Sinister Schnoz

"His nose was the kind that had trouble with swing doors and reminded you of Rome's bloody history."

— Sven Hassel

Almost anytime a character has a large nose, he's a bad guy. Many villains have big noses. They might be long and pointy, or a giant hook down their face, and may be emphasized with Creepy Shadowed Undereyes. Bonus points if he has a mustache that he can twirl like a true Dastardly Whiplash. But for whatever reason, bad guys rock the big noses. Maybe it's symbolic of how ugly they are on the inside? Maybe it's just to distinguish between the honest good guys and the less honest bad guys for the audience. No one nose.^note Hold your tomatoes, please.

It's one of the great mysteries of life. One speculation is that children tend to have small, upturned noses, and since Children Are Innocent, large noses are associated with age and lack of said innocence. (This is similar to Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold.) Another possibility is that they're an Animal Motif inspired by the long hooked beaks of scavenging birds such as vultures and ravens.

This is a common characteristic in anti-Semitic stereotypes, especially if the nose in question is crooked and many Greedy Jew stereotypes can be found with some kind of beak-like nose. The word "schnoz" derives from "schnozzle" which in turn derives from the Yiddish "shnoits" for "snout".

A very common feature of the Wicked Witch, and consequently often shows up on the Witch Classic as well even when she's not meant to be portrayed as sinister.

It's also sometimes done in Anime, usually as a reference to Tengu, who are said to have large noses.

On a serious note, please don't assume that somebody in the real world is a bad person if they happen to have a large nose. This trope is hardly ever a case in real life.

Sister Trope to Villainous Cheekbones and Thin Chin of Sin. Compare Gag Nose, when it's played for laughs.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The first Doraemon movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, have the villainous Black Mask whose hook-nose sticks out of his face like a sore thumb. It's even more pronounced in the 2006 remake which has several close-ups on him.
• Dog Master Galf in Fist of the North Star.
• One Piece
  • Blackbeard from has a rather noticeable nose, and is a villain.
  • The villain with the most evil-looking nose is obviously Arlong. Not only is his nose longer than Usopp's, it's shaped like a saw! Of course, he isn't human, but this feature is unusual even among Fishmen.
  • Both Emperor Charlotte Linlin and her villainous son Charlotte Perospero have very big noses.
  • Double subverted with Kaku, who was presented as a nice, upstanding guy in the Water 7 saga... but actually was The Mole.
• Many of Osamu Tezuka's characters, most notably Astro Boy's morally ambiguous creator Dr. Tenma, the twisted and angry Saruta and Duke Red who made his debut as the Big Bad of the original Metropolis manga. Averted with Professor Ochanomizu, however, who has a huge nose but is kind and ethical to a fault.
• King Piccolo of Dragon Ball has (what is for the series art style) a very large, hooked nose. The main facial difference between him and his reincarnation is that Piccolo Jr. has a normal-sized nose, and correspondingly is less evil and pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
• The CEO of Detnerat has one in My Hero Academia, which undergoes a noticeable Art Shift when he's showing his true colors as the leader of the Meta Liberation Army. Usually it's quite cartoonish, but as a villain it's depicted as more realistic and with a noticeable hook.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • The Joker is sometimes drawn like this, Depending on the Artist. Jim Lee, in particular, likes to draw him this way.◊
  • Why else would the Penguin be called such, aside from his short stature?
• The head nun from Firefly: The Sting has a long, pointed nose and is antagonistic, locking up Zoe so that she'll be forced to join the convent.
• The title character from Iznogoud. Just look at him. The evilest character in the comics, and he has the longest nose of any character.
• Tintin:
  • Mr. Bohlwinkel, the Big Bad of The Shooting Star. It's clearly a Sizable Semitic Nose, as the character was written and drawn as an antisemitic caricature during World War II when Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany.
  • Rastapopoulos. This is even lampshaded in Flight 714 when one of his own mooks (accidentally) likens his nose to that of a proboscis monkey.
• Krimson from Suske en Wiske.
• Eucalypta the witch from Paulus de Boskabouter has a large hook nose.
• De Kiekeboes: Balthazar and Timothea Triangl have a huge nose.
• Nero: Richardo the maffiosi has a typical Italian nose.
• Jommeke: Anatool has a hook nose.
• Lucky Luke: The Daltons all have large bulbous noses.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Haazheel Thorn has a very long and sharp nose as one of his many Obviously Evil traits.
• Fantastic Four: The Mole Man has a big, bulbous nose. (And he can use it, too.)
• Variously used in Asterix. While the Gauls all have big tomato-like noses (a characteristic of many Franco-Belgian Comics), several villains have them as well. Julius Caesar has a tall, pointy nose, but so do several heroic characters (and women meant to be attractive more than humorous are shown with more normal noses as well. Apart from Cleopatra of course, whose long pointy nose is actually commented on as being outstandingly attractive by everyone).
• As a Captain Ersatz of the Penguin and the Joker, the Pink Flamingo of Big Bang Comics also has a pointy ‘beak’ that enhances the resemblance to his namesake — varying in length Depending on the Artist.

Films — Animation

• In Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, we see in a flashback that the mobster who killed Carl Beaumont has a noticeably long, knife-like nose. This actually cues Batman that the hitman was actually the Joker in his pre-Supervillain days.
• Gru of Despicable Me has a long needle-like nose. A subversion, that while he is a villain, he's actually a good person.
• Chester V from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 has a long and pointy nose. Being an Evil Counterpart to Flint, whose nose is big and bulbous, it's fitting.
• Quite a few villains in the Disney Animated Canon, e.g. Frollo, Jafar, and Captain Hook.
• Alistair Krei from Big Hero 6, a sleazy businessman. It turns out he's not the villain Yokai — it's Professor Robert Callaghan. In an interesting twist, our first real hint Krei isn't Yokai is his large nose, which is too big to fit into the mask.
• The Secret Life of Pets 2: Sergei is the movie's villain and his nose shows it.
• The Chief Blue Meanie, Max and a number of Meanie minions sport a prolific proboscis in Yellow Submarine.
• Invoked in Peace on Earth. Grandpa Squirrel mistakes the human soldiers gas masks for "long snoots what fastened onto their stomachs."
• Foreman Spike in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a downplayed example in that while he isn't a villain, he's mean and treats the Super Mario Bros. as though he were a school bully rather than a grown man. He has a long schnoz, carried over from his appearance in Wrecking Crew.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Wizard of Oz, The Wicked Witch of the West.
• The Child-Catcher of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. (It's rather useful too.)
• Iris in 30 Days of Night. Being played by Megan Franich, it's kind of a given.
• The title character from Ink. Often, it's all you can see under his hood. His angst over his ugliness helps drive the plot. Subverted by the end, when he pulls a Heel–Face Turn and decimates the "pretty" Incubi.
• The many villains played by Basil Rathbone.
  • Alan Rickman's nose is emphasized in his villainous or morally-ambiguous roles.
  • And Geoffrey Rush.
• The Menu: One of Chef Slowik's unnamed female cooks has a big nose.
• Star Wars:
  • Watto in Episode I: The Phantom Menace has a huge, trunk-like nose, which contributed to the case of critics who called him an anti-Semitic stereotype.
  • Palpatine/Sidious' actor, Ian McDiarmid, has a rather large nose, which is very visible in the Prequel Trilogy and the last episode of the Original Trilogy. It is often the most visible part of his upper face when he's in his Sith robes, apart from his mouth and chin even when his eyes are fully hidden. And he is the main villain of the saga, leaps and bounds beyond the small-time desert merchant Watto. According to McDiarmid himself, the reason why he was chosen to play Palpatine in the first place is because Lucas took notice of that very nose.^note It's interesting to note that during the production of the Original Trilogy, Lucas has jokingly stated that the Emperor's real name is Richard Nixon, who often caricatured with a large nose.
  • Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens has a rather large nose when unmasked, courtesy of actor Adam Driver.
• In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the signs of a "witch" is having an extra-long nose. However, the nose is fake because the people put it on the woman in question. This IS a general characteristic of wicked witch characters in fiction, though.
• The main villain in Apocalypto was given a larger, prosthetic nose, which Mel Gibson points out in the commentary.
• Blix the Goblin from Legend (1985).
• John E. Dupont in Foxcatcher has a nose you can see before he comes into the room, really a prosthetic worn by Steve Carell. The point is driven home when he nasally corrupts Mark Schultz by getting him hooked on coke.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl:
  • Captain Barbossa, played by the aforementioned Mr. Rush, keeps his distinctive nose in skeletal form while the lower-ranking crew lose theirs.
  • Subverted in the second film: Davy Jones had a strong nose when he was human, but in his Cthulhumanoid form is completely noseless.
• Funny Man: As part of his Villainous Harlequin appearance, the Funny Man has a very crooked nose.
• Thunderball: Emilio Largo, the Big Bad, has a prominent hook nose.

Literature

• As I Darken gives the anti heroine, Lada, a hooked nose, which is mentioned a couple times. While she isn't the villain of the story, she is ugly, somewhat cruel, and violent—and other people see her as this trope because of her nose and her ugliness.
• In the Nordic Noir Backstrom police novels by Leif G.W. Persson, there is the abominable Bäckström's ill-fated attempt to keep a pet. The creature is called Isaak owing to a chain of associations brought on by contemplation of its impressively large and hooked beak. This is of a piece with Bäckström's general attitude towards all ethnic minorities in Sweden. He isn't so much anti-Semitic as anti-everybody.
• Averted with Haverness in Dragon Bones. He has a rather impressive nose, (and so has his daughter), and he is one of the most honest, straightforward people in the realm. Everyone (including those who are in favour of a revolution) agrees that trying to get him involved in a revolution would be stupid because he is so trustworthy and absolutely loyal to the king. When his daughter becomes involved in a revolution, he disowns her. Or rather, pretends to do so. He loves his daughter dearly, but it is safer to pretend to have no ties to her. Still an aversion, as the king the revolution is against is a major jerk, and the rebels are the good gals and guys.
• Harry Potter
  • Toyed with in Severus Snape, who sports a large, hooked nose and is antagonistic towards Harry Potter, but is a Double Agent whose true alignment remains unknown until the very end of the series.
  • Averted with Voldemort, who has two slits in the middle of his face, like snake nostrils.
  • Inverted with Dumbledore, who has a large crooked nose, but is the Big Good.

• The protagonist of The Pyat Quartet has a prominent nose. He laments that this makes people assume that he's one of those shifty Jews, which he isn't, not one bit, no sirree!
• The Saga of the Jomsvikings: When Sigvaldi is introduced, he is described as tall, strong, "shrewd", and having "very fine eyes but an ugly nose". Sigvaldi's "ugly nose", which mars an otherwise handsome appearance, hints at the flaws of his character, namely, his treachery, which later shows when he deviously abducts King Svein in order to blackmail him to make peace with Burisleif, and when he flees from the Battle of Hjórunga Bay, in the process abandoning Vagn and his men to their fate.
• Several Icelandic sagas (to wit, Oddr Snorrason's Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, Fagrskinna, Kristni saga, and The Greatest Saga of Olaf Tryggvason) record a stanza of Old Norse invective poetry supposedly composed around 1000 CE by the Icelander Stefnir Thorgilsson in scorn of the Danish jarl Sigvaldi, the latter supposedly a notorious traitor who was blamed for betraying, at different opportunities, kings Svein Forkbeard of Denmark and Olaf Tryggvason of Norway. The verse itself makes a point of not mentioning the name of its target, but instead speaks only of a "villain" (níðingr) whose nose is "curved down", the latter allegedly being a salient physical feature of Jarl Sigvaldi.
  I will not name him, but I will aim close: The nose is curved down on the traitor who tricked King Svein from his realm and drew the son of Tryggvi into a trap.
• Agatha Christie often indulged in anti-Semitism in her early books. The Secret of Chimneys has Isaacstein, the Greedy Jew and a generally unpleasant character, described as having "a generous curve" to his "big nose".

Live-Action TV

• Fenella the kettle witch from Chorlton and the Wheelies.
• Averted in Doctor Who, where most actors to have played the lead role have had prominent noses (to suit the Doctor's typical 'funny-looking-but-attractive' aesthetic). A lot of this is because a lot of the show's iconography was fixed in the 1970s, and both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker had strikingly big and oddly-shaped noses. The villains, on the other hand, tend to be more conventional-looking or monsters with no nose at all.
• Farscape. In "Coup By Clam", Villain of the Week Doctor Tumii has an impressively-sized nose (albeit with squick-inducing snot) that gets bitten off by Rygel towards the end of the episode.
• Glee:
  • Downplayed with Rachel. Sinister may be a slight exaggeration, but she is an attention-seeking diva who has done things that would make Sue Sylvester cringe to protect her place in the spotlight. And she's played by the famously large-nosed Lea Michele (who a number of other actors have not enjoyed working with).

  • Played somewhat more straight with Sugar Motta, who fakes Aspergers as an excuse to say whatever she wants, doesn't have the talent that Rachel does to back up her bitchiness, and has an even bigger nose.
• Averted in M*A*S*H where Max Klinger's heart and fundamental decency are as big as his nose. although, as Hawkeye remarked, he once sustained 50% traumatic bodily damage necessitating life-preserving major surgery and intensive medical support when he broke his nose...

Music

• Gorillaz:
  • The Boogie Man has an extremely long nose. It's the only facial feature visible.
  • Murdoc's adoptive father Sebastian Niccals has a long, comical nose. He also put Murdoc through many long years of humiliation and financial exploitation, boasting a list of sins that would, according to Rise of the Ogre, "put Bill Sykes to shame."
  • Murdoc himself is a subversion of this trope. His nose is in fact broken so severely that it doesn't even look like a nose anymore. He's also a hedonistic, Chaotic Stupid lech that's implied to be the Antichrist himself.
• Eminem frequently references his striking "pointy nose" in his lyrics. There's a slight racial connotation to his references, since Black people tend to have softer and less protuberant noses than white people, making his angular nose both a reference to his villainous persona and his sinister Angry White Man identity.

Puppet Shows

• Long hooked Noses are often used to identify Villains in Japanese Shadow Puppet Shows.

Tabletop Games

• The Gretchin of Warhammer 40,000 have ridiculously long noses that take up half their head. The same is also true for their Warhammer equivalents, the Goblins.
• The picture shown for the Imp (a minor devil-like creature) in the Monster Manual for 1st Edition AD&D has a schnoz that would make Jimmy Durante jealous.

Video Games

• Toujin the assassin from Battle Arena Toshinden 3.
• Darkest Dungeon: Most of the vampires seen in the Crimson Court DLC have some impressively pointy and elongated noses. There is a reason for this, however, and it's the fact the curse turned their noses into mosquito proboscises, complete with blood-sucking capacity.
• Tengu in Dead or Alive 2. But he is a Tengu, so that is given.
• Patches of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.
• Deltarune: Spamton has a long, pointy nose that highlights his status as a mad, manipulative figure. The nose even becomes the subject of one of his attacks as Spamton NEO.
• Loghain of Dragon Age: Origins, who looks rather like Alan Rickman in general.
• Mordoc the Evil Sorcerer from Dragon's Lair 2, not only has a huge nose, there's a small twig growing on it!
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce and Star Resistance gives us Sunny Day, sporting a long mosquito-like snout flowing out from his propeller-topped head. He and Funny Face form a duo of lieutenants in the Dark Force army, nominally comedy relief but dangerous tools of Dark Force all the same, commanding mechanized troops and relishing in attacking civilians. Star Resistance also introduces Moon Base, a bioroid enemy deployed as base defense and an expert is saturating the screen with as many bullets on its own as the entirety of their escort units combined.
• Kirby Star Allies: Hyness, the Big Bad of the game, turns out to be a bizarre googly-eyed creature with a large, bulbous nose when Kirby knocks the hood off his robes in the middle of his boss fight. The "sinister" part is subverted later on, though, with the reveal that he wasn't always evil, and used to be a benevolent religious leader until he went insane after he got hold of the Jamba Heart. Unlike previous Kirby villains, he lives long enough to be redeemed at the end of the postgame campaign, "Heroes in Another Dimension".
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ganondorf could open a can of Coke with his sniffer. Interestingly, it goes from straight and needle-like to hooked and bent. Averted when he turns into his pig-form, where he gets a snout.
  • Ganondorf gets his long nose from his race: the Gerudo, a race almost entirely made of women who work as Desert Bandits in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It's downplayed in their case because the Gerudo are actually quite nice to Link once he proves himself, and unlike Ganondorf they're implied to actually have some class. Totally avoided by the time of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where they still have the big noses but have dropped the banditry, being no meaner than the other civilized races of Hyrule.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The Mago enemies are depicted in artwork with huge, hooked green honkers covered in warts, bringing to mind the nose of the classic Wicked Witch.

• Igor from the Persona series is an aversion; in spite of his shnoz he's nothing but helpful. Persona 5 has the main villain impersonating Igor for most of the game, meaning it's subverted—while when disguised as Igor he has the trademark can-opener-nose, his true form has a robotic flat face.
• Heiss in Radiant Historia.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Wario and Waluigi, though they aren't always villains. Mario and Luigi both also have large noses, but they are of the non-sinister type. The difference is that Mario and Luigi have noses that are less noticeable because they are smooth, round, and the same color as the rest of their faces while Wario and Waluigi have noses that stand out on their faces because they are beak-like and an unhealthy-looking bright pink.
  • Foreman Spike from Wrecking Crew has a rather long schnoz and is an enemy in that game, knocking Mario off of platforms if he isn't careful.
• Warcraft goblins are more neutral than evil, but still have long noses.
  • While the Steamwheedle goblins are just shrewd businessmen, the Bilgewater goblins added in Cataclysm are more like gangsters. Their mob boss, Gallywix, even built himself a pleasure palace in the middle of Azshara with its own mountaintop golf course.
  • In the cataclysm zone of Uldum, the main villain for most of the quests is a goblin tresure hunter and his mercenary army that are working for Deathwing. He's named Schnotz.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: This is a given for Melinda, considering she's a Wicked Witch.

Webcomics

• Rosemaster from Cucumber Quest has a thorn which resembles a nose.
• Diego from Gunnerkrigg Court: Short, beaky, amoral Magitek engineer, and a firm believer in If I Can't Have You….
• The purple Raiment wielder in Parallax has a very pointy one.
• Schtein, the Villain Protagonist of String Theory (2009). Played for Laughs when he expresses regret that his estranged daughter (whom he's never met) has inherited his nose.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Oscar the devil has a foot-long Tengu-style red nose and is quite literally a Card-Carrying Villain — though he also has "EVIL" print pants in case bystanders haven't gotten the message.

Web Original

• John Kricfalusi refers to this as the "turd sniffer" on John K. Stuff:
  "I'm not sure if Disney invented it, but animators know that the quickest way to turn the audience against someone is to have them sniff the ceremonial turd. Decent people instinctively know you shouldn't be poking your nose around that area and won't root for the turd sniffer."

Western Animation

• Starting with Batman: The Animated Series, many villains in the DC Animated Universe have noses you could pop a balloon with.

• Con Artist Al Swindler on Garfield and Friends has one of the biggest noses in cartoon history. (Seriously, just look at him!) In fact, in his second appearance, Garfield says, "I'm not too good with names, but I never forget a nose like that."

• Corvax from Muzzy in Gondoland has a nose nearly as long as his arms, as part of his Obviously Evil look.
• Invoked in Peace on Earth, wherein Grandpa Squirrel mistakes the human soldiers gas masks for "great long snoots, that fastened onto their stomachs".
• Dr. Doofenshmirtz, the Affably Evil villain from Phineas and Ferb, has an impressive one. It was even lampshaded once:
  Doof: Is my nose really that pointy?

• Gargamel, from The Smurfs (1981), an evil wizard and sworn enemy of the Smurfs, is portrayed in the animated TV show as having a long nose.
• Sofia the First: Cedric the Great, who plans to steal Sofia's Amulet to take over Enchancia, has a pointy nose to go with his evil grin, though he gets his Heel–Face Turn later in the series.
• An interesting variation with Jasper from Steven Universe. Her schnoz is indeed very sinister, but technically she's The Noseless- her gem is in the middle of her face where a nose would normally be.

Real Life

• Pedro Pascal, who portrays villains and anti-heroes across various mediums, sometimes refers to his "sharp nose" as a reason he'll "probably be playing bad guys forever..."
• The Sarchosuchus Imperator^translation  Imperator (a Roman title similar to "commander-in-chief") Flesh-crocodile (basically a giant prehistoric crocodile) had a muzzle six feet long with 132 teeth. It was most likely a lot like modern day crocs: big, mean, and can muscle out anyone stupid and small enough to try and tangle with it.
• Males of quite a few species of large seal sport a tremendous trunk-like snout, and are extremely aggressive about defending their beaches from trespassing rivals or predators.
• The Avon S6 NBC Respirator, made famous by the Special Air Service during the Iranian Embassy Siege, features a distinctive nose.

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