Pyrrhic Villainy: Difference between revisions

 

{{endingtrope}}

{{examples}}

* Although it may depend somewhat on your interpretation, SEELE's plan doesn't seem to have turned out the way they intended by the end of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.

** Chairman Keel seemed quite pleased with the outcome. Presumably they are among the people who can't "imagine themselves in their own hearts", so no free resurrection card for them, but that's apparently what they wanted.

* In ''[[Hellsing]]'' {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|The Major]] succeeds in defeating Alucard, even though [[Action Girl|Integra]] [[Shut UP, Hannibal|kills]] him in the end. Also, London ultimately rebuilds and life continues on like normal.}}

* In ''[[Saint Beast]]'', having defeated two justified rebellions from the angels Zeus is sick of war and decides to retire and go into a long sleep.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' had an early, non-canon [[Yet Another Christmas Carol]] where Robotnik is taken to see the future. Robotnik has finally defeated the Freedom Fighters, but he has rendered himself the last man alive in doing so, turning Mobius into a barren wasteland. However, Robotnik doesn't grasp this, and fails to learn his lesson.

 

* There is a ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' [[Alternate Universe|AU]] story in which Sephiroth {{spoiler|achieves his goal of godhood only to "rule" over a dead, unpopulated landscape, doomed to wander forever through a barren world alone and abandoned by Jenova. It climaxes with him falling to his knees, screaming in agony and irretrievable insanity}}.

 

* In Pixar's ''[[Cars]]'', Chick Hicks wins the final race, but because of his actions during it he finds himself hated and rejected by everyone.

* Michael Corleone might be the ultimate example of this by the end of the second ''[[The Godfather|Godfather]]'' movie. Certainly he's destroyed every major underworld power in his way and taken on the US government and won, but he's also destroyed his marriage, alienated his children and friends, killed his brother, and is left utterly alone. And then the third film features his daughter getting killed right in front of him.

* Daniel Plainview's empty isolation and drunken insanity at the close of ''[[There Will Be Blood]]''.

* ''[[Star Wars]]'': Anakin Skywalker is a prime example of the by the end of the prequel trilogy. Sure, he's won the war, and his turn to [[The Dark Side]] has allowed his [[Evil Chancellor]] partner to take over the galaxy, but he's lost the pregnant wife he did it all for, had his limbs chopped off, and been burned to hell by magma.

* By the end of ''[[300]]'', Xerxes has lost most of his best troops and although he's defeated Leonidas at Thermopylae, the performance of the Spartans and the losses inflicted among his men has only given new determination and inspiration to the other Greeks.

* In ''[[House of Flying Daggers]]'', [[The Mole]] for [[La Résistance]] accomplishes his mission to perfection, but loses the [[Action Girl]] he loves, and [[If I Can't Have You|later kills her]] while fighting [[The Rival]] who had won her love.

* In ''[[Lord of War]]'', [[Villain Protagonist]] and weapons smuggler Yuri Orlov manages to evade the law and escape a long stay in prison to continue his gunrunning. However, this comes at the cost of his brother and uncle being killed, his parents disowning him, and his one true love divorcing him and taking his only son with her. He was also only released due to being useful to the U.S. Government and he's fully aware they can have him [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|disposed of]] if he stops being so. This is hammered home by the Interpol agent chasing him saying that he would like to wish that Yuri would go to Hell, but he's already there. Of course, ''YMMV'', and [[Complete Monster|less fettered]] character interpretations exist.

* In the Hong Kong action crime drama ''Sha Po Lang'' (or ''Kill Zone'' in the U.S.), {{spoiler|Triad crimelord Wong Po, the villain played by Sammo Hung, defeats the hero Inspector Ma played by Donnie Yen, by sending him right out a window. But tragically, this results in the death of not only Ma, but Wong's beloved wife and child when [[Car Cushion|Ma's body falls on their waiting car with them still inside]]}}.

* ''[[Real Steel]]'' has {{spoiler|Zeus declared the winner of the match between him and Atom despite the latter knocking the former out, keeping his status as the unbeatable champion. However, Zeus is booed by the crowd who embraces Atom as the "people's champion."}}

 

* In the [[Chuck Palahniuk]] novel ''[[Haunted (Palahniuk novel)|Haunted]]'', one character, a small time journalist, tells a story about bringing his sick dog to a strange vet and realizing the vet is a former child star. He does a friendly interview with the vet, which shows the vet has made a good, happy and normal life for himself, but the tabloids the journalist works for aren't interested in it. They don't care about former stars that are normal and happy. So he talks to the vet again, drugs him, makes him OD, and creates a wild story about the former star having sex and drug addictions, etc. The story sells and earns him a ton of cash... but next week when his dog is sick and he doesn't know a good vet to bring it to, the dog dies.

* [[The Bible|Judas Iscariot]] may be an example. Sure, he got a tidy sum for betraying [[Jesus]], but, according to Matthew, he was so overcome with guilt afterwards that he hanged himself.

{{quote|'''Raistlin''': I sacrificed myself to save ''myself''.}}

* In the [[William Gibson]] short story "Dogfight," the main character wins the aerial combat video game, but in the process alienates everyone he might possibly celebrate his victory with.

 

* ''[[The Wire]]'': {{spoiler|After killing his way to becoming Baltimore's chief drug kingpin, Marlo only enjoys it for a month before losing his entire organisation, being forced to go straight by the police. His name is quickly forgotten while his defeated enemy Omar lives on as a street legend}}

* ''[[The Shield]]'''s Vic Mackey ends up with a cushy job as a Federal Agent, after burning every bridge imaginable with his family (disowned him and in witness protection), his friends (one killed his entire family/self and left a note blaming Vic for turning him into such a monster while the other, who's loyalty to Vic was never in question, was made into the scapegoat for Vic's crimes), and pretty much had ALL of his sins exposed to the world, as part of an immunity deal he landed as part of his job. Worse, his cushy job is a desk job, which plays against Vic's strengths as a law enforcement agent and his boss, horrified at the fact that Vic conned her, has vowed to make Vic's life a living hell in desperate hope to making him void his immunity deal, costing him his job and freedom. And even if he survives, after three years the Feds can fire Vic and with his sins all public knowledge, means that Vic will never gain employment in law enforcement again, denying him the justification he used to hide from his crimes. [[Humiliation Conga|Karma is a bitch, Vic.]]

* {{spoiler|Lucas North}} from ''[[Spooks]]''. He succeeds in selling [[MacGuffin|the Albany file]] to the Chinese, but in the process destroys the life he built and {{spoiler|causes the death of the woman he loves}}. And to top it off, {{spoiler|the weapon Albany is a blueprint for turns out not to work}}.

* Morgana from ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'' lives for vengeance, but when she finally manages to have King Uther killed, it's clear that she doesn't feel the victory the way she thought she would.

 

* The ending of [[Sophocles]]'s ''[[Antigone]]'', in which the sympathetic [[Anti-Villain]] Creon succeeds in bringing his rebellious niece to [[Knight Templar|justice]] but at the cost of [[Driven to Suicide|his entire family]], makes this [[Older Than Feudalism]].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In the first ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' game, {{spoiler|Ansem}} (Who you find out, in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'', is really {{spoiler|Xehanort's Heartless}}), successfully opens the door which he believes would lead to ultimate dark power, however {{spoiler|Sora tells him that "Kingdom Hearts is Light", and the villain ends up getting disintegrated when the door opens.}}

* In ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'', [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] Teyrn Loghain's plan to take the throne of Ferelden works like a charm ... up until the point where it sparks a civil war and causes riots throughout the country. Ironically, in an effort to protect Ferelden from Orlesian occupation, he's forced to act just as badly as the former conquerors he once struggled against. This sends him into a deep depression and eventually sparks a [[Villainous Breakdown]].

* In ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', one of the ways to talk down [[The Dragon|Legate]] [[Authority Equals Asskicking|Lanius]] in the [[Final Battle]] is to convince him that even if he were to beat the NCR and conquer Hoover Dam, the Legion would inevitably fall via attrition (due to [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]] being a poor long-term way to sustain an army) or overextending themselves (much like the NCR themselves have done).

* At the end of ''[[Batman: Arkham City]]'', when it looks like Batman might not [[Save the Villain|save]] [[The Joker]] from his TITAN poisoning {{spoiler|the clown [[Back Stab|backstabs]] him to try and get the cure, causing it to drop and smash on the ground. Joker dies about a minute later.}} Extra irony-points because {{spoiler|Batman really would have saved him.}}

 

** Vaarsuvius's [[Deal with the Devil]] could also count. {{spoiler|Literally harnessing the powers of evil, but ultimately accomplishing nothing.}}

*** Not necessarily. In a moment of frustration at being "distracted" from the next move, {{spoiler|Vaarsuvius off-handedly teleports the entire Azure navy to a new home; his actions also bring the party back together and get Roy finally resurrected. When bemoaning to Durkon about using the power sought for so long in such a brutish manner, Durkon points out that at least V actually accomplished ''something'', even if it wasn't what was planned on.}} Also, {{spoiler|Vaarsuvius did in fact accomplish the very thing the deal was made in the first place for (preventing family from being horrifically murdered by a Dragon), but it ultimately cost V the love of that family.}}

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

** Listen to that song one more time. Its lyrics are dripping with double meanings. {{spoiler|"The world I wanted at my feet": the world is my oyster, or Penny - the "world I wanted" - lying dead at his feet?}} Also, "Everything you ever..." drifts off every time they sing it, leading the audience to fill in the last word with whatever they're expecting - wanted? feared?

* [[Bennett the Sage]] and [[JesuOtaku]] have done several crossover videos, with the idea in mind being Bennett attempting to [[Break the Cutie|Break]] or [[Corrupt the Cutie]] with [[Squick|terrible and sexually shocking or exploitative anime]]. The third time around, during Jesu's review of ''[[Master of Martial Hearts]]'', she agrees that Sage has won and shown her something so gratuitously cruel and horrific that she just can't laugh it off or remain unaffected by it. However, after a relatively short spell of being horrified, she remembers that it was just fiction and all the good things about life, and goes outside to enjoy herself and play with her roommate's dog. Sage is left in a depressive funk with his "victory", pondering where [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|mankind has gone wrong]], whether a species capable of such things is worthy of redemption, etc.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

{{quote|'''Doctor Girlfriend:''' How much did the caterpillars cost?

'''Monarch:''' A couple of mils. }}

* In ''[[Wakfu]]'', Nox has spent 200 years of research, plotting, and ''genocide'' in order to gather the energy needed to travel back in time and stop his family from being destroyed partially due to his own negligence. In the end, {{spoiler|he manages to defeat the heroes, drain the Tree of Life (killing the Sadidas in the process), and uses the all the energy gained over this time period to travel back in time... a whole ''twenty minutes''}}.

* ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]''. Lucius manages to push [[Wicked Weasel|the weavils]] off their land, but the mountain he was going to carve his face into ends up carved into a weevil head instead.

* In one episode of ''[[The Life and Times of Juniper Lee]]'', the villain is a demoness trying to perform a ritual that will rescue her father, the dreaded Kordoth the Conqueror, a legendary warlord who was banished to the spirit world centuries ago for unspecified crimes. June fails to halt the ritual and Kordoth is freed, but he's hardly a threat anymore; he's ''really'' let himself go during the interim, having grown obese and sluggish from eating donuts.

 

{{reflist}}