sexuality, loathes the times when he is forced to drink wine, and only eats and drinks as much as is necessary to stay alive.
• Harry Potter: Dolores Umbridge is a Ministry bureaucrat who acts like a prim and proper Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher while attempting to micromanage Hogwarts. Her only indulgence is that she's actually a terrifying sadist who forces teenagers to carve lines into their own skin.
• The sadistic and arbitrary serial killer in Dean Koontz's Intensity always keeps his word, has a well-ordered and scrubbed-clean house, and even paid for his purchases made at a gas station after killing the attendant... because he is a killer, not a thief.
• James Bond: As the page quote implies, a number of Bond villains ran along these lines in the original novels, likely to contrast with Bond (who, much like his creator Ian Fleming, smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish). Bond's Arch-Enemy Blofeld was noted to be so straight-edge and professional that he kills a subordinate for raping a kidnap victim, and even refunds a chunk of the ransom her parents paid. As stated in Thunderball:
  "For the rest, [Blofeld] didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much."
• Mal'akh of The Lost Symbol overcame a lifetime of drugs and debauchery with the intent of making himself the perfect sacrifice to complete a ritual that he believes will turn him into a god.
• San Khay of Matthew Swift, who lives a fiercely regimented lifestyle, exercises hard, always eats healthily, and never partakes in smoking or drugs.
• Masego from A Practical Guide to Evil has no real indulgences besides his magical research. He drinks only in moderation, consumes no drugs, eats often but of peasant fare, and is vaguely baffled at the idea of anyone doing something so unhygienic as having sex. In one scene Heiress bemoans his immunity to her attempts to hook him through vices.
• The spymaster Karla from The Quest for Karla trilogy is said to have quite ascetic tastes, the only pleasure he indulges being his fondness for chain-smoking Camel cigarettes.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Roose Bolton has a serious obsession with staying healthy. He eats prunes to help his regularity and drinks hippocras (rather than wine or ale), which was thought at one time to be medicinal. He receives regular leechings, to the point he's sometimes called the Leech Lord. Jaime Lannister considers his aversion to drinking alcohol an indication he is untrustworthy and hiding something, which is very much true. Roose is a cold-blooded murderer, rapist, torturer, and traitor.
• Hakkim Mehdad in The Steel Seraglio is a religious fundamentalist who overthrows the Sultan to turn the kingdom into a theocracy. He is explicitly said to have no use for fleshly pleasures so he exiles the Sultan's Royal Harem to die in the desert.
• Boba Fett in Tales of the Bounty Hunters. He rails against the drug trade and in particular despises Han Solo for drug smuggling, and is also a teetotaler. Also, when Leia is offered to him by Jabba the Hutt during Return of the Jedi, he leaves her alone and takes the couch^note He doesn't send her back, though, to avoid offending Jabba. on grounds that both extramarital sex and rape are immoral. (Leia also points out in response to the drug thing that, being a Bounty Hunter, Fett is essentially a murderer for hire, to which he angrily retorts that, unlike Han, what he does for a living is legal.)
• According to their founding document, The Way Of The Light, the Children of the Light in The Wheel of Time are supposed to be Straight Edge. Since they've long since become a military order, this is enforced on duty but many Whitecloaks are less devoted to their own time. They've also long since become dangerous Knights Templar who nominally serve the Light but usually are pretty despicable people one way or another.
• Marduk from the Word Bearers novels considers drinking ^note and consuming any food beyond the bare minimum needed to survive a sin, claiming that it invites weakness, and chastises Burias for helping himself to a bottle from a captive Imperial governor’s wine collection. Being a Chaos Space Marine and a fanatical devotee of the Chaos Gods, this does not detract from his evil in any way: he promptly has his men rip out the governor's eyes to bypass a biometric scanner.
• World of the Five Gods: In The Curse of Chalion, libertine Dondo dy Jironal sets out to become influential with Teidez, the heir to the throne, via alcohol, carousing, and so on. When Dondo dies, his brother Martou, the Big Bad, has some trouble dealing with Teidez, due in part to Martou's Straight Edge tendencies.

Live-Action TV

• As a disciplined CEO and warrior, Arrow depicts Merlyn as disdainful of crass displays of wealth, to the point of temporarily cutting off his son Tommy for partaking in them.
• Servalan from Blake's 7 certainly has a taste for the finer things in life but has a horror of moral decadence and goes to great lengths to clean up the Wretched Hive of Freedom City.
• Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire is a ruthless gangster who doesn't drink (he prefers milk), smoke, or use profanity. It's generally assumed that he's faithful to his wife, to the point that others call him "dead from the waist down," though it's eventually revealed that he was simply discreet with his dalliances.
• Gus Fring in Breaking Bad is always well-mannered and professional, has a cordial relationship with local law enforcement, and owns a chain of chicken restaurants and the largest methamphetamine operation in the Southwest. He has no vices and seems to spend all the money earned from his criminal empire on nothing except growth of both his legal and illegal businesses. He also expresses a particular disgust for junkies. His one real indulgence in life, which is vengeance, ends up becoming a literal Fatal Flaw when his last stroke of revenge leads him to walk into a trap.
• The Mayor from Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn't drink and gets extremely cross with people who swear (even if they are demons). He also gently turns down the advances from his Tyke Bomb, making her a surrogate daughter instead. His idea of a fun time is going out for frozen yogurt. And he wants to kill the entire town to become an immortal snake demon.
  Mayor: [addressing his gathered vampire henchmen] Remember, fast and brutal. It's gonna be a whole new world come nightfall, don't want to weaken now. Oh, and boys? Let's watch the swearing.
• Dexter.
  • Dexter Morgan. Although the main reason he engages in clean living is due to the Code of Harry: It's his way of avoiding drawing attention to himself, his way of hiding in plain sight.
  • Trinity also qualifies, since he's not shown engaging in any "vices" other than domestic abuse and serial murder.
• Game of Thrones
  • The ruthless Roose Bolton states that he "does not partake" when offered alcohol, to which Jaime asks, "You know how suspicious that seems to most people, don't you?"
  • Tycho Nestoris, of the Iron Bank of Braavos, states that he does not drink alcohol. The Iron Bank is a ruthless and powerful organization that can topple kings if they default on their loans.
  • Tywin Lannister drinks wine, like most people in the Seven Kingdoms, but seems to have only simple, constructive hobbies such as fishing and hunting. He also harshly criticizes whoring. However, Tyrion finds out that Tywin does, in fact, frequent prostitutes when he discovers Shae in Tywin's bed.^note It's implied that after all his children and grandchildren have now thoroughly disappointed him, he's just trying for more heirs. There's also some implication that isn't whoring he's opposed to but being known for whoring. If no one knows you "partake", that's fine.
• The season 1 finale of Misfits features Rachel who through commanding powers of suggestion turns the local youth into a sinister abstinence cult.
• The Outpost: The Prime Order, a fascistic movement that overthrew the royal family about fourteen years ago, prohibits drinking, gambling, drugs, extramarital sex and prostitution (they're introduced smashing up a tavern, which also hosts gambling). Though many of its members (and particularly its common soldiers) ignore these rules, Ambassador Dred is absolute in his adherence.
• Granny Goodness on Smallville. Makes for a sharp contrast with Desaad.
• Star Trek: It's never really brought up, but Ferengi are notably limited in their vices. While Ferengi will engage in prostitution and erotic holo-suite programs, and often seem to enjoy gambling (which they don't see as a vice if you're good enough to make money at it), they are rarely seen indulging in anything more. Presumably they see vices as money-sinks that cut into profit. There is also a general lack of Conspicuous Consumption, except for the Grand Nagus (their political/financial head of state), for whom displaying outrageous wealth is essentially a spiritual duty, as he must serve as a symbol of ultimate wealth for them to aspire to.
  • In "Little Green Men", Quark is shocked to learn that in the past, humans would choose to poison themselves with cigarettes, suggesting that Ferengi do not use any harmful recreational drugs. He's shown in another episode, however, that he wasn't above selling drugs to interested parties.
• The husband-and-wife team of Sportsmaster and Tigress in Stargirl. Sportsmaster is an obsessive follower of an intense fitness regime he calls "the Program", which he assumes everyone should be on. Tigress reacts with horror to the processed food in Barbara Whitmore's kitchen and turns down Barbara's offer of coffee because she avoids caffeine. (Barbara offers her water, and she asks what kind, then looks absolutely disgusted when told "tap", presumably due to chemicals.) They've raised their daughter the same way; when they're in prison she's horrified that her foster home serves macaroni and cheese and doesn't even know what wheatgrass is.

Professional Wrestling

• Notably, CM Punk won his third World Heavyweight Title this way (the first two were as a Face), and was announced, at his own insistence, as "The only straight-edged World Heavyweight Champion" in WWE. This was his gimmick in Ring of Honor as well, complete with saying that Straight-Edge makes him drug-free, alcohol-free, and better than you, even feuding with wrestlers over their past drug issues, and his breakout moment in ROH lore was a promo against Raven revolving their... differences on intoxicants.^note They repeated this feud in Major League Wrestling in 2003, at the same time that they were allies in the Gathering in TNA.
• The page quote about CM Punk's crusade forms to the power stable he formed in dedication to his cult of straight edge, which included Luke Gallows (a violent brute formerly pacified by medication), Serena Deeb (a former Hard-Drinking Party Girl) and Joey Mercury (a former celebrity hanger-on), three wrestlers CM Punk saved from the vices of the modern world.
• Triple H is a lesser-known example. He's not as overt, and he is not Smug Straight Edge, he's just a self-admitted evil man who happens to not do drugs (or at least not anymore).
• Pepper Parks and Cherry Bomb of CZW^note Now The Blade and Allie/The Bunny, respectively, in AEW are an example by way of technicality since they actually go much further than straight edge. Had CM Punk stuck around, they likely would be trying to remove Pepsi from his life or calling him a fornicator for losing his virginity before marriage. Since Punk did not stick around, they settled for Mountain Dew-loving Kavorka Man Greg Excellent.
• The "not saved" Hayley Shadows, who likes to categorize and relive the bad things she does to other people, has some straight edge iconography in her ring gear and got s-t-r-8 e-d-g-e tattooed on her fingers.

Theater

• Viigand from Chess. No interest in sex, parties, or really anything outside of chess - a strong distinction is drawn between him and fallible, human Anatoly. However, Viigand is just a pawn of Molokov, who is every bit as human as Anatoly.
• Plays were somewhat disreputable during William Shakespeare's day, so the more "straight edge" citizens of England, particularly the Puritans, were outspoken critics and wanted them outlawed. For obvious reasons, Shakespeare hated these buzzkills and liked to make them villains.
  • Malvolio from Twelfth Night is a Puritan and hates all forms of fun. The heroes enjoy taunting him with their drinking, singing, and revelry.
  • The "precise" (Jacobean for "puritanical") Angelo in Measure for Measure is another example; his first action as regent of Vienna is to resurrect a law that makes extramarital sex a capital offense, and when he issues a Scarpia Ultimatum to the sister of a man condemned under this law, it's because he finds her virtue a turn-on (she's a novice in a convent).
  • Shakespeare also invokes this trope in dialogue when he has the title character in Julius Caesar remark that he prefers "men...that are fat, / Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights," and that Cassius is clearly untrustworthy because he "loves no plays" and "hears no music."

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham City: While the Joker is anything but Lawful Evil, it's revealed in the backstory that he only ordered a glass of milk when he visited the Iceberg Lounge. Of course, there's a pretty high chance he only did this because he thought the idea of ordering milk at a bar was funny.
• Andrew Ryan from BioShock, despite living in and forming a society based on rewriting one's DNA (and subsequently going insane), is not a capital-S Splicer like the majority of the surviving population. Seemingly the only splicing he ever did was using a Gene Tonic that makes him look younger. Frank Fontaine never bothered to splice up either (never use your own supply and all that), with the only thing he ever used ADAM for being Magic Plastic Surgery to turn him into Atlas. Of course, when he knows you're coming to kill him, he splices up as much as he can before you get there so he can fight you, to the point that he looks like the actual mythological Atlas by the time he's done. Sofia Lamb from BioShock 2 also never touched ADAM in her life, preferring instead to funnel it all into her daughter in order to turn her into a Mind Hive.
• In Fable II, there is both a Karma Meter for Good/Evil and Purity/Corruption. It is theoretically possible to be both Evil and Pure. Evil and Pure characters will resemble vampires with pale skin and red eyes. Their character type is the Fanatic and the townspeople will be afraid but attracted to you if you are evil/pure, and do fun things such as spout off a line about how 'you should just die', then immediately follow it up by asking you to marry them. In contrast, a good/corrupt character is liked by everyone, but has a harder time causing townsfolk to fall in love with them or take them seriously. The meter for Purity/Corruption thereof could be seen as a sliding scale of Lawful/Chaotic at the same time.
• This is the party line of Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas, which officially forbids alcohol, chems (including stimpaks and healing technologies), and general "profligacy" on the belief that relying on these things for pleasure or aid in combat has made humanity weak. Subverted in the case of the high-ranking Centurion Aurelius of Phoenix, whose office contains items like beer, lingerie, a comic book, and "strange meat", though they might be confiscated goods.
• Porter Gage in Fallout 4 is an unrepentant raider, but absolutely hates booze and chem use, because as a raider, he's seen multiple gangs fall apart because they used chems and quickly went Addled Addict. Gage wants to run an actual criminal organization, not a horde of Stupid Evil losers who self-destruct at the first opportunity.
• The Syndicate of Buzzkills from WASTED are a fanatical cult of teetotallers (the only form of entertainment people have After the End is drinking irradiated booze). They're willing to murder anyone who disagrees.

Webcomics

• Mordecai Heller from Lackadaisy qualifies for this trope. Readers never see him drinking alcohol (at least after the Bunny Hugs incident), smoking, knowingly indulging in illicit substances, or engaging in romantic pursuits. He's also meticulously clean, tidy, and orderly, going so far as to dust the shelves in the Lackadaisy armory after stealing weapons from it.
• Evil Klaus from The Lightningbolts has no interest in peeping on the men's bath despite that fact that one of the components who fused to become her is a man.

Web Original

• Chakona Space: The bishop who persecuted Chakat Gildedtongue lives a surprisingly spartan lifestyle, and shows nothing less than respect for humans and aliens. That doesn't stop him from being a condescending bigot who quietly declares bio-engineered morphs the servants of the devil from birth. Gildedtongue calls him out on this, saying she'll go straight to hell if it means getting as far away from him as spiritually possible.
• The Hard Times: Not Evil per se, but "Straight Edge Friend Total Scumbag in Every Other Possible Way" describes a Straightedge guy who is a horrible person in every mundane way, refusing to pay his friends back, taking advantage of women, etc. while abstaining from alcohol and drugs.

Western Animation

• Darkwing Duck villain Ammonia Pine is a Neat Freak almost to a fault, going so far as to use cleaning-themed weapons (which she is still compelled to clean with); she's still pretty evil.
• Parodied in Garfield's Feline Fantasies in which Ramy, Fat Guy's assistant, "doesn't eat, drink, sleep, or smoke."
• The soft-spoken Zaheer from The Legend of Korra reveres the culture of the Air Nomads; a people that try to separate themselves from earthly concerns. In fact, the full realization of his powers comes from letting go of all his worldly attachments, the last one of which was his girlfriend, when she is killed nearby.
• Rikki Kixx is a straight-edge rocker in Metalocalypse. As it turns out, he is unable to indulge in alcohol or drugs for a variety of legal, professional, and health reasons, and is promoting sobriety solely to deny people the joy that he himself can no longer feel. It backfires horribly, as a little-known side effect of a drug his bandmates took in the past kicks in, and causes the audience to see hallucinations, which causes them to drink and do drugs to cope. To make matters worse, his poster boy, Dr. Rockso, fell off the wagon because Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere. And Pickles beat his ass for stealing his former bandmates.

---