Mrs. Lovett is a very good baker but not a nice person.
Hair, that infallible representation of a person's moral compass. In an effort to shape the world of fiction into something more logical than the unpredictable real world, authors have long given their characters physical traits that provide artful hints about where said character stands on the good-evil spectrum. Triangular shapes are the preferred way of telling the audience that a character is one bad dude or chick, but few are more unsubtle and in-your-face than a threatening hairstyle. And as far as that goes, you can't get much more direct than likening them to Old Scratch himself. A hairstyle shaped like horns is almost always a surefire sign of a heart as black as soot.
Not to be confused with a joke seen in cartoons in which a character's hair (feathers, if it's an avian character like Donald Duck) come together briefly into little devil horns whenever they have a truly malicious idea.
Horns of Villainy trades symbolism for the real thing.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Ox Ford from Soul Eater. In no way evil, though—he considers them symbols of strength and intelligence.
- The president of Lala's fanclub in To Love-Ru sports such a hairdo when she (apparently) goes Super Saiyan and starts beating up Rito.
- Andore of Team Unicorn from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, who's not quite evil, but more of Manipulative Bastard. As you might guess by his team's name, his hair has a very prominent unicorn horn, which begs the question: how can he wear a biker helmet with that thing sticking out of his head?
- Sailor Moon. Chibi-Usa/Rini has pointed buns that evoke her Trickster nature (and the Moon Rabbit) and certainly apply as an indicator of malice when she transforms into Black Lady/Wicked Lady. They also evoke the horns of a crescent moon, and her heroic nature as a moon princess.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad member Cooan's cat-ear hair would be a more straight example.
- Elyse in My Balls is a demon with real horns that turn into gravity-defying Ojou Ringlets when she disguises herself as a human.
- Shiki:
- Akira. He's not evil though; just a victim of a series with crazy amounts of Anime Hair.
- Tatsumi, who actually is evil, arguably has them, but they look more like cat ears than horns.
- The Tree of Might:
- Turles, the Evil Counterpart of Goku, has Goku's hairstyle with two horns.
- Videl, the daughter of Mr. Satan, has her hair point up into horns occasionally when she's flustered or angry. This is mostly just part of the pun, though, as her name is actually an anagram of "devil".
- Lord David, one of the many villains whom Kenshiro meets during his journey in Fist of the North Star.
- Blueno from One Piece, befitting his bull Animal Motif. Luffy even calls him a cow on multiple occasions.
- Akira Kongoh, as well as the rest of his family, from Kongoh Bancho appears to have this. In reality, it's the actual shape of his skull.
- Garou from One-Punch Man has hair that starts out like this but slowly transforms into actual horns as he becomes a monster.
Comic Books
- Daredevil as he appeared in Marvel 1602.
- In The Sandman comics, Lucifer looks this way. Also, Cain and Abel.
- The hairdo followed Lucifer into his own comic book although it was subtler there.
- Daimon Hellstrom had horn-hair in the front during his Bronze Age Son of Satan years. As Hellstorm he's let them go and just worn his hair long. In Ultimate Marvel he's a minor character with emo spikes.
- Subverted by Bananaman — his civilian alter ego Little Eric has horned hair, but it's supposed to represent the shape of a banana, instead of having anything to do with the devil. And far from being evil, he's a bumbling superhero.
- Former The Dandy character "Lil Imp"
◊ has bunches that form horns.
- Klarion the Witch Boy in the DC Comics universe. He's a bad boy.
- It is probably no coincidence that the miller, who delivers the final punishment on the Villain Protagonists of Max and Moritz (1865), has only two locks of hair which look like horns.
- Wonder Woman (1987): The White Magician (the Villain with Good Publicity who killed Artemis) wore his hair combed in such a way that it resembled horns, foreshadowing his One-Winged Angel look where he had actual horns.
Comic Strips
- The Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert has two horns of hair and nothing more, although his amorality is generally overshadowed by his gross incompetence.
Fan Works
- The succubus Sunshine in The Return gains a literal pair when Odango Hair are braided over her horns.
Films — Animation
- Despicable Me: Mr. Perkins has the "Pointy Haired Boss" look going.
Films — Live-Action
- Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy wears her hair like this in Batman & Robin.
- A Wachootoo warrior arranges Ace Ventura's normally duckbilled hairdo like this during Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, in mockery of his nickname of "White Devil". Ace does not take it well.
Ace: All right... that's it! This "White Devil" thing has gone far enough. Nobody! Messes! With the 'do!
- Raven at the end of Cecil B. Demented has this. She loves everybody, but she's still a Satanist.
- Will Ferrell as evil fashion maven Mugatu in Zoolander.
- One of Grace Jones's many, many styles in A View to a Kill is a red outfit and hairdo shaped like devil horns. Subtle.
- In The Constant Nymph, Florence wears very severe looking victory rolls, and unsurprisingly, is our antagonist.
- Pennywise in It (2017) sports this with his hair curling up at the ends.
- In The Mad Magician, The Great Rinaldi wears his hair swept to resemble devil horns as part of his Stage Magician persona of 'The Master of Black Magic'.
- In O Auto Da Compadecida, Satan wears his hair as horns.
Literature
- "Ole Devil" Hardin, in the novels of J.T. Edson, deliberately combs the hair over his temples into horn shapes to emphasize his Mephistophelean appearance.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, it's the fashion among the male nobles of Slaver's Bay.
Live-Action TV
- Bandora / Rita Repulsa from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
- Vyvyan's tangerine tri-hawk on The Young Ones looks a lot like horns.
- In My Hero, Mrs. Raven's triplets are said to have gelled their hair into horns.
Music
- Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown of the Spice Girls.
- French singer Mathieu Chedid has this, but whether he's evil is questionable. His stage name being "M", the hairdo (with a widow peak) is rather to suggest this letter.
- Keith Flint from The Prodigy, during the Fat of the Land era.
Professional Wrestling
- Spike Dudley had a horned beard in his "boss" phase, where he took over The Dudley Boys.
- Toshie Uematsu has three, sometimes as many as four, hair spikes or horns on the front of her head.
- Mad Man Manson shaved the center of his head and then spiked up the remaining hair on the sides.
Theatre
- Ms. Lovett in the original Broadway staging of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She has it in the movie too. They're hidden in the general rat's nest of her hair, but she definitely has pointy odango there.
- Satine in Dracula: A Love Stronger Than Death.
- Madame Corporation in Nouvelle Experience is not evil, but she is a sometimes intimidating Trickster and as such has bright red hair styled in this manner.
Video Games
- There's a hidden model in Warcraft III of an Orc warrior, who's bald with very long horns of hair on the sides.
- Seems to be a genetic trait of the Mishima bloodline in Tekken. Most obvious in Heihachi and Kazuya, but Jin occasionally shows signs of it too.
- Final Fantasy
- Ultimecia from Final Fantasy VIII and Dissidia Final Fantasy.
- Possibly also The Emperor from Final Fantasy II, although some of them might be actual horns. Maybe. He was designed by Yoshitaka Amano in the eighties, it can be hard to tell.
- Mewt Randell from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, when he gets to be the Royal Brat in Ivalice.
- Juri Han from Super Street Fighter IV, fits since she's a sultry cyborg assassin working for Big Bad Seth.
- In the 2009 Video Game Final Fantasy Legend II remake, New God(dess) Venus is redesigned to have these.
- Flemeth's character redesign for Dragon Age II includes these. Also, in both games she transforms into a dragon, meaning she has actual horns at certain points.
- Catherine and her really weird Mega Twintails that just add to her mystery. For good reason too, as she's a literal Horny Devil.
- Batreaux from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has these once he's transformed from a demon into a human. It's actually so hornlike that it takes a bit for the player to realize that's hair, not horn.
- The Wolf Queen, in Dark Parables: The Red Riding Hood Sisters, has black hair which pulls itself up into two pointed hornlike shapes on the top of her head. They're actually supposed to look like wolf ears, not horns, but the effect is basically the same.
- In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, Zara's hair is styled into points.
- The Witchkins in Harvest Moon wears her hair like this, though she's more mischievous than evil.
- Inazuma Eleven: Kogure's hair is styled into four horns, two on each side of his head. He also has pointy ears. He's not evil, but he's still a potty-mouthed Bratty Half-Pint and a prankster.
Web Animation
- Tord from Eddsworld, although they were just spikes in the classic era and have only become horns recently.
Webcomics
- Charby the Vampirate, though nowadays he has become somewhat non-evil. Still not a nice guy, however.
- Chase, in I'm the Grim Reaper, thinks Scarlet has "weird hair flicks" on the top of her head for a good chunk of the series. They're horns.
- Elijah And Azuu has main character Azuu (and all of his family) sporting some variation of horned hair. Has crossed over with Charby above, which joked about the hair.
- Zebra Girl, who has real horns a well. While basically good, Zebragirl has been transformed into a demon, with the darkness and violence that entails.
- Dusk in Faux Pas crosses this trope with Ears as Hair — her normally fox ears curve inward and have a very sharp point.
- One of the first characters we meet in God of High School is Mujin Park, whose hair (despite his best efforts) always has a few tufts spring back up like horns. As for his morality, it goes back and forth a bit, but he's utterly ruthless and kills the main character's grandpa the minute they are finally reunited.
Western Animation
- Jimmy's evil clone from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
- Aunt Trudy in The Amazing Spiez, an annoying, but not evil, example.
- Mrs. Dave from As Told by Ginger very unsubtly has hair shaped like horns. She's the overbearing mother of Lois' boyfriend.
- Danny Phantom
- Vlad Plasmius sports this in his ghost-form.
- Likewise, Penelope Spectra also sports a similar hairdo. Hmm...perhaps they go to the same stylist?
- Averted in Futurama: Unlucky Everydude Fry has vaguely horn-shaped hair (even referred to as his "hair-horn" once), yet is undoubtedly good.
- Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
- It's not consistent but Big Bad Eric from Jem is often drawn with his hair messy in a way that obviously mimics devil horns.
- Sylvester Sneakly, the alter ego of the Hooded Claw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
- The Simpsons
- One episode sorta does this: Mayor Quimby is making a speech of some sort, but he's extremely sweaty, so when he passes his hand through his hair, he ends up looking like the Devil. Naturally, the TV crew filming him add hellfire surrounding him.
- Similarly, in "She of Little Faith", while the town is discussing fund-raising ideas to rebuild the church, the shadow of a horned figure falls upon them. It is then revealed that the silhouette belongs to Mr. Burns, who quickly slicks down his hair.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Cloak of Darkness", Captain Argyus of the Senate Commandos has an interesting hairstyle that includes two horn-like shapes at the back. He turns out to be The Mole.
- Jinx from Teen Titans. She starts out as a villain, but the horned hairdo stays after she has a change of heart.
- Klarion the Witch Boy from Young Justice sports a particularly pointy hairdo.
Real Life
- One well-circulated press photo of Heather Mills McCartney sees the wind do this to her.
- Many Aztec (or Nahua in general) women wore their hair like this, mostly those who were married.
- First Lady Mamie Eisenhower wore this hairstyle to her husband's inaugural ball.
- Inverted with rhinos. Their horns are actually made of the same substance that makes up hair and fingernails.
