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Evil Gloating

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"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

Gloating. Monologuing. It's what villains do. Maybe they "set up us the bomb" and are calling to rub it in and take credit. Perhaps they've just snatched the MacGuffin from the hero's very hands and insist on staying just out of reach to taunt. Maybe the villain finally has the hero at his mercy and just has to taunt him one last time before shooting him.

Or perhaps this is the place where they finally have a chance to get all the reasons they despise the hero personally off their chest. Any mistakes the hero makes are also fair game for villainous gloating. At any rate, while this is a villainous staple on par with a hero and In the Name of the Moon, it's still one of the things the Evil Overlord List strenuously warns against, as any villain caught gloating is sure to be either killed or foiled, as in the end his gloating always ends up giving the hero that little bit of extra time or information that helps him counter the villain's Evil Plan. In their defense, it's really fun and gives you that warm evil feeling in the black pit of your soul when you utterly grind your opponent's face into the dirt. Unfortunately, most villains fail to grind hard enough. But how could anyone appreciate the brilliance of your scheme unless you explained it to them?

Another way this could easily backfire is that it goes hand in hand with Engineered Public Confession. A savvy hero can use it as an easy way to reveal the Chessmaster or Manipulative Bastard to the world and bring their plan crumbling around them.

This also goes hand in hand with Evil Plan, where it's practically required to give the hero and viewer exposition of just what the heck is happening. Expect the villain to let out an Evil Laugh and start to Trash Talk about how the hero(es) are powerless to stop them. It can greatly surprise them when the hero interrupts with Get It Over With.

Heroes tend to not gloat, which is why villains facing a Sword over Head will usually either be allowed to live or killed without (much) fanfare: compare After-Action Villain Analysis. Instead, heroes expect the villain to do this, so there may be a Have You Come to Gloat? moment.

This is one of the most well mocked villain cliches, but is very much an Undead Horse Trope. For one thing it gives a villainous character a great chance to act and flesh out their character a little more. For another, it's both Truth in Television and a very appropriate Fatal Flaw for the prideful, narcissistic characters who often become villains.

If they've just finished owning The Hero, this may have been preceded by Ominous Adversarial Amusement and is sure to become "The Reason You Suck" Speech, but don't worry, a Thwarted Coup de Grâce is coming up. If they are making their speech only for their opponent to use it as an advantage, that person was most likely Caught Monologuing, and might even be Killed Mid-Sentence. May overlap with Trash Talk. See also Villain Ball and Did You Actually Believe...? Has some similarities to the Motive Rant.

Roger Ebert coined the Trope as "The Talking Killer" in his book Little Movie Glossary.

Evil Gloating Subtropes aka The Index Of Monologuing-Related Tropes You'll Read Soon Enough

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • A GEICO commercial has a villain capture a hero, strap him into a death machine, promise a swift demise... and start a detailed PowerPoint presentation on his plan, causing the hero to groan and roll his eyes. The villain gets to phase 20 and pauses to use the restroom.

    Animation 

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Baccano! 1934 — Alice in Jails, Ladd goes on a brief monologue about how stupid it is when people indulge in this trope... While indulging in this trope, which he is both thoroughly aware of and rather amused by.
    Ladd: And therefore, as such, in light of that revelation, I'll say that one is enough, and since that one is of course myself, I want you all to shut up. You're boring. Swallow those words and take them to the afterlife yourself if you want them delivered there so damn much.
  • Birdy the Mighty: Averted hilariously in episode 5 of Decode's first season, in which Birdy punches Kinzel's mecha, the Amubis 777 (yes, like Anubis) in the middle of his explanation of why it is so awesome and will own her (to which he responds, "You oughta listen until I'm finished!").
  • Black Lagoon features a Nazi bursting into a room occupied by the series' resident Ax-Crazy Action Girl Revy. The Nazi then starts yammering on at length about his Luger and how he's the only one capable of "taming it". What he fails to notice as he flaps his trap is Revy calmly reloading in front of him. By the time he's ready to fire, Revy shoots him in the gut.
    Revy: [BANG] Shut the fuck up. Can't you see I wasn't even listening? I mean were ya tryin' to sell me the damn gun or what?
  • Bleach:
    • In both the anime and manga versions, the 9th Espada, Aaroniero Arruruerie, fights Rukia, breaks her sword, and skewers her with his trident. He pulls her closer so that he can gloat effectively. This is when Rukia pulls out her third Shikai which reforms her sword through Aaroniero's head instantly killing him. Sure, Rukia's sword reforming and her subsequent rescuing are major Deus ex Machinas, but in Bleach, readers lost count long ago anyway. And that's not even going into Sosuke Aizen, who just loves to listen to himself talk, going by the fact that he has on a few occasions taken the time to fill the good guys in on every little detail regarding exactly how bad he's screwed them over. During his final battle with Aizen in the Deicide arc, it got so bad that Ichigo got sick of it and flat out stated as such while interrupting one of the latter's monologues. In the Fullbring arc, Giriko breaks into this when Drunk with Power...which gets him killed by Kenpachi.
    • In Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World, Tokinada Lampshades that it's incredibly stupid to explain your Evil Plans aloud given anyone could be listening in, but also comments he just can't stop himself, because he enjoys seeing his victims' baffled faces as he explains his rather circuitous schemes.
  • While the manga and anime adaption of Chrono Crusade disagree on quite a few things, there's one thing on which they agree: Aion loves to gloat.
  • Code Geass: Although he's an Anti-Hero, Lelouch is very fond of doing this to a poor hapless victim to his Compelling Voice before using it. In R2 C.C. lampshades it which Lelouch dismisses; he apparently can't pass on an opportunity to be dramatic.
  • Death Note:
    • "Sayonara, Raye Penber."
    • "I am Kira." Just so he could see the look on Naomi Misora's face moments before his Artifact of Doom kicked in.
    • Light also gloats evilly at the end of the penultimate episode. While it wouldn't have changed the outcome had he not done so, it was pretty reckless of him, and he only did it as a matter of pride to show how confident he was that he had successfully tied up all remaining loose ends.
    • The look on his face when L dies. Hell, in the anime, Light went so far as to literally dance on his grave while gloating about his victory.
    • And then in the manga Light gloats one last time when he thinks Ryuk is writing his enemies' names down. It backfires badly.
  • Digimon Adventure: In "The Crest of Sincerity", Cockatrimon takes time after intercepting Mimi, Sora, Biyomon and Palmon to gloat about how he's captured the other kids and petrified the other Digimon, and about how he's going to capture them too. This gives the heroes the time to come to grips with the situation, costing him the element of surprise and, when he finally gets around to attacking, allowing them to dodge his Eye Beams and flee. If he'd attacked as soon as he saw them he might have won then and there, but...
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Frieza really likes to play with his food when he fights, and always takes the time to rub in his enemies' faces how puny and weak they are compared to him. The most notable example is in Resurrection 'F', when after Goku is shot In the Back by Frieza's second-in-command Sorbet, Frieza decides to torture Goku slowly and painfully while rubbing in his face how stupid he was to show him mercy a second time. His gloating leads right to his downfall when, in an attempt to twist the knife even further, he tries to goad Vegeta into killing Goku for him by offering him a high-ranking position in his army; Vegeta refuses, saves Goku, and beats Frieza to a pulp.
    • Cell does this a grand total of three times:
      • In his first form, Cell takes the time to tell a wounded Piccolo about his origins and goals after attempting to absorb him. It bites him in the ass when Piccolo reveals he was faking the injury to get him to talk and promptly regenerates his arm. Which Cell should have known Piccolo could do, since he has the exact same power, inherited from Piccolo.
      • After successfully manipulating Vegeta into helping him absorb Android 18 and becoming perfect, he takes the time while curb-stomping Vegeta to rub it in his face, mockingly thanking him for doing so and outright stating that he never would have been able to reach his perfect form were it not for Vegeta's arrogance and stupidity.
      • After returning from his near death experience and killing Trunks, he spends several minutes detailing how he returned, acquired Instant Transmission, and despite Goku's attempt to stop him, is stronger than ever. To rub more salt in the wound, he rubs in the Z-Fighters' faces that Goku sacrificed himself for nothing and mockingly thanks him.
    • Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might: Turles gloated a lot at first. He gets angrier as the movie progresses and more or less drops this by the final showdown.
    • Dragon Ball Super: During the Future Trunks Saga, Zamasu seizes virtually every opportunity to go off on A God Am I speeches and Motive Rants, constantly taking the time to remind Goku and the Z-Fighters of his belief that he's a "true God" and how there's nothing they can do to stop him. Eventually, he admits that he doesn't actually care if anyone listens to his gloating; he does it simply to hear himself talk. By the time Future Zamasu and Goku Black fuse together and the Merged Zamasu starts to go off on another Motive Rant, Vegito is sick of listening to the gloating and cuts him off with a punch to the face.
  • Dream Eater Merry: Hercules loves to gloat since he's overly dramatic. It helps that he's strong enough to tank enemy attacks while barely breaking his train of thought. John uses this against him in the big fight by baiting Hercules into gloating, then ending the daydream since it was in John's yard, to throw Hercules off mid-gloat.
  • The Familiar of Zero: In the first season, Cromwell, the villain behind it all, starts to gloat about how he'll never be defeated as long as he has the ring. Before he can finish the sentence, Guiche sneaks up behind him and hits him on the head with a big stick. "So, who is this guy?"
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: This is a pretty common behavior of the homunculi, due to their massive arrogance.
    • Envy absolutely loves using this to make people squirm. Unfortunately for him, he admits to killing Hughes in front of Roy Mustang of all people. Not terribly hard to guess what happened after that.
    • Greed and Lust both indulge in Explaining Your Power to the Enemy (the latter because she didn't plan to leave them alive anyway), Wrath often monologues about humans being weak, and Pride is a Smug Snake because of his habit of threatening people and bragging about his superiority. Unlike most examples of Explaining Your Power to the Enemy, they didn't really say anything that could make the good guys pick up on a weakness. They had to figure that stuff out on their own.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, Ryoko Asakura does this when she attempts to kill Kyon so she can watch Haruhi's reactions. She was literally a second away from killing Kyon when Yuki saved him. If Ryoko hadn't taken the time to explain why she wanted Kyon dead, she presumably could have killed him before Yuki even arrived.
  • In Hellsing, Zorin Blitz really likes doing this. However, it proves to be her undoing when she calls Pip Bernadotte an 'insect' and mocks him and the Wild Geese, while a blind and mutilated Seras is crying over his body. Understandably, Seras doesn't take it very well. To the extent that she paints the walls with Zorin's head.
  • Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: After thinking he won, Kaldus Coendera monologues to Bard how he'll be the father of the future king and will be able to tax the rest of the Shigwentsa as much as he wants, while blaming Tersia family for Aidra's death, so Bard should join him while he can. Bard calmly tells that his imposter prince doesn't have the one identifying trait required, and Kaldus realizes he just completely screwed up.
  • Humanity Has Declined: Relentlessly parodied: the skinless chickens gloat about their Evil Plan to the heroine, but she's too busy adjusting the subtitles to pay attention.
  • Inuyasha: Hakudoshi's demise is a direct result of this trope. While fighting Inuyasha's group, he decides to openly brag to them about how he plans to betray Naraku. Unfortunately for him, Naraku overhears the whole thing and promptly recalls the Saimyosho and disables Hakudoshi's barrier, leaving Hakudoshi to his fate of being sucked into Miroku's Wind Tunnel.
  • Jojos Bizarre Adventure: Evil characters like to gloat when they are in a position of power.
    • DIO describes being fully synchronized to Jonathan's body and regaining his full strength as "the greatest high" and sees that he almost feels like singing.
    • Kars fully enjoys describing the sun and his position as the strongest being on earth after using the Stone Mask on himself.
    • Kira gloats about how he has luck on his side, saying his full name in public. Then Josuke surprises him...
    • More down-to-earth than most, but Pucci, after killing everyone but Emporio and cornering him in Green Dolphin Street Prison, still takes the time to expose his motivation and how his plan works to the helpless Emporio.
    • Valentine confidently dares Johnny to use his last Steel Ball and nails, knowing that he cannot use the Super Spin without a horse.
  • K: The Colorless King does this in the murder video, one of the many indicators that the case isn't as simple as it looks and that Shiro, the kid in the video committing the crime, might not be the real killer.
    Shiro: Think about it. Why would I commit a crime and then purposefully identify myself in the video?
    Kuroh: Because you're evil and you want everyone to know it.
    Shiro: If that's true, then I must be a pretty dumb villain.
  • In Karakurizoushi Ayatsuri Sakon, the villain of the Noh Arc just had to explain the entire plot.
  • Kill la Kill: Ragyo Kiryuin does this every time she's near victory, constantly taking the time to remind her adversaries of how worthless and incompetent they are compared to her. Unfortunately for her, Ryuko and Satsuki know how to take advantage of this.
  • In the Liar Game, everyone does this after they believe they have successfully tricked their opponents, particularly if it was the protagonists Nao and Akiyama. However they are usually Out-Gambitted seconds later in a humiliating defeat.
  • Lyrical Nanoha: In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Quattro, Smug Snake that she is, does some big time gloating as she forces the main character to fight against her daughter. In retrospect, this probably wasn't a very good idea. She probably got this from Jail himself, since he did gloat about the power of his Combat Cyborg and Gadget Drone technology. In Jail's case it is justified, as he has already proven the might of his creations by successfully destroying Riot Force 6 HQ and crippling the TSAB Ground Forces HQ and simply felt rubbing his victory to everyone's faces, topping it off with an Evil Laugh.
    Jail: Mid-Childa Ground TSAB members, did you like it?
  • In Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, the main character gloats every time he beats an enemy — often accompanied by ironic torture.
  • Marvel Future Avengers: When it looks like her team of Avengers are about to be executed. Captain Marvel asks Leader what the "Emerald Rain Project" is. In his hubris, Leader is more than happy to tell her.
  • Moriarty the Patriot's version of Milverton is absolutely insufferable explaining things. He spends pages rubbing in Sherlock and William's faces that he believes he has outwitted them (he hasn't). For whatever reason, even with their guns pointed at him, they simply let him keep talking.
  • In My-Otome, when Tomoe confronts Arika after acquiring her new battle suit, she wastes no time bragging about her involvement in Miya's disappearance, Erstin's leg injury, and Arika's costume damage right before she and three of her companions attack. However, she was only supposed to capture Mashiro and get back to base as quickly as possible to avoid drawing attention.
  • Naruto:
    • Despite being a very intelligent and shrewd man, Kabuto Yakushi has a terrible habit of gloating before fallen enemies when he thinks (and usually does) he has the upper hand in a battle.
      • A good example is when he fought Tsunade in order to "convince" her to heal Orochimaru's soulless arms. He began kicking her while she was in her hemophobia-trauma-shock and taunting her for "bringing shame to the name of Sannin. Which Orochimaru has brought glory and power to!" (or something along those lines).
      • He also seems to do this whenever he and Naruto manage to meet up in battle. Since Naruto has a short fuse on anything involving Sasuke, it's not even a challenge to get him riled up by Kabuto's taunts.
    • Hidan is very good at this, which greatly annoys his partner Kakuzu.
    • Madara Uchiha. The majority of what comes out of his mouth is this constantly brags about how superior he is to everyone else.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • Chao does this to Negi's friends after sending them a week into the future when she'd already won the battle by sticking a note gloating about her victory on the side of Eva's resort.
    • Evangeline is also fond of evil gloating, especially when she isn't doing anything evil. She probably wants to remind everyone she most definitely has not gone soft.
  • One Piece: The villains love this trope. Played with in that their gloating usually doesn't bring about their fall, Luffy's endless willpower does... except when it doesn't.
  • Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions: Grings Kodai, the Big Bad, is shown to have a massive ego, so it's only natural that once he thinks he's won by absorbing the Time Ripple, he proceeds to give a Nothing Can Stop Me Now speech, believing he's won and there's nothing Ash can do to stop him now. Then time starts reversing and he discovers that not only was the Time Ripple he just absorbed an illusion created by Zoroark but that Karl, a reporter traveling with Ash's group, has caught his entire Evil Gloating session on tape. Cue start of Humiliation Conga ending with that same footage airing on the TV network that ''HE owned''.
  • Sherlock Hound: Moriarty mockingly bids a goodbye to Lestrade every time he's close to catching him.
  • Sword Art Online:
    • During the Fairy Dance arc, Sugou brags to Asuna about his belief that Kirito is too scared to enter ALO to save her in an effort to demoralize her. It backfires; Asuna knows that Kirito is more than strong enough to enter ALO if there's any chance of saving her, and knowing that he's still alive helps her Heroic Resolve.
    • Sugou does it a second time after Kirito defeats him in ALO and proceeds to attack him in real life in revenge. When Kirito tells him he's finished and should just turn himself in, Sugou smugly brushes him off, stating that countless organizations would want his work and shelter him from the law. After Kirito overpowers him and leaves him unconscious in the parking lot, Sugou's gloating in that regard is proven wrong; he's arrested and incarcerated for his crimes.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, during their fight, Jake taunts Barnaby that he has a secondary power, which was unheard of. He doesn't reveal anything more than that, but had he not chosen to gloat, Kotetsu wouldn't have figured out WHAT that power was.
  • Umineko: When They Cry: One example from the Banquet of the Golden Witch, Beatrice: "And for you, just as expected, it's 'tears please,' and you're down!! I~diot, what a truly simple person!!" It's not a good idea to make the person you're trying to get to sign something feel like crap, but it turns out that it was done on purpose as Beatrice is trying to lose and does this to avoid a Springtime for Hitler.

    Comic Books 
  • All Fall Down: AIQ Squared lays out his entire scheme to the confused and outraged IQ Squared.
  • Astro City: In "Pastoral", Team Carnivore tells Roustabout that their bosses will take him apart to figure out how their experiments worked on him.
  • Atomic Robo: Despite having spent most of his scenes in the story complaining about being in a hurry to complete his scheme, Edison still spends three pages monologuing to the captive Robo about what he's doing, which gives Tesla time to track them down and turn the tables.
  • Batman: Endgame: The Joker whipping out his phone and showing a captured Batman footage of the one way to cure the city of poisoning, a reservoir of Dionesium, as the Bat chokes on poison gas...is the only reason he loses. Because the Batman choking is Dick Grayson, and Bruce Wayne's already on his way there.
  • In the Dastardly & Muttley story "Truce or Consequences" (Gold Key Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #10), Dick Dastardly lures Yankee Doodle Pigeon over to the enemies' side during a 24-hour truce, hypnotizes him, and makes him pose for pictures depicting him as a traitor. When Yankee Doodle comes to and realizes what has happened (with a Kneel Before Zod moment between Yankee Doodle and Dastardly after the following):
    Yankee Doodle Pigeon: You cad! I accuse you of violation of the truce!
    Dastardly: [smugly] So? Sue me! In just thirty seconds, the truce will be over and you will be A.W.O.L.! What do you suppose they'll think of that?
  • Diabolik: Sometimes happens, usually done by the title character but sometimes by Ginko. They do it after the plan has been completed, with Diabolik doing it from safe distance.
  • Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom loves gloating. Fantastic Four #258 provides a particularly glorious example:
    Dr. Doom: No one rivals Doom! NO ONE! Doom is supreme! There is no power on Earth, no intellect in all creation to equal mine!!
  • Irredeemable: Charybdis reveals he's had a Power-Up and starts kicking Plutonian's butt, saying that as Plutonian was Nigh-Invulnerable he'd never learned to fight properly. Plutonian then reveals why he turned evil in the first place.
    Plutonian: And do you know why I just told you all that? So you'd stop lecturing me about sucker punches! (sucker punches Charybdis)
  • Justice League of America:
    • In the pages of JLA (1997), the Key rants (basically to no one, since only his nonsentient robots are around to hear him) for about a page about how brilliant he's made himself through the use of brain-altering chemicals, and how it's allowed him to finally beat the JLA. It ends with this aside:
      The Key: Oh, and make a note of an interesting side effect of my expanding consciousness. I can't stop talking to myself.
    • Justice League: Generation Lost: When Max has Jaime captured he spends a lot of time waxing about his plan, how everything is going according to it, and calling Jaime stereotypical Latin nicknames like Hombre.
  • Lucky Luke: The Big Bad in the album about oil in Oklahoma rants that, because Lucky Luke missed him with the last bullet, he is going to kill him now. If he hadn't done it, he could've succeeded.
  • Mega Man (Archie Comics): Defied in issue 30. Bubble Man nearly starts a smug rant towards Mega Man and his allies but gets shut up by an annoyed Metal Man.
    Metal Man: Do. Not. Tell. Them. ANYTHING.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW):
    • In "The Return of Queen Chrysalis", as Chrysalis begins to describe what will happen should the Mane Six miss the deadline, a fillynapped Scootaloo blurts out that she's about to reveal her evil plan to the heroines. Annoyed at the interruption, Chrysalis cuts off communication.
    • In "Night of the Living Apples" Twilight, after the main six are captured, asks Bad Apple what he intends to do. He answers that he plans to gloat.
      Twilight Sparkle: What are you going to do?
      Bad Apple: Gloat! There will be much gloating!
    • In "Ponies of Dark Water", Twilight's flowchart for taking over Equestria has, as its penultimate step, "GLOAT!" in big bold letters. She duly indulges in this at the end of the comic, boasting about her genius, how she predicted everything that happened and how none of the other characters have a chance to stop her... right before she falls for the old bucket-over-the-door trick and gets the evil washed out of her.
  • Subverted in the Paperinik New Adventures story "Might and Power": Morgan Fairfax is about to illustrate the plan to Paperinik to show off his genius, but Grrodon cuts him off because "I know it perfectly, my soldiers don't care about it, and PK will soon be too absent to appreciate your genius!"
  • The Simpsons: It's given a Lampshade Hanging in one of the Radioactive Man comics, when the hero turns evil and insane after a brush with death. As he's beating up his fellow heroes, he rants that now he gets why villains always start gloating about their plans: Because it's fun.
  • Superman:
    • Smallville Season 11. Lex Luthor could have learned all of Superman's secrets by merely keeping his mouth shut and letting his equipment do its thing after secretly dosing Supes with radiation that allows his satellites to track his every move. But as soon as the satellite comes on line, Lex demonstrates it to Superman, in order to gloat about how screwed he is. And based on a comment he makes later in regards to increased Superman sightings, at the time Lex didn't even consider that Superman had a Secret Identity!
    • Who Took the Super out of Superman?: As soon as he engages Superman, Solarman can't help but gloating about his sunlight-collector suit giving him power enough to beat Superman and becoming the biggest criminal around. And then he gloats over how much of a rush is getting by beating Superman around, not realizing Kal-El is using his own life energy to overload his powered costume.
      Superman: "The longer this clown talks, the less likely he'll be to use the energy he wastes boasting against me!"
    • In Superman: Brainiac, the titular villain captures Superman and then lays out his entire scheme: going to Earth, stealing one city and destroying the planet by turning the Sun into a super nova.
      Brainiac: I will be everything there has ever been, Kryptonian. I will be evolved into perfection.
    • In Who is Superwoman?, Supergirl has just unmasked the titular villain and demands answers. Superwoman isn't dumb enough to confess why or on whose orders she murdered Agent Liberty, but she still gloats about killing Supergirl and then framing her for the crime. Supergirl proceeds to beat Superwoman to the ground.
      Superwoman: Now that you're here on Earth someone else can play the role of Agent Liberty's Kryptonian murderer.
      Supergirl: But the hard drive image—
      Superwoman: Was easily dealt with, along with records of its existence. And with the good Inspector counting feathers on his wings in Heaven no one will be able to point the finger at me. I'll make sure that you are the one who's blamed. Unfortunately for you, you won't be able to tell them otherwise as you'll have suffered a "mysterious disappearance".
    • In For the Man Who Has Everything, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman go in the Fortress of Solitude and stumble upon a comatose Superman. Instead of attacking while they're distracted and with their backs turned, Mongul greets them, introduces himself, explains what he has done to Superman, and smugly declares he'll take over the world after killing them one after the other.
    • At the end of Red Daughter of Krypton, Worldkiller-1 boasts that Supergirl's heroic sacrifice has failed to destroy him, and now that she's dying she can't stop him from taking over her cousin's body. And then he dumps her body in the Sun... which is the worst possible way to dispose of a Kryptonian.
      Worldkiller-1: A noble sacrifice, but in the end, you accomplish nothing. I touched your mind. I glimpsed your memories. I saw your cousin, Kal-El. Superman. He will serve my mission just as well... and he won't have a Red Ring to stop me.
    • Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: When he finally appears, Mr. Mxyzptlk gloats about killing Superman and proceeds to chase after him and Lois... instead of merely wishing Superman out of existence.
      Mr. Mxyzptlk: "Now, two thousand years later, I'm bored again. I need a change. Starting with your death, I shall spend the next two millennia being evil! After that, who knows? Perhaps I'll try being guilty for a while. Did you honestly believe a fifth-dimensional sorcerer would resemble a funny little man in a derby hat? Would you like to see how I really look?"
    • In The Great Darkness Saga, Darkseid and his Servants are inclined to ceaselessly declare the inevitability of his eventual triumph.
      Darkseid: "When I am done, everything that lives shall live only if it is as I wish it to be."
    • In Crucible, Roho loves gloating over his inevitable victory before running away.
      Roho: I will take my wounded and cede this battle. But it is only one in a greater war. One you and Crucible cannot win.
    • In The Great Phantom Peril, Faora's calculated and brutal poking of Superman's pressure points leaves his body paralyzed, but instead of striking the Coup de Grâce she drags Superman around while going on about how great of a martial artist she is and how skillfully she manipulated gullible Mr. Porter into releasing her. By the time that she finally decides to give the killing blow, Superman's paralysis has worn off.
      Faora: A quick puff, Superman— So I can keep you just where I want you on a cushion of Super-Breath as I tell you about Dyr-Ynn — the dreaded "Phantom Touch of Death"! All it takes is a precise force applied to a secret pinpoint spot on your body — and zip! You're dead!
      Superman: [thinking] Glad the braggart's taking time to explain all this! The effects of her last blow are wearing off—!
    • Two for the Death of One: Syrene claims the massive sorcerous power of the Runestone of Merlin, and instead of destroying her enemy Lord Satanis at once, she starts gloating about killing him slowly and painfully while casting low-level spells to play with him. Before she can drop a meteor swarm on his head Satanis has figured out he can survive if he takes over Superman's invulnerable body.
      Syrene: It is over! The power filtering through Superman's body has killed him while making me the greatest sorcerer who has ever lived. And now, my dear husband, to deal with you! My father, Ambra, possessed the fabled Runestone created by Merlin, but you killed him to take the Stone as yours. But before you could claim it and before he died, he sent the Gem hurling into the past. Well, now I have reclaimed my family heritage. The Stone and its powers are mine! And with it I shall kill the man who slew my father!
    • Last Daughter of Krypton: At the beginning of the final battle, Reign stands aside and gloats while her Worldkillers gang up on Supergirl, instead of joining her soldiers in dogpiling the Kryptonian to kill her quickly.
      Reign: Why am I telling you all this, Kara Zor-El? Because I want you to know... who it is that kills you today.
      Supergirl: [thinking] She keeps talking, just watching the fight like it's all for her amusement. But I stopped listening a long time ago. I'm too busy trying to stay alive.
    • In The Killers of Krypton:
      • Harry Hokum has captured a depowered Supergirl, and instead of killing her, he brags about torture her and cut her up before ordering his men to drag her to a cell. In the way, Supergirl finds a way to get her powers back, escape and begin wrecking his base.
        Harry Hokum: You won't be so defiant when I break you down for spare parts. And I'll be far less forgiving.
      • As she is being dragged to a cell, Supergirl taunts Splyce until the villain shoots an energy bolt at her. Splyce starts mocking her, unaware that her solar blast has recharged Kara, who is just pretending to be knocked out.
        Splyce: "I may not be allowed to kill you... But I can do... this!" (fires an energy blast) "I have heard the legends about you and your cousin. So unearned. Who's the pathetic one now?"
        Supergirl: (thinking) Tamaranean solar power. Not quite as smooth as Earth's. Don't react, Kara. Not just yet.
    • Strangers at the Heart's Core: When Klax-Ar spots Kara, he demands she pays attention to him, and then he rants about his identity and backstory, his super-powerful vehicle's origin, and his plans to steal her powers, pry the Earth's location from her mind and then take over the world. Essentially he told her exactly what she needed to know to beat him up, which would have not happened if he had probed her mind from afar without drawing her attention.
      Klax-Ar: "I'll attack your greatest cities— They will be helpless before me and you'll be compelled to accept my dictates! And this monument is the first to— Huh—? The sled is faltering...?"
    • Starfire's Revenge: When Supergirl is knocked out, tied up and dragged to her lair, Starfire guesses the alien hero has not been fully depowered, ergo she must be dealt with immediately before her powers come back again. Nonetheless, Starfire wants to convince her minions that Supergirl is no longer a threat; so, she slaps Supergirl around (which has the effect of waking her up), gets her untied, tosses her around for a bit, throws her into a support beam and then she decides Supergirl has been taken care of. As Starfire is turning her back to her, Kara recovers her powers.
      Starfire: Now, untie her— I think I'll have some fun with her!
    • In The Death of Superman (1961), Lex Luthor's need to gloating does not ruin his scheme to murder Superman, but it ultimately leads to his downfall: he kidnaps Lois, Jimmy and Perry so they see Superman die, and he lets them go afterwards, gloating the whole time. As a result of it, when he is captured by Supergirl and dragged to Kandor to be trialed, the prosecutor can count with three eyewitnesses able to and willing to testify against Luthor.
    • In How Luthor Met Superboy, Lex Luthor lures Superboy into a Kryptonite death trap. As Superboy is lying in agony, Lex leans over Superboy to gloat while waving a flask of Kryptonite antidote over his face. Superboy quickly exploits Lex's arrogance, snatches the flask from his hands and swallows the antidote.
    • The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor: When villain Mind-Bomber holds Lena hostage and seeks shelter in an abandoned subway, Lena goads him to go on a rant about his childhood trauma, his hurt feelings and his impeding revenge with the result that Supergirl finds them and pushes the villain away from his hostage.
      Mind-Bomber: But you prevented that...And you'll pay for it!
      Lena Colby: Incidentally, I've figured out how you gave Linda the slip— You can't read her mind— But you can plant ideas in it! So you made yourself invisible by telepathically willing Linda to not see you!
      Supergirl: But that trick won't work any more, van Horne! Thanks for keeping up the chatter, Lena! I couldn't see you two— But I could pinpoint the precise source of your voices with my super-hearing—
    • Way of the World: After apparently taking down Supergirl and her allies, Dolok goes on about the inevitability of defeating someone who has mastered time instead of killing his enemies. Supergirl cuts off his rambling by calling him an idiot and having one of her allies to break her Kryptonite collar.
    • In Escape from the Phantom Zone, Batgirl goads Xa-Du into keeping rambling on about how he will wreck terrible vengeance upon her for ruining his plans until he spits out that he never intended to fulfill his promise of breaking his fellow inmates from the Phantom Zone. His minions immediately take exception to his lies and manipulations and turn against Xa-Du.
      Xa-Du: I know little of your language, picked up from my time in the Aethyr Switch's mind. But it should suffice to murder you in your own tongue.
      Batgirl: Right. Keep talking.
    • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: Rather than shooting Supergirl right after forcing Superman to leave his ship, Amalak rants and raves about his plans as she listens, believing her helpless. Then she breaks the chains tying her to a chair.
    • Let My People Grow!: After shrinking Superman, Brainiac takes a moment to gloat about annihilating him instead of annihilating him without further ado, giving Supergirl time to appear and run interference.
      Brainiac: "I have no idea what you hoped to accomplish with that ridiculous maneuver, Superman— and, regrettably, you're not going to be here long enough for me to find out! That first shot shrunk you to the size of a mosquito— But the blast you're about to receive will reduce you to absolute nothingness!"
      Supergirl: "I wouldn't touch that button if I were you, Brainiac!"
    • The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: When Superman at last figures out Luthor is using psychological warfare to drive him crazy, he lures Luthor and Brainiac out by pretending he has completely lost his marbles, well-aware that they will be unable to resist the temptation to come out to gloat.
      Superman: "I realized that my crack-up was part of a conspiracy that you planned, Luthor. I smoked you out by pretending to go amok. I knew you rats would come here to gloat. So I was ready for you!"
    • The Condemned Legionnaires: After infecting the Legion of Super-Heroes' female members, Satan Girl cannot resist the temptation to go to the Legion -who did not even know of her existence- and brag about her actions, so initiating a chain of events which would lead to her defeat and disappearance. Additionally, she gloats as telling Supergirl she will reveal her identity when she destroys her.
      Satan Girl: "Ha, Ha...So you thought I'm an android? Supergirl, you'd be amazed if you knew who I really am! I'll tell you as I destroy you!"
    • Brainiac's Blitz: Before shooting his newest weapon, Brainiac boasts that it is a time-travel raygun which will blast Supergirl into the far future where she will have no powers because the Earth's sun will have turned red. Alerted by his gloating, Kara dodges the blast instead of letting it hit her, as she might have done if Brainiac had kept his mouth shut.
    • "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": Emerald Empress's successful ambush knocks the Legion of Super-Heroes out. Rather than take advantage of their unconscious state and kill them on the spot, she gets them brought to her base bridge, waits until they wake up in order to gloat and indulge in some petty bullying, orders her minion to execute them and then leaves the room.
  • The Transformers (Marvel):
    • A freshly returned Megatron starts gloating and boasting to Ratchet, who sarcastically quips whether he's going to start explaining his whole plan as well. Megatron just retorts that he has every intention of telling Ratchet what's going to happen.
    • During the Underbase storyline, Ratbat decided to start with some evil gloating to Danial and Hi-Q about his plan to take the Underbase's power for himself. Unfortunately, he chose to do this right in front of Scorponok, a Walking Armory who was one of the largest and most powerful Decepticons, while Ratbat was one of the smallest. Unsurprisingly, this led to Scorponok deciding that the smaller 'Con had become a liability.
  • The Transformers (IDW): Scorponok is addicted to this. Towards the end of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, he actually does refuse to finish explaining his Evil Plan, only for the Scavengers to point out that they're holding a mysterious artefact that can answer any question and can just ask that instead...at which point Scorponok decides that he's not getting his thunder stolen by a glorified Magic 8-Ball and goes right back to his monologue.
  • Watchmen plays this straight, with a nod to the oft-fatal habit of monologuing, but adds a twist to the end. When confronted by Rorschach and Night Owl, Ozymandias coolly explains (and details) his master plan to them. The heroes expect to be able to stop him yet, but he bluntly tells them that he wouldn't be wasting his time talking to them if they still had a chance to stop him, his plan was already completed about half-an-hour ago.
  • Wolverine: In All-New Wolverine, Amber takes the time to brag about killing Sabretooth, Deathstrike, and Old Man Logan, and revealing her plan to kill the rest of them. After Laura reveals her new suit of armor from Muramasa.
  • In the Wonder Woman Vol 1 story arc Judgment In Infinity, when Diana manages to lasso the Adjudicator's neck, he proudly states he can obliterate her and her Lasso in a heartbeat... instead of obliterating her without previous talk. It becomes his downfall when he is cajoled into keeping talking.
    The Adjudicator: Foolish mortal! Perhaps your lariat has some mystical powers over lesser beings — But it is nothing but a piece of string to the Adjudicator. A heartbeat more, and your lasso will follow you and your hapless friends — into complete and utter obliteration!

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The Many — deranged, fanatical Hive Mind that they are — take some time boasting to Monster X during their battle at Yonaguni:
    "E͏ven͟ if̶ ̴y͡ǫu ̶kil̢l us̷ ͡yoų'̕v͜e ǫnly̵ slash͞e̶d o͘ff o̶ne̷ ten̸d͝r͝i̡l of a s͏in̡gle͘ g͏rea̢ter̢ or͜ga͝nism̵.͟ ̷So m͢an̴y sam͠p̴l̨e̕s. ͟ ̧S͞o m̕a̶n̸y people͠ o͟uţ ͠t͏her͏e͝ h̛op҉i̵ng̢ ̵to͜ ͞start a famil̨y҉, b͞ut can'͝t̛ ̛co͘n͏ceive̶. S͞o ͏th̴e͟y ͞re͘s̷or͘t to... ͝o҉utsid͠e a̕s̴si͘s҉t̡an̡ce̷. ͞ H̴ow ̸m̨an҉y g͟enerątion͝s wįll i̸t͡ ̸t͠a͟ke, do y̨ou͡ ̷thi͞nk̸,̴ ͞be͟fơre̢ ҉t͟he c̨ḩi͘ldre̶n͠ o͡f ̛the dra͠gǫn̷ ̸w͘alk̸ t̕h̨e ͝ci̢ty ̢s̛tr҉e͢et̢s i͟n̵ ͝p̛l̸ai͘n si̢gh͟ţ, ͝n̕o͜ ̡one sųsp͢ec̡t̵ing̸ ̢a th̴ing? ̶ H͞o͝w many mo͟re ̧frien̴ds͠ of yo̢u̢r͡s͟ m̵ight sti҉l̷l͘ be ̶end͘an̢ger͟ed̶? ͞"
  • Loved and Lost:
  • In Queen of All Oni, Jade sometimes lapses into this, but is aware of it, being the savvy villain that she is, and tries to avoid it most of the time. Finn, Valmont, and some other characters also do this at multiple times throughout the story, and it usually doesn't turn out well for them.
  • Lampshaded in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series:
    Thunderstorm: Oh, but of course! If there's anything I love, it's gloating!
  • Subverted in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Envy And Arrogance. Arrogance soundly trashes the mane six and their allies. Then she launches into a long Evil Gloating monologue, which lets them recover and focus their powers. The subversion comes from the fact that she is quite obviously doing this on purpose - as she has outright stated that her boss' Xanatos Gambit will work better if they win.
  • Anthropology:
    • Chapter 24:
      Discord: Enjoying your walk, Heartstrings? You're getting along quite well on just two legs, I see. Like any other human. You really are one of them, aren't you? I just wanted to stop by and offer my most sincere gratitude. If it weren't for you, Heartstrings, I never would have found this place. And to imagine, you were right there in Ponyville the entire time! If I had known there were humans left, I wouldn't have wasted my time there. No, humans are far more fun. I'm rather fond of humans myself. I suppose we have that much in common, you and me. All that technology, right? And their hands that they use it with?
      Lyra: W-where are you?
      Discord: Oh, I'm exactly where I want to be — here, in the human world. Can you imagine? A separate world, filled with millions of humans, and it's been right next door all along. You're really quite a lot of fun, you humans. And just look at how amazing this world is! Leave you alone for a couple thousand years and you accomplish all of this.
      Lyra: How did you get here? How did you find me? What are you doing?
      Discord: I think you know exactly what I'm planning. You see, I've been terribly bored, like you couldn't even imagine. I've been in need of some good old-fashioned chaos. Or — my mistake — the humans here have all new ways to create chaos! I do look forward to this, I really mean that.
      Lyra: There's more to humans than that. I've been studying them — us. We're better than that.
      Discord: From the looks of things, you've all made quite enough chaos without my help. We'll see about that. Well, I didn't plan to visit for long. Just long enough to drop in and leave you with something. You see, there's a whole world of humans out there waiting for me, and let's just say you'll be happier if you're not one of them. Do you realize that there are billions of you in this world? Not thousands, not even millions. I could find millions of you in just one city. And it's not too far from here, is it? Like I said, Heartstrings — my sincerest thanks for your help.
    • Discord then goes ahead and turns Lyra back into a pony. He doesn't know what he's done, though.
  • Ponies of Olympus: Atlas Strongest Tournament: When the changelings reveal themselves during the final match of the tournament, Aurelia goes into detail how they've been manipulating everyone in order to feed off of their skills and power, and will use it to conquer Equestria. Chrysalis sheds tears of pride on her artful delivery.
  • Lampshaded in Blaze: Into the Inferno when after capturing an initially reticent Bellatrix Lestrange Harry quipped "Real villains always explain their evil plots."
  • Lampshaded in Weres Harry when Harry commented to Riddle's shade "You're monologueing. That is what the bad guy does just before everything usually goes to shite."
  • The Very Secret Diary: Tom Riddle unloads a plethora of truly, twisted taunts on Ginny, calling her a dumb fool for not figuring him out sooner.
  • An Unsung Song: In "The Place of White and Gold", Licinius plans on doing more gloating, but still gets some in.
  • In Avengers: Infinite Wars, Avengers such as Natasha and Scott express their disbelief at the cliché lines sprouted by some of the Sith.
  • In Hellsister Trilogy, Satan Girl has mastered this art, and she launches into a monologue as she is beating Supergirl up during their final battle.
    Satan Girl: Do you know what I'm going to do after I kill you, Kara? Do you know? Well, listen. I'm going to find my child. I'm going to raise him to be what neither Mordru nor I could be alone. A sorcerer with the genes and power of the greatest necromancer in the universe, plus the body and powers of a Kryptonian. He will be a scourge such as Mordru never dreamed of. And I will rule through him, and he will rule because of me. We will conquer as none have ever conquered. But it may take a little while to find him. So I'm going to do something first, just to get the kinks out. I'm going to find me a planet, one with people on it, lots and lots of people. And I'm going to kill them all. Then I'm going to another planet, and kill just, maybe, half of them. And I'll make the ones who live worship me. By the time I find my child, he may be the object of a new religion. Wouldn't that be nice, Kara?
  • In Worst Case Scenario (Clcman), Vandal Savage states his intention to kill Robin, Artemis and Kid Flash immediately, but Robin distracts him into spouting an evil monologue. The narration notes that while this is "Supervillain Cliché #1", Savage probably invented it, and has been falling for it for centuries.
  • Conquest loves to do this in Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship.
  • In Dance with the Demons, Kobra gloats about killing Batman during their final battle, but his taunts are met with utter indifference. Batman really doesn't care what Kobra says.
    Kobra: You waste both of our times. Both of us know the wine of violence. Both of us know that this must end here, with a long and heady draft of it. I will toast your death with it.
  • Tantabus Mark II: Lampshaded; Daring Do (who is both an adventurer and an author) notes that absolutely everyone loves a good monologue, which is why villains still do it and authors still use it even when they're mocking the absurdity.
  • FIRE! (DarkMark): During their final battle with Captain America, Red Skull decides to reassert his "repulsive bastard" credentials.
    Red Skull: "Do you think I am innocent of anything the Reich did? I shot down partisans and Allied soldiers. I tortured captives. I supervised operations, at times, in a concentration camp. My hands are as red as my skull, Captain. I would do it again. If I triumph, I will."
  • In Here There Be Monsters, Dr. Sivana's master plan fails because he wastes too much time gloating.
    Shazam!: I almost didn't escape. But all I had to do, in the end, was use my flight power to its fullest extent. For about an hour, to be precise. If you hadn't been so intent on making a long speech, you could probably have gotten me.
  • This is usually par-for-the-course in salt fics involving Lila Rossi's downfall for Miraculous Ladybug, where she will drop the act upon people realising what she's truly like and gloat to them about how easily they fell for all her lies, how easily they believed all her malicious slander about Marinette, how she hates Ladybug and all the other "self-righteous, goody two-shoes heroes"... and usually turning out to have gloated whilst she's being recorded or observed by authority figures with the power to punish her and who aren't happy about being fooled. This trope is lampshaded in the fic Missing (Miraculous Ladybug), where Chloe (who'd had her lackey Sabrina call her while she was in the principal's office with him, Lila's mother and several police officers) remarks on the fact that her tendency to do this when she thinks she holds all the cards has just cemented her downfall.
  • Miraculous! Rewrite:
    • This trope is pointedly averted with Hawk Moth; unlike in canon, he doesn't engage in private theatrics, being more of a No-Nonsense Nemesis.
    • Played straight in "Anansi and Lugh"; upon being brainwashed by Anansi into playing the villain, Adrien monologues about returning the world to its natural state. Plagg, unaffected by said brainwashing, snarks at him over it.
  • The My Hero Academia fic Pulse and Void has the creepy torturer Fusion who starts this with Aizawa. He seems to be trying to provoke Aizawa to make a mistake by gloating about how he made Present Mic scream and bleed and dehumanizing him as he says he’s taking him with as a pet and plaything. It’s a fatal mistake because Aizawa is already enraged and though he tries to block it out, he ultimately channels his rage into the battle and saving Mic.

    Films — Animation 
  • Cats Don't Dance: Darla gloats after screwing Danny and the other animals over. "Nice working with you, Danny! Ahahahahaha!"
  • A couple of examples from The Emperor's New Groove: Kuzco turns back to gloat at Pacha as the latter hangs from the remains of a Rope Bridge, and promptly ends up in the same predicament, while later Yzma's Ironic Echo gloat is ruined by her lackey Kronk's Captain Obvious lampshading.
  • In Frozen: Hans smugly gloats he had already been planning to kill Elsa in order to get the throne. "But then she doomed herself, and you were dumb enough to go after her!"
  • In The Great Mouse Detective, Ratigan causes Basil to have a Heroic BSoD by gloating about how he led Basil right into his trap, then describing his overly complex Death Trap which includes a recording of Ratigan gloating through song.
  • The Incredibles: Discusssed and lampshaded at how villains typically gloat over near victory long enough for the heroes to gain the upper hand.
    • Discussed by Frozone and Mr. Incredible when recounting stories of their glory days:
      Frozone: One more jolt of this death ray, and I'm an epitaph. Somehow, I manage to find cover, and what does Baron von Ruthless do?
      Mr. Incredible: [chuckles] He starts monologuing?
      Frozone: He starts monologuing!
      Mr. Incredible: Yep! [laughs]
      Frozone: He starts, like, this prepared speech about how "feeble" I am, compared to him, how "inevitable" my defeat is, how the [makes dramatic hand gesture] "World! Will soon! Be his!" Yadda, yadda...
      Mr. Incredible: Yammerin'.
      Frozone: Yammering! I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up!
    • Big Bad Syndrome starts this, but grows wise to the same ploy during his first encounter with Mr. Incredible.
      Syndrome: Turns out there are a lot of people, whole countries, who want respect, and they will pay through the nose to get it. How do you think I got rich? I invented weapons. And now I've made a weapon that only I can defeat, and once I unleash it I'll—
      [Mr. Incredible hurls a log at him; Syndrome barely dodges it and quickly immobilizes him with his zero-point energy ray]
      Syndrome: Oh-ho-ho-ho, you sly dog! You got me monologuing!
    • However, this later leads to Syndrome's downfall as he vows to get Mr. Incredible's baby son Jack-Jack someday, only for Mr. Incredible to throw his car at him, causing Syndrome to get his cape caught in the turbines, killing him in a huge explosion.
  • Incredibles 2: After Evelyn has already successfully gotten Elastigirl under her hypnosis, she restrains Elastigirl long enough to shut off her hypno-goggles just so she can explain her Evil Plan and Freudian Excuse to Helen, and then turn the goggles back on and continue with her plan. To Evelyn's credit she does restrain Helen well enough that Helen cannot escape while she monologues.
  • Probably the one thing that defines Kaa of The Jungle Book as a villain rather than just a hungry predator is his gleeful tendency to play with his food. He would have surely eaten Mowgli if he hadn't extended the whole thing to a musical number.
  • The LEGO Movie. Being such an overdramatic villain, you'd expect this from Lord Business. Specifically at the point where Emmet and his friends witness the death of Vitruvius at his own hands in the Think Tank, meaning now he is able to have his opponents at his mercy. But he isn't stupid to do this - none of them are able enough to take a shot at him. As in, all of the Master Builders have been imprisoned, Vitruvius is dead, Emmet is tied to the self-destruct mechanism's battery, Lord Business is armed to the teeth and not to mention his outfit makes it almost impossible to attack him. It doesn't do him any harm to gloat when everything's coming up great for him.
  • At the end of The Lion King, when Simba, still blaming himself for his father's death, is dangling from the edge of a cliff, Scar can't resist indulging in this and freely admits that he killed Mufasa. At this revelation, Simba pulls off his Heroic Second Wind and literally chokes Scar to get him to admit the truth to everyone else.
  • Ursula does this in The Little Mermaid after she succeeds in hypnotizing Eric away from Ariel in her Vanessa guise. To her credit, she gloats only in the privacy of her room when Eric and Ariel aren't around but Scuttle still overhears her loud singing and is able to inform Ariel in time for them to crash her wedding to Eric.
  • Sleeping Beauty: Maleficent does this once she's imprisoned Prince Phillip in her stronghold. Rubbing her victory in his face, along with her plan to keep him locked away for a hundred years and then set him free when he's ancient and wizened, probably helped his Heroic Resolve a great deal.
  • Up: During the swordfight, both fighters throw out their back. Muntz is the first to recover, but instead of attacking Carl, he knocks him over and asks if he has any last words.
  • In Zootopia, this ends up biting Dawn Bellwether in the butt; Nick and Judy manage to catch a recording of her gloating about how she used Night Howler extract to make predators go savage, and how she exploited the ensuing anti-pred hysteria to seize power.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Invoked in Dredd. Judge Dredd gets into a gunfight with a group of corrupt Judges while running low on ammo, and ends up getting shot by the last one, Judge Lex. Dredd tricks Lex into going into a monologue by asking him to "Wait". Lex cannot resist mocking an apparently terrified Judge Dredd, but then Anderson arrives and finishes him off. Dredd clarifies his statement: "Wait for her to shoot you".
  • In A Girl Named Sooner, Mam Hawes does this to Elizabeth, saying that Sooner is happier with her than back in town.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: After Team Godzilla are captured and brought to him, Walter Simmons begins monologuing to them about his egotistical Evil Plan. He's so wrapped up in his own Smug Snake vision that he doesn't notice for a while that the heroes and his own staff are backing away from the display window behind him, at which point he's Caught Monologuing and turns around to see a very much Ghidorah-controlled Mechagodzilla about to kill him.
  • In GoldenEye, following an intense fist fight, Trevelyan is armed, James Bond is at gunpoint... and he stops to breathe and then say "You know, James? I was always better" before shooting - and he misses, because his pause gave Bond a chance to kick open a trapdoor and go down a staircase. (James Rolfe used this as an example for Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him? on his "10 Worst Clichés" list.)
  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A vengeful man catches up with Tuco ("the ugly" of the title) while Tuco is taking a bath. The pursuer starts ranting about tracking his quarry for weeks, and Tuco shoots him dead with the gun he has hidden under the soap-foam: "When you have to shoot.... shoot, don't talk!"
  • The Hunger Games:
    • Clove taunts Katniss about Rue's death instead of just killing her... and unfortunately, Rue's fellow District 11 tribute was listening.
    • Inverted by Cato's rant at the end, which gives Peeta enough time to gain the upper hand, although Cato's intent appears to be to force Katniss to shoot him instead.
  • I Come in Peace: Victor Manning, the drug lord who killed Jack Caine's partner in the opening, later sends Jack a photo of himself with some half-naked girls to show that he's having a great time on his vacation in Brazil.
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: With the Holy Grail in her hands, Elsa Schneider prematurely brags that the grail is hers to keep as she steps across the boundary that she was warned multiple times not to cross. This causes the temple to collapse and Elsa is unable to give up the prize, because she's so sure she can reach it until she falls to her death. In the PC adventure game, Elsa is even less willing to accept defeat. After Indy's continued warnings about the seal, she says, "No! I don't believe it! I won't lose it now!"
  • In Last of the Mohicans Magua, before eating his heart proclaims:
    Magua: Before you die, know that I will put under the knife your children, so your seed are wiped out from the earth forever.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The Avengers (2012): Loki loves to gloat, though he has a tendency to underestimate his audience.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Ronan the Accuser has a habit of doing this. It bites him on the ass at the end: by stopping to give a grandiose speech before annihilating Xandar he gives the Guardians enough time to improvise a plan to separate him from his planet-destroying MacGuffin.
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Parodied and defied when Tony Stark asks Ultron what he's planning on doing with the Vibranium ore that he stole. Instead of going on a monologue, Ultron mocks Tony's attempt to play on his hubris and attacks him.
    • Avengers: Infinity War: A heroic example is shown here, as Thor has lodged Stormbreaker inside Thanos's chest, but instead of killing him outright, he takes time to savour the moment and tell him "I told you, you'd die for that." This gives Thanos the time he needs to do his Badass Fingersnap and teleport away.
    • Captain Marvel (2019): After defeating Fury in hand-to-hand combat, Talos takes a moment to gloat about his victory and comment about Keller's glasses. As he begins brushing off his hands, he's hit by a photon blast from Carol, who had just arrived on the scene.
    • Spider-Man: No Way Home: This is the cause of the Goblin's downfall When his Spider-Man stops MCU Spider-Man from killing him he stabs the former and proceeds to taunt MCU Spider-Man again. This gave Webb-verse Spider-Man the opening to throw the Anti-Goblin Serum to MCU Spider-Man who then injects it to him. The Goblin's face as this was going on shows just how much he screws up.
  • Masters of the Universe: Frank Langella, by far the best thing about this movie, gives a glorious villain monologue. In fact, if you ever watch this film, just watch the parts with Frank in it; the man is at the height of his craft and does it right.
  • In Matilda, the main villain gloats, just before the title character gets her final revenge: "In this classroom, in this school, I AM GOD!"
  • In The Mechanic (1972), The Mole Steve does this after he poisons the main character and watches him die. He gets punished for it.
  • The Princess: Julius engages in this as a show of power. This gets him killed at the end of the film, when he has the Princess cornered and is one sword stroke away from controlling the kingdom, but can't help himself from giving a big speech while forcing her out into the courtyard to die in front of her subjects.
  • In The Princess Bride, when Count Rugen (the Six Fingered Man) briefly has Inigo at his mercy after hitting Inigo with a throwing dagger, the sadistic Rugen takes obvious pleasure in the chance to gloat over a seemingly helpless Inigo.
    Rugen: You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a lesson to all those years ago. You've been chasing me your whole life only to fail now? I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard. [Beat] How marvelous.
  • Serenity: "Do you know what your sin is?" This is what causes The Operative's defeat the last time he tries it on Captain Malcolm Reynolds, who pulls an epic Shut Up, Hannibal! on him.
    Mal: Hell, I'm a fan of all seven! But right now, I'll have to go with... Wrath.
  • Subverted in SHAZAM! (2019), as Shazam and Sivana hover over the streets of Philadelphia facing each other... several hundred feet apart:
    Sivana: Enough games, boy! You think a pack of children can—
    [Shazam tilts his head in confusion]
    Shazam: Wait, what?!
    Sivana: ...you will beg for mercy as I feast on your heart. Slow—
    Shazam: Are you making some, like big, evil-guy speech right now or somethin'? You're like a mile away from me, and there's cars and traf—!
    Silvana: ...I will have the world eating out of the palm of my han—
    Shazam: [hands flapping like mouths] All I see is mouth-movin'! I don't hear any—
    Silvana: ...only I... have the power to unleash...
    Shazam: [strains ones last time, then shakes his head] Oh, whatever. Screw it!
  • In The Shrunken City, the Ood surround Lori interrogating her on the bottle's whereabouts. Their leader then rejects her comment that the Ood have no right to kill innocent people.
  • In Spaceballs, Stephen Toblowsky's character gloats over the captured heroes. Unfortunately for him, it turns out they captured their stunt doubles.
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
    Khan: I deprive your ship of power, and when I swing around I will deprive you of your life! But first I wanted you to know who it was who had beaten you.
  • Star Wars:
  • Near the end of Terminator Salvation, Skynet can't help but explain the genius of its master plan to one of its unwitting pawns and smugly gloat how it has used him for its own purposes and tells him to accept his newfound nature.
  • The Untouchables: Eliot Ness has chased Al Capone's hitman Frank Nitti to a rooftop.
    Ness: I'm going to see you burn, you son of a bitch, because you killed my friend!
    Nitti: He died like a pig.
    Ness: What did you say?
    Nitti: I said your friend died screaming like a stuck Irish pig. Now you think about that when I beat the rap. [starts to walk away when Ness grabs him and pushes him off the roof]
    Ness: [shouting over Nitti's scream] Did it sound anything like THAT?!
  • In Valentine, the Big Bad sends an unsympathetic remembrance card to the parents of one of his victims, signing his own name instead of his initials. Unlike most examples, this carries no negative effects because he's effectively erased himself after he turned 18. The real trouble is figuring out who among the main characters' circle of acquaintances is his public identity.
  • In Van Helsing, Aleera, the last of Dracula's brides, does this to Anna Valerious at various points. The last time she does it, Anna catches a stake from another character mid-gloating and rams it through Aleera's heart right away. In her words: "If you're going to kill someone, kill them. Don't stand there talking about it."
  • X-Men: Apocalypse: While En Sabah Nur is in the process of crushing Xavier to death on the astral plane, the former brags about his victory to the latter.
    Apocalypse: It's over, Charles, you're finished. You're mine now.

    Literature 
  • Angie's First Case: The Wolfpack are well known for calling the police after robberies to reveal which house they just robbed and what they stole.
  • A couple of times in minor Animorphs books, but most notably done by Tom's Yeerk in the final two books (narrated from different perspectives):
    "You appear to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser," Tom said, gloating.
    <The Empire will track you down and kill you for this, you do understand that, I hope?> Visser One said.
    "Oh, I doubt it," Tom said cheerfully. "The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It's possible that I misled you on that point." He was all but giggling.
  • The Tad Williams book The War of the Flowers features Lord Hellebore explaining to his rivals their imminent destruction through a Magitek television. Lampshaded when the Remover complains about him wasting valuable resources to send them the message for no reason other than to gloat.
  • Williams also pulls this in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn in the part of Evil Sorcerer Pryrates, who spends half of the climactic chapter gleefully explaining his plans to the now-helpless protagonists so everyone involved will know exactly how thoroughly they failed to stop him. For bonus style points, he works some of it into the summoning ritual for the Storm King — and true to the trope, said villain promptly cuts off the gloating by demonstrating that Evil Is Not a Toy.
  • At the climax of Darkness Visible, the traitor who Lewis and Marsh have been chasing for weeks gives a Breaking Speech that gloats over the destruction of London.
  • In No Gods Only Daimons, the Unmaker taunts Luke Landon like this just before the climactic fight, to the point where Landon internally lampshades it with This Is Reality.
  • Discworld:
    • This is a common feature of villains. Commander Vimes considers that an evil man always likes their enemy to know they've been beaten, thus giving them a chance to turn the tables, while if a good man feels he has to kill you, he'll do it with hardly a word.
    • Cats and witches also prefer an enemy who knows they're beaten. A key difference is that cats and witches know the dangers of monologuing, so they instead just make sure their opponent is so good and beat that there's no question.
  • Coraline gets out of the Other Mother's clutches by fake-guessing that her parents are hidden behind the door that leads out of the world, causing the beldam to open it so that she can gloat about Coraline being wrong.
  • In the Thursday Next novel The Eyre Affair, Big Bad Acheron Hades launches into a gloating soliloquy right when he has Thursday cornered. In the time it takes him to gloat, Thursday is able to figure out his one weakness (silver) and shoot him dead with a silver bullet.
  • In The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, Selia gloats for a few PAGES about how she's a better princess, how Falada died, and so on, and how no one will believe poor Ani. She should have double checked behind the tapestries before she started...
  • Harry Potter villains just love this trope. Voldemort himself is easily the biggest offender, though nearly every major villainous character monologues at least once in the series.
    • After spending a whole year hiding among his greatest enemies and keeping a large part of his internal thoughts and beliefs hidden to the deepest recesses of his mind, with only a small part of them well-disguised enough (as the actions of the person he disguised as) to be allowed to slip, it comes as no surprise that Barty Crouch's outburst is nothing short of grande where he reveals his role to Harry, brags about his importance to Voldemort and rants about the role he contributed to the Dark Order that will be imposed.
    • Finally inverted with Harry himself monologuing Voldemort at the very end. Harry is in the lucky position of finally holding all the cards - to the point where it doesn't even matter that he tells Voldemort exactly how his shiny new weapon works. It's not even really gloating — he's actually trying to give Voldemort one last chance to save his soul.
  • The Witch-King in The Lord of the Rings.
    Witch-King: "Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
    Witch-King: A cold voice answered: "Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."
    Witch-King: Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me.
    Éowyn: But no living man am I!
  • In Robert E. Howard's "Rogues in the House" Nabonidus gloats about his use of Exact Words — long enough for Conan the Barbarian to brain him with a stool.
    • In "A Witch Shall Be Born", Salome opens the story with explaining her plot and her powers to her sister the queen and gloating over her.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Harry Dresden frequently notes the tendency of villains to do this, and thinks that it must be part of his training. He usually uses the opportunity to seize the initiative in combat, but sometimes is tempted to do the same himself, usually to his cost. For the immortals, it's somewhat justified since they live for so long that it can be easy to lose track of time spans less than a decade. The humans, though, are just stupid, arrogant jerks.
    • Nicodemus subverts this trope by not spilling his plans when he has Harry tied up and at his mercy, prompting Harry to comment that he must have read the Evil Overlord List.
    • In Ghost Story, a villain actually uses this to their advantage -when she continually gloats about the situation in the middle of a fight with Dresden, he just thinks she's being stupid and attacks. He realizes a bit too late she was actually trying to trick him into Cast From Hit Pointing himself to death.
  • In The Dark Lords Handbook -the titular book instructs the dark lord to practice monologues but not to overdue it as Heroes have a tendency to take advantage of their lapse in attention and turn their defeat into victory.
  • Rasalom from The Adversary Cycle and Repairman Jack books seems to enjoy this. He tends to still win, though. He's just that powerful.
  • In the Sherlock Holmes expanded universe novel Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan, the killer thinks the gloating is the best part, as his revenge has been years in the making, but he always makes sure his victims are too weak or disabled to do anything about it. However by the time Dr. Watson confronts him, he's had his revenge and has no interest in explaining himself, telling Watson he'll die without knowing the answer.
  • Clockpunk and the Vitalizer The Vitalizer dismisses the heroes' intelligence, Clockpunk's effectiveness, and the fact that he's perfectly capable of killing her if his plans go awry.
  • Mein Kampf is a real life example of sorts. Yep, ol' Adolf couldn't resist gloating about his future plans for Europe in a freakin' published book.
  • Lampshaded twice in Best Served Cold:
    • Morveer, liking nothing better than a captive audience, could not resist explaining how it had been managed.
    • "Why is it that men pointing loaded flatbows always feel the need to gloat, rather than simply letting fly?"
      "Gloating's fun."
  • The Cask of Amontillado is a monologue by a Villain Protagonist about how he buried a friend alive fifty years prior. In short, the entire story is an example of Evil Gloating.
  • Diogenes Club series by Kim Newman
    • In Cold Snap, the villain is an Evil Genius who has spent decades stewing over various perceived slights, including a defeat by the hero's mentor fifty years earlier. When he gets the hero and the hero's archnemesis (present in an Enemy Mine capacity) in his clutches, he goes into a rant that lasts for over an hour. The story cuts away to another scene for most of it, and only comes back at the end when he starts getting into useful details about what he's actually done, with his two captives nudging him without him noticing into telling them everything they need to know. The hero notes that this is the sign of a second-class villain, as compared to a consummate professional like his archnemesis who will never give you advance warning of his evil plan — as his archnemesis demonstrates shortly afterward.
    • Lampshaded in Swellhead when the title villain notes that traditionally he's expected to explain his Evil Plan, but he doesn't feel the need. "I am not one of those inadequates who need the respect of his enemies. I don't mind toiling in the dark. My achievements are their own satisfaction."
  • In the Star Trek novel Spock's World, the Big Bad rubs it in Spock's face when it looks like Vulcan will actually secede from the Federation.
  • Subverted in Warp World: during Ethan and Jett's final confrontation, Jett starts monologuing but it turns out Alicia had actually put him and the entire room into a time loop while she assessed the situation.
  • In Pact, where declaring that you are going to do something and then following through holds metaphysical weight, the laws of the universe actually encourage gloating to your enemy before you attack them, because it allows you to get a greater benefit out of doing so and gather power to recoup what you lose in the attack. Savvy characters, however, do recognize the value of a bullet.
  • When Clove catches Katniss in The Hunger Games, she decides to give her something to think about. Followed — as usual — by a Thwarted Coup de Grâce.
  • The Eyre Affair: Acheron Hades has Thursday Next at his mercy and starts gloating shamelessly, to the point that the narrative stops quoting him and just notes that he continues gloating.
  • Villains by Necessity: Subverted when Blackmail finally gets around to talking; he keeps fighting all the way through his monologue.
  • Evingolis does it at the end of "Reflections on the Winter of My Soul". The fact is, he knows that spending some time on this will not change Kane's situation a little bit—there is no chance of anyone appearing Big Damn Heroes-style and he is certain of his superiority.
  • In Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, the villain Ellsworth Toohey describes in detail how he is going to take over the world and what a terrible place he is going to make of it, and emphasizes that he is not doing it for any personal benefit but merely For the Evulz. He also gets ranting about how the book's hero Howard Roark is going to get beaten up and mistreated in prison. However, Toohey is not able to address this gloating directly to Roark himself, who considers Toohey beneath contempt and refuses to pay any attention to him. Rather, he has to make his gloating to a weaker character, Peter Keating, whom Toohey already very thoroughly destroyed. In the end, Roark manages to get the jury to find him not guilty, so he does not go to prison and Toohey is denied seeing him suffer - though by the end of the book, Toohey remains at large and concentrating as ever on his wider aim of taking over the world.
  • In Dragons of Requiem it's rare for a villain who doesn't do this in front of the protagonists, given how over-the-top all the main villains are.
  • The Marvellous Land of Snergs: After climbing up a cliff, Mother Meldrum begins gloating and taunting the royal soldiers instead of retreating to her secret cave, feeling safe because she knows she is out of their arrows' range. Unfortunately for her, Vanderdecken's men brought muskets (to be fair, she could not know about the existence of firearms).
  • Tower of Somnus: Anna constantly crows about how she's outmaneuvered Kat, how she's breaking the law so competently, and how Kat will never win. Kat keeps killing all her mercenaries and becoming more famous in the process.
    Kat: I tried to get her to stop explaining her plans. She didn't.
  • Happens on several occasions in Trigger Warning.
    • After taking over the campus library, the gunmen loudly explain their plans to the student hostages, including their motivations (collecting ransom money from the students' "privileged" families) and their escape plans.
    • While facing down Jake, Foster gloats about how both of them will die, since he's rigged the entire library to explode with just the press of a button.
  • Worm features a lot of villains and hence unsurprisingly this trope is seen in pretty much every one of them that can talk and one or two that can't. Even some of the heroes join in. Though the Extermination Arc established that the most powerful entities for both sides don't bother with it.
  • In The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, Shen Qingqiu setting his first quest to be on Easy Mode causes its villain to be not all that bright and to keep on monologuing at length instead of just killing the heroes after they capture them, which Shen Qingqiu mocks in his internal narration.

    Live-Action TV 
  • All My Children: After Michael Cambias is acquitted for raping Bianca, he takes the time to gloat to the entire courtroom that he "owns Pine Valley and everyone in it," which pisses everyone off so badly that Michael's attorney is warned to get him out of the building before the crowd decides to become a lynch mob. Unsurprisingly, Michael actually does turn up dead soon afterward, and Everyone Is a Suspect.
  • "Boston" Rob Mariano had a tendency to do this on The Amazing Race, during pretty much every episode he was on, on both Seasons 7 and All-Stars, a carryover from his time on Survivor.
  • Angel. In "Somnamumbulist", a vampire that Angel once sired is monologuing away, saying that just because Angel has stopped being evil, doesn't mean he's going to stop as well. "It doesn't end, it just goes on and on." Cordelia does a Walk-In Chime-In. "That's not the only thing that goes on, and on."
  • Arrowverse:
    • Arrow:
      • Black Siren does this a lot, though it also tends to backfire on her, as it gives her enemies a chance to sneak up on her. Since her power is a sonic scream, she can't use it while she's talking.
      • After Team Arrow uncovers his true identity, Prometheus just has to gloat about how well he's played them, how they can't stop him, and how he'll ruin Oliver's life.
    • The Flash (2014):
      • In "The Man In The Yellow Suit", the Reverse-Flash murders all of the cops in the room except for Joe West, apparently just so that he has someone to gloat to.
      • When Zoom has Barry defeated and wounded, what does he do? Show off his victory to the newspaper, the CCPD and Harrison Wells. After being outed as the fake Jay Garrick, Zoom shamelessly gloats about how he fooled everyone and how he uses the facade to destroy people's hope. In retrospect, a lot of the comments "Jay" made about Zoom, such as him being an "unstoppable demon with the face of death" and his constant (if accurate) warnings that Barry didn't stand a chance against Zoom, come off as subtle Evil Gloating.
      • Most of Savitar's dialogue consists of him gloating about his godhood and how he's going to kill Barry and his loved ones.
      • The Thinker loves reminding Barry and Team Flash of how every failure they've experienced at his hands.
    • Legends of Tomorrow: Damien Darhk had plenty of gloating when he appeared on Arrow, and nothing changed when he appeared on Legends. When Darhk is about to kill Sara, he starts gloating about how he got his magic back and is invincible. No one else is impressed.
      Snart: Really? Now's the time for a bad guy monologue?
      [Sara escapes with Amaya]
      Snart: Damien, what did I tell you?
      Merlyn: For what it's worth, I thought it was a very good bad guy monologue.
    • Supergirl (2015): Lex is first introduced in a flashback where he is gloating to his sister about the fact that he turned the sun red to kill Superman. He is dismissive of the fact that humans can't survive under a red sun either. In the last episode, he invites his sister and mother to the White House and says he's above gloating... and then spends the entire conversation gloating about how he's a Villain with Good Publicity who controls the President.
  • The Red Baron in Blackadder Goes Forth does this. Subverted when Blackadder would rather be humiliated than die, lampshaded by Combat Pragmatist and all-round cad Lord Flasheart simply cries "what a poof!" and shoots him on the spot.
    • Ludwig also qualifies, as Blackadder says:
      Blackadder: Typical master criminal; loves the sound of his own voice.
  • In the episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled "The Vengeance Formulation", Sheldon makes foam fall on Kripke from the ceiling tiles in his office to get back at him. The plan goes horribly wrong when the president of the university and the board of directors are drenched with the foam too. Then, to make matters even worse, a pre-recorded video comes on to Kripke's monitor. It contains Sheldon gloating about the "classic prank" that Kripke has just fallen prey to. He also gives congratulations to Leonard and Raj for helping him with his plan.
  • Done successfully by Londo Mollari in the Babylon 5 episode "The Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place" He explains to Lord Refa, via recording, his entire Evil Plan for no reason other than to grind Refa's face into his failure and imminent demise. Of course Refa is then horribly murdered by a mob of angry Narns and framed posthumously for treason, fulfilling the rant and the gambit both.
  • Breaking Bad: Before he was wheelchair-bound, Hector Salamanca once killed someone close to Gus, so Gus dedicated his life to making Hector as miserable as possible. After he kills off all of Hector's former family and cartel associates, he makes sure to go to him personally and rub it in his face, knowing there's nothing Hector can do about it. This need to gloat to Hector in person ultimately proves to be Gus's undoing when Walter wires a bomb to Hector's wheelchair, and the next time Gus comes around to mock him, Hector is able to exact explosive revenge.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Ethan Rayne likes doing this. And its the only thing The First Evil ever really did, being intangible. Angelus was good at it too.
    • In the Season 6 episode "Older And Far Away", Dawn has unwittingly made a wish to Halfrek, one of Anya's friends from during her time as a vengeance demon, resulting in everyone who came to Buffy's birthday party, and anyone else who entered the Summers house, being mystically trapped within said house. At the end of the episode, she pops into the house to gloat about how they'll be trapped forever and how they deserve it for not paying attention to Dawn's pain and abandonment issues... but when she tries to dramatically teleport out, it turns out she's fallen victim to her own curse, forcing her to break the spell so she can leave, much to her annoyance.
  • Castle:
    • The villains often resort to this, sometimes because the evidence is so thin that it's necessary to have the murderer confess so the audience can be satisfied that Castle and Beckett have the right person.
    • Averted in "Probable Cause". Someone frames Castle for murder. As Castle sits in a holding cell, they take the incredible risk of slipping into the police station to gloat. Except... it was all part of his plan to disappear. The Evil gloating gave Castle and Beckett the leads they needed to catch him, which was a necessary part of his Batman Gambit to be "killed" by Castle and Beckett.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Daleks are prone to this, but do it to a noticeably greater extent with the Doctor than anyone else. In "Asylum of the Daleks", the Dalek prime minister suggests this is because they find the Doctor's hatred for them so beautiful that they can't bring themselves to destroy it; while in "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor argues that they're always so frightened he has something up his sleeve that they don't dare just shoot.
    • "Doomsday": The Cyber-Leader, managing to sound incredibly smug for an emotionless shell, engages in some towards the Doctor after Jackie and Yvonne are dragged away to be converted, claiming that the Doctor is proof of how emotions destroy.
    • "Smith and Jones": The Plasmavore doesn't confess to the murder of the Child Princess of Pantroval Regency 9, because confessing would imply she feels any guilt about the crime. No, she's proud of sucking a little girl's blood.
    • Subverted at the end of "Utopia", when Professor Yana transforms into the Master and begins to run away with the TARDIS. He says "Now, then, Doctor! Oooh, new voice. Hello, hellooo, helllloooo! Anyway... why don't we sit down and have a nice little chat where I can tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me, I don't think!" Then he zooms back into the past, leaving the Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain Jack at the End of the Universe.
    • "Partners in Crime": Miss Foster cheerfully explains her scheme in creating baby Adipose out of the fat of unwilling humans, a process that can easily be ramped up to convert the entire person, to reporter Penny Carter after capturing her. This also fills in the eavesdropping Doctor and Donna in on what she's up to.
    • "Cold Blood": Silurian warrior Alaya goads Ambrose Northover into killing her with a taser by talking about the gruesome fate planned for her captured son, in an attempt to start a war between humans and Silurians.
    • "Day of the Moon": The Doctor weaponizes the enemy's evil gloating (and suggestion power) by injecting a recording of a Silent arrogantly declaring "You should kill us all on sight" into the recording of the first Moon landing, thus ensuring that pretty much every human who lives from that day onward will receive that command.
    • "Resolution" features an exceptionally creepy scene where archaeologist Lin gets this from the Dalek recon scout using her as a Meat Puppet.
  • Falling Skies whenever the protagonists come face to face with an Espheni leader, they will gloat about their superiority to humans. However they redirect it to a human translator, as they don't speak English.
  • Crichton may be the hero of Farscape, but his speech in the season 4 finale bears a close enough resemblance to a villainous monologue that it elicits a reaction of You're Insane! from one of the bystanders.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Roose Bolton and Walder Frey's scene in "Mhysa", when they are gloating the morning after massacring their enemies, though it is deconstructed as they are only gloating after their victims are thoroughly dead.
    • Tywin Lannister is generally not that vulgar in public, but there are exceptions:
      • He also waits until his victims are dead when in a private moment he gloats by overseeing the re-purposing of an enemy heirloom (Ned Stark's sword 'Ice') for his own family with smug satisfaction, and throws the sword's wolf pelt sheath in the flames, celebrating the Lannisters triumph over the Starks.
      • In the History and Lore videos, on King's Landing, he is positively proud of his cold and brutal betrayal of Aerys Targaryen, noting how the King "thought he was being clever" by keeping Jaime as a hostage against him. He also considers "The Rains of Castamere" as a quaint song and sends it as his go-to death threat to anyone who so much as thinks of resisting the Lannisters.
    • Reversed in Oberyn Martell and Gregor Clegane's scene in "The Mountain and the Viper".
    • After Tansy is torn apart by the hounds, Myranda remarks, "Not so pretty now."
    • Joffrey, which doubles as Evil Is Hammy.
      Joffrey: If we want Robb Stark to hear us, we'll have to SPEAK LOUDER!
    • In Season 8, Euron tells Yara that the only reason why she's still alive/still has her tongue is because he wants someone to brag to. This winds up biting him in the ass when Theon sneaks aboard and rescues her.
  • Duncan won a couple battles in Highlander because opponents stopped to gloat.
    • Consone had his blades at Duncan's throat after stabbing him in the stomach, then had to taunt Duncan about being born poor. It gave Duncan time to land his own stab in the gut and then take Consone’s head.
    • Grayson had Duncan disarmed and on his knees and hesitated taking his head to gloat about how Duncan would have won in a few hundred years more. This gives Duncan the chance to jump off the platform they were on down to the ground, grab his sword and get a Heroic Second Wind.
  • iCarly: Missy does this, allowing Carly to overhear and finally figured out that Missy was trying to get rid of Sam.
  • Talking about the doom they going to cause, their evil plan, their ego or something else is the staple of villains in Kamen Rider. The examples vary from hilarious to genuinely menacing.
  • Just about Once an Episode on Leverage, the Villain of the Week will go off on a rant, either to the Client, the team, or to the villain's own "Bussey", about how they're justified in their actions.
  • In the season 1 finale of Lexx "Gigashadow", His Divine Shadow spends the last few minutes of the episode revealing his true nature and goals to the main characters. He taunts them with their failure to prevent his rebirth fueled by the sacrifice of nearly the entire population of the Light Universe and bids them extinction, capped off with an Evil Laugh. This causes his downfall since he's so busy gloating that he doesn't notice the baby Cluster Lizard Squish when it eats his brain.
  • My Country: The New Age: Nam Jeon indulges in this while trying to strangle Bang-won, telling him that he'll gain power over the crown prince and will become the real power behind the throne. It backfires on him when Bang-won survives.
  • NCIS uses this often. In "Murder 2.0" a serial killer uses a YouTube site to broadcast his murders, all in the name of fame. The killer proves to be a real headache for Gibbs, and when the team catches them, they boast that they would still be famous when their identity was revealed. Gibbs makes sure that no details about the killer are released to the public because of "possible links to terrorism".
  • Odd Squad:
    • The episode "Villains Helping Villains" lampshades this trope in the titular Instructional Film by having Jamie Jam, a well-known villainess in Odd Squad's Rogues Gallery, advise villains not to gloat because while it's fun to taunt your enemies, gloating ultimately leads into you telling them where you'll strike next, where you've already struck, and what pattern you follow when committing odd crimes.
    Jamie Jam: Listen, I get how fun it is to brag about how much smarter you are than Odd Squad, and how they'll never catch you. I've even done it myself. [...] Great speech, right? Wrong. I told Odd Squad what I was going to do and where I was going to do it, which made it so much easier for them to catch me!
    • A subversion occurs in the mid-season 3 finale "End of the Road" with resident Big Bad The Shadow, where she says that the Mobile Unit isn't getting a long monologue, but rather a short haiku.
    Olizabeth: I bet you're expecting a big evil speech. But you're not getting one!
    [the agents are relieved]
    Olizabeth: You're getting a poem instead!
    [the agents become unnerved again]
    Olizabeth: Odd Squad is finished. And the Mobile Unit too. Boo hoo hoo, for you. Buh-bye, Odd Squad!
    • While most every villain in Odd Squad's Rogues Gallery gloats to various extents, "Down the Tubes" puts a comedic spin on it by having Tennifer gloat, then get cut off by Orla excitedly talking about how fun Tube Travel is, and then go right back to gloating.
    • Backwards Bob, introduced in "20 Questions", is prone to doing this very frequently.
    Backwards Bob: Four questions left, for a three-digit code. Kids, welcome to Donesville, population: 3, plus me! I'm the mayor, Bobby Done. My family started this town generations ago! [chuckling]
    • Odd Todd, the Big Bad of Season 1, also does this often, even during a high-stakes court trial.
    Odd Todd: [after taking a sip of lemonade] Tastes. Like. Victory. [Evil Laugh]
  • Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin likes to gloat.
    • In "Faculty Cheerleader", Mr. Conklin gloats to his daughter over his morning coffee. He considers the sight of Miss Brooks, appointed faculty cheerleader, tossing a baton up in the air and it hitting her on the head. When Mr. Conklin decides to make himself faculty cheerleader, he's a victim of Laser-Guided Karma.
    • Mr. Conklin gloats to Miss Brooks in "Two Way Stretch Snodgrass" about his plans for the school football team, complete with Evil Laugh:
      Mr. Conklin: I just learned that Biff Mooney, one of the greatest college football players, is interested in a high school coaching job in this part of the country. I've already opened negotiations by mail, and it's a foregone conclusion that he'll accept my offer. Ah-ha-ha-ha [evil laugh], ah, I can't wait to see the expression on Brill's face when I tell him about it. Heh, heh, heh. [evil laugh]
  • In the third season finale of Person of Interest, Greer spends a minute or so gloating to Collier about how he'd manipulated all of Vigilance. He still kills Collier, accomplishing the goal of letting the gloat target die in despair, but that gloat does give Reese enough time to save Finch.
  • Sherlock: Both of the Big Bads cause their own downfall by doing this:
    • Moriarty (Big Bad of Series 1 & 2): He gloats that Sherlock's suicide is the only way to save his friends from execution, but adds "I'm certainly not going to do it." This clues Sherlock in on the fact that the snipers can, in fact, be stopped another way: if Moriarty does it himself.
    • Magnussen (Big Bad of Series 3): Gloats that he's beaten Sherlock and reveals that his blackmail "files" cannot be stolen from him because they're inside his head...which tells Sherlock that, if he put a bullet in said head, this would no longer be a problem.
  • In the 6th season premiere of Stargate SG-1, Anubis does this when he finds a way to overload the Earth stargate.
    • Hell, the Goa'uld as a whole love this. Not one of them ever passed up an opportunity to force SG-1 to their knees and make with the claims to Godhood. Anubis was really prone to it though. Even Apophis would probably regard announcing that "Your end of days approaches! You shall bow to my awesome power!" as a bit much.
      O'Neill: Oh please.
      McKay: Hello, Anubis? Your agent called, you're playing it way over the top.
    • And the Goa'uld wonder why the Tau'ri refuse to take them seriously.
      • Indeed, the only ruling Goa'uld they do take seriously are Lord Yu (who is too old and senile to ham it up that much), and Ba'al (who has learned how to be Affably Evil).
  • Supernatural:
    • Demons are the only type of evil at first the brothers face who pull this one. Occasionally some other malevolent beastie will indulge but every single demon does it when most creatures just get right to the killing, or at least attempted killing, of the brothers. In the first season finale, the Yellow Eyed Demon does this. Dean lampshades it with "Just kill us, 'cuz I just can't take the monologuing." This just fuels the Demon's Breaking Speech.
    • In later seasons, the angels, fallen and otherwise, demonstrate that they can't resist monologuing either.
  • Inverted in The West Wing when Secret Service agent Donovan is so busy gloating about how stupid a crook was to try to rob a store when the Secret Service was in town, that he doesn't notice the store clerk's very obvious eye rolling, trying to indicate that the guy he's caught has a partner.

    Manhua 
  • Deconstructed in Iron Ladies. While Yihuo was smart enough to leave a robot to trick Siyun, after gloating how he's going to take over the Merak dynasty and become something of a God-Emperor, Siyun reveals he just wanted to know his plans before ruining them. Cut to Dragon Empress tearing a hole through his fleet.

    Radio 
  • Satan likes his Evil Gloating in Old Harry's Game. Several episodes have him place a bet with the Professor about how horrible humanity is, with the stakes simply being that if Satan's proved right, he gets to gloat about it.

    Roleplay 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Before I Kill You, Mister Spy... (formerly James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game, formerly Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond) is built on this trope. Players are Spy Fiction Supervillains who score points by creating a Supervillain Lair and then luring spies into it. The points scored for a spy increase exponentially if you "taunt" them before killing them, but of course, doing so carries the risk that the spy will escape and destroy your lair.
  • Discworld Roleplaying Game enforces this trope by offering dark lord characters their own Code of Honour disadvantage — which includes the rule "if your enemies are defeated and helpless, engage in some token gloating and then ignore them while you get on with important matters". Note that, on the Discworld, Narrative Causality ensures that villains who act this way are generally guaranteed to survive their many defeats, in an equally stereotyped way — and the game supports this too.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Green slaadi are very arrogant and haughty, and tend to waste time boasting, gloating and blustering during combat when they should be paying more attention to what their foes are doing.
  • Exalted: Infernal Exalted can reduce their Torment meters by doing something their Yozi patrons like. As it happens, She Who Lives In Her Name enjoys an impressive feat of Evil Gloating, meaning that a Green Sun Prince who wants to pursue his own agendas without losing control may well have to rant like a B-movie supervillain.
  • Genius: The Transgression: As the game is built primarily on Mad Scientist tropes, monologuing to a bound captive is a viable way to regain Mania.
  • Marvel Super Heroes: Indulging in this is one way for villains to earn extra Karma (the game's combination of luck manipulation mechanic and experience points).
  • Paranoia: Parodied with the mutant power named "evil villain soliloquy that stops time while it's going on". Yes, it literally freezes an action scene to give the bad guy time to gloat.
  • Tomb of Horrors: At one point the module suggests that the DM engage in evil gloating if the party falls for one particularly sadistic trap.
  • Time Lord, the 1990s licensed Doctor Who RPG, gives villains a negative "Gloating" skill. If they capture a player character, they're forced to roll against it and, if they "succeeded", they waste time monologuing.

    Theatre 
  • In Pokémon Live!, "It Will All Be Mine" is basically Evil Gloating in the form of a song.
  • In The Little Foxes, Regina does this by telling her husband Horace that she hates him and expects him to die before long. He does.
  • In the Mrs. Hawking play series:
    • In part one: Mrs. Hawking, Lord Brockton starts to, though his monologue is cut short.
    • It devolves into a This Cannot Be! when the tides turn.
    • Mrs. Frost at the end of Gilded Cages. To an epic extent.

    Video Games 
  • In the third Ace Attorney game, Dahlia Hawthorne lays bare the sheer contempt she feels about the Fey clan and Phoenix; she's dead, having been channeled by a medium, so she believes she's beyond punishmment. Boy, is she wrong.
  • In Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Mr. Scratch, Wake's Humanoid Abomination Evil Twin frequently lords his near-triumph over Wake, particularly in his video messages, whether thrilled over a recent kill, showing off his weapons or contemplating how easily he'll manage a Kill and Replace in Alan's life due to his perceived superiority.
  • In Clive Barker's Undying, Jeremiah attempts this, but is interrupted. By a scythe.
  • Kane does this to the player midway through the GDI campaign of Command & Conquer, completely unaware probably aware that GDI is Faking the Dead.
    • Kane also gives a good one to Mike McNeil after breaking through the Hammerfest defenses in Tiberian Sun and stealing the sonic crystals, leaving behind a broadcast in which he glibly informs him that the sonic tank "will make an excellent addition to my collection", and that he is sorry to hear that McNeil's brother died a slow and painful death in the raid.
  • The Darkness "Awwww, what did they do, Jackie? What did they do to Jenny?"
  • In Eternal Darkness Pious Agustus does this all the time. Even to Mantorok!
  • As the resident Evil Genius in, well, Evil Genius, you can naturally do this while your enemies are being tortured. Be warned that super agents can escape as you gloat over their misfortune.
    • In the Facebook game based on the above, the Loading Screen says "Monologuing..."
    • You can gloat over any captive, a process which earns you a point of notoriety; super agents, however, are the only ones where assigning them to be tortured will automatically cause your Evil Genius to wander over to laugh maniacally at them - a process which can be exploited by moving them a long distance from the torture chamber, causing the super-agent to just sit there waiting for your arrival before the pain actually commences.
  • Halo's Gravemind. 50% Eldritch Abomination, 50% Evil Gloating. 100% Magnificent Bastard.
    "Now the gate has been unlatched,
    headstones pushed aside;
    corpses shift and offer room,
    a fate you must ABIDE!"
  • Hands of Necromancy has a rare heroic example (well, Anti-Hero), but you're a Dark Sorceror fighting the forces of hell, and should you obtain a new spell or power upgrade at any point, you'll let out a chilling, villainous gloat that sounds like you're gleeful at the prospect of destroying your enemies.
  • In Jak 3: Wastelander, Veger taunts Jak right after Damas dies, taking exceptional glee in telling Jak that he was his father and that he died without knowing.
  • In one of the last stages of Jedi Outcast, Fyyar goes off on a monologue, while Kyle casually finishes the objective he was performing before he was interrupted.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has Marluxia mocking Sora and Co. before one of their final fights:
    Imbeciles...You would knowingly shackle your heart with a chain of memories born of lies? You would be one who has a heart, yet cast aside your heart's freedom? You turn from the truth because your heart is weak—You will never defeat me!
  • In Mass Effect, it turns out that even The Reapers aren't immune to evil gloating. Sovereign tells you that there's nothing you can do to stop him and the other Reapers from wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy. It also claims that you're just a tiny insect compared to it and that you have no way of understanding its nature, and yet there it is delivering its evil speech. Subverted at the end of the third game; it turns out he was lying like a rug about his motivations.
    • In Mass Effect 2, Mordin's loyalty mission features an enemy krogan who will gloat at you on and on if you don't take the Renegade Interrupt option. Which will be available for his entire rant. The gloating goes on so long it's got to be some sort of record.
  • In Metro 2033 you get catured by the Nazis and they decide to just execute you on the spot rather than draging a badly beaten up prisoner with them. While the gun is pointed at your face, there is still enough time for two stranger to sneak up on the Nazis and kill them with knives. Then they come to check on you and one of them lampshades the situation for all it's worth:
    One thing I like about the bad guys. There's always a lot of discussions before they get around to pulling the trigger.
  • Moshi Monsters: The mission "Missing on a Star" ends with the leader of the bad guys gloating that the Doom Ray will doom the Moshi world. Thankfully, it resolves come the next mission.
  • Lord Crump does this in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door near the end of Chapter 2 when he traps Mario in a cage and snatches the Crystal Star, not realizing Mario has been Cursed with Awesome at your last destination, and can therefore escape his silly prison (of course, then he have to free the others).
  • Subverted in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal where Ratchet throws a wrench at the Big Bad Dr. Nefarious as soon as he opens his mouth to gloat. Strictly speaking, he throws his wrench at the remote control for his uber weapon just about to target Veldin. Nefarious just stood in the way.
  • Rengoku: In the second game Gryphus, both as a boss and in the backstory, mocks Gram for having emotions, while he patiently waits doing caluclations to defeat Gram each loop. When killed, he gives an Evil Laugh considering that Gram has yet to remember the rest, which Beatrice expositions shortly.
  • In the last quarter of Resident Evil 5, Wesker's speeches are pretty much nothing but this, intermixed with his truly epic Villainous Breakdown.
    • Wesker truly is the epitome of this. He's got it so bad, it's to the point where he literally has a gun pointed straight at Chris' head, and had a perfect opportunity to just off him right there. Except... he ends up just gloating and trying to convince Chris exactly how wonderful of a God he will be.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: Penelope smugly gloats she had already been planning to kill Sly and Murray in order to harvest Bentley's potential, make billions in weapon designs, and Take Over the World. "No matter - once Cooper's out of the way, he'll see things my way! Poor Bentley. He's kinda cute when he's being dumb".
  • In SongBird Symphony, the Big Bad reveals himself to the innocent Player Character through this.
  • In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, ALL the villains do this. Gig also does this from time to time, despite being on your side. The best example of Evil Gloating comes from Levin, aka Raksha the World Eater.
    Levin: You don't like that I've learned all these fancy new words? Well tough shit! I'm feeling verbose!
  • Strike Commander's final mission involves shooting down Generalissimo Mendez, the game's Big Bad. During the fight, he will gloat over the radio and explain his actions in full, before switching to begging for his life as soon as The Commander starts winning.
    • Immediately afterwards, a Post-Final Boss battle occurs in which Jean-Paul Prideaux will similarly explain over the radio exactly who sent him to kill you and why.
  • SHODAN does this a lot in the System Shock series. In both games she taunts the player that she is superior to you in every way because as an AI construct, SHODAN has access to more human information and more control over machinery that any human on Earth could ever even conceive. She also explains how being an organic life form makes you inferior and in the second game, she says that the only thing she likes about you are the cybernetic implants she gave you. She especially does this as you traverse the levels trying to find her, but when you show up for your showdowns with SHODAN her taunting amounts to nothing more than mere Boss Banter.
  • Flowey's boss dialogue in Undertale is made of this trope, and to a possibly greater extent, Asriel Dreemurr as the God of Hyperdeath.
  • Pretty much everything NEXUS says in Warzone 2100 is some sort of gloating.
    NEXUS: You have five minutes, Commander, and then it's frying time! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
  • In Wolfenstein (2009), Blazkowicz comes across a Nazi officer standing in front of a Veil portal. His gloating is interrupted when he is rather violently Killed Mid-Sentence by a giant, mutated abomination that telefrags him.
    • Continued in Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, with Rudi giving a long villain speech gloating about how badly the free world is losing in the face of the hyper-advanced Nazi war machine. And then there's also the newspaper report telling of how the Nazis actually made slaves of the Allied troops captured in the catastrophic D-Day landings and used them to build a giant museum dedicated to the Nazi's defence. Talk about rubbing the salt in.
  • Several World of Warcraft raid bosses do this, especially if you start wiping. Kael'thas and Malygos have raised it to an art form.
  • Zero Wing has the rather infamous scene with Cats phoning into the heroes' ship's huge viewscreen to gloat about how all their base are belong to him, and that they are on the way to destruction.

    Web Animation 
  • The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The second episode is more or less dedicated to Ridiculously Epic doing this for an entire half an hour. Yes, really.
  • In one episode of No Evil, Charles runs into Calamity, and opts to give her a little speech about how he'd love to have an audience, but she's just interfered too much and has to be taken out. She punches him in the stomach before he even finishes talking.
  • In Red vs. Blue, Felix does this when he captures the Reds and Blues, despite his partner telling him to just get on with killing them already. He calls it therapy for having to deal with their idiocy. Naturally, this bites him in the rear, since it gives Carolina a chance to save them. The Reds and Blues take advantage of his love of this later on, getting him to gloat about how he'd been Playing Both Sides of Chorus's civil war... while unknowingly being recorded. Finding that he'd been Out-Gambitted by the people he dismissed as losers sends him straight into Sarcasm Failure.
  • In Bowser's Kingdom episode 6, Ganon was trying to acquire welfare by giving an evil speech, but had to leave because, according to Rick Finklestein, he doesn't qualify for welfare:
    Rick: Name?
    Ganon: I am Ganon! Lord of Evil! King of Darkness!! Wielder of the Triforce of power!
    Rick: That's too long, I'll just put you down as "Angry Blue Pig". Abilities?
    Ganon: I have apocalyptic powers that can destroy Hyrule and any lands that I wish to conquer!
    Rick: I'm sorry, seems you don't qualify for welfare, you'll have to leave.
    Ganon: What!? I am the Lord of Darkness! You will not get rid of me like some pitful moblin! I WILL BURN THIS WHOLE WORLD DOWN!!!
    Rick: Yes, that's all well and nice, NEXT!!

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
    • Captain Hammer's gloating to the Doctor that he is going to sleep with the girl of his dreams, and later on, Horrible's awesomely gloating counter in the form of "Slipping."
    • Also subverted earlier, as Dr. Horrible tries to get his gloat on but gets sidetracked by his romantic problems:
      All right. The wait is over. This, my friends, is my freeze ray, which, with the addition of the Wonderflonium I obtained at my famously successful heist last week... I say successful in that I achieved my objective. It was less successful in that I inadvertently introduced my arch-nemesis to the girl of my dreams, and now he's taking her out on dates, and they're probably going to...French kiss or something. She called him sweet? How is he sweet? [long pause] Right, freeze ray!
  • lonelygirl15,
    • Edward Salinas broadcasts a video straight to TAAG's IP address for this purpose. (Don't ask how he got it)
    • The LG15: the resistance finale features a memorable instance of this: "Hello, McFly? I'm EVIL!"
  • Pretty much every villain from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes displays this trait to some degree.
  • After Mara Wilson got revenge on The Nostalgia Critic, she noted that the mocking he gave her old work will now happen to Critic for his old work. And there was Ominous Latin Chanting as she said it.
  • A frequently exploited trope in Red Panda Adventures. Multiple episodes, such as "Barbarian at the Gates" and "The Doctor is In", open with the Red Panda seemingly at his enemy's mercy, only to eventually reveal that the Red Panda had long since freed himself and was simply egging his captor on to try and learn more information. If the villain isn't obliging on their own, the Red Panda gives them a little nudge with his hypnotic abilities.

    Western Animation 
  • The Boondocks character Colonel H. Stinkmeaner is quite possibly the king of this trope. Every single word he says is evil gloating. At one point he even dies, goes to hell and basically gloats that he is more evil than the Satan, to which Satan readily agrees.
  • Even good guys gone bad suffer from this. In an episode of Beast Wars where Rhinox is turned into a Predacon and nearly takes over, this is what trips him up:
    Megatron: Even now, Rhinox, you're teaching me a valuable lesson...
    Rhinox: Yeah? What's that?
    Megatron: Sometimes Predacons gloat too much! [ZAP]
    • Ironically enough, Megatron would subsequently forget this lesson, at one point gloating over a dying Dinobot long enough to let his target improvise a weapon and hit him very hard with it.
  • Endlessly parodied in Kim Possible, where Dr. Drakken just can't quit gloating, no matter how many times Shego warns him about it. Of course, the otherwise savvy Shego lost when she was Evil Overlord because she gloated herself, angering Ron Stoppable.
    • Amusingly, Shego wasn't going to gloat at first, and only decided to do so after Drakken goaded her into it.
  • Lampshaded and averted in Superman: The Animated Series "In Brightest Day":
    Kyle Rayner: Wait! Don't you want to talk first? You know, banter back and forth to show me your innate superiority?
    Sinestro: No.
  • Transformers: Animated:
    • When Starscream wants to destroy Megatron by using his clones as bomb decoys, he just has to gloat instead of detonating the damn things, giving Megatron and crew time to get clear and let the Autobots save the city. In fact, in this series Starscream is addicted to evil gloating, spending time bragging instead of offing the people he wants to off, like Megatron.
    • This guy takes his evil gloating really seriously. He gets pissed off when Bumblebee interrupts him.
      Starscream: YOU... INTERRUPTED... MY... SPEEEEEEEEEECH!
    • At one point, he gets cloned, each one of which represents a bit of his personality. One, Thundercracker, speaks entirely in evil gloating.
    • This is averted with Megatron (the only TF canon where it is averted, come to think of it), who stands over Optimus and gloats that he's going to finally destroy the person who left him as a head for fifty years before turning right around and blasting the slag out of Starscream, the guy who actually did it.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: The Delightful Children love doing this to their victims/enemies, especially to Numbuh One. Talking too much once means they get to keep their birthday cake... because some nasty chicks have pooped all over it and the KND don't want it anymore.
  • At the end of ReBoot, Megabyte gives a short speech to the entire city after taking over again. He even lampshades the expectation of evil speeches from the Big Bad.
    Megabyte: Attention. As you are no doubt aware, the Principle Office is now under my complete control. You're probably looking forward to one of my erudite speeches about me, Megaframe, the new viral dawn, et cetera et cetera. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you. There is no grand scheme here. This is about revenge. Viruses are predatory by design, and it is time for me to follow my function. Prepare yourselves... for the hunt!
  • In the Spider-Man: The Animated Series, episode "Venom Returns," Cletus Cassidy gloats briefly about how everyone is going to die in 30 seconds due to a bomb he strapped to his belly, only Spidey takes advantage of this by taking the bomb off his stomach by force (and surprise) and throwing it at the sky, saving everyone.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Mr. Burns is known for doing this, (Springfield's organized crime community is relatively less prone to it) but an especially sickening example is in Who Shot Mr. Burns part 1. At the town hall meeting about Burns' plan to block out the sun, Bart is telling the people at the meeting about how his dog was crippled by Burns' oil drilling operation; Bart shows the town the dog's cast and everything, and Burns walks in at this exact moment and says "oh, those wheels are squeaking a bit; perhaps I could sell him a little oil!"
    • Subverted when Homer ends up owner of the power plant:
      Homer: Mr. Burns reign of terror is over! And today begins my reign of terr...
      Crowd: Gasp!!
      Homer: ..iffic management!
      Lenny: Man, I thought he was going to say "terror"!
      Carl: I didn't think he was going that way.
    • In one of Sideshow Bob's schemes to kill Bart, he places him restrained on a conveyor belt, which apparently includes the option of "gloating speed" for Bob to give a triumphant verbal bashing long enough for his family to arrive and save him.
  • South Park:
    • Eric Cartman. Usually a sign that he's taking a giant leap over the Moral Event Horizon rather than just being a Bratty Half-Pint.
      Cartman: Hahahaha ha I made you eat your parents.
    • In "Imaginationland", he finally has Kyle submit to his agreement to suck his balls, however he insists on making a huge ceremony and gloating endlessly in Kyle's face long enough for it to be interrupted three times over.
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Robotnik claimed he'd rather not kill Sonic but keep him imprisoned just so he can subject him to this all day long.
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", we have two:
  • Aku from Samurai Jack absolutely loves evil gloating. He's already doing it mere moments after being born.
    Aku: Ooohhh... YOU. Thank you!
    Samurai Lord: No, my intention was to destroy you!
    Aku: Oh? HA HA HA. But it was your poisoned arrow and your hocus pocus that set me free! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
  • In the Family Guy/The Simpsons crossover, Peter and Homer start a Giant Chicken-style fight over which beer is better (according to Homer and Moe, Pawtucket ripped off Duff). Both end up falling into a vat of radioactive goo, get radioactive powers, fly into the sky, and continue their fight aboard Kang and Kodos's Flying Saucer. Eventually, Homer loses his powers and grabs on to keep himself from falling to the ground. Still powered, Peter starts telling Homer what he'll do to him... then he too loses his powers, laments talking for too long, and falls.
  • In the start of a Justice League episode, Evil Gloating is Invoked, and Deconstructed through being Exploited. Lex Luthor has Superman at his mercy, thanks to a chunk of Kryptonite, and could go any moment for the killing blow, yet he gloats about exactly how he committed his latest crimes, the list of people he bribed... And when Lex is finished, Superman gets up and punches Luthor, before revealing he was actually the Martin Manhunter (who wasn't vulnerable to Kryptonite and was faking it all this time), and that the Justice League just pulled off an epic level sting operation.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Admiral Zhou is this when he kills the moon spirit.
    • This exchange from Toph:
      I am not Toph. I AM MELONLORD! MUAHAHAHAHA!
  • Zigzagged in the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "Strange Invasion". Zurg tries to be savvy by not gloating at all. However, he can't resist, and decides that while he will gloat, he won't give enough specific information on his Evil Plan for Buzz to act on. It fails.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "A Canterlot Wedding Part II" Queen Chrysalis does a lot of this. It leads to her undoing when Twilight Sparkle sneaks past her while she is SINGING about her success.
  • Gravity Falls has Bill Cipher:
    Bill: This party never stops! Time is dead and meaning has no meaning! Existence is upside down and I reign supreme! Welcome one and all to WEIRDMAGEDDON!
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): In "Return to New York, Part 3," Stockman takes the time to gloat that every component of his cyborg armor has its own backup power source. Donnie quickly realizes that this includes the Arm Cannon the Turtles sliced off previously, and levels it at Stockman, who has just enough time to go Oh, Crap! and try to escape before he's blasted out the window.
  • Adventure Time:
    • The Lich, voiced by Ron Perlman, begins his iconic monologue with the simple command, "Fall."
  • Zordrak of The Dreamstone often monologues in excess, which often has repercussions the odd time he takes an active role. In "The Knitted Balloon" he possesses Amberley, and leaves a bewildered Rufus convinced she's given the Dreamstone to his minions, he couldn't resist flying out her body to mock Rufus to his face however. His Urpney minions tend to avoid this, due to being cowardly enough that they just want to get the job over with. At least a couple occasions this was reversed outright, with the Urpneys gaining the upper hand because the heroes engaged in some gloating about how pathetic they were.
  • Dick Dastardly does this with flair in "Camouflage Hoparoo," an episode from his own show, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines:
    Narrator: As Yankee Doodle Pigeon breaks the morning stillness while flying another dangerous mission, he keeps a wary eye out for the vicious Vulture Squadron. Skippered by the deadly, diabolical, despicable demon of the skyways, Dick Dastardly.
    Dastardly: You left out dashing and debonair! [evil laugh]
Now that you have finished reading this article, NOTHING can stop us! MWA HA HA HA HAAAA...

 
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Video Example(s):

Fritz Stanford

This hapless Neo-Nazi could probably have killed Revy easily if he knew when to shut up. Instead, Revy has the time to slowly reload, space out a little, and then gutshot him with ease.

Syndrome's Plan

The Rant of a L...

Jagi Manipulate...

Ace Killer

Rugrats

Shigaraki Ruins...

Castor's Gloating

Arthur: The Bra...

Alternative Title(s): Monologuing, Evil Speech Of Evil

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Fritz Stanford

This hapless Neo-Nazi could probably have killed Revy easily if he knew when to shut up. Instead, Revy has the time to slowly reload, space out a little, and then gutshot him with ease.

How well does it match the trope?

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Example of:

Main / EvilGloating

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Fritz Stanford

Syndrome's Plan

The Rant of a L...

Jagi Manipulate...

Ace Killer

Rugrats

Shigaraki Ruins...

Castor's Gloating

Arthur: The Bra...