Evil Is Hammy

Darth Sidious demonstrates this trope's POWAH! UNLIMITED POWAAAAAHHHH!

Titan: This town isn't big enough for two supervillains!
Megamind: Oh, you're a villain, alright. Just not a super one!
Titan: Oh, yeah? What's the difference?
Megamind: (marches out of a giant floating representation of his head to "Welcome to the Jungle") PRESENTATION!

— Megamind

In many conflicts between good and evil, who is going to be doing the lion's share of Chewing the Scenery? The villain(s), more likely than not. It's one way they are Obviously Evil and Drunk on the Dark Side. Muwahahahahaaaa!

As for why, it's not known for sure. Maybe it's a reflection of their narcissism and total lack of inhibitions. Maybe they've decided that since they've already punted a few puppies, called down the lightning, and donned the Spikes of Villainy, they may as well have fun with it. And maybe the moral depravity of their act is balanced by how much fun they are to watch. Or this is used to indicate how Power and Evil feel Good. Whatever the reason, bacon and scenery are important parts of every villain's daily balanced breakfast.

That isn't to say the heroes never get to have such moments, but the villains will get the clear majority of them. Of course, when they both do, the awesomeness factor increases tenfold. A Genre Savvy Villain Protagonist will act hammy just because it's expected.

Also, when the villains are pretending to be good guys in some stories, they don't really act hammy, but when they show who they really are, they let loose, almost as if being a Large Ham is their true nature.

Often overlaps with Ham and Cheese. Contrast Soft-Spoken Sadist (the villain is the calmest one in the room).

If a hero is also a Large Ham, or there is a World of Ham, it's not this trope unless the villain manages to still out-ham everyone.

Dastardly Whiplash is a specific character type that embodies this trope — you know, the one with the twirling moustache and cape.

Note: Please explain what makes the character hammy when adding them. Just mentioning their actors or voice actors, or quoting them, or linking to a plethora of potholes instead of providing context is a Zero-Context Example and Fan Myopia if you expect everyone to know the characters from very little context.

If you were looking for villains that are an entirely different type of hammy, see Sinister Swine.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, the only truly hammy characters are Rau Le Creuset and Lord Djibril. (Rau spends most of the anime calm and collected, only becoming hammy towards the end when he drops all pretense of being reasonable.) Neither is particularly over the top by anime standards, but they both chew far more scenery than the rest of the cast put together.
  • Other hammy Gundam villains are Mobile Suit Gundam 00's Ali Al-Saachez, ∀ Gundam's Gym Ghingnham, and Mobile Fighter G Gundam's Master Asia, who is the biggest ham in a world full of them.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Piccolo Jr. is at first an Ax-Crazy Card-Carrying Villain as a bad guy, prone to maniacal laughter and long-winded monologues. After his Heel–Face Turn, he becomes The Stoic. He was freshly hatched as the reincarnation of the even Ax Crazier Piccolo Daimaou during his villain arc. One timeskip later and we have an older, more mature Piccolo Jr. forced into an Enemy Mine with Goku, leading to Piccolo's face turn. So his progression from hammy to stoic is probably justified as just Piccolo growing up.
  • In the anime series proper, Cell was more or less a straight villain. In the video games, however, he steps it up on the ham, with each new release making him even hammier. Dragon Ball Xenoverse, especially, has him at his hammiest, as his lines as your mentor prove.
    "Splendid! Now, this was a real fight! I'd totally hug you right now if that was something I did!"
  • Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super, all three versions of him, puts the above to shame. He's prone to long speeches about how awesome he is and how much the heroes suck. While for the most part he's at least quiet about his melodrama, as Fused Zamasu he takes this trope and runs away with it. He just gets hammier and hammier as his fight goes on, much to Vegito's exasperation.

• Inverted and played straight in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The heroes are the largest hams, but the Anti-Spiral King STILL manages to out-ham them in the final battle. Lordgenome in his Disc-One Final Boss Anti-Villain part is no slouch in hamming up either.
• Saint Seiya:
  • The evil Pope has some of the hammiest evil laughs ever in anime. For more contrast, his true personality is Gemini Saga, a quite more stoic Tragic Hero.
  • Scorpio Milo in the Italian dub is probably the hammiest, most scenery-chewing villain of the entire cast, which is also this trope because he speaks in a much less emphatic way after his defeat and Heel–Face Turn. Other villains with a similar speech pattern (done by the same voice actor) include Mime and Siren Sorrento who, coincidentally, are both a Musical Assassin.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: Inverted with Lutecia Alpine, who was an Emotionless Girl during her stint as an antagonist but grew into a Large Ham post Heel–Face Turn (though it did take a few years for it to kick in).

• In Code Geass: The Villain Protagonist Lelouch ticks most if not all the hamminess qualification boxes; he has an evil laugh, is fond of making last-minute grand entrances, and having a larger-than-life persona especially when he's in his Zero disguise.

• Magic Knight Rayearth has the Big Bad of Season 2 called Debonair. She has an extremely loud evil laughter that severely chews any scene she's in.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Evangeline Athanasia Katherine McDowell is a completely evil vampire mage who sneers at the very idea of friendship, and whose devoted servant Chachamaru will crush you like an insect if you so much as look at Eva-sama the wrong way.

• This is mostly averted in Puella Magi Madoka Magica since the closest thing to a Big Bad, Kyuubey, was more The Stoic... but then Walpurgisnacht comes in and single-handedly engulfs the scenery in thick, high-pitched, crazy ham.

• In Princess Tutu, Mytho acts like a very hammy villain after he has been poisoned by the Raven's blood.
  "Why won't you love me?!"
• General rule in One Piece: the hammier the villain, the more likely they are to be curb-stomped by the Straw Hats. More difficult opponents aren't as hammy. Crocodile isn't hammy at all (Evil Laugh aside) and is one of Luffy's hardest fights. Subverted with Oars... since, well, he is Luffy's shadow.
• The Espada from Bleach are a mixed bag since some (Barragan, Grimmjow, Yammy, Nnoitra, Szayel, Drunk with Power!Aizen) are very hammy and others (Ulquiorra, Halibel, Stark) are much calmer. But once the Vandereich appear, they start to put on the pork with total and unapologetic gusto, with people like Mask de Masculine and non-Stoic!AsNodt as their top hams.
• Piedmon, in the dub of Digimon Adventure. Etemon, too. Especially as Metal Etemon. Malomyotismon is no slouch either.
  • The Digimon Kaiser of Digimon Adventure 02 likewise loves indulging in Evil Laughs and over-the-top Evil Gloating speeches and Motive Rants, as you'd expect from someone who's literally a kid trying to play supervillain.
• As awkward as it is to call them "hammy", there's no denying that the skinless chickens from the second episode of Humanity Has Declined fit this trope. Sadly, the only character present for their Evil Gloating In-Universe is too busy adjusting the subtitles to notice.
• Freed Sellzen in High School D×D fits this trope. An Ax-Crazy exorcist who gets off on killing devils and does so for the hell of it. He'll also overact whenever he makes his onscreen appearances as well.
• Ragyo Kiryuin in Kill la Kill is not always hammy, but whenever she's in the middle of one of her evil speeches or gloating, her ham factor shoots through the roof.
• Prussia in Hetalia: Axis Powers is one of the series' few "mostly villainous" characters, and (rather impressively) beats out most of the cast in sheer hamminess.
  Prussia: SUCK IT, LOSERS! I am the AWESOME PRUSSIA!
  • Averted later on, as Prussia was increasingly sympathetic as the series/webcomic went on, restoring the title of "most villainous" to the resident Soft-Spoken Sadist Russia. And then Russia himself became increasingly Lighter and Softer, more sympathetic and less "menacing".
• Light from Death Note is such a ham in his inner monologue and some behaviors such as his evil laugh. He uses eating chips in his room to allay suspicions from him and makes something as mundane as that very dramatic.

• In Cyborg 009, Von Bogoot was mostly a Softspoken Sadist. But his boss, Scarl, was a magnificent ham. Guess who voiced him?
• Kagerou Project: The Big Bad of the series, the Wide-Open Eyes Snake. This trope comes into effect particularly in the anime's twelfth episode when he possesses Konoha. The scene lasts all of five minutes, but it's almost made completely Worth It by how gloriously hammy he makes those five minutes.

• Shuu Tsukiyama from Tokyo Ghoul has on several occasions tried to eat Kaneki and his friends. However, he practically has an orgasm when smelling Kaneki's blood on a piece of cloth, and his gratuitous use of French, Italian, and English phrases makes the character deliciously cheesy.

• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL brings us Vector of the Barian Emperors, who is hard-pressed to be found not at any point screaming, trolling people, or both, all the while making strange faces, particularly in his true form. As a result, he is one of the most popular characters in Zexal, even among Yu-Gi-Oh! fans who don't particularly like Zexal as a series.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Team Rocket. Yeah, they definitely wouldn't win any most dangerous villain awards - but what they lack in threat, they more than make up in presentation. On a few occasions, they actually use it to their advantage by distracting their enemies with their hammy attitude while whoever they're working with at this point carries out their plan.
  • Mewtwo, during his stint as a villain in the English dub of Pokémon: The First Movie, which is not that surprising, considering 4Kids was the one who did the dub.

Asian Animation

• In BoBoiBoy, cocoa-stealing alien Adu Du is loud and hot-blooded, and he also always speaks in Large Ham quotes about himself being a great supervillain in the universe.
• In the Lookus English dub of Happy Heroes, the main villain Big M. has a noticeably loud, exaggerated voice. It does get a bit less hammy in the dub's later episodes, though.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Dark Handsomey, the evil twin brother of the egg person White Handsomey, speaks in an exaggerated voice. In the English dubs, he has a distinct Eastern European accent.

Audio Plays

• Pathetic from Kingdom Paf is basically the incarnation of this trope. She acts hammy even when washing her hands, preparing her lunch, or playing video games.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man:
  • Many of Spidey's villains. Two examples would be Norman Osborn and Doctor Octopus. Venom too, Anti-Hero or not.
  • In Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus are permanently trying to outdo each other in this department. Neither of them manages to impress their archenemies, though:
    Doctor Octopus: Curse you, wall-crawler! Am I never to be free? Will you hound me forever? Will there never be an end?
    Spider-Man: Huh?
• Superman:
  • Lex Luthor loves hearing himself talk:
    Lex: I'm the only sane inmate of Asylum Earth. I'm not eager to hand tomorrow over to an interplanetary extremist with laser eyes. There's only room on this world for one leader, Superman. When I'm finished with you, every last gibbon out there will know you for the menace you are... and they'll realize that Lex Luthor is their savior.
  • Brainiac couldn't even stop talking when he was dying in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?:
    Brainiac: I... am coming for you... Kryptonian... my victory... is inevitable...
  • In Krypton No More, one-time supervillain Protector likes being overly dramatic. His verbosity doesn't impress Superman or Supergirl, though:
    Protector: I warned you, Superman! I told you to leave the polluting industries alone! But no — you wouldn't listen! You've set yourself up as judge, jury, and executioner — and to that, the Protector says NO!
  • Alien overlord Mongul is pretty hammy. In War World:
    Mongul: We had a deal, Kryptonian, and you will honor it — or I will crush your three hapless friends with a single gesture!

• Batman:
  • Many other Batman villains fall into this as well, especially in the campy '60s series and some of the movies. (In Batman Forever, The Riddler, played by Jim Carrey, even asks: "Was that over the top? I can never tell.")

• Doctor Doom: Silence, You Fool! Nobody possesses more ham than DOOM!! Doom's ham-acting actually stems directly from the Pride that is at the root of his villainy: not only does he have to be the centre of attention at all times, but he's recording his words for posterity on top of that.

• The Dark Judges are easily the most melodramatic villains in Judge Dredd. As they go around dispensing their own brand of justice, they do basically nothing but spew Catch Phrases. Maybe undeath just breathed new life into them...
• The Mighty Thor: Most versions of Loki, when they're evil and when they get going (yes, versions. There's a lot of Loki going around.) Thank goodness no more than one hammy Loki has ever been on page at a time, or there might be a hamgularity.
  (A) Loki: (after a particular bout of ham) ... and I am dreadfully prone to histrionics. Do excuse me.
• In My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights, Luna plays this up for all it's worth while pretending to still be Nightmare Moon.
  Princess Luna: I am Nightmare Moon! I defeated my sister, the sun, and plunged Equestria into darkness! I visit nightmares upon innocent foals. I haunt every shadow you fear in the night. I see what you fear, and I will use it to destroy you!
  Casino Guard: Jeez, lady, leave some drama for the rest of us.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • "The Great Darkness Saga": Every single Servant of Darkness, as well as their Master, is prone to pontificate.
  Servant of Darkness: It grows darker throughout the universe, mortal... And there shall be no dawn. Serve the Great Darkness as I do, and you shall thrive... Oppose it, and you shall suffer an eternity of pain.
  Wildfire: The old hi-low, Superboy!
  Superboy: You got it, pal.
  Servant of Darkness: You have nothing, fool. The Darkness shall swallow it all! Give me the Wand I seek, and perhaps you may postpone your Doom.
• "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": When the Legionnaires engage Emerald Empress, one of their worst and oldest enemies, Brainiac 5 mocks her verbosity:
  Emerald Empress: "Curse your force shield, Brainiac Five!"
  Brainiac 5: "Isn't that a bit melodramatic, Your Highness?"
• Wonder Woman (1942):
  • (Earth-Two) Elektro claims to have captured Wonder Woman and dramatically sweeps back a curtain on a stage before his fellow gangsters and waits until they've all tried shooting at her and having their bullets repelled to declare that she's actually a robot which they can use to destroy the real thing.
  • (Earth-One) Professor Menace claims to have captured Wonder Woman and dramatically sweeps back a curtain on a stage before his fellow gangsters and waits until they've all tried shooting at her and having their bullets repelled to declare that she's actually a robot which they can use to destroy the real thing. He somehow manages to be even more dramatic than his Golden Age predecessor, possibly because he controls his robots with his mind rather than having to sit at a console like Elektro.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, although it's relatively subdued, Ghidorah's heads' voices are not above making a rather hammy Badass Boast, and they often speak in a non-indoorsy volume to those who can understand what Ghidorah is saying.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Voldemort is a Cold Ham, by and large, preferring the Soft-Spoken Sadist approach, but sometimes veers into this.
  • 'The Beast' a.k.a. the Blob a.k.a. Dudley Dursley at one point paraphrases Superboy-Prime's infamous "I'M GONNA KILL YOU TO DEATH!" line.
  • This is a signature trait of the Dark Phoenix - which, admittedly, has quite a lot to do with the fact that Harry had a taste for dramatics to begin with, especially when in a bad mood. Though it has to be said, the previous Dark Phoenix, Surtur, is just as bad by all accounts.
  • Nimue starts as a frighteningly understated opponent. However, after becoming Drunk on the Dark Side and suffering major Sanity Slippage thanks to a surge of power that should have blasted her apart (but instead 'merely' eroded her remaining sanity), she becomes a textbook example, spending the last two chapters of her arc throwing a cosmic-scale tantrum because the heroes refuse to just give up and die.
• Daemon from the Tamers Forever Series comes off as this.
• As if their film versions weren't hammy enough, Team StarKid's versions of Snape, Voldemort, Bellatrix, Lucius, and Umbridge in A Very Potter Musical exaggerate this trope.
• Though several villains from Yu-Gi-Oh! are hammy already, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series like to take it to comical extremes:
  • Marik is so hammy that he can hardly express himself like a regular person. Then Melvin takes over: he is hammy even when trying to open a door.
  • While usually more posed and calm than Marik, Bakura has his moments too.
  • Dartz combines it with a ridiculous accent that makes him almost impossible for his minions to understand.
  • Movie villains Anubis ("NOW YOU WILL DIE, AND THEN YOU WILL BE DEAD BECAUSE I WILL HAVE KILLED YOU! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA") and Paradox ("PWOTAGONISTS !") take it to such extremes it becomes ridiculous even for the main characters.
• The Iconians in any Star Trek Online fic involving Worffan101. Supreme High Lord Inevitably-Fated-for-Greatness is noteworthy for the sheer laughable arrogance of his introductory speech in Beat the Drums of War, but all Iconians fit this trope. Worffan101 has repeatedly stated his dislike of STO's portrayal of the Iconians and reacted by taking the hammy Sufficiently Advanced Aliens of the game to their logical extreme.
• Doctor Dire of Dire Worm! plays this trope, lampshades it, exploits it, and generally enjoys herself immensely. For example, facing Leviathan:
  "YOU FACE DIRE NOW, AND MAY GOD HELP YOU FOR THE DEVIL SHALL NOT! HE FEARS HER!"
  • Again, facing several soon-to-be-defeated opponents:
  "CHECKMATE IN TWO."
• Whether or not she's "evil" really depends on fan interpretation, but in Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness Yuuka Kazami has a blast when she's fighting Megas. Of note is this bit while she's charging up the Double Spark:
  "Marisa's spunk in stealing my attack is to be admired..." (voice steadily increases in volume) "...but when you absolutely must reduce everything in your path to a mist of atoms, accept... no... SUBSTITUTES!"
• Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!:
  • Present Mic, being the Large Ham he is, milks this trope for all it's worth when he controls the zero-pointer robot (which is a replica of Starro the Conqueror) during the U.A. Entrance Exam:
    I'm back, bitches! Bet you thought Starro was done for good. Idiots. Can't keep a good extraterrestrial telepathic starfish down! AHAHAHAHAHA!
  • Tenya decides to channel Eobard Thawne in his mannerisms when he's placed on the Villain team during the Heroes vs. Villain's exercise. He hams it up as much as possible, interspersing his dialogue with Evil Laughs and Evil Gloating and shouting "Inconceivable!" when things go wrong. Also lampshaded and deconstructed by All Might, who points out that Tenya had been too in-character, leading to Bond Villain Stupidity.
• In Devil's Diary: Magneto's overdramatic speeches are lampshaded by Quicksilver, who notes he talks like a movie villain.
  "I overheard Pietro once saying that I talked like a villain from an old movie."
• Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z Abridged. While he can be restrained when snarking at others, for the most part, he lets massive ego show in everything he says, and it only goes up if he gets angry.
• A Diplomatic Visit: In the sequel Diplomat at Large, per canon, the Storm King is this. Loud, boisterous, wise-cracking, and pretty wild.
• Dance with the Demons: Kobra needs to pontificate before, during, and after a battle, failing to notice Batman doesn't care about his ravings. So, in chapter 22:
  Kobra: "I congratulate you on your sterling effort. Truly, your wife would be pleased. However, I have a final trump your side cannot counter: a force-field which I have activated. It encases this entire floor, above it, below it, and on all sides. Your allies cannot penetrate it. Nor can you. But there is a way in."
  Batman: "What is it?"
  Kobra: "We have always known it would come down to this. The final battle, the Ragnarok. If I am your Midgard Serpent, and you are my Thor, then we must fight. However, no one has yet prophecied which of us will be slain, and which be slayer."
• The Prince Of Ponyville: Chrysalis chews no small amount of scenery. Subverted by Bank Ledger, who is described as monotone and utterly bland.
• A Force of Four: Mars is a very pompous and verbose War God who loves histrionics.
  Power Girl: "Aren't you tied to Earth? If you destroy it, how will you survive?"
  Mars: "Mars is not tied to Earth. Mars is tied to war. And what better war than that of vast empires within the second Heaven? Where billions may die, billions more be enslaved, and the bloodflow which results nourishes my power with every drop. No. Earth is unnecessary. A canker in my being. When it is destroyed, only my pain will vanish. But it will not be destroyed yet."
• In Evil Belle, Sweetie tries every cliche from the black cloak to speak in a guttural voice.
• Hellsister Trilogy: Darkseid is fond of polysyllabic verbiage and has no concept of indoor voice. Nemesis, the Kryptonian/Zeroxian hybrid whom Darkseid has raised, takes after his father and is prone to histrionics and speaking in all caps.
  Darkseid: "I have had three prior sons, boy. Two of my body, one of my charge. But you, my fourth son...you have had advantages your forebears never knew. I left their upbringing to others. I was busy. You, I have tended to with all my attention. With all my knowledge. Do you know why, boy?"
  Nemesis: "Because I am the greatest of the four. Because I am the one who will break our enemies like pottery shards. Because I will avenge you, my father. Avenge you, and...my mother."
  Darkseid: "Just so. Do you... remember who undid my plans, a thousand years ago, boy? And who, not so long ago... undid your mother?"
  Nemesis: (whispering) "The Supergirl."
  Darkseid: "Just so. It will be some years before you are of age, boy. It will be some years before we can reveal ourselves. The United Planets, the Guardians of the Universe, they must be kept... unknowing. Timing is all-important, boy. Any general can tell you that. Timing is everything."
  Nemesis: "Do you really believe she will come back?"
  Darkseid: "She will, boy. They will summon her."
  Nemesis: "That is good, father. Very, very good."
  Darkseid: "Do you know what you shall do, boy? Do you know what you shall do, in that time and on that day?"
  Nemesis: "I will avenge my mother's death. I will avenge your honor. I will make her pay for blocking the True Path. I WILL DESTROY THE SUPERGIRL."
  Darkseid: "And so you shall, my boy. And so, one day, you shall."
• A Man of Iron: In his final fight with Iron Man and Centurion, Gregor really chews the scenery.
• Ancienverse: Guzma resorts to chewing the scenery with his dialogue whenever he's in a scene.
• Parodied in Shazam! fanfiction Here There Be Monsters. The villain known as Acrobat is not good at making overdramatic speeches and he lacks the power to back his threats, so nobody takes him seriously.
  The Acrobat: "I'll kill you. I'm man enough, madman enough, to kill you all! Disc or no disc, I've got the power of ten men when the moon is out, and I ought to have enough strength here to do you all in!"[...] I'll destroy you all! One by one, I'll tear your heads off and make lamps out of them! I'll use your bodies for baseball equipment! I'll–"
  Midnight Maid: "You've been reading too many comic books."
• In My Dream Is Yours, Jamie Jam is a bigger ham than she is in canon. She introduces herself with smoke bombs, an Evil Laugh, and by using numerous self-appointed titles that are all Added Alliterative Appeal:
  YES, Odd Squad! It is I! The purloining princess of preserves, the criminal queen of condiments, the malevolent mistress of marmalade, the sinister siren of breakfast spreads, JAMIE JAM!

Films — Animation

• The Disney Animated Canon villains are prone to being incredibly hammy. More often than not, they also perform a bombastic Villain Song.
  • The Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, especially after magically disguising herself as an elderly woman.
  • Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, a name that just screams "ham". Even the live-action version with some Adaptational Heroism doesn't forget to give Angelina Jolie the Card Carrying Villainess moments necessary to unleash the ham.
  • The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland has quite a Hair-Trigger Temper. Off with their heads!
  • Captain Hook from Peter Pan, a Dastardly Whiplash-esque pirate captain.
  • Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians, who also got a live-action version, with Glenn Close clearly enjoying herself.
  • Kaa from The Jungle Book.
  • Prince John from Robin Hood.
  • Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective, voiced by no one else but Vincent Price.
  • Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
  • Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Forte (voiced by Tim Curry) in the sequel as well.
    • No one hams like Gaston, no one jams like Gaston, no one kicks it at poetry slams like Gaston! ("I'm especially good at ges-TIC-u-LATING!") Man, what a ham, that Gaston!
  • Jafar from Aladdin, especially when going all out against Aladdin and his allies.
  • Scar from The Lion King played by Jeremy Irons, although not without soft-spoken moments. Zira in the sequel, too.
  • Hades, the car salesman from Hell, from Hercules. Unlike most characters originated in a movie with a Celebrity Voice Actor, Hades has had the same voice actor in every incarnation, because James Woods just enjoys doing it that much.
  • Clayton from Tarzan, voiced by the one and only BRIAN BLESSED!
  • Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove. Eartha Kitt really hams it up.
  • The EEVIL GEN-EE-OUS Jumba from Lilo & Stitch is a Card-Carrying Villain Mad Scientist alien with a faux Russian accent. He's not as evil as he claims, though.
  • Doctor Facilier from The Princess and the Frog. ARE YOU READY?!
  • Gothel in Tangled.
  • Tamatoa in Moana is a hammy Giant Enemy Crab with similar mannerisms to David Bowie.
• Done intentionally in Dreamworks Animation's Megamind. The climactic confrontation with Hal/Titan shows that the title character even believes that supervillainy isn't just about villainy, it's about "PRESENTATION!!"
• Marvin McNasty in Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw. He shouts just about EVERY line and chomps on every scene he's in.

• In The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue there's Martin's dramatically hammy performance in the later portion of the film performed by Eric Idle, who seems to have loads of fun delivering every last line. He doesn't just chew the scenery as Martin, he gobbles it up whole, shats it back out, and then gobbles it up again, rinse and repeat twice more. ("You'll be happy. Oh, so happy, if you just SAY YYYYYYYYEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!")
• Nigel the cockatoo from Rio is a Card-Carrying Villain with a penchant for dramatic poses.
  • Incidentally Nigel's voice actor is Jemaine Clement who also voiced Tamatoa (see above), he clearly has a talent for Ham
• Despite The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists being a World of Ham, Queen "I Hate Pirates!" Victoria manages to out-ham the heroes.^note She doesn't meet the guy voiced by BRIAN BLESSED
• While most of the villains from spin-off series My Little Pony: Equestria Girls are as high on ham as their main series counterparts, particular attention should be paid to Gloriosa Daisy. Given that she's pretty hammy by default it's no surprise that her line deliveries after being corrupted rival Palpatine in their oddness and hilarity, nicely illustrating that she's more crazy than evil.

Films — Live-Action

• The Dark Knight Trilogy: Although there were quite sober villains (such as the softly spoken Ra's al Ghul or the deadly serious Two-Face); The Joker and Bane, however, are conspicuous for their peculiar eccentricities:
  • The Dark Knight: Between laughing, gesturing, and grand speeches; The Joker's presence is exceptionally over-the-top and grandiloquent, at least by the standards of your ordinary Nolan antagonist.
  • The Dark Knight Rises: Bane, mainly during his public speeches. It also helps to see that everything he's saying are Blatant Lies and he doesn't believe a word of them. It's almost as if he's mocking the very people he's trying to agitate.

• Blue Velvet is a movie where most of the characters are pretty low-key, but the villain, Frank, yells nearly every line.
• The Chronicles of Riddick (2004): Colm Feore (The Lord Marshal), Karl Urban (Vaako), and Thandie Newton (Dame Vaako). Note that all three characters mentioned are Necromongers.
• In Cube Zero Canadian actor Michael Riley is completely hamming it up as Jax, the main bad guy the controllers upstairs send down. He's basically an over-the-top caricature who just revels in his evil and is clearly enjoying himself thoroughly.
• 90% of Tim Curry's roles fall under this. If he's playing a villain, there's a good chance it'll be an awesomely hammy performance. Tim Curry does not know any other way to act other than completely over the top, chewing every piece of scenery in sight. And we love him for it.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show: "I'm just a Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvaniaaaaaaa..."
  • "Excuse me, sir!! Do you have Prince Albert in a can?? YOU DO?? Well, ya better let the poor guy out!"
    • "Wuh-HUH! Wuh-HUH! Wuh-HUH!"
    • "They float... THEY ALL FLOAT!!!"
  • Tim Curry outshines every Muppet as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.
  • Annie (1982). Eaaaaaaaaaaasy streeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
  • Legend (1985). Curry in the film has a full pork dinner.
• Colin Farrell's scene-chewing role as Bullseye in Daredevil (2003) takes this trope and just runs with it to its funniest extent.
• Al Pacino as the devil in The Devil's Advocate. Hell, Pacino in any role that's even remotely villainous.
  "God... is an absentee landlord!"''
• Andy Robinson is decidedly... unsubtle as the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry.
• Downfall: Hitler, who's going on a movie-long Villainous Breakdown. "THAT WAS AN ORDER! STEINER'S ASSAULT WAS AN ORDER!'' Who do you think you are to disobey an order I give?! So this is what it has come to... The military has been lying to me... Everyone has been lying to me, even the SS!"
• Baron Vladimir Harkonen from Frank Herbert's Dune is already listed below under Literature, but Kenneth McMillan's portrayal in David Lynch's adaptation is so insanely over-the-top it deserves an extra mention.
• Profion (played by Jeremy Irons) in Dungeons & Dragons (2000).
  "Ha-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta"
  "Myyyyyyyy DESTINNNYYYY!"
  "You can run your Ladyship, but YOU'LL NEVER RUN FAR ENOUGH!"
  "Let their blood RAAAAIIIIIN FRROOOMMMM THE SKKKKKAAAAHHHHHHH!"
• The first two acts of Enemy Mine have No Antagonist and deal with the main characters working together to survive being marooned on a Death World. We do get an actual villain much later in the movie in the form of Stubbs, a vicious and brutal slavedriver who makes up for lost time by being cartoonishly over-the-top evil, and shouts almost every line through a huge mouthful of scenery.
• Face/Off: Castor Troy, whether played by Nicolas Cage or John Travolta, is a being made of pure ham, jumping from memetically insane grins, creepily sexy comments, and dramatic one-liners within an instant. Troy is a terrorist who does things For the Evulz and to be as ridiculous as possible. Admittedly there's a bit of Ham-to-Ham Combat going on in the film, but Castor Troy is still at least a level above his rival Sean Archer in terms of hamminess.
• Kevin Kline as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, where the caricature of the Chaotic Stupid (but don't call him that!) Ugly American is taken to its most evil and ridiculous extreme. He even won an Oscar for the role!
  (while driving on the right in England) "Aaaaaassssshoooooooooleeee!!!"
• Galaxy Quest: Oh, Sarris...
  "You Fool!! You fail to realize that, with your armor gone, my ship will tear through yours like tissue paper."
  "Prepare a tear-harness! For the Female."
• The Doctor from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Even before he becomes Cobra Commander, he had his hammy moments, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts in a weird voice and spouts overly dramatic lines to compensate the mask in his face.
• Every incarnation of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films whether he's possessing, younger or his present snake-faced wizard. The same goes for his Death Eaters. Lucius Malfoy, Barty Crouch Jr. and Bellatrix Lestrange (with the latter's scenery eating making her all the scarier).
• In the 1980s film He-Man, Frank Langella made Skeletor a Shakespearean villain with relish. He ultimately made him a force to be feared with.
• The Highlander franchise gives us the likes of The Kurgan (Clancy Brown) in the first movie, General Katana (Michael Ironside) and David Blake (John C. McGinley) in Highlander II: The Quickening, Kane (Mario Van Peebles) in Highlander III: The Sorcerer, Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne) in Highlander: Endgame and The Guardian (Cristian Solimeno) in Highlander: The Source, all to varying degrees of success.
• The Hobbit has Smaug, much like in the source material. Along with overly dramatic dialogue lifted from the book, he's voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. Going further than the book he manages to some theatrical gestures, despite being a giant snake-like creature with no hands, like Circling Monologue and shows off his sheer size in the most show-offy way he can.
• The Mayflowers in Hudson Hawk, full stop.
  Darwin Mayflower: If da Vinci were alive today, he'd be eating microwave sushi, naked, in the back of a Cadillac with the both of us! History! Tradition! Culture! Are not concepts! These are trophies I keep in my den as paperweights!
• In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Snow's conversation with Katniss doesn't involve him shouting or gesticulating or anything like that, but now that he's dropped his facade, his stoic expression and soft monotone have been replaced with openly evil sneering and sadism.
• In Inglourious Basterds, Adolf Hitler.

• In Jack the Giant Slayer Stanley Tucci is in non-stop ham mode as Roderick. For the giants, being hammy is almost a requirement.
• Many James Bond villains, such as Jonathan Pryce's Corrupt Corporate Executive media mogul Elliot Carver, from Tomorrow Never Dies and the Renegade Russian General Orlov from Octopussy.
• Aeetes, the Sorcerous Overlord of the nation of Colchis in the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts. Jack Gwillim probably never ate a single thing ever again, he devoured the scenery.
  Aeetes: DESTROY THEM! KILL! KILL, KILL, KILL THEM ALLLLLLLLLLLL!
• This trope is seen in a nutshell in the famous "I am the law!" scene in Judge Dredd. The good guy spits out the ultra-hammy "You betrayed the law!", and just to show that evil goes one step further, the bad guy responds with an even louder and hammier "LAAAWW!".
  • This Ham-to-Ham Combat is deliberately averted in the 2012 film Dredd, where Karl Urban's delivery of the famous line is much quieter. But the villain, smug crime queen MaMa, still fits the trope by having Lena Headey clearly having fun playing a Card Carrying Villainess.
• Eve Mauro clearly relishes her role as the psychotic Morgan in Killer Dream Home.
  "This house will be mine."
  "Looks like we have moles all over the place, don't we? Guess I'm going to have to bury them."
  "I refuse to entertain your husband's lapdog."
  "He was going to leave this house to me when he died. I loved him, and he left everything to his selfish wife. And now you're trying to take what's mine!"
  • During the climax Morgan outlines an elaborate and utterly barmy frame-up plot.
    "It is going to be the affair of the century. Hot blonde Bliss Leary gets caught banging boss Josh. Wavy jules goes wild, ends up bashing hubby's head in with a hammer. Then kills anxious neighbour before strangling Miss Bliss to her untimely death."
• In The Last Airbender, Commander Zhao, played by Aasif Mandvi. Averted with Fire Lord Ozai, who is somewhat of a Large Ham in the original cartoon but is soft-spoken and contemplative in the film.
• Gordon Currie's part in the Left Behind movies is the hammiest of all, possibly because Currie was the only one who noticed what kind of movie he was in. He plays The Antichrist. You do the math.
• Given that Mad Max is a World of Ham, virtually all the villains fit this. The warlords of Mad Max: Fury Road deliberately exploit this, along with their Conspicuous Consumption, to come across as larger than life to their fanatically devoted followers, who in turn work themselves into a frenzy and commit suicidal acts in order to impress them.
• Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960) owns every scene he's in with relish.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Loki in Thor and The Avengers (2012) tends to alternate between being frighteningly intense and unsettlingly collected. Although that one "mewling quim" line does establish him pretty solidly as a Large Ham.
  • Then there's Ultron, who is Tony Stark turned into an evil robot, along with uncannily puppet-like exaggerated movements and even singing a Disney song.
  "There are... no strings on me."
  • From the rest of the MCU, Obadiah Stane, The Abomination ("YOU DON'T DESERVE THIS POWER!"), Ivan Vanko, Justin Hammer, The Mandarin (both the hammy actor used as a front and Aldrich Killian once he embraces his villainous plan), Red Skull, Ronan the Accuser, Dormammu, Ego the Living Planet, Killmonger, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro and Scarlet Witch are frequently exaggerated or just plainly enjoying themselves.
  • Honestly, it's easier to name the Big Bads who aren't hammy. The Winter Soldier is fairly low key and has barely any lines in the movie (the only time he's Suddenly Shouting, it's played for drama), Alexander Pierce is a Soft-Spoken Sadist and Helmut Zemo never raises his voice above slightly loud as he's a soldier on a revenge quest, he's not a cackling villain. The Vulture is understated, except when yelling at his sidekicks. Yellowjacket only has a few hammy lines once in full costume, and everyone in Ant-Man and the Wasp is subtle, in contrast to the movie being outlandish.
  • The franchise's Greater-Scope Villain Thanos manages to ham without even talking in his scene in The Stinger of The Avengers'. It only goes up from there when he actually gets a speaking role in Guardians of the Galaxy. And then Avengers: Infinity War is basically two hours of Thanos showing off no one can be as grandiose as him.
  • Hela in Thor: Ragnarok who somehow manages to out-ham pretty much all the MCU villains before her. Constantly prone to Badass Boasts and Evil Gloating, she likes to announce to everyone within earshot that she is the Goddess of Death at every single available opportunity, and saunters around Asgard acting like everywhere is her own personal catwalk. Even her fighting style has an inherent and entertaining flair for the dramatic.
  • As soon as Mysterio is revealed as a bad guy, he drops the serious façade he had built for a cheerfully smug personality, with subsequent interactions with Spider-Man in particular getting very theatrical.
  • Dreykov, a Fat Bastard who wants to taunt, gloat and overall be the biggest presence in the room.
  • Gorr the God-Butcher, whose Faux Affably Evil manners only make him more scary.
• Pam Ferris as The Trunchbull in Matilda devours the scenery with so much aplomb you have to wonder if that's her real Trademark Favorite Food rather than chocolate cake.
• Just about every Malcolm McDowell villain role.
  • Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
  • The CEO of Water and Power in Tank Girl.
  • Cochrane in Blue Thunder.
  • Even as Soren in Star Trek: Generations, at least compared to the subdued performance everyone else but Data hands in.
• Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is hammy whenever possible, and It! Is! GLORIOUS!
• Freddy Krueger in the later A Nightmare on Elm Street films, as he started to have more fun tormenting his victims and became a theatrical wisecracker.
• Whenever someone gets possessed in Night of the Demons (1988) and its sequels, you can bet they'll start chewing the scenery as well as faces.
• The Wicked Witch of the West in Oz the Great and Powerful is supposed to be terrifying, but instead, she is incredibly hammy, complete with Narm and Scenery Chewing.
• In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Dreyfus seems fully aware that he has turned into a Bond villain and he is clearly loving every minute of it.
• In Power Rangers, Rita is clearly having a lot of fun being evil. It especially stands out in this Darker and Edgier, more 'grounded' version. Everyone else is more subdued, more angsty, even characters who were a lot hammier originally. Alpha goes from an excitable worrywart to a Deadpan Snarker, and Zack goes from a quippy, show-offy Dance Battler to a brooding loner. Meanwhile, every scene of Rita's is every bit as much scenery-chewing fun as the original.
• Norman Stansfield in The Professional. EEEEVERYONE!! Most other villain roles played by Gary Oldman should count just as well.
• The hamminess is been disputed between Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), who drunkenly chews every piece of the bar's scenery, and the Burns family led by Arthur (Danny Huston) in The Proposition. Then Arthur kills Lamb for trying to kill Charlie, leaving the hammy niche to him.
• Rhys Wakefield as the "Polite Leader" of the gang trying to invade Ethan Hawke's house in The Purge. Right away, he gives a Slasher Smile similar to the one in his mask and continues mugging while speaking in an Affably Evil tone that just shows he's full of himself.
• Retroactive: The murderous Frank, as played by Jim Belushi, is constantly cracking bad jokes and chewing up the scenery around him.
• Christopher Lee occasionally indulges in this. Although fully capable of being subtle and understated, he knows what's expected of him. His performance in The Return of Captain Invincible especially showcases this.
• Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro, and Demián Bichir play the villains in Savages and do it with devilish glee. Especially del Toro's Ham and Cheese performance.
• In Scanners II: The New Order, The Dragon Peter Drak is by far the most melodramatic of the villains, gleefully killing people with his mind and laughing about it afterwards. By contrast, during his most evil act (murdering David's elderly mother for no reason) he is deliberately calm and quiet.
• Cristal Connors in Showgirls is one of the hammiest characters in this film from her campy mannerisms and lines to her strange obsession with doggy chow. And she is the main antagonist, besides Andrew Carver. In fact, this was very much intentional as her actress Gina Gershon admitted that she was campy on purpose, once she realized just what kind of film she was making.
• Evil Chancellor Jaffar in Sinbad of the Seven Seas hams it up in every scene he's in, even to the point where other characters start commenting on it.
• Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog. He's clearly having the time of his life bringing Robotnik to the big screen, combining his penchant for loud and manic characters with the already bombastic nature of the source character. Whether it's him dancing while preparing his vehicles, to screaming about his love of lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk, his portrayal is definitely one to be remembered. Then there's the moment Robotnik has a Freak Out, complete with exaggerated movements after Sonic destroys his robots on the highway.
  Robotnik: [stomping around his base] OUUUUUGH! GIVE ME A BIG! FAT! BREAK!
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • The Green Goblin. You can't really go subtle when you're flying around dressed as a green storybook monster, and Willem Dafoe wisely didn't bother.
    "I've watched you from deep behind Norman's cowardly eyes. Struggling to have everything you want, while the world tries to make you choose. Gods don't have to choose. We take."
  • Whenever Doctor Octopus tries to be menacing, he talks as hammily as possible.
    "Find him. Or I'll peel the flesh off her bones..." (while a tentacle opens and closes akin to a biting gesture)
  • Eddie Brock after bonding with the Venom symbiote.
    "Ooh, my Spider-Sense is tingling, if you get what I talking about. Tiger."

The later Venom solo movie takes it one step further, with the symbiote itself spouting evil phrases in a cavernous voice, and Tom Hardy even adding in weird acting moments playing Eddie Brock to show it's contagious, like a parasite (PARASITE?!!!!). And its sequel brings in two hammy villains on its own, Carnage and his lover Shriek.

• M. Bison in Street Fighter, OF COURSE!!!. He's a tinpot wannabe dictator supervillain who makes several grandiose speeches about his plans to conquer the world, makes Chun-Li's attempted revenge fall flat with his But for Me, It Was Tuesday retort, and in the climax, he finally loses it completely and declares himself a god while flying around his base shooting electricity at Colonel Guile. Raúl Juliá certainly gave himself a DELICIOUS send-off. (Sagat is also a ham; he just pales in comparison to Bison.)
• Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie wasn't really hammy, just full of himself, but General Zod is a true ham. Kneel Before Zod's ham. Although his first instance was justified in that he was desperately pleading to avoid a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Luthor wasn't much hammier in Superman Returns, was h-WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!!
    Lois Lane: But millions of people will die!
    Lex Luthor: BILLIONS! Once again, the press underestimates me.
  • Man of Steel continues the tradition with its depiction of General Zod. And then Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice added another hammy Lex Luthor.
• Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers.
• Almost every villain in TRON: Legacy is a Large Ham (with the exception of Rinzler), but especially the Big Bad. CLU uses his hamminess to make our world open and available to all of his programs. Yes! TO ALL OF THEM!!! And that's before you get to his agent, Zuse, who chews the scenery with his Bowie-esque nature. A yin and yang of hams, if you think about it.
• Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones completely and utterly enjoy themselves as the villains of Under Siege. Jones even makes a Muppet Show reference at the climax of the film.
• Chancellor Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta cranks up the ham dial progressively as the country wriggles out of his grasp.
• Virtuosity has a young Russell Crowe as villain SID 6.7, a virtual assassin who once in the real world is having fun like nobody cares. One scene even has a criminal psychologist noting he likes to show off, "like a child to its parents".
• Komodo, oh dear sweet Komodo from Warriors of Virtue. The man is a giant ham and cheese sandwich, as these clips prove.
• Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, specially once he's revealed to be a toon and yells in a Creepy High-Pitched Voice.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Magneto, played by Ian McKellen, has a few moments of this, but he's calm the rest of the time. His younger self, portrayed by Michael Fassbender, also overacts whenever he's overtly threatening.
  • The title villain from X-Men: Apocalypse. Rolling Stone reported it was "a performance that director Bryan Singer calibrated by asking for 'quarter Skeletor,' 'half Skeletor' or 'full Skeletor.' Needless to say, 'You can fire your arrows from the Tower of Babel, but you can never strike God!' called for full Skeletor."

Literature

• Visser Three in Animorphs. While thought-speak can be directed at one, several, or even everyone in range, the Visser is CONSTANTLY BROADCASTING HIS PRESENCE to all, including his enemies. In fact, in the whole series (when in an Andalite body), he speaks to one person at a time a grand total of ONCE.
• Opal Koboi from Artemis Fowl practically invented Evil Is Hammy. Especially in the eighth book. She even lampshades it.
  "He is mine. The ultimate power is mine. I have the lemur."
• Venandakatra the Vile in the Belisarius Series. He is a devotee of every vice known to man, and some that haven't been discovered to this day. He loves hurting people, except when they fight back. He wages war by pitching an array of tents that are more ostentatious and less tasteful than the palaces of more Modest Royalty and then makes guarding his comfort a primary objective of his campaigns. He has the most expensive feasts constantly dumped into his mouth and treats slave girls much like food, to be consumed and the husks discarded; and sex to him is no fun unless combined with torture. The book also makes a point of mentioning that he is called The Vile and not The Cruel because the latter might imply respect. In general, the chief pleasure a reader takes in his character is that it is almost impossible to imagine someone so extravagantly and flamboyantly evil - even if we know such people exist in Real Life.
  • In addition, his Royal Brat status means that a good chunk of his dialogue consists of loud, semi-coherent rage.
• The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids:
  • Sebastian Steer, who was The Stoic when he was The Dragon to Lord Nefarious starts ranting and raving and cackling once he becomes an Evil Overlord himself.
  • Doctor Curious's Ax-Crazy Evil Ex is noted as being even more theatrical than the Doctor himself to the point that he actually sings most of his dialogue (in prose).
  • The Director's manner in The City of Peace is described as theatrical and overdramatic. He's not overplaying the villain, however, but overplaying the Tragic Hero to try and make Atoma feel guilty about her part in his Freudian Excuse. She is unimpressed.
• Discworld: Averted by Lily Weatherwax in Witches Abroad; she's actually somewhat menacingly toned down. What makes this instance notable, though, is the way her sister, Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax, reacts; the very fact that Lily isn't Chewing the Scenery enrages her as much as all the damage she's done to innocent lives over the years. Lily went off to be the bad sister, leaving Esme to be the good one, but Lily spent the whole time deluding herself that she was the good one, so even though there was no doubt which sister she was, she never took the opportunity to enjoy it. To Granny, this is almost as bad as denying Esme the choice in the first place.
• The Dresden Files: Many of Harry Dresden's enemies are this to some degree. Drunk on the Dark Side is quite common throughout the series and coupled with the Antiquated Linguistics of many supernatural creatures, this is a great recipe for some serious ham. The standout example is probably Lord Raith, who is explicitly compared to a movie villain in his extremely over-the-top and melodramatic dialogue, but many other characters also fit the bill.
• Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune. Ian McNeice definitely shows it in his portrayal of the baron in the miniseries.
• The main villain in Fancy Apartments is Vrotheus the Vile, who hams up any line he can. It's hard to tell if that's his nature, or if he just likes being dramatic. Oddly enough, he still seems a serious threat despite it.
• The villains of The First Dwarf King seem to think they're in a stage opera. Then again, so does everyone else, but Pathruushkè and Trang Barok take it Up to Eleven — especially when they argue.
• Old Kingdom: Kerrigor in Sabriel. "Blood for the breaking!" Apparently, he was a flamboyant guy who loved having every eye on him even while alive; after becoming undead, getting Drunk on the Dark Side, and becoming quite possibly the most powerful active being on the planet, this natural tendency got exaggerated.
• Invoked in The Tamuli, when the normally restrained Sir Bevier goes undercover at the villain's camp as a mercenary. He attempts to appear "dangerously competent", but his stage training takes over and, as a result, he ends up looking like a homicidal maniac and leaves the entire camp terrified of him.
• Used differently with each of the three most powerful Forsaken in The Wheel of Time.
  • Ishamael is a rather impressive ham in his persona as Ba'alzamon, giving some rather spectacular Card-Carrying Villain rants owing to being Drunk on the Dark Side. Subverted when he comes back later in the series as Moridin, and is much calmer and more restrained, coming across as almost resigned at times, and is much scarier for it.
  • Lanfear is usually Affably Evil, especially around Rand. Just don't mash her Berserk Button, because we're not kidding about the "berserk" part. Lanfear is one of the most deadly channelers of all time, and in a screaming temper, she's more than capable of blasting just about anyone in her way to ash.
  • Demandred appears at first to be a complete aversion; the guy is stoic to the point of hardly ever showing genuine emotion except for the occasional glimpse of the seething core of epic rage at the heart of his personality. Then in the final book he finally lets all that hate out, in the process becoming the Large Ham he was born to be.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: Invoked Trope in the Season 4 finale. A future propagandist is using holographic versions of several main characters to engage in some historical revisionism. When Evil Capitan Sheridan is making a speech in front of a group of about-to-be-executed prisoners, Bruce Boxleitner hams it up for all he's worth.
• Blake's 7. Averted with the soulless Orwellian bureaucrats of the Terran Administration, but once we leave Earth and those tranquilizers they put in the water there are no shortage of Mad Scientists, religious maniacs (one played by BRIAN BLESSED), campy crime bosses, power-hungry schemers, murderous Femme Fatales and psychotic Federation thugs to make things interesting, half of them dressed in Impractically Fancy Outfits and Chewing the Scenery for all it's worth. And while "evil" is an open question, it's certainly true that the more embittered and morally-compromised Avon becomes, the more studs he wears, poses he strikes, and lines he delivers in staccato barks.
• Buffyverse:
  • In the first season of Buffy, The Master had moments of incredible ham:
    "Yes, shake, Earth! This is a sign! We are in the final days! My time is come! Glory! GLORY! *pause* What do you think? 5.1?"
  • And Glory was just made of ham. Seriously, she might not have had a single scene that wasn't gloriously hammy. Overcompensating for your lost hell-empire will do that to you.
  • In both Buffy and Angel we have Angelus, who uses those vampire teeth to chew all the scenery he can find. Particularly in his second appearance. Good lord, man, switch to decaf.
    Angelus: "Uh-ohhh! Vampire with a gun!"
• The Chronicles of Narnia: All of Barbara Kellerman's roles in the BBC TV adaptations of the book series, i.e. the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Hag in Prince Caspian, and the Lady of the Green Kirtle in The Silver Chair. Her attempts to sound angry are more likely to send the audience into giggles than intimidate them.
• Criminal Minds: Being a show full of unstable killers, many of whom have a genuine mental illness, this is common.
  • The Reaper stands out even among other UnSubs. He's over-the-top to the point where he's like a comic book super-villain. Due to his desire for twisted fame, he wants to make everything as dramatic as possible. He overacts his role even when pretending to be his own victim.
  • Billy Flynn is played by Tim Curry. Enough said.
  • Paul and John Mulford are clear cases of Giggling Villain, and visibly enjoy Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
• CSI: Nate Haskell hams it up to no end at his trial for stabbing Langston. It's clearly the character being hammy, as the actor can do a very good subtly creepy when he wants to.
• Dexter: The show seems to be rather fond of this one for the seasonal Big Bad. Season 3 had Jimmy Smits, season 4 had John Lithgow, and season 6 has Edward James Olmos AND Colin Hanks.
• While the show is in general a World of Ham, any Doctor Who villain worth their salt will out-ham the heroes.
  • Professor Zaroff is so shouty, mad-eyed, and completely over-the-top that it keys off the Doctor into knowing he's Obviously Evil long before anyone else has figured it out. And no one else seems to understand this, much to the Doctor's confusion.
  • The Master (not that one) possessing Padmarsambhavar in "The Abominable Snowman" endlessly, hopelessly overacts everything he says and pulls this off in the audio recording. You can even hear the microphone popping as he hisses and spits his consonants.
  • In the fascism-ruled Alternate Universe in "Inferno", the doppelganger of the normally calm and subtle Brig is the wonderfully hammy Brigade Leader.
  • Azal; literally every one of his lines is solid shouting.
  • Omega is one of the best examples of this in the franchise, which is saying quite a lot.
  • The Fourth Doctor is a ham to end all hams when he's his NORMAL self, but the various Robot Mes, evil computer selves, Evil Knockoffs, and the various times he pretends to be evil for plot, humour or Superdickery all involve universe-shattering levels of overacting. In the last case, it's justified, as the Doctor himself is clearly loving the opportunity to be evil for a while because he loves dramatics. One of his most cunning moments is in "Shada", where he teases the villain Skagra about his emotionlessness being an affectation because there is no way he would be fighting someone who didn't have a "manic gleam" in the eye and keep announcing things like "The universe belongs to me!!". Skagra pretends to be above that sort of thing, but still heads headfirst into Villainous Breakdown between his plan failing and the Doctor intentionally annoying him, eventually being reduced to having a manic gleam in the eye and shouting things like "The universe belongs to me!!".
  • Eldrad. The more he reveals his megalomania, the hammier he gets.
  • BY ALL THE MOONS OF CALLUFRAX, YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR FAILURE TO NOT MENTION THE PIRATE CAPTAIN FROM THE CLASSIC SERIES SERIAL "THE PIRATE PLANET"! MR. FIBULI! MR. FIBULI! WHERE IS THAT NINCOMPOOP, MR. FIBULI?!?
  • Soldeed from "The Horns of Nimon" is infamously campy. So much so that his confrontation with Romana has a dance remix. "MY DREAMS OF CON-QUEST!"
  • Subverted in "Warriors Gate". Captain Rorvik has the required scenery-chewing villainy, but he's constantly undercut by his apathetic crew.
  • Sharaz Jek and Morgus are almost Shakespearean in their furious ranting and scheming asides, respectively.
  • King Yrcanos from "The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp", which is no surprise since he's played by BRIAN BLESSED! However, he only really had that status at the start of the story — The evil, that is. Not the hamminess. In fact, the hamminess just kept increasing as the story progressed.
  • The Seventh Doctor lampshades this when he interrupts Davros in "Remembrance of the Daleks".
    Davros: The Daleks shall become Lords of Time! We shall become all-
    Seven: Powerful! Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! UNIMAGINABLE POWER! UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING! ET CETERA, ET CETERA!
  • The Eighth Doctor, in the Big Finish audios, functions as almost a controlled experiment in this trope. When he's himself, he's quite soft-spoken (so you turn up the volume). But if he gets turned evil, he has NO INDOOR VOICE (and you scream and fling your mp3 player of choice as he assaults your eardrums when he turns up the volume too).
    I AM BECOME ZAGREUS!^note The Doctor is never too evil and hammy to make highbrow references.
  • Most incarnations of The Master serve up large slices of ham, notably John Simm, Anthony Ainley, and (in spoof Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death) Jonathan Pryce. Although he only plays the Master for a few minutes (on the TV show, anyway), Derek Jacobi manages to be pretty hammy himself. Quite the change from the mild-mannered Professor Yana.
    • Sacha Dhawan's O keeps the ham in the fridge for most of an episode until he's ready to reveal himself.
    • The Eric Roberts incarnation will always... drezz for the occasion, in possibly the hammiest moment of any of his incarnations.
  • Lady Cassandra from "The End of the World" and "New Earth", especially in the latter, where she gains the ability to Body Surf and possesses both Rose and the Doctor. Billie Piper and David Tennant appear to be having a grand old time camping it up as Cassandra.
  • John Lumic starts hamming it up the very minute he wheels on screen.
    John Lumic: And how will you do that FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE?
  • The Racnoss Empress in "The Runaway Bride" is truly one of the largest hams the series has ever seen. Catherine Tate, in her first appearance as companion Donna Noble, counters with Ham-to-Ham Combat.
  • The Nothing Is Scarier-shrouded Eldritch Abomination in Sky's body, once it has its own voice, positively revels in the Doctor's helplessness and its own ability to easily influence the passengers.
  • Averted in the Tenth Doctor audio story "Dead Air", in which the sound creature impersonating the Doctor's voice is almost right and can semi-convincingly get the patter down, but has a noticeably flatter and less dramatic delivery to its words than the (actual) Doctor narrating the events.
  • A villain called Androvax from a species whose hat is Grand Theft Me pays our heroes a visit on The Sarah Jane Adventures. Elisabeth Sladen was clearly having a lot of fun as a possessed Sarah Jane.
  • She's always been brassy, sassy, and flirty, but Brainwashed and Crazy River Song from "Let's Kill Hitler" could stock a deli counter all by her lonesome.
  • The Eleventh Doctor is already a scenery-chewer to start with, but gets even hammier when infected with Cyber-tech in "Nightmare in Silver". Matt Smith's Acting for Two moment as the Cyberplanner Mr. Clever manages to out-ham the Doctor... as the Doctor!
    Cyberplanner: Good news, boys and girls! THEEEEEEEY'RRRRRREEE HEEEEEERRREE!
  • The various villains of "The Husbands of River Song" each embody this trope in distinct ways: Hydroflax's constant shouting, his body's deep-voiced robotic menace, Flemming's sliminess, Scratch and his compatriots' hissing...
  • In "The Witchfinders", the Morax Queen possessing Becka Savage eats the scenery with every line.
• The Flash (2014): Leonard Snart was originally a calm and methodical criminal who planned every robbery out to the second. He succeeded every time without any real trouble, but he wasn't enjoying it. After the Flash beat him for the first time and he got a freeze gun, he embraced his new "Captain Cold" identity with gusto.
  Cold: AT LAST! THE SCARLET SPEEDSTER!
• Game of Thrones: Ramsay Snow, Lord Bolton's bastard son. Initially, while pretending to be Theon Greyjoy's friend and rescuer, he seems quite calm and soft-spoken; however, the moment he reveals his true colors, he turns into a giggling, jumpy, mood-swinging, psychotic Large Ham.
• Unsurprisingly, considering that they are part of the Batman Rogues Gallery, almost all of the villains on Gotham can be this way. Penguin is a mob boss with a Hair-Trigger Temper who is prone to Suddenly Shouting (and homicidal rage) when things don't go his way, and Jerome Valeska is a laughably evil Captain Ersatz of the Joker who has to kill people in the funniest and most theatrical way possible. His twin brother, Jeremiah Valeska, another Captain Ersatz of the Joker, is less funny than his brother, but no less theatrical. He wears make-up and fancy suits in outlandish colors just like the comic character, and he actually dresses up as Zorro at one point as part of a convoluted scheme that also involved kidnapping Bruce Wayne. Bonus points that the actor who played him got inspiration for his role by watching Tim Curry play Dr. Frank N. Furter.
  Jeremiah: I wanna be the star of the show!
• Many of the villains are this way on Highlander: The Series, just like they are in the Highlander movies. Kalas, a former opera singer, is of particular note, of the villains that last for more than one episode, as is Kronos, an immortal so old he's been terrorizing people ever since the Bronze Age. While he is equally good at exuding quiet menace, he definitely has his hammy moments, especially when he's dueling Macleod.
  Kronos: I am the end of time!
• Horrible Histories portrays historical villains this way occasionally, especially Caligula. Philip II of Spain has his hammy moments too.
• Hounded: The villain's name is Dr. Muhahahaha. See quote page.
• iCarly: Nevel hams up every appearance by yelling his monologues to the gang and laughing maniacally when things go his way, while screaming and flailing when they don't
• Jekyll: Doctor Tom Jackman is a quiet father of two with a deadpan sense of humor. Hyde, by contrast, is an unrepentant maniac and acts like it.
• This is the general rule for Kamen Rider and other Tokusatsu villains, they have to be hammy to keep up with action and pace of the series.
  • Kamen Rider OOO: Parodied when Kougami (an extremely Large Ham as is) makes a Kamen Rider movie in-universe. Everyone playing a villain in the film suddenly becomes a gigantic ham, especially Ankh as the Big Bad, who gives Kougami a run for his money. Of course, this might be because he's still kind of a villain anyway.
  • Dan Kuroto, the Big Bad of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, leaves no scenery unchewed as he becomes more and more unhinged and his god complex grows. His Slasher Smile moments even get special camera effects and sounds. He was actually more of a calm and dignified villain at the beginning but it's clear that that's just a mask and one he's not able to keep on for long periods. There's also his father, Masamune Dan, who displays an excessive level of ham once he reveals himself (helped by the fact that he's played by a famous singer).
  • Blood Stalk of Kamen Rider Build is incredibly flamboyant, frequently vibrating between being eerily casual and excessively showy.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: Isaac/Master Logos, who takes a few cues from Kuroto up there, is a completely off his rocker evil mastermind just barely able to put on a Mask of Sanity. Even when he's not boasting about how great he is he can't help but let out a psychotic smirk that more than conveys just how megalomaniacal he is.
• Robbie Rotten of LazyTown, with an eccentric delivery from actor Stefán Karl Stefánsson mixed with Jim Carrey-level facial contortions. Exhibit A.
• In the BBC's 2008 adaptation of Little Dorrit, Andy Serkis clearly had a ball playing the villain of the piece Rigaud.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
  • Invoked Trope, where Kimberly is kidnapped by Zed's minions. They try a failed Hypnotize the Captive spell on her, but she fakes it working by acting like Rita in all her scenery-chewing glory.
  • Rita herself, as her line in the opening of the show proves it:
    Rita Repulsa: AAAAHHH!! After 10,000 years, I'm FREE! It's time to CONQUER EARTH!
    • Rita's boss Lord Zedd manages to equally as hammy with No Indoor Voice. His volume typically consists either of shouting or really shouting.
  • It's basically required for any Power Rangers villain to be hammy enough to reach Camp status.
  • Tommy / the original Green Ranger. As a good guy, not really much hammier than the other Rangers. As a bad guy? "MUHAHAHA! I will DESTROY the Power Rangers!" He reverts to this when brainwashed by Gasket in Zeo.
  • There's also Astronema/Karone, who was INCREDIBLY hammy as a villain, but no more so than other characters after making a Heel–Face Turn.
• Odd Squad: Odd Todd is easily one of the hammiest villains in the entire show. With his constant taunting, his tendency to invade the personal space of his enemies, and his Evil Laugh, it's no wonder he's one of the most iconic villains of the series. Even before he became a villain, he was constantly Chewing the Scenery. Since his character is inspired by The Joker, though, hamminess is to be expected.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • The Evil Queen and Rumpelstiltskin are both rather hammy in the Enchanted Forest. Rumpelstiltskin combines this with Giggling Villain, The Evil Queen absolutely devours the scenery. Regina and Mr. Gold, their human Storybrooke counterparts, however, choose to become a Cold Ham.
  • Rumpelstiltskin is probably hammier than Mr. Gold because he's also far crazier. Regina, on the other hand, was probably hamming it up for kicks.
  • You thought the Evil Queen was hammy? Wait until you see her impersonate Ursula. Lana Parrilla is clearly having the time of her life.
  • Dr. Whale's true identity turns out to be Dr. Frankenstein. He's as hammy as you'd expect.
  • Virtually every villain is either a classic ham, or at least a Cold Ham, with the Wicked Witch of the West and the majority of Disney villains who appear (Cruella, Hades, Dr. Facilier, the real Ursula) being the former and Jafar (ironically), Lady Tremaine, and Drizella Tremaine being the latter.
• Quark. In "The Good, the Bad and the Ficus", a Negative Space Wedgie creates an evil version of our heroes.
  Quark: (calmly) Ficus, program Maneuver Plan Red. Jean, give me as much power as you can.
  Jean: Yes sir.
  (cut to other ship)
  Evil!Quark: FICUS! Program ATTACK Plan RED! (grabs Jean's shirt) Jean, give me more POWER or I'll BREAK your face!
  Evil!Jean: (grabs Quark's shirt) Commander, you're such a SPACE-HEAD, I'M taking over this ship!
  Evil!Quark: Try it, transmute, and you're SPACE JELLY!
• Red Dwarf: Any of the characters from WaxWorld's "Villain World" qualify. Among the villains are the particularly hammy Caligula and Napoleon.
• Revolution: Captain, no, Major Tom Neville engages in this at times. Bass describing how he'd use a working Blackhawk helicopter against the other republics is pure ham.
• Robin Hood: In this 2006 BBC production, NO ONE chews more scenery than the Sheriff of Nottingham. NO ONE.
• Sherlock: Moriarty, to a certain extent. He's very hammy when he feels like it, but is just as good at being calm and creepy when that suits him better.
• Smallville: Clark would become far hammier whenever he was under the influence of Red K or switched out for an evil doppelganger. And that's without getting into the series' villains. Between John Glover as Lionel Luthor, Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor, and Callum Blue's scenery chewing as the horrifically unstable Major Zod, the show had this trope covered.
  "Unlike you I will lead from a throne, not from the shadows. Everyone on Earth, including the woman you love, will Kneel Before Zod!"
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The Goa'uld pretty much had hammy-ness as a species trait. This was justified because all the Goa'uld were egotistical, bought into their own act of playing gods, and based their entire civilization on ruling through fear. Their Cool, but Impractical technology, their outfits, and their behavior all went along with this trope. Nothing like a booming "KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD!" accompanied with some Glowing Eyes of Doom to get the peasants in line.
  • A Goa'uld could tone it down if it ever needed to pretend to be human, but the hammy-ness returned the instant its true nature got discovered.
  • Case in point:
    Anubis: I am Anubis. Humans of the Tau'ri! Your End of Days finally approaches! There will be no mercy!
    Jack O'Neill: Aw, c'mon. Who talks like that?!
  • The Priors could also ham it up occasionally, especially when quoting the Book of Origin.
• Supernatural:
  • Though he didn't start that way, Lucifer has become hammier over time.
  • This is the easiest way to tell if Castiel is himself or not. In his right mind, he's The Comically Serious. When he gets body-jacked by the Leviathans or Lucifer, however, Misha Collins gets to chew scenery with gusto.
  • Witch Rowena is fairly hammy as well. But even she is out-hammed by the witch, Catriona Loughlin, in "Regarding Dean".
    OOOOHHHH RAGGEDY ANNNNNN!!
• True Blood: Russell Edgington, Vampire King of Louisiana, in the third season. *rips news anchor's spinal cord out, waves it around* "We! Will EAT YOU. AFTER we eat your children! [Beat] And now for the weather. Tiffany?"
• Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga: Carmeara has a knack of mad laughter and constantly yelling the titular Ultra's name, and by extension Kengo Manaka, the reincarnation of said Ultra in a bombastic way possible.
  "Kengo... Kengo... MANAKA KENGOOO!!!"
• Adolf Hitler as depicted in the 1988 miniseries War and Remembrance. It actually did the now-infamous Hitler Rant made famous by Downfall. While arguably Downfall pulled off the scene better, this version cranks the evil ham Up to Eleven.
  "THIS IS THE END!! TREACHERY! INCOMPETENCE! COWARDICE!! THE END! THE END! I SHALL KILL MYSELF! MY DECISION IS IRREVOCABLE! BETRAYED! DOUBLE-CROSSED! DECEIVED! SURROUNDED! BY! LIARS! I can't... I CAN NO LONGER GO ON! I SHALL DIE. IN. BERLIN! THE WAR IS LOST! LOST! LOST! LOST! LOST! LOST! LOST, STUPID. INCOMPETENT. IDIOTS!!"
• Pretty much every villain in Wizards vs. Aliens, especially the Nekross King, voiced by none other than BRIAN BLESSED. The Nekross' hamminess makes them surprisingly lovable!
  "The Nekross Shall Feast!"

Multiple Media

• MonsterVerse:
  • Walter R. Riccio in the Kong: Skull Island graphic novel sequel The Birth of Kong very much as his Sanity Slippage progresses; spreading his arms and screaming like the guy in the hood here.
  • Walter Simmons, the Corrupt Corporate Executive responsible for creating Mechagodzilla and the human Big Bad Wannabe of Godzilla vs. Kong. Dear God, once the mask of a pleasant and well-meaning businessman comes off, does he love hearing the sound of his own voice.

• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • Although William Shatner usually negates this trope since he's the hero, when Captain Kirk was split into good and evil selves in the episode "The Enemy Within", the evil side was much hammier.
      "I'm Captain Kirk! I'm Captain Kirk! IIIIII'M CAPTAIN KIRK!"
    • He does it again when we briefly see the evil Mirror Universe Kirk in "Mirror, Mirror".
    • Same goes for every character in the mirror universe episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. Most of the actors were at near-Shatner levels of hamminess even during the normal episodes, but their evil counterparts take things Up to Eleven.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Invoked Trope in the episode "Duet". Aamin Marritza, a Cardassian filing clerk who worked in a forced labor camp run by the brutal Gul Darhe'el impersonates the latter, both to make Cardassia admit to the crimes committed against the Bajorans and to soothe his guilty conscience over not being able to stop it. While impersonating Darhe'el he acts pretty hammily, but when the ruse is dropped, he acts far more subdued. This is used to great effect when Kira confronts him with the truth and Maritza gives another hammy rant only to break down in tears once the memories and the guilt start flooding in.
    • And speaking of Cardassians, Gul Dukat puts on some of the most ham-tastic grandstanding ever, to the point where everyone else comments on how much he loves the sound of his own voice.
    • Also, an early episode where Dr. Bashir came down with a bad case of Grand Theft Me thanks to a dying evil space criminal gave Alexander Siddig the chance to let his Cold Ham flag fly.
    • And let's not even get started on the holodeck Bond villain played by Captain Sisko, which allowed Avery Brooks to chew up every bit of scenery around him (and obviously had the time of his life doing it.)
    • As in the Original Series, their Mirror Universe characters are much hammier, with added Homoerotic Subtext.
  • Star Trek: Voyager.
    • Emperor Scientist Dr Chaotica in that Flash Gordon (serial) holodeck homage, The Adventures of Captain Proton. The entire program is a World of Ham with even Captain Janeway joining in, so naturally the villain has to out-ham everyone or get left behind.
      "FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! You shall PAY for your inCOMPetence! SEIZE HIM!"
    • Inverted in "Living Witness", where a 'historical recreation' of Voyager shows the crew as squabbling genocidal thugs with a side of ham. Yet the evilest characters in the simulation, Janeway and the Doctor, speak in a calm undertone that contrasts with their normal hammy personas.
  • Star Trek: Picard. In "Stardust City Rag", Jean-Luc Picard has to pose as an organ trader selling Seven of Nine for her Borg parts, so he gleefully hams it up as an eyepatch-wearing French Jerk villain with an overdone Maurice Chevalier Accent.
    Picard: I thought I looked (in exaggerated French accent) appropriately sinisterrrr.
    Raffi: No comment.
  • Amongst the franchise's movies, F. Murray Abraham's Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection, Christopher Lloyd's Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and (of course) Ricardo Montalbán's "Wrath Of" Khan were magnificently over-the-top, with Khan in particular even giving William Shatner - in his most over-the-top mode - a run for his money.
    Khan: I've done worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her...marooned for all eternity in the centre of a dead planet...Buried alive...Buried aliiiiiiive...^note And this was him being subtle!
  • In the Alternate Timeline of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies:
    • From the film, we have Nero, who gave some choice quotes.
      "SPOOOOOOOCCCCKKKKKKK!"
      "I WANT SPOCK DEAD NOW!
      "FIRE EVERYTHING!"
    • Star Trek Into Darkness: Let's face it, Harrison is DEVOURING the scenery.
    • In Star Trek Beyond, Krall at first only has a deep and dramatic voice given Idris Elba is covered in make-up. Though once he becomes more human by the end of the movie, he's free to ham up with no problems.
  • Star Trek: Discovery continues the grand tradition of having the main cast chew the scenery with gleeful abandon as their Mirror Universe counterparts. Especially Mirror Burnham, once she's revealed to be completely bonkers.
• Star Wars:
  • Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith, once it's known he is a Sith Lord. When he had his good-guy facade on, he acted normally. When his evil side showed up, he started acting hammier. When he finally dropped the act altogether, he went to town (as Return of the Jedi, done many years before, shows).
  • In Dark Empire, Palpatine actually says "I AM the Dark Side!"
  • This is actually something of an occupational hazard for Sith since they draw their power from raw passion and self-restraint is, consequently, not exactly on the agenda. Notice that Palpatine is always at his hammiest when using or about to use The Dark Side. His apprentices Count Dooku and Darth Vader also frequently talk in a menacing to the point of exaggeration manner (with Vader having the bonus of gesturing given his face is obscured by a mask).
  • Even before his Face–Heel Turn, Anakin Skywalker hams it up in some of his darker moments, such as his infamous "I killed them all" rant.
  • General Grievous serves as a proto-Darth Vader and is even hammier than him, never dialing down on the dramatic speech (punctuated by coughs).
  • General Hux in The Force Awakens....mainly during that New Era Speech of his before Starkiller blasts away The Hosnian System.
    • Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke, the other villains from the same film, and The Last Jedi get their moments too. Kylo spends most of the climax of The Force Awakens beating his abdominal wound until he draws blood and either growling or yelling his lines. Snoke doesn't get to really cut loose until The Last Jedi but it's quite memorable when he does. His final monologue to Rey combines this with Suddenly Shouting.
    • And don't forget that one stormtrooper that sought out, and battled, Finn.
      FN-2199: TRAITOR!!!
  • The Mandalorian continues the above-mentioned tradition with Star Wars villains and this trope with its Big Bad Moff Gideon. He's no Sith or any practitioner of the dark side, but he is every bit as theatric as one.

Music

• Shakespears Sister's "Stay" is a Concept Video where Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey portray Anthropomorphic Personifications of life and death and fight over a comatose man. Fahey's performance as death is definitely the more over-the-top of the two, mainly due to her dramatic gestures and facial expressions.
• The Megas: Air Man is an Omnicidal Maniac, Heat Man seems to think he's the Devil, and Bomb Man is a Robotic Psychopath who loves Stuff Blowing Up way too much. Then there's Dr Wily, the Big Bad. They're, for the most part, the most overtly villainous characters, and they get the most over-the-top moments in their songs.
  Beneath the Steel/Bomb Man: CUE EXPLOSION!
  The Annihilation of Monsteropolis/Air Man: There will be a fire in the sky, and YOUR DOOM WILL RAIN DOWN!
  Man on Fire/Heat Man: You are the hero! I am the fire! This is the meltdown! Of your desire! Your fight for justice turns to ashes, MEGA MAN!
  Look What You've Done/Dr Wily: This is the eeeeend! You've started the fall! Can't see the destiny, that we once saw, on the edge of dawn! (What have you done?!) What. Have. You. Done?

Pinball

• Loki in The Avengers (Zen Studios).
• Yagov in F-14 Tomcat boasts in his characteristically humorous ways.
  "You can't win!"

Professional Wrestling

• Super villain wrestlers Dr. Cube in Kaiju Big Battel and later, UltraMantis Black in Chikara, chew massive amounts of scenery while describing how they will tear down our society/those stupid heroes/the tecnicos.
• The New Day is all over this trope.
• When Bruce Tharpe was managing the NWA talent in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, he would act like a heel so over-the-top that it was almost cartoonish. Bombastic, loud, and condescending, the New Japan fans loved when he would get knocked on his butt by the New Japan Army.
• Bayley after she evolved her heel character from The Stoic to an over-the-top obnoxious troll.
• Vince McMahon, when in his Bad Boss Mr. McMahon persona, is pretty much made of enough ham to feed an entire army.
  IT'S ME, AUSTIN! IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, AUSTIN!!!

Roleplay

• Simon from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues keeps himself low-key most of the time. His split personality, the Dark Dragon, is not only much more evil than him but also revels in the chance to act like a maniac and ham it up whenever possible.
  "Oh, man, tha's just askin' for an over-dramatic speech o' malice, dread, an' bigging meself up."

Theatre

• Any Pantomime villain worth his salt.
• The Wolf from The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf requires a Large Ham, to contrast with his lethargic attorney.
• Cora in Anyone Can Whistle is a first-class scene-stealer who even succeeds at interrupting one scene change so she can get ready.
• Jasper in Deadland:
  • Hel and Loki are so bombastic, they keep providing Jasper with a chance to run away from them just by taking too long to announce their arrival.
  • Little Lu acts hammy while singing about the crimes of the slaves in his factory, and the punishments he inflicts on them.
• In Twice Charmed, Franco DiFortunato definitely is hammy, as are Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters.
• In Pokémon Live!, all the villains are hammy, especially Jessie and James.
• In Shrek: The Musical, Farquaad really cranks up his hammy tendencies, with a generous dose of campy flair added for good measure.
• The Phantom of the Opera, especially when the actor portraying him goes into Careful with That Axe territory.

Theme Parks

• At Universal Studios:
  • Miseria in The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad makes it very clear that she's the evil villain, from the way she acts to the way she dresses.
  • In Poseidon's Fury, Lord Darkenon is about as hammy as a villain could possibly get, always doing an evil laugh and just reveling in how sinister he is.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: If Cesare wants to live, he lives. If he wants to take, he takes. If he wants you to die, you die. And if he wants to ham, he HAAAAAAAAAMS!
• Geldoblame, of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, is far and away the hammiest character in the game and (unintentionally) probably the best-voiced character, just because it's so amusing.
• In Bayonetta, Final Boss Father Balder has a gleefully campy World of Ham to live up to... and manages to outdo the rest of the cast. His fashion sense does a good chunk of the work alone, but his tendency to both chew and hurl the scenery, along with his brutal execution of the gigantic demons Bayonetta conjures to kill him carry him over the top.
• BlazBlue: Hazama/Yuuki Terumi. Part of the reason he's so Laughably Evil is that his voice actors are clearly having a hell of a time.
  • In Platinum's Gag Reel, when Litchi becomes the Evil Overlord 'Boob Queen', she becomes so overly hammy in nearly everything. In canon, however, Litchi is well-reserved and not that hammy (unless you count her suggestive moans of pains to be 'ham'), and even if she's Forced into Evil and in the NOL group, she didn't even become hammy, still retaining her calm. Tsubaki, on the other hand, becomes even more vehement and probably 'hammy' in trying to force the NOL order after her Evil Costume Switch.
• Handsome Jack, the Big Bad of Borderlands 2, is not a subtle man. As the story of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! goes on, he goes from having a relatively standard acting range to utter scenery-chewing excess as his dark side becomes steadily more dominant.
  Jack: Forgive me. Where's your husband now?
  Helena Pierce: He's dead.
  Jack: That is a heartbreaker, but...[Gunshot] YOU GOT SOMETHING IN COMMON WITH HIM NOW AT LEAST!
• Dr. Nero Neurosis of Brain Dead 13 tends to shout whenever he gets irritated or scared.
  Neurosis: "Average?" I! AM NOT! AVERAGE!
• Castlevania:
  • Barlowe in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia normally speaks with a very neutral and verbose tone. However, once his true colours are revealed, he goes nuts with wild abandon, laughing manically the whole time.
  • And Dracula. In pretty much every game with voice acting. In most games' Japanese dubs, he's voiced by the above-mentioned Norio Wakamoto.
  • Death from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow simply never shuts up in his 5 minutes hammy speech even though he has been quite normal when he stayed as Zobek, your ally.
• Kane in Command & Conquer becomes ever increasingly hammy as time goes on.
  • The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series gives us a parade of Russian nutjobs, culminating (so far) with Tim Curry's Cherdenko. (Because it's Tim Curry.)
  • George Takei's Yoshiro, Emperor of the Rising Sun, is also fairly hammy.
• Dawn of War, since it takes place in Warhammer 40,000, everyone is evil, and hence everyone is hammy, even if they are a Magnificent Bastard.
  • Special mention must go to the Chaos Space Marines, however. Especially Crull, the Chaos Lord from the Winter Assault extension. Oh dear Emperor, Lord Crull...
    BLOOOOOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! LET THE UNIVERSE, DDRRRRRRROOOOOOOWWWWNNNN IN IT!
  • In Retribution, Kyras makes them all look sane and stable.
    Kyras: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! LET! THE GALAXY... BUUUUURRRRRRNNNNN!!!
  • The Dark Eldar in Soulstorm embrace this whole-heartedly.
    "RAISE OUR STANDARD! LET IT STRIKE FFEEEAARR!"
    "FOR KOMORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
• Devil May Cry:
  • Arius from Devil May Cry 2. "OH! NO! I was going to be KING of this world!"
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Arkham and his alter-ego, Jester, is a rich source of Ham. With the latter, it's intentional, as he tried to act like a fool in order to effectively play Lady and the the sons of Sparda against each other. And it could also be a way of unleashing his inner goofball beneath that serious facade.
• Every single Prime Evil in Diablo is this. Diablo, Baal, and Mephisto really love to Chew The Scenery to dust. Just listen to them speak, and even Zoltun Kulle is also an offender.
• Flemeth in Dragon Age: Origins is very hammy when she isn't pretending to simply be a batty old lady and gets much more so in Dragon Age II. Being voiced by Captain Janeway really helps.
  • Loghain becomes much hammier after his Face–Heel Turn.
  • Though averted for the most part in the first game, since the Darkspawn can't, you know, talk. Until Awakening, when they can talk and get their full opportunity to be hammy.
    • Special mention goes to the ham-tastic Mother.
  • Knight-Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II is one of the best examples in the entire series.
    • Not to mention Well-Intentioned Extremist teammate Anders; while he's only hammy in combat (actually, he's usually soft-spoken otherwise), his combat taunts (and screaming) are a bountiful platter of ham.
• In Elden Ring, the player will fight multiple demigods who are varying levels of tyrannical, insane, and/or stubbornly dogmatic. However, the two most depraved and evil among them — Godrick the Grafted and Mohg, Lord of Blood — are by far the hammiest.
  Godrick (second phase transition): Ancestors, one and all... BEAR WITNESS!
  Mohg (intro cutscene): Welcome, honored guest, to the birthplace of our DYNASTY!
• Throughout The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of the Dremora, an intelligent race of lesser Daedra who are most commonly found in the service of Mehrunes Dagon as his Legions of Hell. They are essentially a race (the Master Race if they are to be believed) of Large Ham Blood Knights with deep "outdoor" voices. Some prime snippets of their dialogue:
  Morrowind: "After I kill you, I will rape your corpse. Don't worry. I'll be gentle."
  Oblivion: "Bow to me!" "Break and fall!" "Break! Bleed!" "Burst, bloodsack!" (And those are just the ones starting with "B"!)
  Skyrim: "I HONOR my LORD by DESTROYING YOU!" *slays enemy* "THERE CAN BE NO OTHER END!"
• Far Cry:
  • Vaas Montenegro the Ruthless Modern Pirate of Far Cry 3 is an Ax-Crazy Mood-Swinger who's prone to switching between Sophisticated as Hell profanity-laden philosophical monologues and straight-up screaming explosive murderous death threats. His boss, Hoyt Volker, is equally prone to Suddenly Shouting in his raspy, thick-accented voice. By far, Bambi "Buck" Hughes is the least shouty of the three villains, but he's such a Faux Affably Evil Awesome Aussie, that he comes across as over-the-top anyway.
  • Pagan Min of Far Cry 4 is pretty theatrical and showy (his Establishing Character Moment consists of him stabbing a man to death in a paisley pink suit, after all). The same goes for two of his underlings, Yuma Lau and Dr. Najjar Noore.
  • Batari the High Priestess of Far Cry Primal is pretty deep voiced and bombastic, being a proponent of Human Sacrifice and suffering from a case of A God Am I.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Jegran in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, after he drops pretending to be good.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the entire Chaos faction exemplifies this trope with all of the hammiest villains of the series. The only exceptions are Golbez ( but he isn't really part of the Chaos faction...), Sephiroth and Ultimecia, who are fairly restrained. Odd because Ultimecia was quite hammy in her respective game. ("KURSE YOU SEEDS!")
  • Final Fantasy XIV is usually subdued on the ham front when it comes to villainy, but then Shadowbringers introduces Vauthry, the leader of Eulmore who decides who gets let into the city, as well as somehow able to keep the Sin Eaters from attacking, throwing a very whiny hissy fit when he realizes that Alphinaud had outright insulted him to his face. He proceeds to have a hammy Villainous Breakdown when it's revealed that he's the final Lightwarden, even to the point that during Mt. Gulg, he shouts orders at the Sin Eaters to kill the Warrior of Light and their party.
• Nergal from the 2003 game Fire Emblem wasn't THAT hammy until we got to see his disfiguring scar by the end of the game. Then, he unleashed his inner ham and let it run wild.
• Lord Whitehill in Game of Thrones (Telltale).
  WHAT?! GONE?! That was MY JUSTICE to deliver, BOY, and YOU denied me of it!!
• Sir Richard Hawksmoor in Ghost Hunter. Sir Michael Gambon practically introduces himself with "I want FLESH." An incredible contrast with his role of Dumbledore in the movies.
• The Galactic Emperor from Gotcha Force is this trope, pure and simple. Let's look at his nice little pre-final battle speech...
  Galactic Emperor: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! PUNY HUMANS, JUDGMENT TIME HAS ARRIVED! I'LL FINISH YOU ALL HERE! FIRST THIS PLANET, THEN THE WHOLE GALAXY! YOU AND YOUR SILLY GOTCHA BORGS WILL BE EXTERMINATED!! MWAHAHAHAHA!!
• In I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison himself put so much feeling into voicing AM that one review said that the name of the evil artificial intelligence ought to be renamed HAM.
• Poquelin from Icewind Dale, especially before your final fight with him.
  "Over?, OVER?!!! On the contrary, my time has just begun!!!"
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: When Nur-Ab-Sal fully possesses Sophia, she really chews the scenery there.
  The woman who was is now THE KING THAT SHALL EVER BE!
• Gouji Rokkaku from Jet Set Radio Future doesn't spend too much time center-stage, but he damn well makes the most of the time he has. It helps that he's voiced by Charles Martinet, of all people.
  Rokkaku: The name of this tower of ultimate beauty is...eh, blah-diddly blah blah, the name is IRRELEVANT!
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: After dispatching the comparatively serious Medusa, Hades steals the show, absolutely ravishing in his evilness like if Tim Curry was an evil god.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Pick a Big Bad. Any one of 'em. They're this trope. It's a Final Fantasy / Disney crossover, so this was basically inevitable.
  • Ansem, Seeker of Darkness/Xehanort's Heartless gets an extra special mention here. Billy Zane (his original voice actor) managed to out-ham the likes of Maleficent and Hades.
  "Kingdom Hearts! Fill me...with the power of darkness! SUPREME DARKNESS!"
  • Xemnas, by contrast, is a textbook Cold Ham. It's in his character to be as hammy as possible. Having no emotions, he makes up for it with exaggerated hand gestures and stretches out a lot of his lines to seem more emotional. His voice actor in the Japanese version certainly helps.
  • Ends up being inverted in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], where one of the villains remains calm and demure until he does turn full-on evil. He's Xehanort from the past before he was corrupted by Darkness. Given that Master Xehanort is one of the characters with the highest potentials for Ham, apparently Evil Makes You Hammy.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie has Ishmelga-Rean, a simulation of what happens to Rean Schwarzer if he decided to do his Heroic Sacrifice at the normal ending of the game. The resulting character ends up looking like a corrupted mix of both Ishmelga and Rean who believes in wiping out everyone to restore peace in the world. And boy does the man deliver so much ham especially when he engages in Ham-to-Ham Combat with Rean, Crow, and Rufus when they engage in the only mech fight of the game.
• Lord Ghirahim in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, aka Mr. Furious! OUTRAGED! SICK WITH ANGER!! Zant from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is similarly hammy, especially during his Villainous Breakdown. And Master Kohga from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses lots of dramatic posing and self-hyping. Ganon is also somewhat hammy (literally, in certain situations), but he's rather restrained compared to the other two.
• LEGO Dimensions features a whole plethora of classically hammy villains,^Including... Davros, the Daleks, GLaDOS, Riddler, Joker, the Wicked Witch of the West, Lord Business, Master Chen, General Zod, Dr. Robotnik, and many more and the Original Generation villain, Lord Vortech, still manages to out-ham them all. But, then again, would you expect anything else from Gary Oldman?
  Lord Vortech: Welcome to the end of chaos...AND THE BEGINNING! OF! PERFECTION!*
• Ghaleon from Lunar: The Silver Star and its first remake.
  "My coming out party can begin! Send in the clowns!"
  • Lunar: Eternal Blue manages to up him with Zophar.
• The Reapers in Mass Effect are very hammy. Especially Harbinger, who is ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!
• Metal Gear:
  • Exaggerated with multiple characters, who are only hammy when they are evil.
    • Most obvious with Gray Fox, whose Heel–Face Revolving Door comes with the appropriate personality. As a hostage of Outer Heaven, he's cool and a little condescending. As the lieutenant of Zanzibar Land, he's a disaster of evil laughter and Say My Name, stomping around in a mech. As the antagonistic ninja, he's monologuing about his soul and doing Orgasmic Combat; after he remembers his true self, he's casually teasing Snake.
    • Huey Emmerich is subdued and gently-spoken in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, but in his antagonistic role in Metal Gear Solid V, acts and moves like a stereotypical tokusatsu mad scientist, drenched in sweat and with his voice actor channelling Davros in "Genesis of the Daleks". Lampshaded when Snake and Kaz watch his arm-flinging delivery, make mutual eye contact, and then both comment that these kinds of dramatics are a dead giveaway about his true intentions.
    • In Metal Gear Solid V, the usually pleasant Miller is reduced to Guttural Growler rage and stumbling around in seething fury, while the usually outrageous Ocelot, who is on your side the whole time in this one, has a calm, cattish delivery that comes off as slightly bored.
  • Liquid Snake manages to do this every chance he gets in Metal Gear Solid.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance's Sundowner would like you to know that he's FUCKIN' INVINCIBLE!
    • Sundowner pales in comparison to his boss, Senator Armstrong, whose "NANOMACHINES, SON!" is legendary.
• Vice President RIICHAAARD!! Hawk in Metal Wolf Chaos opened his every appearance with an Evil Laugh and gleefully delivered lines such as...
  RICHARD: "This wild dog of war is on the move, Michael! It'll bite you if you don't move it! It's time for my afternoon tea. There's nothing like sipping some delicious Darjeeling tea...and watching you getting your clock cleaned!"
• Harvey from Octopath Traveler II spends most of his time on-screen either bombastically shouting his lines or indulging in excessive amounts of Evil Gloating. Especially notable since he's much calmer when pretending to be a gentleman, and he's the personal villain of the much more reserved Osvald.
• In Papers, Please, one of the Scripted Event applicants walks up to your booth, and when you ask them for their paperwork, they scream "DEATH TO ARSTOTZKA!" before dropping a bomb on your counter and leaving.
• In Persona 5, during the boss fight with The Mole after their betrayal, they really go all out.
  Goro Akechi: KILL THEM! PERSONA!!!
• Pit People is a World of Ham, but the Narrator out-hams everyone else with a fair margin. In a bit of a deconstruction they also imply that they're not used to overacting and find that "being evil is exhausting," lamenting that they really shouldn't have skipped breakfast earlier that day.
• In Portal, once you escape the fire pit, GLaDOS starts along this path. She really goes to town once you incinerate her morality core.
  • In Portal 2, Wheatley gains several levels in ham when you yank GLaDOS out and plug him in. Apparently, a certain amount of hamminess is literally hardwired into the system.
• The Professor Layton series isn't exactly a World of Ham, often going with one hammed line per game, but it is ALWAYS said by a villain.
  Don Paolo: Heeere I come.... READY OR NOT!
  Anton: LAAAYTOOOON!!
  Clive: This isn't happening... It can't end this way... IT WON'T END THIS WAAAY!!
• Mad Scientist Dr. Nefarious of the Ratchet & Clank series. He simply delights in being as over-the-top ham as possible, despite wanting to exterminate all organic life from the universe. It really says something that, in a World of Ham like Ratchet and Clank, he manages to continuously out-ham everyone.
• Wesker in the Resident Evil series.
  • Chief Irons in Resident Evil 2
  • Alfred and Alexia Ashford in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica.
  • Ramon Salazar in Resident Evil 4. Isn't that right, MEEESTEEER Kennedy?!
• In Return Of The Obra Dinn, we have Second Mate Edward Nichols, the morally bankrupt official who sounds a bit hammy when it comes to stealing treasure and kidnapping the Formosan Royals and killing anyone who attempts to thwart his plans. Especially when he's about to get shot in a Karmic Death (and his voice actor Chris Sharpes' delivery of these lines certainly helps):
  "Wait! Don't shoot! I have treasure! I YIIIIEEEELLLLLD!"
• The villain of Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis is certainly a standout. Especially when he goes all out monologuing about his evil plan to lead humankind to a new golden age or his last words yelling how no one can escape their destiny.
• The Sengoku Basara versions of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Ishida Mitsunari. The first is absolutely, baby-eatingly, skull-cup-usingly Obviously Evil, and even has ominous background music and Dramatic Thunder to back him up. And he's voiced by Norio Wakamoto. Hideyoshi is the type to surround three armies at war and demand ALL of their surrenders at once in a loud voice and with an even louder fist. He then goes ahead and obliges some hotblooded heroes. He also parts the seas. Mitsunari really likes shouting about what he is going to do to his enemies, specifically those who side with Ieyasu. Mitsunari does not say "Ieyasu!" He says, "IEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASU!!!!!!!!"
• Any time you get to confront and fight YHVH — i.e. God — in a Shin Megami Tensei game, you can expect him to bust out bombastic speeches about The Evils of Free Will about eternal punishment and hammy one-liners and battle cries during battle.
  (in Shin Megami Tensei II) "Not even a thousand deaths would be fitting punishment for thy sins! I shall smite thee, and in hell I shall torture thee over and over!"
  (in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, now with voice acting!) "HOW could you diminish me to such a state?! IMPUDENT HUMANS, I CANNOT FORGIVE YOU! I asked ONLY that you take the life I granted you and obediently followed my word! The WEIGHT of your BLASPHEMY is TOO GREAT for death! ETERNAL SUFFERING IS THE ONLY SUITABLE PUNISHMENT! ROOAAAAARRRRR!!"
• The Big Bad of the Skylanders series, Kaos, is voiced by the same person who voiced Invader Zim and is appropriately hammy.
  "Fear my giant floating head! FEAR IT!"
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • DAN GREEN as Mephiles the Dark is one of the very few good points of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) for precisely this reason.
  • Eggman has always showed spades of this, but in more recent games (especially in Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations), he's been invoking this full-on, and he doesn't look like he's going back. Best demonstrated in the finale of Generations where even his past self is unnerved by his maniacal laughter.
  • Out of all members of the Deadly Six, Zazz definitely stands out as the most hammiest.
    Zazz: YOU'RE GOIN' HOME IN A BOX!
• In StarCraft, the Zerg Overmind's first line is: "Awaken, my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright." Every one of its subsequent lines is equally epic and pompous.
  • "Know that I am the Overmind, the eternal will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me..."
  • Duran's appearance in StarCraft II is an interesting case: in disguise as Emil Narud, he has a perfectly normal speaking tone. Once he drops the disguise and shows his true colors, though, out comes apocalyptic levels of ham.
    Narud: It is only beginning. Amon whispered of this from the stars. He told you of his return... he told you of ruin... extinction... the end of all things.
  • Maar's brief appearance in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is also filled to bursting with ham. Now, consider that all three of the above had the same creator, and wonder what his voice must be like...
  • Amon himself. He fancies himself a god, and he pretty much is, and he talks the part.
• The cruelest and evilest of all Suikoden villains, Luca Blight, is also the hammiest, with lots of exclamation marks, a distinctive Evil Laugh of "HOO HOO HOO HA HA HA HA HA!!!", and, of course, his famous last words "It took hundreds to kill me, but I KILLED BY THOUSANDS! LOOK AT ME!!! I AM SUBLIME!!! I AM THE TRUE FACE OF EVIL!!!!! *maniacally laughs to death*"
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Bowser gets hammier with every game.
  • Fawful in the Mario & Luigi series is a hammy lunatic who speaks in the most over-the-top way possible. Him being the villain in Bowser's Inside Story and being against the aforementioned Bowser is one of the reasons it's seen as so funny.
  • In Super Paper Mario, most of the hammier characters are the villains. Let's see, there's O'Chunks, Count Bleck, Dimentio, Mr. L, and to a lesser extent, Mimi and Francis. And there's also Bowser as always, so it's probably safe to say that this trope is in full effect in this game.
• Team Fortress 2: Cower, fools! MERASMUS IS HERE!
• Warframe has a lot of evil bosses who ham it up, but the best example has to be Councilor Vay Hek, a Grineer diplomat who serves as the Big Bad of the Earth maps and The Heavy in general when it comes to anything Grineer-related. He is a violent sociopath in every sense of the word and is also well-known for running around gnawing chunks of scenery with No Indoor Voice and far more Dramatic Pauses than are really necessary, especially while players are on the Plains of Eidolon.
  "WHY ARE THESE FOOLS... STILL BREATHING MY AIR?"
  "I WILL PERSONALLY. THROW. YOUR BELOVED LOTUS...INTO THE SUN!"
• Thorgar from Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. Seriously, he's probably the most hammy video game character ever. Just listen to the guy. Of course, the other warriors of Chaos are (almost) as hammy as him, and the Skaven are pretty fond of unleashing the hog as well:
  BUUUUURRRNNN THEM ALLLLLLL!!!
• Blizzard loves this trope when it comes to antagonists and raid bosses. It's rare to find one that isn't a giant ham.
  • One of the Old Gods, Yogg-Saron, greatly delights in shouting pretty much everything in a booming voice, in direct contrast to the Creepy Monotone of fellow Old God C'thun.
    MADNESS WILL CONSUME YOU!'
    Cower before my true form! BOW DOWN BEFORE THE GOD OF DEATH!
    HOOWAHAHAHAHAHA GAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
  • Sindragosa, the second-to-last boss of Icecrown Citadel, chews the scenery with gusto.
    You are FOOLS to have come to this place! The icy winds of Northrend will CONSUME YOUR SOULS!''
    Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic BETRAAAAYYYYYSSSSSS YYYYOOOOOUUUU!''
• Wario has always been hammy, but when he becomes Wario Deluxe in WarioWare Gold, he takes on a whole new level of hamminess. Even with the game's All-Star Cast, Charles Martinet still manages to steal the show.
  Wario Deluxe: HEHEHAHAHA! Oh, the money! The POWER! I feel it inside! Gurgling! Building! It's, uh...it's, uh...EXPLOSIVE! AHAHAHA! OHOHOHAHAHAHEEEEE!
• The Dark Savant in Wizardry 8.
• Xenosaga gives us Albedo Piazzolla, an incurable muncher, complete with rampant evil laughs at any given opportunity.
• The X-Men arcade game introduces us to MAGNETO, MASTER OF MAGNET! Who wants those X-CHICKEN to know that THEY ARE NOTHING and would like to welcome them TO DIE!!

Visual Novels

• The Big Bad of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Junko Enoshima, makes up for their lack of screentime by tearing the scenery to bits in the final trial, switching between various exaggerated personas that range from 'cutesy' to 'DIO impression'.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, after a relatively understated introduction (at least as far as the anime goes), Beatrice becomes the queen of this trope. Subverted. She's not the evil one. Bern is. And she's actually an Emotionless Girl. Although, after The Reveal, she does get a lot more very expressive faces.

Web Animation

• The AI O'Malley from Red vs. Blue. Just one example, after he's been asked to examine one of the Blue Team:
  O'Malley: We want something from you, but we're not going to tell you what it is, until we need it! Huhuhuhuahahahaha!
  Church: No way! I'm not agreeing to something without knowing what it is!
  O'Malley: Huhuhuhuhuhuh Oh yes you will. You will or your little friend Tucker will die, die a most horrible death. And you know his blood will be on your hands. Years from now, you'll drive yourself mad wondering if there was anything you could have done to save him, so you will agree to what I want. You will agree even though what I want is something mysterious, what I want is something frightening, what I want is something PUUUUUUUUUURE EEEEEEEEEEVIL, AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
  [beat]
  O'Malley: I've also been told a $20 co-pay is pretty much standard.
• Resident Villain Tobe on Pucca. Taken to insanely OTT levels in the Spanish dub.
• RWBY:
  • Tyrian is a constantly cackling, Ax-Crazy lunatic of a man who positively exults in battle and general violence. He's also surprisingly eloquent and has a penchant for the theatrical.
    Ruby: What do you want?
    Tyrian: [melodramatic gasp] The rose has thorns! Why, my little flower, I'm here to whisk you away!
  • The more serious villains of the series become this in the Lighter and Softer Spin-Off, RWBY Chibi. Cinder loves to exult in her evil plans, while Roman desperately tries to get some actual time in the spotlight after his canon death. Emerald, Mercury, and Neo are mostly just along for the ride.
• DSBT InsaniT: Boo. If you can even call him 'evil', that is! Still, he puts a lot of emphasis into his words.
• Dreamscape: Ethan! Ohhhhhh boy, does he play it up!
  Ethan: It's me, your far-superior adversary, Ethan!
  • His sister Curien is the same way.
  Curien: Oh my! Did your house suddenly turn into a river?! Now how on earth did THAT happen?!

Webcomics

• The vast majority of the villains in The Order of the Stick. Though Xykon and Tarquin are the most prominent.
• In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, Lewie the Lich chews more than his fair share of the scenery. Lampshaded in "The Art of Villaininess".
• Royce Lashiec, from Heartcore. To say he has a flair for the dramatic would be a grave understatement.
• Dracula from Deep Dive Daredevils, complete with Evil Laugh.
• Dr. E. M. Balmer from Awful Hospital is a Shady Real Estate Agent but for corpses, and probably the most loud-mouthed, egotistical, and flamboyant embalming machine you'll ever see.
  Dr. Balmer: There is a bad thing polluting this environment, madam. A bad thing so contrary to the matter-law that you would be familiar with, it could very well thrive under conventional decontamination procedures, unless of course we can correctly identify a sample and adapt our formulation. One miscalculation, one pseudo protein away from perfection, and this entire vessel could undergo a Category D Extrapaisley Reconfiguration Event! The chaos! The exquisite madness! I'm simply swooning with UNIMAGINABLE terror! Mmmm....yesss....
• Homestuck has Caliborn, the epitome of evil who speaks exclusively in ham large enough to overshadow his constant use of capital letters and who speaks so much about conquering everything that you'd wonder if he could just talk them all to death.
• The Free Willies: Perhaps due to the luxury he has of being able to manipulate his realm however he likes, Mysterious Monocle Man definitely likes to act and dress over-the-top (one of his favorite things is glitter), especially in his initial interactions with the protagonists.
• Invoked in Peter Parker: Foreign Exchange Student when Tenya and Peter practice their maniacal laughter during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise.
• Debugging Destiny has this in Baleyg, who actively tries to satisfy the hamminess requirements. Lampshaded by King upon realizing the braziers ignite and go out when Baleyg appears and disappears.
  King: Is he really so theatrical to set something like that up ahead of time?

Web Original

• Dark Chaos in Chaos Storm displays this on a regular basis. Being Stupid Evil, his hammy lines aren't taken too seriously.
  Dark Chaos: Dark Chaos? My power has become far greater than you can imagine. I am Dark Mayhem now!
  Chris: A nut by any other name is just as lame.

Web Videos

• When it's revealed that Master Mudmud and Villaine are evil at the end of episode 2 of Adventures in Jedi School, Mudmud hams it up as his sister tried giving him intel.
• Dr. Insano from The Spoony Experiment and Atop the Fourth Wall, and also his Alternate Universe counterparts, including Linksano.
• Nella from The Nostalgia Chick was already the hammiest woman at Channel Awesome, but turned it up a few notches when she became Dark Nella.
• Doctor Steel loves Chewing the Scenery.
• Agamemnon Tiberius Vacuum, the Inarguable Eternal Leader of the glorious and superior Planet 3. "THE VACUUM CONSORTIUM: SUBMIT WILLINGLY!"
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:
  • Doctor Horrible gets some rather hammy moments.
  • His Anti-Hero counterpart Captain Hammer, on the other hand, is a full-on Large Ham throughout the show.
• Every villain in Stupid Mario Brothers is this, especially The Darkness.
• Many members of the Yogscast, such as Ross from Hat Films, Simon Lane, Turpster and Lewis Brindley, become considerably hammier when playing Garry's Mod Murder.
• This episode of College Humor's Game Changer has the real killer, Grant, outright say that he wanted to have the role because he could really ham it up.

Western Animation

• Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness from Samurai Jack, is prone to Evil Gloating, Evil Laughter, and other dramatics.

• Most of the Megatrons of Transformers tend towards dramatic speeches, bombastic tones, and a flair for impressive presentation.
  • There's a lot of Ham with all the Decepticons (and Predacons and Vehicons); Megatron just happens to be around the most.
    • In one episode of Beast Wars, a Mirror Morality Machine turned the laid-back Maximal Rhinox into a Predacon who chewed the scenery with as much gusto as any of them. Being made evil made him hammy to go with it.
  • Starscream clearly wants to take Megatron's place as both leader of the Decepticons and biggest ham in the Transformers franchise, although his approach to it is noticeably shriller than Megatron's. Or anyone's. Ever.
• Admiral Zhao and Fire Lord Ozai of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the former pontificating endlessly about his own greatness when he plans to kill the moon while the latter gets severely Drunk on the Dark Side when Sozin's Comet arrives (to the point where most of his lines in the final battle are him bellowing one taunt after another). Azula too, especially once her Villainous Breakdown kicks in during the finale. The Ember Island Players' version of Ozai is even worse.

• As Atomic Betty's Card-Carrying Big Bad Maximus I.Q. boasts, being hammy is a prerequisite for Supreme Evil Overlords like himself to be great villains. And considering how much scenery he chews in the average episode, it's safe to say he takes this belief very seriously.
• Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. "Moments from now, I will wreak a terrible vengeance on this town! NO ONE WILL BE SPARED! NO ONE! To say nothing of Sideshow Bob.
• From Teen Titans (2003), Brother Blood, Trigon, and a lot of the minor villains (notably Control Freak, Mumbo, Mad Mod, Killer Moth, and Dr. Light) are all rather hammy. Averted with the show's main Big Bad, Slade, who almost never varies his voice from a very Creepy Monotone, and the Brain, season five's Big Bad, who speaks through a voice synthesizer and really can't ham. While The Brain can't ham, Monsieur Mallah, his talking gorilla assistant, does a pretty good job of it.
• Gargoyles covers the whole spectrum:
  • Xanatos and his wife Fox are always very calm and poised, and their Battle Butler Owen is absolutely (and deliberately) wooden. Xanatos does indulge from time to time when it amuses him, however.
  • Demona can range from dangerously understated to completely hammy depending on her mood, as can Thailog. Sevarius loves to ham it up when he's got an audience but is calmer and more businesslike otherwise; seeing as how he's voiced by Tim Curry, hamminess is to be expected.

• Zim from Invader Zim boasts a lot and most of the time has No Indoor Voice, and constantly shouts the word "Doom" almost all the time. Even in defeat, he never loses an opportunity to chew the scenery.

• Most Care Bears villains:
  • Care Bears (1980s): Not many come hammier than No Heart, who shouts almost every one of his lines, has a mean Evil Laugh, and constantly refers to himself as the embodiment of hate and evil.
  • Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot: Grizzle, the bears' main antagonist during that incarnation of the franchise, is as hammy as they come. He's an angry, cub-sized bear lacking a badge, who walks around in a giant mecha suit and is constantly yelling at his non-sentient robot assistants.
• A number of villains in The Spectacular Spider-Man.
  • Especially in the appearances after his first, Doctor Octopus becomes a cunning Card-Carrying Villain down to having an Evil Genius coffee mug, and accordingly becomes immensely hammy ("TREACHERY!!!" anyone?).
  • Electro has a Hair-Trigger Temper on account of his Power Incontinence and can instantly be prompted into a violent rampage by anyone calling him Max (his name before transformation). On some level, he's kind of amusing, but it's also pretty disturbing given his clear Sanity Slippage.
  • Green Goblin is a highly amusing superficial hammy who retains his original version's wacky personality, manipulative planning, and amazing acrobatism. He is shown to crack sadistic jokes.
  • Mysterio seems to have walked out of the Silver Age, having an immensely hammy Evil Sorceror persona, talking in a Fake Brit accent, and throwing around Gratuitous Latin. As with the Goblin, Mysterio interestingly isn't all that hammy in his civilian identity. In Mysterio's case, he's partly Doing It for the Art, and for both, it's a combination of a supervillain perk and to hide how dangerous and cunning they actually are.

• It's almost a requirement to be a SWAT Kats Villain. Indeed, it would be easier to isolate which ones are not hammy.
• Similar to the above, it's a required (or heavily preferred) prerequisite to get on Megas XLR, from Warmaster Gorath to Magnanimous, but the REGIS Mark V takes the cake.
  REGIS: You will all beg for mercy, in vain. The debris of your planet shall litter this solar system. I shall suck upon your very atoms.
• Subverted in Young Justice (2010). After her plan to take over Qurac is foiled, cameras catch Queen Bee shaking her fist at the presidential palace, screaming that "Qurac will be mine!" However, she turns out to actually be M'gann, disguising herself as Queen Bee so that people would know she was behind the scheme. Later when M'gann meets the real Queen Bee, she turns out to be a Soft-Spoken Sadist who calls her performance "a bit over-the-top."
  • Played straight with Gordon Godfrey. He's a news anchor voiced by Tim Curry, who is secretly an agent of Darkseid. So far he hasn't been seen off his news show, so that persona could very well be an act.

• The Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King": the eponymous villain, who is The Stoic and a Softspoken Sadist, but just when he grasps the Near-Villain Victory, he commits Bond Villain Stupidity, all while gloating and laughing.
• Tabaluga's Big Bad, Arktos the Evil Overlord snowman, also is greatly vain, loves the sound of his own voice, and is prone to hamming it up all the time.

• Steven Universe: Peridot is introduced as a calm and cold villain, but quickly becomes one of the hammiest characters on the show after she gets stranded on Earth. She shouts her lines, laughs maniacally and sometimes even makes faces at the heroes. Surprisingly, she becomes even hammier after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Kaeloo: Olaf the emperor penguin is incredibly hammy and does hammy things like shouting most of his lines and doing Evil Laughs. The trope is averted with the other villains, Stumpy, Mr. Cat, and Pretty.
  • Mr. Cat did in fact exhibit these tendencies in the second episode of the show, likely due to Early-Installment Weirdness.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Hawk Moth, as well as any super villain he creates. Every time he transforms someone, the guy gives a hammy speech about the villain he'll make and closes every episode swearing revenge against Ladybug and Chat Noir, usually with some good puns thrown in for good measure. Ironically his civilian identity, Gabriel Agreste, is The Stoic. His minions aren't much better, as most of their dialogue is cracking puns about whatever their gimmick is. A few of them sing about it.
• Apocalypse from X-Men: The Animated Series takes it up to eleven million. Every word out of his mouth is an A God Am I rant for the ages, to the point that the film version at "full Skeletor" seems tame by comparison! Voiced by John Colicos, aka Kor, the first Klingon in Star Trek: The Original Series. You can't get hammier than the guy who created Klingon-type ham! A few of his more memorable lines include: "I am the rocks of the eternal shore! Crash against ME and be BROKEN!" "How many peoples have dreamed of my end? You are no closer than the Babylonians with their swords and fire sticks!" "Spare me your petty judgments! They spring from a brain too meager to comprehend my reality! NOW TASTE THE POWER OF APOCALYPSE!" Throw in an epic Evil Laugh like no other with many of those lines.
• Ninjago has Pythor P. Chumsworth, who's usually shouting about how he's going to release the Great Devourer, has an honestly amazing evil laugh, and calls Lloyd "Old Chum" or "My Dear Boy" whenever the two meet, usually when Pythor is threatening him.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Crisis Point", when casting herself as a villainous warlord in a holomovie, Mariner liberally hams up her lines, filling her dialogue with bombastic proclamations, dramatic threats and evil laughter.

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