Neutral Evil

Character Alignment
Lawful Good | Neutral Good | Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral | True Neutral | Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil | Neutral Evil | Chaotic Evil

If only more characters expressed their character alignment this explicitly.

"For mine own good, all causes shall give way."

— Macbeth, Macbeth

One of the nine alignments from the best-known Character Alignment system. Sometimes known as the "Asshole Alignment" or "True Evil". Characters of this alignment fit neither end of the Law–Chaos axis, hence "Neutral", but they land at the morally worse end of the other, Good–Evil axis. Their methods vary; just as the Neutral Good character will ally with anybody to do what's right and nobody to do what's wrong, the Neutral Evil character will ally with anybody as long as it advances their own interests — and it is all about their own interests. These characters do not respect other people as people like themselves with feelings and needs; rather they are tools or obstacles inferior to the Neutral Evil, to be used for their advancement. Neutral Evil characters are intrinsically selfish people, regardless of whose side they are on, and as a Token Evil Teammate, they may sell out to the bad guy if it makes achieving their goals significantly easier.

Some of the world-shaking ones may seek to tear down an old order, good or bad, to set up their own order — not because their way is better, or for the pleasure of tearing it down, but because they want to be in charge. They will do it using any means at their disposal. To a Neutral Evil character, honor, standards and keeping your word is all well and good, so long as it doesn't get in the way. If their opponent is honorable and decent, that's great because they can exploit it. They are very prone to saying, "I Lied".

While they are usually villains, they can also switch to the good guy's side for a while, if it's better for them at the moment. True Magnificent Bastards of the Neutral Evil persuasion can sometimes (with a little luck) lure other villains into an Enemy Civil War, usually along the lines of Order Versus Chaos — playing Lawful Evil against Chaotic Evil — and cleaning up at both sides' expense.

Neutral Evil is, usually, the most dangerous type of evil to fight. Typically, neutral evil characters are The Unfettered, though that isn't to say they follow no code but rather only follow rules or codes that benefit them. Neutral Evil characters will use the law if it suits them but will throw it away as needed for their purposes. What can make them very dangerous is that, the intelligent versions of this trope, tend to be strict followers of Pragmatic Villainy. Ultimately, what matters is what they want and will cross any line to get it.

Neutral Evil types can come in a variety of different flavors:

• Neutral over Evil — This type is amoral and commit evil for self-serving, but not necessarily malicious purposes. They use Evil means to achieve Neutral ends. Perhaps they are a Punch-Clock Villain, or maybe they believe there is Better Living Through Evil. Essentially, this is anyone who would be True Neutral if not for the lack of conscience or empathy, or their practice of putting either aside to further their own ends. A predatory creature capable of sadistically enjoying the hunt, but ultimately just following its drives to kill and eat, would be a good example.
• Evil over Neutral — This type is immoral and deliberately evil. They use Neutral means to achieve Evil ends. These characters are devoted to the spread of Evil in and of itself- they may serve the resident dark gods or follow a Religion of Evil, or perhaps they are simply Sadists who enjoy hurting others. Though sometimes portrayed as cartoonishly evil, the most serious of this type make very dangerous villains, as they truly do Evil for its own sake, and not (just) evil for the sake of themselves.
• Balance Seeker — This type balances Neutral with Evil, usually manifesting as pure selfishness. They enjoy committing evil yet still seek to get away with their crimes and live a comfortable and profitable life. They have little or no sense of loyalty and they often enjoy lies and manipulation, and tend to see the people in their lives as tools to be used and abused as needed. They seek status, money and power through any means, but can't resist petty acts of villainy if they can get away with it to amuse themselves, or getting revenge on those who have crossed them as long as they can get away with it.

In practice, Neutral Evil often simply means "Evil", so Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil are simply cases where one of the above types meets Lawful or Chaotic Neutral inclinations.

Neutral Evil can be the most dangerous alignment because such characters are willing to step on, betray, take advantage of, hurt, and kill other people to reach their goals and get what they want. The Neutral Evil have no difficulty working with others so long as their own needs are met. However, they also have no difficulty betraying former companions if there is some gain in doing so. They are also extremely susceptible to bribes.

In Dungeons & Dragons, characters who are selfish above all else are Neutral Evil by default.

If you have a difficulty deciding which alignment a evil-aligned character belongs to, the main difference between Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil is not their devotion to their evil wishes, but the methods they believe are best to realize it:

• Even though there are some situations where they can't always use this method, Lawful Evil characters believe the best way is to have a specific, strict code of conduct, whether self-imposed or codified as a law. Their first impulse when making a moral decision is to refer back to this code; those with externally imposed systems (codes of laws, hierarchies, etc.) will try to work within the system when those systems go wrong. Depending on whether they are more Lawful or more Evil, they will either refuse to break the code even though it would hurt their evil objectives, or else break it only very reluctantly, and only when it would hurt their evil objectives if they kept their code.
• Neutral Evil characters are indifferent to Order Versus Chaos, and their only interest is in realizing their evil wishes. They will use whatever means will help in realizing their evil wishes, whether that means tearing down a code of laws, following a code of laws, creating an orderly society, causing the breakdown of justice, or staying away from society altogether. Their only goal is to realize their evil wishes, full stop.
• Most Chaotic Evil characters don't constantly break the law, but they cannot see much value in laws (or, for weaker-CCEs, do not see the value in laws that do not function solely to their depraved objectives). They believe that their own evil impulses are their best guides, and that tying themselves to any given code of conduct would be limiting their own ability to realize their depraved wishes. They do not get along with anyone who tries to instill any kind of order over the Chaotic Evil character, believing these people to be restricting their freedom; Chaotic Evil characters often focus very strongly on their own individual rights and freedoms, and will strongly resist any form of oppression of themselves.

See Also: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Evil

---

Examples of Neutral Evil villains:

• Abusive Parents (if not Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil)
• Most villains who follow Ambition Is Evil
• The more self-centered Amoral Attorney
• Villainous versions of Beneath the Mask (especially seemingly nice characters).
• Bullies, when not Lawful Evil.
• The more villainous Byronic Heroes go here.
• Some examples of The Caligula. (When not Chaotic Evil).
• A good amount of Card Carrying Villains, when not Chaotic Evil.
• Villainous cases of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, as this is often associated with these type of characters.
• Con Man: Those who aren't Chaotic Evil (Or, at their most sympathetic, Chaotic Neutral)
• Some Corrupt Corporate Executives (if not Lawful Evil) who are motivated by greed and personal aggrandizement.
• Cruella to Animals
• Most evil Blood Knights if not Chaotic Evil
• Deadly Doctors (Those that lack morals or subvert the Hippocratic Oath.)
• Many Dirty Cowards
• Evil Chancellors who use illegal means to gain power.
• Evil Colonialist (If not Lawful Evil)
• The Evil Debt Collector when not Lawful Evil
• Characters who are Evil Is Petty (if not Chaotic Evil)
• A less lawfully bound Evil Overlord (example: Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, Skeletor).
• Some Faux Affably Evil characters when not Lawful Evil.
• Feminism when done wrong. (Mostly fuelled by hatred and selfish ideals.)
• Gangbangers and their white cousins, when not Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil (or evil, for that matter)
• "Heroes" who engage in Engineered Heroics (falls under Type 3)
• Glory Hound and Glory Seeker, if not Chaotic Evil
• Most Greater Scope Villains
• Jerkasses
• Jerkass Gods (if not Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil)
• The Killer Game Master, cause he loves to see their players suffer
• The most egomaniacal and self-centered Knight Templars (Type 3)
• Les Collaborateurs, when not Lawful Evil (by the standards of the occupiers' laws, of course)
• In a villainous Four-Temperament Ensemble, the Melancholic or Choleric usually.
• Many Generic Doomsday Villains, although they can be Chaotic Evil as well.
• Mad Scientists that turn into Evilutionary Biologists and/or do things all For Science!
• More amoral versions of The Neidermeyer
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist
• Opportunistic Bastard
• Politically Incorrect Villain (if not Lawful Evil)
• Many Straw Nihilists
• Most of the more amoral Professional Killers, sinister mercenaries, and evil Bounty Hunters, who are Only in It for the Money but still take sadistic pleasure in the hunt.
• Most Psychos For Hire, when they're not Chaotic Evil
• The Religion of Evil
• Most Omnicidal Maniacs that aren't Chaotic Evil
• Most Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds that aren't Chaotic Evil
• Many Classic Villains
• Most Pragmatic Villains
• Many Magnificent Bastards
• Many Narcissists, particularly the ones with the lack of empathy and propensity for manipulation that characterizes the personality disorder.
• The Ego of an evil-aligned Freudian Trio.
• The Starscream, when not Lawful Evil.
• Most organized Serial Killers
• Slimeballs
• Rather vicious versions of the hedonist, when not Chaotic Evil.
• The Smug Snake or Big Bad Wannabe.
• The Sociopath: Those who aren't Chaotic Evil (Type 2-4).
• Most Sociopathic Soldiers
• Straw Hypocrites, since they have no respect for the laws or principles they claim to uphold, but must defend them in public regardless
• The Svengali
• Tragic Villains (when not Lawful Evil).
• The Barnum, if not Chaotic Evil
• The Quisling when not Lawful Evil
• Evil Poachers
• Villainous cases of The Unfettered (when not Chaotic Evil).
• Evil Vigilante Men
• Those who engage in War for Fun and Profit.
• Most evil Yanderes that aren't Chaotic Evil
• The Stool Pigeon: The Betrayer Barry variant is used as example of the alignment in the Player Handbook 3th Edition.
• Can be either Red or Blue Oni depending on personal preferences.
• Most Evil Overlord characters, if not Lawful Evil, which is their primary default alignment. They can be this if they happen to seek balance of both order and chaos for their own selfish and nefarious ends, or even obeying laws and rules, only if they suit them, but will break or bend them if they consider the laws to get in the way of their evil deeds.

Others, such as the Big Bad, can vary between Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil.

Expect any Neutral Evil state to be Mordor, and a Neutral Evil city the Wretched Hive. Neutral Evil characters are likely to be Unfettered. If they are, they can also be the most lethal kind of villain, as the most extreme kind of neutral evil (not Chaotic Evil like one might think) is what gave rise to the concept of the Omnicidal Maniac (though most Omnicidal Maniacs tend to slide into Chaotic Evil by the end). Many Corrupt Corporate Executives are Neutral Evil Jerkasses in charge of Lawful Evil MegaCorps — it's easier to get ahead in business when you cheat. Unlike a Lawful Evil CCE who'd fly into a rage over somebody else's infractions, Neutral Evil sorts rarely care (as long as they themselves stay ahead) — a suitably Affably Neutral Evil businessperson might even applaud a fellow cheater's "initiative."

---

Examples:

When dealing with the examples of specific characters, remember that assigning an alignment to a character who doesn't come with one is pretty subjective. If you've got a problem with a character being listed here, it probably belongs on the discussion page. There will be no Real Life examples under any circumstances; it just invites an Edit War. Plus, real people are far too complex and multi-dimensional to really be classified by such a straightforward alignment system.

On works pages: Character Alignment is only to be used in works where it is canonical, and only for characters who have alignments in-story. There is to be no arguing over canonical alignments, and no Real Life examples, ever.

Anime & Manga

• Most characters in Black Lagoon are of this alignment — living in a world as violent as theirs, both a tolerance and an occasional willingness to do evil to come out on top is practically a necessity. Mr. Chang, Shenhua and Sawyer the Cleaner are the most prominent Neutral Evil characters.
• Berserk:
  • Gambino, Gut's adoptive father, is a real piece of work. A cutthroat mercenary, he had no love for Guts as a father and barely tolerated his existence when he was raised by Sys, Gambino's lover. After Sys's death, Gambino hated Guts enough to sell him as a child prostitute for three silver coins and allow Donovan, one of his men, to have his way with him. He would only get worse after losing his leg to a cannonball during a battle, ending his career on the battlefield, causing him to take to drinking, and blaming everything on Guts. One night when massively drunk, Gambino came into Guts' tent one night and tried to murder him, but Guts killed Gambino in self-defense and fled the mercenary camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries.
  • Griffith fits the bill after joining the God Hand and becoming Femto. Throughout his life, the one thing he valued above more than anything else in the world was achieving his dream of ruling a kingdom of his own. Though the act of ruling may be seen as more lawful than neutral, he is motivated primarily by self-realization instead of any desire to have order. He's willing to sacrifice anything — no matter what that entails — if it means he reaches his goal. When he joins the God Hand, he proves this by betraying his own soldiers and having them slaughtered by demons, then by forcing himself on his former best friend's lover while said former friend watches. After joining them, he triggers the Great Roar of the Astral Plane and is willing to plunge the whole world in chaos with only his dominion as a haven of order.
  • Many of the more reserved Apostles are these, doing their evil deeds out of public eye and enacting their own selfish desires without delving too far into Chaotic Evil territory. It is important to know that all Apostles were once humans who underwent a Despair Event Horizon, so vestiges of their human personalities still remain. Some examples include.
    • The Slug Count, a corpulent autocrat who uses the pretense of a heretic hunt to capture humans to feed on. He was horrid and cruel, but pragmatic enough to keep the people loyal to him out of fear if nothing else. Despite him revelling in evil acts, one of his most interesting traits was his genuine love for his young daughter Theresia. Despite his trying to shelter her from the cruel world and his true nature, Guts used her to slay the horrid beast, and when granted a second audience with the Godhand, he refused to sacrifice his daughter to save himself and is Dragged Off to Hell.
    • Rosine was once a curious and imaginative girl who was born into an abusive household. After losing hope in the world of humans, she sacrificed her parents to become a beautiful moth-like Queen of the Elves of Misty Valley, a swarm of malignant children-turned-monsters that terrorized villages and kidnap children. Despite her change and [hatred of humanity, she remembered and still cared for her former friend Jill, and actually tried to protect her from Guts when he almost killed her. She still wanted to turn Jill into an elf, but her reasoning was that war and death are natural in the human world, and it's better to live in an escapist fantasy.
    • Emperor Ganishka was a renegade Apostle and Demon Emperor of the Kushan Empire. His ego and cruelty knew no bounds, and he is not shy of torture, slavery, and twisted dark magic rituals. He ruled with an iron fist, and ensured that his will is absolute through a campaign of fear and death. However, what prevented him from being a Lawful Evil villain is his defiance against the Godhand and especially Griffith, for he refused to give up his throne to any being, be they king or god. Sadly for Gahnishka, he turned out to be nothing more than an Unwitting Pawn for the gods he denied his allegiance. His first confrontation with Griffith wasn't even a fight, so in desperation he plunged himself into a man-made-Behilit to become a god. Unfortunately for him, it worked, and he was turned into the Chaotic Evil Shiva.
  • While technically not canon, The Idea of Evil fits the bill of a perfect Neutral Evil being, being the Greater-Scope Villain beyond the Godhand and Apostles themselves. Resting deep in the World of Idea, this eldritch being was formed from the collective hopes, dreams, and thoughts of humanity, specifically the bad ones. When people ask why bad things happen like death, war, famine, and plague, The Idea of Evil answers it with its own existence. It is a huge monster created out of humanity's need for a reason for all their suffering. Thus it is responsible for making the world of Berserk what it is.
• Shapiro Keats from Dancougar. He betrayed his kind and his planet to join the Muge army and he tried to manipulate them in order to get the chance to become god of the universe.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Piccolo started off as the Big Bad, until Raditz first appeared and outmatched him. Piccolo decided to join Goku in defeating him only because Goku was as strong as or maybe even stronger than him, and to keep Raditz from taking over the world, which he planned on doing. In training Goku's son, Gohan for the other two Saiyans, he starts to diverge from his evil nature, leading to a full on Heel–Face Turn when he sacrifices his life to save Gohan.
    • His "father", King Piccolo, was for his part an openly Card-Carrying Villain who devoted himself to the cause of wreaking havoc, and who became ruler of the world solely to abolish all laws and throw it into darkness. Just before his death, he reincarnated himself in the form of Piccolo Jr. in the hope that his own evil would outlive him.
  • Vegeta in the Namek saga. He spends most of the saga as a Villain Protagonist until joining Krillin and Gohan to fight the Ginyu Force. However, he's only joining them because they're the only other people who could possibly help them, and made it very clear that he was still planning on killing them and stealing the Dragon Balls. Thanks to circumstances, he eventually goes through Heel–Face Turn.
  • Frieza is absolutely of this alignment. He is an utterly selfish Galactic Conqueror whose modus operandi is taking over a planet, cleansing it clean of life and selling it to the highest bidder; though he is the ruler of The Empire it doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than making him more money, glory, and power. He is a Bad Boss of the worst sort who once blew up a world of his elite warrior race because he heard a rumor that they might become strong enough to defeat him, and his goal is to achieve Immortality so he can be the strongest in the universe forever.
  • Once Cell created the Cell Games, he had a rule that if you are ringed out you lose. When he and Goku fought, he blew up the stadium so that a) He and Goku would be able to keep fighting and b) So that he wouldn't need to abide by his own rules.
• Death Note:
  • Light Yagami's egomaniacal god complex and his utter unwillingness to admit that what he is doing may be wrong places him squarely into this trope, particularly late in the series. While his original motivation may have been to punish criminals and create a perfect utopia with himself as a god, by the end he's been reduced to merely killing the people that he personally dislikes.
  • Mello fits this trope, as well. He is devoted to accomplishing the Lawful Neutral L's goals via his own methods (which include taking over the Mafia). Mello later transitions to a Chaotic Neutral, after meeting with Near.
  • Misa, as well. She is willing to do anything to gain Light's trust and love to her. "Anything" includes becoming a partner in his mass murder business... for which she takes the initiative by herself before he's had a chance to manipulate her into it.
  • Most Shinigami in this universe are apathetic parasites that keep themselves alive by depriving humans of their lives without a second thought. The most important one for the story, Ryuk, might be a funny comic relief guy at many times, but he starts the whole dark, tragic, death-filled storyline because It Amused Me, and that's still his attitude by the end.
• Cyborg 009: Black Ghost is a technologically advanced criminal organisation that manipulates and instigates wars around the world in order to sell their weapons to the highest bidder, and some of these weapons include people turned into powerful cyborgs against their will through kidnapping and blackmailing.
• Naruto:
  • Sasuke Uchiha started out Lawful Neutral, became Neutral Good after becoming part of Team 7, going into True Neutral when he abandoned Konoha and sought out Orochimaru's help, but after Tobi told him the truth about the destruction of the Uchiha clan, and he subsequently attacked the Five Kage Summit with the intent of killing Danzo to avenge his family's deaths and proceeded to proclaim that he would kill everyone in Konoha as revenge for his family, which firmly established him as Neutral Evil.
  • Kakuzu, whose only goal is profit, and Sasori, who wishes to make as many puppets as possible to establish the immortality of his art, also fit this alignment.
• Vicious from Cowboy Bebop is only interested in killing Spike and is willing to do anything to accomplish this.
• Yujiro Hanma from Baki the Grappler. He wavers more between Chaotic Evil and Chaotic Neutral in the sequels. He is excessively cruel and the reasons for his cruelty are sometimes just as excessively flimsy, but he'll also stay out of the "good guys"' way if he doesn't feel like fighting them or even help if he's got personal stakes in their fights.
• My-HiME:
  • Several of the antagonistic Hime become this later on in My-HiME. Their allegiances typically lie with themselves and they are willing to hurt others in order to advance their own agendas.
  • My-Otome manga:
    • Tomoe Marguerite has this alignment written all over her. She is extremely vicious and selfish, to the point of not caring who gets hurt or dies because of her schemes, and will either play by the rules or break them outright. It doesn't matter which, as long as she gets away with it and gets what she wants: Shizuru's love. She becomes increasingly Chaotic Evil as time goes on.
    • The Big Bad of the manga, Sergay initially appears loyal to the real Mashiro even after being exposed as a villain, only to dispose of her when she's no longer useful and attempt to destroy the world.
• Gundam — again — is a good source for examples.
  • Char's original alignment is still debated. Being evil without question, his balance of being a proud soldier but killing friends and superiors to avenge his father would put him in NE alignment.
  • Manipulative Bastard and The Chessmaster Paptimus Scirocco in Zeta Gundam. He will betray anyone and break any oath to fulfill his objectives, but can play along with his "superiors" for as long as needed.
  • Glemmy Toto from Gundam ZZ fits this alignment as well, considering he is The Starscream of the series.
  • G Gundam has the secret main villain Major Ulube, who is planning to rule the Earth sphere with Devil Gundam. Putting him in lawful or chaotic is not really possible, so he's probably best left here.
  • Wang Liu Mei from Gundam 00 will aid whoever can be useful to her goal of changing the world into a place that suits her desires, and elevate herself into an higher being akin to the Innovators, and at the same time will sacrifice anything or anyone she deems necessary. She has loyalty to no one but herself, not even to her own brother Hong Long, whose death only elicited the most minute emotional response from her.
  • Muruta Azrael of Gundam Seed. A Smug Snake whose desire is to slaughter every Coordinator in existence while gaining as much political influence and money as possible. His successor, Lord Djibril, started here for the same reasons, but devolved into Chaotic Evil as the events of the series turned against him.
    • Djibril's Tykebombs, the Extended, are likely Neutral Evil as well: sure they're being forced into fighting, but Sting and Auel at least would cheerfully do it anyway.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: Jail Scaglietti may be a giggling Mad Scientist, but unlike Precia, he's kept his sanity where it counts. He's not prone to abusing his minions for no reason, for one, and he will happily play by the rules of his employers... that is, until he's deemed them too obstructive to his goals.
• Bleach:
  • Mayuri Kurotsuchi certainly counts in this area as a Mad Scientist of the worst caliber. Although he serves the Soul Society (and seems to have no interest whatsoever in the Big Bad's evil plan), he shows very little care for standards and is willing to bend (or, if he can get away with it, outright break) the rules "For Science!". Mayuri is an example of an effective Neutral Evil character on the good guys' team done right; all he wants is research, and he will kill anyone he has to to get it and that's it. He won't backstab, and didn't even backstab Urahara even when the latter informed him that all that stood between him and being the leader of 12th Division was his own death, because he was getting what he wanted anyway.
  • Grimmjow Jeagerjaquez. He is under Aizen's command, but holds no loyalty to him beyond the fact that Grimmjow himself is not strong enough to take him down (which is a great irritation to him). He goes against orders on a number of occasions, including going so far as to break Orihime out of her prison and sealing Ulquiorra into a pocket dimension temporarily just so he can have his showdown with Ichigo.
  • Sosuke Aizen shows himself to be definitely this. He has freely admitted to being unbound by any type of honor, law, morality, or even decency. Everything, including (read: especially) his own underlings, are pawns used to achieve his own goals. Naturally, he believes this makes him the only viable candidate to become the world's new God. While he may have used the political system on his behalf for an unspecified amount of time, even years, he did not have a plan for bettering people, order, or society. It was just a selfish lust for power, and to become "God", not to rule, but because, as he described it, the seat has been empty for a while, so he would take it, aka be the strongest being in existence. He has no loyalty to his minions, they are all dead at the end of his arc, some directly or indirectly because of him, he just views them as tools to further his ambition.
• Neuro from Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro. His motives may benefit humanity in the short term, but this is somewhat spoiled by the fact that every time he saves humans from outside forces, he is essentially saving them in hope that they will kill each other some day, and create a puzzle. And yet, he's not actively Chaotic, either, preferring to manipulate law rather than destroy it.
• Enishi Yukishiro, the Big Bad of Rurouni Kenshin's Jinchu arc is willing to use anyone and anything to get his revenge on Kenshin for his sister's death. To him, nothing else matters.
• Fate Averruncus of Negima! Magister Negi Magi. It's currently unknown what his true goals are, but there isn't much he's not willing to do for it, including taking out multiple gate ports and framing Negi for it, petrifying anyone he sees as an obstacle (including non-fighters like Nodoka and Konoka), kidnapping those he sees as crucial to his plans, and not-so-subtly threatening a city full of innocents when meeting Negi.
• One Piece:
  • A Neutral Evil organization being served by the Lawful Neutral Marines; while the Marines run the gamut from Akainu's Lawful Evil to Smoker's Lawful Good, with a great many Lawful Neutral marines balancing it out, the World Government that commands the Marines has two goals and only two goals: remaining in absolute control of the world that has no choice except them or the pirates, and making sure that the many skeletons in their closet stay there. To this end, the World Government is a patron of the at least partially pirate-run Slave Trade, has civilians and children (pregnant women and babies not exempt!) massacred to keep their secrets under wraps or try to suppress a notorious pirate's bloodline. Worse, however, is that the World Government is fully willing to actually obstruct the Marines from doing their jobs if it serves their own ends, such as hushing up warnings that Impel Down was destroyed, releasing the worst criminals in the world out in massive numbers out of fear that it would hurt their reputation. Sengoku does not seem pleased when he realizes that the government he's responsible for protecting is a lot more interested in keeping its reputation clean than it is in protecting people from the various pirates now free to pillage and rape in secret.
    • G-5 is notable for having problems with authority (though once Smoker is transferred there, he manages to win their loyalty through intimidation and sheer badassedry) and for gleefully torturing captured pirates. They manage to avoid Chaotic Evil status by the fact that, evil-aligned as they are, they're still True Companions and look out for each other, and are devastated when their commander, Vergo, turns out to be a spy for Doflamingo and turns on them.
  • The Warlord Donquixote Doflamingo is an utterly self-centered sociopath who constantly vacillates between flagrant disrespect for the system he lives in and ruthlessly exploiting it for his own benefit, a con he can no doubt afford thanks to being a Celestial Dragon. He rules the kingdom of Dressrosa with an iron fist, but when his position at the top is threatened he decides to destroy it all rather than let anyone dethrone him.
• The Pokémon anime has Hunter J, a sociopathic poacher who cares only about profit, and will kill anyone in her way. She will happily abandon a client to the police as soon as she's paid.
• Code Geass has Luciano Bradley, the Knight of Ten. He serves a Lawful Evil empire solely because it gives him opportunities to kill without consequences. V. V.] in spite of the goal he shares with his brother Charles to rid the world of lies, is deceitful in his goals, even towards Charles himself, most of all in that he murdered Marianne. After one lie too many, Charles takes V. V.'s code and leaves him to die.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Sociopathic Soldier Solf J. Kimblee goes along with the military's genocide in Ishval, but chooses to keep the Philosopher's Stone they lend him to test it out, killing the people who know he has it. His loyalty to the homunculi is questionable at best, given that his primary motivation is to see whether they or humanity survive. In the end, he betrays Pride when the latter hypocritically goes against his idea that homunculi are superior to humans. He personally admits his views are at odds with society, and says that because he knows they are, he's gotten by through pretending to be normal.
  • Among the homunculi, Pride comes across this way — he is really loyal to Father, but he likes senseless cruelty for its own sake a bit too much to qualify as Lawful Evil.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the Big Bad Dante was this, arranging a conspiracy over the course of centuries whose ultimately goals essentially came down to achieving eternal youth for herself and screwing over those she had a grudge against.
    • Dante's Dragon and son, Envy, is this as well. Even though he's loyal to Dante, it's really only for his own purposes.
• Sniper from Ginga Nagare Boshi Gin is scheming to take control of the entire pack for purely selfish reasons, and will stop at nothing to realize his goals, going as far as killing his former allies if they stand in his way. He's seen betraying his allies and tries more than once to start conflicts to weaken both sides so he can more easily take over. He holds little to no regard for his allies' lives, and will abandon them as soon as they can no longer help him further his agenda. He also cheats and lies at his own discretion.
• Doctor from Black Cat, who follows the Big Bad not to change the world, but to satiate his lust for knowledge.
• Elfen Lied:
  • Director Kakuzawa, whose sole concern was wiping out humanity and creating a new race out of his own descendants.
• Sociopathic Soldier and Empty Shell Zaied from Full Metal Panic! is this. As long as he's on the winning side he doesn't care who he works for or what they want him to do.
• Inuyasha: Common for the more intelligent demons, who simply don't care about others and only want to be unstoppable.
  • InuYasha's full-demon half-brother Sesshoumaru is initially almost emotionless and completely unconcerned with anything but his own personal goals, ready to destroy anyone in his way without a second thought. As the story progresses, Character Development starts to take him slowly at least a little towards True Neutral as he learns to care about others beside himself.
  • The demon Naraku seems at first to be a completely heartless, opportunistic Manipulative Bastard who's willing to hurt anyone to advance his goals. In truth, he's doing much of it out of malice rather than simply rationally to achieve his goals. Still, it doesn't change the fact that he's just doing evil things by any means available, with no code of rules but also not impulsively or randomly.
  • The numerous separate entities Naraku spawns from himself, while having their own wills and personalities, tend to be Neutral Evil as well. They generally spend most of their time doing two things: doing his evil bidding without particularly caring what's going on other than to take sadistic pleasure in it, and/or plotting to betray him. He's smart enough about his own alignment that the only way he "trusts" them is because he could destroy them at a whim, or in some cases because he's counting on their betrayal and planning to betray them back.
  • The Band of Seven. Being Ax-Crazy Psychos For Hire could qualify them for Chaotic Evil, except that they have strong morales such as viewing themselves as True Companions and only attacking for their own interests (Mukotsu- women, Jakotsu- men, Ginkotsu-Renkotsu, Kyokotsu- eating in order to preserve power and life, Suikotsu- his Split Personality stops him from going completely amoral and killing everyone in sight, Renkotsu- self preservation and Bankotsu- fighting and fulfilling a promise/contract)
  • Yura of the Hair: A demon who basically just consumes people in her own way, but is not unintelligent and enjoys doing it.
• Shion Izumi from Gantz will kill anyone to get back to the game, where he'll kill aliens and follow the rules or break them.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Yoshikage Kira, unlike most of the main villains who want total domination or to rewrite history, is only concerned with keeping his life undisturbed without distractions, that being that of a Serial Killer with the facade of being a normal businessman. He goes to great lengths to do so.
  • Kars also qualifies, caring only about obtaining the Red Stone of Aja for his own interests of being the Ultimate Life Form.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyubey starts off as a True Neutral Well-Intentioned Extremist; his role was after all to prolong the life of the universe. Unfortunately, this involved tricking prepubescent girls into contracting with him and then slowly breaking their psyches. It WAS all For the Greater Good. What pushed him into Neutral Evil, however, were the events of Rebellion. Despite gaining all the energy he needed in Madoka's exponentially kinder system, it wasn't enough for him, so he locked Homura in a torturous isolation chamber with the intent of observing and ultimately controlling the Law of Cycles to bring back the good ol' days of the Witch System.
• Takahito Tougo from School-Live! sqaurely falls into this trope. He may act like he has his own group's best interests at heart, and he pretends to be Lawful Evil with his brutal strict rules and how he claims to have been "Chosen" to lead, but in the end he's only looking after himself and will do anything to achieve his goal of self-preservation, anyone else be damned. Whether it's killing most of his own group in order to preserve food rations, attacking a friendly group of College and Highschool students because he suspects them of plotting against him, or attracting a bunch of zombies inside the University in the hopes that they'll bite one of his enemies so he can snatch a Cure from them when he's infected, he will commit any atrocity as long as it benefits himself.
• Greedy Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Nabiki Tendou and Evil Mentor Happosai from Ranma ½ tend to be incredibly and endearingly self-centered and act only for personal gain and amusement at the expense of others. Though, being on&off as many Takahashi "villains", they often just plain fall into Chaotic Neutral territory.
• Ragyo Kiryuin from Kill la Kill qualifies here. Turning a seemingly harmless subject such as fashion into an extreme is one thing, but using it as a weapon is borderline impressive for a Lady Gaga look-a-like. Being diabolical in a glamorous way and selfish regarding the lives of anyone is just another day for her.
• Soul Eater: Medusa Gorgon fits here perfectly. Not only does she prove it with her magic, but she could win several awards for how abusive a mother she is towards poor Crona. A chronic liar and a vindictive actress would make her in this case the "Voldemort" of Anime.
• Fairy Tail: Minerva Orlando makes a worthy example here. She's snide and very underhanded for a guild full of playful miscreants. Her powers rival both Erza and Kagura's master swordplay, which isn't anything to smile about. To put icing on this despicable cake, Minerva's pride overshadows the well-being of the innocent, for she is even willing to hold hostages and conspire with less reputable characters. That is until she was taught a very harsh lesson.
  • A large portion of minor villains appearing within the series deserve a spot here (for example, Midnight and Angel).
• My Hero Academia: Despite being considered the second-greatest hero in Japan, Endeavor is a self-obsessed glory hound who abused his family so he could one day claim that his son surpassed his longtime rival All Might. Even his heroics seem motivated less by a desire to do good or enforce the law and more the possibility of bolstering his reputation. He later starts shifting away from this alignment after All Might loses the last of his power and leaves him at Number One, where he takes a long, hard look at himself and realizes just how horrible he's been.
  • All For One however is even more irredeemable. He is by far the most malevolent and overpowered antagonist in the series. With power that bested All Might on multiple attempts, yet in the end it's not All For One's strength that makes him the deadliest. It was his genius and ambitious patience, to let Tomura and the League of Villains mature in his absence.
• Muzan Kibutsuji from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is far beyond the powers of his Chaotic Evil minions. As the oldest and most feared Demon widespread, Muzan is not only dominating but also extremely cunning and deceitful. Neither Demon nor Human is safe from his wrath, as long as you are somewhat useful to him, you may live another day. But there is a reason, why even the most formidable Fighters fear his name.

Card Games

• Munchkin enforces a Neutral Evil type of character for a chance at winning. Per the game's mechanics, you're able to benefit from forging (and betraying) alliances, helping (and backstabbing) your buddies, trading (and stealing) treasure, employing (and sacrificing) hirelings... Winning is all about selfish, flexible play.
• While not all black-aligned characters in Magic: The Gathering are neutral evil, it's pretty common for them. Black mana is the colour of selfishness, so characters who are predominantly black-aligned tend to care mostly about themselves. Some of the nicer ones are True Neutral, some are Lawful Evil (particularly those who are white/black) or Chaotic Evil (red/black), but it's very easy for a monoblack-aligned character to end up mostly focused on themselves and their personal gain without reference to any particular ideology or indeed any priorities beyond that.
  • Ironically enough given the above, the mana color that has historically produced the most villains to fall under this description is not black at all, but blue. Blue mana is the color of naked intellect, its users caring about progress more than any antiquated notions of right and wrong, and while this seems like it should produce characters on either side of the spectrum in practice most of the 'selfish asshole' villains of MTG are either outright outright blue (Ambassador Laquatus, Heidar, Memnarch, Mochi) or are blue-aligned ( Mairsil the Pretender, Momir Vig, Nicol Bolas, Szadek).

Comic Books

• Aquaman: Black Manta wants three things: money, power and Aquaman's head on a stick. He really doesn't care what methods he has to use to get them.
• The Avengers: Kang the Conqueror, while a builder of empires and a commander of armies, has shown to care little for their management and is obsessed with conquest, fighting, and warfare more out of a desire for the thrill it brings than any value he may place on them. Once he obtains something, he tends to lose interest in it, and battles The Avengers for the challenge rather than hatred. His dragon Baltag was Lawful Evil and turned on Kang when he made an exception to their code of honor in sparing a princess's life who had defied them in the past when Kang was in love with her. It has been shown that Kang will learn the value of statesmanship, proper management, and negotiation which will make him lean to more Lawful alignments, eventually becoming the Lawful Neutral Immortus.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Anti-Monitor. He started off completely conquering his home universe and made a chosen people who worshiped him as a God-King with some structure of rank (the Shadows and the Thunderers) and privilege. While his goal is often stated to be the destruction of every positive matter universe, his actual goal has always been to rule an anti-matter universe with the power provided from the destruction of the other positive matter universes. The Anti-Monitor has never been shown to use deception and always does what he says he is going to, even if it is limited to "you will die" or "I won't kill you yet", and has even offered to generously reward the minions that serve him (Psycho-Pirate was offered control of a world, Death Seeker Hank Henshaw was offered oblivion) if they will help him meet his goal. However, he is completely solipsistic and kills inhabited planets in his universe to gain more power.
• Deadpool: Deadpool in his first appearances before becoming a Chaotic Neutral Sociopathic Hero. In Ultimate Marvel, Deadpool goes from just plain screwy to a racist, murderous scumbag who hunts mutants on television for sport.
• Fables: Bluebeard and Goldilocks. Bluebeard lives comfortably in Fabletown and appears to be a legitimate citizen, but in secret, he hoards magic objects, blackmails his fellow Fables, and forces the leaders of the city to bow and scrape for his annual donations, up until Prince Charming kills him. Goldilocks presents herself as an idealistic revolutionary, but is really only concerned with gaining power as governments topple and people die around her.
• Green Lantern: Larfleeze/Agent Orange, the keeper of the Orange Light of avarice, is practically the living embodiment of selfishness. He kills other ring-users and steals their identities, crafting Orange Lantern constructs in their image to be his slaves. His only motivation is to hold onto what he has and take ever more from others.
• The Mighty Thor: Loki. Lying, deceitful, manipulative, cares less about power and glory than about making Thor and the other Aesir miserable, and will engage in convoluted plans to make this possible.
• Scott Pilgrim: The Big Bad Gideon Gordon Graves is a Jerkass whose two goals are 1. Ruin Scott's life by manipulating the 6 other Evil Ex's and 2. Capture Ramona and keep her for himself, forever. The embodiment of malice, indeed.
• Shazam!: Doctor Sivana, Mad Scientist extraordinaire and archnemesis of Captain Marvel, has been described as a cross between Lex Luthor and the Joker in terms of persona. He always has some evil scheme that he's dead-set on, but he most decidedly does not play well with others, excepting Lex himself who he often teams amicably with.
• Sin City: Wallenquist is a simple businessman that never takes anything personal... he just so happens to be The Don. The Roarks and Colonel almost fit this trope, but they have varying degrees of For the Evulz, resulting in them being a bit "purer" in their evilness.
• Spider-Man: Several of Spidey's rogues such as (but not limited to) Hobgoblin, Mysterio, and the Vulture fall into the "selfish evil" definition. They tend to have fairly basic goals (money, power, revenge, etc.) but don't really care how they accomplish them.
  • Perennial Spider-Man Arch-Enemy Norman Osborn is in his civilian identity the very definition neutral evil, fulfilling his needs by using both legal and illegal means, desiring mostly respect, money, and power, though hampered by his numerous mental health problems. When he is the Green Goblin, he becomes Chaotic Evil. When he presents himself as Iron Patriot he is Lawful Evil. But the most evil and effective of the three is prime Osborn's personality, which is not restricted by madness or rules.
  • Another Spider-Man rogue who falls firmly into neutral evil territory is Mac Gargan, the villain variously known as Scorpion, Venom, and Virus. He edges on Lawful Evil at points by working for more organized villains and at one point even being presented to the public as legit, but every time he does the pendulum in him swings back towards Chaotic Evil. Too uncontrollable to be truly Lawful but too used to following authority to be Chaotic, Mac falls neatly into the middle of the evil spectrum.
  • The Kingpin has no compunctions about ordering murder, kidnapping, or arson against anyone who tries to stand up to him, and is quite content to enrich himself off the victims of his criminal empire, but he'll also exploit whatever legal loopholes he can to make sure the long arm of the law can't catch him.
• Superman: Lex Luthor is probably the only person in The DCU who can equal—or surpass—Bruce Wayne's billions. Unlike Bruce, he's more of the Affably Evil Corrupt Corporate Executive type. He's also a very busy guy; when he's not fighting Superman^note Lex truly believes that Superman is ultimately more dangerous than any of his opponents, and that he (Lex) is defending humanity., you can usually find him testing a new Powered Armor, buying his way to the Presidency, or making more money. Either that or stealing cakes; you can never tell. Generally falls into a combination of Type 1 and Type 3, and is a true Magnificent Bastard.
• Teen Titans: Terra (Tara Markov) is very much this during The Judas Contract storyline where it is revealed that she was a ruthless mercenary who worked for Deathstroke all along. However, her animated counterpart is a lot different.
• Thanos: Mainstream Thanos is certainly evil, but has famously stood outside the boundaries of Chaos and Order. Thanos is a high-functioning Neutral Evil-methodical, calculating, but ultimately usually driven by whatever the hell he feels like doing at a given time, or a nigh-omnicidal romantic obsession with Death, and usually a Straw Nihilist who doesn't believe in any moral or ethical authority, answers to nobody but himself, and is The Unfettered in everything he pursues. He will just as easily make alliances with good characters as evil ones, but can occasionally be relied on to keep his words. Even if it is his Exact Words.
• Wanted: After embracing his supervillain lineage, Wesley Gibson does plenty of things For the Evulz, including rape, killing everyone who ever slighted him, and killing everyone in a police station just for kicks. However, he gets along much better with the relatively restrained, Lawful Evil members of the Fraternity than he does with Mr. Rictus, who has For the Evulz as his sole motivation in life. What's true of Wesley is also true of his father, the Killer, and his/his father's girlfriend, The Fox.
• Wonder Woman: Ares wants nothing other than endless war and he'll use any means to achieve it.

Comic Strips

• One of the enemies of The Phantom is a worldwide criminal organisation called the Vultures that keeps an eye on catastrophes and shows up to rob the helpless victims. It doesn't even pretend to have a motivation or justification beyond easy gain at the expense of the weak.
• Dilbert: Dogbert can never seem to decide whether he wants to take over the world or become the richest being in it. So he's done both several times.
• The King from The Wizard of Id. "He who has the gold, makes the rules" — the rules being do what he says, and don't make him mad. His dungeons are full of the wise and sensible people who tried to give him honest advice and frank opinions. And don't joke about his height.

Fan Works

• In the Mass Effect roleplay, "The Council Era", krogan adviser Halak Marr classifies as a neutral evil, as he is fully willing to go outside the boundaries of law and order to further his cause of eliminating the rest of the galactic population, thus leaving the krogans as a Master Race. The Overlord whom he used as an Unwitting Pawn, on the other hand, was Lawful Neutral, and his Worthy Opponent, the Villain Protagonist, is Lawful Evil.
• SF Debris - Star Trek: Voyager: Parody Captain Janeway is a former Mad Scientist, current reckless Starfleet captain and aspiring Evil Overlord / Galactic Conqueror. Her portrayal as a Principles Zealot would make her seem Lawful Evil. However, she routinely murders her own crew for shits and giggles and steals from other civilizations because she gets bored easily. The trick to figuring out whether or not Janeway's going to follow Starfleet protocols is whether or not it would benefit her at that moment. Planet's about to die because of some disaster Voyager can solve? Sorry, Prime Directive. Rebel group has technology she could get more easily from them than the planet's government? Well, guess we have to fund that rebellion!
  Janeway: Ransom, I want you to know one thing. I am disgusted with you, you did the worst possible thing for a Starfleet captain to do! You got caught.
• Vow of Nudity: Fiora, heroine of The Savage Savannah and titular character of The Witch's Sacrifice, is listed as this alignment on her character sheet. Fittingly, she's a manipulative schemer who regularly takes advantage of neighbors and classmates for her own ends, sleeping with authority figures and eventually selling her soul to a demon. It's why everybody assumes the worst after she murders her professor, with nobody ever learning she was saving the lives of everybody in school by stopping a demonic invasion.

Films — Animation

• Disney villains usually fall under this alignment.
  • The Lion King (1994): Scar's an underhanded schemer willing to have a child killed in order to become king. Yet when he gains said power, he abuses it and is more interested in keeping himself well-fed, entertained, and feared than in actually doing his job or being a decent king, solely because he believes that "I can do whatever I want" and lets the Pride Lands slide into desolation because of negligence.
  • 101 Dalmatians: Cruella de Vil. She'll gladly break the law if it gets her a fashionable fur coat.
  • The Little Mermaid: Ursula likes giving Faustian Deals to people while lying to their face and actively tries to hinder them from paying the toll.
  • Beauty and the Beast: Gaston turns into this alignment through the course of the movie, starting off as a jerkass who is a little too used to getting what he wants, and slowly turns into a villain willing to blackmail his love interest into marriage and try to Murder the Hypotenuse to get to her, despite her not wanting him even before her true love showed up!
  • The Princess and the Frog: Dr. Facilier sold his soul to the Friends on the Other Side for power, uses said power to screw people over for giggles, and throws others under the bus in order to keep them from collecting.
• Sunset Shimmer, from My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, was this until her Heel–Face Turn at the end. All she cared about was power, and, as seen during her time at Canterlot High, all she ever used what power she had for was terrorizing and manipulating people. In the sequel, however, she counts as Neutral Good instead due to the aforementioned Heel–Face Turn being in full effect.
• From My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), the Storm King qualifies as a rare tyrant type, combined with the fact that he is a crazed megalomaniac in a position of power within the Storm Creature hierarchy. He was more than willing to let Tempest Shadow co-operate with him under the promise that he will get her horn back, but in the end, he made her expendable once he successfully got the power he needed.
• DC Universe Animated Original Movies:
  • Superman: Doomsday: Lex Luthor deliberately withholds the cure for AIDS because he wants a lifelong treatment to get more cash and is only concerned with Doomsday's rampage because it's dangerous to him. After Superman is seemingly killed in the battle, Lex makes a clone of him for glory by proxy and regularly beat him with kryptonite gloves out of spite.
  • Justice League: Doom: The Legion of Doom joins Vandal Savage in an attempt to destroy their respective nemeses, but is cool with becoming post-apocalyptic warlords and turning on each other if Savage's apocalyptic scheme succeeds.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars:
  • Emperor Palpatine created the Lawful Evil Empire, but he did so through careful manipulation of the system and various extra legal means, and the only real rule in the Empire is "don't piss off the Emperor". He can adjust even the most carefully-laid plans to fit a changing situation, but always keeps his goal in mind: POWERRRRRRRR! UNLIMITED POWERRRRRRRR!
    • Speaking of Palpatine, this was the original and default alignment of the Sith. Whilst individually their alignments may differ, the very creed and Rule of Two they worship is pure selfishness. Oddly enough this brutal regime, debatably made them stronger than the Jedi.
  • Boba Fett also fits this alignment as a Type 1, as most bounty hunters do. His concern for profits and his total lack of empathy for his targets clearly display this when Darth Vader specifically asks him for "no disintegrations."
  • Supreme Leader Snoke soon takes over Emperor Palpatine's role. Granted, he is considerably more calm and mysterious than his cackling predecessor. Snoke serves as a Mediator between the Lawful Evil General Hux and Chaotic Evil Kylo Ren. Which arguably makes him far more threatening than both men.
• Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, although he is quite an enigma. He appears to follow some vague form of rules, but these rules allow for the arbitrary murder of anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with him. Even though he was only hired to retrieve a satchel of money, he ends up killing plenty more, notably a deputy, benign civilians, his two mooks, his old partner, his boss, and the widow of his late-nemesis. In addition, he offers a coin toss to anyone he feels should have one last chance at living. The last victim calls him on the BS of the coin flip and giving people a "chance"; since he's the one choosing to put their life on the line in the first place it's not random, it's not chance, it's not the victim getting a chance, it's just him being a killer.
• Tony Montana from Scarface (1983) is arguably the purest example of Neutral Evil ever set to film. His philosophy can be summed up by any number of his iconic lines but possibly the most succinct is, "I kill a communist for fun, but for a green card... I'm gonna carve him up real nice."
• Phyllis Dietrichson from Double Indemnity, who by her own admission is "rotten to the heart". Her best description would be the human version of a praying mantis.
• Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean sails the seas, recruiting any lost sailors he finds into his crew, then sailing the seas some more. Sometimes though when he doesn't get his way, he'll execute them without even attempting to trap them into his world, depending on his mood (Chaotic behavior). However, he does engage in carefully worded agreements in order to recruit members of his crew (Lawful Evil). In this way, he appears to balance out to Neutral Evil. He's less than pleased in the third movie when he suddenly has to obey the rules of the Lawful Evil Lord Beckett.
• Col. Landa aka "The Jew Hunter" from Inglourious Basterds would appear to be Lawful Evil but has a chaotic streak: choking von Hammersmark to death, letting Shosanna live on a whim and ultimately selling out Hitler to save his own skin and being richly rewarded by the US government, landing him here.
• Gordon Gekko from Wall Street. Keeping the rules, breaking the law, he doesn't care as long as it gives him an advantage.
• Yuri Orlov, the Villain Protagonist of Lord of War, is an utterly amoral arms dealer willing to sell weapons to anyone if there's a buck in it for him, even if said weapons will immediately be used to slaughter innocent people in front of him.
• The Matrix: Agent Smith initially appears to be a Lawful Evil agent of the programme, but it's later revealed that he despises The Matrix and the fact that he has to obey his machine masters, while being forced to inhabit an environment with humans in it drives him crazy. His only concern is escaping the matrix, rather than to serve his masters.
• As debatable as everything is in There Will Be Blood, one thing is for sure: by the end, Daniel Plainview is only looking out for Daniel Plainview.
• Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona is a Psycho for Hire, much like Anton Chigurh in The Coen Brothers' later No Country for Old Men, but seems perfectly willing to work for Nathan Arizona — as long as he gets to inflict as much pain as he wants and still collect a paycheck.
• Loren Visser of Blood Simple is also a Psycho for Hire who enjoys his job as much because he gets to hurt people as for the money. The Coens seem to like this type of villain.
• Michael Corleone by the end of the first Godfather film. Unlike his father, he considers selling drugs, breaking peace talks and offing family members to be viable options.
• Biff Tannen from Back to the Future is almost a textbook example of a Neutral Evil character who would do anything to further himself if he could. The only sort of moral sensibility in his personality is shown after he gets beaten up by George in the first film, after which he reluctantly stops being a jerk towards him only because it's in his personality. That is not to say he has any moral standards, however, because when we see the 1985 as altered by Biff getting the sports almanac, he's even worse, even willing to kill and blackmail to maintain his status.
• Max Cady of Cape Fear uses both Lawful and decidedly unlawful means against his target. At one point, he successfully sues for a restraining order against the hero.
• Carl Showalter, one of the two main antagonists in The Coen Brothers' Fargo. He cares about himself above all else, and unlike his more unpredictable partner Gaear Grimsrud, is happy to work within the rules when he thinks that's what will benefit him the most. Unfortunately for him, it turns out he's more Smug Snake than Magnificent Bastard.
• Frank McCabe in Desperate Measures is a complete sociopath and multiple murderer who acts purely out of self-interest. He never undergoes a Heel Realization due to his "It's All About Me" mentality, and it's heavily implied by the final scene that he escapes anyway. He does have one Pet the Dog moment with the boy with leukemia he took hostage, who needs his bone marrow to survive. The boy is ready to give up and die because it seems there is no hope, when McCabe tells him the only way to have hope in the face of death is to keep fighting and never give up.
• Dino Velvet and Eddie Poole from 8mm, a pair of sleazy pornographers willing to harm and kill the people they work with for money.
• Frank C. Dobbs from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a man driven mad by greed. Doubles as Stupid Evil.
• The Home Alone movies have some excellent examples of this:
  • Frank McCallister is all about himself and his own needs throughout the entire movies. In the first one, he opts out of helping his Sister-In-Law pay for the pizzas. In the second movie, rather than be horrified with what Buzz did to Kevin he was laughing along with the rest, had to be woken up to watch the concert, and told Kevin off saying that he better not wreck "his trip". However he did have some very rare Heartwarming moments
• Emperor Commodus as depicted in Gladiator is a ruthless, power-hungry backstabber who engineers the death of his own father to seize the throne.
• Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Ra's Al-Ghul in the first film wanted Gotham destroyed to bring "balance" back to the world, and The Joker in the second just wanted to watch the world burn. Bane acted like he was on the side of "the people" when he was really out to break not just Batman, but his legacy...out of spite.
• Noah Cross of Chinatown is a Faux Affably Evil tycoon who has more money and power than he knows what to do with. Doesn't matter: he wants more.
• Voltan The Dark One from Hawk the Slayer. A mass murdering Black Knight driven by envy towards his brother Hawk but he's loyal enough to the dark wizard and disciplined enough in leading his henchmen to not be Chaotic Evil.
• Angel Eyes, the titular Bad of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. A cold-blooded mercenary out only for himself, Angel Eyes runs a gang of outlaws, while simultaneously masquerading as a sergeant in the Union Army. Willing to use whatever means are necessary to achieve his goals, Angel Eyes is indifferent to order and chaos; he's Only in It for the Money.
• Edwin Epps from 12 Years a Slave fits Type 3 pretty well. He tries to use The Bible to justify his behavior, while raping his underage "favorite" slave, and attempting to get in the way when legal authorities free Solomon Northrup.
• In Hackers, The Plague appears to have this as a personal philosophy: nothing is important other than him having a good time. He works as a security expert trying to get the protagonists arrested, but only to take the focus off his own crimes.
  The Plague: There is no right or wrong. There's only fun and boring. Now, a twenty-year prison sentence sounds a trifle dull to me.
• Bill Sykes from Oliver! is a grim, discomforting master thief who barely cares for anyone other than himself. A tricky character and dangerous when crossed the wrong way.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man: Obadiah Stane is willing to manipulate terrorists and kill his best friend's son to acquire Stark Enterprises.
  • Iron Man 3: Aldrich Killian hires an actor to masquerade as a Chaotic Evil terrorist, but is really doing the attacks out of spite for his science being rejected by Tony Stark.
  • Ego the Living Planet in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a textbook example of this alignment. Not only does he care only about himself, but his life's goal is to assimilate the Universe into one being, essentially replacing all life with himself. He also has a knack for twisting agreements when it suits him such as when Yondu delivered all his half-Celestial children to him on the condition that Ego wouldn't hurt them, he killed all of them when they didn't display any special powers and claims he kept his end of the bargain since they "didn't feel a thing".
  • Lacking the reflection and Character Development that his prime universe counterpart experienced, Thanos in Avengers: Endgame descends into Neutral Evilness thanks to his plan to eradicate the entire universe and rebuild it already balanced out of spite for the Avengers undoing his life's work through time travel. That said, it's clear this was meant to show what lies beneath Thanos's veneer of bringing balance into the universe and what he was truly looking for was the validation of being right all along (meaning even his prime universe self would not have been above such thinking).
• Tom Griffin in The Invisible Man (2020), like his Chaotic Evil brother Adrian Griffin, tried to manipulate Cecilia into getting back with his brother. However, unlike his brother (who only resorted to more illegal means), he was also willing to use the law to his benefit, like keeping Cecilia wrongfully imprisoned for the death of her sister, while also trying to kill Sydney as well.
• In contrast to other mob movies which romanticize The Mafia as a more honorable form of villain, GoodFellas depicts the typical mobster as this. Villain Protagonist Henry Hill is a greedy, hedonistic sociopath drawn to the mafia lifestyle by the fact that it allows him to take what he wants, while his associate Jimmy "The Gent" Conway works with people only as long as there's something in it for him and will kill anyone at the drop of a hat if they are no longer useful to him, could be a liability to him, or simply are owed money he doesn't want to pay back. Their equally evil but more unhinged and sadistic associate Tommy DeVito falls under Chaotic Evil, however.
• Jordan Belfort, as depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street. Belfort's a morally bankrupt white-collar criminal who doesn't even try to hide the fact that his hedonistically repugnant lifestyle is entirely funded by illegal business practices. He has absolutely no scruples and will do anything to get what he wants, be it from beating his wife when she attempts to divorce him, shamelessly ratting out his minions for a lenient sentence, or trying and failing to bribe the Lawful Good FBI agent investigating him. Multiple times in the film he has moments of realization that what he's doing is wrong, but the lesson never sticks, and he's all too happy to slide back into this alignment at the slightest possible provocation rather than climb out of it.
• The Galaxy Invader: Joe Montague spends his days abusing his wife and kids at the slightest provocation, not a care about the outside world, until an alien lands near his house and he immediately decides to capture it for money.
• Blazing Saddles: Hedley Lamarr spends the film playing sheriffs, outlaws and citizenry against each other in order to achieve a land grab.
• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: Lord Humungus, a warlord perfectly willing to have his men slaughter entire settlements for oil, but pragmatic enough to let them go if they give it up willingly.
• Monsieur Verdoux: Henri Verdoux seduces women and kills them to feed his family during an economic depression.
• Die Hard: Hans Gruber pretends to be a Lawful Evil terrorist, but is secretly a completely selfish thief planning to rob Nakatomi Plaza blind.
• Escape 2000: Floyd Wengler is willing to slaughter the Bronx for his boss's urban renewal plans, but flat admits that he's doing it for the cash.
• Sin City: Ethan Roark, Jr., takes advantage of his Lawful Evil father's desires to make him President one day to rape and murder little girls with impunity.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: Rene Belloq, an archaeologist perfectly willing to screw over other archaeologists and his own men to get artifacts, and willing to help the Nazis win World War II for money.
• 100 Bloody Acres: Lindsay Morgan steals bodies to make into fertilizer, and kills anybody who witnesses his crimes, all for money.
• Nightcrawler: Lou Bloom spends most of his life as a criminal before finding out he can make lots of money filming things for the news. Due to knowing If It Bleeds, It Leads, he starts engineering accidents and outright killing people for more cash.
• Criminally Insane: Ethel Janowski doesn't care about anything except eating as much as possible, but will butcher anybody who tries to take her food away.
• Ninja: Masazuka is entirely selfish, and willing to slaughter his master and fellow students and work for a corrupt corporation to get his master's powerful weapons.
• Quigley Down Under: Elliott Marston, a Cattle Baron willing to commit genocide on the logal Aboriginal tribe to grab their land.
• 2020 Texas Gladiators: Catch Dog is expelled from the Rangers for trying to rape a woman, and later joins a fascist group to hurt more people.
• Train to Busan: Young-suk is solely concerned with arriving at Busan, even when a zombie outbreak starts, to the point of being willing to let a child die to get there.
• The Limehouse Golem: Lizzie Cree starts a series of murders and frames her husband for the crimes all for the attention of killing him and stopping the terror.
• Cannibal Holocaust: Alan Yates and his film crew go to various locales and carve trails of blood for the sole reason of making interesting documentaries.
• Bullet in the Head: Paul decides that gold is the only thing that matters, betraying anybody he feels like including his own blood brothers to get more cash.
• Citizen X: Andrei Chikatilo, a factory worker who spends his free time killing children to vent feelings of inadequacy, not caring about anything else around him.
• South Bronx Heroes: The Bennetts believe their foster kids owe them something for taking them in and make them do child pornography to "earn their keep."
• The Bad Seed (1956): Rhoda Penmark is a creature of pure selfishness willing to kill people for a penmanship medal.
• Blood and Black Lace: Massimo Morlacchi is solely dedicated to acquiring an incriminating diary that revealed he committed an Inheritance Murder, and kills his wife to cover up the crimes.
• Leprechaun: Lubdan the Leprechaun is only concerned with his gold and the supernatural power that comes with it, and is willing to kill anybody required to acquire it.
• The Big Doll House: Lucian would appear to be Lawful Evil, being a torture-happy prison guard, but she's also willing to smuggle drugs into the prison for information and is clearly in it for the sadism more than the power.
• In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, both of the main antagonists have Neutral Evil as their official alignments:
  • Forge Fitzwilliam is greedy and self-serving above all else, and is unafraid of betrayal and outright murder if he thinks it will get him ahead. He just as easily associates with Edgin's band of Lovable Rogues as he acts as the lord of a realm, but consistently prioritizes his own selfish advancement over any moral obligations.
  • The Red Wizard Sofina is devoted to the evil lich king Szass Tam, and carries out his will without question.

Literature

• Achilles from Orson Scott Card's Shadow series. He will do anything from betraying countries, kidnapping, and starting wars just so long as it means he'll get rid of those who saw him when he was weak.
• Heathcliff, the Villain Protagonist & The Chessmaster of Wuthering Heights. A malicious Byronic Hero that he's a mainly a mischievous Rebellious Spirit driven by vengeance against his adoptive brother but will use orderly methods and a gentleman facade in order to become the lord of Wuthering Heights.
• Mundt, the Stasi officer from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. He runs his intelligence service with a fanatical level of control, and is willing to kill anyone who even indirectly threatens his position, but his completely indifferent about which cause he serves.
• The sea-witch from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Unlike her Disney incarnation she has no interest in seizing the throne from the king of the sea and hence does not deliberately manipulate things so that the eponymous mermaid will fail to win the heart of the prince on becoming human: she just accepts the payment of her voice and turns her into one with a potion that has numerous painful side effects, leaving the heroine to succeed or fail depending on what she does.
• Nicolae Carpathia, Leon Fortunato and much of the Global Community of Left Behind become this. They are not Lawful enough to make a self-sustaining Evil Empire, and yet aren't Chaotic enough to completely disregard order and structure. People have rank and privilege, but the change-over rate is high. All of them lie continuously, oppress and backstab others while flattering their higher-ups, are willing to kill and torture without hesitation and with zeal, and have no real overall goals other than to obtain and maintain their power. Their society eventually falls apart because no one is doing any necessary maintenance work, and yet Carpathia insists on continuous worship of himself and the obedience to his every whim.
• Watership Down: In a weird, passive sort of way, Cowslip and the others from his warren, since, whilst they care about enlarging their population, they will say nothing about the snares being hidden in the fields to any visiting rabbits, but are equally accepting of any of their own getting caught and will instantly behave as though anyone killed in that manner had never existed, scratching or killing any that talk openly about the snares or missing rabbits.
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The King and the Duke, a pair of greedy, unscrupulous con men who travel from town to town swindling locals, try to defraud orphans out of their inheritance, and sell Jim back into slavery near the end of the book.
• On the subject of Jim Butcher characters who will stab you in the back as soon as they get a good shot: Lady Invidia Aquitaine of the Codex Alera. She turns on (or attempts to turn on) everyone over the course of the series, and by Cursor's Fury, you can all but hear the phrase "sudden but inevitable betrayal" going through everyone's heads.
• Harry Potter:
  • The Death Eaters and Voldemort, who are content to work either within or outside of the system, whichever one best helps them achieve their evil goals. Specifically:
    • Barty Crouch, Jr. definitely falls here. He is loyal to Voldemort and his goals above all else, and doesn't care how he has to achieve them. In the film version, however, he's definitely more Chaotic Evil as his motives were more For the Evulz.
    • There are a few other Death Eaters who could arguably fall here, but more likely fall into one of the other evil tropes. Fenrir Greyback makes some steps toward Neutral Evil in Deathly Hallows but overall remains Chaotic Evil, as his goal is still about being a sadist and turning kids into werewolves/killing them; he remains a Psycho for Hire on the fringes of the group, and seems to prefer it that way. The Malfoys are more Lawful Evil; they'll work against the system if they have to, but overall they overwhelmingly prefer being in positions of power, authority and respectability, closer to Lawful Evil. In Draco's case, it's heavily implied that he fancies himself as a lot darker and more sadistic than he actually is, and isn't truly capable of the depth of evil required to be a Death Eater — making him more Chaotic Neutral with evil tendencies.
  • Dolores Umbridge is another example, if she's not Lawful Evil, as she only seeks power and doesn't care how many children or innocents she has to step on, abuse, torture, or commit war crimes against to do it. This is why she is indirectly allied with the Death Eaters in the final book.
  • The dementors are the ultimate example in the Harry Potter universe. They have evil ends (eating people's souls, which for that person leaves them an Empty Shell and is a Fate Worse than Death) but don't care whether the soul they're eating belongs to a good character or a bad character. They simply feed off misfortune, whomever it's coming from, and they're used by both the Ministry and the Death Eaters to the same effect. What makes them this rather than True Neutral is the truly good people want nothing to do with them — for example, Hermione, in her position as head of the Dept. of Magical Law Enforcement, eventually outlaws their use in Azkaban — and that even if their ends are not aligned with either side of the book's main conflict they are still very, very evil.
  • Slytherin are generally this when put into perspective. Students of this house are seen as morally ambitious or power-hungry in some way or another. Nice (or decent) students are very rare and a large portion of ex-students become Death Eaters.
• Nom Anor of the Star Wars New Jedi Order series was decidedly less fanatically devoted to his religion than his fellow Yuuzhan Vong, furthering his own agenda sometimes at the expense of others of his species. As a fellow Vong noted "Nom Anor is a consummate infidel. He thinks only of his own ambitions."
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Evil Chancellor Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. Throughout the series, not only does he use and then discard anyone he come into contact with, but he is also revealed to have engineered a particularly brutal civil war that resulted in the deaths of thousands for no other reason than to get back at the girl who had once rejected him.
  • Cersei Lannister also qualifies. She may fancy herself as a Lawful Evil Evil Overlord, but she's really just a self-centered, power-seeking bitch.
  • Cersei's brother and lover Jaime too, though more out of cynicism and moral laziness than anything else. He moves out of this in the later books after rediscovering his morals and beginning a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Walder Frey, who openly admits to his liege lord's daughter that he doesn't care for honor, and slaughters the Stark/Tully army for personal gain and because of a petty grudge.
  • Bronn is an amoral mercenary who freely admits that he kills for the highest bidder. When Tyrion asks him whether he would unquestioningly kill a child like some of the Goldcloaks, Bronn emphasizes that he wouldn't do it unquestioningly: he would ask "How much?".
• Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird. He sends an innocent man to his death and attempts to murder a child all out of sheer spite, bigotry, and selfishness. He's possibly the ultimate fictional example of the ordinary, everyday evil that any of us may well encounter.
• Tolkien was quite fond of these kinds of villains, it seems:
  • Smaug the dragon from The Hobbit. Don't involve him in any of your petty wars, just leave him and his stash of gold alone.
  • Gollum/Smeagol — more so than when he appears in The Hobbit — in The Lord of the Rings. While clinging tenuously to sanity and humanity, he's more about weaseling out pity to save his life/obtain his Precious than striking fear or making a point. Hence, the only living thing he appears to see as any kind of role model (and his alliance there is somewhat dubious) is the other, more formidable Neutral Evil of the series, Shelob.
  • Saruman had no scruples whatsoever, and he had none of the aspirations of Sauron either; he was just completely self-centered and egotistical.
  • The C-brothers of the Fëanor's sons - Celegorm, Caranthir and Curufin - may or may not fall in this category, especially Celegorm assaulting Lúthien with the consequence of his own dog abandoning and attacking him.
  • Both Ungoliant and her last daughter, Shelob. They gladly assaulted and attacked anyone who they perceived weaker and/or edible, with Ungoliant attacking her employer, Morgoth.
• Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22 is a war profiteer who takes contracts from both sides, including one to blow up his own army base so he can sell his overstocked cotton, which he also tries to get rid of by covering it in chocolate and making the other soldiers eat it.
• The Wheel of Time: Virtually all of the Forsaken are Neutral Evil, serving in or atop institutions to further the goals of the Dark One, but otherwise driven entirely by personal ambition and spite. At least, this is how they started out; several of them have plenty of moments that slide them towards Chaotic Evil, which is the personality of Big Bad Shai'tan himself. It's implied that he looks for people who act and kill on their whims (or will in the right situation) and are violently or emotionally unstable and constantly plot against one another to the detriment of their mutual goals, which are probably suicidal in themselves since if the Dark One gets free he will probably simply destroy and kill all of them and that's that. Ishamael/Moridin is the only one who thinks this is his endgame, and since he heartily approves, and believes that he IS the Dark One, with the rest of his personality puts him firmly in the Chaotic Evil category too.
• Erast Fandorin: Achimas Welde, a merciless assassin from The Winter Queen and The Death of Achilles.
• Thénardier of Les Misérables, a selfish, greedy scoundrel who exploits and abuses the main female characters, steals from the dead, cheerfully backstabs anyone he knows for the right price, and in the epilogue becomes a successful slave trader after getting away with his crimes. In many ways, he's a foil to Javert, whose real issue is that he confuses Good/Evil with Order/Chaos and thus will do whatever the law tells him because he believes the law is always right. The sign of Javert's morality is that, when he realizes he may not have been in the right after all, he can't deal with this revelation and commits suicide. By contrast, Thénardier knows he's evil, and either doesn't care or (especially in the musical) seems to revel in it.
• In When Demons Walk, the eponymous demon turns out to be this, rather than evil for the sake of evil. It's not that it likes killing people; doing so is just the most effective way to achieve its goals.
• Discworld: Vlad de Magpyr, a vampire in Carpe Jugulum. While he resembles more his Lawful Evil Faux Affably Evil tyrannical father than his Chaotic Evil cruel unintelligent sister, he's still somewhere in between in that he seems to mainly care about his personal games with people — what he can grab for himself now — instead of systematic domination. That also makes him The Ego in a Freudian Trio of evil.
• Gormenghast: Steerpike will lie, cheat and murder, stopping at nothing to claim power he feels should be his but he's pragmatic and patient enough to make a long term plan which involves using his charisma and gradually climbing the social ladder of Gormenghast. However, after being almost burned alive, he becomes more unhinged, reckless and openly hostile towards the people of the castle, drifting him towards Chaotic Evil.

Live-Action TV

• Whoniverse:
  • The Master from Doctor Who, particularly in the new series, whose motives seem to be an odd blend of revenge against the Doctor, and just because they can and it's a bit of a laugh. This would explain why the Simm Master dances to pop music while his minions slaughter over half a billion people — Evil is Fun.
  • Captain John Hart from Torchwood. He loves to cause chaos and hurt people because he's a cunning, sadistic bastard, but he really enjoys it when he's in charge and there's something in it for him, as he heavily implied in the series 2 finale, "Exit Wounds," when he was coerced into being Gray's Dragon.
  John Hart: You're so self-obsessed you thought I'd want to blow up your stupid city, when I could be experiencing seventeen simultaneous pleasures in the Lotus Nebula!
  • The Rani. Destruction is not her endgame, but she has no qualms about causing it if it gets her what she wants, such as destroying a whole planet to convert it into a time manipulator.
• Doctor Smith from Lost in Space in both the original TV show and the film, though in different ways. His main method of causing trouble is cutting a deal and selling out the other crew members to some Monster of the Week in exchange for wealth, power, or some luxury item or just a trip back to Earth. Needless to say, he is a Dirty Coward. The film version is a Card-Carrying Villain who has chosen evil as philosophical choice. When his future self becomes a hideous spider-creature he now wants to rule the Earth and eat its inhabitants. The remake portrays "Smith"^note She's not even the real Dr. Smith; she stole his identity and left him for dead when the ship was attacked as a Manipulative Bitch who values survival above all else and will work with or against anyone if she perceives an advantage in it.
• Ares of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess is characterized much the same way as Wonder Woman's.
• Alex Krycek from The X-Files will work for a far-reaching conspiracy or a group of terrorists, with little concern for anyone but himself. He willingly commits acts of violence, murder, and blackmail in the name of self-interest.
• As well as a character can fit an alignment in a show like Lost (a recent D&D guidebook even used Sawyer as an example of Neutral Evil, but he only fits in the first two seasons as afterwards he turns into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold), Benjamin Linus fits here pretty well. He's ultimately trying to have control of the Island and alter it to his benefit, and although he does join the Losties, he's ultimately using it as a means to an end, and killing whoever gets in his way. Until Season Six, where he begins to atone for his actions, becoming Neutral Good by the end of the series.
• Jubal Early of Firefly tries to paint himself as Lawful Evil, but River deconstructs his façade to reveal that deep down, he's just a sadistic bastard who took his job because he enjoys being paid to hurt people.
• Farscape:
  • Scorpius is prepared to do anything to take revenge against the Scarrans and ensure the survival of the Sebacean people — in that order. This means that his numerous acts of murder, torture and psychological warfare are balanced neatly by his tendency to Pet the Dog or assist his enemies, should it serve his purpose.
  • Rygel tends to be more neutral evil than not. While his conscience occasionally bothers him, those instances are few and far between. Generally he is selfish, abandons or sacrifices his friends if it's convenient, and exploits or ignores laws as suits his needs. In general, Rygel will always do what's best for Rygel, and screw everyone else.
• Babylon 5:
  • In fact, both the Vorlon and Shadow races actually fit into this alignment once you've watched the entire story unfold. Both races use respectively lawful and chaotic means to force growth in the younger races, but in the end their methods are purely incidental as their goal was always to keep the younger races growing and evolving. The evil part comes in later when their goal seemingly changes to control over the younger races like selfish parents dominating their own children.
• Vic Mackey from The Shield might not always appear Neutral Evil; after all, he takes care of his friends and family and, with one notable exception, only performs heinous actions towards violent criminals (or at least people he believes to be such). In the end, though, he throws his one remaining friend under the bus, frightens his ex-wife to the point that she seeks witness protection, and arguably drives a former friend to murder/suicide. So... yeah.
• Victor from Burn Notice seems to be headed this way. He has his motives and is methodical and careful, but his manic personality lends a level of chaos to what he does. He describes his motivations as being mostly revenge (and sympathetically) but had no real purpose besides that. He just wanted to hurt the people who killed his wife.
• Basco Ta Jolokia from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. He works as a privateer for the Zangyack Empire (having betrayed Aka Red and Marvelous to them before the series began not because he has any real respect for their authority but because it's easier to go about his goal of obtaining the Greatest Treasure in the Universe without the Zangyack breathing down his neck. He lets the heroes get away now and then (and even fakes their deaths when Damaras wants them dead) because he figures it'll be easier to just eventually take all the powers they've collected rather than hunt down a member of every single team (though he does do some collecting on his own). He threatens a pregnant woman and later a whole high school to get what he wants, and even goes so far as to sacrifice the life of Sari, the only being that may have had any positive feelings toward him, the moment her internal dimensional lock is emptied of Pseudo-Organic Combat Lifeforms for him to throw at the heroes.
• Heroes:
  • Arthur Petrelli seems to go here with how he chooses allies from both sides to help achieve his own goals and gladly turns against his own sons to get what he wants.
  • Sylar also qualifies, as he is willing to work with anyone one minute and change sides the next to get what he wants: power.
  • Samuel Sullivan passes himself off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but in truth his goals are all based on a petty grudge against Muggles and he's even willing to kill his own True Companions if they turn against him just to get what he wants.
• Stargate SG-1: The entire Goa'uld race is as evil as you can get, so fit well into the Neutral Evil alignment. They're arrogant, megalomaniacal, and power-hungry without the slightest bit of sympathy or conscience. They'll backstab allies if it is profitable, yet submit themselves to more powerful forces such as the Asgard. There are some exceptions among them though, most notably the Chaotic Evil Anubis and the Lawful Evil Lord Yu.
• Deadwood: Al Swearengen. He regularly conspires to have innocents including a child killed to protect his own interests. He personally murders people without hesitation and boasts that he could burn down the entire town if he wanted to. Although he does have a personal code of honour, it's also implied that he would remove the law and the system enforcing it if doing so increased his own prosperity.
• Sue Sylvester of Glee is a comic version of this trope; she is almost 100% evil on a show where most characters are pretty conflicted. The fact that she'll use any means necessary to take down Will and the glee club, whether that means going through the principal's authority or putting the elderly nurse in a coma, is frequently played for laughs. Later episodes push her more toward the "evil for the sake of doing evil" kind of Neutral Evil though, as it becomes clear that her cheerleading team may not actually need the money they'd get from the glee club being disbanded, and Sue may just love messing up Will's life for the hell of it.
• In Battlestar Galactica (2003), a universe populated largely with Well Intentioned Extremists and Knight Templars:
  • Number One (aka, John Cavil), stands out as easily the most selfish and egomaniacal villain in the entire series. Neutral Evil, for sure.
  • Gaius Baltar (before Character Development) would definitely fall under this trope, as he lives only to serve himself and is utterly self-centered. When secure, he is a Smug Snake; when threatened or in danger, he becomes a sniveling Dirty Coward. Perhaps his defining moment is when we first meet him: when he sees Caprica being nuked due to his unintentional efforts, he wails in fear; not because billions of people are dying, but because he will be blamed for it.
• The Ice Truck Killer/Brian Moser of Dexter. Unlike the eponymous Lawful Evil fellow serial killer and younger brother, Brian has no code and kills mostly for pleasure and encourages Dexter to do the same, starting with Deb.
  • Miguel Prado also qualifies, posing as Dexter's friend and protege to learn Dexter's code and methods, and then uses them to kill innocents and criminals alike to protect and advance his own career.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang as a whole best fits this alignment, as they will do something if and only if in his best interests to do so. Individual alignments may vary (Charlie is Chaotic Neutral and Dennis is Lawful Evil). Everyone else is absolutely willing to be as corrupt as necessary to carry out the harebrained scheme du jour.
• In The Cape, Peter Fleming, the Corrupt Corporate Executive in charge of Ark Corporation's expansion into Palm City. He has no morals, ethics, or codes of honor and doesn't hesitate to use legal or illegal means to eliminate threats to his plan to seize complete control of the city. He is naturally opposed by his Neutral Good Foil Vince Faraday, the titular superhero.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Regina/the Evil Queen was presented as completely selfish and indifferent to others' well being to the point that she was willing to sacrifice the one person she truly loved, and her ability to love, in order to guarantee that no one else would have a happy ending. As mayor of Storybrooke, she is perfectly willing to both use the law and break it in order to get what she wants. However, later seasons would push her into strictly Lawful Good.
  • Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, much like Regina was also presented as completely selfish and indifferent to the well being of others. Acively drawing power on a creature that's Made of Evil aside (using an Artifact of Doom at that), Rumpelstiltskin is shown to be something of a con-artist in Storybrooke, either bending the rules of his own deals or following them to their logical extreme in order to get what he wants. The most notable example being sending a demon after Regina after promising Belle that he wouldn't hurt her. Later seasons remedied this, though, showing that he would even pull a Heroic Sacrifice to defend the town of Storybrooke.
  • Cora/The Queen Of Hearts (Also pre-Heel–Face Turn) was an even firmer example than her daughter, Regina. Using any means necessary (i.e. marrying into a royal family strictly for the status, dealing with Rumplestiltskin and then subsequently going back on her word and ripping out her own heart — Not to mention the countless amount of people she murdered to fulfill her own desires) she was determined to groom Regina into the ruthless tyrant she inevitably became.
• Walter White of Breaking Bad. Though YMMV on when he crossed into being a Villain Protagonist, as the series progresses Walter's ego devours his morality. After making the decision to become a meth cook, the law, family ties and even the criminal codes of caution, professionalism and not harming children have all gone by the wayside in favor of his naked lust for power, control and recognition in the underworld.
  • The Aryan Brotherhood from season 5 most likely fit here as well. Uncle Jack, with his Honor Among Thieves tendencies, might lean more toward Lawful Evil, but the sociopathic Todd, whose only motivation for any action he takes is self-interest, is a perfect fit.
  • Todd's business partner and crush, Corrupt Corporate Executive Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, belongs under this alignment as well, as naked selfishness motivates almost everything she does and she is willing to sell out anyone as soon as it is in her interest to do so.
• Moriarty from Sherlock has made a career of this, working as a "consultant criminal" who assists anyone who needs a crime committed, be it murder, smuggling, fraud, etc.
• Blackadder is defined by his constant efforts to scale the social ladder, by any means necessary (although the fourth version just wants to get out of the trenches). The third cheerfully admits to having no principles beyond self-advancement, and to that end arranges at least seven deaths in six episodes.
  "...The toffs at the top, the plebs at the bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them."
  "A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a stack of French porn."
• The Sopranos: Livia Soprano. She's selfish, amoral and has no qualms about manipulating or destroying the lives of the people around her, as long as she gains further power and attention. While her iron fist reputation among her children might initially make her seem more Lawful, her impulsive decision to have her son murdered (by her lackey brother-in-law, no less!) and general disregard for anybody other than herself place her firmly in this alignment.
• In Gotham, Jeremiah Valeska, the show's second take on the Joker, is a type 3 before he undergoes further Sanity Slippage and becomes more like the Laughably Evil Monster Clown he is famous for being. After his twin brother, the show's first Captain Ersatz of the Joker, sprays him with his insanity toxin and makes him evil, Jeremiah is still much more emotionally controlled and calculating than his twin, though he isn't saner, despite what he likes to tell people. When he starts committing crimes, his motives are largely selfish or motivated by important people in his life. He wants to carry out what he considers an improved version of his brother's plans for the city, but also targets specific buildings and people so that he can motivate Bruce, who he still thinks of as his friend, to become the hero he's meant to be. While Jeremiah shows signs of his future theatricality, he is a relatively No-Nonsense Nemesis when he first becomes a villain:
  Jeremiah: Jerome wanted to slather you in honey and have you eaten alive by corpse beetles. Now that's mad. Me, if I wanted to kill you, I'd just do it. Simply and sanely.
  Jeremiah: Don't compare me to that short-sighted psychopath. He just wanted to destroy things. Me, I'm a builder.
• The Wire provides a few different examples:
  • Clay Davis, a sleazy con man and Corrupt Politician who lies, steals, and cheats constantly to advance his own interests.
  • The Greek, the mysterious boss of the international crime syndicate which controls drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal activity through Baltimore harbor. Unlike many organized crime groups which aspire to some sort of honor code, his organization puts profit above all else.
  • Calvin "Cheese" Wagstaff, Proposition Joe's treacherous, backstabbing nephew.
  • De'Londa Brice, Namond's utterly selfish and abusive mother, who attempts to push him into a life of crime to support her lifestyle.

Myths & Religion

• Izanami-no-Mikoto from Japanese Mythology sadly fell into this alignment. As the legend foretold, Izanami and Izanagi were once quite the happy and satisfied couple. That is until one day, Izanami died and was sent to Yomi (the netherworld or Hell in some depictions). Upset, Izanagi drew all his might to rescue his beloved wife but, he was too late. Exposed to food of the realm, Izanami wasn't his beautiful wife anymore, she became a monster which disgusted Izanagi. In that moment both were torn apart, Izanagi promising to create more humans to replace the many Izanami would kill out of revenge and spite.
• Judas Iscariot from The Bible placed himself into this alignment. It is written that, Judas was among Jesus's twelve original disciples. However he betrayed Jesus to the Romans, yet had the decency to hang himself after. Though it's clear he's a villain, some believe (such as Gnosticism) what he did brought about humanity's salvation. Satan himself can also be viewed as this, particularly if you ignore any extra materials.
• Reynard himself in Reynard the Fox stories in the Medieval folklore. Doubles as a Villain Protagonist: he is a notorious liar, thief, traitor, murderer, rapist and adulterous sleazeball who is never punished for his deeds. The other animals, but especially Isengrim the Wolf, are little better. Isengrim also falls into this category.

Pro Wrestling

• This is the classic heel alignment- breaking the rules whenever it's convenient and hiding behind them as soon as they face consequences.
• WWE's Triple H has the Red Baron of "The Cerebral Assassin" for the way he manipulates the system, his opponents, and anybody whose head he can get inside to maintain his position on top of the mountain. He's at his most comfortable when he's surrounded by "friends" who help him carry out his plans, but no matter what happens, he is always out for himself and his own betterment in the end. In short, he is a Jerkass Manipulative Bastard who is hugely divisive and wrestling's best example of a Villain with Good Publicity.
• Edge is a pretty good example of Neutral Evil in action. Always calculating, always scheming, willing to play the numbers game when it suits him, willing to turn on anybody close to him when it suits him, and always, ALWAYS looking for a way to scratch, bite, and claw his way to the top... there's a reason they call him "The Ultimate Opportunist".

Radio

• As soon as he took over the role of main villain, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne from The Goon Show became this alignment. A fair number of plots ("Lurgi Strikes Britain" and "The Spanish Suitcase", for example) were based upon Grytpype pulling off a Zany Scheme to make a fat profit, and leaving Neddie to take the fall.

Tabletop Games

• Examples from Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Goblins in the 1st and 2nd editions of the game were Lawful Evil and said in manuals to have a strict pecking order in their culture, but most of the time they were just played as screaming hordes. In 3rd edition, they were changed to Neutral Evil (though individual goblins can be any alignment, naturally). Howver, their bigger cousins, the Hobgoblins remain Lawful Evil, devoting themselves to a rigid, unforgiving code of conduct that oppresses their lesser kin.
  • Daemons, also known as Yugoloths, are the Neutral Evil answer to the Lawful Evil devils and Chaotic Evil demons. They mostly work either as mercenaries in the war between the demons and devils (they don't care whom they slaughter) or as guardians for mortal summoners — for the right price. The more powerful Yugoloths see themselves as The Chessmaster and view mercenary work as a ploy to make every side dependent on them, and they believe that they can end the war and conquer the world on their own terms when they deem it fit. The distinction between the three groups of fiends is that devils want to own you, demons want to destroy you, and daemons only care about what they can gain from you. One sourcebook (Evil) that contains rules for summoning and bargaining with fiends naturally stresses how incredibly dangerous it is to deal with either demons or devils, as well as giving advice on how to do it — but about daemons it just says that if there are Neutral Evil fiends, there's no point in even trying to make deals with them, as there's no kind of hold you could gain of such creatures, no way to make them do anything but backstab you.
    "While you can trust Chaotic Evil to rampage, and Lawful Evil to tyrannize, you can't really trust Neutral Evil to do anything."
  • Omnicidal Maniac Tharizdun used to be filed under Neutral Evil; 4th edition asked, "If he wants to destroy everything everywhere, why isn't he Chaotic Evil?" and, failing to come up with an answer, shifted him over to CE.
  • "End of All Things" was the defining characteristic of the extreme version of Neutral Evil until 4th Edition. To explain it one way, Chaotic Evil wants to rape and pillage along the way, and enjoys their work. The end of everything is an incidental side effect to what they do. (Extreme) Neutral Evil just wants everything to cease save for themselves. "Watching the world burn" isn't as important as the world just burning, and the end results thereof. Taking an example from 2nd edition Yugoloth philosophy, Neutral Evil lacks the raw... passion that Chaotic Evil has. Usually.
  • Additionally, a number of undead fit the Neutral Evil alignment, more by default than anything else contradicting other rules in having it (mindless or "animal" intelligence creatures normally don't have an alignment because they can't comprehend morality).
  • The drow elves live in a society that's practically built on backstabbing and actively encourages it. They were categorized as Chaotic Evil in the 2nd edition, but in the 3rd edition, they became Neutral Evil worshiping a Chaotic Evil goddess — who at one point actually tells them to tone it down before they backstab themselves to extinction.
  • Bhaal, the God of murder and patron of assassins in the Forgotten Realms setting promotes killing people for the sake of killing, it doesn't matter what purpose or effects the murders have as long as they are hurting people. What prevents Bhaal from being Chaotic Evil is that he imposes some degree of order and hierarchy in his temples out of pragmatism and he doesn't care about freedom.
  • Shar, the goddess of darkness and loss, and Selune's evil sister, doesn't care about personal freedom or self-interest like Chaos does and she doesn't have an internal system of honor and ethical justification like Law. She's happy to make deals or betray those deals if it helps her achieve her goals. Her main goal is to end the world so everything is void and eternal darkness. 
• Pathfinder reuses the name Daemons for its Neutral Evil fiends, and redefines them as the Omnicidal Maniac fiend faction, being born from various forms of death and yearning only to destroy all of reality. This destructive interpretation of Neutral Evil makes Daemons the primary source of large-scale inter-fiend conflicts and fiend/empyreal alliances, as there's few others who would desire the destruction of everything. They also share the alignment with the divs, corrupted genies who seek to ruin and despoil everything created by mortals, and the sahkils, fallen Psychopomps driven mad by the knowledge that the universe is doomed to be consumed by entropy and determined to spend the time it has ruling at the expense of everyone else.
• Warhammer:
  • The Vampire Counts fit into this category by default, but mainly because there are several different types of vampires, with vastly different methods and mannerisms. While there are many who hide amongst the nobles of imperial cities, manipulating them from within, there are also several who are nigh close to hulking, degenerated beasts. This makes them range across the evil alignments more than any other evil army in the game. A perfect example of this is exemplified within the three Carsteins, with the courtly but corrupting Vlad being Lawful Evil, the absolutely mad Konrad being Chaotic Evil and finally the manipulative Mannfred being Neutral Evil.
  • The Greenskins — that is, Orcs and Goblins. They are not similarly law-bound and disciplined like Dark Elves. They are simply a ravening horde living off robbing and plundering but not intending to wanton destruction for its own sake. Their society is based on the stronger bullying the weaker and the unscrupulous the gullible. They have two gods, Gork who is brutally cunning, and Mork, who is cunningly brutal
• Warhammer 40,000 has a few candidates:
  • The Dark Eldar fall here, especially in their latest incarnation. The Dark Eldar in Kabals, Wych cults and Incubi covens are Lawful Evil, and the Dark Eldar in Haemonculi covens, mercenary groups, street gangs and pirate groups are Chaotic Evil. Because the different Dark Eldar sub-groups all put their differences aside and work together during raids, the faction as a whole rounds out to this alignment.
  • Slaanesh is the Chaos God who personifies selfishness, with its every thought and purpose bent towards self-satisfaction and new sensations. Its followers are the ultimate hedonists and take this trope to a self-destructive extreme, as pain, defeat and death are all considered new experiences to enjoy.
  • The Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines, who follow Tzeentch, could also qualify. Three things drive them: (1) the desire to acquire more knowledge and arcane power for themselves, (2) the lust for vengeance against the Imperium for the destruction of their home-world of Prospero (particularly the Space Wolves), and (3) the need to justify themselves that they were loyal to the Emperor until the Emperor betrayed them. All arguably selfish desires, but still makes them one of the more nobler seeming of the Chaos Space Marines.
  • The Necrons. They fight the Chaotic Evil Chaos Gods by eradicating every lifeform in the Universe. The basic Necron units could be considered as Lawful Evil, or even Lawful Neutral, but their Gods, the C'Tan just want to eat the universe for their own satisfaction. They do have their distinct personalities and methods, however, which leads to varied alignments. The outsider, gone completely mad from the voices from the other C'Tan he has eaten, is most likely Chaotic Evil. The deceiver, far more methodical, but still very treacherous to the others of his kind, is Neutral Evil. The Void Dragon has presumably manipulated the Adeptus Mechanicus for over ten millennia as their Omnissiah, making him seem more Lawful Evil, while the Nightbringer has been known to spare those who pledge loyalty to it (and thereby agreeing to become a necron), putting him in a more lawful direction too. The C'Tan are, in all respects, beings of anti-Chaos, thereby putting them in a more lawful perspective as a whole.
• The majority of the Yozis in Exalted. Malfeas can't consider points of view other than his own, and will not tolerate dissension from his absolute rule-by-power. The Ebon Dragon (when he's not being Chaotic Evil) is the principle of selfishness and vice, deception and betrayal being his very nature. If Kimbery loves you, she considers you her personal property, and never forgives a slight — ever. We also have a couple semi-benign examples: Szoreny mainly cares about his own well-being, but is called the "kindest of the Yozis" for a reason, and Oramus just wants out of the prison the Solars made his wings into.

Theatre

• Macbeth starts as a good man who arguably wouldn't have betrayed his king without the influence of the witches and his wife. But by the time he's had Banquo killed and Macduff's family slain... It's debatable if he's even a good man at the start, as he already seems to be pretty good at unseaming enemies from the nave' to the chops. Lady Macbeth, from the same play also fits Neutral Evil; she has much the same "power above all else" philosophy as her husband, though she's a bit more indirect in her evil acts.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Mrs. Lovett. A lot of her actions are done purely out of selfishness, such as baking murder victims into meat pies so she can make some money, but she really crosses the Moral Event Horizon when it turns out Todd's presumed dead wife had been alive the entire time, and she knew.
• Most depictions of Don Juan (aka Don Giovanni) are this alignment. He's a pure hedonist who seduces, uses and occasionally murders people, with no thought beyond his own immediate satisfaction.
• Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet is a mean, violent Thug, who indirectly causes many of the troubles within the plot. Being the son of Lady Capulet's brother, Tybalt is Romeo's rival and would kill him if, Lord Capulet didn't forbade it beforehand. Unfortunately for him, inciting Romeo's wrath proved to be his undoing.

Video Games

• Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda. In the earlier games, as Ganon, his only goal is to capture the Triforce through violence or subterfuge. In Ocarina of Time, he takes over as Hyrule's king, but his reign seems to consist mainly of reducing the countryside to a charred wasteland and eliminating everybody, not crushing them under his boot with ironclad laws, secret police, and other things you'd expect from a Lawful Evil overlord. The Gerudo under his command do seem to have a fairly regimented organization, but all his other minions are just unorganized monsters. In fact, he never seems to actually rule anyone, and the conquest of Hyrule is really just a stepping-stone towards obtaining the Triforce. It actually varies by the incarnation of Ganondorf in question. Especially since there are 3 versions of him, not counting reincarnations because of the Triple Timelines.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
  • General Shepherd instigated a US-Russian war which could quite possibly lead to World War III, all in the name of reawakening America's military might after it went very gun-shy when 30,000 Marines were nuked in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He does have a slight justification; those 30,000 Marines were all commanded by him, leading him to cross the Despair Event Horizon when they got nuked.
  • Makarov as well. While initially he seems just like another Chaotic Evil terrorist causing wanton destruction, it's revealed in the third game that he was willing to do anything to get a chance at becoming Russia's new leader, seeing the moderate Ultranationalists as "weak".
• The Baldur's Gate series:
  • Jon Irenicus. This being a Dungeons & Dragons game, it is a part of his gameplay stats. He exemplifies an extreme version of the alignment in caring about nothing other than his own goals, displaying a horrifying lack of empathy. (Some versions of him in the game files are technically "Chaotic Good", but you can kind of tell that's not right. It's apparently because they modified those files from Elminster's, because Elminster was almost as high in level as a mage. Scared yet?)
  • There's also Broken Bird Viconia deVir. She's having a hard time being unfairly persecuted at every turn for being an Always Chaotic Evil drow elf, but she also hasn't actually stopped thinking like drow usually do, merely switching from worshipping the drow goddess of frantic backstabbing and power-grabbing to a human goddess of cold self-interest and cynical denial of love and hope — a remarkably small change — and has a large number of dialogues spent insulting and belittling other members of the party. Her foremost goal, however, is survival; apart from that, she doesn't really have any particular plans or objectives, and generally just goes along with whatever the player wants to do if she joins them.
  • Handsome Lech Eldoth, a sleazeball womanizer happy to exploit women for all they're worth.
  • Montaron is a Psycho for Hire who has few character traits other than a love of killing people. Despite this and working with the Ax-Crazy Xzar, he is lucid enough to pick his fights and not attack people he knows he can't kill without at least some backup.
  • In the Enhanced Edition, two more Neutral Evil characters were added. On one hand, there's Dorn Il-Khan, a half-orc Blackguard with a vendetta and a tendency to solve his problems by stabbing them to death. He seems to be Type 1, willing to use any method to achieve his vengeance, including cutting a deal with a dark god. At the same time he's surprisingly honest and unbigoted in an "I hate everybody equally" way.
  • Then there's Hexxat, a vampire thief who mostly just wants to survive, but is willing to do anything to do so, including draining young ladies of blood.
• Testament from Guilty Gear just wants humanity gone. To that end, he tried to wake up Justice in the first game. Oh, he looks like he mellowed out after he found his Morality Pet Dizzy, but just look at his win quotes: his desire hasn't changed, it's just on the back burner out of love for her, since she's been taken in by the Jellyfish Pirates. (When Dizzy does die in one of his story mode endings in XX, he kills his way through the Jellyfish Pirates and goes right back to Kill All Humans.) However, if the right paths are taken, Testament takes steps to be more True Neutral, judging on how he accepts that he'll try trusting humans again, and also at one point decides to be serious in protecting the grove Dizzy used to reside in as well as reminiscing about the times that he respected his father Kliff Undersn. In the bad end, even after humans burned down his grove and he cursed them for it, Testament for once didn't go on a killing spree and chose to rest with the burnt grove forever.
• The Warcraft franchise:
  • The Old Gods, and other high-ranked Void entities. Whereas the other major evil forces in the setting have some grand goals in mind, the Void's goal is simply to corrupt the world-soul of Azeroth and use it to devour the universe and enslave everyone in it. In order to do that, they may either create Lawful Evil empires, such as Azj'Aqir or the True Horde, or start Chaotic Evil cults like the Twilight's Hammer to sow discord among their enemies.
  • Much of the Burning Legion's middle management falls into this category. While the ordinary demons only care about destroying everything on their path, and Sargeras has the overarching goal of destroying the Void, characters like Gul'dan, Archimonde or Varimathras only follow the Legion for one reason: the power given by the Fel.
• Mass Effect: Aria T'Loak is a ruthless leader of several mercenary bands, who kills anyone that gets in her way, does whatever she has to in order to maintain her power, and otherwise doesn't care what people do with their time so long as it doesn't involve pissing her off or interfering with her business. She gives Commander Shepard information on several missions that involve removing unwanted persons from Omega, because it furthers her own objectives, and rewards Shepard with info on where to find valuable cargo, but otherwise does little to help him/her unless it can also further her own goals.
• Some characters in Fate/stay night have the Neutral Evil alignment:
  • Caster (Medea) is desperate to be together with Kuzuki, but her actions to preserve her wish, such as trying to siphon all the mana of the people in the town without much care for their welfare or the Holy Grail rules, or goading Saber to her side, to name a few, cement her as Neutral Evil.
  • Assassin (Sasaki Kojiro). This one seems to be in name only, because Assassin does not actively act like an evil asshole, but is a Blood Knight stuck at one place and engages in duels honorably. TRUE Assassin on the other hand... ^note was instead Lawful Evil
  • Shinji Matou, a despicable Casanova who abuses his adoptive sister Sakura and his Servant Rider, and will stop at nothing to win the Grail War, is also this alignment.
  • Ilya could fit if you mixed her alignment with It's All About Me. If you're on her side, wonderful! If not, she'll brutally murder you. She doesn't appear to have a conscience or good impulse control. She's a difficult case to pin down, for various reasons. It's safest to say that she slides between the various neutral alignments — Neutral Good, True Neutral, and Neutral Evil — based on the Route and storyline involved.
  • Kirei Kotomine bounces all over the scale over the course of the series. In Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and the anime adaptation he appears to be little more than Chaotic Evil, as he subverts the rules of the Grail War while posing as the referee, lets his Servant feed on the souls of orphans, and plans to unleash an Eldritch Abomination that will destroy the world, apparently just for shits and giggles. Heaven's Feel, however, goes deep into his motivations and lends him enough Lawful Evil traits to end up here instead. Kirei was born with some sort of mental defect that only allowed him to take satisfaction from acts that others considered "evil", but he also possessed a conscience and recognized that those deeds were wrong. After trying to find satisfaction as a mage, a priest, and a loving husband, he finally cracked after his wife died and he realized he was more upset that he hadn't been able to kill her himself. His plot to unleash Angra Mainyu is a desperate bid to get some answers about his own existence; the fact that it will wipe out most of humanity is just a side-effect. He also Will Not Tell a Lie and holds to his duties as a priest when Shirou asks for his help with Sakura.
• General Gismor from Drakengard 2 is a selfish jerk who only cares about himself and getting as much power as possible. He might be the leader of the Knights of the Seal, but it is obvious that he couldn't care any less about the law, his underlings (as he shows by almost killing Eris) or peace — he simply does what benefits him, and only him, the most.
• Lobo of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters is the leader of an underground criminal organization that is known to do many shady dealings, up to and including selling children (a rare commodity since birth rate is low in the game's setting) for anything (usually sexual slavery).
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Shang Tsung is driven by a selfish desire for power and eternal life via Your Soul Is Mine!. In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, he joins forces with the Chaotic Evil Quan Chi to betray his master Shao Kahn, raise an army of undead warriors, and open a portal to the Heavens to give Tsung a steady supply of souls to feast on forever. In the end, both Tsung and Quan Chi betray each other so they don't have to share power. Throughout the series Shang Tsung is portrayed as a Manipulative Bastard who will go to any lengths to survive and further his own ambitions without giving scant regard to anyone else. Shao Kahn was originally only able to keep him in line by being much more powerful than him.
  • Shinnok, the Fallen Elder God, is likewise interested solely in pure power, and wishes to consume the energies of everything in the universe to become The Omnipotent and rule over everyone, including the other Elder Gods. He is willing to ally with both the Lawful Evil Red Dragon and the Chaotic Evil Quan Chi in pursuit of his goals, but he has no allegiance to anyone but himself and no interest in anything but his own power.
  • Mileena slid towards this alignment during the events of Mortal Kombat X. Though she started as Chaotic Evil at first, it wasn't until the tenth game that she finally calmed down a little. However her devilish personality remained and evolved from sadistic glee to vengeful and cruel.
• Tohru Adachi from Persona 4, who you learn later on is responsible for starting the entire mess in Inaba For the Evulz. While he is a police officer, he states that the only reason he became a cop was so he could legally carry a gun. After you beat the living daylights out of him, he sort-of pulls a Heel–Face Turn and slides up to True Neutral.
• Dagda ends up here in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. He is weary of the Forever War between the Lawful Evil angels and the Chaotic Evil demons, with humans always getting caught in the middle. What is his solution to this problem? Destroy the universe and kill everyone in it, then make a new one where humans are free from outside influences.
• Krew in Jak II: Renegade is the sort of guy who lets a Horde of Alien Locusts into the city for a quick buck. He gleefully steals everything that catches his eye, and employs some very unsavory types. He's so far into the Villainous Glutton trope that he has to use an antigrav chair to get around.
• Most Ratchet & Clank Big Bads qualify:
  • The first game has Chairman Drek, who leads his race, the Blarg, in destorying planets in order to create a new homeworld after the old one was polluted. However, it turns out that he was behind the pollution of his own planet, and plans to continue polluting his people's planets in order to receive the funds to continue destroying other planets to build a new one. Basically, it's one massive real-estate scam.
  • In the first two games, Captain Qwark is a narcissistic, sociopathic creep who utilizes Engineered Heroics to hog the spotlight, putting the lives of millions at risk. The first game has him sell out to Drek, so that the Blarg could finance his comeback. In the second game, he openly takes the reins of Big Bad, disguising himself as Megacorp's CEO, mass-producing a dangerous Genetic Abomination, and publically releasing that monster as a household pet. He's gone from face to heel and back again multiple times throughout the series, but by the Future arc, he's pretty much stopped going through the revolving door, having settled on "face". He's still a selfish, egomaniacal Glory Hound Jerkass, but that's an improvement.
  • Dr. Nefarious is the most recurring villain of the series, and a nefarious Mad Scientist who seeks to rid the galaxy of all organic lifeforms so he can rule over a robotic dystopia with an iron fist. He returns in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, with his desires expanding to wrong all the rights in the universe, use the Great Clock not only to reverse his own defeat, but the defeats of all other villains.
  • Gleeman Vox is yet another sinister businessman, but this time as a media tycoon instead of a real-estate scammer. He operates Dread Zone, a holovision program where heroes are forced to fight each other to the death, while becoming rich off of the merchandising and popularity of his Blood Sport.
  • Otto Destruct is the Technomite emperor, who seeks to rule the galaxy because his people never recieved credit for their technological contributions. Excapt no, that's a lie. He doesn't care about credit, he just wants to harvest the intelligence of all lifeforms.
  • Klunk orchestrates a plot to steal a priceless gem, one where Ratchet is arrested and blamed for its disappearance. His plan is to create a planet-destroying weapon with the gem as a refractor, dismantle the satellite after it had already destroyed several planets under the guise of Clank, and present himself as the savior of the galaxy so that its residents would cater to his every whim.
  • Emperor Percival Tachyon rules over the Polaris Galaxy with an iron fist, and has a massive ego despite his small stature. However, what he desires above all is beyond more power: He wants to completely genocide the Lombaxes, and he wants to bring back the Cragmites.
  • The Space Pirates also count, being swashbuckling, mechanical, bloodthirsty decadroids who care only about wealth and booty. has robot space pirates of the second type. Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty has undead robot space pirates! And zombie ninja pandas are briefly referred to in Tools Of Destruction, presumably to complete the Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot requirement.
  • Dr. Nevo is controlling the massive spaceship Emphemerus to bring multitudes of dangerous creatures to the planet Magnus. except he's only doing it because Dr. Croid's pet, Mr. Dinkles, is actually behind the scheme, being possessed by a monster known as the Loki Master.
  • Stuart Zurgo exploits Qwark's need for Engineered Heroics in an attempt to ruin his career. While going full villain over it may have been a disproportionate response, his reasons for his haterd of Qwark are understandable, as shown in his own entry.
  • Neftin and Vendra Prog are driven to reconnect with their home dimension, regardless of innocent collateral. Averted for Mr. Eye, who is straight-up Chaotic Evil.
• Doctor Eggman from the Sonic the Hedgehog series will ally with anyone and anything to get his way. He will release an Eldritch Abomination to crush Sonic one day, and form an Enemy Mine with Sonic to stop said Abomination the next. He seeks to tear down a functioning order to replace it with his own, shows off a Faux Affably Evil attitude whenever he feels like it, and is generally an egomaniac of the absolute highest order.
• Exdeath of Final Fantasy V. His primary goal is to use the power of the Void to create a world of monsters ruled by himself. However, after he's partially absorbed by the Void, that causes his motivation to change to erasing all existence, including himself, thus becoming a Chaotic Evil Omnicidal Maniac.
• Shadow from Final Fantasy VI. After all, even though he wouldn't enjoy it, he would still kill anyone for money, innocent or not. Until his Heel–Face Turn. Said turn takes place over a significant portion of the game however, and by the end of it, he's only True Neutral, unlike the rest of the decidedly good heroes.
• Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII once his personality settles after his Face–Heel Turn. He starts out a "hero", being something like True Neutral, already with the beginnings of the indifferent attitude that goes much further later on. After the Heroic BSoD that sends him over the edge, he may go through a brief Chaotic Evil phase as he comes to hate humans and razes Nibelheim, but by the time of the game's main storyline, he emerges having found out what he truly is and having fully accepted it, and simply cares nothing for anything or anyone else, willing to destroy the Planet to become a god, without either hatred or regrets. In Dissidia Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, Sephiroth's motives continue to be so indifferently self-serving that he can't even be bothered to take evil's side in the main conflicts, instead focusing on tormenting his Arch-Enemy Cloud.
• Pokémon Black and White: Ghetsis is Type 3 Neutral Evil. A megalomaniac in the extreme, he wants nothing more than sole rule of Unova; he fancies himself a king already, dressing in outrageous robes and screaming “I AM PERFECTION!” even as his plans are crumbling around him. While he has set up the requisite criminal gang, Team Plasma, and seemingly groomed (i.e., mind-raped) his son N to be his successor, it later becomes apparent that he would probably liquidate them once he's taken over.
• Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Cyrus is the classic end-of-all-things Neutral Evil, especially in Platinum. His stated goal is to “purify the world of spirit”, getting rid of free will and emotion (he's virtually gotten rid of the latter in himself). However, once his scheme is about to come to fruition on the top of Mt. Coronet, his plot turns about to be more ambitious than that of even Ghetsis: binding one of the Olympus Mons Palkia or Dialga to create a new universe “of which I am deity!” As a deity-to be, though, Cyrus wants to be Lawful Evil, but that seems to be a self-delusion.
• Pokémon Red and Blue has Team Rocket, a gang of criminals that steal Pokemon and do generic crimes like stealing items and holding people hostage. Team Rocket doesn't have any goals beyond causing mayhem for their own pleasure and many of its members even outright state that they're glad that they're doing evil things. Pokémon Gold and Silver has the gang cause other crime like chopping off tails from Slowpokes for dirty money and using a device to enrage the Gyarados in the lake for self interest again.
• B.B. Hood/Bulleta from Darkstalkers is Faux Affably Evil and doesn't care about anything but making money and killing any resident of Makai for her own profit and just for shits and giggles. It's even pointed out in the game due to her win quotes "I won't stop until every living thing in this world is dead. I hate poverty, this is what I do for a living"! Though her outward appearance suggests otherwise, she's a psychotic bitch.
• BlazBlue:
  • After hearing about the Grim Reaper in Kagutsuchi, Jin Kisaragi switches from Lawful Evil to this, as he tried to not notice his allies that he left his post to do his own agenda. He fell hard to Chaotic Evil when he is confronted with either Noel or Ragna for... lots of personal reasons. These days, however, Jin has slowly moved away from his Neutral Evil self and at best, he can be called True Neutral, due to his lingering care for Tsubaki, but mitigated in that he's still a little 'off' on Ragna and still a Jerkass to Noel, although he dreamed of being Neutral Good or Chaotic Good due to his hero complex.
  • Relius Clover is this. While cordial and level-headed, he's a complete sociopath who regards everything and everyone as "test subjects" or "specimens" and thinks that anything and everything is fair game when it's For Science!, including turning family members into Nox Nyctores, traumatizing and abandoning his young son, and performing Cold-Blooded Torture alongside copious Mind Rape to advance his goals and satisfy his scientific curiosity.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Yuuki Terumi has shades of tethering between Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil. He's primarily Neutral in his evil when in his restrained Hazama guise; try not to rock the boat and give him a reason to cut loose...
• The Father from the fan-made King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne remake, and maybe the Black Cloak Society in general. They're too organized and methodical to be chaotic evil, as the lot of them engage in long term plans (Mordack and Alhazred's plans for Cassima, Mannanan's kidnapping and enslavement of young boys as servants), but they show little respect for laws or rules aside from how best to use them to further their ends. The Father, in general, is rather pissed off that he isn't able to get the Crown of Daventry because of a stipulation left by Daventry's first king. He tries all sorts of torments on Graham and family to try and get around it, including cutting deals, sending spies, and assuming the guise of a "harmless" adviser to con his way into what he wants. Too bad for him Graham ain't falling for any of it.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Lord Lundgren tries to pass himself off as Lawful Evil, but his actions — slowly poisoning his own brother; hiring assassins and more skilled soldiers to kill his grandniece, even if it means destroying relations with neighbouring territories; and marking said grandniece as an imposter and her knight escorts (loyal to Caelin) as traitors — are all done purely so he can inherit power for himself.
    • Also, Lord Darin shows signs of this, serving Big Bad Nergal in exchange for a promise to become ruler of the world. This isn't entirely his fault though, and it's implied that Darin was originally Lawful Evil — he was dissatisfied that Laus was not the centre of Lycia, but was still a loyal servant of the Lycian League until Ephidel corrupted him.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Validar is a good example of Neutral Evil. Everything he does is out of fanatical devotion to the local God of Evil and a desire to see the world burn; at one point, he explicitly hopes that his actions will live up to Kid from the Future Lucina's nightmares.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has Hans, Garon's Psycho for Hire. He's a violent murderer who only cares about two things - advancing in the Nohrian hierarchy and killing as many people as he can get away with. While his behavior in general is reminiscent of Chaotic Evil, he's perfectly capable of following orders and putting up a loose facade of a Punch-Clock Villain if it means he can hurt more people.
• The Fallout setting supplies many examples. In addition to be able to play as someone of this alignment, we have:
  • Myron from Fallout 2, a teenage drug chemist who's found a way to make the Wasteland even more miserable by producing Jet in exchange for money, power and to satisfy his massive ego. He can also attempt to rape a female Chosen One.
  • Mister Burke from Fallout 3. Nuking a peaceful town because ... well, we don't know why. But it's the thing he does. He just needs someone to push the button.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has Benny, a sleazy, opportunistic criminal who shoots you in the head the first time you meet him. Even after that, he lies to you time and time again, even when you break him out of slavery.
  • Despite being a member of the New California Republic, Colonel Cassandra Moore is this according to Joshua Sawyer. She enjoyed her status as a Ranger specifically because it gave her the authority to do whatever she wanted to do and has no problems eradicating otherwise good factions like the Kings primarily because she sees diplomacy as ineffective. She'll also make sure to get Ambassador Dennis Crocker fired if the Kings make a truce with the NCR and go on a smear campaign against the Courier if you ally with the Brotherhood of Steel (the faction that she has an intense hatred of due to crippling her to the point that she was forced to a desk job).
  • Father Elijah, whose lust for control and megalomania has led him to enslave people and force them through a death gauntlet to achieve his final goal: to slaughter the entire population of the Mojave, as a salve for his wounded pride as much as anything else.
  • Dean Domino of the Dead Money DLC is entirely self-serving and amazingly vindictive, and will attempt to kill you at the first chance if you haven't been completely servile towards him. He also kept the Sierra Madre's mistress as his drug-slave and sought to destroy her husband and their marriage out of jealousy, making him responsible for much of the Sierra Madre's horrors.
  • The Disciples from the Nuka-World DLC of Fallout 4. Unlike the spoiled Operators and the animalistic Pack Raiders, The Disciples are cutthroat and significantly more sinister in both appearance and attitude among the three dominant gangs. Putting the tasks they give you into perspective, their ways effectively ruin peoples' lives caring little for profit or overly exerting themselves.
• The Spy class from Team Fortress 2 fits the sneaky Jerkass brand of NE to a tee—while being ostensibly polite and cultured, his MO is to disguise himself as enemy team members and backstab them and, when dominating players, show the juvenile, pun-laden glee he takes in outwitting and murdering them.
• Super Mario Bros.: Bowser, due to his strange on-again-off-again Villain Decay, appears to fit this alignment moreso than any other. He's an unrepentant jerk who seems to love nothing more than trying to take over the Mushroom Kingdom and appears to have no actual cause for doing so beyond his personal pleasure. If a more powerful or destructive villain shows up, he can be expected to help the heroes, either out of self-preservation or anger at being upstaged.
• Evil Chancellor and Big Bad Richard Hawk of Metal Wolf Chaos builds a Wave-Motion Gun on Alcatraz Island, unleashes a poison gas attack on Chicago, and wrecks up New York in a giant Spider Tank after turning against the most badass Humongous Mecha-piloting President Action EVER (which may put him in the running for Stupid Evil). He's just that much of a bastard.
• Legacy of Kain: Kain fits here nicely. Magnificent Bastard, Sociopathic Hero, Evil Overlord. He's trying to save the world from decay, corruption, ruin, damnation, and demonic invasion, but he's trying to save it so that his vampire brethren can return to their rightful place as rulers of the world, and so that he can return to his rightful place as ruler of the vampires. A sadist who takes pleasure in stalking and killing, he has a capacity for mercy, and he never lies. In the end, his motives are selfish, but it just so happens that what is good for him is good for the world.
• Firebrand of Demon's Crest. He's a demon, so he's evil in all his appearances, but he's only out to take over the Ghoul Realm for his own sake using the powers of the Crests. In the previous Gargoyle's Quest games, he willingly operates under the orders of his king and thus fits Lawful Evil better; they're just going up against a bigger evil than themselves.
• [PROTOTYPE]: Alex Mercer. The original Alex Mercer, that is. Blacklight Alex grows a conscience and works to save people later in the game, but the human Alex Mercer was willing to wipe out the human race just to spite the people who ultimately killed him.
• Xehanort's ultimate goal in all Kingdom Hearts games is to use the titular heart of all worlds to reshape the universe and become a god.
• Arcturus Mengsk from StarCraft. Throughout the series he has displayed both lawful and chaotic tendencies, but they are always incidental for his own personal gain and anything goes as long as it suits him. He used to be a terrorist using increasingly extreme methods to fight the corrupt and oppressive Terran Confederacy. After the Confederacy’s fall he formed and established himself as The Emperor of the equally oppressive Terran Dominion, once again using increasingly extreme methods to crush any opposition to his rule. His intentions may seem sound, but deep inside he is just a narcissistic bastard. To quote the man himself:
  "I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me!"
• Gen from Street Fighter. Except for maybe Dorai and Chun-Li, he shows no attachment to anyone, and if you annoy him enough, he'll kill you without an ounce of remorse. The same goes for his victims during the time when he was an assassin. Gen seems to have shifted to at least True Neutral when he began training Chun-Li and decided not to be an assassin anymore when he was forced to kill someone in front of her. He may have fallen back to Neutral Evil when he contracted leukimia and decided he'd rather die in a deathmatch than a deathbed.
• While the villains from TRON and TRON: Legacy fall more into Lawful Evil, the three primary antagonists of TRON 2.0 fall into this category. It doesn't matter if they use lawful methods (a corporate takeover of Encom) or outright illegal ones (kidnapping Alan Bradley and threatening to kill him, using the Datawraiths to seize everything from state secrets to bank accounts). All Crown, Popoff, and Baza are interested in is power and control over other people.
• Ammon Jerro from Neverwinter Nights 2 is canonically a borderline Type 3, but he doesn't really fit any of the above categories well. The best way to describe him is Machiavellian: he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist of the He Who Fights Monsters variety, and is willing to do anything and everything it takes to protect his home city from an extraplanar abomination that nobody else believed existed.
  • Belueth the Calm from Storm of Zehir is type 1. She is an amoral aasimar thief who believes only in the thief-god Mask and in the awesome power of money.
• Several characters in F.E.A.R. fit under this alignment.
  • Genevive Aristide, CEO of Armacham, is directly responsible for setting in motion the events of the first game, and her only subsequent desire is covering her own ass. She orders her own security troops to open fire on US military and government agents and "clean things up" by murdering everyone associated with Project Origin. Later on, she orders the destruction of the Origin facility, which involves effectively setting off a nuclear explosion in the heart of the city of Fairport (technically, the Point Man was the one who set off the reactor, but Aristide initially ordered the explosion). By the second game, she is desperately trying to contain Alma, subjecting people to Mind Rape, brutal surgical procedures, and using the psychic members of team Dark Signal are bait to keep Alma distracted until she could trap both Beckett and Alma in a containment device — but makes it clear that her only concern is keeping her job.
  • Harlan Wade was this while Project Origin was ongoing, showing utterly no remorse regarding the horrible things he was putting Alma (his own daughter) and the Point Man and Fettel (his grandchildren) through. He seems to have shifted away from this by the end of the first game, however, and tries to atone for his acts by letting Alma kill him.
  • Though we only see hints of his twisted nature in the first two games, Paxton Fettel is definitely this in the third. There's nothing in him but a desire for revenge, power, and to inflict suffering on others. He has his reasons, as his youth was one of the most screwed-up experiences imaginable, but that doesn't change the fact that he's flat-out evil. He goes so far as to kill and eat his own mother's ghost.
• Ocelot in the Metal Gear series definitely qualifies as one. Yes, he serves under various villainous organizations, but he plays both sides almost flawlessly for his own agenda.
• Pigma Dengar in Star Fox is motivated primarily by greed in every action he takes.
• Ryuji from Yakuza 2 certainly counts. He really only cares about himself and his own status, hating that he's known as the Dragon of Kansai when it implies that he bows to another man. His role in the game is motivated by his own selfish desires.
• Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2. This obnoxious posterboy of malignant narcissism basically plans to rule Pandora with an iron fist, as a stepping stone to remaking it into a gleaming monument to his own awesomeness. Oh, and he'll murder anyone who gets in his way.
• Baron Albert von Seltsam in The Riddle of Master Lu. He takes everything as a sport or game, but it's no use to point out to him he's being unsportsmanlike, since he's also quite willing to cheat if it's necessary. "Whatever it takes to win." He tries to kill the protagonist to get the MacGuffin and use its vague powers to compete with the big boys like Hitler, apparently not minding a second world war as much as its having poor players.
• Reaper from Overwatch belongs here or Chaotic Evil. His personality isn't the most heroic, in fact he's downright malicious in the wrong hands. However with the introduction of Roadhog and Junkrat, Reaper can be considered closer towards this alignment after all.
• Blake Dexter from Hitman: Absolution is a cruel, sadistic dealer, who gambles with peoples lives in hopes of scoring big money. He is in many ways, the opposite of Agent 47 for he hides behind his goons letting them half-heartedly die for him, while he enjoys luxury like a despicable coward. When 47 does catch up with him however, the pay-off is well deserved.
• The Society in Injustice 2 are a group of supervillains that want to fill the power vacuum left by the Regime's overthrow. Unlike Superman and his minions who were Lawful Evil and sought to enforce order by any means necessary, every single member of the Society fought for their own goals: Captain Cold wants revenge for his sister's deaths, Scarecrow wants to spread panic and fear, Poison Ivy wants to create new world for plants and so forth. Their leader Gorilla Grodd is the most Neutral Evil of them all since its revealed that he is serving as The Dragon to Brainiac and is okay with him destroying Earth, something which other Society members desert him for, and even then he makes clear to the heroes he has no allegiance to anyone but himself, and is just bidding his time for his "master" to show weaknesses so he can backstab him.
• Lantry from Tyranny, despite otherwise being a decent guy, straddles the line between Type 1 and True Neutral thanks to his role as The Quisling. He sees Kyros as preferable to a bunch of squabbling independent warlords, though he’ll also admit to simply being fascinated with him/her.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a a D&D-style alignment system, and at least one canonically neutral evil character who can join your party.
  • Jaethal is an exiled elf who tried to enact a ritual of immortality by killing her extended family, only to later end up dead and resurrected by the goddess of undeath Urgathoa, whom she now serves as an undying inquisitor of the faith. Jaethal lacks morals of almost any sort and view everyone not her as expendable tools or allies of convenience at best, her only virtue being a sort of calm politeness to anyone (best expressed towards Tristian, whom she will engage in repeated rounds of Passive Aggressive Combat).
• The sequel, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has a few more party members with this alignment.
  • The Lich ascension path is neutral evil, concerned mostly with results and personal power no matter who gets hurt. To fully become a lich, the Commander needs not only to become neutral evil and engage in a number of atrocities, but also kill anyone they care for. All the undead you raise as minions during the pathway are also neutral evil.
  • Daeran Arendae is an aasimar oracle and a pretty clear-cut example of a high-functioning sociopath, completely lacking in empathy and perfectly happy to let others die or suffer for his own amusement. He accompanies the player character mostly just to keep himself entertained.
  • Wenduag is a mongrelman fighter who is largely only concerned with growing stronger, and has no scruples regarding how she gains that strength. She fights for the player character only because she recognizes them as powerful and wants to secure a place by their side.
• Danganronpa has series Big Bad Junko Enoshima. They are fanatically devoted to the concept of despair for its own sake, and will do anything to cause untold human suffering just because they can.
• Chrono Trigger Magus is this, being an Evil Sorcerer only concerned with his own power. He starts out as a Disc-One Final Boss, and while you can later recruit him to your team (which most players will do, as he's by far the most powerful playable character), he joins for entirely self serving reasons, namely realizing Lavos poses a threat to him as well.
• Revenant from Apex Legends might as well epitomize this alignment. He is the only character, with the least redeemable qualities. In fact the only thing that gives him any satisfaction is death, murder and whatever grim or ghastly concept is imaginable. I do not exaggerate, Revenant makes Caustic look tame between the two villains.
• Ratbag from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War may seem like a Token Heroic Orc, but he's never motivated to help the hero by any noble cause (stopping the Black Captains, freeing the Outcasts, defeating Sauron, saving Middle-Earth, etc...). In the first game, he only wants to be Warchief because he wants to be the one calling the shots, and he wants revenge against the bigger Uruks for treating him like shrahk for being the runt. He decides to aid Talion because the latter is incredibly skilled at killing his competition, which he takes credit for (a popular way amongst Uruk-kind to get promotions is to kill whoever is bossing you around). In the second game, he's less malignant, but he was technically still (half of) the first Overlord you had to usurp. He's still courteous and respectful to Talion and cares deeply for Ranger (the Olog), but he's still an Uruk, and isn't afraid to kill for what he wants.
• Khotun Khan, the Big Bad from Ghost of Tsushima. A brutal and cold-hearted tyrant, Khotun made Tsushima his literal playground, sparing not a shred of dignity towards it's inhabitants. Being "Lawful" is out of the question, for the Khan treated the Samurai no better than vermin. It's only fitting, that he would later get the same treatment. As without a doubt, Khotun would've continued to ruin Japan leaving a plethora of war crimes behind.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue has Sigma. His ultimate goal (achieve meta-stability and become a real human) doesn't really fit cleanly on the law-chaos or good-evil axes, but his methods (drive Agent Maine insane so he'll murder the other Freelancers, then abduct their AI fragments and forcibly merge with them) are absolutely evil.
• RWBY: A good number of the villains fall into this alignment.
  • Roman Torchwick, the Starter Villain of the series, falls squarely under this alignment, as everything he does is all for the sake of himself and his assistant, Neo. He is an unrepentant thief, is perfectly fine with doing horrible things such as attempting to kill Ruby Rose (who is fifteen) and carrying out Cinder's orders to help in the Fall of Beacon for no justifiable reason beyond self-preservation.
  • Cinder Fall, The Heavy, is devoted entirely to the pursuit of her own power. She desires to be powerful, feared and strong, and sees Salem as her ticket to achieving that goal. Initially, she loyally carries out Salem's mission at Beacon Academy because of the benefit it brings her in the process. However, she begins Jumping Off the Slippery Slope of sanity after Volume 3 as her lust for ever more power begins to get the better of her. She loves showing off her power and feeding her ego, and does not tolerate anything that may bruise it. In Volume 8, Watts makes her see how working with others will bring her greater success at achieving her goals, so she returns to her Beacon form.
  • This is also the alignment where Adam Taurus starts out. He fights for Faunus rights, but is far too extreme in his methods of doing so, and he is also largely driven by his selfish goal of forcing Blake to be his. As he sinks further into his obsession with Blake and reveals that Faunus rights don't matter to him, however, he slides into Chaotic Evil instead.
  • While his colleague Tyrian and his leader Salem are both Chaotic Evil in different ways, Arthur Watts aids them because he felt snubbed at Atlas and his former superior James Ironwood for selecting his rival's project over him. While undoubtably evil his actions are always geared at himself. He doesn't cause more destruction than need be but won't work to do less either.
• Alastor from Hazbin Hotel is a shrewd, dodgy Dealmaker. Though for the most part, he acts polite, classy and reassuring, the looming feeling of distrust still surrounds him. It's made very apparent he's a very deadly force to reckon with, yet him claiming to aid someone out of "boredom" seems too good to be true. Overall, whatever Alastor's true intentions are remain a very closely guarded secret.
• Helluva Boss: Blitzo and the others at the Immediate Murder Professionals are always willing to kill people bloodily for money; they apparently enjoy it, but their motives for murder are almost always pragmatic. This is true for all of them regardless of how different their personalities are otherwise and how heartwarming they can be with their loved ones.

Webcomics

• Sarda from 8-Bit Theater ends up being type 3, being motivated by selfish desires with a slight sense of righteousness. Leans towards chaos when he screws with people's lives after little to no provocation, yet firmly believes that history cannot be changed.
  • Also, Red Mage is a combination of type 1 (amoral) and a little bit of type 3 (indifferent to the good/evil conflict), concerned only with maximising his stats. It also helps that, despite few characters being anywhere near stable, he is by far the most insane character in the series.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Bun-bun the mini-lop is Neutral Evil to the bone, never seeming to do anything that isn't directly in his own interest, and completely ignoring the interests of everyone else. He does enjoy violence for violence's sake, but even then he generally channels it towards people who annoy him. Everyone seems to annoy Bun-bun to a certain extent.
  • Nash Straw is a hired assassin mostly concerned with getting the job done, with no apparent empathy towards anyone, but also not a very reliable employee if it doesn't suit him to be.
  • Dr. Schlock was a True Neutral Dirty Coward up to a certain point. That point came when he started to think that the only way to keep an evil corporation bent on taking over the world from hunting him down was to take over the corporation and lead its evil agenda himself. He continued to do as he had done before: save his own skin before anything else.
• In The Order of the Stick, Tsukiko is an evil necromancer who resents the powers-that-be in Azure City telling her what not to do, but she's willing to work for Xykon, making and leading his undead Mooks.
• Skoll of Cry 'Havoc' tortures and kills people for fun. falls here due to her propensity to disobey orders, countered by her loyalty toward Karcharoth.
• In one Kevin & Kell R.L. is classified by the cartoonist as Neutral Evil. While he's certainly a Corrupt Corporate Executive, he still at least attempts to follow the law. The problem is that his wife Angelique is Chaotic Evil and spurs him into more overt acts of sabotage against Kell.
• Eridan Ampora of Homestuck fame. He's selfish and self-centered: when anything goes wrong, he takes the opportunity to pontificate on how it affects him and wax lyrical about his many inadequacies — solely to fish for compliments. Give him one, and he will hit on you. When he's rejected by his former Love Interest, he throws a fit, tries to murder her new boyfriend, succeeds in murdering her, DOOMS HIS SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, kills his self-professed "only friend" and then runs away to try and join the Big Bad.
• Girl Genius: From what we've seen, Lucrezia Mongfish AKA the Other fits the bill. On one hand, she's a Control Freak who wants to turn everyone into her mind-controlled slaves with her Puppeteer Parasites. On the other hand (pun intended), she's very impulsive and hot-headed, and she used her mind-controlled puppets to cause wanton destruction. The only unifying theme is that she's incredibly selfish, even seemingly not getting why someone wouldn't serve her.
• In Tower of God, it's a relatively common attitude among the Regulars climbing the Tower to think that nothing matters but getting ahead and it's foolish to care about anyone else. It's basically Inherent in the System.
  • Rachel only cares about reaching the top of the Tower, but she lacks the special powers that basically everyone else climbing it has, and she also feels that she lacks the capacity to make real friends who would help her. Thus, she's resolved to use every dirty trick to get ahead and to make allies only to use them. She's also lashed out viciously against others in resentment for their having what she doesn't.
  • Hoaqin takes using others to get ahead to the extreme. He's devoured around a billion souls to gain more power, has absolutely no sympathy towards anyone, and will defend absolute selfishness as the only philosophical stance worth considering.
  • Yura Ha is focused solely on how important it's for her personally to find a certain thing on the Hell Train, and when she makes companions on her way there, she's ready to backstab or throw them away without blinking an eye. Ironically, about the only companion she cares about is Rachel.

Web Original

• Neopets: Snargan, a green skeith serving as the treasurer of King Skarl of Meridell, always uses Meridell's treasure to gamble in Double Or Nothing to try to win money from players for his own.

Western Animation

• Mozenrath from Aladdin: The Series. He betrayed his master, the Evil Sorcerer Destane, and took his place as the most powerful sorcerer alive at the time and the ruler of The Land of the Black Sand and its undead population. Throughout the series he has shown himself willing to harm, step on, or betray anyone and everyone to get what he wants. Being the most powerful sorcerer alive isn't good enough for him; he wants to go on to rule Agrabah and the rest of the Seven Deserts.
• Archer: Malory Archer is a good example. While she shows some distaste for authority that leans her towards Chaotic Evil, she mostly just sides with whoever she thinks she can control with no regard for morality. The only person aside from herself whose well-being she shows a little concern for is Archer, but even then her standards only rise so high as to try to avoid getting him killed.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Admiral Zhao tried to kill the moon for no reason other than to stroke his own vanity.
  • Fire Nation officers generally skirt between this and Lawful Evil, though it's hard to tell from their lack of definite characterisation. The Warden of the Boiling Rock may count, as he is perfectly willing to drown himself and escaping prisoners in boiling water just to ensure he maintains the prison's 'no one escaped under my watch' ratio, but nonetheless "pulled some strings" to release his niece Mai from prison — due to lack of specific information though, he may simply be Lawful Evil or even simply Neutral.
• Lydia from Barbie & The Diamond Castle has supremely selfish reasons for becoming a villain: she wants to be the only muse and keep all music for herself.
• Oddly, the whole Celestialsapien species from Ben 10 is this or the Selfish Neutral alignment, especially as of "Universe vs Tennyson". While in previous episodes, you could argue them to be of the True Neutral alignment, this one shows them accusing Ben of a crime they regularly commit (changing the universe), and get off scot-free. This, along with some of their previous members' behavior, like Bellicus and Serena arguing about saving the universe or not and later recreating it like it was something meaningless, a mother Celestiasapien being undecided to even try to save her own child, makes them a pretty scary example of the uncaring aspect of Neutral Evil, and a disturbing example of a more realistic (although possibly unintentional) approach on the Always Chaotic Evil trope.
• Emperor Zurg from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command would be a classic example. Compared to his Lawful Good arch-nemesis Buzz Lightyear, Zurg revels in evilness and has a comedic mean streak that is best to be respected. His acting as foil to Buzz is mainly due to his sarcastic cruelty clashing with the heroes' serious nature.* In The Dragon Prince, Lord Viren started out as the wise and loyal advizor of King Harrow, at first he seemed like a pragmatic leader that knew what was necessary for the good of the kingdom but as the series progresses, it is revealed that Viren's actions made things worse as he doesn't care about the morality and long term consequences as he consider collateral damage as acceptable loses. After Harrow pointed out is his fault everything got worse, Viren stopped caring about serving the king so he decided to betray him and overthrow him to prove that he is the smartest and strongest man in the kingdom and the only one capable of saving humanity from Xadia, although this is just an excuse to not admit he only cares about boosting his ego. Viren falls into this category for being someone who would cross every line to get what he wants with lies, blackmails, extortion, threats, betrayals and assassinations, especially using emotional manipulation and bending the law to his convenience, then breaking the rules behind everyone's back if persuasion doesn't work. Among other morally questionable things he did in his quest to "save humanity" are encouraging poaching rare and endangered animals and creatures for dark magic, convincing Harrow to kill dragon king Avizandum for revenge and kill unborn dragon prince Zym to make sure he wouldn't get revenge on Katolis when grows up, imprisoning elves into coins, ordering his children to kill the princes and get Zym at any cost including letting his son Soren die for it, locking Gren in his dungeon, stealing the royal seal to summon the kings into meeting, lying to the kings of being the regent and convince them to start a war with Xadia with lies and rumors, making smoke elves to assassinate the kings, make a coup in the kingdom, blackmail king Ezran to abdicate and send him to the dungeon, making an alliance with archmage Aaravos, destroying Lux aurea and stealing their power source, turning his army into mindless sunfire zombies against their will, attacking the storm spire, try to kill Ezran even when he lost the war, try to harvest Zym and then kill whoever he wants after absorbing his power.
• Vlad "Plasmius" Masters from Danny Phantom is supremely selfish in his motives for evil, though he himself doesn't seem quite capable of recognizing this-he doesn't care that Maddie is already Happily Married and doesn't want to be his wife, or that Danny doesn't want to be his surrogate son. Vlad wants it, and that's all that matters. Everyone else is just a convenient pawn to help him accomplish this.
• Family Guy: Glenn Quagmire started out as more of a True Neutral pervert before getting flanderized into a date rapist motivated entirely by his own hyperactive libido.
• Futurama:
  • Zapp Brannigan is a military commander who uses his position mainly as a means to stroke his own ego and get revenge on random groups he has a vendetta with. He sees no problem with destroying an inhabited planet or sending his men on suicide missions to preserve his own Villain with Good Publicity status.
  • Lrr, RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8, is usually shown as a tyrant willing to commit mass murder whenever it suits his objectives. The typical Earthican response to his attacks is to give him whatever he wants, since there's nothing the Earthican army can really do to fight him. However, this may be more Blue-and-Orange Morality, as he shows occasional acts of mercy and compassion seemingly at random.
• Lil' Gideon, the phony psychic and child psychopath from Gravity Falls, certainly falls under this alignment. He is so power-crazed he ultimately undoes his own plans by going after the protagonists in a Humongous Mecha in the mistaken belief that they have a book of hidden knowledge he desires, even though he had already driven them out of town and they were no longer a threat to him.
• Selfish Eric Raymond from Jem fits in this slot better then Lawful Evil. At one point he outright admitted to embezzling money from Starlight Records to personally fund The Misfits.
• The Weavils on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Whether it's one of them or a group, they generally just do whatever profits them at the moment while being jerkasses about it. They seem largely indifferent to Lucius' goal of spreading misery, as long as it doesn't harm them.
• Shego from Kim Possible. Granted, at times the writers have trouble deciding if she's Lawful Evil (she has no interest in taking over the world) or Chaotic Evil (but she doesn't want to destroy it either), but most of the time she's evil for her own enjoyment.
• Being a show for little girls, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is constrained in its depictions of evil, with most villainous characters revealed to be either bland forces of nature or simply in need of a good hug.
  • Not so Diamond Tiara, school bully and spoiled brat extraordinaire, who, after hovering between this alignment and True Neutral for years, finally crossed over in "Flight to the Finish", when she, calculatedly and in cold blood, psychologically destroyed a handicapped person to better her chances of winning a competition. However, in "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", she becomes Neutral Good when stands up to her abusive mother and helps fix the school playground.
  • Lord Tirek is a classic example of this alignment. He is obsessed with increasing his personal power by any means he can devise, for no greater purpose beyond having power for power's sake. He is willing to use and manipulate anyone in order to do so, and afterwards betray them without a twinge of conscience when he ceases to have a use for them.
  • On a somewhat larger-scale note, Queen Chrysalis seems to qualify as this as well — all she cares about is taking over Equestria so her and her minions can feed off their love. To that end, she was willing to be a complete, unprincipled Manipulative Bastard. Her primary altruistic quality, her dedication to keeping her subjects fed, turns out to be little more than a ruse when it's revealed that she was keeping them in a state of constant starvation in order to be able to better manipulate them into being her personal army.
  • Lightning Dust becomes this in "The Washouts". In her debut episode, she was introduced as being overly competitive, but not intending to harm others. In "The Washouts", however, she goes as far as allowing a child to perform a dangerous stunt that can prove to be lethal and doesn't care about her safety one bit. Her only concern was to perform a great show whether or not others get hurt.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) has several villains that qualify, as most of them are out for personal gain:
  • Fuzzy Lumpkins has serious anger issues and will do whatever he can to deal with it, even if it means destroying a city or running for mayor.
  • Princess Morbucks is determine to be a Powerpuff Girls and has no qualms with harming them or helping out with other villains to accomplish that goal.
  • The Smiths try to be an average family, but over time prove to be selfish after the girls ruined their dinner and threw Harold into prison for a week after he tried to melt the professor's head with a hair dryer. They trash their house in hopes of making them move and then try to run them over with a car after that plan failed.
  • Femme Fatale is out to rob banks, seemingly to fight for women's rights. But it turns out that she is just doing it just so that she can get away with her crimes.
  • Lenny Baxter is a comic-obsessed nerd who would do anything to collect anything that was Powerpuff Girl-related, even if it meant stealing their belongs and later kidnapping.
  • Sedusa tries to seduce the professor to her side in order to take over his family and make the Powerpuff Girls do what she wants them to do.
  • "Knock It Off" has Dick Hardly, as he's willing to create his set of knock-off Powerpuff Girls, sell copies of them in order to make money, and kill anyone that tries to stop him.
• Scooby-Doo's People in Rubber Suits rarely (if ever) fall anywhere outside of Neutral Evil. As far as they're concerned, greed and revenge are the building blocks of their ambition, and as far as the series is concerned, Ambition Is Evil. Should one of the monsters turn out to be Real After All (such as in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo), they'll probably end up being outright Chaotic Evil.
• Sideshow Bob and Fat Tony from The Simpsons qualify for this alignment pretty well, both being ultimately in it for themselves and working within or outside the law when it fits them. Both have ''tried'' redeeming themselves at various points, but gotten rejected at every attempt. Bob varies between outright criminal and leader (he was in charge of a dam-building project and the mayor of a small town in Italy). Fat Tony is a crime lord who is just as often seen cooperating with the police (who are too dumb to see through him) as well as evading them.
• Hobgoblin from Spider-Man: The Animated Series. He's a cackling hitman played by Mark Hamill doing his Joker voice, but, unlike Mr. J, he's motivated entirely by self-interest. He wants all the money and power he can get his hands on, and he'll do anything (that could get past the Fox Kids censors) for it.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Mr. Krabs developed into this, as he has no qualms breaking the law to make a quick buck.
  • Sheldon Plankton is another example. He'll work within or outside the law if it suits his goals; while he does have ambitions to Take Over the World, the main thing that he cares about is his envy-driven grudge with Mr. Krabs.
• Asajj Ventress of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was equally born among the Neutral Evil Nightsisters of Dathomir. As Dooku deduced before, Ventress showed skill but no true commitment to the Sith ways. Following his betrayal to Ventress, she and her kin plotted to kill Dooku for his treachery. However such an attempted assassination, ultimately proved to be their undoing. After which, Ventress found other means of getting her own back on her former master.
  • Side-Villain, Cad Bane was as greedy as he was cruel. There was very little he wouldn't do for the right price, Bane had many tricks up his sleeve, making him a formidable foe to even the strongest Jedi. But dare to backstab him or cut him out of deal? And you'll regret it for sure.
• Slade and Blackfire from Teen Titans (2003) both count. The former cares primarily about power, but there's enough pure cruelty in his motivation to shift him here from Lawful Evil, while the latter seems to live her life as one giant act of pure selfishness (which is all the more evil in contrast to the rest of her species).
• The (Utrom) Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). Being both a respected philanthropist and a ruthless crime lord, in the end it means nothing to him. All that matters is power and absolute immortality.
• Starscream from Transformers in all his forms. He's not the Trope Namer for The Starscream for nothing. Ironically, whenever G1 or Armada Starscream did honestly bring up some issue of honor or rules, Lawful Evil Megatron berated him for even daring to respect Cybertron law.
  Starscream: I was only raising a legal point.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Rusty Venture is an utterly amoral scientist, especially in the first few seasons before he Took a Level in Kindness. He had no standards for his creations, as shown by his using an orphan's heart to power one of his inventions (To be fair, the orphan was probably already dead. Well, except for the fact that his heart was still beating), and shows little to no care for his sons, though the fact that he had a bunch of clones of them for backup may be part of this), and is generally recognized as a Jerkass by most everyone who knows him (Brock Samson himself considers Venture partly a Villain Protagonist, even if he's not exactly terrifying.). However, as the seasons continued, he made an effort to improve himself.
    Rusty: "Brock, am I... a bad person? Am I, Brock!?"
    Brock: "Ehhh..." [makes a "kind-of" hand gesture]
  • Ironically, Dr. Venture's most recurring and stubborn Arch-Enemy, the Mighty Monarch is also this. Unlike most members of the Guild of Calamitous Intent that are Lawful Evil Punch-Clock Villains devoted to a set of strict rules and guidelines that keeps them in check, The Monarch is completely obsessed with his hatred of Dr. Venture, for very personal reasons never really explained or defined. When he is separated from Dr. Venture through villain-hero level ranking and Dr. Venture is given another Guild-sanctioned "Arch", he does whatever it takes to takes to haunt his nemesis, from abusing "prior escalation" standards in order to arch "guild sanctioned relatives", to annihilating every Science Hero he is assigned to with ease. It goes so far as killing other villains and fellow Guild members under the guise of the Blue Morpho is a Murder the Hypotenuse gambit. The Monarch is solely defined by his personal hatred towards Rusty Venture.
  • Every awful attribute of Rusty Venture is amplified with his dad, Jonas Venture Sr. Despite being adored by everyone and being a brilliant scientist and charismatic celebrity, he is a selfish, vile sociopath who abused his son by forcing him to go on traumatic adventures, committed horrible experiments For Science!, tempted his friend into infidelity and then blackmailing said friend with the evidence, and turning his former best friend into a cyborg slave (he genuinely thought he did a good thing) doesn't even begin to cover it.
• The main character of Villainous, Black Hat, is a perfect combination of selfishness, greed, and deliberate malice. His whole shtick is to avert Cut Lex Luthor a Check, selling goods and services to help other villains commit horrendous actions and destruction. He never tries to hide his depravity, instead proudly boasting about how vile he is and abusing his underlings. He doesn't seem to really care for any legal authority, openly selling illegal weapons and other products frowned upon by international law. He also does not engage directly in any publicly destructive actions. In the end, all that matters in income and the spread of malignance. Finally he acts a master and balance to both the sophisticated and submissive Dr. Flug and the volatile and psychotic Dimencia, as well as 5.0.5. According to Word of God, he is retired, and left his life as a Galactic Conqueror who enslaved countless worlds so that he can sell his talents and resources to aspiring villains. While his business does help out other villains, there is little to no real goodwill, as Black Hat is open to many ways of payment.
• Wuya from Xiaolin Showdown is this compared to villain-wannabe Jack Spicer, whose power is at times laughable. Wuya is malevolent and snide, unleashing evil in an appropriate way that befits her legend very well.

---