Not-So-Harmless Villain: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''Buffy:''' God, I hope so.|''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''}}

 

** ''[[The Long Halloween]]'' and ''[[Dark Victory]]'' both do this for Calendar Man. Once a campy gag villain who committed relatively harmless crimes while dressing up in costumes based on specific days, his internment at Arkham changed him into a creepy, white-clad inmate who'd mastered the [[Hannibal Lecture]], already knew the answers to the mystery Batman's trying to solve, and later manipulated a rehabilitated character back into madness. Unfortunately, the change didn't stick.

** Later, in the ''Hush'' story arc, {{spoiler|The Riddler}}, bitter that he's fallen so far in Gotham's criminal hierarchy, decides to team up with the new psycho on the block and puts Batman through the wringer. He figures out Batman's secret identity. The only thing that stops him from completely destroying Batman is that he has the answer to the ultimate riddle, and it's no good if everyone knows the answer. Thankfully for Batman, he eventually got hit in the skull with a mace and received a case of [[Easy Amnesia]].

* ''[[G.I. Joe]]'':

** The Marvel comic ignored the cartoon's Cobra-La origin of Cobra Commander, with writer [[Larry Hama]] instead characterizing him as an ex-hippie used car salesman who wants to [[Take Over the World]]. Initially, the character never strayed very far from the cartoon's [[General Failure]] persona, though he eventually evolved into a [[Villain Ball]], and even a halfway-competent [[Big Bad]], costing the Joes billions of dollars in equipment and an entire squad of team members (though this was actually due to [[Poor Communication Kills|lieutenants misunderstanding his orders]]). The character's final turn into a full [[Villain]] occurred in issue #131 (December 1992) when, [[Failure Is the Only Option|after numerous tries]], Cobra located and attacked the Joe team's [[Elaborate Underground Base]]. After readying the second wave of the attack, the following conversation takes place.

'''Cobra Commander:''' I won't stand for negativity in the ranks. ''(shoots Viper)'' You wait and see. Well, it's too late for you, but the rest of you, you just wait and see. }}

** In ''[[G.I. Joe: Resolute]]'' he goes into a massive rants about how he was really faking his [[General Failure]] stick, in a hope it would make his [[Mooks]] less likely to blindly follow orders and become [[Genre Savvy]]. This is just after he killed a [[The Starscream|traitorous subordinate]], and then killed 10 million people.

* Doctor Light was an incompetent villain for a long time. In ''[[Identity Crisis]]'' it was revealed that the League wiped his mind and deliberately turned him into a joke after he raped [[Elongated Man]]'s wife. He recovered, and takes on the Titans. All of them.

* Yellow Bastard of ''[[Sin City]]'' fame had this moment in his eponymous story. He was believed to have been comatose and missing a hand (among [[Groin Attack|other body parts]]) and was no longer a threat. He comes back as a yellow, disfigured freak bent on revenge.

* In a lot of the Marvel/DC crossovers, the [[Badass Normal]] characters of one universe would always be looked down upon by the living god (sometimes literally) characters of the other. One particular example: [[Spider-Man]] is following Carnage as he's being transported to a prison across the country; along the way it passes through [[Batman|Gotham City]], and Bats is ''very'' displeased with having the wall-crawler on his turf. However, Cassidy figures out a way to escape and goes bloody crazy at a time that the Joker also happens to be active, and rather unintentionally the heroes end up switching their villains. Carnage laughs off the Bat until he's taken down with [[Crazy Prepared|expert planning,]] and Spider-Man really, really doesn't seem to perceive Joker as a physical threat, but Joker just won't ''stop'', and dances happily across the [[Moral Event Horizon]] numerous times. After realizing just how similar he really is to Cassidy, down to hallucinating Joker's smile as Carnage's symbiot-grin, he [[Beware the Nice Ones|almost beats Joker to death]] before Batman gets him to stop. Really, through the whole thing, nobody took anyone else seriously before the ass-kicking started except, of course, Batman.

* Baby Face Finlayson from ''[[The Beano]]'' was a harmless villain in his early appearances in the 70s and 80s but he became not so harmless in Kev F Sutherland's strips in the 2000s where the character reached almost [[Big Bad]] status.

* ''[[The Lion King]]'':

** Those three hyenas. At first, they seem like a bunch of idiots who always fail every time, but at the end of the film, they all show their true dangerous selves when they {{spoiler|kill Scar.}}

'''Scar''': No! Let me explain! No! You don't understand! No! I didn't mean it! No!No! I'm sorry I called you- NO! NO! (screams in pain) }}

** Scar himself. Many can tell that he's jealous of his brother's position, but no one had any idea [[Cain and Abel|how far he would go.]]

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** The Daleks are a meta-example. While the characters rarely reacted with anything but terror, their numerous appearances over the original series' [[Long Runner|twenty-six year run]] heavily diluted any fear to be had from the motorised pepper pots. Thus the new series episode "Dalek" was written with the sole intention of showing a new generation that the Daleks were Not So Harmless, with a single imprisoned, crippled, powerless Dalek killing hundreds of people effortlessly.

'''The Doctor:''' All dead. }}

** Indeed, the single moment where the audience knew that the Daleks were not to be trifled came with a single word: ''''' {{spoiler|[[Oh Crap|EL-E-VATE!!]]}}'''''

== Music ==

* Voltaire's "When You're Evil" is a cheerful showtune with a singer who's cartoonishly pure Evil-with-an-E.

I'm a bump on every head'' }}

::It takes about three verses to realize that he's serious.

A stabbing pain, a sudden start.'' }}

* Alberich in Wagner's [[Der Ring Des Nibelungen]] stats off as a harmless [[Extraverted Nerd|lovesick dwarf]]. Foiled in his amorous attempts, he steals the Rheingold and becomes [[From Nobody to Nightmare|absolute ruler]] of the Dwarves. And that's just the beginning...

** the conspirators against Caesar consider Marc Antony no threat, saying, "He can do no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is cut off". In fact, they're so unafraid of him that Brutus lets him speak at Caesar's funeral! Whatever speech he can make will pale in comparison to the unparalleled generosity of letting him speak at all, right?! {{spoiler|Friends, Romans, Countrymen!}}

** The audience is privy to a bit of foreshadowing regarding Marc Antony's forthcoming [[Badass|badassness]] with this line:

 

 

* Dr Robotnik of ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' is largely considered far more incompetant than most other incarnations of the doctor, however he has been shown to be [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] several times over and many of his inventions, as goofy as they are, are very elaborate or at least work as he intended.

* Shredder of the 1987 ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' cartoon is similarly considered a heavy downgrade from his fearsome alternate counterparts, but he still possesses combat skills that usually only Master Splinter can rival, and his schemes, though cartoony, range anywhere from pitiful to [[Beware the Silly Ones|potentially deadly]]. Following the [[Darker and Edgier]] reboot in later seasons, he has [[Demoted to Extra|a minor]], but more fearsome role.

* [[Ben 10]] has several cases like this:

** Dr Animo is a stereotypical [[Mad Scientist]] mostly considered as a joke (though he was considered as Ben's thid most dangerous enemy in the original series, but considering the ones before him were [[Complete Monster|Vilgax]] and [[Enfant Terrible|Kevin 11]], that makes him the least impressive of the three). In Alien Force episode ''Voided'', however, he has ended up in an alternate dimension where he became a ruthless dictator by taking control over the alien animals used to keep the dimension, and almost created a portail to go invade Earth. Sadly, after this episode, he is back to being a joke.