Dick Dastardly

"Drat, drat and double drat!"

- One of Dick Dastardly's signature catchphrases.

Richard Milhous "Dick" Dastardly (also simply known as Dick Dastardly) is a recurring antagonist from many Hanna-Barbera television productions.

Being an infamous card-carrying villain, Dick Dastardly is very devious, sly, pompous, villainous, manipulative, traitorous and arrogant so he enjoys causing problems of any kind and becomes furious when his plots end in failure.

He attempts to build all kinds of complicated machinery, contraptions and whatnot to trip up his opponents although they mostly end up doing him and his comrades much more harm than good. Although incompetent in his own personal right, he remains persistent in his attempts to spread his villainy.

Wacky Races
His first appearance, Dastardly appears as one of the many racers in a cross-country rally. Along with his dog partner and sidekick Muttley, he piloted the Mean Machine which was equipped with all sorts of traps and hazards that he used in his many attempts to cheat in the race.

Dick, however, never won a single race because his plans always failed due to both his and Muttley's incompetence, the other racers already being prepared for his traps somehow or simply his own horribly rotten bad luck. His plans generally backfire on him anyway making him finish last in most races, if he does end the race at all.

Sometimes he did have the opportunity to win the race without cheating but failed to do so because of little details noticed at the last second (to the point that it was shown he could have won had he not cheated in the first place).

Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines
In his second major appearance as a villain, Dick and Muttley are joined by two new henchmen named Zilly and Klunk, piloting the planes of the Vulture Squadron. His goal was to catch the pigeon Yankee Doodle Bird for his unseen employer Chief (|the Chief, who carried messages for the opposing armies. Just like in Wacky Races, all of his plans failed miserably due to the incompetence of not only himself, but his subordinates as well and the pigeon always escaped unscathed while Vulture Squadron is forced to retreat and lick their wounds like a pack of wild animals. It also marked the start of Dick Dastardly's continuous failures becoming a running gag.

Wacky Races Forever
He was hired by Mr. Vice Roy to win the race so Roy could take over Perfect Industries and of course he failed miserably.

Yogi's Treasure Hunt
This was similar to the Indiana Jones series. Dick Dastardly and his dog Muttley raced to take the treasure from Yogi Bear's gang for evil deeds. Dastardly always ends up losing when he races against Yogi and company.

Wacky Races (2017)
He appears in the Wacky Races reboot and serves as one of the villain protagonists alongside his old sidekick Muttley.

Quotes
"DRAT! DRAT! DOUBLE DRAT!! AND TRIPLE DRAT!!!"

- Dick Dastardly's famous quote.

Trivia

 * Dick Dastardly became a kind of go-to villain for various Hanna-Barbera specials and series owing to his easy recognizability.
 * His voice actor used the same voice as he did for the even more iconic villain Gargamel from The Smurfs.
 * When the Hanna-Barbera crossover cartoon Laff-A-Lympics was made in the 1970's it ran into several legal problems with characters they intended to use. Hanna-Barbera's version of Jeannie (I Dream Of Jeannie) was not owned by them, nor were Josie And The Pussycats. Dick Dastardly and Muttley were also victims of this though it was a mistake. Believing that the two were owned or co-owned by another company (they weren't), substitutes were made in the form of the Dread Baron and Mumbly. Mumbly had once been a heroic dog detective who talked in Muttley-speak and in a comic based on Laff-A-Lympics the Baron was revealed to be Dick's identical twin brother.
 * Similarly to Gargamel, Dishonest John, Snidely Whiplash, Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale and Lord Licorice, he is considered to be on the "lower scale of villainy".
 * Dick Dastardly bears a striking resemblances to Mario villain Waluigi, who is a also racer that cheats and wears purple.