History EvenEvilHasStandards / Literature

* In Alex Grecian's ''The Devil's Workshop,'' UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, of all people. Jack believes that murdering and mutilating people is part of a divine "plan," and his crimes are a kind of favor to the victims. Killing children, though, is right out, as they aren't "ripe."

* In ''Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', Hannibal Lecter gets disgusted when Migs, the patient in the next cell over from him throws his [[ADateWithRosiePalms semen]] at Clarisse on her way out. Hannibal is so insulted that he agrees to help her find Gumb to make up for it, and [[spoiler:talks Migs into killing himself]]. He is a cold-blooded, cannibalistic serial killer and a brilliant psychiatrist, at that.

** Lord Roose Bolton of Dreadfort is the same - he is a horrific villain, but a [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic one.]] He has disdain at best for his son Ramsay Bolton, who is also horrific, and [[AxeCrazy not pragmatic]] [[StupidEvil about it at all]].

** [[CardCarryingVillain Godelot Sr]], writer of ''Magick Moste Evile'', wouldn't touch the subject of Horcruxes.

* ''LightNovel/BanishedFromTheHerosParty'': Godwin is the alchemist who crafted the Devil's Blessing drug and who is perfectly willing to use explosives on his own men to trap the protagonists. He openly acknowledges he's a villain by most standards. However, for precisely this reason he absolutely can not stand villains who have deluded themselves into thinking they're the good guys. Despite having been a coward when dealing with [[spoiler:the confrontation with Ares the Sage in the ancient elf ruins as he tries to force Ruti to resume her role as the Hero]], he ultimately aids the protagonists because the opponent's insistence that he's the one in the right just pisses Godwin off.

** At the end of the novel, we watch Bill as he tries to escape Rapture with his wife Elaine and young daughter Sophie. Bill has been Ryan's closest friend for years; Ryan saw potential in him when he was a humble plumber and took him under his wing, bringing him and his then-fiancee Elaine with him to Rapture and confiding in him about many matters -- he's even close with Bill's family, often asking after Elaine and Sophie to make sure they've been safe amidst the spiraling chaos of the city. Before they can escape via bathysphere, Ryan's men, all of whom know Bill personally, corner them and tell Bill that they have orders to bring him in and kill him, as is Ryan's decree for anyone who tries to defy his rules -- however, they all realize that Ryan only said to take Bill, conveniently leaving out Elaine and Sophie. Ryan, knowing that Bill would never have tried to escape without his family, granted implicit permission to let the two of them leave the city, something he's never let anyone do before or since. They tearfully bid Bill goodbye before boarding the bathysphere. All of Ryan's detractors are killed by crucifixion, but Karlosky grants Bill a personal kindness by agreeing to MercyKill him beforehand, and before he does, he says that Ryan has personally watched every one of his opponents be strung up and left there to rot, but he's not in the room with them now because couldn't bear to watch Bill die -- Bill [[GoOutWithASmile dies with a smile]] knowing that Ryan, despite his despotism and madness, [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes never truly lost his love for his best friend.]]

** Andrew Ryan's personal bodyguard Karlosky is a hardened man who obeys his employer's orders without question, however extreme they may be, but when Ryan's scientists conclude that the only way to compensate for the ADAM shortage crisis is to have Little Sisters harvest it from the corpses lying around Rapture, he's visibly unnerved. Ostensible protagonist Bill McDonough takes notice and remarks to himself that it would take something truly brutal to sicken Karlosky.

** Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock will not shy away from monstrous acts, but he does them according to an ice cold calculation of benefits and he prefers them carried with equally cold blooded efficiency. He reacts with disgust to the murder of the young Princess Rhaenys not because a young girl was murdered, but because his brutal MookLieutenant who did it stabbed her something like 50 times when, as Tywin puts it "Anyone with the wits the gods gave a turnip would have spoken some soothing words to her and then smothered her with a pillow." (For context, Princess Rhaenys was a girl who was maybe 5 years old and had been found hiding under her father's bed while the capital was being sacked.)

* A lesser-known O. Henry short story used this to create the author's trademark twist ending. On Judgment Day, the narrator sees a long line of men waiting to go to Hell. Then the reader hears a sad story about a shop girl who only earns $5 a week. The story goes into details about her budget, how she sometimes goes hungry without anyone noticing, etc. She's about to accept a date from a rich man who has a taste for shop girls (whether he's a Romeo pimp or just likes to have kept women is not specified), but changes her mind at the last moment. The narrator says her story won't end until a night when she's feeling a little hungrier. Meanwhile, an angel tells the narrator that the long line of men are store owners who only paid their shop girls $5 a week, and asks "Do you belong with them?" "Not on your immortality," the narrator replies indignantly, "I only burned an orphanage and robbed a church!"

* In Creator/GeneStrattonPorter's ''Freckles'', Black Jack has agreed that Wessner can kill Freckles, however he likes, once they are gone, but he objects to watches while Wessner torments him, especially since Freckles would beat him in a fair fight. Another man is angry that Wessner didn't just keep Freckles from seeing any of them.

* In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', orcs are AlwaysChaoticEvil servants of the Dark Lord who routinely kill and eat civilians, and are constantly waging war against each other. "Kindness" is a dirty word to them, and they torture people for fun. But eating other orcs is one thing they won't tolerate.

** Even ''[[Characters/HarryPotterLordVoldemort Lord Voldemort]] himself'' has a few moments of these (yes really). For one, he despises [[DirtyCoward Wormtail]] for his treachery and cowardice (the fact that he's probably the worst example of a minion you could possibly get is probably frustrating too). For another, as AxCrazy and [[TheSociopath psychopathic]] as Voldemort is, even ''he'' finds Fenrir Greyback, a savage werewolf who [[PaedoHunt specifically targets young children]] to sate his bloodlust, to be repulsive - though that probably has more to do with FantasticRacism than any moral standard. Voldemort even makes it clear the ''only'' reason he includes him in his ranks is because he's useful to him.

* This is a major theme in one of O Henry's short stories, 'The Tempered Wind'. Two conmen, Parleyvoo Pickens (the narrator) and Buckingham Skinner, team up with a third conman and set up a business in New York selling fake bonds. However, a newspaper report exposes the business as fake, and the conmen get a nasty surprise when their customers show up at the office and are revealed to be poor factory workers, disabled war veterans, old women, and even children. One woman tells them about how she had invested all her life savings and needs the money back for her dying child, while the factory girls are losing money for missing work, and one women is in tears because she was saving for her wedding. [[spoiler:Pickens and Skinner give all the money back.]] When the reporter who wrote the article interviews the conmen again, Skinner says:

** Even ''[[Characters/HarryPotterLordVoldemort Lord Voldemort]] himself'' has a few moments of these (yes really). For one, he despises [[DirtyCoward Wormtail]] for his treachery and cowardice (the fact that he's probably the worst example of a minion you could possibly get is probably frustrating too). For another, as AxCrazy and [[TheSociopath psychopathic]] as Voldemort is, even ''he'' finds Fenrir Greyback, a savage werewolf who [[PaedoHunt specifically targets young children]] to sate his bloodlust, to be repulsive. Voldemort even makes it clear the ''only'' reason he includes him in his ranks is because he's useful to him.

* Humbert Humbert of ''Literature/Lolita'' is an irredeemable character - an abusive, violent paedophile who is quite willing to commit murder to get his own way. But even he is contemptuous of the misogynistic teaching philosophy of Beardsley College, which teaches young women that being housewives and attracting men is more important than academic learning.

* Taken UpToEleven in ''Literature/RumoAndHisMiraculousAdventures'': The [[{{Cyclops}} Demonocles]] positively thrive on TheSoundOfScreaming, prefer to eat prey alive, and will beat their friends to death [[ForTheEvulz over nothing]] and then [[WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou blame them for it]]. [[spoiler:Break [[BizarreAlienBiology the intricate bony structure in a Demonocle's huge, complex tongue]]... and not only have you effectively crippled him, but you've demoralized any other Demonocles who witnessed the sight.]] [[HypocriticalHumor How could any living creature do anything so cruel to another]]?

* ''Literature/TheWitcher'': Witchers from the School of the Cat have an unfortunate tendency to be PsychoForHire, due to intentionally recruiting remorseless killers and ''then'' giving them an unstable mutation that dials that trait UpToEleven. While highly effective at slaying monsters, they're widely feared for their cruelty and willingness to kill ''people'' just as readily, and they have even been rumoured to perform assassination work occasionally (when most Witchers are sworn to political neutrality). Brehen is a rogue Witcher from the School of the Cat who was banished because even his fellows were disgusted by his extreme methods and sadism.

** Fontaine is at first genuinely creeped out and physically sickened by the methods Suchong and Tenenbaum come up with for producing more ADAM. He gets over it when he realizes how much money can be made, however. On a related note, in one of the scenes in which he, Tenenbaum, and Suchong are discussing the Little Sisters, he internally insists to himself that the girls aren't human anymore in a way that comes off as him trying to rationalize the way he's treating them in order to avoid being digusted with his actions.

** During their conversation in Ryan's office, Fontaine is disgusted when Ryan implies that perhaps the reason he's set up the orphanages around Rapture and pays the girls much more attention than the boys is because he's [[MistakenForPedophile sexually]] [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil abusing them.]] Fontaine immediately snaps at him and says that he only likes fully-grown women. Ryan is just as apalled at the thought and sounds like he's about to threaten Fontaine with violence if he were to be using the girls for the suspected purpose. Since he was already contemplating having his bodyguard kill Fontaine on the spot in this scene, it's not a stretch to think that if his suspicions had been confirmed, he would have gone through with it.

** Fontaine is at first genuinely creeped out and physically sickened by the methods Suchong and Tenenbaum come up with for producing more ADAM. He gets over it when he realizes how much money can be made, however. On a related note, in one of the scenes in which he, Tenenbaum, and Suchong are discussing the Little Sisters, he internally insists to himself that the girls aren't human anymore in a way that comes off as him trying to rationalize and justify the way he's treating them.

** At the end of the novel, we watch ostensible protagonist Bill McDonough as he tries to escape Rapture with his wife Elaine and young daughter Sophie. Bill has been Ryan's closest friend for years; Ryan saw potential in him when he was a humble plumber and took him under his wing, bringing him and his then-fiancee Elaine with him to Rapture and confiding in him about many matters -- he's even been close with Bill's family, often asking after Elaine (who used to be Ryan's secretary on the surface) and Sophie to make sure they've been doing alright in the spiraling chaos of the city. Before they can escape via a bathysphere, however, Ryan's men, all of whom are pretty close with Bill, corner them and tell Bill that they have orders to bring him in and kill him, as is Ryan's decree for anyone who tries to defy his rules -- however, Ryan, knowing that Bill would never have tried to leave without his family, only told his men to take Bill, granting implicit permission to let Elaine and Sophie escape, something he's never let anyone in Rapture do before or since. They let them go and the two of them tearfully bid Bill goodbye before boarding the bathysphere and leaving. Normally Ryan's detractors are killed by crucifixtion, but his bodyguard Karlosky grants Bill a personal kindness by agreeing to MercyKill him beforehand, and before he does, he says that Ryan has personally watched every one of his opponents be strung up and left there to rot, but that he's not in the room with them now because couldn't bear to watch Bill die -- Bill [[GoOutWithASmile dies with a smile]] knowing that Ryan, despite his despotism and madness, never lost his love for his best friend.

** In ''Literature/{{Thunderball}}'' Blofeld tells his SPECTRE underlings of a successful operation to kidnap a teenage heiress for ransom. However, Blofeld reports that it was discovered the girl was no longer a virgin, taking advantage of by one of her captors. Blofeld not only wrote a note of apology to the family but returned some of the ransom money as they had promised the girl would be returned "unharmed." Blofeld then executes the agent responsible, telling the others that they may be criminals but they still hold to a code of conduct.

** Valentine Morgenstern was the leader of a [[NaziByAnyOtherName cruel group of shadowhunters]], and during his life he tortured, maimed, and murdered many innocent people for [[VanHelsingHateCrimes no other reason]] than because they were vampires, werewolves, warlocks, or fairies. He even killed other shadowhunters when he found them a nuisance or when they got in the way of his plans. However, he is still disgusted of his (partially demonic) son Sebastian, who murders and destroys for sheer joy.