Bad People Abuse Animals / Live-Action Films

• American Psycho: After Patrick Bateman murders a homeless man in a dark alley, he immediately stomps his dog to death.
• A dog is stabbed in Andy Warhol's Bad.
• The killer in Angst narrates to the audience about how he tortured animals in his youth.
• Hilariously inverted in Austin Powers, as Dr. Evil outright kills several people on the account of upsetting his cat, Mr. Bigglesworth.^note Mr. Bigglesworth got upset because Dr. Evil got upset, which was because the assassins he hired failed to kill Austin Powers.
• Bravo (the British channel) had three idents that contained this trope. They consisted of one where we see rabbits on a farm roaming around, and then a grenade falls down and explodes them, one where a cat is locked up in a cage, and one ident where a goldfish is seen, then the camera zooms out to reveal that it's in a blender, leading to where the goldfish is blended off-screen.
• Brimstone: The first unambiguously cruel act the Reverend carries out on-screen is the wholesale slaughter of Elizabeth's livestock.
• A rather disturbing example is in a Deleted Scene in The Cat in the Hat: The main antagonist Larry Quinn, before going to negotiate with a television store owner, decides to hide Nevins in a TV set by tying him up with the TV's plug, forcing him to chew on it, and then forcefully throws him into the set. To make matters more unsettling, Nevins yelps after being thrown into the TV. Not even the fact that all of this is shown off-screen helps matters.
• In Circus of Horrors, Dr. Schüler delights in goading the various animals in the circus by poking them with the crop he carries with him at all times. This eventually comes back to bite him when he gets badly clawed.
• Downfall (2004): Eva Braun admits that she kicks Hitler's beloved German Shepherd Blondi under the table just to get a reaction out of Hitler.
• In Eden Lake, teenage psychopath Brett and his gang are showing abusing a rabbit and a fox.
• In Equilibrium, as if we needed any more indication that the government of Libria was dictatorial and evil, it turns out that they have a policy of killing dogs and puppies for being "inducive of emotion". This is what finally drives John Preston, who has gone off the government-mandated drug Prozium, to turn fully against the regime.
• In the climax of Eyes of a Stranger, the first sign we have that something is wrong in Tracy's apartment is a dramatic Reveal Shot of her dog, strangled by the Serial Killer already inside with her. Being blind and deaf, Tracy remains unaware and continues her normal routine.
• The infamous "bunny boiler" scene from Fatal Attraction, which had Alex Forrest, a truly unhinged Yandere, killing and cooking the pet rabbit of Dan's daughter in the family's pressure cooker.
• This trope ended up leading to a sequence being dropped from The Fly (1986). In between the scene that reveals Veronica is pregnant with Seth's child and her resultant Nightmare Sequence, there was originally a whole reel (known informally as the "monkey-cat" sequence) in which Seth, his Slow Transformation continuing apace, decides to use all three of his telepods to genetically splice together the surviving baboon and a cat. The resultant single creature violently attacks him, whereupon he beats it to death with a lead pipe. Because there is virtually no dialogue or obvious exposition via his computer to explain what his purpose in doing this is — instead it's revealed later as an attempt at finding the cure for his condition, one he tries to put through in the climax — the first test screening audience made the wrong assumptions about Seth and believed he was just being needlessly cruel to helpless beings. As a result, they no longer cared about his plight, which meant the rest of the film was a wash. Even though this meant losing an elaborate follow-up sequence that paid off the growth developing on his abdomen (an insect leg emerging from it), the whole reel was cut so Seth could remain sympathetic.
• Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare: As a young child, Freddy Krueger murdered the class hamsters with a hammer.
• The Good Son: Henry shoots and kills a dog with a nail crossbow.
• Gothika: Discussed Trope when Dr. Miranda Grey explains her theory about the killer's accomplice's origins with the sheriff, which as a budding serial killer probably included torturing animals from a young age onwards. Then subverted when the sheriff reveals in a Wham Line that he never did enjoy it.
• Similar to Miss Gulch above, Mrs. Deagle of Gremlins (1984) jumps away from any possible sympathy from her very first scene and never looks back by swearing she will snatch Billy Peltzer's pet dog whenever Billy least expects it and she will toss it into her dryer in retaliation for it accidentally breaking a porcelain snowman of hers (Billy even offers to pay it back right then and there but she insists she won't accept anything less than the dog's life as payback).
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The High Evolutionary has no qualms with immoral experimentation on animals, such as Rocket. He also gladly kills them himself once they outlive their use. Some of his more dangerous experiments are also kept under lock and key until his explicit command. Many of them aren't even violent, they're just bred by him to be used as The Brute even when they don't want to be.
• Halloween:
  • In Halloween (1978), Lester the German Shepherd is choked to death by the Serial Killer Michael Myers showing that the Big Bad is strong enough to even kill Angry Guard Dogs.
  • Halloween (2007): Michael Myers kills both dogs he comes across. He's also implied to have eaten one.
• In The House That Jack Built, a scene from the titular Serial Killer's childhood is shown, where he remorselessly cuts the legs of a duckling with pair of pliers, just to establish that he was always a thoroughly horrible person.
• Ice Cream Man: While he is more genuinely insane than truly malicious, Gregory kills his neighbor's dog and puts it through a wood chipper.
• One of the first indicators of Christopher's evil in Island of Death is when he rapes a goat and then slashes the poor beast's throat, leaving it to bleed to death.
• John Wick: What motivates John for most of the movie is the fact that Iosef Tarasov and his gang killed his new dog Daisy, which was the last gift of his dead wife, as they were beating him to shit and stealing his car. And the reason they killed the dog was that Iosef was annoyed that she was barking at them.
• In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the Big Bad Elijah Mills wants to sell the dinosaurs to the highest bidders, many of whom are callous, uncaring criminals, just to satisfy his own hunger for monetary riches.
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The first on-screen casualty of the Klowns' rampage is farmer Green's pet dog "Pooh Bear". Farmer Green outlives the dog for just a minute or so, though. In the scene where Mike and Dave return to the cotton candy room to find Debbie, you can see a noticeably smaller cocoon behind them, which is supposed to be the dog's.
• In The Killing Kind, Terry's first act of psychopathy after returning home is to strangle his mother's cat Penny to prevent it from meowing and giving him away while he is spying on Lori through her bedroom window.
• Little Shop of Horrors: As part of his musical number, Dr. Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. mentions murdering lots of puppies, fish, and cats before his mother noticed his "funny" behavior and suggested he put his sadism to more profitable use by taking up dentistry instead.
• Long Weekend: In addition to their unwarranted killing of the dugong (albeit due to mistaking it for something more dangerous like a shark), Peter and Marcia run over a kangaroo without a second thought, while Peter fires willy-nilly shots at ducklings and other creatures.
• M3GAN: Among M3GAN’s crimes is killing the neighbor’s ill-behaved dog after it attacked her and Cady, the little girl she is programmed to protect.
• In Man in the Attic, Slade literally kicks Harley's dog, which has been lovingly following him around ever since he joined the household, to drive it away from while he burns his bloodstained Ulster. From this point on, the dog goes from being slavishly devoted to him to being afraid of him.
• Mars Attacks!: The Martians kill dogs and birds in addition to humans. In particular, they seem to absolutely despise birds. They kill two birds during the film and also kill the president's dog. They also abduct a woman and her pet dog and swap their heads around for giggles. Finally, one of the classic Mars Attacks! cards shows one of the Martian invaders disintegrating a boy's dog in front of him, apparently for no other reason than just being a dick.
• The titular character in Mikey is a psychopathic nine-year-old boy who fed his friend’s pet frog to piranhas, breaks the neck of Jessie’s cat and places it under her boyfriend’s car to blame him for its death, and while attacking his foster mother he casually smashes a fish tank with a hammer letting them suffocate.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: The movie doesn't pull punches when showing the expedition's deployment of seismic charges into the jungle blowing the native mundane deer wildlife to giblets — it serves to make Kong's massacrous outrage and retaliation against the Sky Devils for carpet-bombing his home seem more pathic and understandable to the audience. Later in the movie, Lieutenant Colonel Packard shoots a distant Leafwing that was minding its business on sight, before he explicitly knew the creatures were dangerous — though ithere is some pragmatism to this action given the environment and it being better to be safe than sorry, it's one of the early signs that Packard is losing his marbles and is on his way to becoming a danger to the rest of the cast.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: A Bad People Abuse Monster Animals variation with Apex Cybernetics. As vicious as Skullcrawlers are, what Apex are doing with them — breeding them in captivity and then throwing them at Mechagodzilla to be brutally killed by the Mecha in test runs — is something that Apex's heroic counterpart Monarch would never even consider doing. It's also implied that Apex intend to at least make the attempt to cage, enslave, or kill any and all Kaiju that they can get their hands on.
• The Night of a Thousand Cats: Hugo treats his feline henchmen like total crap, violently grabbing one and tossing him over the fence and attempting to drown another in his swimming pool. Horrifyingly, none of this appears to be simulated.
• Norbit: After being repeatedly disrespected and cheated on by his wife Rasputia, the final straw for Norbit is when she intentionally runs over the neighbor's dog for simply looking at her. Even though the dog is hospitalized and crippled, she just laments the fact that she didn't succeed in killing it.
• Platoon: While patrolling the village, Bunny shoots an innocent pig for no good reason.
• Ring of Fear: After rejoining the circus, O'Malley constantly torments the tiger that he blames (along with Clyde Beatty) for his downfall and humiliation; doing such things as shooting it with a slingshot. His cruelty to the big cat will come back to bite him in the end: quite literally.
• In Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt, Romasanta plays a horrible trick on one of Theresa's captive birds. He jabs short twigs into its body to hinder its wings and make it "fly like a butterfly". When the out-of-control bird crashes into a tree and breaks its neck, his only comment is a callous "It was only a bird".
• Shoot to Kill: After taking a jeweler's wife and maid hostage to make him rob his own store, the killer brutally kills the family dog to show that he means business.
• Snatch. features its Big Bad, Brick Top, jabbing a dog with a stick to get it to compete in Beastly Bloodsports. Director Guy Ritchie included this scene after having a conversation with a Brazilian man who said that in his country, the worst kind of criminals are animal abusers (namely, dogs.) Additionally, Avi the Jewish gangster is willing to have a dog cut open to get a diamond out of its stomach, which horrifies his Psycho for Hire Bullet Tooth Tony. Ironically, in real life, Brick Top's actor Alan Ford is an animal rights activist.
• Spawn (1997): Jason Wynn uses his pet scorpions' terrarium as an ashtray. He doesn't actually extinguish his cigar on any of the scorpions, but the implication is obvious.
• Starkweather: The first act of sociopathy the young Charles Starkweather commits—at the Dark man's urging—is to stomp a toad to death.
• Strays (2023): Doug is a lazy, narcissistic Manchild who smokes all day, cheats on his girlfriend, only keeps poor Reggie out of spite, spends every day trying to get rid of him, and finally tries to kill him in the climax.
• The farmer in The Tale of the Bunny Picnic berates and insults the dog, refuses to feed him until he brings him a sack full of bunnies, and can't even be bothered to give him a name. He's the only truly villainous character in the special, and the only one who doesn't get a happy ending.
• The Swan (2023): The bully Ernie is gifted a rifle for his birthday; he and his best friend Raymond promptly shoot down over a dozen birds and hang them with a string. They then kill a swan and tie its wings to Peter, despite the latter's pleas that the swan is a protected species.
• Tales of Terror: In "The Black Cat", Montressor is not content with abusing his wife Annabelle, but also torments her pet cat, and would undoubtedly kill it if it ever stayed still long enough for him to get his hands on it. As might be guessed from the title, the cat provides him with his karmic comeuppance.
• A Taste of Killing and Romance has the introduction of Wong Cheung, a Blood Knight hitman sent to silence a witness' family. Him graphically killing his victim's mother and young daughter (both in a lengthy, drawn-out manner - the former suffocated by saran wrap while the latter gets force-fed a bottle of liquid detergent) already established him as a sadist, but the film went the extra mile by having Wong grab the family's Pomeranian, shoving it into a washing machine, and leave with the spin cycle at maximum. Despite the animal clearly being NOT on his Leave No Witnesses list.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: In the extended cut, the T-1000 stabs John Connor's dog Max to death in cold blood after his barking clued John and the T-800 in that the T-1000 was trying to trick them.
• Tiger Fangs:
  • Dr. Lang subjecting tigers to inhumane experiments (and that he releases the poor creatures so they can attack the rubber manufacturers) establishes him as a cruel individual.
  • Lang's accomplice Henry and his assistant are introduced tormenting a tiger, invoking Frank's ire.
• The titular characters of Tragedy Girls dissolve a (human) corpse in industrial lye, and casually admit that they had to practice making it to get the formula right, and had to go through a lot of stray cats and dogs before they finally got it. To make matters worse, one of the girls goes home to her oblivious father... who asks her if she's seen their cat lately.
• Troop Beverly Hills: During the girl scout troop Jamboree, Velda's Red Feathers troop cheats by misdirecting Phyllis's troop into a snake-infested swamp. After Annie drops some advice about which snakes are perfectly okay with water, they are scared out and in a stroke of luck, a skunk scares them again, causing them to take a shortcut and finish first, ahead of Velda's troop, allowing her rival troop to qualify for the final. In anger over the plan backfiring, Velda picks the poor skunk up by its tail and vows it's going to pay for helping her hated rivals win—that night we see she killed the skunk and made it into a hat.
• In The Uncanny, Valentine cements his position as a villain when he drowns Scat's three kittens (fortunately off-screen).
• In Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, Blanche's jealous and bitter sister Jane killed her pet bird and served it to her.
• The Wizard of Oz: Miss Gulch (the Wicked Witch's Kansas counterpart) is already a pretty bitter and vile harpy every second she's on-screen, but she cements herself as irredeemably evil by barging into the Gales' home with a court order so she can take Dorothy's beloved dog Toto to the pound to be killed (and if it was up to her, she would do it by boiling the poor little thing in her oven). Turns out some random dog bit her earlier in the day and she couldn't care about finding out which dog it was — she already hates Toto, so she just went to the sheriff (which she has some control over) and told him that Toto did it so she could get rid of him.

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