LogFAQs > #914917879

Yesterday's trope, Walking Spoiler, was a tie between Frank Fontaine (Bioshock) and Delta (Zero Time Dilemma), who got 2 votes each.

Previous Winners:
Un-Canceled - Futurama
Continuity Reboot - Batman Begins / Tomb Raider (2013)
Opposing Sports Team - Monstars (Space Jam) / Globo Gym Purple Cobras (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) / Luca Goers (Final Fantasy X)
Calling Your Attacks - Falcon Punch (Super Smash Bros.)
Arc Words - You have failed this city! (Arrow) / Bad Wolf (Doctor Who)
The Gunslinger - Roland Deschain (The Dark Tower)
Interface Screw - Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy (Yoshi's Island)
Cold Sniper - Widowmaker (Overwatch)
Signature Move - Falcon Punch (Super Smash Bros.)
Badass Santa - Santa Christ (Nostalgia Critic)
How the Character Stole Christmas - How the King Stole Christmas (Brawl in the Family)
An Ass-Kicking Christmas - Die Hard
Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain - Wile E. Coyote (Looney Tunes)

Today's trope is Evil Brit. Here is the link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilBrit

Any character with a British accent, particularly in upper class Received Pronunciation (far and away the most common type you'll hear in American media) is likely to turn out to be a villain. The English tend to view this trope in one of three ways, depending on the particular depiction. Either: with a sense of pride (Evil Is Sexy / Evil Is Cool / Evil Is Posh after all!), mild eye-rolling amusement (tsk, Americans) OR annoyance at the apparent national stereotyping.

This includes all evil characters with British accents (where the rest of the cast has accents), whether or not they are actually stated to be British. Quite a few of these are not actual Brits, but have anomalous quasi-British (usually vaguely upper-class and English, as noted above) accents in settings where almost everyone else has some sort of American accent and no one is necessarily supposed to be from either country, just to mark that character as villainous. As you might expect, this version appears to be associated with films and shows in which the use of English is (at least weakly implied to be) a Translation Convention for whatever the characters are "really" saying, although it's not exclusive to them. See The Queen's Latin and Aliens of London.

Villains of this type come in two flavours. The first is usually wealthy and snobbish, and probably quite well educated. The second is the hooligan with the Cockney (or similar) accent.

TL,DR: The villain has a British accent when the other characters don't, because it makes them sound more evil.

Nominations:
Hans Gruber (Die Hard) - He has a British accent despite supposedly being German.
Scar (The Lion King) - He has a British accent despite his brother and nephew both having American accents.
Goku Black (Dragonball Super) - He switches from the Christian Bale Bat-voice to a British accent when he transforms into his Rose form.