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No-Nonsense Nemesis

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Sinestro: I will have the Green Lantern ring after your death!
Kyle: Wait! Don't you want to talk first? Banter back and forth to show me your innate superiority?
Sinestro: No.

A No-Nonsense Nemesis is a character that outright refuses to carry either the Hero Ball (Things I Will Do If I Am Ever the Hero) or Villain Ball (Evil Overlord List); Hollywood Tactics and the Idiot Ball are also out of the question. The individual may be a Combat Pragmatist, Genre Savvy, Street Smart, or simply very practical, and will neither delay nor take unnecessary chances when their objective is at hand. For example, the villain really does think that Murder Is the Best Solution, and no, they aren't going to do any Evil Gloating or exposit on their plan before shooting, thank you very much. An opponent might be confused to the point they outright ask "You're really going to just shoo—" They might try to stall their No-Nonsense Nemesis by offering suggestions like "Wouldn't it be more fun to suspend me above a vat of acid and slowly lower me?" Also a good idea to make sure this nemesis isn't around during your Transformation Sequence, for they will gleefuly disregard Transformation Is a Free Action.

Mind you, this is mainly on the tactics of the individual in regards to a direct approach and not necessarily personality. They can be highly eccentric or insane, but still have a pretty direct approach (in the sense that blow it all up is a direct way of dealing with heroes as a villain and a favorite among the psychotic.) Expect the moment they drop the no-nonsense to indulge themselves to be the moment things go wrong for them.

See also Killed Mid-Sentence. Compare Shut Up, Kirk! and Aren't You Going to Ravish Me? as well as Pragmatic Villainy, which an evil No-Nonsense Nemesis will certainly display. Contrast Bond Villain Stupidity, Complexity Addiction, Just Toying with Them, Too Dumb to Live, Contractual Genre Blindness and Fair-Play Villain. For a heroic example, see Villain Killer. A Pragmatic Hero is also likely to be this or, failing that, at least have shades of this. Overlaps with Consummate Professional.


Examples:

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  • Conrad from Berserk. Void monologues about fate and destiny, Slan gets aroused by and prolongs the torture of her victims and Ubik likes breaking people by talking with them. By contrast, Conrad doesn't speak unless needed, and proves quite efficient with duties in the physical realm, namely creating a plague to drive refugees together for the unholy birthing ceremony.
  • Zenon Zogratis from Black Clover. When arriving at the Golden Dawn HQ, he tells his Dark Disciples to kill everyone aside from Vangeance. After defeating Yuno, he immediately leaves with a captured Vangeance and Yuno is left impaled and dying. Right after he arrives at the scene, Zenon rescues a defeated Dante and ensnares Yami with his magic. Noticing Asta's devil arm, he immediately tries to kill him. When the Black Bulls try to stop him, he leaves with a captured Yami to not waste anymore time.
    • Lucious Zogratis, Zenon's older brother, as well. He is well aware that Asta poses the greatest threat to his plans due to his Anti Magic, and immediately confronts Asta with the clear intention to kill him and remove the only obstacle to his plan. After seemingly eliminating Asta he intends on crushing Yuno because he's the key to the one in tens of thousands of futures where the heroes have the advantage.
  • In Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, the biggest enemy to a Hajike/Wiggin' Specialist is one who identifies themselves as a Legendary Idiot/Joke Killer. They have extreme prejudice towards anything considered nonsensical or silly and destroy anyone who so much as cracks a joke. If they so much as sense the slightest bit of idiocy or ridiculousness from someone, they'll attack them with full force.
    • The main example being Torpedo Girl who is this to such an extent she even hurt her father, Landmine Dandy, for this back when she was a child. Granted, she is prone to her own eccentricity (such as her "I'm a torpedo" Running Gag) She does still end up being defeated back when she's an antagonist by being overwhelmed with cosmic levels of absurdity.
      Torpedo Girl: I can't win. These guys are so obtuse, there is no logical way to defeat them.
  • Isshiki Ootsutsuki from Boruto. Compared to many other villains in the series, Isshiki proves to be this. He has no interest in testing his powers, proving some kind of philosophical or moral point to his opponents (unless he is sure he has already won), nor does he have any reason to try to keep Naruto or Sasuke alive as his goals have nothing to do with obtaining their powers. Thus he tries to avoid fighting them, and when he does decide to fight he fights to win and end the fight as quickly as possible. He does admit he sometimes enjoys himself when fighting, but he doesn't let it distract from his goal.
  • Prime Minster Schneizel el Britannia from Code Geass. A Boring, but Practical example. Schneizel never indulges in grandiosity or spectacle when in battle, taking an extremely methodical approach. This is why he doesn't immediately throw nukes at everyone until he's in the best position for it.
  • Both Ange Misurugi and Embryo in CrossAnge become this by the time of the final arc. With Embryo, Once Embryo is spurned by Ange enough times, he throws his theatrics out the window and tries killing her, but Ange destroys Hysterica and Tusk bisects him. With Ange, Ange doesn't waste anytime finishing off Embryo when her allies enter his dimension to rescue her.
  • Adam Smasher from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Aside from occasionally engaging in some deceptively friendly chit-chat, he doesn't fuck around in battle, and he relentlessly hunts down his targets until they're dead by his hands. He kills Rebecca instantly with a Goomba Stomp and then rips apart and executes David in their final battle within a matter of minutes.
  • In Death Note, Matt is chased and cornered by mooks and explains that they aren't going to shoot him because they'll need to interrogate him. They shoot him to death immediately, with one remarking that Matt was obviously stalling.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The Upper Rank One Demon Kokushibo is this. When a fight starts and his sword is drawn, he aims to bring his opponent down and break them completely. The most he'll allow is for a defeated foe to become a demon themselves.
    • Sekido, Hatengu's anger avatar. Unlike Karaku and Urogi, he tries to execute the enemy as soon as possible and wastes no time dealing with them.
  • God from DEVILMAN crybaby. Demons cackle, complain, gloat, and contort themselves in all sorts of goofy ways. God? He acts swiftly, mercilessly, and wordlessly.
  • Metalseadramon and Machinedramon from Digimon Adventure. Both contrast their Villain Ball carrying colleagues Puppetmon and Piedmon by being as efficient as possible:
    • Metalseadramon prefers not to play with his food, just cook it. This makes him stand out among his companions (especially Puppetmon and Piedmon) who prefer to play with their food, even if they have to hold the Villain Ball while doing it.
    • Machinedramon, as sadistic as he was, he did not hesitate to immediately start leveling the city once the children were masking their location.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Frieza is one when he is being methodical, or when he is pushed to his limits. On Namek, when he realized that Dende was healing the Z-Warriors he was fighting, the little Namekian was his very first target after completing his last transformation. Dragon Ball Minus reveals that he gathered all the Saiyans in Planet Vegeta to exterminate them all with his planet. Of course, his overconfidence and sadism tend to limit this trait when he fights personally.
      • Once Goku arrives back on Earth to fight him, Frieza makes it clear in no uncertain terms he's not playing around like on Namek and immediately jumps from Form 1 to his final and true form for battle. Subverted in that he could have just immediately gone Golden and finished Goku then and there, Super Saiyan Blue be damned, but instead does not go Golden until he needs to and from that moment on once more starts playing around with Goku, depleting his own stamina instead of finishing Goku off because he wants to see Goku suffer that much. Naturally, it blows up in his face, again. He's wised up some by the Tournament of Power.
    • Cell is this while imperfect — as he knows he is too weak to win against his stronger foes without gaining power, he instead deliberately and mercilessly kills to gain power. When fighting those he knows he can defeat, he methodically goes after anyone who makes themselves a threat — once he is struck by anyone entering the fight he immediately makes sure they can't return later to screw up his plans before continuing his main goal. After he becomes Perfect, however, he starts holding the Villain Ball more often. Given that the likes of Goku and Vegeta were used as sources for his DNA, a Blood Knight nature is literally In the Blood for Cell, and once he's complete he just can't hold it back anymore.
      • Cell gains some of this back after regenerating From a Single Cell and becoming Super Perfect. Upon returning to Earth, he one-shots Trunks before the dust even clears, and after nearly killing Vegeta and crippling Gohan's arm, outright declares that he's through playing games and anything less than complete universal destruction is a waste of his power.
    • Future Trunks is a rare heroic example. He doesn't hold back to make things fun; he fights at full force from the beginning. Trunks finishes off Frieza on Earth without letting him find a chance to counter. When he gets back to the future, Trunks kills 17 and 18, permanently preventing Cell from achieving his perfect form. When Cell showed up anyway, Trunks also destroyed Cell in his weakest form without giving him a chance to fight back. It's also revealed in Dragon Ball Super that when his timeline's incarnations of Babidi and Dabura arrived on Earth to awaken Majin Buu, Trunks instantly destroyed them both without letting them even plead their case.
    • Goku himself also occasionally takes this tack, mostly against Cell and Super/Kid Buu. Cell he just tried to kill from the start, and against Super Buu, he did everything possible to avoid a fair fight (including fusing with Vegeta) from the beginning, while he only reached this conclusion with Kid Buu when he realized that reasoning with him was no longer an option whatsoever. When Goku is given a second chance with Frieza due to Whis rewinding time before he destroyed Earth, Goku goes straight to obliterating Frieza and making sure he's actually dead, as opposed to Namek.
    • Once Super Buu enters the fray, his first move (after gruesomely killing a bystander) is to fly straight to Kami's Lookout and demand that Piccolo present the "worthy opponent" that he had been promised (Gotenks). When Piccolo tries to stall for time by pointing out that there are people left on Earth for Buu to kill, Buu immediately annihilates just about every bystander left on the planet (except Mr. Satan) with an energy wave he calls the "Human Extinction" attack, to the horror of everyone. He then demands, with no further distractions, to see his opponent. He later declares that, even if Goku and Gohan were to fuse, they still couldn't defeat him, but then immediately adds that he isn't going to take the chance and will just kill them now to be certain.
    • Kid Buu one-ups even Super Buu. Instead of fighting the heroes, he simply blows up the entire planet, knowing that he can regenerate from almost anything. Goku and Vegeta are forced to fight Kid Buu on the world of the Kais because it's one of the few planets he can't oneshot. In fact, even though Kid Buu isn't as strong as Super Buu, he's considered far more dangerous as unlike Super Buu, Kid Buu can't be reasoned with, and doesn't care about a good fight; he just wants to destroy everything for its own sake.
    • King Piccolo from the original Dragon Ball series. His first order of business upon his return is to kill all the world's martial artists so no-one can ever seal him again and collect the Dragon Balls to wish for youth. Upon finding out that two of his children are killed, he goes and deals with the threat directly and nearly kills Goku, even checks his heart to make sure he was dead. He allows the other heroes to collect the remaining Dragon Balls and swallowed his so they couldn't steal them. When he was about to make his wish Chiaotzu attempted to interrupt, only to be quickly killed. Once he regained his youth, he kills the Eternal Dragon so no one could ever use the Dragon Balls against him. There's a reason he remains the only villain in the series to win, only losing in the end because he never counted on Goku's heart restarting after he left.
    • Although not as ruthless as the above villains, Mercenary Tao. Being a professional assassin, he more often than not goes for quick kills. When Goku proved to be durable against physical blows, he attempts to pierce his heart with a finger beam. His only true mistake was not checking Goku's body.
    • King Cold, Frieza's father. When he and Mecha-Frieza went to Earth to get revenge on Goku, Cold suggested just blowing the planet up from orbit; it was Frieza who adamantly insisted on landing and personally killing everyone there to make Goku suffer. Since Future Trunks shows up and kills the two of them shortly after, Frieza should have gone with Cold's plan.
    • Vegeta becomes this on the rare occasions he's not letting his ego get the best of him. In the Namek Saga, he quickly kills the members of the Ginyu Force when Goku chooses not to do so, and in Resurrection 'F', he outright tells Frieza that he's nowhere near as merciful as Goku and won't give Frieza the chance to walk away.
    • Syn/Omega Shenron, the Final Boss of Dragon Ball GT. He attacks Goku when he's exhausted and weak from fighting Nuova and Eis. Later, when Goku and Vegeta fuse into Gogeta and nearly kill him only for the Fusion time to wear out, he does everything he possibly can to prevent them from fusing again.
    • Beerus, God of Destruction of Universe 7. He does like fighting and sees Goku and Vegeta as Worthy Opponents, but when he's on the job, he is swift and merciless. Zamasu assassinating Gowasu (undone by a time rewind) and attacking Goku gets him swiftly stopped and Hakai'd. No banter, no fight, just obliteration.
    • Goku Black from Dragon Ball Super is this trope to frightening degrees. Unlike most villains who toy with their opponents, Goku Black is a ruthless mass-murderer who focuses solely on killing opponents as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's best shown in his fight with Goku and Vegeta in the future. After letting Vegeta wail on him for a while to show how much stronger he's become since his last fight with Goku, he then knocks him away, transforms into his new Super Saiyan Rose form and swiftly impales Vegeta in the chest with a Laser Blade. Later, he double teams Goku and Trunks with Future Zamasu rather than let him handle things himself, the two of them nearly killing Goku and Trunks had it not been for Vegeta, Future Mai, and Future Yajirobe.
    • Zen'o is this when the situation presents itself. One look at the cosmic horror Merged Zamasu had become after merging with the entire multiverse in that timeline, was all Future Zen'o needed before deciding to destroy the entire multiverse in that timeline, and obliterate the immortal Zamasu in the process.
    • Hit is a renowned assassin who will not toy around with his targets, preferring to end his battles or kill his targets as efficiently as possible. At least, until he finds a Worthy Opponent. This is shown perfectly in episode 71 when we see him in the middle of a hit job on a local crime boss. He uses Time Skip to bypass all the boss' security guards and reach his target, calmly tells said target that he's hired to kill him, then promptly punches a hole through said target's chest, ignoring his pleas for mercy and killing him instantly. And when he fights Goku again, he lets Goku hit him a few times to showcase his intangibility powers, then promptly punches him through the heart, killing him instantly.
    • Piccolo has identified that not being this is the biggest flaw possessed by Goku and Gohan, as they consistently drop their guard due to arrogance and their own certainty in their power, and both of them have been beaten as a result (Goku vs Frieza, Gohan vs Buu). As seen in the two-versus-two match between the team of Goku and Tien Shinhan versus Gohan and Piccolo, he's successfully trained this flaw out of Gohan. Even in the lulls in combat, Gohan is completely silent, on-guard, and ready, and when fighting he is absolutely unrelenting. Contrast that with his arrogance when he was at peak power versus both Cell and Buu.
    • Android 17 during the Tournament of Power. When Brianne de Chateau and co. try to transform into their Magical Girl alter-egos, he simply blasts them stupid before they can finish. It takes Brianne, Goku, and Toppo to browbeat him into letting it happen.
  • One Piece:
    • Crocodile doesn't usually mess around unless he's absolutely sure he can do so and has the time for a minor distraction. When he first fought Luffy, Crocodile gave him a few minutes to attack pointlessly, then promptly kicked his ass. He also avoids carrying the Villain Ball during a battle with some mercenaries; when they drank some water that would enhance their strength but kill them in a few minutes, Crocodile just flew to the top of a palace and waited for them to keel over.
    • Mr.1/Daz Bones, who ranks just below Crocodile, fits the trope even better. Since he can turn any part of his body into a blade, he wastes little time cutting his opponents to pieces.
    • Hawkeye Mihawk. One of the only two people in the series who doesn't call their attacks and most of his battles end in one strike. He rarely stops to chat, choosing only to speak after his opponent is defeated or too weak to do anything against him. The one time he does get especially chatty was to Zoro during their first encounter, but that's only because the difference in their skill was so obvious that Zoro couldn't so much as hit Mihawk. (That, and Mihawk admired Zoro's resolve).
    • Even more so Magellan. He rarely speaks while fighting, and when he comes across Blackbeard and his crew invading Impel Down, he attacks them instantly instead of questioning their motives.
    • There's also Vergo, who's just as no-nonsense as Magellan. Despite his quirks with forgetting things, he plays no games when it comes to fighting or taking care of his business. He goes straight for the kill every time with no smiling, laughing, or even evil-gloating at all. He also cruelly punishes those who don't show him respect. Vergo also does not wait for his opponents to finish calling out their attacks or performing gestures to use their powers, deliberately interrupting them mid-sentence or mid-gesture with his Super-Speed.
    • Akainu is also a great example. Since he lacks Aokiji's empathy and Kizaru's laziness, he will do everything in his power to kill pirates and will only chat with them if it means manipulating them into fighting a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in his favor or doing a task for him.
    • Fujitora has also shown himself to have these qualities. Like Akainu, he doesn't mess around and will pull out all the stops right off the bat to finish his fights as quickly as possible. Unlike Akainu, he tries to limit casualties as much as possible and goes out of his way to make sure that any collateral damage is either repaired or fairly compensated.
    • Charolette Katakuri is definitely this. Unlike the majority of his brothers and sisters who tend to be more relaxed when not fighting, Katakuri is always in a dead-serious mode. Whenever he's fighting any opponent, he always goes for the kill, nothing more. He even told his older brother to kill off the Vinsmokes when the latter kept gloating at them. Katakuri is also one of few opponents who doesn't underestimate Luffy from the start as he already knows Luffy is a formidable opponent.
    • Kaido doesn't play games. Unlike the other four Emperors, he isn't merciful, talkative or overly sadistic. If he sees you as a threat, then chances are you'll be reduced to an unconscious, bloody pulp within mere seconds of fighting him, if you aren't killed outright. Just ask Eustass Kidd, Luffy and the Akazaya Nine — all of whom were curb-stomped when Kaido got serious.
    • Jack "the Drought" only cares about killing his enemies. Any attempts to talk or negotiate with him are met with violence.
    • King "the Wildfire'' never bothers with posturing, monologuing or codes of honor. If he goes after someone, he'll use everything he's got to quickly dispatch them.
    • "Red-Hair" Shanks, Luffy's pirate idol, is in general a very jovial guy, often teasing his friends. But in battle, he's nothing but serious. When he realizes that Eustass "Captain" Kid is going to unleash an attack that will wipe out his allies, he immediately moves in and shuts Kid down in one blow.
  • Lord Hazanko from Outlaw Star. He is deadly serious, if extremely brutal with his enemies. If regular pirates are not cut out for his missions, he usually sends in his most reliable assassin Shimi, first and foremost. When it comes to his overall goal, he is careful enough, and works efficiently to achieve his ultimate goal.
  • Bleach:
    • Ulquiorra Cifer. Unlike his bombastic colleagues, Ulquiorra is not the type of person who goes into hammy speeches or sadism. He just chooses to get the job done as efficiently as possible. Whenever he fights against Ichigo, he does not laugh maniacally or smile. He simply does his best to eliminate him or kill him. He has the distinction of being the one and only antagonist in the series to bring Ichigo to the verge of death, and pretty much the only reason he survives is because his revival was just that big of an Ass Pull.
    • Yhwach trained the Vandenreich to not screw around in battle. They're supposed to get in, engage the enemy, and get out again. Individual Quincies vary in how well they meet this objective, and Yhwach has killed off at least some of his elites for screwing up. Yhwach doesn't explain his abilities until after they're already in effect. He's been able to use a doppelganger to masquerade as him to uncover Yamamoto's Bankai, and Yamamoto had no idea until it was far too late. Ichibei also thought he was defeating Yhwach until Yhwach had fully understood Ichibei's powers and destroyed him. The best Quincies at following Yhwach's strategy appear to be Lille and Pernida. Lille takes his sniper abilities very seriously and is happy to pick off Shinigami from a distance to "cull the herd" while Pernida doesn't explain his abilities at all, leaving his opponents to try and muddle through what's happening; even Mayuri struggles to understand Pernida's ability.
    • Jugram Haschwalth. Should Jugram truly fight or carry out orders outside of battle given by His Majesty, Yhwach, Jugram will waste time on neither sarcastic wit nor trash talking. When he faces Bazz-B on Wahrwelt, he does not give him any chances to damage him and severely damage him with each slash from his sword. When he learns that Uryu was intentionally betraying him and the Schutzstaffel, and attempting to destroy Wahrwelt, he immediately attempts to kill him. As soon as he finds out Uryu's Schrift, he prevents Uryu from running by returning all the damage he received and attempt to finish him off when he is too injured to move.
    • Heroic example in Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto. Yamamoto is brutal and serious. During the battle against Aizen and his Arrancar, he imprisons Kaname, Gin, and Aizen himself in powerful flames. When he actually fights during the war, he makes sure Ayon is completely destroyed. Rather than despair that Ryuujin Jakka is nullified by the Arrancar, he ultimately killed Wonderweiss through other means. During the invasion started by the Vandenreich, as soon as he sees Driscoll Berci using his subordinate's Bankai, he immediately incinerates him. When he faces Yhwach, he immediately uses Bankai, rather than have another sword clash, and makes it clear that he wanted to annihilate him, not looking forward to waste time on other things.
  • In Cells at Work!, bacteria are depicted as cackling Shonen antagonists. However, in Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, they're mostly incommunicado and vicious, acting more like professional invading soldiers, with the sole exception being Gonococcus, who act like hentai monsters. The Body in question is a complete 15th Annual Feces Presentation, so the bacteria are winning and have no need to taunt the immune system with how badass they think they are.
  • Bazett in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA 2wei! initially presents herself as this. Being the one initially tasked with collecting the Class Cards, she's not happy with someone else in the Mage Association taking her off the role and giving it to Rin and Luvia in a blatant power play, so she waits until all the cards have been collected, and then marches into Luvia's mansion unannounced and demands that she hand them over or she'll take them by force (and being an absurdly powerful Bare-Fisted Monk who can go toe-to-toe with Servants, take them by force is exactly what she does, even to the point of being willing to kill Kuro to retrieve the Archer card.) Her actions would ultimately bite her in the ass, though, as it turns out that Rin and Luvia had found the location of an undiscovered eight Class Card, which meant that her trying to kill them without stopping and listening to them jeopardized her original mission, as they were the only ones who even knew it existed. She also completely destroys Luvia's mansion in the process, causing an angry Mage Association to saddle her with the repair bill, driving her broke and homeless.
  • Wrath from Fullmetal Alchemist is most definitely this. Unlike his superior, Father, or the other homunculi, when in battle, he won't yammer on about his own species' superiority, hint to their villainous plan, or needlessly torture his opponents. If he sees you as a threat, he will make sure to dispose of you as quickly as possible, or at least incapacitate you, so you're easier to use for Father's plan, like threatening to kill your childhood friend if you resign from the military. Justified in that, unlike the rest of the villains, he doesn't have a Healing Factor or Resurrective Immortality to give him the free time to blather on.
  • In Gamaran, Combat Pragmatists are common. One of the straightest examples could be Ango Kuryuu of the Muhou School, who decides to stop his opponents... by bringing along his elite pupils to help him and quickly gets rid on one of the two targets (Zenmaru) with one blow. Another one is Tsuchiryuu: when facing the Ogame and Nakaizumi school members at the main gate, he first goes for the mook archers, killing them all in melee, and then takes on Gensai and fully takes advantage of his dead angle to try to kill him.
  • The Major from Hellsing. When talking to Zorin Blitz about her mission of observing the Hellsing manor until he arrives, he describes Integra and Seras as imperfect, inexperienced and untested. To him, they deserve the same scrutiny and caution as facing Alucard.
  • The Band of Seven from Inuyasha. While they do have their quirks, they are certainly less prone to Villain Ball moments than most of the villains, if anything if not for the intervention of Sesshomaru and Myoga, the group would've suffered severe casualties.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: Zigzagged with Ryomen Sukuna; he's extremely dangerous, clever and powerful, with every appearance he makes always dramatically worsening the situation for the heroes. What stops him from being this all the time is him putting his own wants and desires above all others, to the point of being willing to attack Yuji's enemies for perceived slights, and refusal to act in benefit of another if he perceives them as coercing him into it. Sukuna is a force of nature, and can equally help or hinder the heroes through his destructive actions, though his absolute malice towards all is always made clear.
    • Jogo, the strongest of the Disaster Curses, plays this straight. When he gets to Nanami, Maki and Naobito's location after Dagon's death, he instantly incinerates the whole group without giving any of them a chance to counterattack. When he encounters Nanako and Mimiko, he only asks them how many of Sukuna's fingers they force-fed Yuji, and when they refuse to answer, he simply blasts them. And in the rare instances he finds himself severely outmatched (namely against Gojo and Sukuna), he will absolutely fight his heart out to bring his opponent down. Unfortunately for him, it still isn't enough to defeat Sukuna, who outclasses him by a country mile.
    • The biggest example in the series, however, would be Toji Fushiguro. If there's a target he's been paid to eliminate, that person is DEAD, no questions asked. Sukuna and Jogo will usually make their precense known to their enemies, whether it's to intimidate them or examine the situation at hand. Toji doesn't even do that and immediately goes right for the throat out of nowhere - literally in Gojo's case, along with disemboweling him and and stabbing him through his brain. On top of that, he actually succeeds in his misson of killing Riko; he shoots her in the head then curb-stomps Geto afterwards, only sparing him so he can live with the shame of losing to a non-sorcerer. When he discovers that Gojo has come back from the verge of death stronger than before thanks to discovering the Reversed Cursed Technique, Toji fights him even more ferociously than he did the last time, to the bitter end.
  • The roles are reversed in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. The villain, Char Aznable, goes out of his way multiple times to defeat Amuro on even terms, obsessed with avenging his pride by defeating him fair and square. Amuro, on the hand, prioritizes stopping Char from crashing Axis into Earth over all else, and is willing to do anything to stop him, damn the rivalry; he attempts to shoot and kill Char while the latter is unarmed and is only stopped by an unexpected intervention. In their final engagement, Amuro spends most of the battle running away from Char in order to mess with Axis' trajectory and finally deals the deathblow to Char's Mobile Suit by striking it from behind while Char is distracted.
  • Rustal Ellion from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. Rustal does not hold back and is perfectly willing to make full use of his fleet's power to crush his enemies into oblivion.
  • My Hero Academia: All For One doesn't play around. When he sees Best Jeanist and the group of Pro Heroes in the Nomu factory, he distracts them with small talk, then blasts them away with a supercharged Air Cannon. The only reason they weren't killed on the spot was due to Best Jeanist using his Fiber Quirk to pull the others out of the line of fire.
    • Kai Chisaki/Overhaul is similarly unwilling to waste time with small talk or Evil Gloating. His primary focus, from beginning to end, is squarely on killing his opponents. Overhaul is even willing to play dirty by having his henchmen fire potshots at his opponents, aiming attacks at a small child, knowing Mirio would shield her from them, and will even fuse with one of his men if that's what it takes to stop them. The end result: Mirio ends up de-powered and greivously injured and Nighteye is fatally wounded and dies in the hospital. According to one of Nighteye's visions, Deku would have been killed as well, if not for Eri.
  • Homura Akemi of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a heroic example of this trope. Whenever she encounters a witch she immediately invokes her time-stopping powers and unleashes an unholy rain of modern weapons and ammo to kill the resident witch and didn't waste any time or momentum up against Walpurgisnacht even though it had no effect. Justified in that she's been repeating a "Groundhog Day" Loop for a while now and has gotten quite efficient at it.
  • Two from Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl:
    • Paul. Part of the reason he beats Ash so soundly is because he's completely focused on the battle from beginning to end, not allowing himself any distractions by either gloating or responding to Ash's comments.
    • J. She has on several occasions reneged on an actual battle and just tried to straight-up kill Ash directly. Her battling style also consists of simply steamrolling any obstacles she finds herself up against.
  • Amethio from Pokémon Horizons: The Series. Amethio is an antagonist played almost completely straight, with next to no comedic traits (which are instead given to his subordinates). As a result, he's a serious threat anytime he's around, and he has to be dealt with with direct force, and many times the protagonist just opts to flee from him. This is a significant shake-up from good old Rockets, as this kind of antagonist tends to be a Knight of Cerebus only showing up well into a season, but Amethio is around from episode one, which sharply warps the storyline around the danger he represents. This in turn reshapes the main character group as well, as the story necessitates a powerful elite trainer (Friede) to cover the newbie protagonists. And even then, most of the fights between Amethio and Friede have not been conclusive, as all of them get interrupted or the RVT group flees as soon as they can. The fight between Friede and Amethio in HZ 025 finally has a conclusive result, with Friede's Charizard defeating Amethio's Ceruledge, but Amethio notably pushed Friede into enough of a corner to force Friede to Terastallize his Charizard and unleash a powerful Tera Blast.
  • Ranma ½ has Shampoo, who has the motto "Obstacles are for killing", and it's not just words: when she thinks she can get away with it, she'll resort to outright murder to get what she wants.
    • The clearest example is when the Tendo engagement to Ranma had been transferred to Nabiki: Ukyo and Kodachi were quickly suckered in trying to buy it, but in the middle of the 'auction' Shampoo, who had not tried to kill anyone for a while, appeared and tried to kill Nabiki because, she said, that way it was free. Much to Nabiki's horror, Ukyo and Kodachi realize she's right.
  • Rosario + Vampire has Hokuto, who only engages in typical Villain Ball-type behaviour to get his enemies to drop their guard and further his plan rather than for his own amusement, isolates the good guys from each other so they can't all attack him at once and Tsukune can't unleash Inner Moka, dominates the resulting fight with a merciless No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Xanatos Speed Chesses his way past an interference which truly took him (and everyone else,) by surprise, only engages in Evil Gloating in order to play for time, and even when he is eventually outmatched he uses My Defense Need Not Protect Me Forever to gain the advantage anyway, and his plan only fails because he is apparently so touched by Tsukune's idealism that he surrenders willingly, and we later find out that even this had an ulterior motive.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Eudial, who would retreat once she saw there was no reason for her to remain, use her Daimons not to extract her victims' Pure Heart Crystals but to cover her retreat once she extracted it much faster with a technological device of her invention and verified it wasn't the right one and the one time she did stay and fight she did it by luring her opponents in a building she had previously filled with traps, and even shot Sailor Neptune with heavy machine guns, and that was in spite of her flamethrower being able to overpower Sailor Moon's attacks. The fact she lost isn't because she was ineffective, it was because the Sailor Soldiers were just that formidable (for example, the machine guns ran out of ammo before scratching Sailor Neptune), and in the last confrontation Sailor Moon obtained a power-up that made her attacks more powerful than her flamethrower.
    • In the manga, Sailor Venus is one. The very first thing she does when she appears in person is to throw a cutting boomerang at Zoisite from behind, and that's before showing herself. When Makoto gets Brainwashed and Crazy she just sucker-kicks her in the face with enough strength to throw her across the room, and when Beryl foolishly appears in person she uses the first opening to gut her like a fish with a sword made of something harder than diamond and poisonous to boot. Notably, she wasn't like that before: in Codename: Sailor V she was rather hammy and time-wasting, only starting to become this in the three Pet Chapters (the second villain, Wan-Wan, was suddenly beheaded while he was complaining about her incredibly long speech, while the first and the third faced chemical weapons: Nyan-Nyan and her minions were knocked by a stinking smell so strong they fainted and then finished while they were still down, and the mosquito youma Chuu-Chuu got killed by magical mosquito-repelling incense).
    • Sailor Galaxia, both in anime and manga:
      • In the anime, most of the series is her first freeing Nehellenia to "train" Sailor Moon into getting her final power-up, and then using her minions to draw Kakyuu out. The moment Kakyuu is found, Galaxia enters the fight personally and wipes out all of humanity.
      • In the manga she needs Sailor Moon alive for her plan, so she sends her minions after her... And makes sure she cannot rely on her allies, personally going after Sailor Venus and the Outers, the most dangerous ones.
  • Saint Seiya:
    • Saga, whose assassins should be overkill against the expected opposition and dramatically raises the stakes every time the previous attempt fails. The only reason he fails is that the heroes are lucky enough that something always distracts his envoys long enough for them to turn the tables...
      • Even once his evil side is dealt with he maintains this trait. In Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold the only reason some of his opponents survive his arrival on the scene is that they see he's charging a Galaxian Explosion and run, that and after disintegrating their fortification and killing most of their numbers he didn't have time to track them down.
    • Deconstructed in the anime with Phaeton: having been ordered to recover the helm of the Gold Cloth and kill Saori's Saints and having every resource of the Sanctuary but the Gold Saints at his disposal, he sends in Lizard Misty, the strongest of the Silver Saints after Shaina who was never even touched in battle... And when Seiya barely comes out on top and kills him he's suddenly without his best resource, with Shaina not being really trustworthy due to being Ax-Crazy.
  • Tao Ren from Shaman King is an Anti-heroic example. He nearly killed Yoh in their first fight, almost cutting his abdomen open with his guandao. Yoh remained in the hospital for days afterwards, but got his revenge shortly after. Even after becoming an ally, Ren still remains pragmatic and focused.
  • The Washyuu family from Tokyo Ghoul. The entire family (Tsuneyoshi, Yoshitoki, Matsuri and Kichimura) are focused on getting results and success above all else, human costs be damned.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! has Yami Marik. The first thing he does once he's out is try and kill the comatose Rishid to make sure he can't wake up and bring back the real Marik. He later banishes Marik from his mind so he can't fight his control over their body.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light has Anubis. After Yugi defeats him in a duel, Anubis turns into a monster and decides to skip the card games, attacking his foes directly with intent to kill.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions has Aigami/Diva. When he learns that Kaiba has found the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle at the excavated site of the ceremonial battle, he immediately tries to erase him from existence. It only fails thanks to Kaiba's new duel disc, which lets him No-Sell the power of the Quantum Cube, forcing Aigami to duel him instead.
    • The Light of Destruction possessing Sartorius in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. The Light of Destruction, after securing Aster's key, forces Jaden into a Sadistic Choice for Aster's life in order to make him give up his key without having to duel him. It's only the intervention of Neos that forces The Light to duel Jaden after all, and even then, he steals the keys and gives them to a re-brainwashed Ojin to activate the satellite while he keeps duel Jaden to keep him busy.
      • Sartorius, himself. In both of his duels with Judai, he employs a strategy that practically doesn't let him do anything and gives him an overwhelming advantage while at it (The Light Barrier in the first duel and implanting The Fool in his deck for the second one) because he is aware of Judai's strength and capacity for miraculous comebacks...and he's right to fear it. He's arguably the least cocky villain in the series.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V:
      • Shun Kurosaki only concentrates on winning, never acknowledges the crowd nor talks to his opponents except to play his cards or give a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. He grew up in a place where Duel Monsters was to the death, not purely a fun past time.
      • Yuto, as well. Just like Kurosaki, he never responds to any trash talk and calmly plays his turn. He wasn't fazed at all, meeting Yuya, who is said to look just like him. However, he was going to leave Sora alone since he was injured, until he provoked him. He's also a lot more merciful, trying not to hurt his opponent, and stops the duel with Yuya once Sora is taken away.
      • Yuya Sakaki later faces several opponents like Sector Security who don't give a crap about his Entertainment Duel shtick and just continue to stoically play to win.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS:
      • Ryoken Kogami/Revolver doesn't mess around when it comes to exterminating all the Ignis, not even bothering with the idea of co-existing with them. He challenges Playmaker as soon as he can to retrieve a captive Ai, first via a brainwashed Blue Angel then himself. After his loss, immediately created the Tower of Hanoi program with his father in an effort to wipe out the Ignis no matter where they are on the Internet. He also chastises Playmaker for still believing humans and AI can coexist when it's clear Lightning and Windy wants to control humanity, declaring that he will wipe them all before letting his lieutenants impale a defeated Windy with a virus program.
      • A rare protagonist example in Yusaku Fujiki. He's not Dueling for fun, but for Revenge and likes to finish duels quickly.

    Comic Books 
  • In the The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past tie-in comic adaptation, Agahnim is very competent. He personally kills Link's uncle, believing him the only last descendant of the Knights of Hyrule that could wield the Master Sword. When he gets reports of Link retrieving the first Pendant, he realizes that Link might be of the bloodline as well, and immediately sends his soldiers out to apprehend Link and burn the library, which holds the Book of Mudora that contains the knowledge needed to retrieve the next Pendant.
  • In Paperinik New Adventures, the Evronians have no tolerance for any potential threat to their invasion of Earth and react with overwhelming force, with Paperinik's existence being met with sending three assassination teams with orders to kill him quickly and then start looking for more, because if there's one such individual there could be multiple.
    • Quite fittingly, Paperinik himself is one, with absolutely no qualms about stomping the weaknesses of his opponents in the most efficient and brutal way possible, with the only concessions to spectacle being made because a showy Terror Hero is scarier. He's so effective that an Evronian warrior who fought him has nightmares about it in spite of being emotionally crippled like all low caste Evronians, and had an instant Villainous Breakdown the moment they met again.
  • The Punisher:
    • Inverted (at least with respect to morality) in a Punisher/Batman crossover.
      Punisher: I've got all the therapy you'll ever need right here, comedian.
      Joker: ...you're really going to shoot?
    • Played with in the regular comics quite a lot, especially the MAX series. In the "In the Beginning" arc, villain Nicky Cavella puts a gun to the Punisher's head when the Punisher is tied up and pulls the trigger. The Punisher dodges the shot and bites off several of Cavella's fingers. Later lampshaded in the "Widowmaker" arc, where several villains comment how every time the Punisher is captured, the villain doesn't just shoot him.
  • Watchmen:
    • It's mentioned that during the heyday of costumed heroes most of them knew to differentiate between actual criminals and those who were just dressed up and looking for attention. There was one guy who liked to go around in a costume and pretend he was a villain in order to get beat up by heroes (at least until whatever hero it was realized the guy was getting off on being beat up). He tried it on Rorschach eventually and was promptly tossed down an open elevator-shaft to his death.
    • Also exemplified by the Wham Line delivered by the Big Bad: "Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

    Fan Works 
  • Downplayed in BURN THE WITCH (Miraculous Ladybug): Witch Hunter, the Akumatized villain of the piece, is out to get Lila Rossi for her lies and while she has magic to help her raise a huge bunch of irate citizens to step in line with her cause, what she wants to do to Lila once she gets her hands on her is to lynch her, none of those fancy methods other Akumatized villains have used to get rid of their targets like sending them to a pocket dimension or turning them into zombies or disintegrating them.
  • Team Rocket Admins in Challenger don't use low-level Pokemon that are only slightly stronger than the heroes. They use ridiculously powerful Pokemon and will attack enemy trainers directly whenever they can. Ash's first encounter with an Admin nearly kills him after Proton poisons him with a Crobat. The second time, Proton uses a Rhydon that's so much stronger that even three on one, Ash's Pokemon can barely scratch it even when using super effective moves.
  • Couturiere is an incredibly intelligent Akuma. What little theatrics she does are also made for pragmatic reasons, and when Lila first pisses her off, she forgoes them completely and starts beating the crap out of her.
  • Lord Garmadon and his son Lloyd are this in the fanfic The dark never consumes all, for the light remains within its core, primarily to Marinette's classmates in the mask and out respectively. The former has beaten them twice on the battlefield, whilst the latter doesn’t buy any of Lila’s lies or their excuses.
  • A Hollow in Equestria
    • Ulquiorra Cifer is a Nominal Hero example of this trope. His preferred tactic when faced with a threat to Equestria is to kill it outright. Were it not for interference from the ponies he's tasked with protecting, there would be a lot more dead villains, and potentially a lot less suffering from innocent bystanders when he's forced to play nice.
    • Nightmare Moon tried to employ this trope during her arc as the story villain. She recognized that her own overconfidence would get her defeated/killed, especially against the likes of Ulquiorra. She recognized him as the superior threat and understood her standard tactics wouldn't work against him, and made multiple attempts at killing him outright. Had he not been such an Outside-Context Problem her approach might've succeeded.
  • Harry Potter/Uchiha in Itachi, Is That a Baby? is known to immediately kill anyone who attacks him (or he's being paid to kill) and later teaches his students the same philosophy. As a result, when a group of foreign wizards attack the Quidditch World Cup, every one of them is killed by the new aurors who've been taught to only take prisoners if they need information and/or to ransom.
  • Heroic example with Jonathan in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged, to the point where stopping to have an Internal Monologue will lead to a fist to the face. Lampshaded by Dio.
    Dio: Seriously? Let me finish my sentences!
  • In the J-WITCH Series, Drago treats fighting the Guardians much more ruthlessly than most of their other enemies. For example, in "The Knights of Vengeance" he doesn't just plot to trap them in a valley but also starts a chemical fire in that valley in order to kill them with poison gas, while in "What's More Dangerous?" he immediately singles out Jade to try and kill her when he learns she can permanently destroy his Annihilators.
  • Subverted in Superman fanfic Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation. Muto has no intention of giving Superman a fair fight. He wants him dead as soon and as quickly as possible. However, Superman keeps him talking long enough to find a way to defeat him.
  • Miraculous! Rewrite does away with much of Hawkmoth's propensity for Evil Gloating, having him more singularly focused upon his plan to revive his wife.
  • The MLP Loops: It's not uncommon for variant loops to have villains put aside their gloating and just get the job done. Tirek is the most common example (as he was only a little bit of a Cold Ham in canon), but it happens to everyone. In one loop, Twilight is captured by Chrysalis, waiting for Chrysalis to leave her alone in the caves so that she can rescue Cadence and save the day... and Chrysalis just slits her throat before Twilight can blink. Of course, Chrysalis had no way of knowing that Twilight was the Anchor and that the loop can't exist without her; the loop crashes when Twilight dies.
  • Kyril Sutherland from the remastered version of The Night Unfurls is a heroic example who prefers to-the-point conversations over beating around the bush. He never messes around when conducting a task or hunting down his prey, comfortable with striking when his enemies drop their guard, as well as flinging an exploding star to a villain's face as soon as said villain reveals his Evil Plan.
  • In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, there's Capriccio, a Team Cipher Commander (later Admin) who is absolutely ruthless when it comes to getting the job done, and if he so much suspects of someone being his niece or nephew, he'll kill them on the spot, no questions asked.
  • Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Human!world Sombra is an immortal lich who, despite devolving into a Generic Doomsday Villain due to repeated resurrections, is still a swift and merciless enemy who wastes no time playing games. Word of God is that Sombra was originally supposed to be a joke while Chrysalis was the serious one, but they ended up being switched, with Chrysalis as a Corrupt Corporate Executive Card-Carrying Villain fighting with her pony counterpart over which of them is more evil.
  • While he's known to drag things out for one reason or another, Naruto doesn't screw around in Reaching for a Dream after Danzo tries to have Xanna kidnapped and used as a hostage. Danzo's actually impressed that rather than go through official channels to see Danzo punished, Naruto skips straight to an assassination attempt that would've succeeded if Danzo didn't sacrifice Shisui's eye via Izanagi to survive. Even still, Naruto left behind no evidence linking him to the attempt.
  • In The Rise of Darth Vulcan, the titular evil warlock is calm, analytical, and ruthless, in stark contrast to the usual threat Equestria has to face: Megalomanaiacal Physical Gods with a penchant for giggling sociopathy, gloating, dramatics, and other things the Evil Overlord List (which Vulcan not only read but memorized) warns against.
  • The Ultimate Big Brother: Just as in canon, Charlotte Katakuri embodies this trope, taking his opponent very seriously despite how ridiculous they are. However, this time he's a protagonist working against the goofy but far more malevolent Monokuma. Despite the fact that Monokuma is a robotic teddy bear, Katakuri does not underestimate him, treating him as a serious threat.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Barbie of Swan Lake, Rothbart transforms Odette, then immediately tries to kill her. He succeeds in disintegrating her, but the Magic Crystal saves her.
  • Big Hero 6:
    • Yokai is a surprisingly dangerous villain for a Disney film. He is not played humorously at any point, and will do anything he can to achieve his goals. When fighting, Yokai does not fuck around. He does whatever it takes to defeat his enemies, from sneak attacks to lethal force. He doesn't stop to talk, gloat, monologue, or snark. He can't be bought, threatened or reasoned with. He doesn't care if his opponents are children or are his students. And he certainly doesn't let little things like collateral damage stop him. If you get in his way, he will kill you. The only reason the gang survived after he drove them into the harbor waters is that he didn't stick around to make sure they didn't surface afterwards.
    • At one point Hiro nearly engages in this. The moment he realizes Yokai is Callaghan and that he had a hand in Tadashi's death, he rips out Baymax's healthcare chip and orders him to "destroy" Callaghan, which he nearly succeeds in doing (despite the rest of the team slowing him down) before Honey replaces the healthcare chip. Even after this, Hiro remains intent on killing Callaghan, and it's only after Baymax refuses to let him remove the healthcare chip again that he calms down and realizes what he's doing.
  • In The Book of Life, everything about Chakal is completely serious, and he wastes no time in being as brutal a fighter as he can.
  • Hopper from ABugsLife. He never underestimates the ants, unlike literally every other grasshopper in his entourage, and is fully aware his way of life precariously hangs on the ants' tolerance for abuse. When his henchmen get indolent, Hopper kills them on the spot to remind the others they can never give the ants lenience. His authoritarianism is as much out of brutal pragmatism as it is for his own gratification.
  • Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run. The moment she realizes that the chickens are close to escaping, she personally steps in with an axe to kill them all.
  • In the beginning, Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters firmly establishes that Godzilla destroys anyone and anything he encounters immediately.
  • Hades from Hercules. Knowing the sheer danger Hercules poses to his plans, he tries to deal with him with massive overkill. Deconstructed as it backfires on Hades twice.
    • The first monster Hades sends after Hercules is the Hydra, the most powerful minion in his arsenal by far. When Hercules (barely) kills it, Hades is suddenly left without one of his best assets, and the only one who could approach the Titans and Zeus in power.
    • After freeing the Titans, Hades sends the Cyclops after a temporarily-depowered Hercules, just in case. This ends up causing harm to Meg, thus voiding Hades' deal that she wouldn't be harmed and restoring Hercules' strength in time to rescue the gods.
  • Soto from Ice Age. He is taken seriously in all of his scenes and has zero tolerance for wasted time and energy.
  • Most experienced superheroes in The Incredibles display this trait. Mr. Incredible, for example, has attacked a villain mid-monologue and thrown heavy objects at someone out of his normal reach. Syndrome tries to emulate this trait, but he occasionally lets his Large Ham instincts get the better of him. He also programmed the Omnidroid to be without any dramatic flourishes and to simply attack the enemy in the most expedient way possible, learning from all tactics used against it.
  • Shere Khan from The Jungle Book 2. Unlike his sinister yet playful characterization in the first film, he becomes this in the sequel, where his personality is much darker and has no comedic quirks.
  • Lord Business from The LEGO Movie indulges in hamminess and other staples of being a Card-Carrying Villain, but when he has to get personally involved he does not play around. He decapitates Vitruvius with a penny while the latter is giving Emmet a rousing speech, throws the Piece of Resistance out a window into the Infinite Abyss of Nothingness instead of leaving it somewhere for the heroes to recover, and when Emmet does recover the Piece after returning from the real world, Lord Business shoots him in the leg with the Kragle before he can get anywhere close to disarming it.
  • Grandfather from Codename: Kids Next Door's movie, Operation: Z.E.R.O., proves to be a more effective villain than any other one seen on the show thus far. From the moment he's reawakened, he casts Father aside, zombifies not just the KND but also every other person on the planet to prevent any uprisings, takes over every Treehouse AND the Moonbase in as little as a day (with 2/3 of those in one hour according to Numbuh 362), and even after he infects the whole organization (Numbuh One aside), he doesn't waste his time gloating. He instead makes it very clear that he won't rest until the Book of KND is completely destroyed.
  • The orcas/Killer Whales from The Pebbleandthe Penguin. They do not play around with their target prey, compared to the Leapord Seal, and will gang up on tiny penguins, despite being large, fast, and powerful enough to plow through a harpoon. It is only with quick reflexes and a sacrificial distraction from Rocko, that Hubie got out alive from that encounter.
  • Bigweld from Robots. Bigweld is this to Ratchet when he comes out of hiding - he confronts him promptly in the office and fires him on the spot. Unfortunately, Ratchet manages to knock him out with a telephone.
  • Aaron Davis/The Prowler from Spider Man Into The Spiderverse. In stark contrast to Doc Ock, the Prowler does not trade barbs with the heroes. He attacks quickly and relentlessly, giving almost no time for his targets to react. If he's sent to kill you, he'll do everything in his power to do it.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Ava Starr/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp. She does not waste time in pursuing her objective of curing her condition; no comedic gags here.
  • Following her example, Kang the Conqueror debuting in Antmanandthe Wasp Quantumania. Unlike He Who Remains and his other variants, Kang is a completely serious man who is entirely focused on trying conquer any and all worlds that stand in his way.
  • Army of Frankensteins: Captain Walton is shown as utterly coldhearted from the beginning, killing his men without blinking and ordering Union troops slaughtered. He even shoots a child in the back without blinking.
  • Austin Powers:
    Scott: I have a gun in my room. You give me five seconds, I'll go get it, I'll come back out here, boom! I'll blow their brains out!
    Dr. Evil: Scott... You just don't get it, do you? You don't.
  • Avengers: Infinity War:
    • Corvus Glaive is this, compared to the other Children of Thanos. Whereas Ebony Maw loudly announces his presence to Tony Stark and Stephen Strange with a bombastic speech while standing in the middle of a street in broad daylight, Glaive announces his presence by impaling an unsuspecting Vision from behind, doesn’t engage in banter with his victims, and doesn’t allow Scarlet Witch to distract him from his goal of prying the Mind Stone out of Vision’s head. Later on, Glaive infiltrates Shuri’s lab to attack the unconscious Vision once again, specifically waiting until Scarlet Witch (who was there to defend the Vision) has left the room to make his move.
    • Thanos himself qualifies. While it takes him a while to directly get involved in the story, he immediately kills half the Universe's population with a snap of his fingers when getting the Infinity Gauntlet. The reason why the Avengers have to go through so much trouble to go back in time and steal the Infinity Stones from various places around the galaxy to make their own Gauntlet in Avengers: Endgame is because Thanos, almost immediately after he had teleported to a safe location to live out his post-Snap retirement, destroyed the Stones, both to prevent being tempted by them and to be a spoil-sport. When he makes his first move in the final battle, he orders his ship to completely annihilate the Avengers Compound, which leads to half of the sequence being utter chaos, and he almost got the Stones back several times.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
    • HYDRA. When they want Fury dead, they gang up on him with a dozen guys with assault rifles, and when that fails, snipe him through the wall. Cap merits a Walking Armory backed by five guys with assault rifles and one with a massive minigun. They have been infiltrating their main adversaries for so long that they pretty much control it. When they do engage in Evil Gloating, there's a reason; Zola called in a missile attack on his position and is stalling for its arrival, and Pierce is chatting to hostages who he can kill with the press of a button. They never assume "No One Could Survive That!", sending a heavily armed platoon to check to make sure he's dead, even after said missile attack. And their ultimate plan is to kill people who might be threats down the road, using near-unassailable flying aircraft carriers encrusted with guns.
    • The Winter Soldier himself. Barely speaks, never banters, does nothing but focus on the mission. He only starts to break down when Captain America realizes that the Soldier is actually Bucky Barnes (his oldest and closest friend from way back during World War II) and tries doing an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight with him.
  • Eric Qualen and his gang from Cliffhanger. They don't bother to hide that they're all Hate Sink Jerkasses and Ax-Crazy psychos with a Faux Affably Evil front at all and do not mess around when committing atrocities with no hesitation without blinking an eye to get their stolen money.
  • Dormammu from Doctor Strange (2016). Dormammu does not mess around with mortals, and he will just kill them on sight. Since Dormammu has no concept of time, this trope ends up backfiring on him as his unwillingness to bargain will cause him to keep killing Strange over and over again, and he's ultimately forced to listen and bargain.
  • Joker in The Dark Knight (though not to his actual nemesis):
    Gambol: You think you can steal from us and just walk away?
    Joker: Yeah.
  • Hans Gruber from Die Hard. He doesn't mess around with McClane, trying to shoot him point blank in the face, wounding him with broken glass, and immediately trying to blow the roof when he finds out the hostages are coming back downstairs. He lapses into Bond Villain Stupidity at the very end after his Villainous Breakdown, but points for trying.
    • Colonel William Stuart from Die Hard 2. Stuart doesn't care about anything other than achieving his end goal, and focuses on his strategies and readjusts them depending on the situation. He even nearly wins before getting killed.
  • Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th doesn't have the highest body count of any Slasher Movie villain for nothing. As he doesn't talk, he spends nearly all of his time killing and practically never hesitates. The FBI returns the favor in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. They lure Jason into an ambush and then, without saying anything, hit the lights to distract him, empty several magazines into him, and finish the job with an airstrike.
  • Gozer upon it's return in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It seems to have learned from its mistakes in Afterlife, as not only does it kill Egon the first opportunity it gets, but it also doesn't bother with the Destroyer form demands like in 1984.
  • Tuco from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. When the one-armed man attempts to kill him while he's bathing only to waste time on Evil Gloating, Tuco wordlessly blasts him and delivers his iconic line: "when you have to shoot, shoot - don't talk".
  • John Wick is said to be not the Boogeyman, but "the guy you hired to kill the Boogeyman". After Iosef steals John's car and kills his dog, John goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge through the Russian mafia to get to Iosef. The whole time, John does not make jokes or one-liners about any of the people he kills; he simply takes the most practical approach to killing Iosef's guards in order to get Iosef where he wants him. After catching up to his target, John doesn't even let Iosef finish talking; Iosef gets as far as "it was just a fucking-!" before John just shoots Iosef in the head.
  • Of all characters, Gamera becomes this in the third installment of the Heisei Trilogy, Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys. He doesn't hold back anything in trying to kill the Gyaos, constantly spamming fireballs without any care for the staggeringly massive amount of collateral damage they inflict. He even shoots a nearly dead one execution style just to make sure it's dead.
  • In Zack Snyder's Justice League, unlike the 2017 theatrical version, Steppenwolf doesn't engage in self-aggrandizing boasts or meaningless insults. He taunts the heroes of the Justice League at times, but as a psychological tactic to get under their skin.
  • In Little Sweetheart, Thelma will shoot you if you're ruining everything. Or get you shot by the cops. On the other hand, Robert Burger, her main victim, doesn't seem to do anything right. He's willing to trust that Thelma will do the right thing after she's ruined his life. Really now, is he that stupid? He likely knows that she killed Elizabeth, so why should he think she would let him live?
  • John Tuld in Margin Call. Tuld is this in spades especially to the more ethically upstanding Sam. He's relentlessly pragmatic in initiating a market crash.
  • Robo-Rita Repulsa from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. Robo-Rita is Rita's evil half with none of her good. As such, she's far more ruthless and willing to kill than the original. Not only does she kill Trini, her endgame is to go back in time and team up with her past self, then kill the rangers in their sleep before they can be recruited. In the finale, she tries to finish an unmorphed Billy off with the same One-Hit Kill spell she vaporized Trini with.
  • Lyutsifer Safin from No Time to Die is unique among Bond villains for averting Bond Villain Stupidity — when he wants something, he works to get it in the most expedient way possible, and doesn't bother with unnecessary theatrics. While he does deign to monologue at Bond, he only does after he has Bond held at gunpoint by four armed men and with a hostage, (Bond's daughter Mathilde). And when Safin has Bond at gunpoint, he does indeed just shoot him, and then infects him with Heracles nanobots programmed to kill Madeleine and Mathilde, even if Bond somehow does get away. Tellingly, while Safin does die, he indirectly manages to do the one thing that no other villain in the entire franchise has ever managed to accomplish: kill James Bond; Bond chooses to let himself be killed rather than living a life without Madeleine and Mathilde, or indirectly killing them with the nanomachine "virus".
    • A milder example is Le Chiffre from Casino Royale (2006). Le Chiffre is Only in It for the Money and to save his own neck; while he does show signs of intellectual vanity and showing off how smart he is, overall his primary focus is making money and staying alive. As such, his efforts to murder and later torture Bond and others are ruthlessly straightforward, and he expresses open disdain for more theatrical villainy.
    • Franz Sanchez of Licence to Kill, as well. He's pragmatic, he's cruel, and he's efficient. One of the best examples is when he has Bond seemingly dead to rights in the conveyor belt to a grinding machine. Bond tries to buy for time and Sanchez briefly switches it off — before very immediately realizing Bond had nothing to actually say and flipping it right back on without hesitation as he proceeds to leave the facility as it's going to hell. It's only the sheer blindside of Pam showing up that Bond has a hope of getting out, and no one could've seen that coming given she was thought to be shot dead by Dario.
  • Budd from Kill Bill. He skips the effort of trying to fight the Bride in favor of shooting and burying her immediately.
  • Jill Roberts from Scream 4, in contrast to most killers in this series. With the exception of Sidney, Jill always tries to kill her targets as quickly as possible, and only may stop to make a deal or command.
  • Serenity:
    • Kind of an odd example, since you don't know if River is a bad guy or not at this point:
      (River is pointing a gun at Mal)
      Mal: I've staked my crew's life on the theory that you're a person, actual and whole, and if I'm wrong, you'd best shoot me now...
      (River cocks the gun she is pointing at Mal)
      Mal: Or, we could talk more.
    • Both Mal and the Operative, to varying degrees. Showcased in their very first scene together:
      The Operative: I want to resolve this like civilized men. I'm not threatening you. I'm unarmed.
      Mal: Good. (shoots him)
      (Mal turns to leave and the Operative leaps on him from behind)
      The Operative: I am of course wearing full body armor. I am not a moron.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming, contrasting Peter's constant banter is the Vulture. In his first two altercations, he doesn't even speak: he just swoops in and takes Spider-Man out as quickly and effectively as possible, and isn't afraid at all to take the loss and abandon his stolen goods if that's the best way of getting rid of Spidey. Even when he figures out Spider Man's identity he's willing to completely drop his grudge and use Peter's friends and family as leverage if it'll get him off his back. A lot of this has to do with wanting to stay as far below Damage Control and The Avenger's radars, as he's well aware he's no match for them and is Only in It for the Money, not to mention he considers threatening Peter's family instead as gratitude for saving his daughter's life. It's not until Spider-Man ruins his heist of the Stark Cargo Plane that things get personal...
  • Dr. Tolian Soran from Star Trek: Generations. Soran is entirely unswayed by Captain Picard's usual attempted moral speech to talk him out of what he is doing, easily defeats him in a fist fight and succeeds in his Evil Plan to enter the Nexus. In the process, his machinations are responsible for the destruction of the Enterprise-D and the death of Captain James T. Kirk.
  • Star Wars:
    • Darth Vader is a great example of this in the original trilogy. His first instinct when dealing with any opponent is to go in as fast and brutally as possible. If you have information he wants, he chokes it out of you, either with the Force or with his bare hands. If you fail him or disobey his orders, he'll execute you on the spot and replace you with another subordinate. His only soft spot is for his long lost son, Luke Skywalker, and even that has limits. When Luke grazes his armor once during their lightsaber duel in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader's response is to quit toying with him and sever his hand.
    • In The Last Jedi, when Luke Skywalker arrives to help the Resistance battle the First Order, Kylo Ren immediately orders every piece of artillery in his arsenal to rip him to shreds, and only deigns to face him in single combat when Luke No Sells the onslaught. This is actually a serious weakness in his command, which the Resistance exploits several times in the trilogy; he'll pull so many resources off other things to go after the highest-value target with overwhelming force that it undermines the effectiveness of his forces everywhere else. In the same battle he squandered an overwhelming air superiority because he threw every single fighter at the Falcon.
    • Snoke, his predecessor, too. Snoke is clearly a believer in the direct approach; in The Force Awakens, he's fine with BB-8 and the map he carries being destroyed as long as it prevents Luke's return, orders the complete destruction of the Republic's capital to neutralise its threat and tries to do the same with the Resistance's base. In The Last Jedi, he orders a sizable assault on D'Qar after Starkiller Base fails, then personally leads the pursuit of the Resistance fleet. After Rey is brought before him, Snoke doesn't bother trying to turn her to the dark side, simply shutting down her attempts at attacking him and torturing her until he has the information he wants, then ordering Kylo Ren to kill her.
    • Enric Pryde from The Rise of Skywalker is this in spades. Hux turns out to be a traitor? He executes him and assumes his place. Kylo Ren pulls a Heel–Face Turn? Already accounted for in the previous point. The Resistance moving in to destroy the Signal Tower that his fleet needs to leave Exegol? Deploy all the TIE Fighters he has and move the signal transmission to his flagship. They try landing on his ship? Deploy his own soldiers to counter them and disable their speeders (though the Resistance had a plan for that). Really, he only loses because The Cavalry arrives at just the right time to turn the tide.
    • Played With in the case of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Unlike his successors to the role of The Dragon note , who engage their Jedi foes at length, he doesn't spare a single word for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and gets straight to the business of killing them. Despite this, he decides to gloat and show off when he has Obi-Wan dangling off a ledge which gives him enough time to outsmart Maul and cleave him in half, costing him the fight, his sanity, his position as Palpatine's apprentice, and his legs.
  • Bryan Mills in Taken: He does not fool around when it comes to getting his daughter back.
  • Terminator:
    • The Terminator: There's a lot of crossover with Implacable Man, but Reese's description of one in this film, both to Sarah and the police, nails this trope as squarely on the head as possible:
      Reese: That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with; it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, EVER, until you are DEAD.
      Reese: You still don't get it, do you?! He'll find her! That's what he does! That's all he does! You can't stop him! He'll wade through you, reach down her throat, and pull her fucking heart out!
    • Terminator 2: Judgment Day: When T-1000 loses John, he takes the place of his step-mom and waits for him to come home. When he realizes his cover's been blown and John's not coming, he works out the next highest probability for success (now replacing Sarah and waiting for John to make contact) and does that. Since he has the same files as the T-800 this is presumably how all the T-Series machines think: they work out the most likely to succeed plan and do it with zero hesitation or dicking around.
  • Lockdown from Transformers: Age of Extinction. Arguably the most dangerous aspect of his personality. He does not waste time on boasting or dragging things out. He gets to the point ASAP.
  • Scourge from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. While he's definitely bloodthirsty, Scourge seems to prefer the quick and easy way to get the job done, quickly killing Apelinq and Bumblebee and trying to do the same to Optimus Prime.
  • Verona from Van Helsing. Unlike the other two brides, she doesn't play around. Seen when she orders Marishka to stop messing with Van Helsing and just finish him off already.
  • Wild Wild West:
    • Dr. Loveless is sometimes prone to Bond Villain Stupidity, but there's a hilarious moment after Artemus has been captured and is about to be shot. He's fortunately wearing body armor and so requests that he be shot "...in the heart that loves this country so much." Loveless's response? "Shoot him in the head."
    • Loveless gets another moment earlier. When he goes to abduct President Grant, Gordon uses his Body Double guise to try and pull a Bait-and-Switch. Loveless' response? "We'll take them both!"
    • Munitia, one member of Loveless' Amazon Brigade, gets one moment of this when she catches Jim West climbing the mechanized tarantula: Jim says a funny One-Liner to distract her and her response is an instant point-blank shot to the chest. If not for the fact Gordon secretly added his "impermeable" mesh to Jim's suit, we would have had a much shorter film.

    Literature 
  • Maldor from The Beyonders is a villain who's basically memorized Evil Overlord List and taken it to heart. He has been known to offer a Worthy Opponent or two the chance to rule beside him, but should they refuse, he makes sure they are in no position to cause him trouble ever again.
  • The Codex Alera:
    • Fideleas, the traitorous crown spy is a deadly foe who will kill those who get in his way quickly and effectively. Against one powerful mage, he laced a crossbow-like weapon that fires large spikes with two deadly poisons, one that is more deadly as it spreads through the body, the other is one that increases the victim's heart rate. It was almost guaranteed to kill the person.
    • On the weaker end of nemesis, Ehren, who has very weak magics to the point of being nothing against the upper lords, tricks his target for assassination into going out and be a prime target and gets the man mortally wounded.
  • Discworld has a few moments. Notably, Sam Vimes firmly believes "If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word." His subordinate Carrot is such a good man and does kill the Big Bad and The Dragon of the book very quickly.
  • The Architect in Dragon Age: The Calling. He is a rare talking Darkspawn and a Well-Intentioned Extremist (his plan to end the Blights is to make everyone in the world a half-Darkspawn immune to the Archdemon's call, which will result in countless deaths). He gets several characters (sworn to fight Darkspawn) to join him. When one of them starts expressing doubt, he kills her without a second thought right in front of her brother.
  • Dragon And Thief: "Don't I get a last meal? A blindfold? Anything?" Jack says this just before the baddies attempt to herd him into an airlock. He fortunately managed to stall long enough anyway.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Harry lampshades it when Nicky captures him in Death Masks, noting that Nicodemus is the kind of person who, when he says "join me or die", will do the "or die" part quickly, cleanly, with no gloating and a minimum of fuss.
    • Kincaid, the bodyguard of the Archive, has no problem staying hidden and sniping enemies with good headshots from the distance.
    • The Archive, sum of all human knowledge that is written or typed, is deadly serious in a fight. She once did an Offhand Backhand and vaporized the idiot who tried the attack.
    • This is what allows Marcone to not only survive but thrive in a world of wizards, fairies, vampires, and gods. As soon as he's clued in to the supernatural world, he hires the best consultant he can find and plans out how to deal with beings who could kill him with a stray thought.
    • In Cold Days Cat Sith is this to his enemies, though fortunately he's Harry's ally for most of the book. When he attacks a group of Fae who are menacing Harry, they only notice he's there after he's already killed one of them. When he's infected by the sentient Nemesis madness, Harry immediately knows it's not a deliberate betrayal. The infected Cat Sith is gloating, where if it were the real Cat Sith he'd already be dead.
  • Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter series. Harry is so intent on non-lethal force that his use of Expelliarmus (the Disarming Charm) is how the Death Eaters identify him. Voldemort is far too big on gloating and enjoying killing people. Neville's first action in the Battle of Hogwarts is to run to get Mandrakes to throw at the Death Eaters — Mandrakes' cries instantly kill everything that hears them. The second time he's seen in the battle, he's running around using a man-eating plant on the Death Eaters. The third time, he bum-rushes Voldemort wielding nothing but Gryffindor's sword and decapitates Nagini before Voldemort can get over his initial shock at the utter stupidity of somebody running head-long into the most powerful dark wizard ever.
  • Honor Harrington tends towards this, thanks to her being a Combat Pragmatist. This mindset is not exactly rare in the setting, due to most factions being thick with skilled military professionals or cold-blooded killers.
  • Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. The man is Pragmatic Villainy personified and always knows when he's reached his limits.
  • Bane from the Redwall novel Mossflower. Bane proves to be a Game Changer to the Kotir vs Woodlanders conflict because of his straightforward approach to war: don't bother with subterfuge, we have overwhelming forces, we can charge out there and just crush anyone who we see. It actually works the first time, inflicting serious demoralising losses on the woodlanders and forcing them to adapt.
  • Sandokan:
    • Suyodhana will do everything to get his enemies killed, and will make sure they stay dead. Case in point, his initial treatment of Tremail Naik, that at the time he considered nothing more than a slight annoyance rather than the worst enemy the Thuggee cult could ever make: while he could have beaten him in a fair fight (as he actually ended up doing off-page), when they first met he had him immobilized by two dozen men using bola-like garrotes before putting a knife in his heart and leaving him to the wild tigers, and when the body disappeared and two of his men ended up dead he correctly deduced Tremal Naik had somehow survived (the knife was deviated by a rib and didn't get the heart), sent one of his best men to check his house, and upon receiving confirmation he was indeed alive he ordered him to finish him off before he could recover. Indeed, the rare times he takes chances it usually backfires on him, eventually leading to his death in a knife fight with Sandokan.
    • Harry Corishant is one for Suyodhana: he was already an enemy of the Thuggee cult for his job, and when, in one of Suyodhana's extremely rare Card-Carrying Villain moments, they kidnapped his daughter to make her a priestess of Kali, he changed his name so the Thuggee wouldn't draw the connection and started a war against them, having any prisoner tortured and/or interrogated with the youma drink, and when he finally learned where their base was from Tremal Naik he attacked with what he supposed was overwhelming firepower (Suyodhana being Suyodhana, he had called upon his entire cult just in case his plan to kill Corishant resulted in this and had overwhelming numerical superiority).
  • Professor James Moriarty as depicted in his original appearance in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem", follows all the ways of an Impossible Genius who also happens to be using his talents to act as a dangerous gangster boss. His visit as recounted by Holmes has the purpose of delivering an implicit, though unambiguous message: "Stop interfering with my operation, or I will kill you." In the narrative's present, Holmes finds himself forced to dodge and outwit several of Moriarty's assassins just to move around London, and when the time comes for their Duel to the Death, though Moriarty allows him the courtesy of leaving a parting message for Watson, he then holds nothing back in engaging his enemy, and as mentioned later in "The Empty House", he had also brought in Colonel Sebastian Moran as backup, which Holmes only narrowly managed to dodge before making his getaway.
  • Euron Greyjoy from A Songof Iceand Fire. As cruel and petty he is, Euron doesn't waste time getting rid of his opponents and potential threats to his rule, after becoming king. One of the first things he does is to have Aeron captured and taken captive in his Silence before he could spread dissent and have the Drowned Men hunted down by Erik Ironmaker. He also neutralizes Asha as a political threat, after she ran away immediately after the Kingsmoot, by having her married to Erik Ironmaker with a seal in her stead.
  • Count Denetrius Vidian in Star Wars: A New Dawn. The Empire's efficiency expert. Once sent to increase productivity, he would dissolve and rearrange organizations in an instant with no regard for the well-being of the staff. Workplace safety is of no concern if it gets in the way of output, so don't talk back when he tells you to remove the railing around those acid vats. He was even willing to destroy an entire moon just to make it easier to harvest the raw material. He took his efficiency to a personal level, rebuilding his body as a cyborg, replacing his eyes, ears, and voice so that he could send and receive audio/visual communication wirelessly, eliminating middlemen and ensuring privacy.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Zach Dempsey from 13 Reasons Why. He doesn't fool around in his fight with Bryce. Beating on him even as Bryce is trying to talk, giving him little time to react or fight back, and the one punch Bryce tries to swing, Zach easily catches and disables via breaking his arm.
  • Shin Hati from Ahsoka. While willing to indulge her Blood Knight tendencies when she can, when she has to be, Shin is very direct and rarely ever stops to taunt her opponents. When she has Sabine and Ezra surrounded by Night Troopers, she simply orders them shot, and responds to Ezra's desperate attempt to buy some time by repeating the order.
  • Julian Sark from Alias. Sark is very efficient when he carries out his own or his employers' plans. He also is pragmatic enough to quickly step out of the way of any Colliding Criminal Conspiracies and survive to get more employment.
  • Jack Welker from Breaking Bad. He eschews Gus-style manipulations and the Salamancas' over-the-top violence in favor of shooting people up. What makes Jack so dangerous is his lack of hesitation and tendency to keep things relatively simple.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike acts like this throughout both Buffy and Angel, which is surprising considering his reputation. When not focusing on healing Drusilla, his plans were to-the-point attempts at killing Buffy and the Scoobies with little screwing around. His introduction is during the buildup to a vampire holiday which The Anointed One was planning to attack during... and skipping the ceremony and attacking days early when no one expected it. During "What's My Line," he hires the Order of Taraka to kill Buffy and keep her from interfering with his plans, which his henchman Dalton considers overkill, and after Angelus enters the picture and begins a long, drawn-out campaign of mind games against Buffy and co., Spike repeatedly tells him to just kill her and be done with it.
  • Cobra Kai: Miguel becomes this to Robby in the last episode of the first season, in stark contrast to all Robby’s other antagonists. Unlike Hawk, Miguel will not attempt to showboat or let his temper get the better of him. Unlike Aisha, Miguel has no old friendship with anyone from the LaRussos and no reason to view them favorably or take it easy on someone for their sake. Unlike Trey and Cruz, Miguel is capable of keeping on the right side of the law. And unlike Louie, Miguel cannot be forced to back down.
  • Everett Lynch/The Chameleon from Criminal Minds. He has zero interest in playing mind-games with Rossi, focusing entirely on evading capture once he knows the police are onto him. It's entirely possible that he doesn't actually care about Rossi as anything other than another cop. This changes on the episode "Face Off" where he gets personally invested in Rossi, but even then, it's all part of his escape plan, not out of any animus he holds towards him. He even seems to regard Rossi with a degree of respect.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Shakespeare Code": For all their hamminess, the Carrionites are ruthless in killing anyone who threatens their goal. They off the Master of the Revels when he threatens the staging of Love's Labour's Won; kill the landlady of the inn when she walks in on them bewitching Shakespeare; send Doomfinger to kill Peter Street, the architect they'd manipulated to redesign the Globe Theatre, and those he's speaking with when he reveals their plan; and don't hesitate to try and kill the Doctor and Martha when they interfere (only the Doctor's Bizarre Alien Biology and Martha being out of her time saved them). The only mistake they make is not killing Shakespeare when he's done writing the play, allowing him to banish them with a spell of his own.
    • The return of The Master in the new series initially suggested he'd be like this; he lampshades and refuses to "have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you think of a way to stop me", refuses to be moved by the Doctor's abject pleas (even after the Doctor obeys his command to "use my name"), and instead of hanging around for ages to gloat or invoke The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, he simply abandons the Doctor in a situation that is likely to be fatal, but fully expects him to escape and plans accordingly. Even though this No-Nonsenseness doesn't last (in the end, the Master is still the Master, and as such he simply cannot help but give into his pathological need for validation, resulting in him keeping the Doctor around as his (seemingly) helpless prisoner so he has someone to gloat at), his brief appearance at the end of the relevant episode is very memorable for the sudden appearance of such an antagonist.
  • Roxanne Ford from Empire. She really wants Lucious to go down and is willing to stoop to unimaginable lows to accomplish this.
  • C. Auguste Dupin from The Fallof The Houseof Usher 2023. A Hero Antagonist version. In the present day, Dupin refuses to tolerate the Ushers' chicanery and Roderick's manipulations, having long since cottoned on to them. He's also immune to bribery, and Dupin is totally dedicated to seeing justice done.
  • In the fifth season of The Flash, this is Cicada's first encounter with Barry, Cisco, and Ralph. He doesn't even talk to them, just throwing his power-draining blade in front of them and then proceeding to stomp their asses, despite the 3-to-1 odds. He would've killed Barry right then had Nora not shown up, surprising him. Then, he just walks away.
  • From Game of Thrones: Tywin Lannister. Tywin likes things concise and to the point and wastes no time when an opportunity is at hand. He dislikes beating around the bush and is very vocal about the unnecessary behavior he regularly encounters, be it lavish, humorous, erroneous, or plain foolish.
  • Jeremiah Valeska from Gotham. Contrasting his psychotic brother Jerome, Jeremiah is very pragmatic with his approach. Jerome had set up a Cruel and Unusual Death for Bruce, while Jeremiah states that if he wished for Bruce to die then he would simply shoot him in the head.
  • Luther Mahoney from Homicide: Life on the Street. Most of the criminals the detectives face are Stupid Evil, prone to making mistakes and making themselves easy to catch. Luther, however, is dangerously intelligent and Genre Savvy enough to see their tricks coming, making him a formidable opponent.
  • Legends of Tomorrow season 5 has Atropos, one of the Fates (i.e. a Greek deity). Being a knife user, she does not screw around, killing anyone who gets in her way, either with her bone blades or by showing the mortals her true form, burning them alive. She kills Zari's brother Behrad by cutting his life strand, pointing out that he shouldn't even be alive. She also doesn't have a problem with starting a Zombie Apocalypse just to kill half a dozen people.
  • Moff Gideon from The Mandalorian. Gideon seems to have read the Evil Overlord List and taken to it much better than many of his contemporaries in the Empire, including Tarkin and the Emperor himself. Probably why he's still around long after the Empire itself fell at Jakku.
  • Arthur Harrow from Moon Knight (2022). With Marc cornered but refusing to surrender, Harrow decides to simply produce a revolver and shoot him twice in the chest the moment he gets an opening.
  • Elliot Alderson from Mr. Robot. Despite his mental health struggles, he surprisingly manages to be this. Rather than be a kind of a person who only wants to relish in money, fame and glory like Tyrell and Angela which proved to be their downfall and blindly believe in the system like Dom does, which also was her downfall, Elliot is able to use his wits and smarts to look for the weak points in his enemies and check their background to use it against them when he faces them, using his knowledge of the system they are working on and anticipates his enemies next moves to avoid making dumb decisions, something which other characters in the series failed to do.
  • Chucky Pancamo from Oz. Beecher discovers this when he tries to call off the hit on Schillinger's son. Pancamo's already made it happen startlingly fast.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: Diabolico, at least in regards to the Titanium Ranger. Rather than letting the newest recruit start plowing through his goons, he curses him with a cobra tattoo that will slowly and painfully work its way up his body, before killing him. It almost works, too. Then there's his fight with the Ranger's megazords. Diabolico just unleashes everything he has at them, blowing a hole straight through the Supertrain Megazord, and sending the Rescue Megazord through several buildings.
    • Queen Bansheera, even more so. Her first action on returning was to try and wipe out Mariner Bay with a tidal wave. Only Ryan stopping the summoning ceremony foiled it.
    • Power Rangers: Dino Thunder has Mesogog. Mesogog NEVER engages in comedic antics, always advocates the most direct plans to victory, and doesn't gloat.
    • Power Rangers RPM's Venjix is the only PR villain who's managed to Take Over the World, mostly thanks to killing off almost all of humanity and turning most of the world into a barren wasteland. Thus, he has no compunctions about eliminating the Rangers, no humor (humor is limited strictly to his underlings), and was only following the usual playbook to disguise his real plan ( infiltrating Corinth with tons of sleeper agents).
    • Power Rangers Megaforce has Emperor Mavro, who goes straight for a planetary invasion and beats down the rangers at every opportunity he can.
    • Power Rangers Dino Charge has Sledge. As a Bounty Hunter, Sledge is used to being as brutal and direct as possible.
    • Power Rangers Beast Morphers has Evox. He is utterly devoid of any sense of humor. While Blaze, Roxy, and Scrozzle often engage in banter and puns, Evox is very straight-to-the-point. Justified due to being a reincarnation of Venjix, one of the darkest and cruelest characters in all of Power Rangers.
    • Power Rangers Dino Fury has Lothorn. He follows the orders of his benefactor and attacks the Dinohenge statues in an attempt to rob the Rangers of their powers.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation: This is why the Borg are absolutely terrifying. When Picard first tries to address the Collective, they bluntly interrupt him before forcibly taking a piece of the Enterprise.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Dominion, on the other side of the galaxy but connected to the Federation's area of space by a stable wormhole, are led by the Founders, a species of shapeshifting aliens with mastery of genetic engineering and highly advanced technology.
      • A mere handful of shapeshifters is enough to infiltrate the Alpha Quadrant great powers, they cripple the security forces of several major races, use their bio-engineered diplomats to take advantage of Cardassian lust for power to puppet them for a military staging area, and bring the Breen empire in as an additional military force when the Federation blocks the wormhole by mining it.
      • Once the inevitable war with the Federation begins, the combined power of the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan empires only blunts an offensive led by hard-as-nails clone Super Soldiers in advanced warships. It gets so bad that the Federation actually loses control of the titular Space Station! It takes an entirely literal Deus ex machina to stop the reinforcements that would have steamrolled the allied forces.
      • Sisko turns out to be this for the Dominion. Sisko brings the warship he designed to fight the Borg out of mothballs, foresees the Dominion attack & creates the minefield that effectively saves the Federation from total defeat, and the moment he takes back the advantage in the war, he presses on to claim total victory.
      • Section 31 believed it was acting this way when it used Odo to infect the founders with a genetically engineered virus that would have killed them all. Unfortunately, they didn't account for the Founders' level of spite. Without the cure developed by the protagonists, the last orders to the Jem'Hadar would have been to burn the galaxy to the ground without anyone available who could have called off those orders.
      • The Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order take a similar approach to Section 31. Recognizing the threat of the Dominion, they overcome their differences to put together a joint fleet of warships to attack the Founder's homeworld. Using cloaking technology they are able to glass the planet in minutes. Unfortunately, the Founders were aware of the attack, had in fact expedited it to lure them into a trap, and the Founders make it clear that the only reason the Cardassians aren't all dead YET is that they need them to win the war.
  • Logan Roy from Succession. He has no patience for weak-willed individuals and half-assed plans. If you're going to try to oust him, you better be upfront about it.
  • The Kingdom from Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad. The prologue episode alone sees them attacking Planet Juran to attack Cosmos while he's alone, in a clear bid to eliminate one of the components of Ultraman Legend and Ultraman Saga. Later, they attack Planet Babel in a bid to ensure that Ultraman Noa can't interfere with their plans. Thankfully, Cosmos and Nexus are far from defenseless pushovers outside of their respective Super Mode, as their troops and Titan learned rather painfully.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Wrestlers who completely ignore their opponent's taunting and theatrics and simply rush at them in a straight line to beat them senseless. Examples include:
    • Samoa Joe
    • Chris Benoit
    • The Undertaker
    • Kane
    • Amazing Kong
    • Luke Harper: Part of his gimmick as Brodie Lee was his absolute refusal to play along with Chikara's normal tomfoolery. Whenever the wrestlers would break into their spontaneous comedy skits, he would ignore the skits and just start attacking everybody.
    • AJ Styles: During his 2013 Face–Heel Turn, he declared that he no longer cared about having fun or entertaining the crowd, only about winning to earn money. In his matches, he would try to win as fast as possible, and win, lose, or draw, as soon as the match ended, he would stoically walk to the back.
    • Gunther/Walter: One good look at him is enough to make you realize this guy isn't fooling around. And his hard-hitting style more than proves it.
    • The Revival. Their motto is even "No Flips, Just Fists."
    • The Ascension
    • Mark Henry has some quirks, but he does this at times, like when he faced Boogeyman. Normally, Boogeyman's gyrations and other bizarre mannerisms freak out his opponents, but Henry simply walked forward, hit him with the World's Strongest Slam, and pinned him in a matter of seconds.

    Tabletop Games 
  • This is a popular choice for how to play the main villain of Curse of Strahd. Although even in that case he will just play with the heroes at first; the gloves don't come off until they're strong enough to pose an actual threat.
  • In Pathfinder's 2nd edition, gods have thematically appropriate curses they can bestow on those who displease them, ranging from relatively minor inconveniences to their major curse, which does things like instantly beggaring someone, causing everyone to forget their existence, rendering them incapable of wielding a weapon without breaking it, and similar things pretty much guaranteed to at least ruin and quite likely kill someone before long. The major curse of Achaekek, the god of assassins, is he personally appears in front of you and immediately kills you, then prevents you from being resurrected.

    Theatre 
  • In Pokémon Live!, after Pikachu teaches MechaMew2 its electric moves, Giovanni decides to kill Ash and Pikachu with Hyper Beam.

    Video Games 
  • If given the chance, enemies in AI Dungeon 2 often kill you right away. Surrendering will normally result in them shooting you instead of taking you prisoner.
  • Jon Irenicus from Baldur's Gate II. First, when he fights several Shadow Thieves and Cowled Wizards near the beginning of the game, he wastes no time going straight for One-Hit Kill spells like Flesh to Stone and Disintegrate. Later, when you get your only chance to question him about his plans after he steals your essence of Bhaal, he states outright that you're not worth telling anything, given that (he believes) you're going to be dead soon. And if you try to attack him after escaping the Spellhold maze without getting the other inmates to help you, he just kills you — not even in a controllable battle, just a cutscene. The only way the player is able to suss out his master plan at all is because he keeps writing things down in journals for the player to find (though that's justified with Irenicus suffering from memory loss due to the loss of his soul.)
  • The post-game DLC for Batman: Arkham Knight portrays Red Hood (aka a post-Heel–Face Turn Arkham Knight, aka Jason Todd) dual-wielding guns and having absolutely no qualms about killing the criminals he pursues, including throwing Black Mask out of a window to his death.
  • Bayonetta 2 introduces a new rival for the titular heroine in place of Jeanne from the first game. This one is a Masked Lumen Sage who is pursuing Loki, your Kid Sidekick, on the belief that he killed his love. Unlike Jeanne, who had a penchant for smack-talking and theatrics, the Lumen Sage finds no use for these things, and in his first appearance outside of the prologue, he speaks a grand total of three words. He refuses to stop until he has his revenge since the only reason that he fights Bayonetta is that she intervenes, rather than just because he can, at one point telling Bayonetta that this isn't her fight. It's only on the third and final battle with him that he loses patience and flat out declares that he's going to kill her.
  • BlazBlue: When Terumi appears in another guise like Hazama, he wants to play with you. When he takes direct control and appears as Terumi, he wants you to hurt, he doesn't care if you survive the ordeal or not, and the only thing removing slightly from his no-nonsense-ness is his sadistic mania. Ironically, even when Terumi plays with you, that's still him being direct. He has No Ontological Inertia and needs the hatred of others to survive — if he draws out your suffering, it's to improve his lifespan.
    • One example is in Continuum Shift where, having just literally curb-stomped Ragna, he turns and gets back to his current plan of getting Mu-12 to kill the Master Unit. Once Ragna pushes himself up and claims that he's Just Toying With Terumi to get his attention, Terumi goes absolutely apeshit, ripping into Ragna and stomping him into the ground while yelling for him to die.
    • Another Continuum Shift example involves the end of Makoto's arcade story. Terumi's plans for Noel involve brutally mindraping her so she would willingly become his Sword of the Godslayer and destroy the Master Unit, but that requires that somebody who knows what she is and is willing to talk her through it stay at least one Hierarchical City's distance away from her. The instant Makoto is done knocking Noel out, he pulls the latter away, spews stealth insults at the former whilst cackling maniacally, and tries to kill her; while he goes full-bore with just about everyone else he fights in Arcade mode, Ragna included, here you can tell he isn't trying to hide the fact he wants the squirrel dead yesterday.
    • In Central Fiction, he regains his true form; he even loses the sadistic, maniacal glee he used to have when shredding his opponents in the past and instead replaces that with a cold and brutal Tranquil Fury; he delivers a swift Curb-Stomp Battle to everyone in the immediate vicinity that could pose a problem to him, kidnaps Mu-12 and immediately sets out to confront Amaterasu directly. Because he was being Stalked by the Bell as a result of injuries sustained in the previous game, he could not afford to fuck around in getting it back lest his unmaking catch up with him, and every method he takes in Central Fiction is explicitly aimed at achieving that goal in as little time as possible. While he's far from willing to admit it, part of the reason Makoto pisses him off so much is that she unwittingly set up events that put a parallel Jin Kisaragi into the Susano'o unit, effectively locking him out for much of the story.
    • Kokonoe tends to be this as well, as a heroic grey example. While a number of her plans don't work out for one reason or another, she acts quickly and decisively. Calamity Trigger has her aware that Hakumen is a significant threat to her due to his Black-and-White Morality, so she snares him with a trap that would've removed him for good if not for Rachel's interference. Continuum Shift has her send Lambda to watch Ragna fight Terumi so that Lambda can kill the latter the moment she spots an opening. It fails, but this is due to a third party hijacking Lambda. In Chrono Phantasma, she sets up a trap for Azrael, who's hunting her, and lures him to it instead of trying to give him the fight he wants. Even when she first learns he's after her through an ambush, she fires a rocket launcher at him and immediately retreats. Her arcade ending in CP also has her alter her own brain so she feels no hate for Terumi, making him utterly powerless against her. The only thing she doesn't want to use is her arsenal of nuclear missiles, and that's because she's smart enough to see them as a Godzilla Threshold.
  • Beatrice from Blue Archive. Where Black Suit and Maestro either attempted to recruit or avoided Sensei when carrying out their plans, Beatrice fully recognizes the threat they can pose and plots to have them killed as soon as possible.
    • Beatrice: "Their interference would alter the meaning of all that I possess. They are dangerous."
    • Beatrice: "That's when I realized in order to bring my plan to fruition, I must eliminate Sensei before all else."
    • Demonstrated nicely in Chapter 4 of the Trinity Arc, where Beatrice's immediate response to Sensei turning down her offer of a partnership is to sic Justina Saint Guardians on him and the Arius Squad, ordering them terminated at once.
  • Bug Fables' Wasp King does not mess around. Upon leading an attack on the Ant Kingdom, he singlehandedly wrecks the guards, effortlessly dodges Team Snakemouth's attacks, defeats them in a Hopeless Boss Fight with his fire magic, steals the most-recently collected Ancient Artifact from them, and almost takes the other artifacts, were it not for Maki's appearance forcing him to retreat, after which he pretends to return to the Wasp Kingdom to lure Team Snakemouth and Maki there, only to double back and stealthily return to the Ant Kingdom, defeat everyone in his way, including the aforementioned Team Snakemouth and Maki when they return, and steal the rest of the artifacts, before making a beeline to the Rubber Prison (destroying the boats in the pier and releasing the prisoners on the way, to delay the heroes), whence he can reach the Giant's Lair and the Everlasting Sapling. There, he turns on the comparatively giant stove and, when confronted, defeats everyone with his flames again, except for Team Snakemouth, whose Flame Brooch protected them. Even after they defeat him, he tosses a literal cherry bomb at them and eats the fruit of the Everlasting Sapling, only losing in the end because the Sapling had wilted.
  • City of Heroes largely has a lightness of tone and several hammy super-villain, but it's Big Bad, Lord Recluse, is the Big Bad for a very good reason. The game's large array of scene-chewing villains, tossing around the Villain Ball, are all just an opening act. If you make it passed them to the point where he actually needs to tend to issues in-person, he will crush said villain ball beneath his heels. No banter, no mercy, no alternate victory conditions and a mind that can calculate entire battle scenarios in seconds.
  • The Devil in Cuphead. While all other bosses constantly spout quips and puns at the player after defeating them, the Devil in his final phase doesn't even bother with this, simply declaring "Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed!" while holding the desiccated remains of Cuphead and Mugman's heads in his hands.
  • The Doom Slayer in Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal is a rare heroic example. It's obvious that the Slayer revels in the hurt he inflicts on demons and those who work with them, but he generally is mostly interested in ending them as efficiently as humanly possible. Each of the brutal Glory Kills last at most a few seconds before he casually tosses the corpse aside. In Eternal, when he comes across the Hell Priests, every time he has them at his mercy and they attempt to gloat or bargain, he kills them in seconds without uttering a single word towards them.
    • To really drive the point home, when he defeats The Dark Lord, and his opponent asks if the Slayer would say something to him before killing him, Slayer kills him first and then says "no". The smart way.
  • Dragon Quest X: Nelgel the Netherlord is perhaps the bona fide poster boy for this trope in the Dragon Quest series. He destroys Tenton just after the Hero has the Tensu Flower and seals Rendacia in a dark barrier. When the Hero reincarnates as one of 5 Races (Ogre, Wetling, Dwarf, Elf, and Poppet) to avenge Tenton, he appears in the Hero's dreams and holds his Netherscythe to their necks as a warning to stay out of his affairs. Later, they meet up with Sage Horro, who creates a bridge to enter the Heart of Hell, though Nelgel destroys that before it can reach his lair. Then, when the Hero has the means to reunite their soul with their old body, he attempts to stop them with purple flames, though they escape with the help of Galapagod's true form: Pegasus! Finally, after creating the Heavenly Arknote  and fighting their way through to the Netherlord's Throne, Nelgel traps the Hero in dark bindings and proceeds to kill them with his Netherscythe, though they are saved in time by the Original Owner, who frees them, forcing the Netherlord to fight them to the death. Even after transforming into the Netherfiend and losing again, the seal he created on Rendacia is still active!
  • Giygas in EarthBound (1994) wastes no time attacking Earth when the Apple of Enlightenment predicts that he will be destroyed by the Chosen Four. He sends an Elite Mook after Buzz Buzz when the latter tries to get Ness, one of the Chosen Four, started on his journey. Giygas then uses his powers to influence the evil within the hearts of people and animals while also giving life to inanimate objects to attack Ness and his friends. For the whole game, nearly everything is trying to kill the Chosen Four or at least hinder them in some way. By the time you do confront Giygas, his immense power as well as his still lingering guilt and feelings for Maria, his former human foster mother, tears apart his mind and body, leaving him as a blabbering dangerous idiot that can only speak incoherently while attacking the heroes with random psychic powers.
  • Inverted in Fable II. At Rose's urging, Sparrow disables Lucian and can kill him two seconds into his Motive Rant, or twenty. Wait too long and Reaver does the deed instead.
  • Benny from Fallout: New Vegas, who gloriously averts Bond Villain Stupidity. He puts a bullet in your head in the opening cutscene, and does so again when you confront him at the Tops Casino; the former to keep you quiet, and the latter because you've proven to be an exigent threat to him (you took out a good chunk of his men with your weapons confiscated). It's nothing short of a bonafide miracle that you survive not one, but both of the headshots. That or Maria's damage output being just that Pathetically Weak.
  • After spending most of Fate/Grand Order being as severely underestimated by your allies as by your enemies, the enemy Crypter in Lostbelt Olympus instead greets you with his Nigh-Invulnerable Lancer, a military force armed to the teeth, and an orbital Wave-Motion Gun on standby. When he realizes you can counter all that, he takes to the battlefield himself, and matches your Servants' power with his magecraft alone. THIS is why he's The Ace of the Crypters.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Emperor Mateus, the antagonist of Final Fantasy II, is one of the series' best examples. The game starts with him summoning the forces of Hell to plague the Earth while, at the same time, his armies conquer basically most of the world while they build the Dreadnought, which quickly proceeds to bomb several towns in the game after its completion. Then, when the Wild Rose Rebellion proves to be an actual threat by Firion, Guy, and Maria obtaining Mythril, the Goddess's Bell, and Sunfire from Kashuan Keep, he kidnaps its leader Princess Hilda. When the heroes eventually save her and destroy the Dreadnought, her father (the King) suddenly becomes fatally ill; it later turns out that they saved a demonic Lamia Queen doppelganger instead of the real princess, as the Emperor had anticipated. This move breifly catches Firion off guard, but he and his allies defeat it. Then, Hildia is annouced as a prize for a gladitor game against a Behemoth, which the good guys defeat, but are captured by the Palamecian Empire, until Paul rescues them. When the heroes obtain Ultimia, albeit at the cost of Minwu's life to break the seal, the Emperor has cast a spell that has lifted his castle into the sky and surrounded it with a Cyclone, and he uses that to destroy every town that the Dreadnought may have missed. The protagonists finally find a way inside the castle via the last Wyvern and kill the Emperor. But that isn't the end. Mateus's soul split into two halves: a good and an evil side, and the evil side goes into hell, TAKES IT OVER, and then comes back to life as the Dark Emperor, who is far more powerful than ever. In heaven, the Killed Off for Real characters from the game, Minwu, Scott, Josef, and Ricard, find that the Light Emperor now possesses the throne of heaven and wants to atone for his actions and asks them to forgive him. Eventually, though, they come to realize that even the "good" side of the Emperor is still pure evil and is just trying to trick and kill them. It takes the combined might of both the living and dead protagonists to destroy both the Light and Dark Emperors at the same time and finally destroy him for good.
    • Golbez in Final Fantasy IV is perhaps even better. He spends the first part of the game exploiting Baron's Red Wings airship fleet to gather the first two Crystals, as this makes them the dominant power in the world. For the third Crystal, Fabul has been warned by the party and hunkers down to defend, so he takes matters into his own hands, sweeping into the Crystal Chamber, blasting Cecil and his friends away, and then abducting Rosa when she tries to intervene. When he finds out Cecil is trying to become a Paladin, he sends one of his strongest minions to kill him before he can complete the quest and specifically chooses Scarmiglione for the task because Cecil's dark sword is near-useless against the undead. When that fails he instead manipulates Cecil into getting him the fourth Crystal, offering to release Rosa in exchange; naturally, he pulls I Lied once Cecil hands the Crystal over to him, blasts him back, and departs again. In the next confrontation, he finally pulls Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? and attempts to kill Cecil and the party, but is defeated and forced to retreat. He spends the rest of the game behind the scenes, waiting for Cecil to get the fourth Dark Crystal to keep it from him, only for him to take control of Kain's mind and snatch it away. Golbez's only problems were Bond Villain Stupidity when he would let the heroes live rather than finishing them off, but both instances are defensible as it being more pragmatic for him to retreat once he has what he came for (and it's also implied he let Cecil live precisely because he recognized he made a good Unwitting Pawn).
      • The real reason for Golbez's few moments of Bond Villain Stupidity isn't revealed until near the end of the game. Golbez was himself under the same not-quite-perfect Mind Control that Kain was, and when he saw Paladin Cecil's face up close, it wasn't quite strong enough to get him to deal a finishing blow to his own brother.
    • The Greater-Scope Villain of Final Fantasy XIV all the way up to the Endwalker expansion has this trope written all over her: Meteion, a very badly broken Empath is aiming to (and nearly succeeds at) ending all life with her Song of Oblivion, abusing the Emotional Powers known as Dynamis to turn anyone who succumbs to even minor despair into a mindless monster, forming a chain reaction as the people fear the monster and fall to despair themselves. This is all already a pretty no-nonsense way of going about enacting her plans, but there are several obstacles to actually stopping her:
      • For one thing, she is enacting her plan from the edge of the observable universe, where no one could find her. The heroes can only circumvent this with a convenient tracking device.
      • And once the spaceship with its load of main characters enters the domain of Ultima Thule, what is Meteion's very first move? To attempt to use dynamis to erase everyone. This can only be counteracted with a timely Heroic Sacrifice to overpower the despairing Dynamis with a hope of survival.
      • Rinse and repeat the above, as Ultima Thule is made of despair itself and must be constantly refuted to even advance.
      • The heroes must then fight through millennia's worth of negative Dynamis and the memories of doomed worlds to actually find her to start the Final Boss battle.
      • Said battle's tactics consist of Staying out of range, Throwing two planets at them, and using powers over time itself to rewind her attacks and hit the party with two limit breaks. The first one is counteracted by the player's own limit break, and the second requires a Deus ex machina to properly survive.
  • In Grim Fandango, when Manny comes face to face with the Big Bad, Hector LeMans, he asks him if This Is the Part Where... he tells him all the details of his Evil Plan. Hector's response is to just shoot Manny with a sprout gun and tell him that no, this is the part where he dies.
  • Guilty Gear has a rather surprisingly heroic example in the form of Ky Kiske. It's revealed that Ky, unlike Sol, actually learned how to utilize various battle strategies that don't normally involve fair tactics (while Sol most likely just busted his way through everything with his powers). When facing someone he actually wants to kill, like gears during the Crusades, Ky employs any and all means to kill the enemy with zero compunction or remorse.
  • In Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy can become this depending on the player's choices. When killing The Dragon who killed her father, one of the dialogue options is to stab him, then kick him off her spear before heading of to kill the Big Bad without so much as a look.
    Aloy: You're done! HADES is next.
  • Black in Iconoclasts is this, when she has to do things, in contrast to how her behaviour would imply. While she normally leaves things to her partner, White, she interrupts any possible actions that could be taken against her in spite of her regenerative immortality and does so immediately and efficiently. Later on, after White was killed through an unprecedented action, her appearances that have her interact with the heroes has her live up to this, up to pulling a gun on the heroine after being told to handle something by the books by someone else. The only time she didn't was when she was otherwise alone, isolated, and with someone she hated more than anyone else.
  • Near the end of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Mickey basically blitz’s the big bad with a time stop and tries to get Sora and Riku out of there. It only failed because Xehanort was more of a time master than he is.
  • The first thing Necrodeus does in Kirby Mass Attack is, as soon as he sees Kirby, split him into ten and kill nine of them using his staff. He would have killed all of them, had one not escaped. Necrodeus then put his minions of a very tight watch, so that whenever you travel between game worlds you lose almost all your Kirbys every time. When Kirby gets to his hideout and finds his powerful staff, he simply swallows it so Kirby can't get it. Not bad going.
  • The Legend of Zelda: If Link has any advantages over his enemies, he will use them, such as attacking weak spots; using items to clear distances, using the terrain to his advantage. Really, everything is fair game to Link.
  • In Lost Dimension, The End has little desire to explain any of his motivations or past and if you get the game's bad ending by reaching the top floor without eliminating any traitors, he expresses his joy in the idea that the protagonist, Sho, will die alone in complete ignorance before watching with glee as Sho is stabbed to death by one of the traitors.
  • The Reapers in Mass Effect generally do not screw around with Shepard whenever they encounter him/her directly. The first major Reaper opponent doesn't kill Shepard outright because that particular Reaper doesn't consider him/her a threat up until Shepard actually stops it dead in its tracks — and then it immediately summons the most powerful husk variant possible to try and crush Shepard immediately. The second Reaper Shepard encounters fucks around even less, by killing Shepard outright in the first ten minutes of the second game and then trying to find his/her body to assure that s/he's really dead, and after Shepard's resurrection Harbinger pulls out all the stops in an effort to kill Shepard, going so far as to manifest itself in its Collector minions constantly to try to kill Shepard. And every Reaper encountered in the third game doesn't screw around and tries to just blast Shepard to ashes with their main gun, even turning those dreadnought-destroying guns from entire fleets firing on them just to kill him/her once and for all. This culminates in Harbinger itself personally coming down from orbit to personally blast Shepard and, over the course of about a minute, completely repel the Alliance's final offensive.
  • The Amaterasu Corporation in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code features a group of nemeses who don't hold anything back regarding their opposition of the game's protagonists. This is demonstrated in the game's first case, where the Peacekeepers immediately try to kill the detectives before they even arrive at Kanai Ward and then frame the survivors. And that's just the beginning of the absolute madness the corporation puts the detectives through. Then skip to the climax, and it also turns out the company's CEO, Makoto Kagutsuchi, was using the detectives all along, and makes no hesitation in eliminating them as soon as he accomplishes his goal of ousting Yomi Hellsmile, the director of the aforementioned Peacekeepers, from his position of power, using Yomi's overarching plan of manipulating the NDA's chief, Yakou Furio, into killing Dr. Huesca, the company's head researcher, in a Suicide Attack. Albeit, Makoto's plan comes up as a result of Complexity Addiction, but for a company CEO, his only focus is his extremist goals, so it basically turns it back around to him getting to the point of his villainy again.
  • While Impact Man from Mega Man 11 is a goofy Large Ham supreme, he's also the only Robot Master in the series to leave his boss room and attack Mega Man out in the level itself, launching his component pieces at Mega Man in a non-stop assault in several rooms.
    • In the realm of fangame Robot Masters, Charade Man from Mega Man Rock Force fits. While he's the silliest boss, messing around in the stage select screen, he does actually attack Mega Man in the middle of the level itself by imitating the attack pattern of past Robot Masters, including Quick Man. This makes him the only Robot Master besides Shock Man to be fought thrice.
  • Metroid Dread features the E.M.M.I robots, nigh-invulnerable research probes which each carry a replica of one of Samus's own abilities and track her by sound. The last one, E.M.M.I.-07PB, carries the Power Bomb, and upon Samus's arrival into its zone it simply uses the Power Bomb the moment it hears her, vaporizing the entire zone and defeating Samus instantly. The only reason why EMMI-07PB failed to fully kill her was because she had a power that its systems could not account for: her Metroid powers!
  • Kronika from Mortal Kombat. If nothing else, she's efficient; she is actively working on her scheme to reset existence, even conjuring sand duplicates of other characters to buy her more time, in the final boss battle. In story mode, losing a round to her gives her enough time to succeed, resetting enough of the world to erase everything and everyone Liu Kang knows; beating her at that point just gives him an opportunity to ensure the next world is a free and happy one.
    • Her reasoning for putting Shang Tsung into the void outside of time is entirely out of the justified belief that he'd manipulate events to come out on top one way or another. As seen in Aftermath, a free Shang Tsung, especially one who is fully aware of Kronika's worries of him, manages to come out on top of literally everyone imaginable through pure guile and manipulation, ultimately resulting in her soul being stolen before she even had a chance to turn back time. Even if he was stopped by Fire God Liu Kang, she still effectively lost even worse than in the base game, where she at least managed to go the beginning of time canonically.
  • Eve in Parasite Eve tries to convince Aya that they're not that different, and attempts to Break Them by Talking. When Eve sees that neither works, she switches gears when she kick starts her "give birth to the ultimate being" plan. Eve sends her monsters at Aya's police station to distract her while Eve herself goes to the hospital to get the sperm needed to impregnate herself. When Aya does eventually show up, Eve chooses to slow Aya down rather than fight her head on by cutting the elevator cables so Aya falls to the basement. Next, Eve cuts the power to the whole building so Aya can't use the other elevator to escape. If you try to take the stairs, Eve will make them collapse.
  • In Path of Exile the Elder never speaks to the player and doesn't even look at them until they invade its lair, it just shows up, does whatever it's going to do, and leaves immediately. When it was imprisoned it demonstrated it was capable of conversation and manipulation, pretending to be a friendly spirit and tricking someone into freeing it, but once free it evidently sees no point in communicating.
  • Pokémon Black and White: Ghetsis Harmonia. For all his many faults, Ghetsis does not screw around. In Black and White, his team is designed specifically to take down N's team. In Black and White 2, Ghetsis embodies this even more so. He attempts to outright kill the player character and has a device that disables Poké Balls to prevent the player from capturing Kyurem.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet:
    • Professor Sada/Professor Turo. They did everything in their power to ensure that the time machine would not be easily shut down:
      • First, the lab it's in is at the deepest part of the Area Zero, which is swarming with powerful wild Pokémon, including Paradox Pokémon, ensuring that no average trainer would be able to reach it.
      • Second, the time machine can only be shut down using the professor's copy of the Scarlet/Violet Book, something that only their son Arven, who's not particularly skilled at Pokémon battling, would be able to get from the professor's surface lab.
      • Third, any attempt at trying to shut down the time machine, even with the proper credentials, will be stopped by the AI professor, who battles with a full team of Paradox Pokémon. From a gameplay standpoint, not only is their team the highest leveled team before the post-game, and not only do Paradox Pokémon have stats on par with legendaries, but half the team will be guaranteed to be Pokémon that the player hasn't encountered yet, and the other half are species that the player has only encountered recently, meaning that the player starts off with a huge information disadvantage and is most likely scrambling to figure out what the heck they're fighting. As the cherry on top, the last and most powerful of the Paradox Pokémon carries Booster Energy in order to trigger its Ability and gain a stat boost to their highest stat.
      • Fourth, assuming that someone managed to beat the AI professor, a secondary protocol forces the time machine to reactivate, lock all Pokéballs not registered to the professor, and force the AI professor to send out a hostile version of the box legendary.
      • Finally, even defeating the Paradise Protection Protocol doesn't prevent the machine from working, it just stops the AI Professor from being controlled by the Protocol. Actually shutting down the machine requires the removal of the AI Professor, one way or another, as it can and will continue to function indefinitely otherwise.
    • Kieran from the Teal Mask and Indigo Disk DLC. In "The Indigo Disk", when Terapagos first appears, he does not waste any time with preamble. He just comes right out with a Master Ball.
  • Punch-Out!!: Mr. Sandman, the champion of the WVBA in the NES, Wii and first arcade games, doesn't rely on gimmicks or cheats during his fight. He's just a regular boxer who's very good at what he does. Relatedly, he doesn't waste any time with national stereotypes (unlike all other boxers, including fellow American Super Macho Man), so his traits and portrayal are also decidedly realistic. In fact, he is the only boxer in the game who doesn't break any rules or boxing regulations — a claim not even Little Mac can makenote .
  • Nemesis from the Resident Evil series (specifically, his self-titled game), fittingly enough. It's not a mindless killing machine lashing out at any living thing in its way. It Can Think and all it thinks about is killing Jill, and if Jill overpowers it or proves to be too quick, it will come back with a FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS to get the job done. It's also always stalking you, and is capable of jumping you completely at random anywhere but the save rooms. Somewhat subverted in Resident Evil 3 (Remake) where he does toy with Jill a little, typically by throwing her around rather than going for kill moves — the game implies he's doing it because he enjoys hunting her.
    • The Tyrant A.K.A. "Mr. X" of Resident Evil 2 (Remake) fame is a better example from the remakes as he didn't play around when chasing Leon and Claire and fully contend to let regular zombies to do the dirty works if they could help it.
  • Bitores Mendez from Resident Evil 4. Unlike Saddler or Salazar, Méndez takes far less chances with Leon, swiftly knocking him out the first time they meet and only sparing him on Saddler's orders. Even then Méndez still would have rather likely killed him in their next encounter if he hadn't noticed Leon was infected. It's probably a good thing for the player he was only in charge of the village.
  • His Spiritual Successor in Resident Evil 6, The Ustanak, does not play games either. In his first appearance he chases you down until you get through a window he can't fit through, and the only reason he doesn't just smash the wall is doing that would give you a head start and it would be more effective to ambush you up ahead: the only time he ever stops or slows down is when better alternatives exist or he needs to change weapons.
  • Mother Miranda from Resident Evil Village. Miranda does taunt Ethan with the revelation that he had been an Unwitting Pawn all game long- and then subverts the usual Resident Evil villain problem of starting a big boss fight or failing to act by straight up ripping his heart out before he can even realize it happened. The only reason anyone could reasonably beat her in the end was thanks to Eveline's internal rebellion from Rose's resurrection, and she still ends up a Combat Pragmatist with downright vicious attacks and attempts to blow the whole arena up.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic himself is a downplayed example. While he generally doesn't take things very seriously, when a threat is made apparent, he drops his casual and snarky attitude to get the job done.
    • Shadow is a much better example because unlike Sonic, he doesn't mess around, period. When Sonic proves himself as a Worthy Opponent in Sonic Adventure 2 and a genuine threat, Shadow says in no uncertain terms that he plans on murdering him with his full strength to stop him once and for all. Even after his Heel–Face Turn, Shadow still maintains this attitude.
  • Spider-Man (PS4): Unlike other bosses, Taskmaster doesn't waste time with quips or boasting. He jumps you out of nowhere once you finish enough Taskmaster Challenges for him to get a handle on your abilities.
  • Strider (2014) has its titular hero Strider Hiryu. He's a professional assassin hired to kill Grandmaster Meio and he is frighteningly efficient at his job. When on his mission, he's intensely focused and has little time for small talk. In fact, the few times he speaks, it's to either ask a question relevant to his current objective or to give out some Badass Boast when fighting an opponent. And when he does start fighting, he doesn't banter, gloat, or snark and focuses solely on killing his enemy.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Mario and Luigi. Their standard response to facing Bowser is to throw him into a pool of lava. This outright kills Bowser. Luckily for the Koopa King, Death is Cheap applies to both sides in the Mario 'verse. Luigi might actually be worse: technically, in Luigi's Mansion, his entire goal is to subject a mansion full of ghosts to a Fate Worse than Death. Do not kidnap Mario, it ends up much worse for you than kidnapping Peach.
    • King Boo learned after that incident, however, and adopted that attitude himself, leading to Luigi having a much harder time when he comes back in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. After losing then, he comes back in Luigi's Mansion 3 and first thing he does? Shove everyone he can into a portrait, no questions asked, no hesitation. He bags both Mario and Peach this way, and Luigi was just one laundry chute away from joining them.
  • Sophia Lee in Tomb Raider III knows Lara Croft is after her artifact and there's no way in hell she will give up the only thing that is giving her eternal life and beauty, so she hires a gang of mercenaries to kill her the moment she arrives in London. When the assassination attempt fails and Lara walks into Sofia's office, she tries to convince Lara to work with her and say how Lara's lifestyle would boost her company's image. When Lara refuses the offer, Sofia immediately grabs the artifact and flees to the rooftops rather than fighting Lara head on. It's only when Lara gives chase that Sofia starts fighting back by using the artifact to shoot energy beams at her.
  • Though you have to do a No Mercy run in Undertale in order for him to finally drop the nonsense and become your nemesis, Sans the Skeleton is absolutely not messing around when you finally fight him. He always starts the fight with his strongest, flashiest, most dangerous attack (and then briefly lampshades the fact that most foes don't do this) and it only goes downhill from there. He spends most of the fight flagrantly ignoring all the usual game conventions to kill you as efficiently as possible, including dodging all of your attacks, attacking you while you're still navigating the combat menu, and even faking a surrender to make you let your guard down. Even when you finally get the upper hand, he doesn't quit: Realizing that he can't win, he instead opts to abuse the turn-based combat system by simply never actually attacking when it's his turn, effectively leaving you unable to act. The flavor text the game provides after surviving his first attack perfectly sums up the situation for you:
    • Hell, YOU yourself, as well as The Fallen Child are this too. At least Sans talks and gives exposition. The player spends the entire Genocide Run killing, or hunting down in order to kill the Underground inhabitants without talking, or even emoting.
  • Yakuza 0 has Lao Gui. In a series where other villains give badass speeches before throwing off their shirts to engage in Good Old Fisticuffs, Lao Gui comes in guns blazing without uttering a word, and his boss battle has him using a gun and bladed weapons. He only resorts to hand-to-hand combat when he runs out of ammo and his sword breaks.

    Webcomics 
  • A rather memorable but minor example can be found in 8-Bit Theatre when the main characters run into a Random Encounter in the end-game dungeon: A dragon, or rather twelve dragons. When Red Mage objects to this with the argument that only a maximum of nine enemies may be onscreen, the dragons simply reply with a very effective "Fuck you." It's at this point that the main characters realize that this is not going to be their typical encounter with an inefficient villain who they bicker endlessly with until they somehow end up on top and the only reasonable course of action for them is to, as Red Mage puts it, "Run."
  • Gort from Darken makes a habit of just killing enemies before they start a journey of lifelong revenge and repeated skirmishes. Friends and Repentants make no difference
  • Darths & Droids: In Episode VII, Ben assumes Sally-as-Kylo Ren will lock his character up somewhere he can easily escape from. Much to Ben's surprise, Sally just kills him right there, since Ren has no reason to keep Ben's character alive.
  • When Morth ascends to daemonhood in Exterminatus Now and proclaims that he's going to kill the Inquisitors and then go on a rampage, Eastwood counters that that's hardly Patternari behavior but Morth replies that there's no point in ascending if you can't go on a rampage now and then. He is later killed by a Greater Daemon of the Hound, the embodiment of rampaging Attack! Attack! Attack!.
  • In Goblins, when Forgath meets Kore, he comments the latter probably wants to give a speech about the nature of evil. Mid-sentence, Kore fires a volley of crossbow bolts at Forgath.
  • Homestuck:
    • Jack Noir. When faced with a fight against John and Rose he simply teleports and sucker-stabs John in the back. Also, in order to stop the Reckoning and win SBURB, you need the Black King's scepter. The first thing Jack does when he has power is destroy the staff, making it impossible to stop the Reckoning.
    • Draconian Dignitary has this down to a tee.
      There's a narrow line to walk between obeying the orders of a clear superior and blindly facilitating a perfectly useless genocide. It takes a very savvy breed of psychopath to pull it off.
    • Also, when Vriska goes out to meet Jack for one climactic duel, Jack teleports away, follows her trail back to the base before it gets too faint, slaughters everyone there, and THEN goes back for the duel.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Vaarsuvius disintegrates a captive without knowing who it is simply because dim nice guy Elan has captured him, which means the captive must be a villain who will escape to bedevil the team.
    • And after losing his eye to an escaping O-Chul, Redcloak's already-pragmatic viewpoint shifts more toward this.
      Redcloak: [talking to a paladin captured by his Osmium Elemental] Interesting. Not too long ago, that would have been a very effective taunt. But you can thank one of your "brothers" for its futility now. What I have lost in depth perception, I have gained in perspective. Stupid risks are just that: stupid. [to the elemental] Crush him.
  • U.F.O.:
    Ingrid: I mean, don't you want the satisfaction of knowing you beat me in a fair fight?
    Roberta: What? No. That's stupid. I just want you to scream a lot and die. [breaks her arm]

    Web Original 
  • Item #7 on the Evil Overlord List.
    When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."
  • Crimson from Helluva Boss. It's a given considering his Control Freak nature. It definitely shows when Crimson learns that Chaz has been scamming him and immediately has him killed offscreen.
  • Alex Kralie is this in Marble Hornets, big time; the first time he sees Jay in months, he is not only anticipating an ambush from Masky but reveals his identity on camera and smashes his leg so he won’t follow them again. Then once Jay finds out he’s gone Ax-Crazy during the interim, he immediately tried to shoot Jay and another nearby witness he was collaborating with in a secluded area. And then it turns out he was The Dragon to the resident Humanoid Abomination and set the events of the plot in motion, all the while making himself look as sympathetic as possible. Finally, after months of set up, he corners Jay and shoots him dead. Not bad for a guy undergoing heavy Sanity Slippage.
  • Locus from Red vs. Blue tries to be this. He never banters with his opponents and prefers ending their lives quickly when he has them at his mercy. However, he does try mid-battle to understand the minds of those he views as Worthy Opponents, and he doesn't stop his partner's Evil Gloating, so clearly he's not as immune to this as he'd like to be.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: Rafael defeats Yami Yugi because he stoically plays the Duel Monsters card game instead of standing around making jokes like everybody else does, catching Yami Yugi off guard.
  • Done twice by LongBeachGriffy in his If Movie Villains Didn't Waste Time videos.
    • The first video features the villain simply shooting his hostage and then the hero. When the hero's outraged that he didn't even explain his evil plan, the villain retorts that his plan is none of their business.
    • In the second video, the hero storms the villain's Evil Lair, looking to stop him from using the nuclear launch codes he stole, insisting they'd have a big dramatic fight then he'd stop the launch with one second left. Unfortunately for him, the villain sold the codes online the moment he got them.

    Western Animation 
  • Amphibia:
    • After showing his true colors, King Andrias proves to be not the kind of villain who plays or messes around with his enemies. If he sees you as a threat to his plans of multiversal conquest, no matter big or small, he will try to kill you right away, even using tactics that go on There Is No Kill Like Overkill territory.
    • The Core, fittingly Andrias' master, also counts. Once they have Anne in their clutches, they don't waste time and immediately opt to go for the kill. They only spare her when she points out that they don't know what will happen to her Calamity powers when she dies, and even after they decide to spare her, it's only to figure out how to extract them before they then kill her immediately.
  • Roland Dagget does this in Batman: The Animated Series episode "Batgirl Returns." After capturing Catwoman and Batgirl, the following conversation takes place. However, he still makes the mistake of telling them this, giving Robin time to swoop in and save the day. Had he simply done the thing he was intending to do instead of talking about it, he might well have succeeded.
    Batgirl: So what are you going to do? Leave us hanging over one of these vats with acid burning through the rope?
    Dagget: (evil laughter) If there's one thing I learned over the years, it's that you crime-fighting types are very resourceful. So I'll just have my men shoot you and throw your bodies into the vats. There's still enough acid residue in them to destroy the evidence.
  • Aggregor from Ben 10. Unlike most of Ben's other enemies, like Vilgax and the Highbreed, Aggregor is not an Orcus on His Throne and is perfectly willing and able to carry out his plans himself rather than relying on his mooks; he personally captures the five Andromeda aliens, going so far as to impersonate a Plumber to do so, and shoots Addwaitya in the back before making off with the Alpha Rune.
  • Isaac from Castlevania (2017) usually works as a Forgemaster on the sidelines; but if forced into direct action, he won't screw around. As soon as Godbrand confirms his intent to betray Dracula, Isaac doesn't hesitate to slaughter him via Sneak Attack and dispose of his ashes. And right after being separated from his master in the Season 2 finale — he proceeds to kill a group of bandits in self-defense (with similar Combat Pragmatism to how he killed Godbrand), raise their corpses as undead Mooks, and Start His Own army to continue Dracula's legacy. Combine this with his Undying Loyalty, and he's basically the Soundwave to Carmilla's Starscream.
    • Erzsebet Bathory from the sequel series Castlevania: Nocturne. While it takes her a while to get involved in the plot, Erzsebet doesn't mess around. She brings forth her eclipse and makes a beeline for the church to ensure Abbot Emmanuel's cooperation
  • Kim'Dael from The Dragon Prince. When she attacks Janai, she doesn't waste time talking and uses her magic at the first opportunity, only stopping when informed that only Janai knows where the Sunseed she's looking for is.
  • General Lunaris from Ducktales 2017. He does not mess around, his invasion being specifically geared to break Scrooge's will and cut off his allies long before he even arrives on Earth. One notable scene in his campaign has Scrooge asking Gyro to unleash three Godzilla Threshold weapons with increasing drama/"I really did not wanted to do this" desperation, only for Gyro to answer that Lunaris' army destroyed them all.
  • Some recent incarnations of G.I. Joe, including Resolute and Renegades, turn Cobra Commander into this, hewing closer to the character as he was in the Marvel comics, as opposed to the incompetent, often bungling version from the Sunbow and DIC animated runs.
  • Nolan Grayson aka Omni-Man from Invincible (2021). Trying to defeat the Guardians, he wastes no time in cold-bloodedly murdering them, exchanging no words, and focusing on killing as many as he can. In the episode after, he commits a total genocide on the Flaxans to eliminate their threat to his plans without wasting any time.
  • Tchang Zu from Jackie Chan Adventures. Even when he's bombastic in his early appearances, he's still quite straightforward in dealing with his enemies when compared to most of his siblings who tend to take their time like Tso Lan or get distracted by personal traits such as Po Kong by her hunger. He wastes no time trying to simply zap Jackie the moment he sees him, and he also immediately attacks the J-Team when he discovers them in Hsi Wu's domain.
  • Justice League Unlimited re-imagines Doomsday as this. While in the comics the character was just a brainless killing machine, the animated version (as a sort of meta-commentary for how one-dimensional the character was) is a bio-engineered assassin built for the sole purpose of killing Superman. Doomsday knows he's been manipulated since birth to hate Superman but he also doesn't care and embraces that he has no goal or motive beyond killing him.
  • Kim Possible:
    • In the movie A Sitch in Time, Drakken is disappointed Shego wants to just kill Kim and co. without first expositing her rise to power. Heck, in the Bad Future depicted in the movie, Shego is Supreme Empress of the entire planet, simply because she doesn't screw around with the whole Evil Is Hammy thing like Drakken.
    • This trope actually shows up a lot, as the show loves to subvert supervillain tropes. Two or three villains were specifically defined by it.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • The Red Lotus from Season Three (Zaheer, Ghazan, Ming-Hua and P'Li). Much like Amon and the Equalists, the Red Lotus are dangerously competent villains. As shown in their kidnapping attempt on Korra, they infiltrate Zaofu with no one noticing, incapacitate Korra without raising any alarms, and only fail to get back out because Pabu happened to catch them and alert Bolin. After losing Korra in the subsequent fight, they cut their losses and retreat.
    • Kuvira from Season Four. In "Kuvira's Gambit", upon seeing Team Avatar while piloting the Colossus, she immediately fires on them with the cannon. And during their second fight, she doesn't taunt Korra at any point and focuses solely on the fight.
  • As seen in "Pharaohman is Awesome", whenever Mega Man in the Ruby-Spears cartoon copies the weapon of a robot master, it tends to a trigger a This Cannot Be! moment. When Mega Man ambushes Pharaoh Man and copies his weapon, Pharaoh Man just decks him in the face.
  • Monkie Kid:
    • In the Season 3 finale, Sun Wukong delves into this trope. After his initial plan to use the Samadhi Fire against the Lady Bone Demon is derailed, he decides to face her alone, dropping any trace of his usual joking demeanour and being laser focused on ending her. Throughout the fight he keeps her on the backfoot with a relentless assault, only stopping to take out the Mayor when he keeps interfering (in one hit no less) and leaving her with her first major Oh, Crap! moment since her debut. While he does stop for a brief exchange at the end, even this is laced with Tranquil Fury, and it's clear if not for a desperate move on her end he would have finished her there and then.
    • The antagonist of the Season 4 finale, Azure Lion, fits as well. As soon as they get what they need, they waste no time enacting their plan to attack the Jade Emperor, only stopping along the way to deal with anyone who might interfere and use the cursed scroll to do quickly and easily. They maintain this attitude even after a massive powerup, going after the heroes once they learn Sun Sukong was freed and capable of interfering in their plans, and their initial method of attack is once again the cursed scroll, which only requires one hit to take an enemy out of the fight.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • King Sombra is The Silent Bob, wastes no chances to Gemstone Assault the Crystal Empire, hid the Crystal Heart behind Crazy-Prepared traps centuries ago, and quickly rushes Spike upon seeing him with the Heart. Suitably, his episode(s) treat(s) him as an Advancing Wall of Doom, putting our heroes in a Race Against the Clock.
      • Similarly in his Bad Alternate Future segment in The Cutie Remark, it's shown he wasted no time sticking it to Equestria. As soon as he had completely seized the Crystal Empire he forcibly conscripted the innocent citizens into an army using mind-controlling helmets and went on the attack. It takes everything Equestria has to even hold him at bay, let alone actually put up a fight.
      • And again in the Season 9 premiere when he's brought back from the dead. He heads straight for the Crystal Empire, only briefly slowing down to brainwash himself up an army along the way, storms the palace, kicks Cadance and Shining Armor's asses by taking Flurry Heart hostage, and takes the Crystal Heart for himself. When the Mane Six show up to fight him he immediately goes for his best attacks, and when he realizes he can't stand up to the Elements of Harmony, he fakes his death so he can follow the Six to the source and destroy the elements themselves. With that destroyed, he immediately sets his sights on Ponyville, and then Canterlot, taking them both down in no time at all. When faced with Discord who he realizes he can't beat, the second he figures out Discord likes Fluttershy he aims for her forcing Discord to throw himself in the way. Though he does a bit of gloating along the way he remains deadly focused the entire time, and manages to not only conquer two entire kingdoms in a single day but would have also gotten a decisive victory against the Mane Six had they not at the last possible second gotten a new 11th-Hour Superpower.
    • Lord Tirek hams it up a little but generally is cold and goal orientated, taking what he wants and moving on with little interest in gloating or boasting. Unlike many of the other villains he's also quite happy to get physical with his opponents, and overwhelming firepower is his first resort.
    • Similarly, though having to keep up her facade as a loving town leader forces her to give way to a little nonsense, deep down Starlight Glimmer does not dick around in The Cutie Map. Though she tries to get the Mane Six to join her willingly, she is instantly suspicious of them and tasks members of her village into spying on them, and by the time they decided to dig too deeply into how she was removing cutie marks it turns out she had anticipated that, already laid a trap, and effortlessly imprisons them, intent on bombarding them with sleep deprivation and propaganda until they break.
    • Tempest Shadow from My Little Pony: The Movie (2017). She wastes absolutely zero time with malicious gloating or silly banter, in stark contrast to most other My Little Pony villains, best shown when she leads the invasion of Canterlot.
      Tempest Shadow: How about we start with your complete and total surrender?
    • Grogar. So far, he's made his plans clear to his Legion of Doom, explained (and displayed) himself when Chrysalis believed him to be powerless, and whisked Sombra away when he decided to go solo. Needless to say, this combined with his Ancient Evil reputation has quelled the rest of his Villain Team-Up into following him, especially after his winning wager against Sombra. Following the reveal that we never actually met the true Grogar, it's unknown if he fits this, but given how dangerous he is implied to have been, it is likely.
    • Cozy Glow evolves into this by the series finale. She stuns Twilight upon entering the room, sends the guards through a portal to the outside, brings Grogar's bell to drain Celestia and Luna's magic, and upon capturing most of the Mane Six, she is in favor of disposing of them immediately. Fortunately for them, Chrysalis shoots this down.
  • Emperor Belos from The Owl House. Once he no longer needs Luz alive to complete the Stable Time Loop, he wastes little time moving against the Owl House and its inhabitants, with Eda and Lilith forced to flee after a massive Emperor's Coven assault offscreen. The only reason he doesn't do more is that he's preparing for the Day of Unity. This is further supported in his battle with the Hexsquad in "Thanks to Them", as he takes full advantage of the fact that he is currently possessing Hunter to get in free attacks at them with little fear of full retaliation due to the Hexsquad not wanting to harm Hunter.
  • Humorously deconstructed in Phineas and Ferb with Professor Mystery, the nemesis of Peter the Panda. Unlike Doctor Doofenshmirtz, he never talks about his tragic backstory and refuses to explain what his inators do, so Peter can only focus on thwarting his evil schemes. However, Mystery’s lack of gloating means that he and Peter never develop much of a rapport, so thwarting him tends to be boring. Peter eventually goes to fight Doofenshmirtz because he’s a much more interesting villain, which is a major faux pas in a world where the nemesis relationship is Serious Business.
  • In Reboot:
    • The virus Gigabyte, the merger of the two viruses Megabyte and Hexadecimal, has neither Hex's madness nor Megabyte's ego or greed. He sets himself to a goal and sticks with it.
    • Megabyte spends the entirty of the series tryng to infect the Supercomputer, or, as a consolation prize, ruling over Mainframe, but he has a tendency to gloat and give self-agrandising speeches. By the end of the series he has given up his dreams and dedicates himself entirely to revenge upon those who have wronged him.
    • Downplayed with Daemon, a supervirus like Gigabyte. While she is willing to engage in more civil and leisurely conversation, such conversations are exclusively in service to her goals and only take place while strategizing her next move. While in a position to act directly, she never wastes time in spreading her infection, only relaxing once there is nothing more to be done at the time. Justified by her being a living omnicidal timebomb - while her purpose is to infect and crash the entirety of cyberspace, her infection's final stage will activate at a pre-appointed time regardless of her progress. She literally has no time to waste.
  • Evil Morty from Rick and Morty. His defining trait. When Evil Morty wants something, he will achieve it, no matter the odds, and is smart enough to causally pre-empt any and most threats that could derail his plans along the way, especially anything a Rick throws at him. It says something that he's never once actually suffered a genuine loss in the show, and has made it clear several times that if he wanted to, he could easily deal with Main Rick and Morty, but that's non-essential to his overarching goal of simply living a life away from the Rick-Morty escapades — in fact, he outlines to Morty that it would actually be detrimental to him if he bothered to kill them and inspired vengeance from their family. The ultimate sign of this is him causally taking down Rick Prime, Main Rick's nemesis that he's been hunting fruitlessly for decades, and making it look utterly trivial to do, mainly from annoyance that Main Rick's efforts were interfering with his life outside the curve.
  • Rare heroic example: one sketch of Robot Chicken showcased SEAL Team Six going after COBRA (after G.I. Joe was completely slaughtered by insurgents in Afghanistan as a result of being too Awesome, but Impractical) and machine-gunning them all. Cobra Commander then starts to give the SEAL team a "We Will Meet Again" speech and is machine-gunned and given a point-blank headshot just to be sure after he says a few words.
  • Samurai Jack:
    • The Minions of Set, who take this trope to the most terrifying levels possible. Aku frees them from their prison to kill Jack, and they prove that they do not fuck around by immediately slaughtering an entire battalion of combat droids in a matter of seconds. When they encounter Jack, they quickly overwhelm him with blitz-style attacks and force him on the defensive for most of the episode. They don't stop to let him catch his breath, they don't banter, gloat, or monologue, they don't need to eat, drink, or rest, they can instantly heal from any injuries, even shrugging off attacks from Jack's sword, Aku's sole weakness. They don't want to fight Jack, they want to kill him and they will do it any way they can. To put it into perspective, they come out of nowhere and sucker punch Jack, punch him in the stomach, gives him a swift and brutal uppercut, and whenever Jack successfully parries one of their blade strikes, the Minions just punch him in the face instead.
      • Similar to the above were the Ultra Robots and the Daughters of Aku, both of whom managed to overwhelm Jack and force him to retreat in their initial encounters. Unlike the Minions of Set, however, Jack does manage to defeat them himself.
    • Once Jack finally makes it back to his time, he immediately goes to finish off the weakened Aku as quickly as possible, attacking him without pause and giving the latter no time to process what's going on nor any opportunity to escape with his life. Considering how Aku sent him to the future in the first place because he wasted too much time in dealing the finishing blow, and Jack now has 50 years more experience, this makes sense.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated:
    • The Phantom. When Scooby and Shaggy try to pull the old Scooby-Dooby Doors trick on him in the sleeping compartments of a tour bus, he simply sets the entire bus on fire.
    • Several other villains in the show qualify as well. More than a few have hospitalized people and it's made very clear they will harm the gang during most encounters if given the chance.
    • Professor Pericles becomes this. He outright seeks the gang's elimination and in the first season finale is confirmed by Word of God to have killed Mr. E's assistant. He eventually gets control of a lot of robotic soldiers, making him much more dangerous.
    • The Nibyru Entity showed itself to be this in the Series Finale upon being released. Within ten minutes of appearing, it absorbed and mutated Professor Pericles' body, devoured the remaining members of the original Mystery Inc along with the entire population of Crystal Cove except the Scooby Gang, and caused the city to burn in its search to find and destroy the heroes. Definitely the least humorous and most terrifying monster in the Scooby-Doo franchise.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Sideshow Bob's brother Cecil is about to kill Bart.
      Cecil: At last I'm going to do what Bob never could. Kill Bart Simpson!
      Bart: By throwing me off a dam? Isn't that a little crude for a genius like you?
      Cecil: Ooh, I suppose it is. Eh, if anyone asks, I'll lie. (throws him off)
    • A Deleted Scene from "$pringfield", seen in the "138th Episode Spectacular".
      Blofeld: 20. Your move, Mr. Bond.
      Bond: I'll take a hit, dealer. (Homer gives him a card) Joker? You were supposed to take those out of the deck!
      Homer: Oh, sorry. Here's another one.
      Bond: What's this card? "Rules for Draw and Stud Poker"?
      Blofeld: What a pity, Mr. Bond. (Odd Job and Jaws grab Bond and drag him out)
      Bond: But... but it's Homer's fault! I didn't lose. I never lose! Well, at least tell me the details of your plot for world domination!
      Blofeld: Ho ho ho, I'm not going to fall for that one again.
    • A scene from "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming," when Bob's demands aren't met after taking control of an expired nuclear warhead:
      Bart: Bob, no!
      Lisa: Don't you see? That would be taking the easy way out!
      Bob: I agree. (pushes the detonator)
    • And again from Bob, who somehow gets a lot of mileage out of this trope despite being a honey-baked ham possessed by Kelsey Grammer, when he's drinking at Moe's with Lenny and Carl. Lenny questions why he's had so much trouble killing Bart, pointing out if he didn't waste time singing or with big schemes he could have just skulked into Bart's room at night with a knife and ended it in like a minute. Naturally, Bob tries exactly that in the end of the episode.
      Bob: And now I'm going to take some advice I got from Lenny... and kill you without delay!
    • The one time villain Hank Scorpio from the episode "You Only Move Twice". At first he places his nemesis the aptly named James Bunt in a typical death trap which he escapes. However Homer tackles and knocks him unconscious. Scorpio does not make the same mistake again and simply has his henchmen shoot his unconscious body on the floor, instantly killing him.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)'s depiction of Dr. Robotnik is this, in line with this version's Adaptational Badass. This Robotnik doesn't usually waste time gloating or throwing tantrums. He's chillingly efficient, pragmatic and willing to do anything to wipe out Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters. That's not even getting into him turning all the other Mobians into robotic slaves and conquering the planet. He gets a little bit exaggerated in season 2, but this doesn't make him any less of a threat.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Toffee. Unlike Ludo or his henchmen, Toffee doesn't gloat, monologue, or waste time. He has a plan, and he carries it out with calm, calculated efficiency. He doesn't care if that means kidnapping, or even murdering, children. To him, it's all just one more step towards accomplishing his mysterious goals. Whereas nobody takes Ludo seriously, everyone, straight up to the Mewni Royal Family, is scared of Toffee.
  • Grand Admiral Thrawn of Star Wars Rebels is one of the most dangerous enemies of the Rebel Alliance. His plans include building squadrons of TIE Defenders more powerful than any rebel starfighters and locating the rebel base on Atollon, pinning them down with his Interdictor cruisers and making escape all but impossible. The only reasons his plans fail are the incompetence of his subordinates and the arrival of game-changing factors that he has no way of anticipating.
  • Yellow Diamond from Steven Universe. Apart from her concise and business-like attitude, once she sees Steven on the battlefield, she immediately goes in for the kill.
  • In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "In Brightest Day...", Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Sinestro are duking it out. Sinestro is out to kill Lanterns and take their rings, while this is Kyle's first day as a Lantern. Sinestro doesn't gloat; he simply goes for killing blows. When Superman interferes, he straps him up to a yellow construct and buries him deep underground so that he can finish off Kyle without interruption.
  • Soundwave of Transformers: Prime is this trope to frightening degrees. Most of the time, Soundwave prefers to remain in the background as Head of Communications and keep tabs on everyone. But on the rare occasions he's forced to take a direct hand in the field, he completes his missions with terrifying precision and ruthless efficiency. Unlike the other Decepticons, he doesn't gloat, he wouldn't be caught dead with the Villain Ball, actively avoids dog kicking, and plans for everything he can prepare for.
  • The Venture Brothers
    • Jonas Venture Jr. Due to his relative unfamiliarity with how the Guild of Calamitous Intent operates, when serving as the Monarch's designated Archnemesis, Jonas Jr. Venture took him seriously as a threat and was fully prepared to go for the kill until both the Monarch and Brock tell him that he's forced to play by the rules lest he faces severe retaliation from the Guild. Needless to say, he finds this all ridiculous.
    • Sgt Hatred. While he lacks the overt brutality and talent for violence that Brock has, when serving as the Venture bodyguard, he makes up for it in pragmatism. He not only sets up a proper security system but has no compunction against shooting enemies (whereas Brock prefers to get in close for the kill). As such, the Monarch's henchmen states that Hatred is arguably even more of a pain to deal with than Brock.
    • The Monarch has his moments, as well. When the Monarch is downgraded in the Guild's threat index and ordered to stop being Rusty Venture's Arch-Enemy, Monarch becomes one of these out of sheer rage and annoyance because of his utter obsession with "arching" Rusty. Cue a montage of Monarch massacring every other hero he is assigned to Arch within seconds of their face-off.
  • Feathers McGraw from Wallace & Gromit. When Wallace or Gromit get in his way he just pulls his gun either to intimidate them into locking themselves into the closet or shoot at them.
  • WordGirl: In a heroic example, "The Straw That Broke Two-Brains' Back" has WordGirl ceasing her usual theatrics and defeating Dr. Two-Brains as fast as she can so she can get back to watching the show his broadcast interrupted. She ends up missing the show, but then as an encore presentation is about to come on she makes her own broadcast warning any other villains who might be watching to not do any more crimes during her down time, threateningly bending a girder to show how serious she is.

     Other 
  • The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi is a guide on becoming this kind of fighter, as the book stresses superiority of flexibility, speed, and practicality over complicated combinations and flashy moves.
    Whenever you cross swords with an enemy you must not think of cutting him either strongly or weakly; just think of cutting and killing him. Be intent solely on killing the enemy. Do not try to cut strongly and, of course, do not think of cutting weakly. You should only be concerned with killing the enemy.
  • Similarly, most of the principals of Krav Maga encourage you to be this in a fight in order to neutralize your opponent as quickly, effectively, and simply as possible by any means necessary, by attacking their weak points, and without any concern for "honor" or "fair play" or "fighting etiquette". If a swift kick to the nards and running away means victory, then do it. Civilian-side Krav Maga even teaches legal principles in order to effectively defend yourself within the realms of the law so the person you just kicked the man-shit out of can't turn around and sue you. They include, but are not limited to:
    Neutralize the threat as quickly as possible.
    Keep it simple.
    Simultaneously attack and defend.
    Continually move.
    Use weapons if available.
    Focus on soft tissue and pressure points.
  • MCMAP, the fighting style taught in the US Marine Corps, is similar to Krav Maga (and utilizes some of its maneuvers) in that the entire point is to end the fight as quickly as possible. Though in MCMAP, the design is to use minimal force to control the situation rather than to simply hurt or disable the enemy. One of the primary tactics is to create distance in a close combat fight so you can properly aim your rifle at your opponent to get them to surrender.

 
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Alternative Title(s): No Nonsense Villain

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Colonel Radec

Known as "Visari's Hound", Col. Radec will not hesitate to dispatch an enemy to fulfil his Autarch's will. Even one of the series previous Protagonists.

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