Sadomasochists are known to thrive off of pain, whether it be the pain of others or pain inflicted on themselves. This is most common in villains who are sex fiends, Perverts who endanger others for the thrill, self-loathing/suicidal villains who use pain as a coping mechanism, or maybe two or more villains who feed off each others' pain and keep the circumstances going out of mutual need.

If the villain has just a kink over enjoying their own pain in general (e.g. Rose Armitage), they do not qualify.

Please note that Sadomasochists differ from Sadists, who only get pleasure from pain inflicted on other people, but doesn'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.

• Despite the major difference from sadism, sadomacochism isn't a redeeming quality. Some of them can be pure evil if their worship to pain is fueling their destructive nature in ways that make them more disturbing than the average sadistic villain (e.g. many versions of The Joker, Isaac Ray Peram Westcott, Bill Cipher, Goku Black, Junko Enoshima, Horace Pinker, Xenia Onatopp and Carnage).