Basic Trope: Evil character crosses a line that another evil character considers to be too evil, even for them.
- Straight:
- Somebody suggests killing a relative of the witness to a murder. Bob, a mob boss is horrified, and refuses to allow it.
- Bob has one of his underlings iced for raping someone.
- Bob orders a hit on a pedophile.
- Bob refuses to harm children, even avoiding mass murder in order to avoid killing a child.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob has a very long list of things he will not do, to the point that he is pretty much ineffectual as a bad guy.
- Bob is a Noble Demon.
- Bob, a mass murderer, is horrified with the idea of wiping out entire city blocks at a time with the help of military grade explosives.
- Serial Killer Bob was suggested by Corrupt Politician Charlie to murder a relative of a witness. He calls him a monster.
- Satan himself, who is definitely not a good guy, is horrified by Emperor Evulz's acts.
- Downplayed:
- Everyone Has Standards
- The Mob Boss is willing to work with some more hardened criminals, but still disapproves of some of their most serious crimes.
- Bob is a Troll and as such has no problems with insulting people; however, he draws the line against physically harming them.
- It's not so much the evil deeds that the villain draws the line at so much as it's merely being disgusted with how the crimes are committed.
- The Jerk Jocks and various bullies see nothing wrong with making fun of a mentally disabled kid or playing tricks on them for amusement but even they consider attacking one or even doing anything that would make them cry disgusting.
- Bob is willing to cross the line, but only as a last resort in the most dire of circumstances; killing a witness's relative was, for whatever reason, the only way to avoid a gang war that could have caused massive collateral damage.
- Justified:
- The line in question is rather serious for obvious logical reasons, such as specifically targeting the innocent children of opponents for death (and thus bringing up Pragmatic Villainy concerns). Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil among even most (most) monstrous villains as well because it's the kind of crime that would cause society to declare full-blown war on them, seriously hindering their plans. And only the completely deranged would think that there's anything good about cannibalism.
- Bob is a Well-Intentioned Extremist/Knight Templar and really does have standards and adheres to them religiously, even though he does other horrifyingly evil things in the name of his cause.
- This also foreshadows the Harmless Villain making a Heel–Face Turn.
- The Villain may be evil, but he's not devoid of humanity.
- Whenever the villain has an Even Evil Has Standards moment, it's because the irredeemable action is a reminder of pain he's suffered, or the reason he turned evil.
- The villain commits his misdeeds to get rich, so he gets angry when another villain threatens to destroy the world. After all, there's no point in having illicit money if you don't have anywhere to spend it.
- The character in question is a Villain with Good Publicity, who cannot indulge into pointlessly evil antics, because that would inflict terrible damage to his public image. So, his standards are bound to pragmatism, not morality, but in practice the overall effect is almost the same, as he cannot tolerate those lacking good judgment.
- Morality is subjective. What some find noble, others consider terrible.
- Bob is too nice for that.
- The act in question serves no point except to cause suffering in somebody who clearly isn't that big of a deal in the long run, which is both pointless and highly detrimental, or possibly just mental.
- Bob would be affected as well as collateral damage of the vile deed (ex. Evulz wants to kill all members of a race out of Fantastic Racism and Bob has a wife that is one of them.)
- The thing Bob is against is just disgusting on a biological level, so he refuses to cross that line despite not caring about the moral repercussions. He might not care about one of his minions hurting a child while indulging their whims, but it's still revolting to look at or think about.
- Inverted:
- Even Good Has Standards; A hero has a line of things too good for him to consider doing.
- Some things are just not evil enough for Bob.
- Utopia Justifies the Means or Well-Intentioned Extremist (May be considered as 'Good' Without Standards in some way).
- The Mob Boss goes on a killing spree, unleashes a thousand killer lions, and eats every last Pringles box in the pantry.
- The moral line makes a character look worse instead of better. Bob the Paladin was previously a paragon, but refuses to work with Charlie because he considers him to be an abomination because he is gay.
- Everyone Has Standardsnote
- Bob will gladly do something seen as bad if it means getting justice
- Subverted:
- The "villain" who expresses standards turns out to be The Mole who was Good All Along.
- Somebody suggests killing a relative of the witness to a murder. The Mob Boss says "No", and, much later, when asked, proceeds to explain the Pragmatic Villainy reasons for not doing so.
- The Mob Boss, after an awkward pause, laughs at his underlings for believing he would have any scruples about going after people's families. "I'm just fucking with you. Kill them all."
- Bob claims that he would Never Hurt an Innocent, or acts offended when someone else tries it, but he does it anyway.
- The Ruthless Foreign Gangsters come to town claiming to have standards, but Culture Clash rears its ugly head and their standards turn out to be ones that are politically incorrect to the locals; like "I don't mind prostitution... but no homosexuality", or "No drugs... not to our people anyway".
- The Mob Boss claims to have standards, at least as far as he himself is concerned, but the sham is revealed when it becomes clear he has no problems employing or allying with people who don't.
- The villain applies his moral standards very inconsistently, being alternately merciful or ruthless to other people, all depending on his current mood and how much he likes/hates them, rather than out of principle.
- The villain expresses outrage at a particular atrocity... but only because his enemies were responsible for doing it. He proves that he has no qualms about committing the same crimes himself.
- The villain's standards were about more mundane things than actually really evil actions. For instance, puking onto your enemy MAY be disgusting and degrading, but he's actually hygienic and doesn't want to go through the troubles of cleaning things up. There's a difference between 'evil' and 'disgusting'. So the villain punishes any of his underlings that dared to puke (or weaponize puking) to the heroes, but still does heinously evil actions while staying physically clean.
- The villain is secretly a Hypocrite and doesn't practice what he preaches.
- Double Subverted:
- Somebody suggests killing a relative of the witness to a murder. The Mob Boss says "No.", and, much later, when asked, proceeds to explain the Pragmatic Villainy reasons for not doing so. And then mentions that "Even if all that weren't true, it just isn't the proper thing to do."
- When his underlings still don't do the dirty deed, he then applauds them, saying, "That was a test, and you passed. For future sake, women and children are a big no."
- However, said innocent experienced a Fate Worse than Death, and as such, he put him down for his own good.
- When one digs down far enough, though, the Ruthless Foreign Gangsters ultimately turn out to share some standards that are universal across cultures.
- The Mob Boss genuinely didn't know his subordinates and allies did not share his views and quickly cuts ties (and a few throats) when he finds out.
- The villain does have principles and tries to be consistent about applying them, but when faced with his Abusive Parents, he gives in to his hatred and just can't resist the opportunity to take revenge. After realising how cathartic it felt, he Jumps Off The Slippery Slope, but he still retains some of his principles.
- The villain does really have a problem with that particular atrocity. Normally, he would never commit the same crimes, but he decides to Pay Evil unto Evil and give the scumbags that did it a taste of their own medicine.
- Upon recognizing his hypocrisy, however, he becomes disgusted with himself for not following his own code.
- Parodied:
- The bad guy has an "Evil Etiquette" book, and the worst villain is scolded by other villains.
- Bob is a mass killer but he scolds someone for jaywalking.
- Zig Zagged:
- Somebody suggests killing a relative of the witness to a murder. The Mob Boss says "No.", and, much later, when asked, proceeds to explain the Pragmatic Villainy reasons for not doing so. And then mentions that "Even if all that weren't true, it just isn't the proper thing to do." And then the guy dies anyway, and everyone thinks it was him, but then he finds and turns in the real killer, who was the guy he talked to. Mob Boss gave the order to kill as a Xanatos Gambit: Whether the witness dies or not, the Mob Boss has an excuse to punish the guy for an unrelated offense, but the witness' death is not the preferred outcome because they had kids to support.
- Alternatively (continuing from Subverted), when his underlings still don't do the dirty deed, he then applauds them, saying, "That was a test, and you passed. For future sake, women and children are a big no." One of his underlings steps up to ask a question, "Why do you only target men? It sounds like a Double Standard." The Mob Boss replies, "Exactly." and cackles loudly. He elaborates, "My plan is to Divide and Conquer. I will use arguing and manipulation to separate the men and women from eachother. Without their friends and partners, their morale is sure to slowly deteriorate. And then I can swoop in and control everything!" "But, sir, er... what about homosexuals?" "... ... ...Separate them too!"
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't give any any damns about right and wrong at all.
- The villain has no standards, priorities and restrictions whatsoever.
- The Mob Boss doesn't even consider turning on the worst villain.
- Alternatively, nothing too heinous ever comes up.
- Enforced:
- "We want him to be more of an Anti-Villain, so we need to give him a code of honor and a moral line he will not cross."
- "We plan for him to do a Heel–Face Turn later on, so we need to Foreshadow it."
- Lampshaded: "Don't fear, Bad Guy will not kill you. It would be too evil".
- Invoked: "As main witness of Bad Guy crime, I suggest you to get pregnant, fast."
- Exploited: The bad guy won't hurt a kid, so his rival sends child soldiers after him.
- Defied: When somebody suggests the Mob Boss should turn a Complete Monster in to the police, the Mob Boss refuses, pointing out the monster is still good at what he does.
- Discussed: "We're not dealing with some kind of comic book supervillain here. People, even if they're criminals, aren't going to immediately throw all moral standards out of the window."
- Conversed: "I heard this movie has some interesting antagonists. Some of the villains are actually shocked when the main bad guy commits particularly heinous acts, and refuse to help the main bad guy any further afterwards. You should go see it!"
- Implied:
- The Mob Boss goes through all the plans put forward by his men. When he reaches a suggestion that they plant bombs around a bank to be set off during a robbery, he runs it through a paper shredder. No further details regarding this action are given any attention.
- While serving dinner to the Mob Boss's prisoners, one of the guards "forgets" to serve one of the inmates to get back at him for making him spill his coffee. He returns a moment later and begrudgingly serves the meal, clearly not doing so on his own will.
- Jim The Dragon is established early on to be a serial rapist but he is still an incredibly efficient chief goon despite his oddities. Still, after two scenes establishing that he works for Bob, he enters Bob's office and gets his head blown off by Bob, who never says why he did it, but he spends the whole scene with an utterly disgusted look on his face.
- When a beaten-up victim asks "what are you going to do? Torture me?", the Mob Boss becomes silent and no torture happen afterwards.
- Deconstructed:
- Implication and consequences of extremely amoral acts are shown, to the point that a pragmatic evil code is provided.
- Bob only refrains from what is in his code. Everything else is fair game.
- For all his standards, Bob still comes off as being somewhat of a hypocrite for all the other nasty things he does.
- Bob pats himself on the back for not involving children in his crimes, but as Officer Alice points out, he's still a drug-dealing gangster.
- Bob's crimes still break his code, in a roundabout way (ex. He scams some guy out of his money and he kills himself out of grief), he is just too high up in his Ivory tower to see it (it wasn't him that killed the guy, that's... collateral damage! Yeah! ...right?)
- Bob clings to his standards to convince himself he's a hero, and his delusions prevent him from a Heel Realization.
- Reconstructed:
- However, the code has several rules that are there simply for moral decency's sake, and are always followed.
- The rule book is there to keep things in line so things don't devolve into Stupid Evil.
- Villains with standards last longer because they are thrown into Cardboard Prisons, while Complete Monsters are killed outright.
- Similar to the above, there is a very notable difference between Bob, who has standards, and Jim, who is a Complete Monster. Jim is just plain horrible, In-Universe and out, while Bob can boast of having some good publicity, even if it literally is "at least he is not Jim".
- Played For Laughs:
- The murdering arsonist absolutely refuses to jaywalk.
- The bad guy has no problem with mass murder, but draws the line at email pranks and trolling.
- The bad guy is willing to do anything illegal, and anything that may cause harm or inconvenience to others, purely For the Evulz. But he is absolutely disgusted by people who have their toilet paper facing the wrong way.
"Just because I'm evil incarnate, doesn't mean I'm an animal!"- The person who suggested the thing Mob Boss would not cross the line to do was The Mole working for the good guys, who were Wrong Genre Savvy and did not know what to do next.
- Played For Drama:
- When the Mob Boss refuses to murder the witnesses' relatives, his associates are so frightened that they overthrow him and he is forced to go on the run from his own crime empire.
- Alice gives Bob shelter after he comes to her telling her he is on the run from the mob. Alice assumes he is a witness, only to find out he did something so horrible even they were digusted.
- Played For Horror: Bob massacres Alice's entire adult family, including her distant relatives and pets, because she didn't allow him to go through the express checkout with eleven articles, and rips off her arms, legs, eyes and jaw, but leaves her alive because she was a single mother (and it's a good thing the kid was not home, otherwise he would have been Forced to Watch). It would have seriously been more merciful to kill her, all things considered.
Look, I may be a murderer, but I'm not gonna leave a troper in the lurch: here's a link back to Even Evil Has Standards.
