Smug Snakes in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- All For Luz: Kennedy Jennkins acts cocky and tough when things seem to be going his way, with his team backing him up outnumbering his enemies and barking orders at them. However, he gets easily angry and scared when things start to go south for him. He honestly believes The Governor intends to honor his agreement to pay him billions for killing Luz, with no intention of sharing any of it with any of his teammates, when reality the Arc Villain doesn't intend to let any of kids live out of Fantastic Racism. When Luz starts wiping out his 22 strong team one-by-one in her Blood Lust fuelled Roaring Rampage of Revenge while stealing their Quirks for herself, he has a complete Villainous Breakdown and tries to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here abandoning his comrades to to try and save himself. He spends his last moments begging for his life, as Luz finishes him off.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail plays with this through Mr. Bradbury. While he's the most Reasonable Authority Figure in Chloe's life and one of her only true supporters, as the other adults in her life are largely useless or ignorant of her struggles, he reveals a less pleasant side later on. Once the full extent of the bullying and cruelty she was dealing with comes out, he spends a lot of time crowing about how he warned others, taking particular pleasure in rubbing this into her father's face. Yes, it wasn't right for the professor to dismiss him before, but does that justify gloating about how both of his children need therapy now...?
- Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: Cinder Fall is genuinely intelligent, powerful, and knows how to play a mean game of Xanatos Speed Chess. However, she has a bad habit of overestimating her strength while underestimating the strength of her opponents. This is due to her incredibly arrogant belief that being the Fall Maiden automatically makes her invincible. This ultimately contributes to her downfall as she is unable to realize until it's too late that while she may be strong, Darth Nihilus is even stronger.
- Graduate Meeting of Mutual Killing has Masaru Miyata, a Young Entrepreneur who is actually the youngest of the graduates at seventeen. His title? Super High School Level CEO. Despite his business suffering due to the Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Event in the History of Mankind, he looks down snidely upon the others, and even works with the Mastermind, killing one of his peers when they get too close to discovering his ally's identity. Not even being convicted of murder dampens his attitude; realizing that he's still going to be executed, on the other hand...
- Hope on a Distant Mountain: Byakuya arrogantly presumes that he can manipulate and intimidate Makoto during their breakfast together, implying that he could arrange for something to happen to him or his family if Makoto doesn't give him what he wants. This threat only serves to shift Makoto into the same mental state he used to get through the trials, pushing back against Byakuya HARD and leaving him completely shaken and staggered.
- Doumon from the Tamers Forever Series is a manipulative, condescending and arrogant bitch who casually dismisses Takato as a threat, treating him like a small child who needs to learn his place. It makes it all the more satisfying when Takato calmly points out to her just how completely and utterly screwed she is.
- The Odds Were Never In My Favour: Dumbledore, to sociopathic degrees. He's constantly over-estimating his political capital and squandering it on petty, self-centered matters. He completely (and regularly) ignores good advice from Flitwick and Snape warning him about mistakes he's making, or how he's misjudging the student body. He thinks that he can do four important jobs all at once even as it becomes painfully clear to the readers that he's failing at all of them. He's remained painfully oblivious towards major threats such as the Exchequer. He treats any defiance against his authority with an It's All About Me attitude. He makes deals with dangerous factions while remaining dismissive of the potential blowback and blind to any evidence of their instability or evil nature simply because they're "Light" factions. By the winter break of Alexandra's third year, most of the characters agree that he's setting himself up for a hard fall, and are patiently (and often eagerly) waiting for it, while Dumbledore himself remains utterly confident of his own righteousness and invincibility.
- The Very Secret Diary: Tom Riddle is certainly very dangerous and manipulative, but he's not as clever as he believes himself to be. He repeatedly underestimates Ginny, and thus constructs an incredibly weak backstory. All it took was Ginny asking a few uncomfortable questions, and his ruse was undone. Even when he starts outright possessing Ginny, she still finds ways to delay his plans, to which his only response is angry, impotent threats.
- The Victors Project: President Snow remains utterly confident that he's one step ahead of the rebellion's plans when he's really two steps behind, and it's his own excesses and cruelty that have driven so many victors and other influential citizens to join the masses in plotting against him. Even after the entire Nation is in Rebellion, and defeat is a certainty he still doesn't lose his cool, haughty bearing.
- Queen of All Oni: Lung sees himself as the next Daolon Wong, and is utterly convinced of his brilliance and power. And yet, when his plan to break Jade to his will fails, he simply blunders ahead with it, even when it's clear he's killing her. This gets him killed by her vengeful bodyguards.
- Filler Villain Anton Mortimer thinks that his money and power makes him some sort of criminal mastermind who can threaten the J-Team into backing off without consequence. However, it's clear that he can't even really run his own company efficiently without his Hypercompetent Sidekick's assistance, and when Jade shows up at his mansion looking for the Oni mask he recently acquired (and quickly lost), her minions easily overpower him and rob him blind, all while she gives him a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech on just how pathetic he truly is.
- Veran in Wisdom and Courage. While she is indeed very powerful and dangerous, her massive arrogance, tendency to Kick the Dog as much as possible, and her constant underestimating of Link and Zelda place her in this category. In fact, during her fight with Fierce Deity Link in chapter 29, the minute she realizes that Link is more than a match for her with the Fierce Deity's power even with the Triforce and Majora on her side, she bails.
- Mall Rats (TLH) features Frank, who is arrogant and cocky about his ability to choose the correct movie.
- BURN THE WITCH: Despite being exposed as a False Friend and Con Artist right at the start of the story, with Rose getting akumatized into Witch Hunter and whipping up more and more of Paris into an angry mob intent on burning her at the stake, Lila remains convinced that she's staying one step ahead of everyone. She even tries to take advantage of the few people trying to save her, smugly certain that Hawk Moth will keep things from going too far... despite how he doesn't seem all that interested in saving her. It takes Hawk Moth himself informing her through Witch Hunter that he has no more need of her for her to realize just how much trouble she's in.
- In Cheshire, Chloé has used her family's power and connections to systematically bully and isolate Marinette, who used to be her Childhood Friend before Chloé decided she needed a 'rival' to crush beneath her heel.
- Throughout the CONSEQUENCES series, Lila constantly and consistently deludes herself into believing that she's got Hawk Moth dancing upon her puppet strings, that she's the most valuable and important ally he has, and that she's a practically bulletproof Karma Houdini who'll never have to answer for anything she's done. Time and again, this is thoroughly proven not to be the case.
- Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist: Lila takes Marinette's decision to transfer to another school as a clear victory. However, she's not satisfied with this, and her efforts to seek Marinette out and rub her triumph into her face ultimately result in her humiliation and downfall when Marinette decides enough is enough.
- Death Daggers begins with the Spoiled Brat son of a powerful executive attempting to assault Ochako. When he's caught, he gloats about how his father will not only ensure that he gets off scot-free, but will use his connections to ruin the lives of everybody who got involved and their families, for no other reason than because he can. Unfortunately for him, his provocations turn him into an Asshole Victim.
- Uwabami swiftly proves herself to be this in the Good Neighbors series when she catches someone posing as a press intern. As she can't resist gloating to them about how the arrest will get her manager off her back, since said manager wants her to make more arrests and be more active as a Pro Hero, but she'd rather not risk getting injured during an actual fight. Not when she's got so many modeling contracts to fulfil.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Loved and Lost: Prince Jewelius is a skilled manipulator and chessmaster who successfully usurps Equestria's throne by using the events of "A Canterlot Wedding" to destroy the reputations of the princesses, Shining Armor and the friends of Twilight Sparkle as well as corrupt the latter into turning against them. As Equestria's king, however, he quickly lets his ego get the better of him to the point that he reveals to the disgraced and ashamed heroes that he worked with Queen Chrysalis to overtake Canterlot before double-crossing her. He's arrogant whenever he believes he has the upper hand, but he's in reality a Dirty Coward who relies on his more powerful allies/pawns to do the fighting for him. He's partly inspired by Scar and even dies much the same way; he refuses to do anything about the escaped Changeling army before he's done with the heroes, and once the heroes have cornered him, the Changelings appear and take their revenge by eating him alive.
- The Nuptialverse: Olive Branch, the Big Bad of Families, turns out to be this. While he starts off as a master manipulator (bordering on being a Magnificent Bastard), when he finally reveals his master plan to force Celestia to make him immortal, it turns out he massively overestimated his minions and underestimated the Mane Six, and his plans fall apart completely and he's arrested.
- A Case Study in the Sturdiness of the Rookie 9: After marking an unfortunate Kiba with his cursed seal, Orochimaru spends much of his time gleefully mocking, belittling, and ultimately underestimating them, gloating about how they have no choice but to give into his influence and become another one of his pawns. As a result, he's completely blindsided when they manage to coordinate a counteroperation with the adult shinobi that completely ruins his plans for the Konoha Crush attempt.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Kluge, SEELE's Dragon and The Heavy of the story, presents most of traits: he's an arrogant, overconfident, manipulative bastard who treats everyone with arrogance and disdain and will stop at nothing to destroy NERV. He's cunning and dangerous, but he isn't powerful or smart enough to be the real Big Bad, and ultimately he dies at the hands of the Emerald Tablet whom he foolishly thought he was controlling.
- Boiling Isles and Beyond: Alador believes he has complete control over his children. When Amity gives him a not-so-subtle hint she’s going to ruin the Blight Gala, he just shrugged it off. When Amity’s plan began, he was completely blindsided.
- Old West: Benjamin Hares, the estranged gopher snake husband of Grace Glossy, is a cowardly Con Man who's often in trouble due to his lack of forethought. He tries to use his still valid marriage with Grace to sell her property to Dufayel behind her back, but that fails because a representative of the bank becomes suspicious of him and fetches Grace, and the (not amoral) attorney puts the case on hold until he's provided with legal documents.
- What Lies Beyond the Walls has Blackheart, a much more cowardly version of Badrang, Jurlick, a Jerk Jock who bullies Benrath and isn't capable of defending himself when it comes to a fight, and Darktail, a sly fox who tries to use his words to his advantage, and tends to fail.
- Zhuge Liang in Farce of the Three Kingdoms. He's the world's greatest genius because the narrative says so, and he won't shut up about it.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act III: Throughout chapters 30 and 31, Kano simply laughs off the girls' threats as he's blackmailing and photographing them, confident that, between the pictures he's taken and the group's current shaky situation in the academy, he's untouchable. He's proven wrong at the end of chapter 31 when Luna eats the entire back half of his head as he's about to force himself on Mizore.
- Arc Royale has Cinder Fall. As in canon, she thinks of herself as all-powerful and a cunning mastermind, convinced that she has every Jaune on Salem's side under her control and thoroughly manipulated. This couldn't be further from the truth, as each of the Jaune iterations could easily kill her or simply leave her command if they so wished. The only reason they don't is because they each have their own motivations that require them to play nice; one of them isn't even on her side, being a third party in the conflict that's happily manipulating both Salem and Ozpin's forces. The closest she has to a Jaune who can't leave is Ashari, and even that's purely because he doesn't want to upset Emerald (who he treats as his daughter), rather than either of them actually having the power to defeat him.
- Blaze and Indus in Team LVDR. While both are incredibly monstrous, they both fail spectacularly in their first attempt to kill the heroes.
