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Sadomasochistic villains enjoy inflicting pain on others and themselves. This is most common in villains who are sex fiends, villains who beg for the heroes to defeat them for the thrill, self-loathing/nihilistic/suicidal villains who use pain as a coping mechanism, or maybe two or more villains who feed off each other's pain and keep the circumstances going out of mutual need. An example is Beavis who cut his finger off with a table saw and laughed for most of the episode as he was covered in blood, it even came off a second time after he picked his nose with it, and he still laughed (he has sadism too).

It isn't exactly a mental illness, as even mentally healthy people can do BDSM, the consensual sexual act where they "pretend to hurt each other for fun." This category will include villains like those as well as utterly brutal rapists who will do unimaginable things to their victims AND themselves. If the villain has just a kink over enjoying their own pain in general (e.g. Rose Armitage and Dio Brando), they do not qualify.

Likewise, if a villain only reluctantly inflicts normal recoil pain on themselves out of anger, especially if they intend and/or had in mind to project it on others, they don’t count. Especially for the latter case, they would be exclusively sadistic.

Villains who sarcastically ask the hero to kill or hurt them without truly wanting them to do it do not count either (e.g. Clayton (Disney)).

Please do not add Sadists under this category, who only get pleasure from pain inflicted on other people, but don't like to get hurt themselves. Sadomasochists don't just enjoy causing pain; they get a fix out of it and enjoy receiving it just as much as they enjoy inflicting it on others. They also differ from Masochists, who only get pleasure from receiving pain, but don't strive to find it; they merely enjoy it when it comes to them. Thus, the two categories cannot overlap.

It is very rare for these villains to be Cowards due to the extremely self-destructive nature of sadomasochism, but it isn't impossible. Some of them might like the thrill of getting hurt, but they will genuinely freak out if they realize they're going to die or get a permanent injury AND they knew what they were getting into but didn't turn back until it was too late. Both parts of the sentence are important because cowards are overprotective of themselves and/or bring their fates upon themselves and weren't ready to face them.