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Smug Snakes in Live-Action TV series.


  • 1941 (2009): In a series filled with sadistic Nazi and fascistic antagonists, Weissman stands out for his pettiness and faux affability. When Walter realizes his beloved Dasha has been sentenced to hang, Weissman is reveling in Walter's torment.
  • 24: Almost every single antagonist, be it terrorist or whoever arrives to CSU that season to play "Tyrant Takes the Helm". As an example, Hiram Bauer — the fact that he's Jack's father makes him believe that he will be let go for being a terrorist mastermind, or will be Beneath Suspicion to Jack. Not so much...
  • Angel:
    • Lilah Morgan was a true Manipulative Bastard, but eventually she had to die and be replaced, and that replacement was Eve. As Poor Man's Substitute for Lilah, Eve inevitably came off as a Smug Snake, but the writers seemed to realize this, and put her through a series of events that had the effect of breaking the cutie.
    • Lilah herself only slowly evolved into a Manipulative Bastard; earlier in the show she was definitely a Smug Snake, even ending up with a promotion — and thus her life — solely because Lindsey contemptuously tossed it away.
    • The true Smug Snake in Angel was Gavin Park. Gavin believed himself to be the next Lindsey McDonald, a Manipulative Bastard who could arguably be called Angel's Archenemy (well, he would argue that he could), but he just wasn't the man, lawyer or villain that he'd replaced. Nevertheless, Gavin managed to do some damage to Angel Investigations thanks to Loophole Abuse
  • The A-Team: Pick any villain from any episode, any villain.
  • Babylon 5:
    • G'Kar during the first season and especially in the pilot movie.
    • Also, Mister Morden, with his ever annoying arrogant smile. J. Michael Straczynski points out in the commentary that he specifically loved the actor for how unlikeably smug he made the character come off: "Look at that guy! Don't you just want to hate him?" The audience wasn't the only one who hated him:
      Vir: I want to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and put it on a pike, as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this.
    • Alfred Bester was like this in his first number of appearances as well, both smug and unsuccessful, but JMS noticed the threat of Villain Decay and averted it hard with his later actions.
    • Most of the series' one-shot antagonists come under this trope.
    • Allison Higgins, ISN reporter and face of Clark's propaganda machine.
  • Big Brother:
    • In the American version, Jessie was very full of himself. And in S13, Enzo practically has this written on his forehead.
    • In S14(US), former winner Dan Gheesling aspired to Magnificent Bastard status, but only reached the level of Smug Snake.
  • Blackadder:
    • The Black Adder himself, Prince "Sniveling Worm" Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, who thinks himself quite the Magnificent Bastard, while his contemporaries regard him with a mixture of disdain and contempt. His various throne-usurping schemes either fail spectacularly, end up biting him in the ass, or both. Thankfully, his descendants gained several layers of Magnificent Bastardry, presumably from their (unseen) matriarch.
    • In Blackadder Goes Forth, Captain Kevin Darling, a snotty little creep who, working safely behind the battlelines as General Melchett's adjutant officer, has made it his life's mission to make sure that Blackadder doesn't escape the trenches of World War I. He's loathed by Blackadder for obvious reasons; however, despite (or because of) all his sucking up, the General can't stand him either, at one point informing Darling that he regards him as a son — just not a particularly well-liked one. While he might have been a little git, it didn't stop some from crying for him in the last five/ten minutes of "Goodbyee".
  • Breaking Bad:
    • Walter White himself. When his Heisenberg persona comes into play, Walt likes to think of himself as threatening and intimidating, but in reality, it's just his massive ego. Much like other fictional high-functioning smug snakes like Light Yagami, Walt can be very smart and cunning, but his pathetic Freak Outs, childish tantrums, extreme arrogance and overconfidence can and do cost him the sympathy of manys. All these attributes prevent him from qualifying as a invoked Magnificent Bastard. Marie described him very accurately:
    Marie to Skyler: "That arrogant asshole thinks he's some criminal mastermind, but he's not."
    • Several characters, but sleazy cartel boss Don Eladio and Todd, the child-killing Neo-Nazi thug are two standout examples.
    • There's also the cartel capo, Juan Bolsa, who clearly thinks he is far smarter than Gustavo Fring. Simply put, he is not and is proven wrong in a spectacular fashion.
    • Lydia at times seems to think she's ahead of everyone else in the series. However, there are a few flaws that hold her back. First, she's an utter Dirty Coward, who can't personally stomach seeing the violence that she orders at the drop of a hat. Which leads to her second flaw, her propensity to have everyone murdered the second they cease to be useful out of fear of them. Finally, underestimating her enemies. All of these end up being her undoing in the series finale.
    • Ted Beneke. He's a sleazebag who has an affair with Skyler and seems to think he's smooth even though he commits tax fraud while claiming he won't be penalized. He takes the money Skyler gives him and buys a new car even though he's this close to being arrested for unpaid back taxes.
    • Prequel series Better Call Saul has a lot of these, but the biggest ones early on are the Kettlemans, a duo of embezzlers. Much of their appearances are steeped in the fact that they're absolutely certain that they'll get off from embezzlement and think they can fool anyone, even though everyone knows they're guilty and they make almost no effort to hide their paper trail. In fact, they're so certain they'll make it out that they turn down a plea deal for a sixteen-month sentence because they think they'll be able to avoid a thirty-year sentence entirely.
  • Deputy Chief Wuntch, Captain Holt's Evil Counterpart from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She comes close to Magnificent Bastard territory at times, being very good at hatching very clever schemes that Holt doesn't fully comprehend until it's too late, but it's ruined by her rather oily and self-satisfied personality and tendency to childishly gloat over Holt whenever she gets an advantage over him.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Spike was this through Season 2 up to Season 6 (and a little of Season 7, at times). As a villain though, particularly in Season 4, he had several bouts of incompetence, viewed by the characters as more of a pest than a diabolical villain.
    • Glory is not even a tenth as smart or diabolical as she thinks she is. If it weren't for her immense physical abilities and tendency to go off half-cocked, the gang probably could have outsmarted her without breaking a sweat.
    • Warren brags to anyone who will listen when he thinks he has killed Buffy. The vampires around him are only too happy to wipe the smug grin off his face when they tell that not only will Buffy be alive and well very soon, but he just killed one of her friends and pissed said friend's soulmate right the fuck off. He introduces himself to the darker elements of Sunnydale as the leader of the Trio, expecting to be recognized, but no one does. When Willow finally catches up to him, Warren briefly tries to act like a tough guy and threatens her, but he's reduced to pathetically pleading for mercy before she flays him alive.
  • Burn Notice: Brennen is an Insufferable Genius who consistently aspires to Magnificent Bastardry and fails to achieve it because, no matter how many times it backfires, he just can't resist leaving Michael unattended long enough to contact his allies and/or cut a side deal with one of Brennen's own allies.
    • Anson Fullerton, the CIA psychiatrist that was one of the founders of the Burned Spies conspiracy (otherwise known as "the guys who gave Michael the titular Notice"). Having profiled Michael's psych thoroughly, he believes that he has the upper hand and he constantly is asking Michael to perform operations that will benefit him while gloating that there will be seriously bad consequences if he so much as hesitates in doing them (like putting Fiona in jail). To his credit, he's constantly got enough pieces in place to play a good game of Xanatos Speed Chess (such as having evidence that Fiona blew up the British Consulate, so his threat has serious weight, not to mention other dirty spies all over the place), but the moment that Michael and the CIA are able to finally get a foothold and get down to demolish his organization, he goes through a very long Villainous Breakdown.
  • Camelot: In this Starz TV series, Merlin comes across as a condescending, ill-tempered, and unpleasant character in contrast to his Endearingly Dorky counterpart in Merlin (2008). The Sword in the Stone was just a ruse staged by him to trick the people of Camelot into accepting Arthur as their king. Merlin has a Yandere-like obsession with Arthur, believing him to be the indisputable ruler of the land, even though this Arthur is portrayed as a whiny, self-centered Jerkass. Merlin has nothing but contempt for the people of Britain, describing them as "a chorus of fools". His nemesis, Lady Morgan, on the other hand is a thoroughly Magnificent Bitch, and at one point he ends up being towed behind her carriage with a rope around his wrists, resulting in a Funny Moment.
  • Charite: Medicine student von Minckwitz, who thinks a lot better of himself than he has any right to, lives well beyond his means and is willing to do just about anything to pay his debts — including making a public scandal out of Robert Koch's affair and discrediting Koch's young lover Hedwig in the process, sneaking around the hospital's rules for a bribe, and stealing the untested medicament Tuberculin to sell it for a lot of money. That last one does him in; he's convicted and exmatriculated in shame.
  • Chuck: Villainous CIA representative Clyde Decker is always seen with a smug grin and frequently talks about a big plan meant to take down Chuck and his allies. However, it turns out that Decker himself is just a pawn in a larger plan by Daniel Shaw to bring down Chuck, as we find out "Chuck Versus the Santa Suit".
  • Cobra Kai: Yasmine in a nutshell. She loves cyberbullying (For the Evulz, even!) and thinks she's being really clever by tormenting Aisha over her weight. But when a homeless person stands outside her car, she cowers. And that's to say nothing of her lack of physical fighting ability (as evidenced by the frontal wedgie she gets by her victim at the canyon). Basically a spiteful idiotic Dirty Coward.
  • The Colour of Magic:
    • Trymon in this TV series adaptation. Ungarnished ambition, oily hair, and being played by Tim Curry all result in a decidedly un-Magnificent Bastard.
    • Almost any character played by Tim Curry qualifies as this.
  • Columbo: One is required to appear in each episode - not always as the killer.
  • Community: Former lawyer Jeff Winger is aloof, sarcastic and condescending
  • Coronation Street: David Platt believes himself to be a Magnificent Bastard, with his wicked schemes of Disproportionate Retribution. However, since he constantly makes the mistake of messing with people who easily wiped the floor with him, like Charlie Stubbs, Jason Grimshaw and Gary Windarss, it often blows up in his face. And the constant temper tantrums. Or the time he tried to blackmail Tracy Barlow (who is quite a qualified Smug Snake herself) into sleeping with him, she actually laughed it off.
  • Criminal Minds: Being a show about Serial Killers more than a few of the villains are like this, especially those that suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. George Foyet, The Boston Reaper, is one of the best examples, being a sociopath who suffers from Lack of Empathy, It's All About Me, and an ego the size of a blimp. He takes offense at the idea that anyone would dare to try and stop him, torments Hotch for no better reason than his incredibly petty ideas of Revenge by Proxy, is killing people for the fame more than anything else, and takes such a sadistic delight in everything he does that it's impossible to admire him, despite his undeniable genius. The poster boy for this trope, however, is probably the Season 2 Final Boss, Frank Breitkopf. While he has more sympathetic qualities than The Reaper, Keith Carradine plays him with such slimy arrogance that it's impossible to like him, or even admire him. He comes off like an evil college professor: you are going to learn something, no matter how painful it might be.
  • CSI: Conrad Ecklie, at least for the first half or so of the show. He's The Rival to Grissom and is only in the law enforcement business for money and glory; in an early appearance he worked to get Nick convicted of the murder of his Hooker with a Heart of Gold girlfriend, even though the woman's pimp was a more likely suspect, just to piss Grissom off. He changes in the Season 5 finale after his actions to split up Grissom's team lead to one of them being horrifically tortured.
  • Dawson's Creek: Abby Morgan was the series first's Smug Snake, with her wildly bitchy moments and biting remarks to even her "best friend" Jen. Dru Valentine, introduced in Season 4, replaced her role later (and well, at that).
  • Daredevil (2015): Vanessa Marianna fancies herself Wilson Fisk's partner, and he considers her as such, but whereas he's a lifelong criminal mastermind she's merely a particularly savvy art dealer. Her first action as part of Fisk's criminal empire is to order the death of Ray Nadeem; the consequences of this dismantles Fisk's entire operation within a matter of days. Had she not been so bloodthirsty or eager to prove herself, Fisk would have gone ahead with the original plan to discredit Nadeem, a tactic which was working...but killing Nadeem meant that his dying confession video became admissible evidence in court.
  • Dark Oracle: Both Vern and Omen have severe Smug Snake tendencies, with both being arrogant, self-centered, quickly offended, and prone to wildly overestimating their own abilites. Of the two, Omen is the most serious threat, as he almost has the power to back up his bragging; both eventually Heel–Face Turn and, in Omen's case, lose most of the Smug Snakeness.
  • Deadwood:
    • You can practically see the trail of slime behind E.B. Farnum as he skulks around town, engaging one poorly thought-out scheme after another.
    • Cy Tolliver appears to be covered with a sickly layer of slime too.
  • Defiance: Played with. Niles Pottinger, the man the Earth Republic sent to keep the title city in line, might be a slimeball, but he's also a genuinely clever man perfectly willing to do all sorts of horrific things to get ahead, fully capable of outmaneuvering all the other players in the game. He's not underestimating his own skills, which is part of his problemeveryone he meets hates him because not only is he annoyingly competent, he's smug about it. His superior in the E-Rep even notes that while losing Defiance would be a huge blow to their operations, watching that smirk get wiped off Pottinger's face would be worth it.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Plenty of villains from the classic series, including Mavic Chen and Soldeed, qualify — the two mentioned are both overconfident and both only think they have control over their respective Villain of the Week, when said villains are obviously playing them like harps.
    • "The Power of Kroll": Many people might plan to wipe out an intelligent species, only Thawn would do it for a reason as petty as expanding a business (which isn't even his business, he seems to be middle management at best). His plan to sell the Swampies faulty guns and then shoot them in self-defence falls apart because a giant squid starts killing everyone indiscriminately and his staff aren't as sociopathic as him, even giving him funny looks when he starts chuckling about how all the people he doesn't like are going to die. Even the Doctor only sees him as someone to snark at. When he gets a spear in the chest, no-one gives him a second look.
    • The Master devolves from his usual Magnificent Bastard status unnervingly often.
    • A rare heroic example is the Sixth Doctor, who acts very pompous, obnoxious and arrogant to friends and foes alike, has an incredibly high opinion of himself and only rarely displaying his true colours. Unsurprisingly, this make him unpopular with the audience.
    • "Dalek":
      • Henry van Statten is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and Bad Boss with an unbelievably callous disregard for the lives of his security personnel, who are massacred by the Dalek as van Statten, seeing it as the prize of his collection, yells at them not to shoot at it because he doesn't want a scratch on its bodywork. In addition, he has a truly massive ego. All of this makes him incredibly unlikable, and his subordinates overthrowing him at the end very satisfying.
      • Simmons, the man van Statten tasked with "making [the Dalek] talk", comes across as a smug, slimy weirdo who enjoys his job of essentially torturing a living thing every day a bit too much. (Yes, it's a Dalek, but it's not like he knew that.)
      • Adam Mitchell, a Teen Genius working in van Statten's bunker, comes across as a bit full of himself. It's a hint that, as demonstrated in "The Long Game", he's not the best fit for being a Companion.
    • Speaking of "The Long Game", there's the Editor. He's incredibly smarmy and condescending, particularly noticeable when he's confronting Eva. He's even like this when attempting to save his own skin, before Eva's corpse prevents him from fleeing.
    • "The Idiot's Lantern": Eddie Connolly thinks he's much more of a force than he really is, throwing his weight around and acting like he's the king of his house... then he tries to browbeat the Doctor, who responds by springing to his feet and towering over Connolly, snapping out a brief, savage and oh-so-satisfying verbal beatdown that cuts off the man mid-stride.
    • "Partners in Crime": Miss Foster thinks that looking after the Adipose children she's breeding for the First Family makes her untouchable, and that the First Family is therefore indebted to her, no matter what the Doctor tries to tell her. A quick drop and a sudden stop prove her wrong.
    • "Midnight": When it's able to speak for itself, the entity acts so unbelievably smug that only the other passengers' intense paranoia and subsequent fixation on the Doctor as the real problem can serve as explanation for why most of them (except the hostess and Dee Dee) don't realize that "Sky" is not acting like someone who is no longer possessed.
    • "Amy's Choice" features the unbelievably punchable Dream Lord.
    • Madame Kovarian did manage to spectacularly outmaneuver the Doctor in "A Good Man Goes to War", but in "The Wedding of River Song" she is genuinely surprised to be the victim of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness from the ruthless murderers she has as allies, and then shows that Villains Want Mercy and asks Amy to save her, totally confident that she will, because despite kidnapping and brainwashing her baby, "[Amy would] never do anything to disappoint [her] precious Doctor". The Oh, Crap! look on her face when she realizes just what a Mama Bear Amy is when the Doctor is not actually present is very satisfying. And even if she wasn't noticeably less competent than she believes herself to be, her overall smarmy, oily demeanour would be enough to make her this trope.
    • "Rosa" gives us Krasko, who has a superior smirk on his face in most of his interactions with our heroes. However, in his attempt to Make Wrong What Once Went Right, he proves not to be as intelligent as he thinks he is, and ultimately comes off as just a racist thug who got his hands on time travel technology.
  • Farscape:
    • Grunchlk, a bloated, scheming, greedy merchant with a nasty habit of overcharging his clients and betraying them should a better offer appear. In the episodes he appears in, every single character despises him with a passion, especially Scorpius, who takes great delight in stabbing him in the back of the skull with a Mind Control probe and forcing him to eat two of his own fingers.
    • Commandant Grayza; a smug, vindictive and generally repulsive Peacekeeper who wasn't nearly as smart as she thought she was, and eventually got completely owned by the Scarrans before being removed by her own lieutenant for incompetence.
    • Prince Clavor from the "Look at the Princess" trilogy: a whiny, posturing and thoroughly smug little bastard that wants the throne of the Royal Planet for himself — but probably wouldn't have been able to string half of his plan together without Scarran help. And he pays for it throughout the story: his mother plots to keep him off the throne, his fiance plans to assassinate him if he ever takes power, Crichton slaps him about... finally, the Scarran ambassador decides that control over the Royal Planet isn't worth another minute of Clavor's smugness, and fries the bastard alive.
    • A good portion of one-shot villains are under the belief that they can rob, extort, blackmail, harass, bully, or otherwise inconvenience the crew of Moya, who have a well-earned reputation as being The Dreaded for taking on and defeating far more powerful opponents.
  • FlashForward (2009): Uncle Teddy a.k.a. Flosso. He's a Fat Bastard who smokes a lot, is a Card-Carrying Villain, has people killed without a qualm, thinks he's so smart, and bullies Simon. However, he gets his comeuppance when he has Simon come with him, just the two of them, reveals Simon's professor's corpse in a car trunk, and tells Simon to comply and that this is his last warning. In a Moment of Awesome, Simon says "I'm calling your bluff! You need me too much!" The look on Flosso's face at that point was priceless. Simon shoves Flosso down to the ground and presses on his windpipe. He smokes a lot, so he suffocates rather quickly and dies.
  • Frontier (2016): Captain Chesterfield is both quite arrogant and desperate for recognition while scheming to become the Governor of Fort James. While he eventually succeeds at that specific goal, many of his other schemes fail due to his own bumbling leadership. It's also clear that Lord Benton, while no less arrogant than his former subordinate, is a far more cunning threat, forcing Chesterfield into an eventual Enemy Mine with Declan Harp.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • While Cersei is indeed a somewhat competent/lucky schemer, she is not as brilliant as she thinks herself to be, and her self-entitlement, pettiness, and overconfidence often render her blindsided, and she always struggles to grasp that she's in over her head when she has been outplayed. Her own father dresses her down for it.
      Tywin: I don't distrust you because you are a woman, I distrust you because you're not as smart as you think you are.
      • During her dinner with Tyrion in "The Prince of Winterfell", she gloats over the fact that she's holding Tyrion's whore hostage while both Tyrion and the viewers know she's got the wrong woman altogether. Not that that makes Tyrion any less pissed at her contemptible behavior.
      • Despite considering herself a keen player in the Game of Thrones, none of her plans ever truly succeed. Indeed, in most cases, her actions end up backfiring on her horribly, particularly her plan to rule Westeros behind the scenes while Joffrey sat on the throne. The most Cersei ever appears to achieve are very small, petty victories over people much less powerful than her, and that desire for the short-lived sense of satisfaction irrespective of whether it actually improves her position or accomplishes anything in the long run is textbook Smug Snake.
      • At the end of Season 6, while she does eventually manage to outmanoeuvre her enemies to become crowned Queen, this isn't exactly the glorious triumph it might otherwise seem to be, and she probably shouldn't be trading in this trope for a Magnificent Bastard crown just yet.
    • Viserys's snide and superior attitude is totally at odds with his bratty, bullying behaviour. He acts like he is a King before he even has an army...or anything, for that matter. When Daenerys finally stands up to him, he has a Villainous Breakdown.
    • Theon is accused of this by so many people (Tyrion, Ros, Osha, Maester Luwin, Balon, Yara) because of his hostage status that his Inferiority Superiority Complex and his desire to prove himself lead him to terrible decisions, thereby proving them right.
    • For all his cunning, Ramsay has a pretty inflated opinion of his own intelligence and importance compared to his father. Consider that all of the people he's terrorized and tortured were unarmed and incapable of fighting back: the Ironborn at Winterfell surrendered in good faith, the civilians at Winterfell when he torched it and put them to the sword, torturing Theon while Theon's chained up in his dungeons, hunting unarmed girls for sport while armed with a bow and hunting dogs, and then massacring the Greyjoy garrison at Moat Cailin (again, after they surrendered). He's a capable fighter on a personal level, but he's never won an actual "battle" (apart from turning back Yara's Leeroy Jenkins-style sneak raid on the Dreadfort, invented for the TV show; even this wasn't a full-scale attack but only 50 men against an entire castle garrison, relying on the element of surprise, which soon evaporated). Ramsay genuinely thinks that flaying unarmed girls alive who are chained up in his dungeon makes him "cunning" — but any idiot can pull the wings off a fly.
    • To those he has power over, Joffrey is abusive, threatening, and shamelessly overconfident. However, the instant that someone actually stands up to him, he shows off the cringing coward he truly is.
    • Qhono sneers in Tyrion's face about Lannister's men's weakness.
    • Littlefinger is a Manipulative Bastard, but because he's so used to being able to manipulate others, he tends to flounder when his manipulations come up short, and, being a Non-Action Guy, this doesn't go well when he doesn't have hired muscle at his back. Cersei managed to turn this on him when he antagonizes her, and she (and her guards) make it clear she could cut his throat at her whim if she truly wanted to. In Season 7, it gets him killed by the hands of the Starks.
  • General Hospital: Not only does Lisa Niles fit this to a T, but she also gets bonus points for being a total psycho. She seriously believed that killing Robin would make Patrick fall in love with her. All her attempts to off Robin failed. Most recently, Lisa fell into a coma after accidentally sticking herself with a syringe full of toxic drain cleaner that she meant to use on Robin.
  • Gladiators (2024): Legend, one of the show's Heels, is a vain, seemingly dim egotist who describes himself as a cross between David Hasselhoff and Mahatma Gandhi. If a contender beats him, he always has a reason why it's not his fault, and the reason is rarely plausible.
  • Gold Rush!: Dakota Fred easily qualifies, acting like a douchebag when working with the Hoffmans in the first season, then backstabbing them and buying the claim out from under them in Season 2, forcing them to find another site to mine.
  • Grimm: Adelind Schade. Whilst she tries to be a manipulative mastermind, she always ends up underestimating everyone around her. She tries to get the key from Nick, and loses her powers. She poisons Juliette, but it ends up bringing Nick and Renard together as allies. She allies herself with Prince Eric, but he gets killed and his successor clearly thinks she may be involved. She gets herself pregnant by Eric or Sean Renard and sells the baby in exchange for her powers but her dealer betrays her to the Royals. And even her pregnancy goes awry in hideous ways, with Stefania exploiting the situation for all she's worth. She got her powers back but had to run from the Royals because of her child, and then she lost her child. In an effort to get her child back she makes a deal with Viktor to do his bidding, except he doesn't have her child, which she only finds out AFTER sleeping with Nick while magically disguised as Juliette and taking a flight back to the Royals. She is then captured by Viktor and Mind Raped into submission and loyalty. And when she decided to take Juliette hostage she ended up getting her butt whooped by the newly-powered Juliette instead. Then she found out she is pregnant with Nick's child after having slept with him, followed up by her initial attempt to lie about it being Viktor's baby being blown to bits by Prince Kenneth, who reveals that Viktor is sterile.
  • Hannibal: Mason Verger. You can go down the description on the main page and check off every single sentence, as they almost all apply in his case.
  • Hawaii Five-0: Marco Reyes in Season 5. This Colombian drug lord thinks it is a good idea to kidnap Danny's brother Matt, and asks Danno for the money Matt Williams has stolen from him. Every time he interacts with Danno, a notoriously hot-blooded Five-0 officer, it's with a smug smirk on his face — which get him punched in the gut a few times. When Danny and McGarret finally bring him the money, he gives back Matt — inside a barrel. And Reyes doesn't even bother eliminating Danny, despite the later swearing he'd kill him, thinking threatening his daughter is enough to insure safety. Danny and McGarret promptly overpower his bodyguards, and Danno puts a bullet in Reyes's head.
  • Heroes:
    • Season 3 Big Bad Arthur Petrelli: between his ludicrous amounts of power, constant dog-kicking and smug, smarmy tone throughout it all.
    • Eric Doyle, the creepy puppet-master from Season 3 also qualifies. Creepy and smarmy, he's the kind of villain audiences just love to hate.
  • Homicide: Life on the Street:
    • Luther Mahoney is a powerful drug lord who oozes smugness, and he constantly taunts the detectives with Evil Gloating while making sure he never incriminates himself. Unfortunately, he's a quite high-functioning Smug Snake, and very good at escaping consequences for his crimes.
    • Gordon Pratt is a smug racist with an affinity for Ancient Greek literature. He smugly taunts the black Lewis and Pembleton with various demeaning "facts" about how black people are inferior to whites and constantly reminds them of how much more educated and intelligent he is than them. Eventually, Pembleton gets fed up and exposes that Pratt knows nothing about the Greek books he claim to love, exposing him as a fraud.
  • Horrible Histories: William Shakespeare is presented this way, especially in the HH Proms skits. In his case, he genuinely is a handsome, witty genius who invented plenty of beautiful new words and phrases and wrote a lot of great stories, but he also takes credit for other peoples' work if it has any similarity to anything he did (even picking on Cleopatra for telling her own story in her own way because he thinks Antony and Cleopatra is better) and is so condescending to other people that we cheer when he gets punched.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Kamen Rider Agito: While we're on the subject of Kamen Rider, this trope would not be complete without mention of Houjou. He spends the entire series trying to undermine the G3 crew in multiple ways, from guile-ing his way into becoming the G3 Operator, to proposing a competing powered armor system, to trying to capture Agito just to render G3 obsolete. The worst part is, every time he gets shut down, he only seems to get worse.
    • Kamen Rider Ryuki: This is Jun Shibaura's fatal flaw. While he's already an expert manipulator in his own right, his intelligence is undermined by his own arrogance and shortsightedness. And by thinking he can manipulate Takeshi Asakura, one of the most dangerous participants in the Rider Fight into his game of death, Asakura ultimately proves him wrong by outsmarting Shibaura before killing him on the spot.
      • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Drew Lansing (a.k.a. Kamen Rider Torque), one of Big Bad General Xaviax's lieutenants, fancies himself both an expert manipulator and fighter. Eventually, he proves lacking in both areas.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim has Mitsuzane Kureshima, who starts as an ally of the title hero but turns to evil as a result of fancying himself a master manipulator. In reality, he's only exceptionally intelligent for a teenager, and all of the more experienced villains easily trick him into doing their bidding for little or nothing in return. When he finally outlives his usefulness, the last one to play him opts to spell it out for him:
      See, little prince Kureshima, didn't Takatora ever tell you why he didn't want you to grow up bad? Liars, cowards, those kinds of bad children, are easy prey for bad grown-ups!
    • Kamen Rider Drive has Mitsuhide Nira, an Obstructive Bureaucrat who frequently interferes with the Special Crimes Unit for little reason beyond satiating his ego.
    • Kamen Rider Ghost Big Bad Adel is convinced of his power and authority as king of the Gamma race, but abusing the king's access to the Gammaizer androids leads them to evolve into monstrosities that con him into giving them even more power and ultimately allowing them to usurp him as the true villain.
    • Kamen Rider Build has a whole den of snakes, as it centers on a Japanese civil war where all factions are being manipulated by the alien Planet Eater Evolt. All four faction leaders think that Evolt answers to them and all of his manipulations of the other factions are on their orders, only for each of them to be obliterated once they're no longer useful to him. Evolt himself has shades of this trope as well, as while he is genuinely a genius chessmaster, he's far more vulnerable to letting his sadism and pride get the better of him than he thinks he is.
  • Law & Order/Homicide: Life on the Street crossover "Sideshow" features Independent Counsel William Dell. During the course of the two-parter, he abuses his grand jury subpoena power, lies to police, commits blackmail, derails a major character's judicial appointment, cons defendants with bogus immunity agreements, sabotages a plea bargain between the Baltimore prosecutors and a key witness, and finally gives full state and federal immunity to a murderer so he can secure uncorroborated (and probably false) testimony implicating the President in his crime. When confronted at the end of the episode about his decision to torpedo a murderer investigation for political gain, he accuses McCoy and Danvers of being "petty" and "savage" in their lawyering, because "the stakes are so damn small."
  • Leverage: Many, many, villains of the week, because the team specializes in taking down people who are clever enough to work themselves into positions where they can do real damage and confident enough that they think the law can't touch them — but who aren't smart enough to avoid falling for the team's schemes.
    • Corrupt Corporate Executive and evil agricultural scientist Doctor Anne Hannity, whose Evil Plan (to unleash a famine-causing blight to create a market for her blight-resistant wheat) would have had much better odds of success if she'd only been able to resist gloating about it.
    • Sterling is sometimes a non-villainous variant (he's a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist) in his weaker moments. But the little weasel is aggravatingly competent enough that most of the time he qualifies for Magnificent Bastard.
    • Chaos, the show's go-to evil hacker. He's at least as much of an Insufferable Genius as Hardison, without Hardison's charm and kindness, and tops this off with an unhealthy dose of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and Card Carrying Villainy.
    • Ian Blackpoole, especially. The claim that could have kept Nate's son alive meant nothing to him. In fact, far from understanding Nate's disgust, he was actually shocked at his reaction. Triple that for Maggie ("The Second David Job").
  • Mad Men:
    • Bobbi Barret, the wife and manager of comedian Jimmy Barret, ends up like this in one episode. Jimmy had previously insulted the wife of the owner of Utz potato chips, which he was doing a commercial for. Don Draper takes most of the episode negotiating with Bobbi to get him to apologize. After the two end up having sex (don't ask) Bobbi agrees to a dinnertime apology. But Jimmy spends all his time at the dinner hitting on Don's wife. When Don takes Bobbi aside, she says that according to Jimmy's contract he doesn't have to apologize, unless Don gets them more money. So Don shoves his hand up her dress and says that if he doesn't, he'll ruin Jimmy. Jimmy apologizes.
    • Pete Campbell is constantly this, although he does get somewhat better about it as the show goes on. He's never as bad as Roger.
  • M*A*S*H: Dr. Frank Burns is this. His replacement, Dr. Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III, also has the makings of this trope, but has a more bearable personality. If one needs proof, watch "An Eye for a Tooth", and notice the ending.
  • Merlin (2008): Morgana walks around with a perpetual smirk on her face, even though every single one of her plans to kill Uther, Arthur and Merlin have completely failed. She's also apparently under the assumption that her Complexity Addiction makes her The Chessmaster. Also, the fact that Merlin knows she's actually evil and can't tell Uther means his hands are tied. It's gotten to the point where she admits, to his face, that he was singlehandedly responsible for thwarting her takeover of Camelot and killing her sister, and she still mocks him about how useless he is.
  • Murder One: Malcolm Dietrich in Season 2 was a very, very obvious attempt to replicate the magic the show had with Richard Cross, the Magnificent Bastard from the first season. For whatever reason it just didn't work, though undoubtedly at least part of this was due to not being able to score as good an actor as Stanley Tucci, who had played Cross.
  • Murdoch Mysteries: Doctor Luther Bates. He's convinced his unethical experiments are for the betterment of the human species, and that he'll gain recognition for them one day. Under accusation, he denies everything while sporting the smuggest smirk you can imagine. When Murdoch finally corners him, he tries to kill the inspector, still as proud of himself as ever. His demise his suitably karmic: he gets killed by one of his aforementioned experiments.
  • NCIS: In "Iced", the culprit of the week is Cesar, a relatively unimportant gang member who secretly killed his boss and has since been using text messages supposedly from said leader to take over. He's overly smug about getting away with murder and gleefully needles Gibbs when they release him. He even planned to arrange retaliation for the inconvenience of being held for interrogation — against a federal law enforcement agency.
  • The Office (US): Charles Miner replaces Michael and responds to his eccentricity with realistic exasperation. However, his time in charge is largely characterized by appointing his employees with mismatched roles, bullying Jim at any chance he can get, and being all-around smug.
  • The Red Queen in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. - Jafar even lampshades it. But in a case of dramatic irony, Jafar falls into this territory by underestimating the Red Queen in the following episode. He seems to have wised up, though, and begins treating her more like an equal afterward. Somewhat.
  • Oz: You could make an entire page of examples, which is to expected given its prison setting. On the inmate side of things, the absolute worst is Timmy Kirk. A self-righteous, manipulative sociopath who always wears a smirk on his face, Kirk fancies himself as a Magnificent Bastard, but lacks any of the gravitas of one, and is impossible to like. True to form, when he's brought down for his actions, he nearly breaks down in tears. On the opposite side of the law, Governor James Devlin is a typical example of a smug politician who abuses his power to do anything he likes, and exhibits the same sociopathic tendencies that many of the inmates do.
  • Lanny from Pair of Kings thinks he's an evil mastermind, but is really more of a danger to himself than anyone else.
  • Person of Interest: Root exemplifies this trope in Season 2. She is undoubtedly intelligent and pulls of an incredible Batman Gambit in the finale of Season 1, in which she puts out a contract on herself so that she can get close to Finch, knowing that Reese would make a heroic stand and that she could eventually get close to Finch. However she makes the fatal mistake of underestimating Reese's intelligence, leading to her failure. Once she gains access to The Machine, she gets even worse, failing to plan ahead as she becomes reliant on The Machine doing it for her.
  • Power Rangers: Every Big Bad has at least one scheming lackey utterly convinced that they're superior to the remainder of the universe and willing to backstab anyone in their way. This usually ends with them being converted (if brainwashed into snakedom) or, much more often, exploding violently by either side's hand.
  • Primeval: Lester is a curious case, he starts off as an archetypal Smug Snake, but it's revealed that this is more an act than anything else. His awesome powers of Sarcasm really shine through in Season 2 when he's given his own Smug Snake nemesis in his assistant and Starscream wannabe, Leek and by Season 3 his return from a 10-Minute Retirement is given a Standing Ovation, and yet all the time he retains his aura of smug self-satisfaction. A rare heroic Smug Snake perhaps.
  • A Prince Among Men: This is why this short-lived BBC sitcom didn't work — the title character was a Smug Snake, when he needed to be a Magnificent Bastard. Not only that, but the creators missed the point that we sympathize with, for example, Blackadder because the world really does seem out to get him and he's just fighting back. Gary Prince's world seemed to be incredibly on his side.
  • Prison Break:
    • Brad Bellick in the Season 1 practically embodies this trope. As a corrupt correctional officer, he certainly acts like a Magnificent Bastard. He deals with former mob-boss Abruzzi, has a history of inmate abuse, insults T-Bag to his face and interrupts Michael's plans quite often. But at the same time, he's obnoxious, sleazy, importunate, and cowardly.
    • Agent Kim from Season 2 is another notorious example, lording and sneering over our heroes while being generally inept in almost all of his endeavors, then getting done in by the most unlikely of culprits.
    • Don Self after he was revealed to be The Mole. Where Bellick had at least some sense of magnificence, this guy's just too annoying to like.
  • Revenge: The entire Grayson family embodies this trope in all it's finery. In fact nearly anybody who isn't Emily, Nolan or Aiden is pretty much a smug snake.
  • Revolution: Just about every militia member is this. Some consider Tom Neville a Magnificent Bastard, but "Nobody's Fault But Mine" disproved it in the end by having Miles Matheson outwit and humiliate him. Now Tom's just an obnoxious bully who is prone to temper tantrums ("The Love Boat") and thinks the world revolves around him ("Children of Men", "The Dark Tower").
  • Robin Hood: The Sheriff of Nottingham of this BBC series seems to count himself a great Magnificent Bastard, but in practice his evil works tend to be rather too easily foiled by Robin Hood's men to be considered the work of a true evil genius. Furthermore, his "la-di-da-di-da!" catchphrase, often uttered as a sign of impatient indifference in response to threats concerning the meddling of Robin Hood and his men, is much too unctuous, awkward, and obnoxious to be a distinctive of a true Magnificent Bastard.
  • Scrubs: While not really a villain, new med student Cole in Season 9 fits the bill. Due to his wealthy family contributing tons of money to the school, Cole sees himself as "untouchable" no matter what he does, always has a smug smile on his face and a smarmy tone in his voice, and is involved in an emotionally unhealthy relationship with Lucy. Recent developments indicate he may have a decent side to him but even this might be further manipulation.
  • Seinfeld: Newman, though he tends to think this way about Jerry.
  • The Shield:
    • Armadillo Quintero is perpetually smug, clearly believing that he can easily run rings around the Strike Team and the rest of the cops pursuing him and taking a disgusting amount of pride in his crimes. He is able to keep Vic on the back-end for a while, but he eventually underestimates how far the Strike Team is willing to go and winds up dead for it.
    • Manny Sandoval is a small-time criminal who is disproportionately smug about his status in the criminal underworld and his ability to outmaneuvers Claudette.
  • Smallville:
    • Rick Flag is a competent schemer (at least so far), but his fondness for Cold-Blooded Torture, Sociopathic Soldier status, and 1960s-ish supervillainy keep him here, especially when compared to Lex Luthor and Lionel. He's arrogant, viciously vile, and at least partially insane: he's a Badass Normal who's spent so much time around superheroes that he self-identifies as one. Lx-3 (Old!Lex), an Axe-Crazy clone of Lex Luthor might count as well, as he has all of Lex's cunning and superiority, and none of his style.
    • Genevieve Teague, Big Bad of Season 4, is a competent schemer, but she's also a paranoid Abusive Mom and her grand scheme to not die ultimately gets her killed. She also lacks Lex's Jerkass Woobie status, Zod's presence and Lionel's sheer panache.
    • Lots of one-shot villains count as well, as does Regan Matthews, a slimy Corrupt Corporate Executive who served as Lex's Dragon throughout Season 8. Arrogant, condescending and just plain unpleasant, he was nevertheless unusual for a Smug Snake as his defining trait was his Undying Loyalty to Lex.
    • Chloe Sullivan is a rare heroic example. She may be a dork, but her smirk and condescending attitude sometimes just make you want to reach through the television and punch her in the face. In "Truth," she temporarily gains the ability to compel people to tell her the truth about their secrets, instantly becomes Drunk with Power and starts prancing around the school with a smirk on her face as she casually forces hapless students to reveal their innermost secrets and then announces them to the entire school in the newest edition of the Torch. Actually lampshaded in-universe in Season 10. In the episode where Desaad attempts to corrupt Clark's allies by exploiting each of their greatest character flaws, Desaad (who can read minds) notes that Chloe's greatest character flaw is arrogance. That being said, Chloe is usually nice enough that it's forgivable. Plus, she still overcame that particular temptation.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand: It'd be easier to list the antagonists that aren't Smug Snakes. Ashur, Glaber, Albinius, Tullius, and Cossutius are some of the more notorious examples.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • The Vorta are a Planet of Hats of Smug Snakes, with Weyoun as the smuggest. The Jem-Hadar despise all Vorta for this, despite remaining unquestioningly loyal.
    • Many Cardassians are also Smug Snakes. Dukat is one, through and through while fancying himself a Magnificent Bastard. Just listening to him talk about how he feels the Bajorans should have loved him like a father while he oversaw their enslavement and the strip-mining of their world, is disgusting to the series' protagonists and highly amusing to Weyoun. Dukat even has moments where he is on the side of the heroes until he takes an opportunity to serve himself to everyone else's detriment.
    • Dukat's right hand and successor Damar was also a pretty Smug Snake until he decided to rebel and fight back against the Dominion.
    • Kai Winn is the queen of Smug Snakes, especially in her first appearance. She and Weyoun actually meet and have a Smug-off in late Season 5.
  • St. Elsewhere: Dr. Seth Griffin started out this way, particularly when he tried to pit fellow first year residents Carol Novino and Susan Birch against each other. Birch ends up taking the fall for a patient death for which Griffin was responsible and is kicked out of the residency program.
  • Storage Wars: Dave Hester acts like a complete prick and has a near-permanent smirk on his face that makes one wonder why the other bidders don't knock his teeth out.
  • Supernatural:
    • Bela Talbot, a thief and dealer in occult items, was intended to be a foil to the Winchesters. Unfortunately, she was so disdainful and so treacherous (she sells their location to an enemy, steals the Colt, sets up the boys for arrest by the show's Inspector Javert, and finally tries to kill them) that even her tragic backstory couldn't earn her sympathy from the Winchesters.
    • Zachariah. A Slime Ball through and through, he tells the Winchesters that he's the last person they want against them and claims to be even more of a danger than Lucifer. Doesn't stop Joshua from getting him to back down with a single sentence, or Dean from effortlessly killing him two episodes later.
    • Crowley can sometimes be this, though usually he's just a Magnificent Bastard.
    • Bartholomew, for all his ego, is really nothing special and can't live up to his mentor.
  • Survivor:
    • We have Richard Hatch, Boston Rob, The Four Horsemen, Coach, Colton Cumbie, and Russell Hantz, although the latter tends to be a cross of this and Entitled Bastard.
    • Richard Hatch and Boston Rob don't count since they both backed up their arrogance by actually winning (albeit it took Rob four times in order to do so. He was definitely a Smug Snake in his first season, but during All Stars he took the leap into Magnificent Bastard territory. Richard on the other hand has always been shown as being very smart). The other examples mentioned above( as well as many others on the show) are, however, justified.
  • That '70s Show: Laurie Foreman, who was the only somewhat major character with no redeeming moral qualities, a general smugness about her, and was intentionally made this way, with the characters themselves lampshading it.
  • The Thick of It: Being set in a world of power-crazed politicians, this show has a fair few. Julius Nicholson and Steve Fleming both consider themselves to be Magnificent Bastards but they also have big egos and tend to foil their own devious plans by bragging about them.
  • Top Gear: Jeremy Clarkson tackles any task or challenge on the show with the attitude that it will work because he says it's going to, even if his co-presenters warn him otherwise. Which makes it all the more hilarious when things go horribly wrong as a result.
  • Torchwood: Miracle Day: Lyn Peterson. She's very attractive and seems pretty powerful at first, arresting Rex Matheson and the Torchwood team as soon as they arrive on US soil, but her incompetence soon becomes clear when her attempt to poison Jack Harkness is easily exposed and Gwen Cooper incapacitates her with a single punch. She proves herself a good fighter when she assaults Rex, but he still manages to defeat her by breaking her neck. Given that everyone on Earth has lost the ability to die, she remains alive but disturbingly (yet strangely comically) has her head on backwards.
  • True Blood: The members of the Fellowship of the Sun tend to follow this trait. Filled with empty smiles and holier-than-thou attitudes, this vampire-hating church isn't above kidnapping and murdering of ordinary people whose only crime is having a sexual relationship with a vampire, all while declaring their good intentions and other propaganda. Especially annoying, since many (most?) vampires of the show would most definitely deserve staking, but you couldn't root for these people to do it even if you wanted to.
  • The Vampire Diaries: The modern John Gilbert. Smug, sadistic, and smarmy, a lot of viewers consider him the only villain they've really wanted to die as soon as possible.
  • The West Wing:
    • Speaker of the House Haffley is an example of the "failed Magnificent Bastard" variety. He often tries to use the Republican majority in Congress to be irritatingly obstructionist to Democratic president Bartlet. But while he often comes close, whenever he is most confident usually something will happen to throw him a curve-ball that he wasn't expecting, leading him to choke and screw up:
      • For example, when his efforts to use the Republican-dominated Congress to bully budget cuts out of the Bartlet administration and dismantle their legislative agenda leads to a government shutdown, the public blames Bartlet and Haffley initially looks like he's going to come out on top... until a Moment of Awesome when Bartlet walks to Congress to meet with Haffley, meeting with stranded tourists along the way. Having spent more time gloating and preening about his and Bartlet's position rather than preparing his next move, Haffley panics, his Smug Snake instincts kick in, and he ends up leaving Bartlet sitting in a corridor while he tries to figure out what to do. This backfires on him, making him look arrogant, uncaring and distant in the face of Bartlet's humility, public opinion turns on him and he ends up having to eat crow and accept Bartlet's budget terms.
      • In another example, he organises a vote on stem cell research to interfere with the Democratic Presidential campaign, attempting to manipulate an assured victory by scheduling it when all the Democrats will be away from the Capitol. Instead, Matt Santos tricks him into thinking the Democrats had left when they didn't, and much to Haffley's dismay they end up marching en mass into the chamber in order to vote against him.
    • An infrequent recurring character called Larry Claypool represented the "slimy-but-low-level Obstructive Bureaucrat meets Amoral Attorney" kind; a lawyer for a right-wing organization that frequently sought to embarrass the President by muckracking, he often issues subpoenas to the characters requiring them to testify about issues that will cause embarrassment to the President and his staff, and comes off as smugly as possible whilst doing so. He's frequently described as an idiotic, pompous blowhard, but a dangerous one since he has the unerring ability to find things that might cause serious damage to the administration in his muckraking.
  • Who Wants to Be a Superhero?: Dr. Dark is intentionally played as this in the second season. He talks in a raspy voice and spends his screentime boasting about how evil and brilliant he is. Then when his big plan in the second season fails, he confronts the superheroes personally and gets beaten up in a fight that lasts about a minute and a half.
  • Wolf Hall
    • George Boleyn fancies himself as being cleverer than Cromwell. But when Henry accuses Cromwell — very loudly, in public — of being an untrustworthy schemer out only for himself, George can't resist visiting Cromwell to gloat about it and thus tipping him off about who put those words in Henry's mouth. He also falls neatly into a Reverse Psychology trap when he's put on trial for treason by reading a page of insults about Henry that Cromwell tells him not to... only to realize that he's just taken ownership of the words and condemned himself.
    • Sir Thomas More is portrayed somewhat as this. When the walls begin to close on him, he comes across not so much noble and principled as self-righteous and arrogant when he refuses to recognize Henry as head of the Church. And since the series is from the point of view of a man who personally knew men that More had executed for heresy, More's claim that he "does none harm" rings hollow as well.


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