 you're getting squashed under her heel, regardless of whether you were a child or not.
- Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, before his reformation, that is. Making this trope Older Than Television.
- Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Rosemary Hershey is Sweet Revenge is very much this. She is in charge of a company that makes architectural plans and blueprints. Her employees probably didn't like her, but they tolerated her. However, she suffers a Villainous Breakdown that spans pretty much the entirety of the book. During her breakdown, she is practically screaming at her employees to come up with some great architectural blueprints now! When she gets some blueprints from them, she starts yelling at them that a 12-year-old could have drawn up these plans! This is interesting, because Rosemary doesn't really have much expertise in drawing up plans. In fact, she had to rely on plagiarizing the plans belonging to her former boss Isabelle Flanders to get to the position she is at now. She becomes so enraged at what she perceives as incompetence on the part of her employees that she fires them. All of them! Yes, that is how bad her breakdown is!
Live Action TV
- Adelai Niska, a psychotic crimelord introduced in the Firefly episode "The Train Job," makes a point of showing his new hires the beaten, bleeding body of... his nephew. Indeed, after the crew of Serenity renege on their deal with him after learning that the job in question was denying the citizens of Paradiso some much needed medicine and put his Dragon Crow through the ship's engines, Niska takes revenge by capturing Mal and Wash and putting them to the torture in "War Stories," prompting a furious Castle Storm by the rest of the crew to get them back. Of course, many crimelords in all genres and even (gasp) Real Life make a point of being cruel to perceived enemies.
- He goes on to explain that reputation is nothing is you don't back it up with reality. Basically, he feels that being known as a torturer is not enough to motivate underlings. Being seen as one shows you he's serious.
- The Master of Doctor Who has a persistent tendency to kill anyone who even remotely qualifies as a henchman. Notable examples include his first appearance in Terror of the Autons where he kills a mildly disobedient henchman with a plastic chair, and "The Sound of Drums" where his first act as Prime Minister is to gas his entire cabinet. The only discernible reason he does this is because he's just that twisted.
- The insane Emperor Cartagia on Babylon 5, who, among other things, kept the severed heads of advisors who gave "unappreciated" advice, in a room all their own, and killed his court jester for making the wrong joke. Not to mention his plan of ascension to godhood, which involved the destruction of the entire Centauri Homeworld. He was, of course, completely out of his mind.
- It's worth noting that one of the advisers was killed because he had a "most annoying cough."
- Only slightly better: Ulkesh, the second Vorlon ambassador, whose treatment of his human aide Lyta included forcing her to throw away all her possessions to "avoid distractions", making no attempt to avoid Mind Raping her when he Body Surfed her, Agony Beam-ing her whenever anything vaguely annoyed him, and Punching Her Across The Room when she attempted to telepathically scan him. The emotional subtext approached Domestic Abuser.
- Angelus in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He gets amazing enjoyment out of emotionally torturing Spike despite the fact that the last time we saw him (before he became Angel) the two still got along quite well.
- The Master was also terrible, probably made worse over being trapped underground and powerless and unable to take his frustration out on anyone but his own servants. He overused You Have Failed Me and snapped at his servants constantly. He mellowed out a bit after everyone except The Anointed One died.
- Prime Minister Yogoshimacritein in Engine Sentai Go-onger. Not only does he uses the Quirky Miniboss Squad as human shields twice and fires them at our heroes as missiles--or even because he indiscriminately fires in their direction, he also he fires RIGHT THROUGH THEM to hit our heroes.
- Of course, most Super Sentai BigBads count as this trope, but this is a particularly harsh whiplash since Yogostein, his son, was genuinely nice to his followers. The same son Yogoshimacritein denounces as a useless failure when he appears, mind.
- Admiral Helena Cain of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. A sick, twisted bitch, even by Battlestar standards. For instance, her original XO refused to give a near-suicidal order - her response was to shoot him in the head in front of the entire CIC.
- In the forgettable episode "Black Market", the head of the black market Phelan shoots one of his henchmen in the head simply so that Lee can close his case without uncovering more dirt and disrupting his operation. He does this in plain view of his other henchmen as well.
- Although she's never outright killed anyone, on 24, Erin Driscoll (the boss of CTU in season ) is by all accounts a horrible, horrible boss. This is a literal example of a "bad boss." She starts out by firing Jack from his job at CTU (even though his actions saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people) because she thought he was a drug user. She then (in the space of 12 hours) fires one of the two halfway competent programmers in the building, makes bad decisions, gets security to taser an innocent employee (then forces her back to work, then fires her for complaining about being illegally detained and tortured), orders Jack to stop his rescue attempt of the Secretary of Defense (which he ignores anyway), tells a grieving man (who just found out his mother is dying) to suck it up and go back to work, and finally ignores her schizophrenic daughter's pleas for help, as Driscoll is keeping her confined in the CTU medical wing. The fact that the Secretary of Defense pulls rank and asks her to leave is a sigh of deep relief.
- Surprisingly averted by the terrorists. Most terrorist masterminds tend to take the suggestions of their subordinates into consideration, and step back to reevaluate when their subordinates ask them to look at the bigger picture.
- The Seattle-based sketch comedy Almost Live once did a bit set in an office where the bad-tempered bully of a boss gets promoted, and his replacement is, literally, a box of snakes. Eventually the box gets promoted as well and replaced with the greatest horror of all: a guy who sells Amway.
- Angus Grier from All Creatures Great and Small is a drunken bully who humiliates his employees for kicks.
- The Good Guys pilot has a drug lord who insults his bodyguards, pays a flunky who handles million dollar drug deals for him "less than he pays his pool boy" and constantly reminds Pedro that the guy is only the "second best assassin in the world" and has him do gun tricks as entertainment. It is hardly surprising when his men are not very loyal to him.
- Georg from Icelandic comedy Naeturvaktin is an arrogant, dictatorial bully to his employees, particularly Ólafur. He steals their pay, ignores their complaints, and takes every opportunity to belittle or torment them, often accompanying the abuse with an explanation that it's all somehow for their own good.
- Red Forman is like this on That 70s Show to his employees, and won't deny it if you raise the point. When the family is congratulating him on getting the job at Price-Mart, Hyde says "God help the poor bastards who work for you!" Red merely smiles and laughs, taking it as a compliment.
- House has Edward Vogler from the first season. House himself, however, is horrible to work for. Several characters have noted that prolonged employment by--or contact with--Dr. House has a corrupting influence on the soul.
- Walter Sykes, the Big Bad of Warehouse 13's third season, is this in spades. If you fail him, he'll roll another Xanatos Gambit and arrange to dispose of you. If you succeed, he no longer has any use for you and has you offed anyway. As it happens, it's just another facet of the corruption of the Collodi Bracelet turning him into a Complete Monster.
- Supernatural's latest Big Bad Leviathan leader Dick Roman really deserves the "Dick" part when it comes to his treatment of his own staff and kind. Off course one wouldn't expect anything else from a species of eternally hungry Eldritch Abomination, but his enjoyment in punishing anyone who displeases him in any way appears to exceed his desire for his kind to conquer the earth and devour humanity. At one point he forces one of his scientists to "bib" and devour himself when his attempts at turning humans docile and apathetic (and thus easier to farm and eat) had a 0.03% chance of other humans becoming rage-filled cannibals, while in another episode he eats an unlucky leviathan who failed to retrieve a package replaced with a borax bomb (the only thing that hurts Leviathans, at least temporarily). Joyce B