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Wicked Cultured

You wanna be the one to tell him he's suppose to extend the pinky when sipping tea?
"I can't believe what that clown is doing to Leoncavallo! And they call me a murderer! "
— Sideshow Bob, The Simpsons

"Hitler loved good music and many top Nazis were cultured and sophisticated men, but it didn't do them, or anyone else, much good."
— Stanley Kubrick

It's not that Evil Is Cool, or even necessarily Affably Evil, although it can be Evilly Affable. Rather, this is more like "Evil is Intellectual." Evil is smart, wicked, sarcastic with a biting sense of humor. Evil is smooth and eloquent, if not outright suave. Evil dresses well, uses polysyllabic words, quotes Shakespeare, sips fine wine, listens to Beethoven and Brahms, and in general is shown to be cultured if not necessarily civilized. This can apply to any villain, Anti Villain, or associated character types.

May overlap with Dumb Is Good, but it doesn't have to. The hero of the story can easily be a more rugged intellectual, or he reads/writes poetry, which is almost never perceived as an "evil" form of culture. Closely related to the Magnificent Bastard, whose sheer tactical and strategic brilliance often sets him inside the trappings of Wicked Cultured.

When Aristocrats Are Evil, they almost always follow this trope; when enough of them do, you get Deadly Decadent Court. They are likely to practice Brains And Bondage without any trace of Safe Sane And Consensual.

Compare the less sinister Villains Out Shopping, and Villainous Fashion Sense, and also Man Of Wealth And Taste. The exact opposite of this is a Gentleman And A Scholar.

Don't confuse with Sophisticated As Hell.

Examples:

Western Culture

Anime and Manga
  • Johan Liebert is always perfectly dressed, well-spoken, blends in perfectly with high society and is a smart intellectual. Oh, and he's like Jesus to serial killers.
  • The Major from Hellsing is a textbook example: he dresses immaculately, always ready for A Glass Of Chianti, is well-read, refined, eloquent, frighteningly intelligent, but... He's totally, batshit insane and has an "EVIL" written on him in two-foot letters. In blood.
  • Creed from Black Cat is definitely shown to be one of the more "cultured" characters in the series. He appears to be the only character in the series that bothers taking a bath (which is filled with rose petals, no less), dresses in sleek, black leather, drinks A Glass Of Chianti (with a rose in it), speaks in a much more formal manner, plays the organ well, is skilled with large scale oil painting, carving gold statues, etc.
  • Ma Quve from Mobile Suit Gundam is a ruthless Smug Snake under the orders of Princess Kycilia Zabi, whom he's fiercely devoted to. He's also an extremely cultured, polite, soft-spoken man who adores art and souvenirs. His last thoughts as he died in battle were of both his Princess and an old porcelain vase that he wanted to offer to her as a gift
  • Umineko No Naku Koro Ni: "Madame, your laugh lacks elegance."
  • Crocodile from One Piece. Drinks wine while the Straw Hats are imprisoned (in addition to a No Mr Bond I Expect You To Dine scene with Vivi), names his criminal organization after medieval architecture, and dresses in a fashion akin to a mafia ringleader.
  • Sebastian Michaelis is the perfect butler: he can cook the finest cuisine from any country, perform beautifully on the violin, and recite quotes from virtually any body of literature. Oh, by the way, he's a demon.
  • Aizen of Bleach.

Comic Books
  • The Top of The Flash's Rogues Gallery is an incredible genius who is, among other things, a wine connoisseur. This has made him a pariah among the other, more blue-collar Rogues.
    • The Fiddler, as well, was a classically trained violinist and musical virtuoso who sometimes claimed he was Doing It For The Art.
      • This was lampshaded once when Deadshot asked him why, if he was classically trained and had a genuine Strad violin, why he called himself the Fiddler, like "...an inbred hick".
    • Let's not forget the Shade. A Victorian era gentleman who has stopped aging thanks to his darkness superpowers, he is droll, well-dressed, cultivates roses, and enjoys fine art and food. Though he basically only did crime because he was Bored With Immortality, and eventually did a Heel Face Turn.
      • Weather Wizard also fancies himself something of an intellectual.
  • In many Legion Of Super Heroes continuities, Brainiac 5's unfathomable intelligence causes him to start out as an Insufferable Genius, then slowly becoming more and more sinister.
  • Doctor Doom had five Rembrandts. Then he had one burned because he didn't like it.
  • V is basically a Villain Protagonist with a good cause, and he applies this trope to himself, quoting the line, "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste," from the Rolling Stones's "Sympathy for the Devil." He plays the piano, writes his own songs, grows roses, has an enormous vocabulary (most of it starting with "V")...
    • He has a reason - his art collection is 'rescued' from the Culture Police, and his over-eloquent theatrics are meant to be a contrast to the bland and menacing fascist government.
    • In the novelization of V For Vendetta, Creedy has shades of this.
  • Vandal Savage is an astute intellectual who is thousands of years old. He also hunts down his descendants so he can eat them.
  • The Penguin aims for this, but he lets himself down with grotesque behavior that betrays what a misfit he really is among high society.
  • Manute from Sin City speaks in a very polite and eloquent manner. He seems to have little regard for hookers and "the dregs of Sin City".

Film
  • The portrayal of Magneto in the X-Men Movies fits this role.
  • The Pin in the neo-noir film Brick.
  • The Godfather.
  • Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
  • Sardo Numspa in The Golden Child.
  • Evil in Time Bandits, who is sort of like Satan.
  • Alex of A Clockwork Orange - the only thing he loves more than rape and "the old ultra-violence" is Beethoven's music.
  • Cutler Beckett from Pirates Of The Caribbean, in contrast to the monstrous Hector Barbossa and Davy Jones, presents himself as a cultured villain, sipping tea aboard his ship before going into battle.
    • In the first movie, Barbossa himself affects this in contrast to his crew, when he asks Elizabeth not to use long words, but then responds to her demand that they leave with "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means 'no'."
      • Davy Jones also happens to be a passionate musician, venting his centuries of anger and bitterness and lamenting the betrayal of his "lost" love by playing his steam-blowing pipe organ at regular intervals.
  • The Merovingian from The Matrix. He owns a restaurant, an S&M fetishist nightclub, lives in a grand mansion, and has a beautiful wife. His manner is that of a smug Frenchman and he effortlessly rebuffs the heroes upon their first encounter.
  • Hannibal Lecter personifies this trope. You know what a hideous and horrible thing he is, but you still want him to like you and invite you over for dinner.
    • Well, maybe just a glass of Chianti.
  • Sigfried in the Get Smart movie fits this very well (whereas the original in the tv show was Affably Evil). He is essentially The Mean Brit as a Bond villain and is paradoxically, calm and cultured while being Chaotic Evil. This is particularly apparent at the end when he is in his car listening to and conducting the same music being played by an orchestra in which he has placed a bomb which will kill the president and everyone else inside.
  • Rotti Largo from Repo! The Genetic Opera has a love for Italian culture, dressing in suits from Milan and even hosting his own opera.
  • Casanova Frankenstein, in Mystery Men, who is so smart and sophisticated Captain Amazing asks him how to pluralize words while they are bantering.
    Amazing: Well, we've always been each other's greatest nemesises... nemesisi... nemesi... what's the plural on that?
    Frankenstein: Nemeses.
  • Count Dooku, especially in the Expanded Universe.
    • His master Palpatine/Darth Sidious has shades of this as well — Ian McDiarmid, who played him, has said that Palpatine's only redeeming feature is that he is a patron of the arts, particularly weird alien operas. Of course, Palpatine was at least partially inspired by Adolf Hitler...
    • According to Star Wars Expanded Universe materials, Jerec of Dark Forces II is revealed to enjoy classical music from around the galaxy, even pieces written by noted traitors to the empire.
    • Likewise, the Imperial war criminal Kardue'sai'Malloc (the horned alien in the Mos Eisley cantina) is an obsessive collector of music: not only does he own a treasure-trove of rare recordings, but he spent many years following some of the greatest musicians of the age in the hope of attending a performance, and only settled on Tatooine when the artist he'd been hoping to witness there was arrested and executed. Of course, after being captured by Boba Fett, Malloc ensures that his collection is donated to a museum.
  • Darryl Revok has a really nice apartment with some modern art here and there.
  • Many, many James Bond villains have taste and class, often used to contrast against the somewhat less (though still quite) cultured secret agent:
  • To a degree, Khan from Star Trek, both in "Space Seed" and Star Trek II. In Star Trek II, however, he turns out to also have an Ax Crazy side.
    • General Chang from Star Trek VI is definitely this. The man could barely get through a given day without gratuitous Shakespeare quoting; even when trying to smash the Enterprise.
      • You should hear him quoting Shakespeare in the Klingon original original Klingon!
  • Gordon Gekko in Wall Street wears trend-setting, custom-made clothes, collects art, and dates an interior decorator.
    • And has a state of the art cell phone that was used to good effect in the twenty-years-later trailer for Wall Street II.
  • Nearly every character portrayed by German actor Sky du Mont (e.g. Sandor Szavost in Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut).
  • Klytus from the 1980 Flash Gordon manages this by speaking in the arch, refined tones of Peter Wyngarde, and holding a hankerchief to his face during an execution.
  • Subverted by Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, who believes himself to be well-educated and tasteful, but is in fact a thuggish moron.
  • Agent Stansfield in Leon/The Professional has a love of classical music and hard drugs.
    Stansfield: You're a Mozart fan. I love him too. I looooove Mozart! He was Austrian, you know. But for this kind of work, (imitates playing the piano) he's a little bit light. So I tend to go for the heavier guys. Check out Brahms. He's good too. (proceeds to slaughter the family)
  • Col. Hans Landa of Inglourious Basterds is witty and articulate in at least four languages, often engages in philosophic debates with his quarries, and prides himself on having a deep understanding of the human psyche. One of the first things he does in the movie is massacre an entire family of Jews. Of course, the "Good Guys" aren't much better.
    • A bit of stock character for Nazi officers, as portrayed in the sketch show Alas Smith And Jones (Transcribed a little way down this page.)
  • Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man. He plays the piano, lives in a castle, sings folk songs, is the go-to guy on local history, wears nice suits...
    ''"A heathen, conceivably, but not - I hope - an unenlightened one.
    • In contrast to that the "Good Guy" punching a woman while wearing a bear suit. (In the Remake of course)
  • In The Abominable Dr Phibes, the Villain Protagonist is an award-winning concert organist, holds two degrees from prestigious European universities (including one in theology), and enjoys composing poetry and ballroom dancing to music supplied by the clockwork band he has built. He's utterly mad and spends the movie brutally murdering a whole bunch of innocent people.
  • In SWAT, the tipoff to the identity of The Mole is that, while the other officers take their leisure playing with their children or drinking beer and watching TV, he spends it drinking French champagne in a restaurant with a sommelier.
    • In case you were wondering, a sommelier is something of a professional wine connoisseur whose sole purpose is to assist restaurant guests by recommending particular types (white or red?) and vintages to go with their selected meal. It takes upwards of six months to become certified and probably make around twice as much as the cop who dined at that restaurant. And Now You Know.
  • Cobb from Following is well-dressed, witty, urbane, and philosophical about the fact that he's a career burglar.
    Cobb: You take it away, to show them what they had.

Literature
  • Most Forsaken in the Wheel of Time books fit this trope perfectly. Not surprising, given that they are from a much more civilized time where they were among the highest ranked scholars and wizards in the world.
  • Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She's obviously the most cultured, clever and deepest character of the book (Valmont also counts, but he's her villain sidekick). Her choice to pursue a career in evilness was heavily influenced by the philosophers she read. She would probably protect intellectuals and free speech if she wasn't too occupied ruining other persons' lives.
  • Left Behind seemed to be aiming for this with Nicholae Carpathia. But let's face it — the authors themselves, religious fundamentalists, were insufficiently cultured and educated for a convincing presentation.
  • Vetinari, periodically. In particular, his hobby of reading the Discworld equivalent of classical music, because actual instruments are just too unrefined.
    • Though, really, he's an ascetic more than anything. Sure, he's well read and educated, but he dresses simply, subsists on bread and water, has no known vices (apart from an uncompromising attitude toward mimes — performing in the city is punishable by the scorpion pit — but most don't begrudge him that), takes no advantage of the perks and trapping of his office, spends essentially all his time making sure the city doesn't fall apart and planning Xanatos Gambits around the city's Guilds and international politics. Also, he's not so much evil as deeply pragmatic (although there is, admittedly, not much of a difference sometimes.)
    • Odd subversion in The Truth: Mr Tulip has a deep interest in art, and is able to discuss it at length. Apart from that, he's Dumb Muscle who'll use anything as a drug, and has a vocabulary reliant on the word "——ing". His partner Mr Pin is the smart one, but doesn't have the interest in culture.
    • Let us not forget the Dragon King of Arms in Feet of Clay. A vampire over five hundred years old, he was in charge of Ankh-Morpork's heraldry.
    • Also Lord Hong, who not only lives in a Deadly Decadent Court, but has mastered all the Orientalist arts of his culture. Nobody concentrates!
  • Parodied in Neverwhere, in which Mr. Croup collects priceless Chinese porcelain to eat.
  • Patrick Bateman, the Villain Protagonist of American Psycho is a good example as well, though he has more populist tastes in music than most: A memorable scene has him verbosely expounding upon the merits of Huey Lewis and the News.
    • The book shows in several places that his idea of culture is pretty thin, not the least of which is the moment where he describes Whitney Houston as "the most exciting and original black jazz voice of her generation." Which is sort of the point, as Bateman is supposed to be a vain, hollow fake. All superficial appearances, no real substance, but lots of rage.
  • Captain Nemo of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea conducted most of his discussions with Dr. Arronax in his fantastic library, decorated with the finest original and replica art, a catalog of priceless biological specimens, and of course his massive organ, on which he played music by the foremost composers. Only a borderline example, because Nemo isn't entirely a villain.
  • In William King's Warhammer 40000 Space Wolf novel Wolfblade, when Torin fills Ragnor in on the ambitions and conflicts of the Naviagator Houses, he observes of one particularly ambitious and ruthless one:
    a great patron of the arts — all the great lords are.
  • Captain Hook of Peter Pan is generally portrayed as cultured, and often something of an Anti Villain. Peter, by contrast, is a feral tyrant, ruling by whim but setting strict rules for the Lost Boys. (In some adaptations this is taken farther: Peter is incapable of learning or memory, and murders the Lost Boys if they don't follow his rules.)
    • In Disney's otherwise very loosely adapted version, he speaks pleasantly to Wendy while switching to a prettier gold (with ruby ring!) hook to play the piano — looking quite dashing in a villainous way.
  • In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, the Emperor's Children, already artistically inclined, and their remembrancers, take a turn for the decadent after visiting a xenos temple. Only those who did not visit it seem to notice.
  • The Phantom Of The Opera. Despite being a homicidal maniac, he has decidedly highbrow hobbies. This is carried over to the Lloyd-Webber show, although his talents as a musician being somewhat lacking.
  • In Kim Newman's Swellhead, part of the Diogenes Club series, there's a heavy subversion; the villain is massively intelligent and knows pretty much everything, but a) his cultural leanings are decidedly cheesy (he likes Burt Bacharach, and has muzak versions of MOR songs playing in his Elaborate Underground Base) and b) he is actually defeated by his lack of knowledge of the younger generation's pop culture. Not "as a consequence of"; By. After failing to name the singer who had a hit with "I Should Be So Lucky", his head explodes. Or, if you prefer, goes pop. Much, much Better Than It Sounds.
  • O'Brien from George Orwell's 1984.
  • Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter. He's well dressed and well spoken, and he's also implied to be heavily involved in wizarding cultural affairs (on the board of Hogwarts, donates to St. Mungo's). And damn, is his pimp cane◊ awesome or what?
  • Another Star Wars Expanded Universe example: Grand Admiral Thrawn. The guy collects art. Then he studies it, learns the loopholes in the creators' culture, uses them to steer them into the exact position he wants them, and systematically beats them until they surrender. The one time he was unable to gain insight through a culture's art, he was forced to utterly destroy them, although he still looks at their art and believes that he's finally starting to understand (this species, tellingly, was the Khaleesh - the most well-known of which is General Grievous). Thrawn's Affably Imperial, of course, and in some depictions he's not strictly a bad guy, and always pragmatic.
    • A less morally ambiguous example is Smug Snake Prince Xizor. He's the head of the vast crime syndicate Black Sun, he sits at the Emperor's feet closer than anyone but Vader, and he's fabulously wealthy and lets it show. There's mention that he forgave some underling when presented with a thousand-year-old miniature tree.
    • Trioculus. In addition to the pseudo-Latin name, he actually interrupts his pursuit of our heroes to go hunting.
  • Most/many of Anne Rice's vampires are this. Lestat, at least in the Interview with the Vampire film (can't recall if he does this specifically in the novel), twice puts blood in a glass and offers it to Louis, Armand loves his sparkly rings, Claudia is a well-read, impeccably dressed child who plays Mozart and Liszt. Marius takes this to slightly squicky levels, being a wealthy painter in Renaissance Venice who just happens to keep a sort of harem of pubescent boys. Gabrielle, while spending most of her immortality wandering around in jungles, was a marquise and the only literate member of her provincial noble pre-Revolutionary French noble family.
    • Rice even explores this through Lestat's voice in The Vampire Lestat, as he muses that it's not surprising Louis thought he was lying about his Blue Blood: Louis was a member of the American nouveau riche who put on what they imagined were aristocratic airs, while Lestat came from "a long line of Barons who threw chicken bones over their shoulders" and slept with their hunting dogs.
      • Rice has lots of fun with this. For all his sophistication, Lestat learned English from reading cheesy, low-brow pulp detective dime novels, and loves slang because of it. He describes his own way of speaking as Sam Spade-ish.
  • Not only is Villain Protagonist Artemis Fowl a Teen Genius Chessmaster, he's also a fan of fine cuisine, high literature and so on. Justified because as an incredibly rich kid, that's probably what he was exposed to most.
  • Hannibal Lecter is depicted as a highly intelligent and cultured man, with refined ("even rarefied", as the novel Hannibal puts it) tastes. He shops at exclusive high-end stores and wouldn't miss a good opera for the world.
  • Judge Holden is an erudite, patient, eloquent, philosophizing, multi-talented, poly-lingual, murdering, manipulative, megalomaniac pedophile.
  • In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert is a well-educated, cultured professor of French poetry. He is also a pedophile who marries a woman planning to kill her so he can molest her 12-year-old daughter.
    • To be fair, said 12-year-old is more than eager to be "molested" (at first).
  • A few of Redwall's less barbaric villains; Tsarmina, Ublaz, Vilu Daskar, and Badrang come to mind.
  • Several characters from The Count Of Monte Cristo, starting with the Count himself, who has impeccable taste and if not an outright villain, is a ruthless Well Intentioned Extremist. There's also the bandit leader, Luigi Vampa, who is a polite, nice guy who reads Caesar's Commentaries for fun. He's also a strong believer in punctuality, and if a ransom is not paid on time, he will calmly stab the kidnappe to death or shoot them in the head. And there's also Benedetto, a young career criminal who has no trouble posing as a cultured aristocrat.
  • Parodied in The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy with the Vogons, who love writing poetry. And then reading it to their captives as a form of excruciating torture.
  • Count Dracula, being a Voivode and all, comes across as a fairly refined, rich old gentleman before he's revealed as a vampire.
  • Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
  • The robot Erasmus in Legends of Dune believes himself to be cultured, while at the same time performing inhumane experiments on his human slaves. Only one human has the guts to tell him that his music sucks and his attempts to be civil are not fooling anyone. While he initially enjoys these arguments, he eventually gets fed up and throws her baby from a high balcony.
  • In Night Watch, Zavulon (or Zabulon) always appears wearing a suit and rarely shows anger. However, he is a scheming bastard who would be considered an outright villain if not for this world's Grey And Gray Morality. His Dusk appearance, however, is that of a demon (the author even felt the need to mention his spiked penis). The Movie version shows him more as an anarchist wearing black leather and a bandana.
  • The Dresden Files' Nicodemus, the host and compatriot of a fallen angel, definitely qualifies. He's a Neutral Evil Complete Monster, the scariest and evilest creature in a series full of scary, evil creatures who could squash him with their pinkies, but he does it with impeccable taste.

Live Action TV
  • Sort of Real Life, since it's reality TV, but Joe & Bill (a.k.a. Team Guido) from The Amazing Race. They were relatively old, gay, had lived all over Europe, spoke several European languages and were overall kind of prissy. Needless to say, the other teams did not like them. Although they did give reason to, most famously because one of them shoved somebody's mother and reduced the daughter to tears.
    • This is definitely a YMMV situation. The "Cultured" part definitely applied to them (they were even the first team to wear matching outfits), but, in retrospect, they weren't really that "Wicked". It was mainly three teams who were complaining about them, and the things they were complaining about are now considered basic strategies that every team is expected to know. Meaning these days, Joe & Bill come of as innovators, while the other three teams appear to be whining about a team actually trying to win. The only really wicked thing Team Guido did was trying to block said three teams from getting on their plane, which led to the aforementioned shoving incident, somehow shoving a woman who was standing behind them.
  • Farscape: Scorpius, though he wasn't particularly attractive (not to a human audience, anyway). Quite apart from his well-cultivated manners and sideline interest in growing crystherium flowers, his time spent travelling the galaxy has given him an in-depth knowledge of many, many cultures; he's even managed to learn the complex and translator microbe-immune language of the Scarrans and the Diagnosans.
    • Not particularly attractive to a human audience? You don't get onto the internet often, do you?
  • Bester in Babylon 5 seems to fit this too.
  • In Smallville, both Lionel and Lex Luthor are examples of this.
  • Benjamin Linus of Lost is an extremely polite and gracious host to his many captives, going so far as to feed one of them a beachside breakfast with a real knife and fork. He even plays Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C-Sharp Minor" on his piano shortly before the Barracks are stormed by Charles Widmore's mercenary strike force... and before he is informed of their breaching of security and promptly reveals a shotgun hidden within his piano bench.
  • Used and also subverted by members of the Conspiracy on The X Files:
    • Cancer Man/CGB Spender/Cigarette Smoking Man is something of a self-learned intellectual with an amazing capacity for reciting facts and quotations, but we find out in one episode ("Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man") that all he really wants to do is write airport novels about the lone rogue going up against massive conspiracies... it is made pretty clear that he has to tell the truth about what he knows, but the only way to do this without sacrificing everything is to frame it as bad fiction that gets rejected by publishers. So basically, CGB Spender is a ruthless villain with a facade of culture whose actual personal interests are a subversion of the archetype this trope describes.
  • On The IT Crowd, the German cannibal plays the cello beautifully.
  • Although Santos from the Argentinian series Los Simuladores is not evil, he is incredibly calm and cultured, and runs a shady business of pulling Batman and Xanatos Gambits with information gathered via "unorthodox" methods.
  • Lodz on Carnivale was erudite, charming, and persuasive. He was also remarkably evil and showed some signs of Nazi sympathies.
  • Angelus in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. A lot of older vampires in general, really. But...
    • Subverted with Spike, a punkish Mockney yob with a strong resemblance to who inspired Billy Idol. Then double-subverted when we meet him pre-vampire...as a "bloody awful" would-be poet of implicitly upper middle-class origin.
    • Played straight with most of the Wolfram and Hart villains. They're normally a bunch of attractive, human (although occasionally soulless) lawyers who play golf, (sometimes with the devil) go to fancy parties (and get butchered) and drink wine. They're usually played as a contrast with the rougher, lower-class heroes. In fact, when Lindsey leaves W&H, he immediately goes back to his roots in a poor, Southern family.
  • The Wire: Brother Mouzone is a Badass Bookworm who dresses in the traditional Nation of Islam suit and bowtie, and reads heavy and serious intellectual books and magazines between gang killings. Stringer Bell was desperately trying to climb out of the gutter and get to this trope, before he was killed by Mouzone and Omar Little. The police are stunned when they search his apartment and find an immaculate office that wouldn't look out of place on Wall Street.
    McNulty: "Who the fuck was I chasing?"
  • Quite a few of the bad guys on the various Law And Order series.
  • Jim Profit of Profit, along with a quite hellish Freudian Excuse for his dislike of television.
  • Dexter, arguably.
  • Half of the killers on Columbo
  • In Cracker, Albie Kinsella (Robert Carlyle) resents how he thinks people view him as an uncultured and uneducated thug. He makes a point of this when he kills his second victim, a professor, who had dismissed him as such in public, when he recognises the music the professor was playing as Mozart and asked him if he was surprised he knew that (which he was). He both hates that people think of him as scum (in his mind) and blames them when he in turn acts like murdering scum. Unfortunately his first murder was a hotheaded attack on a shopkeeper over being ripped off by 4 pence. In other words he's a Deconstruction of the Trope, a working class killer who both shows signs of being cultured yet is at the same time is becoming every bad thing he thinks society views him as being.
    Albie: Ya treat us like scum we start actin' like scum.
  • Colonel Montoya from Queen Of Swords.
  • System Lord Ba'al from Stargate SG 1. Part of his ascendancy to Magnificent Bastardry was that he wasn't just a Large Ham; he could also churn out charm by the bucket and became almost an expert on human high culture. In one of the DVD movies, he forgoes the "Kneel Before Zod" speech and actually invites himself to lunch with the President in the Rose Garden at the White House! What a guy!
  • In an episode of Stargate Atlantis, the team goes to a planet whose leaders struck a deal with the Wraith. The Wraith who regularly visits the planet enjoys fine cuisine and wines, despite the fact that they provide no nourishment for him.
  • Marcus van Sciver is known throughout Detrot as a patron of the arts and a proponent for the city's cultural revival. At the same time, he's a vicious bloodsucking mastermind, whose goal is to overthrow the vampiric aristocracy. Being British helps. Hell, he manages to get Krista to sleep with him after killing her brother and forcibly turning her by telling a sob story about his late wife.
  • In an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, several characters are trapped in a malfunctioning holodeck, surrounded by holographic gangsters from Picard's noir holonovel. The man in charge of gangsters is well-dressed and well-spoken. Crusher gets sick of it and asks why he insists on treating them well before shooting them. He replies that without civility, we may as well be animals.
  • Peter Stone, the Big Bad of seasons 5 and 6 of Degrassi The Next Generation. Executive Meddling had him do a Heel Face Turn in season 7, though. In the mean time, he filmed Manny stripping and sent it over the Internet; took some bikini pictures of Darcy and sent them over the Internet; and planted some weed in Sean's locker.
  • Spoofed on That Mitchell And Web Look in the "Evil Genius" skit. A construction worker who's been paid to put in a Trap Door asks the evil genius to call him by his first name:
    Evil Genius: Alas, I abhor informality.

Video Games
  • The titular character from Legacy of Kain.
  • A few of Agent 47's targets in Hitman fall under this heading, though they are particularly rare. The most obvious is Don Fernando Delgado, a drug baron who also produces several highly-regarded wines, plays the cello as a hobby, and collects rare butterflies.
  • President Shinra of Final Fantasy VII is seen listening to classical music while the Sector 7 Slums are destroyed. Also, Genesis of Crisis Core quotes incessantly from the play Loveless.
  • Ultimecia of Final Fantasy VIII has a definite sense of luxury and style, even if her fashion sense is a bit odd. Her castle has a large chandelier, a pipe organ, an impressive wine cellar, and an art gallery with pieces she either collected or painted herself.
  • Kuja of Final Fantasy IX, as evidenced by his ridiculously luxurious desert mansion decorated with pristine statuary and wall-to-wall stained-glass windows.
  • Similarly Wilhelm of Xeno Saga.
    • Also Albedo.
  • Kane.
  • Dark Oppressors in Nexus War are supposed to be like this. It doesn't exactly get reflected well in their skillset, but the sort of players that get attracted to the game mean that it gets played straight anyway.
  • Doctor Killjoy of The Suffering takes great delight in reciting Shakespearean soliloquies.
  • Mr. X from Streets of Rage
  • Mad artist Sander Cohen of Bioshock covers dead bodies (and sometimes living Splicers) in plaster and poses them as statues, chains poor Fitzpatrick to a piano rigged with dynamite and makes him play until he blows up, sends you on a quest to kill his fellow artists and take pictures of their corpses to add to his latest masterpiece, and in one spontaneous fit of rage sics multiple waves of Splicers on you to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers".
  • General Viggo in Fur Fighters tries to come across like this, he succeeds right up until the end when he cracks.
  • The Gravemind from Halo always speaks in trochaic heptameter. He explained to Cortana in Human Weakness that he simply grew found of poetry after he consumed enough poets from different races and cultures.
  • Played with in Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2. Archibald Grims, Smug Snake and card-carrying terrorist without a cause, invites his most cultured subordinate for a spot of tea. He takes this time to explain that he doesn't actually like tea, but he likes to drink red tea because it kind of looks like blood. Meanwhile, his subordinate notices that he's using a teabag, so he can't even get the "cultured" part right.
  • Spy from Team Fortress 2 initially appears this way, especially in his Meet the Spy video. It kind of falls apart in-game, though, when he winds up shouting insults like a 12 year old and laughing until he snorts.

Tabletop Games
  • In Vampire: The Requiem, most Invictus vampires are presented this way, as are the Ordo Dracul and Clan Mekhet; of course, just how evil they are depends on the individual and one's point of view. In the previous edition, Clans Ventrue and Toreador were even more cultured, and the classier Lasombra and Tzmisice really reveled in the Wicked Cultured part.

Western Animation
  • David Xanatos is probably the Most Triumphant Example of this.
  • Stewie from Family Guy, some of the time.
    • Daggermouth
  • The Ultra-Humanite in Justice League donates money to public television, enjoys classical music, and once reprogrammed a childrens' toy to tell them the story of the Nutcracker. He's also a Mad Scientist albino gorilla.
    • Possibly Vandal Savage, as well. He's smart, but his level of culture is arguable; Wonder Woman certainly feels he's exactly as barbaric as the caveman he ultimately is.
      • "Hereafter" pretty much confirms it when Superman looks over his library. "You don't seem like the type."
      • To be fair, at that point Vandal had pretty much been by himself for a thousand years, so he was half crazy from boredom and guilt by the time Supes reached him.
    • And then there's Lex Luthor...
  • Sideshow Bob and his brother Cecil Terwilliger. Not surprising, as the voice actors  * portrayed the cultured (but not wicked) Crane brothers on Frasier.
    Cecil: Perhaps a glass of Bordeaux? I have the '82 Chateau Latour and a rather indifferent Rauson-Segla.
    Bob: I've been in prison, Cecil. I'll be happy just as long as it doesn't taste like orange drink fermented under a radiator.
    Cecil: That would be the Latour, then.
  • All things considered, Beast Wars Megatron certainly fits the bill. From his aristocratic accent to his quoting Earth literature, one doesn't doubt that if it had been possible for him to sip a nice chilled glass of red, BW Megatron would have been. Perhaps while doing the Slouch Of Villainy in his command-chair or soaking in his energon hot tub.
    • The fact that he bathes with a rubber ducky manages to reduce his cultured aura not one bit, impressively.
  • The Grand Duke in Rock-A-Doodle is not just a evil owl who spits black magic and wears a dracula cape; he also enjoys embroidery and plays a demonic organ that controls the weather. Being voiced by the urbane Christopher Plummer helps.
  • Many Disney villains, including Jafar, Scar (well, as cultured as a lion can BE, I suppose), Maleficent and Lady Tremaine.
  • Phantom Limb from The Venture Brothers is a definite example, once called out for having sold out his villainous principles for high culture accoutrements such as dealing in stolen art instead of 'the old stuff'. (In the same episode, he laments how many of his fellow art thieves want to steal the Mona Lisa, for no other reason than it's a famous painting, and not because they appreciate it as art.)
  • Monkey from Dexters Laboratory faced a villain (a super-smart ape) who was very cultured. He did a Face Heel Turn when Monkey convinced him to embrace his primate instincts.
  • Megabyte from ReBoot, no question.
  • Played with in Exo Squad. Phaeton is highly articulate and literate enough to have a quote from Dante inscribed the entrance to his bunker. On the other hand, he is NOT a fan of art, which he (quite passionately) declares to be "a useless Terran pastime".
  • Codename Kids Next Door: The Delightful Children From Down The Lane, some of the time.
  • Vlad Masters of Danny Phantom, invoked-his accent is very much cultured.

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