Stupid Evil / Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The first in his line. Both Fire Lord Ozai's father and grandfather were evil imperialists, but Sozin was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wanted to be (or be seen as) a Benevolent Dictator; and his genocide of the Air Nomads, while vile and inexcusable, made pragmatic sense as they were a relatively small community unlikely to ever accept Fire Nation rule, and after Roku's death the Avatar would be reborn in their ranks. Azulon is implied to have been a tactical genius who at least had some affection for his family (sans Ozai). Ozai, by contrast, is as evil as they were without any sense; he banishes his loyal son, starting him on the path to ending his reign, and his solution to squashing rebellion is to burn down the Earth Kingdom— the largest (both in landmass and population) area of the Fire Nation's Empire, essentially becoming "King" of a land of ash that produces no money or crops for the mainland.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • The Joker sometimes lets his overwhelming cruelty and ego get the better of him. No where is this more apparent than in Mad Love, where Harley Quinn has captured Batman and is going to drop him in a piranha pool. When she tells the Joker about it, he gets mad and shoves her out the window for "ruining" his plan which allows Batman to escape and kick his ass.
    Batman: I have to admit, she came a lot closer to killing me than you ever did.
  • For a less extreme example: in Harlequinade he steals a nuclear bomb, and immediately plans to nuke Gotham just for fun, and doesn't bother demanding ransom or the like as a saner villain might.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Beavis and Butt-Head range from feelings of "whatever" to hate for virtually everything that has nothing to do with junk food, sex, mayhem, or the music they like, including air.
• Khyber in Ben 10: Omniverse abandoning his dog for no reason when he makes his escape just so the writers could avert a Draco in Leather Pants scenario counts as this considering that not only is it needlessly dickish but also completely impractical to do so. To elaborate further, the dog he formerly owned is shown to be completely loyal to him and has been personally trained by Khyber himself to use the Nemetrix which works only on non-sentient beings, therefore, he has to waste all the time recruiting and training a new dog for his Nemetrix. Furthermore, Azmuth was also about to use it to track down and arrest Khyber and would have certainly get captured if it weren't for Malware's arrival.
  • Later inverted in the show's final season. Maltruant gets help from Doctor Psychobos to help repair him. Psychobos assumes it's because he's the smartest being in the universe, but is corrected that Azmuth's the smartest being in the universe, but is too smart to be evil, so he went for Psychobos.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Almost all the villains seem to have no other desire in life than to pollute the planet for the sake of polluting the planet. It's rare that the villain is actually trying to accomplish another goal with pollution being an unwanted (or even wanted) side effect. Looten Plunder, Hoggish Greedly, Sly Sludge, and (sometimes) Dr. Blight at least try to make money, yet consistently choose those methods that will cause Captain Planet to stop them, and with the exception of Sly Sludge they never take the hint. In the crossover with OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, Lord Boxman (himself an avowed Card-Carrying Villain) directly points out that Dr. Blight's plan to pollute the world doesn't really get them anything.
  Lord Boxman: This will surely destroy the plaza!
  Dr. Blight: And the world!
  [both laugh, but Boxman stops]
  Lord Boxman: Oh... why would we want to do that? We do live on the world.
  [Dr. Blight pauses, then resumes polluting]
  Dr. Blight: Who cares! Bah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
• All of Von Reichter's plans to kill the titular Cyber Six shove him violently into this territory.
  • Cyber Six needs a chemical called Sustenance to survive, a chemical that only Von Reichter knows how to make and her only means of obtaining it are from vials she recovers after killing his other creations that he repeatedly sends to kill her. If he just took some time off and hit the beach, he could sit back with a margarita while she literally starved to death. Though there is a more justifiable reason in the comics, as there are normal cyborgs that run on Sustenance that inhabit the city.
  • His plan in the final episode is to outright nuke the city. This is what finally causes his son José to turn on him, not out of any goodness, but because Von Reichter had promised him the city would be his to take over, and José is outraged by him going back on this promise.
• Lou Pottingsworth III, aka the Toiletnator. The fact that his only weapons are plungers and toilet paper is a sign that you're about to see some of the most raw stupidity and weakness in the Adult villain business when he shows up. Even higher-up baddies like Mr. Boss and Father consider him to be the worst villain of the bunch.
• Darkwing Duck: In an episode where Quackerjack teams up with Megavolt, Quackerjack pulls out a fire truck the size of a bumper car with a hose that acts as a flamethrower. After he uses it, there is this exchange between the villains (in case you missed the point, Quackerjack's stunt had set the entire city block on fire, and they were in the middle of it):
  Megavolt: Not bad... But... Shouldn't a fire engine shoot water?
  Quackerjack: Course not! Then it would be a water engine.
  Megavolt: [looks around nervously] Uh... Got one of those?
• The Dragon Prince:
  • Lord Viren is a human supremacist terrorist that betrayed his best friend Harrow, wanted to kill the princes of Katolis and Xadia, and engage war against Xadia, claiming it is all to protect humanity, but in reality his cause is based on lies, paranoia and assuming the worst of elves and dragons. He uses this as an excuse to kill and exploit all the magic creatures he wants as he doesn't care for the consequences of doing so, he also does this to deny that it's his fault he made everything worse with dark magic, he is also hypocritically willing to kill any human that defies and criticizes him, since he made a false flag attack on the human kingdoms to launch war when the human kings didn't believe him that Xadia will exterminate them. Even if Viren wanted peace, Xadia will kill him and all humans, not because he was right because of Xadians wanting to do it all along and not only to get revenge for killing the royal family and destroying Lux aurea, but because Viren's invasion will convince them humans are a virus and Xadians must kill them to protect the planet.
    • Ironically, he succeeded in securing a better future for humanity by having humans turning against him and uniting with Xadians to kill him and stop him from making an endless war for his hubris, and keeping him from killing innocent Xadians and wildlife for his greed.
    • After passing out from grabbing his staff, he had tons of visions and reminders of all his past crimes and sins, and when witnessing that Claudia was becoming a copy of himself, he now accepts he isn't the selfless saint he believed he was. When Aaravos told Viren he must kill his son Sparklepuff to make his resurrection permanent, he then accepted he was a hypocrite war criminal and everything he said of protecting humans was a lie that he told to everyone and himself to deny he is the worst human ever. He then went to die alone in hopes Claudia doesn't force him out of the death he deserved and that he doesn't deserve to die peacefully after all the betrayals and mass murders he did.
  • Claudia is following Viren's footsteps in his quest to conquer Xadia, she initially didn't do it out of bias against Xadia but because of blindly believing her dad is right and she still believes it, to the point to betray her friends and help him kill Zym whom she adores, she continues to do struggles to follow Viren's agenda, despite that everyone else is telling her that Viren only cares for his ego, and even Viren now told her that he doesn't want to conquer Xadia anymore. Also, despite telling Soren that xadians love to bully and spite humans for being worthless and stupid animals, she hypocritically is dating an elf, that likely doesn't know or ignores her mindset on Xadia and her worst actions against xadians.
  • Kasef enters to this category because despite he and all humans were fooled with Viren's false flag attack, he was too impulsive in going to war without thinking in the consequences and he was rude to Ezran about making peace
  • Sol regem provocked the initial war against humans as he saw them as parasites and wanted to kill them all because Ziard refused to not use dark magic.
  • Karim was defying his sister Janai because of his prejudges against humans and his desire to keep outdated and toxic traditions.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • While Black Heron's pretty competent when it comes to technology and planning, she seems more concerned with being a Card-Carrying Villain than actually succeeding in her goals, often attracting unnecessary attention because it fits the "Good Guys/Bad Guys" narrative. She ends up exposing Bradford's status as the head of F.O.W.L. in "Let's Get Dangerous" when she flies in on a helicopter with their logo stamped on the side because she just can't fathom why Bradford would want to escape in an unmarked helicopter.
  • The show's version of Flintheart Glomgold lives and breathes this trope. His lying and dirty deals made him the second richest duck in the world, but his obsession with beating Scrooge leads to him constantly coming up with idiotic schemes (usually) to defeat him that do nothing but waste his own money. This reaches its peak when Glomgold loses his memory and is actually happy for once when he's not thinking about Scrooge, but when he gets his memory back he returns to his evil ways.
• Played straight by a few of Exo Squad's main characters, as well as a few throwaway characters.
  • Notably general Typhonus, whose irrational evil stupidity and bad timing have actually benefited his enemies more than anything. At one point, sent by Phaeton to sabotage any deal between Exofleet and the Pirate clans to unite them, but his betrayal of the pirate clans and kidnapping of their leader only serve to unite the factions into a new powerful force against his species.
  • One Neo-Sapien human collaborator betrays his fellow operatives and allies for the sake of currency. Considering their now revealed plans to enslave humanity or genocide, it's pretty stupid. The Stupid Evil is enhanced when you realize that he has no way to even use the money he's being paid with!
  • Despite the fact the Neosapiens plan on wiping out the enemy human fleets such as the pirate clans or Exosquad, one Pirate Clan leader still betrays the entire clans, sabotages their fleets, and tries to cause infighting just so he could get in power. His actions get him killed though he was fairly successful as a spy otherwise. Strangely, the Neosapiens recruited him but never seemed to support him with anything other than angry forceful orders, so why did he even work for them when he could've gained leadership through his regular non-traitorous means?
  • Despite Phaeton clearly going insane, and eventually plotting to blow up planet earth along with the majority of the remaining Neosapians, several still serve him unquestionably. Some even bathe in villainous excitement of the plans despite the fact everyone would be dead and their species nearly extinct.
  • Subverted in most of the series, notably one scene where Phaeton continually questions Marsala's switching sides, constantly providing him with tests of loyalty, even nearly turning one ally into a vegetable during interrogation, on top of capturing the rest of the squad and beating up an ally. Even that wasn't enough as Phaeton orders Marsala to kill his allies. Marsala is given a gun and in the last minute finally proves his actual loyalties. Most other villains would have been stupidly evil and accepted his faked betrayal in an instant.
• Early on in The Fairly OddParents!, Vicky made it clear that she never wanted Timmy to suffer any serious physical harm, let alone be the cause of it, because her well-paying job depends on him being kept intact and instead tormented him by being a Manipulative Bitch. Then in later seasons she started plotting violence against him and terrorizing him with weapons in spite of the fact that there's only so much she can get away with.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Bill Cipher makes a "deal" with Dipper by taking over his body in hopes of destroying the Author's journal. Yet, for no reason other than "pain is hilarious", Bill deliberately tortured his possessed body despite the fact that he needs the body to be in good condition in order to accomplish his goal. This ended up biting him because his weakened body left Bill unable to chase after Mabel, who has the journal in her own hand.
  • Despite the fact that the Northwests simply need to open the mansion gates to break the lumberjack's curse that was placed upon them when they went back on their promise of giving the commoners a grand party as thanks for building said mansion, they absolutely refused to do so simply because they do not want to associate with the "common rabble" in spite of the fact that they are greatly endangering the lives of everyone (including themselves) by doing so. In fact, had Preston successfully convinced Pacifica to hide in the bunker in order to prevent her from fulfilling the 150-year-old promise, his mansion would have been burnt down and with it, all the rich folks, politicians, and celebrities invited, forever destroying his dignity and the reputation of the family name.
• Invader Zim has the titular character. On one occasion, when Gaz, one of the only two human characters that acknowledge Zim is an alien bent on world destruction, is asked why she never helps to stop his schemes, she points at this trope. He's even this by the standards of his species, the Irkens, who are pretty Stupid Evil themselves. There's a reason the Almighty Tallest sent him on a Snipe Hunt to Earth (which they didn't even think existed); he's so indiscriminately destructive that he's a bigger threat to his own side than the enemy.
  Zim: I put the fires out!
  Tallest: You made them worse!
  Zim: Worse... Or better?
• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous:
  • Eddie is a cowardly scientist that ditched the campers and left them to die to the Indominus rex only for him to be eaten by her.
  • Dr. Henry Wu is as shortsighted as his incarnation in the movie: he created the Scorpius rex (a mix of velociraptor, tyrannosaur, carnosaur, scorpion fish and tree frog) as a prototype for Indominus rex. At the first test run, Henry and his staff almost died from the Scorpius' poison, then disobeyed Simon Masrani's orders to kill Scorpius to prevent her from killing the staff and the fauna, instead freezing her thinking he can fix her and tame her to serve humans. When the park's power grid shut down, Scorpius' cryogenic prison thawed out. Hilarity does not ensue.
  • Kash, the engineer of Manta Corp, went along with his boss' plan to have an underground dinosaur deathmatch. Darius points out that this not a profitable business plan— if a dinosaur dies every time they force them to fight it will cost a lot of money, time and resources to replace it even before presenting them to their customers. Then he used Dr. Mae Turner's dino neurology research to invent a brain-controlling chip to turn the dinos into giant RC toys. If the chip malfunctions either will fry the dino's brain and kill them or will free it from its control with the dino tending to kill the person who controlled them; what's more, they control the animal so completely that they will also die if the owner forgets they need to sleep, drink and eat. If this information went public, it would give Manta Corp a PR disaster to end all PR disasters.
  • Daniel Kon, the CEO of Manta Corp, came up with the "dinosaurs as RC toys" idea in the first place. Talk about Didn't Think This Through!
• Played for Laughs in Justice League Unlimited: The Flash, stuck in the body of Lex Luthor (don't ask), has to keep up the charade of being Luthor in front of a gang of supervillains. The problem is, all-around-good-guy Flash has no idea how to act even remotely like a "bad guy," much less one as suave as Luthor, which leads to this exchange as he's walking out of the bathroom:
  Dr. Polaris: Hey, aren't you going to wash your hands?
  Flash: [in Luthor's body] No! 'Cuz I'm evil.
• Kim Possible has Dr. Drakken, a self-proclaimed evil scientist whose plans mostly involve stealing stuff from other scientists, and there are times that he doesn't even know what the thing he stole does, nor does he know how to use it properly. One time he and DNAmy were after the same gadget, and Drakken was needlessly cruel to her when preventing her from getting it first. Turns out he didn't know how to use it and Amy did.
  Shego: Too bad you ticked off the one geneticist who's twisted enough to help you.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Chloé Bourgeois, though it's more like Stupid Jerkass. She's a bully and Alpha Bitch whose constant antagonization of those around her has given her an Akumatization count in the double digits, and yet she keeps displaying Aesop Amnesia after the nth possessed vengeful supervillain comes after her. You'd think she'd figure out that she needs to stop being a jerk out of self-preservation, at least. In her case, it's justified by the fact that a life of privilege completely insulated from negative consequences has made her lose all touch with reality. When she has her Face–Heel Turn in "Miracle Queen", she has all but two of the Miraculous and the entire city of Paris under her control — and manages to lose the lot (plus any chance of getting the Bee Miraculous in the future) through sheer overconfidence and stupidity. Hawk Moth is not happy with her.
  • Many Akumas are this, though it's because the transformation makes them completely obsessed with whatever slight made the person vulnerable to Akumatization (otherwise, most of these people wouldn't want to be supervillains). If it comes down to a choice between fighting the heroes and hurting the object of their grudge, they'll pick the latter, no matter how much Hawk Moth tries to get them back on track.
  • Gabriel Agreste, on several occasions.
    • He would rather terrorize Paris in search for the Miraculouses to revive his wife Emilie by creating a timeline where she is alive than being a good father for Adrien, whom is unhappy with his absence and his cold demeanor. Adding salt to the wound is that Emilie made a last video stating that she doesn't want to be revived, and the Kwamis know that if he uses the ultimate wish, the universe will be destroyed and reshaped in the way the user wants, meaning Gabriel would only revive the people he cares for.
    • In the first episode of season 5, he could've solved all his problems by giving his past self a USB with instructions to fix the Peacock Miraculous so Emilie never died, but his obsession with Ladybug made him fail that task, which in turn made Nathalie realize Gabriel is too stupid and reckless to be trusted with such power.
    • Gabriel also rejects that Adrien now loves Marinette, he wants him to love Kagami for a financial and social deal with Tomoe rather than genuine happiness for Adrien. Ironically, Adrien had at some point dated Kagami, but they broke up because she couldn't stand that Adrien was making many excuses to ditch her in dates to become Cat Noir.
    • Then he was fooled into entering a wax museum where Ladybug and Cat Noir pretended to be statues so he be captured, Adrien already deployed his cataclysm but Gabriel used it on his arm so he can escape instead on the floor, now he is slowly dying.
• Mr. Bogus: Butch occasionally shows shades of this, due to his cowardice and rather low intelligence.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Diamond Tiara suffers from this in "Ponyville Confidential". Having been appointed the editor of the school newspaper, she attempts to blackmail the Cutie Mark Crusaders into continuing to write their anonymous gossip column, despite the fact that everyone in town has stopped reading the paper due to the hurtful lies the gossip column spread, and they already know who the columnists are.
  • Queen Chrysalis from "A Canterlot Wedding" wants to absorb The Power of Love from all Equestria, and her Shapeshifting gives her near-limitless potential for successful espionage... except she has a chronic Villain Ball, acts Obviously Evil despite posing as Princess Cadance, attempts a needlessly cruel (and, more importantly, cover-blowing) Uriah Gambit involving Twilight Sparkle and the real Cadance, doesn't even try to discredit the real Cadance when she makes herself known, reveals herself despite not yet knowing the full result of her prior Energy Absorption (not to mention being currently cut off from her fellow Changelings), and fearlessly mocking Cadance and Shining Armor for trying to turn The Power of Love against her (despite how she herself just used it to defeat Princess Celestia). For all this, Chrysalis ultimately becomes a humiliating Twinkle in the Sky.
• Phineas and Ferb: Defied by Heinz Doofenshmirtz, who has stated that just because he's evil, doesn't mean everything he does has to be evil, and is annoyed by the fact that Major Monogram and Perry always assume whatever he's doing must be somehow malevolent (although to be fair, they're usually right most of the times). However, several of Doof's schemes are Ambiguously Evil as they don't do any usual harm, such as activating a laser gun that can create mustaches, buying some machinery that only opens and closes a lobster cage, building a country on a floating inner tube, creating a portal to travel to alternate dimensions, or building a governor's mansion on top of City Hall. Technically, anybody would point out the fact, but tell that to a no-nonsense major who usually jumps up to bizarre conclusions over them.
  • Played straight in Phineas And Ferb Save Summer by Rodney and the rest of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N.. Doofenshmirtz builds a machine that moves Earth further away from the sun. Rodney is inspired to build a bigger version and use to hold the world hostage with the threat of plunging the world in an eternal winter. When all but one of Rodney's demands is met, he isn't satsified and makes good on his threat, something even Doofenshmirtz objects to. When Doofenshmirtz tries to stop the machine, Rodney uses to move Earth even further away from the sun with the intent of plunging the world into an eternal ice age.
• Pinky and the Brain: Pinky. BIG TIME. Until you discover he's just Obfuscating Stupidity.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • Lampshaded and subverted in one episode, where Mojo Jojo and Him are each trying to prove to the Rowdyruff Boys that he is eviler than the other (and is thus more worthy of being their father). Him's final attempt is to brainwash two scientists into using a device that starts to move the Earth into the sun. Mojo quickly launches into a tirade about how stupid that is (for obvious reasons). This is a subversion because Him was bluffing. After letting Mojo speak his mind, he simply waves his hand, and it stops. (For all we know, he wanted Mojo to embarrass himself.)
  • Princess tends to do things like this a lot because she's a Spoiled Brat who wants what she wants now, and doesn't think about the consequences of her actions. Her worst instance of this was when she bribed the Mayor into letting her be Mayor of Townsville, and then made crime legal, hoping to put the Girls out of business. She was on cloud nine until someone robbed her father's mansion blind. Princess was quick to revoke the law, but the Girls didn't recover her property, mainly because they were the ones who had robbed her. Princess tries to get them arrested, but the Girls politely explain that you can't be arrested for committing a crime if the "crime" was legal at the time it happened. With this, the Girls are able to "convince" Princess to relinquish the town back to the mayor.
  • Thanks to a deal made by the Powerpuff Girls, Mojo Jojo is allowed to wreak havoc across Townsville over and over with the Girls being allowed to eat 1 candy for each crime they stopped. Yet for no reason aside to be a dick, Mojo decides to betray them by stealing the Mayor's candy just because he finds it more fun than destroying Townsville despite the fact that they are the reason he even managed to get out of prison every time. Unsurprisingly, this leads to Mojo getting the worst beating of his life, and the girls would have even killed him if Blossom hadn't realized what they were doing.
• Recess: School's Out: The Evil Plan of Big Bad Dr. Philium Benedict is to cause a new ice age to destroy summer vacation forever and make kids study more, a plan that he expects will have people make him President of the United States as thanks for improving grade averages. The utterly absurd decision to risk the extinction of mankind for such a small benefit is pointed out by the heroes (not to mention that no one would vote for a workaholic guy that hates recess), but Benedict (who has been thinking of this plan since the 60's) just shrugs and says "I can try".
• Samurai Jack:
  • In one episode, Aku promises a genius scientist named Exter to spare his village if he will make some super-robots to destroy the title character for him. The scientist does so. After they are done, Aku decides to "test them" by destroying the scientist's village for no reason whatsoever. This naturally leads to said scientist giving Jack the means to defeat these robots. Aku threw Villain Balls around a lot; there were many occasions he successfully caught Jack but ultimately came out short due to his sadistic tendencies, be it stalling his execution in favor of a Cool and Unusual Punishment or double-crossing a Noble Demon that has the means to his escape for the sheer kick of it. A rare example of this trope being implicitly justified, as Aku is an embodiment of evil. He ravages his own empire, makes his people suffer, and backstabs allies not because it has any benefit for him, but because it's the evil thing to do. To paraphrase the old contentious fable of The Scorpion And The Frog, it really is his nature.
    • It's telling that Aku went for the direct killing blow exactly once, having beaten down Jack, pinned him with a massive claw, and was in the process of skewering with his own blade. Sadly (for Aku, anyway) the blade simply goes 'plink' against Jack's skin, leaving Aku so shocked that his eyeball flames poof out. Turns out that, since Jack's blade was forged to fight the ultimate evil — AKU HIMSELF — it couldn't hurt those who were pure of heart in the hands of evil. Mind you, there was no reason to use that particular method instead of the rest of his lethal arsenal, other than it was kinda ironic. So yeah, even when Aku decides to just kill him, he still does it in a Stupid Evil way. Ultimately, his defeat is brought upon by his own sadistic hubris. Having captured Jack in the penultimate episode, Aku begins the Grand Finale bragging about it to the world, then starts dithering over how he wants to execute his sworn nemesis. This gave Jack's allies just enough time to pull a Big Damn Heroes, setting off a series of events that allows Jack to return to the past.
  • The High Priestess raises her seven daughters to be elite assassins with the sole purpose of killing Jack. However, she trains them to believe that showing compassion -even to each other- is weakness, and has them tortured when they show any pity or regard for their sisters' well being. Ultimately, this severely undercuts their numerical advantage and causes them to suffer defeat in detail, since Jack is more than a match for any one Daughter.
• The Simpsons: Played for laughs in the two-parter "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" when Charles Montgomery "Monty" Burns decides to fulfill a lifelong dream of blotting out the sun. Even Smithers calls him out for this act of "Cartoonish Supervillainy". Burns does try to rationalize this scheme by pointing out that by denying the people of Springfield solar energy, he'd have a monopoly on energy sources (he's already purchased every oil rig in town) and force everyone to purchase nuclear power, but it's likely that all his potential customers would be so disgusted (or just so creeped out at living under permanent darkness) that they'd just move to another town. At one point, in the midst of gloating about how he has succeeded in bringing the town to heel and ruined many lives, he sees a baby with a piece of candy in a park across town and he decides to drop everything and go get that piece of candy, forcing Smithers to make him focus (this act turns out to be Foreshadowing for the event that gets Burns shot, which is that he decides, in the middle of his gloating about blocking the sun, to steal Maggie's candy, which he has to struggle to perform because he's Pathetically Weak, which leads to an accidental discharge of Burns' gun). He also covers up the Heroic Sacrifice of Smithers' father and disposes of his corpse in the sewers because "Cover-ups were all the rage back then."
• Sofia the First: While it would be somewhat of a stretch to call Cedric truly "evil", Cedric's evil plans are this, both in general and in one memorable instance. In general, much of Cedric's plans revolve taking Sofia's amulet, which he plans to use to rule the kingdom. But this amulet gives its wearer gifts or curses depending on behavior. And Cedric knows this, but doesn't seem worried about the possibility of getting cursed if he ever got the amulet. And in one memorable instance, as part of a scheme to take the amulet in the pilot, Cedric casts a spell that puts everyone in the ballroom to sleep. That would be a brilliant plan, if not for him deciding to cast this spell while he's in the ballroom himself, so he falls asleep like everyone else.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Dr. Robotnik leaned into this in later episodes. The guy savored polluting the earth and was vehement on destroying all sentient life or roboticizing it into a mindless slave, leaving him the only free-willed being on earth, par his nephew and subordinate, who he proved to find rather dispensable as well). He also fell into the other cliched Villain Ball, capturing Sonic frequently and putting him in an easily escapable Cool and Unusual Punishment, and regularly abusing his potentially dangerously skilled minions (in the comic adaption, Snively did indeed alter Robotnik's devices to kill him as revenge).
• South Park:
  • It has an episode where Satan sends three serial killers from Hell back to Earth in order to get him a birthday cake shaped like a car. Unfortunately, they keep killing the vendors, ruining their efforts.
  • Eric Cartman's sheer selfishness and determination to have something he can rub in the face of Kyle often bites him in the ass. A stand-out example is when he makes a bet with Kyle to make a song that goes platinum. Cartman does shameless ripoffs of various popular songs as "Christian rock" that become huge hits, but at the end of the episode learns that Christian rock bands can't get a platinum award. While sales for the band could still make Cartman lots of money, because he was only thinking about his bet with Kyle, Cartman throws a fit and shows what a jerk he is to his Christian audience, costing him his entire fanbase and earning him a well-deserved red-ass beatdown from Token.
  • "Asspen" plays this for laughs when Stan ends up being put in a skiing match against a jock named Tad in a cliche "save the youth center" plot. Tad, being an 80s rival character, decides to sabotage Stan to ensure a win... only Tad is an experienced skier while Stan is nine years old and just learned how to ski that weekend. When Tad gets ahead, he spends several minutes setting up traps (cutting down a tree, laying sawdust) meant to slow Stan down, but Stan is so slow already that the traps don't even change his speed any. This also gives time for Tad himself to get sabotaged and lose. He is also so determined to bully Stan into a challenge that he doesn't acknowledge the fact Stan is constantly telling him he doesn't care about the whole thing and wants to be left alone and if he did, he would be the winner of the competition by default.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Sheldon Plankton, whose own evil schemes keep failing because of his own stupidity. He claims to be an evil genius, yet he doesn't know some of the simplest things like snow and blinking.
  • Mr. Krabs takes his Money Fetish so far that he often actually wastes money on being greedy. For example, in "Penny Foolish", Krabs sees SpongeBob pick up a penny off the street. Krabs wants the penny so badly that he's willing to spend millions of dollars on building a movie theatre just so he can charge SpongeBob one cent for entering.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Ludo, the first leader of the Forces of Evil, wanted to steal Star's wand to rule the multiverse, but his plans are really stupid. One time he could've easily stolen the wand but flinched because of his fear of hair. When he did manage to conquer Mewni it wasn't even his plan— it was Toffee using his half wand talking to him.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
  • The Shredder only cares about getting revenge on Splinter, and will do so at any cost, up to and including supporting the Kraang's invasion of Earth. He truly falls into this in the Season 3 finale when he literally stabs Splinter In the Back just as he's about to shut down the Triceratons' black hole generator, killing him and dooming the planet; all the while, Shredder gloats over finally killing Splinter and makes it clear that now that he's finally won, he doesn't care that the world is going to be destroyed, and him along with it.
  • The whole reason why Krang was banished to the 1987-dimension was because he was an idiot who caused more harm than good for the rest of the Kraang armada. This is all clearly demonstrated when Kraang Sub-Prime discovers he was trying to use the Dimensionizers to blow up realities. Why? Because Krang was ordered to destroy the Turtles by any means necessary and completely missed the fact that the entire point of the Dimensionizers is so the Kraang can conquer realities.
• Total Drama: During Island, Heather will take any opportunity to humiliate her rivals or benefit herself, even if it risks making her team lose. However, this habit was largely dropped in subsequent seasons.
  • In "Not Quite Famous", to punish Gwen for being snarky toward her, she steals the other girl's diary and reads it out loud in front of the entire camp during the talent contest instead of the ballet performance she planned.
  • In "Paintball Deer Hunter", the campers are divided into hunters and deer. Heather (a deer) forces Beth (a hunter) to waste time getting food for her, even though the team needs Beth to hunt down the other team's deer in order to win.
• Transformers:
  • In the Grand Finale of Transformers: Beast Wars, Megatron picks up the Villain Ball by deciding to kill the entirely helpless human village before the armed Maximals, and was attacked while waiting for it to recharge. To add insult to injury, somehow the attack failed, and it appeared the only ones who died were Quickstrike and Inferno.
    Megatron: I suppose, given my imminent godhood, these primitives should really be beneath my attention. (sighs) Still, "no score is too small to settle", I always say...
  • The Transformers: Prime incarnation of Starscream plays it up with all the arrogant gloating he does and his bad habit of thinking out loud — something which even Megatron has called him out on. He also thinks that every bot should bow down to him because he's in charge (or he thinks he should be), even if those bots tend to be twice his size and strength.
  • Airachnid. Whilst dangerous, her ambitions far exceed her capabilities, something that even Starscream manages to keep some check over. She attempts to take command of the Decepticons in Megatron's absence, despite Soundwave, his most loyal follower and the one Decepticon that everyone else on the ship is wary of, standing no less than 10 feet away from her. When she tries to assert authority by force, Soundwave effortlessly puts her in her place. Later, after breaking away from the Decepticons, she attempts to lure Megatron out alone and then kill him by sicking an Insecticon on him. When Megatron starts fighting back and winning, she panics. Apparently, she forgot there was a reason the guy was in charge. Underestimating Badassery is a flaw of hers that comes back to bite her every single time and she almost never learns from it. Her final humiliation in the series even comes from Soundwave himself.
  • The original The Transformers take on Starscream wants to overthrow Megatron, but often just disobeys him because he can. This leads to Starscream's disobedience often making him into a hindrance; in the pilot, the Autobots wake up because Starscream shoots at their ship, and an Autobot sneaking on the Decepticon ship is aided by Starscream trying to kill Megatron.
  • Galvatron in the show's third season is even worse, thanks to his violent outbursts that lead to attacking his own men for no reason. Of course, he did end up immersed in lava for quite some time after the movie (in which he was fairly competent), and it's pointed out that it didn't do his processors any favors. It's shown that, crazy though he is, he's basically the only leader the Decepticons have by that point with enough charisma and fighting skills to actually keep them together—but even his most loyal servant, Cyclonus, still tried to send him in for psychiatric treatment. It didn't work.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy: Snaptrap was this in one episode where it is revealed that he calls T.U.F.F. to gloat about whatever plan he cooks up and they come to defeat him. When his abused minion Larry decides to leave D.O.O.M. and start his own evil empire G.L.O.O.M., he does not tell T.U.F.F. his plans. Snaptrap reveals that he only tells the good guys about his schemes for the sake of politeness, ignoring the fact that as a villain, he has no obligation to be polite.
• Wacky Races: Dick Dastardly is on the low end of evil, because he's always trying to cheat to win the titular Wacky Races. But despite pulling ahead numerous times in each episode, Dastardly keeps stopping to try and sabotage his opponents' ability to race, despite having a huge lead. What makes this one particularly notable is that his car, the Mean Machine, also seems to be by far the best of the various cars in the race, with its arsenal of gadgets and rocket boosters giving it a massive edge over the ragtag accidents he goes up against. In the unaired pilot for Wacky Races Forever, despite being only a few feet from the finish line, Dastardly openly declares that because he's a villain, he has to cheat. However, all of this is Played for Laughs, because Dastardly is still a Jerkass who has it coming when the other racers blow past him.
• Wakfu: The Shushu have this as a racial trait. For a specific example, Rubilax manages to steal Sadlygrove's body and stumbles upon a way to release his kinsmen into the World of Ten. When he contacts King Rushu to explain, the other demons can't stop berating and belittling him, finally demanding he releases another Shushu and let HER take over the operation (something the other Shushu had been pushing for to get the glory for herself). They genuinely seem surprised when Rubilax gets fed up, cuts communication, and ends the plan. And of course, there's their generally violent behavior which led to the all but destroyed state of their own world.

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