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Smug Snakes in Video Games.


  • A Final Unity: Several characters in this Star Trek: The Next Generation licensed game qualify:
    • Captain Pentara slips into this role towards the game's end, to her own detriment when she fails one of the many secret tests of character.
    • Admiral Brodnak is also this, constantly overestimating himself and underestimating everyone else throughout his time interacting with you.
    • Consultant Iydia at the Morassian nature preserve. He is dismissive of the Enterprise's investigation into Dr. Hyunh-Foertsch's disappearance, angry that it is taking away time from his important research, and condescending over anyone who tries to question him and everyone else at the facility to boot. In conversation it is quickly also revealed that he lacks any scientific ethics. Finally, it is discovered that he had drugged and kidnapped Dr. Hyunh-Foertsch because she was about to expose his smuggling operation.
    • Arch-Rashon Nachyl on Frigis is implied to be one based on dialog with Aelont, but no on-screen behavior really confirms this.
  • Across the Agarest Senki games, we have the completely loathsome Summerill. He believes he is a total genius and gloats about every foul act of evil he commits like it's a priceless masterstroke in his plans. Before fighting him, expect a good six to ten sentences from Summerill about how he's going to make you long for death, and nearly all of his plans are self-aggrandizing — see his plan for making himself the new supreme god, and how the first chance he got, he tried to murder the God he professes to serve. Not even defeat can shut this bastard up.
  • Henry Leland from Alpha Protocol is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who spends the entire game smugly debriefing you of your misadventures. While he is also Affably Evil, it's clear the main reason for this is because he thinks he's already won and is now just taking the time to politely rub it in your face. Unless you take his offer of We Can Rule Together and decide not to screw him over in the ending, Mike outplays him quite handily.
  • Guy Forcas in Anno 1404. He does have some bite, though. (He's ranked as a medium difficulty AI in Continuous Mode.)
  • Cesare Borgia from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is one in every sense of the word. At first he seemed like a Worthy Opponent of protagonist Ezio Auditore, but he turned out to be nothing more than a delusional tyrant who fancied himself as an invincible and invulnerable king. He thought that everything was under his control but when he killed his father Rodrigo, who was the real man with all the power and everything started spiralling downwards from there, it soon becomes apparent that Cesare merely lived off his father's name and reputation. A sharp contrast to his Real Life counterpart.
  • Most villains from the Atelier Iris series, the biggest example being Mull, the Big Bad of the first game. His Expy from Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm, Crowley, was thankfully much closer to being a Magnificent Bastard, but still didn't quite make it.
  • Baldur's Gate:
    • He gets little development or even screen time, but Angelo probably qualifies based on the one scene. He's Sarevok's lackey who takes over the local law-enforcing mercenary company when Sarevok's plans to get its real leaders out of the way go into motion. When you are arrested for murders you were either framed for or goaded into actually committing by Sarevok, he's more than happy to glibly sentence you to death for a list of imaginary charges besides murder, clearly enjoying abusing power. He even gets a potential Kick the Dog moment in that if you mouth off to him in a way that manages to actually annoy him, he'll have a random party member killed on the spot. He's even annoying in the final battle, as he's equipped with a haste effect and a quiver full of Arrows of Detonation.
    • Isaea Roenall oozes it. "Don't take it so hard, I'm just... better than you. Oh, and feel free to lodge a complaint with the proper authority. That would be... me." He too abuses his military position to get away with anything, including kidnapping one of your party members when she doesn't want to go through with their arranged marriage. Luckily, the ensuing quest lets you bring him down in flames. This is very satisfying.
    • Edwin, a party member. His dialogue clearly indicates that he thinks he's a Magnificent Bastard and he almost never shuts up about his masculinity and being a Red Wizard. Problem is, he doesn't realize that he's one of the designated comic relief characters...
    • "Baron" Ployer, an ex-slaver that was exposed and humiliated by Jahiera and is now plotting a harebrained revenge scheme; Galvarey, a corrupt Harper that seeks to use the PC's status as a Bhaalspawn as a bargaining chip to increase his status; and Dermin, Jahiera's former mentor who was in on Galveray's schemes and is just as bad as he was.
  • Baten Kaitos Origins: Every significant villain except Baelheit himself is prone to tripping over this trope at one point or another, mainly because of their tendency to rely on advanced weapons/magic as a crutch to take out people far stronger than them, then act completely flabbergasted when it finally doesn't work. All arma-users also seem motivated exclusively by arrogance, until their various heel face turns, and Wiseman seems convinced that his magic is the most powerful force in the universe until the very end of the game.
  • BlazBlue:
    • Hazama/Terumi might as well be the poster boy for smug snakes. The man is constantly associated with snakes, almost never stops disregarding even the biggest threats around him as he is confident they can do nothing to stop him, his weapon is a chain with a snake head called Ouroboros which is a symbol traditionally represented as a snake biting its own tail, and at the end of Continuum Shift, Takamagahara actually refers to him as "The Snake". However, his smugness is entirely justified in that he is using magic to learn and retain knowledge of every single possibility in the time-space continuum. Not even the otherwise-omniscient Takamagahara could do that.
      • What keeps him from being a full-blown Magnificent Bastard is that he easily loses his cool if, in any way, his plans are disrupted, he is not being regarded as the centre of the universe or his "truth" is called into question note . His knowledge of the time loops and continuum shifts is meaningless if he fails, or refuses to understand the motivations of his victims — half-formed layers of backup plans can only carry one so far before an exploit is found. Case in point: Slight Hope. However, when things go belly-up, he's usually more than capable of beating the shit out of whoever screwed him over especially once he gets the Susanoo Unit and his full power back.
  • Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2. Every word out of his mouth is him gloating about how he is always one step ahead of you, and that you have no chance. Also, the way he discusses the death of his victims...
    • Like Caesar, Jack is another example that is genuinely competent enough to hold his own as the Big Bad, to the point where, for much of the game, he's actually right on that first part.
    • Rhys from Tales from the Borderlands is a Handsome Jack fanboy, and makes a big effort to talk, act and even move like him. It comes off as painfully awkward, and the times he's actually in control of the situation can be counted on one hand.
  • Most villains from Bug Fables often avoid this, but there are two noteworthy exceptions:
    • Part-time popstar/part-time explorer Mothiva is a constant thorn in Team Snakemouth's side and an overconfident pain in the ass who never misses an opportunity to insult and belittle them. So both times she tries to attack and upstage them in pursuit of glory, it magnificently backfires and her second loss ends up costing her the love of a bunch of fans who start cheering for Team Snakemouth instead.
    • General Ultimax spends a good 90% of his dialogue boasting about the Wasp Kingdom's superiority and smugly telling Team Snakemouth that they stand no chance against his military might. However, his confidence stems from hiding behind a few bodyguards and later a tank in his boss fights, and when he loses the advantage he clams up and goes from smug to terrified. However, this attitude's the result of being brainwashed into villainy by the Wasp King. Once he's dead, Ultimax turns out to be much humbler and more good-natured without his influence.
  • General Sarrano from Bulletstorm is a walking bottomless pit of arrogance, foul language, callousness, and pure evil. He uses soldiers like Grey and Ishi to carry out genocide and assassinations and then pretends to be angered by the casualties left in their wake after they take down his prized warship near the game's beginning.
  • Gary Smith from Bully is a Smug Snake. For his Smug Snakery to work, it requires 1) that everyone in the game take everything that comes out of his mouth at face value, 2) putting aside the fact that he has a reputation as a sociopath and common sense says ignore him, 3) that protagonist Jimmy spends most of the game insisting that going after Gary "has to wait" rather than going after him. And then, most importantly, 4) whenever Gary makes an appearance, all protagonistic figures must lose all ability to take action, period, and devolve into a stuttering stammering mess until Gary is done talking and has left the area. Notable that while he can deal a Badass Boast after another and nearly wins, when Jimmy takes direct action against him, he brings him down like a punk, although the odds were against him.
  • Most of the non- and post-Dracula villains in the Castlevania series, like Graham Jones in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and the cult leaders in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, come off as Smug Snakes vainly attempting to fill the Count's shoes o' evilness. Also, Walter in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, primarily because his motivation for doing evil was being a bored, unkillable vampire asshat. Can't get much more smug than that. They all have a distinct tendency to get effortlessly manipulated by Dracula and pro-Dracula minions like Death. Mostly-averted by tragic-backstory-vamp Brauner, and Isaac, who's far too... entertaining to qualify.
    • Dmitrii Blinov from Dawn of Sorrow at least tries, pulling off a combination of I Surrender, Suckers and My Death Is Just the Beginning, before coming back to life and successfully copying Soma's Power of Dominance in a surprisingly successful gambit. He was more of a "Magnificent Bastard in the making", right up until he ended up dying again.
    • From Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia comes another partial-aversion: Barlowe does a fine job of hiding his true allegiance to the Dark Lord, effortlessly manipulating Shanoa into obtaining Dominus so that, by using it, she can resurrect Dracula. And, when he reveals what's Beneath the Mask, he isn't that smug about it, just real effin' crazy. He ends up resurrecting Dracula anyway even after being defeated.
  • Command & Conquer
  • Anyone with the "Naive Puppet Master" trait in Crusader Kings and its sequel.
  • Maghda and Azmodan from Diablo III. The latter's boasting about his "brilliant strategy and sneak attacks" to the player's face lets them counterattack flawlessly. Ultimately, Azmodan does more damage to his army than the entire enemy force, including the One-Man Army player character. He is the anthropomorphic personification of Pride, after all.
  • Sakaki from the .hack//G.U. trilogy is a classic Smug Snake who has moments of true Magnificent Bastard-hood (notably his complete and total manipulation of Atoli), but he has more arrogance than skill, failing to comprehend how dangerous it is to use AIDA, and managed to get the entire population of an MMORPG out for his blood after he somehow managed to convince CC Corp to give him Administration rights, and decided to host a Player Killer Tournament to trap Haseo.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Given how much backstory and justifications he's been given in the canon of Dragon Age, fans are still arguing whether this applies to Loghain, but one of his lackeys, Rendon Howe, is a golden example of this trope. Not only is he overconfident, arrogant, and rude towards the PC, he even crosses the Moral Event Horizon twice on the very basic game that plays out to all origins and completely vaporizes it in Human Noble origins: you find out that Howe earned his title as Teyrn of Highever by slaughtering the former noble's family, despite them being his old friends. That incredibly smug smile and Tim Curry's voice only strengthen his position as one of the meanest characters (and as the most satisfying bossfight) in the whole game.
    • Sister Petrice of Dragon Age II, a backstabbing, conniving fanatic whose attempts to start a war with the Qunari from behind the scenes keep getting derailed by her utter contempt for her would-be accomplices and her inability to shut up about her racist beliefs at the most crucial moments.
      • However, Kirkwall does get into a war with the Qunari, exactly as Petrice wanted. But Petrice only proved to be one-third of the sparks that ignited the fire; the other two were the city petitioning the Arishok to return a couple of recent elven converts, and the Tome of Koslun being stolen once again. So this trope still applies to Sister Petrice even if Petrice ultimately succeeded: Petrice is too incompetent to start a war with the Qunari on her own; a couple of events beyond Petrice's power to influence had to occur first.
    • Livius Erimond of Dragon Age: Inquisition is an arrogant, manipulative Tevinter Magister who allied with the Big Bad in the hopes of being made a god. After tricking the Orlesian Grey Wardens into resorting to human sacrifice, blood magic, and demon binding, he laughs off any punishment the Inquisitor gives him at his trial...unless the player happens to be a mage, that is. And mages know better than anyone that Tranquility is a Fate Worse than Death...
      Erimond: The Blight is not unstoppable or uncontrollable; it is simply a tool.
      Varric: Someone's definitely a tool.
      Dorian: No, Livius. You're a tool.
      Sera: He's a tool.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • Morrowind: Orvas Dren, the leader of the thuggish, brutal, drug-pushing, slave-trading Cammona Tong. He's arrogant, prideful, and extremely confident in his position, having two members of the House Hlaalu council and the lead of the Fighters' Guild in his pocket. He has no qualms with plotting to assassinate and overthrow his Reasonable Authority Figure brother, Duke Vedam Dren, and has been steering the Cammona Tong down even more morally repugnant paths, like hiring bounty hunters to track down escaped slaves, using slaves as drug mules and working with the Sixth House, creepy cultists of the devil of the Dunmeri religion..
    • Series' recurring villain Mannimarco, a dreaded Lich/Necromancer, has acted this way in every appearance to date. He often sees himself as more of a Magnificent Bastard, but his schemes have repeatedly failed (or have been generally less successful than hoped) due to his Fatal Flaw of his arrogance.
  • Myron in Fallout 2 is a teenage chemist who is responsible for creating the addictive drug Jet. While he is undoubtedly a genius he is absolutely useless in combat and is generally a pretty terrible person overall.
  • Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas is a rare strain of this trope as he's not only competent but the game's Big Bad; he's just not as competent as he thinks he is. He doesn't even make a token effort to sway the Courier's loyalties if you oppose the Legion; he openly insults your intelligence if you ask about his beliefs, and if you try to release Benny he blackmails you into killing him, although it will likely only give you another reason to hate the Legion.
    • Benny himself is quite the smug prick. An arrogant would-be schemer who makes a habit of backstabbing anyone who trusts him and is convinced that he's the cat's meow, while he's not completely incompetent he still heavily overestimates his abilities. For one, Mr. House is fully aware of Benny's schemes and for all his charm his lies often are incredibly transparent due to a combination of his speech patterns and his sneering attitude.
  • Fear Effect presents Madame Chen. She is a pimp who runs a brothel behind a restaurant. She is a Card-Carrying Villain. She can turn into a demon, and happily admits to being "a bitch from hell" when Hana calls her that. She never changes her attitude, even when Hana kills her off and she ends up in hell. Okay, she did give Hana a doll that allowed Hana to meet her literal inner child, but it didn't seem to redeem Madame Chen at all.
  • Kuja from Final Fantasy IX, is a genuine threat — but not only is he obscenely arrogant and cruel, he ultimately can't overcome his fear of death. Essentially, he has the mind and air of a wicked genius, but the temperament and personality of a frightened, spoiled child. This mainly shows up in the game's latter half. It's taken even further in Dissidia Final Fantasy.
  • Duke Snakeheart from Final Fantasy Tactics A2. As if his name didn't give it away, he's a smug bastard who thinks he has it all planned out and tries to do things his way, in spite of the other Duelhorn members objecting to his actions. Ultimately, he admits to being the one that leaked Duelhorn's battle strategy and poisoned the girl Maquis saved for no apparent reason. In fact, during the fight, he says that he trusts no one but himself. He only questions the error of his ways once you defeat him.
  • As one of the Long-Runners, Fire Emblem has many of these:
    • Chagall of Agustria from Genealogy of the Holy War is a selfish, cowardly, treacherous king who killed his father Imuka to inherit (which makes him hated by everyone, as Imuka was The Good King), then mistreats his top knight Eldigan and executes him despite his loyalty, therefore taking away his most powerful fighter and provoking the ire of Sigurd and Lachesis. Ultimately, Chagall ends up all alone and is ultimately slain (or, in one of the mangas, commits suicide rather than fighting).
      • Then there's Andrei of Jungby and Lombard from Dozel, both of them greedy noblemen from Grannvale who conspire against Sigurd for power. Andrei is especially notorious since he entered the conspiracy by killing his own dad a-la-Chagall, which makes even Lombard despise him.
    • The second part has Hilda from Cronos, a power-hungry Lady of Black Magic who's very full of herself and seems a little too controlling of Ishtar, her own daughter, who's far more powerful than her because of her Major Tordo Holy Blood and only follows her around because she understands familial love and piety. And then there's her Evil Gloating about having tortured and pretty much killed her "traitorous" sister-in-law Tailtiu (or her sister Ethnia, if Tailtiu had no kids), in which players find so satisfying to wipe off from her face using Tailtiu's kids Tine and Arthur (or in Ethnia's case, her kids Linda and Amid).
    • Narcian from The Binding Blade fits this trope almost perfectly. He is a very narcissistic Dragon Rider with a tendency to bear grudges, and will not hesitate to let his underlings die for him so that he can live; plus, his Stalker with a Crush tendencies towards Clarine cause him to massively lose a battle he should've won at the beginning. Eventually, due to his constant failings, Zephiel demotes him, replacing him with Galle. He is given one last chance to redeem himself in the defense of Etruria's palace, but he fails and is killed.
    • The Blazing Blade:
      • Sonia Reed believes herself to be the most powerful mage and heartlessly manipulates her husband, the guy's family and her adoptive daughter Nino to please Lord Nergal. While she is a powerful Lady of Black Magic, her arrogance is such that her daughter's partner Jaffar would rather have a Heel–Face Turn than obey her orders, and ultimately either Limstella simply leaves her to die in disgust, or Nergal finishes her off for failing him.
      • Ephidel and his perpetual and extremely irritating grin. Fittingly, he's probably the most utterly disgusting character in the game, at least among those who aren't out of their minds.
    • Pablo, Riev, and especially Valter from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. The first one only thinks money is power in itself and tries to bribe everyone in his way; the second is a Sinister Minister worshiping a Dark God without reason at all, and the third is a monstrous Blood Knight who wants either to bloodily kill Ephraim or keep Eirika as his Sex Slave.
    • Lekain from Radiant Dawn is almost capable enough to be mistaken for a Magnificent Bastard. A high-ranking member of Begnion's Senate, Lekain arranged the Serenes Massacre and assassinated the previous Apostle, placing Princess Sanaki, whom he thought he could easily manipulate, on the throne in her place (while making sure Sanaki's older half-sister/the real heir aka Micaiah pulled a disappearing act). He's also The Man Behind the Man to Izuka and Naesala, and it gets to the point where if something bad happened to a character it was probably Lekain's fault. However, ultimately, he's a Big Bad Wannabe and an Unwitting Pawn of Sephiran, the game's real Big Bad and an actual Magnificent Bastard. The business with Sanaki really backfired on him.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening has one in Excellus, one of the main villains of the Walhart arc. He believes himself to be a Magnificent Bastard, but constantly overestimates his own intelligence, and even those on his side have no respect for him and have no qualms against insulting him to his face, with Walhart himself openly stating that Excellus is nothing but an amateur compared to the Avatar. On top of it all, during Walhart's final stand, he flat-out tells Excellus to his face that not only is he no threat to him whatsoever, but Walhart knew all along that Excellus was plotting to betray him, and kept him alive solely because Excellus amused him. Bonus points for Walhart explicitly calling him a snake.
    • Fire Emblem Fates:
      • Iago, an Evil Sorcerer who serves as King Garon's highest adviser and tactician. He likes to think he is a Magnificent Bastard, similar to how the above Excellus does, but his plans almost never turn out right, to the point that even his king mocks him for being useless. This is generally due to his underestimation of the Avatar.
      • Hans, Garon's other retainer. Yes, sometimes he follows orders very well (like when he provokes Hoshidans into attacking him to give an excuse for war and tosses Team Dad Gunter into the Bottomless Canyon), but ultimately, he's just a Blood Knight Brute who isn't very bright and punts puppies for no reason.
      • The Dark Mage Zola can be seen as such, especially in the Conquest and Revelation paths (in Birthright, he hangs around a little longer and shows a more sympathetic side). He disguises himself as Duke Izana, kidnaps him and impersonates him in his own palace (which technically speaking is a war crime) in hopes of conspiring against the protagonist and does not react well when uncovered and defeated, like when he tries to kidnap Sakura in Revelation after losing and is easily shot down and killed by Leo.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a pair of one-shot villains from the first act who fit the bill:
      • Kronya, an assassin working for "those who slither in the dark", whose main act of cruelty was to disguise herself as a (possibly deceased) former academy student and kill the player character's father for "getting in the way" and gloat about it, provoking a Roaring Rampage of Revenge from the Player Character that gets her killed in short order and used as fuel for a forbidden dark magic spell that awakens the player character's Next Tier Power-Up form. Even the Flame Emperor, who is nominally supposed to be on the same side as Kronya, finds her "annoying".
      • Speaking of the Flame Emperor, their henchman Metodey, another assassin who appears during the raid on the Holy Tomb and as the boss of the thieves holding Aelfric for ransom in the Cindered Shadows side story, loves to talk about the colorful ways he plans on slaughtering his enemies. He doesn't last very long either, begging for his life after he's defeated and claiming he was Just Following Orders.
    • Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, in addition to Kronya and Metodey, has Shahid, the Arc Villain for Part I of Claude's story route as well as his older brother. He views everyone in Fódlan as little more than bloodthirsty beasts, sports a near-permanent sneer on his face, and thinks that all it takes to win wars is drowning the enemy in soldiers without considering morale and logistics. Therefore, he loses both times he tries to invade Fódlan and his second-in-command, Nader, loses his faith in the Almyran prince and switches sides in the middle of the second invasion to support Claude.
  • Golf Story: Max Yards treats you with utter contempt and brags about his pro golfer status. Yet when he plays against you in match play at Bermuda Isles, he's shown to make some hilariously bad plays, regularly ending up in bunkers and scoring bogeys, and blames his bad performance on the course. When you beat him, he claims it's because he's too big for such an "amateur course", instead of admitting that you're a better golfer than he is.
  • Palawa Joko, still a very threatening Evil Overlord in Guild Wars, got his ass handed to him by Turai Ossa mostly because he grossly underestimated his opponent's power and wit. In the Path of Fire campaign of Guild Wars 2, the Player Character learns that he made an alliance with Balthazar and helped him create his forged army before being quickly betrayed and sealed away in the Domain of the Lost once the forged army was ready to invade Elona. Still imprisoned by a magic too powerful for anyone to break it, he still boasts about his own greatness and even tries to bargain with the player and boss them around as if he was in any position to do so, and upon refusal, and worse, the player coming with a plan that he doesn't like, he goes on a long and detailed rant about how he will get revenge on all those who dared to betray him.
  • Dr. Wallace Breen of Half-Life 2 fame. Acting as the puppet governor for the Combine, Breen keeps spouting out propaganda about the good intentions of "our benefactors" throughout the game (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) and making disparaging remarks on how Dr. Freeman "has created nothing". He is not even above threatening the transhuman Combine soldiers with "permanent off-world assignment" as a punishment for failure or, for that matter, the entire human race with extinction if they do not comply. He also seemingly betrays his own Mole within La Résistance, Dr. Mossman, refusing to make a bargain for Dr. Vance's life. Breen keeps gloating about how Freeman will be "destroyed in every way possible and some ways that are essentially impossible" even when he is about to escape through the Combine portal. He is apparently killed as Freeman damages the dark fusion reactor, causing the portal to collapse.
    • Alternate Character Interpretation suggests he genuinely believes that sucking up to the Combine is the only thing that will stop them from wiping out mankind. The resistance believes Gordon is the only thing that will stop them.
  • Lt. Blake and his boss, Captain Perry, in Heavy Rain would have this kind of attitude around Norman Jayden. Count on the likes of Dr. Adrian Baker and Mad Jack.
  • Hotline Miami has a couple of these.
    • Richter (the rat-masked assassin who breaks into Jacket's apartment, murders his girlfriend, and then tries to murder him) is one of these.
    • The Janitors are almost always seen wearing extremely smug and condescending smirks while they happily taunt the Biker (and, by extension, the player themselves) for their ignorance. However, if you manage to get the Golden Ending, they finally drop it and spend the rest of the scene with slightly worried straight faces.
  • Erol is the Draco Malfoy of the Jak and Daxter series — he's a smug, arrogant jerk who gets in Jak's face nonstop from the moment his character is introduced. He gets even worse after his "death" and resurrection as a cyborg in the third game.
  • Zexion from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. He's very overconfident in his strategic and manipulative abilities, but none of his schemes work out like he wanted them to. Appropriately enough, he ultimately is (indirectly) done in by the game's real Magnificent Bastard, Axel.
    • Maleficent, leader of the Disney villains, is a series-wide example. She's significantly more intelligent and dangerous than most of her associates, but generally is less of a threat than Xehanort and Organization XIII, and her efforts often play into their hands.
  • Late in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Kreia helps Atris turn into this by convincing her to take up the role of Darth Traya, the eternal betrayer. Kreia is herself Darth Traya and has been playing Atris, plus every other person she meets, like a fiddle. Atris never even gets out of her Academy and realizes she's been had as soon as the Exile beats her in battle.
  • Mayor Dalmore from The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is a self-assured noble ass who's Obviously Evil plan is to burn down an orphanage so he can make room to build luxury housing to sell off to the rich, all so he can pay off his massive debt. When the protagonists point out he could sell his luxury estate to cover his debt, he hypocritically protests that he can't get rid of his home. His plan is quickly found out and while he's quick to gloat that he's protected by code of conduct and has an artifact of power to help, it's not much good and he's quickly reduced to a panicking coward. Weisman ultimately proves to be little better. While his plan is a good and complex one with a particularly sadistic failsafe when the party manage to beat him he's hardly capable of believing it. It never occurred to him his second in command with a sword that can cut through anything would object to The Reveal that he kickstarted the war that massacred his village and betray him. When he tries to pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, Keven made damn sure he won't.
  • Any Legend of Zelda villain that gets Hijacked by Ganon often is a Smug Snake. For instance:
  • Vaati in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap comes off as this, with his digitalized "Mmmhm mhm" laughter, it doesn't help when one realizes he used to be an itty bitty Minish, taking away a good chunk of his 'evil aura' — Minish Vaati is just too cute!
  • The Big Bad of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Lord Ghirahim, acts really smug around Link, thinking that a human like him can't stand up to a demon. After Link beats him twice, he stops acting like this and doesn't hold back in their third and final fight.
  • Yuga of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is practically the poster child of this trope. He's a massively arrogant and condescending prick who cannot open his mouth without insulting everything and everyone around him. Despite that, he proves to be more dangerous than he looks considering he's the first Zelda villain to invert Hijacked by Ganon by possessing Ganon and effectively remains the Big Bad when he betrays Princess Hilda, who was working with him.
  • While he pulls off Gambit Roulettes with the best of them, Gongora from Lost Odyssey is a straight-up jerk lacking anything approaching style. It doesn't help that most of the people he manipulates are amnesiacs, inbred royals and money-grubbing alcoholic skirt-chasers. When he actually has to manipulate someone with a brain, he often uses cruder methods. It also doesn't help that he, you know, radiates evil, his attempts against the amnesiacs amounts to "I'm not the bad guy, you are, he kicks dogs for fun, and he indulges in maniacal laughter before checking to see if his plan actually worked...while his Too Dumb to Live allies watch, which triggers their danger senses.
  • Amon from the Lufia series. He's the Sinistral of Chaos, making him the most qualified to become a Magnificent Bastard when compared to the Sinistrals of Destruction, Death, and Terror. Unfortunately, he's also the second of four Sinistrals. This means that he doesn't show up until the heroes have become strong enough to kill the God of Destruction, and he's not high enough up the ranks to be the Big Bad or even The Dragon. He generally gets off one good plan and then gets defeated quickly enough to get the real Big Bad more screentime.
    • Idura from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, and especially the remake Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, manages to completely overshadow Amon in this regard. He's just as overconfident but doesn't have the justification of being a God. Instead, he spends most of his time laughing while kidnapping babies and girlfriends. Appropriately, he develops a rivalry with the Boisterous Bruiser of the team, and most of his "brilliant traps" are overcome with brute force.
  • Makai Kingdom:
    • Zetta is a heroic example, though far less sympathetic and Played for Laughs. Despite declaring himself the "most badass freaking overlord in the universe" about once a scene he spends most of the game powerless, surviving mostly on the charity of people he regularly insults. The game levels things out by making him a regularly mocked Butt-Monkey.
    • King Drake III. His smugness could probably clog up a black hole. It goes hand in hand with him being a Harmless Villain, ensuring that nobody takes him seriously. Pram ultimately boots him out of his own netherworld off-screen and nobody cares.
  • Multiple in Mass Effect:
    • Sovereign from Mass Effect is very competent, but isn't above Evil Gloating when he finally meets Shepard.
    • If you don't invest in Charm/Intimidate points, Saren comes off as one too (again, however, a competent one).
    • Mass Effect 2 has Warden Kuril, who turns out to be Too Dumb to Live when he tries to capture Shepard's crew while still letting them keep their weapons.
    • Mass Effect 3 provides a pair:
      • The Illusive Man jumps off the slippery slope in Mass Effect 3, but being voiced by Martin Sheen helps him maintain some gravitas even as he loses it in the endgame. The player's ultimate interactions with him during that endgame determine whether he takes a shot at a Heel–Face Turn or remains a snake to the end.
      • His new henchman Kai Leng, on the other hand, is possibly the biggest jerk in the whole series. Regardless of actions, the player ultimately must square off against him. However, player actions can provide an oh-so-satisfying heroic Who's Laughing Now? moment where one gets to break his ego before his head.
  • Avery Naillev in Mishap 2: An Intentional Haunting. His diary depicts his fellow scientists as miles below him and one of the main characters as a naive fool with no consideration for the possible monetary applications of his greatest invention. He stole the blueprints, arranged for it to explode, and confidently expected that said main character's widow would be grieving and in need of comfort. Yet when the main characters invade his island fortress he gets so rattled, despite his Affably Evil facade, that he has one of the ghosts which unwillingly serve himnote  literally rope them into the events of chapter five.
  • From the Nintendo Wars series:
    • Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising has the appropriately named Adder, who fights dirtily, has utter contempt for most of his enemies (and tries to persuade the one he does respect to join Black Hole) and revels in the crushing of civilians. Every defeat you inflict upon him is wonderfully cathartic. Contrast with his superior, Worthy Opponent Hawke, who tempers his villainy with competence and a healthy respect for his opponents.
    • Advance Wars: Dual Strike has Rich Bitch Kindle.
    • Both Waylon and Admiral Greyfield in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Waylon fights on Greyfield's side against your army just because he feels like it, and Greyfield is a megalomaniac who's fully convinced that anyone who doesn't conform to his worldview doesn't deserve to live anyway. The Mayor is a walking, talking embodiment of this trope, and it's clearly intentional.
      • Adder, Kindle, and Waylon are also rare examples of snakes who are genuinely dangerous and skilled at their jobs. Greyfield however is a total pushover, which makes sense given that his character is also a General Ripper with a hugely inflated ego.
  • Octopath Traveler:
    • Helgenish has an exaggerated sense of self-importance and is condescending to everyone he views as inferior to him, but speaks nervously in the presence of his superior, Rufus.
    • Vanessa Hysel is shown to be quite full of herself and condescending towards Alfyn after her true colors are revealed.
  • Captain Shannon from The Orion Conspiracy turns out to be this. He had some potential for Magnificent Bastard. He murdered Danny by having a concussion charge blow up, damage Danny's spacecraft, and it falls into a black hole. Shannon had a wife, and he blames the main character Devlin for her death. Danny's death accomplished two things...1. It got to Devlin and hurt him, and 2. It made Devlin come to the space station, where Shannon would be able to deal with him on his terms. Then he hideously murdered Kaufmann to frame Devlin. He had Devlin tossed into a makeshift prison, and said that he would hand Devlin over to the authorities once they arrive. It is revealed later that Shannon planted a bomb in the shuttle that Devlin was going to be transported in, and that it would have blown up once it got two kilometres away from the station. Fortunately, Devlin escaped the prison before that happened. Then Shannon personally confronted Devlin, held him at gunpoint, and smugly (ha, ha!) confessed to the murders and the reasons for committing them. Too bad for him he did not count on Meyer (who he was on bad terms with) overhearing the confessions and jumping him.
  • Matt in PAYDAY: The Heist pulls a Face–Heel Turn on your crew in the middle of the heist by pulling a gun and locking you inside a room as he runs off with the money. He taunts you before leaving and even after you catch up to him when he gets into an auto accident, he refuses to come out and says he rather have the cops deal with you. The crew decides to light the van on fire to burn him out and when he comes out, he begs to be let go while the crew drags him to the rendezvouses point threatening that they may cut his arm off to detach the briefcase of money he has on his arm.
  • Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners:
    • Professor Tsuchida considers himself to be completely above the law. After illegally digging his way underneath a pyramid, he recruits a group of tourists as his Unwitting Pawns, bringing them into the ruins with the intention of using them to set off any Death Traps they uncover. He also enjoys bragging about his various accomplishments, shutting down others' attempts to argue with him by proclaiming he's much smarter than them.
    • Soji Mizumi turns out to be a Serial Rapist. Though he puts on the thinnest veneer of being a half-decent human being, it hardly takes anything to get him to drop the mask, and he haughtily brags about his conquests. He also seems to think that he barely needs to Blackmail his victims in order to force them to sleep with him, and should he survive, learns absolutely nothing from the experience.
  • Persona series:
    • Shuji Ikutsuki from Persona 3 manages to pull off a months-long Evil Plan that sets in motion The End of the World as We Know It, and does it all behind a façade of dorky jokes and friendly smiles. After The Reveal, though, it turns out he's just a Straw Nihilist whose Motive Rant is delivered with all the enthusiasm and energy of a news reader. He also botches the ensuing You Have Outlived Your Usefulness by making the classic mistake of underestimating The Power of Friendship (and the dog).
    • Tohru Adachi, the true killer of Persona 4 is every bit the Smug Snake Ikutsuki was. While his initial scheme, which involved manipulating Namatame into committing the rest of the killings and leading the heroes into a wild-goose chase against him was quite clever, he quickly devolves into the personality of a Smug Snake when the heroes discover his plan and give chase after him, whereby his true personality as a mocking, arrogant Straw Nihilist is finally revealed. Also, in further true Smug Snake fashion, it turns out that he himself is being manipulated by higher powers beyond his control, who are in turn being controlled by an even greater power. In other words, the puppet of another puppet. Furthermore, also spoiled his seemingly clever scheme not once, but twice throughout the game. The first one is easy enough to miss. When Naoto is reading off the list of victims found in Namatame's truck, he simply states "Whoa. That solves everything", without even possibly even knowing what Naoto is talking about. The second time is much more obvious. When he cries out "Namatame was the one who put them all in!", he supplies all the evidence the heroes need to prove he is the killer.
    • Persona 5 has Masayoshi Shido, a corrupt politician behind practically every bad thing in the game, including the protagonist's probation. For all of his ambitions and belief that he's been chosen by divine right, it's clear that the only reasons he can amass his power/influence is due to his connections and having his son doing all of his dirty work.
      • The Traitor a.k.a. Goro Akechi is far less intelligent than he thinks he is. The Phantom Thieves easily cotton on to his intentions and play him like a fiddle, while the above-mentioned Shido already suspects he is his illegitimate son and plans to throw him away like a used tissue once he's outlived his usefulness.
  • Grand Secretary Atsura, The Spymaster for Rautai in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, might actually be a convincing mastermind if the narration didn't go out of its way to point out how fake his every display of emotion is. He's clever enough to make his job offers in terms of the Watcher's known reputations — whether they're motivated by a Chronic Hero Syndrome, a sack of coins, or an opportunity to hurt people — but he defaults too quickly to "smug and enigmatic" if the Watcher presses them for details.
  • Pokémon:
    • Pokémon Black and White brought us a literal Smug Snake in Snivy, the Grass-type starter Pokémon. Its name certainly makes the point, and it only gets smugger throughout its entire evolution line. Even its Pokédex entry agrees. Ken Sugimori has stated that Snivy's personality was meant to be similar to that of European (particularly French) nobility, so that's why.
    • Ghetsis, also from Black and White. It feels so refreshing when he goes from his usual arrogant douchebaggery to a massive temper tantrum when you defeat him and wreck his Evil Plan.
    • Over in Pokémon GO, one of the Rocket leaders, Arlo, is a condescending douchebag to the core. It makes it kind of hilarious when he accuses the player of being arrogant when he seems constitutionally incapable of shutting up about how great he thinks he is.
  • Psychonauts 2 has Gristol Malik. He is a very good schemer, and a mole who is not obvious. However, he is not a Magnificent Bastard, although he comes close, because his plan is built on his delusions of grandeur, he thinks Maligula, who is a victim of his father's abuse, will actually help him, which is his fatal mistake in his otherwise solid plan, and he hasn't planned much of his program after he regains his lost throne. He also isn't even fought, and never takes defeat well, being a Spoiled Brat.
  • Most villains in Radiant Historia, but especially Queen Protea. She's petty, vain, incompetent, has an extremely inflated sense of her own importance, disregards her stepdaughter completely, kicks any dogs within reach, and is so oblivious to everything actually going on that she's effortlessly manipulated by her advisors. When the party actually confronts her in one timeline, she refuses to believe her army could possibly be losing when several of the enemy commanders have just burst into her throne room and doesn't actually get it through her skull that she should be worried until Stocke is actually holding a blade to her neck.
  • Andre in the third Rayman game. He constantly mocks Rayman and believes he is great, but spends the game's majority in Globox's stomach, which only sometimes works in his favor. Also, without Reflux, in the final battle he is nothing.
  • Ramon Salazar from Resident Evil 4 fits this trope to a T. He's a smug elfish character, who constantly condescends Leon Kennedy by calling him by his last name and ensuring that the next trap will surely kill him. The further Leon gets into the castle, Salazar starts to lose his smug sarcasm, and yells "JUST DIE, YOU WORM!". The last battle with him is so annoying and deliberate, several players simply use the One-Hit Kill rocket launcher to be rid of his irritating ass.
    • Ricardo Irving from Resident Evil 5 is the spiritual successor to Salazar, except taller and with an even more irritating boss battle. An arms dealer with zero scruples or loyalty, he happily seeks to profit by selling biological weapons to the highest bidder, even when that highest bidder intends to kill off nearly all life in the world.
    • Ozwell E. Spencer, Big Bad and The Man Behind the Man to the whole series, is one. He wanted to be a god, but had no idea how to go about doing it, so he hired the various Evil Geniuses who make up the antagonistic characters, and let them research at will, hoping one of them would create a way for him to achieve his godhood. In a series full of brilliant or horrifying bad guys with One-Winged Angel forms that are the stuff of nightmares, Spencer stands out as an Evil Cripple and The Man Behind the Curtain, who waits far too long to put his plan into action, and eventually sees it hijacked by his former protege, Albert Wesker. Smug, condescending, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, the old man is one of these to the end.
    • Albert Wesker himself also takes the cake. In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Wesker brags about how he will use the T-Virus to bring about change and attempts to kill Chris Redfield for revenge after Chris had foiled his plans in Resident Evil. By Resident Evil 5, Wesker is high off the A God Am I trope as he constantly brags about bringing evolutionary changes to the world with Uroboros and how he will be a god of the new world. Towards the game's end, Wesker gets more agitated as Chris and Sheva keep avoiding Wesker's death traps, creatures, and himself and it isn't until Chris stabs Wesker with a serum overdose to throw his body out of balance that Wesker gets extremely pissed off and then goes One-Winged Angel by infected himself with Uroboros.
    • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard follows Salazar and Irving's tradition with Lucas Baker, eldest child of the Baker family, engineering prodigy, trickster, and gleeful criminal and Serial Killer whose favorite hobby is gearing his intellect towards whipping up death and torture machines into which he throws his family's prisoners as a form of sadistic "play". When he's got a screen or a microphone to hide behind and an operation or scheme's going according to plan, he's mockingly chatty and perky, and he makes it clear he's convinced that his intelligence and planning is infallible... but he's also a scatterbrain, and it coming around to bite him in the ass and spoil his "fun" is enough to send him from lording over his premature "victories" to all-out tantrums.
    • The same goes for Big Bad Eveline. The game front-loads a decent amount of sympathy for this character in her backstory as a Tyke Bomb who "just wants a family," and does its very best to present her as some kind of tragic Anti-Villain, but it's severely undermined by how she displays entirely too much delight and glee at the horrific suffering she inflicts on dozens of innocent people for this sympathetic treatment to properly work in context. The "Daughters" DLC also severely undermines Eveline's Tragic Villain nature when she's rescued and taken in by the Bakers, and immediately repays their kindness by enslaving them and turning most of them into psychotic murderers, even gloating to the remaining untainted member of he family that "They're mine, now!" right before doing the deed.
  • Stratos from Sacrifice, who is extremely self-centred, smug, and disdainful towards many other gods while barely hiding it under a veneer of civility. He has rather overt aspirations towards monotheism, and turns out to be the mastermind behind the main plot, which (unless you serve him), eventually derails beyond his control and kills him.
  • Everybody not on the Tokugawa side in Samurai Warriors sees Ieyasu as a Smug Snake.
  • Nicholai from Shadow Hearts: Covenant tries so hard to be a Magnificent Bastard. He's charismatic, scheming, and utterly selfish, and loves to taunt you from just outside your reach. He sets up deals with every evil faction in the game so that whoever remains standing at the end, he should achieve his goals. He even contracts the power of a god! However, he doesn't quite count on Yuri kicking the crap out of everyone, his plan to release the Malice of Apoina Tower comes off as petty revenge, and he ends up getting completely outmaneuvered by someone even more scheming. And the completely undignified way in which he finally bites the dust.
  • Mastema from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey acts slimier and slimier the further you get in the game, blatantly playing on Zelenin's insecurities and acting like an arrogant dick to everyone else. Then in the Chaos path, he has a rather impressive Villainous Breakdown, revealing that he doesn't even have the excuse of having admirable motives. It's rather satisfying to see Louisa Ferre rip his excuses to shreds as he ingloriously dies.
  • Vincent from Silent Hill 3. He has a case of Heel–Face Revolving Door around Heather and Claudia and spends his time not only allying with either of them but also snarking them.
  • Alfonso from Skies of Arcadia. Even Galcian, a pretty Evil Overlord in his own right, holds Alfonso in contempt after he callously kills off and scapegoats his own vice-captain when his airship is taken over by Dyne's band the game's beginning — although mostly this is just because Alfonso is so utterly useless.
    • Worth noting that you never actually fight him once in the whole game. He's killed off rather unceremoniously with Empress Teodora when the Rains of Destruction are called down on Valua and the roof of the Imperial Palace caves in, but by that point, the protagonists have put him through such a Humiliation Conga that if you did fight him, he'd probably be brushed aside like a humorous interlude.
  • Penelope from the Sly Cooper franchise has this as her true persona. She makes herself look friendly and endearing to people, but she's just a sociopathic brat who looks down on others and forms alliances and even false romances based on their usefulness and potential. Bentley at one stage catches Penelope gloating over using both the Cooper Gang and Le Paradox over her goals of world domination via money and warfare, and planning to dispose of both sides; this costs Penelope her reputation, and becomes disgraced in the criminal underworld.
    • Arpeggio also counts. He is the leader of the Klaww gang, and seeked immortality and to cure his disability by merging with Clockwerk. While he is very book smart and his inventions made him really earn the position of the leader, he gets easily betrayed and killed by Neyla, whom he foolishly trusted, and also didn't know his plan would end up with Clockwerk poisoning his mind as he did with Neyla herself.
  • Many baddies in Star Wars: The Old Republic fit this bill.
    • Skavak, overarching rival to the Smuggler, is a greedy backstabber, womanizer, and all-around asshole. He seduces half the women in the galaxy, then abandons them when they’ve given him whatever he wants.
    • Tarro Blood of the Bounty Hunter storyline. A disgraced Mandalorian, he reenters the Great Hunt after ten years in exile and eliminates the competition by either buying them off, or killing them. When the Hunter grows closer to winning, Tarro downloads the list of Great Hunt targets, and sells them to the highest bidder, conveniently omitting his own targets. Once you finally catch up to him, he smugly boasts that he is the superior hunter, while in a cell... one which he locked himself in.
    • Jedi Master Jun Seros, also of the Bounty Hunter storyline. Only content to attack you from afar, then calls you a murderer for killing the forces sent to arrest you. Also a Hypocrite of the highest order; he defames the Bounty Hunter for the murder of his allies, yet when he ambushes and kills the Hunter’s allies, who had nothing to do with them until recently, he says that it isn’t murder, as “they made their choice”.
    • Many Jedi or Sith you meet often are this, particularly if you’re playing as one of the ranged classes. They’re derisive of you, and believe you don’t stand a chance against them. Once the smoke clears, and they’re lying in a heap, they usually whine about how someone without the Force could beat them.
  • Wario and Waluigi in the Super Mario Bros. series.
  • "Queen" Valentina from Super Mario RPG shows many traits of your classical Smug Snake, including an over-inflated ego plus a penchant for treating her underlings (especially her fat, feathered punching bag of a dragon Dodo) and everyone she encounters with as little respect as possible.
  • Super Robot Wars Reversal: Duminuss, as depicted in the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation series, has had a number of grand schemes blow up in her face due to not thinking them all the way through.
  • Tales Series:
    • Saleh from Tales of Rebirth. This guy is presented as a badass member of the Kingdom's Elites, but all he does is approach the heroes, taunt them and do nothing. Later on, after being lectured by Tytree, he comes in denial that there is no way that the human heart can defeat him. So what does he do? Taunt the team even more rather than kicking their ass. Add to the fact that he's all doing it For the Evulz, he's as smug as you can get.
    • Grand Maestro Mohs from Tales of the Abyss is a high-level member of the Corrupt Church with designs to plunge the world into all-out war "for its own good". He's also a Villain with Good Publicity (even amongst some of your party members), and legally untouchable because he never touches anything directly. He is as such free to spend most of the game's story smugly plotting on the sidelines and looking down at both ally and enemy without suffering any personal backlash, even after performing the game's arguably biggest Kick the Dog moment by killing Ion. He's finally killed after devolving into an Ax-Crazy One-Winged Angel.
    • Rideaux from Tales of Xillia 2 is a doctor agent for the Spirius Corporation, and leaves a very sour first impression by blackmailing Ludger and saddling him with a 20 million gald debt. He continues to be a thorn in the party's side from that point on, taunting them and going so far as to fight them on multiple occasions, but they're forced to put up with him, due to being under the employ of the same organization for the sake of trying to save the world. He ultimately gets a very satisfying Villainous Breakdown when he learns that the organization intends to use him as a sacrifice to open the way to the Land of Canaan; something he ends up being powerless to prevent.
  • In The Trapped Trilogy series of Adventure Games, Dan McNeely is a particularly memetic example. While the creator probably meant for him to be a Magnificent Bastard, the sheer number of plot holes diminish whatever guile or cunning he can demonstrate, leaving only his sneering tone apparent.
  • The Guardian from the Ultima series, at least in Ultima VII: The Black Gate. He constantly taunts, insults and annoys the Avatar in feeble attempts to scare you off, all the while you uncover his plots, undermine the Fellowship, gather plot coupons, and smash the prism generators. Although he's fully aware of everything you do, he never bothers to alert the Fellowship to the fact that you are not their friend, his own Dragon Batlin keeps treating you like a clueless dupe right up until you try to interrogate him with the prism cube, and when you finally pull out your ace and foil his plan, he's downright shocked that you could stop him.
  • The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night gives us Higanbana, who was introduced as this in EP1. Then again, that's just the first episode, so...
    • Needless to say, Kanamori manages to be even more of a Smug Snake than Higanbana ever does, to the point of going insane at the best of times whenever he gets away with something.
  • Rosencrantz from Vagrant Story is a smug bastard all the way, who thinks he has the secret of Lea Monde all figured out...and then Ashley whips his ass, and hardly anyone seems to care. Rosencrantz has to yell yield, and Ashley mocks him for it. Not only that, but the game's real Magnificent Bastard gets a shot. After Rosencrantz has ambushed Sydney and Ashley, Rosencrantz demands Sydney name him his heir. Sydney calls him a "worm", and Rosencrantz chops off Sydney's arm. Sydney, bleeding Black Blood, stands up and reattaches his arm. He then demonstrates to Rosencrantz that not only is the man not immune to Sydney's magic like he thought (by making him think he was holding Sydney's severed hand), but Sydney had been manipulating him the entire time. And ultimately, Sydney doesn't even kill Rosencrantz. He lets a giant six-armed statue of Kali do it for him. Truly, in case you had forgotten the real Chessmaster and Large Ham in the story, Sydney does not fail to remind you that he was eating the scenery first.
  • Prince Lacroix from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Arrogant, smug, and power-hungry; Lacroix condescends to you and sends you on suicide missions at every opportunity. He wants you dead for political convenience, so every mission is a Xanatos Gambit — Further his aims or be out of his way. He plots and schemes, playing key characters against each other to get what he wants. Whenever things don't go his way, he'll throw a childish temper tantrum.
    • Alternately, he spams Dominate.
    • And in the end, his schemes don't matter. Because the Ankharan Sarcophagus he spends the whole game trying to get not only never had an Antidevelluvian he could commit diablerie on, but the mummy has long since been switched out for a bomb set to blow on whoever opens it.
  • Jazz from the first two Wing Commander games. At first he just appears to be a smug asshole, but the reality is considerably worse.
  • Megumi Kitaniji from The World Ends with You. He doesn't just bend and push the guidelines set by the Composer, his counterattack mass imprints everyone in the RG and UG to do his bidding via the Red Skull Pins. Even his Noise form is a snake.
    • Konishi has a fair number of Kick the Dog moments, especially with regards to Rhyme, but she never succeeds in her machinations.
  • In the World of Warcraft expansion 'Wrath of the Lich King', Arthas at several points in the storyline is exactly this. He has a constant, constant habit of walking two feet in front of you, taunting you about how incredibly awesome he is, how trivial you and your efforts to oppose him are, how you're better off serving him in undeath, and then he simply walks away when he could have easily annihilated you with a single stroke and been done with it. This is yet another symptom of his chronic Villain Decay (and there are several).
    • This gets turned on its head when, at about 10% HP he uses "Wrath of Frostmourne" and proceeds to blow your raid apart, going into a monologue about how his entire plan from the start was taunting you into chasing him and crafting you into an ultimate general for his undead army. Were it not for Tirion Fordring busting out of his ice prison, he would have succeeded.
    • Torok, chieftain of the Bloodtotem, in Legion. He's immediately disdainful of you, dismissing you as weak even after you kill a powerful harpy for him. It only gets worse when he turns out to be collaborating with the Legion. After you finish a quest involving killing ten of his men, he laughs off you killing the "weakest" members of his tribe, and when you find the corpse of Navarogg's pet, Frag, he smugly tells you that it died a painful death.
  • Kevin from Xenosaga not only supplies (and initiates in others) epic quantities of angst, he does this while taking his shirt off a lot and speaking in a measured, patronising tone that assumes everyone but him is very, very stupid.
  • Sengoku from Yakuza 2 is an epic Smug Snake, from his gold suit and retro sunglasses all the way to his camp personality and permanent toothy smile. Spending his time blackmailing your contacts and minor allies into turning on you, he proves so irritating that he eventually ends up being taken out by his own Dragon and thrown off a building. You can't help but thank him for the service...
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, the Neo Ghouls and Pegasus's lackeys are this. They're supremely confident that they're going to win, and incredibly surprised when they don't.


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