This character thinks or behaves in ways that would have made them a Fetishized Abuser if the author had been on their side and built their narrative on Rule of Cool or Rule of Sexy. However, the narrative is not on their side; their position in it is built on the Rule of Creepy instead. May be combined with Rule of Funny or Rule of Scary. In either case: This is the same kind of sadist as a Fetishized Abuser, or at least they would like to be. Unlike them, however, this character is the inversion of sexy- an Unsexy Sadist.
Being unsexy doesn't necessarily mean unattractive. A handsome person can be unpleasantly creepy, just like a physically ugly person can be portrayed as sexy in a weird kind of way. Yet, a character in this role is very likely to also be extremely unattractive. Often in a nerdy or gross kind of way.
At best, this character is a harmless person with unfulfilled dreams of From Nobody to Nightmare. At worst, a Wrong Genre Savvy perpetrator of crimes that will never ignite Stockholm Syndrome or anything else he might have hoped for. Likely to fill the role of Straw Loser. If the author tries to explain them psychologically, it will often be in the form of a Freudian Excuse or diagnosis. In older works, the latter is often "sexual sadism," sending a message that Bondage Is Bad and often failing to make a distinction between play and abuse. In modern works, it's usually something else — averting Bondage Is Bad by making a distinction between abuse and consensual sadomasochism. Sexual sadism is still likely to come into it, although in combination with The Sociopath or other trope that makes a similarly unhealthy mix. If this character wear glasses, they are not sexy. The Depraved Dwarf, who often behaves sadistically to exert power over others (in compensation for their unimposing physical stature) and/or to satisfy sexual perversions, can also overlap with this trope.
While this character can be female (perhaps overlapping with the Psycho Lesbian, the "Rosa Klebb" variety of The Baroness, and/or the more genuinely dangerous Abhorrent Admirers), he's usually male and often a nerd, depending on how pathetic they're supposed to be seen. In the same way that the trope can be used to play or avert Bondage Is Bad, it can be used to play or avert The Unfair Sex: On the one hand, it portrays men as destructive creeps; but on the other hand, it can be used to show the difference between this kind of man and all other men, making the regular man look great in comparison—and maybe give him a chance to be heroic.
Note that this character isn't necessarily a villain — they may have the ethics and self-control to keep their desires in check. In either case, the character comes across as a very small person with a total lack of greatness. Finally, please note that this trope has two criteria, and both need to be filled for a character to be an example. Simply being unattractive doesn't qualify as unsexy, and simply being a jerk or having violent tendencies doesn't qualify as sadist.
Examples:
- Ayakashi Triangle: The Gogyosen marionette boy Matsuri into seducing Suzu as a means of assassination. Yet, despite lacking any personal interest in sex, their target being so willing freaks them out, showing a rather fragile desire to be in charge.
Why does it feel like she's the predator and we're the prey!?
- Kagari Izuriha from Black★Rock Shooter is incredibly controlling of her friend Yomi and guilts her into isolating herself socially in order to solely be with her out of a misguided idea that Yomi was somehow responsible for the accident that crippled her. Her behavior is presented as repulsive, but unlike most examples, she actually gets over it.
- Kagerou Shoukiin of Inu × Boku SS. Appearance-wise, he's a Bishounen but he's such a hammy Attention Whore about his S&M obsession that it's impossible to take him seriously.
- Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Phryne Jamil. For starters, she's deluded herself into thinking that she's more beautiful than the Goddess Freya when she actually looks more like an oversized toad, and proudly boasts about the many men she's taken to her bed and how they died in pleasure (read: she kidnapped them and raped them to death).
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio generally has people throwing themselves at him, but the one time he forces himself on someone, it just ends up showing how egotistic and petty he is. He forcefully kisses Erina to deny his rival Johnathan her First Kiss. She is so disgusted, she washes her mouth out with the dirty puddle water Dio pushed her into, humiliating him in front of his lackeys.
- Legend of the Blue Wolves: The Continental. Not only is he as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, but he's also morbidly obese.
- Redo of Healer: The "Sword Hero" Blade is a crossdressing woman who date-rapes innocent women before raping and killing them in her torture dungeon. But when Keyaru torture-executes her by siccing a group of drugged thugs on her where they will rape her (and eat her alive if she cannot arouse them), she's reduced to a sobbing wreck who cannot even so arouse the drugged men and ends up being cannibalized on and killed.
- The Sandman (1989):
- In one issue during the Brief Lives arc, one ancient guy is thinking about a movie he saw last night, a horror movie featuring Marquis de Sade as an athletic Romanticized Abuser villain. This is contrast with the real De Sade he used to know, a frail and obese little man who wrote obsessively about acts he never dared to perform.
- The attendants at a Serial Killer convention are shown to be rather pathetic individuals who kill, rape, and torture largely for reasons relating to their own self-image. Morpheus takes away their fantasies and delusions and leaves them to see themselves as they truly are.
- In the film Death and the Maiden, the main character is somewhat unstable because she was tortured and raped in prison, and discovers at the end that her rapist was a meek little man who really loved his work because he at last had the chance to be with any woman he wanted without having to beg her.
- Little Shop of Horrors depicts Steve Martin's Depraved Dentist character this way.
- Pulp Fiction infamously features two such pervs who briefly imprison Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames in a Torture Cellar below their pawn shop.
- In Spaceballs, Dark Helmet (a Darth Vader expy and Nerd in Evil's Helmet played by Rick Moranis) drifts into this trope and realises how exquisitely evil he is while he plays with his dolls, acting out a scenario in which the heroine falls in love with him because he has kidnapped her. He really doesn't want his subordinates to know that he does this. Again.
- Both villains of the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are this trope personified. As they abuse women sexually, they try really hard to construct themselves as manly or powerful, and they both fail miserably at that. The original title of the novel in question is "Men Who Hate Women", a line that is used in the story: Mikael Blomkvist, the male hero, is shocked to learn about the horrible crimes the villain has done. Lisbeth Salander, the female hero, dismisses the whole thing as the villain simply being "one of those men who hate women".
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest characterises Nurse Ratched as a mannish, repulsive "ball-cutter" who takes out her sexual repression by terrorising male patients at Bedlam House into subservience. More explicitly perverted are her orderlies, three Scary Black Men who exploit their authority in order to sexually abuse patients — although one orderly, a Depraved Dwarf, at least has the Freudian Excuse of having seen his mother gang-raped.
Nurse Ratched: If Mr. McMurphy doesn't want to take his medication orally, I'm sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don't think that he would like it.
- Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thornes contains an illustrated list of dominant and submissive archetypes to stay the hell away from. Most of the dominants on that list fit this trope, especially the self-proclaimed "True Master".
- In Slave Jade, the villain is a wannabe BDSM dominant who fails to understand the difference between how sadomasochism works in fiction and in real life. Ironically, his victim is a beautiful submissive masochist who was even in love with him at first - his dreams of being her "Master" would have come true for him if he had just known how to handle it. Instead, she ends up shooting him, getting him locked up in jail and then moves on to find herself a master who knows what the hell he's doing.
- Ramsay Snow from A Song of Ice and Fire, a depraved serial killer and serial rapist who's sadistic both sexually and in general, and invokes No Yay wherever he goes. He's also described as hideously ugly. His actions range from the easily fetishiseable (eg. making Theon wear a collar and referring to him as his 'dog') to things even the most hardened kinksters would blanch at (eg. keeping Theon on the edge of starvation, knocking half his teeth out so he can hardly eat, flaying then amputating his fingers and toes and possibly other things, forcing his wife Jeyne Poole to perform unspecified sex acts with his dogs...)
- Corlant of The Witchlands is a Smug Snake who lusts after Iseult's mother and her previously made advances to her, turning to stalking when she brushed him off. He comes off as a lecherous creep, especially when it turns out he's not above blackmailing Gretchya to get what he wants.
- In the Black Mirror episode "USS Callister", Robert Daly and his character "Captain Daly" are portrayed as pathetic (although very dangerous) creeps. While the incompetent in-universe author Robert Daly keeps trying to portray his character Captain Daly as a gloriously wholesome Fetishized Abuser, the in-universe audience does not buy it at all - and the narrative does not encourage the real audience to buy it either.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the trio of nerds try way too hard to be cool. When they go into the area of sexualized Mind Control, all they accomplish is coming across as major creeps and getting called out on it by victims and protagonists alike.
- The detectives in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit love invoking this trope, using it to taunt suspects. Sometimes also played straight by the narrative itself. One such character was a mildly mentally disabled man who was very ashamed of never having managed to meet a woman. He read some bondage porn and failed to see the difference between real BDSM and the list of Common Hollywood Sex Traits. Tragedy ensues as he becomes "a real man."
- In League of Legends, Dr. Mundo used to be a sadistic For the Evulz Mad Scientist. This transformed him not only into a superpowered Combat Sadomasochist but also into a drooling disgusting maniac. Exactly the type of guy you would not want to catch staring at your body under any circumstances.
- Goblins: Dellyn Goblinslayer rapes the Yuan-Ti Kin every night and has some very depraved fetishes, plus heals her every time so he can keep her looking good. This isn't fetishized at all: Minmax, who used to think monsters are worth nothing but XP while he learned it and once admired Dellyn, throws him out of the window and nearly beats him to death with Forgath's help, and Kin herself sees an opportunity and finishes him off brutally.
- Unsounded: Delicieu was a large man worn cruel and detached who would pimp out his apprentices, grab and restrain them near emotionlessly as they struggled and distill memories from them to sell.
