The Sociopath / Live-Action TV

Series with their own pages:

• Kamen Rider
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
• Power Rangers
• Star Wars
• Ultra Series

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• Accused (2023): In "Scott's Story", Hunter is clearly a sociopath, showing no empathy toward others but is also skilled at concealing this and manipulating them.
• American Horror Story has a lot of these. From the first season, Tate is the most prevalent example, though he might not be a complete sociopath. Season 2 has Bloody Face (aka Dr. Thredson), Leigh Emerson, and the Devil himself. Season 3 had Delphine LaLaurie. The fourth season had Dandy Mott and Stanley. The fifth season had James Marsh.
• The Angel episode "I've Got You Under My Skin" has a young boy who is possessed by a demon. When Angel and Wesley successfully exorcise him, the terrified demon explains that he didn't have any influence over the boy at all — the child is a complete sociopath (possibly literally soulless as well), and all the destructive acts he took throughout the episode were his own doing. The demon was actually trapped in the boy, and is so broken that he doesn't even try to resist when Angel kills him. The end of the episode sees Angel race to rescue the boy's family as the boy sets their house on fire to punish his sister for having more marshmallows in her cocoa.
• Better Call Saul: Lalo Salamanca, the cousin of the Creepy Twins mentioned under Breaking Bad below, is an extremely high-functioning example. He has an abundance of superficial charm and social competence, but it disguises a complete Lack of Empathy and total disregard for human life, to the point he intimidates other cartel members. His idea of bonding with his uncle was the two of them torturing someone to death for little reason, and he shows on more than one occasion a lack of understanding of appropriate emotional responses to horrible things.
• Servalan, the Big Bad of Blake's 7. On the surface a beautiful and charming lady with the Silk Hiding Steel demeanour you'd expect from a high-ranking member of the Terran Federation. Underneath she has no empathy for anyone but herself, and her entire goal is her own advancement — in fact some of her schemes seriously harm Federation interests.
• The Boys (2019): Stormfront. Similar to Homelander, she puts on a front for the media and basks in the public's adulation, while caring nothing for human life (particularly people of color, in her case) out in the field.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Jack Welker is an almost perfectly textbook example of antisocial personality disorder. He is ruthless, brutal, cruel, and never shows remorse for his actions. His nephew Todd is a more nuanced case, as he's mild-mannered and helpful but has no qualms about murdering children and civilians and seems genuinely confused when his associates can't shrug it off like he can.
  • The Cousins are emotionless hitmen who kill everyone in their way, including innocents who didn't need to die, without flinching for the sake of their family.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Warren Mears, who decides to become a super villain mostly out of boredom. When his ex-girlfriend Katrina points out to the Trio that Warren's mind-control was essentially an Attempted Rape, Jonathan and Andrew seem genuinely disturbed by the realization, but Warren is unbothered and just kills her to prevent her from telling anyone. After he accidentally kills Tara and nearly kills Buffy, he seems to honestly not understand why their friends would want to get back at him.
    • In Warren's Season 5 appearance he does not exhibit such sociopathic traits. He was more of an Anti-Villain who had created a robot girlfriend and was genuinely bothered when she posed a threat to others and tried to help Buffy contain the threat. However, Word of God is that the writers only made him the worst of the Geek Trio in Season 6 because Tucker Wells' actor (the character had tried to kill the Sunnydale High students with hellhounds in Season 3) was unavailable. Warren would have had Andrew's Anti-Villain conscience and likely a similar eventual redemption arc. It was out of necessity that the writers decided he would have to become a far worse person, wanting the Geek Trio's evil leader to be familiar from a previous episode.
  • Glory also fits this trope. She acts like a charming, somewhat ditzy socialite, but in reality she's a ruthless manipulator who doesn't care how much pain and suffering she causes.
  • Vampires as a whole are this. Due to their status as The Soulless, vampires are Always Chaotic Evil, and has no moral conscience or ability to feel remorse. Angelus, the Hyde part of Angel's Jekyll & Hyde personality, is the most notable example: he's brutally sadistic, violent, highly intelligent, manipulative, ruthless, and only cares about making people suffer. In the very episode where he first returns, "Innocence," the Judge, a demon with the power to incinerate any being who has humanity (more specifically human emotions) tried to fry him, only for Angelus to No-Sell it; as stated by Giles, only "true creatures of evil" could survive the Judge's Touch of Death.
• Bull: Several sociopaths show up amongst the defendants whom TAC has to prove are guilty, but the highly unusual season 3 episode "A Girl Without Feelings" instead has them defending a clinically proven sociopath (and former long-term patient of Dr. Bull) and proving her innocent of the crime of murdering her brother, despite the fact she was found literally covered in her brother's blood. The episode doesn't hold back on showing how Tally's Lack of Empathy makes it extremely hard for Bull's team to win the jury over to their side, and even at the very end, Bull verbaly reminds the audience that Tally does not actually feel sad about her brother's death.
• Community: Mr. Rad from the glee club is presented as a slightly off and permanently smiling music director. He cleverly manipulates the reluctant study group into filling in for the usual club members, who all tragically died in a recent bus accident. He does this by cornering them one by one and appealing to their character traits, but it's presented more as brainwashing than simple persuasion. His sole concern seems to be for the show to go exactly as he wants it. When Britta unexpectedly joins and ruins the show, he has a meltdown on stage and shouts at her in front of the entire audience that either the show goes exactly the way he wants it or "there can be another bus crash". Needless to say, this is the end of Mr Rad and the glee club.
• Condor: Many characters in their own way, but most notably Joubert. She's a cold-blooded killer who explicitly doesn't care about others.
• Criminal Minds:
  • There's a "pure psychopath" about once a season. Interestingly, despite the hundreds of cases the BAU have investigated, only 9 characters have been listed as genuinely sociopathic/psychopathic. They are Adrian Bale, Nathan Harris (who was not actually a criminal), Frank Breitkopf, The Boston Reaper, Ray Campion, Raymond Donovan and Sydney Manning, Danny Murphy, and Greg Phinney. Of these, The Reaper is probably the worst, being an utterly amoral psycho who killed people for no better reason than a desire for fame, and went after the police when they dared to try and stop him.
  • Jeremy, from the Season 6 episode Safe Haven, is a 13-year old "budding psychopath", with severe attention deficit problems and antisocial tendencies. He can't pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes, has a serious lack of impulse control, lies compulsively and convincingly, killed his neighbor's dog, regularly tortures his little sister, and tried to poison his entire family with rat poison in the Thanksgiving turkey. After being abandoned by his mom he goes on a cross country killing spree as he attempts to return home and murder her, killing entire families and torturing the mothers. He has no real emotions (as is repeatedly demonstrated), but fakes them incredibly well, and at one point expresses a very creepy sexual interest in a girl who can't be much more than ten. Rossi suggests that they should keep him on file for a reason.
• CSI: Had a few of these as killers of the week. One possibility is the teenage killer in "Unsual Suspect" and "Goodbye and Good Luck." Another appeared on an earlier episode, and it was even lampshaded how she could switch personalities on a whim.
• CSI: NY: In one episode, a 16-year-old girl manipulated an older guy into killing a woman at a French Revolution themed party. Stella is annoyed that they can't prosecute the girl, because she didn't commit any actual crime, she just pulled the strings to get the other guy to act.
• Torrence, the Big Bad of The Day of the Triffids (2009). Superficially charming, he's introduced calmly stealing lifejackets (including one from a child) while everyone else panics so as to cushion himself in a crashing airliner. His lies are never quite convincing due to their grandiose nature, and he's often shown admiring statues or paintings of Winston Churchill, and clearly sees himself in a similar role, but the government Torrence sets up to exploit the blinded population quickly collapses under assault from the triffids, along with his Faux Affably Evil facade.
• Doctor Who
  • The Master is a classic example, although he will generally stop bothering with the suave act and just enjoy himself once he no longer needs to. He fits all traits, and as such, makes an interesting Foil to the show's Bunny-Ears Lawyer protagonist — Both of them are eccentric geniuses with a childish streak and a love for intellectual challenge, but there is one thing that sets them apart: While the Master can be very charming and suave, he has a complete Lack of Empathy. The Doctor, by contrast, has No Social Skills but is generally well-intentioned.
    • It ends up being subverted with Missy. She starts out like any incarnation of the Master, but throughout her life, shows signs of wanting to be friends again with the Doctor. By the time Series 10 rolls around, she's imprisoned in a Vault as a punishment for her crimes, with the Doctor watching over her in an attempt to cause her to make a Heel–Face Turn. Slowly, she starts feeling remorse for those whom she has killed. It culminates in her deciding to stand with the Doctor in his Final Battle, after swinging back and forth between wanting to help him and wanting to oppose him, but her previous incarnation is having none of it and kills her.
  • Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society, is most definitely this. He averts the Well-Intentioned Extremist trope by wanting to initiate the Final Sanction not to save the Time Lords, but to save himself. And while trying to save Gallifrey from destruction, he placed a signal in the Master's brain as a child, thus causing the Master's insanity. By the time "Hell Bent" comes around, he's had the Doctor tortured for 4.5 billion years, still orders the Time Lords (who decide by then that they've had enough of his shit) to kill him once he escapes, despite the fact that the Doctor is the very reason Rassilon is still alive, and has taken to referring himself as "Rassilon the Redeemer" and "Rassilon the Resurrected".
  • And let's not forget Davros, the creator of the Daleks. With delusions of grandeur and no empathy toward others, Davros is as nasty of a piece of work as his creations, best exemplified when he was willing to destroy all of reality and have the Daleks become the sole remaining lifeforms.
• Dark Oracle: Omen appears to be one of these initially, but his genuine liking of Cally and slow development of human emotion keeps him from falling fully into the trope. Villain of the Week Claudia, who believes "if it feels good, do it," might well be a low-functioning sociopath. And then there's the comic book characters, Blaze (a hot-tempered Jerkass who has no qualms about breaking a fellow student's arm), Violet (a Manipulative Bitch who enjoys scaring the crap out of her victims), and comic!Sage (who plays mindgames with Lance, screws around, and tries to off several girls with a poisonous snake).
• Dexter: Averted with the eponymous Dexter Morgan, the most famous Sociopathic Hero and Serial-Killer Killer on TV, is an example of a sociopath with a moral code his father instilled to direct his murderous urges at other killers. As such, he self-identifies as a sociopath but he usually only lies & manipulates his targets or people who are trying to hunt him down or to maintain a facade of normalcy (he initially gets into a relationship with Rita entirely as a disguise). With his Character Development, he's a hybrid of schizoid and sociopath who displays enough guilt, love and empathy to qualify as a reformed sociopath, though it's dubious whether such development is realistic.
• Dr. Death has the titular Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a poorly trained spinal surgeon who thinks very highly of his skills despite the fact that all of his patients have very poor outcomes, including infections, debilitation, paralysis, and even death. He can be perfectly charming, but actually has no regard for anyone in either his professional or personal life, being emotionally abusive to his girlfriends and perfectly willing to maim and abandon his best friend. He utterly refuses to take responsibility for his continual failures in the operating room, blaming everyone from nurses and anesthesiologists to the patients themselves. It's unclear whether he's intentionally harming people, simply so arrogantly delusional he believes his own lies, or some combination of both.
• Dragnet: As a Police Procedural, it showcases a bunch of them. What follow are some examples that stand out.
  • The franchise (apart from missing early radio episodes) is bookended by robbers with itchy trigger fingers.
    • The earliest available radio episode involves a gang of holdup men who shared a brace of guns between them on jobs. One of them, Alonso Jackson, is best known for bursting into a liquor store, saying "This is a stickup!" and then letting the clerk have it immediately (shooting him again in the spine later to make sure he's dead).
    • The final case of the Sixties Dragnet finale, DHQ: The Victims, is the holdup of a mom-and-pop grocery store. When Julio, the husband, implores robber Carl Brooks to leave some dough behind to pay the bills with, Brooks punctuates a taunt with three bullets to Julio's stomach. He is completely unmoved later, in the hospital, when Julio's corpse is being wheeled out while his widow is being consoled by the priest who gave Julio his last rites. Both Jackson and Brooks' lives were forfeit, presumably because of the extra meanness of spirit behind the murders.
  • The Big Holdup features the "Rattlesnake Bandit", who goes From Nobody to Nightmare in a week or so pulls heists for petty sums simply for the thrill he gets out of injuring people — one victim, a grade school teacher, ends up blinded for life. When the cops show up he comes out guns blazing and is killed in self-defense.
  • The Big Rod and The Big Accident both feature remorseless hit-and run drivers. In the former episode, when the grieving widower tells the culprit to be glad the Police got him [the hit-and-run driver] first, because "I would have killed you," and all the culprit can say is "Pretty upset, isn't he?" In the latter episode, the hit-and-run driver tries to take solace in the fact that they elderly couple probably wouldn't have lived much longer anyway. In both cases, a disgusted Friday reads them the riot act.
  • Mister Daniel Lumis is not a killer, but easily the biggest asshole in the entire franchise. He leaves a trail of kicked dogs everywhere he goes, and then expects the cops to respect his my-wants-trump-all attitude, and to excuse without punishment his wronging of everyone around him.
• Elementary has Jamie Moriarty. This version of Moriarty personifies every single aspect of this trope with a more personal and realistic approach. Moriarty blackmails and kills her/his own employees, manipulates people just for fun, doesn't even think twice before ruining anyone's life and uses outright violence without the slightest hesitation, disgust or remorse. In "The Diabolical Kind", she even asks Sherlock, the only one she can relate to, how he manages to empathize with other people and be "one of them".
• The Flash (2014): The Season 2 big bad Zoom has been called as such by his actor in an interview, and his Lack of Empathy and murderous tendencies more than back up that claim. He is also able to lie very well and has a certain jovial charm to him, as well as an overly inflated sense of self-worth to the point that the suggestion of someone being superior to him is a Berserk Button. After his initial scheme to save his own life succeeds, he demonstrates the characteristic poor impulse control of a low-functioning sociopath, moving from one plan to another whenever a new one comes to mind as being amusing (kidnapping Caitlin, taking over Earth-2, then destroying the multiverse). He outright admits that stealing Jay Garrick's identity was more or less solely done to sate his boredom, and even using a time remnant as part of posing as Jay for Team Flash seemed more about the inevitable payoff of killing the remnant in front of them, thus leaving them all devastated, rather than any practical reason.
• The titular character of Fujiko is a Blue-and-Orange Morality-type sociopath. The general consensus of the public is that the childhood trauma of having come home to her family brutally murdered and dismembered and almost being killed herself warped her sense of empathy...that is, assuming she didn't kill them herself. However, through various experiences and influences in her life, she has come to believe that she can "reset" her own miserable circumstances by taking the life of those who get in the way. Fujiko also chalks it up to "The children of scum are scum"; and indeed, her family's real murderer has told her as much.
• Galavant has Madelena, the innocent peasant girl forced to marry the evil king, who upon being granted a position of power immediately abused everyone she could and schemed for more. When she and Galavant have a long song together she says that she loves him "as much as someone like me can love anyone", only mentioning sex and how well they look together as why.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Quite a number of these characters crop up, including (but not limited to) King Joffrey Baratheon who stands out in a show full of bad people doing bad things.
  • Roose Bolton is a high-functioning example. While initially appearing to be a faithful (albeit extremely ruthless) lord in Robb Stark's service, he is ultimately revealed to be a depraved tyrant who delights in all forms of cruelty and harbors no loyalties to anyone but himself. While savvy enough to act polite and modest when it serves his own interests, Roose never passes up an opportunity to torment others for his own amusement when he can get away with it. Moreover, he shows no attachment toward those around him including his own son, Ramsay, whom canon confirms he all but completely ignored until the death of his firstborn son left him without an heir. Ultimately, any doubt as to Roose's lack of empathy or semblance of conscience is put to rest when he smugly recounts to a stunned Ramsay how he brutally raped his mother when he was conceived.
  • Ramsay Bolton has no empathy for any living thing. He is also a consummate liar, a thrill-seeker who tortures or hunts people for fun, he has an inflated opinion of his own abilities and he's bad at long term planning.
  • Harald Karstark doesn't seem to be bothered in the least by Ramsay murdering his father right in front of him (nevermind the fact that Roose avenged Harald's father, which is the entire reason why he sided with the Boltons), and immediately begins telling others to address Ramsay as Lord Bolton. Lord Umber also implies that he's a pedophile.
  • Gregor Clegane is the most clear-cut example in the entire series (which is saying something in a story overflowing with vile and loathsome characters like Joffrey and Ramsay). While his appearances are few and far between, the few scenes in which he does appear along with the sheer magnitude of his crimes make it glaringly apparent that he lives only for wanton carnage and brutality. Likewise, he is consistently portrayed as almost entirely lacking in impulse control except at the basest levels of Pragmatic Villainy. Furthermore, he is COMPLETELY devoid of empathy or principles given that he permanently maimed his brother for playing with one of his toys and is all but explicitly stated to have murdered his father simply to expedite his own inheritance (while being the object of Parental Favoritism no less).
  • Euron shows characteristics of a classic sociopath, even moreso than the likes of Ramsay and Joffrey. Superficial charisma, lack of conscience, willingness to manipulate others to achieve his own ends...
• The George Lopez Show: In general, Zack Powers is a smug, hedonistic, two-faced juvenile delinquent whose response when George warns him to stay away from Carmen is so callous that it's borderline sadistic.
  Zack: I think it'll be over...when Carmen gets outta bed to make me a sandwich.
• Heroes:
  • There are a few among its villains, like Arthur and Sylar.
  • Sylar's own father is a case. When asked why he murdered Sylar's mother and sold him to another family, he replies that he doesn't even remember because "it didn't matter to me."
• Himmelsdalen: Siri and all of the patients are sociopaths. The sanitorium specifically exists for studying them, and the condition's discussed at length.
• House: A memorable patient in one episode is identified as a sociopath, by both the short hand and proper medical categorization. Notably 13 only recognizes her as such because she's terrified of her, with House saying it's a survival tactic, implying a common association with sociopaths to predator animals. Ultimately it turns out her apparent sociopathic behavior was actually a side effect of some other unrelated medical problem, and she "reforms" by the end of the episode.
• The Sinners from House of Anubis, as a result of being The Soulless and having no conscience. They are manipulative, chaotic, completely uncaring of who they hurt (and do it often just For the Evulz) and determined to get their way. They even seem to have no emotion beyond amusement and anger.
• House of Cards (US): Frank Underwood is this long before the show even starts. While the audience may at first be able to sympathize with his desire to screw over the people who wronged him, he progresses into using things like bribery, blackmail, manipulation, threats, and even outright murder with worryingly little restraint. He sees everyone around him as objects to be utilized for his own agenda, his relationship with his wife Claire is strangely loving but incredibly twisted, he has a massively overblown ego that repeatedly causes him to shoot himself in the foot, (namely by needlessly antagonizing people he still actually needs) is a pathological liar, only really seems to care about his own lust for power, and feels no sympathy or remorse for the lives he's ruined to get to where he is. On top of all that, he really only seems genuinely capable of feeling sorry for himself.
• Although played for laughs, Barney on How I Met Your Mother exhibits many of the traits. He lies frequently and is able to sound sincere when doing it, is totally blind to the feelings of others, constantly seeks stimulation, and will manipulate others to get his way. Ultimately downplayed over time, as Barney does prove to have some decency beneath all his jerkassery.
• iCarly: Nora Dershlit. The only thing she wants is to make friends, but her perception of what counts as "friends" is so horrifically skewed that she believes locking the iCarly gang in her basement against their will qualifies, ignoring their repeated expressions of the fact they don't even like her, believing she can force people to be her friends. She has absolutely no remorse for holding people against their will and outright tries to murder Gibby when he comes to save the iCarly gang. In her second appearence, she once more holds them against their will by holding Spenser hostage and torturing him on a giant wheel to keep the iCarly gang under control, even implying she can and will kill him if it comes to it. She also shows the Manipulative Bitch qualities of the trope, feigning remorse for her actions to trick the iCarly gang into agreeing to release her from prison and luring them into her trap again. She's also confirmed to be a sociopath In-Universe, even referring to herself as one:
  Carly: Nora... You're a nutcase!
  Nora: The correct term is disturbed, lonely sociopath.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Every character is a sociopath. They frequently do things that are unethical if not illegal, stab each other in the back, and no one in the gang is able to stick to a plan.
  • Dennis deserves a special mention. Some of his actions even leave the rest of the depraved gang disgusted. In one episode, Dennis accidentally admitted that he has no feelings.
    • He also shows more of the symptoms then the rest of gang. For example; Dennis has the superficial charm, fans sometimes comment on how he seems the most normal yet turns to be the most depraved of them all, plus he's good at getting chicks sometimes. He also seems a very cold calculated yet shallow understanding of human emotion. For example, Dennis' technique to get women (the D.E.N.N.I.S. system) is very cold and calculated but also very unsympathetic and fails to work at the end of the episode. Dennis also has the grandiose sense of self-worth that is a symptom of sociopathy.
    • In the episode "Psycho Pete Returns", a psychiatrist diagnoses Dennis with Borderline Personality Disorder, a serious mental illness marked by unstable relationships, inability to regulate emotions, and impulsive behavior.
  • Dennis & Dee's mother Barbara was worse than the two put together. She married Frank for his money while lying to him and her children about their parentage for 30 years (and acted as though she was discussing the weather during her confession), emotionally abused Dee throughout her childhood and left her nothing in her will while calling her a mistake, and one of her final acts on Earth was stealing medicine from sick children.
• Killing Eve: Villanelle displays most of the symptoms, however she still seems to have genuine feelings for Eve, Konstantin and of course Anna.
• The Kill Point: Mr. Rabbit, who manages to be the Token Evil Teammate of a bank robbing crew. He beats the hostages unprovoked, psychologically tortures one of them for no particular reason, carries around the severed ear of an Iraqi soldier he previously tortured to death, and tells Captain Cali that he considers the hostages "cattle" and "sheep being led to the slaughter." He ends up getting beaten to death by the leader of the team, because Even Evil Has Standards.
• Kings has Andrew Cross, who makes for an ugly contrast with the narcissists who compose the rest of his family. A bored, listless young man who admits to viewing other people as things (and doesn't seem to understand that this is wrong), Andrew displays a very limited emotional affect, moves impulsively from idea to idea, and has some very troubling sexual urges, as evidenced by his stalking of his aunt, and his leaking of his cousin's nude photos to the press. In the end, Andrew sides with his father's coup, only to betray him to his uncle Silas when it fails, and then, in the closing scenes of the show release Vesper Abaddon from prison with no prior explanation, all with the same perpetual bored look on his face. Whether Andrew has any genuine goals, motives, or loyalty in him, is left in serious doubt as of the end of the show.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • Had a serial-killer prostitute (based on Aileen Wuornos) who displayed the "cocktail personality" where she'd become a troubled mentally-frail patient for the psychiatrist or a seductress for Detective Stabler. Her son was the only thing she cared about and it turns out she killed his mother and kidnapped him as an infant.
  • One doctor did point out that not all sociopaths are evil unrepentant killers, most of them live normal lives like everyone else in their own way.
  • In "Desire" April and Lorraine are both this. Lorraine explicitly taught April not to care about rules or other people, living off them through whatever means to succeed. April might not have been naturally sociopathic as a result, while Lorraine may be.
  • The wiki has an enitre page for listing all the sociopaths that have shown up in this show.
• Lost: Anthony Cooper, Locke's father, is one of the most chillingly accurate depictions of a sociopath on television. He's a very successful con man who has made an entire career out of manipulating people and then dumping them once he's got what he wants. Sawyer's parents are just two of his victims, and he's not remorseful about that in the slightest. He abandoned Locke at birth, reconnecting with him only to steal his kidney. He has no qualms about murdering anyone who might expose him and even throws Locke out a window for trying to reason with him. He's concerned about himself above all else and shows no regret for any of the many lives he has destroyed.
• The Magicians (2016):
  • This seems to be how people end up after losing their "shade", to go by Martin Chatwin and Julia. The shade is the part of a human soul that governs pain and fear—but also guilt and love. People without shades have all the classical sociopath traits of being friendly, sociable, happy, but always just a little bit off. They have absolutely no empathy whatsoever, and will often sing while performing the most horrific crimes for even short-term gains. At one point, Julia burns down a forest of sentient trees, rendering the entire species extinct, for no reason than because she thought it might get her home a little faster. When it is brought up later, she jokes about it and has to stifle a giggle. This is eventually deconstructed when Julia decides she wants to be a good person again, but has no idea how. She ends up sitting in her apartment, paralyzed with indecision, as she can't figure out if even the tiniest things are evil or not.
    Julia: I never once stopped to ask if I was doing the right thing, and now it's all I ask — "If I did this, would Q look at me like I'm evil?" I can't really feel any of it anymore. I'm doing it from memory.
  • Niffins also behave in this manner, calmly killing even the people they once loved. It turns out Niffins lose their shade when transforming.
• Red John in The Mentalist is a ruthless manipulative narcissistic serial killer, capable of killing anyone — including an innocent woman and a child just because he felt insulted — and controlling a large criminal network.
• In the Merlin (1998) mini-series, Mordred is blatantly a sociopath. Outwardly a handsome, charming, charismatic young man, Mordred is actually a callous, manipulative, sadistic hothead who wants to conquer Britain and kill his father. He practices archery on his castle's servants, kills several soldiers while laughing and jesting with them, and laughs when his own mother is murdered in front of him. And he's a Super-Soldier with the backing of an evil goddess. Yikes.
• Million Yen Women: The person who invited the women to live in Shin's house and eventually ends up killing a couple of characters before getting put out of commission, turns out to have done it all for no other reason than their own amusement.
• Mongrels plays this for laughs with Vince, a depraved serial killer and rapist who commits all sorts of horrible crimes that are played for dark laughs if only for how how ridiculously over-the-top his atrocities are. He does show glimmers of empathy on occasion and does care for his urbane, metrosexual cousin Nelson underneath all his bullying, and he sincerely loves his mother. He's still a dangerous lunatic to everyone else, and he will assault you if you call him a c*nt.
• Murder in the First:
  • In the first season, Erich Blunt shows every sign of being one, expressing no empathy or remorse for anything, and with an interest in other people only so far as they please him or he can manipulate them to do what he wants. His PA/girlfriend Ivana shows much the same traits as well.
  • The second season has Alfred "Alfie" Rentman, leader in a mass murder on a school bus, whose own father (a neurologist) had diagnosed him. There was nothing he could really do about it though, since it's an incurable and untreatable condition.
• The Other Kingdom: Versitude, King Oberon's advisor displays lot of signs of potentially being one considering she's misanthropic, viewing humanity as "wasteful, silly creatures" and little more than hers to mess with. She also abuses her position of being the king's advisor, is more than willing to bring harm towards Astral's and the Athenians' way and possibly endanger those around her, and has no qualms over lying to anyone she comes across. She would also make Winston — an early teenager no less — her own personal target as when she's not brushing him aside, she's placing him in perilous situations, including several near-death experiences and making him look bad, all without showing anything resembling a conscience. But some of her worst deeds include callously selling Athenia out to their rival kingdom of Spartania for King Reed to eventually take over and locking Astral and Brendoni and their friends in the school gym knowing full well that Athenia was at risk of being destroyed at the time, and that Astral and Brendoni would be unable to use their powers during the solar eclipse.
• Once Upon a Time: Emma Swan twice called Regina Mills this, but later episodes show this isn't quite the case. Peter Pan and Cruella de Vil, on the other hand, play it straight.
  • Jafar in the show's spinoff Once Upon a Time in Wonderland also plays the trope straight, much like his Aladdin counterpart.
  • Mother Gothel/ Eloise Gardener is no exception. No qualms with hurting anyone nor with using them to further her agenda only to discard them afterwards. Nor does she have any feelings toward her own child other than an accessory to her plan to wipe out humanity.
• Person of Interest:
  • A better example of this is the head of HR, who shows no empathy for even his closest loved ones and seems incapable of it.
  • Dominic, the head of the brotherhood gang, is another example. He shows no emotion or concern when a good number of his men are killed because "We all die in the end".
• The Villain Protagonist Jim Profit of Profit is the high-functioning type. He's an amoral and remorseless schemer who manipulates people around him to his own ends (including blackmail and murder) while presenting himself as a charming, likeable guy.
• Rake: Cleaver defends two teenage girls charged with manslaughter who he eventually realizes both have this disorder, and actually committed premeditated cold-blooded murder. They're explicitly compared to Leopold and Loeb, two similar (though male) "thrill killers" in Chicago during the 1920s.
• The Red Dwarf episode "Cured" reveals the Cat to be a psychopath, but a relatively harmless (if incredibly self-absorbed) one. Unfortunately for the boys, Professor Telford is the violent type of psychopath. Un-unfortunately, the Cat exploits Telford's own psychopathy to get him to hand him a gun, which he then shoots Telford with to save his crewmates.
• Revolution:
  • "Sex and Drugs" has Drexel the drug lord as one. He shows no empathy, he is a Consummate Liar, he has no real attachments to anyone, he is shown to be a Manipulative Bastard and attempts to be The Charmer, he has no impulse control at all, he has an unhealthy need for stimulation, and he most certainly has a Small Name, Big Ego. No Troubling Unchildlike Behavior is ever mentioned, but it probably doesn't need to be.
  • Sergeant Will Strausser, at least as of "Sex and Drugs" is being deliberately set up as one. "Ties That Bind" has Miles Matheson and Strausser discussing the fact that Strausser is one, with Miles pointing out that Strausser was going to be put in a padded room before the blackout happened. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" has Strausser threatening to rape Charlie Matheson to Rachel Matheson's face, and he actually tries to rape Rachel when it's just the two of them alone. Fortunately, Rachel manages to kill him off.
• Sharpe has Obadiah Hakeswill, the Arch-Enemy of Sharpe and the reason why he was condemned to 2,000 lashes (of which only 200 were given). Lack of Empathy? Check, just ask Sally Clayton's children, after he raped and murdered their mother, as well as any unfortunate soldier he bullies into staying quiet about his abusive conduct. Consummate Liar and Manipulative Bastard? Double check, as he makes himself appear disciplined in front of superior officers and rapes the wives and girlfriends of the rank-and-file, while getting those who are wise to him in trouble, like Harper, who he framed for the theft of an aristocrat's wife's portrait, condemning him to 100 lashes. Need for stimulation? If there's a pretty woman in the episode, he'll try to rape her and if she has a husband, he'll threaten him too. Narcissist? He believes himself invincible right up to his death. He's even worse in the novels, where his crimes include raping a young girl... when he was 12.
• Sherlock:
  • Sherlock's Arch-Enemy, James Moriarty, is this trope played very straight: he has no empathy whatsoever, is a liar, charmer, and manipulator who easily surpasses Sherlock in all three departments, is a criminal mastermind who has orchestrated scores of crimes — up to and including murder — throughout Europe merely because he was bored, and by the end of Season 2 has single-handedly wrecked Sherlock's credibility, career and relationships. The difference between the two is probably best underlined when they first meet face to face.
    Sherlock: People have died.
    Moriarty: That's what people DO!
  • Subverted by Sherlock himself. While he identifies himself as a "high-functioning sociopath" and is shown to usually have a lack of sympathy for those around him, he is shown to care for various characters (his concern when Mrs. Hudson and John are in danger, his sadness over Irene's alleged death, and his reaction to humiliating Molly at the Christmas party). Word of God is that Sherlock wants to be a sociopath (because caring about people gets in the way) but isn't.
• The Shield: Armadillo Quintero, who in a show filled with horrible people manages to stand out as the worst. He is outwardly charming, but he kills, rapes, and tortures with abandon and expresses no compassion for anyone else. He even murders his own brother simply to prove a point to Vic, and he does it all with a stunning Lack of Empathy.
• Smallville:
  • If we are to believe Lionel Luthor, his Bastard Bastard Lucas is one of these. Lionel himself, and his son, Lex, both display traits of the disorder as well, but not enough to qualify. A much better example is probably Earth-2's Clark Luthor a.k.a. Ultraman. A promiscous Professional Killer and Psycho for Hire, he lies like a dog to everyone he meets, has a violent, Hair-Trigger Temper, and switches between moods quickly enough to give you whiplash. His adoptive father, Earth-2 Lionel is likely an example as well, with a Lack of Empathy that runs so deep it's almost frightening. The same goes for Serial Killer and Torture Technician Desaad.
  • Lx-3, Lex's clone and Shadow Archetype from Season 10's "Lazarus", is a solid example. He spends all his time on-screen committing mass murder, has a Hair-Trigger Temper and a sadistic streak, seems to actively enjoy murder for its own sake, and hates everyone. He tries to kill every person he meets.
  • Bob Rickman, corrupt salesman with Mind Control powers who has no qualms making his enemies kill themselves or brainwashing innocent people to kill for him. His pesticide plants were massively toxic, spreading cancer and environmental damage, which he took delight in being able to get away with thanks to his powers.
• The Society: Campbell, full time. This scares his brother, Sam as he lampshades this by pointing out how he can fake human emotions but doesn't really feel any of it, and is a master manipulator. Campbell, himself, admits this to Elle during the Thanksgiving episode. He makes Elle his personal punching bag, implied to have abused Sam in the past and even sets up a coup and becomes a tyrant and possibly make Allie his slave like Elle. He was diagnosed as one, in fact. Sam tells a story about how he cut of the wings of the family's pet bird just to watch it struggle as it died.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The Goa'uld are this as a matter of course. It's indicated to be, at least in part, to do with their use of the sarcophagus, which has this effect even on humans who use it regularly.
  • Linea is a textbook example, coming off as a perfectly charming and kindly old woman. However, she's a frighteningly brilliant Mad Scientist who can MacGyver fusion power from plants, and successfully creates a Fountain of Youth (with the side-effect of Easy Amnesia, though that can also be cured, while retaining the youth). She's also got a stunning degree of Lack of Empathy, earned her nickname 'The Destroyer of Worlds' (an engineered plague was involved), only spared the SGC because they helped her and it Makes Us Even, and when she reappears, her good personality, Ke'ra, makes it plain that while she personally cares deeply for Daniel, Linea would happily kill him without batting an eye.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Kivas Fajo from "The Most Toys" is, to those who meet him briefly, simply an eccentric collector of rare artifacts from the Local Bubble. However, he is utterly without pity, and kidnaps Data — already legally established as a person — as the centerpiece of his collection. Another of his prize items is the dreaded Varon-T disruptor, illegal in the Federation because of how horribly it kills the target. He actually uses it on a broken employee simply because it amuses him to pose Data with a moral dilemma. It backfires on him epically when Data proves that he doesn’t need to have an emotional reaction to decide that Fajo should die, and the only reason why Fajo doesn’t die is because the Enterprise beams Data up just as Data pulls the trigger on the Varon-T disruptor.
• Supernatural:
  • Sam Winchester exhibits classic sociopathic behavior when he loses his soul in Season 6. Though he becomes an example of a pro-social version, as his interest in hunting remains constant, but his Lack of Empathy becomes his defining character trait. He sees nothing wrong with purposefully letting his own brother get turned into a vampire, letting 150 people get turned into monsters because there's a chance it could lead him and Dean to an Alpha, using a baby as bait, working with Crowley or with killing Bobby Singer in order to avoid getting his soul back among other things. It is implied and later shown that he killed innocents and did some things that arguably would make him cross the Moral Event Horizon and even hardened hunters like Samuel Campbell and Dean are horrified by his behavior.
  • While introduced with having humanizing characteristics and redeeming traits, and being played as Tragic Villain, this is ultimately Lucifer's true nature. Lucifer has many characteristics of sociopath including: Inability to empathize, manipulative and charismatic demeanor, monstrously high opinion of himself, throwing childish temper tantrums when things don't go his way, and absolute refusal to admit any wrong doing. Gabriel even says to him that he is incapable of feeling love and empathy and only cares about being feared, being worshiped, or both.
• Super Sentai:
  • A lot of villains are this. Bazeu and Dr. Kumazawa, Ra Deus and Lie Kopflen, Zeba, Bias, Lagorn and Jarmin, Vulgyre, Radiguet, Tran/Tranza and Supreme Commander Akira Ichijou, Colonel Shadam, Exhaus, Guirail, Grandienne, Gien and Ryuya, Tau Zant and Sandaaru, Abrella, N Ma and Dagon, Yaiba, Long, Yogoshimacritein, Brajira and Robogog, Basco, Enter, D, Genegtsu and Mangetsu, Ginis, Quval, and Bangray, Don Armage, Gachireus, Galza, Dagded... and these are just one or two of the most notable ones from each season, for the most part.
  • Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger has a borderline case in Dr. Mikoto Nakadai, a super-smart surgeon who's so bored with his life that when he becomes Abare Killer, he joins the Evolians and uses his powers to what he considers good use — during the course of which he formulates his own evil plans that are close to working and make the old villains look comical. It doesn't help the fact that he had a shard of the Evolian god Dezumozorlya.
• True Lies (2023): Nathan, a hitman called "The Wolf", tells Helen he doesn't feel emotions like happiness and has never considered whether he liked his work. He's very skilled at acting normal though, with Helen thinking he's good at heart and he acts quite friendly with other people.
• The Twilight Zone (1959) showcases a number:
  • Joe Caswell in "Execution" has lost track of how many people he's murdered, and when they string him up to be hanged tells the father of one of his victims that he'd do it all over again if he had the chance. Paul Johnson from the same episode is a petty crook who kills Caswell simply because he's in the way, and then tries to ransack the place — in the process inadvertently beaming himself into his comeuppance at the hanging eighty years earlier.
  • "A Nice Place to Visit" gives us petty crook Henry Francis ("Rocky") Valentine, who's gone from head of a juvenile street gang while still in grade school to a petty thief who's shot resisting arrest. He does get what's coming to him: an eternity of frustrating boredom.
  • In "Death's-Head Revisited", former concentration camp commandant Gunter Lütze had tortured helpless captives during The Holocaust, and called it "the good old days", but when it dawns on him merely that he might be imprisoned, he cries inhumanity. He gets what's coming to him (after a trial that looks like a rejected last chance to repent): to hallucinate being put through everything he put captives through.
  • Peter Craig in "The Little People" wants to lord it over others, and finds a planet populated with microscopic people. He lords it over them until he is accidentally crushed himself by a giant alien explorer.
  • In "The Jeopardy Room", Commissar Vassiloff prides himself on being an artist in killing and cruelty. He, too, gets what's coming to him: thanks to the stupidity of his right-hand man Boris, his own cruelty literally blows up in his face.
• Veep gives less-than-subtle hints that Dan Egan is of the high-functioning variety. The fact that he reveals that he killed a stray dog as a child to win a dare leaves little room for doubt. He later claims that he once "broke off an engagement at an Applebee's and then ordered dessert".
• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • This show is full of people who are pretty unrepentant about doing awful things, but Simon (whom Negan even refers to as a "demented, broken goddamn ghoul") is a perfect textbook example of antisocial personality disorder. Lack of empathy? Check; he views people as tools to play with for his amusement, and he shows zero remorse for committing genocide in several communities. Selfish manipulator? Check; he displays kindness towards Dwight and Gregory while using them as pawns for his own gain, but then tries to dispose of them both when their usefulness expires. Brilliant but lacking in foresight? Check; he makes some rather arrogant decisions when Negan is temporarily indisposed in Season 8B. Constant need for stimulation? Check; he's very aggressive, and when the Saviors start losing the All-Out War he literally starts throwing temper tantrums like a bratty child who can't get his way.
  • Alpha. She's extremely manipulative, psychotically violent and sadistic to the point of wiping out entire communities simply for being there, and disturbingly callous to the point where she outright gloats over the death of her victims just to be a massive bitch. While she does love and respect a few people, such as her daughter, Negan and Beta, it's a twisted and narcissistic form of love where their worth is weighed by how much they conform to her own warped views of the world, even planning to have Lydia killed for not being up to her standards.
• Vincent Swan of the BBC comedy White Gold ticks a lot of the boxes — superficially charming, but he will sell out anyone if he thinks he'll profit from it, including his own sales team, he lies to customers, friends and his family alike, cheats on his wife twice (once with his son's teacher, no less!) with no remorse and only fakes contrition when he gets caught, is a distant father to his children and prefers buying their affection with expensive presents than spend any actual time with them and he's convinced he's a Magnificent Bastard, when in reality he's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is and gets by merely because he's Surrounded by Idiots — the moment Ronnie Farrell, an actual gangster, shows up, he starts to realise he's quite out of his depth, but that still doesn't convince him to change his ways because he gets off on the adrenaline too much.
• The Wire: Marlo Stanfield. Unusual in a show well-known for its Gray-and-Grey Morality, where even the most hardened criminals are capable of kindness and are often shown doing ordinary things. A ruthless drug dealer, Marlo has no qualms, seemingly no moral compass, and the closest thing he has to a personal attachment to anyone is a slight bit of loyalty to his hyper loyal Co-Dragons Chris and Snoop. Anyone else, regardless of how helpful, loyal, or useful they've been to him, is a second away from outliving their usefulness. One of his defining moments is when he has a security guard with a family killed... just because the man dared speak up about the fact that Marlo stole merchandise right in front of said security guard. In another case, based on the simple rumor that another drug dealer had bad mouthed Marlo, Marlo has his enforcers kill the man, his wife, and the couple's children. He is also the most prolific criminal on the show, with at least several dozen murders to his name. His personality is remarkably reminiscent of a Serial Killer, and several of the police trying to bring him down comment on that fact.

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