Basic Trope: The villain has intellectual and artistic interests.
- Straight: Evil Elliott ends every night with A Glass of Chianti, reads lots of classic literature, plays chess, and enjoys watching ballet.
- Exaggerated:
- All of Elliot's plots are references to any and all of these things. Oh, and did we mention he plays the pipe organ and speaks in an upper-class English accent?
- It’s not just Elliot. All the villains are sophisticates.
- Downplayed: Elliot drives nice cars while listening to classical music, is maybe occasionally seen going to an opera, and has a nice house filled with Monet paintings, but these are not dwelt upon or referenced in any way outside of being window dressings.
- Justified:
- These are Elliot's interests, regardless of whether he's good or evil.
- Elliot was raised in an old-fashioned aristocratic family.
- If Good Is Dumb, evil must be intellectual.
- Elliot is a Mad Artist whose love of beauty is directly tied to his villainy.
- Elliot is The Social Darwinist and believes elites like him have the right to tyrannize their lessers.
- Inverted:
- Evil Elliott is an uncultured, sloppy Neanderthal.
- Hiro is a Working-Class Hero and The Idiot from Osaka (or more accurately The Idiot From Wakayama), and very proud of having low-cultured hobbies and interests.
- Lower-Class Lout
- Hiro is a good guy, but yet he's still very fond of high culture.
- Subverted:
- Evil Elliott is Wicked Pretentious, only acting cultured and sophisticated on a superficial level.
- Evil Elliott likes classic literature and chess, but he's also a big football fan too.
- Evil Elliot seems to be cultured, but when one of the other characters quotes a classical play to him, he doesn't pick up on it.
- Elliot is an intellectual, all right, but his interests are less "classy" and more "nerdy".
- Double Subverted:
- But no one knows that except him and his Right-Hand Cat.
- Evil Elliott likes football for the strategic complexity; he disdains the more lower-class elements of fandom in favor of the coaching and planning.
- That's only because he didn't take much interest in that particular play. The other works by that playwright, he knows like the back of his hand.
- Elliot actually educates himself on high culture, and develops a high appreciation for it.
- Elliot feigns apathy towards high culture so people don’t see him as an Upper-Class Twit.
- Parodied: Evil Elliott's dark fortress doubles as an opera house.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Evil Elliott plays chess, other times he watches football.
- Averted: Evil Elliott is never shown as having particularly erudite interests in-story.
- Enforced:
- An executive mandate dictates that all works must have Anti-Intellectualism as a core theme. The writers have no choice but to present Elliott as cultured.
- Elliott is an Affably Evil Anti-Villain, and is going to be a rounded and constantly returning character. The writers receive an order from the producers to make him cultured (despite not being an established trait of his), not only to make him more sympathetic and understandable, but also to allow the opportunity to throw in a few Genius Bonuses here and there.
- The author wants to critique the upper classes.
- Invoked: Evil Elliott decides he needs a break from his world domination plot and decides to take Lilith Badgirl to the ballet.
- Exploited: Superguy lures Evil Elliott to Trope City Art Museum for the final battle.
- Defied: Evil Elliott doesn't want to be seen as unmanly, so he doesn't pursue any of these interests.
- Lampshaded: "For someone so evil, you sure like ballet a lot."
- Discussed: "My personal interests have no bearing on my goals. I could enjoy watching football and drinking ale instead of opera and wine, and my goals would remain unchanged."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Elliot's minions swap stories of guarding him during his spare time activities, and the focus is classical arts and music.
- One of the heroes engages in some Ye Olde Butchered English, and hits Elliot's Berserk Button in the process.
- Deconstructed: The work criticizes the idea that having good taste in fine arts would make Evil Elliott any less of a monster, and explores how his sensitivity in some areas makes him even worse than he would be otherwise.
- Reconstructed: The work explores Evil Elliott's Freudian Excuse of a poor and miserable upbringing, and presents his cultured tastes as well as his villainy as attempts to overcome his past.
- Played For Laughs:
- The good guys (and, secretly, Evil Elliott's minions) find it amusing that he likes art and music.
- Evil Elliott takes a few moments while fighting outside the Troperville Opera House to introduce the good guys to the opera playing inside - after all, don't they both deserve a break?
- Played For Drama: Evil Elliot wants to destroy/take over the world because he thinks it has become a crass and childish place. His tastes are emblematic of this.
Here is a link back to Wicked Cultured, not that you goody-goodies could appreciate it for what it is, of course.
