Dave: How can you have a goatee without shaving? Does it just materialize?
Male Helen: Well, yes. I'm evil.
Male Helen: Well, yes. I'm evil.
— Narbonic
A man with a beard is a man to be feared. What is it about bad guys and facial hair? For some reason, we often take being clean-shaven as an indicator of being strait-laced and, under more traditional morality, a good person, pure of spirit. In older, simpler days, a traditional hero would not even have five o'clock shadow, even if he's been on the run and well away from his shaving mirror for a week.
Conversely, a man with facial hair is less pure, at the very least a Darker and Edgier Anti-Hero — more often, he's an outright villain, and his chin is deliberately contrasted with the depilated chin of the hero.
Note that this generally applies to small, well-groomed beards, especially goatees. Having a huge bushy beard turns one into a Nature Hero, sailor, grizzled old prospector or Boisterous Bruiser. Except, of course, for the beards recommended by certain religions that are in the public focus at the moment.
The characters who sport a Beard of Evil are usually either the Big Bad or a second-in-command. This may play into the fact that in both western and eastern culture, goatees are traditionally worn by members of the aristocracy, and Aristocrats Are Evil.
The Beard of Evil has a long history of being associated most closely with the Evil Twin or Evil Counterpart, and you probably already know why. It also scores extra evil points if combined with a shaven head. (Anybody with a bald head and a beard is pretty much guaranteed to be a card-carrying villain. Blame Alex Raymond and Anton LaVey.)
Satan is also frequently depicted with a goatee (which probably came from depictions of Goethe's Mephistopheles as a 16th-century gallant).
A subset of Good Hair, Evil Hair. Not to Be Confused with Growing the Beard or Manly Facial Hair. See also Dastardly Whiplash and Soul Patch of Cool because they address soul patches, goatees, and chin tufts.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In a Priceline ad William Shatner plays both his normal helpful negotiator self and his Evil Twin who's trying to trick people into paying too much for hotel rooms. In an homage to Star Trek, Evil Shatner has a beard.
Anime and Manga
- In Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad, beards are a staple of evil wizards.
- Emperor Ganishka from Berserk has a massive but immaculately-groomed beard that fits with his general 'Eastern tyrant' aesthetic. It also serves to conceal the Red Right Hand (a disturbingly wide mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family) that marks him as an Apostle of the Godhand, and creates a suitably impressive visual effect when he activates his Super Smoke powers.
- Bleach: The most distinctive feature of Yhwach is his sideburns, which extend all the way to his mustache. He's explicitly described to be even more wicked than Aizen, who in that same sentence is described to be evil incarnate.
- Blue Exorcist: Mephisto Pheles has one impressively sharp, blue, goatee. Interesting, considering what his name is an obvious pun off of. Whether or not he is evil however, has yet to be fully revealed.
- Daimos: In this series, if you have facial hair, then you would be considered an irredeemable bad guy. Olban's nice, thick beard and Miwa's pointy mustache are good example for this, whereas cleanly shaved faces signify either good guys or morally grey. There are exactly one inversion for each types in this though, Prof. Izumi also has a beard, but he's a Reasonable Authority Figure, whereas Georiya is cleanly shaved, but he's Olban's #1 lackey and equally evil.
- In episode 12 of Den-noh Coil beards start appearing on the (pre-adolescent) main characters. These beards are actually Illegals, virus programs that occasionally cross over into reality and are generally antagonistic. These particular Illegals are sentient, forming their own mini-civilizations on each person's face and revere the person they exist on as gods. They then go on to launch missiles and wage civil war on each other and, once that's stopped, "interplanetary" war. After realizing the futility of war, the Illegal beards leave their hosts to find their Promised Land.
- "That Man" from Excel♡Saga is a Yakuza thug with a beard, the only recurring character with facial hair and the real leader of ACROSS, making him the closest thing the show had to a Big Bad.
- In The Familiar of Zero when he arrives, Ward is shown a few times in flashbacks where he acts kind to the main character, and has no beard. However, in the present, he has a beard, and is, well, evil.
- Fullmetal Alchemist has the most malevolent and vile examples to date:
- Father himself has the noble old man look of Van Hohenheim with a bit of Grandpa God imagery, but is a vile heartless monster more closer to Satan than god. His beard turns out to be part of his protective skin suit with his true appearance being more of a blob that lacks any form of hair.
- Lieutenant General Raven has more of a small beard, but is as heartless as Father himself and is willing to have people die for the Philosopher's Stones and tempted Olivier to go to such a path but got killed for the trying to tempt her.
- The Count of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou sports a sharp, blue goatee to complete his Byronic character. He isn't exactly pure evil, but definitely counts as a Manipulative Bastard willing to get innocents mixed to his pursuit of vengeance.
- Lyrical Nanoha:
- General Regius of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Fat frame, beady little eyes, nasty demeanor, and neatly maintained beard give him all the markings of an obvious villain. So naturally, he turns out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist who just found himself too entangled in the TSAB's darker secrets, with his final scenes showing him filled with guilt when he realized how far he had fallen.
- Before him there was Gil Graham, the Treacherous Advisor of A's, another Well-Intentioned Extremist. After finding that Hayate had become owner of the Book of Darkness, he planned to allow her to fill the book and then seal her away with it in order to remove the threat of the book forever. He felt some guilt over doing this to a child who'd done nothing wrong, but reasoned that as an orphan without a family, no one would miss her.
- Dr. Hell from Mazinger Z and Mazinkaiser is the Mad Scientist Big Bad and he has a long, bushy, bristly, white and positively epic Beard Of Evil. In Great Mazinger, The Dragon Great General of Darkness/Ankoku Daishogun had a beard warned he was NOT to be messed with. King Vega, Big Bad from UFO Robo Grendizer was the only on the side of the evil guys had a beard. His was bristle but well-groomed, though.
- Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. That particular style seems to be a favorite of Magnificent Bastards. In the spoof fan video Evangelion: ReDeath, he proudly announces he spent millions in research on the ultimate pimp beard.
- One Piece: Eventually, Blackbeard(Marshal D. Teach) finally grows one of these. Brownbeard, has three of them, even. Funnily enough, the original, Whitebeard(Edward Newgate), only had a mustache (though this is a case of Lost in Translation: the Japanese for beard means any kind of facial hair).
- Panzer World Galient: Big Bad Marder has a very prominent goatee.
- That first enemy that appears in Rurouni Kenshin wanting to take over the Kamiya dojo and claiming to be the Battousai.
- Lordgenome is about the only human on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with any significant amount of facial hair. He's the main villain of the first half. (And it seems to be fireproof, given that it isn't too badly damaged when he gets serious and his head bursts into flames.)
- His beard also gets significantly larger and begins to curl at the ends as he gets angrier (most notably when his head bursts into flames).
- In the Virtual Nightmare arc in Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lecter has a typical fiendish goatee.
- Jose, in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's definitely counts, his long Father Time style beard dropping down past his waist.
Asian Animation
- Motu Patlu (2012)'s main antagonist, John the Don, has a noticeable goatee.
- Yamucha's-Kung Fu Academy features a gang of squid thieves whose leader has a beard resembling a five-o'-clock shadow.
Comic Books
- The Adventures of Aero-Girl: The Bearded Lady of the Three Ring Gang is a Rare Female Example.
- The Adventures of Peter Wheat: One of the main villains from the Hornet Kingdom is the Grand Wizard, who has a black beard. He spends his time trying to help his daughter to destroy the Wheat Kingdom.
- Chapman has a full beard in the Animorphs graphic novels, something that was never mentioned in the books (and was absent in the TV series). While Chapman himself isn't evil, he's controlled by a Starter Villain Yeerk.
- Old-time The Avengers villains Count Nefaria and Graviton.
- Batman:
- Ra's al Ghul fame often sports a beard of some kind. Exactly what form it takes is very Depending on the Artist, but at several points he has been portrayed with what can only be described as a Fu Manchu beard, or two straight tufts on either side of his chin.
- Professor Hugo Strange combines this with Bald of Evil.
- Captain Stingeree wears a beard to complete his pirate look.
- In the Batman: Black and White story "The Black and White Bandit", the villain has a distinctive forked goatee with a white streak.
- Referenced in a universe-hopping arc of Cable & Deadpool. "How do I know you're not the anti-Siryn? Then again, you're not sporting the alternate-universe mandated evil goatee..."
- Empowered: Willy Pete, as a fire elemental, has a beard made of flame. "Evil" is rather understating it.
- The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an inversion, as it's the beard itself that is the antagonist instead of the man it's attached to.
- Grigori Rasputin in Hellboy has a Beard of Evil and Bald of Evil, as contrasted with Hellboy himself, who combines Topknot and baldness with a Soul-Patch-and-Muttonchops Combination of Moral Ambiguity.
- Iznogoud: The title character is the only one of the three primary characters to have a beard (Wa'at Alahf has a moustache and stubble, the Caliph is clean-shaven), and is by far the most evil of the three.
- Serial killer/rapist Mr. Gone from The Maxx combines Bald of Evil with a wild Beard of Evil. After a Time Skip during which he does a Heel–Face Turn, he no longer has any facial hair.
- Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005) features the nefarious Subway Pirates, rival factions of which are led by the barbaric Allbeard (whose incredibly thick, long beard covers up his face) and the slick Nobeard (who has a Bald of Evil and is incapable of growing hair anywhere on his body). Mentions of other pirates from bygone eras of subway privateering are also made, including luminaries like Falsebeard and the like. For added hilarity, it's commonly accepted that Allbeard and Nobeard represent Alan Moore and Seven Soldiers writer Grant Morrison, famously fur-faced and bald, respectively.
- Superman:
- Kryptonite Nevermore: Minor villain Ferlin Nyxly has a goatee. It is not a big surprise that he becomes a criminal.
- Minor villain Amalak the Space Pirate was originally a rather forgettable-looking clean-shaven guy with a red-haired crew cut. In his final appearance, though, he had let his hair and beard grow out all scraggly, and it made him ten times scarier-looking than he had ever been before. Sadly, he got Killed Off for Real at the end of that story, and took his cool creepy beard with him. A Post-Crisis version of Amalak was introduced in 2007 storyline The Third Kryptonian. With the cool beard, naturally.
- Inverted by the pre-Crisis version of Earth-3, home of the Justice League's Evil Twins — there, Lex Luthor's Good Twin Alexander Luthor sports a goatee.
- General Zod, after the comics finally adopted the Terence Stamp look.
- One version of Brainiac sported a goatee.
- Similar to the Star Trek example, in the Transformers Mirror Universe Shattered Glass, Rodimus has a goatee. See.
◊ Said universe also provides an example with the evil Alpha Trion, although the regular Alpha Trion has similar facial hair.
- In The Ultimates, while the goateed Tony Stark is heroic, he has an evil brother, Gregory Stark, who also has a goatee — blonde, naturally.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): The villain Hypnota invokes this by wearing a goatee and mustache, which started out as part of her act as a cross-dressing stage magician before she got shot in the head by accident and lead to believe her own sister tried to murder her. Even when wearing clothes that do nothing to hide that they're physically a woman Hypnota still wears the goatee.
- The Earth-One version of Angle-Man has such distinctive cliche villain facial hair that his mask does nothing to disguise his identity.
Comic Strips
- Ming The Merciless in Flash Gordon, perhaps unsurprisingly, sports what is known as a Fu Manchu.
- In the comic strip Mark Trail, this is played straight but Bald of Evil is subverted: Story-arc-specific male characters have a full-on inverse relationship between levels of evil, and levels of hair on head and face. One arc featured an immoral bearded man (and another, with mutton chops), a very moral completely bald man (so moral, he was keeping his construction company from leveling a field because of a family of ducks he found), and a morally conflicted balding man.
Fan Works
- The tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 has a home brew version called "Brighthammer 40k," where the endless GRIMDARK of the Warhammer universe is flipped on its head into NOBLEBRIGHT, and everyone is a generally pleasant, good group of people to be around. The Emperor of this NOBLEBRIGHT (yes, spelled like that every time) universe inverts the idea of a Beard of Evil — he wears a Goatee of Good, and is something like a million times more upstanding and noble than his Warhammer counterpart. He's also not dead and stuck in a chair, which counts for something, certainly.
- Doing It Right This Time: Gendo is asked by a reporter whether he knows what the Evil Overlord List says about this trope (the question being submitted by either Rei or Ritsuko); he retorts that since he's actually old enough to be a 'disaffected member of Generation X' the rule doesn't apply to him.
- During the Christmas Special of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Goku realizes that Turles is his Evil Counterpart in all but one way.
Goku: He's like... an evil me! Only he doesn't have a goatee... I'm gonna imagine one! [does so] So evil!
- Dungeon Keeper Ami has two examples.
- One of the first warlocks Ami hires is described as a "generic evil warlock". Upon closer inspection, he sports a fake beard. He was too young to have a proper one and was going for the look, thus being an Invoked Trope.
- Ami herself, thanks to losing hair to a misadventure and using a modified beard growing spell. Subverted Trope, as she isn't evil, everyone only thinks she is.
Torian, did you by any chance, only expand the target region? - Harry Potter and The Trademark Dispute: Discussed. Ron Weasley and Ron Stoppable believe the other to be an Evil Twin since they share the same name. Ron Stoppable asks if Weasley has a goatee and when he gets a negative answer, asks if he has one himself. With both Rons assured that neither has a goatee, they accept that neither is evil and start to become friends.
- Queen of All Oni: Lung, apprentice of Daolon Wong, has a Fu Manchu mustache which he fiddles with at one point, and is responsible for inflicting Cold-Blooded Torture on Jade.
- In the Anton Zarnak fanfic, "The Serpent Rises," Zarnak faces a coven of sinister occultists from different sources, and is rather sardonic about the fact almost all of them have shaven heads and goatees, as if it were a uniform.
Films — Animation
- A staple of Disney villains:
- Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective is a downplayed example. He has a five o'clock shadow and is the only character to have a visible beard.
- Jafar in Aladdin deserves a mention. Agrabah's men (besides Aladdin) are all drawn with beards, but Jafar's is not only a goatee, but twisted. He was even based on Zigzag.
- Scar, Simba's Evil Uncle, from The Lion King has a tuft of scraggly black fur on his chin reminiscent of a goatee.
- Governor Radcliffe in Pocahontas has a beard. In the second film, King James, a not-evil man also has a beard but Governor Radcliffe's is a goatee.
- Grigori Rasputin from Anastasia has his historical long black beard. It is depicted as greasy and matted, fitting this Rasputin's generally corpse-like appearance.
- Batman: Bad Blood: Firefly has a beard and has no problem mind probing Bruce.
- Xibalba has a snazzy beard and is the Big Bad of The Book of Life. Until his Heel–Face Turn.
- El Supremo from Freddie as F.R.O.7 has a sinister-looking full beard and a pencil mustache.
- Zig-zagged by The King's Beard. In the flashback, out of the two twin brothers, Jasper, the evil one, is originally clean-shaven, while Cuthbert, the good one, sports a black goatee and mustache which, combined with his red wardrobe, makes him look rather like a Classic Villain. However, as the title implies, Cuthbert's beard is soon cursed by Jasper to grow to an incredible length, becoming a wizardly-looking long white beard in the process and lessening the evil look. Moreover, in the climax, the magic beard is shrunken down to a white goatee which Jasper transfers to himself, so that by the extreme end of the story, evil Jasper is the one with a villainous-looking pointed goatee (sans mustache) while good Cuthbert now bears a smooth chin.
- Megamind has one of those not being a particularly malicious person and turning good in the end. And it is one "nice" goatee.
- In contrast, Metro Man has no facial hair at all. Until he faked his death to give up the hero gig and grew a massive beard (either as a disguise or out of sheer laziness).
- Also, Tighten/Titan/Hal has no beard to speak of, and is actually the main antagonist of the film. Then again, the movie makes a point of subverting the superhero tropes pretty thoroughly.
- Foreman Spike in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is maybe more rude than evil, but he has a bushy beard to complete his boorish image; he insults the Mario Brothers like a schoolyard bully despite being a grown man. In fact, he looks a lot like Bluto from Popeye and even shares the same personality.
- Captain Corso of Titan A.E. had a goatee, and true to form turned out to be The Mole.
Films — Live-Action
- 5 Days of War: The villainous Ossetian soldiers Col. Demidov and Danilli sport beards.
- 8 Ball Clown: 8-Ball has a beard, and is a mentally unhinged murderer with a heroin addiction.
- Christo and Shabal from Act of Valor. Averted with Senior Chief, who is bearded but good.
- American History X has Neo-Nazi Derek Vinyard played by Edward Norton sporting the Van Dyke of Evil, along with a shaven head, and a Swastika, in a "Can you tell he's the villain, yet?" kind of way.
- Inverted in Aquaman (2018). Big Bad Orm is always clean-shaven, unlike his titular half-brother Arthur who has a beard.
- In Batman Begins, Ra's al Ghul's and Henri Ducard's fu manchus are our first clue that the League of Shadows is evil. (Well, the first clue for those who hadn't read the comic books.) Bruce Wayne also sports a rather scraggly beard at the beginning of the film, but it's gone by the time he disavows killing and severs ties with the League.
- Beautiful People (2014) has Testemento, a bearded thug who enjoys torture and murder.
- In Big Game (2014), psychopathic man-hunter Hazar has a beard astoundingly similar to Gruber's.
- The title character of Blacula grows some seriously wild sideburns every time he decides to drink someone's blood.
- Breakheart Pass: Calhoun, the outlaw leader, combines a wild, barbaric beard with Bald of Evil for a unique look.
- Cain Hill: Chester Lockhart, the killer of the movie, has a pretty big beard.
- Coming Home in the Dark: Mandrake, the murderous Soft-Spoken Sadist who kidnaps Hoaggie and Jill after shooting their kids, has a scraggly looking beard.
- Corridors of Blood: Black Ben's wickedness is highlighted by his thick black beard.
- The Creeps: Dracula has a beard, and is every bit the villain in the real world as he is in the book.
- Desolation (2017): The killer who stalks Abby, Jen, and Sam has a large beard.
- In Die Hard 1, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber sports one, contrasting a clean-shaven Bruce Willis as John McClane.
- Dinosaur Hotel: The Games Master, who sets up games for people to out-survive each other against predatory dinosaurs, has a white beard.
- Fouché sports one in The Duellists. He was clean-shaven in Real Life.
- The members of the Cannibal Clan in Dying Breed have dirty, unkempt beards.
- Kruger from Elysium.
- In The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, the immortal Evil Sorcerer Cagliostro sports an especially ridiculous looking goatee.
- Exam: White has a significant amount of stubble when compared to Black. Brown also has a full grown beard, although he's less villainous than White.
- Fast-Walking: Wasco, a power-hungry prisoner, has a beard that give him a fittingly Charles Manson-ish appearance.
- Fu Manchu's evil beard was so famous that the mustache style is named after him. In the original novels, however, he is clean-shaven.
- Gentlemen Explorers: As befits an evil aristocrat, the Prussian agent known as the Count sports a goatee.
- Firefly from G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
- Godzilla vs. Kong: Walter Simmons has a neat-trimmed goatee, and he's a rich, egotistical Smug Snake and the movie's Big Bad Wannabe.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Pius Thicknesse has a distinct amount of facial air in addition to his consensual fascism. What's more, the films imply that Pius is a willing Death Eater, whereas in the books, he was explicitly under the Imperius Curse.
- Holocaust 2000: The religious fanatic who attempts to kill Robert twice has a sinister beard.
- M. Merde in Holy Motors.
- Who could forget Seneca Crane's impeccably trimmed, ornately detailed Beard of Evil from The Hunger Games?
- While the titular hero himself might sport a trim goatee, Iron Man (2008) also plays this straight with Stane, who has a full beard and a bald head.
- The Italian Job (2003): Although technically not a beard, Steve Frazelli sports a rather evil-looking moustache.
- Ivan the Terrible: Tsar Ivan IV (Nikolay Cherkasov) doesn't start off as evil and the boyar conspirators against him are worse for a time (and he's beardless initially). But then the more wicked he becomes the more he lets his beard grow.
- Suprisingly few James Bond villains:
- Hugo Drax of Moonraker plans to remake the world to make it a better place to have an evil beard in.
- From For Your Eyes Only, Kristatos.
- Other than that, there are actually very few major Bond villains with a beard, only henchmen.
- Jurassic Park:
- Jurassic World: Hoskins is not exactly evil but as the most prominent human villain, he sports a nice example of the stereotypical "villainous goatee", just in case it wasn't already obvious enough that we're not supposed to like him. One of the mercenaries brought in by Hoskins also has one of these to boot.
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: The film features a pretty thuggish merc type with a beard.
- Lost in Space: Doctor Smith gives away his role as villain this way.
- In Man of Steel, the evil Zod has grown a Superman II-esque beard by the time Clark is an adult. Inverted in the intro, in which bearded Jor-El faces off with clean-shaven Zod.
- The Matrix (1999) has Cypher's goatee to couple with his bald.
- The McKenzie Break: Schluter, the Big Bad, has a small, sinister-looking beard. This is emphasized by how Schluter is the only bearded character in the entire film, besides a few Spear Carriers.
- Nine Queens: Marcos has a goatee, and he's a scumbag who rips people off for a living, even his own family.
- No One Gets Out Alive: Becker is a bearded man who's been sacrificing the female tenants of his boarding house to an Eldritch Abomination residing within a stone box to stay healthy.
- Averted in Once Upon a Time in the West. Henry Fonda planned to grow a beard as well as wear brown contact lenses to play the film's villain, but director Sergio Leone talked him out of it, since Fonda having his usual appearance in a role so different from his usual humble and noble characters would make it all the more shocking.
- All major villains in Pirates of the Caribbean have various beards (scraggly, tentacled, smouldering) except for Lord Cutler Beckett, who's just a bit stubbly.
- In Prince Caspian, the Telmarine aristocrats are bearded and bad, except for the eponymous Caspian, who is clean-shaven and a good guy. (Inverted later in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by which time Caspian has grown a beard himself, but is as heroic as ever.)
- The Serial Killer in Road Games has an unkempt beard and mullet that give him a feral appearance.
- Christopher Lee as Count Dooku possesses such a beard in the Star Wars prequels.
- Zod did much to increase the fame of this style in Superman II.
- Thir13en Ghosts: Cyrus wears a pretty classy one, and he's an Evil Uncle who wanted to open the literal Eye of Hell and become the most powerful man on Earth.
- The Big Bad McComb sports an evil beard in Timecop.
- In To Be or Not to Be, The Mole Siletsky has one. Even noted by one of the characters.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- Among the three trolls in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Tom has a short chinstrap beard. The Master of Lake-town is a Fat Bastard who sports a greasy goatee.
- In both The Hobbit Film Trilogy and The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy, Christopher Lee (again) as Saruman has a distinctive Wizard Beard. There's also the spectral form of the Witch-king of Angmar, which has a long beard just as his human form in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring did.
- Sentinel Prime from Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
- Pearce, the Villain Protagonist of Van Diemen's Land has an unkempt scraggly beard.
- A must-have for villains in Warcraft (2016), it would seem.
- Sorcerous Overlord Gul'dan has an unkempt Wizard Beard.
- Blood Knight Orc chieftain Blackhand, though he's more of a Noble Demon than Gul'dan.
- Medivh's Jesus-like beard turns out to be the case.
- X-Men (Film Series):
- X2: X-Men United: William Stryker. Also, Mitchell Laurio may be more on the 'asshole' side rather than the 'genocidal' side, but there's no denying he's an unshaven sadist.
- Logan: Donald Pierce's moustache and chinstrap combo is the facial hair negative of Logan's mutton chops at the end of the movie. Also, many of the Reavers sport fairly thick beards.
- Deadpool 2: Firefist is seen with a beard during Cable's flashback (flash-forward?), and by that time, he's already an irredeemable Pyromaniac.
Literature
- Older Than Steam: The eponymous character of Bluebeard.
- A man in Citadel had the ability to involuntarily generate evil, incompetent duplicates of the world's greatest heroes. They all had goatees, even the women.
- Hunter wears one of these in Claiming You Under The Blood Moon, as does Lucas, Ian's father.
- In A College of Magics, Faris's wicked uncle has a neatly-pointed black beard. Her friend Jane speculates that he's covering for a deficiency of chin.
- In The Corellian Trilogy the chief feature distinguishing Han Solo from his evil cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo is the latter's beard.
- Discworld:
- Lord Vetinari is commonly depicted with a tidy goatee. He's not that evil, though. He does, however, have a 'menacing elegance'. Oh, yes, and he's awesome.
- Parodied in Making Money, where the Head of Post-Mortem Communications is described as having tried to grow a beard like this, but not being evil, ended up just looking sheepish.
- From the same book, we have the delusional Cosmo Lavish. He tried to copy the Vetinari beard of evil, but on him, it just ended up looking like a pubic chin.
- Of all the human attributes to apply to a dog, The Divine Comedy describes the monstrous Hellhound Cerberus with a beard as he eats those damned for gluttony, cementing its infernal nature.
- Dracula is actually described as having a beard in the book and is malevolent as most versions, adaptations inspired by the clean shaven Bela Lugosi tend to remove that detail, opting to either have his face clean while some versions stay close to the original book.
- In The Dresden Files, Harry has met a representation of his subconscious mind a few times, and while not strictly evil, he is much more ruthless and selfish than Harry's conscious self, and he sports a goatee, which is of course lampshaded by Harry.
- Earth's Scariest Monsters!:
- Hamadi has a black goatee and mustache. He hates his pharaoh Adofo and wants to usurp him.
- Louis Cypher has a distinctive black beard and mustache that contain red highlights. He attempts to goad Jermaine into making a Deal with the Devil with him by emotionally manipulating the boy and preying on his insecurities. Not long after the angel Melody arrives and intervenes to protect Jermaine, Louis reveals himself to be the actual Lucifer/Satan.
- In Good Omens, Famine is described as having "a trim black beard."
- Harry Potter:
- Death Eater Antonin Dolohov has one, as does ex-Death Eater (and head of the Durmstrang Institute) Igor Karkaroff, and Death Eater supporter Albert Runcorn (unlike the film version).
- Illustrator Mary Grandpre always draws Severus Snape with a beard, despite the fact that he is never described as having facial hair in the books (and was played by clean-shaven Alan Rickman in the movies), in order to emphasize his sinister characteristics.
- The long-dead Salazar Slytherin had no hair on his head, but an impressive Wizard Beard.
- In the Honor Harrington books, the viciously evil Pavel Young cultivates a goatee, partly to hide his double chin.
- In Horns, Ig turns into the classical Big Red Devil to avenge his girlfriend's murder. Part of the package is a goatee.
- In-universe discussion in The Hunger Games: during her first Games, Katniss notices that although many of the boys in the arena are old enough to grow beards, and have been away from razors for a good two or three weeks, not a single one has done so. She suspects that their Capitol stylists have done some sort of procedure on their faces to prevent this, presumably to keep them looking young and innocent.
- And in the film version, Seneca Crane sports a particularly stunning example.
- Simon's beard in I Capture the Castle makes Cassandra compare him to a gargoyle. And Rose makes him shave it off before she agrees to marry him.
- In Death: Isaac McQueen ends up putting on a goatee at the end of New York To Dallas.
- Inheritance Cycle: Galbatorix has a beard in the film adaption. During Brisingr, Eragon seems to assume that Galbatorix has a beard when he mentions him.
- While it can be argued that calling Lan Qiren of Mao Dao Zu Shi evil can be a bit of a stretch, he is very petty, vindictive, rude, obnoxious, small minded and participated in the massacre of the Wen Remnants without showing any remorse. Lan Qiren's most distinctive feature is his beard, which he is inordinately proud of.
- The Moonraker book from the original Bond series by Ian Fleming. All of the Nazis working on the Moonraker missile have mustaches or beards, as a way of 'disguising their identity'.
- Chernomor, Big Bad from the Ruslan and Ludmila has a very long beard. He also has a Bald of Evil.
- In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth has a beard and is a seeker of vengeance who uses his work as a doctor to achieve it (he was cheated because his wife, Hester, thought he was dead and slept with a man). He abuses Dimmesdale, one of his patients, because he was the one who slept with Hester.
- In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, John Dee, an evil Necromancer, has a goatee. Of course, he's a real historical figure who does have a beard in a drawing of him.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events has the man with a beard but no hair, who's apparently so evil that Lemony Snicket won't even tell us his name.
- Count Olaf also is depicted with a goatee in Brett Helquist's illustrations and Jim Carrey's portrayal of the character, though he is never described with one in Snicket's text itself.
- This trope is Older Than Feudalism. In The Talmud Sanhedrin 100, it's written: "[The book of Ben Sira says...] he whose beard is parted will be defeated by none.{because he is constantly scheming, running his fingers through his beard}"
- The Twits starts with a long description of how foul Mr. Twit's beard is, and then goes on to explain that the man himself is just as despicable as his facial hair.
- In Seanan Mc Guire's Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots, the first villain, The Claw, almost manages to look not ridiculous, despite the lobster suit.
Live-Action TV
- 24, Season 8:
Arlo: Dana's been visited twice today by this guy with really questionable facial hair.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
- Grant Ward is clean-shaven for most of season 1, but once it's revealed he's an agent of HYDRA and The Mole, he suddenly starts sporting Perma-Stubble and becomes a lot scruffier. It turns into a full-length Beard of Sorrow when he's imprisoned in season 2, but he goes back to the stubble-look after escaping.
- Later, the Beard of Sorrow Glenn Talbot sports for most of the present-day episodes of Season 5 is trimmed into a goatee shortly before he forces his way into the Confederacy and becomes the Big Bad.
- Babylon Berlin: Inverted. The mob boss Edgar "The Armenian" Kasabian has a beard in the first three seasons, but is clean-shaven in the fourth season, due to facial scarring from a murder attempt. His loss of his beard coincides with him becoming a much crueller and more vicious character.
- Barry: Barry's handler Fuches sports a beard and he's a much more openly malicious character than Barry is. Barry's more brutish accomplice Taylor also sports a beard, and Barry grows one himself in the later seasons has he becomes increasingly villainous.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): Gaius Baltar was known for abusing this trope relentlessly. Made even more notable by his being perennially trapped in the Heel–Face Revolving Door. It got to the point where you could tell how evil he was at the moment by the style of his facial hair.
- Played straight by the title character in Blackadder II. Invoked in Blackadder Goes Forth.
General Melchett: Now then, soldier, do you love your country?
Baldrick: Certainly do, sir.
General Melchett: And do you love your king?
Baldrick: Certainly don't, sir.
General Melchett: And why not?
Baldrick: My mother told me never to trust men with beards, sir. - One of the themes in Breaking Bad is Walter's physical and mental transformation from nerdy teacher to badass drug dealer. First he went bald, ostensibly due to chemotherapy, then he grew a rather sinister goatee which grew darker through the course of Season 3 as Walter grew darker and darker as well. In the last two episodes, where he becomes The Atoner, he grows a full Beard of Sorrow.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Kakistos' goatee.
- In the Charmed episode "It's A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World", the Mirror Universe version of Leo has a goatee.
- The Collector: While meeting the younger Morgan in flashbacks, the Devil takes the form of a goateed Colin Cunningham, his most consistent avatar in the series by far.
- Columbo: In "A Friend In Deed" Los Angeles Police Commissioner Mark Halperin, a dapper man whose beard has a touch of gray, helps a friend cover up his murder of his wife. Then he murders his own wife and tries to frame a nonviolent burglar for both killings.
- On Community, Alternate Universe Abed, deducing that he and his remaining friends inhabited the darkest of the alternate timelines, decided that they should embrace the darkness and become evil. He therefore prepared false goatees for everyone until the men could grow theirs in properly. (Like so many things with Community, it makes more sense in context.)
- Alton Brown, normally clean-shaven, wears a short, stubbly beard for Cutthroat Kitchen. Considering that he's the creator of the Troperrific Good Eats, this is almost certainly intentional, and it does make him look much more sinister, befitting his role as the instigator of all sorts of backstabby shenanigans on the Cutthroat Kitchen set.
- Damages: Rick Messer, who is usually credited as "the Bearded Man" even after his name is revealed, is a corrupt police officer who does favours for villainous rich people and is willing to torture and murder to help out his clients.
- Doctor Who:
- The Master's most iconic appearance, as portrayed by Roger Delgado, is bearded, as is that of Anthony Ainley. Ainley was intentionally trying to look like Delgado. There was substantial disappointment that Eric Roberts did not "sport the goat" as the Master in the 1996 telefilm, although Gordon Tipple - whose short-lived Master at the start of the film may or may not have been Ainley's - did have one. The Master also had a beard as portrayed by Jonathan Pryce in the Comic Relief spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death", and as voiced by Derek Jacobi for the animated "Scream of the Shalka", though fans were sufficiently used to the idea that no one was seriously bothered when Sir Derek Jacobi and John Simm played beardless Masters in 2007 (although the Simm incarnation would eventually grow his own beard in the 2017 season and Sir Jacobi's incarnation prominently sports it on the covers of his Big Finish Doctor Who stories). Simm's eventual beard was even an Actor-Inspired Element where he showed up with it for filming; since his return was about contrasting his traditionally evil Master to Missy's attempted Heel–Face Turn, it was permitted to stand.
- Inverted in that the Brigadier has a mustache, while his evil-universe counterpart is clean-shaven. He sports an Evil Scar-and-Eyepatch-combo instead.
- Later additions in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, has seen too that there is also a straight example, namely in that there also turns out to be an evil version of the Doctor in in the same universe that the evil Brigadier comes from. Said version of the Doctor sports a moustache ( because he's the Leader seen in Fascist Britain's propaganda posters), in contrast to his clean-shaven Prime Universe counterpart.
- And for maximum cross-trope linkage, in the 2007 Children In Need mini-episode "Time Crash", when the Tenth Doctor mentions the Master to the Fifth Doctor, this exchange ensues:
Fifth Doctor: Does he still have that rubbish beard?
Tenth Doctor: No, no beard this time... Well, a wife... - Season 12 features "O", a James Bondesque pastiche codename, who at first is clean shaven and when The Reveal is that he's the Master in disguise, he's still clean shaven. Until he returns for the Grand Finale and he's sporting a quasi-stubble beard.
- Subverted with the War Doctor, played by a bearded John Hurt. While Ten and Eleven certainly act like he's an unforgivable monster, at least at first, they eventually come to regret trying to forget him and accept him as "truly" the Doctor, although he still doesn't count for official numbering. Ironically enough, the actual evil Doctor pseudo-incarnation, the Valeyard from "The Ultimate Foe", is clean-shaven.
- Inverted on Dollhouse; Alpha grows a beard post-Heel–Face Turn.
- Engrenages: Inverted. Herville is clean-shaven when he's introduced as a Pointy-Haired Boss to the homicide squad, but after his Heel–Face Turn, when he's been transferred to a police station in a tough area and become a Father to His Men, he's grown a beard.
- Though he later redeems himself, Captain Bialar Crais of Farscape keeps his beard.
- Game of Thrones:
- Gregor Clegane is an enormous knight and one of the more repugnant characters in Westeros, with a sinister beard to boot. All three actors have one.
- There's also Ser Amory Lorch, another thuggish knight loyal to the Lannisters who has a full beard, Ser Meryn Trant who has a scrubby goatee, and and Janos Slynt with his thick white beard.
- Rorge, a convicted criminal and later Psycho for Hire, has a stubbly beard.
- Weasel is bearded, and considering he is a sadistic Torture Technician assisting The Tickler, he's evil.
- Ramsay Bolton has one very briefly in Season 4. He orders Reek to shave him, to demonstrate to his father Roose Bolton that Reek is loyal.
- Locke has a long, pointed beard very similar to Vargo Hoat's.
- Harald Karstark sports a trimmed beard and is described as ruthless and calculating. Oh, and he sides with Ramsay Bolton.
- A lot of antagonistic wildlings naturally have this, including Orell, Craster, Stiv and Wallen.
- Petyr Baelish is bearded, even though it's not quite the goatee he's described to have in the books. While he's also viewed as a Magnificent Bastard by some, his actions definitely cause suffering for which he shows no remorse at all.
- By the time Stannis Baratheon burns Shireen Baratheon at the stake his Perma-Stubble has become a thick bushy beard.
- Balon Greyjoy has a mild Perma-Stubble case of this. He's an abusive, hypocritical, self-serving asshole who's badly in need of a shave.
- Balon's brother Euron Greyjoy is an insane, sinister pirate with a faintly muttonstache-style beard to match.
- The Ironborn Black Lorren has a white beard, and he's a Fat Bastard who boasts about the rapes he's committed
- Lem Lemoncloak of the Brotherhood Without Banners has a great big beard and leads a massacre of a whole village.
- Shagga of the Stone Crows might be Tyrion's ally, but he's still a murderous savage with a bushy beard to boot.
- Half-brothers Black Walder and Lothar Frey have beards and live up to their family's scummy reputation.
- Kraznys mo Nakloz has a classical van dyke beard and is a pretty nasty slaver.
- Mero the Titan's Bastard has the usual unshaven rogue look, although he's less a rogue and more an opportunistic psychopath.
- Jack Bass is evil enough when he first appears in Gossip Girl's second season. When he returns in season three he's even more evil, and is now sporting a goatee.
- House of the Dragon: Otto Hightower sports a bushy short beard in contrast to Viserys ho has the more heroic Perma-Stubble. He is an Evil Chancellor and the main cause of the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons.
- Henry Danger: The episode "Opposite Universe" has Henry and Charlotte travel to an alternate universe where the personalities of people they know are now flipped. The heroic Captain Man and Schwoz are now evil and sporting beards.
- Ares has a Beard of Evil in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Notably, his Mirror Universe counterpart, Ares, God of Love, is clean-shaven. The evil mirror Hercules, on the other hand, does have a beard.
- Heroes had the evil warlord known only as White Beard.
- Inverted in How I Met Your Mother with Barney's 'origin story' in the episode "The Re-Return". At the start of the flash back he's a wide-eyed, innocent, New-Age Retro Hippie, complete with long hair and a soul-patch. When he becomes the Barney we know from, presented as the 'evil' version, he shaves it off.
- Played straight in an episode of The Jamie Foxx Show in which Foxx's character is accidentally forced to switch places with a criminal look-alike who is physically identical in all ways except for a scrawny beard.
- Kamen Rider Build: Gentoku Himuro has a well groomed, Tony Stark-esque beard to go with his role of a smarmy goverment official. Not only he is very much an outlier as the franchise favors all characters to be cleanly shaven regardless of their alignment, he keeps it after his Heel–Face Turn and gets nicknamed "Beardo".
- On Knight Rider, Michael Knight's Evil Twin, Garthe Knight, sports a particularly evil facial hair.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Pharazôn is an Evil Chancellor with a bushy beard, making him to stand out among the main male characters who sport a Perma-Stubble.
- In Tom's first two appearances, in Lost, he has a beard and is very scary. Then we see him without the beard, and learn that it's fake, and he becomes much less scary.
- In The Middleman's Mirror Universe, every single male character is bearded; most but not all are more evil than their clean-shaven counterparts.
- The Mr. Potato Head Show: A wicked goatee, combined with Bald of Evil and his name, Bully-Boy McPherson, are all that's needed to establish Mr. Potato Head's new supervisor as bad news the moment he's introduced.
- Cardinal Richelieu's mustache and goatee from The Musketeers.
- Not common on Once Upon a Time (2011); the biggest male villains are Rumplestiltskin and Hades, both without beards, but when Jekyll and Hyde are introduced, Hyde is the one with facial hair, though ironically not the only one who's bad. And of course they couldn't carry over Jafar and Dr. Facilier without their beards of evil.
- The Office (US) downplays this with Ryan Howard, who doesn't become 'evil' as much as a 'Drunk with Power smug asshole' upon being promoted to Corporate. However, his spike in arrogant jerkassery is reflected in a corresponding growth of increasingly douchey goatees. Then, as his arc continues, his brilliant ideas start to fall apart and he starts to fall victim to his vices, his facial hair becomes increasingly unkempt to reflect this.
- Red Dwarf: In "Demons and Angels", the most obvious physical difference that Low Lister has with his High and regular counterparts is his filthy, unkempt beard. That and his Eyepatch of Power.
- Stargate SG-1:
- Lampshaded:
- They were in fact evil, or at the very least quite self-centered. Prime universe SG-1 may have cared more about their universe than others, but they at least didn't go looting the others to ensure their own survival at their expense.
- In the first Alternate Universe episode, Teal'c has a Topknot of Evil
- In one Alternate Universe episode that had to be a reference to Star Trek's Mirror Universe, both evil Teal'c and evil Apophis do in fact have goatees. Though Apophis's beard is rather redundant 'cause he's already evil, and oddly enough, Teal'c ends up with similar facial hair a few seasons later.
- In a non-alternate-universe example, recurring villain Ba'al sported a tidy diabolical goatee.
- Lampshaded in Stargate Atlantis episode "Doppelganger": Sheppard inquires about the other Sheppard, "Did I have a goatee?"
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series: The Mirror Universe was the Trope Codifier for using a goatee to signify an Evil Twin, as evil Mr. Spock has a goatee. Ironically, Evil Mr. Spock is far and away the least evil person in the mirror universe.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: An episode where the Defiant was stolen featured who we thought was William Riker before being revealed as Thomas Riker pulling off his heist before removing his sideburns to reveal that he had a goatee, not a beard. However, he wasn't really evil.
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- In the episode "Author, Author", the Doctor wrote a holonovel with barely-disguised copies of his fellow crew members as the villains of the story. As a homage to the Mirror Universe, Tuvok's actor Tim Russ grew out a goatee for the occasion. And in contrast, the Doctor has given Tom Paris' counterpart just a silly looking mustache.
- Dr. Chaotica in the Show Within a Show The Adventures of Captain Proton! is a homage to Ming the Merciless, and naturally sports a goatee.
- Star Trek: Enterprise:
- The franchise did a Shout-Out to itself by giving Mirror Soval a Spock-beard. (Common fashion amongst Mirror Vulcans?) Either way, Mirror!Soval is, like Mirror Spock, one of the least evil characters when he makes an appearance, and goes down fighting against the evil counterparts of more established characters.
- While, for obvious reasons, Mirror T'Pol couldn't have a beard, she did have long flowing locks of hair to distinguish her from her closely-cropped regular counterpart.
- This seems to have been the fashion among commanding Vulcans. Mirror Spock's personal guard didn't have a beard, and neither did either of the Vulcans Mirror T'Pol enlisted to help her retake the ISS Enterprise from Archer. Mirror Tuvok from the Terran Rebellion was also clean-shaven.
- Star Trek: Discovery: Mirror!Sarek, like his son from the Original Series, also has a goatee in the Mirror Universe although he is quite heroic, being a member of the Resistance, along with Voq, who sadly did not have a Klingon goatee.
- Star Trek: Picard: Because there are two major Romulan male characters in this series, Narek has a beard to convey visually to viewers that he's the sinister one.
- Succession:
- The show's Big Bad / Villain Protagonist Logan has a goatee, as does his eldest son whenever he's not clean-shaven.
- Kendall's friend Stewy is an unrepentant douchebag with a neatly trimmed beard.
- Supernatural:
- Crowley, the longest running villain on the show by far, started sporting a beard in Season 7. Although after Season 8, he transitions from being a true villain back towards being a more long-term Anti-Hero.
- Metatron's beard appears to be badass at first, before his true colors are shown and he only proves to be more and more of a slimy, underhanded prick from there.
- John Winchester's natural beard effectively becomes one for Azazel when the latter briefly possesses him. Notably, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan only got to briefly play Azazel this one time, this was the first true glimpse into Azazel's personality on the show.
- The werewolf in "Heart" turns out to be Glen, who has a curly beard which he retains both in his human form and when wolfing out (werewolves in Supernatural only gain animalistic eyes, fangs and teeth with few other physical changes). Bear in mind though, Glen was actually a pretty nice guy in his human state who apparently had no idea what he was or what was happening to him, and the closest thing he had to an unpleasant characteristic was an implicit disapproval of prostitutes based on religiousness.
- In "Hammer of the Gods", Odin has a beard; and he's fine with helping to drag the dinner screaming and begging for mercy onto the chopping block, to say nothing of what a later episode reveals about what an Abusive Parent he was.
- "Taxi Driver" features both a crossroads demon and a dead vampire in Purgatory who have this look.
- In the episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), the vampire has a goatee. In the same episode, Jason (the demon who repairs Abaddon's old vessel) could use a shave in the mechanic meatsuit.
- Malachi, a particularly-savage and barbaric "anarchist" angel, possesses a vessel with a goatee.
- In "Raising Hell", Francis Tumblety, a.k.a. Jack the Ripper, sports a full Van Dyke.
- Nottingham in Witchblade has a scruffy full beard. At the end of Season 1, a clone of Nottingham is introduced who looks exactly the same as him only with a sinister-looking goatee. Sure enough, while Nottingham is morally grey, the clone turns out to be all-out evil.
Music
- Doctor Steel sports a rather impressive cross between a Gendo and a fearsome pointed goatee.
- Hooray for Gooba! has a song titled My Evil Twin Has a Mustache wherein the narrator/singer bemoans the fact that his friends cannot distinguish between himself and his Evil Twin when he blatantly has a mustache. There is also the matter of the puppy-kicking...
- Kunt and the Gang's song Men With Beards (What Are They Hiding) has the singer theorizing all beards are Beards of Evil.
Mythology and Religion
- The Hindu goddess Kali wears a necklace of severed heads. Think of her fashion sense what you may, but the guys who gave head are seen as evil... and sport a goatee. note
Pinball
- Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon (Bally) retains his beard and still is a merciless customer to face.
- In Full Throttle (Heighway Pinball), the player's rival, Francisco Valentino, has both a thin pencil mustache and a narrow beard.
- The two green jinn from Magic Girl (John Popadiuk) have this to add to their air of menace.
- Worn by the Klingons in Data East's Star Trek table.
- Also seen on the Klingons on the "Qapla'" table of Star Trek Pinball.
- The evil genie in Tales of the Arabian Nights (Williams) has one.
- Crush has one in WWF Royal Rumble, as he's playing a Heel.
Professional Wrestling
- "The" Brian Kendrick also sported this upon his Face–Heel Turn after the Cruiserweight Classic.
- Inverted with Brock Lesnar, who returned at SummerSlam 2021. While he does sport a farmer's beard, he has mostly been a face until his second feud with Bobby Lashley made him a tweener. This would later be played straight on the Raw following WrestleMania 39, where he turned heel after attacking and brutalizing Cody Rhodes before their tag team match with the Bloodline.
- Chikara has had several "monsters" but Tursas was the first to have a beard requiring physical restraints.
- During his run as the leader of the Straight Edge Society, CM Punk put on a mighty beard, evocative of a messiah-like figure.
- Daniel Bryan has to be seen to be believed, following his Face–Heel Turn.
- Dean Ambrose betrayed Seth Rollins after winning Raw Tag Team Champions for the second time.
- Following his Face–Heel Turn, the cleanshaven space around Hulk Hogan's iconic blonde fu manchu was filled in by a black five-o'clock shadow.
- Neville sported this in late 2016 and claimed that the fans cheered for him because he was "weak" and that he is now the King of the Cruiserweights.
- Jack Perry, previously the clean-shaven face Jungle Boy, grew a beard after his 2023 heel turn. The beard became thicker as his heel run continued, most notably during his 2024–25 gimmick as "The Scapegoat". Averted when he kept the beard after turning face in fall 2025.
- Prince Nana was known for his meticulously maintained beard, which was often imitated by members of his Embassay. It was lost when he and Joey Ryan put their facial hair on the line against the much wilder beards of baby faces Grizzly Redwood and Necro Butcher in Ring of Honor.
- Roman Reigns after establishing the Bloodline and cementing himself the Tribal Chief and Head of the Table.
- Seth Rollins after betraying Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose later rejoined The Authority.
- A calling card of The Wyatt Family, Erick Rowan has the longest example.
Roleplay
- The Gamer's Alliance: Koschei and Pronin have beards and are very much evil.
Tabletop Games
- In Nomine: The favored physical form of Fleurity, the Demon Prince of Drugs, sports a neat, sharply trimmed goatee.
Toys
- Inspector Gadget: The Dr. Claw action figure has a twisted beard.
Video Games
- Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: The Prowler "La Lupo" has a soul patch and close-cropped goatee, contrasting with Ezio's full beard-and-'stache. Cesare, Rodrigo, and the Engineer also have beards.
- Command & Conquer:
- Kane in the first game complements his evil beard with his complete lack of other hair on his head.
- That crazy adviser of Romanov in Red Alert 2 also has a evil beard. And, like Kane, Yuri lacks hair on the head
- Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 tops even that; it doesn't have a Beard of Evil, it has THE Beard of Evil!
- In The Darkside Detective, the protagonist, Detective McQueen, inevitably has a counterpart in the Dark World, Agent McScream who inevitably looks just like him except for a goatee beard (in classic Mirror Spock-style). (And, for some reason, a receding hairline.) He doesn't appear to be all that evil, though; he stands around making sinister pronouncements, but doesn't actually do very much. (Maybe that's why he only has a receding hairline instead of a full-on Bald of Evil.)
- McQueen's sidekick, Officer Dooley, also has a Dark World counterpart, Chief Ghouley, who sports a handlebar mustache. Ghouley, however, is not evil at all, since he is inverse of the Clueless Deputy that Dooley normally functions as, meaning that he is both extremely good at his job and is very helpful towards McQueen.
- The Obviously Evil Ser Alrik in Dragon Age II sports one.
- At least two of the three (actually four) main villains in Far Cry 3 have beards: Vaas Montenegro, a Latino pirate who is the living "definition of insanity", and Bambi "Buck" Hughes, a crass, loutish Australian mercenary who also rapes tough men.
- The German chess edutainment game "Fritz und Fertig" has King Black◊. Sometimes, Dark Is Evil.
- This seems to be a defining character trait in the God of War series, with all of the main villains (ie. Ares, Zeus, Baldur, Odin, etc.) having massive scruffy beards. Kratos also has a Villainous Goatee, which is pretty damn appropriate. Subverted in God of War (PS4), where Kratos' goatee has grown into a full beard, but he's a more sympathetic figure here.
- Grand Theft Auto V: The three protagonists are career criminals with different levels of evilness (Michael and Franklin lean towards the affable side, while Trevor is more of a Card-Carrying Villain), and you can have all of them sporting a beard by going to a barber shop to change their facial hair.
- The character himself isn't evil and doesn't have a full beard, but one of the many repeated mentions on how Soseki Natsume looks suspicious in The Great Ace Attorney is his moustache.
- Played straight and inverted in Half-Life. Dr. Breen, when you finally see him, has a full beard and is allied with the Combine. Gordon Freeman, the hero, has what is best described as a Goatee of Asskicking.
- Heavy Rain: Rabid Cop Carter Blake has a small beard which contrasts with By-the-Book Cop Norman Jayden's clean-shaven face.
- Referenced in Injustice 2 if you set up a Mirror Match with two Green Arrows.
"Can't tell which one of us is evil."
"I know! We've both got beards." - Jimmy Negatron has a goatee to distinguish himself as the bad guy, which is a blatant reference to Mirror Spock's goatee in the classic Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror.
- Played straight in The Journeyman Project with Graham Jarvis as Elliot Sinclair, the father of time travel.
- During the recasting for its remake, Pegasus Prime and the 3rd game, Legacy of Time, apparently he shaved it to a mustache.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- Luxord, one of thirteen members of the villainous Organization XIII, and that baby-blond goatee of his.
- Master Xehanort, which is Hilarious in Hindsight considering that Leonard Nimoy played him in the English version.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Older and Wiser Wind Waker version of Ganondorf sported an orange beard on charcoal-colored skin, and made it work.
- He retains the beard in his Twilight Princess incarnation.
- In Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon, in its Mechanical Abomination form, sports a beard that is one of its few traits hinting at its human origins.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Ganondorf has a jawline beard similar to the one he had in The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. He even retains it in his Demon Dragon form despite turning into a more reptilian creature.
- The Evil Zombie Pirate LeChuck from the Monkey Island series has a rather impressive beard for being, well, dead, and therefore technically not having hair growth. And this one is actually a source of his evil powers,note as Guybrush discovers in the second game. In case it wasn't clear for anyone that this was an evil beard, in the third game, his beard is composed of fire.
- Paper Perjury
- Anton Chambers is an unscrupulous Corrupt Corporate Executive and one of the few characters in the game with a full beard. He's the closest thing the game has to a main antagonist, although he ends up as the Asshole Victim of the fourth and fifth cases.
- Kelvin Wattson also has a full beard and is rather hostile to Justina and Sophie when they come investigating his mother's death. He turns out to be the murderer, although his behavior is partly because he's overwhelmed with remorse over killing her.
- Pokémon
- Team Rocket Executive Petrel in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver sports a purple goatee.
- Archie, the Team Aqua leader in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has a diabolical goatee.
- Lysandre, the leader of Team Flare in Pokémon X and Y, has a full beard that is spiky like his hair.
- Bitores Mendez, one of the villains of Resident Evil 4, was both bearded and Bald of Evil. In fact, he looked a lot like Grigori Rasputin.
- During Asha's loyalty mission in Saints Row IV, you encounter an evil version of your character who, of course, sports an evil goatee. Even if your character is female.
- In Secret Agent Clank, Clank's Evil Knockoff Klunk is now sporting a goatee.
- Rasputin (yes, again) in Shadow Hearts: Covenant makes sure to retain the beard even after transforming into a horrible demonic sin against nature.
- Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves:
- Don Octavio, a vicious mob boss with an opera motif, sports a thick goatee.
- General Tsao has a Fu Manchu beard, and is a rude, sexist warlord who forcibly wants to marry Panda King's daughter.
- Captain LeFwee, being a ruthless and scheming pirate who executes his own crewmembers for petty reasons, has a Seadog Beard made of feathers.
- Lampshaded in Tales of the Abyss, where a skit involves Anise spinning a tale to Natalia how the Big Bad's beard is a source of his evil powers. Just one source: You don't want to know what his ponytail does. Another skit has Tear, the villain's younger sister, telling about how the villain grew the beard to make himself seem older.
- In Tavern Talk, Quasar's an evil necromancer with a short black beard and mustache, highlighting his smug face.
- Tomb Raider has the amoral archaeologist Pierre DuPont, who sports a goatee. The first Continuity Reboot gives him a Bald of Evil in addition to this.
- The Wizard in Tsioque sports a long beard, with a similarly pointed mustache.
- Quite a few antagonists in the Uncharted series have beards: Atoq Navarro in Drake's Fortune, Rameses in Drake's Deception, Hector Alcázar in A Thief's End, though we later find out that he was Dead All Along, and Asav and Orca in The Lost Legacy.
- Warcraft:
- Inverted in most works: male facial hair is directly proportional to goodness. Although the fairly unpleasant Blood Elves do tend towards goatees of the classic villain variety. It goes with their laugh.
- World of Warcraft: While beards aren't usually indicative of moral alignment, villainous characters that are not humanoid tend to sport some sort of appendices that greatly resemble beards — one clear example is the Sha of Doubt, the physical manifestation of a negative emotion who has white beard-like growths hanging from its face.
Web Animation
- Mars, a minor but memorable villain from Broken Saints features a little goatee, but otherwise sports a Bald of Evil.
- The Devil sports one when he is tempting Jesus in the wilderness with the three temptations in a Caleb and Sophia episode.
- RWBY: Most of the male villains are clean-shaven with the exception of Hazel, who sports a goatee-style chinstrap. Hazel is quiet and calm; he hates fighting and loathes unnecessary killing. However, he relentlessly carries out Salem's will to ensure the destruction of the Huntsmen Academies and the theft of the four Relics the academies guard, no matter how many people might die in the process. He also believes Ozpin is an evil monster who sacrifices the lives of children, and will stop at nothing to ensure Ozpin is killed, whom he blames for the death of his sister. Hazel therefore stands out among the villains for his personal connection to Ozpin, his conflict between his gentle nature and loyalty to Salem's murderous goals when not triggered, and the absolute insanity of his physically destructive rage when triggered.
- In the first episode of Space Goose, the title character discovers that he has an evil doppelganger with a goatee.
- Starters: Mudkip is a Serial Killer who has dismembered hundreds of Pokémon. He is also one of the only characters in the series to have facial hair, sporting a moustache.
Webcomics
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Victor the obvious spy has one.
- What? He's not a spy, he's a plumber! Clearly!
- Darths & Droids:
- Jim, Qui-Gon's player, suspects Sio Bibble (or "Bubble", as he calls him) of being evil due to his beard and position as Amidala's trusted adviser. It's not true, but despite his bit-part in it, Bibble is one of the few campaign details Jim never needs to be reminded of. Having established his firm belief in the Beard Of Evil as a guaranteed indicator of a character's untrustworthiness, Jim refuses to let anyone see his character sheet, claiming Qui-Gon is clean-shaven.
- This is also mentioned in a later comic with Bail Organa.
- Flat out lampshaded in the GM's notes for the campaign that took place in between the first and second movie (based on The Princess Bride). In his notes on Count Rugen, he notes "Has a goatee! Should be fun when others don't believe Jim that he's evil."
- Jim couldn't tell if Darth Vader is a bad guy, because he can't see his facial hair.
- In Dinosaur Comics, everyone has a beard in the mirror universe. And the strip is backwards.
- A Noodle Incident in Girl Genius apparently featured evil extradimensional doppelgangers of Da Boyz who all wore goatees:
Dimo: Oh ya — hyu din' look goot vit a goatee, brodder.
Maxim: Yah? Vell, hyu din' look goot wit two ov dem!
Dimo: Yah, dot vos schtupid. - In Irregular Webcomic!, strip #2470 is a repeat of #2461 in the Mirror Universe, complete with backwards layout and goatees. Unfortunately, the Nazis are the same. (Maybe not.) And the comic links here.
- Invoked, discussed, and Played for Laughs in Jet Dream: This trope features heavily in Cookie Jarr's ''My Jet Dream Romance'' solo story, as a philosophical debate between J.E.T. T.E.E.N. Boy Booster Phil Philpott and "El Teen Gringo del Sur" over the good or evil of facial hair becomes violent!
Phil: I learned enough not to trust men like Trotsky, Castro, and Blackbeard! Men with beards!
El Teen Gringo: But what of Lincoln? Moses? Zeus? You're blinded by your dangerous obsession! Bah! You'll never understand. Taste some Teen Gringo Justice — Fist Style! - In Mac Hall this was inverted here and then played straight here.
- In Narbonic whenever Helen is turned into a man she sprouts a goatee. Apparently it materializes from sheer evil.
- Never Satisfied: The biggest visual difference between Sylas Dubois and his abusive dad? The latter's beard.
- In NIMONA, Anti-Villain Ballister Blackheart has a very classic evil goatee. He was clean shaven as a young knight, and grew it after leaving the Institution, seemingly as a Then Let Me Be Evil affectation. By the end of the comic, it’s been mostly taken over by angst stubble, and by the epilogue it’s become a more heroic looking full beard. Played with in that he was never particularly evil, but was presenting himself as such.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Elan's Evil Twin brother Nale has a blond beard to serve as his distinguishing villainous mark. Exaggerated by the fact that he's had it since he was a baby.
- As Vaarsuvius pointed out after dealing with Kubota, "that mustache did not do him any favors" when trying to determine whether Kubota was to be considered an enemy of the Order.
- Bozzok has one as well, he's even seen maintaing it.
- Lampshaded, but not invoked, in the 2019 calendar. The art is based on magic items, with the "Mirror of Opposition" for February, depicting Roy against an evil doppelganger coming out of the mirror. The double looks exactly like Roy, and Vaarsuvius muses it would be easier to Spot the Imposter if there were some way to distinguish between the good and evil versions, such as a distinctive physical marker in the chin area. Blackwing then suggests a really big zit.
- In Questionable Content, the characters are joking about a series of events leading to the creation of Martin's "Evil Twin." He mentioned the frustration said twin would encounter, given that he's "incapable of growing a decent goatee."
- Rain (2010): Chase Brenton is a vile, creepy jerkass and has a goatee to go with it.
- Runewriters has Jonan of Rusanne, who is somewhere between Token Evil Teammate and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
- Edvard de Santigo from Supernormal Step has a very malicious-looking goatee.
- Invoked by Van Von Hunter when Van drew a goatee on his Evil Twin so that they could be told apart.
Web Original
- Treated as Dead Horse Trope in Evil Overlord List:
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
- Gaia Online has both mocked this and played this straight. (But mostly mocks it)
- On the serious side: Vladmir Von Helson, the arguably most evil character in the story line, had a particularly sinister goatee before he was ashed.
- On the other hand, recent micro updates starring Mr. Wizard parodies Dr. Singh and Timmy have featured several characters with beards of evil (which is either The Virus, or a case of Body Snatchers). However, one of them is a 10 year old boy, the other is a Labtech who grew his beard on the outside of his face mask. And they both seem to be more concerned with getting into Singh's pants than actually doing anything evil.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
- The Mysterious Somebody is a clone of Dark Jedi Joruus C'baoth who engineered an epidemic of insanity to take over the PPC and spent most of the 90s in charge of the organization. While in control, he started a department that acted as a Secret Police force, funded most of the PPC's activites via a factory that produced Mary Sues, and used his mind control abilities to keep people from suspecting him of any wrongdoing. The image of C'baoth used to represent the Mysterious Somebody on the wiki sports a long white beard.
- In the Mirror Universe where the PPC is an organization run by Mary Sues, the counterpart of Makes-Things has a beard.
Web Videos
- Spoofed in the trailer for The Adventures of Captain Bucky and his Space Marshals in Outer Space! where the President of Earth and the "evil Communist Czar" are both played by the same actor, with the latter wearing a thick moustache.
- Pedophile Beards
Western Animation
- Duke Igthorn in Adventures of the Gummi Bears has a mustache and goatee, the latter which he will stroke on occasion. Conversely, his good twin brother Sir Victor has a clean-shaven Lantern Jaw of Justice.
- Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender, along with several other villains, including Long Feng and Combustion Man, who also has Chrome Dome Psi / Bald of Evil.
- Ben 10:
- Vilgax, the series Big Bad, has an iconic tentacle beard and is considered the galaxy's "worst of the worst".
- Clancy has one, shaped like mendibles no less.
- Joseph Chadwick of the Forever Knights gains one in Omniverse.
- When Phil joins the Rooters, he cuts his Beard of Sorrow shorter, and the Rooters aren't exactly moral paragons.
- Played With by the Tetrax of Dimension 23 in Omniverse, who has a fairly awesome-looking beard made of the same crystal the rest of his body is. However, he's more of a Hero Antagonist than a true villain, as he and his allies are ultimately merely trying to retrieve Ben 23's Omnitrix and return it to Azmuth, with Ben 23's less-than-altruistic use of his Omnitrix up to this point and the seemingly-widespread and indiscriminate distrust of aliens on this dimension's Earth seemingly leaving little room for argument.
- Several Birdman (1967) villains have this kind of beard, most notably Number One, the leader of F.E.A.R.. This is useful, since apart from this and a small skull insignia, he looks exactly like all of his henchmen.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command:
- Warp Darkmatter, who is more or less Buzz's evil equivalent, sports a typically roguish goatee.
- Evil Buzz Lightyear from the Alternate Universe.
- Codename: Kids Next Door:
- An episode features this trope with Mirror Universe; the kids are sent into an Alternate Universe via a neighborhood swimming pool, where the KND is feared, evil, and lead by an evil version of Number 4, who wears a goatee. The original Number 4 calls him out on this, claiming that since he — the original — is brave, then the evil one must be a coward.
- Another bearded villain on the show (who appears more frequently) is the candy pirate Stickybeard; as his name implies candy is embedded all over his full beard.
- Vlad Masters from Danny Phantom. Also Skulker and Danny's Evil Counterpart Dark Danny sport one.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In episode "The Really Bad Day" Cosmo turns evil for a day. Watch his fearsome change when... he sprouts a single curly strand from his chin.
- In the Futurama episode "Lesser of Two Evils", Fry assumes that Flexo, a bending unit who looks identical to Bender except for a pointed beard, must be Bender's Evil Twin. He isn't, Bender is the evil one.
Bender: Oh like you didn't see that one coming.
- Gargoyles:
- David Xanatos, the villain well known for his trademark "plan that benefits even when they fail" sports such a beard. He bore more than a passing resemblance to his actor, who played Commander Will Riker and whose beard was notable for another reason. In one dream episode set 40 years in the future, Xanatos has gone all Shadow Dictator on Manhattan. He's still using his Steel Clan robot minions, but they now inexplicably have Riker's beard.
- Macbeth fits the Trope too, if you consider him evil.
- The Duke from Gawayn sports one of these.
- Lampshaded and played straight with Cesar Salazar in Generator Rex after a six month Time Skip. Then zigzagged when he shaves it off and stops acting antagonistic but is still on the bad guy's side, and then it's revealed that he was on their side all along.
- Hazbin Hotel: A variant. Adam's got an unshaven chin that appears to be an extremely poor attempt at a goatee, making him look even more like the slovenly Psychopathic Manchild he is.
- Keldor from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002). While he still had a face, he sported a sleek black goatee.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: Both Dai Gui and Hsi Wu respectively have a goatee-like appendange on their chin. Daolon Wong has a white goatee, as does Tarakudo has a real goatee to complement his classical samurai mask appearance.
- The Villain on The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3. Discussed:
Timmy: I think he should have a mustache. Mustaches are evil.
Cosmo: Not everybody who has a mustache is evil?!
Wanda: Your momma has a mustache!
Cosmo: You should give him a mustache. - Parodied on an episode of Kaeloo, where Kaeloo gives Quack Quack (who is playing the antagonist) a fake beard to make himself look evil.
- Ivanhoe: The King's Knight features Prince John with such as beard as well as the titular dowry hunter and regent loyalist in "The Bearded One."
- King of the Hill has the Eli Selwick with a beard and bald head combination that can make the likes of Anton LaVey and Darth Bandon proud, Eli's type of evil on the other hand is promoting misogyny to make other men as hateful as himself, while his bald and beard combination can resemble the former two, his appearance is based more off the infamous manosphere influencer known as Andrew Tate.
- Dr. XXX of The Mad Doctor cartoon short in addition to Bald of Evil for his sinister appearance.
- Abraham Kane, the Big Bad in Motorcity, as well as Bald of Evil.
- The Owl House: Philip Wittebane was clean shaven when he arrived on the Boiling Isles but over time grew a big bushy beard. He permanently shaved the beard off when he adopted his Belos persona, which makes this an interesting example where the beard of evil is actually plot-relevant, as it prevents Luz and Lilith from recognizing that Philip is a young Belos when they meet him in the past.
- Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension has Alternate Doofenshmirtz who sports an Eviler than Thou goatee. Hilariously commented upon between Jeff Swampy Marsh and Dan Povenmire (the voice of Heinz Doofenshmirtz) during the comic-con 2011 Phineas and Ferb panel, pointing out this particular trope... and the fact that Dan sports a goatee as well.
- HIM from The Powerpuff Girls has a goatee and is considered the most evil of the Rogues Gallery.
- Aku the SHAPESHIFTING MASTER OF DARKNESS from Samurai Jack has a goatee, made of fire.
- The Affably Evil Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons. Invoked in another episode when Mr Burns' girlfriend leaves him for her ex, Snake. Burns protests that he's already positively evil - what does he have to do, grow a devil beard?
- The Smurfs (1981):
- Gargamel in attempts to grow his own Beard of Evil in his admiration of evil wizards with beards by using magical hair growth tonic, but his beard ends up growing up so long that it reaches to the Smurf Village.
- Gargamel did sport a fake Beard of Evil when he was masquerading as the dream date wizard Harlequin in order to get his hands on Hogatha's "magic whistle," which was really her bird call. However, during a kiss, the fake beard attaches itself to Hogatha's face, revealing her dream date to be Gargamel, yet Hogatha doesn't notice it until after Gargamel is gone when she looks at herself in the mirror and says, "I have charm, I have beauty, I have a beard... A BEARD?!?"
- Gargamel's godfather Lord Balthazar has the Chin Spike of Evil.
- And there's Matthew McCreep from The Smurfs and the Magic Flute.
- Pastiched on South Park: in their mirror universe, everyone has a goatee, including the "Evil" Cartman, who, as the opposite of the "real world" Cartman, is polite, helpful, and a genuinely good person. The unbearded Cartman rips off his beard (as a unit...) after he finds out that Stan and Kyle want to send him to the alternative universe and keep the "evil Cartman."
- Parodied with Chad Ghostal, Space Ghost's Evil Twin brother on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. His facial hair is different every time he's on screen.
- Star Trek: Prodigy upholds the Trek tradition in the episode "Cracked Mirror" when Captain Chakotay and some of the Protostar crew end up in the Mirror Universe they meet Chakotay's evil counterpart who is sporting a goatee and all too happy to torture them with a device called "The Agoniser". After security officer in training Murf knocks Mirror Chakotay out prime timeline Chakotay swaps clothes with his counterpart and applies a greased on beard to pose as his counterpart. Murf also paints one on too but as deceptively cute, generally unitelligible pink-and-purple humanoid-Blob Monster combo the size of a three year old it is pointed out that wasn't really necessary.
- Superman: The Animated Series: Jax-Ur, being based on General Zod.
- Tangled: The Series: Played with in the season 3 premiere. When Varian first appears in the episode and reveals he has helped the Saporians take over Corona, he has a goatee. He loses it as soon as he is redeemed. Subverted in that it is just drawn on and Lance wipes it off with his thumb.
- Double Subverted by Grune of ThunderCats (2011) first appearing as a heroic prodigal Four-Star Badass of Catfolk Proud Warrior Race the Thunderians, only to rapidly reveal himself as a Turncoat and Collaborateur with Big Bad Mumm-Ra and his allies the Lizards.
- An episode of The Tick involves the mystery of a mobile mustache super-weapon. When asked by Arthur why the government brought such a horror into the world, the only response he got was:
Jim Rage: You don't understand, man... The Russians were already working on a beard... ''We had a facial hair gap!''
- Transformers:
- Unicron the giant, planet-eating, robotic, chaos god had a mustache and goatee. He also gives one to his minion Scourge, along with a lovely set of pink fingernails.
- The evil Junkion Detritus has a beard. Although facial hair is a common feature among Junkions, this sets him apart from his good-natured Palette Swap, the Autobot Hound, who lacks one.
- The Venture Bros.:
- This is played with through the character of Dr. Orpheus, a good guy who looks evil (the eponymous brothers describe him as looking like "a Dracula"). The Monarch and Dr. Venture, on the other hand, are both rather unsavory characters with beards.
- Lampshaded when Hank puts on a fake goatee and 21 comments that he looks like the "Mirror Mirror version of Hank" in "Showdown at Cremation Creek Part 1".
- Wakfu:
- Qilby's long, goatee-like beard turns black and grow longer when he reveals himself to be Evil All Along and transforms into his One-Winged Angel form.
- Black Bump of the Brotherhood of the Forgotten has rather thick one under his Cool Helmet.