Hate Sink / The Karate Kid

"Hey Kyler!!!"
[Loudly leaves his tray on the table]
"Why don't you shut the hell up and stop being such an asshole!"

— Miguel Diaz

The Karate Kid is a story about bullying victims fighting back against their tormentors, so naturally there are many absolute scumbags that unfortunately exist in the Miyagi-verse.

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The Karate Kid Films

Introduced in The Karate Kid film series

• Appearing in the films and Cobra Kai:
  • The LaRusso Trilogy: John Kreese appears in the films as nothing more than a bullying thuggish asshole, both to Daniel and to his own students. Although Johnny is The Heavy of the first film as Daniel's school bully, rival and Final Boss at the tournament, it's made very clear that Kreese's awful teaching is the real reason why Johnny acts the way he does, and in many ways Johnny is another of Kreese's victims. This is confirmed in the beginning of Part II, where Kreese tries to choke Johnny out because he lost to Daniel, while Part III shows that even losing all of his students hasn't taught him a thing, as he still blames Daniel and Mr. Miyagi for all of his problems. He also uses racist slurs against Miyagi. Although Kreese appears to be as bad as he was in the films when he reappears on Cobra Kai, considering that he takes advantage of Johnny's sympathy and willingness to give him a second chance in order to steal Johnny's dojo, Kreese eventually subverts this trope with Season 3's reveal of his tragic backstory, and he even gets a few Pet the Dog moments in his relationship with Tory, though he remains a nasty piece of work with only a handful of redeeming qualities.
  • Part II: Chozen Toguchi, in stark contrast to Johnny, is ultimately shown to be worse than his mentor and even takes over as the film's Big Bad after Sato's Heel–Face Turn. Despite his obsession with honor, Chozen is himself a liar and a cheat, and he proves to be a Dirty Coward when he refuses to help Daniel save a little girl's life in the middle of a hurricane. Having an Irrational Hatred for Daniel from the moment he meets him, Chozen constantly blames Daniel for "insulting his honor" every time he is exposed for the fraud he is. He also attacks Daniel and harasses Kumiko with no provocation multiple times, before finally threatening to kill Kumiko in order to force Daniel to fight him to the death. Again, this is subverted in Cobra Kai, as Chozen has undergone a Heel–Face Turn in the decades since we last saw him, and sincerely regrets his past actions.
  • Part III: Mike Barnes is a Psycho for Hire who gleefully participates in Kreese and Silver's revenge plot beating up both Daniel and Jessica to force Daniel to compete in the All Valley so he can beat and humiliate him on a grand stage. Unlike Kreese and Silver, Barnes has no personal vendetta with Daniel, and his only motive for his actions is a combination of money and sadism. Once again, this is subverted in Cobra Kai as Barnes has gone through an offscreen Heel–Face Turn and does his best to help Daniel take down Silver.
• Films only:
  • Part III: Snake is one of the lackeys hired by Terry Silver to help Mike strong arm Daniel into competing. And unlike Dennis who doesn't do much talking and only assists Barnes and Silver in their plans, Snake uses his mouth to rub in Daniel's face how weak he is compared to his bosses, even though he's clearly in a level before him. He has his own style of taunting and also helps Mike to abandon Daniel and Jessica Andrews at the edge of a cliff to drown when the tide comes in and it is Snake's idea to force Daniel to hand over the Bonsai tree too even after Daniel agreed to fight, threatening to drop Jessica to do so. Snake gets a moment during the tournament when another taunt results in Daniel getting the drop on him a moment and he looks to be on the verge of tears when Daniel defeats Mike.
  • The Next Karate Kid:
    • For most of the film, Ned Randall rivals Johnny in his relentless bullying and taunting. Ned constantly harasses Julie Pierce to try to force her to go out with him while making her look like a troublemaker using his position in the school's Alpha Elite and even gets her in trouble with the police too—while also having them take her pet hawk Angel as well. When Eric McGowen is standing up to him—both with his harassment and when Ned gets a student injured in a bungee jumping stunt, Ned also targets him by means of forcing him into a fight where he beats him down—and before that, taunts and tries to get him to push him off the roof of the school too. By the end, while he cheats during his fight with Julie by throwing sand in her face, Ned's willing to back off not only when she defeats him, but also finally sees how much of a toxic and vile influence Colonel Dugan was on his own behavior too.
    • Colonel Paul Dugan himself is the instructor of Alpha Elite who much like Kreese insists on his students using extremely aggressive and militaristic tactics. He either knowingly or unwittingly looks the other way whenever Ned taunts; torments and gets Julie in trouble and has Ned beat the crap put of Eric for defeating Dugan while sparring earlier. Dugan also berates Ned for his defeat at Julie's hands and also the boys for not wanting to challenge her after, but then they all look down upon Dugan once Mr. Miyagi summarily kicks his ass.
    • Aside from Dugan and his personal squad of goons, the workers at a gas station come off as one-dimensional bullies who try to pick a fight Mr. Miyagi for the unforgivable sin of calming down a mean Doberman. Naturally, Mr. Miyagi does not want trouble, but when they refuse to leave him alone and start to harass Juile, Mr. Miyagi was once again forced to fight back against them.
  • 2010 film: Master Li is this film's Kreese Expy who also instills the same strict and vicious methods toward his karate students. During the tournament, he also has Cheng and his other students perform illegal moves on Dre Parker and it is even more egregious here since Dre is younger than Daniel. Once Dre wins though, Li's students defy him by bowing to and showing Mr. Han respect for his way more honorable methods.

Cobra Kai

Introduced in Season 1

• Kyler Park. Unlike the Grey-and-Gray Morality setup that most of the other characters have, Kyler is clearly written to be as unlikable as possible and has little to no redeeming traits. Even when Cobra Kai students start falling under He Who Fights Monsters, they are still not as awful as Kyler. Season 3 reaffirms that the guy hasn't changed one bit and if anything makes him even worse, as he deliberately attacks Miguel's back during the LaRusso home invasion even though Miguel had just recovered from a life-threatening spinal injury. While he eventually devolves into more of a comic relief punching bag in the later seasons, he is, as Eli states in the Season 5 Final Battle, still the same Insufferable Imbecile as he was throughout the entire show—with his only possible redeeming qualities being that he is affable with his Cobra Kai teammates and doesn't approve of Terry Silver cheating his way in the tournament. Even then, he tries to take credit for his former sensei's downfall.
• Kyler's main henchman and former best friend Brucks isn't any better either, with his distinctively annoying voice and going along with Kyler's horrible antics (he WAS the one who coined the "Rhea" nickname to Miguel). When one of his former victims, Hawk, gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown during a recruiting match, it's very hard to feel sorry for him after what he did in Season 1.
• Yasmine is no doubt, an unrepentant bitch who thrives off of cruel in-person gossip (a prime example being a snide remark on Eli's lip) and posting hate comments on social media (at least throughout Season 1). It's all too satisfying to see Aisha give her a well-deserved front wedgie, which thankfully humbles her to a greater degree—to the point where she becomes a nicer person (she still has her moments though) and fully averts from this trope altogether.
• Counselor Blatt is a prime representation of the Adults Are Useless trope. She clearly doesn't have a clue how to deal with teenage students (especially regarding the bullying epidemic at West Valley High), and her decisions tend to make things worse rather than better. She also represents the Political Correctness Is Evil trope, as she cares more about students using the buzzwords she wants them to use than questioning every detail of bullying incidents that occur in the school. Throughout Season 3, Hawk uses her incompetence as a PR pawn against the Miyagi-Dos during the ongoing karate war—which only infuriates them further. What makes this tragic is that it's also Truth in Television that school staff members (particularly those dealing with bullying issues) tend to be quite terrible at their job, making Counselor Blatt no different. While, unlike most examples on this page, Blatt clearly means well and isn't really a bad person, her gross incompetence is obviously designed to make her extremely frustrating to watch.
• Tom Cole is portrayed as Daniel's sitcom arch-nemesis and business rival in the automotive industry, but he doesn't have the sympathetic qualities that Daniel's actual archenemies (Johnny, Kreese, and Silver) have. He was actually more of an amusing Jerkass in the first season, but that goes out the window in Season 3 when he outright tries to take over LaRusso Auto just to come out on top. When he's not busy providing Kick the Dog moments to Daniel and outright wanting to rub Daniel's troubles in the face by buying his company, Daniel himself knows just how much of a crook he is behind the scenes—with his bogus prices and poor treatment of Anoush. It really says something when Cole dismisses Miguel's near-fatal injuries and Robby being sent to juvie as a throw away snark to piss off Daniel even further.

Introduced in Season 2

• Mitch, AKA Assface AKA Penis Breath is the textbook Fat Bastard in the series. Introduced as a new recruit and eventually a muscle to Hawk's gang in Cobra Kai, he gleefully goes along with their antics (i.e., bullying Demetri, trashing the Miyagi-Do dojo, jumping Nathaniel after the car wash, messing around Golf n' Stuff) — even going as far as to become hostile to his friend, Chris, when the latter defects to Miyagi-Do out of disillusionment. While he seemingly redeems himself after Kreese kicks him out of Cobra Kai and subsequently joins Johnny's new Eagle Fang dojo, and even gets one or two brief moments where he isn't a total jerk/idiot (like encouraging Demetri to get back up during the house fight), it's all rendered moot late in Season 5 when he outright betrays the people that cared for him, simply because he "didn't even wanna leave [Cobra Kai] in the first place," citing snacks, swag, smoothies, equipment, and chicks as his reasons for defecting. Even Mitch's excuse of constantly being called "Penis Breath" is shallow when he's never shown speaking up about it, and continues to side with Cobra Kai even when Kyler himself calls Mitch "Penis Breath"; this ends up being All for Nothing when he too is convinced to leave alongside his fellow students upon Silver being exposed and defeated.

Introduced in Season 3

• Rodney, the landlord in Tory's apartment complex, is a sleazy jerkass who threatens to evict her for not paying her rent on time. That on its own may be standard procedure for any landlord, but he shows no sympathy towards Tory's situation with her sick mother and (worse yet) attempts to use the rent issue to pressure her for sexual favors. When Tory tries to retaliate against him, he points out that he can call her probation officer if she doesn't go along with it. He gets his much-deserved comeuppance when Kreese threatens the man with a cigar chopper after Tory tells her sensei about her living situation.
• In Kreese's flashback, we have David, who basically picked on Kreese for just looking at his girlfriend Betsy (not to mention repeatedly calling him a freak, mocking his mother's suicide, crumpling a U.S. Army pamphlet, tripping Kreese, hitting his own girlfriend, and finally he and his friend assaulting Kreese in a two on one fight). It doesn't get any more cathartic than Kreese himself being able to beat both of them up AND steal David's girlfriend in the process.
• Captain George Turner fully embraces this once his true colors are revealed when his squad is imprisoned. He abandons his responsibilities as a CO, proving himself to be a callous, self-serving, borderline sociopath who cares only about himself, and goes all the way to give a series of Kick the Dog moments to Kreese — first by rub the mission's failure in Kreese's face, and (when Kreese volunteers to fight him in Silver's place) bluntly reveals Betsy's death to Kreese to screw with his head.

Introduced in Season 4

• Unlike Anthony LaRusso and later Kenny Payne (both sympathetic characters: the former who at least has the excuse of being a Peer-Pressured Bully due to family insecurity, the latter wanting an outlet to express his vengeance from the bullying done to him), Zack Thompson has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He's arguably the worst out of Anthony's gang bullying Kenny, with most of their cruelest actions toward Kenny masterminded by him (who isn't seen to show any regret for his antics). It's really saying when Zack's cruel to both Kenny and Anthony, even though the latter is supposed to be "friends" with him (the extent to which he belittles and insults Anthony goes well beyond Vitriolic Best Buds, to the point that you'd wonder why they're even friends to begin with).
• Tory’s aunt Kandace exist solely to show what kind of adults Tory has to deal with in her life. After all, she's an unrepentant criminal who cheats the system and tries to skim off of her sister's disability checks while waiting for her to die and scheming to get custody of her nephew, even though she doesn't even remember his name (Brandon), and openly taunts Tory about the latter's poor odds against her in court. Despite having only one scene, it's telling that this is a Jacob Marley Warning of what Tory (who has proven her Ax-Crazy credentials several times over by that point) might become had she not recognized the empathy that Amanda LaRusso has for her and sought the help that she needs.

Introduced in Season 5

• Miguel starts off believing that his biological father, Hector Salazar, is a loving family man, but learns the hard way that he is just as bad as Carmen describes him, due to his fixation on business and will do anything to ensure his (unscrupulous) businesses stay afloat, never mind the costs involved. You could say he only appears in the series just to show how Johnny is the right father figure for Miguel and the right man for Carmen.
• Miguel goes to a seedy bar to meet the man who he thinks he's "Hector Salazar", but he's not. He's just a random guy who threatens him with a gang beatdown if he doesn't leave. It may be a short scene, but Miguel's interaction with the shady guy was to make us think that he might be his father (given how Carmen described him as a criminal) and to show how Miguel could be in serious danger, now that he's in Mexico. However, this possible gang leader is just as unlikable as all the other jerks in this series, just by cussing out and threatening Miguel.
• Elizabeth Anne-Rooney isn’t exactly the most likable person to be around, as demonstrated by her callous attitude and referring to Amanda as "Babe Ruthless", despite Amanda clearly not wanting to be reminded of her past moniker. And that’s not mentioning Jessica resenting her for stealing her boyfriend in Part III.
• Sensei Kim Da-Eun exists solely to make Tory's life a living hell all because she does not live up to the standards of the Way of The Fist's philosophy of "no mercy". While Kreese and Silver have their own redeeming moments that fleshed out their character arcs, Da-Eun stands out as one of the worst senseis in the series with nothing positive about her and her failure-intolerant mindset, coupled with Corporal Punishment (through physical and emotional pain) as a means to discipline students is akin to that of tiger parenting.