Evil Is Petty / Anime & Manga

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• Akame ga Kill!: The first arc of this manga features a noble couple who takes in common travelers to the capital before dragging them down into their Torture Cellar to torture them to death for fun. Their cute and seemingly innocent daughter Aria is just as twisted as the couple, and took a personal hand in torturing one of Tatsumi's friends, a girl named Sayo, to death. Why? Because Aria was pissed about Sayo having naturally smooth hair while she herself had to struggle with her own hair, and she didn't like Sayo's sassy attitude at all.
• Berserk:
  • Griffith is one of the most horrifying examples in the manga weight class. Everything he does, every sacrifice and morally questionable act he commits to, he does for the sake of his excessively idealized dream, which is...to have his own kingdom. Unlike a variety of other villains outside of Berserk and many within it, there isn't much all that sympathetic about his main motivator — no dead family to bring back, no poverty-stricken slums to restore, no desire to create a better world. He simply thinks that he deserves a kingdom, and post-godhood, he finally gets one... which is a utopian city with his hawk motif stamped all over it where everyone worships him as a savior and everyone who matters kisses his feet. Even before joining the God Hand, his pettiness showed through in acts such as ordering Guts to kill off a political rival who slighted him, and when things didn't go his way, he had quiet but catastrophic meltdowns that ruined his own future and innumerable others too.
  • Griffith’s reasons for betraying Guts and Casca in particular are the absolute epitome of this. His pride crushed after Guts not only leaves him ^* Something Griffith believed impossible since practically everyone else is blindly swept away by his magnetism but defeats him too. When after a year of being tortured and rendered lame, he sees that Guts and Casca still healthy and whole have started a relationship, Griffith snaps and takes horrific revenge upon them in the midst of the Eclipse. He ruined his two most loyal allies’ lives simply out of pure jealousy and hatred over the fact they would dare to love each other, rather than him alone.
  • Guts's adoptive father, Gambino, also takes a cake to this trope. He sold out his own adopted son to a pedophile mercenary named Donovan for one single night, for 3 silver coins. Donovan then proceeded to rape Guts outright, and both he and Gambino failed to exist for long after this came out. And why did Gambino do this to Guts? Because Gambino blamed him for his girlfriend Shisu's untimely death^note Which was due to a plague.
• Case Closed: The reason many villains of the week have to perform murder and widespread mayhem comes down to petty slights. One example is The Big Bad Mad Bomber of the Non-Serial Movie Countdown To Heaven, who turns out to be a famous painter, who remains Beneath Suspicion for most of the movie because he's an old man and he's wealthy and living a pleasurable life. The reason he's going around Tokyo murdering people and blowing up buildings? He's getting revenge on a company that built a condominium that is blocking the view of Mount Fuji from his home. He made his fame from replicating that view in his paintings, but the fact still remains that he doesn't care who gets caught as collateral damage in his retaliation.
• In Chainsaw Man, Makima's stated motivation is to use the Chainsaw Devil, which can erase concepts from history by devouring them to cause the end of things like war and hunger, creating a utopian society. Before the final battle, Denji asks her if Makima would also use this power to get rid of the concept of bad movies. Makima shrugs and answers in the affirmative.
• Prince Julio Asuka Misrugi in Cross Ange might as well embody this trope. In the entirety of his screen time, he has outed his sister Ange as a Norma, and sent her to a hellhole island to fight against the otherworldly DRAGON invaders. Then he lures her out by making their youngest sister Sylvia pull off a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, makes Sylvia attack Ange, and then he subjects her to a Kangaroo Court leading to a public lashing and hanging. All of this in order to get rid of her, quell any uprisings that might have been caused by the revelation of the family secret of harboring a Norma, and to reclaim the royal ring given to Ange. After that plot fails and Ange escapes, Julio jumps at the opportunity given to him by the true Big Bad, Embryo. That solution being extermination of all Norma, which naturally includes Ange. Mind you, Embryo is more focused on restarting creation as is, and he actually would prefer the Norma to serve him as his Battle Harem. Julio, however, would like nothing more than to destroy all the Norma and kill his own sister. This gets Julio killed, too, as once Embryo sees he's acting outside of his intended plan, he viciously kills him without a second thought.
• Death Note: While Light Yagami/Kira has much loftier ambitions, like ridding the world of all crime and becoming God of the New World, he nonetheless has shades of this and often indulges in unnecessarily cruel and petty acts either because someone criticized him or just because he can.
  • Most notably, he kills Lind L. Taylor on national television simply because he was pissed at Taylor for telling him that what he was doing was evil.
  • Then there's his murder of Naomi Misora, in which he tells her that he's Kira the moment before the Death Note takes effect, just to see the look of horror on her face as she realizes what's about to happen, and taunts her with offers to get her in touch with the Task Force, knowing that she can't do anything about it. Unlike all of his other victims, Light did all of that for no other reason than to be cruel.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Going hand in hand with his ego and Hair-Trigger Temper, Muzan Kibutsuji can't resist doing unnecessarily cruel or petty things to those around him, either because of minor slights or just because he can. Case in point: he brutally murdered two drunks just for being rude to him before going on to kill their female companion, who had done nothing, all while proclaiming his own perfection and superiority.
• Denjin N: Despite using the world's best men to prepare Misaki's idol group for the concert, Tadahiro's N personality kills one of them for slipping up the lyrics mid-dancing and then half of them for getting distracted because of that.
• In The Devil is a Part-Timer!, after letting The Hero Emi Yusa stay at his place the night before since she lost her wallet during an attack, the police bring Maou in for questioning regarding the incident. To get released, he calls Emi in to sign for him in the middle of work despite all his other options because it's his duty as an overlord to annoy heroes. Then there was the whole manner of having Lucifer prank call her while she was at work. Of course, these are the evilest things he's ever actually shown doing.
• A few Dragon Ball villains fit the bill quite well:
  • Commander Red, leader of the Red Ribbon Army. We're initially led to believe that he wants to use the Dragon Balls to Take Over the World. By the end of the saga, it turns out he only wants to use the balls to make himself taller, and he's perfectly willing to sacrifice every last soldier in his army to do so. And mainly because he thinks the Red Ribbons Army has the strength to conquer the world anyways, so he thinks using the Dragon Balls for that would be redundant. When his Dragon Staff Officer Black finds out, he's not pleased and promptly shoots him dead.
  • Mercenary Tao. For starters, after forcing a tailor to do a week's worth of work on his ruined uniform in three days, he refuses to pay him on the grounds that doing so would ruin his reputation as a cold, ruthless assassin, and kills him instead (he offers to "pay" him by carrying out a contract killing on anybody of his choice, only for the tailor to quite understandably balk at that). Not only that, but Word of God is that in the past, Tao killed Mr. Satan's master and beat Satan himself within an inch of his life simply because the two made fun of his hairstyle.
  • This is Lord Frieza's Fatal Flaw. Going hand in hand with his overwhelming arrogance, Frieza can't resist doing unnecessarily cruel things to those weaker than him, often just to prove he can. This became his downfall as it was his murder of Krillin in front of Goku — and then threatening to do the same to his son — that ultimately triggered Goku's ascension to Super Saiyan, and resulting in him being blown to pieces and left for dead. Even when he is brought back as a Villain Protagonist for the Tournament of Power, Frieza can't help but indulge in this: Upon finding out that Cabba is something of a student for Vegeta, he resolves to defeat and ring out Cabba for just that reason. Surprisingly, Frieza's beatdown of Cabba was arguably the least drawn out or brutal one he had handed out until that point, but even so, he tells the helpless Saiyan that he will hunt down his teammates next just to get a rise out of him.
  • Vegeta, during his Evil Prince days. For starters, his response to Goku giving him a bloody lip was to devolve into a massive Villainous Breakdown and try to blow up the Earth out of spite.
  • Dr. Gero's entire vendetta against Goku, which resulted in the Android and Cell Sagas, is simply because Goku cost him his job and funding when Goku destroyed the Red Ribbon Army... at least, in his early depictions and his initial appearances. Later material reveals his motivation goes somewhat deeper, and while it's still very myopic (his son may have died for Red Ribbon, but his son still died for a leader who didn't care about his men and a cause that would've made the world a worse place) and ultimately petty, it's at least more understandable.
  • Spopovich beats Videl within an inch of her life, to the extent Videl is crying in agony, purely because Mr. Satan, her father, beat him in the last tournament. It's even implied he let Babidi control him just so he could get back at Mr. Satan.
  • Beerus, the Big Bad of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. While more Ambiguously Evil, he has a history of destroying planets for pretty petty reasons, such as losing at video games or being denied food. In Dragon Ball Super, the Old Kai even explicitly describes Beerus' acts of destruction as pointless and petty.
  • Zamasu, part of the Big Bad Duumvirate of Super's Future Trunks Saga. When it comes down to it, everything he does during the saga is purely to get back at Goku for losing to him in a simple sparring match. It's even worse in the manga, where he never even meets Goku. He just sees his fight with Hit on Godtube and becomes furious at the idea of a mortal rising to the power of a god.
  • Goku Black, the other part of the saga's Big Bad Duumvirate. Before he was Goku Black, he was Zamasu, the Apprentice Supreme Kai of U10. After losing a sparring match with Goku and learning that he had access to god energy through his Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan form, he goes off the deep end and begins a plan to wipe out all the mortals in the multiverse. After using the Super Dragon Balls to take Goku's body, he teleported to Earth and personally killed Goku, who's trapped in his old body, and then butchered his family. Since he goes to Future Trunks' timeline after this, there was no reason for him to murder Goku or his family. He did it purely out of spite.
  • While making a movie, Barry Khan allows Gohan to be a stuntman and hopes that he'll be badly injured at the very least simply because Videl snubbed him when he tried hitting on her. He then tries to ruin Gohan's marriage by setting him up with Cocoa, taking pictures of her kissing Gohan, and then showing those pictures to Videl. Videl isn't fooled for a minute and shreds the pictures before shooting Barry down with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, remarking how pathetic it is that Barry is treated like royalty and still acts like an insecure little brat:
    Videl: Did it sting that much to be told I don't need your autograph? Does seeing Gohan stand out sting that badly? You get treated like royalty, but you have no self-confidence. How pitiful.
  • Broly. A ludicrously powerful Saiyan who managed to survive Planet Vegeta's destruction, his entire reason for his beef with the heroes...is because when he and Goku were babies, they were in the same ward, and Goku was crying. THAT'S IT. Broly is homicidally angry at Goku because he cried. Note that this only applies to Broly in the video game Dragon Ball Heroes; In Dragon Ball Super: Broly he is an Anti-Villain who was exploited and abused by Paragus and other villains, and underwent a Traumatic Superpower Awakening after coming to believe he killed his father by accident. He shows signs of a Heel–Face Turn later on when he develops a Friendly Rivalry with Goku.
• In Durarara!!, Izaya first shows how far he'll go to troll people by kidnapping a suicidal girl named Rio Kamichika to "prove" that, since she was scared, she's not really suicidally depressed and is just being a whiny Emo Teen (and then he invites her to prove him wrong by showing her a ledge to jump off of and dangling her from it). His second act of vile depravity? Breaking someone's cellphone.
• In Fairy Tail episode 162: Toby Horhorta has lost his sock (which was on a necklace he was wearing the whole time), Black Snake gestures to show him it's hanging from his chest. Toby starts sobbing and thanking Black Snake, only to have him rip it to shreds in front of his face for laughs. Toby also has anthropomorphic dog features, so this could also be a nod to the Kick the Dog trope.
• Food Wars!:
  • While she's not necessarily evil, Erina Nakiri's attitude at the start of the series (at least until her Dark and Troubled Past is explored in full) doesn't give her a very good reputation. She's haughty, overly-critical, and tried to deny Soma his entry into the school solely because he made a common dish instead of trying to be fancy like all of the other applicants (granted that Soma was being irreverent towards her, which she took as a personal offense). Her multiple efforts to get him expelled after he still manages to get in also help with this, and she makes a habit of beating down clubs that she finds unnecessary in order to make food labs (of which she has at least five). And then there's her Kick the Dog when she cut off ties with Ikumi Mito, just because she failed to defeat Soma.
  • Etsuya Eizan, the 9th Seat of the Council, is even worse. Case in point, he sets up a plan to crush Soma in the Fall Classic, sending out one of his subordinates to humiliate Soma's Friendly Rival Takumi, as he knows Soma won't stand for it and will try to avenge his defeat. When that fails, he tries to rig a culinary battle against Soma by bribing the judges, only to end up defeated when Soma provokes him into competing by asking him if he's afraid of fighting fairly. Why did he do all this? Because Soma interfered with the kaarage business he was trying to set up near his district, and because he refused to work under Eizan when offered.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the Big Bad Dante takes over people's bodies and has thousands of people die to make the Philosopher's Stone to use just to live longer, manipulating the Homunculi by lying about making them human, which she has no intention of doing. In addition, Dante also wants to take over Rose's body next so she can screw Ed, the 15/16-year-old son of her former lover (and possibly husband) Hohenheim, and is very abusive towards the Homunculi to the point that she is killed by Gluttony after she lobotomized him so he wouldn't think about anything besides eating.
  • In the manga and Brotherhood, Shou Tucker voluntarily sacrificed his own family for a research grant; first his wife, then his daughter and her dog. Brotherhood adds a scene after Ed's done beating the stuffing out of him and while Al's trying to comfort Nina/Alexander. Tucker just crawls up to his nearly-broken State Alchemist pocket watch on the floor and happily declares that he'll get to keep his job. Thankfully, Ed breaks the watch completely by kicking it out of Tucker's hand, saying there's no way in hell he'll get to keep his job after what he did.
• Ren Sohma from Fruits Basket is a selfish bitch who ruins the life of her daughter, Akito, the God of the Zodiac, and thus those of everyone surrounding her, purely because Ren was deathly jealous of how her husband, Akira, adored her. To the point of threatening Akira that she’ll abort Ren unless she’s Raised as the Opposite Gender. Envious of the attention Akito receives, Ren insists people should be worshipping her instead as she was the one who gave birth to Akito. Considering the horrifying consequences, Ren comes off as not just evil, but repulsively self-centered, vain, and pathetic.
  • Later in the manga, Ren finds out that Akito has a box, which a maid had fixed up to comfort Akito after Akira's death (Akito had been told that her father's soul was in it). Ren first sends Rin to steal the box for her, misleading Rin into thinking that she'll tell her how to break the Zodiac Curse if she does this, and leading to Rin being attacked and imprisoned by Akito (which Ren feels absolutely no remorse over), and then going to steal the box herself, threatening Akito at knifepoint. All of this for a box, and her justification simply being that everything of Akira's is hers by right. Akito hands the box over, only to reveal that it was completely empty the entire time. Akito and Ren had been at each other's throats over an ordinary, empty box.
• Dan in Genma Wars is a Jerkass bandit who loves robbing helpless peasants and make their lives even harder than they already are. He tricks one of the protagonists Gin into eating human flesh that was disguised as a roasted pig. This ends up costing Dan his life as Gin becomes so furious that he kills him for it. It's revealed shortly afterwards that it really was just a pig and he said it was human flesh just to screw with Gin.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: One other reason why Kaldus Coendera wanted to marry Aidra is becuase Bard has injured him in battle decades ago, and he's good friends with her, so Kaldus decides to rob Bard of everything he cherished along other plans.
• Inukami!: As if killing Kaoru and beating down the Inukami weren't enough, Jesei stoops to reading Yohko's diary aloud.
• Inuyasha: Naraku's only real motivation is his love/hate feelings for Kikyo and pure hatred for Inuyasha, although he doesn't want to admit that to himself. Even after discarding his human feelings, he had no real idea what he was going to do if he finally managed to end Inuyasha and his companions. But he still ruins or attempts to ruin the lives of seemingly everyone he encounters For the Evulz.
• Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?
  • Ai Nagumo reveals herself as this issue to why she’s a bully. She’s pissed that her basketball coach forced her to sit out essential games while Shiori got the lead in the team. Then Nagumo finds out the only reason their coach favors Shiori is because she’s having an affair with her father. Nagumo considered exposing the affair, but then she hears Shiori talking with her friend, revealing that she had planned to quit the basketball club because her grades have been dropping and that she considers Nagumo a better player than her, and was happy to leave the team to her. Instead of being happy and grateful towards Shiori, she was angry that Shiori was so happy and decided that exposing the affair would not be enough, so she decides to destroy Shiori's life.]]
    • This gets deconstruction by the end of the story because Nagumo's pettiness destroyed her and her friends and her parents' lives; the full instance of her bullying was revealed to the public, which destroyed her and her friends' reputations. Confident that she can escape without consequences, she smugly reveals to Shiori that her father was having an affair with the coach, which is why she wanted to destroy her life and left to go home confident that she can escape consequences by studying abroad, only to be confronted by her parents who revealed that her actions had destroyed their reputation. It finally hits her with the reality that her and her parents' lives have been destroyed and they are going to be living as outcasts, all because she wanted to hurt someone who didn't do anything wrong towards her.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: A lot of villains in the series are doing things For the Evulz. Here are some notable examples:
  • Steely Dan takes advantage of holding the protagonist's grandfather hostage by treating him like a lowly servant, having him clean his shoes and build him a human bridge over a small gap. Also, he overcharges Joseph for kebabs before attacking the heroes, and he takes as much pleasure from that as from any of the legitimate things he did to them. Once Steely Dan's left powerless thanks to the heroes defeating his Stand, Jotaro proceeds to pay back all the things he did to his grandfather and his friends. With interest.
  • Dio Brando is having fun with his Stand ability to stop time by killing a stray cat and messing around with bystanders' food. Even before he became a Stand user in Stardust Crusaders, he was especially this in Phantom Blood when he first met Jotaro's great-great-grandfather, Jonathan Joestar, making it his mission in life to ruin Jonathan's life — including murdering his dog, stealing his girlfriend's first kiss and gloating about it immediately afterwards, murdering his father and becoming a vampire. All this, just to cause Jonathan as much misery as possible.
  • Rubber Soul from Stardust Crusaders is another sterling example. His Stand, Yellow Temperance, lets him impersonate anyone perfectly... but he acts like a fool while doing so because he likes making the people he's copying look like idiots. Of course, this wasn't too bright a move since his bizarre behavior is exactly what clued Jotaro into the fact that "Kakyoin" wasn't what he seemed.
  • Enrico Pucci from Stone Ocean has shades of this, as when he's trapped behind a locked door during a rain of poison dart frogs a guard who comes across him panics and runs to get help instead of opening it as he requested. Pucci became so indignant at being ignored that he blinded the poor man with their poison and left him for dead.
• K from Karakuridouji Ultimo has no problem with killing five billion people, because it means he won't have to wait in lines as much
• Lady!!: The root of why Madeleine Waverly treats Lynn the way she does. She blames Lynn for everything under the sun while taking no responsibility for her own actions, repeatedly bars her from seeing her father and sister to the point of specifically telling the staff to forbid Lynn from seeing them on different occasions, constantly goads her kids into sabotaging Lynn's happiness at every opportunity, and manipulates both George and Richard to do the same. All because she wants George all to herself and can't stand the idea of Lynn having his attention even though she's one of his biological children.
• Major: Tetsufumi Egashira, the Chief Manager of the Kaido Baseball team, goes to extreme lengths to screw protagonist Goro Shigeno and prevent him from playing baseball, including blackmailing pretty much every major school with a baseball team into refusing him entry (forcing Goro to enroll in a school without a baseball club and start it himself), ordering one of the players to intentionally injure him during a friendly match, and during the regional tournament he's obsessed with breaking Goro either emotionally or physically (or both) with little care for winning the match itself or even using the players as tools for it. All because Goro refused to be his poster boy to increase Kaido's prestige since he never intended to play for them anyway.
  • Worse still, twenty years later in Major 2nd it's revealed that he's still bitter about it, and it's all but stated that the difficulties the Fuurin baseball team is going through since Goro's son Daigo entered the school are his doing, and he's clearly bent on getting the baseball club shut down (refusing the offer of Coach Kunitomo, thus leaving the team without a coach and a full roster of players, and appointing Yamaguchi as the advisor for the club when she clearly is not the person for the job). While the full reasons haven't been revealed yet, he's in all likeness trying to get revenge on Goro through Daigo.
• Muruta Azrael of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, who commits genocide against the genetically-enhanced Coordinators because he was slapped around by Coordinators once as a kid. He's also a misogynistic Bad Boss prick who seems to get off on belittling his subordinates. Granted, despite being a genuine Hate Sink, he originally comes across as a very intelligent — if rather cold and taciturn — commander... until he sees the power of the GENESIS, and he descends into Stupid Evil by ordering his forces to try and nuke the PLANT Colonies rather than focus on destroying the giant microwave laser that is going to be aimed at Earth.
• Roberto from Monster. Johan destroys lives like some kind of freakish artistry, but using a polite facade. Roberto kills people, commits acts of vandalism, and works as Johan's enforcer, while at the same time being sexist, creepy, petty, and rude.
• All for One from My Hero Academia is a petty jerkass on top of his general bastardness. For example, he deliberately picked Tenko Shimura for his plan just to spit in the legacy of Nana Shimura, and when he gave a Quirk to Yuga Aoyama he chose one he knew damn well would hurt the kid just because he liked the idea of him being in pain. His attack plan during the Final Battle, with his unstoppable array of Quirks, pretty much boils down to "kill everybody in the battlefield in the most violent ways I can think of because I hate the concept of "hope" they represent" and rubbing it in really hard on All Might's face that his efforts are useless. His obsession with doing this even as his body is self-destructing and he just cannot afford the time ends up being his ultimate doom.
• Naruto: Although he was The Dreaded and Shrouded in Myth in backstory, Madara Uchiha is striking in several aspects once he makes an appearance; he is strikingly powerful, to the point that Only the Author Can Save Them Now actually hits a Writer's Block... and yet, as a person beneath all that power and status, he's... well, a bit of a petty Jerkass. Though judging from his last bits of dialogue before his death, his dreams for peace, despite having been partly motivated by pettiness and pride (a not so very charming combination) as shown by his previous actions, were still nonetheless genuine to a degree—as shown by his admittance that his way was wrong, and accepting that Hashirama's ideals for peace was probably the correct path.
  • It says a lot that even the Nine-Tailed Fox, a self-proclaimed "living mass of malevolence", finds Madara to be too much of a douchebag to tolerate, though it certainly helped that he was also forcibly subjugated by him against his will. Enough that he's willing to unconditionally help the protagonist defeat him. Edo Tensei Hashirama is more sympathetic and believes that Madara is still lashing out in grief over his brother Izuna's death.
• One Piece: Many villains are shown to be despicable through how petty they are.
  • Vinsmoke Niji has pretty much established himself as the most spiteful of his siblings. When Sanji chastises him for not eating his food, he hurls the untouched meal at the family cook Cosette. When he's given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by Sanji, he responds by launching a kick at Sanji's head. He later beats up Cosette off-screen as recompense for Sanji's disrespect, with Sanji discovering the results. It's later deconstructed and justified in chapter 852: A combination of having his empathy removed in-utero by Judge to weaponize him, then having his worst flaws enabled since childhood, turned Niji into a bratty asshole who literally can't understand that what he's doing is wrong. While it doesn't excuse what he did, it paints his actions in a more tragic light.
  • There was no real reason for Orochi to hide the failed SMILES among Ebisu Town's garbage, other than the fact that their sadness/mournfulness and gloomy atmosphere bothered him.
  • Aside of working for a tyrannical pirate crew, Ulti in general is just a very rude and unpleasant jerk, never missing a chance to bark at others and insult them; even her brother Page One and Kaido himself don't escape her pettiness, and they're probably the only people she has even the slightest degree of concern or respect for. She also has no code of honor and Would Hurt a Child without hesitation, which is what drives the usually cowardly Nami to attack her outright rather than run.
  • None of the previous mentioned could topple the World Nobles. As the direct descendants of the World Government’s founders, they’re all given free rein to do whatever they want. And it’s speaks volumes that slavery and murder is like a walk in the park to them. Should anyone dare to stand up to them, let alone walk past them without bowing, you’ll either be riddled with bullets, or they’ll put a hit on you with Marine Admiral at their beck and call. Luffy couldn’t care less over their social standing after giving one of them a rightfully earned punch to the face, and this resulted in Kizaru overpowering Luffy and his crew, and Kuma separating them all, all because of an Asshole Victim shooting one of their friends.
    • In the past Sabo almost died because of a World’s Noble fury, who justified his attack because Sabo was waving a pirate flag on his boat, but felt more furious that a mere human dared to cross his ship in his path.
• Ratman: Though how evil she is is a bit debatable, Crea, the leader of the evil organization Jackal, ordered the titular hero (who is her underling) to cut the power to a restaurant because the waitress was rude and her food was late.
  Crea: If I had a bomb, I would have blown that place up!
  Shuto: You've said that five times already.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero:
  • Princess Malty Melromarc. Her Establishing Character Moment is to falsely accuse Naofumi of trying to rape her, after she stole all of his money and equipment, just for her own amusement. Later, she tries to have her younger sister Melty assassinated simply because Melty gave her a mild reminder that it was her duty to care about the kingdom, as the next in line for the throne. Later webnovel (and only in the webnovel) chapters reveal she was programmed that way by her true self, Medea Pideth Machina, an absolute narcissist of an evil goddess who intentionally seeds the worlds she plans on devouring with narcissistic heroes from completely alien worlds and daughters reality-warped into existence and created from her soul fragments, just to drag the brutal conflict out as long as possible. Note that this isn't a tactic to weaken worlds — she's strong enough to devour them at full-strength but simply enjoys the show. Also, she enjoys watching her own daughters pray to her to save them since she loves the feeling of subsequently betraying and murdering them.
  • Her father is almost as horrible; sure, he was broken when a group of beastmen raiders invaded his homeland and turned his sister into a sex slave. So what does he do? He endorses his country's slave trade specifically towards persecuting beastmen, and steals the heroes from every other country so they'll all be massacred by the recent demonic invasion. It takes a Humiliation Conga, usurpation from the throne, and the death of his (half-beastman) niece for the King to realize how petty and hypocritical he is.
  • Bisca T. Balmus, the Pope of The Three Heroes Church, a fanatical religion that solely worships the Sword, Spear, and Bow Heroes along with demonizing the Shield Hero whom they refer as "The Devil of The Shield". During the events of the story, The Three Heroes who were the object of the Churchs' faith wound up leaving a trail of pain and destruction in their escapades which were only resolved later on when Naofumi, the titular "Devil" of their religion passed through and not only fixed the initial problems caused, but also provide the populace with something much better before leaving. When the Church got fed up with the current crop of Heroes and planned to have them killed off so they could summon an entirely new set, Pope Bisca called out the Three Heroes for their actions. However, because of how hard Naofumi worked to undo all of the baggage that the public had levied against him, Biscas' reason for wanting him dead showed how delusional and shallow he was: when Naofumi stopped by The Three Heroes Church to pick up some Holy Water for treating Raphtalias' curse, the Nun tried to scam him with lesser-quality Holy Water; Pope Bisca had resolved this issue by giving Naofumi the Holy Water he wanted to purchase, but Naofumi didn't immediately say "Thank You" for it.
• Rosario + Vampire: Gyokuro Shuzen actually rivals Ren Sohma in terms of being a petty Evil Matriarch. She helped set up the anti-human organization Fairy Tale and embarked on a mission to Kill All Humans all because she was jealous that her husband Issa paid more attention to his mistress Akasha Bloodriver than he did to her, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice her own daughters along the way. On top of it all, her reasons for wanting to exterminate humanity are not out of any real Fantastic Racism, but simply to spite Akasha's dream of human/monster coexistence.
• All of Nehellenia's motivation in Sailor Moon in the Stars arc revolves around making Usagi suffer because she is deeply envious of the happiness Usagi has, leading Nehellenia to kidnap Usagi's boyfriend and friends and tries to erase Usagi's daughter out of existence.
• The titular character of Samon the Summoner is this and proud of it, as he's made it his mission to corrupt Teshigawara by constantly harassing her with the demons he summons just because he finds her goody two shoes attitude annoying.
• Soul Eater: Medusa constantly makes grand speeches about change and progress and acts quite smug, but whose "coolness" tends to extend to things like physically and mentally abusing her own child, making hurtful and taunting remarks toward others for little reason other than to be a bitch, and having a grand plan that amounts to fucking up the world because she doesn't want people to be happy.
• Summer Wars: Love Machine is an A.I. that likes to play games but is a Sore Loser who will cheat if it's at a disadvantage. It treats every OZ account as a plaything to mess with, causing chaos in the real world by messing with accounts used for essential services (such as causing traffic jams, creating false alarms with emergency services, shutting off heart monitors, and even dropping satellites onto nuclear power plants). When it starts to lose to Natsuki at a game of Hanafuda, it tries to drop a satellite onto her family's home out of spite. Unlike most examples of this trope, Love Machine's pettiness actually serves to make it terrifying, because it's completely indiscriminate in its actions. Whether that's causing minor inconveniences or endangering people's lives, everything is just one sick and twisted game to it.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Grimlock arranges for Laughing Coffin to kill his wife, all because he hated how much more confident and assertive his previously meek and submissive wife was becoming. Both Kirito and Asuna are rightfully appalled and disgusted.
  • Nobuyuki Sugou dips into this during his first meeting with Kirito. After revealing his Arranged Marriage with Asuna, he gloats to Kirito's face that there's nothing he can do to stop it, and mockingly invites him to their wedding just to twist the knife. He takes great delight in describing Kirito's reaction to said wedding to Asuna, openly admitting he barely stopped himself from laughing at it.
  • While Kyouji Shinkawa had a number of factors that drove him off the deep-end, namely his shitty real life and the influence of his evil brother Shouichi, what ultimately triggers him plotting with his brother to recreate SAO's death game in GGO was that his character build was screwed over by bad advice he followed from a Jerkass pro player that spread bad information on purpose, knowing that an upcoming patch would screw whoever followed his advice over. Said player ends up being the first victim of "Death Gun". Kikuoka is in disbelief when he learns that part of the reason several people have died or nearly died is because someone couldn't stand having a sub-optimal character in a video game.
  • Quinella brainwashing and forcing immortality on skilled swordsmen and criminals so that they can enforce her control is one thing, but her doing the same to some seemingly random girl with a knack for Wind Sacred Arts just so she can have someone to operate an elevator is where you truly realize how low her opinion of the Underworld's residents is.
• Trigun's Big Bad Knives Million is very much this, in spite of all of his actually sympathetic and understandable hatred of humans, he still devolves into a Big Brother Bully Psychopathic Manchild when things don’t go his way or he gets particularly offended. Case in point when Vash shoots him in both the manga and anime (or just even point his gun at him in the former) Knives despite having a Healing Factor and Super-Toughness carries on like a big child over the fact Vash would dare to do something like that to him. He also kills or maims his own loyal subordinates whenever he gets upset. Knives’ hatred of Rem is especially petty as he acts like she “poisoned” Vash’s mind with her altruism and prevented Vash from being loyal to him even though the only reason he’s alive in the first place is because of her love and kindness.
• In the Tokyo Ghoul franchise, pettiness seems to be quite common among the villains.
  • In the Prequel Jack, Lantern is revealed to have targeted and killed Taishi Fura's friends because their delinquent behavior annoyed her, and she resented them for not appreciating their good fortune at being born human.
  • Yamori was already vile enough to begin with, being a brutal Torture Technician that enjoyed making people suffer, but when Kaneki refuses to go along with his Sadistic Choice, and Nico expresses unease over this particular "game", Yamori throws a temper tantrum and kills both hostages. He then slaps Nico on his way out, blaming them for ruining his fun.
  • In the sequel :Re, Nimura Furuta is incredibly petty and cruel in a number of ways. He belittles others in hypocritical ways just to upset them, makes sexually suggestive threats, and when Eto mocks him for being a Bastard Bastard, he swears to punish her for this slight. He later shows up with a "present" for her: he's murdered her editor and cooked the body into a pate, bringing it to her as lunch. For all his skill and brilliance, he's still just a petty young man with serious Daddy Issues that has to have the final word.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • In a filler arc, Siegfried is a CEO of an obscured, failing company that was not able to compete against KaibaCorp and is highly resentful against Kaiba because of it. So Siegfried wants to bring down Kaiba and his company by cheating and using cyber-crime to crash KaibaCorp's computers and cost Kaiba valuable time and money, both as a last ditch attempt to save his company and a way to lash out at the man who he holds responsible.
  • In the manga Yu-Gi-Oh! D Team ZEXAL, there was the unsubtly named Master Evil. His motivations for trying to destroy the Duel Carnival with a series of Death Traps (possibly murdering his two henchmen Fusion Guard and Sydney Cross for losing in the process) was because he had been banned from the last Carnival for cheating (despite this, after finally losing to Yuma and being arrested, he did admit that the duel was fun).
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions Kaiba more or less puts the entire world at great peril JUST for the single-minded goal of dragging the soul of the pharaoh back to the living realm. Why? Because he's salty that he never defeated him and he wants a rematch. Even after the conflict is resolved and he realizes the pharaoh will never return to the living world again and has to face the reality of simply moving on, he just builds a machine that lets him travel into the afterlife and stalks the pharaoh's soul down. He even leaves his brother in charge of his company due to the chance that he may never return, and the movie ends on an ambiguous note and leaves us to wonder if he makes it back. He's getting his rematch one way or another.
    • Exclusively in the dub version, when Kaiba crushes a metal tin of water out of frustration he immediately demands whoever designed it to be fired since "Kaiba Corp products shouldn't bend that easily"

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