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Mayor Pain

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"Oh, I'm quite tired of this lunatic
Why must we suffer 'cuz the mayor's sick?"
— Rasputina, "The Mayor"

Mayors have a lot of advantages to storytelling. As the leaders of their city, they serve as figures of authority that can order around the police and pass dangerous laws, but they possess small spheres of influence, meaning that they can remain in the same setting and interact with regular people without raising too many questions. The power of a mayor can range heavily depending on the local law codes, which allows for the author to play fast-and-loose with what the mayor can do without running into Artistic License – Law too much. Lastly, the position is by definition a political one, but it's also not one that tends to get involved in national-scale politics, which can make them excellent objects of political satire without making the story seem too partisan. Hence, the Mayor Pain: a mayor whose main role in the story is to cause trouble for our protagonists.

The exact nature of the trouble they cause and their motivations for doing so can vary, but they broadly fit into two categories, based on the question of "are they evil, or simply inept?"

  • The Evil Mayor Pain (The Wilkins): Wickedness over incompetence. The mayor performs his duties relatively well and may even be a pleasant person, yet they have a secret Evil Plan to carry out — or else they're A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. This is the kind of mayor that puts the "sin" in "sindaco".
  • The Incompetent Mayor Pain (The Quimby): Incompetence over wickedness. The mayor isn't actively malicious (usually, anyway), yet they still cause trouble due to a lack of judgment. Of course, this incompetence can have any level of disastrous consequences...

This Trope usually overlaps with Corrupt Politician or Sleazy Politician. Related to President Evil (which applies on a way larger scale). Expect some Permanent Elected Officials to fulfill this trope. Near obligatory in a Town with a Dark Secret, especially one infected with a Weirdness Censor. In a Horror or Disaster Movie, they’re often a Suit with Vested Interests eager to suppress any rumors of possible disaster that could scare away tourists and investors. If this is an Ultimate Authority Mayor, things won't be getting better for the town, and they may need to be voted out or worse. The incompetent version may be an Authority in Name Only. See also Hail to the Cheat if their personal life is just as hectic as their professional one.

Not to be confused with the movie Major Payne.

No Real Life Examples, Please! We've got enough on our hands with every political ad painting the opponent as either flavor. Not to mention, it's also not nice to call Real Life mayors evil or incompetent either.

noreallife

Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Anime & Manga 
    Audio Plays 
  • Benjamin the Elephant and Bibi Blocksberg: The mayor of Neustadt is an egoistical windbag who has the habit of referring to his fellow citizens as his "subjects". Benjamin and Bibi often have to stop one of his self-serving plans, but also occasionally bail him out of trouble.
    Comic Books 
  • Befitting of its nature as a Crapsack World, Gotham City often has mayors who are troublesome for the heroes even when not outright corrupt:
    • Hamilton Hill was an Evil Mayor Pain; a competent politician, but completely in the pocket of crime boss Rupert Thorne. He was succeeded in office by Armand Krol, who was an Incompetent Mayor Pain (enough of one that one of his stunts impedes emergency efforts during a virus breakout and leads to the person he lost reelection to getting sworn in ahead of schedule).
    • Sebastian Hady was an Evil Mayor Pain, who opposed Batman and other vigilantes, had connections to the mob, once hired Firefly to burn down an apartment complex so that a construction company he owned could buy the land, and even tried to frame Commissioner Gordon for murder.
    • Played With in the case of Christopher Nakano. A former GCPD officer, and considered one of the few fully honest ones who actually cared about helping the people of Gotham, he nonetheless held a pathological hatred of all "masks" (vigilante and villain alike) due to the trauma of losing an eye and his partner being killed by a bomb that Batman failed to disarm during The Joker War. As such, once he became Mayor, he pursued an anti-mask agenda that made things difficult for the heroes, especially once he started working with Simon Saint and the Magistrate, inadvertently leading to the events of Fear State. However, he did eventually have a Heel Realization about his actions, and started working with Batman.
    • As of this writing, Poison Ivy – a former supervillain who is at best an Anti-Hero these days – is the Mayor of Gotham, and she has wasted no time letting the power go to her head, bluntly overriding the city council to do whatever she wants to advance her agenda, including stacking her cabinet with friends, legally empowering her eco-militia allies, and murdering corrupt bureaucrats. And then there's how she lets Vandal Savage (currently serving as Police Commissioner) talk her into outlawing Batman and the other heroes.
  • In Batman: Earth One, Mayor Oswald Cobblepot (The Penguin in the regular timeline) is Mayor of Gotham. He's also a crime boss who uses a Serial Killer named The Birthday Boy as his own personal hitman, supplying him with teenage girls as payment.
  • The Marvel Universe has two major examples in more recent years:
    • Spider-Man supporting character J. Jonah Jameson, best known as boss of the newspaper Daily Bugle, was elected mayor of New York City while Spidey was on an interdimensional mission with the Fantastic Four. While Jameson has good intentions and wants to make the town a better place, his obsession with Spider-Man getting in his way as well as some unpredictable supervillain attacks on the town lead to him being very ineffective as a mayor.
    • Jameson's successor however was downright evil: Wilson Fisk a.k.a. The Kingpin, best known as the Arch-Enemy of Daredevil. As a Villain with Good Publicity, he portrays himself as reformed. He uses his new position to ban vigilante heroes like Daredevil (while only supporting Spider-Man to sow discord among the superhero community) to support his evil business. His time as mayor come to an end in the Devil's Reign event. Fisk's successor is Luke Cage and for that puts an end to the "Mayor Pain" era of New York.
    Fan Works 
  • Land Of Steel: Mayor Gladstone was a government worker appointed to run the Eden settlement while the rest of Earth Bet evacuated. As the city grew into a penal colony in all but name, it became clear to Gladstone that she was unsuited for this position. She chooses to focus on vanity projects and expensive parties with representatives from other Earths in order to ignore the man woes befalling Eden.
  • Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises has Mayor Joe Biden, a Scatterbrained Senior who is completely out of touch from managing the town.
    Film — Animated 
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Mayor Shelbourne starts off as just a jerk, but once the food starts falling, he will do anything to keep it coming, since his town is now getting notoriety and he is quite a glutton. He ends up pushing Flint to keep making the food, even when he's told it's not safe. And when the inevitable happens, he quickly shifts the blame to Flint.
  • Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade: The Mayor is mainly the Quimby type. He is more concerned about puffing up his own ego and earning tourist dollars than he is with things like good sense and reason. With incontrovertible proof that both magic and witches are real, he decides to remove a rock that is specifically labeled as a seal to a great evil to place a statue of himself. When the inevitable happens and a giant attacks his city, he blames the Witches and only backs down when he starts thinking of the tourist revenue. Even a Witch supporting him from a great height on her broom is not enough to dissuade him even when she gently tries to remind him exactly whose fault this whole fiasco is.
  • Rango: Tortoise John is an Evil Mayor Pain.
  • Downplayed in Zootopia with Mayor Leodore Lionheart, who's a Well-Intentioned Extremist in using off-the-books methods to snatch "savage" predators off the street and have them imprisoned in a repurposed asylum without due process. Admittedly, he is doing this for the sake of his career as a Sleazy Politician, but he does have a doctor there in order to figure out what is wrong with said predators. Then, this trope is played straight with Mayor Dawn Bellwether, who is the one responsible for said predators going savage and is fully intending on using anti-predator prejudice to keep herself in power for the rest of her life.
    Film — Live-Action 
  • Animal House: The Mayor of Faber, Carmine De Pasto, is a perfect example of the "evil" version. Although Dean Wormer was already looking for a reason to kick the Deltas out, it's De Pasto who exacerbates the film's events by explicitly telling Wormer that if he doesn't find a way to expel them pronto and the Deltas cause any trouble at the parade as a result, he will have the Dean's legs broken. He also strong-arms the Dean to give money to fund the parade, which explicitly will strain the college's budget.
  • Eddington: The movie revolves around the local Sheriff, Joe Cross, accusing the current mayor Ted Garcia of being an incompetent politician who torments the citizens with in his mind unnecessary regulations regarding the COVID-19 Pandemic, and decides to run for mayor himself. He also accuses him on having abused his wife. It's implied over the course of the movie that Joe might be Right for the Wrong Reasons as Ted seems to be a Corrupt Politician who sells out the town to a MegaCorp.
  • In La Famille Bélier, Lapidus despises deaf people and promotes industrial development, which harms the farmers.
  • Ghostbusters (2016) directly references the below movie, as Erin calls out the New York mayor feeling the city hall obstructing their job makes him like the mayor from Jaws. He gets mad at the comparison. (specially as he's an aversion of the trope: the mayor is just hiding his support from the populace because Plausible Deniability will help avoid panic, while secretly funding the Ghostbusters as he sees them as the only legitimate means of fighting ghosts.)
  • In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Walter Peck has become the Mayor of New York and thirty years and the Ghostbusters being shut down for most of them have done nothing to mellow down his vendetta. He spends the whole film badgering them about broken laws (including massive collateral damage and Phoebe, because she is a member of the team but still under 18, breaking child labor laws) and orders the Ghostbusters to shut down (in the middle of the third act when it helps the villains achieve their plans) and their headquarters to be demolished, with him personally arriving in the epilogue to oversee their arrest. Being the mayor however comes to bite him in the ass, because on that same moment the whole city considers the Ghostbusters heroes because of them taking down the Big Bad who just tried to turn Manhattan into a wintery hell and it's obvious for Peck that if he arrests them now he will be screwed by popular opinion (and he won't be able to do it in the future when the Ghostbusters swindle him into saying on live television that he supports them).
  • In Godzilla (1998), Mayor Ebert of New York City is a definitive "incompetent" type, obsessed with how a rampaging Kaiju and the United States military accidentally blowing up Manhattan in its attempt to save it will reflect on his chances to be re-elected.
  • Mayor Augustus May-Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a childhood bully of the Grinch who's no better as an adult, publicly humiliating the Grinch and blaming Cindy for inviting him, spending the taxpayers' money on a new car for Martha, and in a deleted scene wrongly declares Martha the winner of the Christmas lighting contest despite Betty being voted the winner.
  • Mayor Larry Vaughn in Jaws 1. He may have a point that the tourist trade from the beaches is the lifeblood of the town's economy, but ordering them to be opened after being warned of the danger of attacks from a man-eating shark is inexcusable. The novel provides additional reason for him in the fact that it's the local Mafia strong-arming him to do it — but on the other hand, he got in bed with them, meaning he's even more malicious.
  • The Last Shark, a 1981 Italian movie "inspired" by Jaws, includes a mayor similarly "inspired" by Larry Vaughn in mayor William Wells of Port Harbor. That being said, Wells is a downplayed example compared to his inspiration; he refuses to close the beaches due to fears that cancelling the windsurfing regatta might derail his political career, but still authorizes heavy defenses to keep the shark away (unfortunately, the shark is not one to let this get in the way of its feeding). He later personally attempts a plan to capture the shark that, while utterly idiotic, is still more of a personal effort than anything Vaughn did. The worst aspects of Vaughn's character are instead given to Wells' aide Matt.
  • Osmosis Jones: Mayor Phlegmming is as incompetent as they come. It's his idiotic decisions that are the reason why Frank is such a slob; he cares more about his re-election than the lethal threat that could and almost did kill Frank. Unsurprisingly, he is booted out of office after the incident and later accidentally ejects himself from Frank's body.
  • The Mayor in Police Academy 6: City Under Siege is a bumbling Evil Mayor Payne, and is secretly the Big Bad.
  • The Salvation: The dying town's mayor is also its undertaker, so he's the only one making money. It also turns out that he's in league with the villain, helping him kill the town so that it can be bought up by oil tycoons.
  • Some Guy Who Kills People: The mayor shows up at a crime scene to yell at the small sheriff's department for not solving the murder spree, even though it's his decision not to call in out-of-state cops.
  • Under Paris: The mayor of Paris is, appropriately enough for a film with a mutant man-eating shark as the antagonist, borrowing her playbook from Larry Vaughn and insists that there is no way she will shut down the event that will boost Parisian tourism and the French government has spent billions sponsoring (a triathlon on the Seine River) and the heroes better deal with this quickly and, most importantly, quietly. The resulting bloodbath of the climax (which escalates like crazy, culminating in the city of Paris flooding and becoming a habitat for the shark and its progeny, from which they will invade other cities of the world) is most definitely her fault by a huge percent (the remainder being a dumb kid and her Animal Wrongs Group efforts).
  • Le Viager: The mayor of Saint-Tropez loves hogging the spotlight for PR when cameras are around, and he shows up at Louis' 100th birthday just for that.
    Literature 
  • In After the Golden Age, the protagonist discovers evidence linking the mayor to the perpetrators of a crime wave in Commerce City. He turns out to be a supervillain.
  • Governor Grice from the Ciaphas Cain novel For The Emperor is incompetent, except that he's really an evil genestealer hybrid (the Evil Mayor Pain) who is disguising his treason as mere incompetence. As there's no evidence he has any personal planning or administrative skills, and Grice's personal and family histories must be consistent, he probably really is an incompetent governor. They show up a lot in the setting and tend to stay in place until they impede somebody important who can have them killed.
  • The Night Mayor is set in a virtual reality world based on Film Noir, so naturally the mayor is corrupt and incompetent. When one of the protagonists visits his office, she notes that his official portrait shows a bulge under his jacket that's either a concealed firearm or a large wad of bribe money. He also makes decisions by turning the memos into paper airplanes and seeing where they land, with consequences including a children's hospital being torn down to make room for a miniature golf course.
  • Mayor Petty is this in Sunrise, though there are hints of this in the previous book Ashen Winter. He first calls an attack on a neighboring city called Stockton, despite warnings from an autistic teenager named Ben that the attack was too predictable, and therefore would fail. Just as he had predicted, the attack fails, leading to many casualties, and he's only able to get Warren back because of a carefully planned mission by Alex and Ben. Despite this, he continually refuses to accept advice from Alex despite the fact that he was the only reason the citizens of Warren were able to obtain it again. He effectively takes credit for Alex's military successes and evades responsibility for his own failures. It's not until Warren is completely destroyed when he is forced to move to Alex's new town named Speranta and become subservient to him, which he is quite unhappy about because he clearly hates the idea of being talked down to by a mere teenager. However, despite his blatant incompetence in dealing with the realities of a post-apocalyptic world, he is still well-beloved by the former residents of Warren, which goes to show that they love him because of familiarity and his supposed "experience" than they do about any actual merit.
  • Mayor Clancy in Scorpions (2016). He's demonstrably crooked and supposedly has ties to The Mafia and keeps a staff of hired Mooks on retainer. In addition, there are rumors that he has had people killed when they wouldn't sell him their land for development purposes.
  • Big Jim Rennie from Under the Dome definitely qualifies as the evil variant, though his title is "councilman" rather than "mayor". He's still essentially the acting mayor as he's the senior member of the town council, mayor included, who was in Chesters' Mill when the Dome came down.
  • In You Are Dead (Sign Here Please) the mayor of Dead Donkey is resoundingly unpopular and is also (separately) a drunken incoherent bum.
    Live-Action TV 
  • The Book of Boba Fett: Mok Shaiz, the Mayor of Mos Espa, is Fett's first antagonist and challenger to his newfound leadership of Jabba's former territories. Having profited from the Evil Power Vacuum following the Hutt's death, the Mayor tries to intimidate Fett into working for him, and later makes a deal with the Pyke Syndicate to force Fett out when he refuses. The Pykes proceed to present a much greater threat for Fett in the back half of the season.
  • Boss centers around Tom Kane, a corrupt and machiavellian mayor of Chicago who has to face similarly scheming challengers while clinging onto power after being diagnosed with Lewy-body dementia.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer has Mayor Richard Wilkins III, who provides the name for the Evil Mayor Pain. On the outside, he's a polite, organized and rather efficient politician. The truth, however, is that he plans to undergo the Ascension to become a demonic snake. He also planned to use this new condition to bring order to the town.
  • Criminal Minds: Clark Preston from "A Thin Line" was going to become one, had the BAU not found out about the murders he had planned.
  • Daredevil: Born Again: Just like in recent Marvel comics (see Comic Books above), Wilson Fisk gets elected as the new Mayor of New York City. While his intends seem to be good at first and he swears he left his criminal days behind (with him entrusting his wife Vanessa to manage his criminal empire), it becomes clear over the course of the first season that he can't suppress his darker impulses. By the time of the first season finale, he has turned into a complete tyrant, using his power to Take Over the City and eliminate his opponents, such as forbidding vigilantes.
  • Desperate Housewives: Victor Lang, Gabrielle's husband for the first half of season 4.
  • Doctor Who: "Boom Town" has Margaret Blaine, Lord Mayor of Cardiff... or should we say, Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, last surviving member of the Slitheen who came to Earth, who plots to use a nuclear power plant project to rip open the Negative Space Wedgie in the centre of Cardiff to power her escape vehicle so she can go home, destroying the Earth in the process. And she seems so nice!
  • Schitt's Creek has Mayor Roland Schitt who is mostly a type 2 and means well but when it comes to the Roses, especially in the first season, he morphs into a type one.
  • No Appointment Necessary (1977): In "Like Father, Like Son", Alf is forced by Reg Hodgekiss, the Mayor, to employ his son, Nicholas. Alf is the only one who enjoys this, seeing Nicholas as "an investment" due to his powerful father.
  • Once Upon a Time (2011): Regina Mills, a.k.a. the Evil Queen, is definitely the evil version. In the beginning, at least; post-Heel–Face Turn, she remains mayor largely because she is competent at the job.
  • Powerpuff: As the new mayor, Jojo is counting on using an attack to take revenge on the Utoniums and boost his chances of getting re-elected.
  • Ranczo: Paweł Kozioł is The Incompetent variant most of the time. He profits from public tenders arrangement with Więcławski, almost causes an international incident getting wasted just before EU officials come to visit, spends most of his work hours napping or playing Solitaire and considers democracy a pain in the ass.
  • Read All About It: Duneedon, the evil tyrant of the galaxy Trialvaron, has a human identity-Don Eden, the mayor of Herbertsville, Canada.
  • SCTV has Cloud Cuckoolander mayor of Melonville, Tommy Shanks. He is actually institutionalized at one point, and his reelection slogan is, "Vote for Me and Get Me Out of Here".
  • Under the Dome: Big Jim Rennie is still evil in the TV adaptation.
  • The Wire: Mayor Clarence Royce fits squarely in the Quimby camp, taking a purely superficial approach to Baltimore's crime problems by pressuring the police to produce data that suggests the murder rate is falling, which in turn forces the department to "juke the stats". Tommy Carcetti starts off better when he replaces Royce, but he gradually puts the needs of the city on the back burner as he eyes a run for governor. However, Carcetti's arc reveals that it's the system rather than whoever is at the top which is responsible for the city's plight.
    Music 
    Podcasts 
  • Mayor Pamela Winchell from Welcome to Night Vale. She's a strange mix of both the "evil" variant and "incompetent" variant, although she's not stupid and it's difficult to peg her as out and out evil. Given the way she's described, it seems more like she's just totally insane. She eventually falls more directly into the "incompetent" category after she becomes obsessed with "emergency press conferences," and later steps down as Mayor; her successor is Dana Cardinal, that being former Night Vale Community Radio intern Dana, who is much more level headed, but allows Winchell to stay in "government" (and indulge her obsession) as Director of Emergency Press Conferences. Of course, the Mayor of Night Vale's powers are actually pretty limited, with affairs seemingly being mostly in the hands of the City Council (which has had the same composition since the city was founded over a century ago), the vague-but-menacing government agency, and the Sheriff's Secret Police. Oh, and the Glow Cloud (all hail), if the issue involves the Night Vale School District in any way.
    Radio 
  • Our Miss Brooks: Mayor Rimson in "Student Government Day" is a mix of the evil and incompetent. Rimson is corrupt, he's even getting a kickback from the gangster running the "Jackpot Amusement Company". The company puts rigged slot machines in candy stores, getting children and teens to gamble away their money on machines that don't pay out. Rimson is reluctantly forced to turn on the crooks; he only does so because his campaign advisor "Honest John" tells him the situation is too hot. In a glaring example of incompetence, Rimson's police force had arrested the Mayor-for-a-day Harriet Conklin, the Police-Chief-for-a-day Walter Denton, and Miss Brooks for good measure.
  • Averted in "Faculty Band" and "Public Property on Parade". Mayor Rimsom had been replaced by an honest, and, based on his appearance in "Public Property on Parade", a competent mayor.
    Tabletop Games 
  • Mutants & Masterminds: Mayor Moore, of the supplement "Iron Age", is a perfect example of the criminal type. Ruling over Freedom City during The '80s and the early part of The '90s with an iron fist, Moore signed an act that outlawed superheroes in the city limitsnote a homage to the Keene Act of Watchmen, and yes, the mayor's name is a Shout-Out to Alan Moore and it probably would be easier to count the criminal enterprises that Moore was not in bed with.
    Theatre 
  • Automatic: This play gives us The Mayor (no other name given) who straddles the line between Incompetent Mayor Pain and Evil Mayor Pain. For most of act one, he’s presented as an egotistical fool wearing a sash declaring “I am the Mayor”, furthermore cementing his ignorance by constantly misusing words. It’s only later when the depth of the Amalgan conspiracy is revealed that he begins to show a darker side, plotting to kill the protagonists and likely everyone on the station.
    Video Games 
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin's Mayor of Freehaven is pretty much constantly skirting Evil and Incompetent. He's a transparently self-centered, hideously smug guy who insists on abusing any authority given to him. The guy is mostly defined by him a) constantly ordering around the main characters and demanding they cater to his every whim, and b) constantly disrespecting the main characters and attempting to kick them and any civilians traveling with them out at any opportunity. However, he doesn't dip into outright evil until he becomes The Quisling — which doesn't end well for him.
  • In Batman: The Telltale Series, Mayor Hamilton Hill is still an Evil Mayor Pain and in the pocket of a crime boss, but here, he's part of a triumvirate with both Carmine Falcone and Thomas Wayne and all three essentially ran Gotham. He also put the hit on the Wayne family. Harvey Dent spends the first two episodes running against him for mayor but, the whole thing goes moot when the Penguin fatally shoots Hill.
  • The first boss of Castle of Heart is a corrupted Mayor (even identified as such in-game) who took over entire towns due to forming an alliance with a band of brigands. A tremendous Fat Bastard of a man, the Mayor is the first boss, after killing him the hero then starts his journey to seek the sorcerer.
  • City of Heroes's signature Mad Scientist, Dr. Aeon pulls double duty as both the Wilkins and the Quimby at the same time. Since he works as a governor of a City of Villains, naturally he is evil. He takes public office as little more than an excuse to get funding for his mad experiments. So he is unapologetically evil, but while he is a decent mad scientist, he is utterly inept as a politician and his attendants/babysitters need to do the actual policy enforcement.
  • Clam Man: Mayor King initially seems like a typical politician (although Clam Man seems to be one of the few people who isn't fond of him), but eventually turns out to be the Evil type. He's the real Big Bad of the game, leading a conspiracy to demolish the part of the city where Clam Man lives since many people have complained about how trashy that area is, and King wants to secure his re-election.
  • Criminal Case:
  • Fallout 4: Mayor McDonough kicked the ghouls out of Diamond City upon first coming to power, something that disgusted his brother John enough to leave the city and later become the mayor of Goodneighbor. In the present day, he turns a blind eye to the kidnappings and synth infiltrations that have been going on in town, and Piper Wright, the Intrepid Reporter in charge of the city's only paper, even suspects him of being a synth himself. She turns out to be right.
  • Mayor Roger C. Hole from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is hopelessly corrupt, and winds up getting killed by a member of a gang he was being paid to harass. Donald Love later tries to be this, but loses in the election to Miles O'Donovan.
  • Grimshire: Theo isn't an evil person per se, but it's readily apparent that he's little more than a mayor in name only and functions mostly as a tax collector while passing most of his responsibilities of the job onto his assistant, Percy, whom the rest of the town respects far more than him. Even so, he will still occasionally find his spine and do his job to keep things peaceful and exhibits some leadership, such as when he steps between the villagers and Gustavo's soldiers when an argument over them taking their food comes about. None of the villagers are particularly happy about still giving the soldiers more of their food in tribute, but they do acknowledge that Theo stepping in prevented the situation from escalating to a dangerous point.
  • Heart of the Woods has Evelyn Fischer, Morgan's mother and the mayor of the small town of Eysenfeld, who's the Evil type. Evelyn is actually a rogue fairy known as "The Moonsick One," who has been stealing people's bodies for centuries to prolong her life, resulting in the village sacrificing people every generation. She uses a Glamour to win the loyalty of the town's citizens, and is apparently responsible for cursing people who get close to her daughter Morgan. She even doesn't care for her town, since by the end of the game, she's decided to possess Tara and leave Eysenfeld in the body of a minor internet celebrity.
  • An evil example from The Henry Stickmin Collection: While Mayor Greg Frederickson appears to be a kindly public figure in the beginning cutscene of Stealing the Diamond, he is in truth a member of an infamous crime syndicate called the Toppat Clan. As revealed in his bio for Completing the Mission, he and his fellow criminals were planning to steal the same Tunisian Diamond he presented to the public that day.
  • The Mayor of Hidden City is actually pretty decent, but he's extremely misguided and has done plenty of questionable things while under the influence of external forces. In one side quest, he tries to sacrifice souls to the Shadow Cult in exchange for a corporeal body (although he gets a My God, What Have I Done? moment after the Detective confronts him and releases his victims). In another, he gets possessed by a malicious demon who made him act like a tyrant until the Huntress exorcised the demon.
  • Love & Pies: In the Rival Season Pass, it's revealed that Sebastian Corps, the corrupt CEO of Global Megacorp, was the former mayor of Appleton before Mei. He approved of the construction of his company's warehouse, not caring if it means destroying the town's historic gatehouse first.
  • In Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar, Mayor Cain, who's also the principal of Cyber Academy, is this, planning to use the titular Cybeasts to take revenge on society for ostracizing his grandfather, who was the creator of Falzar. However, Wily and Chaud prove to be a few steps ahead of him, making him little more than a Big Bad Wannabe.
  • Neofeud: Mayor Laura is responsible for Coastlandia's oppression of Sentient Machines and hybrid beings, since she works with the Hypetech CEO and Neofeudals to rig the Goertzel-Takeda consciousness test against non-humans, weakens the social safety net, uses housing projects as a scam to launder money, and forces the poor out of their homes for the sake of gentrification.
  • Persona 5 Strikers has Mariko Hyodo, the mayor of Sapporo who serves as the Arc Villain of the city in that she's shown to be overly harsh towards her employees (lambasting them for an out of place flower in a garden) as well as being obsessed with re-election at all costs using the EMMA App to influence the masses, with her hoarding of votes making her the game's representation of Gluttony. Unlike the villains in the original game however, she is explicitly not corrupt and has much more understandable motives in that her actions are motivated by an accident that resulted in the death of a child caused by her staff being negligent and corrupt (they took bribes from a shady building company to allow them to take the contract for an annual festival, resulting in a shoddily built ice sculpture), which thanks to the mind-altering effects of EMMA drove her to be both overly paranoid and obsessed with atonement.
  • Saga of Sins has the incompetent version, Mayor Sterling who overcharge taxes from the citizens of Sinwell - a poverty-stricken hellhole, even commisioning a marble statue of himself to boost his ego. The hero Cecil calls him out:
    Cecil: Impressive craftsmanship, Mayor Sterling. Pray tell, how did you afford such craftsmanship?
    Sterling: The people of Sinwell appreciates my efforts in improving this village's standing in the country. They saw fit to contribute their hard-earned coin, as their way of gratitude.
    Cecil: What you really mean to say is you raised their taxes.
    Sterling: Don't lecture me boy! Sinwell would be no more than a hole in the ground without me!
    Cecil: A hole in the ground is all that will be left of Sinwell, if your greed is left unchecked.
  • In Saints Row 1, city alderman Richard Hughes plans to become this by tricking the Player Character into killing the previous mayor and others, but is Killed Off for Real himself. In Saints Row 2 his wife actually becomes this, even going so far as to hire the leader of a powerful criminal organization to spray fecal matter at Ultor properties around town.
  • Scarlet Hollow: Mayor Jimmy doesn't have any real authority on account of being a dog with an honorary title, but a player who Speaks Fluent Animal can learn that he knows that pets around town have been disappearing and seems to believe that he would be able to do something about it if he chose, but doesn't want to because publicly acknowledging it might scare away tourists. This is despite Scarlet Hollow being a run-down old mining town that barely gets any tourism at all.
  • The Shantae series:
    • Mayor Scuttlebutt is an Incompetent Mayor Pain on the verge of being a Running Gag. While a reasonable enough official in the first game, his incompetency begins to show in Risky's Revenge when he fires Shantae from her job and later sells the town to the Ammo Baron rather than try and deal with his forces and Risky at the same time. In Pirate's Curse, he would have been able to buy Scuttle Town back from the Ammo Baron... IF he hadn't spent the between-game interim eating the cheap waxy chocolates bought with the money he got for the deed. And then in Half-Genie Hero, he fires Shantae again after Risky's attack leaves Main Street in flames and gives her post to Holly.
    • Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Some mayors of the game hinder Shantae in her quest:
      • The fake mayor of Arena Town is actually evil as revealed at the end of the game, due to being series villain Risky Boots in disguise.
      • Armor Baron, the actual leader of Armor Town, stops her in her tracks by locking her in a suit of armor, which she escapes.
  • In the SimCity series of games, the players themselves can easily invoke this, due to the whole Ultimate Authority Mayor aspect giving you control of natural disasters and Alien Invasions.
  • Stella Glow: Mayor Bonanza appears to be a gentle, nice mayor for Port Noir. The façade is dropped when it's shown that he framed Wind Witch Popo as a troublemaker for being a witch. And during the climax of the chapter involving him, that turns out to be the least of his offenses.
  • World of Warcraft: The Death Knight's starting campaign has the player, still in service to the Lich King, conquer and destroy a nearby human settlement. As you approach the town hall, you can hear the villagers berating their mayor (named Quimby) for getting them to settle so near the Scourge, basically leading them to their doom.
    Web Animation 
  • Bugbo: Mayor Quentin is the evil variety. He's a haughty and rude individual in every way. When he tripped on a circus ball one day, he was so furious that he declared ALL circuses illegal, ruining the Hollow Clown's life.
  • Ghost Burger👁 Image
    : Mayor Stan, the elected politician in charge of the unnamed Northern English town the film takes place in, is of the Wilkins variety. He's a complete and utter bastard, and he's incredibly rude to the father of the main protagonist, who runs a struggling burger bar. Then there's the fact that he beats up said man, and attempts to run off with a box of all his earnings, before having his torso eaten violently by a toilet which has randomly come to life.
    Webcomics 
    Web Original 
  • Cowboy SMP: While Poliver, the Mayor of the town of Pity, isn't outright evil, he's certainly self-serving and incompetent. He is enough of a sleazeball to lie about a gold rush in the town despite its lack thereof, as well as the reason the town is so dilapidated in the first place. He also heavily relies on Scott, the local sheriff, to defend him from hostile mobs, as opposed to learning self-defense in the good ol' wild west, and apparently drinks so much moonshine that he can barely tell who's local and who's new to the town.
    Scott: If you have any problems or questions, I'm probably more… suited than the mayor, so…
    Cherri: Yeah… Kinda… feels like he might have lost a few screws.
    Scott: Yeah, while he lacks in brainpower, he makes up for it in hat size.
  • In the Crinoverse, King Bradley is the mayor of Emerald City, and corrupt and evil as all get-out.
  • Rotborough has an evil variant in the form of Mayor Grimond "Gray" Jones, who seems pleasant, but is hedonistic, lustful, quick to anger, creates claymation of his detractors suffering rather than engaging with them, and seems to be carrying out a sinister plan involving secret hitmen and the town's sewer system.
    Western Animation 
  • "His Dishonor, The Mayor" from Action League NOW! is basically the closest thing the titular Action League has to an arch-nemesis, and plain card-carrying evil to boot, frequently plotting to harm or kill the League, or harm other people. (His voice is a parody of then-Pittsburgh mayor Tom Murphy, as the voice cast of the show worked on a morning radio show there.) We only ever see him doing evil things, rather than actually, you know, mayoring, which leads to the question... What is he the mayor of?
    Stinky Diver: Don't look at me. I didn't vote for him.
  • The mayor of Elmore in The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Nuisance" tries to force the Watterson family out of town for being a public nuisance. While this is morally questionable (and admittedly not unwarranted given how destructive the Wattersons are), his actual reasons turn out to be far worse: Them holding down property values is all that prevents a plan to gentrify the town into a gated community, displacing most of its current residents.
  • Amphibia: Mayor Toadstool is basically Joe Quimby as a toad. He's a corrupt, sleazy, and amoral official who regularly embezzles the town's money, frequently tries to bribe his way to victory, and is clearly in the position for himself. He begins a Heel–Face Turn towards the end of Season 1 when he helps Anne save the town twice; by mid-season 2, he realizes he actually cares for the town and its people, turning down a major promotion to stay in Wartwood.
  • Hamilton Hill as portrayed in Batman: The Animated Series was a mild example of the incompetent type, mostly as focused on Batman specifically; he's antagonistic towards Batman despite his merits (going so far as to authorise an armed task force, albeit when it does appear that Batman has started murdering people), and could be a bit critical of Gordon's decisions. In terms of actually running the city, he's fairly decent, and often depicted presiding over improvements of the city's infrastructure. Though, compared to his comic and Telltale incarnations, he's not the Mayor Evil type.
  • Mayor Pelican from Blinky Bill certainly counts, as his incompetence and narcissism cause plenty of annoyance for the people of Greenpatch.
  • Cococinel: Mayor Bumblebee is very strict, grumpy and exaggerated. He always insists things are done his way and doesn't hesitate to send a citizen of Cocoland to jail if they disobey his orders.
  • Vlad Masters/Vlad Plasmius eventually becomes this in Danny Phantom, abusing his authority to antagonize Danny.
  • Mayor Robert "Bob" White on Doug, whose entire platform seems to be "Vote for me!" He never seems to do anything but campaign for re-election, which is probably why he ends up being replaced by Doug's neighbor Mrs. Dink.
  • Mayor Mellow from Grojband is a bumbling idiot who takes advice from a picture of his late mother and often dishes out Disproportionate Retributions in response to anything disrupting Peaceville's, erm, peace.
  • Mayor Peeve from Middlemost Post, while not particularly evil in general, will often let his grudge against Angus and the Middlemost Post (held because Angus’s ship, parked atop Mount Middlemost, leaves City Hall in its perpetual shadow) get in the way of his mayor duties to the detriment of his citizens; for example, purchasing a robot to drive the post out of business while not accounting for the damage it causes.
  • Mayor André Bourgeois from Miraculous Ladybug is a heavily implied Sleazy Politician who frequently abuses his power to spoil his daughter Chloé. The fifth season finale sees this corruption biting him in the ass when Lila Rossi and Chloé present evidence of his incompetence as part of their conspiracy to perform a coup and place Chloé on the mayor's seat. As for Chloé, her short stint as mayor is despotism enforced by police robots that leads to a revolution.
  • Clay Puppington from Moral Orel, who hates his job, lets himself be influenced by Evil Matriarch wannabe Miss Censordoll, and banned eggs from Moralton, on the surface because eggs are laid from sinful places but really because it factored into his oedipus complex.
  • Ninjago: Season 15 has Mayor N. Trustable, who is rude to the ninja right from the off (despite the whole "saved the world from destruction repeatedly" thing) and cares more about fussing over his cat and playing office golf than anything else. When the inevitable villain attack occurs, he runs away and isn't seen again.
  • From The Oblongs, the town of Hill Valley is governed by Mayor Johnny "The Mayor" Bledsoe, a masked wrestler (talks like an American pro wrestler, wears a luchador mask with a nice suit). He's a good balance of evil and incompetence, like all authority figures in the series.
  • Mayor Spryman from Ozzy & Drix is a Quimby, a stuck-up bratty punk of a teenager that has no business being in charge of a city, though considering that Hector is a teenager it's most likely a factor of his personality that Spryman is not only mayor but acts the way he is.
  • The Mayor of Townsville from The Powerpuff Girls (1998) is so incompetent, he somehow managed to kill Navi when playing Ocarina of Time. It's safe to assume that the real mayor of Townsville is his much smarter assistant, Sarah Bellum.
    • The episode Impeach Fuzz sees him temporarily replaced by Fuzzy Lumpkins, a recurring villain.
    • In "Bought and Scold", Princess, another one of the girls' recurring villains, becomes mayor after buying it out from Mayor. The first thing she does is make crime legal as a way to get back at the girls.
  • After the events of the first season finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Mayor Jones is a definite Evil Mayor Pain. In that one episode, we learn that he moved to Crystal Cove only to look for treasure, blackmailed the original Mystery Inc. into leaving, double-crossed Professor Pericles, dressed up as the Freak of Crystal Cove, and to top it off, concealed the true identity of Fred's real parents while raising him as his own son.
  • The Simpsons:
  • In the Sonic Boom episode "Mayor Knuckles", Knuckles is asked to fill in for the mayor for an afternoon. He quickly turns into a Quimby, approving any proposal brought before him without reading it first and creating a lot of problems in the process. For example, he allows the town’s only garbageman to take an immediate six-month vacation without hiring a replacement, causing everyone’s trash to pile up uncollected.
  • Mayor Bill Dewey from Steven Universe seems like an image-obsessed blowhard in his early appearances, but it ends up being subverted. It turns out he does actually care about the townsfolk; he views his job as putting their well-being first — and he doesn't want a riot breaking out, especially considering what the Crystal Gems tend to do to the town. In "Dewey Wins", when he finally realizes he's in over his head with recent events, he abandons his re-election campaign and allows Nanefua Pizza to become the new mayor of Beach City.
  • Mayor Manx from SWAT Kats is the incompetent type- he pushes all his work on his Deputy Mayor, Callie Briggs, and is mainly concerned with getting reelected. This caused some issues in one episode when it transpires he's the descendant of a famous "MegaWar II" fighter pilot named the "Blue Manx", and the Blue Manx's old nemesis, the Red Lynx, comes back as a ghost pilot to wreak havoc and settle his old score.
  • The Mayor of Tom Goes to the Mayor, who is so impossibly incompetent that he crosses a line and borders on being the evil kind of this trope.
  • A lot of the problems of Griffin Rock in Transformers: Rescue Bots can be lain at the feet of Mayor H.B. Luskey. A lot of problems in the town stem from his ego, blame-shifting, and total ineptitude at pretty much everything he does. He's at his worst in "The Vigilant Town", where he demands that an experimental computer meant to protect the town be turned on full power, even after it demonstrates that it's willing to violate civil liberties to perform its function. In Season 4, after the Rescue Bots reveal themselves as aliens, Chase runs against Luskey and wins—but Chase being The Spock, a Rules Lawyer, and a strict By-the-Book Cop didn't make him any better and he resigned, with Luskey resuming the post.
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Interim Mayor Honeybee

When Honeybee becomes the interim mayor, she decides to make everyone happy by approving all the laws they want to happen all while ignoring Wolf's advice about the law she's approving. She learns her actions are disastrous when Whippeton and Ted's Folly declare war on Lone Moose and the town is in chaos thanks to everyone taking advantage of Honeybee's new laws.

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When Honeybee becomes the interim mayor, she decides to make everyone happy by approving all the laws they want to happen all while ignoring Wolf's advice about the law she's approving. She learns her actions are disastrous when Whippeton and Ted's Folly declare war on Lone Moose and the town is in chaos thanks to everyone taking advantage of Honeybee's new laws.

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