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Not So Harmless Villain / Western Animation

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Not So Harmless Villains in Western Animation.
  • In Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Simon the Monster Hunter may seem goofy, silly, egotistical, and wildly regarded as a crackpot and laughingstock for believing in monsters, but in addition to being the Determinator no matter how many times he fails, his plans to capture the monsters are quite clever and effective, with him usually losing largely due to bad luck. In the first season finale, he actually succeeded in capturing Ickis, Oblina, Krumm, and the majority of their class, with them only getting away because Ickis convinced Bradley to let them go. There's a reason the Gromble considers Simon the most dangerous threat to the monster world.
  • Adventure Time:
    • The Earl of Lemongrab initially appears to be an annoying, harmless jerk. The second time he appears, however, he's deliberately torturing people with weapons including a sword that shoots sonic blasts, and an electrical torture chamber. However, it's hard to tell whether he's genuinely evil, or just COMPLETELY BATSHIT CRAZY.
    • The Ice King is usually played as a demented old fool, but being a tall order comedic sociopath, he is dangerous at times. In one instance, he manages to overpower Finn and is about to make the final blow, but then remembers he didn't visit him to fight and holds off. He also proved useful under benevolent purposes, helping Finn defeat the Lich. The most overt example of this in the series happens in "Princess Monster Wife", in which in his first major appearance after "Holly Jolly Secrets" revealed his tragic past and made the audience feel sorry for him, he chopped bits off several princesses to make himself a wife. "Finn the Human" showed that his crown is powerful enough to freeze the planet for centuries on end and it would overpower a normal person's mind into doing just that in a matter of minutes. The only reason the Ice King remains mostly harmless is a tiny remnant of his original personality is still resisting it.
  • Dr. Robotnik of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is largely considered far more incompetent than most other incarnations of the doctor, however, he has been shown to be pretty clever several times over and many of his inventions, as goofy as they are, are very elaborate or at least work as he intended. In particular, the last few episodes of the series revolved around a Time Travel plot where Robotnik and Sonic were trying to collect the Chaos Emeralds. Seeing as this is Sonic we're talking about, Robotnik always proved too slow and didn't manage to get a single Emerald ... until the very last one. And then with that one he managed to collect the rest in a single episode and nearly destroyed Sonic and friends.
  • Adventures of the Gummi Bears:
    • Duke Igthorn is as much as Large Ham as any other Disney villain, and as typically successful as any other Saturday morning cartoon villain. However, several times over the course of the series he's truly endangered Dunwyn through his schemes, and in the series finale actually conquers the kingdom, losing at the end of the finale notwithstanding. It's also clear that if it hadn't been for the Gummi Bears, he would have taken over Dunwin a long time ago. Even if most people now believe that the Gummi Bears only are fairy-tale characters, they remain a threat to Duke Igthorn, that the king's knights only can dream of being. And there's also one episode, where he uses the Gummiscope to blow up a tower and nearly kill Princess Calla (she was even unconscious for a while). So yes, Duke Igthorn sure had his dangerous moments.
    • There is also the fact that his minions are for the most part a bunch of Ogres three times his size and could probably crush him like a gnat if they so wished. NONE OF THEM dare to betray their master. What kind of normal human can pull off that sort of feat? In the two episodes where they wound up following someone else, they went right back to Igthorn the moment that leader was gone.
  • Aladdin: The Series:
    • Abis Mal is mostly by far the least threatening of Aladdin's Rogues Gallery, but there are times when he's managed to not only get the upper hand, but come dangerously close to winning.
      • In "Forget Me Lots" he took advantage of Jasmine's amnesia in order to brainwash her into a fanatically loyal, nigh-unstoppable One Woman Army. Haroud gave Abis the idea, but then Abis ran with it.
      • "Some Enchanted Genie" had him in control of a genie. He wished that she'd crush them like bugs, but when pointed out she can't kill, he instead wished for them to be turned into bugs, so he could do the crushing. Someone else had to wish he didn't wish that.
    • There's also Mechanicles. Like Abis Mal, his one episode, "I Never Mechanism I Didn't Like", where he's a major threat involves brainwashing. Unlike Abis Mal, however, he doesn't brainwash just Jasmine, but everyone in Agrabah except Aladdin and Genie.
  • In his first several appearances, Barry from Archer is an antagonist, but a fairly harmless one (Archer beats the bejeezus out of him in at least half of their encounters). Then the KGB gets ahold of him, and suddenly he's a lot less easy to mess with.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball turned minor character Rob into a villain towards the end of Season 3. He begins his first villainous outing in Season 4's "The Nemesis" where his attempts to get revenge on Gumball and Darwin backfire on him Wile E. Coyote-style and aren't even noticed until the brothers take pity on him and try to build up his confidence and make him a bigger threat. So he resolves to blow up the town dam only to find out it doesn't have one. Then things get more serious with his surprise appearance in "The Bus", in which, through manipulating others, he secretly masterminds the theft of a million dollars which results in a high-speed police chase, a legitimate bomb scare aboard a packed school bus, and a fight with Gumball atop an airplane wing. And he almost gets away with it! And if that wasn't enough, come “The Disaster” and “The Rerun”, he learns he exists within a TV show and concludes that Gumball's existence as the main character is why he has become an arbitrary villain. So he drops most of the clichés forced upon him and becomes hell-bent on destroying Gumball's life, breaking up his family and banishing him to the Void with a reality-changing TV remote. Were it not for a literal Reset Button and a change of heart after Gumball tries to Save the Villain, he would have succeeded. "The Ex" and "The Spinoffs" are much more lighthearted, although the latter has some sinister undertones as he attempts another Hostile Show Takeover. Towards the end of the show, Rob learns the show is about to end after kidnapping Banana Barbara and becomes something of a Byronic Hero, who attempts to save everyone from disaster by turning them into humans and escaping Elmore. Yet his methods and failure to properly warn everyone lead others to resist him, leaving the Void to swallow up Elmore at the end of the series.
  • Atomic Puppet: Mookie is the resident Butt-Monkey and Big Bad Wannabe, whose only successful scheme was turning Captain Atomic into a puppet. Then in the series finale he finally snaps and decides to abandon his attempts at Engineered Heroics to fully embrace villainy. He proceeds to caused a massive jailbreak, teams up with Professor Tite-Gripp, and dons a set of Powered Armor that makes him a match for Atomic Puppet.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra:
    • Xin Fu and Master Yu, the two goons hired to bring Toph back for her parents, seem harmless and not very intelligent at first, but are shown to be relatively competent earthbenders if given their chance to shine, and did in fact even manage to briefly capture their quarry at one point... until she invents Metalbending just in the nick of time to kick their asses all by herself.
    • Princess Azula was this to Long Feng specifically. When they decided to partner up to pull off a coup to bring down Ba Sing Se, Azula deliberately makes him think that she is a somewhat intelligent young girl who is way over her head. When he decides to betray her, as she knew he would, she turns his own men against him and reveals to him just how cunning and ruthless she really is.
    • Korra has the titular character's cousins Desna and Eska, who at first seem to be nothing more than Creepy Twins used for comic relief. Then comes "The Peacekeepers", where they both fight Korra to a standstill and may have even beaten her if not for a dark spirit intervening. They continue to be big threats for the rest of the season until their Heel–Face Turn.
    • In season 3 of Korra, the Earth Queen mistakes Zaheer and his crew for run of the mill bounty hunters. She couldn't be further from the truth as they are a group of benders with elite powers (P'li is a combustion bender, Ming-hua has deadly Combat Tentacles with waterbending, and Ghazan is a lava bender) who are ruthless Bomb-Throwing Anarchists. They absolutely curb stomp the Dai Li. She pays for it with her life as Zaheer makes quick work out of her by suffocating her with his bending.
    • In season 4 there is Baatar Jr. Throughout the season he is portrayed as someone being manipulated by Big Bad Kuvira, because of his resentment of his family. Otherwise, he is a harmless number two who is on his way to being Kuvira's Henpecked Husband. Then we find out not only was he not being manipulated, but many of the Earth Empire's advancements were more his idea than Kuvira's. She used her charisma as the Great Uniter and her muscle as an expert metal bender to make them a reality. And he turns out to be the general of their army's war mechs divison and puts up a strong fight against the heroes, so much so that Toph ends up interfering and saving them.
  • Ben 10:
    • Dr Animo is a stereotypical Mad Scientist, mostly considered a joke (though he was Ben's third most dangerous enemy in the original series, but considering the ones ahead of him were Vilgax and Kevin 11, that makes him the least impressive of the three). In the Alien Force episode "Voided", however, he ended up in the Null Void, where he became a ruthless dictator by controlling the giant aliens that guard the dimension, and almost created a portal to invade Earth. He does however return to being a joke once he is sent back to Earth.
    • The Forever Knights, while creepy and threatening in the Original Series and earlier Alien Force episodes, were gradually turned into a joke over the course of Alien Force and Ultimate Alien. It got to the point that, in one episode, Gwen (who is usually the Only Sane Woman of the group) considered Ben supporting his girlfriend in a tennis match as a bigger priority over preventing their latest wold domination scheme. Comes season 2 of Ultimate Alien, their original leader Sir George comes back, ends their Enemy Civil War and turns them into a much more competent group with high-tech weapons that actually succeed in killing a recurring character.
    • Vilgax's sidekick Psyphon was passive for most of his screen time, usually contenting himself with being a messenger, advisor, scientist and lackey. After Vilgax is apparently killed in the finale of Alien Force, he goes on a Avenging the Villain moment against Ben. Turns out he is skilled enough to handle Ultimate Spider-Monkey in a hand-to-hand fight. Omniverse takes it even further by giving him a more threatening appearance, a gang of underground alien criminals, and making him a near match for Ben and Rook. Of course, being Omniverse, he is gradually turned into a bigger joke than he ever was to begin with as the shows goes on.
    • Minor villain Ssserpent was first introduced as a Smug Snake (literally) villain who got curb stomped by Ben in his first two appearances. When he shows up for the third time, he turns out to have learned from his previous defeats, and proves smart enough to anticipate which form Ben is about to use and set a trap instead of fighting him directly. He almost succeeds in killing off Ben.
    • Captain Nemesis initially seems like a goofy wannabe superhero seething in jealousy of Ben. And then it turns out that he's actually a cold-blooded, sociopathic murderer who doesn't care how many corpses he has to step over to get what he wants and ends up being one of the darkest villains in the series.
    • Malware, big time. The guy is first introduced at the beginning of Ben 10: Omniverse, where he is quickly sent to retreat by Ben in the Batman Cold Open. We then get a Whole Episode Flashback that reveals his origin, including the fact that he murdered people of his own kind to feed himself, but still seems to have him stick as a minor villain. And THEN Of Predator And Prey reveals that he was the Big Bad all along and the one who hired Khyber; the reason he was defeated so easily at the beginning of the show was because he already got what he wanted in the fight and just needed to leave. Hell, when Ben encounters him for the first time in five years in Malefactor, he's genuinely frightened by him (because he literally ripped his favorite alien Feedback out of the Omnitrix), putting him into an Heroic BSoD, a task few villains in the franchise have succeeded in.
    • The Incurseans were introduced in Alien Force as rather generic alien invaders with a frog-like appearance, who appeared almost exclusively for comedy (with their first episode being the only exception). In season 3 of Omniverse, they are promoted to Big Bad level baddies, and actually manage to take over Earth through sheer military brute force for a short time. Ben almost loses it when he realizes he is losing to what he always considered C-List villains.
  • Big City Greens: For the first season and a half, Chip Whistler always managed to get out-done by the Greens. No matter how much he tried, and no matter what he did, it would almost inevitably end in him chipping his tooth. It's gotten to the point that, by the time that "Chipwrecked" comes around, the Greens have completely stopped taking Chip seriously, and know that he’ll inevitably defeat himself. This comes to bite them in the back big time, as Chip uses his power as a Corrupt Corporate Executive to shut down Big Coffee and kick the people out of the apartment complex next to the Greens' house so that he can build a Wholesome Foods store to block the Greens' house from sunlight. Chip them nearly kicks the Greens out of their home by planning to build a parking lot in the area that it occupies. Even after Chip's plan to run the Greens out town fails, he still tries to kill Cricket out of spite. It's no wonder that it all ends in him getting banned from Big City altogether.
  • Colonel H. Stinkmeaner from The Boondocks was introduced as a miserable old Jerkass who the Freeman's believed was a blind swordsman, aware of everything around him. Turns out he was a major Boisterous Weakling who, after antagonising them all episode, ended up being killed by one punch. However after his initial appearance he ended up becoming a Once a Season threat and in his next appearance he'd taken a major level in badass, defeating the armies of Hell, earning the respect of The Devil himself and coming back as a ghost possessing Tom, using his sight and youth to try and kill the Freeman family. After that it's revealed he was The Leader of a team of Evil Old Folks who are just as dangerous as they initially thought he was, if not more, and in his final appearance he came back as a clone with enhancements such as Super-Strength and possibly sight.
  • Castlevania (2017); Season 4 introduces a vampire named Varney, a Miles Gloriosus whom the other villains treat with contempt at best and outright hostility at worst. Then Saint Germaine prepares to enact his ritual to resurrect Dracula, and Varney reveals he has been manipulating all the other villains the whole season. Not only that, he reveals his true identity: Death, one of Castlevania's most iconic villains and the true Final Boss of the series.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • At first, Gramma Stuffum seemed like a goofy recurring villain (even if still a threat). Then came "Operation: F.O.O.D.F.I.T.E.", which was basically just one big epic fight between her and Sector V to the music of GWAR songs.
    • Among the Rogues Gallery of the KND, Toiletnator is THE most pathetic villain and The Friend Nobody Likes. However, he has shown that he can be a scarily competent fighter if he tries: in one episode he alone defeated five other villains (Mr. Boss, Crazy Cat Lady, Fibb and Wink and Knightbrace) who had taken over the Sector V Treehouse (because he somehow thought five adults were Sector V).
  • Danny Phantom: The Box Ghost was a minor incompetent villain, only posing a serious threat to Danny when he was first starting out. He was so pathetic that Skulker used him for bait. He continues to be this for the rest of the series, except for one episode where he managed to steal Pandora's Box, allowing him to release the world's worst evils while at the same time being filled with the Box's energy. To say nothing of his Future Badass-self in The Ultimate Enemy alternate timeline.
    The Box Ghost: Beware.
  • Darkwing Duck:
    • While Darkwing's no-nonsense, death-penalty toting Knight Templar future self of Darkwarrior Duck will never be mistaken for harmless, there is a brief point where this is invoked. In a scene cut from the broadcast version, Gosalyn attempts to appeal to Darkwarrior when he pulls his signature, and decidedly non-lethal, gas gun on her. She calls his bluff when he reveals that he hasn't used a gas gun in years and that the weapon he's aiming point-blank, at her face is a freaking missile launcher.
    • Among the goons of the infamous Taurus Bulba none contrasted more with their leader's seriously intimidating style than the Bumbling Henchmen Duo Hoof and Mouth who made even Hammerhead look like a no-nonsense gangster. Despite supposedly providing the muscle they actually only provided comic relief by their gormless goofing off. This goofing off however apparently went horribly wrong offscreen as it implicitly turns out that they were the ones who murdered Gosalyn's grandfather, Professor Waddlemeyer because they didn't understand Bulba's orders to keep him alive at least until they could get the doomsday machine's operating code casting their buffoonery under a darker light.
  • DC Animated Universe:
  • Dora the Explorer: Though not shown often from the present day one, Swiper the Fox, of all people, sometimes has shades of this. His Bad Future self reveals the only reason Dora can stop him is he's just polite enough to listen to her "Swiper no swiping" trick. When he ended up on the Naughty List on Christmas, he stops listening at all. The result is he becomes so successful and steals so much stuff the future Dora angrily tells the present Swiper there's nothing left to swipe and he's single-handedly ruined everyone's Christmas since that day. Then when the past Swiper tries the "Swiper no swiping" trick on his future self, future Swiper simply laughs at him and says it doesn't work anymore before stealing said item anyway. Good thing Swiper is polite, huh?
    • In some other episodes, Swiper might also try harder than usual to swipe something (as in one episode where he jumped Dora and friends just before they could finish the third "No swiping" command and swiped three items as opposed to just one, or in "Boots' Special Day", where Swiper attempts to be more sneaky than usual by changing where he’ll come from to throw Dora off), or he might try more than once per episode (as in one of the Easter episodes, where he came back at the end in an eggshell for another go).
  • The Dreamstone:
    • The Urpneys are blundering idiots who even the heroes described as being "tiresome". However, despite their haplessness, they did on several occasions managed to outsmart or capture the heroes and actually succeeded in bringing the Dreamstone to Zordrak multiple times over. It was merely stopping the heroes from stealing it back they had problems with. In some cases the heroes are left genuinely outmatched until dumb luck intervenes. "The Spidermobile" is a defining example; Sgt. Blob and his men decimate the entire Land of Dreams in Urpgor's new (literal) Spider Tank and take the stone with ease. They even remain undefeated, it is Zordrak that ends up losing it to the heroes.
    • While not really a Harmless Villain himself, Zordrak's intents originally seemed to be little more than keeping the Dreamstone away from the Noops so he could spread nightmares, making the war between the two sides for a rather mundane cause. In "A Day Out" he reveals a new motive; to corrupt the stone's power to use as his own and become "LORD OF THE UNIVERSE!!!", making the stakes from the Urpneys trying to steal it for him a lot higher for the Noops.
  • DuckTales (2017):
    • When they introduced Mark Beaks, a social media-obsessed billionaire to be a foil for Scrooge, he was mostly harmless (in one episode, he went to Scrooge's manor and hacked the security... simply so he could find embarrassing photos of Scrooge to post online). Who is Gizmoduck? showed him as a liar and thief who put a Restraining Bolt on Gizmoduck, forces him to help only the people who have his app, and eventually steals the armor and announces his intention to be the one who decides who is saved or not.
    • Flintheart Glomgold, despite being considered an "Arch-Enemy" by Scrooge himself, is shown to be very incompetent, egomaniacal dumb and working with over-complicated schemes. Over season 1, Scrooge takes Flintheart more as an annoyance than a real threat. However, in season 2 he is taken more as a threat: When Scrooge finds out early that season that Flintheart once stole from him and built his business empire on it, he accepts a challenge on the title "Richest Duck In The World". The episode "GlomTales" sees Flintheart organizing a Villain Team-Up with some of the biggest threats of Scrooge's Rogues Gallery.
  • Denzel Crocker from The Fairly OddParents! is probably the most incompetent villain on the show (despite being one of the smartest), but he does successfully manage to take over the world and capture Cosmo and Wanda in Abra-Catastrophe!, and manages to put the Fairy World in disarray in the first installment of The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour.
  • Stan, Xander Crews' aging, overweight, and constantly exasperated assistant on Frisky Dingo. After Xander went missing, he had him declared dead (calmly explaining such when Crews called him before hanging up and laughing), took over the Crews corporation and, with it, the Crews fortune and Xander's identity as the superhero Awesome X, and his command over the Powered Armor wearing X-Tacles.
  • Gargoyles' Owen Burnett at first merely seems like an uptight man Friday for David Xanatos— but not only does he quickly prove to be an extremely competent badass in his own right, he is in fact Puck, an immortal Great Gazoo.
  • Cobra Commander may seem like a complete idiot, but remember that he is a notorious international terrorist with an army at his side. If not for the GI Joe team, he likely would have won in the first episode. This is lampshaded in the Darker and Edgier G.I. Joe: Resolute in which he explains that he only acted stupidly and cowardly so that his troops will know how not to behave.
  • Li'l Gideon Gleeful in Gravity Falls seems like just a fraudster who thinks he's entitled to have Mabel, but he quickly turns dangerous when he thinks Dipper is trying to interfere in their relationship. It's also revealed he has a journal like Dipper's, and knows about a secret at the Mystery Shack.
  • La Cebolla in Hamster & Gretel was initially introduced in "La Ballad of La Cebolla" with the superpower to talk to onions: even when showing that the onions will do what she says, Hamster, Gretel and Kevin do not take her seriously, until later in the episode, when she kidnaps Gretel for her Onion Amplifier: using her superpowers to command an army of onions and onion-like plants to be used as whips, binds and projectiles, as well as using onion breath to knock Hamster unconscious... it's essentially a more specific type of Green Thumb if applied correctly, and boy, did she apply it correctly here.
  • Hazbin Hotel:
    • Valentino is the most incompetent of the Vees and a childish moron, which is quite frequently Played for Laughs. However, he's also the nastiest in terms of personal villainy and a serial rapist who proves very dangerous to anyone below his power level. His Domestic Abuse of Angel is treated entirely seriously, with the episodes and supplemental material focusing on it being much darker than the rest of the series.
    • Sir Pentious is an insecure, dorky Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who generally proves incompetent at whatever he tries, and is easily persuaded to make a Heel–Face Turn. However, numerous people acknowledge he's really good at surviving fights with stronger opponents unscathed despite this, and in the first season finale his death ray actually manages to pose a threat to the otherwise unstoppable Adam, although unfortunately he's able to kill Pentious before he can get a shot off.
  • Invader Zim has Zim become this in the film Enter the Florpus. More often than not in the show and comics, his schemes are thwarted not by his arch-nemesis Dib or his cloudcuckoolander robot sidekick, but his own ego and Genius Ditz personality. In the film, Gaz, the only human character other than her brother Dib to know that Zim is an evil alien, is even in the middle of pointing out that Zim's plans always fail when the Villain Protagonist successfully teleports Earth into the path of the Irken Armada, throwing the populace into chaos and successfully conquering the planet.
  • Invincible (2021): The Lizard League are considered a Goldfish Poop Gang by Cecil, and they are mocked on social media. Then they get into a fight with three low-ranking members of the Guardians of the Globe and actually manage to put up a decent showing, outright killing one and leaving the other two severely injured.
  • As with any portrayal of King John of England, Ivanhoe: The King's Knight features the then prince as seemingly harmless only to show himself to be able to use a sword with deadly skill.
  • Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes is usually the poster boy for The Devil Is a Loser. However, according to Word of God, he has powers that can allow him to remake the planet to his will! The sole reason he doesn't is that he wants to prove to everyone he doesn't need to.
  • Olaf from Kaeloo wishes to Take Over the World and cover it with ice, but he never scares anybody or does anything that actually harms them, so they just make fun of him. At least, until the season 2 finale, where he kidnaps Quack Quack to use his powers to power up a machine that created snow, and freezes Kaeloo and Mr. Cat alive and puts them in People Jars.
  • Kim Possible:
    • Dr. Drakken is a buffoon and a classic Harmless Villain most of the time, but most of his schemes nearly work aside from some fatal flaw that destroys them. Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama saw him succeed on a grander scale, and showed how dangerous he can be when he finally learns from his past mistakes. In the second finale, he underwent a plant mutation that at first made it look like he was turning into a monster, giving him powerful, destructive vines that he used to crush the alien walkers, earning him his very first victory.
    • Shego is mostly the muscle who fights Kim and is too lazy to actually take over the world herself, but in A Sitch in Time she comes up with and pulls off a successful plan to take over the world. (In fact, she makes her laziness and lack of personal investment into assets by simply paying an organization to come up with the plan for her and then farming out every bit of the work she can, contrasting with the usual cast of supervillains who need to feel they earned their victory.)
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Elmer Fudd is a real dunce and less a villain than a mere punching bag for Bugs Bunny, whom he invariably hunts. And then came one of the most epic Looney Tunes cartoons ever, What's Opera, Doc?, where Elmer shows Bugs how "harmless" he really is… Elmer stands as the only villain to actually defeat Bugs in the classic shorts, and more than once. He gets an arguably even more awesome victory in "Rabbit Rampage", when he somehow manages to become the cartoonist and uses this power to spend the entire short tormenting Bugs (the same thing Bugs did to Daffy in an earlier, more famous short.) Another good example comes from Hare Brush, where he successfully fakes insanity and gets Bugs arrested so that he doesn't have to answer to his own tax fraud.
    • Perhaps the series' oddest move was evolving Daffy Duck into one for Speedy Gonzales. Similar to the above examples, Daffy was still rather bumbling and comical, however he was often portrayed as Speedy's most competent foe compared to the rest of his completely ineffective Rogues Gallery, often putting Speedy and his friends in much more dire circumstances (e.g. enslaving them or depriving them of water) and downplaying the former's Comically Invincible Hero streak.
  • Zet from Magi-Nation. Seeming at first to be a Harmless Villain as part of a Bumbling Henchmen Duo (and the eternal Butt-Monkey of his Dumb Muscle superior Korg), Zet turned out to be not only a peerless mastermind once he was finally rid of Korg, but is universally considered the hardest boss in the game, having more health than the final boss himself and the ability to act twice in one turn.
  • Metalocalypse:
    • Charles Foster Ofdensen goes 19 episodes before anyone even says his name; he's the annoying, nasal-voiced nerd lawyer who serves as a voice of reason to the otherwise stupid and possibly insane metal band. And then we find out that he's actually been a badass all along, and the villains of the series consider him a bigger obstacle in the way of Dethklok's destruction than Dethklok itself. He seems to actively hide his ruthlessness from Dethklok, and has been known on at least three occasions to lie to them about what he does to people who threaten them, or his own position with the band. In one of the season 2 deleted scenes he's seen him telling the boys what happened to potential management usurper Melmord Fjordslorn: "Turns out he was a pedophile. What a weirdo." The truth? Ofdensen fought him to the death for the right to manage the band and won.
    • Dr. Rockso, the Rock 'n Roll Clown. He does cocaine. No, really. The overweight, coked-up clown dressed in not nearly enough fabric with a brightly colored wig and facepaint is a dangerous, dangerous man willing to do whatever it takes to get just a little more of that sweet blow.
  • My Life as a Teenage Robot:
    • Killgore wants to get credibility as a villain, but since he's just a living windup toy and considered cute by many, no one can really take him seriously. However, when push comes to shove, he's capable of accomplishing anything, including rebuilding Armageddroid, a rogue Humongous Mecha created by Dr. Wakeman that nearly killed Jenny in their first battle, to prove he's a legitimate threat.
    • Krackus is a senile, blustering Cluster robot who has a reputation as a Bungling Inventor. While his inventions are prone to comically-spectacular failures, when they work they work dangerously well.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Lord Boxman of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes is regarded by hero and villain alike as a bumbling robot-maker due to his obsession with, and failure to, destroy Lakewood Plaza Turbo. However, in "We're Captured!" after K.O., Enid, and Rad ruin his dinner with Professor Venomous, Boxman flies into an Unstoppable Rage, jury-rigs a BFG and sends the Power Trio packing. In "Villains Night Out", he gate-crashes a private event run by other villains and makes a total fool of himself, and his antics get the villains' cruise ship sunk. He then reveals to Venomous that he's fully aware how little the other baddies think of him, but wanted to make it clear that he doesn't care, and that he'll do whatever he wants. This actually impresses Venomous enough to support Boxman's creation of Boxman Junior, a super bio-robot so powerful that K.O. actually had to work with T.K.O to defeat.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar:
    • Despite being clearly obsessed with the penguins and ridiculed by the public as a loon, Officer X is the only human shown fully aware of and posing a threat the the penguins' schemes and plans. Because of this, he was capable of constantly out-thinking the penguins, and anticipating their plans when hired as their zookeeper.
    • The Amarillo Kid at first seems like a small annoyance at worst who is only a threat to Private's reputation as The Ace in Mini-golf, then he manages to get the penguins' HQ to self destruct and locks down the rest of the zoo, unless Private plays one last game.
  • Phineas and Ferb shows that Heinz Doofenshmirtz can be scarily dangerous at times:
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
    • Mojo Jojo often appears harmless due to the Powerpuff Girls overpowering him, but in reality, he's done a lot of things that prove he's competent and not a joke. Such things would include mass murder, slandering, turning the whole world into dogs and creating a supervillain ape army, but he also defeated a giant overlord that not even the girls stood a chance against. And he has actually defeated the girls.
    • The Gangrene Gang tends to be a Goldfish Poop Gang most of the time, although some stories make them actual threats at least for a while. In one story, they gain superpowers and "turn Townsville topsy-turvy" until the powers wear off. In another, they start committing clever robberies under Sedusa's tutoring. Unfortunately for Sedusa, they sell her out once she tosses them aside.
    • The Amoeba Boys are always the Butt Monkeys of the show, only doing minor crimes that don't make sense at all; yet the fact that they are living germs can make them one of the biggest threats of the show when they don't actually mean to be. Their worst act was that they caught a cold after staying up all night standing in front of a "Keep Off The Grass" sign which got mixed with their DNA and created a virus that spreads infecting all of Townsville to near-death. The Girlsnote  were forced to find the Amoeba Boys and bring them to the lab to have the cure extracted. They also split themselves into an army after being inspired from a peeled orange they took and raided the army to steal more oranges which caused everyone in Townsville to have scurvy.
  • The Wartime Cartoon series Private Snafu depicts soldiers of the Axis Powers in more or less the comedic and stereotypical light you'd expect. There's one important difference, however: they're generally portrayed as competent and legitimately dangerous adversaries, and some episodes end with them killing the title character note . For example, in "Fighting Tools" a German soldier openly mocks Snafu's poor care of his weapons and winds up the victor since his equipment works. There's a simple reason for this: the series was aimed at a military audience rather than a civilian one, meaning they wanted to hammer home that the enemy was a real, very credible threat and not to be taken lightly or underestimated.
  • Reboot: When the show starts, Megabyte seems like your typical goofy, ineffectual Saturday morning cartoon villain, never managing to cause permanent harm with his attempts to take over Mainframe. As the series progresses, Cerebus Syndrome sets in, and Megabyte starts going off the deep end from repeated, constant failures, he becomes increasingly evil and dangerous. He goes from silly once-a-week Dastardly Whiplash plots to manipulating and betraying Bob's kindhearted nature by throwing him into the Web then unleashing a hellish war upon Mainframe as he makes his play to conquer the city and eventually the entire Supercomputer, killing numerous people.
  • Blokk in Shadow Raiders, a brute-force driven dimwit who extremely quickly suffers Villain Decay and hardly seems a big deal. But then Planet Rock redeploys its main weapons somewhere else, and Blokk leads a hideously destructive attack and kills the planet's ruler in one-on-one combat. And when the small kids of the show defeat him again, he finally snaps and spends the last episode on a vicious killing spree that nearly wipes out the planet.
  • Cute, lazy, and more than a little bit childish, She-Ra: Princess of Power's Imp may seem like little more than the Big Bad's pet, but he's a highly competent spy and a very creative mischief maker who has caused plenty of trouble for the Rebellion. If you pay close attention to when he spies on a group including former Horde captain Adora, you'll notice that even shapeshifted he'll make sure to stay where she's not likely to see him.
  • The Simpsons: The first time Sideshow Bob went to jail, it was simply for framing Krusty the Klown for robbery. In most of his major appearances afterwards, he plans to murder people (usually Bart Simpson, after the first two times he got Bob arrested).
  • South Park:
    • Eric Cartman. Most of the time, he's just a fat, racist bully, but he's fed a teenager his own parents in the form of chili, nearly started a second holocaust and controlled Cthulhu to destroy all who he hates.
    • Sheila Broflovski. Her moral crusades were usually Played for Laughs, but in The Movie she singlehandedly starts a literal war with Canada, initiates a Canadian Holocaust and (indirectly) causes the apocalypse.
    • Herbert Garrison. When first elected into office it seems that people were simply overreacting over how horrible he would be as president with the only things he had done was get rid of six immigrants and not complete the wall he promised. Later on however, its been revealed that he's been raping foreign diplomats and his own staff to death. And that's not even getting to the fact that he also nuked Canada, killing millions of people there.
    • Professor Chaos, Butters Supervillain alter-ego was originally a complete joke, being a very naive 8 year old covered in aluminum foil. His "evil plans" included switching two peoples orders at a restaurant and stealing an eraser from school as well as trying to flood the world with a garden hose. But as the show went on and Butter's started showing Hidden Depths, he became this. For example in "Franchise Prequel" he starts his own company that spreads misinformation for profit and in the process manages to destroy the main characters chances of developing a successful multimedia franchise. And this is nothing compared to his future self "Vic Chaos" who is The Dreaded and has to be locked up in an insane asylum because he's so dangerous, he's an NTF salesman. One that in just five minutes can convince anyone, even the guards at the asylum he's locked up at, to give him all their money and leave the scene in utter chaos.
    • Cartman's alter-ego, The Coon is also this. He's an fat, unathletic 9 year old trying to be a superhero for attention, the police consider him an annoyance, the "criminals" he attacks are ordinary people minding their own business and his claws don't do much besides give people quite painful scratches. He spends his whole episode convincing himself everyone loves him then being insanely jealous of the much more popular superhero Mysterion. Of course this is still Cartman we're talking about, and silly costume or not he's still The Sociopath so while he may call himself a hero that's only by Cartman's definition of a hero.
  • The season 1 finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks reveals that the "walking joke" Pakleds have suddenly become a threat thanks to Starfleet ignoring them for too long. How much of a threat? Their first appearance in the episode results in the destruction of an entire starship with all hands lost. Also dangerous enough to require a Heroic Sacrifice from a main character to stop them. In Season 2, they are revealed to have been given weapons by a rogue Klingon, and then bomb their own homeworld to frame Freeman in a Samaritan Snare writ large
    • Lower Decks runs on this trope to a significant degree. So far, besides the aforementioned Pakleds, we've had Badgey (a "Clippy"-looking helper hologram who turns into a murderous psychopath), Peanut Hamper (an adorable little robot who's perfectly willing to wipe out an entire planetary civilization to advance her own selfish goals), and of course the Moopsy (a cute, cuddly little thing that can leap up in a flash a suck your entire skeleton out of your body in a matter of seconds).
  • Ludo from Star vs. the Forces of Evil regularly jumps between this and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. He spent Season 1 as a bumbling little fool hopelessly trying to steal Star's wand. The second season has him graduate to this trope by finding a wand of his own (which is suspiciously made from the hand of the seemingly deceased Toffee), learning to master its power, and gaining command of an army of rats. At the beginning of the third season, he's even destroyed the spell-book and gained control of Mewni. However, every other character still treats him as little more than a nuisance and he ultimately discovers that he's just been used as a pawn and Meat Puppet by Toffee for the past several months, which doesn't help his Inferiority Superiority Complex.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Peridot plays with this as her very first appearance carried a lot of threat with the first reveal of an unknown enemy out there with its sights set on earth. In her first direct interaction with the group, however, she's shown to be rather immature and a bit pathetic. Despite this, she does consistently prove to be a problem until she begins her Heel–Face Turn.
    • The Ruby Squad are mostly comprised of Harmless Villains (Leggy, Navy) or Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains (Doc, Army) and Eyeball. When they first appear they're easily fooled by the Crystal Gems and act like gullible children, with Eyeball mostly just growling and giving everyone dirty looks. "Back to the Moon" reveals that she's a veteran of the Gem war and is much more violent and unhinged than her comrades as she tries to murder Steven while trapped in space.
    • Navy looks like a bubbly fool even by Ruby standards, and in "Room for Ruby" she wants to join the Crystal Gems, acting all sugary and lovey-dopey toward Steven and Earth...then she drops the act and reveals herself as a Manipulative Bitch that tricked Steven that whole time, playing on his naïvety and the image of the Rubies as cute idiots, stealing the spaceship back and getting revenge over the Crystal Gems fooling them before. All without ever dropping her cheerful adorable smile.
      Navy: I could have done that, but then I would have never got to see your face when you were tricked...BY YOUR FAVORITE LITTLE RUBY!
  • Teen Titans (2003): In both of his first two appearances, Dr. Light gets taken out in the teaser, before the main episode's plot begins. In fairness, he never counts on Raven's dark side taking over and terrifying him. In Season 5's episode "Kole", we see that without Trigon's influence on his daughter, Dr. Light is more of a challenge, nearly defeating the Titans in the process.
  • Shredder of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) cartoon is similarly considered an Adaptational Wimp, a heavy downgrade from his fearsome alternate counterparts...but surprisingly, back in the day he was actually a case of Adaptational Badass: where Comic Book!Shredder is curb-stomped and killed in his first appearance, Cartoon!Shredder is a Badass Normal ninja master that can hold his own against the turtles despite being a normal human, possesses combat skills that usually only Master Splinter can rival, and his schemes, though cartoony, range anywhere from pitiful to potentially deadly. And following the Darker and Edgier reboot in later seasons, he has a minor, but more fearsome role.
    Shredder: I never bluff...
    • In Turtles Forever, Shredder's two henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady, also count. Do they manage to beat the Turtles at their own game? No, but they are the ones who ultimately kill 2003 Shredder so that has to count for something.
    • In a meta sense, the Shredder gets less and less harmless with every incarnation. The original is dead in one issue. The '87 cartoon version, as described above, has his moments, but spends most of his time arguing with Krang as if they were married(his voice actor confirmed it was actually intentional). The Movie version was a deadly combatant, but got angry and unfocused easily, leading to his defeats. Then came the 2k3 version, a thousand-year-old alien who took the myth of a demon and used it to control the criminal underworld into modern day, and was a fierce enough combatant to cripple the turtles ON-SCREEN. So did the human, but possibly even more depraved and terrifying 2012 version.
  • Thomas & Friends:
    • The Troublesome Trucks are usually more mischievous than malicious. However, they are more dangerous in "A Close Shave" because after breaking away from Edward, they try to push Duck into the back of James' passenger train. This would have likely resulted in the deaths of many innocent passengers had Duck not held them back long enough for James' train to leave the station platform so they could be diverted into a siding.
    • Bulgy is a double-decker bus who hates engines and desires for their railways to be torn down and turned into roads. Usually, he's little more than a trouble-making bigot, but in "Free The Roads", he accidentally contaminates a water but deliberately says nothing of it to the engines. This results in the engines falling ill, setting the railway back for a while, and allowing him and Bertie to take their passengers. However, this plan ends up working a little too well, as the sheer amount of passengers causes Bertie to break down. Bulgy takes Bertie's passengers as well as his own, but they all get squished, and he breaks down as well.
  • Todd McFarlane's Spawn: This especially comes up in the Animated Adaptation, when Spawn dismisses and threatens the seemingly harmless Clown one time too many. Clown smirks and says "you don't know who you're dealing with... but it's time you found out," and proceeds to change into his true, One-Winged Angel form of the Violator to give Spawn the Curb-Stomp Battle of his life, all while lecturing him on his role in the coming apocalypse.
  • Transformers:
    • The Decepticons from The Transformers cartoon were originally portrayed as goofy, incompetent villains who constantly lost to the Autobots every single time throughout the first two seasons, but from The Transformers: The Movie onwards, they actually began killing almost half the original Autobot cast! (out-of-universe, this was actually done by the writers just so they can make room for new characters, both 'Bot and 'Con alike) The third and final season, as with the Japanese sequels, actually portrayed all of the 'Cons as true villains.
    • Even in early seasons, there were a fair number of times the Decepticons outsmarted or overpowered the Autobots and were mere seconds away from victory. Megatron, despite his infamy as a General Failure, was also always just cunning enough to reverse around any of the Autobots attempts to get a long term upper hand in their war with the Decepticons (e.g. he instantly reversed around Mirage's attempt to turn them and the Insecticons against each other and also managed to steal or outmatch some of Wheeljack's gadgets such as the Immobilizer and the Dominator Disc). This inability to gain a definite control over the Decepticons led to the latter having control of Cybertron by the time of the Time Skip at the start of The Movie, with the Autobots forced into hiding.
    • Transformers: Animated: When Starscream made a bunch of clones, they all set to bickering, and their personalities really affected how they fought (Skywarp was too much of a Dirty Coward, and Ramjet and Thundercracker spent too much time talking). Slipstream and Sunstorm, however, were more effective, taking Bulkhead and Prowl down respectively.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • The Monarch is thought of as a Harmless Villain... until he starts killing people with poison darts and elaborate deathtraps. This appears to be situational. Against Dr. Venture and Brock Samson? Harmless Villain. Against anyone else? The man is actually kind of scary. Compare his banter with Venture(roughly paraphrasing: "At least I've driven you mad HAHAHA") to what he says to the Moppets: (again, roughly paraphrasing: "I will feed your bodies to the dogs if you don't move NOW").
    • This also applies to The Monarch's henchmen. Put them up against Brock Samson, OSI, or the minions of other supervillains, and they come off as bumbling, incompetent losers. Turn them loose on Muggles and Innocent Bystanders on the other hand... and they're a terrifying group of well-armed killers, albeit still not truly competent, per se.
    • And Dr. Girlfriend's Murderous Moppets/the Pupa Twins, Tim-Tom and Kevin. Yeah, they're unshaven dwarfs dressed like 19th-century schoolboys, but they're also deadly hand to hand combatants. Specifically, both of them are Psycho Knife Nuts. They also plot against the Monarch and his henchmen for awhile.
    • Sgt. Hatred seemed too Affably Evil, treating Dr. Venture very cordially after being assigned as his new archenemy. Then he shot Doc in the stomach without provocation. They were rubber bullets, yeah, but that's just his way of "keeping it lively," which just makes it way worse. He is also a pedophile (A recovering one, but he has trouble controlling his urges). Later, he returns to the OSI and replaces Brock as Venture bodyguard. As noted by Monarch Henchman 21, due to Hatred not sharing Brock's hatred of guns, henchman casualties are actually up under Hatred.
    • In season 4 21, previously an incompetent (yet Genre Savvy) henchman, has taken a huge level in badass and has become not only by far the most competent and dangerous of The Monarch's henchman, but also the most mentally imbalanced as well. This is all because of the loss of his best (and perhaps only) friend, 24.
    • The Venture Bros in general applies this to all villains. The justification is that the villains we see are sanctioned by the Guild of Calamitous Intent, which places strict regulations on arching. OSI, the world police force, tolerates the Guild simply because they have restrictions for their members and the alternative is letting a bunch of pissed-off madmen with exotic weapons, powers, and costumes run around aimlessly.
  • Villainous: Dr. Flug is just a nerdy scientist wearing a ridiculous paper bag and who is deathly scared of his boss Black Hat. Yet, when he wants to he can be just as evil: at the end of "The Lost Cases of Townsville", he captures Mojo Jojo and is seen about to experiment on him while saying that his experiment won't kill Mojo, but will make him wish it would. He also made clear to the Kids Next Door that he is not above harming children who get in his way. In the first season finale, it's revealed that before working for Black Hat he spent years trying to kill his own brother.
  • Wander over Yonder:
    • Lord Hater is a Psychopathic Man Child who is obsessed with being the GREATEST IN ALL THE GALAXY!! While his inability to do anything about Wander has made him a laughingstock, he's still a skeleton with super strength and lightning powers, and before he met Wander had actually built up a pretty fearsome empire. When Hater goes into an Unstoppable Rage, even the normally fearless Wander knows to keep away.
    • There's also the Potted Plant from "The Bounty". While it may seem like a joke compared to the other bounty hunters, it actually manages to capture Wander and Sylvia by eating them, although it makes the mistake of eating Commander Peepers as well, who escapes by cutting it.
    • Sylvia thinks that the clown-themed supervillain Dr. Screwball Jones is a joke, but when she's subjected to forced Tickle Torture she admits that Screwball's plan really is evil. At one point, Dr. Jones is also seen as being the third most evil and credible villain on the Galactic Villain Leaderboard.
  • In the two-part WordGirl episode A World Without Wordgirl, the titular hero, tired of missing her birthday party due to stopping villains, wishes she never was WordGirl. When her wish comes true, she finds herself in Chucktopia, later learning that, without Wordgirl to constantly stop him Chuck, a villain whose entire gimmick is making sandwiches, managed to become a successful villain and took over the city, forcing all the other villains to work for him.
  • Xiaolin Showdown:
    • Teenage wanna-be villain Jack Spicer, who underwent Villain Decay from the second season onwards, and quickly became a one-man Goldfish Poop Gang. He was constantly pushed around by everyone else, both on the heroes side and the newer much more dangerous villains. At least, until the penultimate episode, when a Bad Future shows that, in a timeline when Omi wasn't around to constantly thwart him, he'd defeated all the major villains who were taken more seriously than him, conquered the world, and rechristened himself the Emperor of Darkness. Hannibal Roy Bean even lampshades it in his first appearance by telling Jack that he would have no problems becoming the most formidable villain ever if he learned to conquer his fears.
    • Wuya spends much of her time as a harmless ghost chewing out Jack Spicer...until she regains her physical form and full power, at which point she conquers the world single-handedly and is nigh unbeatable. It takes Omi going back in time to retrieve a mystical sealing artifact along with Raimundo betraying her in order to do her in . Even when resurrected in a weakened state later on, she proves extremely dangerous.
  • In Yin Yang Yo!, despite being the first villain of the series, Ulta-Moose is considered the most pathetic of the Rogues Gallery. However, in one episode, he obtains the Amnesiulet, and uses it to gain the powers of the Night Master. Not only does he ransack the town with the Night Master's army, but he manages to even kill Yin and Yo. It's only averted thanks to Yang using a "Groundhog Day" Loop.

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