Bond Villain Stupidity: Difference between revisions

|''[[The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches]]''}}

 

 

Often includes [[Monologuing]], accompanied by stock quotes such as: "[[You Have No Chance to Survive]]! I ''don't'' think we'll meet again... Goodbye!"

 

{{examples}}

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Hentai]]'', The villains usually lose because they are dedicated to rape the heroine, instead of just killing her.

 

* In the ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' series, one villain, Hammerhead, tries to avoid this trope by pulling out a gun and shooting a troublemaker; unfortunately said troublemaker manages to catch the bullet unharmed, much to Hammerhead's surprise.

* The ''Umbrella Academy'' [[Story Arc]] ''The Apocalypse Suite'' {{spoiler|averts this, as the [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]] White Violin gets shot by her brother before she causes [[The End of the World as We Know It]]}}. Equally, it ''doesn't'' avert it earlier when {{spoiler|Kraken (one of the White Violin's other brothers) fails, for some reason, to destroy her violin or bow when he had the chance}}.

* ''[[The Phantom]]'' wouldn't have lasted for one generation, let alone [[Legacy Immortality|the twenty-one he's currently at]], without practically ''every'' enemy he's ever met falling for this trope. Of course, Phantoms do get occasionally killed in the line of duty, but it's usually in open combat and not because someone's clever enough to [[Just Shoot Him]] when they have him captured.

 

* In ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', the [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|(Brox)}} asks [[The Dragon]] {{spoiler|(Grunnel)}} why he wouldn't let {{spoiler|her}} kill George and Ringo, who were both useless to them. {{spoiler|Grunnel}} responds with a number of reasons, including that it's funnier to have them powerless and unable to stop the proceedings. (Also, he does genuinely like them.) Later, after it becomes clear that the two have managed to get useful stuff done despite having their magic neutralized, {{spoiler|Grunnel}} apologizes to {{spoiler|Brox}} for being wrong. The latter isn't terribly upset, though, as {{spoiler|she}} believes that they still can't bull their way through dozens of wizards to get into the warehouse.

* Frequently in ''[[Naruto Veangance Revelaitons]]''. For example, Madara manages to defeat Ronan once, but then decides to inject him with a serum and have him go around the world.

* After John's cover is blown in ''Stone Cold'', the bad guys put him into a chopper (which is vital part of their [[Evil Plan]]) where they plan to strap him with explosives and then drop him on unsuspecting cops below. Of course, he gets loose, some other guy gets blown to bits mid-air instead and the chopper crashes.

 

* In John Buchan's 1919 [[World War I]] spy thriller ''Mr. Standfast'', the villain, having finally captured the hero [[Richard Hannay]], explains his evil plans at great length. Buchan was arguably the first writer of modern spy thrillers, thus making this [[Older Than Television]].

* Unsurprisingly, this happens regularly in the ''[[James Bond (novel)|James Bond]]'' novels. Some ([[Live and Let Die (novel)|Mr. Big]], who has actually put quite a bit of thought into it) are smarter about it than others ([[From Russia with Love|Red Grant]], where even Bond notices). However, the highlight has to be ''[[The Man with the Golden Gun]]'', when it's actually not Bond, but M who gets this treatment from {{spoiler|Russia's newest assassin, James Bond}}.

** In ''[[From Russia with Love]]'', the Soviet [[Chessmaster]] Kronsteen lays a complicated and near-perfect trap for [[James Bond]]. Everything works as planned, all the pawns including Bond go through their predicted moves, and Bond gets exactly where the Soviets wanted him. But at the crucial moment {{spoiler|the assasin Red Donovan - an Irishman who hates the English - makes the fatal mistake of engaging in prolonged crowing, boasting and gloating instead of just going ahead with his assinged task of killing Bond. This allows Bond the chance to improvise a desperate last-moment plan which works, enabling him to kill Donovan and use the information which Donovan carelessly revealed in order to catch the senior Soviet operative Rosa Klebb}}.

{{quote|'''Iceclaw:''' If Tigerstar can harm cats like he can and walk in their dreams, why doesn't he just do it to Firestar, take revenge, and get it over with?

'''Vicky:''' Because Tigerstar wants a long-drawn out kind of vengeance, involving as many cats as possible, so that Firestar truly suffers. ... }}

* Uncharacteristically occurs with [[The Thrawn Trilogy|Grand Admiral Thrawn]], usually one of the more [[Genre Savvy]] people in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. He has just betrayed Mara Jade by tricking her into revealing Talon Karrde's location, leading to his arrest by Imperials who will torture him if he doesn't hand over important intel, and then smugly mouths off to her face about it. Mara predictably goes [[Berserk Button|berserk]] and attempts to attack Thrawn, at first physically then through the Force. Both of these fail, leaving Thrawn with the question of what to do with a still visibly enraged and always emotionally unstable Jade. Instead of killing her, he allows her to live, and lets her out of his sight aboard his ship before letting her go. Jade then predictably hacks into the computer network of Thrawn's ship, uses it to find Luke Skywalker, and saves him. The next one-and-a-half books can be accurately described as Jade [[Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal|sticking it to Thrawn]] which eventually leads to his plans collapsing and his death.

* ''[[The Laundry Series|The Jennifer Morgue]]'' had a very... ''[[Invoked Trope|unique]]'' case. Realizing that he is a mad genius billionaire with access to world-ending technology and a strong desire to actually use it, the [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|sets up a geas that makes the tropes of a Bond movie reality. He plans to make it so that the only person who stands a chance of thwarting his plan is a solitary British secret agent... and if one of those manages to get through, then he'll shut off the geas so that said agent is nothing more than a solitary man hundreds of miles away from any back-up who can easily be killed}}. Small problem: {{spoiler|despite all his precautions, the [[Big Bad]] completely fails to realize by the end that the geas he thought he ended is still operating, even when he's got the hero and his fellow agent bound up and prefers to monologue at them rather than just kill them}}.

* [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s "The Pit and the Pendulum" shows that this Trope is [[Older Than They Think]] - the sinister orchestrators of the [[Spanish Inquisition]] subject the protagonist to ''two'' [[Death Trap]]s, inadvertently enabling him to survive until the French army takes the city and rescues him.

 

* In the ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' episode "cold station 12": "Five minutes after we leave, every stasis field in this station will shut down, releasing hundreds of pathogens. I wonder which one will kill you first".

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade hung]] in a ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode when Harmony captures Dawn in order to get Buffy to attempt to rescue and then capture Buffy. When Harmony's minions point out that they could just kill Dawn because as long as Buffy believes Dawn to be alive then she'll come anyway, instead of waiting until Buffy arrives to kill Dawn. Harmony refuses "Because that's not the plan, duh!".

* In the ''[[Smallville]]'' episode "Arrival", two evil Kryptonians confront Clark Kent. They open a portal to the [[Phantom Zone]] and shove Clark into it. At the last second, Clark grabs a piece of rebar and tries desperately to hold on as the portal sucks him in. Instead of doing something like cutting the bar with their heat vision, the villains just smirk and start walking away, only for Clark to [[Flash Step]] up to them, and [[Hoist by His Own Petard|shove them into the portal]].

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' villains aren't renowned for their intelligence, but were most guilty of Bond Villain stupidity during [[Power Rangers Jungle Fury]], where a constant stream of new villainous overlords continued to defeat the Power Rangers then walk away, only to complain later about not being able to defeat the Rangers. By about the 20th time this happened in a 32 episode show, it was very hard to keep caring.

* A few [[24]] fans weren't too attached to the [[Affably Evil]] Jonas Hodges in season 7, because of this trope. At one point in the season, Jones Hodges manages to frame Jack Bauer for the death of a man he tortured by tasering, but could've just as easily killed Jack Bauer in the process. A bit of context: the incapacitated man was lying in the hospital bed recovering from the aforementioned torture when Jack Bauer sneaked back into the room (Bauer wasn't allowed to see him, but had to [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|interrogate him...again]]). When this happened, Jonas Hodges deployed knockout gas into the room to knock them out for a few brief minutes, which he then sends some men to kill the tortured man, and then leave. This makes the more [[Genre Savvy]] fans think, "why didn't he kill Jack while he had the upper hand?" (Answer: because that would be bad for ratings) To be fair, many other villains kept Jack alive far longer than he should be, but those moments were done more realistically to suspend disbelief.

* Patrick Jane from ''[[The Mentalist]]'' has been saved by this trope quite a few times. Often involves [[Holding the Floor]] till [[The Cavalry|Lisbon]] arrives.

* In the South Korean series ''[[Strong Girl Bong-soon]]'', series villain Kim Jang-hyun cleverly manipulates Bong-soon into violating the strictures on the use of her mystically-granted super-strength, resulting in her losing it. However, he is not satisfied with just [[De-Power]]ing her; he has to abduct her, bind her, chain her to a massive pipe and [[Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb|and duct-tape a time bomb]] to her, then leave her to die in a locked steel utility shed. All this served to do was give her a chance to beg the Powers which give her super-strength for its return so she can save the life of the man she loves, who has found the shed and, unable to break into it, vows to her that [[Together in Death|he will not leave her to die alone]]; the Powers are [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]s and restore her strength. Which ultimately results in Kim Jang-hyun's capture, arrest and conviction for his crimes.

 

* This is the Unique Limitation of the Criminal Mastermind archetype from the ''[[Feng Shui]]'' supplement ''Seed of the New Flesh'', appropriately titled "Slave to the Cheese." Not only are you 100% unable to [[Mundane Solution|just shoot]] any named cop or Buro characters you capture or non-lethally defeat, but [[Complexity Addiction|you must do everything in your power to prevent anyone else from doing so]], preferring to toy with your prey by putting them in elaborate death-traps or offering them some desperate ([[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen|but psychotically "fair"]]) gamble with which to win their lives and freedom. Not only that, but you absolutely cannot resist the urge to engage in a [[Just Between You and Me]] speech, telling them your plans in order to rub it in.

* The trapmaster in ''Super [[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]''. He plays a trap card at you when you start fighting him. If he defeats you, however, his Bad Stuff is that "he leaves you in one of his traps and strolls off laughing. [[Lampshade Hanging|The idiot. No effect]]."

* The Infernal [[Exalted]] have Acts of Villainy, specific behaviors installed by their [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|Yozi]] masters to allow them to bleed off [[Hate Plague|Torment]] accrued via defiance. As [[God of Evil|the Ebon Dragon]] took a hand in these, they're both a) [[Card-Carrying Villain|obviously dickish behaviors]] and b) designed to screw someone over, be it the target or the Infernal. One of them, Infernal Genius Declaration, is basically this trope, granting the Infernal mental relief if they brag about their plans to their hated foe, especially when they're on the ropes.

 

* [[Double Subverted]] in the William Gillette play ''[[Sherlock Holmes (theatre)|Sherlock Holmes]]'', where Moriarty's first plan is in fact to just shoot Holmes. He doesn't try it again, though; his next plan involves preparing a [[Short Con]] as bait to lead Holmes into a [[Death Trap]] (which he escapes in dramatic fashion). Justified, since Moriarty doesn't want a gunshot to be heard outside.

 

* Sephiroth of ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' has this badly. He could, at any given moment in the original game, completely obliterate the party with ease. However, he instead prefers to mock and taunt the heroes, stringing them along with plans to manipulate them later. As is expected with the trope, this came to haunt him later—when Sephiroth kills Aeris, she's already managed to summon Holy, which ultimately stops Meteor's impact. Had Sephiroth just killed Aeris when he had the chance, Holy wouldn't have been summoned, instead he waited for Cloud to catch up to her so he could kill Aeris in front of his eyes to torment him.

** Justified to some degree in that Seph wasn't intending to kill Cloud and (most of) his group, it was all part of his [[Xanatos Gambit]] to get him to deliver the Black Materia to {{spoiler|his real body in the Northern Crater, which he then used to summon Meteor}}.

** The extent to which the Imperial Legion are villains is fairly debatable as well. A more straight example would be the various mad scientist-cum-mages who feel the need to have you fight a pet monster of theirs rather than kill you outright, or even Alduin, who, rather than kill you outright when he meets you at dragon burial mounds, resurrects a lesser dragon and lets it do the work. Predictably, it always fails.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]''; in the ''Battle for Azeroth'' expansion, [[Big Bad| Queen Azshara]] uses her potent dark magic to drag an entire Alliance ''and'' Horde fleets into Nazjatar, an underwater domain covered by a dome of air. While she could dispel the dome and drown the survivors any time she wanted, she permits them to live so long as they "amuse" her. And given the comments she directs to the player during several World Quests, it seems that, for now, that is her motive.

 

* [[Lampshade]]d and [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] in [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=040217 this] ''[[Bob and George]]'' strip. {{spoiler|Don't worry, he got better.}}

* Averted in the vampire vs. zombie webcomic ''Last Blood'', during the final battle, the vampires are captured by zombies who chain them up with the intent to torture them. However, for the past 20 pages, there have been allusions to the idea that the leader of the vampires, Addison Payne, has a brilliant scheme to defeat the zombies at some point, even once captured. So instead of letting him live and risking utter victory just for the sake of torture, the lead zombie simply stakes him through the heart, no suggestion necessary. Despite this stroke of brilliance, he still winds up losing it all when he decides to keep one of the human women as his presumed concubine, and goes to embrace her, at which point she promptly stakes him in the heart, killing him and turning his zombies loose.

'''Torg:''' If you were a ''real'' villain, [[Just Between You and Me|you'd tell me your master plan before killing me]]. }}

 

* [[Double Subverted]] in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' with Roland Daggett when he had Batgirl and Catwoman at his mercy. When Batgirl taunted him with the suggestion that he leave them trussed up over one of his vats of deadly chemicals with acid burning through the rope, he pointed out how often this method had failed him before, and announced he was just going to [[Stating the Simple Solution|have his men shoot them and toss their bodies into those vats instead.]] In the end, however, his stopping to tell them this gave them just enough time to get loose and take him down anyway.

* In ''[[Kim Possible]]'', this trope is literally part of the Tradition, at least according to Senior Senior Sr. Truth be told, this is only one of many villainous flaws he has that he insists are "tradition".

* In a similar example to the above Sherlock Holmes example, ''[[The Great Mouse Detective]]'' has [[Big Bad|Ratigan]] set up an ''incredibly'' elaborate deathtrap for Basil and Dawson instead of just killing them outright. However, the movie does at least give reasons for why he made it so elaborate (he couldn't decide on just one killing method) and why he left rather than stay to watch their deaths (Basil arrived at Ratigan's hideout later than expected, forcing him to leave early to carry out his [[Evil Plan]]). Ultimately [[Justified]] in that Ratigan probably didn't expect {{spoiler|that Dawson would taunt the defeated Basil into creating a plan that set off the trap early and started a chain reaction that freed them rather than killed them.}}

* ''[[Futurama]]'' pulls this with the Slurm Queen during the 'Fry and the Slurm Factory' episode.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Villain Ball]]

[[Category:No One Respects the Spanish Inquisition]]

[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]]