Plot Irrelevant Villain: Difference between revisions

In other words, Joe is a villain who doesn't do anything. He has been shoehorned into the narrative for little reason beside the conventional wisdom that all narratives need a clear bad guy. For this reason he's an especially common addition to adaptations intended to reach a [[Viewers are Morons|wider audience]] than in his original form.

While the easiest way to sum up this trope is "useless character", that's more objective as what's going on here. For example, Oogie Boogie from ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]'', awesome though he may be, is motivated purely by [[For the Evulz]], causes trouble only after the [[Denouement]], and has little if anything to do with the main plot of how Halloweentown takes over Christmas.

This trope can possibly go in line with [[Designated Villain]]. If he's there to provide someone to boo because the main problem is too cool to hate or a morally neutral problem (a runaway train, an earthquake) it's a [[Hate Sink]]. Compare with [[Breakout Villain]] and [[Orcus on His Throne]]. When it's an entire unwholesome class of characters who don't seem to do of the dirty deeds of their profession, it's [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]].

* From ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', Gary Oak in the first season. He's a [[Jerkass]] antagonist to Ash for absolutely no reason, and continually antagonizes him in ways that never add anything to the story.

** [[Terrible Trio|Team Rocket]] also fall into this sometimes, mostly in the movies. Sometimes only showing up to keep up appearances.

* Wapol, the [[Big Bad]] (the term should be applied loosely) from the Drum Island Arc. While this guy had a cool Devil Fruit power with the potential to make him a threat, he was never even a ''small'' threat to the heroes, he was just... ''there'', and the arc would have gone smoother had he ''not'' been there. Ironically, he became a rather complex and interesting character after he quit being a villain and went into toymaking.

* ''[[Sword Art Online]]'' has an odd in-universe example, which might overlap with [[Tropes Are Not Bad]] given how ''awesome'' it was. It seems that the [[Big Bad]] and [[Final Boss]] of the [[Fictional Video Game]] was originally a demon (for lack of a better term) called An Incarnation of the Radius, which was to be fought at the summit of the giant tower of Aincrad; the tower's full name is "Aincrad, an Incarnating Radius" so this Boss is supposed to be a personification of the tower itself. However, when Kayaba Akihiko (the [[Big Bad]] of the original series and the game's in-universe designer) turned SAO into a [[Deadly Game]], he placed an avatar of himself as the Final Boss, and the Incarnation went unused. ([[Word of God]] states that Kayaba believed he had made the monster too strong and that no players would ''ever'' defeat it; while he had no concern for their lives, his ultimate goal required someone to eventually defeat the final boss.) However, the villain in the full-length movie ''Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale-'' discovered this unused Boss through data mining, figured it was a shame to waste it, and used it as a weapon against the heroes, resulting in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xp8F4V39k4 an epic battle] where ''every'' survivor from the original series squared off against the boss-who-never-was.

* In the movie ''[[Fired Up]]'', the [[The Cheerleader|stereotypical evil cheerleader captain]] of the [[Opposing Sports Team]] is introduced as a big villain... and does nothing in her five minutes total screen time other than badmouth the good team a couple of times and have sex with the female lead's [[Jerkass]] boyfriend (who the audience knows is sleeping around, so this role could be filled by any random girl).

* The rival climatologist team in ''[[Twister]]'' is entirely redundant and has no useful role in the story.

** This is more of a subversion than a straight example. Jonas Miller seems to be there just to make some anvilicious anticorporate point, but it's Dr. Miller's (attempted) theft of the Dorothy concept and Dr. Harding's anger at it that ultimately pulls him back into the stormchasing team.