Evil laughter

An evil laugh is a stock megalomaniacal laugh by a villain in fiction. In comic books, where supervillains utter such laughs, it is variously rendered as mwahahahaha, muhuhahaha, mwahahaha, and mwa ha ha or BooWHAHAHA!. (Compare Ho ho ho.) These words are also commonly used on internet Blogs, BBSes, and games. There, they are generally used when some form of victory is attained, or to indicate superiority over someone else. The words are often used as either interjections or nouns.

The evil laugh has been used for thousands of years to convey a villans feeling of significance. For men it starts off as a low rumbling, in the back of the throat, slowly accending to a loud cackle. For women, on the other hand, it begins as a hoarse scratchy sound, and then rises to a maniacal laugh- however, this could work either way.

The Evil Overlord List notes that evil laughter often distracts the villain from important details that the hero can use to escape or prevail.

Popular culture

Characters that use an evil laugh include:

• Doctor Claw from the popular childrens cartoon series Inspector Gadget
• Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls
• Shao Kahn from the Mortal Kombat series
• Bryan Fury from the Tekken Series
• Devil Jin from Tekken 5
• General Skarr from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
• Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
• X-Death in Final Fantasy V
• Kefka in Final Fantasy VI
• Luca Blight in Suikoden II (HOO HOO HOO HA HA HA!!!)
• Blofeld in the opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only
• Bowser from the Mario series
• Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda series
• The Joker from Batman
• Green Goblin from Spider-Man
• Hobgoblin from Spider-Man
• Zim from Nickelodeon's Invader Zim
• Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon
• Doctor Evil from the Austin Powers movie
• Doctor Eggman from the Sonic the hedgehog video games ("HOO! HOO! HOO! HOO! HOO!")
• Alien hunter from the film Predator.
• Covenant Elite from the video game Halo: Combat Evolved. Usually they make evil laughter when they defeated the Master Chief.
• Dr. Malcom Betruger from Doom 3
• Professor Miloch from Blake and Mortimer
• "Lamont Cranston" in the radio drama The Shadow.
• Jack Spicer in Xiaolin Showdown
• Wuya in Xiaolin Showdown
• "O'Malley" in the machinima series Red vs Blue
• Mandark in the animated series Dexter's Laboratory ("HA-Haha! Ha Haha Haha!")
• Freeza, Raditz and Cell from Dragon Ball Z
• Kodachi "the Black Rose" from Ranma 1/2 ("OHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!")
  • Ayeka from Tenchi Muyo!, and
  • Naga the White Serpent from Slayers also have the same laugh.
• Katsuhiko Jinnai from El-Hazard
• Albel Nox from the video game Star Ocean 3
• Lezard Valeth from the video game Valkyrie Profile
• Isaac from the video game Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
• Albedo from the game Xenosaga
• Robert Blake's unnamed character in Lost Highway
• Sarevok from Baldur's Gate
• The Summoner from Diablo II
• Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle
• Murray the talking skull from the Monkey Island game series
• Master Hand from Super Smash Brothers
• Dark Samus from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
• Evil Emperor Zurg from Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
• Hector Con Carne from Evil Con Carne
• Jabba the Hutt and Emperor Palpatine (exhibiting the rarer "evil cackle") from Star Wars
• Various characters from One Piece
• Jafar from Disney's Aladdin
• Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons
• Megabyte from ReBoot
• The Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera (musical only)
• ZeeBad from Doogal (American version) "The evil laugh comes from deep down the throat" in a parodical direct self-reference.
• Willy 'Gluttony' Weiss from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Joseph 'Greed' Gari from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Carlos 'Envy' Gonzalez from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Daniel 'Sloth' Dixon from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Gerald 'Wrath' Benson from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Rhett 'Lust' Gossett from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'
• Chiko 'Pride' Gomez from the famous comedy 'My Willy and Me'

Other notable occurrences of the evil laugh in popular culture include:

• the fade-out of the video for the song "Tribute" by Tenacious D
• the song "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
• the end of Vincent Price's spoken "rap" in Michael Jackson's Thriller
• the song "Feel Good Inc" by Gorillaz
• various occurrences in the Dilbert cartoons, usually though not always by Dogbert, and usually spelled "Buwahahah" or some variation.
• Manolo Yanes From CSBS
• the song Peek-a-Boo by Devo

Professional wrestler Ted DiBiase was well known for an evil laugh whenever he performed as the Million Dollar Man during his run in the WWF. Although he doesn't usually laugh, The Undertaker does give a spine-chilling laugh once in while at the end of a promo, especially to his brother Kane. Also, The Boogeyman is known to use an evil laugh to coincide with his gimmick.

The "evil laugh" has become an almost-total cliché in recent pop culture and is now almost only used in a comedy light or satire. For example, Gary Larson drew a Far Side cartoon which portrayed a lecture hall full of science students aspiring to be mad scientists. The mad science curriculum, asserts Larson, requires all students to take "one semester of maniacal laughter".

See also

• Megalomania
• Evil genius

External links

• a proposal for an evil-laugh-activated hand dryer