I’ll nominate Coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) from Glee. Although she has been violent on occasion, most of her schemes are non-violent.
For instance, she once stole a student’s identity and deliberately ruined his credit. Another time, after being suspended for previous unethical behavior, she decided to blackmail the principal into letting her return to work and basically do whatever she wanted. The principal is depicted as being ineffective and rather stupid but generally well-intentioned, a devout Christian, and apparently happily married, and Sue had no real dirt on him. So she slipped a roofie in his drink, took a compromising photo with him, convinced him that they’d actually had sex, and threatened to go public with the photographic “evidence”.
What makes Sue especially evil IMHO is that the victims or collateral damage of her schemes are often minors (worst still, minors over whom she has authority) and she is frequently motivated by sheer spite. She’s occasionally depicted as feeling sympathy for others and having some sense of justice, so her usual cruel behavior is not due to an inherent lack of understanding about right and wrong. She has apparently made a free and conscious choice to be horrible most of the time.
How about Eric Cartman, one of the South Park kids? He’s a major asshole, and only gets violent on rare occasion.
He has (among many other things)
kidnapped Butters as a prank, but let his parents grieve as though their son was gone.
Traded the market in dead fetuses
Developed a “crack baby” athletic association
I’ll surely think of others after i hit the submit button
…sent Scott Tenorman’s parents to their deaths at the hands of a trigger-happy farmer, subsequently desecrating their corpses by making chili out of them, and tricking their son Scott into eating it.
Ha, that was actually the first example I thought of, but was trying to shy away from his more violent events. But he was completely calm, cool, calculating and collected throughout the whole thing… exemplifying his assholishness.
Well, Duke would have died in GI Joe the “movie” (which wound up not even being a movie but a 5-part miniseries as part of the regular show, but that’s another story) if too many little kids hadn’t cried at Optimus Prime’s death in Transformers The Movie (supposedly, though I sure didn’t hear anyone crying when I went to see it opening day).
Considering the ending of the show, he probably was never as bad in real life as he was in the series - as arguably Ted’s incentive is to tell his kids what a terrible womanising asshole Barney is, so as to elicit a favourable comparison with his own relationship with Robyn and engender some sympathy for the idea that he should go after her again after his wife dies. Indeed, if anyone is a bullshitter, it may well not be Barney.
Second whoever put Carmella Soprano up. I tried long and hard to think of someone worse but almost all of them crossed the line to violence at some point.
I came here to nominate Magnussen from Sherlock (as someone wisely has already done.) That guy is creepy as fuuuuuck. We were talking about how Moriarty is dastardly though such a fun villain, whereas Magnussen is just uncomfortable to watch.
That’s who I was going to mention. I could name a lot of things she does that are truly evil but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
ETA: And before someone points out the violence done on her behalf, she does a lot of evil shit that involves no violence, too.
The first episodes were about the fantasies turning out BAD, but with no “lesson learned.” The “lesson learned” piece came later. IIRC, he was supposed to be the “devil” in early episodes, and they later made him out to be a lesson-teaching angel of some kind.
The Malcolm McDowell remake that came around later pretty unambiguously had him, if not as the devil, then as some kind of demonic overseer that was there to rehabilitate the tortured souls (demons) that were the workers on the Island, while giving “lesson teaching” fantasies to tourists. His main accomplice was very clearly a succubus. A bit of a different vibe, for sure, but not “evil.”