"You talk about the people as though you owned them, as though they belong to you... You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules."
— Jedediah Leland to Charles Foster Kane, Citizen Kane
This trope is the logical conclusion of an overconfident obsession with oneself. However, it is distinct from It's All About Me in that it does not focus simply on characters who frequently display self-centered behavior (often for comedic effect), but explores the mindset of characters whose behavior is strongly symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
The narcissist appears to be literally in love with themselves, presents themselves as perfect, and expects you to agree. When these expectations are not met, they react with indignation and hostility towards those who dare deny them that to which they feel entitled. Moreover, while highly self-conscious of how others view them, they are generally indifferent to the harm that they cause others in furtherance of their goals.
The Trope Namer is Narcissus of Classical Mythology. The best-known version of the story is from Ovid (in The Metamorphoses), according to which Narcissus coldly turned down a beautiful woman named Echo, who as a result faded away to nothing but a literal echo. Angered by his callousness and vanity, Aphrodite cursed Narcissus to fall in unrequited love with the next person he saw — which was his own reflection in the river, which he did until he died, whereupon his body was transformed into a flower. This is a perfect (if minimalist) description of the conflict within the narcissist — somebody who loves themselves, but at the same time never feels loved by themselves. Thus, they try to fill this hole with the love of others. Real Life Narcissists often have rather fragile egos when things do go wrong for them, and they may well do so since the Narcissist is rarely as clever, talented, or charming as they think they are.
It is insufficient for a character to simply be extremely vain or excessively preoccupied with their selfish desires to qualify for this trope. Rather, ALL of the following requirements must be met in order to qualify.
- The character's personality is overtly permeated by their own grandiosity. In all their interactions with others, a pathological narcissist firmly believes themselves to be vastly superior to those around them and (more importantly) expects recognition of this "fact". While capable of faking humility, all narcissists are angered by the mere hint they are being denied the recognition "owed" to them. Likewise, they deeply resent anyone who draws attention away from them or in any way encroaches on their claim of superiority. The "extinction burst" is a well-known phenomenon when someone finally calls them out on their bullshit and makes the narcissist realize that they can no longer control them. The more arrogant and prideful examples are likely to unleash a gigantic torrent of verbal abuse, while the more depressive ones will instead launch into a massive pity party about how much worse the target has made their life. Either way, escalations into physical attacks, scorched-earth revenge campaigns, or even faking a suicide attempt just for the attention are not at all uncommon.
- The character is self-absorbed to the point that they consistently prioritize their own desires at others' expense. Due to their grandiose sense of entitlement, narcissists have little (if any) qualms with disregarding others' needs and personal boundaries to further their goals. If they do take someone else's needs and desires into consideration, then it is likely an opportunity to grandstand for attention by congratulating themselves for their sheer magnanimity, or, worse, as a bargaining chip or to have something to hold over the other person in the future.
- The character is extremely self-conscious of how they're perceived by others. Despite having little regard for those around them, their peace of mind hinges on receiving recognition of their self-importance from others. However, unlike a character with Acquired Situational Narcissism, a pathological narcissist's grandiosity is not dependent on others' validation. Rather, it is the fact that these characters' egos are so inherently bloated that they perceive anything less than near-constant praise and adulation as a grievous injustice. Don't count on them to give anyone else the same level of respect that they expect to receive for themselves. If they absolutely must acknowledge the superiority of another, they'll give the shallowest of lip service.
- The character regularly displays a glaringly low tolerance for criticism and a blatant unwillingness to take responsibility for mistakes or outright wrongdoing. If someone dislikes them, the only possible reason is that the other person is a "hater" who's just jealous or inherently negative. Any apologies for toxic behavior, if they do come, are either insincere formalities or attempts to shift blame and save face, and either way are hollow and meaningless because the narcissist doesn't actually believe that they did anything wrong, but they also know that they only stand to lose by not deigning to apologize. On the upside, a narcissist's obsession with projecting an image of infallibility renders them capable of internalizing at least SOME set of moral guidelines.
- The character has an insatiable appetite for acclaim and power. Regardless of how much success or popularity they obtain, a narcissist's bloated sense of entitlement will always leave them unsatisfied in the long-term. Consequently, such characters inevitably feel driven to seek out ever greater levels of self-aggrandizement. As a result of their self-centeredness and diminished empathy, narcissists have little (if any) qualms with flouting rules and personal boundaries to further such aims. Their success and overall functionality is contingent on how good they are at selling themselves to people and keeping them hooked; even the highest-functioning examples can have everything come crashing down when they piss off or hurt the wrong people, and low-functioning examples are generally friendless, unsuccessful losers whose lives are marked by ceaseless drama, a revolving door of people, and a persistent "weight of the world"/"eternal sufferer" attitude born from continual perceived victimhood.
A common characteristic of an Alpha Bitch, Bridezilla, The Bully, The Fighting Narcissist, Jerk Jock, My Beloved Smother, Pointy-Haired Boss, The Prima Donna, Selfie Fiend, Spoiled Brat, or a Stepford Smiler. Particularly sinister and dangerous examples often include the aforementioned clinical/true sociopaths, The Social Darwinist, Übermensch, and General Ripper. The most absolute extreme of this trope is in the phrase "A God Am I": psychotic megalomaniacs who consider themselves divine and destined to subjugate everyone and everything to their will.
Compare Small Name, Big Ego; Inferiority Superiority Complex; and Black-and-White Insanity. Compare and contrast The Sociopath, who often displays extreme self-centeredness and vanity (though not always to the same extent a narcissist would), with an insatiable craving for stimulation, a complete lack of conscience, as well as an inability and unwillingness to form any emotional bonds with those around them.
Contrast Heroic Self-Deprecation.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Played for Laughs and deconstructed in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Girlfriend #10 is Mimimi Utsukushisugi, who goes to great lengths to make herself beautiful, acting grandiose to anything she interprets as compliments, and putting on an air of sophistication at all times. Where she's different from most narcissists, however, is that she prides herself on seeing beauty in other people, and she considers inner beauty just as important as outer beauty.
- Long-haired Bananya from Bananya, who spends more time grooming his fur every two hours than doing anything with his fellow Bananyas.
- Berserk: Griffith was a narcissist prior to the events of the Eclipse, viewing his team as little more than extensions of his own will, manipulating them towards his goals, blaming others for his decisions, and completely unable to take any sort of damage to his ego. His goal of becoming king wasn't out of any sort of ideals or a desire to improve people's lives, he simply wanted to rule over others. After the Eclipse, he sheds what few human traits he had and becomes a pure psychopath.
- Bleach: While not without reason, Sosuke Aizen has a much higher ego than he has any right to have. He's a manipulative, arrogant, and charismatic sociopath with ambitions of 'standing atop the heavens'. He views himself as better than everyone else, sees those serving under him as little more than tools, and wholeheartedly believes that he, and he alone, is the only one who has the right to kill the Soul King and take its place. When he fuses with the Hogyoku and becomes more powerful, he starts to become more arrogant and cocky, and eventually starts to break down when a "mere" human starts to overpower him.
- Chainsaw Man: Makima, as her superiority complex is a Required Secondary Power for her Mind Control abilities. As the Control Devil and Horseman of Conquest, she's the Anthropomorphic Personification of Control Freaks everywhere. As a result, she serves as a Dark Messiah who sees everyone and everything as beneath her, and so they should all just shut up and let her save them from The Evils of Free Will.
- Light Yagami of Death Note is a genius, handsome, popular, and knows it. Word of God says he thinks he's above most people. After gaining powers over life and death, it takes him less than a week to develop a god complex.
- The Bishōnen Line Digimon Splashmon is a Virus-attribute lunatic who prioritizes its own beauty above all else, including effectively commanding its mooks. When one appears in Digimon Ghost Game he uses his Murder Water powers to transform people into water with the intent of turning them into cosmetics, and he goes ballistic when Gammamon's attack messes up his hair.
- Dragon Ball:
- Bulma may count, although she mellowed out a bit in her later years. She has a few traits such as her vanity, having a lot of self-centered desires, and showing no scruples with manipulating and screwing people over to fulfill her desires and getting what she wants. In Dragon Ball Super: Broly it's revealed that she's been abusing the Dragon Balls to keep herself looking younger.
- Vegeta has been the most prideful in himself and his strength for decades until his Heel–Face Turn. His position as the Prince of All Saiyans gave him a superiority complex.
- Frieza even more so. He's a tyrant that only conquers planets to bolster his empire and never regards the feelings of others. Played for Laughs in Broly when soon after the aforementioned Bulma scene he declares his intent to use the Dragon Balls to become taller.
- Cell also has shades of this, especially after he reaches his Perfect Form. He considers himself the greatest being to ever be made and only compliments Dr. Gero in relation to him creating such a perfect specimen such as him. Cell decides to host a tournament to prove that his power is superior.
- All incarnations of Zamasu are this to the double-digit nth-degree. He's firmly convinced that he's just plain better than everyone else, to the extent that he furiously lashes out at the mortal Goku for touching a god like him, thinks he knows better than his fellow gods, including his more experienced master, is psychotically self-absorbed, refusing to even consider the possibility that he's wrong about mortals and believes that it's his duty to wipe them all out, going so far as to slaughter the other gods because he considers them useless for sitting around and doing nothing about evil, and constantly goes off on Motive Rants and Evil Gloating sessions, admitting that he doesn't really care if anyone listens to him or not because he just likes hearing himself talk. He's also unable to handle criticism and takes defiance of his plans very personally; when Trunks calls him nothing but a sinner and a murderer, Zamasu flies into a rage and gives him a Shut Up, Kirk!, declaring that his crusade is Trunks' own fault because he broke the gods' Time Travel Taboo and created two separate timelines. To drive the point home, it's made clear that the only reason Future Zamasu and Goku Black get along as well as they do is because they're literally the same person.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Pride in Fullmetal Alchemist. He's utterly obsessed with himself to the exclusion of all others. Justified as he literally is arrogance given human form, and as such, has no emotions beyond self-love and satisfaction.
- The version of Pride in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is no better, viewing himself as the pinnacle of creation and an agent of God.
- Leonard Tesstarossa of Full Metal Panic!, which makes for an interesting contrast with his sociopathic predecessors, Gates and Gauron. Unlike them, Leonard can care about other people — it's just that he finds himself infinitely more interesting.
- The nameless manager of the Princess Imperial restaurant from Happy Sugar Life is a particularly toxic example. She reveals to Satou that she sees the restaurant as her "kingdom" with herself as the "queen" and thinks that everyone should love no one else but her. When Satou starts working there, she quickly starts gaining popularity among the staff and the others say that the manager is old news. The fact that Mitsuboshi asked Satou out is one thing that pushed the manager over the edge. When she hears what the staff has to say about her, she then decides to kidnap Mitsuboshi and keep him locked in her office to rape him for a week to show the superiority of her "love." Meanwhile, to undermine Satou's newfound popularity, she manipulates the staff into hating Satou and making her work more difficult. Satou is punished by working excessive overtime at the restaurant without the overtime pay all for the perceived slight of bruising the manager's ego, something Satou calls her out on. Her Villainous Breakdown consists of her angrily attempting to justify her actions, and when Satou records her confession, the manager is worried about her reputation being ruined.
- Prussia from Hetalia: Axis Powers has the catchphrase "I am awesome!" He thinks he's a main character and has a library full of journals he's kept. In the Japanese, he refers to himself as "Ore-Sama". He even wrote a song for himself, about himself.
- In March Comes in Like a Lion, Shimada accuses Gotou of being one, due to having a well-built physique that one would not normally expect from a professional shogi player.
- Al Da Flaga of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is a narcissistic parent, who raised his son (Mu La Flaga) with the intent of making him nothing more than an extension of his own ego. When Mu insisted on being his own person, Al locked him away in a Big Fancy House and had himself cloned. He then raised the clone to believe that it had no identity of its own and existed only so that Al's legacy could live on, effectively trying to turn the clone child into a perfect duplicate of himself. He succeeded instead in creating a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and Misanthrope Supreme who sought the annihilation of the entire human race and had to wear a mask in order to give himself a sense of identity.
- Gilbert Durandal from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, an Evilutionary Biologist from the cloning lab turned Control Freak and Consummate Liar politician who takes Al's narcissism and dials it up when he tries to tell the entire world how to live their lives. He's shown throughout the entire show as being preoccupied with image, presentation, and self-aggrandizement at the expense of truth or emotion, and God help you if don't cooperate with him for the coming One World Order. Fittingly, Rau liked him so much, he showed up after death just to screw with him and make fun of his plans.
- Paptimus Scirocco of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a Dark Messiah who manipulates and discards his followers like pawns on a chessboard. While he does care about them on some level, Scirocco largely views his minions in terms of what they can do for or to him and uses constant emotional manipulation to keep them in line (especially the women). Even his Utopia Justifies the Means rhetoric contains an undercurrent of "only I can save the world." He has a typically narcissistic appreciation for those most like himself to boot — it's worth noting that the only woman (indeed the only person) he has any respect for is fellow Magnificent Bastard Haman Khan and that the measuring stick he uses for her greatness is his own inability to manipulate her.
- Played for Laughs in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. When Miyamae points out that Suzuki, the male protagonist of the eponymous Nozaki's Shōjo manga, hasn't developed at all compared to his Love Interest Mamiko, Nozaki helpfully points out that he spends huge amounts of time caring for his skin while talking about how pretty he is. This isn't in the manga itself and he's forbidden from ever showing it.
- Donquixote Doflamingo from One Piece is one of the most odious and vile malignant narcissists in all of anime and manga. Supremely self-absorbed and firmly convinced of his absolute superiority and right to be beyond reproach and consequence due to his royal blood, his public face as a Warlord hides what he truly is: a cruel, sadistic tyrant who defines people's worth by their ability to be useful to him and displays extreme rage and almost gleeful hatred towards anyone who gets in his way or makes him look bad, and, when desperate, demonstrates that he will stop at absolutely nothing to get his way, even if it means killing an entire country. His supposed Undying Loyalty to his inner circle (which, for a while, appeared to be his one redeeming trait) is also revealed to be a sham, as he is perfectly willing to use them as martyrs and sacrificial lambs for his cause. When defeated and captured, he refuses to take any sort of responsibility for his actions and instead seems to be overjoyed at the fact that the World Government is facing a possible war over the power vacuum that his capture created. Lastly, while he may have had a horrifying and traumatic past, flashbacks make it very clear that most of it is his own damn fault, and his brother (one of the most genuinely nice and sympathetic characters in the series) went through the exact same things that Doflamingo went through, which lends a great deal of credence to his theory that Doflamingo was just innately evil.
- One-Punch Man:
- Amai Mask, who is an idol/singer on the side along with being a hero, is also the face of the Hero Association and cares deeply about how he — and other heroes — look to the public. Later revealed to be because of his true monstrous nature forcing him to maintain appearances. The Hero Association, being funded entirely by donations, also needs to keep up a good image with the people.
- A minor A-Class Hero is explicitly called Narcissistoic and lives up to his name quite well.
- Karamatsu in Osomatsu-san. His youngest brother, Todomatsu (Totty), is also this to a lesser extent.
- Tamaki Suoh from Ouran High School Host Club seems like one of these on the outside, but behavior-wise he's very considerate of others, with his most inconsiderate moments stemming from cluelessness. He does have a (justifiably) high opinion of his own appearance:
"What a crime... such a breathtaking crime. That God would create a star as bright as I. And I know it's a disgrace, to admire this perfect face, reflected in your eyes."
- Jessie and James of Pokémon: The Series live for style, which only makes them that much more lovable. Jessie's Berserk Button is any injury done to her hair or her beautiful face; James carries around photos of himself to look at in his spare time. They dress up (stylishly) for no particular reason, silhouette themselves against the light, wave roses around, and in general steal every scene they walk into. When they're about to die their priorities are clear:
Jessie: I'll always remember what a wonderful dresser you were.
James: So will I! - Sailor Moon has a few examples.
- There's Rei and Minako, but they vary in terms of how they perceive themselves. Rei's attitude is "Well of course I'm beautiful and adorable doesn't everybody know that?" While Minako is more "To be so beautiful, surely this must be a crime!" Rei often lacks self-awareness when she gets in the mood, and Minako tends to be very grandiose and hammy when proclaiming her good looks.
- For a villainous example, there's Queen Nehellenia from the fourth arc, whose vanity was so bad she devoured the dreams of everyone in her kingdom, which turned her subjects into living nightmares and transformed her planet into a dark wasteland, all for the sake of making sure her beauty is never ruined by age. The fourth season of the first anime even ends with her getting resealed in her prison dimension and being okay with it because it means she'll be beautiful, and the fifth season opens with her floating in a void filled with mirrors to which she can eternally gaze upon herself. She doesn't care about anyone or anything except for how she looks and that others see her as beautiful, and she really hates Sailor Moon due to jealous and paranoid beliefs that the Moon Princess is actively mocking her.
- Miki Kawai from A Silent Voice, a sweet-looking and intelligent classmate of Shoya who turns out to be this. Unlike some examples, she's actually more of a textbook case of Narcissism. She has a strong need to be seen as important and to be admired, claiming that she works and studies harder than everyone else, and so shouldn't be seen as anything less than great by her classmates. She is bothered when people talk badly about her, thinking that it must be because they are jealous of the relationship she has with her crush. She also believes that she was bullied back in elementary school, just like Shoko was, even though in reality she was a bystander who laughed at the bullying and was responsible for turning Shoya into the class scapegoat. But, of course, Kawai appears incapable of acknowledging these flaws, and ultimately believes she can do no wrong.
- Black Star from Soul Eater.
"I will be the man who will surpass the gods!"
- Sword Art Online: Sugou Nobuyuki possesses multiple narcissistic traits. He's arrogant, egomaniacal, and power-hungry, to the extent of proclaiming himself a god, and quite manipulative, easily tricking Asuna's parents into thinking he's a friendly Honest Corporate Executive when he's really using their company for his own twisted ends. He also possesses a grandiose sense of self-worth and expects special treatment from people around him, believing he's entitled to have Asuna even though she completely despises him. Finally, he's unable to handle criticism and takes defiance of his plans very personally; he views Kirito as beneath him, openly calling him trash and scum, and is outraged when Kirito ruins his plans while verbally tearing down his delusions of godhood and summing him up as nothing but a "king of thieves" mooching off Kayaba's work, to the extent that he outright tries to murder him in real life while declaring he won't accept anything less than Kirito's death for his interference.
- The Rising of the Shield Hero:
- Malty has numerous narcissistic traits such as being arrogant, manipulative, greedy, egotistical, and sadistic as she sees herself as the only one fit to rule Melromarc and have control over anyone that comes her way as her overconfident attitude and royal lineage manages to allow her to get away with her crimes.
- Motoyasu may seem well-meaning, but he only has his heroic image on his mind as he uses it as a way to get more women as a part of his "harem" and believes he's never wrong as his blind sense of justice makes him stubbornly ignorant towards the world around him.
- Itsuki only likes being a hero because so he can be praised by everyone he meets as he doesn't care who he's helping or not helping at long as the honor and glory comes his way and if he's praised then that will be enough to satisfy his ego.
- Biscas T. Balmus is a corrupt pope who believes that he is absolute justice and as he's attacking Naofumi and the rest he states that he's God himself as his complex has driven him to hypocritical madness and delusional insanity.
- Mald is a racist and overconfident knight who looks down on Naofumi and demi humans as he constantly taunts them along with commoners. He even had the nerve to betray Itsuki and the rest just to gain more power and influence for himself as he saw everyone as deposable tools till, they were no longer useful.
- Lesty is a mirror of Malty as she's a royal brat who normally whines when she doesn't get what she wants and believes that she's above everyone else till she's put in her place as he arrogant attitude normally bites her in the ass.
- Eisuke Nikaidou from Tsurune: The Linking Shot. His superficial charm is just a facade to hide the resentment he holds towards Minato and Shuu. He only thinks about himself, winning, being the best, and getting revenge on those who have provoked his rather childish grudges. When he and Minato get stuck in the elevator, he goes as far as admitting to Minato that he only used his teammates to his advantage.
- Charlotte Scherzen from Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid possesses all five traits listed above. She believes that she is the most important, popular, beautiful, and beloved person on the island of Mermaid. She tries to assert her dominance in any way she can by either showing off how beautiful she is (including her massive boobs) or by showing off how powerful she is as a fighter and a Liberator. She hates Akira since he is the only threat to her popularity being the only male on an island of women and will stamp out any potential threat to her power. She tirelessly attempts to acquire power and influence on Mermaid to fuel her ego. And when she takes over as governor with Momoka's help exposing Akira as a woman, she refuses to listen to any dissenting opinions. It makes it fairly easy for Momoka to manipulate her by stroking Charlotte's ego, and that ego is severely bruised when Momoka reveals her true intentions.
- Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! is incredibly proud and self-involved. In the anime, he is slightly nicer and a protective big brother to Mokuba.
Asian Animation
- Smart S. of Happy Heroes is very into himself, up to the point that he refers to himself as stuff like "the main character" and will immediately panic should an intrusion ruin his appearance even the slightest bit.
Comedy
- Discussed by Jim Gaffigan in regards to his anxiety over body-length mirrors in the gym. He imagines that these types of people would be the only ones who would enjoy watching themselves work out:
"If I'm gonna be working out, I want to look at something...like myself. I want to look at myself while I work on myself. I should do a recording so I can listen to myself while I look at myself while I work on myself...as I leaf through my Self magazine and read about how myself can improve myself."
Comic Books
- Reggie Mantle from Archie Comics is this and then some. As Jughead once commented, he suffers from "I"-strain.
- Fantastic Four: Reed Richards became Doctor Doom's nemesis because Doom blames Reed for the accident which scarred his perfect face. Taken even further in some versions of his origin, in which the scarring is fairly minor, but he insists on putting on his famous mask before it's finished cooling, due to his need to "conceal" the imperfection.
- A-Pex in Power & Glory, who brags about his "invulnerable body of throbbing pink steel", even though he has a crippling fear of disease that leaves him incapable of fighting anyone.
- Batman:
- The Joker has a truly titanic ego, thinking that he's the smartest and greatest comedian, criminal, and person in the world. He takes insults very personally and will become an Ax-Crazy maniac bent on destroying those who trolled him. He also takes being snubbed from joining any Legion of Doom personally. It's this reason that Superman's rival Lex Luthor includes him in his schemes just to avoid invoking his wrath. Even if Joker joins a league of villains, the other baddies tend to keep the clown at arm's length.
- Depending on the Writer, the Riddler is an incorrigible Glory Hound who leaves riddles for attention and to prove his cleverness.
- Vanity in all interpretations of The Smurfs. He spends most of his time admiring himself in a handheld mirror.
- Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me: Laura Dean has some of the hallmarks. She is incredibly self-centered and shows zero regard for Freddy's feelings, expecting Freddy to always be there to cater to her whims, but not annoy her with her own pesky emotional needs. She's willing to manipulate Freddy just for the hell of it, and doesn't consider her friends and hobbies to be important. Like many narcissists, her ego, while massive, also appears to be incredibly fragile, as when Freddy finally gets sick of her crap and dumps her, she breaks down screaming and crying almost immediately.
- Spider-Man: A trait that nearly all Spider-Man characters to some level have shown at different times:
- Peter after being bitten by a spider, decides to court celebrity and fame as a performer rather than use his newfound superpowers and changes for scientific analysis and research. While Uncle Ben's death teaches him why this isn't good, he still retained a narcissistic streak well into his later years such as Roger Stern's "The Daydreamers" where he dreams about winning the Pulitzer, the Nobel, joining the Avengers and the Fantastic Four at the same time with both of them fighting each other over him, and of course Jameson kisses his boots and grovels at his feet. This changes after his marriage with Mary Jane when both of them realize their Hidden Depths and he becomes more genuinely selfless. Post-OMD, he retains some sense of it, such as insisting to Mary Jane that it's okay for him to lie to Carlie Cooper for his double life because he wants her to love him for "plain ol' Pete" only for her to dump him, as MJ more or less predicted she would when she finds out that he lied to her. And as Peter Lampshades in ''The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), he rather liked the fame and adulation that came with being a CEO of a company with unearned wealth and degree.
- Even his work as Spider-Man has an element to it. Peter's main angst as Spider-Man is primarily how his guilt affects him and him personally, how it screws up his life, and how his attempts to help others cause problems for him because he's misunderstood or he's unlucky. His reaction to Goblin killing Gwen is how Norman killed "his woman". In Slott's "No One Dies", his excessive concern and grief over losing loved ones leads him to add a new Heroic Vow which Mary Jane points out is excessive and grandiose since he's a superhero and not god and that his great sensitivity tends to make him lose sight of what he is actually capable of and what his actual responsibilities are.
- Narcissism is also a trait and flaw for many of Peter's supporting cast one which they overcome. Flash Thompson goes from a selfish jock to a dedicated serviceman inspired by Spider-Man to serve something bigger than himself. Gwen Stacy in Ditko's run started out as a self-absorbed Ice Queen before mellowing out to an overly sensitive girl in Lee-Romita's run. J. Jonah Jameson is of course almost supremely self-absorbed and self-centered even when he is doing good, acting noble, and serving something bigger than himself, with his narcissistic side co-existing with his heroic side.
- Mary Jane is interesting for someone whom others see as this, and who also tells herself that she is one many times, but actually proves to be more consistently selfless than most. After walking out of her broken home and abandoning her sister to make something of her life, she became devoted to her Aunt Anna and even her neighbor May Parker, notably being friendly and visiting them even when Peter was too busy. Her decision to stick by Peter in The Night Gwen Stacy Died even after she lashes out at him. Her support and encouragement of Peter being Spider-Man during one of his "Spider-Man no more" phases when they were friends (thinking out how she, the most irresponsible person she knows, prefers Peter continuing to remain the most responsible man person she has ever met), and ultimately becoming a very devoted, faithful, and loving wife to Peter. Post-OMD, MJ lapses into her pre-character development narcissism but her selfless streak returns from time to time (such as encouraging Peter to find love and happiness even if she is still in love with him herself), helping her boss Tony Stark, and flirting with superheroics even when she doesn't want to.
- Superman:
- Lex Luthor hates Superman (and Supergirl, to a lesser extent) for holding humanity back... from worshipping him, instead. While he's not incapable of empathy, he has trouble viewing his employees and allies as anything other than extensions of himself and is a major Control Freak who cannot stand it when those around him have different opinions from him.
- In the Silver Age, as recounted in "How Luthor Met Superboy", Luthor's hatred for Superman began when the latter as Superboy saved his life from a chemical fire after Luthor's experiment to create life went awry. Luthor not only blamed him for intentionally sabotaging his experiment, he also blamed him for turning bald as well. Now, if that's not vanity, we don't know what is.
- Brainiac steals cities and blows up their original homeworlds when he's done with absorbing their cultures' knowledge. In short, his goal as seen in Superman: Brainiac is absorbing the whole knowledge of the universe until "evolving into perfection", and regards literally everybody else as expendable guinea pigs.
- Supergirl's villain Reactron is a self-centered, lecherous bully who hates Kara Zor-El to death because she had the gall to fight back and beat him down when he attacked her with no provocation whatsoever. In retaliation, he murdered her parents, blew up her planet, and attempted to kill her and rape her several times. He also murdered his ex-girlfriend because the woman dared to break up with him. Benjamin Krullen cares for no one but himself, and people are only toys he amuses himself with.
- Cinder of Deathstroke the Terminator's bastard version of the Titans is a miserable take on this trope. She's spent decades living in her own misery, built off the death of her little brothers and her sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle. After gaining magma generating superpowers left her functionally immortal and thus unable to commit suicide like she wants, she now spends her time murdering rapists and child molesters because she thinks she has nothing better to do with her life. As such, every appearance she makes is about how unhappy and self-obsessed she is, incapable of moving beyond her fog of self-hatred and with no desire of wanting to do so.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Getaway is eventually revealed to be one of these: he's driven by a conviction that he's supposed to be a Prime, and proves willing to manipulate, torture, brainwash, kill and otherwise go to tremendous lengths in pursuit of his self-aggrandising "destiny". Then, when he realises it's totally out of reach, he tries to take Rodimus out in a Taking You with Me explosion that would have destroyed the ship and is only stopped by Cyclonus cutting off his arm. Psycho Psychologist Froid specifically notes narcissism among Getaway's more interesting psychological issues.
- Venom: Depending on the Writer, Eddie Brock, the original Venom/Anti-Venom, is sometimes referred to as a narcissist when he's not being referred to as a sociopath. He doesn't totally lack empathy like a sociopath, but it's certainly "Never His Fault". (It's Spider-Man's!) Brock probably better fits a borderline personality disorder than either of those (albeit an extremely dangerous one).
- Ozymandias from Watchmen is the World's Smartest Man and he knows it, being a Captain Ersatz to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt who constantly compares himself to Alexander the Great. He personally carries out the violent death of the Comedian, implied to be payback for Blake's previous beatdown of him. He's convinced that he alone has the resources and the will to carry out his plans and avert nuclear war, and is wholly unconvinced of humanity's potential to avert war on their own terms. In the sequel, Doomsday Clock, after his plan fails, he refuses to admit that he was wrong and doubles down, planning to Save Both Worlds after ending up in the DC Rebirth universe with the same destructive methods that worsened things in his own. He goes so far as to undermine the efforts of actual heroes to look good in comparison, and after getting shot by The Comedian he expresses a desire to die as the heroic martyr that saved everyone.
- Wonder Woman: (Pre-Flashpoint) Queen Atomia is an unapologetic and proud Mad Scientist who uses her laboratory to turn people into her near-mindless, totally devoted and worshipful slaves. To drive the point home, she's shown having her lobotomized and forcibly cyborged minions kiss her feet.
Comic Strips
- Phoebe and Her Unicorn: Marigold Heavenly Nostrils the unicorn is introduced trapped staring at her own reflection for a good day. In fact, about half of the punchlines in the comic are about her belief that she's the most beautiful thing imaginable. She once thought that a dressing room was "loveliness camp".
Fan Works
- In Equestria: A History Revealed, the Lemony Narrator Loose Change hits all of the criteria: she's convinced that she's the best historian ever (she's a Cloudcuckoolander college student), she believes that her essay (the story) will bring her fame for revealing the truth behind Equestria (otherwise known as her rambling anti-Celestia conspiracies), and she's deeply jealous of other ponies who have powers she doesn't but covers it up with a facade of Earth Pony supremacy.
- In Friendship is Failure, the Author Avatars have all five traits to some extent or another; being convinced of their own superiority, being utterly self-absorbed, being extremely self-conscious of how they're perceived by others, being incapable of admitting responsibility and being insatiable for acclaim and/or power.
- The Makings of Team CRME:
- Roman Torchwick was said to be written with narcissistic personality disorder in mind, and it certainly shows. He is already incredibly arrogant about becoming the top mob boss in Vale and tends to view others as extensions of himself. Shown when he says that he married a woman just to have a queen for his criminal empire and because they're both attractive people, meaning they should naturally be together. He will screw over anyone to get power. He also responds favorably to praise whether it is willing or reluctant (one reason he likes his old mob boss, Violet Kincaid) and will be offended when he isn't seen as a criminal mastermind. His only friend, Dwight Golding, is only kept around for so long because he helped Roman in building his criminal empire and not any real attachment to Dwight. He was mostly seen as an accessory and is only treated nicely when Roman fires him because he helped Roman get his business off the ground.
Chloe: I mean, [Neo]'s always happy to see you. And I don't blame her.
Roman: Well, of course, she’s happy to see me. It's me. - Cinder Fall starts fitting the criteria of a textbook malignant example in this series. She’s incredibly egocentric and overconfident about her abilities and even brags about her Fall Maiden powers before she even gets them. She’s also insanely needy for validation since it’s not enough to just be strong and powerful. She wants to be feared for it, too. She tends to only consider others in the way that they relate to her. She is fond of Mercury because they have similar experiences with abuse and share certain traits. However, that fondness is strained when he starts undermining her connection with Emerald that she uses for her benefit. She likes having Emerald around because she is devoted to Cinder, but she will put Emerald down when she starts being too bold. She wants total obedience. And she hates Watts because he makes it his mission to take her down a peg. She also doesn’t like having her decisions being criticized. Having Salem treat her as the favorite child only helped to enable her ego. And being praised by her for successfully training Mercury and Emerald also helps to stroke that ego. This also proves how Emerald and Mercury are extensions of herself in her mind. They help her get praise from Salem. She even gets distracted by her own sexy when observing her naked body in a mirror. The narration even states that she sees it as a perfect body.
- Roman Torchwick was said to be written with narcissistic personality disorder in mind, and it certainly shows. He is already incredibly arrogant about becoming the top mob boss in Vale and tends to view others as extensions of himself. Shown when he says that he married a woman just to have a queen for his criminal empire and because they're both attractive people, meaning they should naturally be together. He will screw over anyone to get power. He also responds favorably to praise whether it is willing or reluctant (one reason he likes his old mob boss, Violet Kincaid) and will be offended when he isn't seen as a criminal mastermind. His only friend, Dwight Golding, is only kept around for so long because he helped Roman in building his criminal empire and not any real attachment to Dwight. He was mostly seen as an accessory and is only treated nicely when Roman fires him because he helped Roman get his business off the ground.
- The Pony POV Series has General-Admiral Makarov, the Big Bad of the Shining Armor Arc, who declares Shining his Arch-Enemy and sentences him to a Fate Worse than Death all because when they first met at a diplomatic banquet, Shining didn't know his name. He's ultimately revealed to be one of Pandora's creations, which became a Black Hole Sue, convinced that it's perfect and that all stories should be about it, no matter how that twists them.
- Project Riribirth depicts Riri Williams as one, to the extent that she programs the AI systems she builds to continually praise her and tell her how awesome she is. This is shown to be in part because of the way Tony Stark mentored her.
- Sam & Mickey portray Barbie as very boastful and vain.
- The Arthur fic Proper Discipline has D.W. diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, despite being a kindergartner. She is diagnosed after her behavior, or more precisely D.W. setting her house on fire, causes her to be institutionalized.
- Prince Jewelius, the Big Bad of Loved and Lost, proves himself to be a narcissistic sociopath after he takes over Equestria's throne and names himself "Holy King Jewelius I". He loves basking in the praise of Canterlot's citizens, uses his own image in his banners, and believes himself to deserve being regarded as the greatest ruler in Equestria's history after all the years he spent being jealous of his aunt Princess Celestia and cousin Princess Cadance's prestige. He manipulates Twilight Sparkle into agreeing to marry him because he wants to father through the powerful unicorn a lineage that'll keep his legacy alive for the future generations. He also becomes horribly angry whenever the citizens or Twilight show sympathy towards Celestia and Cadance, refusing to admit there's anything wrong in his thinking.
- During the initial Berkians-vs-Madrigals clash in The Dragon and the Butterfly, Camilo manages to disarm Snotlout by turning into Snotlout and asking for his weapons, Snotlout so awed by "himself" that he doesn't think about the possible risks.
- Blackbird (Arrow): Dinah Lance is the typical narcissistic parent who treats one of her children as The Scapegoat (Laurel) and the other as the Golden Child (Sara). Tellingly, Sara is her favorite not because of anything she had done to endear herself to Dinah, but rather because she reminds Dinah of herself when she was younger, which goes a long way into explaining why Dinah goes so far to absolve Sara of any wrongdoing.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: Cersei ends up repeatedly sleeping with a Slaaneshi shapeshifter who takes on Cersei's form as part of her descent into Slaaneshi worship (notably, s/he tried to take Cersei's form to seduce Jaime, who was horrified enough to fight back, breaking the illusion).
Films — Animation
- This is popular with Disney villains:
- Gaston from Beauty and the Beast has an entire song dedicated to how awesome he is.
- Ratcliffe from Pocahontas loves himself almost as much as he loves gold.
- The Evil Queen of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, who had a magic mirror whose primary job is to specifically tell her that she's the most beautiful in the land every single day.
- Scar of The Lion King. He manages to use in one sentence five different words to praise himself and tops it off with how much of a wonder he is.
"Meticulous planning, tenacity spanning decades of denial is simply why I'll be king undisputed, respected, saluted and seen for the wonder I am, yes my teeth and ambitions are bared, be prepared!"
- The Italian version of the last part translates as: "I'll be a king admired, feared and loved, nobody is better than me!"
- And in the French version we have "Le seul dieu vivant qu'on acclaime!", which means "The only living god to be acclaimed!".
- Frollo of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a textbook narcissist who projects his own lust on Esmeralda, and as is typical of a Knight Templar uses self-righteous morality to justify his perceived superiority. Somehow he succeeds in praying in a way so selfish and self-absorbed that the contrast with his faith should be even more obvious than the answer to the riddle who is the monster and who is the man?
"Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man, Of my virtue I am justly proud / Beata Maria, you know I'm so much purer than the common vulgar weak licentious crowd..."
- Sarousch, the villain of the sequel, always looks at himself in the mirror. All the while calling himself "handsome" and such.
- Syndrome from The Incredibles cared only for himself and his fame. He's notably a much more realistic example of this than most; he doesn't just have an ego, he actively can't comprehend the idea he's wrong or anything is his own fault. Even his memory of the trigger event that drove him to villainy completely removes Bomb Voyage or anything that may have been his fault.
- One Disney hero: Kuzco and one Disney villain: Yzma.
- Same in Enchanted: one hero, Prince Edward and one villain, Queen Narissa.
- Also King Candy AKA Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph.
- Mother Gothel in Tangled.
- Tamatoa from Moana spends half his Villain Song "Shiny" singing about how beautiful and powerful he is (well, thinks he is). The other half is a "The Reason You Suck" Speech aimed at Maui. Tamatoa overcompensates for his original drab appearance by decorating his shell with glittering treasure and painting himself with bioluminescent paints so that he is shiny even in the dark.
- Narcissus himself briefly appears in Hercules for a one-off gag.
Hermes: Fabulous party. You know I haven't seen this much love in a room since Narcissus discovered himself. - Gaston from Beauty and the Beast has an entire song dedicated to how awesome he is.
- Mok from Rock and Rule. One of his villain songs consists only of the lyrics "triumph in the power and the glory that is me".
Films — Live-Action
- Patrick Bateman from American Psycho is more narcissistic than two clones of Narcissus screwing in a room full of mirrors. At one point he actually admires his reflection in a mirror while having sex. Not to mention every single other character.
- Batman (1989): Jack Naiper is a narcissistic mobster with ambitions to taking over Gotham's underworld, always checking himself in the mirror every now and then. After receiving a bullet wound across his cheeks and falling into a vat of chemicals, Jack's first instinct is to head a back-alley surgeon to have his face repaired immediately. The end result is a clownish face with a permanent grin, which causes Jack to lose all sense of sanity and smashes the mirror in rage. However, his narcissism didn't go away; it instead becomes twisted as Jack reinvents himself as the Joker and soon grows to love his new face. After becoming the new kingpin of Gotham, the Joker commits several massive, murderous crimes for no reason other than infamy all because he's envious that Batman gets front pages and not him.
- A Few Good Men: Jack Nicholson is spot-on in his portrayal of Col. Nate Jessup, the Marine Corps officer who orders an illegal Code Red to deal with a woefully inferior Marine recruit. Jessup has a massive god complex and an ego that borders on sadism and psychopathy. He disobeys his superior officers because he thinks he knows better than them, loves to hear himself talk, rather flippantly exploits others for his own gain, has a colossally overblown sense of self-importance, seems to think he and he alone is somehow 'special' ("I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom."), demands excessive admiration and unquestioned obedience he clearly doesn't deserve, displays arrogance and haughtiness to his peers as well as his underlings, is an Entitled Bastard, displays a clear Lack of Empathy, and is seemingly incapable of even considering the mere possibility that he is ever wrong about anything. Even when confronted with irrefutable evidence that he is, he simply blames everyone else.
- Godzilla vs. Kong: Walter Simmons definitely shows signs of being this. Overbloated sense of grandiosity and superiority over others? Just watch his scene with Madison, or even look at the undertones of cockiness when he's interacting with Nathan early on in the film; not to mention his expressed disdain for environmentalist protesters in the novelization seemingly solely because they voice disagreement with whatever he does. Self-absorbed to the point of prioritizing his own desires at others' expense? Just ask the hundreds of displaced survivors whom he knowingly put in Godzilla's warpath in Hong Kong. Extreme self-consciousness about how others perceive him? Well, he does want himself and his company specifically to be the ones who will make humanity the Earth's dominant species again, and he doesn't mind being falsely credited as a hero if he were to successfully kill Godzilla after humanity believes the latter has made a Face–Heel Turn. Very low tolerance of criticism and blatant unwillingness to take responsibility for any wrongdoing? He certainly doesn't behave like a well-adjusted grown man would when Ren is telling him he shouldn't rush through activating Mechagodzilla with the Hollow Earth energy formula (though that might be purely down to Simmons' lack of impulse control), and when Madison gives him a short "Reason You Suck" Speech on what he's done, Simmons just brushes it off by painting the mere existence of any Alpha Titan as an us-or-them situation for humanity. Insatiable appetite for acclaim and power? He's already a renowned billionaire and the head of an implicitly-huge corporation, and ever since the world first became aware of the Titans he's wanted more than he already has by finding a way for human hands to harness a Titan's power, and he's all too happy to paint himself as humanity's savior when the public misinterprets Godzilla's rampages as him turning against the human race.
- The Big Bad of Gone Girl, titular character Amy Dunne, was one of the most terrifying examples in all of fiction. She was a malignant narcissist, Manipulative Bitch In Sheep's Clothing, and Control Freak who lured men in with her beauty only to force them to live up to impossible standards and systematically ruined their lives if they fell short. She murdered one because You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, had the next jailed with a False Rape Accusation for not liking the ties she bought him, and attempted a Thanatos Gambit to have her husband Nick jailed for cheating on her. Nick's ultimately forced to give her whatever she wants due to The Baby Trap and the fear of leaving his child alone in the hands of a monster.
- The Hobbit: Smaug. Given that he is an ego run amok, he clearly enjoys Bilbo's feigned flattery, despite being well-aware of who sent him and why. He doesn't think for a second it's true, but gives Bilbo an indefinite stay of incineration as long as he keeps it up.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Iron Man 2: Black Widow's report dubs Tony Stark as such. However, it is a milder case of It's All About Me: Tony acts like he believes the entire world revolves around him, as demonstrated by his series of suspiciously specific denials at the Stark Expo, his performance at the Senate subcommittee hearing, and discussed by Nick Fury (who reminds Tony that he is "not the center of my universe") and Piper, who at one point threatens to throw something at his head if he says "I" one more time. But he deeply cares about Pepper, fellow Avengers, young Peter Parker and ordinary people he protects for their own sake — something a pathological narcissist is incapable of, along with taking the blame.
Tony Stark: "Textbook... narcissism?" [sees Fury's expression] Agreed.
- Loki manipulates, projects false images of himself (sometimes literally), and displays either overly confident or insecure behavior. While in Thor, his main motivation is to prove himself the equal of his adoptive brother, come The Avengers (2012), he's become a full-on megalomaniac, obsessed with conquering Earth so that he can force humanity to worship him as a God-Emperor, justifying his bloody campaign as bringing peace to Earth when really, he is motivated in no small part to prove himself as great a king as his father, Odin. During this time—despite having been reserved, most of the time, before this—loses his cool when his power and/or authority is challenged, shouting people down with declarations of how great and powerful he is. (The alarming shift in behavior between films is explained by the fact that, according to Marvel's official site, "unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fueling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.") Getting his arse whooped by the Hulk and being locked in the dungeons of Asgard doesn't seem to have in any way tempered his arrogance because come Thor: Ragnarok, his reign over Asgard whilst disguised as Odin features a literal monument to his vanity and he's written an epic tragedy about the life of his fallen son, ergo, himself. Thor, having deduced that Odin is actually Loki in disguise, makes insulting remarks about Loki as though he isn't there, causing Loki to be visibly irritated despite his attempts to maintain the facade.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The Big Bad, Ego, finds all life in the universe "disappointing" compared to himself so he seeks to "improve" the universe by killing everything and replacing it all with himself. He seduced hundreds of women and sired hundreds of children to further this plan, and murdered just as many when they didn't inherit his "spark" and therefore were of no use to him. He keeps Mantis around to serve his needs and Drax thinks he is treating her like a pet, and his overall vibe is that he sees everyone in terms of how they can or cannot serve or amuse himself. Even his final plea to Peter is that if he — Ego — dies, Peter will be "condemned" to be just like everybody else. Peter merely asks him "what's so wrong about that?"
- Spider-Man: Far From Home: The Big Bad, Mysterio is an incorrigible glory whore whose view of other people can be boiled down to a simple dichotomy: either they shower him with praise and adulation, or they get to be martyrs and sacrificial lambs to feed his own magnificence. He is a grandstanding charlatan who has no line that he won't cross in the name of his own ego and public image. His explosive rage when faced with anything even remotely perceivable as a petty slight and scorched-earth approach to getting the last laugh when bested by Peter are also very telling.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Once again, the Big Bad is utterly self-obsessed, this time the High Evolutionary. He builds societies that revere him as a god, to the point that he's built Counter-Earth with the Statue of Liberty equivalent being a statue of him, then tears them down when they fail to live up to his arbitrarily high standard of perfection. He demands that his creations be capable of learning and creativity, but when Rocket displays those gifts and manages to figure out something he couldn't, he responds with seething jealousy. He inevitably blames his mistakes on others and seems bewildered that anyone might not view his personal goals as all-important. Even at the last, he acts like Rocket mutilating his face was a vicious, unprovoked attack, instead of an entirely predictable result of shooting Rocket's closest friend in front of him and then mocking him for being sad about it.
- Iron Man 2: Black Widow's report dubs Tony Stark as such. However, it is a milder case of It's All About Me: Tony acts like he believes the entire world revolves around him, as demonstrated by his series of suspiciously specific denials at the Stark Expo, his performance at the Senate subcommittee hearing, and discussed by Nick Fury (who reminds Tony that he is "not the center of my universe") and Piper, who at one point threatens to throw something at his head if he says "I" one more time. But he deeply cares about Pepper, fellow Avengers, young Peter Parker and ordinary people he protects for their own sake — something a pathological narcissist is incapable of, along with taking the blame.
- Waldo Lydecker from 1944's Laura is definitely in love with the main character but his love for her is eclipsed by the blinding rays of his own self-love.
- Mirror, Mirror: The Queen, who's obsessed with her looks.
- Pavi Largo from Repo! The Genetic Opera is so in love with himself that he has a mirror with him at all times.
- Holmes accuses Professor Moriarty of "acute narcissism" in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Considering that Moriarty can't seem to prevent himself from smiling every time Holmes mentions his intelligence and takes a moment to gaze into a mirror and smooth his clothes before engaging in Cold-Blooded Torture, it seems Holmes is right as usual.
- Se7en: John Doe has an absurdly inflated opinion about himself, believing himself to be leagues above everybody who crosses his path.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Dr. Robotnik is an incredibly insufferable egomaniac. It's to the point that he spends half the time in the presence of others telling them how much better he is than them. The fact that he keeps Agent Stone around as his Yes-Man shows that he needs constant reaffirmation to his ego. His Establishing Character Moment shows him constantly asserting his dominance over the military crew he's working with, belittling the major's credentials without letting him get a word in edgewise, and almost immediately telling him that his men work for Robotnik now.
- Buddy Ackerman in Swimming with Sharks. "What you think means nothing. What you feel means nothing. You are here for me. You are here to protect my interests and to serve my needs."
- Suzanne Stone Maretto from To Die For is a textbook narcissist who is so obsessed with becoming a famous news reporter that she's willing to kill her husband when he asks her to spend more time with her family.
- Arliss Loveless in Wild Wild West. He even jokes about it.
Rita: Not to give you a big head, but I kinda missed you.
Loveless: Well isn't that a coincidence. I kinda missed me too!
Literature
- Jaume of The Dinosaur Lords is incredibly, annoyingly self-absorbed. While he cares for his lovers, he doesn't care for their feelings and what they might think about him having other flings, and always expects people to have opinions and thoughts that would suit his agenda best. He likes to surround himself with beautiful things, is a hedonist and only his care for his mounts and country keeps him likeable.
- The mentioned-but-never-seen Professor of Applied Anthropics of the Unseen University has put forth the Very Strong Anthropic Principle, which holds that the entire point of the universe is to give rise to the Unseen University so that it may house a Professor of Applied Anthropics (Footnotes comment that virtually everyone secretly believes this, with minor variations of a fill-in-name-here nature). Later in the book in which this is mentioned, one of the wizards mentions the principle, and comments that it's jolly decent of the Professor to share the universe with everyone else.
- Gilderoy Lockhart, from Harry Potter. He's so ridiculously stuck-up, it's Played for Laughs. But then he gets what he deserves when Harry and Ron pwn him and force him to accompany them to the Chamber of Secrets. Then, he accidentally loses his memory, which conveniently erases all his smug self-importance and turns him into a cheerful Manchild. His actor, Kenneth Branagh, has specifically rejected the idea that Lockhart's secretly insecure — the narcissism is 100% genuine.
- Also clearly the inspiration behind Narcissa Malfoy. But then, she is subject to major Character Development when it is shown that all she really wants is to be with her family, to the point that she spares Harry out of gratitude for reassuring her that her son is alive.
- Cormac McLaggen is convinced he could play everyone else's position on the Quidditch team better than them. Harry makes it clear that McLaggen's ego wouldn't be worth putting up with if he was world-class.
- They're all overshadowed by Voldemort in this department!
- The god Apollo from The Heroes of Olympus is extremely arrogant and self-centered even for a god. It is revealed in the last book to have inadvertently started the Roman-Greek demigod war because he gave his blessing to a decedent on the promise he would be raised to be the most important god in the Legion above even the king of Olympus Zeus/Jupiter. He thinks he is perfect and is several times manipulated by flattery yet is willing to bully or murder demigods on a whim if he thinks it will benefit him in some way and can only really think in terms of how a situation is affecting him. His sister Artemis is the only one he shows any type of respect or concern for.
- This is even more blatantly obvious in "The Trials of Apollo" where for a while, all he does is whine about how unfair his punishment is and how much it sucks to be human. Although he does get better by the end of the book and even shows genuine guilt at the problems he's caused and concern for others, especially Meg and his children.
- In Death: A number of characters in the series can be put in this category. Then again, they tend to be sociopathic serial killers. Clearly, characters in those categories probably would love no one but themselves.
- Jo Utting from the novel Kind of Cruel is a textbook example of this trope, with therapist Ginny commenting she's a classic psychologically abusive narcissist. She's critical and controlling, especially towards her sister-in-law, Amber, lashing out at her one minute and then pretending nothing happened the next and expecting her to play along and contradicting herself constantly.
- The novel Loverboy is written from the perspective of a mother suffering from NPD who tries to keep her Trophy Child in a Gilded Cage all to herself, while perceiving his desire to explore the outside world as betrayal and abandonment.
- Clip in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. He ticks off an impressive number of symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He has an inflated sense of his own abilities, achievements, talents, and prowess, and has a strong sense of entitlement to the positions of Mortal Sword of the Black-Winged Lord and later the Herald of Mother Dark, which he claims are righteously his. He thinks nothing of using others and lacks the ability to consider them as more than his pawns, to be used as he sees fit. Only his own opinion has any value to Clip. Kedeviss insinuates that Clip may be envious of Nimander and his kin, as they have actually met Anomander Rake while he hasn't, and Skintick suspects that Clip is occupied by fantasies of his fated meeting with Anomander Rake, in which the latter has to step down when faced with Clip's fury.
- In Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, psychology professor Sam Vaknin studies the mindscape of malignant narcissists from the psychodynamic point of view.
- Lucifer in Paradise Lost is the mightiest of all the Angels in Heaven and consequently comes to believe that he is, or at least should be, higher than God himself To this end, he gathers an army of Angels about himself and attempts to overthrow God to rule in his stead. After obviously losing and being cast into Hell, he becomes Emperor there, claiming "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven" and seeks to corrupt mankind so that they will worship him instead of God, in order to gain vengeance on God for refusing Lucifer what he believes is rightfully his. He's so full of himself that when he meets Sin, he's initially attracted to her because she looks so much like him. Though to be fair, when he learns that the reason for the resemblance is that Sin is his daughter, even he's understandably squicked out.
- The first thing Eve does after being created is look in awe at her own beautiful reflection. God calls her to look away from herself and towards Adam, but Satan uses the first woman's vanity to eternal consequence.
- Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is modeled after the Greek character of Narcissus and even painted dressed as him at one point.
- Redwall's Emperor Ublaz Mad Eyes is self-obsessed to the point that he thinks it's perfectly reasonable to put all his manpower (or beastpower) into attacking a small and unimportant tribe several thousand miles away so he can have their family heirloom of six pink pearls. Just because he thinks they'd make a pretty crown for him, not because they're magical or anything.note
- Joe from Robots Have No Tails is nicknamed Narcissus by his inventor because he'd rather gaze at his own reflection than do anything. But, like real narcissists, he's not content to simply admire himself and must devise ways of hurting others — in his case, up to and including drugging one of his master's creditors/house guests.
- Second Apocalypse: Ikurei Conphas is a beautiful genius and prince of the Nansur Empire. He frequently thinks of himself as being like a god. In one sequence, he recalls as a child being unable to comprehend how others were moved by the invisible strings of emotions and empathy.
- Morgoth from The Silmarillion, as he is based on Satan, the original narcissist.
- Jaime and his twin sister Cersei from A Song of Ice and Fire are both this, and it is implied that this is the underlying cause of their relationship because they look so much alike, particularly when they were younger. Jaime to a far lesser degree — he seems to feel some genuine romantic attraction to his sister, and is able to admit some of his mistakes and is also rediscovering his former morals.
- The Hapan in Star Wars Legends are an entire race of this. They were a species of Human Aliens known for their extreme beauty resulting from generations of selective breeding, and their entire culture is based around a neurotic love of beauty that considers any sort of blemish to be a Fate Worse than Death. Their leadership was a matriarchy as well, with a Deadly Decadent Court.
- The depiction of Albrecht von Wallenstein in Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy.
- In Warrior Cats, Clear Sky shows the traits of this by the third book of Dawn of the Clans. He's prideful and boasts about how he's born to lead and everyone should be grateful to him for doing so, and that when they question him they just don't understand how his way is best. He loves to throw around his weight, bullying cats on his border, starving his captive just because he can, making anyone who questions him fear him, and becoming eager at the thought of making himself more powerful and expanding his territory. He's extremely self-conscious about how others view him and spends part of the book wondering if cats are talking about him behind his back, and how confronting them about it might look.
Live-Action TV
- 30 Rock:
- Played for Laughs by Jane Krakowski as Jenna Maroney. Her Freudian Excuse is a miserable childhood with her Stage Mom, Verna.
- Tracy Jordan on the same show also appears narcissistic at times, but this is just one of a whole host of psychological problems that render him more of a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Grant Ward, The Mole on the team, is shown in Seasons 1-4 to have severe signs of pathological narcissism as they betray and hunt down their formerly bonded team, always putting their own needs above others and blaming them for their own choices, only to attempt suicide when their self-esteem is at an all-time low and to regain their respect even after they tried to kill their former comrades.note
- The Boys (2019):
- Homelander is a Psychopathic Manchild and textbook case of a malignant narcissist. He's a Villain with Good Publicity whose pathological need to be liked is the one thing stopping him from going full-on Beware the Superman on all mankind, and the first time he receives anything less than adoration from the public he has a narcissistic collapse and has to fight the urge to butcher the angry mob with his Eye Beams (purely out of concern for his image rather than the morality of not committing mass murder). Additionally, he's so much of a Glory Hound that he intentionally invoked the Superhero Paradox and created villains for himself to fight, all to boost his image.
- Soldier Boy, his predecessor and father, was even worse. He was a Fake Ultimate Hero who pretended to have defeated the Nazis in World War II while Believing Their Own Lies, and destroyed Black Noir's film career because he couldn't stand having anyone else in the spotlight, justifying it by claiming he wasn't talented enough to deserve it. He even tries to kill his own son & grandson because he viewed them as Inadequate Inheritors.
- Homelander is a Psychopathic Manchild and textbook case of a malignant narcissist. He's a Villain with Good Publicity whose pathological need to be liked is the one thing stopping him from going full-on Beware the Superman on all mankind, and the first time he receives anything less than adoration from the public he has a narcissistic collapse
- Gina Linetti in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is convinced that she's the absolute center of the universe and that everyone else on the planet exists solely for her benefit and to cheer her on with whatever she aims to do. Putting a mirror in front of her distracts her in the same way it would a cockatiel, she considers almost everything and everyone around her beneath her and displays a boundless contempt for them, has limited concern for the feelings and problems of others, demands to be the center of all attention at all times, and consider this line of dialogue when the squad is attempting to persuade Sgt. Jeffords not to accept a cushy job with a private security contractor:
Terry: I'm trying to do what's best for my family. It's not just about me.
Gina: Exactly! It's about me, and how you're abandoning me to these squares! - Buffyverse:
- Angel is viewed as narcissistic in the show and his spin-off show turns that into a Running Gag. On the DVD Commentary for "Billy", the writers admit they enjoy writing scenes showcasing Angel's "narcissism," although Angel's willingness to be self-sacrificing shows he cannot be a Narcissist in terms of the disorder. He has empathy and is anything but self-centered. The Running Gag in Series 2 builds to the finale arc where he finds himself in an alternate dimension. While the gang discusses their plight, Angel can be seen in the background utterly distracted by his reflection — which in our dimension he as a vampire cannot see. Once the gang has recovered from the shock of seeing him being able to reflect at all, Lorne has to forcibly drag him away from the mirror.
Lorne: Come on, Gorgeous, you can stare at yourself in my grandmother's glass eye.
- Angelus possesses all of Angel's narcissistic inclinations with none of the compassion to off-set it. He cannot shut up and is one of the cockiest, most dangerous, and sociopathic characters in the entire show.
- In a warped way, Spike loves Drusilla and Buffy. However, it doesn't stop him from causing pain for everyone around him. A particularly egregious example of Spike hurting Buffy causes Spike to feel guilty enough to go through trials to regain his soul, so he will not be so hurtful again. However, he still retains his edge and in the Angel spin-off, Angel's Running Gag is expanded to include him as well, culminating in them competing for everything from their place in world-shaking prophecies to trying to "save" Buffy from her latest boyfriend simply because they feel inadequate against his prowess among women.
- Glory is one to an utterly ludicrous degree. She even forces her minions to constantly come up with new ways of praising her.
- The First Evil: "You think you can fight me? I'm not a demon, little girl. I am something that you can't even conceive. The First Evil. Beyond sin, beyond death. I am the thing the darkness fears. You'll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate..." Doesn't look like modesty is this thing's strength.
- Angel is viewed as narcissistic in the show and his spin-off show turns that into a Running Gag. On the DVD Commentary for "Billy", the writers admit they enjoy writing scenes showcasing Angel's "narcissism," although Angel's willingness to be self-sacrificing shows he cannot be a Narcissist in terms of the disorder. He has empathy and is anything but self-centered. The Running Gag in Series 2 builds to the finale arc where he finds himself in an alternate dimension. While the gang discusses their plight, Angel can be seen in the background utterly distracted by his reflection — which in our dimension he as a vampire cannot see. Once the gang has recovered from the shock of seeing him being able to reflect at all, Lorne has to forcibly drag him away from the mirror.
- Played for Laughs by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. Not only is the set shaped around his name (C-shaped desk and all), he's also convinced, among other things, that the "gay agenda" is to make him, personally, gay.
- Jeff Winger on Community, although his experiences at Greendale improve him eventually. At one point, he admits that during sex he would rather stare at himself than the girl he's with.
Britta: You're a textbook narcissist.
Jeff: Please. I'm an exceptional narcissist. - Doctor Who:
- The Master is completely obsessed with his own brilliance and considers the Doctor his only equal; few of his evil plots have a clear long-term goal besides getting his arch-enemy's attention. He takes it to the absolute extreme in "The End of Time" when he converts the entire population of Earth into duplicates of himself... all of whom are as pleased with this as the original.
John Simm: [on the commentary] I knew he had a high opinion of himself before, but I had no idea he's that narcissistic.
- Clara Oswald has been called a "needy, game-playing control freak", and once fragmented herself into countless duplicates across time who lived all the lives she had ever wanted (in fairness, she had a good reason for doing that). The TARDIS also once used the holographic interface to talk to her using an image of Clara herself, claiming it was the image Clara would react best to. Note that the TARDIS really doesn't like Clara.
- The Master is completely obsessed with his own brilliance and considers the Doctor his only equal; few of his evil plots have a clear long-term goal besides getting his arch-enemy's attention. He takes it to the absolute extreme in "The End of Time" when he converts the entire population of Earth into duplicates of himself... all of whom are as pleased with this as the original.
- The Flash (2014)
- Eobard Thawne is extremely self-centered and willing to trick or kill people he thinks of as friends for his own sake. It's revealed in Season 2 that his mortal grudge against the Flash is based on the fact that he couldn't become a great hero like him. His ideal world, as shown in Legends of Tomorrow, is one where he's a genius scientist famous for solving most of the world's problems and having Dr. Stein, perhaps the only man smarter than him, as an assistant.
- Savitar has an entire cult dedicated to himself, declares himself a god, and thinks of everyone as either a pawn or an obstacle. When Barry rejects his divinity, he just shrugs and says that he can be a god just by making other people think he is. It's all but stated that he does all this to compensate for "merely" being a time remnant clone of Barry Allen.
- Game of Thrones:
- Like many real-life high-functioning sociopaths and sadists, Ramsay shows several narcissistic traits. He's overly confident in his abilities, his relations are shallow and only for the sake of his own pleasure, and his inflated ego is easily wounded by his father's pragmatic remarks.
- While a brilliant statesman and a highly skilled military strategist, Lord Tywin Lannister is also extremely vain, insensitive, and self-absorbed. He equates his ambition with that of his House and the Kingdom and so, expects nothing less than total obedience from those around him.
- Cersei Lannister, much like her father, has a pronounced sense of self-worth. She is also practically a textbook case. Cersei sees herself as far more intelligent and powerful than she actually is. Her love for her brother Jaime is because she sees him as a reflection of herself if she were a man (which is also why she is notably distraught over his missing hand rather than any impact that it could ever have on his life). She loves her children, but moreso as extensions of herself than as human beings. She takes any perceived (real or not) slight extremely seriously and will often come up with forms of Disproportionate Retribution for it, even when she has absolutely nothing to gain by doing so. She also often tends to devalue and ruthlessly criticize and tear down those who come into contact with her. So, truly, due to the way Cersei's mind works, she is almost fundamentally incapable of not thinking everything is about her and ties back to her. So even on a more general level, Cersei is truly incapable of placing anyone's interest before her own.
- In Hannibal, the title character is the personification of this. His murders are motivated by his God complex and disdain for people he feels are wasting their lives. Hannibal demonstrates his superiority by degrading them and either leaving them on display or turning them into lavish meals. Moreover, he sees the people around him, even the people he likes, as being far beneath him — toys at the very best and mindless animals at worst. He indirectly refers to the common people as "sheep" in a very condescending way. As Will points out, every single thing about Hannibal, from his dress sense to his dietary habits, is a way of proving his superiority over everyone else.
Will: I don't find you that interesting.
Hannibal: You will. - The title character of House has shown narcissistic tendencies, which has not escaped the notice of any of the main cast.
- Zaphod Beeblebrox lampshades this in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) when Trillian turns off the TV news just as the reporter is commenting on him:
Zaphod: If there's anything more important than my ego, I want it taken out and shot immediately.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dennis Reynolds. He fancies himself a handsome ladies' man, though it eventually becomes clear that he uses manipulative seduction tactics that border on date-rape. He thinks he's popular, but it's revealed that he actually just ran around high school proclaiming himself to be a "legend" while the cool kids laughed at him behind his back. He admits that his emotions are so buried that he virtually has none. However, he is extremely insecure, bordering on mania whenever his ego is besmirched in even the smallest degree. In one episode he's officially diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and proceeds to disregard it entirely.
- The entire gang qualifies, befitting of their Neutral Evil morality. Dennis just stands out as the most extreme example.
- Dennis and Dee's mother Barbara was a narcissistic sociopath who died as a result of a botched neck lift surgery she got to appease her own vanity after Frank called her a "turkey neck" when she revealed the kids weren't his.
- Jessica Jones (2015): Kilgrave, in addition to being The Sociopath. He is materialist, has a very short fuse, considers himself a cool guy, believes he has the absolute right to control, abuse and/or punish others, loves to be praised and admired, and loves to impress and delight others. He is so obsessed with himself that he refuses to admit that his actions are horrible.
- Kings: King Silas Benjamin is a blatant narcissist, who cannot separate the good of his kingdom from the good of Silas. He views his children and his nation as extensions of himself and takes honors going to anyone else as a personal insult. His wife and son also display traits of this.
- The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Motherly Love'' featured a mother with malignant narcissism who seduced her son's best friend and cried rape when he walked in on them, prompting him to shoot him. Her ex-husband appears later on to explain her diagnosis to the detectives and that she manipulated their son his whole life, which he doesn't believe until the very end when she tries to throw him under the bus in court to save her own skin.
- Alice Morgan from Luther is profiled by Luther as a malignant narcissist, a nasty subset of narcissism that includes sadistic and antisocial elements.
- Cat from Red Dwarf is absolutely in love with himself, though it should be noted that his being an evolved housecat means human emotions don't exactly map one-to-one. The most telling example is when a Shapeshifting Seducer assumes the form that he desires most... himself.
Cat: So I'm the object of my own desires?
Shapeshifter Cat: Is there anyone more deserving? - Schitt's Creek: In the first few seasons, David Rose is a classic narcissist who prioritizes himself over nearly everything else and has a rather grandiose few of himself, despite constant put-downs from his family. As the series progresses, he evolves into a good person who loves his family and is a devoted friend and boyfriend as well as a talented marketer. His mother, Moira, can lean toward the narcissistic but her love of David's father mitigates it a bit.
- Dr. Cox from Scrubs is the greatest doctor of them all, a diagnosing machine, this fabulous thing. Too bad his personal life is in shambles. The show has also delivered An Aesop when showing how a little bit of confidence is not necessarily a bad thing and goes a long way towards making their patients feeling at ease.
- Jace from Shadowhunters. Best summed up in his own words:
- Lex and Lionel Luthor from Smallville. Lionel's an Archnemesis Dad and Corrupt Corporate Executive who has trouble seeing his company and his son as anything more than extensions of himself and is willing to break almost every law imaginable in order to stay on top. Possession by Jor-El eventually rids him of the worst of these traits, though he remains manipulative and grandiose long after his Heel–Face Turn. Lex starts out as a "Well Done, Son" Guy who tends to bring up his own problems in almost every conversation he has. This problem only gets worse as time goes by, and his delusions of heroism and need for adulation become more and more extreme; by the end of the show he's moved well past narcissism and into full-blown psychopathy as his need for control and someone to blame take over his life.
- Tony Soprano's Evil Matriarch Livia from The Sopranos was this, as a result of Borderline Personality Disorder. She was a horrifically emotionally abusive mother with no regard for others, and only got worse with age until she became a Manipulative Bitch constantly using her own misery for attention and pity. When Tony mentions he's seeing a psychiatrist, her first instinct is to accuse him of badmouthing her and despite Tony constantly doting on her she tries to have him killed for putting her in a nursing home.
- Tony himself was a more subdued example. While he displays some trademarks of The Sociopath, including a grandiose sense of entitlement and poor impulse control, he is nevertheless revealed to be capable of experiencing genuine shame and remorse for his crimes as well as making sincere (albeit largely ineffectual) attempts to perform acts of genuine kindness for those outside his immediate family. However, his self-absorbed and covetous nature is entirely consistent with narcissistic personality disorder.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. When Major Kira first crosses into the Mirror Universe, her Evil Counterpart the Intendent has exactly this response to her. Later episodes however chose to interpret this as the Intendent being bisexual and wanting to Screw Yourself.
- Supernatural: Lucifer's major reason for rebelling was because he was pissed that he wasn't God's favorite anymore.
- In the Netflix documentary series Tiger King, the animal park owners are dripping with narcissism, especially Joe and Doc. Many are entitled, self-centered, hungry for the limelight, lecherous, indifferent to the rules of morality and the law, and devoid of empathy for humans or animals.
Music
- The POV character in Dead or Alive's "Far Too Hard," who comments that he is "fascinated with the profile in [his] mirror" and ruefully notes that you should "never, ever make it with your own reflection."
- The Carly Simon hit "You're So Vain"
- "Everybody Loves Me" by One Republic.
- "Mirrors" by Justin Timberlake can be seen this way, as he's comparing the girl he loves to his own reflection. Todd in the Shadows jokingly played a clip of Gaston when commenting on this song.
- Christina Aguilera's "Vanity". The narrator heavily crosses into Screw Yourself.
- Marina Diamandis' song "Teen Idle."
I wish I wasn't such a narcissist
I wish I didn't really kiss
The mirror when I'm on my own - Deconstructed with Brynn Elliott's "Tell Me I'm Pretty." She's gussying herself up to look like a magazine model and be noticed and comes to the epiphany that she's wasting her time soliciting comments. Paraphrasing the hook, she doesn't need anyone else to tell her she's pretty.
- The Pussycat Dolls' "(Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Were) Hot Like Me" is pretty much the trope and the group in a nutshell.
Myths & Religion
- The Trope Namer, Narcissus, was a Pretty Boy Greek hunter who was punished by the gods to fall in love with his own reflection. Why that is depends on which version of the story you hear, the most famous being Ovid's version where he rejected Echo and didn't realize the reflection was his own. Another has Narcissus falling in love with his twin sister, and after her death, pretending his reflection is her. What happens after also varies, from a slow death due to starvation and thirst because he would not look away to drowning in an attempt to kiss his reflection, to stabbing himself when he realizes that his reflection is just a reflection and will never love him back. Regardless of cause of death, or a sympathetic god transforming Narcissus so he could stare at his reflection forever, a flower either grew in the place where he died or he was transformed into one: the Narcissus plant, more commonly known as the daffodil.
- Satan in the versions where he becomes jealous of God and rebels against him.
- Iblis (Satan) from Islam fell from grace by looking down on humanity and seeing them as inferior to bow to.
Pinball
- Dr. Dude, full stop.
Dr. Dude (thinks): I am so coooooool!
- The player can also invoke this by getting the best score on the "I" Exam: "I Am Way Cool"
Pro Wrestling
- When he first debuted in the WWF in 1993, Lex Luger was billed as "The Narcissist". He often posed in front of a 3-way mirror set up in the ring before matches.
- In the mid-2000s, Mark Jindrak had a similar gimmick, billed as "The Reflection Of Perfection".
- The Midnight Son Caleb Konley, who says his face is the best in the sport.
- Cody Rhodes was like this during his "dashing" persona from 2010-2011 and had a digital mirror during his entrance.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Beholders take this to an extreme. Each considers itself to be the pinnacle of creation and the perfect reflection of the Great Mother, the deity that created them. Anything that isn't a beholder is barely worth noticing. Beholders of other breeds are hated foes that must be slain on sight. Beholders of the same breed are tolerated inferiors, except technically each Beholder is its own breed. Beholders are also very good at noticing even the slightest difference in another beholder. A beholder with slightly bumpier skin or slightly sharper teeth is as much a hated rival as a beholder with more obvious differences. Every beholder's belief that it is a perfect reflection of the Great Mother is exacerbated by the Great Mother being a shapeshifter who adopts a form that matches that of the beholder looking at her, thus reinforcing the beholder's narcissism. If all this seems crazy, that's because it is. The Great Mother is completely insane by human and even beholder standards.
- Pathfinder: Crystal dragons are incredibly vain about their appearances, and enjoy filling their lairs with mirrors and effective crystals in which to regard themselves. Gifts of fine mirrors are good ways to curry their favor; insults, intended or not, about their appearances are a good way to earn their wrath.
- Warhammer has Sigvald the Magnificent — the favored champion of the Chaos God Slaanesh, Lord of Vice and Excess. Sigvald is so narcissistic that he has his shield polished to a mirror sheen so he can look at himself in battle, and is often distracted by his own reflection even in the heat of combat. His narcissism even causes him to launch his followers on wars of aggression to punish people whose hair is said to be more beautiful than his (the high elves if you must know), or the makers of wines he finds dull and tasteless. Many champions of Slaanesh show similar behaviour.
Video Games
- BioShock: The main villains of the game are all self-absorbed self-made men who believed they could be worshiped more than gods by hiding from the nuclear apocalypse at the bottom of the ocean. When the top villain, Andrew Ryan, began to realize that his "capitalist's utopia" was starting to demand aspects of 'communism', like charity and public infrastructure, he turned Rapture into a police state rather than admit his creation was flawed from the start.
- BioShock Infinite: Zachary Hale Comstock thinks he's a greater prophet than Jesus, having plastered his floating city with images of himself for others to worship, and intends to make his daughter the empress of the world... ignoring how all his supernatural power comes from his R&D team, who he murdered to keep his secrets. He encourages racism to keep himself in power and has violently abused anyone who criticized him.
- When it comes down to it, Hazama/Yuuki Terumi from BlazBlue is pretty much this in a nutshell (and The Fighting Narcissist because it's a fighting game). His mindset is so simple being "I am the most awesome being in the world, so the world better run on my tastes, or else", and when someone else questions or objects to that opinion, he flips off. To drive the point home, in Japanese he refers to himself with the incredibly self-aggrandizing pronoun "ore-sama". Central Fiction reveals that his ego isn't entirely unjustified: he's actually a super-powerful self-aware robot (the Susanoo Unit is his body while "Terumi" is his mind) whose purpose is to guard another robot (the Amaterasu Unit) that controls reality. Everything that has happened in the series is due to Susanoo/Terumi chafing at the fact that someone as "awesome" as him was stuck acting as a glorified guard dog for Amaterasu.
- Borderlands 2: Handsome Jack. His egomania is best portrayed in the construction of Opportunity, where his face is plastered on every other surface and any criticism of his constant media bragging is grounds for execution. He has an obsession with being a hero, strangles anyone who questions his methods, tries to take credit for killing The Destroyer, turns Bloodwing into a monster so he can blow her up and play an ironic sonata about it, calls everyone who opposes/disagrees with him a bandit, and manipulates people into doing what he wants by threatening their loved ones and spying on his pawns. He also grafted a creepy mask shaped like his face just to hide the ugly-but-awesome scar that Lilith branded him with. It comes as a real shock to learn that there are others he cares about (and also treats like crap), like Nisha and his daughter Angel, whom he has enslaved and exploited to the point of making her physically dependent on Unobtainium and outright suicidal.
- Vyers of Disgaea both thinks and speaks very highly of himself, but he is actually a very nice guy.
- Eco Fighters: Several objects modelled after Kernal Goyolk hint at this such as the giant robot boss in the second-to-last level to his face being carved into a mountain side during the rail way level.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of Meridia, a Daedric Prince whose sphere is obscured to mortals, but is associated with Life Energy, Light, and Beauty. She cannot tolerate it when her actions are painted in anything but a positive light, even at her most ruthless, petty, and vindictive. While disguised as "the Groundskeeper" in Online, she refers to herself (as Meridia) and her actions in the most glorifying language possible. To hear her speak, everything she does is merciful, benevolent, and wise, and she also thinks highly of her own beauty and power. She shows zero patience or tolerance for anything which does not support that conclusion.
- In Endless Space, the Horatio faction was founded by an eccentric trillionaire who cloned up an entire regime of allies, servants, and slaves (including Opposite Sex Clones) with some Imported Alien Phlebotinum he found on a planet. (Out of boredom, no less!) He then decided to fill the galaxy with the most beautiful thing he knew of — himself.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- The Big Bad Caesar is a Psychopathic Manchild who for better or for worse views himself as a God-Emperor and the Spiritual Successor to Julius Caesar himself. According to Word of God he's had narcissistic delusions of grandeur ever since he was a boy, although to his credit they stopped being delusions after he successfully built a civilization from nothing.
- Dean Domino, Greater-Scope Villain and Token Evil Teammate of the Dead Money expansion. A smarmy Evil Brit who is incredibly self-centered as well as having a very fragile ego. He literally cannot stand the idea of someone being better than him at anything, even if it's just in his mind, to the point that he plotted to bankrupt his rival Sinclair simply because he took his happiness as a sign that he thought he was better than him. Additionally, if the Player Character does anything less than suck up to him he'll betray them in the final act.
- Far Cry:
- Far Cry 4's Big Bad Pagan Min, the king/dictator of Kyrat, is definitely an egomaniac. Pagan made his mark by returning the heir to the Kyrat throne, only to immediately murder him and take the crown for himself. According to his government's propaganda, Pagan Min is the great messianic savior of Kyrat trying to bring order and peace to a war-torn nation, saving it from being taken over by those dastardly Golden Path rebels. In truth, he cares little for his troops or even his lieutenants in favor of enjoying the game of cat-and-mouse between himself and his chosen heir Ajay.
- Far Cry 5: Cult leader Joseph Seed is convinced that World War III is coming and he was chosen by God to rebuild after the end. He calls himself the Father, controls his siblings abusively, and generally reinterpreted the Bible to revolve around him. It doesn't help that he was right about WWIII, yet still managed to screw everything up because his obsession with being the one messiah drove him to kidnap an entire county and hold them hostage in emergency bunkers, causing them to riot and destroy the bunkers just in time for the apocalypse. Although Far Cry 6 retconned it so that the war was All Just a Dream.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Despite being an animatronic, Roxanne Wolf is an almost textbook depiction of a vulnerable narcissist. Her Establishing Character Moment early into the game is delivering a series of compliments to herself in the mirror, with attention drawn to her looks in particular. Many of her voice lines throughout the game are similarly self-centered, such as betting she's Gregory's favorite while she's hunting him down and outright saying she's going to catch him first because she's "the best." That said, as large as her ego is, it's also extremely fragile. Some of her voice lines are particularly vitriolic, such as saying nobody will miss Gregory, with the implication that she's projecting her insecurities onto him. At one point she can be found sobbing in her room over being unable to catch Gregory, before pulling herself together and assuring herself she will find him. She flat-out loses it after her decommissioning questline, in which she gets disfigured and blinded on her own go-kart track. Roxanne becomes the most dangerous threat in the game at that point, all the while alternating between screaming, Inelegant Blubbering, and attempting to reassure herself that she's still loved and beautiful.
- God of War Ragnarök: Odin turns out to be a classic example. Basically every time he shows up, he demonstrates at least red flag for the disorder.
- Almost all his screentime is spent subtly putting others down and showing an utter lack of care for them (he's introduced barging into Kratos's home uninvited, while Thor asks first and brings mead as a gift). He only cares about things in relation to what they mean to him (He's mad about Baldur's death because Baldur was his tracker, while he outright calls his grandsons Magni and Modi "kinda useless" in front of their grieving father), and disregards the feelings of others unless he wants to manipulate them.
- While he likes to present a mild-mannered persona, he's very concerned with his public image and makes sure that all of Asgard is unquestionably obedient to him.
- He lies about pretty much everything (When Mimir advises "if he says the snow is white, he's lying", that is Not Hyperbole), no matter the importance or the believabity.
- He lashes out against anything he can't control; this can range from committing genocide against a people who have access to something he doesn't and/or refuse to worship at his boots, to killing someone for picking apart his lies.
- He is utterly incapable of comprehending the consequences of his actions; the whole 'Ragnarok' plot is him causing a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy because he refuses to consider the role that he might have in causing it with his evil actions. And the fact that fate isn't so much an inorexable order of events so much as it is logical consequences of predictable choices; the only reason Ragnarok would happen is because Odin would never stop being evil, which in turn would lead to The Dog Bites Back; once Kratos learns this truth, he's able to easily avert the prophecy of his death by acting more altruistic, but Odin rejects the option at every opportunity.
- Finally, he absolutely refuses to change his ways, even admitting as such in his last words. As long as there is something that doesn't do what Odin wants, he will attempt to control or destroy it.
- Kirby:
- Queen Sectonia from Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a textbook example of this. Throughout all of Royal Road, posters of her are seen everywhere; and when you finally encounter her, she considers herself a god and aims to merge with the Dreamstalk to become ruler of all of Popstar. The post-game and Word of God reveals that the Dark Meta Knight from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror corrupted her through the Dimension Mirror which Taranza gave to her, causing his Unstoppable Rage to leak out and twist her mind.
- President Haltmann from Kirby: Planet Robobot may be just as egotistical as Sectonia. As Kirby runs through the Access Ark, there are multiple self-portraits of him spread throughout the walls, showing how big of an ego this guy has. The post-game, however, reveals that he wasn't always the case. A similar thing could be said for Susie, but not nearly to the extent as Haltmann - one of the credit pictures from Kirby Star Allies's Heroes in Another Dimension mode features Susie admiring three stone sculptures of herself, which could place her in this territory.
- A less subtle example is Meta Knight. Prior to being outright confirmed in Star Allies, Meta Knight has been showing signs of this since his first few appearances, such as his crew being called the Meta-Knights, owning a giant airship known as the Halberd which has his mask on the front, that one time he used said ship to conquer Dream Land to put it under a better rule, and even fighting the galaxy's strongest warrior to try and become the strongest in the galaxy. Thankfully, though, he's managed to overcome this, with only a Jamba Heart being able to bring out this side of him.
- League of Legends has its fair share of self-obsessed champions.
- The OG LoL narcissist is, of course, Draven. Famed executioner of Noxus, and has an ego the size of a small country. His narcissism is even incorporated into the game, with his League Of Draven passive. Whose icon is a picture of, you guessed it, himself.
- Qiyana takes the narcissism of Draven, and adds in a royal bloodline to make her possibly his biggest competition in lore for "It's All About Me". She even has a line alluding to Narcissus himself.
Qiyana: The best thing about water? My reflection.
- Fawful from Mario & Luigi. Any game. He speaks of himself in third person in a positive way, puts his own image on everything and everyone in the world, and seems to want everyone to view him like he does himself. Generally, he's an extreme narcissistic with Mind Control technology gone insane with power.
- In Mass Effect, this is subverted with Miranda Lawson. Created to be perfect in almost every way, she at first acts like one, but digging deeper reveal that this is a mask for a person with a severe Inferiority Superiority Complex and deep self-loathing. Her father, Henry Lawson, on the other hand is a very clear example, creating Designer Babies like Miranda using only his DNA. Of course, this is the least of his problems.
- Bass from Mega Man (Classic) thinks VERY highly of himself. In Mega Man & Bass, his bad point is "vain as a peacock".
- Dr. Huey Emmerich from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a truly revolting example of this trope. While his issues are hinted at in Metal Gear Peace Walker, The Phantom Pain shows Huey to be a scumbag who is utterly convinced of his false intellectual superiority, prioritizes his own needs to the point of using his own son in a weapon and outright killing his own wife for objecting, and incapable of taking any responsibility and acknowledging his own faults and mistakes, to the point of denying the evidence when its right in front of him, among other things.
- Metroid: According to Sakamoto, the reason why Ridley created Mecha Ridley in the Space Pirate Mothership is because he wanted his very image to be represented as a powerful weapon of mass destruction. In Palutena's Guidance, Viridi cites Mecha Ridley as proof of Ridley being a narcissist. Elements of this can be seen in Super Metroid, where Ridley is the only boss in the game that has statues and architecture based on him.
- Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat, though to a much lesser degree in MKX and MK11.
- Octopath Traveler:
- Helgenish constantly makes derogatory remarks and belittles the women in his employment, whom he treats like slaves. In spite of his abhorrent treatment of them, he thinks himself an amazing person whom nobody else has any right to criticize or disagree with, and refuses to consider that he could be doing anything wrong. He eventually stabs Yusufa in front of Primrose, kicks her off a cliff, and heartlessly mocks her dying words, but is enraged when Primrose snaps and calmly tells him that "I saw you for the foul swine you are the first time I laid eyes on you".
- Darius, Arc Villain of Therion's story, eventually betrayed and tried to murder Therion, his partner-in-crime of several years, because he couldn't stand Therion having thoughts of his own and disagreeing with him. In the present, Darius treats his own men like insignificant pawns and threatens to murder the one genuinely loyal man among them for having the audacity to ask a question he didn't want to answer. Despite this, he feels entitled to his men's Undying Loyalty and hypocritically decries them as traitors when they unsurprisingly turn on him.
- Persona 5:
- Ichiryusai Madarame, a famous painter, is associated with the sin of vanity since he's obsessed with being a well-respected artist. While he puts on a humble act in public and claims to paint in a small and run-down shack, it's all a ruse. He actually has a much larger house under a mistress' name, and his Palace, the representation of how he sees said shack, is actually a gaudy and extravagant-looking museum. All this would be bad enough, but he stays relevant by plagiarizing his students' work, and stole his Magnum Opus from Yusuke's mother while letting her die.
- The Big Bad, Masayoshi Shido, is associated with pride and has the traits of a textbook malignant narcissist. He demands loyalty and unconditional worship from everyone, while giving no loyalty or acceptance in return. He also has a god complex, believing that only he and him alone is fit to be Japan's savior, yet at the same time avoids responsibility and accountability for his wrongdoings. This is reflected in his Palace, which is a dark parallel to Noah's Ark, representing his belief that only he and his upper-class followers are fit to live in the world he intends to create while everyone else can drown. Lastly, like any other narcissist, he has an overly paranoid tendency to attack those whom he perceives as a threat to his image, no matter how small.
- Narcis Prince in Super Punch-Out whose name also doubles as a pun. He likes to brag about how beautiful he looks, but he goes absolutely berserk in the fight should you punch his face. Like above example also counts as The Fighting Narcissist.
- Dutch van der Linde is shown to have been a flaming narcissist during Red Dead Redemption II. While he does genuinely care for the rest of his gang, his care for them is outweighed by his lust for the outlaw lifestyle he utterly refuses to leave behind. He violently hates the idea of being questioned and will turn outright pissy when his grand, delusional plans are questioned despite all the setbacks and failures he runs into. He also begins to prefer the company of Micah Bell over the rest of his longtime partners in crime thanks to Micah's nonstop butt-kissing, which bites him in the ass when Micah turns out to be a rat for the Pinkertons, resulting in most of the van der Linde gang either dying or leaving in disgust. Dutch does grow out of this when Arthur Morgan dies, but instead of becoming a better person he becomes overtaken by despair and becomes a murderous thug of an outlaw driven by his hatred for modern society.
- Princess Sarah from the Richman series only cares about herself, looks down on the player and ask why she should listen to them when chosen in 11, and has her admired person in her profile from 4's instruction manual list as herself.
- In The Sims 4:
- If '"Get Famous'' is installed, famous Sims have a chance of getting the Vain Street fame quirk from using mirrors. Sims with this quirk always want to admire themselves in the mirror and become tense if they haven't in some time.
- And to a lesser extent, the Self-Absorbed trait can also be this. Sims with this trait are able to request compliments and get excited when receiving presents.
- Sonic The Hedgehog series Big Bad Doctor Eggman fits this in addition to being The Sociopath. Not only does he name almost every damn thing he invents the "Egg (fill in the blank)", he's constantly making giant robots and other likenesses of himself and even puts his face on the Death Egg, as well as claiming multiple times to be the smartest person in the world.
- Spider-Man 2: Mysterio is this, as he reshapes the Statue of Liberty in his image.
- Spooky, from Spookys Jumpscare Mansion fills her titular mansion with grand portraits of herself, arcade games that feature her as the main character, and monsters that slaughter innocents for her own selfish purposes.
- Vega from Street Fighter also combines this with The Fighting Narcissist.
- Mario Party 2: The game's Excuse Plot is that every character wants a land they found to be named after themselves.
- Supplementary material for Sword of the Stars reveals that the Locust are an entire species of trans-carbon narcissists. "Narcissus could only dream of an experience like it."
- Wandersong: Audrey Redheart, the Big Bad, is willing to destroy the entire universe, including herself, just because a goddess promised that the next universe would worship Audrey as a hero. She also looks down on the Bard for being more compassionate than her, rebuffs any criticism as naive ignorance, and is so devoted to her self image that she rejects all pleas to stop her mission because she does not want to live in a world where she is a nobody again instead of the Hero. Yet the only reason everyone loves her is because she lied to them about saving the world and helping others along the way, and by the end even the All-Loving Hero protagonist has had enough of her self-centered mass-murdering ways.
- The Witch's House: The titular Witch is a textbook example. She cares only for herself, acts as a False Friend to the kind Viola, betrays her "friend" when she's no longer useful to her, is an Ungrateful Bitch (feeding a frog to a giant snake after it had done nothing but help her, and betraying Viola despite all she had done for her), has no empathy, and is a total sadist (taunting Viola about her fate and snickering after she is killed by her own father). Everything Ellen does is motivated by her desire to be loved by both parents and friends. When she could receive neither, she turned to magic and began killing, and it's shown in her backstory that many of her first kills (her parents and a boy who ran away after seeing her true form) were only made after she thought they showed no love for her. The reason she was so dead-set on stealing Viola's body in the first place, aside from getting one that didn't hurt, was because she knew Viola had a kind and loving father, something she never had, and she wanted him for herself. Essentially, what she views as love is more akin to narcissistic supply.
- Yandere Simulator: The third rival, Kizana Sunobu, has many characteristics of one. Her defining trait is her pride, also being a Proud Beauty. She thinks of herself as far more important and knowledgeable than she really is, and she hates it whenever anyone makes her feel inferior. The task you do for her shows that Kokona having a similar hairstyle as her is enough to demand that she change it so she can be the only one with it, despite the fact that Kizana wasn't even the first to have it. She pays no mind to those she deems unworthy of her attention and has a grudge against the Student Council President Megami Saikou for being more popular. While she is fond of Senpai, it would not be surprising if she still loves herself more. The fact that she'll push him to be an actor if she wins his affections implies such.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- Redd White is an incredibly vain and pretentious man with no empathy for anyone but himself who will gleefully ruin the lives of many without a shred of remorse. Much of his screen time is him bolstering himself up while putting others around him down. There are many statues of naked, muscular men in his office and he says that they are all modeled after him.
- Manfred von Karma is a ruthless prosecutor who ties his identity to being the perfect prosecutor by all means necessary. He won't take anything less than perfection in every trial and decries defense attorney as worthless things to be crushed. He is such a textbook example to the point where a minor blemish upon his previously perfect record is enough to drive him to murder the man he blames for it.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All:
- Maximilian Galactica is rare benign example. Max is incredibly vain, pompous, and self obsessed, trying to be the center of attention at all times. Despite this, he's not that a bad person, just an extremely arrogant one.
- The final villain, Matt Engarde, is a thoroughly non-comedic version. The only thing other than himself he cares about is his cat; he's only interested in the humans in his life insomuch as they can make his life better, and he lashes out at any attempt to be better than him. He drove Celeste Inpax to suicide basically so that Juan Corrida wouldn't have a happy relationship, and he has no problem with hiring an assassin to kill Corrida before Corrida could potentially hurt his career. It's also shown that he has no real understanding of consequences, to the point of fooling the Magatama because he genuinely didn't think that hiring a hitman made you guilty of murder. This also leads to his downfall, as when he tried to record blackmail on de Killer, he only considered what he could do with it, not that Phoenix might find out about it or that de Killer, a man who explicitly states he values trust and loyalty above all else, might be pissed off about the attempted betrayal and make Matt his next target.
- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth: Strongly implied with Zinc Lablanc II as he's a huge Jerkass to people that aren't him but gives himself pretty things. He also sees his time as a lot more valuable than others' time; he's short-tempered with anyone who speaks too long for his liking, but he's perfectly fine with talking over others. A clear non-villainous example in this case, since he's more an annoyance than outright evil.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Kristoph Gavin is superficially charming, but under his facade, he is a calculating and manipulative man who ruins the lives of anyone who slights him. It's also implied that the only reason he became a lawyer was to make people dependent on him. Not being chosen to defend a high profile client and having said client replace him with Phoenix, someone Gavin thought was inferior to him, was enough for Kristoph to ruin Phoenix's career and kill the client when the opportunity later presented itself.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: Florent L'Belle would be like putting Vega on the stand (fitting, as both are Capcom creations). Always overflowing with self-praise for his own appearance, he even has his own line of beauty products that he refuses to sell to anyone despite them being in quite high demand. Yet he still advertises them in magazines and on TV, just to rub it in everyone's faces that they will never be able to have them. This has left him in desperate need of money, which is his motivation for committing murder.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- The Danganronpa series has its Big Bad, Junko Enoshima; a self-absorbed, vain, and capricious maniac who more or less destroyed the world simply because she found it boring, and found her despair-worshipping anarchy more fun. While she is capable of love, as shown by her willingly killing her sister on a whim to feel the despair of losing her, she has absolutely no concern for any relationship that is not entirely focused on her, and her quirks are all meant to be as attention-grabbing as possible; at one point she even tries to reprogram the entire planet into copies of herself to enjoy.
- In Super Danganronpa Another 2, Serial Killer Kanade Otonokoji is a malignant narcissist who considers herself better and smarter than everyone in the cast (not without good reason), acts extremely arrogant and condescending during the Class Trials, and has absolutely zero empathy toward anyone else, even her own parents. Is it any wonder that she'd fall in love with her twin sister, the closest thing to herself?
- Dennis from Double Homework does everything for approval and admiration. Lampshaded in this exchange:
Protagonist: He’s a psychopath.
Dr. Mosely: No, he’s a narcissist.
Web Animation
- The Cyanide & Happiness Show: "Lookin' Good" centres around a man who enters a whirlwind romance with his own reflection in a mirror, ranging from taking it out to a restaurant date, romantically watching the sunset with it, before taking his narcissism to the logical extreme and having sex with his own mirror.
- DSBT InsaniT: Ohhhhhhh Julie is a BIG time narcissist! She thinks she is the picture of perfection and everyone else is beneath her.
- Prima from Of Weasels And Chickens. In all the songs she sings, she manages to find some way to praise herself.
(when introducing herself) Prima. Number one! All around perfect, if I’m correct -– and trust me, I always am.
- RWBY:
- Cinder Fall admits that she wants to be "strong, feared, and powerful", implying a need for recognition by others. During her fight with Pyrrha, she attempts to de-legitimise Pyrrha's eligibility to receive the power to bolster her sense of superiority. When Ruby permanently cripples and disfigures her at the end of Volume 3, Cinder begins developing a vengeful obsession with her. While still recovering from her injuries, she is disgruntled and frustrated with having to suffer disrespect and insults from the rest of Salem's subordinates. When she first meets Raven, the latter concludes that Cinder has a "slight case of egomania" to have a name that is suspiciously fitting for a Fall Maiden and, when she fights Jaune, she only stops toying with him when he manages to strike her mask, almost injuring her; she instantly flies into a rage, ranting about the audacity of someone as weak as him daring to think he could beat her. When she confronts the Spring Maiden at the Relic of Knowledge's vault, she outright claims that the only person worthy of possessing such power is herself.
- Adam Taurus has multiple characteristics commonly attributed to a narcissist. He is manipulative, arrogant, egocentrical, and power-hungry. He is visibly attention-hungry; he expects special treatment from people around him and has a skewed perception of himself as a heroic figure for the Faunus. He never sits on the High Leader's throne, he lounges indolently as he issues his orders. He is unable to handle criticism and takes defiance of his authority personally, retaliating spitefully and with murderous intent. As a result, when Blake turns her back on the White Fang because his violence is hurting innocents, he doesn't simply go after her, he vows to destroy everyone she loves as well.
Webcomics
- Awkward Zombie: Marth. Played for Laughs in one strip where the only other person he describes as beautiful... is his 32nd-great-granddaughter from the future who looks almost exactly like him but with longer hair.
- Homestuck:
- Inverted with Karkat (a.k.a. carcinoGeneticist). Troll romance is complex and includes kismesissitude, which is a sort of attraction based on hatred and personal rivalry. Karkat's closest thing to a kismesis is himself due to unshakable belief in whatever his current mindset is a searing hatred of his past and future behavior. The other trolls find this hilarious. Karkat actually seems rather chagrined when he realizes this fact; possibly because kismesissitude is actually related to breeding and it may not be possible to provide the proper genetic material when you're your own kismesis (and being unable to provide genetic material from either of the breeding relationships is grounds for execution in Karkat's culture).
- Vriska Serket ticks every box. Her narcissism is epitomized in her calling up Terezi right after she blinded her to laugh about it, casually bragging about how resilient she is in the face of her ARM being blown off, and her seeming to not understand why the other trolls can't just "get over" what she did to both Terezi and Aradia after the fact.
- Eridan also shows Narcissistic tendencies — for example, his feelings of superiority over the trolls of lower blood and entitlement to a romantic relationship. Also a result of his egotism and general obnoxiousness.
- Aranea Serket is almost certainly a clinical narcissist. No matter how she spins it, Aranea's grand scheme for the universe ultimately revolves entirely around assuaging her own boredom and being seen as a god and savior. She also proves herself to be almost totally void of empathy, being willing to incapacitate, Mind Rape, or even outright murder anyone who gets in her way. The only thing potentially stopping her from being a full-bore sociopath is her apparent capacity for affection (e.g. for Meenah and Vriska).
- Gemini Man in L's Empire is so obsessed with his appearance, that he applies a new coat of paint every 4 hours and shines his armor every 6. Calling him ugly is a good way to get a face-full of laser.
- Ménage à 3 features international lingerie model Senna, who is deeply aware of her own international model-grade looks, thinks that nothing short of black magic can divert someone's interest away from her, and assumes that when her boyfriend is nice to one of her rivals, he must be working on some complex plot on her behalf.
- Hanazawa Teruki from Mob Psycho 100 is a perfect example. Before his fight with Mob, he displayed practically all of the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to the point of one of his actual quotes being "I’m special, better than others, and the whole world revolves around me!" Even after the fight, he seems to have a distinct Lack of Empathy, having no problem with torturing someone or burning them alive.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-056 is an egotistical shape-shifter who always makes itself a little bit better than whoever it's copying, IE it turned into Scarlett Johansson while passing a group of young women and scored 30 points higher on an IQ test than the smartest/nearest researcher. It causes nothing but stress and chaos wherever it goes and it wants to be seen by more "sycophants".
- SCP-2372 is the body (id) and soul (ego/superego) of a man who disliked the idea of his body decomposing. The soul wants to escape the body and claims the body thinks the man was really "into himself".
- A possible interpretation of ●●|●●●●●|●●|●. It's a monster that steals any verbally expressed (using words) information about itself, including kidnapping anyone who speaks about it. It might be that it perceives verbal information about it as its "reflections" while also being unable to recognize photos or drawings as being about itself.
- SCP-056
Web Videos
- Sam from The Cry of Mann contains quite a few signs; he believes himself the best actor on the show and talks constantly about how good of an actor he is and how famous he is, despite being a bit-character. He's so obsessed with himself that he felt entitled to be on "Tanking Mann", barging into the show even on days he wasn't booked and taking the spotlight away from the actual guests and hosts. His need for constant praise and attention is so great, he went berserk when a caller asked which role he played in the show, forcing the caller to claim they were just joking around. Finally, he shows a need for power and attention, with the aforementioned forcing himself into "Tanking Mann" episodes and his apparent ownership over "Tanking Mann" itself, which was considered a leech on Cry Of Mann's success as a show. He even bribed a camera guy to give him a spotlight so he can monologue when not meant to, knowing the cast couldn't do anything to stop him.
- Captain Hammer of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog "Stand back everyone, nothing here to see / Just imminent danger, in the middle of it ME!"
- In her peephole video, Erin Andrews admires her naked body while curling her hair in the nude.
- Rubber Soul is a very big narcissist in Vaguely Recalling JoJo, he calls himself Mr. Damn Handsome.
Western Animation
- On The Alvin Show, Alvin shows signs of this. When Dave takes away the boys' TV watching privileges because of a situation involving an ostrich, Alvin exclaims "You mean I can't even watch me??!"
- Gumball from The Amazing World of Gumball is fundamentally decent and hides his monstrous ego with genuine anxiety, but he's such an Attention Whore he inserts himself into someone else's story and forces a happy ending where he saves the day on them.
- American Dad!:
- Stan Smith is a huge example. He believes himself to be the ultimate patriot and the best American citizen in America as he is obsessed with going on the jury and wants to be the foreman every time. He also desires to maintain his high school record in wrestling. He also rules over his own household with an iron fist. He also believes himself to be the ultimate Christian as he wanted to play the role of Jesus in the Christmas play but got reduced to being the mall Santa and he beats up Roger when he got the role of Jesus instead for the implied reason of jealousy.
- Roger Smith combines narcissism with a high amount of sociopathy. His narcissism is shown through his many awards and achievements (which he mostly got through cheating), his numerous personas and disguises, his self absorbed behavior, and the fact that he proclaimed himself to be "The Decider" (which was a direct result of being lied to by his own species in a trick to abandon him on Earth).
- Atomic Puppet:
- Commander Cavalier is incredibly obsessed with his good looks and will always take the opportunity to admire himself in a mirror, even in the midst of battle. Despite this, however, he's extremely friendly and kind-hearted, as well as a competent superhero.
- Rex Bordeaux absolutely adores himself, to the point where his channel's newsvan is painted with an idealized version of himself riding a tiger and carrying a warhammer in a lightning storm.
- Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force has a hugely inflated opinion of himself and is constantly seeking recognition from others for his supposed greatness.
- Batman: The Animated Series: The Joker has a truly titanic ego, thinking he's the smartest and greatest comedian, criminal, and person in the world. The tiniest insult will cause Joker to drop his Laughably Evil image and focus all his efforts on killing that specific person who mocked him.
- King Barlowe, a rival mob boss, posthumously exploits this against the clown via his fake inheritance scam and even rubs it in Joker's face via his taped Spiteful Will. Having splurged on the money before realizing he's been had, Joker is left with two choices: get jailed for tax evasion or admit he was conned by a dead man (and become Gotham's Butt-Monkey). Bonus points for Barlowe as Joker can't even go after said dead man.
- In "Joker’s Wild", upon seeing the titular casino, the Clown Prince of Crime alternates between wanting to blow it up for infringing on his likeness and sheer glee at a casino dedicated entirely to him.
- In an effort to defeat the clown for good, Terry exploits this in their Final Battle in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker via his Boring Insult, claiming that his jokes are pathetic and that he's just a stupid manchild who couldn't make Batman laugh. Joker doesn't take this insult lightly and has a spectacular Villainous Breakdown.
- Michael Morningstar from Ben 10: Alien Force is a vain, egocentric Rich Bitch with Vampiric Draining powers who sees his girlfriends as his property as he's more in love with himself than anything else per Word of God. After Gwen accidentally disfigured him, virtually all of his Evil Plans revolved around getting enough Life Energy to fix his face. When he starts dating Charmcaster who provided him with an infinite supply, it still wasn't enough for him and she dumps him after realizing he couldn't even be bothered to remember her name.
- Bojack Horseman:
- BoJack has textbook compensatory narcissism with a deep-rooted entitlement and high need of appreciation coming from an inferiority complex, with his actions being attempts to live up to who he thinks he should be for others and falling short of it. He also has Borderline Personality Disorder due to his disgust and craving of affection from even people he despises — like Mr. Peanutbutter — or knows are just trying to use him — like Angela and Ana. He's been also often interpreted as having clinical depression due to his lack of motivation and positive emotions as well as his self-defeating behavior and occasional suicidal ideation.
- His mother, Beatrice, has a more complex case of narcissism with a pot full of different shades of the spectrum: "amorous" (clingy attitude and territorial attitude even to those she dislikes just because they're hers), "elitist" (haughty, believes appearance and status to be everything, derides everything short of her image of perfection), "compensatory" (behavior largely out of insecurity, compensation) and even "fanatic" (she just can't let go of grudges, keeps any emotional actions as proof of her own beliefs) fit her to some degree.
- While nice about it, Mr. Peanutbutter fits the description of the shy, covert/compensatory narcissist: he wants people to be happy and often goes out of his way to make it so but rather than finding out what would make them so, he forgoes that in favor of his bases of what he assumes would make them happier. He also tries to be the cool guy so that people will feel comfortable around him and don't leave him at all, something which has happened in the past and has created him a complex. Not that he would come out and say it; better try passive-aggressive remarks in the form of concerned thoughts. There's also how much he wants things exactly as he envisions in spite of his carefree attitude, which he masks with niceness hoping that will make things go his way. His grandiose sense of projects without any backbone or purpose and insecurity about Diane also make him rather needy with his expressions of love being Grand Romantic Gestures.
- Secretariat was just as much as a Crowd Pleaser as Mr. Peanutbutter and just as miserable as BoJack. He would often bask on the public's adoration while secretly falling apart because of how little he saw of himself in his audience's expectations. Fame, glory, and love meaning everything for him, he was eternally fearful of falling into obscurity to the point of selling out his brother to the army as a replacement during The Vietnam War. Tripping into disgrace once he was found out betting in his own races, he was banned from racing, the only thing that made him feel alive and allowed to forget his problems, and as such he finally committed suicide. Forget BoJack, Secretariat is the embodiment of compensatory narcissism as well as a chilling reminder of what can happen when such disorder is allowed to run rampant.
- Sarah Lynn is an example of the "unprincipled"/"amorous" type: willing to exploit others for her own gratification, feels little to no remorse over it and always uses her sexuality and devil-may-care attitude as an excuse to get away with horrid actions.
- BoJack has textbook compensatory narcissism
- Simon from Captain N: The Game Master.
- Neil from Class of the Titans can usually be seen admiring himself in his mirror or heard boasting about his beauty and alleged greatness. No surprise given he's a descendant of Narcissus himself.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog:
- Di Lung is easily the most insufferable genius in the entire series, literally calls himself "perfect" in the series' final episode of the same name, and even makes an entire pile of photographs of himself just so that he can stare at them and kiss them in "Cabaret Courage". He also calls other people "fools" just for being less smart than him and created his own television show just to show off how obscenely rich he is.
- Danger Mouse is usually quick to point out he's the world's greatest secret agent. Agent 57 lampshades it when he assumes DM's form to help him in "The Spy Who Stayed In With A Cold."
- From Daria, in the first few seasons, Quinn was a narcissist. Just look here.
- A lesser example is Jane's older brother Wind. All he does is mope and cry about his failed marriages, and when it's not a topic in a conversation, he makes it one. In the later season episode "Art Burn," he guilt trips Jane and Trent into rebuilding the gazebo in the Lane Family's backyard because it was "The Naming Gazebo" and an important part of his childhood. And then he promptly disappears for the rest of the episode and does nothing to actually help his siblings. Then we find out their parents made up the whole "Naming Gazebo" thing because he once tried to change his name.
- Drawn Together:
- Captain Hero is one big one. He is an egotistical superhero who believes himself to be a skilled crime fighter but he is in reality a very stupid superhero. He owns several pictures of himself in his bedroom and when he thought that the AIDS walk was a race, he took steroids in an attempt to win something that was not a game or sport to begin with. He also blames others for his own faults such as when he blamed Wooldoor for the deaths of several people in a cable car crash when in reality, Captain Hero neglected to save them while Wooldoor attempted to warn him about it
- Princess Clara. She believes herself to be the ultimate agent of God and has a huge desire to take out what she perceives to be sin wherever she sees it. She also crusades against anything that she sees sinful unless such things benefit her directly. She is also very condescending towards others, especially towards her own housemates and she judges them harshly for their sins when the bible clearly says that true Christians should not judge people by themselves and Clara has clearly broken this as she has committed several sins of her own in the course of the show.
- Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy. Deconstructed in the movie when he reveals that he thinks of himself as a "foul, wannabe loser."
- The tv anchors Tom Tucker in Family Guy. His house is full of pictures of him, including one of him in a wedding dress.
- Prince Daring Charming of Ever After High. The fact he always carries a mirror to look at himself makes it really obvious.
- Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
- Both Zapp Brannigan and Bender from Futurama. In "The Farnsworth Parabox" Bender seemingly falls in love with an alternate gold plated version of himself, stating that he has finally found someone "as great as me". Zapp is shamelessly vain and full of himself.
- Narcissus is promoted to God status in Disney's Hercules, where he is shown briefly smooching at a hand mirror.
- In Goof Troop Pete is highly narcissistic (of course, he always is). He sees himself as perfect, and nothing could be better than his son PJ to grow up exactly as him — he can't grow up to be better because that suggests Pete could be improved upon. When his parenting methods prove inferior to Goofy's — and they always do — he is personally offended, but rather than saddened, becomes extremely agitated.
- Infinity Train: The creators have described Simon from season 3 as a clinical narcissist; while he lacks the comically overinflated ego, he is pathologically incapable of acknowledging his own mistakes for any reason. Anything that doesn't fit into his first impressions is rationalized, ignored, or even killed so he doesn't have to consider alternate views, and he has no regret in doing even the most horrible of deeds because the possibility that he might do something wrong just doesn't compute.
- Johnny Bravo is obsessed with exactly two things: Himself, and using that first thing to mack on as many ladies as possible.
- Johnny Test is one big example as he is a bratty kid who mostly cares about himself.
- Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes. His response to seeing an image of himself is "Hello, handsome."
- Mr. Cat from Kaeloo has shown shades of this, for example Comically Overreacting to losing a whisker.
- King of the Hill:
- Played for Laughs with Peggy Hill. Her ego, originally a mild quirk, eventually became her defining character trait, so much so that her backstory had to be rewritten to explain her incessant Inferiority Superiority Complex. As a result, in later seasons she became a Know-Nothing Know-It-All and Control Freak who would actually make up a "fact" in the middle of a conversation, and immediately convince herself it was true because she was the one who said it.
- Played for Drama with the Hills' neighbor Nancy Hicks-Gribble, a self-centered Alpha Bitch that couldn't commit to fully taking her husband's surname, let alone their actual marriage. She cheated on Dale for the entirety of their relationship but had the gall to take offense when he spends time around other women, and was more concerned with her hair loss than the fact that her entire family was built on a lie.
- Looney Tunes:
- Wile E. Coyote in the cartoons where he is paired with Bugs Bunny. He just loves how his name and "Super Genius" roll off his tongue, as well as all the elaborate machines he creates to capture that wascally wabbit.
- In The Looney Tunes Show, Bugs calls Daffy this. He does display many of the traits that mark narcissism in reality.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, Chloé Bourgeois is a textbook budding pathological narcissist. She has an overwhelming sense of superiority to her "commoner" classmates, is self-centered to the point where she almost certainly would have been mauled to death by one of Hawk Moth's akumas by now if not for Ladybug's Miraculous Ladybug power, is obsessed with claiming the power of the Miraculous and the rich and handsome Adrien for her own, has an overwhelming sense of entitlement, treats everyone around her like her own personal servants, and has zero empathy. It doesn't help that her home life is also a textbook breeding ground for narcissistic personality disorder; her father is an overindulgent milquetoast who has taught her socially manipulative behavior through his career as a politician, while her mother is an emotionally abusive jerkass who can barely be bothered to remember her name when she's even around.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Queen Chrysalis is a shapeshifter with energy-draining powers, which would be a lot more useful if she wasn't addicted to throwing her weight around, being the center of attention and indulging in endless evil gloating. She also shows herself incapable of accepting any blame for her failures and to possess a very overblown perception of her own power and cunning, seemingly immune to any and all humiliation.
- The New Adventures of Jonny Quest has Zartan, an extremely vain, flamboyant Corrupt Corporate Executive type who appears in the episode "The Monolith Man." He is extremely handsome and dresses very flamboyantly. While experimenting with an unknown type of underground radiation, it turned the right side of his face to stone. Now he is driven to find more of the same radiation in an effort to study it so he can undo the damage to his good looks. One problem: the crystals which give off the radiation are extremely volatile and tend to explode without warning, making it extremely difficult to mine. Zartan's mining operations suffer multiple accidents as a result of the crystals blowing up and killing the workers. Undaunted, Zartan demands his men press on and on because restoring his handsomeness is more important than the lives of his employees.
- Raymond on OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes. He is quite vain and obsessed with his good looks.
- The Owl House:
- Emperor Belos started off as a Puritan who was firmly convinced that witches were evil and a threat to mankind. But he displays all the traits of a narcissist: he primarily wants to kill all witches so he could receive glory for his work (like him referring to himself as Witch Hunter General). In his mindscape he has a series of false memories that depict him being victorious over his enemies despite that being the opposite case. Whenever he kills a Grimwalker he claims it is because they always betray him not once acknowledging it was his fault. He is so convinced of his self-righteousness, that he cannot fathom his actions as evil.
- Odalia Blight, the matriarch of the Blight family, cares only about maintaining her family's social status and is possessively controlling over her kids such as forcing Amity to dye her hair green in her likeness. Being an opportunist, she jumps at assisting Belos to carry out the Day of Unity if it meant that her family would be made royalty. While claiming that she did it out of her family's best interests, her family disowning her makes it apparent that she was only looking out for herself.
- The Shredder, hands down, proven in Turtles Forever. The Mirage Turtles lure the 2003 Shredder out of his Technodrome by calling him a coward. It works, and Shredder literally jumps into an ambush, set not just by them but the other Ninja Turtles that he thought he killed earlier. Why did both mismatched teams know this would work?
2003 Leonardo: If there's one constant in The Multiverse, it's the Shredder's big fat ego!
- King Julien from The Penguins of Madagascar. "That is not very interesting to me, because it is not about me. See how that works?"
- Beth Smith in Rick and Morty had sociopathic tendencies even as a child, and didn't become much better as an adult. She refuses to accept responsibility for her actions, always blaming her shortcomings on the rest of the family. Taken to extremes in Season 6 when she starts hooking up with her own clone.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle: In the "Fractured Fairy Tale" episode "Leaping Beauty", the protagonist Beauty runs around spreading sunshine and flowers to all the other people in her town, until she crosses paths with a witch. Rather than cast a sleeping spell on Beauty, the witch casts a Boredom spell, which turns Beauty into a narcissist, admiring a mirror all day and singing her own praises to the point where the rest of the town falls asleep out of boredom.
- Samurai Jack has Aku, the Made of Evil Big Bad, who demands tributes from the oppressed masses in the form of statues in his likeness. A good example of this is when he visits the Cult of Aku to see their statue. He applauds their efforts and adds that while it's an attractive replica, it pales in comparison to the real Aku. Then he gives them a piece of his essence to worship.
- In She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Horde Prime exists at the center of a cult devoted to his glorification. He surrounds himself with brainwashed clones of himself, who he can possess at will and harvests to extend his lifespan and simply for ornamentation. Any mistake he makes must be hidden or obliterated and has left countless destroyed planets in his wake. He becomes enraged when confronted with his own errors, and after experiencing multiple failures attempts to destroy the universe rather than lose control.
- Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
- In one episode when he and Marge go to a marriage counselor, he's asked to list the most important people in his life, which are: Homer, Homer J. Simpson, and Captain McCool (which is what he calls himself).
- In the episode where gay marriage is legalized in Springfield, Homer imagines what it would be like to marry someone of the same sex, and pictures himself married, and making out, with himself while a bunch of baby mini-Homers crawl on the floor.
- South Park: Eric Cartman is a textbook example. He is self-centered and convinced that he is the coolest person in the world. He is very manipulative whenever it involves getting something he wants and is utterly remorseless whenever he commits illegal acts. Even when he began dating Heidi, he gaslights her into thinking that he was the victim and corrupts her into a female version of himself to which even he is shocked. With his mother Liane, he constantly leeches off her leading to him sabotaging her real estate job because he was her job. Of course, this bites Cartman hard as because she quit her job, she could no longer pay the rent and they are forced to move into a hot dog stand.
- Squidward Tentacles from Spongebob Squarepants; all of his paintings and sculptures are images of him. Then there's also his rival Squilliam, who is just like Squidward only more successful and with more hair.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: While Grievous has all the self-centered, self-absorbed, power-hungry traits of a narcissist it's not clear that he's really that fond of himself until "Lair of Grievous" reveals he's decorated his lair with a series of larger than life statues of himself, as a glorious war victor.
- The Warden from Superjail!.
- The Incredibly Amazing Man from Super Noobs is a big one as blatantly shown through his name. He is very arrogant and condescending towards other superheroes, concerns himself with his looks, is very inconsiderate of others and very destructive, and is obsessed with selling merchandise that revolves around him, especially merchandise that features images of him.
- Total Drama:
- Chris McLean. His favorite thing is himself, to the point that he puts his image on many items that go along with the challenges.
- Justin as well. You almost always see him admiring his physique and face.
- Alejandro, though to a much lesser extent than the others. It's no wonder, considering he is heavily based off of Justin.
- Lightning pretty much believes he is the greatest thing in the universe. When not boasting about his athletic prowess, he's usually flexing his biceps and kissing them.
- Topher is absolutely obsessed with his appearance (especially his hair), which is no surprise given that he idolizes Chris and seeks to replace him as the show's host.
- Don is an example as he constantly worries about the shininess of his teeth and makes some comments about his own looks when recapping previous episodes, although he is not much of it as Chris is.
- Jacques and Josee also qualify as Jacques places a lot of concern about his hair and does not want oil to drip on it and Josee is obsessed with winning gold and throws tantrums when she places anywhere other than first. They are even willing to cheat in the race in order to maintain their perceived superiority.
- Starscream in most Transformers adaptations, particularly Transformers: Animated and Transformers: Prime. Subverted in Transformers: Armada.
- Knock Out from Transformers: Prime is even more narcissistic. True, he has displayed Ho Yay with Breakdown, but Word of God has stated that it doesn't really matter whether he is attracted to males, females, or both because he is first and foremost in love with himself.
- Sentinel himself is also an example, particularly in Transformers: Dark of the Moon where he proclaims himself a living god. In most versions, he'll end up at least mildly villainous due to his narcissism.
- Pizza Steve from Uncle Grandpa.
- Jack Spicer from Xiaolin Showdown. He constantly worries about his hair and even calls his robot minions "Jackbots".
Oh yes, sure, go on, kiss the water!
