Basic Trope: The villain is portrayed as a Jerkass who frequently goes out of his way to Kick the Dog, even in ridiculously small ways; or a convention often seen in Karma Meter-based video games where Evil consists of doing lots of tiny, petty annoying acts.
- Straight:
- Emperor Evulz, an Evil Overlord who plots grand schemes to conquer the neighbouring kingdoms and unite them under his oppressive rule, also frequently curses, spews racist and sexist remarks at the drop of a hat, constantly hurls both emotional and physical abuse at his servants as well as his guests or really just anyone who happens to cross his path, regularly goes out of his way to find new ways to make the life of his subjects miserable, commits spiteful suicides on the daily just to be Back from the Dead time and time again just to spite others, and cheats at chess.
- In the video game Fangblade, Spyke can be played as a decent, straightforward hero or a rude, obnoxious Jerkass, with the former giving him lots of 'good' points and the latter lots of 'evil' points.
- Exaggerated:
- Poke the Poodle.
- Emperor Evulz is Stupid Evil.
- Emperor Evulz orders the extermination of a man's entire bloodline just because the man beat him at chess (or in a New Media Are Evil example, Call of Duty).
- In addition to trying to destroy the world, Emperor Evulz decides to systematically ruin General Drake's entire life — burning down his house, mutating his wife into a horrible monster, brainwashing his daughter, framing him for murder, and a whole host of other things — all because he felt Drake was smarter than him. Dare General Drake even try and put a stop to Evulz' plan, through lethal means or otherwise; Evulz would've already died by his own hand, and if General Drake were to even breathe a sigh of relief seconds after Evulz' death, Evulz comes back to life and even more dangerous than ever, and quadruples down on the previous plan on ruining General Drake's life. And then General Drake tries to stop Evulz, Evulz dies again, comes back to life and even more dangerous than ever again, and this Vicious Cycle goes on for who-knows-how-long.
- Fangblade has two entirely different paths depending on the player's choices. Spyke can either be The Chosen One who saves the world while setting a perfect example for all, or a self-centered Jerkass who sets half the world ablaze and lets the rest smolder For the Evulz.
- The protagonist of Fangblade becomes an epitome of evil at the end when his karma meter reaches "Extreme Evil" by doing a series of seemingly minor heinous acts.
- Downplayed:
- Emperor Evulz is Faux Affably Evil.
- Emperor Evulz is a jerkass, but the said jerkassery isn’t petty.
- Most of the "Evil" choices in Fangblade are serious, major crimes, but some seem to be being a jerkass for its own sake.
- The resident jerkass has a habit of poking the poodle.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz is a Troll.
- In Fangblade, the Ultimate Evil is a Trickster God who thrives on Chaos, while the Designated Big Good is a Knight Templar: two Jerkass Gods vying over a Crapsack World.
- Emperor Evulz is intentionally trying to piss everyone off.
- Emperor Evulz has lost his entire powerbase and his plans are all in ruins. Petty spite is all he has left.
- Black-and-White Morality is in effect.
- Inverted:
- The villain is cordial and respectful, even to his adversaries.
- The Hero is one big Jerkass.
- Petty is evil: Bob, the resident jerkass does stuff like shooting innocent people, kicking dogs, and physically assaulting others.
- For some reason in Fangblade, doing things like bombing an entire city will give you “Asshole” points.
- Doing things like giving compliments to other people in Fangblade will give you “Hero” points.
- In addition to being, well… the hero, The Hero is a nice guy.
- Subverted: Player Bob makes Spyke kick a puppy, but he doesn't gain any evil points for it.
- Double Subverted: ...because it was a werewolf puppy, and it was also a pretty big Jerkass to boot. Kicking a normal puppy still gets evil points.
- Parodied:
- The big actions you can take over the course of the game — like saving a burning orphanage or being the one who set it on fire in the first place — have absolutely no effect on Spyke's Karma Meter. Instead, it's decided entirely by petty acts like whether you avoid swearing or Cluster F-Bomb your way through dialogue, petting or kicking puppies, and such things.
- When Spyke is brought to justice, the NPCs whom he harmed sport no worse injuries than nosebleeds, but all insist that he be hanged.
- Evulz being a petty douchebag is his villainy in general.
- Zig Zagged: Some very petty acts will affect the Karma Meter, but other acts have no affect. Some petty acts even count towards good on the meter.
- Averted: While Spyke can choose to be petty, it has no effect on his Karma Meter.
- Enforced:
- "People need to understand that Emperor Evulz is such an utterly rotten and mean-spirited person that he doesn't even bother keep up a façade of being Faux Affably Evil."
- "It'd take a lot of time and money to script an entirely separate 'evil path' for this game. Why don't we railroad the player down a single path, but provide 'polite' and 'dick' responses in the conversation trees that create the illusion of choice?"
- Lampshaded: "Why does being evil mean I have to be a complete dick to everyone I meet?"
- Invoked: "If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!"
- Exploited: Bob the hero is able to draw Evulz into a trap by performing something he knows Evulz will find annoying, because he knows Evulz will personally hunt down and kill those he finds annoying.
- Defied:
- The game has no Karma Meter.
- The Greater-Scope Villain, Wykkyd the Eldritch Abomination and Evulz' boss, makes clear that he will do horrible, horrible things to Evulz if he's a petty dick. Killing a billion people for the sake of conquering the world and stomping down on rebellion is an awful (but acceptable) possibility. Killing that billion people just because Evulz doesn't likes gingers is not.
- Discussed: "As a villain, I expect you won't be satisfied burning my house and killing my father. No doubt you'll want to smash my porcelain figurine collection, stomp through my vegetable garden, and give me a wedgie too."
- Conversed: "Did he just steal candy from that baby?" "Wow, he must be evil."
- Deconstructed:
- Spyke quickly discovers that he Can't Get Away with Nuthin': no matter how rudely others treat him for being different, even being the tiniest bit snarky in response has everyone treating him like that just proves he's evil, including the Jerkass Knight Templar God. The only one who welcomes such behavior is the Chaos God, meaning he apparently has to choose between putting up with everyone else's crap or go full-blown evil.
- Even villains who work for Emperor Evulz are really appalled at their lord's Jerkass habits when it comes to being the Big Bad that they either give him "The Reason You Suck" Speech or leave him for good because he wouldn't match up to their own ideals.
- Being petty is actually tiring and distracting — if you spend two minutes to beat the crap out of every person who annoys you (or even five seconds blowing their brains out) and repeat it two or three hundred times a day, then in the aggregate it just steals too much of your time and you get nowhere (and do you know how much it costs to purchase that much ammo nowadays?). Emperor Evulz really does not wants to become pragmatic with his evil, but if he wants to actually have anything done, he is going to have to.
- Reconstructed:
- This whole situation turns out to be a game-wide Secret Test of Character: in the end, Spyke discovers that the Gods' personalities are determined by what their worshippers believe, and he can take a third option of changing how the gods are viewed, rewriting their personalities to something that better suits his sensibilities.
- Evulz is a petty little asshole but he's the villainous version of a Small Steps Hero, taking so much time hurting each individual person who pisses him off that he really doesn't spends much time doing anything worthwhile. Wykkyd is capable of wiping out an entire city, killing all of its children and raping all of its women in the time frame of your average lunch break. They both deserve to die but it's easy to see who needs to go first.
- Played for Laughs:
- Spyke's consistent poodle-poking runs afoul of his boss' Pragmatic Villainy, and he regularly gets bitch-slapped for it.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Villain Protagonist
- Played for Drama:
- Evulz is a depraved sadist who enjoys watching his victims suffer; as a result, he preforms minor, yet horrifyingly cruel deeds alongside his more grandiose plans.
- Evulz had no reason to kill Jim. He just woke up one morning feeling like he had to kill someone and Jim was the first guy who got in the way. As awful as it is for Jim's family to endure the fact that he was murdered, it is this specific detail that makes them lose all hope.
- Played For Horror: Jim the police investigator has to hold in his desire to puke his guts out as he sees in a security tape how Evulz blows a little old lady’s brains out and then spits on the fresh corpse just because she asked him if he could hand her a tub of ice cream she couldn’t reach (and he'd already licked anyway — it pissed him off to be inconvenienced but he could have just let her be the victim of his “prank”).
We will never know why some villains like to waste their time abducting cats and drinking too much water; we can only record specific times at which Evil Is Petty.
