Basic Trope: In fiction, the villains are often shown playing pool.
- Straight: A bunch of criminals from The Mafia are shown playing pool at the Bad Guy Bar.
- Exaggerated:
- The bad guys do nothing but play pool all day.
- Anyone who plays pool is a very evil villain.
- Regular villains are scared of the pool players, who are invariably the worst of the lot.
- Downplayed:
- In one scene, a few criminals are briefly shown playing pool.
- The villains play pool as their sports.
- Justified:
- The pool table is one of the main fixtures of the Bad Guy Bar, so why not use it?
- The Big Bad (especially The Don) loves to play pool, and this affection for the game has filtered down to his Mooks.
- The villains use a lot of ricochet in combat, and pool is good practice.
- Inverted: The policemen are shown playing pool on their time off.
- Subverted:
- Several tough guys are shown playing pool at a seedy bar, but then it's revealed they are all honest people, sometimes either Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters or Punch Clock Villains.
- The bad guys are shown playing pool... and then someone points out they're playing snooker.
- Double Subverted:
- The scene then cuts to the criminals' hideout, and they're also playing pool.
- The bad guys are British gangsters who are calling pool "snooker" because they don't know or care about the difference.
- Parodied:
- Playing pool is treated as crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
- The pool balls are painted to look like bombs, skulls, and other "evil" things.
- The Mafia uses a National Pool Tournament as a cover for the underworld gathering.
- The pool is a national sport of the Great Proletarian Reich.
- The more evil someone is, the better they are at playing pool.
- Zig Zagged:
- The two characters shown playing pool are a Punch-Clock Villain and a Double Reverse Quadruple Agent respectively.
- The bad guys play cue sports, but can't set on what variation to play - so one day it's some variation of pool, another day - snooker, other day - Russian billiards, another yet - straight-rail billiards, and so on.
- Averted: The bad guys play cards instead of pool.
- Enforced: The writer has bad guys playing pool because that's what bad guys always play on TV.
- Lampshaded: "I'm so bored, Jeff..." "What about playin' pool? It's the most villainous game in the world, after all."
- Invoked: To avoid Bar Brawls, the owners of the Bad Guy Bar installed a pool table as a way to entertain their patrons.
- Exploited:
- People in need of hired thugs look among the people playing pool in bars.
- The gang leader invites a rival for a friendly game of pool in order to break the ice.
- Defied: "Alright, that's it... we're not playin' this stupid ball game today, ya mooks! I'm damn sick of it!"
- Discussed: "Any idea what Freddie is doin' today?" "Playin' pool, like he always does. I start to wonder why does our dishonest lot love pool so much..."
- Conversed: "Why do the bad guys on TV always play pool? It's like it's the national sport of Criminalland or something."
- Implied: A darkly humorous Running Gag throughout the story is that every other scene at the police department opens with someone filing a report about a beating inflicted with a pool cue.
- Deconstructed: When the government catches on that bad guys love to play pool, it becomes much more strictly regulated, and anyone who likes to play pool is regarded with suspicion.
- Reconstructed: In the story's world, the pool is known as the favourite sport of both violent criminals and hardboiled policemen, so it has a neutral reputation overall.
- Played For Laughs: The bad guys try to play pool... only they're as inept at it as they are at hitting the heroes in combat.
- Played For Drama: The Mole is found out when he is invited to play pool and it turns out he doesn't know how.
- Played For Horror: The Glorious Leader/President Evil is shown casually playing pool as he plots the atrocities for his vision of World War III.
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