Villain Ball: Difference between revisions

** Aside from the central extravagance of the hunger games (and even that is in some ways an inspired form of repression in that it forces people to become complicit in it through starvation, quite stalinesque actually) the tactics the capital uses to repress the districts are actually a fairly realistic representation of the terror methods that [[Real Life]] regimes use, and just like in [[Real Life]] but unlike in most stories: They work, to a point. In 75 years of power the capital had almost certainly weathered minor uprisings that it had been able to quell through force, control of information, and playing disctricts off against each other. What's tips the scale in the period of the plot is: {{spoiler|military support from district 13, inter-district organizational and information support from district 13 and rebels in the capital, and a unifying symbol for all the districts in the form of [[The Hero|Katniss]] and [[The Load|Peeta]] that had already been helpfully broadcast through the capital's own propaganda machine.}}

* In [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Worldwar]]'' series, {{spoiler|US President Earl Warren}} grabs it hard when he orders a nuclear missle launched at the Race's colonization fleet, at literally no possible gain for himself (it only kills enough of the Race to seriously piss them off) and everything to lose if he's found out.

 

 

* ''[[iCarly]]'': Missy in ''iReunite With Missy''. Missy tries to her old "best friend" position off Sam, by treating her nicely around people, but indirectly attacking her in ways that force Sam away from Carly. Sam herself is unsure if Missy is trying to hurt her, or if she's jealous of Missy. The evil plot is ruined when Missy gives Sam a [[Motive Rant]] for no reason. This pushes Sam to ask Freddie for help. Carly has no clue until she [[Right Behind Me|overhears]] [[Evil Gloating|Missy gloating]] about the cruise Freddie gave up to get rid of her.

* The ''[[Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future]]'' episode "The Mirror in Darkness" has Dread using a fake Power to trick survivors into unwitting digitization. The first time we see him, it's convincing to ''us''. But the second time, we know the plot, and the real Power is waiting for him. The fake then suddenly yells his head off, and generally acts like a dick, before the real Power shows up.

* Brennen of ''[[Burn Notice]]'' is generally quite [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]], except that he can never quite figure out that leaving Michael unattended for any length of time is a bad idea.

** Larry however seemed to have learned from this, even lampshading in the new episode that he wasn't letting Michael out of his sight because he knew he would do something to sabotage his plan.

* The [[Evil Chancellor]] Long Feng in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. Had he simply directed them to the nearest general outside the city after explaining the whole "No talking about the war here" thing and sent them on their way, they would have been out of his hair right there and he'd still be [[The Man Behind the Man]]. But instead, {{spoiler|he tried to play Big Brother and threaten them about Appa, and thus made an enemy out of Aang, eventually leading to his arrest, then losing even the Dai Li to Azula in an attempt to break out and take over.}}

** In the episode "The Deserter", if Zhao hadn't gotten so angry at Aang's taunting, he wouldn't have burnt his entire fleet down to cinders. And then, he {{spoiler|kills the moon spirit}} in the season finale.]] If he HADN'T done that, he wouldn't have {{spoiler|been killed by [[Fan Nickname|Koizilla]], and might have actually succeeded in conquering the Northern Water Tribe.}}

* In the [[Grand Finale]] of ''Transformers: [[Beast Wars]]'', Megatron {{spoiler|decides to use the [[Wave Motion Gun|Fusion Cannon]] on the entirely helpless proto-humans [[Lawful Stupid Chaotic Stupid|when he should have attacked the Maximals first, who could actually do something to stop him]].}}. To make it even worse {{spoiler|all of the proto-humans [[Unexplained Recovery|survived somehow]] and he only succeeded in killing Quickstrike and Inferno, ''his own minions''.}}

* By being the [[Genre Blind]] [[Harmless Villain]] he is, Dr. Drakken from ''[[Kim Possible]]'' is by no means immune to this trope. In one episode he created the awesome plan of disrupting the [[Mission Control|Kimmunicator]] so that he could pretend to be the [[Techno Wizard]] Wade in order [[MacGuffin Delivery Service|trick Kim into stealing]] the [[Phlebotinum]] from Professor Dementor. Twice. Which got Kim's suspicions up and let to his defeat. When he has [[The Dragon|Shego]], who is more than capable of stealing the [[Phlebotinum]] by herself...