So, we see plenty of villains who are politicians or military officers or wizards or what have you, but I’m kinda curious to find out about some villains who are tradesmen, ie: they are versed in some fairly specialized trade that they would be making their livings with, were they not villains (or, for that matter, that they DO make their livings doing, WHILE being villains).
Off the top of my head is Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York who is, as his nickname would suggest, a butcher (both in terms of knowing how to cut and prepare animals like pigs, and in how he tends to deal with people he does not get along with).
Norman Bates’s hobby was taxidermy. Rick Moranis’s character in Little Shop of Horrors was a horticulturalist. Not exactly a villian, but certainly a menacing character, Ivan from The Machinist was a welder.
In the Spellsong Cycle by L.E. Modesitt, Jr, there’s Forse the chandler and his son Farsenn, also a chandler. Forse is a repeat rapist who ends up charcoal when he tries to rape Anna the sorceress. His son turns to Darksong, and uses it to take control of the men of the town of Pamr and lead them in an assault on Anna and her party in a later book; this results in the death of nearly every man in the town when she defends herself, and the death of the local Lady and everyone in her mansion at the hands of the controlled men.
In the mystery/vampire novel Art in the Blood :
The artist Brett Leighton kills Sandra, another artist. She makes and sells some knockoffs of his work, and worse, she’s BETTER at it than he is. He kills her, and takes her versions of his painting to sell under his name; greed, and vanity.
If a computer programmer is a “tradesman”, there are any number of villainous hackers in fiction.
If a surgeon is a “trademan”, there’s Doc Buzzsaw from the City of Villains online game, who makes her living by implanting cybernetic enhancements in various villains. And if you don’t keep up the payments, she’ll have the body parts in question repossesed. Forcefully.
In the game Suikoden II, there’s an entire organization of evil cooks.
In Storm Warning by Mercedes Lackey, the palace artist is also an enemy agent and assassin.
one of the lesser bad guys is a trvelling salesman. The main villain drives a refrigerated truck for a living. This comes in handy for storing dead bodies
In the comic book Fables, the “enemy” who is killing and conquering kingdom after kingdom, reigning in death and misery for his opponents, crushing all who stand in his way, is…
In the silver age Flash, Captain Boomerang was originally the host of a children’s TV show, the Top was hired to promote toy tops, and Abra Kadabra was a stage magician.
As** twickster **mentions, he’s not a villain. A dentist and a…um, photosythesizer are. If you want an evil horticulturalist, you have to go to Sean Connery’s character in The Avengers (the movie).
Off topic a bit, but Seymour Krelbourn is definitely the villain of Little Shop of Horrors. It is Seymour who continues to nurture his Audrey II, despite knowing that a plant that eats blood can’t possibly be a good thing. It is Seymour, not the plant, who goes to Orin’s office, intending to kill Orin, and (although he can’t shoot Orin) deliberately allows Orin to die through inaction. Seymour chops Orin up and feeds him to Audrey II. Seymour tricks Mushnik into getting eaten (in the stage play this is more obvious) to cover his own tracks. He does these things because when he does, he gets what he wants: the girl, money, professional success, fame, respect, power. He’s the bad guy.
The brilliant thing about that movie, and especially the stage show, is how they put that out there but don’t belabor it. In fact, they give Seymour all kinds of traditionally positive qualities: he’s an underdog, so we’re conditioned to root for him; he’s in love with the cute female lead; he gets abused but says only nice things to others; he’s a classic romantic comedy hero. Except he’s the villain.
