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Beard of Evil

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Fear foreign ferocious, fiendish fellows featuring fine, fashionably felonious facial follicles.

Dave: How can you have a goatee without shaving? Does it just materialize?
Male Helen: Well, yes. I'm evil.
— Narbonic

A man with a beard is a man to be feared. What is it about bad guys and facial hair? For some reason, we often take being clean-shaven as an indicator of being strait-laced and, under more traditional morality, a good person, pure of spirit. In older, simpler days, a traditional hero would not even have five o'clock shadow, even if he's been on the run and well away from his shaving mirror for a week.

Conversely, a man with facial hair is less pure, at the very least a Darker and Edgier Anti-Hero — more often, he's an outright villain, and his chin is deliberately contrasted with the depilated chin of the hero.

Note that this generally applies to small, well-groomed beards, especially goatees. Having a huge bushy beard turns one into a Nature Hero, sailor, grizzled old prospector or Boisterous Bruiser. Except, of course, for the beards recommended by certain religions that are in the public focus at the moment.

The characters who sport a Beard of Evil are usually either the Big Bad or a second-in-command. This may play into the fact that in both western and eastern culture, goatees are traditionally worn by members of the aristocracy, and Aristocrats Are Evil.

The Beard of Evil has a long history of being associated most closely with the Evil Twin or Evil Counterpart, and you probably already know why. It also scores extra evil points if combined with a shaven head. (Anybody with a bald head and a beard is pretty much guaranteed to be a card-carrying villain. Blame Alex Raymond and Anton LaVey.)

Satan is also frequently depicted with a goatee (which probably came from depictions of Goethe's Mephistopheles as a 16th-century gallant).

A subset of Good Hair, Evil Hair. Not to Be Confused with Growing the Beard or Manly Facial Hair. See also Dastardly Whiplash.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • In a Priceline ad William Shatner plays both his normal helpful negotiator self and his Evil Twin who's trying to trick people into paying too much for hotel rooms. Guess which one has a beard.

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad, beards are a staple of evil wizards.
  • Emperor Ganishka from Berserk has a massive but immaculately-groomed beard that fits with his general 'Eastern tyrant' aesthetic. It also serves to conceal the Red Right Hand (a disturbingly wide mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family) that marks him as an Apostle of the Godhand, and creates a suitably impressive visual effect when he activates his Super Smoke powers.
  • Bleach: The most distinctive feature of Yhwach is his sideburns, which extend all the way to his mustache. He's explicitly described to be even more wicked than Aizen, who in that same sentence is described to be evil incarnate.
  • Blue Exorcist: Mephisto Pheles has one impressively sharp, blue, goatee. Interesting, considering what his name is an obvious pun off of. Whether or not he is evil however, has yet to be fully revealed.
  • In episode 12 of Den-noh Coil beards start appearing on the (pre-adolescent) main characters. These beards are actually Illegals, virus programs that occasionally cross over into reality and are generally antagonistic. These particular Illegals are sentient, forming their own mini-civilizations on each person's face and revere the person they exist on as gods. They then go on to launch missiles and wage civil war on each other and, once that's stopped, "interplanetary" war. After realizing the futility of war, the Illegal beards leave their hosts to find their Promised Land.
  • "That Man" from Excel♡Saga is a Yakuza thug with a beard, the only recurring character with facial hair and the real leader of ACROSS, making him the closest thing the show had to a Big Bad.
  • In The Familiar of Zero when he arrives, Ward is shown a few times in flashbacks where he acts kind to the main character, and has no beard. However, in the present, he has a beard, and is, well, evil.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou sports a sharp, blue goatee to complete his Byronic character. He isn't exactly pure evil, but definitely counts as a Manipulative Bastard willing to get innocents mixed to his pursuit of vengeance.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Dr. Hell from Mazinger Z and Mazinkaiser is the Mad Scientist Big Bad and he has a long, bushy, bristly, white and positively epic Beard Of Evil. In Great Mazinger, The Dragon Great General of Darkness/Ankoku Daishogun had a beard warned he was NOT to be messed with. King Vega, Big Bad from UFO Robo Grendizer was the only on the side of the evil guys had a beard. His was bristle but well-groomed, though.
  • Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. That particular style seems to be a favorite of Magnificent Bastards. In the spoof fan video Evangelion: ReDeath, he proudly announces he spent millions in research on the ultimate pimp beard.
  • One Piece: Eventually, Blackbeard finally grows one of these. Brownbeard, has three of them, even. Funnily enough, the original, Whitebeard, only had a mustache (though this is a case of Lost in Translation: the Japanese for beard means any kind of facial hair).
  • Panzer World Galient: Big Bad Marder has a very prominent goatee.
  • That first enemy that appears in Rurouni Kenshin wanting to take over the Kamiya dojo and claiming to be the Battousai.
  • Lordgenome is about the only human on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with any significant amount of facial hair. He's the main villain of the first half. (And it seems to be fireproof, given that it isn't too badly damaged when he gets serious and his head bursts into flames.)
    • His beard also gets significantly larger and begins to curl at the ends as he gets angrier (most notably when his head bursts into flames).
  • In the Virtual Nightmare arc in Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lecter has a typical fiendish goatee.
  • Jose, in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds definitely counts, his long Father Time style beard dropping down past his waist.

    Asian Animation 
  • Motu Patlu's main antagonist, John the Don, has a noticeable goatee.
  • Yamucha's-Kung Fu Academy features a gang of squid thieves whose leader has a beard resembling a five-o'-clock shadow.

    Comic Books 
  • The Adventures of Peter Wheat: One of the main villains from the Hornet Kingdom is the Grand Wizard, who has a black beard. He spends his time trying to help his daughter to destroy the Wheat Kingdom.
  • Chapman has a full beard in the Animorphs graphic novels, something that was never mentioned in the books (and was absent in the TV series). While Chapman himself isn't evil, he's controlled by a Starter Villain Yeerk.
  • While the titular hero himself might sport a trim goatee, Iron Man also plays it straight with Stane, who has a full beard and a bald head. And, in The Ultimates he has an evil brother, Gregory Stark, who also has a goatee. Blonde, naturally.
  • Serial killer/rapist Mr. Gone from The Maxx combines Bald of Evil with a wild Beard Of Evil. After a Time Skip during which he does a Heel–Face Turn, he no longer has any facial hair.
  • Rasputin in Hellboy has a Beard Of Evil and Bald of Evil, as contrasted with Hellboy himself, who combines Topknot and baldness with a Soul-Patch-and-Muttonchops Combination of Moral Ambiguity.
  • Seven Soldiers features the nefarious Subway Pirates, rival factions of which are led by the barbaric Allbeard (whose incredibly thick, long beard covers up his face) and the slick Nobeard (who has a Bald of Evil and is incapable of growing hair anywhere on his body). Mentions of other pirates from bygone eras of subway privateering are also made, including luminaries like Falsebeard and the like. For added hilarity, it's commonly accepted that Allbeard and Nobeard represent Alan Moore and Seven Soldiers writer Grant Morrison, famously fur-faced and bald, respectively.
  • Marvel's Avengers old time villains Count Nefaria and Graviton.
  • Empowered: Willy Pete, as a fire elemental, has a beard made of flame. "Evil" is rather understating it.
  • Similar to the Star Trek example, in the Transformers Mirror Universe Shattered Glass, Rodimus has a goatee. See.◊ Said universe also provides an example with the evil Alpha Trion, although the regular Alpha Trion has similar facial hair.
  • Referenced in a universe-hopping arc of Cable & Deadpool. "How do I know you're not the anti-Siryn? Then again, you're not sporting the alternate-universe mandated evil goatee.."
  • Superman:
    • Kryptonite Nevermore: Minor villain Ferlin Nyxly has a goatee. It is not a big surprise that he becomes a criminal.
    • Minor villain Amalak the Space Pirate was originally a rather forgettable-looking clean-shaven guy with a red haired crew cut. In his final appearance, though, he had let his hair and beard grow out all scraggly, and it made him ten times scarier-looking than he had ever been before. Sadly, he got Killed Off for Real at the end of that story, and took his cool creepy beard with him. A Post-Crisis version of Amalak was introduced in 2007 storyline The Third Kryptonian. With the cool beard, naturally.
    • Inverted by the pre-Crisis version of Earth-3, home of the Justice League's Evil Twins - there, Lex Luthor's Good Twin Alexander Luthor sports a goatee.
    • General Zod, after the comics finally adopted the Terence Stamp look.
    • One version of Brainiac sported a goatee.
  • Ra's al Ghul of Batman fame often sports a beard of some kind. Exactly what form it takes is very Depending on the Writer, but at several points he has been portrayed with what can only be described as a Fu Manchu beard, or two straight tufts on either side of his chin.
    • Professor Hugo Strange combines this with Bald of Evil.
    • Captain Stingeree wears a beard to complete his pirate look.
  • Iznogoud: The title character is the only one of the three primary characters to have a beard (Wa'at Alahf has a moustache and stubble, the Caliph is clean-shaven), and is by far the most evil of the three.
  • The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an inversion, as it's the beard itself that is the antagonist instead of the man it's attached to.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): The villain Hypnota invokes this by wearing a goatee and mustache, which started out as part of her act as a cross-dressing stage magician before she got shot in the head by accident and lead to believe her own sister tried to murder her. Even when wearing clothes that do nothing to hide that they're physically a woman Hypnota still wears the goatee.
    • The Earth-One version of Angle-Man has such distinctive cliche villain facial hair that his mask does nothing to disguise his identity.
  • The Adventures of Aero-Girl: The Bearded Lady of the Three Ring Gang is a Rare Female Example.
  • Batman: Black and White: In "The Black and White Bandit", the villain has a distinctive forked goatee with a white streak.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 
  • Queen of All Oni: Lung, apprentice of Daolon Wong, has a Fu Manchu mustache which he fiddles with at one point, and is responsible for inflicting Cold-Blooded Torture on Jade.
  • In the Anton Zarnak fanfic, "The Serpent Rises," Zarnak faces a coven of sinister occultists from different sources, and is rather sardonic about the fact almost all of them have shaven heads and goatees, as if it were a uniform.
  • The tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 has a home brew version called "Brighthammer 40k," where the endless GRIMDARK of the Warhammer universe is flipped on its head into NOBLEBRIGHT, and everyone is a generally pleasant, good group of people to be around. The Emperor of this NOBLEBRIGHT (yes, spelled like that every time) universe inverts the idea of a Beard of Evil — he wears a Goatee of Good, and is something like a million times more upstanding and noble than his Warhammer counterpart. He's also not dead and stuck in a chair, which counts for something, certainly.
  • During the Christmas Special of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Goku realizes that Turles is his Evil Counterpart in all but one way.
    Goku: He's like... an evil me! Only he doesn't have a goatee... I'm gonna imagine one! [does so] So evil!
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami has two examples.
    • One of the first warlocks Ami hires is described as a "generic evil warlock". Upon closer inspection, he sports a fake beard. He was too young to have a proper one and was going for the look, thus being an Invoked Trope.
    • Ami herself, thanks to losing hair to a misadventure and using a modified beard growing spell. Subverted Trope, as she isn't evil, everyone only thinks she is.
    Torian, did you by any chance, only expand the target region?
  • Doing It Right This Time: Gendo is asked by a reporter whether he knows what the Evil Overlord List says about this trope (the question being submitted by either Rei or Ritsuko); he retorts that since he's actually old enough to be a 'disaffected member of Generation X' the rule doesn't apply to him.

    Films — Animation 
  • Grigori Rasputin from Anastasia.
  • Batman: Bad Blood: Firefly has a beard and has no problem mind probing Bruce.
  • A staple of Disney villains:
    • Scar, Simba's evil uncle from The Lion King has a tuft of scraggly black fur on his chin reminiscent of a goatee.
    • Jafar in Aladdin deserves a mention. Agrabah's men (besides Aladdin) are all drawn with beards, but Jafar's is not only a goatee, but twisted. He was even based on Zigzag.
    • Governor Radcliffe in Pocahontas has a beard. In the second film, King James, a not-evil man also has a beard but Governor Radcliffe's is a goatee.
  • Captain Corso of Titan A.E. had a goatee, and true to form turned out to be The Mole.
  • Megamind has one of those not being a particularly malicious person and turning good in the end. And it is one "nice" goatee.
    • In contrast, Metro Man has no facial hair at all. Until he faked his death to give up the hero gig and grew a massive beard (either as a disguise or out of sheer laziness).
    • Also, Tighten/Titan/Hal has no beard to speak of, and is actually the main antagonist of the film. Then again, the movie makes a point of subverting the superhero tropes pretty thoroughly.
  • Xibalba has a snazzy beard and is the Big Bad of The Book of Life. Until his Heel–Face Turn.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Harry Potter:
    • Death Eater Antonin Dolohov has one, as does ex-Death Eater (and head of the Durmstrang Institute) Igor Karkaroff, and Death Eater supporter Albert Runcorn (unlike the film version).
    • Illustrator Mary Grandpre always draws Severus Snape with a beard, despite the fact that he is never described as having facial hair in the books (and was played by clean-shaven Alan Rickman in the movies), in order to emphasize his sinister characteristics.
    • The long-dead Salazar Slytherin had no hair on his head, but an impressive Wizard Beard.
  • Inheritance Cycle: Galbatorix has a beard in the film adaption. During Brisingr, Eragon seems to assume that Galbatorix has a beard when he mentions him.
  • In the Discworld universe:
    • Lord Vetinari is commonly depicted with a tidy goatee. He's not that evil, though. He does, however, have a 'menacing elegance'. Oh, yes, and he's awesome.
    • Parodied in Making Money, where the Head of Post-Mortem Communications is described as having tried to grow a beard like this, but not being evil, ended up just looking sheepish.
    • From the same book, we have the delusional Cosmo Lavish. He tried to copy the Vetinari beard of evil, but on him, it just ended up looking like a pubic chin.
  • In The Corellian Trilogy the chief feature distinguishing Han Solo from his evil cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo is the latter's beard.
  • Older Than Steam: The eponymous character of Bluebeard.
  • The Moonraker book from the original Bond series by Ian Fleming. All of the Nazis working on the Moonraker missile have mustaches or beards, as a way of 'disguising their identity'.
  • Simon's beard in I Capture the Castle makes Cassandra compare him to a gargoyle. And Rose makes him shave it off before she agrees to marry him.
  • Chernomor, Big Bad from the Ruslan and Ludmila has a very long beard. He also has a Bald of Evil.
  • In Good Omens, Famine is described as having "a trim black beard."
  • In the Honor Harrington books, the viciously evil Pavel Young cultivates a goatee, partly to hide his double chin.
  • In Death: Isaac McQueen ends up putting on a goatee at the end of New York To Dallas.
  • In-universe discussion in The Hunger Games: during her first Games, Katniss notices that although many of the boys in the arena are old enough to grow beards, and have been away from razors for a good two or three weeks, not a single one has done so. She suspects that their Capitol stylists have done some sort of procedure on their faces to prevent this, presumably to keep them looking young and innocent.
    • And in the film version, Seneca Crane sports a particularly stunning example.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events has the man with a beard but no hair, who's apparently so evil that Lemony Snicket won't even tell us his name.
    • Count Olaf also is depicted with a goatee in Brett Helquist's illustrations and Jim Carrey's portrayal of the character, though he is never described with one in Snicket's text itself.
  • In The Dresden Files, Harry has met a representation of his subconscious mind a few times, and while not strictly evil, he is much more ruthless and selfish than Harry's conscious self, and he sports a goatee, which is of course lampshaded by Harry.
  • In Seanan Mc Guire's Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots, the first villain, The Claw, almost manages to look not ridiculous, despite the lobster suit.
  • In Horns, Ig turns into the classical Big Red Devil to avenge his girlfriend's murder. Part of the package is a goatee.
  • A man in Citadel had the ability to involuntarily generate evil, incompetent duplicates of the world's greatest heroes. They all had goatees, even the women.
  • In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth has a beard and is a seeker of vengeance who uses his work as a doctor to achieve it (he was cheated because his wife, Hester, thought he was dead and slept with a man). He abuses Dimmesdale, one of his patients, because he was the one who slept with Hester.
  • In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, John Dee, an evil Necromancer, has a goatee. Of course, he's a real historical figure who does have a beard in a drawing of him.
  • The Twits starts with a long description of how foul Mr. Twit's beard is, and then goes on to explain that the man himself is just as despicable as his facial hair.
  • This trope is Older Than Feudalism. In The Talmud Sanhedrin 100, it's written: "[The book of Ben Sira says...] he whose beard is parted will be defeated by none.{because he is constantly scheming, running his fingers through his beard}"
  • Of all the human attributes to apply to a dog, The Divine Comedy describes the monstrous Hellhound Cerberus with a beard as he eats those damned for gluttony, cementing its infernal nature.
  • In A College of Magics, Faris's wicked uncle has a neatly-pointed black beard. Her friend Jane speculates that he's covering for a deficiency of chin.
  • While it can be argued that calling Lan Qiren of Mao Dao Zu Shi evil can be a bit of a stretch, he is very petty, vindictive, rude, obnoxious, small minded and participated in the massacre of the Wen Remnants without showing any remorse. Lan Qiren's most distinctive feature is his beard, which he is inordinately proud of.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 24, Season 8:
    Arlo: Dana's been visited twice today by this guy with really questionable facial hair.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Grant Ward is clean-shaven for most of season 1, but once it's revealed he's an agent of HYDRA and The Mole, he suddenly starts sporting Perma-Stubble and becomes a lot scruffier. It turns into a full-length Beard of Sorrow when he's imprisoned in season 2, but he goes back to the stubble-look after escaping.
    • Later, the Beard of Sorrow Glenn Talbot sports for most of the present-day episodes of Season 5 is trimmed into a goatee shortly before he forces his way into the Confederacy and becomes the Big Bad.
  • Barry: Barry's handler Fuches sports a beard and he's a much more openly malicious character than Barry is. Barry's more brutish accomplice Taylor also sports a beard, and Barry grows one himself in the later seasons has he becomes increasingly villainous.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003): Gaius Baltar was known for abusing this trope relentlessly. Made even more notable by his being perennially trapped in the Heel–Face Revolving Door. It got to the point where you could tell how evil he was at the moment by the style of his facial hair.
  • Played straight by the title character in Blackadder II. Invoked in Blackadder Goes Forth.
    General Melchett: Now then, soldier, do you love your country?
    Baldrick: Certainly do, sir.
    General Melchett: And do you love your king?
    Baldrick: Certainly don't, sir.
    General Melchett: And why not?
    Baldrick: My mother told me never to trust men with beards, sir.
  • One of the themes in Breaking Bad is Walter's physical and mental transformation from nerdy teacher to badass drug dealer. First he went bald, ostensibly due to chemotherapy, then he grew a rather sinister goatee which grew darker through the course of Season 3 as Walter grew darker and darker as well. In the last two episodes, where he becomes The Atoner, he grows a full Beard of Sorrow.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Kakistos' goatee.
  • In the Charmed episode "It's A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World", the Mirror Universe version of Leo has a goatee.
  • The Collector: While meeting the younger Morgan in flashbacks, the Devil takes the form of a goateed Colin Cunningham, his most consistent avatar in the series by far.
  • On Community, Alternate Universe Abed, deducing that he and his remaining friends inhabited the darkest of the alternate timelines, decided that they should embrace the darkness and become evil. He therefore prepared false goatees for everyone until the men could grow theirs in properly. (Like so many things with Community, it makes more sense in context.)
  • Alton Brown, normally clean-shaven, wears a short, stubbly beard for Cutthroat Kitchen. Considering that he's the creator of the Troperrific Good Eats, this is almost certainly intentional, and it does make him look much more sinister, befitting his role as the instigator of all sorts of backstabby shenanigans on the Cutthroat Kitchen set.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Master's most iconic appearance, as portrayed by Roger Delgado, is bearded, as is that of Anthony Ainley. Ainley was intentionally trying to look like Delgado. There was substantial disappointment that Eric Roberts did not "sport the goat" as the Master in the 1996 telefilm. The Master also had a beard as portrayed by Jonathan Pryce in the Comic Relief spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death", and as voiced by Derek Jacobi for the animated "Scream of the Shalka", though fans were sufficiently used to the idea that no one was seriously bothered when Sir Derek Jacobi and John Simm played beardless Masters in 2007 (although the Simm incarnation would eventually grow his own beard in the 2017 season and Sir Jacobi's incarnation prominently sports it on the covers of his Big Finish Doctor Who stories).
    • Inverted in that the Brigadier has a mustache, while his evil-universe counterpart is clean-shaven. He sports an Evil Scar-and-Eyepatch-combo instead.
      • Later additions in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, has seen too that there is also a straight example, namely in that there also turns out to be an evil version of the Doctor in in the same universe that the evil Brigadier comes from. Said version of the Doctor sports a moustache ( because he's the Leader seen in Fascist Britain's propaganda posters), in contrast to his clean-shaven Prime Universe counterpart.
    • And for maximum cross-trope linkage, in the 2007 Children In Need mini-episode "Time Crash", when the Tenth Doctor mentions the Master to the Fifth Doctor, this exchange ensues:
      Fifth Doctor: Does he still have that rubbish beard?
      Tenth Doctor: No, no beard this time... Well, a wife...
    • Season 12 features "O", a James Bondesque pastiche codename, who at first is clean shavennote 
  • Inverted on Dollhouse; Alpha grows a beard post-Heel–Face Turn.
  • Though he later redeems himself, Captain Bialar Crais of Farscape keeps his beard.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Gregor Clegane is an enormous knight and one of the more repugnant characters in Westeros, with a sinister beard to boot. All three actors have one.
    • There's also Ser Amory Lorch, another thuggish knight loyal to the Lannisters who has a full beard, Ser Meryn Trant who has a scrubby goatee, and and Janos Slynt with his thick white beard.
    • Rorge, a convicted criminal and later Psycho for Hire, has a stubbly beard.
    • Weasel is bearded, and considering he is a sadistic Torture Technician assisting The Tickler, he's evil.
    • Ramsay Bolton has one very briefly in Season 4. He orders Reek to shave him, to demonstrate to his father Roose Bolton that Reek is loyal.
    • Locke has a long, pointed beard very similar to Vargo Hoat's.
    • Harald Karstark sports a trimmed beard and is described as ruthless and calculating. Oh, and he sides with Ramsay Bolton.
    • A lot of antagonistic wildlings naturally have this, including Orell, Craster, Stiv and Wallen.
    • Petyr Baelish is bearded, even though it's not quite the goatee he's described to have in the books. While he's also viewed as a Magnificent Bastard by some, his actions definitely cause suffering for which he shows no remorse at all.
    • By the time Stannis Baratheon burns Shireen Baratheon at the stake his Perma-Stubble has become a thick bushy beard.
    • Balon Greyjoy has a mild Perma-Stubble case of this. He's an abusive, hypocritical, self-serving asshole who's badly in need of a shave.
    • Balon's brother Euron Greyjoy is an insane, sinister pirate with a faintly muttonstache-style beard to match.
    • The Ironborn Black Lorren has a white beard, and he's a Fat Bastard who boasts about the rapes he's committed
    • Lem Lemoncloak of the Brotherhood Without Banners has a great big beard and leads a massacre of a whole village.
    • Shagga of the Stone Crows might be Tyrion's ally, but he's still a murderous savage with a bushy beard to boot.
    • Half-brothers Black Walder and Lothar Frey have beards and live up to their family's scummy reputation.
    • Kraznys mo Nakloz has a classical van dyke beard and is a pretty nasty slaver.
    • Mero the Titan's Bastard has the usual unshaven rogue look, although he's less a rogue and more an opportunistic psychopath.
  • Jack Bass is evil enough when he first appears in Gossip Girl's second season. When he returns in season three he's even more evil, and is now sporting a goatee.
  • House of the Dragon: Otto Hightower sports a bushy short beard in contrast to Viserys ho has the more heroic Perma-Stubble. He is an Evil Chancellor and the main cause of the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons.
  • Henry Danger: The episode "Opposite Universe" has Henry and Charlotte travel to an alternate universe where the personalities of people they know are now flipped. The heroic Captain Man and Schwoz are now evil and sporting beards.
  • Ares has a Beard of Evil in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Notably, his Mirror Universe counterpart, Ares, God of Love, is clean-shaven. The evil mirror Hercules, on the other hand, does have a beard.
  • Heroes had the evil warlord known only as White Beard.
  • Inverted in How I Met Your Mother with Barney's 'origin story' in the episode "The Re-Return". At the start of the flash back he's a wide-eyed, innocent, New-Age Retro Hippie, complete with long hair and a soul-patch. When he becomes the Barney we know from, presented as the 'evil' version, he shaves it off.
  • Played straight in an episode of The Jamie Foxx Show in which Foxx's character is accidentally forced to switch places with a criminal look-alike who is physically identical in all ways except for a scrawny beard.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Gentoku Himuro has a well groomed, Tony Stark-esque beard to go with his role of a smarmy goverment official. Not only he is very much an outlier as the franchise favors all characters to be cleanly shaven regardless of their alignment, he keeps it after his Heel–Face Turn and gets nicknamed "Beardo".
  • On Knight Rider, Michael Knight's Evil Twin, Garthe Knight, sports a particularly evil facial hair.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Pharazôn is an Evil Chancellor with a bushy beard, making him to stand out among the main male characters who sport a Perma-Stubble.
  • In Tom's first two appearances, in Lost, he has a beard and is very scary. Then we see him without the beard, and learn that it's fake, and he becomes much less scary.
  • In The Middleman's Mirror Universe, every single male character is bearded; most but not all are more evil than their clean-shaven counterparts.
  • The Mr. Potato Head Show: A wicked goatee, combined with Bald of Evil and his name, Bully-Boy McPherson, are all that's needed to establish Mr. Potato Head's new supervisor as bad news the moment he's introduced.
  • Cardinal Richelieu's mustache and goatee from The Musketeers.
  • Not common on Once Upon a Time; the biggest male villains are Rumplestiltskin and Hades, both without beards, but when Jekyll and Hyde are introduced, Hyde is the one with facial hair, though ironically not the only one who's bad. And of course they couldn't carry over Jafar and Dr. Facilier without their beards of evil.
  • The Office (US) downplays this with Ryan Howard, who doesn't become 'evil' as much as a 'Drunk with Power smug asshole' upon being promoted to Corporate. However, his spike in arrogant jerkassery is reflected in a corresponding growth of increasingly douchey goatees. Then, as his arc continues, his brilliant ideas start to fall apart and he starts to fall victim to his vices, his facial hair becomes increasingly unkempt to reflect this.
  • Red Dwarf: In "Demons and Angels", the most obvious physical difference that Low Lister has with his High and regular counterparts is his filthy, unkempt beard. That and his Eyepatch of Power.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Lampshaded:
      Mitchell: Well, you don't have beards, so I'm guessing you're not from the Evil Twin universe.
    • They were in fact evil, or at the very least quite self-centered. Prime universe SG-1 may have cared more about their universe than others, but they at least didn't go looting the others to ensure their own survival at their expense.
    • In the first Alternate Universe episode, Teal'c has a Topknot of Evil
    • In one Alternate Universe episode that had to be a reference to Star Trek's Mirror Universe, both evil Teal'c and evil Apophis do in fact have goatees. Though Apophis's beard is rather redundant 'cause he's already evil, and oddly enough, Teal'c ends up with similar facial hair a few seasons later.
    • In a non-alternate-universe example, recurring villain Ba'al sported a tidy diabolical goatee.
  • Lampshaded in Stargate Atlantis episode "Doppelganger": Sheppard inquires about the other Sheppard, "Did I have a goatee?"
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Original Series: The Mirror Universe was the Trope Codifier for using a goatee to signify an Evil Twin, as evil Mr. Spock has a goatee. Ironically, Evil Mr. Spock is far and away the least evil person in the mirror universe. This is given a Shout-Out in a Priceline commercial. You guessed it, Evil Shatner with a goatee.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: An episode where the Defiant was stolen featured who we thought was William Riker before being revealed as Thomas Riker pulling off his heist before removing his sideburns to reveal that he had a goatee, not a beard. However, he wasn't really evil.
    • Star Trek: Voyager:
      • In the episode "Author, Author", the Doctor wrote a holonovel with barely-disguised copies of his fellow crew members as the villains of the story. As a homage to the Mirror Universe, Tuvok's actor Tim Russ grew out a goatee for the occasion. And in contrast, the Doctor has given Tom Paris' counterpart just a silly looking mustache.
      • Dr. Chaotica in the Show Within a Show The Adventures of Captain Proton! is a homage to Ming the Merciless, and naturally sports a goatee.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise:
      • The franchise did a Shout-Out to itself by giving Mirror Soval a Spock-beard. (Common fashion amongst Mirror Vulcans?) Either way, Mirror!Soval is, like Mirror!Spock, one of the least evil characters when he makes an appearance, and goes down fighting against the evil counterparts of more established characters.
      • While, for obvious reasons, Mirror T'Pol couldn't have a beard, she did have long flowing locks of hair to distinguish her from her closely-cropped regular counterpart.
      • This seems to have been the fashion among commanding Vulcans. Mirror Spock's personal guard didn't have a beard, and neither did either of the Vulcans Mirror T'Pol enlisted to help her retake the ISS Enterprise from Archer. Mirror Tuvok from the Terran Rebellion was also clean-shaven.
    • Star Trek: Discovery: Mirror!Sarek, like his son from the Original Series, also has a goatee in the Mirror Universe although he is quite heroic, being a member of the Resistance, along with Voq, who sadly did not have a Klingon goatee.
    • Star Trek: Picard: Because there are two major Romulan male characters in this series, Narek has a beard to convey visually to viewers that he's the sinister one.
  • Succession:
    • The show's Big Bad / Villain Protagonist Logan has a goatee, as does his eldest son whenever he's not clean-shaven.
    • Kendall's friend Stewy is an unrepentant douchebag with a neatly trimmed beard.
  • Supernatural:
    • Crowley, the longest running villain on the show by far, started sporting a beard in Season 7. Although after Season 8, he transitions from being a true villain back towards being a more long-term Anti-Hero.
    • Metatron's beard appears to be badass at first, before his true colors are shown and he only proves to be more and more of a slimy, underhanded prick from there.
    • John Winchester's natural beard effectively becomes one for Azazel when the latter briefly possesses him. Notably, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan only got to briefly play Azazel this one time, this was the first true glimpse into Azazel's personality on the show.
    • The werewolf in "Heart" turns out to be Glen, who has a curly beard which he retains both in his human form and when wolfing out (werewolves in Supernatural only gain animalistic eyes, fangs and teeth with few other physical changes). Bear in mind though, Glen was actually a pretty nice guy in his human state who apparently had no idea what he was or what was happening to him, and the closest thing he had to an unpleasant characteristic was an implicit disapproval of prostitutes based on religiousness.
    • In "Hammer of the Gods", Odin has a beard; and he's fine with helping to drag the dinner screaming and begging for mercy onto the chopping block, to say nothing of what a later episode reveals about what an Abusive Parent he was.
    • "Taxi Driver" features both a crossroads demon and a dead vampire in Purgatory who have this look.
    • In the episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), the vampire has a goatee. In the same episode, Jason (the demon who repairs Abaddon's old vessel) could use a shave in the mechanic meatsuit.
    • Malachi, a particularly-savage and barbaric "anarchist" angel, possesses a vessel with a goatee.
    • In "Raising Hell", Francis Tumblety, a.k.a. Jack the Ripper, sports a full Van Dyke.
  • Nottingham in Witchblade has a scruffy full beard. At the end of Season 1, a clone of Nottingham is introduced who looks exactly the same as him only with a sinister-looking goatee. Sure enough, while Nottingham is morally grey, the clone turns out to be all-out evil.

    Music 
  • Kunt and the Gang's song Men With Beards (What Are They Hiding) has the singer theorizing all beards are Beards of Evil.
  • Hooray for Gooba! has a song titled My Evil Twin Has a Mustache wherein the narrator/singer bemoans the fact that his friends cannot distinguish between himself and his Evil Twin when he blatantly has a mustache. There is also the matter of the puppy-kicking...
  • Doctor Steel sports a rather impressive cross between a Gendo and a fearsome pointed goatee.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • The Hindu goddess Kali wears a necklace of severed heads. Think of her fashion sense what you may, but the guys who gave head are seen as evil... and sport a goatee. note 

    Pinball 

    Professional Wrestling 

    Roleplay 

    Toys 

    Video Games 

    Web Animation 
  • In the first episode of Space Goose, the title character discovers that he has an evil doppelganger with a goatee.
  • RWBY: Most of the male villains are clean-shaven with the exception of Hazel, who sports a goatee-style chinstrap. Hazel is quiet and calm; he hates fighting and loathes unnecessary killing. However, he relentlessly carries out Salem's will to ensure the destruction of the Huntsmen Academies and the theft of the four Relics the academies guard, no matter how many people might die in the process. He also believes Ozpin is an evil monster who sacrifices the lives of children, and will stop at nothing to ensure Ozpin is killed, whom he blames for the death of his sister. Hazel therefore stands out among the villains for his personal connection to Ozpin, his conflict between his gentle nature and loyalty to Salem's murderous goals when not triggered, and the absolute insanity of his physically destructive rage when triggered.
  • Mars, a minor but memorable villain from Broken Saints features a little goatee, but otherwise sports a Bald of Evil.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Victor the obvious spy has one.
    • What? He's not a spy, he's a plumber! Clearly!
  • Darths & Droids:
    • Jim, Qui-Gon's player, suspects Sio Bibble (or "Bubble", as he calls him) of being evil due to his beard and position as Amidala's trusted adviser. It's not true, but despite his bit-part in it, Bibble is one of the few campaign details Jim never needs to be reminded of. Having established his firm belief in the Beard Of Evil as a guaranteed indicator of a character's untrustworthiness, Jim refuses to let anyone see his character sheet, claiming Qui-Gon is clean-shaven.
    • This is also mentioned in a later comic with Bail Organa.
    • Flat out lampshaded in the GM's notes for the campaign that took place in between the first and second movie (based on The Princess Bride). In his notes on Count Rugen, he notes "Has a goatee! Should be fun when others don't believe Jim that he's evil."
    • Jim couldn't tell if Darth Vader is a bad guy, because he can't see his facial hair.
  • In Dinosaur Comics, everyone has a beard in the mirror universe. And the strip is backwards.
  • In Irregular Webcomic!, strip #2470 is a repeat of #2461 in the Mirror Universe, complete with backwards layout and goatees. Unfortunately, the Nazis are the same. (Maybe not.) And the comic links here.
  • Invoked, discussed, and Played for Laughs in Jet Dream: This trope features heavily in Cookie Jarr's ''My Jet Dream Romance'' solo story, as a philosophical debate between J.E.T. T.E.E.N. Boy Booster Phil Philpott and "El Teen Gringo del Sur" over the good or evil of facial hair becomes violent!
    Phil: I learned enough not to trust men like Trotsky, Castro, and Blackbeard! Men with beards!
    El Teen Gringo: But what of Lincoln? Moses? Zeus? You're blinded by your dangerous obsession! Bah! You'll never understand. Taste some Teen Gringo Justice — Fist Style!
  • In Mac Hall this was inverted here and then played straight here
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Elan's Evil Twin brother Nale has a blond beard to serve as his distinguishing villainous mark. Exaggerated by the fact that he's had it since he was a baby.
    • As Vaarsuvius pointed out after dealing with Kubota, "that mustache did not do him any favors" when trying to determine whether Kubota was to be considered an enemy of the Order.
    • Bozzok has one as well, he's even seen maintaing it.
    • Lampshaded, but not invoked, in the 2019 calendar. The art is based on magic items, with the "Mirror of Opposition" for February, depicting Roy against an evil doppelganger coming out of the mirror. The double looks exactly like Roy, and Vaarsuvius muses it would be easier to Spot the Imposter if there were some way to distinguish between the good and evil versions, such as a distinctive physical marker in the chin area. Blackwing then suggests a really big zit.
  • In Questionable Content, the characters are joking about a series of events leading to the creation of Martin's "Evil Twin." He mentioned the frustration said twin would encounter, given that he's "incapable of growing a decent goatee."
  • Rain (2010): Chase Brenton is a vile, creepy jerkass and has a goatee to go with it.
  • Edvard de Santigo from Supernormal Step has a very malicious-looking goatee.
  • Invoked by Van Von Hunter when Van drew a goatee on his Evil Twin so that they could be told apart.
  • Jimmy Negatron has a goatee to distinguish himself as the bad guy, which is a blatant reference to Mirror!Spock's goatee in the classic Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror.
  • Runewriters has Jonan of Rusanne, who is somewhere between Token Evil Teammate and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
  • In Narbonic whenever Helen is turned into a man she sprouts a goatee. Apparently it materializes from sheer evil.
  • Never Satisfied: The biggest visual difference between Sylas Dubois and his abusive dad? The latter's beard.
  • A Noodle Incident in Girl Genius apparently featured evil extradimensional doppelgangers of Da Boyz who all wore goatees:
    Dimo: Oh ya — hyu din' look goot vit a goatee, brodder.
    Maxim: Yah? Vell, hyu din' look goot wit two ov dem!
    Dimo: Yah, dot vos schtupid.

    Web Original 
  • Gaia Online has both mocked this and played this straight. (But mostly mocks it)
    • On the serious side: Vladmir Von Helson, the arguably most evil character in the story line, had a particularly sinister goatee before he was ashed.
    • On the other hand, recent micro updates starring Mr Wizard parodies Dr. Singh and Timmy have featured several characters with beards of evil (which is either The Virus, or a case of Body Snatchers). However, one of them is a 10 year old boy, the other is a Labtech who grew his beard on the outside of his face mask. And they both seem to be more concerned with getting into Singh's pants than actually doing anything evil.
  • Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
    • The Mysterious Somebody is a clone of Dark Jedi Joruus C'baoth who engineered an epidemic of insanity to take over the PPC and spent most of the 90s in charge of the organization. While in control, he started a department that acted as a Secret Police force, funded most of the PPC's activites via a factory that produced Mary Sues, and used his mind control abilities to keep people from suspecting him of any wrongdoing. The image of C'baoth used to represent the Mysterious Somebody on the wiki sports a long white beard.
    • In the Mirror Universe where the PPC is an organization run by Mary Sues, the counterpart of Makes-Things has a beard.
  • Treated as Dead Horse Trope in Evil Overlord List:
    35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
  • A man in Citadel had the ability to involuntarily generate evil, incompetent duplicates of the world's greatest heroes. They all had goatees, even the women.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Ben 10:
    • Vilgax, the series Big Bad, has an iconic tentacle beard and is considered the galaxy's "worst of the worst".
    • Clancy has one, shaped like mendibles no less.
    • Joseph Chadwick of the Forever Knights gains one in Omniverse.
    • When Phil joins the Rooters, he cuts his Beard of Sorrow shorter, and the Rooters aren't exactly moral paragons.
    • Played With by the Tetrax of Dimension 23 in Omniverse, who has a fairly awesome-looking beard made of the same crystal the rest of his body is. However, he's more of a Hero Antagonist than a true villain, as he and his allies are ultimately merely trying to retrieve Ben 23's Omnitrix and return it to Azmuth, with Ben 23's less-than-altruistic use of his Omnitrix up to this point and the seemingly-widespread and indiscriminate distrust of aliens on this dimension's Earth seemingly leaving little room for argument.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: Both Dai Gui and Hsi Wu respectively have a goatee-like appendange on their chin. Daolon Wong has a white goatee, as does Tarakudo has a real goatee to complement his classical samurai mask appearance.
  • Pastiched on South Park: in their mirror universe, everyone has a goatee, including the "Evil" Cartman, who, as the opposite of the "real world" Cartman, is polite, helpful, and a genuinely good person. The unbearded Cartman rips off his beard (as a unit...) after he finds out that Stan and Kyle want to send him to the alternative universe and keep the "evil Cartman."
  • Wakfu:
    • Qilby's long, goatee-like beard turns black and grow longer when he reveals himself to be Evil All Along and transforms into his One-Winged Angel form.
    • Black Bump of the Brotherhood of the Forgotten has rather thick one under his Cool Helmet.
  • Gargoyles:
  • Transformers:
    • Unicron the giant, planet-eating, robotic, chaos god had a mustache and goatee. He also gives one to his minion Scourge, along with a lovely set of pink fingernails.
    • The evil Junkion Detritus has a beard. Although facial hair is a common feature among Junkions, this sets him apart from his good-natured Palette Swap, the Autobot Hound, who lacks one.
  • In the Futurama episode "Lesser of Two Evils", Fry assumes that Flexo, a bending unit who looks identical to Bender except for a pointed beard, must be Bender's Evil Twin. He isn't, Bender is the evil one.
    Bender: Oh like you didn't see that one coming.
  • Vlad Masters from Danny Phantom. Also Skulker and Danny's Evil Counterpart Dark Danny sport one.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • This is played with through the character of Dr. Orpheus, a good guy who looks evil (the eponymous brothers describe him as looking like "a Dracula"). The Monarch and Dr. Venture, on the other hand, are both rather unsavory characters with beards.
    • Lampshaded when Hank puts on a fake goatee and 21 comments that he looks like the "Mirror Mirror version of Hank" in "Showdown at Cremation Creek Part 1".
  • Several Birdman (1967) villains have this kind of beard, most notably Number One, the leader of F.E.A.R.. This is useful, since apart from this and a small skull insignia, he looks exactly like all of his henchmen.
  • An episode of The Tick involves the mystery of a mobile mustache super-weapon. When asked by Arthur why the government brought such a horror into the world, the only response he got was:
    Jim Rage: You don't understand, man... The Russians were already working on a beard... ''We had a facial hair gap!''
  • Parodied with Chad Ghostal, Space Ghost's Evil Twin brother on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. His facial hair is different every time he's on screen.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • An episode features this trope with Mirror Universe; the kids are sent into an Alternate Universe via a neighborhood swimming pool, where the KND is feared, evil, and lead by an evil version of Number 4, who wears a goatee. The original Number 4 calls him out on this, claiming that since he — the original — is brave, then the evil one must be a coward.
    • Another bearded villain on the show (who appears more frequently) is the candy pirate Stickybeard; as his name implies candy is embedded all over his full beard.
  • Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender, along with several other villains, including Long Feng and Combustion Man.
  • The Villain on The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3. Discussed:
    Timmy: I think he should have a mustache. Mustaches are evil.
    Cosmo: Not everybody who has a mustache is evil?!
    Wanda: Your momma has a mustache!
    Cosmo: You should give him a mustache.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command:
  • The Affably Evil Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons. Invoked in another episode when Mr Burns' girlfriend leaves him for her ex, Snake. Burns protests that he's already positively evil - what does he have to do, grow a devil beard?
  • The Smurfs (1981):
    • Gargamel in attempts to grow his own Beard of Evil in his admiration of evil wizards with beards by using magical hair growth tonic, but his beard ends up growing up so long that it reaches to the Smurf Village.
    • Gargamel did sport a fake Beard of Evil when he was masquerading as the dream date wizard Harlequin in order to get his hands on Hogatha's "magic whistle," which was really her bird call. However, during a kiss, the fake beard attaches itself to Hogatha's face, revealing her dream date to be Gargamel, yet Hogatha doesn't notice it until after Gargamel is gone when she looks at herself in the mirror and says, "I have charm, I have beauty, I have a beard... A BEARD?!?"
    • Gargamel's godfather Lord Balthazar has the Chin Spike of Evil.
    • And there's Matthew McCreep from The Smurfs and the Magic Flute.
  • Dr. XXX of The Mad Doctor cartoon short.
  • Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension has Alternate Doofenshmirtz who sports an Eviler than Thou goatee. Hilariously commented upon between Jeff Swampy Marsh and Dan Povenmire (the voice of Heinz Doofenshmirtz) during the comic-con 2011 Phineas and Ferb panel, pointing out this particular trope... and the fact that Dan sports a goatee as well.
  • Lampshaded and played straight with Cesar Salazar in Generator Rex after a six month Time Skip. Then zigzagged when he shaves it off and stops acting antagonistic but is still on the bad guy's side, and then it's revealed that he was on their side all along.
  • Double Subverted by Grune of ThunderCats (2011) first appearing as a heroic prodigal Four-Star Badass of Catfolk Proud Warrior Race the Thunderians, only to rapidly reveal himself as a Turncoat and Collaborateur with Big Bad Mumm-Ra and his allies the Lizards.
  • Abraham Kane, the Big Bad in Motorcity, as well as Bald of Evil.
  • Aku the SHAPESHIFTING MASTER OF DARKNESS from Samurai Jack has a goatee, made of fire.
  • The Duke from Gawayn sports one of these.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: In episode "The Really Bad Day" Cosmo turns evil for a day. Watch his fearsome change when... he sprouts a single curly strand from his chin.
  • Ivanhoe: The King's Knight features Prince John with such as beard as well as the titular dowry hunter and regent loyalist in "The Bearded One."
  • Keldor from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002). While he still had a face, he sported a sleek black goatee.
  • HIM from The Powerpuff Girls has a goatee and is considered the most evil of the Rogues Gallery.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: Jax-Ur, being based on General Zod.
  • Parodied on an episode of Kaeloo, where Kaeloo gives Quack Quack (who is playing the antagonist) a fake beard to make himself look evil.
  • Duke Igthorn in Gummi Bears has one. Curiously his good twin brother Sir Victor has none.
  • Tangled: The Series: Played with in the season 3 premiere. When Varian first appears in the episode and reveals he has helped the Saporians take over Corona, he has a goatee. He loses it as soon as he is redeemed. Subverted in that it is just drawn on and Lance wipes it off with his thumb.
  • The Devil sports one when he is tempting Jesus in the wilderness with the three temptations in a Caleb and Sophia episode.
  • The Owl House: Philip Wittebane was clean shaven when he arrived on the Boiling Isles but over time grew a big bushy beard. He permanently shaved the beard off when he adopted his Belos persona, which makes this an interesting example where the beard of evil is actually plot-relevant, as it prevents Luz and Lilith from recognizing that Philip is a young Belos when they meet him in the past.

Alternative Title(s): Villainous Goatee, Goatee Of Evil

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