Basic Trope: An evil character makes an Evil Laugh and expects others (likely his mooks) to join in.
- Straight: The Big Bad has successfully completed his lasted evil scheme, so he indulges in an Evil Laugh fit, but not before asking his minions to join in.
- Exaggerated: The Big Bad demands his cronies laugh, then he demands his hostages laugh, then he goes outside and starts demanding random people to laugh.
- Downplayed: The villain giggles a little and nudges his cronies, prompting them to smirk or giggle themselves.
- Justified:
- The villain has made some sort of Doomsday Device that, for whatever reason, works on laughter. He starts laughing and when the machine isn't sufficiently powered, tells his henchmen to join in so he can use it.
- The villain is an Ax-Crazy Monster Clown.
- Inverted:
- The villain does a little Evil Gloating among his henchmen who take the initiative to start laughing. The villain is perplexed but joins in anyway since, "I guess it is pretty funny, isn't it?"
- The villain laughs at one of their own schemes, and his henchmen start laughing, too. The villain then proceeds to tell them to stop.
- Subverted:
- The villain laughs and his mooks join in, assuming he expects them to. The villain gives them a Big "SHUT UP!" because they were not given the order to do so ...
- HA HA HA—No
- Double Subverted: ... Then he quickly changes his mind, "Oh, go ahead and laugh."
- Parodied: The villain laughs but stops just before his minions join in. Realizing they're laughing, he starts laughing again but by then, they've stopped. They awkwardly try to get their timing right before they just give up.
- Zig Zagged: The villain laughs and asks his minions to join but quickly realizes it isn't funny and stops them, only to change his mind yet again and ask them to keep going.
- Averted: The villain starts laughing and questions why his men aren't joining. They begin grumbling that his jokes really aren't that funny.
- Enforced: The writers want to put a humorous spin on the Evil Laugh.
- Lampshaded: The villain has a Laugh With Me moment. When he is out of earshot, one of the mooks turns to another and asks, "Wait, why are we laughing?" The other mook shrugs, "He wants us to?"
- Invoked:
- When a new mook joins the villain, one of the senior mooks instructs him on his cue to laugh.
- The villain has hired mooks who actually have it in their contracts that they are to laugh every time he does.
- Exploited: The villain does this to make his minions nervous, thus intimidating them into following his every command.
- Defied: The villain doesn't make jokes since he doesn't want the hassle of telling his henchmen to laugh with him.
- Discussed: Two henchmen complain that the evil overlord always makes them do this.
- Conversed: Bob and Alice talk about how funny it is when this happens in the movies.
- Implied: Retired henchmen talk about their past jobs for villains. One of them complains, "His jokes were bad enough but it was worse when he wanted other people to laugh at them."
- Deconstructed: The villain questions why he laughs so much and moreover, why he has to have other people laugh with him. He decides it makes him look insecure and stops.
- Reconstructed: Then he realizes when the henchmen stop laughing at his jokes, they begin to take his other orders for granted too. The villain soon realizes he needs to reassert himself and begins demanding them to laugh again.
- Played For Drama:
- The villain has committed a crime so heinous that even his own men believe he has gone too far. He starts laughing uncontrolably, revealing he has finally gone mad and snarls, "Laugh, damn you." Fearing some sort of retaliation, the men start to force themselves to laugh nervously.
- After capturing the hero, the villain demands that the hero laugh with him and tortures him when he refuses.
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