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Wicked Witch
(aka: Evil Witch)

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Wicked Witch (trope)
[Witches] are malefic, negative and destructive. Their knowledge of the art of the occult gives them tremendous powers. They can change the course of events and people's lives, through harm. You don't believe me? Their goal is to accumulate great personal wealth. It can only be achieved by injury to others. They can cause suffering, sickness, and even the death of those who for whatever reason offended them.
Dr. Frank Mandel, Suspiria (1977)

Welcome to the dark side of the classic witch. Step lightly, or you may get eaten.

The wicked witch archetype is a classic staple of Fairy Tales everywhere. It used to be that just about every witch was wicked, and if a non-evil female magic user appeared in folklore, she'd be referred to with a term like "sorceress" or "fairy godmother" instead, but in modern times that's not always the case. A lot of the trappings of a wicked witch are shared by her good or neutral counterpart, the Witch Classic, such as broomstick riding and wearing pointy hats. Still, there are some red flags to watch out for to decide if the witch you're dealing with is good or may in fact be wicked.

It's likely that every witch in existence will be this trope in a setting where Magic Is Evil. There might also be some overlap with the Wicked Stepmother and the Evil Matriarch; however, royalty tends to be beautiful. In settings tending more towards Magic Realism than typical fantasy worlds, their magical powers will be downplayed, but their prophecies will have a bad habit of coming horribly true, especially if they get insulted or snubbed.

Compare Evil Sorceress of which this tends to be a more 'earthy' version.

Usually uses Black Magic. Subtrope of Witch Classic. Sister tropes include Cute Witch, Hot Witch, and Widow Witch.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie: Clow Reed's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend in the dubbed version. In the original, she was merely a water-diviner whose business was disrupted by Clow Reed, and who was sealed up voluntarily. She was also not actually his girlfriend, though she did have feelings for him that may or may not have been reciprocated. note  In the dub, she was formerly Clow Reed's student, and eventually his long-term girlfriend, until she decided she wanted more power and headed on over to The Dark Side, and Clow Reed broke up with her and sealed her away because she was dangerous.
  • Food Wars!: Nao Sadatsuka isn't an actual witch, but she likes to dress and act the part, given that she specializes in boiled dishes that she prepares on a stirring cauldron, which many people compare to witchcraft. She's even given the moniker "Boiling Witch".
  • Little Witch Academia: Two of the teachers at the school fit this look, but are more stern that truly evil. Professor Anne Finnelan has the craggy looks (resembling the Wicked Witch of the West without the green skin) and is the strictest teacher at the school, while Professor Lukic is more elderly in appearance with a hag-like appearance and a spine-chilling cackle, who delights in scaring the wits out of her students.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid: True Witch Fabia Crozelg dresses in a black witch outfit, flies around on a broom called Hell Gazer, commands several devil familiars, and specializes in a wide variety of Curses. When Church Knight Sister Chantez sees her, she mentions that she's practically her complete opposite professionally. She's also the villain of the Library arc, spying on the Vivid cast and later capturing them one by one.
  • One Piece:
    • To the outside world, Mother Carmel was a kindly old nun running an orphanage and dreaming of racial harmony. In reality, Carmel was a black-market child trafficker who sold orphans to the World Government as soldiers and spies. In the criminal underworld, Carmel was known as the Mountain Witch, a nod to the yamanba of Japanese folklore—old hags who eat children. Carmel wielded the Soul-Soul Fruit, using it to manipulate nature.
    • Kurozumi Higurashi was an old, wrinkled crone with a hooked nose and a grudge as ancient as she was. Higurashi blamed the Kozuki clan for the downfall and persecution of the Kurozumi clan and made it her life's mission to take revenge. Armed with a Shinto ōnusa twisted into a symbol of corruption and the Clone-Clone Fruit's shapeshifting powers, Higurashi wormed her way into Orochi's life when he was just an ignorant orphan and groomed him into a puppet of her vengeance—like witches in folklore preying on children. Higurashi impersonated members of the Kozuki clan to sabotage Wano from the inside as she helped Orochi become the shogun.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Witches are very, very far from the classic image of the "Witch", being much closer to Eldritch Abominations or the youma of classic mahou shoujo shows than anything else. Also, apart from witches that grew from former familiars after their parent witch was killed, every single witch used to be a Magical Girl.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena intentionally subverts the Wicked Witch archetype with Anthy, who is a witch who acts like a princess. She is victimized by her brother Akio, a prince who acts like a witch, and she eventually falls in love with Utena, a princess who acts like a prince.
  • Smile Pretty Cure! has Majorina, one of the enemy commanders. Crooked nose, occasional cackling, rides on a broom, casts hexes (albeit from her invention, uses a ball to spy on others (though she doesn't use it too much, and is old and ugly (until she shouts "Majorina time!" and turns into her Hot Witch form).
  • Soul Eater portrays witches in general as Always Chaotic Evil, but Medusa and Arachne in particular are the Big Bads of various points of the story.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters: Mystical Sands is a witch that the heroes have to defeat to progress. She controls sand and laughs constantly as the heroes fight her sand worm minions.

    Arts 
  • Witches' Sabbath (1798): The elderly, impoverished women are a coven of witches congregating on their own Sabbath. It's heavily downplayed, though, since the only stereotypical traits they display are that they have Satan as their god and that they are ugly.

    Comic Books 
  • Alan Ford: Witchcraft is an old hag who was burnt for witchery 300 years ago, but her spirit returns to the world of the living from time to time. Initially an opponent of the group who wants revenge, she eventually helps Minuette and Alan from time to time, but always remains something of a loose cannon with a tendency for pettiness and overreactions. She can take the form of a gorgeous blonde with curly hair.
  • Brath: C'inntra, the mad priestess of the Moon Goddess, is a withered old crone who yearns to bring back the banned practices of Human Sacrifice and to help her nocturnal goddess claim dominion over the world.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Magica De Spell, the witch of Mount Vesuvius, is one of Scrooge McDuck's recurring foes as she tries to steal his #1 Dime to turn into an amulet of wealth. She's more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain than anything else, but tries to maintain an image of being a scheming evil enchantress nonetheless — a few stories feature her dealing with issues with her reputation as a villainess among other witches.
  • Fables: Frau Totenkinder ("Madam Childkiller") is any unnamed Wicked Witch in fairy tales. She's been shown specifically to have been the Wicked Witch in "Rapunzel", "Beauty and the Beast", "The Frog Prince", and "Hansel and Gretel", but she got better after the oven incident. (This is explained in the 1001 Nights of Snowfall prequel.). Totenkinder is actually a subversion because she's not actually evil, just self-servingly neutral, and only looks the way she does by choice.
  • Hillbilly: With the exception of White Witches like Alma Rose, witches are all twisted crones who serve as the central antagonists of the series.
  • Hoppy the Marvel Bunny: In "A Witch's Tale" from issue #9, Captain Marvel Bunny interferes with a coven of broom-flying, black-clad, point-hatted witches who are trying to turn one female into a witch against her will.
  • Judge Dredd: Mega-City One has been attacked by the Sisters of Death several times, who combine the wicked witch archetype with Eldritch Abomination. As allies of the Dark Judges (and the ones responsible for turning them into living dead), they're undead spirits who consider life itself a crime and whose powers are so vast that they took over most of the Judge force and blacked out the sun.
  • Little Lulu: Most of the stories that Lulu tells to Alvin feature an evil witch named Witch Hazel (No, not that Witch Hazel), and her niece (also a witch) named Little Itch.
  • Mother Hubbard, from ''Scoop Comics’’ in 1941, is an old hag with a witch's hat who flies on a broomstick and uses cauldrons and crystal balls to use dark magic. However, she's on the good guy’s side, fighting evil gnomes and trolls, and, like most heroes of the time, battling Those Wacky Nazis.
  • The Marvelous Land of Oz: Mombi the Wicked witch of the North is The Starscream to Big Bad Ruggedo the Nome King in Oz (Caliber).
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Hilda Spellman has a pointy hat, long nose, warts, crooked teeth, flying broomstick and propensity to put hexes and curses on anyone she sees fit to. Her sister, Zelda, however, is far more the fairy godmother type, and their niece, Sabrina, is a friendly Cute Witch. This was true in stories before the late 1990s; with the success of the sitcom, Hilda and Zelda were given character makeovers that made them look and act more like typical modern women.
  • Suske en Wiske: An Tanneke in De Zeven Snaren (but she becomes a good character in the end), Alwina in De Schat van Beersel, Kovertol in De Tuf-Tuf-Club, De Zwarte Madam in De Zwarte Madam, Ham Leyn Wecks in De Mysterieuze Mijn, Jeanne Panne in Jeanne Panne.
  • Wendy The Good Little Witch is a Cute Witch, but she has three very wicked aunts.
  • The Witches of Oz (2024) deconstructs the Trope Namer's reputation — Margot wasn't actually an evil witch, she was just very mad about the death of her sister and wasn't thinking straight, taking out her anger on poor Dorothy. After having time to reflect, she regrets her past actions, but is still deeply bitter about how everyone villified her.
  • Wonder Woman: Circe is a powerful human hating Solitary Sorceress who routinely turns people into animals and monsters. She's also a shapeshifter who usually looks like a Hot Witch, but she alters her appearance constantly.

    Comic Strips 
  • Angus Og: Granny McBrochan has all the attributes of the classic wicked witch; living in a remote cottage, magical cats, purveyor of curses and potions, and a cauldron. In practice she is a mostly benign feature in the lives of most Drambegians. Her wrath is mostly confined to Angus, and goodness knows but he deserves it at times.
  • The Far Side: Green-skinned, hook-nosed, black-robed and -hatted Halloween witches with a taste for kids turn up fairly often. One strip has a couple with very cross expressions on their faces berating the witch they hired to babysit for eating both of their kids, while another has a witch express pleased surprise at her friend being expecting, as opposed to literally having "one in the oven".
  • Popeye: The Sea Hag is a cadaverous old woman who menaced ships and stalked Popeye. She was said to have "a face that sank a thousand ships". Her slave, Alice the Goon, was a terrifying figure who reportedly gave kids nightmares, until Segar revealed that Alice only worked for the Sea Hag because the Sea Hag was holding her baby hostage. Rescued by Popeye, Alice became Swee'Pea's babysitter. The Sea Hag had a crush on Wimpy, and among other things once made him grow to giant size.

    Fairy Tales 
  • Baba Yaga is the Russian folklore's most famous and most feared witch. She flies around using a giant mortar and pestle, is known for kidnapping and eating small children, and lives in a forest hut, which stands on chicken legs. In some tales, though, she is helpful to people who treat her respectfully and do not put their noses into her business.
  • "The Blue Light (Brothers Grimm)": The witch lets the soldier to stay in her home for the night in exchange of him working for her next morning. But it takes the soldier the whole day to do the job and he becomes so tired that he has to stay for another night, so he has to do the same amount of work again next day. When she asks him to give her the light from the well, the soldier knows that she would leave him in the well, so he refuses and she leaves him anyway.
  • "Brother and Sister": The Wicked Stepmother not only drives off the title characters with her cruelty, but, being a witch, tries to enchant them into animal forms (and succeeds with Brother). She also murders Sister after her marriage and replace her with her own daughter.
  • "The Brothers and the Ogre" (Aarne-Thompson type 327B): A common variant replaces the evil ogre, giant, or troll with an evil hag or witch that tries to kill the hero and their siblings when they stay in her house:
    • "Esben and the Witch": When Esben and his brothers stay at the witch's, she tries to murder them in their sleep. Fortunately, Esben shifted around the nightcaps so she murdered her own daughters instead. After they find a king's castle to work as stableboys in, the king charges them with stealing the hag's treasures or else lose their heads, so Esben heads back three times to steal a golden dove, a golden boar, a magical lamp, and a magical coverlet. He's caught the last time he returns and is caged so that the witch can fatten and eat him, showing cross-influence from the "Hansel and Gretel" family of stories, but is able to escape when she's obliged to go to a witch's sabbath.
    • "Smallhead and the King's Sons": Smallhead has to rescue her half-sisters from the house of an evil hag where they have unwisely sheltered. After escaping, she needs to return twice to steal the hag's magic sword and book, and a third time to rescue a prince that she turned into a pig and planned to eat.
  • "Buttercup": A witch kidnaps Buttercup in order to eat him.
  • Child Ballads:
  • "The Daughter of Buk Ettemsuch": A witch breaks into the heroine's house and eats her older sisters (though the incident was the sisters' fault for leaving the door open).
  • "The Death of Koschei the Deathless": Baba Yaga tells Prince Ivan that she will give him one horse if he takes care of her herd for three days; but she will behead him if he loses any of them.
  • "Frau Trude": Frau Trude turns a girl into a block of wood and then uses the former child to fuel her fire.
  • "The Frog Prince": It's mentioned that the Prince got turned into a frog by an evil witch.
  • "The Goose Girl At The Well": Subverted. Others speculate that the old woman is a witch due to her strange behavior. But in the end, she turns out to be good who helps the princess by letting to live with her after the princess was exiled.
  • "Hansel and Gretel": The siblings end up lost in the woods, and find their way to a house made of cake and bread, which is owned by a cannibal witch who forces Gretel to work for her and fattens Hansel to eat him later.
  • "The Iron Stove": An evil witch traps a good prince inside an iron stove. Nothing more is known about her since she has no mention nor presence afterwards.
  • "Jorinde and Joringel": A witch who disguises herself as an owl and or a cat turns Jorinde into a nightingale, and Joringel has to go save her.
  • "Kate Crackernuts": The envious Wicked Stepmother has a Wicked Witch turn her stepdaughter's head into a sheep's head.
  • "The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh": The stepmother, out of jealousy at her beauty, turns her stepdaughter into a dragon; she is disenchanted by her brother.
  • "The Lambkin and the Little Fish": A woman uses witchcraft to transform her stepchildren into a fish and a lamb, then orders a cook to kill the lamb to feed her guests with.
  • "The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples": A witch prevents the prince and his love from meeting a second time.
  • "The Old Witch": The two girls go into service for the old witch; one, by being friendly to things she meets on the way, succeeds in tricking her out of gold, but the other fails.
  • "The Old Woman In The Wood": A witch curses a prince and his servants to be trees and the prince could only be a dove for two hours a day.
  • The One-Handed Girl: The heroine's brother accuses her of being a witch and a serial widow that kills her husbands.
    "By the kindness of your heart have you been deceived, O king," said he. "Your son has married a girl who has lost a hand. Do you know why she had lost it? She was a witch, and has wedded three husbands, and each husband she has put to death with her arts. Then the people of the town cut off her hand, and turned her into the forest. And what I say is true, for her town is my town also."
  • "Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun": The main character's little sister is a size-shifting, swift-footed, iron-toothed witch who eats their parents up and tries to eat him, too.
  • "Prunella": Prunella is a Wicked Witch's prisoner, because she had taken fruit from the witch's tree, and she assigns Impossible Tasks; only with the help of the witch's son does she survive.
  • "Puddocky": When the girl steals parsley from the witch, the witch has her come work for her, and eat all the parsley she likes, but when young men start to quarrel because of her beauty, she turns the girl into a toad.
  • "Rapunzel" is held captive by a witch, who demanded her in return for her father's life, because he had stolen rampion from her for his pregnant wife. As are Petrosinella and The Fair Angiola, whose mothers had robbed the witch and had to pay the same price.
  • "Sweetheart Roland": The witch wants to kill her stepdaughter, but she escapes while also stealing the witch's wand that helps her to shapeshift, and the witch uses her seven league boots to chase her.
  • In "The Two Brothers", collected by The Brothers Grimm, and "The Three Princes and Their Beasts", collected by Andrew Lang, one of the brothers gets lost in the woods and encounters a wicked witch who turns people to stone.
  • "Vasilissa the Beautiful" offers one of the rare instances where the witch Baba Yaga helps the main character, presumably because Vasilissa was respectful to her and refused to make too many questions.
  • "The White Bride and the Black One": The protagonist's stepmother uses witchcraft to make her not properly hear Reginer, while Reginer is cursed not properly seeing the protagonist, so the witch could replace the protagonist with her biological daughter. After turning her stepdaughter into a duck, she casts a spell on the king, so he would see her and her daughter as pretty instead of their true ugly selves.
  • "The White Dove (Andrew Lang)": A wicked witch gets two brothers to promise her their younger brother for their safety; then she kidnaps the younger brother and tries to destroy him with Impossible Tasks.
  • "The Witch": The Wicked Stepmother intentionally sends her children to a Wicked Witch, who tries to set them Impossible Tasks; through the advice of their grandmother and kindness to the objects about her house, they escape.
  • "The Witch In The Stone Boat" kidnapped a princess, taking her form and place, and sending her to her brother as a bride, but the princess's son knew she was not his mother, and the true princess came back three times, and the third time, the prince managed to free her.
  • In Andrew Lang's "The Wonderful Birch", a Wicked Witch turns the heroine's mother into a sheep and uses shapeshifting to take her place; she has the sheep killed and feeds it to the woman's husband, although the daughter does not eat and manages to bury the bones. Then she does everything in Cinderella and then, after the wedding, enchants her stepdaughter into the form of a reindeer after the wedding and puts her own daughter in her place.

    Fan Works 
  • Codex Equus:
    • The Second Age saw a number of evil witches threaten the world, most notably Queen Dark Crystal, one of the most evil and powerful witches to ever live, and Rita the Repulsive, the Witch From the Stars, an "extratellusian" witch from the stars with command of both powerful magic and advanced technologies.
    • The Grittish Isles have a recurring problem with evil witch covens, such as one that plotted to get rid of all the Isles' children by turning them into mice and tricking the transformed children's ignorant families into killing them.
    • Abyssal Anthem us a "Deep Matriarch" who seeks to spread evil and misery to accumulate enough Negative Karmic Energy needed to awaken an Ancient Evil and use its power to conquer the surface islands of Pulau Tropika and beyond. She is in possession of many powerful magics to facilitate that end, requiring her to be opposed by the Keepers of Mana.
  • The Fluffy Folio: The project adds some more monsters to the Hags of Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Bog-Bonbon Hag is able to turn people into Copycats, and always has a bag of cursed sweets that bring ruin to those that eat them.
    • The Pumpkin hag often pretends to be a good fairy in opposition to another hag, but actually uses this guide to corrupt people's crops into undead monsters.
    • Tree Stump Hags are born from Witch Trees that form in corrupted forests. They live in the deepest, rotting parts of nature, preying on those that get lost.
    • The Baby Yagas are a whole swarm of what looks like toddler hags, though their true origin is unknown. Interestingly enough, they are Chaotic Neutral instead of the usual Evil.
    • Averted with the Bog Hag, which aren't usually malevolent (and are also protectors of their environment) despite being in the Hag family.
  • The MLP Loops: An unidentified but ill-fated one of these runs into Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, who take care of her. Unfortunately, they do so near Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the former of whom insists they prove the unfortunate now rather ex-witch was, in fact, evil. It's determined that she was sufficiently wicked enough to mollify Granny's outrage. Nanny is less concerned. ("'s alright, Esme. No-one we know!")
  • In SlifofinaDragon's Sengoku Basara fanfics, we've got Kagehime/Hitomi Kira, the daughter of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Nene, both who are dead before she (Kira) makes an appearance. How she's part of this trope involves being skilled (all on her own) in rather frightening levels of Black Magic (such as channeling ghostly red-black hands and raising an army of zombies) and wearing a red and black kimono. Heck in misakiyu's illustrations, she appears as a cross between a Cute Witch and a Hot Witch (in fact, an Expy of Natsuko Honda), but makes intimidating faces that make one question her sanity.
  • Under the Sea (2023): Discussed but averted. Like in the original Fairy Tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the sea witch is True Neutral.
    Adrasteia: I get that a lot. People hear "sea witch" and automatically assume that means "evil sea witch".
  • The World of the Creatures: The Crones of Crookback Bog are three sisters and hideous humanoid monsters who use their powers to terrorize their subjects.

    Films — Animation 
  • Barbie as Rapunzel: Gothel is this, though she's not unattractive. She has magical abilities, lives in a manor in the middle of the woods, and has done plenty of evil deeds like kidnapping Rapunzel to spite Rapunzel's father and Gothel's unrequited love, King Wilhelm, locking Rapunzel in a tower, and attempting to murder the prince and his younger siblings.
  • Coraline: The Other Mother/The Beldam spies on and lures unhappy children through a mysterious portal door into an alternate dimension where all of their dreams and fantasies come true. Of course, it's all a devious trap where she sews buttons over their eyes and devours them.
  • Disney Animated Canon: Evil witches, sorceresses, and the like are common antagonists. Appearance-wise, they include a mixture of beautiful sorceresses, old crones, and monstrous hags:
    • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Queen Grimhilde is a vain, beautiful queen who pratices Black Magic and transforms herself into a very impressive hag of a witch, including all the classic physical features, in order to pull one over on Snow White. In fact, she's so effective as a Witch that she is resurrected to grand effect in the Disney comic books.
    • Fantasia: In Night on Bald Mountain, the final segment, among the many, many demons and damned souls that fly at their master Chernobog's beckoning, there are witches that use their ghostly brooms in a perpetuation of what they did in life.
    • Sleeping Beauty (1959): Maleficent is technically an evil fairy, but still invokes the look and feel of an evil enchantress who curses Aurora out of spite. She's referred to as a "wicked witch" by Merriweather.
    • The Sword in the Stone: Mad Madam Mim is a forest-dwelling witch who tries to eat Arthur until defeated in a magic duel by Merlin. Interestingly her subsequent appearances in the various Disney comics turned her into Chaotic Neutral verging on Chaotic Good.
    • The Black Cauldron: The Witches of Morva are, technically speaking, neutral forces in the main conflict, but the three old crones are nonetheless malicious cheats who turn people into frogs and try to swindle the main characters out of their magical treasures.
    • The Little Mermaid (1989): Ursula, referred to as "the sea witch" by the fish and the merfolk, is a smooth-talking but malicious tentacle-legged enchantress who enjoys tricking people into unfair magical deals.
    • The Emperor's New Groove: In the movie's original drafts, titled Kingdom of the Sun, Yzma was characterized as a vain old sorceress who dealt with demons and sought to bring about eternal nighttime. The finalized version leans more strongly towards being a Mad Scientist, although a few traits of the original remain such as her use of Magic Potions to turn people into animals.
    • Tangled: Mother Gothel doesn't have active magical powers as such, but is otherwise very knowledgeable insofar as magic goes and has spent centuries using magic to preserve her life, culminating in kidnapping Rapunzel to use her magic for this purpose.
  • Kirikou and the Sorceress: Karaba is a sorceress who has cursed the village, extorted the women's gold and jewels, and devoured all the men and boys.
  • My Little Pony: The Movie (1986): Hydia and her two daughters Reeka and Draggle are witches, evil, and proud of it, although Reeka and Draggle are rather incompetent at it. They treat beauty as repulsive and pride themselves in causing mischief and trouble for innocent people. In fact, every female member of their family is this trope with a few being mentioned, to the point it's basically the family business.
  • ParaNorman: The town once executed a supposed witch in its past, and is now filled with cheesy attractions and shops depicting her as this, which Salma finds historically inaccurate. And she's right. The witch was really just a little girl that could speak to ghosts.
  • The Real Story Of Humpty Dumpty: Glitch the witch wants to poison princess Allegra and causes Humpty to fall from the wall.
  • Spirited Away:
    • Yubaba, the owner of the bathhouse, is a short, squat, huge-nosed witch who refuses to free Chihiro's parents when they're turned into pigs unless the girl sings over her name to her and becomes a servant in her business.
    • Yubaba's sister, despite her kinder nature, is also not above using violence to get what she wants. This is exemplified by her sending paper familiars after Haku and cutting him up badly with them for stealing something from her.
  • "Trick or Treat (Disney)": Played with. Witch Hazel has the appearance and styles herself as the classic Halloween witch, but acts more as a supporting character. While going out for a Halloween joyride stirring up trouble and frights, she witnesses Donald's cruel trick on his nephews, which moves her "black heart" into offering her assistance to the boys. First, she attempts to speak diplomatically to Donald, but, after he yanks on her nose and douses her with a bucket of water, she finds the "quacking rogue" so offensive that she has Huey, Dewey, and Louie help her concoct a potent potion to jinx Donald with.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Blair Witch Project: The titular witch has killed children, been responsible for the deaths of many different people through history, and tortures, torments, and kills the protagonists of both The Blair Witch Project and Blair Witch.
  • Bloodlands: The main antagonists are a coven of undead witches terrorizing a family.
  • The Cabin in the Woods: One of the horror monsters kept in the Monster Menagerie is an ugly, elderly Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with long, black fingernails and a black dress and cloak who uses her magic to eat someone's soul.
  • Clash of the Titans (1981) and Clash of the Titans (2010) both feature the Stygian Witches. They are based on the Graeae from Greek mythology — and the name actually translates as 'old women', 'grey ones', 'grey witches' etc. They're a trio of elderly women who share one eye and one tooth between them. Perseus taking their eye convinces them to reveal some useful exposition. They appear to be far more bloodthirsty in the 2010 remake, as they're implied to be cannibals.
  • The Day the Earth Froze: Louhi commands a vast array of magic spells that have allowed her to imprison the winds in giant sacks and to spy on Annikki and kidnap her with her enchanted Black Cloak, the better to force Ilmarinen to forge the Sampo (which he can only create once) for her and her trolls instead of for his compatriots back in Kalevala.
  • Deadtime Stories (1986): In "Peter and the Witches", Peter is a slave working for a pair of wicked witch sisters who are seeking to resurrect their third sister via Human Sacrifice.
  • Drag Me to Hell: Mrs. Sylvia Ganush is a Roma who places curses on those who wronged her.
  • Gretel and Hansel (2020): As in the fairytale, Holda the witch uses her evil powers to lure children into her home and eat them. Her black dress and pointed hat even evoke the classic appearance of a witch.
  • Hocus Pocus (1993): The antagonists are three sister witches; while all three are Card Carrying Villains and cannibals who plan to sacrifice the town's children for eternal youth, each is a slightly different take on evil fairytale witchcraft.
    • Winifred is the typical evil hag crossed with the Vain Sorceress, an ugly, petty and narcissistic crone who turns people into animals, owns a grimoire of dark magic, resurrects the dead as zombies, and brews foul potions.
    • Mary is more of a Fairy Tale witch, a foolish cannibal cook able to smell children a la Hansel and Gretel, and with a hairdo shaped like a typical witch hat.
    • Sarah is a vain Hot Witch with hints of the succubus and siren legends, with an entrancing voice and a habit of luring young men to their deaths in the woods.
  • The Last Witch Hunter: While most witches are of Hot variety, the Witch Queen looks like something humanoid grew from a tree, has Voice of the Legion and laughs in a rather unamusing manner.
  • Legend (1985): Jack briefly scuffles with a man-eating swamp hag named Meg Mucklebones with green skin, batlike ears, and claw-like nails, who is nonetheless very vain and easily flattered.
  • Mystics in Bali: The Queen of Leyak is an Indonesian twist on the old tropes, being an old hag who constantly cackles and uses dark sorcery to control her apprentices and make them steal Life Energy from infants for her youth.
  • Nightbooks: Natacha, a witch with no qualms in enslaving children, who also kills people who she doesn't find useful. And the original witch, who lured her into the apartment in the first place.
  • Oz the Great and Powerful features three witches. One is evil all along, one turns evil and one remains good. The Wicked Witches both have natural monstrous forms but can use an enchantment to disguise themselves as beautiful. When Theodora becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, she loses her beauty and gains the iconic green skin. The Flying Broomstick thing turns out to be something she does to mock Oscar.
  • Red One: Gryla is the Christmas Witch, a malevolent entity who used to punish children who misbehaved around Christmas time. By the film's present she plans to expand her punishments to naughty adults as well
  • Suspiria (1977): The Big Bad Helena Markos, the Witch of Sighs. She's very old, has wrinkled skin, cackles, and eats people.
  • The Theatre Bizarre: In "The Mother of Toads", concerns an American anthropologist and his girlfriend who fall victim to a witch known as the Mother of Toads.
  • The Tooth Fairy (2006): Elizabeth Craven, also known as the Tooth Fairy, is a witch that lured children to her house with the promise of gifts in exchange for a tooth. What she'd really do is kill them after she got the tooth, binding their souls to the Earth.
  • Les Visiteurs: A witch lives in the Forest of Malcombe and performs Black Magic. Godefroy raids her hideout and has her locked in a cage to be burnt for sorcery, and her retaliatory curse against him sets the movie's plot into motion.
  • Weapons: The Big Bad that caused a whole classroom of kids to disappear in the middle of the night turns out to be a Wicked Witch that would be more at home in a Grimm fairytale than a modern suburb in New York. Aunt Gladys uses Blood Magic to control her victims and drain their own youth in order to regain some of hers. She stands out due to a garish fashion sense involving clashing colors, bright red wigs, and makeup that just barely prevents her from looking like a clown.
  • The Witch: A Puritan family in colonial New England are (maybe) tormented by a witch in the woods. The first time we get a good look at her she seems to be a Hot Witch, but this is implied to be some kind of magical illusion, and she's not so pretty the next time we see her. Additionally, the Final Girl, Thomasin, becomes another witch at the end.
  • Wicked: Part I: Intentionally plays around with this trope. Despite the main character being the most iconic Wicked Witch of all time - Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, is very explicitly the Heroine of the story. She is one of the kindest characters and she fights for the oppressed. Despite this, she is othered for the green color of her skin. Meanwhile the two more conventionally attractive witches, Galinda and Madame Morrible, both have more Wicked trait - with Galinda being self-centered (at first) and Madame Morrible working for the Wizard to subjugate the Animals of Oz. It should be noted, Elphaba does end up being the only magic user to do something truly horrific in the Part I, unintentionally causing the Flying Monkeys incredibly painful and disturbing transformation after a spell gets out of hand.
  • The Witches (1966): Granny Rigg keeps a cat, elderly woman, no husband or children in sight, has plenty of herbal remedies and potions, and curses children. However Stephanie is the coven head — and Granny Rigg draws the line at sacrificing her own granddaughter.
  • The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West. She has bright green skin and a prominent pointy nose, wears all-black clothes (which includes a pointy hat), flies on a broomstick, and is characerized as a magic-using thug, powerful but crude and spiteful, who sends her flying monkey minions to pursue Dorothy. She's also the Trope Codifier for witches being green-skinned, being a literal Audience-Coloring Adaptation — pretty much every witch Halloween decoration made since the movie owes something to her.

    Gamebooks 
  • Fighting Fantasy:
    • Creature of Havoc: The village of Dree is home to witches who perform Black Masses, cavort with demons, and use travelers for their foul experiments.
    • Howl of the Werewolf: An old crone is in service of Lord Varcolac inside his castle, and proves to be a devious opponent.
    • Spellbreaker: Nazek's minions are the sorcerous coven of the Cauldron of Midnight, including the potion-brewing Wodehag, the wind-riding Bedlam Hags, and the one in the Crowfoot hut.
  • Les Messagers du Temps: The Mollues are plump and jovial witches, who look like very pleasant individuals, but they also despise women or any man who doesn't compliment their beauty to the highest degree, and will spit on you to turn you into jelly if you displease them. Sometimes, they will do it for fun.

    Literature 
  • Abarat: Mater Motley is an ancient, corpse-like crone with terrible magical power and an even worse personality.
  • The Adventures of Strong Vanya: Baba Yaga is an old, evil witch who steals horses and kills whoever she finds wandering around her swamp.
  • The Ancestral Trail: There are two such witches in the Evil One's army. Mirra has the typical look of a decrepit hag, while Zibella is more of an Hot Witch. Or maybe not, considering she's the witch of illusions, and what Richard and his friends see is just a very advanced illusion masking her true hideous aspect.
  • "And Not Quite Human": The nightmares created by the vampires to torment the Arcturians into suicide contain plenty of unpleasant imagery, among which witches brewing up a concoction in a pot.
  • The Arts of Dark and Light: Idumeta Venfica, who becomes Severa's first teacher in witchcraft, has most of the traits of one, being an old, ugly crone living outside the town proper and devoting herself to Black Magic.
  • The Baby-Sitters Club: Karen Brewer believes that the next door neighbor Mrs. Porter is one, and that her real name is Morbidda Destiny. The sitters would waver on whether or not they really believed this (and one of the Little Sister books revealed that even Mrs. Porter's granddaughter could not be sure whether it was true). Kristy eventually reasoned that Mrs. Porter could not be a real witch because when the Brewers' cat left a dead mouse on her doorstep she brought it over to demand that they dispose of it, rather than keeping to use in her potions.
  • Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales: Princess Inez and her grandmother Svetlana in "Cinderella" are witches who transform any maiden who stands between the former and Prince Dante into animals.
  • Biff, Chip and Kipper: The main antagonists of "Castle Adventure" are three witches, dressed in black, red, and green, who have turned the king into a frog and taken over his castle. The three of them also wear pointed hats of their respective colours and each have a Sinister Schnoz, with the red witch having prominent warts on her nose.
  • The Broken Sword: The unnamed witch who puts the plot into motion by telling Imric about Orm's unbaptized baby (Valgard), is old and ugly, lives alone, makes deals with dark powers, etc.. She does have a sort of Freudian Excuse, as Orm killed her family.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Lady of the Green Kirtle of The Silver Chair both fall into the poisonously-beautiful subtype of witches and add attempted seduction (subtextual, these being children's books) to their magic as a means of seeking power.
  • The Courtship of Princess Leia: Gethzerion is quite ugly due to facial deformities caused by her use of the Dark Side and lives in isolation with her fellow wicked witches, the Nightsisters, at the Imperial prison on Dathomir, which they took over. She and they use their powers for evil, chiefly by hurting people (Gethzerion tortures Han with Force telekinesis near the end).
  • Deathless: Baba Yaga of Russian folklore shows up, or at least an odd version of her — she drives around in a limousine with chicken-legs, and insists on being referred to as Chairman Yaga, but she has the mane of horrid hair, a tendency to eat people, warts, a nasty cackle, and outranks every other magician in the world. From the same novel we also have the beautiful Madame Lebedeva who casually mentions cursing and killing people with her magic, although she's more amoral and inhuman than wicked.
  • Discworld: Witches aren't usually this —Witch Classic look aside, they act as a mix of doctor, judge, and defence against supernatural threats in rural communities— but some examples exist or are discussed:
    • Some witches do go bad, and tend to remain in infamy as warning examples among the rest of their profession:
      • "Black" Allis Demmurge is a frequently mentioned example of what happens when witches go bad. She was one of the most powerful witches to ever live, but after a while the magic went to her head, and she took to living in Gingerbread Houses and eating people until she wound up pushed into her own oven.
      • Inverted with Lilith 'Lily' Weatherwax, an evil fairy godmother, Granny's older sister, who deluded herself into thinking she was 'the Good One'.
    • The Illustrated Wee Free Men: The Bonus Material includes a "wicked witch" called Brenda Loveknot as part of the toad's backstory, who cursed Princess Sandy of Brokenrock to be stunned by a falling hamster on her 18th birthday. However, Loveknot insists she's not evil, just fulfilling a necessary narrative role, and the "curse" was placed by arrangement with the king on the understanding that it would inevitably lead to Sandy marrying a handsome prince.
  • Dorrie the Little Witch: Although most witches are good, some are this trope, and end up the antagonists of some books.
  • "The Dreams in the Witch House": Keziah Mason was a 17th-century witch who dealt with dark entities such as Nyarlathotep. Her ghost still haunts her old house, alongside her old familiar, a rat-like creature called Brown Jenkin.
  • The Dresden Files: Mother Winter is a wizened, horrible old woman with sharp teeth, terrifying magical powers and a tendency to chop people up and cook them in her pot. Harry Dresden refers to her as "Granny Cleaver" because she throws knives at him when she first meets him. Mab, Queen of the Winter Court of Faerie, is also described as being the person who gave all wicked witches, vain sorceresses, and terrifying ogresses their lessons in being nasty.
  • Dresden's Haunted Forest: Magdalena is a hundred-years-old evil witch who lives in the forest and eats children to fuel her immortality ritual.
  • Enchanted Forest Chronicles:
    • Averted by Morwen. She is a witch, and still practices magic, owns a dozen or so cats, and wears black robes, but is also very practical, sensible, friendly, and attractive in a motherly way.
    • Parodied with her colleague Archaniz, who looks and acts the part down to the poisonous garden... because she's the Chairwitch of the Deadly Nightshade Gardening Club. She also grows ordinary daisies in the garden and worries about witches getting a reputation for being too kind and helpful and thus getting swamped by people asking for assistance.
  • The Farthest-Away Mountain: The Colored Snow Witch is an evil, ugly woman dressed in rags that wields Black Magic and lives in a hole at the top of a mountain forsaken from everyone but other servants of the evil Master.
  • The Forgotten Beasts of Eld: Maelga is the sorceress Sybel's closest neighbor; one of the only people willing to live near the mysterious and frightening Eld Mountain. She's only a little bit wicked; she and Sybel end up good friends after Sybel receives the baby, Tam, and turns to Maelga for advice. Maelga steals a cow — refusing to let Sybel do it — so they can feed Tam, and leaves a jeweled broach in its place, making many peasants hopefully leave the barn door open after. She does dispense curses and potions to the villagers, though.
  • Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe): Kevin is terrified that Dymphna is this, momentarily worrying if she'll fatten them up for her dinner. Then he laughs at his own silliness.
  • The Golden Ass: Lucius, like Apuleius himself, is from Thessaly, the "Land of the Witches", and shows an interest for sorcery. However, with the sole exception of the mysterious Phyleme, a married woman, all the witches in the stories fit this bill, being terrible, vengeful and remorseless.
  • The Golden Pot by E. T. A. Hoffmann was the Troper Codifier, as it was quite popular in an English translation during the early 19th century. The very wicked witch in this tale is a wrinkly old woman with the missing teeth that make her pointed nose almost meet her pointed chin, wearing a tall black hat, has a spooky black cat that she talks to, lives in a small cottage full of taxidermied animals and such, and cooks up a potion in a cauldron as a "love" charm for the young woman who comes to see her.
  • Into the Heartless Wood: The Gwydden is a witch queen who seeks to wipe out all of humanity. She used to be a forest nymph before having her soul stolen by Elynion.
  • Into the Woods: Belladonna, the Big Bad of the sequel, is a 1000-years-old witch who wants to start wars, enslave thousands, and rip out Aurora's heart.
  • John the Valiant: John stumbles upon a completely dark country, and the only light source is a fire under a cauldron used by an army of witches. When each one is killed by John, more light shines upon the country, and the country is cleared of the darkness after all of them are dead.
  • King Arthur's Daughter: Morgan le Fay is an evil sorceress who schemes to take Britain for herself and rule through Mordred or one of his sons, and torments both Ursulet and Ambris through her magic illusions.
  • Land of Oz: The witches are actually named "Wicked Witch" (of the East and West and North and South). Their foes are Good Witches of the North and South, which originated as a specific subversion, as the notion of a good witch was alien at the time.
    • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz begins with Dorothy's house accidentally landing on the Wicked Witch of the East, and its first portion follows her attempts to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, who rules tyrannically over the Winkie people, as part of a mission from the Wizard. The Witch of the West is depicted as an old crone in frumpy clothing and an eyepatch — the Witch Classic look with black robes and a pointy hat was introduced in the flim adaptation.
    • The Marvelous Land of Oz introduces Mombi, the mildly wicked witch who brought Jack Pumpkinhead to life with her Powder of Life. Later in the series, Mombi becomes a full-fledged Wicked Witch, the former Wicked Witch of the North who kept Ozma imprisoned but was stopped from gaining power over Gillikin Country by the Good Witch of the North. A fourth witch was also stopped by Glinda in the south.
    • Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked is a revisionist look at the characters and the land of Oz. The story centers on a green girl named Elphaba who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West. Over the course of the book, Elphaba gradually acquires the stereotypical attributes of this trope (except the ugliness — while never pretty per se, she's repeatedly described as having strong features that could easily tip into the stereotype, including a hooked nose, but they come together strikingly on her).
  • The Marvellous Land of Snergs: Mother Meldrum is a decrepit, evil witch who lives in the heart of a dark forest and earns her livelihood by selling curses (among other things).
  • The Midnight Folk: The villains of the stories are a coven of evil witches led by Mrs Pouncer, complete with familiar felines, flying broomsticks, tall pointy hats, wrinkled faces, hooky noses, etc. It turns out that the faces are cunningly-fashioned masks that come off with the hats when they return to their respectable daylight lives.
  • Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep: In "The Witch", the witch is a "queen of doom" and a "cackling crone". As evil as she is ugly, she goes out into the night for no greater purpose than casting cruel curses on whomever she happens to come upon.
  • None Too Holy: The children and the townspeople tell stories of a witch named "Ol' Lottie" who lives in the woods, and she's one of Hardestadt's prime suspects as to who murdered Father Collins. It turns out that she's a completely peaceful woman named Charlotte who just happens to be a witch, and helps Collins ward off the true murderer.
  • Once: The sultry practitioner of traditional remedies Nell Quick claims natural healing ability. Through diabolical ritual, she tries to acquire the land and wealth of sixteenth century mansion Castle Bracken, and to eliminate unwitting heir Thom Kindred.
  • The Orphan's Tales: Knife seems so at first —an old, ugly widow who lives in a cottage all by herself, whose first act is to attack Leander— in retaliation for him killing her daughter. It turns out she has a strong sense of justice.
  • Paradise Lost: The figure of Sin is compared to hags who ride through the air and sacrifice children:
    Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd
    In secret, riding through the Air she comes
    Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
    With LAPLAND Witches, while the labouring Moon
    Eclipses at thir charms.
  • Re:Zero: Seven witches, representing the Seven Deadly Sins in one fashion or another, exist in the setting, the most important being the Witch of Envy, whom Subaru's primary Love Interest Emilia closely resembles as a silver-haired half-elf with violet eyes. The Witch of Envy is responsible for Subaru's New Life in Another World Bonus, a curse that gives him a form of Resurrective Immortality akin to Save Scumming, and is later revealed to have killed the other six witches and imprisoned their souls in a graveyard in the Mathers domain.
  • "The Runaway Princess" by Kate Combs has Gorba, who appears to be this. She's old and ugly, lives alone in the woods, turns any prince who bothers her into a frog, and has skulls, noxious herbs, and monsters everywhere in her house, from edging on the curtains to mugs. However, she also averts the trope by having a major romantic streak, takes good care of any frog prince she enchants, has delicate china and samplers among her collection of stuff (with very witch-like images and sayings) , and turns all her frogs back into princes so they can help in the final battle, and then lets them stay princes and go home.
  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:
    • Addie Fitch in "Such Things Happen", although it's deliberately left ambiguous as to whether or not she's a real witch or simply a crone. The fact that she's apparently susceptible to a folklore-based method of witch-hunting tilts the evidence toward the former.
    • The Witch from "A New Horse" is a more straightforward example. She curses people to transform into horses with a magical bridle and rides them into the night at breakneck speed, exhausting them.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Numerous present and historical figures are reputed to have been evil witches and sorceresses. Which ones were or weren't this is left a bit ambiguous — magic is very much a force in the world, but on the other hand Westeros' misogynistic society has a difficult time accepting that a woman could efficiently hold power without being a scheming seductress, a sorceress in league with demons, or both. As such, a considerable amount of historic female rulers have developed reputations as beautiful, scheming witches that may or may not have been true. Common touches include bathing in blood to maintain youth a la Elizabeth Báthory and to use poison alongside sorcery — Westerosi society considers poison to be "a woman's weapon". There is also a tradition of "woods witches", rural and forest sorceresses loosely associated with the old First Man religion and in the present also with peasant culture in Westeros proper, but these as a category are not depicted as necessarily either evil or good.
    • The women of House Upcliff of Witch Isle have a reputation as sorceresses who deal with strange powers of the sea. Their most famous member, Ursula Upcliff, is said to have ridden with other First Man rulers against the Andals and to have tried to curse her foes, but to have been killed by Torgold the Grim.
    • Queen Visenya Targaryen is rumored to have practiced both sorcery and poisoning, and to have killed her nephew Aenys so that her son Maegor could become king.
    • Tyanna of the Tower, King Maegor's third wife and Mistress of Whisperers (that is, spymistress), is said to have practiced sorcery and alchemy and to have used rats and vermin as her spies, and was executed by her husband on charges of poisoning his other wives to make them birth dead children and monsters.
    • Shiera Seastar, one of the more notable bastard children of King Aegon the Unworthy, is said to have used sorcery to aid her half-brother Brynden "Bloodraven" when he acted as King Aerys I's Master of Whisperers and to have bathed in blood to maintain her beauty. Similar rumors surrounded her mother, Serenei of Lys.
    • Danelle Lothston, the last Lady of House Lothston's tenure over the haunted castle of Harrenhal, is remembered in ghost stories as "Mad Lady Lothston", a witch who sent giant bats out to capture children for her cookpots and to have bathed in blood. Even over seventy years since her death, she's still used as a Bogeyman to warn children against going out at night.
    • Maggy the Frog was a supposed witch who sold magical cures and love potions and told fortunes at Lannisport. She's described as an extremely old, squat woman with warty greenish skin, as having done her business in a dark tent smelling of strange spices and lit by a brazier burning with green flames, and as having taken cackling pleasure in giving out portents of doom to her costumers. Whether or not she could curse people, cause love, or summon demons as she was said to may or may not be true — but at least, many of the events that she saw in a young Cersei's future have come true exactly as foretold, and Cersei has become deeply paranoid about the coming doom that Maggy's prophecy also gave her.
  • Spirit Hunters Series: Jenna Graham, real name Constance Wentworth, is a centuries-old witch from the time of the Salem Witch trials who has survived for centuries by swapping souls with young women and taking their identities.
  • The Story Girl: The children think that Peg Bowen is an evil witch at first, even half-believing that she bewitched the cat Paddy. This is subverted in The Golden Road, where she takes them in during a snowstorm and turns out to be eccentric and sharp-tongued but fundamentally decent.
  • "The Surviving Twins": Griselda is an old sorceress and an unscrupulous manipulator, brainwashing and enslaving Helmuth and planning to do the same to his family.
  • Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms: The scheming, malicious witch is a common Traditional role when old stories start to impose themselves on the world, especially in Godmother Elena's kingdoms. The trope is played with in various ways. In the first book, for example, Elena meets a sorceress who turns out to be more of a Dark Magical Girl, enjoying the aesthetic trappings of the role without any real evil intent. She teams up with Elena to teach a lesson to a selfish prince and failed Quester without placing him in any real danger. Elena herself also briefly takes on this role in order to redirect a Ladderlocks story onto a less dangerous Traditional path.
  • Terry Brooks:
    • Magic Kingdom of Landover: Nightshade, the only antagonist who shows up in every book of the series, is an evil, beautiful witch. She has the most powerful magic in all of Landover after the land itself.
    • The Sword of Shannara Trilogy: The utterly psychotic Witch Sisters, Morag and Mallenroh of The Elfstones of Shannara. Beautiful, cold, and utterly evil, they've turned the Wilderun into a disaster, and spent several thousand years warring with one another and kidnapping/murdering anyone who gets in between them. The Ilse Witch of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara is a more sympathetic version who was, coincidentally, raised by Morag and Mallenroh's brother, The Morgawr.
  • The Thickety: Timoth Clen's exploits are full of evil witches that he killed, and the number one rule in his teachings is that there is no such thing as a good witch. This turns out to be false.
  • The Thief of Baghdad: Lev and Jamila encounter one in the desert. She seems nice at first, although her cackling should have given her away, and then tries to eat Lev. He ends up getting her to break her two remaining teeth, meaning she can't eat him anymore. Suddenly, she becomes much nicer and even helps them find their way to the caravan.
  • Three Hearts and Three Lions: Mother Gerd claims to be merely summoning a sprite, but, given that she recites the Lord's Prayer backwards and warns Holger not to pray or cross himself, it's clearly a devil.
  • Tsar Gorokh's Detective Agency: Baba Yaga claims to have killed quite a few heroes in her younger days. Now, she is reformed and lives in the city, having moved out of her traditional "house on chicken legs" home in the woods. In the seventh novel, though, she admits that the rumors about her eating children are true.
  • The Unhandsome Prince: Emily's mother wasn't really wicked, but she definitely had leanings in that direction, and certainly looked the part. And she did turn Prince Hal into a frog (although, to be fair, he was trying to steal something from her at the time).
  • Vermis I: From hexxing an entire swamp to turn it into a death trap, to kidnapping and eating children, to preying on innocent travelers, witches are a significant force in making the world of Vermis the terrible place that it is, and they are feared and despised by almost everyone.
  • Villains by Necessity: Valerie is a sorceress whose usual ambition is to kill or harm others, although she's begrudgingly willing to work alongside fellow villains to save the world (thus herself as well).
  • Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: Séraphine Alavolette de Plumauvent, queen of all birds, takes the form of a witch while travelling around the human world: she has a long hooky nose, wears black, owns a flying broomstick, and uses magic trinkets to lure and kidnap unwary children.
  • Warren the 13th: Annaconda is described in her first appearance as a witch. It initially just seems like the author's way of describing how cruel she is, but then we learn that "witch" is absolutely literal. She and her sisters are genuine, black-magic-casting witches who crave power.
  • The Wide-Awake Princess: Several casting fell magic. One tries to trap Gwendolyn with a spinning wheel, which leaves Annie wondering how that works, since an evil fairy cast the curse.
  • Wise Child:
    • The Solitary Sorceress Juniper is widely rumored to be this and treated like one by the villagers because of her different way of living (she lives alone outside the village, uses her herbs for healing in a manner that seems magical, and does not attend church). She isn't one and is actually a doran, a person defined by living as one with nature, but it doesn't stop the local priest from exploiting the villagers' fears to turn them against her.
    • Maeve is a straighter example, as she seems to have powers of her own (she has numerous male admirers, is mysteriously wealthy with a large house and servants, is implied to have enchanted her husband somehow to make him choose her over Juniper, and she gives Wise Child a magic stone that has adverse effects on her), but they're never explicitly shown.
  • The Witcher: Women with talent for magic but no money for sorceress training tend to end up getting the reputation, if not always the personality of a Wicked Witch.
  • The Witches: Dahl stated that his witches are Always Female and always hate children. They dedicate their lives to killing children. He also gives some telltale signs to spot a witch.
    • They're bald. As they cover this up by wearing wigs 24/7, a woman scratching her head a lot is sure to be one.
    • They have cats' claws instead of fingernails. So they're always wearing gloves.
    • Their nostrils have pink rims, to help them smell out children. Which apparently smell of fresh dogs' droppings.
    • Their eyeballs flash different colours. You can apparently see fire and ice dancing there if you look hard enough.
    • They have no toes. Yet they squeeze their feet into pointed shoes anyway — which is excruciating.
    • Their saliva is blue, and they use it as pen ink.
  • ''The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches': Wendy’s sisters have long, pointed noses and equally long, pointed chins, and pride themselves on being evil and scary.
  • Wizard and Glass: The malicious Rhea, the Witch of Coos, is old and lives alone with a cat.
  • Wizarding School Mysteries: In ''Wicked Witchcraft", the Letharg coven is led by a trio of awful crones who abuse their interns, create a monster to kill students and harvest their body parts, and ultimately are gunning to sacrifice Gretchen to the archdemon who gave them immortality in the first place.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Alma Gêmea: The old woman that sells products such as love potions and poisons doesn't seem to have any sort of magical powers such as broomstick riding, but she has a witchy aesthetic, is referred to as a witch in-universe, lives in a creepy house, and threatens to cast spells on people who get in her way.
  • Arabela has two, both living in the Fairy Tale Kingdom. One is the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and one acts as an assistant to the main villain.
  • Are You Afraid of the Dark?:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Bewitched: Deconstructed in "The Witches Are Out". Near Halloween, a candy magnate wants his product's mascot to be this. Since it's the '60s and all, Samantha, her friends and relatives stage a protest march, complete with picket signs, "Witches Are People Too", etc. (Aunt Clara's reads "Vote for Coolidge"). After terrorizing him by (among other things) making him look like that, the magnate capitulates, discovering later that since most Halloween candy is bought by fathers, a pretty witch is more appealing. Truth in Television if you are a Wiccan devotee: letters to this effect turn up in newspapers and on blogs every year.
  • Charmed (1998):
    • Subverted and lampshaded in "All Halliwell's Eve" when Prue, Piper, and Phoebe prepare for a Halloween party dressed as a nature witch, Glinda, and Elvira respectively, and Phoebe comments on Prue's costume. The plotline involves the Halliwell sisters being sent to 17th century Virginia to protect one of their ancestors. To ward off a mob, Phoebe uses her levitation powers to fly toward them while seemingly riding a broomstick. As she told her sisters, "I'm embracing the cliche."
      Phoebe: Hook-nosed hags riding broomsticks — that's what we're celebrating. Personally I am offended by the representation of witches in popular culture.
      Prue: Which is why you're dressed as mistress of the dark?
      Phoebe: This costume happens to be a protest statement.
      Prue: I am so impressed that you can make a protest statement and show cleavage all at the same time.
    • Another couple of episodes feature Wicked Witches. One that features Fairy Tale Motifs has one of these freed from being imprisoned in a magic mirror - and she tries to kill the sisters by using fairy tale items. You guessed it - she dies by getting melted. The other Wicked Witch appears in the sixth season causing trouble for magical creatures - she is indeed seen in a black hat cackling by a cauldron.
    • Paige and Phoebe were both wicked witches in their past lives, though Paige's is referred to as 'The Evil Enchantress' - and is given a Lady of Black Magic portrayal.
  • Dark Winds: Ada is a witch with a lot of the traits, though Navajo like most of the characters. She is rather unattractive, wears a black dress, lives off by herself with her daughter and uses her magic to harm others for her evil comrades, usually by something from them like hair.
  • El Chavo del ocho: The fact that old spinster Doña Clotilde presents almost all the characteristics except the obvious magic powers becomes a Running Gag. One episode even involves the kids having to enter her house just to deliver a newspaper, and they find that it's like a haunted dungeon complete with Clotilde the witch brewing a potion inside and using a Don Ramón doll in it (maybe to represent the real one), much to Chilindrina's horror. Turns out it was All Just a Dream, and they hadn't even entered Doña Clotilde's house yet.
  • H.R. Pufnstuf: Sid and Marty Krofft have a female example in Witchiepoo and and a male example in Hoodoo from Lidsville, an evil magician who rides a flying hat. Which is lampshaded in one episode where the two end up meeting through a dating service. It was up to the heroes to break up the relationship.
  • Kenan & Kel has an episode where Kenan suspects a new transfer student is actually a witch. She dresses all in black, has a black cat as a pet and makes a lot of homemade food. Chris outlines the ways in which to spot a witch - they apparently scratch themselves a lot, smell like fire and have green tongues. Through coincidence, the girl in question appears to demonstrate all those. Kenan then suspects her of casting a love spell on Kel and a bad luck spell on him. He does indeed get an Imagine Spot where she's dressed in the traditional black hat and cloak.
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger has Bandora, a witch who leads a band of monsters responsible for killing off the dinosaurs. It's later revealed she gained her magical powers through a contract with Satan.
  • Die Liewe Heksie: The GeeleHeks, the old cackling crone who tries to steal the secret of Bloemmieland's beauty for her own barren wasteland.
  • Masters of Horror: "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House" (based on... well, H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House"): The witch is a decrepit old woman who forces various men to sacrifice children for her spells.
  • For whatever reason, evil witches were fairly common in the early days of Metal Heroes:
  • Once Upon a Time (2011): Deconstructed:
    • Zelena, the actual literal Wicked Witch of the West, is not only one of the most beautiful female characters in the series, being a Hot Witch, she showcases quite a bit of cleavage throughout the series, despite her emotional fragility. Not only that, but she's also had one of the worst lives of all villains in the series, and a huge Freudian Excuse for her actions. Eventually, after a series of wicked deeds including kidnapping, murder, and rape she, most unexpectedly finds happiness and begins her path towards redemption in her baby daughter Robyn, named after her father Robin Hood, who wasn't her partner, but conceived the girl while Zelena was wearing a cloaking spell pretending to be his wife Marian.
    • Regina can be considered a subversion of this trope too, although she was established from her introductory scene as being very different from that.
    • It's debatable if Cora is a subversion or plays this straight.
    • The Black Fairy seems to be this, except for the looks. Only her backstory episode will tell.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) plays with this one.
    • One of these (in fact referred to as THE Wicked Witch) lives at the top of the beanstalk where she eats mortals for dinner. She's a Hot Witch now, but this dialogue implies that it wasn't always so...
      Zelda: It's the Wicked Witch!
      Sabrina: Wicked? But she's so pretty.
      Hilda: Oh! She's had a lot of work done.
    • In "The Crucible", Harvey references the trope when Sabrina is accused of being a witch. He says she can't be one because witches are old and ugly — and melt when you throw water on them (which he does to Sabrina).
    • In another episode, a distant aunt of Sabrina is shown to have all the physical characteristics and wardrobe... except that she turns to be absolutely nice, caring and selfless.
  • Simon and the Witch: There are moments that suggest that the witch could be this if Simon weren't around to act as her conscience. The book version is ready to kick a child's sandcastle down or lure Sally into falling into a hole in the road. On TV she's more mischievous than wicked, although she's quite happy to allow Jimmy to stay in detention and take the blame for passing her note around the class, until Simon intervenes. On occasions both Sally and Angelica seem to suffer embarrassment or upset at her hands rather more than they deserve. Simon sums this up in a second series episode when he says "You're not a poor old lady... you're a wicked old witch!" and she rplies "Yes, I am, aren't I?" and they laugh.
  • Supernatural: There are many instances of wicked witches, including the Wicked Witch of the West and the witch from Hansel and Gretel.
  • Tales of the Tinkerdee: Taminella Grinderfall is a fatter example than most, but with her dark clothing, dingy lair, magical cauldron, spellcasting skill, lack of any kind of real scruples, and the monstrous company she keeps, she definitely fits the trope!
  • Terrahawks: Zelda is technically an extraterrestrial android, and while her matter-manipulating powers may look like magic, they aren't supernatural. But her appearance, voice, cackling, and the monstrous company she keeps all allude to this trope.
  • The Worst Witch:
    • In the Halloween Episode, Miss Hardbroom speaks against this trope. Mildred wears a Halloween mask meant to evoke this stereotype and gets scolded. Mildred runs into a trio of true Wicked Witches later on but they're normal women who just look a little rough from living in the forest. Miss Hardbroom mocks the trope even more "I suppose they had long warty noses and green skin".
    • In the series finale, the girls accidentally wake up the Wicked Witch from Sleeping Beauty - and she curses everyone to fall into the same eternal sleep.
    • The Off-Witch school inspector Mistress Broomhead is quite close to this as well. She tries her best to close the school down... until Miss Cackle discovers that she's an old school classmate — who's been wicked since childhood. She apparently turned all her teachers into snakes and tried to encase the school in a block of ice.
    • Most stereotypes are subverted by the evil Harriet Hogweed - which is why she is able to pass for the good witch Lucy Fairweather.

    Music 
  • Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition has an orchestral piece based on Baba Yaga. His other most famous work Night on Bald Mountain is about a witches' sabbath.
  • La Canción de las Brujas ("The Song of the Witches") by the Mexican composer of songs for children, Cri-Cri; it tells how the witches fly at midnight searching for naughty boys to punish them.
  • Vladimir Vysotsky: "Two Fates" sees the narrator, a hard-drinking oarsman, being harassed by two of these. The first, the Heavy One, appears out of nowhere to steal the man away from his boat as punishment for his carelessness in rowing without oars, and it's implied she means to have him killed; the second witch, the Crooked One, at first appears to want to help the oarsman, but when he gives the witches his mead, the two greedily drink it, allowing him to escape and leaving the two women upset that he got away.

    Mythology 
  • Hags are a frequent monster antagonist in Irish Mythology and, as some of the UrExamples of this trope and Witch Classic, fit all of them to a T. They live in places off the beaten path, typically in woods, bogs, or fog shrouded hinterlands, with their only company being their (typically monstrous) children and servants. They use twisted black magic to enact cruelty and evil as they see fit. And as far as ugly goes, they more than fit the bill. Not only do they often have non-human skin colors like various shades of blue, green and the like, but they also have sharp iron teeth stained orange or red, long, sharp claws greasy, technicolor hair and more warts and scabs than you'd care to count, but many stray into Humanoid Abomination territory. Some hags are described with Creepy Long Arms, or pulling magic staffs out of their body, able to survive as just a head (at least temporarily), or giving birth via their full grown spawn exploding out of their bloated body once slain. Hags like these and many more were slain by Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his Fianna as they protected Ireland.
  • The Yamauba from Japanese Mythology has some aspects to evil witches, being an old hag with powerful dark magic which she uses to terrorize humans.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • AAA and later LLF and LLU ruda La Bruja. After Malena Hernández was unmasked she got a golden masked successor.
  • Rossy Moreno, Miss Janeth and Tiffany made rounds in as a Brujas for hire trio, having appeared in AULL, NWA Mexico, AAA and PROLLM, among others.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech of all franchises has a mysterious figure known as the "Callandra Witch": an old woman wearing a necklace of human and animal bones. First sighted on Babylon by Clan Sea Fox, she waved a wand at a Star of mechs, vanished in a sudden dust storm, and had her place taken by an entire lance of mechs - one of which was wearing the same kind of bone necklace. The story of the Callandra Witch is regarded by many people in-universe as a mere legend, even though sightings of her have been reported by Clanners for centuries.
  • Blood on the Clocktower: The Pit-Hag can transform good players into useless characters such as Outsiders, evil players into Demons, to potentially save the game if the demon is about to be executed, or Minions into other Minions. The Witch can cast a deadly spell on a player each night, that makes them die if they nominate, potentially triggering the terrible side effects of characters such as the Sweetheart or Klutz
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The "Hag" monster type is a range of evil, magic-using, Always Female cannibalistic Mage Species that resembles hideous old women. 3rd Edition, which introduced broad creature types, treats them as monstrous humanoids; later editions treat them as evil fey. They are consistently characterized as malicious, scheming beings who enjoy sowing misery and fear; they are as notorious as devils for offerings dark magical deals, but where devils want to get the mortal's soul at the end, and will thus usually try to make their deals advantageous in the short term, hags just use them as excuses to make others suffer. They reproduce by mating with regular humans (or elves or whatever else) to produce daughters who become hags as adults; in 5th Edition, they instead conceive after eating a humanoid child.
      • A number of distinct hag types exist. Green hags are the most common and "typical" variety, and prefer to live in twisted dark woods. Annises trade magical power for physical strength, are the most prolific child-eaters, and often rule over ogre or troll tribes. Bheur hags are blue-to-white skinned hags who live in cold climates and mountains, and enjoy causing blizzards. Bog hags are swamp-dwellers who disguise themselves by wearing the skins of their victims. Sea hags are especially mostrous sea-witches, with fish-like features and hair like seaweed. Night hags are the most supernatural kind, being fiends rather than humanoids or fey, have horns and purple-blue skin, corrupt mortals with nightmares and nightly temptations of evil, and trade souls across the Lower Planes.
      • Hags sometimes organize into covens, which can consist of any combination of hag types, granting them the power to cast more spells and craft magic items. These are considered alliances of equals, and always consist of three hags so that any argument between two coven members can be settled by the third — groups of more than three hags always fall apart, and even the traditional trio may have issues between their bitter, spiteful members.
    • Iggwilv the Witch Queen (also known as Tasha or Natasha) —primarily a Greyhawk character, although she's involved in the wider multiverse— is one of the most notorious sorceresses in the setting. She's mechanically a wizard, but she uses most aesthetic trappings of the "evil Hot Witch" archetype. She wears black robes, sometimes with a witch hat, has a demon familiar, and is an exceptionally talented and prolific demonologist — her Demonomicon of Iggwilv is often treated as the canonical text on calling up what you can't put down. She's also a longtime lover of the demon lord Graz'zt. Her canonical alignment is Chaotic Evil (excepting in 5e, where she's Chaotic Neutral).
    • Nentir Vale: Heroes of the Feywild introduces a Witch class. While they can be as good or evil as any class, they were the first true magic users, and the gods still have a vendetta against them. As such they tend to be viewed as this trope and act in secret.
    • Ravenloft, while having plenty of the classic type of D&D hags, also has a subversion: the bruja ("witch" in Spanish), while as repulsively ugly as their hag sisters/cousins, are non-malicious, occasionally even helpful seers. This, and their incredibly strong fatalism, is thought to be the result of them trying to gain the knowledge of their time and method of death... and succeeding.
  • Godforsaken: Hags are evil magical creatures distantly related to the fey. They resemble withered ancient humans with obvious inhuman features — dead eyes, green or purple skin, metal teeth, webbed fingers, and seaweed-like hair are common traits. They love corrupting pure and innocent things, and feast on the dreams and flesh of their victims.
  • JAGS Wonderland: The Wyches are Whirls born from the realization that one is obeyed because he is feared rather than respected. They are purveyors of Black Magic (actually techniques to call up Wild Things from the lower Chessboards) and vicious bullies.
  • Magic: The Gathering: The witches of Eldraine are human mages who have chosen to live in the Wilds beyond the edge of civilization, and have become so removed from their humanity and so steeped in sorcery and the cruel logic of their home that they might as well be part of The Fair Folk themselves. They are modeled primarily after the capricious and antagonistic crones of fairytales, and delight in cruel deeds such as baking children into pies, bewitching and enslaving knights, and cursing people into animal shapes that symbolize their personal faults and failures. The Wilds of Eldraine set uses a trio of evil witches as its villains — Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is a child-eating cannibal who lives in a house in the woods; Hylda of the Icy Crown is an expy of The Snow Queen; and Eriette of the Charmed Apple is the Evil Aunt of Eldraine's royal heirs and a malicious schemer in the vein of Snow White's stepmother.
  • Pathfinder:
    • The game inherits the hag monster type from Dungeons & Dragons, which is themed around representing green-skinned, hook-nosed, baby-eating hags, and adds several more varieties besides.
    • The Witch class can be this sort of witch, if they want. They are not bound to do it, but all the child-smelling, cauldron-bubbling goodness is there in their basic class features.
    • Played with in the Kingmaker adventure path, where the characters will meet an old woman with a long pointy nose, weedy hair, green skin, and magical power who lives alone in a swamp with her giant flaming scarecrow. She's actually a sorceress who is cranky because she's tired of people assuming she's an evil witch and mostly just wants to be left alone.
    • Baba Yaga is one of the most powerful mortal spellcasters alive —she could be a goddess if she wanted to; she doesn't— and spiteful, malicious, cruel, and deeply feared. She's not usually actively dangerous to whoever doesn't make a habit of trying to deal with her, mainly because she's too apathetic to care about the world. Her last major effort was the creation fo the country of Irrisen, when she took over a large portion of the Ulfen lands with an army of trolls, frost giants, icy fairies and giant wolves, then left her daughters in charge of a kingdom locked in an endless winter. She was hoping that this would inspire the locals to do something interesting; when it didn't, she resigned herself to it being a failure outside of using her daughters and grandchildren as sources of magical power, anyway. The witch-queens of Irrisen are haughty, cruel Vain Sorceresses in the fashion of Jadis the White Witch, ruthlessly oppressive to their subjects and freely dealing with evil fey and magical creatures.
  • RuneQuest: Voughs are based on folkloric witches and river hags like Jenny Greenteeth or Peg Powler. They are hideous, inhuman aquatic hags who can use powerful Death and Water magic, and hate mortals and try to drown anyone who enters their domains.
  • The Strange:
    • Witches are common and powerful in Halloween, and few of them are safe or pleasant to be around. Hazel Jenkins, the owner of the House on the Hill, turns caught trick-or-treaters into slaves, food, or test subjects, and fashions monstrous creatures. Some covens in the Forest Hills are also looking for fresh meat for their stew pot.
    • The Gingerbread House is an old recursion consisting of a homely cottage of sweets tucked in a discreet corner of the woods. Its resident is, of course, the hungry, cannibalistic witch of fable. She likes the taste of children best, but will happily eat whoever winds up on her doorstep.
  • We Are All Mad Here: Some witches are the stuff of nightmares, with tales of their exploits keeping children safe in their beds during the darkest hours.
  • Witch Girls Adventures: There's a condition called Hag's Syndrome that makes the setting's Hot Witches and Cute Witches look as close to the part as they can — when their powers first manifest, their skin and hair turn green and their eyes red — and, in a Shout-Out to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, water melts their skin. Actually a subversion, as a witch that has this isn't necessarily wicked — their spells are more powerful than other witches, but it's entirely possible for a good witch to have the condition.

    Theater 
  • The Golden Apple: Mother Hare, although her magic mostly runs along the lines of crystal balls and potions, and she isn't ever called a witch (though at one point, another character mockingly tells her, "Go home and ride your broomstick!"). She's an Affably Evil old clairvoyant who avows that Good Is Dumb and creates the titular Apple of Discord.
  • Into the Woods: The Witch (who is either explicitly depicted or implied to have been every unnamed evil witch in fairy tales) is a subversion of sorts: her evil deeds happened in the backstory and during the story itself she does more to help the protagonists than hinder them. They blame her nevertheless.
  • The Love For Three Oranges: Fata Morgana is a witch who helps the traitorous faction at the King of Clubs' court, cursing the Prince with an obsession with the eponymous oranges.
  • La Sylphide: Old Madge. She's initially sympathetic, seeking shelter at a wedding party in exchange for telling everyone's fortunes- but she gets thrown out by the protagonist James for saying his bride Effie will marry his best friend Gurn and not him. (He's also worried about her exposing the fact he's being pursued by the titular sylph.) Old Madge gets her revenge by creating a poisoned scarf and tricking James into wrapping it around the sylph, claiming it will make her his forever when in actuality it kills her.
  • Wicked: Played with. There's at least one very wicked witch —perhaps more, depending how one judges Glinda's and Nessarose's actions— none of whom have any of the stereotypical trappings, and Elphaba has the trappings (green skin, pointy hat, black dress and cloak, flying broomstick) without being wicked. As part of this, it's made clear that none of the trappings actually signify wicked witchiness in-universe: the black dress and cloak are just a dress and a cloak, the worst anyone has to say about the pointy hat is that it's an unfashionable style and color, and the only reason she has a flying broom is that she needed something to levitate in a hurry and the broom happened to be the only thing that was lying around.

    Toys 
  • Playmobil has featured several witches as well. Most of them have a hairstyle that combines the stringy hair and bun styles, and a hooked-nose-and-glasses piece has been used on most of them. The witches in the "Fi?ures" theme encompass the classic traits, because the first has the nose, stringy hair and sickly skin, while the second has the warts and the messy hair with bun.

    Video Games 
  • Absented Age 2: Ghostbound: The Big Bad of the game is Prim, the Witch of the Sea Breeze. She used her powers to flood Karen's hometown in order to determine which residents have strong enough hearts to consume, and those who didn't got petrified. The reason her magic is so strong is because she's actually Coco, an ancient cat spirit who devised a way to consume Heart Fragments, turning her into the Primal Gänger.
  • Alan Wake: Barbara Jagger has slight shades of this, especially in her portrayals by the game's Heavy Mithril band. Of course her true nature is a bit more complex.
  • Aveyond: All witches. Except once where two feuding witches repeatedly curse each other and one "curses" the other with unending beauty. She's still quite evil, though.
  • Baldur's Gate III: Auntie Ethel is a green hag, a fey being resembling a hideous, green-skinned old woman who lives in a wooded swamp and uses her magical powers to torment people out of simple malice.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: Gruntilda, the Big Bad. She's a dead ringer appearance wise for the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz, and her evil plans in the first game involve enhancing or restoring her beauty at others' (mainly Tooty's) expense. In the sequels, she seeks revenge on the title duo for defeating her and rescuing Tooty.
  • Bear & Breakfast: Charlotte is a classical cannibalistic alligator witch. She assures Hank that it's "safe" to enter her house because he's too big for her cauldron, then reveals that she's preparing Wade for pickling. However, her tiny tadpole apprentice Twiggy makes her look less threatening than she thinks she is, freeing Hank from any worry of being cooked in her cauldron. Twiggy themself even confirms that Charlotte isn't a "real" witch because she doesn't have a broom.
  • Bramble: The Mountain King: A witch who resides in the marshlands sacrifices children to create dark souls.
  • Castle of Illusion: Mizrabel the Witch has kidnapped Minnie in order to steal her youth and beauty, and taken her to a castle filled with dark magic that Mickey must rescue her from.
  • Castlevania: Partially monkeywrenched in newer games. Some of the most annoying generic enemies are witches, but they're all rather attractive and young looking. They still dress the part though, and fly around on brooms. Subverted entirely by the Belnades family, a clan of witches who have assisted the Belmont clan in destroying Dracula many times.
    • The closest example to a Wicked Witch in the series is Actrise from Castlevania 64, and she retains her youthful beauty. She had to slaughter her children in exchange for it...
    • Circle of the Moon plays this straight as opposed to the cute/hot witches in later games.
    • And then played completely straight with Baba Yaga herself, in Lords of Shadow. Sure, she's helping you, but she quite clearly put Gabriel in a Death Trap music box for her own amusement, and is responsible for driving Malphas to insanity. She would have become young and presumably beautiful (the Death Trap contained a blue rose she needed for a youth potion), had Zobek not killed her offscreen (when he realized she was working for Satan).
  • Choo-Choo Charles: Zigzagged with Lizbeth Murkwater, a mysterious old woman in robes and a pointy hat who lives outside a swamp in the southern region of the island. She's a bit creepy, and her "stew" cooked in a big black cauldron needs meat of some kind... but she's friendly enough to the player and will reward them with scraps if the player retrieves a fish from an island in the swamp for the stew.
  • Criminal Case: Supernatural Investigations: Morgana Blackhawk is willing to kidnap and eat children, collaborate with demons, or have her sister eliminated for the sake of consolidating her own power.
  • Darkest Dungeon: The Hag boss comes complete with a boiling cauldron and humanitarian tendencies. They're the one responsible for filling the Weald with Festering Fungus and zombies, having been a former botanist who worked with the Ancestor. Unusually for this trope, she lacks much in the ways of proper magic, which many of her disciples, among others, can clearly use. Rather, she relies more on trying to have the heroes Stewed Alive in her pot.
  • Dishonored has Granny Rags, an old crone given the Mark of The Outsider who occasionally requests Corvo to help her with nefarious rituals.
  • Dragon Age: A pivotal character in the series is a shapeshifter called Flemeth who first appears as a wrinkled crone living in a cottage (in a swamp) with her daughter. The Chasind call her Witch of the Wilds and tell their children she'll eat them if they don't behave ("Bah! As if I had nothing better to do!"). She's extremely powerful, near-immortal, fond of the odd Evil Laugh, and no-one seems to have a clear idea what she is or what she's after. Oh, and she'll go Maleficent on you and turn into a DRAGON if you mess with her.
  • The Elder Scrolls: The series has witches of all types, but Hagravens fit the trope best. Hagravens are a species of flightless harpy who were once mortal women that performed a ritual (involving Human Sacrifice) that traded their humanity for access to powerful magic. Hagravens prefer deadly fire-based magic attacks and can typically be found in remote areas leading either Reachmen clans (as Evil Matriarchs) or covens of still-mortal witches (who ultimately plan to become Hagravens).
  • Everybody Edits has a the witch smiley, obtained from magic coins.
  • The Flintstones (1993): The Cave Witch is the game's Final Boss. She has captured the Dragon's family and has turned them into stone statues, and Fred has to defeat her in order to break the spell and save them.
  • FlyKnight: The witch Lunamoth has enslaved the wasps and has stolen the wings of all of flykind so that she might travel to the Moon and replace the Moth Deity. Defeating her and ending the curse she has laid upon the Flies is the ultimate object of your quest.
  • Gnarled Hag: The titular Hag evokes the classic image of a wicked witch — complete with hat, implied, a decaying, unkempt house in which she resides, as well as a penchant for imprisoning trespassing children and turning them into slugs — but with a horror twist that makes her seem more of a Humanoid Abomination as well. Namely, her horribly distorted, almost mask-like face with loose skin that dangles from her jaw, the ability to phase through the floor with a hearty dose of Body Horror, and a full-blown One-Winged Angel transformation when sufficiently angered.
  • Hades 2 The human witch Medea is a sadistic Lady of Black Magic who relishes in the poisons and curses she creates and the devastation they cause. She's the protagonist's Token Evil Teammate as she lets you wield her curses in combat and also serves as a scout for Hecate, who is the leader of the Resistance fighting against Chronos's attempted conquest of the world
  • King's Quest: Many of the games featured evil witches. Hagatha in King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, Lolotte in King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, and Malicia in King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride were their respective games' main antagonists. Unnamed witches caused lesser mischief in King's Quest I: Quest For The Crown and King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!.
  • Kirby: Canvas Curse: The Big Bad, Drawcia, is a sorceress who wants to transform Dream Land into a world made of paint. When defeated, she transforms into a screaming paint ball and was eventually killed off. Not to mention she was born from a painting herself.
  • Lands of Lore: Scotia is vile, cruel (she obliterates the servant who finally brought her the Nether Mask), deceptive, driven by her lust for power and domination, and, on top of it all, old and ugly. The garrulous customer at the pub in Yvel mentions that, because she failed the tests to join the Talamari, she hates King Richard "and his little Dawn" ever since... other than this hint of a possible past injustice, she has no redeeming qualities. In the second game Scotia's son Luther expresses a degree of fondness for his late mother and sadness for what she became, further hinting that something happened that made her this way.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Lords of Magic: The Witch is an enemy spellcasting unit who looks like the ugly green-skinned hag you'd expect from a fairy tale. The player cannot create one, but they only show up as hostile-to-everyone Marauders.
  • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has one as its Big Bad: the foul witch Cackletta. She is a hideous and cruel old hag with bloodshot eyes and a wide smile filled with sharp teeth, she even has green skin like a lot of classical witches (though in her case it is normal for her race). Cackletta uses her magic to trick and harm others in her bid to get the wish granting Beanstar, and that wish is to rule the world with an iron hand.
  • Minecraft added witches as a second ranged hostile mob in the Pretty Scary Update (version 1.4, in 2012). They attack by throwing negative status effect splash potions (slowness, poison, damage, and weakness) at the player and use positive status effect potions (healing, fire resistance, and swiftness) to heal/protect themselves. They can be found rarely wandering around the overworld, but are guaranteed to be found inside woodden stilt cottages in swamps. While they are notably non-hostile towards NPC villagers, unlike most monster mobs, they occasionally appear alongside bands of Illagers when these raid villages, and buff and heal them with potions.
  • Monster Hunter (PC) has witch mooks as recurring enemies, labelled "Evil Witch" in their introduction scene. They attack by casting spells which can transform the player into frogs.
  • Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness: The main villain is Mesmerelda, an ugly, green-skinned hag with magical powers who has set up base in a creepy, Halloween-themed castle.
  • Muppet Monster Adventure: One of the enemies that starts showing up in "Escape Claws" is a green-skinned witch in a pointy purple hat and purple witch's robes that casts fireballs at you. She reappears in "For Peton's Sake" dressed in white and casting icicles.
  • Nethergate: The crones live in a wasteland, keep monsters and garden-variety amphibians in the house, and have a habit of imprisoning people in their dungeons for decades. If you're playing on their side, most of the side quests you can do for them are assassinations.
  • Night Creatures: The Witch of the Cave, one of the bosses, dresses in a face-obscuring cloak, flies unassisted, and attacks by conjuring bats from her Magic Cauldron.
  • Planescape: Torment: Ravel Puzzlewell is a night hag who attempted to rip apart the main city Sigil, and who is responsible for your condition of immortality. You spend half of the game looking for her.
  • Princess Peach: Showtime!: Grapewears a classic wide-brimmed hat and wide dress, as well as a face-covering mask. She covers the Swordfighter stages in papercraft thorned vines and uses The Dark Arts to seize control of the Sparkle Theater.
  • Quest for Glory I: Baba Yaga is a greedy and gluttonous ogress who is an extremly powerful witch. In the game she terrorizes the land of Spielburg, including being behind the disappearance of the Baron's children with a curse she placed on them. You will need to risk being eaten and confront Baga Yaha to get your mission done, furthermore the only way for Spielburg to truly find peace is to drive her off. Baba Yaga returns in IV, though here the trope is heavily downplayed. Granted, Baba Yaga is still dangerous, sadistic, and will eat you if you give her the chance, but outside of cursing a gnome who insulted her, Baba Yaga is mostly minding her own business in Mordavia. She will even help you if you get on her good side.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations 2: While Alex Wesker's power comes from science rather than magic, her characterization seems heavily rooted in classic witch iconography, between her hag-like appearance post-mutation (especially when she's wearing her cloak) and her obsession over kidnapping a little girl and her little bear, too.
  • A ROBLOX Quest: The main villain of Bloxxy-Tooie is Grantilda, an evil witch who attacked the Mayahem Temple and shattered the sacred Jiggy, scattering its pieces across the Isle 'o Jiggs. It's however revealed that Grandtilda was actually a Cute Witch named Graciela, who only became evil due to her possession by the Phantom Orb.
  • Shrek 2: Spooky Forest is home to an evil witch who turns Shrek and Fiona's carriage horses back into the Three Blind Mice to use for a spell. She menaces the gang multiple times over the course of the level, and eventually tries to kill Fiona by sending the carriage she's in plummeting off a cliff, forcing Donkey and Dragon to save her.
  • The Sims: These characters are possible, either by creating one outright, or having a good or neutral witch/wizard study or use The Dark Arts. (Which, in the Sims, are limited to things like sending bees after other Sims.) On the other hand, The Sims Medieval gives you a quest to deal with one of these who actually threatens the kingdom. (You could also, possibly, make your own kingdom's Wizard into one, as there are clothing and hat options that look like a witch's gear and the traits Cruel and Evil are available. You couldn't make her green though, just very pale.)
  • Six Ages: Ugarra the Hag is a witch, water spirit, or demigoddess —it's not made entirely clear— resembling an ugly old woman dressed in sodden rags who inhabits the rivers of your valley. She vexes and harasses the Weeder river-folk and any travelers upon the waters, often demanding service and threatening magical retribution if it is not given, but, in the Chaos Age when the world is dying, becomes a protector of the Weeders.
  • Tails' Skypatrol: Witchcart, the Big Bad has the stock appearance of one, as she wears black clothes and a pointy hat and has a long nose. She rides a mine cart instead of a broomstick and doesn't own a cat, but still uses magic in her schemes and during the final battle.
  • The Thorium Mod: The Hags, rare enemies who wield Elemental Powers. The Tracker implies that they're women who took shortcuts to trade their youth for magical might, and now try to steal the youth from others.
  • Touhou Project:
    • When Patchouli is a witch who traffics with the Scarlet devil.
    • It's strongly implied that the Wicked Witch image is the reason why Byakuren was imprisoned, despite her kindness.
  • Valheim: Subverted with the Bog Witch, a greydwarf who lives in the swamp and sells magic ingredients. Her hut is also a safe zone against the many horrible things in the swamp.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Forever After: Gender-flipped — just like the current incarnation of Prince Charming is a young woman, the title of Wicked Witch is presently held by a man. He is otherwise a classic incarnation insofar as he's a malicious sorcerer handing out curses and misfortune to the people of Forever After. The various sub-stories feature their usual villains, which include the traditional witches —the Thirteenth Wise Woman of "Sleeping Beauty", Mother Gothel of "Rapunzel", the Sea Witch of "The Little Mermaid", Makemnoit of "The Light Princess", Aladdin's self-professed aunt, and so on— alongside other wicked figures such as the Queen of Hearts or the mute sorcerer Old Drybones.
  • Endstone: Colindra says she has to take care of her looks or be taken for a witch.
  • Erstwhile: The Wicked Stepmother is also the wicked witch who cursed the springs.
  • The Handbook of Heroes: From "Witchy Ways", where a regular old woman is being subjected to almost Burn the Witch!.
  • Homestuck: "Witch" is one of the titles that stays with the Troll Empress, even in other universes — the Alpha Kids refer to her as the Batterwitch. This is in direct contrast with Feferi, her descendant, and Jade, her great-granddaughter by adoption, both of whom are Cute Witches.
  • Nixvir: The Wicked Witch of the North Pole. What we do see her doing is using magic to oppress her army of the deaf and organise magically-induced big cat orgies off-screen. In a parody of the Oz example, it turns out that she cannot leave the North Pole, because if she moves into a warmer climate, she would turn to steam. Erik accidentally discovers this when causing the waters of the North Pole to heat up.
  • The Queen and the Woodborn: Baba Roga is a hag with one eye and a horn jutting from her forehead, and is feared for her tendency to eat any human she comes across. She's more friendly to the goddess Morana, coming across as a nosy honorary aunt who shows up uninvited and at inconvenient times... at least until Morana threatens to lop off her arm for trying to eat Danica, leading to Roga indignantly storming off to complain and gossip about Morana's love-life to her sister Baba Yaga.
  • Simtopi: Wilhelmina is very old, has wrinkled skin, dresses in black, wears a pointed black hat, cackles, and curses people.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Lady Noga is a classic Wicked Witch (while also being a Space Pirate captain). She is very reminiscent of Baba Yaga in both her appearance, Slavic accent, and her love for eating children.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time: "The Witch's Garden" has a witch with haggish features, green skin, and a back so bent over that she's in the shape of an arch. She uses her walking stick for magic, and curses Jake for eating one of the donuts in her garden.
  • Alfred J. Kwak: The titular character in "The Witch" is teleported from her appearance in Hansel and Gretel. She's basically a checklist of the typical portrayal: fat, ancient, monstrous appearance, tattered clothes, eats children, cackles and flies around on a broom (although she has bat wings...). She also tries to force Alfred to marry her.
  • As Told by Ginger: "I Spy A Witch", the Halloween Episode, has Miranda and Mipsy causing a Halloween prank by defacing a statue outside the school - dressing it up like a wicked witch. The two then frame Ginger for it, resulting in her being suspended, so the former can get the lead in the Halloween play - which coincidentally is a Salem Witch Trials story. Once the Foutleys discover the truth, thanks to a photo courtesy of Carl's late best friend, Maude, whom he brought Back from the Dead to try to scare Lois, only to give her the photo, Ginger sneaks onstage and she and the rest of the cast out Miranda as the culprit while they're performing the scene where her character is accused of witchcraft. It is implied at the end of the episode Ginger's suspension was reversed and Miranda and Mipsy rightfully received the punishment.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: Hama was a normal Waterbender until she was captured and imprisoned by the Fire Nation, where she developed a twisted version of the ability called Bloodbending. She uses this power to torture innocent Fire Nation citizens by turning them People Puppets, and she is only stopped when Katara turns her power against her... which is exactly what Hama wanted to happen.
  • Big City Greens: "Urban Legend": Gramma Alice has taken to pretending to be a swamp witch in order to frighten the residents of Big City and keep them away from her lot, with her grandson Cricket acting as her imp familiar and providing special effects such as using bags of flour to simulate magical smoke or petending to transform into a chicken after drinking "devil's brew" (actually dirty water from a rain barrel). This eventually results in a mob with (store-bought) Torches and Pitchforks showing up.
  • The Blunders: A wicked witch lodges with the Blunders after passing herself off as a princess transformed into a frog. She transforms Patch into a snail, tricks Trouble into eating soup which transforms him into a donkey and takes the family vacuum cleaner and uses it as a broomstick when they doubt her capabilities as a witch. However, Trouble unplugs the vacuum cleaner, causing it to fall, and the witch to die as a result.
  • Casper the Friendly Ghost: Wendy's Aunts, as she's basically a witch counterpart of Casper and therefore the only known friendly witch.
  • Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz: Wilhelmina, daughter of the Wicked Witch of the East and niece of the Wicked Witch of the West, is somewhat of a cross between this and Cute Witch; personality-wise she's this trope and is the primary antagonist of much of the show, while her age and the show's art style cause her to lean toward the latter in the looks department.
  • Gravedale High: Mrs. Crone looks like the Wicked Witch of the West in modern clothes, although her wickedness is relative due to the Blue-and-Orange Morality of all the monster characters.
  • Looney Tunes: A different much closer to form (and to dietary habits) Witch Hazel appears in a number of shorts, starting with "Bewitched Bunny". Her skin is green, and she also has a long, pointed nose and an equally long, pointed chin. Except in "Bewitched Bunny" (where Bea Benaderet provides the voice), both Witch Hazels were voiced by June Foray, who also played assorted witches (usually with the same voice) in the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segments in Rocky and Bullwinkle.
  • Miss Moon: One episode features a witch named Dezhilba who wants to capture six children to turn them into a soup.
  • The New Misadventures of Ichabod Crane features a witch named Velma Van Damme, who's apparently responsible for the headless horseman that terrorizes the folks of Sleepy Hollow.
  • The Owl House:
    • Terra Snapdragon is an elderly female magic user who brews dubious concoctions, wields formidable and vicious magic, wears a thinly-veiled facade over her cruel disposition, and she frequently stays isolated from the rest of the Isles, preferring her personal greenhouse. Later episodes added into this with "Them's the Breaks, Kid" showing she takes a sadistic glee in the pain of children, and "King's Tide" gave her a creepy cackle to round it out.
    • Hilariously enough, Philip Wittebane/Emperor Belos actually has a lot more in common with the 17th-century definition of a Witch than the residents of the Boiling Isles do despite Belos himself being a puritanical Witch Hunter, whose goal is the genocide of all Witches. He's an elderly outcast who cut a deal with a powerful entity in exchange for powerful magic he fuels by devouring the flesh of innocents (The Collector and the Palismen) and hides his hideous true from behind a kindly mask he uses to manipulate the righteous into his clutches. "Hollow Mind" makes the parallel even more obvious, having him disguise himself as a seemingly helpful and innocent creature to deceive two children into following him into an extremely foreboding forest (the depths of his mindscape) until they're far away from rescue and he reveals his true evil nature while cackling madly. Furthermore, "Watching and Dreaming" has Belos make allusions to two of the most famous evil witches in popular culture. First, he has a One-Winged Angel transformation into a giant dragon for the final battle, akin to Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty (1959), complete with a hammy announcement to go with it. Second, his death scene has him melting from rain caused by Luz, similar to how the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz was famously weak against water.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016): "Witch's Crew", one of three Halloween Episodes in the series, had the girls become wicked witches, thanks to Princess Morbucks trying to create a potion that'll make her more beautiful and powerful than the girls, only for it to backfire and spill, causing not only their transformation, but also turning Morbucks into a real ogre and a trick-or-treating Mojo Jojo into a real cat. With the girls becoming villains temporarily, Mojo and Morbucks end up playing the roles of unwilling protagonists as they find a way to reverse the spell.
  • The Real Ghostbusters: The witch in "If I Were a Witch Man" uses all the traditional tropes associated with evil witches, and even have a legion of flying monkeys (well, she calls them goblins). It turns out to be actually the ghost of an old witch defeated by Egon's ancestor possessing modern humans.
  • Rugrats:
    • In "Ghost Story", Angelica appears as one complete with pointed hat, broomstick, and cackling.
    • The trope appears again in their Affectionate Parody of The Wizard of Oz. Three guesses which character Angelica plays.
    • Kimi dresses as one for the show's second Halloween Episode — and thoroughly terrifies Chuckie with her cackling.
  • Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid: Hedwig the Big Bad is crone meets mermaid. As the Big Bad of the series loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's short story, she is an evil sea witch with purple skin, white hair, and is extremely ugly.
  • The Simpsons:
  • The Smurfs (1981) had a few:
    • Hogatha, a short, dumpy hag who's bald (but wears a wig), snorts when she talks (which is how she got her name, apparently), rides a vulture, and can cast evil spells. Most of her schemes either involve trying to find ways to make herself beautiful or force handsome princes to marry her (and naturally, the smurfs always get caught in the middle of these plans).
    • Far worse than Hogatha was Chlorhydris, who was so full of hate that she wanted to make the entire world feel the same way, eradicating everyone's ability to feel happiness and love. While such goals are not uncommon for villains in a series like this, Chlorhydris did some downright sadistic things in pursuit of it, like kidnapping the wood elf Laconia and using her wand to kill the flowering plants in the forest - not caring in the least that doing so was causing Laconia to die an agonizingly slow death as she felt their pain. (Unlike most villains in the series, Chlorhydris was given a backstory; apparently, she was once in love with a wizard who left her at the altar, and apparently, the heartbreak not only caused her to fit this Trope well, it was enough for her to want to deny all of creation what she had once had.)
    • Brenda, the title character from "The Littlest Witch" is supposed to be one in training. Fortunately, she averts this trope when she learns to be good, and to use her powers to do good things. Her teacher, on the other hand, is just as wicked as all the others.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Mother Mae-Eye is sort of a supervillain version of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. She initially appears as a grandmotherly old woman, but her true form is a hideous old hag with warty, green skin and three eyes. She brainwashes the Titans into thinking that she's their mother using the magical —and addictive— pies that she makes, all the while planning to turn them into one, and, when found out, grows to giant size and uses them as weapons.
  • The Trouble With Miss Switch: Saturna is the very spiteful and corrupt head of the Witches' Council, who, with the aid of her Comput-o-witch, declares Miss Switch's witchcraft ideas to be old-fashioned and out of date, then condemns her to be banished to the Dead Forest, from which no one has ever returned. Saturna's skin is green, her hair is gray, and she also has a long, pointed nose and an equally long, pointed chin.
  • WinxVerse: The Trix (Icy, Darcy, and Stormy) are an evil trio of witches from Cloud Tower who constantly scheme to conquer the Magic Dimension, frequently crossing paths with the Winx. The series also subverts this with the other witches from Cloud Tower (including its headmistress Griffin), as while they do draw their powers from darkness and negative emotions like the Trix, they aren't necessarily bad people and even they find the Trix's ambitions to be a step too far.
  • Zuzubaland: The Green Witch is tall and skinny, has dark green skin, embraces being ugly, is equipped with a Magic Wand, rides a broom when she goes out of her castle, uses potions and sorcery, and has a temperamental, fun-hating personality.

    Real Life 
  • The Vampire of Barcelona, Enriqueta Marti, who not only kidnapped and prostituted street children for the city's wealthy pedophiles but also killed the younger children and processed their blood, bones, and fat to make love potions and cures for tuberculosis and various venereal diseases for the same wealthy residents of Barcelona in pre-WWI Spain.
  • Leonarda Cianciulli, who killed three women, turned their body fat into soap (in one case giving it to her neighbours) and used their blood as an ingredient for cakes, which were eaten by her friends, her son, and herself. Not only was she a firm believer in divination and magic, but she admitted her victims were human sacrifices offered for the protection of her son.
  • Tamara Samsonova, the "Granny Ripper," who murdered at least 11 victims, allegedly including her own husband. She not only cooked and ate body parts, but was a practitioner of black magic and astrology, even tearing out pages from her spell books and including them with some of the bodies. In her own country, she is often called "Baba Yaga" in reference to the fairytale character.
  • Carolanne Smith, the "She Svengali" of Tulsa's "Hex House". In addition to being a career criminal, Smith kept two women imprisoned in her basement who, despite being let out every day on their own to go to work (having to give whatever they earned to Smith) never once tried to escape, leading some to suspect they were hypnotized or under some sort of spell. Smith would also often have strange burials at night around her house. When her home was raided by police, they found a number of books on witchcraft and ritual magic, as well as journal entries confirming her belief in her power to control others. However, she was only given a year in prison for her crimes.


In Salem, you hunt witch. In Soviet Russia, witch hunts YOU!

 
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The Trix

Icy, Stormy, and Darcy, also known together as the Trix, are a trio of evil witches who actively antagonize the Winx in their quest to take over the Magic Dimension.

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