- 24: You have the Well Intentioned Extremists who often serve as the Big Bad. But most of the Mooks are simply punching the (villain) clock and are only out to collect a check. Most of them will Heel–Face Turn once they are caught or at least cooperate with the authorities since they never really bore anybody any ill will. But they're villains so they usually demand immunity or some other kind of deal.
- 'Allo 'Allo!: Most of the German officers are quite jovial and friendly towards Rene and the rest of the cafe staff.
- Altered Carbon: Kovacs is taken to a virtual reality torture parlor, where clients pay to torture and interrogate people while technicians provide them programs to help the process. The techs are friendly people with their own lives and jobs, whose main concern is clocking in overtime. They have absolutely no malice for anyone involved. Subverted in that it's made absolutely clear that this doesn't matter. They are still willingly participating in a horrifying system with full knowledge of what is happening. When Kovacs escapes, he kills absolutely everyone in the building, from torturers to clients to managers to techs to secretaries. The press and police are horrified when they discover the massacre, but he makes no apologies.Kovacs: I should be given a medal for shutting that place down.
- Angel:
- Played with. When the title character meets a vicious-looking demonic prison guard he has to defeat. The demon reveals his name is Skip and he commutes to work. Skip is sympathetic to Angel's situation, but is obligated to fight Angel anyway; when he is defeated (Skip later claims he took a dive) Angel makes sure he's not badly hurt before knocking him unconscious. Although in this case, Angel himself fits the trope better. Skip is guarding a guy who is supposed to be in Hell and Angel is there to break him out because he has to in order to save Cordelia.
- Skip later turns out to play a larger role in the show. First he helps Cordelia become part demon to cope with her visions. Later on, it was revealed that he did this because he was working for the goddess Jasmine, who kills Cordelia and tries to take over the world. This makes him less of a Punch Clock Villain and more of The Mole.
- Demons in general went from being evil horrible tentacle monsters in Buffy to being almost unilaterally punch clock villains in Angel. Demonic characters would still casually talk about eating kittens and bringing about the end of the world, but in practice we saw a lot of them chilling at karaoke bars, visiting massage parlors or slogging through unpleasant blue collar jobs.
- When the cast takes over Wolfram and Hart they find that a lot of the people there will just go with the flow. Work to bring about apocalypse, work to help people, whatever, what's my bonus package look like? Lorne reads everyone to screen out the truly nasty people, and they get along okay. That said, there were a few goofs. Eve and Sirk both turned out to be plotting with Lindsey to kill Angel. One of their doctors was part of an extreme gourmet food network, and had Nina kidnapped to be eaten alive. And Knox secretly worshipped Illyria, and decided that Fred would make a good host for it. There also had a demon who liked to dismember virgins for fun.
- Babylon 5:
- Sebastian a.k.a. Jack the Ripper from the episode "Comes the Inquisitor" may have tortured Delenn and Sheridan during his testing of the two, but once they pass the test, that's the end of his hostility towards them.
- Mr. Endawi of Earth Force Intelligence from the third season premiere "Matters of Honor", who comes to Babylon 5 to snoop around about reports of the Shadows. What is interesting is that he apparently doesn't know he is being used to help cover up a Government Conspiracy to cooperate with the Shadows. The orders he is given are exactly the ones a Reasonable Authority Figure would have issued in the same circumstances. His superiors simply intend to use the intelligence for sinister purposes. But as far as Mr Endawi is aware he is just being a good officer following perfectly sensible orders; it is the actual purpose of the orders he is unaware of.
- In "Intersections in Real Time", John Sheridan is tortured for weeks on end by a banal inquisitor attempting to gain a signed confession out of him in exchange for his freedom. The inquisitor makes a big deal about never telling a lie, neglecting to mention the truths he conveniently omits, such as offering Sheridan half a sandwich in exchange for some small act of cooperation and not mentioning the fact that the poison within it will give him a night of horrible illness. Adding to the banality of the inquisitor's evil, near the end of the program, when the inquisitor has completely failed to get what he wants from Sheridan, he is simply replaced with another, who begins having the same conversation the first inquisitor began with.
- Morden, possibly:"Flesh does what it's told... or they become most annoyed."
- The Expanded Universe Technomage Trilogy and its prequel, The Shadow Within also indicate that Morden offered to serve the Shadows "to the best of his ability" in exchange for freeing his wife and daughter from being trapped forever consciously in a bubble of hyperspace after a tragic transport accident, and allowing them to die humanely — supposedly the Shadows were able to do that, whether or not they really did is something we never know.
- Barry: Goran Pazar is a ruthless mob boss who treats his occupation as a rather mundane nine to five and often seems more pre-occupied with being a doting father to his daughter. One notable moment has him interrupt his mens' torture of a captive in his garage because his daughter is having a sleepover and they're being too loud.
- Breaking Bad: Mike Ehrmantraut functions as a professional hitman for Gus Fring's meth operation, as well as a multitude of other jobs that generically make life easier for criminals. Although he confesses to enjoying his job, he is also shown to be somewhat of a clear-headed softie, and a caring family man towards his granddaughter and daughter-in-law.
- 'Budgie' was a UK TV series about petty crook Ronald 'Budgie' Bird. The main antagonist was porn dealer/strip club owner Charles Endell, whose primary henchman in Series Two was Laughing Spam Fritter. In the very last episode Laughing Spam Fritter admits that he holds no personal grudge against Budgie. It's just that Endell pays him a regular wage to carry out his orders, and he's been ordered to bring Budgie in.
- Covert Affairs: Foreign Police. Sometimes even American police. Naturally they don't want Annie working in their country, at least not without them knowing what she is doing. But the police are doing their job as police and Annie is doing her job as a CIA agent.
- Criminal Minds: Discussed and Deconstructed on the episode God Complex, where the specific example of the Holocaust Camp managers is brought up and is pretty much declared that the type of emotional detachment needed for the more severe examples of this Trope are no better than a common foaming-at-the-mouth sociopath. Indeed, when the Mad Doctor Monster of the Week shows his wife the results of his 'work', he cannot understand why is she so freaked out.
- Dark Angel: Though in most ways the opposite of this trope, Max goes in this direction in her pre-hero career. When confronted with the supposed immorality of her burglary, she replies indignantly: "I steal things in order to sell them for money. It's called commerce."
- The TV Movie Die Wannseekonferenz takes this trope to something of an extreme: a dozen or so bureaucrats go around a conference table and discuss the implementation of the Holocaust.
- Doctor Who:
- When the Ogrons appear, they are portrayed as a Servant Race for the Daleks. However, the IDW comics show this was more a job, and due to the Doctor defeating them they are in economic trouble. An Ogron diplomat even helps the Doctor, and by the end the Doctor helps the Ogrons get work with the Shadow Proclamation.
- The Thals and Kaleds in "Genesis of the Daleks" seem to be portrayed as this. The Thals are using brutal methods in their war against the Kaleds such as enslaving people and forcing them to do work that will kill them but once they think they have won the war they decide to free all their prisoners and some Thals even prove helpful to the Doctor when the Daleks attack them. The Kaled scientists are doing research that will lead to the creation of the Daleks, but most of them are ultimately shown to be opposed to Davros.
- In another instance, the Doctor gets some righteous fury on the workers of the Bad Wolf Corporation; a television company with gameshows that end in murder. When one of the managers claims that they're just doing their job, he angrily tells her that she has now lost the right to even speak with him.
- Most employees of the Torchwood Institute tend to be Punch Clock Villains; however, over in Torchwood, they're the main characters. They're usually different members, though, with Captain Jack explaining that he rebuilt and changed Torchwood after they got destroyed in the Cybermen invasion.
- In "Time Heist", bank security is incredibly polite about the fact that they're going to kill you, and really wish you wouldn't make such a fuss about it.
- The Dukes of Hazzard: Tends to leave the audience feeling more than a little sympathetic to the deputies working under Sheriff Rosco and Boss Hogg. Most of the sympathy fell on Enos Strate, who was genuinely sympathetic and actually had a crush on Daisy Duke. While his replacement Cletus Hogg wasn't as much an Anti-Villain, he generally pointed out that it's nothing personal; he just wants to keep his job and not be a shame to the Hogg name.
- Farscape: The crew fought a lot of random mercenaries, bounty hunters, and pirates in the first season's Early-Installment Weirdness. When they needed muscle to rob a bank towards the end of the second season they went back to those worlds and hired them all themselves.
- Firefly:
- Subverted Trope when Jubal Early claims to only hurt people because it's part of the job, River replies that it's why he took the job. Eventually he concedes.
- Played straight with some of the Alliance officers they meet — some are amoral evil jerks, and some are just doing their job by pursuing the crew because they broke the law. In the movie, Mal even has a conversation with one of the guards when they rob a bank, telling him that if he gets shot, he'll look more heroic in letting the bank get robbed.
- Flander's Company: The premise of this French series, where villains are actually paid by heroes to commit evil, fight them and lose.
- F Troop: The Hekawi Indians have no time to terrorize the settlers when they're busy making souvenirs for tourists and distilling whisky for the town saloon. It's also shown that on the rare occasions they do attack, it's at the behest of Sgt. O'Rourke who wants to maintain the reason for the Fort's existence and allow him to continue running his business.
- Game of Thrones:
- Bronn is pretty mellow when he's not fighting, but he makes it clear that he'll do anything for the right price. Kings, knights, maesters, thugs, and, as he notably points out, women and children — he really just doesn't care who he has to kill as long as Tyrion's paying him the money.
- Lannister soldiers are shown slaughtering the entire Stark household, even the septas, but when we see a few relaxing at camp, they're pretty normal people.
- Steelshanks saves Jaime's life, which makes him come into conflict with Locke, to fulfill Lord Bolton's orders.
- The Hound looks like one. While he blatantly admits that he loves killing (it's implied that he's lying or exaggerating as a way to cope), he's also completely obedient to whoever he's serving and has a soft spot for Sansa, showing her small kindnesses wherever he can. He also stood up to his brother's attempt to kill Loras. He's also rather decent to Arya, who tried to kill him on at least two occasions. He eventually drops the villain part altogether when he joins the Brotherhood Without Banners.
- Aeron doesn't really seem to support Euron's batshit insane ruling, but he serves him, because that's what he does.
- Get Shorty: Miles and Louis are perfectly nice people outside of their jobs as enforcers for a murderous cartel boss. That doesn't stop them from intimidating, blackmailing and murdering people when they need to, however.
- Get Smart: Constantly played this for a laugh. Often when Control and KAOS agents talked during combat, it turned out that KAOS had much better employee benefits.
- Captain Watt, Sir John's right hand and his personal guard's captain in Help! I'm a Teenage Outlaw. Watt is very loyal to Sir John, but, despite his loyalty, Watt is actually quite pleasant most of the time and often seems dubious of his master's wisdom. Even he considers some of Sir John actions despicable such as when he threatens to burn down the village, doesn’t care Giles was kidnapped or tries to sell Lady D’s only portrait of her parents.
- The Hero Yoshihiko and the Devil King's Castle: Episode 2 has a literal example with a group of bandits who corner the heroes, only to leave them be when they realize it's already time to punch out for the day. Their leader tries to convince them to stay, at which point the bandits claim their union doesn't allow "overtime" killings.
- Heroes:
- Mr. Bennet, known in the early season as 'Horned Rim Glasses' for his eminently clerkly appearance, was a frightening example of this trope played straight until a family crisis pushed him into his Heel–Face Turn.
- Daphne Millbrook from Volume 3 is another example, an Affably Evil speedster that is reasonably personable around Hiro and Ando, despite pursuing the same prize.
- Hogan's Heroes has Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, who run a prison camp under Nazi Germany. However, neither are devoted to the Nazi ideology at all, since the former is extremely deadpan and sarcastic when heiling Hitler while the latter admits he longs for the pre-3rd Reich days. Their main goal in the war is to keep their cushy jobs in the prison camp so they can avoid being sent to the Russian Front. The prisoners are sometimes able to take advantage of this by convincing Klink to do things that will supposedly earn brownie points with the higher-ups or undo a recent order for him to be sent to the front lines. Depending on the Writer for a given episode they can be openly working with the prisoners; in the first season Schultz did this so often he had to remind them he's technically on the other side.
- Homicide: Life on the Street:
- Done chillingly with one-off character Miles Stradinger, an icy sociopath who serves as an arbitrator between hitmen and their clients. He casually confesses to having arranged dozens of hits when interrogated and admits he sees his profession as a public service rather than a crime.
- Kid Funkadelic from "Bop Gun" is a professional "stone-cold stick-up man" who has committed hundreds of mugging within the past year. He points out with a hint of pride that he's never killed any of his victims so as not to bring the heat down on himself, and expresses annoyance that one of his accomplices has landed him in hot water by doing so while he was present, ensuring he'll see jail time, though he refuses to give the accomplice up.
- Ironside (1967): In one episode, a pair of hitmen hired to kill a pool player (they end up being stopped by Ironside's team) chat about their difficult plane ride to San Francisco and what one of them plans to do with his child later on. When their target appears, they comment that he looks like a nice guy and wonder what he did to earn their boss's wrath.
- In Kamen Rider Build, Kazumi Sawatari/Kamen Rider Grease is introduced as a Rider from enemy nation Hokuto who, Blood Knight tendency and coldness aside, is more like a soldier who needs to provide for his loved ones and has no personal ill-will towards Build and his friends, even acknowledging Build's Hazard Trigger-induced killing of Kazumi's friend as a natural consequence of war. When Hokuto government falls, Kazumi has no reason to fight Team Build and teams up with them instead.
- The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: In the second season episode "The Arabian Affair", we actually see a THRUSH minion in their New York satrap carrying a lunch pail and punching a time clock as he leaves the office. As well, throughout the series the viewer sees numerous uniformed THRUSH forces (usually guarding headquarters and other important facilities), with the implication that these personnel are at least drawing a steady paycheck, if not actually punching a time clock.
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Rita's alchemist Finster didn't really seem evil (proud of his work, maybe); in fact, he seemed willing to do whatever anyone told him, Rita, Zedd, Master Vile, and even Goldar (he did draw the line at listening to Rito, however). He even once quipped, "Sometimes it's no fun being a bad guy..."
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: TV's Frank is very chummy with Joel, Mike and the gang, despite believing in evil as much as Dr. Forrester. In the episode "Village of the Giants", when Dr. F fires Frank, Frank tells Mike and the 'bots: "You guys were the best victims a fella could ever have".
- Jennifer Barkley in Parks and Recreation is a totally unscrupulous political operative who'll play any dirty political trick to win, because that's what she's paid for. She's very clear from the start that she has no personal investment in the election, she's just doing her job. And she just as happily tries to work for Leslie and Ben in later episodes."And you can trust me... because I don't care enough about you to lie."
- Mr. Robot:
- Leon is a freelancer working for the Dark Army and has no investment in their agenda Once he's no longer working for them, he actually helps Elliot and Darlene.
- It's a full time job for Irving, and one he believes in and enjoys, but it's a still a job, as seen when he tells one person they no longer have anything to fear from the Dark Army and then fondly reminiscing about killing another.
- Prison Break: This show is full of punch clock villains. The prison guards like Warden Pope were punch clock villains-Good guys who even had the respect of the audience and the protagonists but were simply in the way of a bigger cause (freeing an innocent man from prison) so they had to be taken down. Same with Paul Kellerman. He was a humongous threat to the protagonists but he was depicted as disinterested in the people he was trying to kill and a man dealing with heavy pressures from his employers. These punch clock villains were contrasted with characters who became emotionally invested in the destruction of the protagonists like Brad Bellick.
- Revolution: Major Tom Neville is this. He knows that Monroe's plans will kill lots of people, but he is apparently not bothered by that. In episode 2, he claims to Danny that he doesn't enjoy what he's doing, but this is the only order they've got. In addition, his wife Julia is urging him to kill Monroe and take his place as head of the Monroe Republic in episode 8. Episode 11 shows Neville looking a little more excited at the prospect of systematically exterminating rebels than is appropriate. In episode 13, Neville and his wife flee the Monroe Republic when he fails a mission for Monroe. Episode 16 has him working for the Georgia Federation, and enjoying the power he has a little too much. Finally, episode 19 and the first season finale result in Tom Neville betraying the Georgia Federation, taking over the Monroe Republic in a coup, and planning to take over the continent for himself. All things considered, this is a Subverted Trope.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch has the Hitler-expy Salem, who truly believes that he could lead witchkind to glory and doesn't understand why no one will let him try...so he assembled a militia to usurp the Council. Even in the present day, after centuries of imprisonment "behind whiskers", he still doesn't get that people won't respect a leader who's so bad at actually leading that they had to take power illegitimately. And he's still a perfectly civil (if sleazy) conversationalist...so long as the subject of politics is avoided.
- She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: In episode 8 Jen and Matt Murdock get into a discussion about the difference between "henchmen" and "goons". Matt believes henchmen are true believers, whereas goons are only in it for the money. Thereafter, Jen dubs the guys they fight "henchgoons" (though in attitude they're definite goons, being paid by their boss. But not enough to dress up as tadpoles.)
- Snowpiercer: Although a somewhat lesser definition of "villain" (they could be more loosely considered Hero Antagonists), many of the Brakemen, specifically Till and Roche, tend to fall under this trope, as while they're charged with enforcing order on the train at any cost, and often employ some brutal methods to do so, they're also just normal people with partners, families, regular interests, etc. Klimpt counts as well; while his job consists of keeping people in a chemically-induced coma as punishment, he clearly cares for the well-being of his charges. Notably, nearly all of these characters end up joining Layton's revolution towards the end of the first season.
- Really, most of the non-passenger antagonists who work on Snowpiercer could count, as they're ultimately just doing their jobs because they really don't have any other options, unless they want to do something worse (like Janitorial), or end up in the Tail.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- This was how the Klingons waged their civil war, with soldiers from rival sides drinking together in bars at the end of a long day's slaughter. In an interview, Ronald D Moore cited the classic Looney Tunes Ralph the Wolf/Sam the Sheepdog cartoons as his inspiration.
- The Ferengi as well, only doing evil when it gives them money. The crew of a Ferengi ship deposed their captain, who had tried to kill Captain Picard, because "there is no profit in revenge." (There was even another Ferengi military officer that appeared briefly in that episode who gave Picard information for free. Of course, that may have been because the villain in question was an escaped convict who was criminally insane.)
- Star Trek: The Original Series: The Romulan Commander from the episode "Balance of Terror":"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend... We are creatures of duty, captain. I have lived my life by it. Just one more duty to perform."
- Supernatural:
- Several villains of this caliber show up, most of whom are actually demons and monsters whose entire existence hinges around doing evil. Most prominent is a demon in Sin City who is stuck in a caved-in basement with Dean. She defends her role in bringing evil to city, claiming that she's just doing her job and most of the humans involved did it out of free will rather than her influence. Another example would be a pair of Pagan gods Sam and Dean encounter in the Christmas Episode who are Affably Evil and claim that they only take a few lives each year in order to stay alive.
- The reapers may or may not count, taking the souls of those that have been touched by death in whatever city they're assigned to. It is debatable whether what they are doing can really be considered "evil."
- Temps de chien: In the fifth episode, Antoine has to deal with a vandal who turns out to have been hired by Manon to make him just depressed enough to sell the hospital. At the end of the episode, one vandal is about to throw paint at him, only for Antoine to tell the man that he sold the hospital. The vandal reveals he wasn't aware of it because his cellphone isn't working anymore and thus Manon didn't warn him. He then apologizes to Antoine and wishes him an excellent day before leaving.
- Torchwood: Children of Earth: The trope is one of the principal themes. Many characters in the British government fit the trope, none more than Frobisher, designated Butt-Monkey and expendable fall guy for every single action taken by his superiors during the miniseries. You feel really bad when he finally kills his family to spare them a Fate Worse than Death and then commits suicide himself.
- The Umbrella Academy: Hazel and Cha-Cha treat their assassination missions as just a day job, although Cha-Cha does genuinely like her job.
- The Untamed: Wen Zhuliu will do anything the Wen Clan asks of him because he's grateful to them for his advancement, but he clearly takes no pleasure in Wen Chao's overt sadism, and at least twice keeps silent about information valuable to the Wen Clan: the drugged wine during the rescue of Jiang Cheng from the occupied Lotus Pier, and Wei Wuxian's mysteriously absent core during his abduction. Wei Wuxian deconstructs this during their confrontation. Even if his motivation is gratitude and not malevolence, he's still tortured and killed countless innocent people in his service to the Wen Clan.
- Vegas (2012): Vincent Savino may be working for the mob, but he's an outright visionary when it came to casino management. His vision of a new era of Las Vegas casinos include fancy restaurants and boxing arenas to attract the gamblers. He also wanted to buy the Tumbleweed, tear it down, get rid of the sawdust, and create a modern casino using legitimate financing from a bank instead of union pension fund loans. Today he'd be a respected and legitimate casino executive instead of a criminal.
- The X-Files: Morris Fletcher in "Dreamland" and "Dreamland II":"You think being a Man in Black is all voodoo and mind control? You should see the paperwork!"
- Zero Zero Zero: The Lynwoods provide a white-collar contrast to the brutal criminal empires of the cartels and the 'Ndrangheta clans. In spite of profiting off of the drug trade, they're pretty normal people. While the cartel and 'Ndrangheta clans deal with violent coup attempts, the Lynwoods' chief adversity is Chris's terminal illness.
