Near Pure Evils who fail the in-story Heinous Standards of their respective work. Keep in mind that they differ from Villainous Benchmarks in that they still pass the general Heinous Standards or at least stand out enough with their Moral Event Horizon crossings. Especially if the villain lacks redeeming qualities, sympathetic backstories, detracting comedic moments, insufficient characterization and/or moral agency issues all while having this as their only prevention from being Pure Evil, Near Pure Evils often fall under this category. Many of them (i.e. the Green Goblin, Victor Zsasz, Yoshikage Kira, Jack Anders, Dark Master, John Joel Glanton, Antasma, Bradford Buzzard, Scorpion, Big Smoke, Fassad, Malty S. Melromarc, and Imperious) fail it to Pure Evil villains, Inconsistently Heinous villains and even in some cases other Near Pure Evil villains themselves, as long as said villains pass the standards (e.g Hama, Lord Shen, Cyrus Grissom, Arlong, Imhotep, Charlie Walker, and Elder Princess Shroob).

This also includes Near Pure Evils who suffer from Fridge Horror (e.g. DOR-15, Kanya, Zhao and Warden Kuril), Near Pure Evils who suffer from offscreen villainy (e.g. Turles, Ray Bulgarin and Lewis Dodgson) and Near Pure Evils who fail to stand out only because of the themes of their stories and nothing else, like in scenarios where everyone is evil for a certain reason (e.g. Alex DeLarge and O'Brien).

There are also villains who are devoid of any redeeming qualities or other preventions either by debasing themselves or they are just irredeemable (e.g. Bradford Buzzard, Green Goblin, Kyosuke Higuchi, Bowyer, Antasma, Cackletta, Captain Flint, Francis, DOR-15, Dawn Bellwether) but only are not Pure Evil because they do not pass the Heinous Standards. Conversely, it's possible for an Insufficiently Heinous villain to have some redeeming qualities so long as it doesn't detract too much from their villainy.

These villains can only qualify as Near Pure Evil if their heinous actions are on the high end of Standard Evil, and in the case of fridge horror villains, their actions that suffer from fridge horror need to at least have partial effect or be central to the plot.

Their opposites are Insufficiently Admirable Near Pure Goods.