Sergeant Hatred

First Appearance	"Fallen Arches"
Performer	Brendon Small (season 2) Christopher McCulloch (seasons 3-4)

Sergeant Hatred is Dr. Venture's new guild assigned Archenemy, in The Venture Bros.. A supervillain and member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, his villainous 'theme' is that of an evil soldier, complete with flying tank and henchmen dressed as [infantryman. Despite being a registered sex offender, he has a reputation in the world of supervillainy for being especially hospitable and genial to his friends and enemies alike.

Hatred was first mentioned early on in Season 2 as having been the victim of robbery at the hands of The Monarch's henchmen. After being alluded to throughout the season, he finally made a brief cameo appearance in the Season 2 finale before becoming a major character in the show's third season, as well as replacing Brock Samson as the Venture's bodyguard in Season 4.

Concept and creation

In a director's commentary for "The Buddy System", series creators Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick recalled once seeing a man with a crew cut at Starbucks, who appeared to be looking at foot fetish pornography on his laptop without regard for the comfort of those sitting around him. The man's intense demeanor, coupled with his blatant disregard for sexual mores, inspired Jackson and Hammer to create Hatred. They have said that they view him as a sympathetic character who realizes that his sexual attraction to children is wrong and tries to keep it in check.

Background

Hatred's full backstory is yet to be addressed in the show. He is briefly depicted as "Sgt. Haine" (haine is the French word for "hatred"), Brock's superior in the Office of Secret Intelligence in the flashback episode "The Invisible Hand of Fate", during which it is revealed that he was a double agent whose true loyalty was to the Guild. Apparently, he served in the O.S.I. to cover up the Guild's existence, by making Brock and Col. Gathers look foolishly mistaken in their attempt to prove it—which the remainder of the O.S.I. apparently doubted.

Hatred is first mentioned in Season 2, when The Monarch's henchmen tell him that they repaired his Cocoon fortress by stealing parts from "Sgt. Hatred's hover tank." He makes an unidentified cameo appearance in "Fallen Arches", as part of a crowd leering after Dr. Venture's inventions. He isn't mentioned again until "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills", when Hank Venture tells Myra Brandish that Sgt. Hatred molested him. He makes his first identified appearance in "Showdown at Cremation Creek", during which it is revealed that he has married a Native American named "Princess Tinyfeet", with whose feet he is obsessed.

Hatred became a major character in Season 3 of the show, beginning with "Home is Where the Hate is", in which he was assigned by the Guild to be Dr. Venture's new archnemesis. The episode revealed that, in spite of being a super-villain and registered sex offender, Hatred is in fact very genial and personable, and has a reputation for hospitality among his fellow villains.

Hatred proved to be a much less adept nemesis than the Monarch, forgetting on which days he was scheduled to attack Dr. Venture and finding that, due to Venture's exposure to bizarre acts of violence since childhood, none of Hatred's conventional weaponry frightened him. In "Home is Where the Hate Is", Hatred confesses to the Monarch that he got himself assigned as Venture's nemesis so that he could be as nice to him as possible, in order to frustrate the Monarch out of spite for stealing from him.

In "The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part I)", the finale of Venture Bros. Season 3, Hatred launches a half-hearted, ill-fated strike on the Venture Compound, which ends with him locking himself in a bathroom to cry and attempting suicide. He later confesses to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch that Princess Tinyfeet is likely to leave him and that he now feels himself to be an inadequate villain. In Part II, he tries to get Dr. Venture to murder him before a battle-hungry Hank reinvigorates him, resulting in his leading a doomed squadron of undeveloped clone slugs into the battle between O.S.I. agents and the Monarch's henchmen. After surviving the resulting brutal massacre of the clones at the hands of the Monarch, Hatred appears to reconsider his villainous ways and rivalry with the Ventures, and ends the season asking O.S.I. for a job.

In the Season 4 opener "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel", Hatred is working for O.S.I. again as the Venture's new bodyguard after having forcibly undergone reprogramming to cure his pedophilia, as well as the drug Nomolestol; this treatment may not have been successful, as in later episodes he admits to having questionable images on his computer to which he masturbates. He has started to train Hank in combat, such as sniping, and praised him for being willing to shoot him when ordered, even though Hank only succeeded in grazing his shoulder with a ricochet. It is shown multiple times throughout Season 4 that Hatred is nowhere near as efficient a bodyguard as Brock, allowing the Monarch to invade the Venture compound and kidnap the Ventures with relatively little trouble. In "The Revenge Society", Dr. Venture even notes, "If Brock were here right now, I'd be watching him hose blood off the front lawn".

"Perchance to Dean" and "Peturn to Malice" reveals that in the wake of his alcoholism and [divorce, Hatred must pass his time obsessing over the security of the Venture compound and the Venture family's own lack of experience in self-defense, the family having always previously relied on Brock Samson, and before him Myra Brandish, to bail them out of trouble. Additionally, he has begun to become more literate in his spare time, borrowing Dean's copy of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine and becoming a fan of Dean's beloved "Giant Boy Detective" mystery novel series - even to the point that during a moment of depression, he wonders aloud what Giant Boy Detective would do in his situation. He has admitted to being a fan of country music, in particular Jimmy Buffett.

Due perhaps to his own lack of self-respect, Hatred demands respect from others, sometimes through his generally courteous behavior towards his friends, enemies and even his subordinate henchmen, and sometimes through extreme means - in "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel", he forces Hank to shoot him point-blank in order to create the memory of having 'taken a bullet' for the boy and bonds with him.

Military experience

Hatred is shown to be knowledgeable of military manuvres and procedures throughout the series, and is highly knowledgeable in weaponry, as shown in "Home Is Where The Hate Is"; additionally, in that episode he explains his mind is that of a military commander, ready to organize his attacks and strike only when his soldiers are in the right position. In "The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part II)", the command in his voice is enough to stimulate a plethora of brain-dead clone slugs into standing straight and marching in formation, a feat which appeared to make him glow with pride.

In "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel", Hatred attempts to teach Dean how to put a gun together blindfolded, but the task takes the inexperienced teen several hours and eventually ends with him working the blindfold into the gun's structure and inserting the trigger into the barrel. In the same episode, he reveals that he has co-ordinated the Venture family's 'uniforms' that they might better resemble a military 'unit' and thus be better cohesive, treating the boys and Dr. Venture as soldiers under his command who, as with real soldiers, follow his specific tastes in areas such as food and music. As a riposte to Hank's stubborn rebellion against his rule, Hatred forces Hank to (ineptly) shoot and wound him in order to earn his respect as a leader.

In the same episode, during an siege on the compound by Nazis he tells Dr. Orpheus that "We are at war with Hitler again! This is how it's done on the front lines, soldier!", implying that he does have some real world experience with the military beyond his O.S.I. work, and that his rank of "Sergeant" may not just be a villain title, though the collective 'We' in the phrase could refer to the American people in general. He also claims to have once punched a man so hard that his head literally spun off his body, and to have devoured a Labrador retriever while under extreme conditions.

Appearance

Hatred appears to be a huge man in his early 50's, very muscular and barrel-chested with a huge pot-belly and red crew-cut hair framing a jolly, cherubic face (though he originally had a lean physique identical to that of Brock Samson, when he was posing as a commander in the O.S.I.) Most notably he has the word 'HATRED' tattooed in red on his body, with the H on his face and the letters descending down the front of his body; though never totally shown, the D is over his genitals (though, as of the Season 4 finale, he has had all the other letters removed, except the D because it was too painful, and a blue V in place of the H. The tattoo letters are now VD). He dresses in an American military-style uniform, in a khaki-green sleeveless shirt and pants, and usually wears a helmet and combat-boots. He also talks in a loud, screaming voice characteristic of a drill-sergeant, but is normally boisterous and jolly. Template:VentureBros