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Ecocidal Antagonist - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Nov 05 2023

Ecocidal Antagonist (trope)

You sure you want this cover now, Sonic?

'Cause greedy human beings will always lend a hand
With the destruction of this worthless jungle land
And what a beautiful machine they have provided
To slice a path of doom, with my foul breath to guide it!

Want to make your Green Aesop easier for younger audiences to understand? One of the simplest ways to go about this is to make the person responsible for the destruction a truly diabolical villain. If there isn't a Polluted Wasteland in the setting, this type of character is setting out to create one.

Exactly how this villain is styled can vary from one story to the next, but this behavior is commonly seen from the Corrupt Corporate Executive, particularly if he's part of an industry that naturally takes a toll on the environment. Sometimes, an executive or director's willingness to damage and pollute the environment is enough to turn their usually more redeemable subordinates or close ones against their boss, due to having better standards or guilt for their contributions. In fantasy settings, he may represent unchecked industrialization or may even take the form of a Muck Monster or another Elemental Embodiment of poison or decay, and use toxic goo to attrack. Usually, if they don't just do it For the Evulz, they'll do it because of the money they'll gain.

This can also provide a realistic justification for Fisher King and Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia. An evil ruler's lands are ravaged badlands specifically because the pollution created by their industries made the country that way.

In real life, there are much more complicated reasons why an individual person might destroy a forest or pollute a body of water, and it's rarely a black-and-white issue. As such, No Real Life Examples, Please!

Supertrope to Evil Poacher. See also Toxic, Inc., for a company that doesn't seem to do anything except create pollution (prone to be ruled by one), Wicked Wastefulness if for villains who are wasteful with resources, and Cruella to Animals, for somebody who eats or wears animal products, or uses animals for scientific research, purely because they enjoy hurting them, and Omnicidal Maniac, who just wants to destroy everything and everyone beyond the ecosystem. Compare to Greenwashed Villainy for when these kinds of villains attempt to appear eco-friendly for pragmatic reasons, even if their ulterior motives show otherwise. Compare with Bad People Abuse Animals, which often overlaps with this trope. Contrast with the Nature Lover, as well as the antithesis of this character type, the Eco-Terrorist, who is pro-environment but also takes it to similarly harmful extremes. The Last Fertile Region is frequently in danger from these types.


Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • Franken Fran has an interesting variation; the story arcs about the masked crime fighter Sentinel introduce the evil organization Black Lotus, who want to destroy the world and humanity. However, they do this by being humanitarians, because they believe that causing humanity to prosper will give them their intended results anyway via overpopulation and pollution.
  • The Kirby: Right Back at Ya! episode "Beware: Whispy Woods!" shows DeDeDe and Escargoon have absolutely no qualms cutting down an entire forest for their own selfish purposes. While watching him deforest Whispy Wood's forest from afar, Kawasaki outright wonders aloud if he intends to totally destroy all of Popstar's ecology.
  • One Piece: Kaido, one of the Four Emperors and the Big Bad of the Wano arc, is generally a nasty villain all around, but the narrative emphasizes his negative impact on Wano Country through how it's been polluted through his weapon factories, making the rivers poisonous, and by extension the animals that drink from them, which also hurts the people of smaller villages and settlements in Wano as much as the environment.

Asian Animation 

  • The 3-episode BoBoiBoy special "Saving Planet Earth" has two examples:
    • Probe watches a Show Within a Show called "Awasman!" where the titular yellow hero stops a sentient villainous trash can from dumping the contents of a dump truck into the river.
    • Downplayed with the Shield Monster. His main objective is to eliminate BoBoiBoy, but he makes use of Rintis Island's pollution to form a shield of armor around himself, utilising garbage to attack. It is by getting the citizens to sort their rubbish and recyclables that the hero and his friends defeat the Shield Monster.

Comic Books 

  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Ravage DeFlora from Don Rosa's "War of the Wendigo" is the manager of Scrooge's logging operations in Northern Ontario. He's not too bad at first, but when his timber plant is attacked by the animals in an effort to stop him, he switches from anti-environmentalist into straight-up ecocidal. Ravage retaliates by stoking the furnaces with dioxin and pumping acid into the drain pipes to kill the animals clogging them (and destroying the forest as collateral). Even this is not enough, and he ultimately becomes a raving lunatic trying to burn down every tree and animal in sight with a flamethrower.
    • In the Italian comics, a villain named Inquinator made his debut in 1991. The name is a reference to the Italian word for "pollution" and his only goal is to damage the environment. He first appeared as an antagonist for Paperinik and then returned in the Ultraheroes saga.
  • Marvel Universe: Dario Agger, CEO of Roxxon Corp, is firmly of the belief that he can do whatever he wants and get away with it because he's rich — and what he primarily wants is to turn as much of the Earth as possible into a polluted wasteland and murder anyone who tries to stand up to him, earning him the enmity of Thor and the Hulk. He also joins Malekith the Accursed's Dark Council when promised the opportunity to do the same to the Ten Realms.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): The original timeline's Dr. Robotnik loves ruining the environment in any way possible, considering it his idea of a perfect world. The cover of one comic (currently the page image) has him wearing a pin promoting pollution while standing in an industrial area.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): To say that Eggman is anti-environmentalist would be an understatement. The second arc of the comic has him developing the Metal Virus, which turns all organic matter to machines and spreads via contact, to the point that in a Bad Future the only thing that's left on the planet is ruined cities and metallic plants, with not even a hint of life around. After that is defeated, he makes a self-rebuilding and ever-expanding city that hollows out the ground below it for resources. And that's not getting to the other villains in the comic; Surge and Kitsunami introduce themselves by starting a massive forest fire.
  • Swamp Thing: One of Swamp Thing's lesser-known enemies is Avery Carlton Sunderland, a Corrupt Corporate Executive in charge of the Sunderland Corporation who is at odds with the plant elemental because of the harm he allows his company to cause the environment. After originating as an antagonist in Martin Pasko's run, he was eventually killed off early in Alan Moore's run in the story "The Anatomy Lesson", with his daughter Constance subsequently taking his place as CEO of the Sunderland Corporation in Nancy A. Collins' run.
  • Tandy Computer Whiz Kids: In Safeguarding the Environment, the Whiz Kids are tasked with trying to clean up a polluted creek and teach others about being green. The villains are a group who not only happily spread pollution everywhere, but who are also intentionally trying to re-pollute the creek in order to have an illegal dumping ground.

Fan Works 

  • Operation ECLIPSE (Lermis): Dr. Eggman is back at it. Among other things, he has polluted Emeraldville to such a degree that the sky itself changed colour, and he has caused so much light pollution on planet Anhur that not only it's visible from the space during daytime, it even [[spoiler'causes birds to fall from the sky]].

Film — Animated 

  • FernGully: The Last Rainforest: Hexxus is a Muck Monster who acts as an embodiment of pollution, spreading oil and sludge and causing severe destruction to the titular rainforest. Interestingly enough, however, his Villain Song "Toxic Love" still implies that humans are partially responsible for his ability to wreak havoc.
  • Frosty Returns: Mr. Twitchell is a businessman who sells Summer Wheeze, a product that can instantly remove snow. He doesn't really care about the consequences of the environment, he's only in it for the money.
  • The events of the fourth Futurama movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, are set in action by Leo Wong's plan to destroy the Violet Dwarf Star to build a giant golf course poses a serious threat to alien life (especially since, unbeknownst to everyone, the star is half of the genetic material required to recreate the Encyclopod and preserve the DNA of every endangered or extinct animal species that ever lived). This spurns Leela to join (and eventually lead) an ecofeminist group to stop him.
  • The Lorax (2012): Zig-zagged with the Once-ler. While he's portrayed sympathetically and is not as overtly evil as the film's main villain, Mr. O'Hare, he more or less embraces this trope in his Villain Song "How Bad Can I Be?", and makes it clear that he cares more about profits than the well-being of the forest, though he ends up living to regret his actions. As for O'Hare, he does business by making everyone pay for artificial air instead of getting air from the trees for free, and attempts to stop Ted from planting a seed that would restore the trees and environment to prevent him from ruining his main source of profit.

    The Once-ler: Who cares if a few trees are dying?!

  • The Big Bad of Norm of the North is Mr. Greene, an unethical real estate developer whose plots are to drive out the Arctic wildlife in order to build more housing for clients, and who is not above bribery. He has also captured Norm the polar bear's grandfather, who Norm eventually saves. Additionally, Greene sabotages Norm's initial attempts to convince Greene's company to not build houses in the Arctic through a Recorded Spliced Conversation that manipulates his recorded words to make it sound like he endorses Greene's plots.
  • The Big Bad of Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle is Dr. Zed, who intends on stealing healing energy from a tree with no regard for the ecosystem or the Pokémon living there. The scientists who advise him against it are killed for their criticism, and Dr. Zed is also a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who claims to want the healing energy to help people, but the movie shows that his main concerns are for his own pride and ego.
  • Rio 2: Besides Nigel's gang of animals, who are targeting Blu, illegal loggers are the movie's human antagonists. They cause mass deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, advancing closer to where Jewel's family lives. When they encounter Linda and Tulio and realise that they're a threat to their operation, they tie them up to a tree and leave them there. The worst of them is Big Boss, their leader, an all-around Jerkass who treats his workers terribly and gets his comeuppance by the hand of nature itself as he gets Eaten Alive by an anaconda.
  • South Park: The Streaming Wars Part 2: Pi Pi secretly works with ManBearPig, the personification of climate change, to cause a drought that will allow him to sell urine as a water substitute.

Film — Live-Action 

  • The villains of Avatar are the RDA MegaCorp and its Private Military Contractors, who plan to strip-mine Pandora for Unobtainium, and destroy countless acres of forest in the process. Avatar: The Way of Water, RDA is back and more destructive than ever, though this time they're focused on harvesting amrita, a substance that can stop human aging, from the brains of the sapient whale-like tulkum. The whalers don't even use the rest of the carcass, leaving it to rot.
  • The villains of Choke Canyon are an energy corporation which is hell-bent on dumping nuclear waste in the titular canyon, even sending mercenaries to kill the hero, a theoretical scientist who has based himself on the canyon for his project, a theory for clean energy that involves sound vibrations and Halley's Comet.
  • Godzilla vs. Hedorah: The titular antagonist is an alien organism that came to Earth to feed off mankind's excessive pollution. As it grows in size, the monster develops numerous superpowers, such as an extremely acidic body (strong enough to melt humans and even Godzilla to the bone), flight, eye lasers, and the power to exhale fumes deadly enough to kill thousands of people, all while leaving toxic spills and deadly gas wherever it goes. It ends up causing so much destruction, death, and ecological devastation that Godzilla and the military have to work directly together in order to kill the smog monster, portraying Hedorah as that much of a threatening, monstrous, and despicable creature that needs to be destroyed, even in comparison to other kaiju in the franchise.
  • The Big Bad of Meg 2: The Trench is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who is mining the Lost World beneath the Marianas Trench for rare-earth minerals and gleefully tells Jonas and his team that as long as nobody exposes the mining operation, she can keep it going for years due to how inhospitable the trench is until there is literally nothing left. Jonas' Batman Cold Open in this film shows he has spent the years in between films chasing after criminals of this sort to expose them, with him obtaining evidence of people planning to dump nuclear waste on international waters. One of the goons to the executive is also quite eager to kill Jonas because he spent time in jail as a result of one of Jonas' operations.
  • On Deadly Ground has Michael Jennings, CEO of Aegis Oil. His only goal is to bring the company's new refinery online and he doesn't care who gets killed or how much environmental damage is done in the process. While this could be chalked up to pure greed, he shows intense hate for nature itself; his Establishing Character Moment has Jennings filming a propaganda commercial and screaming about the live animals he's forced to work with.
  • The main villains in Rolli – Amazing Tales are the Trashers, a cult that worships trash and aims to destroy the forest by polluting it.
  • Spaceballs: The titular Spaceballs, having squandered their planet's oxygen supply, seek to steal the oxygen from the planet Druidia. To do this, they plan to kidnap Princess Vespa for ransom to gain access to the shield covering the entire planet and use Mega Maid to vacuum up its oxygen, also stealing a mountain's snow and several trees in the process.

Literature 

  • Always Coming Home: This trope is how the Kesh view the people of our times, represented in their culture by Head Turned Backwards bogeymen. They can understand that all the ecological damage to Earth was caused by human action, but cannot understand it as a lack of foresight. For them, these were the deliberate actions of madmen.
  • Animorphs: Yeerks typically wreck the environments of the planets they conquer, according to Ax.
  • Juniper Sawfeather: Affron Oil, which has ad campaigns that insist that the corporation cares about protecting the environment, but the narrative shows that they have no interest in spending money on anything that would actually contribute to helping the environment. In fact, their ships have polluted beaches along the west coast and were responsible for the oil spill that killed two mermaids at the beginning of the first book. Furthermore, they are contributing to the masquerade regarding mermaid life and similar, because the public discovery of such sentient life would prevent Affron Oil from getting away with their polluting acts.
  • The Lorax: The Once-Ler is an Anti-Villain example. He ignores the Lorax's repeated pleas for him to stop cutting down Truffula Trees, and it is only once it is too late when the last of the trees is destroyed that he regrets his actions.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The wizard Saruman the White was originally on the side of good, being a trusted friend and confidant of Gandalf and the other Istari (wizards) but ultimately chose to follow the Dark Lord Sauron. After his fall into villainy, he begins tearing down the nearby Fangorn Forest to make way for his new wave of industrialization, which earns him the ire of the Ents.
  • Race to the Sun: Mr. Charles is a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose oil and gas company destroys the environment and is a target of many protests. In addition, he turns out to be a literal man-eating monster who kidnaps gifted children to work for him.

Live-Action TV 

  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar reforms the beautiful and verdant Southlands into Mordor, and in season two his army of Orcs destroys a huge part of the Drúadan forest on its path to Eregion, angering the Ents living there. The saddest part is that Adar was shown in season one praying to the Vala of nature, Yavanna.
  • Saved by the Bell: In the episode "Pipe Dreams", oil is discovered on school property. When a representative from the oil company makes a presentation to the PTA showing the nice new campus Bayside will have if they allow the company to drill, Zack places multiple oil derricks in the campus model and announces to the committee that an oil spill already occurred and killed all of the animals his science class released into the wild. The man from the company brushes it aside, noting that "accidents happen". Zack then "accidentally" spills oil on his suit.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Malon Prime is supposedly the jewel of the Delta Quadrant. It's kept that way because the Malon have an entire industry dedicated to dumping their waste output in other star systems. Their waste is so bad that it makes for a Dangerous Workplace full of No OSHA Compliance. They are forced to look for places to dump their waste because it's just as dangerous to other species as it is to the Malon. To solidify the Malon's actions as very selfish, the Voyager offers clean warp technology to help out the Malon, but they outright refuse because they claim that doing so would completely destroy the entire race's biggest economy, demonstrating their greedy priorities.
  • Super Sentai:
    • Engine Sentai Go-onger: The villains of the season are the Gaiark, a clan of machine-monsters that thrive on pollution and seek to pollute the Earth to make it habitable for their kind. It's also their thematic hat, the higher-ups of the organization literally being called "Pollution Ministers". Justified in the sense that they need pollution to survive; meaning they have to oppose environmentalism by principle. Ironically, the three Pollution Ministers all pull Heel Face Turns by the end of the season and later post-series content; having long found their ideal "Junk World".
    • Tensou Sentai Goseiger: The second villainous organization that attacks the Earth in Goseiger is the "Earth Condemnation Group Yumajuu," led by Makuin and Kingguon. Much like the Gaiark, these two seek to pollute Earth and make it habitable for monsters like them.

Pinball 

  • Popeye Saves the Earth: Before the events of the story, Bluto founds four Toxic, Inc. front companies, all of them threatening to drive various animals into extinction (one company threatening two ecosystems), with Popeye going from one company to the next to shut them down. It's hinted that Bluto is inflicting this damage on purpose as a form of display of power.

Tabletop Games 

  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse's primary villainous force is the Wyrm, the embodiment of decay, entropy, and destruction, and its many servants. The modern Wyrm is quite insane, and what was once a natural force of renewal now manifests as the defilement and destruction of everything good about the natural world. Areas of Wyrm influence are typically filthy, polluted hellholes, and its active servants are for the most part actively invested in ruining everything else — most notably the MegaCorp Pentex, which uses its appearance as a legitimate corporation as a front for its mission to pollute both nature and the bodies of humanity and hasten the final collapse of civilization.

Toys 

  • Action Man: Most toy commercials involve Dr. X and Professor Gangrene causing harm to the environment like polluting the oceans, spreading a forest fire, and using a volcano that produces purple smog. The 2000 series in particular expanded this into Dr. X's status as an Evilutionary Biologist; by making the environment more toxic and hostile, the more he can push humanity into the next evolutionary step.
  • G.I. Joe: The 1991 Eco-Warriors subline (released to compete with Captain Planet and the Planeteers) featured COBRA characters who were deliberately spreading pollution and causing environmental disasters as part of COBRA's main goal of world domination. The action figures came with small water guns that were described as shooting various types of toxic waste.

Video Games 

  • Dr. Machino, the main Big Bad of Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt, actively seeks to destroy the environment, and is the ruler of the polluting robots. His headquarters are like a titanic landfill.
  • Throughout the Banjo-Kazooie series, Gruntilda enjoys polluting several worlds to show her appreciation for the gross and ugly.
    • In the first game, Clanker's Cavern is a dirty sewer with an area filled with toxic waste and Rusty Bucket Bay is a grubby harbor with water so polluted that it drains Banjo and Kazooie's air twice as fast, and Snorkel the dolphin is trapped beneath the ship's anchor.
    • In Banjo-Tooie, Grunty Industries actively pollutes the waters of Jolly Roger's Lagoon, and Banjo and Kazooie must stop the pollution to obtain a Jiggy.
    • In Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, Spiller's Harbor is facing a decline in tourism due to oil spills caused by Gruntilda.
  • In Blue's Journey, the Daruma Empire is destroying the environment, to the point the natives of Raguy are starting to fall deathly ill. This is what provokes Blue to go after them, until he reaches the Polluted Wasteland the heart of their empire is.
  • Chibi-Robo!: The villains Chibi-Robo faces in Park Patrol are the smoglings, who dance around flowers in the park to turn them black (which causes them to wilt overnight). They're mainly the Mooks for Sergeant Smogglor, who summons them daily to undo all of Chibi-Robo's work in the park. Sergeant Smogglor is also actually General Greenthumb, a hero who was brainwashed by Miasmo, the true Big Bad of the game.
  • Corruption of Laetitia: Cardinal Alfredus Marian is obsessed with producing more military weapons to maintain his rule over Laetitia and sate his paranoia, even at the cost of the environment. As a result, his people suffer through famine and the various monster species suffer from environmental pollution. This got to the point where one of his factories caused a disease through sheer pollution, forcing many of the humans of Savia Village to convert themselves into a new monster species just to survive. As a result, the sapient monster species and even many humans join Celeste's rebellion against him.
  • Crash Bandicoot (1996): Dr. Cortex has claimed one of the three islands of the Wumpa Archipelago as his own, dubbing it Cortex Island, and beneath his castle lies his toxic waste industry, Cortex Power, which has made most of the island a polluted mess. Aku Aku has teamed up with Crash to take down Cortex, because he doesn't want the rest of the islands to become polluted. However, this aspect of Cortex gets dropped after the first game, with the focus shifting to him being an Evilutionary Biologist.
  • Dave the Diver: Sea Blue initially presents itself as an overzealous Animal Wrongs Group that goes after small-time fishers for the sake of protecting the ocean. However, they ignore the destructive actions of big fishing corporations, and as people notice the hypocrisy behind their actions, it's eventually revealed that they don't actually care about the environment, their creed being a front for eliminating competition for a fishery that desires to fish as much as they want in spite of ethics. Sea Blue's leader, John Watson, is notably destructive in his boss battle, blowing up part of the environment nearby trying to kill Dave (and blaming Dave for the destruction).
  • Donkey Kong: In contrast to the Kongs' presumably eco-friendly Bamboo Technology, the Kremling Krew are a race of marauding but highly industrialized crocodilians who are very apathetic about the environment, while their factories operate with No OSHA Compliance. Their own island itself is a barren wasteland.
    • In Donkey Kong Country 3, Mekanos was once a lush, beautiful island filled with plant life, but the Kremlings turned it into a waste-filled hellhole.
    • In Donkey Kong Country 1, the area surrounding Kremkroc Industries used to be a lush environment before Kremlings built the factories.
    • While we don't see the exterior of Frantic Factory in Donkey Kong 64, it is implied the outside is a polluted wasteland.
  • Eco Fighters has Kernal Goyolk, who plans on turning Elwood into a dread sphere.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VII: Before the main conflict shifts to Sephiroth as antagonist, the central villains for the bulk of the game are the Shinra Corporation — a MegaCorp whose business model is built upon pumping the Materia (magical life blood of the planet's biosphere) out of the environment, converting it into electricity, and selling it to the desperate masses populating the industrial hellscape of Midgard. Accordingly, the protagonists are a plucky band of eco-terrorists doing their utmost to sabotage Shinra's businesses. When they leave Midgard for a while, the full ramifications of Shinra's actions are shown on the overworld map in the giant polluted wasteland that surrounds Midgard — an ugly blot on an otherwise relatively verdant continent.
    • Final Fantasy XIV:
      • In the Conjurer questline, the conjurers of Stillglade Fane regularly battle the corruptive influence of voidsent on the Twelveswood. Conjurers wield the powers of nature to purge voidsent corruption of the earth, water, and air, clearing pollution that would render the land infertile, the rivers murky, and the air poisonous.
      • Subverted in the White Mage questline. Alaqa is a Xaela thaumaturge who raise the body of a fallen dragon to spread taint, corruption, and disease in Coerthas, bringing her into conflict with the white mages of Gridania when that taint reaches into the Twelveswood. While she's initially depicted as a wicked witch-like figure, the heroes discover that she's a refugee from Othard who fled Garlean occupation of her land, only to watch her loved ones be slaughtered by Ishgardians who mistook her kind for Dravanians. Her actions, while destructive, are framed as the sympathetic Roaring Rampage of Revenge born of a senseless massacre, with the damage to the Twelveswood being an unintended side effect. She later atones for her actions by becoming a conjurer, protecting the land she once harmed.
      • In the Blue Mage questline, Whastrach coerces the Whalaqee leaders into signing over their sacred, ceruleum-rich lands in exchange for the treatment of a plague ravaging their people. This infuriates the Warrior and Martyn, who wager everything to put a halt to Whastrach's environmentally destructive plans.
  • In Mega Man Zero 4, a group of humans fleeing from Neo Arcadia for the green and lush "Area Zero" draw the ire of Dr. Weil, who sends his Einherjar Eight Warriors to destabilize the environment to force the humans back into his clutches. Each of the Einherjar attempt this through various meansExplanation. His final plan is to use his Kill Sat, Ragnarok, to completely obliterate Area Zero, destroying the last of the Earth's natural environment with it.
  • Oddworld:
    • The Glukkons are an industrial-focused species that prioritize satisfying their greed and materialistic desires above all else, turning the world around them into a polluted, barren wasteland, and using their Slig troops to hunt several species to near-extinction. The Meeches were a species already rendered extinct by the start of the game, and you play as a rebelling Mudokon worker, Abe, to throw a wrench into their malicious businesses.
    • Stranger's Wrath, taking place in a different part of Oddworld, features Sekto as the Big Bad Corrupt Corporate Executive of a different financial empire, factories and over-hunting of several species (including the Steef, the species of the protagonist, Stranger) included.
  • Pokémon: In keeping with the Solar Punk themes of the setting, more than a few antagonists had shades of this. Team Rocket was a group of Evil Poachers, Team Magma in the remakes were Well Intentioned Extremists who wanted to shrink the world's oceans for the sake of industrialization to benefit mankind, and Team Flare wanted to protect the environment by killing nearly everything that inhabits it to prevent an Overpopulation Crisis.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Chairman Drek is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who is responsible for deliberately industrialising and overpolluting his home planet and rendering it uninhabitable, forcing his people, the Blarg, to pay him a fortune to construct a brand new planet for them to live on, and overseeing an army of Planet Looters who steal the best bits from other planets in the galaxy for him to use in his creation. He's also secretly planning to repeat the cycle all over again once the Blarg have settled on their new planet.
  • The Simpsons Game: The villain of the level that introduces Lisa's capabilities is Mr. Burns, who's using large buzz saw blade-wielding machines to cut down massive trees... so that he can make each one into a single toothpick. The setting is a ginormous logging facility where the Simpsons children have to contend with hazards around the area as well as the loggers who work there.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Since Sonic is a free spirit and lover of nature, his Arch-Enemy Dr. Eggman (formerly Dr. Ivo Robotnik) is a tyrannical industrialist, a representation of all the ways humanity harms the environment. He runs pollution-spewing factories to manufacture his armies of robots and other weapons, and he kidnaps wild animals to imprison them inside his robots as power sources (or in some continuities, he transforms them into robots outright). That said, this aspect of Dr. Eggman has been de-emphasized in games since the mid-2000s, as he (mostly) stopped imprisoning animals inside his robots, and the games started glossing over how he makes all his machines.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog: The final level is Scrap Brain Zone, the gigantic factory that serves as Eggman's base. In Act 1, smokestacks are visible in the background, spewing smoke into the sky. And in Act 3, you're dumped into the polluted waters below the factory.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog CD uses the game's Time Travel gimmick to show the results of Eggman's actions. Under normal circumstances, if you travel to the future in any level, you wind up in a wasteland of pollution and broken machinery. But if you thwart Eggman's scheme (either by destroying his roboticizers in the past version of each stage, or by collecting all seven Time Stones), then traveling to the future reveals a utopian version of each level where nature and technology coexist in harmony.
    • Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Eggman firebombs the lush jungle of Angel Island, either in an over-the-top attempt to kill Sonic or purely For the Evulz.
    • Sonic Colors: Eggman exploits the alien Wisps in much the same way he formerly exploited terrestrial animals. The stages on Planet Wisp contrast the planet's natural beauty with the ugliness of Eggman's invasive industrialization.
    • Sonic Frontiers lampshades this in an easy-to-miss bit of incidental dialogue. Sonic notices that Eggman is drawing geothermal power from the volcano on Chaos Island, then quips, "Ha! Never thought he'd go green."
  • Terror of Hemasaurus: Richie Hoarderson, the CEO of PollutaCorp, wants to make as much money off exploiting the environment as possible without having to kowtow to regulations... to the point of starting an ecoterrorist Apocalypse Cult worshipping a bioengineered kaiju in order to sow chaos and discredit environmentalists.
  • Warframe:
    • The warmongering Grineer are known to strip-mine entire celestial bodies in order to fuel their expansion across the Origin System. On Earth, they use toxin injectors to poison entire forests in order to clear land. Ceres and Sedna, meanwhile, have been entirely converted into factories that spew toxic sludge.
    • The Corpus are a faction defined by their limitless greed, which extends to unrestrained exploitation of natural resources. Nef Anyo, one high-ranking Corpus plutocrat with little regard for human rights, has jeopardized all of Venus on multiple occasions in his haste to maximize profit.
      • During the "Vox Solaris" quest, Nef orders the activation of an Orokin coolant tower that will terraform more of Venus' surface but orders it to be activated before it's ready, which risks causing a catastrophic heat cascade that would destroy the Fortuna colony.
      • A recurring event has Nef pump dangerous amount of coolant into the ground in order to harvest Thermia (basically Venusian magma), causing fiery Thermia fractures to erupt all over the Orb Vallis.

Web Animation 

Web Originals 

Western Animation 

  • Animaniacs (2020): Josh Polar from the episode "Global Warnering" is a polar bear realtor who, while not actively harming the environment, is betting on climate change worsening so that his arctic real estate becomes valuable, tropical, and necessary.

    Josh Polar: Here comes the sea-ea-ea / It fills me with glee-ee-ee,
    When glaciers are dying / everyone's buying / new beach property!
    Location is the golden rule / and we've got the world's most spacious pool!
    Did I mention it's heated? / No credit needed! / Here's your new key!

  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Fire Nation broadly operates on an anti-environmentalist agenda, most exemplified by their willingness to burn down and destroy large, forested areas for unexplained reasons, and create factories that pollute even their own localized waterways and towns. They are also responsible for multiple beneficial species going extinct, and their final plan's goal is the mass destruction of habitable land across the Earth Kingdom.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Eco-Villains generally seem to just pollute For the Evulz, and generally act as representations of destructive behaviours. To whit:
    • Hoggish Greedly represents toxic emissions and by-products, along with unrestricted industry. Most of the times he appears alone involve him attempting to illegally obtain natural resources. He eventually undergoes a Heel–Face Turn when his son befriends the Planeteers and convinces him that it's possible to be environmentally friendly and still produce things.
    • Sly Sludge represents short-term thinking and improper disposal, frequently littering when he could be putting garbage elsewhere. Like Greedly, he also undergoes a Heel–Face Turn when the Planeteers convince him that there's actually good money to be made from recycling and proper disposal (e.g. precious materials could be harvested from discarded electronics for only a fraction of the price of mining raw ore).
    • Like Greedly and Sludge, Looten Plunder's main aim is money, but he's far worse than the other two in that he also represents unchecked, short-sighted capitalism that seeks maximum short-term profit, long-term consequences be damned. A good chunk of his episodes focus on him doing such crimes as poaching and clear cutting.
    • Duke Nukem and Verminous Skumm differ from the others in that pollution is their actual objective: Nukem seeks to create an irradiated wasteland to create others like him, while Skumm seeks to pollute the body and mind via methods such as drugs and self-destructive behaviour.
    • Dr. Blight represents scientific advancement at the cost of the biosphere and environment, but also indulges in "pollution for its own sake" in some episodes. At the start of one, her reaction to learning that the local air quality is great is "Yuk, let's try and fix that."
    • Zarm may be an Earth spirit like Gaia, but he is a cruel god who easily embraces destruction, war, and hatred. He has driven a different planet he visited to oblivion via nuclear war, intends to bring Earth into World War III (caring little about the environmental collateral damage), and has even led the other Eco-Villains against the Planeteers on occasion.
  • The Machine, who serves as Free Willy's Big Bad, has little regard of the environment, and was already this when he was Rockland Stone. He resorts to all sorts of un-ecological means to kill Willy, and his closest minions are henchmen who look like living radioactive waste.
  • The Goof Troop episode "A Goof of the People" has Mr. Sludge, who looks like a Dogface mixed with a walking biohazard and actively has his company Sludge Co. pollute everything around them.
  • The Legend of Korra: Kuvira is a downplayed example. She orders her troops to harvest the spirit vines until there's nothing left (in a clear deforestation analog), but her actions are ultimately temporary damages in pursuit of a short-term goal, and she doesn't seek any environmental destruction outside utilizing the spirit vines. The spirit vines are also framed as a renewable energy source by Varrick, further complicating the analogy.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Discussed in "The Power Is Yours!" when Dr. Blight comes to Boxmore to pollute the area around Lakewood Plaza Turbo. She notes that her ultimate end goal is simply to pollute the planet until it dies. Boxman points out that, since they live on Earth, her plan will lead to their own deaths as well. Dr. Blight just states that she doesn't care and continues on.
  • The Raccoons: In the show's earlier years, plenty of Cyril Sneer's plots involve harming the Evergreen Forest in some capacity, such as chopping down trees for lumber profit in "The Christmas Raccoons". However, as he goes through Character Development, his plots usually stray away from environmental damage. In fact, in "The One That Got Away!", he's outraged to see a favorite childhood lake of his polluted with toxic waste and has minor antagonist Milton Midas arrested for encouraging its pollution.
  • Robotomy: Because the robots of Insanus operate on Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad, this trope is Played for Laughs. The robots consider trees to be a monstrous blight, doing horrible stuff like making the air breathable and the temperatures comfortable, so they do everything they can to destroy all plant life in sight. To their credit, the Plant Spirit of Insanus does end up trying to wipe out all robots, but only because the Scrap Metal Spirit of Insanus cheated on her, so she decides to kill him and all other robots. Given that the robots are all absurdly destructive and evil and turned Insanus into a Crapsack World, there's no real good side here or any sort of moral lesson (as per the norm of the show).
  • Rocko's Modern Life: Mr. Bighead from "Zanzibar!" hates the environment and is content with dumping his garbage wherever he pleases, even to the point of singing a song about it. Captain Compost Heap encourages the citizens of O-Town to recycle through The Recycle Song, then gets Rocko to lead them to get the Conglom-O corporation to clean up their act. Mr. Dupette, the CEO of Conglom-O is more negligent than genuinely malevolent and is happy to comply. He gets Mr. Bighead, who has been put in charge of handling Conglom-O's waste and did so very carelessly, to clean up his act. The citizens of O-Town thank Mr. Bighead, who unfortunately hasn't learned his lesson. He tells them off for making him clean up when he could have just relaxed and continued to dump his garbage wherever he pleases. He ends up getting roasted by the Sun for this.
  • The Simpsons: Homer's evil boss Mr. Burns sometimes dumps toxic waste into water for kicks. In fact, that's why his pet fish Blinky has three eyes.
  • The Smoggies are treasure hunters with no regard for the environment. While some of the environmental effects are exaggerated even if plausible, an artistic license creates giant bugs due to chemical pesticides.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Dr. Robotnik, of course. In the "Blast To The Past" two-parter, when he's beginning his coup, one thing he does is take a whiff of the smog his machines are creating, and enjoying it.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Montana Max owns a number of environmentally unfriendly factories that produce frivolous things such as ice cream spoons and donut holes, which Plucky Duck, as his superhero alter-ego, the Toxic Revenger, tries to shut down.
  • The main villain in Tommy Zoom is literally named Polluto, and his shtick is to pollute on purpose for no apparent reason, such as by littering or by driving a car that spews more exhaust fumes than most cars.
  • Winx Club: The fifth season's Big Bad, Tritannus, starts out as a regular merman. An oil spill causes him to mutate and acquire new powers, which gives him the opportunity to acquire more political power and get revenge. As a result, he actively seeks to cause environmental disasters — such as oil spills and waste dumping on the ocean — to strengthen his pollution magic. He always does it with malicious glee and the utmost uncaring for the living beings that get impacted by his actions.
  • Yogi's Gang has a few anti-environmental villains, such as Mr. Smog, who has a smog factory and tries to convince everyone that smog is good for them, and Lotta Litter, who litters at Jellystone Park.