Stupid Evil / Live-Action TV

• The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself: The Fairborn Witches are relying on a prophecy that one day, Marcus will be powerful enough to defeat his father for them, a powerful Blood Witch that they can't defeat in any other way and that has killed many of them. Because of this, their decision to be awful to him, isolate him from everybody else, and just generally throw all their Fantastic Racism against Blood Witches on him seems short-sighted at best and is proven entirely self-defeating when he bails on them as soon as they push harder against him when he tries to defend himself.
• Tuco in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul has such poor impulse control, a Hair-Trigger Temper, and being Ax-Crazy that he often causes a ton of trouble for himself because he never thinks ahead. More than once, he killed a useful and loyal associate for an incredibly minor slight while on a meth high, and while in prison, he greatly extended his meagre six-month sentence because he just had to pick a fight with an inmate and one of the guards. His erratic and violent temper led to his former partner plotting his assassination, since he figured he's probably going to get killed by Tuco in one his freak-outs, although the hitman he hired eventually settled for just sending Tuco to jail for a while.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: The Emperor actively cultivates the Darkening for the sake of more power, in spite of being aware of its effects on his already frail body and even comparing it to Thra's decay. He also seems very short-sighted, not caring for the Chamberlain's idea of moderating their feeding habits, or the Scientist's concern about the spread of the Darkening.
• The mob bosses that vy for Falcone's position as head honcho of the crime syndicates of Gotham are as bad as each other. Mooney and Maroni plot to overthrow Falcone, but their plans would leave too many dead bodies that would result in disorder. Also, when they do have Falcone in their hands, they quickly turn on each other for full control over Gotham's underworld. At least Fish tries to feign team spirit with Maroni, but he insists on mocking her and insulting her in every sentence that he utters, becoming the straightest case of this among the mafia.
• Heroes:
  • Sylar and Elle: Elle is bored on their first mission date and decides it would be fun to kill the rental car guy. Sylar gets one after killing four people in broad daylight and then not even trying to hide all that blood.
  • Also, Peter Petrelli during his brief Face–Heel Turn phase after absorbing Sylar's ability and its corresponding psychosis. In comparison, Sylar, for his part, is perfectly capable of faking normality if it will advance his long-term goals, or even of occasionally showing mercy if the mood strikes him. Evil Peter, on the other hand, had No Indoor Voice and was instantly compelled to decapitate every single person that he met after he gained Sylar's craziness.
• Kamen Rider
  • Kamen Rider Wizard: Phantoms are magical beings that emerge from humans who fall into despair, resulting in the latter’s death. Some Phantoms try to force Gates, humans with the potential to spawn Phantoms, into despair by attacking them directly, believing that the fear of death is enough to cause despair. This is not an effective method because the Phantom doesn’t consider the risk of accidentally killing their target before they can fall into despair, and while the fear of death is a natural human trait, it isn’t necessarily enough to create extreme anguish. Case in point with the Phantom Weretiger, whose target is the grandmother of the secondary Rider. He tries to attack her, only for a young man to step in the way and take the blow. It shows that while it’s enough to knock him out, it could’ve seriously injured or killed an elderly woman. There’s also the factor that she is begging him to make her fall into despair and was actually trying to spawn a Phantom in hopes that it can help sustain the life of her grandson. This means that she’s not afraid to die, so Weretiger’s attack would’ve been all for naught. His fellow Phantom Gremlin puts two and two together, coming up with a better plan by forcing the Gate to watch the brutal death of her grandson. Fortunately, the pair are able to predict such a scenario, and arrange to have the titular hero rescue the hostage during the distraction.
    • For all his clever planning, Gremlin falls under this for wanting to use the Philosopher’s Stone to become human. This is extremely foolish on his part because he was a prolific serial killer before he became a Phantom. Even if he did succeed in becoming human, he ends up trapping himself in a lose-lose situation; he can now be arrested by the police, or if they don’t have enough evidence to pin him for his crimes, keep a close eye on him until they do. Both of these scenarios can be easily avoided if he remained a Phantom, as the only person that can stop him is a wizard.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: After gaining power from the Helheim Forest, the Overlord Inves decided to set up a world where only the strong are allowed to live. This includes slaughtering practically _the entirety of their population_ instead of allowing them to live as slaves or low-class citizens. The reason why this mindset backfired is because there’s no one left to maintain the one thriving civilization they once had. It would be the equivalent of alpha wolves slaughtering their entire pack without realizing that they’re still needed for things such as hunting and defending their territory. In the aftermath, the Overlords are left with an empty world filled with animalistic creatures who’s only purpose is to feed on the fruits of the forest that gave them power.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One: Most of the villains suffer from this, especially the Ark, Gai Amatsu, Azu and Horobi. All four of them commit wantonly evil acts that do nothing to further their goals at best and actively hinder their goals at worst. The only reason they get away with anything is because the rest of the characters aren't much smarter.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Web of Fear", the Great Intelligence's vessel turns out to be Arnold, who we learn is actually dead due to being killed by the Yeti, the Intelligence's foot soldiers under its direct command. This means that the Intelligence murdered its own vessel with its own weapons for no apparent reason (by the end of the story, Arnold is clearly beginning to rot). This got a bit of a Fix Fic in the novelisation, which established that Arnold was dead and under the Intelligence's control the whole time.
  • The Master in his first season has this as a character trait. Most of his stories involve the Doctor pointing out to him that if his own plan succeeds, he's doomed — usually due to basic logical oversights like not considering the fact that he's trying to blow up the planet he's currently living on and can't leave, or that the villains have Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, or that the telepathic death machine has no way of not killing him too, and so on — and the Master panicking and agreeing to help the Doctor fix his own mess. This is a lot of how he can remain a Friendly Enemy — the implication is that he's just so stupid, and his plans are so pointless and convoluted, that the Doctor can't even take him that seriously. This rather pathetic characterisation is partly why the Hinchcliffe regime decided to drastically reinvent him as a psychotic, murderous, and genuinely hateful lich-like creature.
    • In "The Deadly Assassin", we get this exchange:
      Doctor: The Master is consumed by hatred. It is his only weakness.
      Master: Hatred is a strength.
      Doctor: You'd delay an execution to pull the wings off a fly.
    • In "Logopolis", he not only accidentally kills octillions of people, but he also draws attention to himself by randomly killing a policeman and Tegan's aunt.
    • The Rani calls him on this: she just wants to rule one planet, beneficently if she can get away with it — but what are you going to do with the whole universe?
      Joe Ford: I'm not sure what happens to the Rani between this and "Time and the Rani" because she develops from a (relatively) sensible character into a panto ice queen. The only explanation I can think of right now is that she has now experienced how much fun it is to toss logic aside and indulge in grandiose master plans. The Master has a lot to answer for.
    • The new series attempts to rectify this by making the destruction of his homeworld and his species in the Time War the motivation to take over the universe and giving him a Freudian Excuse as motivation for his more psychotic actions — a sound of drumming imprinted in his brain by the Time Lords. This excuse was an Actor Allusion to John Simm's previous role as Caligula and has yet to be mentioned by any subsequent incarnations. Big Finish Doctor Who suggests that the Master was chosen to be Death's Champion.
  • Nyder in "Genesis of the Daleks" has a brilliantly illogical moment where he opens fire on the Doctor, Harry, and Ravon, risking his general's life just to kill a couple of people out of racism. This actually works to enhance how much of a psycho he is.
  • The Weeping Angels know who the Doctor is, and are completely aware of what he's capable of, and know what happens when he's pissed. They still go out of their way to make him mad just for the sake of being dicks.
• In the CSI episode "Bad to the Bone", the killer is close to this (he's shown to have a short temper and be extremely violent). He steals poker chips (and never cashes them in despite having thousands of dollars worth), starts fights (in which he beat a man several times his size to death with his bare hands) and then walks into a diner covered in blood to wash his hands and order a sandwich. He's killed when he decides to try and strangle Grissom when he's swabbing his hands for blood residue and dies in the ensuing brawl with the police (his sister, and only surviving family member, is relieved he finally got himself killed). The rest of the episode is devoted to the team finding the remains of one of his victims in his garden. While he's not the only example in the series, he's one of the only ones who doesn't have the excuse of being on drugs or a stupid kid (though it is implied that he has some kind of neurological disorder or is simply some kind of psychopath with next to no impulse control whatsoever).
• Game of Thrones:
  • What makes King Joffrey Baratheon so dangerous to everyone including himself is that he isn't just cruel, he's stupid and cruel. This starts with his execution of Lord Ned Stark, which triggers a war with the North, leaving his regime vulnerable to his nominal father Robert Baratheon's brothers, who want to usurp his rule (and they quickly put on an appearance) when the smart thing to do (and what his mother Cersei and others wanted) would have been to keep Ned alive but Reassigned to Antarctica and negotiate a truce or alliance with the North. In a world of Magnificent Bastards practicing Pragmatic Villainy, no one's very impressed with him engaging in pointlessly evil acts just for the sake of being a bastard heedless of the consequences. He's compared negatively to Mad King Aerys at a few points. It reaches a peak in "The Old Gods and the New" when Joffrey triggers a riot in King's Landing by ordering the crowd of starving smallfolk put to death because one of them threw cow dung at him, as per the novel. Joffrey's uncle Tyrion Lannister does not hesitate to express his distaste and all but invokes the trope by name with this splendid description:
    Tyrion: We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings, but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!
  • It must be genetic because Queen Cersei Lannister (and her twin brother Jaime, to a slightly lesser extent) tend to default to killing people and pissing people off even when it blatantly conflicts with their interests, something which their father Tywin and brother Tyrion separately note about Cersei. Both Cersei and Jaime suffer from no one particularly liking them, and neither seems to understand the true reasons why. Only in comparison to her son Joffrey does Cersei seem reasonable. It gets to the point where Tywin is quick to empower his much-disparaged son Tyrion to mitigate Cersei's calamities despite hating his guts. Cersei-related examples:
    • She cares nothing about public sentiment and doesn't realize that throwing people out of her city will draw their ire and how the ire of the mob is dangerous for kings and queens.
      Tyrion: Listen to me, "queen regent". You're in danger of losing the people.
      Cersei: The people? Heh. You think I care?
      Tyrion: You may find it difficult to rule over millions who want you dead.
    • Her understanding on the actual military threats posed by Robert's brother Stannis Baratheon and Ned's son Robb Stark is likewise tenuous at best, to the point that Tyrion's victory at Blackwater is almost in spite of her efforts, rather than because of them (her only contribution is commissioning the wildfire ammunition to be made by the pyromancers, a plan Tyrion co-opted because she likely would have burned King's Landing to the ground by accident). Of course, a lot of these may be due to her rapidly becoming a not very functional addict.
    • Once the sensible influences or restraints of Tyrion and Tywin are gone, Cersei goes one step further and engages in one petty, short-sighted scheme after another, culminating in her empowering the Faith Militant as a petty revenge scheme against the Tyrells because she resents the influence they've gained since Margaery Tyrell married Cersei's son Tommen, with zero regards for the potential blowback. She's called out on this one multiple times after the Faith Militant become inordinately powerful in King's Landing and decide to detain Cersei for her various sins in addition to Margaery.
    • She takes it another step further when she decides to gather all of her enemies at the same time at the Great Sept of Baelor with what was supposed to be her trial, and has the building blown up via detonated wildfire, killing her level-headed uncle Kevan Lannister, Margaery, Loras and Mace Tyrell, the High Sparrow and the Faith Militant, and heavens know how many other people, leaving her alone with Tommen in the political arena of King's Landing. She then happily skips off to torture the septa who beat her and mouthed off to her... leaving a despairing Tommen, knowing that his mother was responsible for the blast that killed his wife, family and countless people, to take a leap off a very high window.
    • Cersei takes it up to eleven in the Season 7 finale. She lies about joining Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen in an Enemy Mine against the Army of the Dead, telling Jaime she'll let the two sides weaken each other and then finish off the winner. Jaime incredulously points out if they don't help, they'll die. Either the dead win, absorbing Jon and Daenerys's armies into their ranks before attacking them, or Jon and Daenerys win and take their revenge on them for not helping, and Daenerys's forces are already more powerful than Cersei's. When Cersei refuses to budge, Jaime gets fed up and abandons her to join Jon and Daenerys.
    • Cersei finally does the absolutely stupidest thing she could do in the last two episodes of the series, killing one of Daenerys's dragons and personally executing Dany's best friend Missandei right in front of her just to see her suffer, and lets her go afterwards. Cersei probably thought that the trauma would weaken Dany, but unfortunately all that it did was make her finally embrace the Targaryen madness and order her armies to take over King's Landing and kill the majority of it. Cersei doesn't survive. To be fair, neither does Daenerys herself, but Cersei wasn't alive to see that.
  • Lord Ramsay Snow/Bolton stands out as being incapable of restraining his sadism at great cost to his cause, though unlike Joffrey, he is intelligent and street-wise when he needs to be. The problem is that he mainly uses his intelligence to devise ways to torture and torment people for kicks, often without considering the long-term consequences of his cruel acts.
    • When his father Roose Bolton returns to the Dreadfort, he's quick to chastise Ramsay for how he's managed to destroy any chance of making a badly needed alliance with the Greyjoys just because he wanted to have a bit of pointless fun utterly breaking Theon Greyjoy.
    • Ramsay then needlessly massacres the Greyjoy garrison at Moat Cailin, flaying them alive and publicly displaying their corpses... after they had surrendered in good faith on the promise of safe passage!
    • This is pushed to new heights in Season 5 after Ramsay gets cocky from being legitimized as "Ramsay Bolton". Everyone (from Jon Snow in the Night's Watch to Stannis to the Small Council in King's Landing) is starting to get concerned that winter is finally coming in a matter of weeks, and to worry about food supplies. Ramsay, in contrast, is messily enjoying a private feast for himself — animals he should have kept alive for the winter.
    • When Lord Cerwyn (one of the top dozen lords in the North) refuses to acknowledge the Boltons as the new rulers of the North, Ramsay publicly flays him alive - along with his brother and his wife — while forcing Cerwyn's son to watch. Ramsay is outright proud that afterwards, the son paid his taxes. Ramsay barely listens as his father tries to explain to him that such wanton brutality hurts them in the long term — instead, he continues to shove food in his mouth. Roose then gets so annoyed at Ramsay's oblivious stupidity that he comes the closest he ever has in the entire TV series to outright shouting at someone. ^note In the books, Ramsay actually got that feast from House Stout; their lord begged Ramsay that they had already slaughtered all of their animals at harvest time for winter, and all they have left are their breeding stock: he pleads that if Ramsay has him slaughter his breeding stock, he won't have any way of replenishing his herds at all and won't be able to provide Ramsay or himself meat again a year from now. Ramsay utterly ignores his warning and demands that he slaughter his breeding stock anyway. Ramsay isn't just eating up provisions, he is destroying his means of production. This quote from 28 Days Later comes to mind: "He's telling me he'll never bake bread, plant crops, raise livestock: He's telling me he's futureless."
    • In Season 6, his father coldly points out that "playing his games" with Sansa Stark, i.e. raping and torturing her repeatedly and causing her to run away, may well have cost him the support of the North. Without Sansa, the Boltons have no hold over the other Northern lords. In the following episode, Ramsay correctly surmises that Sansa is running away to her half-brother Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at Castle Black, and suggests they wage war against Castle Black to reclaim his bride. However, Roose believes the Northern lords would rise up against him for murdering the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.
    • All of this comes to a head in "Battle of the Bastards". He uses his own men as a trap in the titular Battle of the Bastards, discounting the possibility of reinforcements and ending up killing his entire Karstark-Umber-Bolton alliance more or less to a man. When finally cornered inside Winterfell, he at least has one chance to kill the enemy leader while surrounded but wastes it by finishing off the giant Wun Wun (who was going to die anyway) instead of killing Jon when he is distracted. His actions have left House Bolton with no heirs, dooming it to be forgotten by history as the Starks retake Winterfell and he is fed to his own dogs.
  • Gregor Clegane, aka the Mountain, is Ax-Crazy, but he's so Ax-Crazy that he has virtually no impulse control or strategic thought and will simply lash out at anyone who irritates him, and, given his massive strength, usually kills them. He's really only alive because almost no one is willing to take him on and Tywin Lannister protects him from the people who are, and even Tywin is getting tired of his liability.
    • Lord Tywin reproaches the Mountain for wasting able-bodied prisoners by torturing them to death.
    • In his first appearance, Gregor tries to straight-up murder Loras Tyrell, a son of one of the Great Houses of Westeros, in front of the King for defeating him in a joust.
    • In his fight with Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne, Clegane publicly confesses to killing Oberyn's sister Princess Elia and her children. That was an Open Secret, but as long as he kept his mouth shut, Doran Martell could justify not starting a conflict with the crown. Once Gregor destroys the Lannister's Plausible Deniability, Ellaria Sand's coup and subsequent declaration of war go off almost completely unopposed in Dorne.
  • Viserys Targaryen. Provoking a Dothraki warlord by threatening his wife and unborn child on the Dothraki's own turf is not a wise idea.
  • House Greyjoy tend to attack whenever they think they can gain anything from it, even if they can't actually hold onto it because they're sea raiders who aren't very effective on land against trained soldiers. If you have other enemies to deal with this can actually make them dangerous to be around because though they may be doomed to fail and are too short-sighted to be initially reasoned with they could still end up taking you down with them in the process.
    • Evident from Balon's very first appearance. Balon always does the stupidest, most evil thing he can think of. He could have joined the Starks (as Theon advised) or (probably, since the Greyjoys were still nominally loyal to the Iron Throne before attacking the North) the Lannisters and achieved his objective of independence for the Iron Islands — but his insistence on acting independently means his uprising is doomed to failure once the War of the Five Kings is resolved.
    • Theon displays poor leadership and favours unnecessary violence. He's shortsighted and doesn't seem to grasp the concept of Pragmatic Villainy, being more interested in seeming tough. Luwin is unable to convince him that Ser Rodrick is more valuable alive than dead, and Theon repeats this mistake again with the Stark boys, as Yara points out. A rare example in which his Stupid Evil comes from trying to adhere to PR where the Ironborn are concerned. The worst part is that he's stupid from an Ironborn perspective too; he understands the "hit hard and fast" part of their way of war, but refuses to do the "take the loot and captives and run" part. The result is that his masterful raid on Winterfell with a handful of men rapidly degenerates into an insane attempt to hold it with a handful of men, who promptly abandon him at the first opportunity.
• Luke Cage (2016): Tone is a very loyal triggerman to Darnell "Cottonmouth" Stokes, and that is where the problem lies — he is an Overzealous Underling who does not stop looking for a fight and putting people in the ground for the sake of enhancing his boss' respect in the underworld even when Stokes explicitly orders him to cut it out. Tone begins his appearance in the show getting in the face of another gangster for allegedly not showing Stokes enough respect when the conversation had been very casual. The tragedy that causes the whole series to happen — the shooting of Pops' Barber Shop — is performed by Tone when he sees a kid who stole from Stokes has taken refuge inside, with zero care about the fact his own boss followed the rule of it being a Truce Zone (and did so because Pops has a very old friend of his) because he believed following that rule made Stokes look weak. He definitely did not do himself any favors by gloating about it to Stokes ("Whoo! Somebody call Quentin!").
• In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld can be like this. In "In the Line of Duty", Teal'c explains that he has seen certain victory turn to defeat simply because the Goa'uld cannot rein in their gloating or pointless sadism. There were really only three Goa'uld who managed to avoid this: relatively non-evil Yu, No-Nonsense Nemesis Anubis, and Magnificent Bastard Ba'al.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • It is shown that the previous Dark One was under the control of the local Duke, who was having children conscripted into the army to go fight against the ogres. The question is why? The duke had the power of the Dark One at his disposal, which is later shown to be more than enough to drive back the ogres (as Rumpelstiltskin did). There were plenty of adults around, so why pointlessly throw away children in the war? It seems that the only reason to squander that magical power and get children killed for no point or purpose was to get Baelfire involved so that Rumpelstiltskin would have a reason to grow a backbone and kick off his character arc. Or, being a feudal lord, as a way to keep the peasant population in check. Some fans theorise that the Ogres didn't even start the war and that the Duke keeps the war in the current unwinnable state in order to justify exorbitant taxes and martial law.
  • Regina qualifies as well. In the pilot, Emma is all set to just walk away after returning a runaway Henry (Emma's biological son, Regina's adopted son), but Regina manages to act so incredibly threatening towards her, for no real reason, that Emma is forced to question whether Henry is better off there. Regina also tries to frame Mary Margaret for the murder of Kathryn, not being used to working with a police officer who isn't under one of her spells; Emma, who is now the sheriff (and an experienced bail bondswoman), immediately guesses that the planted evidence is too convenient, and Regina having been busted misusing town funds before and having a vendetta against Mary Margaret makes it obvious who the culprit is.
  • Cruella, after revealing her true colours to Isaac the Author, thinks it's a good idea to monologue about how she used him and delights in being evil to a man who literally has Reality Warper powers. As a result, he punishes her by making it impossible for her to kill anyone.
• Reacher Gilt is this in the TV adaptation of Going Postal. Having taken the clacks system away from the Dearheart family thanks only to the happy coincidence of Moist Von Lipwig's bank fraud, which ruined the family enough that they were forced to sell the clacks, he basically runs it into the ground, allowing the towers to break down, treating the employees like shit, and making business decisions based solely on what will profit him the most in the short term. And when he's actually forced to compete with someone, he automatically resorts to criminality. After Vetinari decides to force Moist Von Lipwig to resurrect the post office, Gilt responds by hiring a banshee to try and kill Lipwig and burn down the post office. When Lipwig manages to keep the postal service running anyway, Gilt hires bandits to intercept the carriages. It never seems to occur to him that the clacks could have easily crushed the postal service if he'd actually bothered to maintain and improve the towers. This is a particularly regrettable case of this given his characterization in the book, where he is a full-blown Magnificent Bastard who is suggested to have little liquid wealth and is simply extremely savvy with financial tricks and showmanship. In the book, it is explained that he is fully aware that the clacks are nearly unusable (and are constantly getting worse), but he is still making a fortune from them, and when they (inevitably) completely fail, he will make an even larger fortune by selling them, regardless of their condition, making his cheapskate management a solid case of Pragmatic Villainy (and he is implied to have done this to other businesses in the past). The only reason Moist and the post office are a genuine threat to him is because Boxed Crook Moist is equally clever at showmanship, and can make the post office appear a viable (and divinely supported) institution, even though he is fully aware that a functional clacks is a better system by any sane standards. This is largely thanks to company board of directors (who he was manipulating into doing the stupid stuff and taking all the risks while he was robbing them blind in the background) being Adapted Out.
• Anslo Garrick in The Blacklist. He's given the task of capturing Red and no shortage of resources, and yet he barely pulls it off because he can't control his temper and becomes entirely focused on trying to force Red to open the cell in which he's trapped himself.
• Bomber Adrian Bale from Criminal Minds. The man is a textbook sociopath who only cares about blowing people up to the exclusion of all else, including his own well-being. One year before the start of the series, he held a group of people hostage in a warehouse until Gideon was able to talk him down; Bale gave himself up but held on to the remote for his bomb, and detonated it when six FBI agents went in to do a sweep, ensuring he was imprisoned for life and destroying any chance of parole. He actually taunts Gideon over this, saying that Gideon clearly misread him. He points out that he could never deny himself the "emotional release" of seeing an explosion and killing more people. In Season 1, he was called in to advise the BAU on how to disarm a necklace bomb on a hostage that was copied from one of his designs — in exchange, he managed to negotiate a transfer to a secure hospital and forces Gideon to make a written statement that Bale was smarter than him. When it came down to a Wire Dilemma, he lied about which wire to cut (fortunately, Gideon didn't believe him-he listened when Bale said he could never deny himself the chance to see an explosion and kill more people), invalidating his deal and getting himself put back in prison, now branded as a snitch.
  • A number of other UnSubs also qualify, but unlike Bale, they have the excuse of being desperate or crazy. Adrian was 100% in control of himself and understood the consequences of his actions; he just wants to pull a Taking You with Me on Gideon, then go back to jail.
• Buffyverse:
  • Angelus can be guilty of some really moronic acts. Lashing out at allies and preferring torture For the Evulz instead of just killing those in his way is Tuesday for him. Killing the demon that would have allowed him to win for keeps, on the other hand, is just Chaotic Stupid.
  • Harmony tries to convince people she's not evil, even as she's betraying them to their faces.
  • Spike himself, in his early days. In his debut episode, he teams up with the Order of Aurelius, planning to attack Buffy on the Night of St. Vigeous when a vampire's powers are enhanced. Unfortunately for the Order, Spike "couldn't wait" and leads an attack on Buffy at Sunnydale High a few nights early, which results in several vampire deaths. May not be stupidity; one of his defining traits is that he's in it for the thrill of a fight that might end with him getting killed. Attacking when he's got the advantage would actually diminish that thrill.
• In The Boys (2019), a Basement-Dweller geek radicalized by Stormfront comes to the conclusion that an Indian convenience store clerk was a supervillain simply because he looked foreign, and in a paranoid fit decides to go Shooting Superman. Of course he wasn't, and his murderer quickly realizes that he's killed an innocent man, but if he was he would've simply died horribly and accomplished nothing.
• In The Musketeers, Athos is perfectly willing to hand over his land and feudal responsibilities to his neighbour Baron Renard, because they just remind him of his tragic past. So Renard tries to have him flogged to death, and starts boasting and gloating about how he rapes and murders peasants For the Evulz, not to mention actually trying to do the same.
• In The Making Of The Mob, Vito Genovese is consistently portrayed this way. His great feats include murdering a former associate in broad daylight to get out of paying the guy (which ultimately resulted in his having to leave the country); murdering another guy so that he could marry his widow; stealing supplies from the United States Army during World War II (when he was already under suspicion for having close ties to Mussolini); and the Apalachin Conference, in which he invited La Cosa Nostra leaders from around the country to a farm in Upstate New York in order to celebrate the establishment of his own crime family — and drew the attention of the New York State Police, resulting in dozens of arrests.
• Stranger Things: Agent Connie Frazier is this. Had she kept pretending to be a social worker and not blown poor Benny's brains out while trying to recover Eleven, Connie could very well have easily recaptured Eleven in the very first episode, thus saving her group a lot of time and effort with no real downside. Instead, it leads to Eleven psychically killing Connie in retribution for killing the first human being who had been genuinely kind to her, inadvertently attracting the attention of the Demogorgon, who kills the other government agents. Oops.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise the Mirror Universe episodes, the crew of the Mirror-NX-01 Enterprise eagerly betray one another and generally act cruel and petty even when it goes against their self-interest or would hurt them in the long run.
• When the Homeguard is introduced in Babylon 5, the cell on the station is preparing a coordinated set of assassinations on all four major alien powers' ambassadors, which in turn is a signal to other cells to set their own plans in motion. Do they keep their heads down in the meantime, so as to remain undetected until they're ready to strike? Nope! They repeatedly attack random non-humans all over the station and leave their calling cards, quickly getting Station Security on the hunt for them. These attacks don't play any part in the big plan, they just really wanted to beat up aliens.
• Doctor Smith has such a bad case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder in Lost in Space (2018) that she seems compelled to put herself at risk in order to betray someone even when she gains nothing from the betrayal.
• Agatha Cackle in the 1998 series of The Worst Witch. While an Adaptational Badass who comes close to taking over the school in the Season 1 finale with a fool-proof plan - impersonate her twin sister the headmistress to get inside and then sneak in her two associates with powerful magic, planning to take control when the entire school is at an end of term assembly - she blows her entire plan from her own idiocy. She goes out of her way to be a Stern Teacher, which immediately makes others realise something is up with the usually friendly Miss Cackle. She in turn is horrendously abusive to Mildred - locking her in her room and announcing she'll be expelled on the last day of term - which immediately makes Millie suspect that Agatha has switched places with Amelia. And once they find the real Miss Cackle, it turns out Agatha "couldn't resist" gloating about her plan; giving everyone an easy way to stop her.
• Crowley from Good Omens (2019) has a habit of committing acts of low-grade evil that makes life just a tiny bit worse for everyone in London, which is very effective at tarnishing millions of souls just a tiny bit with very little effort... but he always seems to forget that he lives in London. For example, taking down all the city's cell towers works a treat in making countless people absolutely furious and causing them to take it out on each other in petty and harmful ways, but it also severely bites Crowley in the ass when he needs to make a call, and can't because the towers aren't back up yet. Of course, he's not really all that evil, and is certainly the kindest demon there is.
• Most criminals featured in Homicide: Life on the Street aren't criminal masterminds, but absolute morons with zero impulse control. Even the smarter criminals are downright pathetic in how easily they fold when the detectives apply the slightest bit of pressure during an interrogation.
• In the Star Wars streaming series The Book of Boba Fett, Boba perceives this as pervasive amongst all the crime lords in the galactic underworld. He points this out to his prospective partner-in-crime Fennec Shand about this when attempting to recruit her, explaining that the Pragmatic Villainy of mercs like those two could be far more profitable.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
  • Lucretia takes the cake. She fancies herself a manipulative schemer, but her main problem is that she's not as smart as she thinks she is. Many of the biggest issues she and her husband face can be traced back to her bad decisions. Her biggest is her jealous reaction to Illithyia requesting Crixus to sleep with - so she tricks Illithyia into sleeping with Spartacus and even has a Kick the Dog moment of outing it to her, thinking she has the protection of higher ranking Licinia (who helped her pull off the scheme). Illithyia goes ballistic and beats Licinia to death! Quintus then reminds Lucretia that her reckless decision resulted in having the body of Marcus Crassus's cousin in their home (with only Moral Luck that Licinia told no one she was coming helping them dispose of the body discreetly). Lucretia is so enraged to find her handmaiden Naevia having an affair with Crixus that she first gives her a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and then punishes her further by sending her away...except Naevia knew the truth about Quintus's murder of Barca and only intimidation kept her from revealing it. Naturally, with nothing left to fear from Lucretia, Naevia spills the secret to Oenomaus, which robs Quintus and Lucretia of their most valuable ally when the slaves rebel. Lucretia had been blackmailing Illithyia over the aforementioned murder and continues to boss her around shamelessly, even thinking she can command her when the slaves rebel. Illithyia realises she can kill two birds with one stone by having her guards seal the doors after she flees, knowing anyone who still knows about Licinia's murder will be slaughtered.
  • Illithyia herself isn't much better - as an ignorant Roman noblewoman who doesn't realise her actions won't have consequences. The biggest one is trying to bribe a new gladiator trainee into killing Spartacus in exchange for his freedom. Said trainee has no experience and understandably does not succeed in killing the man who'd not only trained for a year but also just became a champion by beating an opponent touted as undefeatable. The fact that Illithyia bought Segovax herself and has a well-known dislike of Spartacus made it obvious that she ordered the attack. And the fact that she continues to hang out at the ludus not thinking Quintus or Lucretia would let her nearly robbing them of their most valuable asset go un-punished - especially when her husband's reputation was taking enough of a nosedive that Licinia and her other Roman friends were joking about it.
• Charmed (1998):
  • The episode "Morality Bites" shows a Bad Future, where the sisters have become more corrupt. Phoebe was enraged when one of her friends was killed by baseball player Cal Greene, and he got Off on a Technicality. Her solution was to murder him with her powers in public. She was then caught, resulting in modern day witch hunts, and because she crossed the line by using her powers for murder, none of her allies like Leo would help her escape prison.
  • When Wyatt is born, several demons and warlocks try to kidnap him for his powers. They didn't think of the possibility that his mother, a powerful Charmed One herself with two sisters and a whitelighter to back her up, wouldn't intervene to rescue him. Her Roaring Rampage of Revenge terrified the demonic community so much they passed a law forbidding any demon from going after Wyatt, solely so they wouldn't have to worry about Piper going Mama Bear again.
• Voltes V: Legacy: In the original Voltes V anime, both Heinel and Katherine were ruthless villains who wanted to execute the heroes at any cost. However, the live-action adaptation (where Heinel is named "Zardoz" and Katherine is named "Zandra") significantly changes their characterization to be this.
  • When Zardoz has the Voltes team in his grasp, instead of killing them (thus rendering the titular Super Robot without its pilots), he chooses to present them to his uncle as gifts, and then, for no reason, decides to spar with them.
  • Zardoz also knows the youngest pilot of the Voltes team, John, is a Gadgeteer Genius from pretending to be a human "Manuel". When Steve begs him to let Jon go citing his age, Zardoz agrees. Unsurprisingly, Jon rigs the teleporter device to rescue the Voltes team and Zardoz is foiled again.
  • When Zandra finds out that Judalah is a spy, instead of killing her on the spot she toys with for her own entertainment, which leads to Judalah escaping.

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