"Thanks for accepting my request for help after I only asked once, Lexi. Normally, it takes at least two requests, and some kind of message, like a finger in a box."
— Principal Skidmore, A.N.T. Farm
Much like how Dean Bitterman is the principal equivalent of Sadist Teacher, the Evil Principal is one step up from an Evil Teacher. Whereas the Dean Bitterman is merely a crusty, fun-hating bully, the Evil Principal is an outright villain who sets places on fire, murders students and jaywalks when no one is looking. While they can overlap, the Evil Principal has to actually commit crimes or mastermind an Evil Plan of some kind to qualify.
The Evil Principal also sometimes isn't as obviously antagonistic as the Dean Bitterman and is often well-liked and seemingly nice. But behind the scenes, they get into all kinds of evil, secretly plotting robberies, assassinations, deals with shady organizations or even things like student rape or torture. They are most likely to appear in stories where the protagonists are school-aged children and teens in an Adults Are Useless situation taken up a level where the adult is genuinely malevolent. Whenever there's a School for Scheming or Academy of Evil, expect to see this character in charge.
Contrast Reasonable Authority Figure and Putting the "Pal" in Principal.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- DEAD ROCK: The main antagonist is God, who happens to be the ruler of the three realms and the principal of Dead Rock. An institution that trains its students to become demon kings in the human world.
- Gakuen Alice: Kuonji, the Elementary School Principal of the titular Alice Academy, is the Big Bad involved in child slavery and who mistreats and manipulates the students of the school, and commits many evil acts in the process of achieving his goals.
- Great Teacher Onizuka: Misuzu Daimon believes she's making a positive difference when she takes over as principal of Holy Forest Academy, but her methods involve monitoring all electronic communication between students, trying to get teachers she doesn't like (i.e. Onizuka) fired (or make his life so miserable he'll quit), and unleashing a student Secret Police of "Angels" to infiltrate the school and punish "bad seeds" through rumors, social ostracism, and even physical violence.
- Hollow Fields: Miss Eleanor Weaver is the headmistress of the titular Academy of Evil, officially named the Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered, and is a Mad Scientist who educates others in how to be mad scientists. She also commits several evil acts herself.
- Kill la Kill: Student Council President Satsuki Kiryuin is effectively the head of Honnouji Academy, with the actual principal a powerless figurehead, who rules it with an iron fist, enforcing a strict caste system, executing students, and even annexing other schools. At least until it turns out she was only doing this to pretend to be loyal to her mother Ragyo, while planning to betray her and stop her tyranny over Japan; though it fails, she still does a Heel–Face Turn afterwards.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Though technically one step above this as the "acting" Chairman of the School Board, Big Bad End of the World/Akio Ohtori thoroughly qualifies. In a grotesque twist, he hides this status beneath a public persona of being its theoretical opposite, presenting himself as a Cool Teacher and Reasonable Authority Figure who's One of the Kids and occasionally Hot for Student. (And yes, that latter one comes with all the worst scenarios.)
Comic Books
- Batman and Robin (2023): Damian is forced to attend the local high school by Bruce, only to discover that the principal is one of his former Evil Mentors from the League of Assassins, Mistress Harsh. He deduces that it started out as just a cover but she ended up Becoming the Mask because it appealed to her Control Freak nature as she groomed teens into Ninja shortly before she attempts to execute one of them to spite him.
Film — Live-Action
- Hounded has Ward Van Dusen, the headmaster of Columbus Hall, the private middle school his son, Ronny, and Jay Martin attended. Ward had a long history of Nepotism since he was named headmaster, succeeding his father-in-law, Armand Columbus. When Jay's older brother, Mike, was a student at Columbus, Ward cut him from the baseball team to make room for his nephew, who never even played the sport his entire life. When he tries to help Ronny get into a prestigious school by stealing Jay's presentation, stealing the scholarship that should've been his in the first place, his acts of nepotism ultimately get him demoted to secretary and Ronny sent to military school while Armand took back his old job and Jay is rightfully given his scholarship.
- Elliot Jindraike, the Principal of Curtis Jr. High, from Max Keeble's Big Move, who plotted to embezzle all the money from the school to fund his football stadium named after the school superintendent, where it will be constructed at the animal shelter Max regularly visits.
- The Substitute: Principal Rolle is first introduced as an outwardly genial ex-cop, now tasked with cleaning up a poor inner-city school plagued with gang and drug problems. In reality, Rolle himself is the mastermind behind most of the drug trafficking going on at the school, using school buses to transport cocaine and storing it in the boiler room. He has no qualms about murder either; he tries to have Slade killed several times and personally murders another teacher who finds out about his scheme. Also turns out that he was a Dirty Cop before becoming a principal, and sees good to have a more direct line for distributing the drugs directly to the kids.
Literature
- Animorphs: Assistant Principal Hedrick Chapman is secretly a Controller with a Yeerk in his brain, helping them take over more people including the students in his school. Upon finding out Chapman is a Controller, Marco jokes this is why he's so strict.
- The Demon Headmaster, or rather the first book (and the first series of the BBC adaptation), has the premise of a creepy school where all the students are mysteriously well behaved. It quickly turns out the eponymous character can hypnotize anyone who looks at him, causing the main character to join a group of students dedicated to opposing him. The later books avert this, by having him engage in wilder supervillain plots, like mind-controlling the Prime Minister, and cloning people (albeit not dropping the title).
- In The Devil is a Part-Timer! High School, Archbishop Olba takes on the role of the school superintendent here, helping Lucifer brainwash the students into voting for the latter as Student Council President and aiming to Take Over the World.
- Ghost Girl (2021): Principal Scratch is an evil spirit who did away with the previous principal and uses his position to reach all the residents of the town and feed off their souls.
- Harry Potter:
- In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Karkaroff is the director of Durmstrang and a former Death-Eater Krum described as not caring about his students, leaving them in the cold. He is self-serving at best, being an ex-supporter of Voldemort, and is still shown as treating his students poorly.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Dolores Umbridge takes charge, uses her blood-quill on at least two students, and allows Filch to whip students. Not to mention the fact that she was the one who sicced the Dementors on Harry at the beginning of the story to silence him, and outright tries to use Cold-Blooded Torture on him later.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Severus Snape seemed to have became this for a Voldemort-controlled Hogwarts until he was revealed as The Mole.
- Matilda: Miss Agatha Trunchbull, headmistress of Crunchem Hall Primary School, is a Child Hater and Dean Bitterman taken to the extreme, sadistically punishing kids with wildly outlandish punishments like forcing them to eat a whole cake in one sitting, chucking them out the window for eating during class, or, her favorite, making them stand in the Chokey. She isn't just abusive to her students, either- it's heavily implied that she was involved in the death of Miss Honey's father.
- Michael Vey: Mr. Dallstrom is the rude and cruel principal of Meridian High School that the titular Michael and his peers attend. He picks on weak and unpopular students, and in Michael's case makes fun of his Tourette's Syndrome and punishes him with detention when he is bullied, making up reasons like "[Y]ou cannot be stuffed into a locker without your consent" and for not struggling "hard enough" against his bullies. He later stoops even lower when he accepts bribes from the corrupt Elgen Cooperation to send Michael to their "school" in California so they may experiment on him.
- Sometimes in The Worst Witch, Agatha Cackle, the Evil Twin of the normal headmistress Ada Cackle, takes over as headmistress. She'll usually be giving the students a hard time and/or trying to destroy the school when she does that.
Live-Action TV
- In Daybreak (2019), the sadistic, cannibalistic warlord Baron Triumph is revealed to be Principal Burr, who hates children and wants to nuke Glendale to rebuild it in his own image.
- Doctor Who: In "School Reunion", Headmaster Finch is leading the Alien Conspiracy of the week, turning his students into Wetware CPUs, and occasionally eating a student he thinks nobody will miss.
- Gen V is a Spin-Off of The Boys (2019) that takes place on Godolkin University, a Superhero School sponsored by Vought International which also is responsible for creating superhumans in the first place. Naturally, even the ones running the university are downright evil:
- Season 1 has Dean Shetty, a human who secretly also runs some secret labor in "The Woods" that is creating a virus that could wipe out all Supes.
- Season 2 has Dean Cipher who is an outright Super Supremacist who discriminates every human employee and let his students fight each other in order to improve them. It turns out that "Cipher" really is an ordinary guy named Doug Brightbill who is controlled by the true Big Bad, Thomas Godolkin. However, Godolkin definitly counts himself, as he is the founder and the first principal of the university.
- Downplayed in House of Anubis with Eric Sweet. He's the headmaster of the school and The Dragon to Victor Rodenmarr Jr., and thus a member of The Conspiracy to attain immortal life at the expense of the students, but he's actually a good man despite his exterior and mostly just gets bossed around by Victor. He ultimately does a Heel–Face Turn in Season 2, fully subverting this. However, come Season 3, this is double subverted when he comes back to help Victor and Miss Denby complete their ceremony and is turned into a "Sinner".
- In El internado: Las Cumbres, Mara the headmistress fills this role. She punishes two students for fighting by having them locked up in the "iceboxes" (chilly isolation cells furnished with a bench and a bucket) overnight. She is upset that a group of students stole money from her and tried to run away, but shows little alarm about the disappearance of one of those students.
- In My Babysitter's a Vampire, the Cloaked Man, the Big Bad of Season 2 who wants to commit genocide on vampires, is revealed to be Vice Principal Stern.
- Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Elsa's human disguise is Principal Randall of Reefside High, the school the Rangers attend. Even in her human guise, Elsa is cruel, vindictive, and openly contemptuous of teenagers.
Video Games
- Ann: The principal is willing to trade sexual favors for good grades, victory in school contests, and other such things while being uncaring of the students who don't do as well despite turning in better work. He also murders Hana to keep her from leaking his dirty secret.
- Blue Archive has Beatrice, one part the de facto ruler of the Arius Satellite School and by admission its principal, and one part member of the elusive Gematria, and a nasty piece of work to boot. After taking over Arius from its previous ruling body, she rules the clandestine school with an iron fist, instilling fear and hatred in its students — those who violate her rules are often threatened to be sacrificed so that Beatrice can further ascend to a greater being. The reason why the Arius Squad is behind the events of Volume 3 is because Beatrice forces them to do so by threatening to sacrifice their Morality Pet Atsuko because she has the blood of the previous ruling family that rumored has the mystic power she needs to ascend into a higher being, and she just ends up sacrificing her anyway when they fail the mission. As such, the students of Arius act more like hardened soldiers, with some sources claiming that they didn't even get proper education or even learn how to read and count, if Azusa is in any indication.
- Both Corpse Party continuities have the principal of the school be a corrupt and loathsome figure.
- In the backstory of Corpse Party (PC-98), the principal helped cover up the death of Sachiko Shinozaki, which was caused when she attempted to escape her teacher's rape attempt because he valued the school's reputation over delivering justice to the teacher. The evil half of Sachiko is shown torturing the principal's soul over this, and yet he still insists he has done nothing wrong.
- In the Heavenly Host saga, the principal of the titular school, Takamine Yanagihori, is here the attempted rapist who targeted school nurse Yoshie Shinozaki, accidentally killed her, then strangled Sachiko for witnessing it, condemning his soul to be tormented for eternity.
- Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass: In Megatropolis's Shinryu Academy, the Pulsating Mass takes the form of Principal Pulsating Mass. Running the academy, it acts as an abusive principal to Jimmy and his friends, and once they get close to finding the Secret Knowledge, it outright tries to kill them all.
- Kindergarten:
- The Principal of the first game serves as the Big Bad, having taken away Billy for his experiments and giving drugs to anybody who tries to look into it. He also has no qualms shooting the kids.
- At first glance, the Principal in Kindergarten 2 appears a lot nicer than the principal from the first game, but the way her daughter acts makes it clear that something is off. This is ultimately because she made her daughter into a cyborg forced to obey her, and she has three students down below for experiments with plans to take over every school in the world. She will also kill her daughter if she starts to disobey her.
- Regis serves as the principal in Kindergarten 3, but he is actually just the janitor acting as principal due to the real principal having gone missing. This is because Regis locked Principal David up to take the job for himself. Meanwhile David ends up being an aversion as he actually wants to help the kids stop Regis and shows to care for his sone Davey.
- LAst WEEK: The School Principal of Vitheesart is revealed to be the Big Bad of the duology who was sacrificing his best-performing female students in exchange for the school rising in prosperity and reputation.
- ObsCure: Herbert Friedman, the founder and principal of Leafmore High School, was originally an Adventurer Archaeologist searching for the secret to immortality. He discovered it in Africa in the form of the mortifilia plant, but while it did make him and his wife Elisabeth Wickson immortal, it turned his brother Leonard into a plant monster. Herbert proceeded to found Leafmore as both a cover for his experiments and a source of test subjects, kidnapping students and experimenting on them in the lab beneath the school in order to find a cure for Leonard's transformation.
- Principal Kobayakawa from Persona 5 displays apathy to students' troubles under a mask of politeness, as he turns a blind eye to Kamoshida's sexual abuses because the teacher's athletic achievements are giving the school some good reputation. He's also a low-ranking member of The Conspiracy, and when the order came to investigate the Phantom Thieves, he requests his honor student Makoto to do it for him, pressing and then blackmailing her to uncover a group known for its secrecy, even as she gets in trouble with the Yakuza. It's worth noting when he's offed by his superiors for incompetence, none of the students show any pity.
- Senran Kagura: Dogen, a recurring Big Bad in the series, is effectively this if not officially. In the games, he's merely an investor of Hebijo Clandestine Girls' Academy who's power is nevertheless such that the actual principal is basically a figurehead who he could easily fire if he wanted to, while the anime and manga adaptations make him the official Headmaster. Either way, he uses Hebijo to carry out his criminal operations and try to Take Over the World, manipulates troubled girls into joining, instills a Training from Hell regimen to beat the kindness out of his students and turn them into his minions, and displays a willingness to kill them if they defy his orders or if he no longer needs them.
- Seven Mysteries: In the original version, the Headmaster flat-out organizes the murder of his students if they get too close to the dark secrets of the school, and blackmails Sang and Thuy into being his muscle. In the remake, he's more of a pawn of the Demon who doesn't want to help out but is forced to.
- Downplayed in Turtle Head with Principal Kurtis Dale in that he isn't actively malicious, but he does use his authority as principal to cover up his Serial Killer son's connection to his murders just to preserve his own reputation, which he values more than the safety of his students. He goes out of his way to obstruct anyone from investigating the incidents, most notably janitor Tian Henderson, by doing things like preventing anyone from entering the old school building where his son is holding Kay Brown and the corpses of his victims. He even kills his son in the original game solely because his son's murders were drawing too much bad attention to him. In the end of both the original game and Emma's Story, he is ultimately arrested as an accomplice to his son's crimes.
- Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening: Principal Inez Ulrich is the human Arc Villain of the Atkinson Middle School chapter who has made a deal with an Inner Evocation, Moror the Voracious, for the power to become a queen. With Moror's power, Inez turns the school into her fairy court and has her minions abduct children to be sacrificed to Moror via turning them into plants.
Visual Novels
- Danganronpa:
- Series Big Bad Monokuma calls himself the headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy (and in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, of Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles), and since there are no adults present, he effectively is one. Maintaining a friendly and comedic demeanor, he blackmails students into killing each other and isn't above getting his hands dirty when threatened. For the majority of the game, one of the ongoing mysteries is if the Killer Game Master and the school's real headmaster are the same person. They are not, though Jin Kirigiri has been working under people who forcibly nurture talents in students, and had to let Junko get away with murders in her younger days, both ending with the situation in the present.
- The Steering Committee were effectively the real power running Hope's Peak Academy, with Jin as a figurehead, and they are the reason that the Academy became a School for Scheming. Through them, the Academy defrauded many students in the Reserve course program, ran an Elementary branch that outright abused their students, covered up everything from rampant bullying to actual murders just to keep their reputation as the best school in Japan, established connections with a prominent Yakuza family and biker gang and allowed members to attend, and used mad science to turn Hajime Hinata into the emotionally-dead Ultimate Life Form Izuru Kamukura.
- Princess Evangile: Misako Kitamikado, the Headmistress of Vincennes Private Girls Academy is the Big Bad of all routes both main and fandisc, wanting to preserve the school's status quo as a One-Gender School through any and all means possible, including blackmail, hiring thugs to trash a Culture Festival, and kidnapping, depending on the route. In the main story routes at least, she eventually has a Heel Realization and eventual Heel–Face Turn, but in the Fandisc routes, she gets what she wants and remains as evil as she was at the story's start.
- Spirit Hunter: Death Mark: The principal of H Elementary is revealed to have been the adoptive father of Hanahiko, the Arc Villain of Chapter 1, who abused and molested him in an attempt to "cure" his crossdressing and feminine tendencies, and eventually killed him. His abuse is what warped him into a Vengeful Ghost.
Webcomics
- Nineteen-Ninety-Something: Principal Mulroney is one of the few characters who got worse in the comic's reboot, going from an apathetic Dean Bitterman to an utter asshole willing to intentionally flunk a student in order for her to be available for him to steal her ideas for school improvement for another year.
Western Animation
- The Amazing Spiez!: The villain in the episode "Operation: Rival Schools" is Principal Farley, the principal of the spies' rival school Oak Knolls Junior High who stole an experimental ability-enhancing light wave technology from a secret military lab so his students could finally win the annual Olympiad instead of always coming in last place. When Principal Shields has Oak Knolls disqualified from the competition and banned from future ones because of the student's extra aggressive behavior (a side-effect of the experimental tech), Farley kidnaps her and tries to make off with her and all of the competition's awards.
- The Emperor's New School: The villainous Yzma has become the principal of Kuzco Academy under the pseudonym of Principal Amzy. She has her sights on becoming empress and so will do whatever it takes to sabotage Kuzco's attempts of passing his classes so that he will fail and be disqualified from continuing as emperor.
- The Freaky Stories segment "The Iron Fist Principal" has a girl transfer to a new school where everyone lives in constant fear of the unseen and apparently extraordinarily cruel disciplinarian principal, who ultimately turns out to be nothing but a story that the school's faculty made up to keep the students in line, with the teachers even going as far as using a creepy mannequin to cast Sinister Silhouettes in the Principal's Office.
- Jacob Two-Two (2003):
- Principal I. M. Greedyguts, the Fat Bastard principal of Dreary Meadows Elementary School and a recurring antagonist whose schemes usually involve making the school even more of a living hell for his own self-benefit.
- He claims that his twin brother, Y. B. Greedyguts, the principal of Cheery Meadows Elementary School is even worse than he is despite seemingly being the complete opposite of I. M. in personality. He's right; the niceness is all an act Y. B. puts on to trick students and teachers into coming to his school that's actually a power plant where they are forced to run endlessly on hamster wheels to generate electricity for him to sell, and they don't even get coffee breaks.
- Robotboy: Principal Culpepper, the principal of Tommy, Gus, and Lola’s school. She’s the villain of two episodes in the show’s second season, "Destroy All Robots" and "Tween For a Day". She was never allowed to play with toys when she was a kid, so as the school principal, she confiscates any toys her students bring to school. Then, after school, she dresses like a little girl and plays with all the toys she confiscated. After finding out about Robotboy, she also wants to take him from Tommy so she can play with him like a toy. She also uses the school janitor, Mr. Yashinski, as her henchman.
- X-Men: Evolution:
- In the first season, Raven Darkholme/Mystique is the principal of the high school the X-Men attend and uses her position to obtain new recruits for Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In the first episode she press-gangs Toad into the Brotherhood by calling him into her office and demanding he spy on Xavier before Voluntary Shapeshifting into a monster to ensure his compliance. Furthermore, she bullies Xavier's students and hinders their academic lives. Xavier initially kept the kids Locked Out of the Loop regarding her Secret Identity so they could have normal school lives, which backfires when she eventually drops the pretense halfway through the season and ambushes Cyclops.
- In the second season onward, Mystique is replaced by Muggle Power poster boy Senator Kelly (before he became a Senator). While Prime Timeline Kelly was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who eventually saw the error of his ways, this version of him underwent Adaptational Villainy and is a vindictive Straw Hypocrite who also goes out of his way to torment Xavier's students while goading the other students against them.