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Generic Doomsday Villain: Difference between revisions
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And why are they spreading destruction and misery? [[Shaped Like Itself|Because... they're]] ''[[Shaped Like Itself|evil.]]''
From a [[Watsonian Versus Doylist|Doylist]] point of view, this sort of character seems to make perfect sense: The story needs a villain to [[The Villain Makes the Plot|drive the plot forward]] and to [[Villains Act, Heroes React|give the heroes something to foil]]. This villain needs to be powerful enough to stump the protagonists at least for [[An Arc]], which is why they're often introduced as [[Invincible Villain|powerful enough to be undefeatable]] outside of [[Deus Ex Machina|divine intervention]].
But on an [[In-Universe]] level -- the level on which the audience [[Emotional Torque|relates to the story]] and [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|suspends disbelief]] -- what matters is whether the character is consistent and coherent and has a compelling reason for what they do. Just like a good hero, a good villain is someone we ''care'' about, either because they're someone we [[Jerkass Woobie|empathize with]] or someone we [[Love to Hate]]. A [[Generic Doomsday Villain]] [[Eight Deadly Words|is none of these things]]. They're all power and [[Flat Character|no personality]].
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* Of all the villains in ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', Hades is perhaps the least motivated and most small minded. His grand plan is to cause The Great Eclipse, which will perpetually block out the sun and kill everyone on Earth. Being the king of the dead, you'd imagine he wants to do this, because he wants an army of the dead to attack Olympus with or maybe he's trying to give humanity a "peaceful" death because he foresees [[World War Three]]. Nope. He just has this nebulous dislike (not even hate) of the living and mortals, thinking them mildly distasteful.
** Subverted in ''[[Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas]]'' when {{spoiler|it is revealed that [[Evil All Along|Alone]] had retained control of his body and had been using Hades's powers to fulfill his own goals from the beginning. And Alone [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|does have a very clear goal]]}}.
* Kazuo Kiriyama in ''[[Battle Royale]]''. The only justification for his actions is that they add lots of kills to the storyline and give the real characters someone to fear. In the novel and manga versions, his complete lack of personality is due to brain damage and he is unable to comprehend ethics. "I forget things sometimes..." Interestingly, while the scene explaining his background is beautifully written, he gets no perspective after that. Fitting this trope, he could be replaced with a 'battle robot sent by the organization' and it would be the same story.
* Kouki, a member of Kurata's [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]] from ''[[Digimon Savers]]''. His comrades are personally motivated in their own right, with Ivan being a sympathetic [[Punch Clock Villain]] who fights to support his family, and Nanami working for Kurata only to further her own goals, which are [[Not So Different|similar to Touya's]]. But Kouki? Kouki has no motive and seems to care about nothing but smacking the hell out of the heroes, doing property damage and killing Digimon [[For the Evulz]]. Which is unfortunate considering [[What Could Have Been|he was apparently originally supposed to be a character very similar to Masaru but found by Kurata instead of DATS.]]
** While we're on ''Digimon'', one of the main complaints about ''Frontier'' (season 4) was the Royal Knights, a [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]] who show up and [[Invincible Villain|do nothing but beat the tar out of the heroes for ''nine straight episodes'']] because... something had to eat up the time before the [[Big Bad]] got out of his [[Sealed Evil in a Can|can]], right?
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** Similarly [[Final Crisis|Mandrakk the Dark Monitor]] pretty much just wants to kill everything because he wanted to feed on the Bleed and the Multiverse that existed within it. It didn't help that he was also a [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]], unless the reader had already read a particular tie-in.
* [[Spider-Man]]'s equivalent to Doomsday would probably be Morlun, a villain introduced by [[J. Michael Straczynski]] during his [[JMS Spider-Man|run]]. Apart from a few references to his race feeding on people who were connected to animal totems, Morlun had no real backstory to speak of, and his exact nature was never revealed. His personality was pretty bland as well, since he really only wanted to "eat" Spidey and stated that it wasn't personal. For some unfathomable reason, this was the first time a villain had ever made Spider-Man angry, even when guys like the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus had kidnapped, murdered or otherwise threatened his loved ones. His latter appearances, especially when written by [[Reginald Hudlin]], are driving him towards this trope as well.
* These pop up now and then in ''[[Invincible]]''. Unusually, they are treated by the writer with all the gravity they deserve... that is, very little. One notable one was vanquished by all the guest stars and supporting characters in the series working together while the series protagonist, Mark, was unavailable. It was a [[Crisis Crossover]] in the B-plot of one or two issues of one title.
* Typically very common in [[Crisis Crossover]] events, as writers and artists are quicker to show how powerful their creation is than to make it interesting.
* The ''Transformers: Stormbringer'' series turns the Decepticon Thunderwing into the "force of nature" variation of this trope.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* You like the destruction they cause, but don't much care about them? Sounds like a C-list [[Kaiju]]. The better ones [[Monster Is a Mommy|have]] [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|some motivation]] and / or [[The Woobie|are oddly sympathetic]], but the ones that never appeared in more than one movie are pretty much this. Whether it's a bad trope, of course, depends on how cool the destruction is.
* Shinzon from ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]''. His reasoning seems to consist of "Well, I'm the villain of this movie, so I guess I better [[Moral Event Horizon|mentally rape Troi]] and [[Earthshattering Kaboom|destroy Earth]]." The extreme actions that actually relate to his supposedly well-intentioned goals occur entirely in the opening minutes of the movie: as he was raised by the Remans, he understandably doesn't like their status as the [[Proud Warrior Race|Warrior]]-[[Slave Race]] of the Romulan Empire. But when he assassinates the entire Romulan Senate and installs himself as the new dictator...''he's already solved all the Remans' problems.'' At that point his only real explanation for wanting to destroy Earth is to prove the Remans' superiority over the Romulans and show the galaxy that their Romulan empire is not to be messed with which is somewhat unclear. For a poorly explained reason (to prove to everyone that the Remans are to be taken seriously), he has a super battleship way more advanced than every ship it comes up against. He also got a planet-destroying superweapon from... somewhere.
* The villain from the fourth ''[[Mission Impossible (film)|Mission Impossible]]'' movie has a generic doomsday agenda (provoke nuclear war, destroy planet) without a motivation deeper than being some sort of insane A-bomb mystic. [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], as his sketchy nature allows to concentrate on the heroes and present the plot in a very simple but entertaining [[Three Act Structure]].
* Darth Maul of the first ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequel is the prime example of this trope. He barely has any lines of dialogue in the entire movie, and quite literally exists and lives to serve his master as an obstacle for the Jedi to overcome. Seeing as the lightsaber duel he took part in (and his double-edged lightsaber) proved so memorable, fans see him as huge wasted potential.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* Arthur Petrelli from ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' is a conscious attempt to avert this, with him stealing Peter's [[Physical God]] powers and ''not'' using them to cause wanton destruction. Though his lack of motivation or any real plan land him into this trope anyway. He existed to steal Peter's power and as soon he did that he faded into the background and sat around waiting for {{spoiler|Sylar to kill him}}.
* The Replicators from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''. Since most of them are machines made out of Lego blocks, they have no personality whatsoever. [[Grey Goo|All they do is multiply]]. And they just. Won't. Stay. Dead. Though this changed when the show introduced the Human Form Replicators (including the [[Stargate Atlantis|Asurans]]), which actually had personalities and in some cases became recurring characters. Some were even somewhat [[Anti-Villain|sympathetic]].
* The [[God of Evil|First Evil]] from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. This gets bonus points for being an [[Informed Ability]]; we are told repeatedly it cannot be fought directly, and yet does damned little in the onscreen villainy department.
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** Indeed. The original outcome was for Sting to be pinned by fast count thanks to Nick Patrick's interference, therefore creating a valid reason for the match to be restarted by [[Bret Hart]], who was one of the hottest commodities in wrestling at the time and was making his big debut in WCW at the time. It is rumored that [[Hulk Hogan]] bribed Patrick, a notoriously corrupt ref, to intentionally slow down his count so that the main reason for restarting the match and giving the victory to Sting would be null and void. This created a great backstage controversy that basically killed all of the momentum [[Bret Hart]] had in his entrance to WCW, which was supposed to be the last major blow against the then-WWF to kill WCW's chief rival for good. However, thanks to the bullshit pulled backstage by Hogan and his little clique, among other things, the WWF was able to rally itself going into 1998 and ultimately crush WCW at the end of the Monday Night Wars.
** The capper was that when Sting slapped on the Scorpion Deathlock, Hogan never tapped out. Supposedly, Hogan was yelling "I quit" but none of the cameras or mics picked this up. After almost two years of dominating WCW and nine months of building up Sting as the [[Badass]] savior of WCW, seeing the villainous leader of the nWo giving up in agony against Sting should have been a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] for WCW but it instead signaled what was going to happen to the company later on.
* Michelle McCool gets this, in large part due to being a [[Creator's Pet]] because of her relationship with [[The Undertaker]]. The worst is likely the Piggie James angle - she spent months running down Mickie James all building up to Mickie beating her and taking the Women's Championship... then Michelle won it back about two weeks later and has had no problems with Mickie since. It didn't help that "Piggie" James spent most of the feud getting the crap beaten out of her and being mocked about her weight. Being hated is a [[Rudo]]'s job but they are supposed to get properly punished to please the fans that now hate them.
** Though when she started feuding with [[Beth Phoenix]], [[Kelly Kelly]] and Natalya her wins and losses were more even, along with Layla.
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* The Necrons from ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' were introduced as a faction of [[Skele-Bot 9000|skeletal androids]] with [[Omnicidal Maniac|a grudge against organic life]] and that was pretty much all they did: [[Crush! Kill! Destroy!|kill, kill, kill]] without any sort of personality, [[The Voiceless|much less dialogue]]. Their 5th Edition codex, however, [[Retcon|added]] a more detailed backstory to the army (albeit one very similar to ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'''s Tomb Kings), so while the average Necron warrior might be [[Soulless Shell|a mindless drone]] [[Came Back Wrong|after so many millennia of being repeatedly killed and repaired]], the ruling caste consists of actual characters with quirks and motivations beyond "kill all humans." As always, there's debate whether the new background is better or worse than the Necrons being a race of mysterious, silent killers.
** The Tyranids suffer from this to an extent. They're a [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] that shows up, eats everything on a planet and uses the bio-mass to make more Tyranids to repeat the process on the next world. Certainly dangerous, certainly terrifying, but they're essentially animals. The most nuance to their backstory is the suggestion that they're attacking our galaxy because something ''even worse'' is chasing them.
* Leviathan, from the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' supplement Elder Evils, is a serpent made of the leftover chaos of the world. If it wakes up, the world will cease to exist. Interestingly enough, it's [[Chaotic Neutral]], not evil - destroying the world is simply what it ''does''. The campaign layout provided has the "good ending" condition being putting it back to sleep, not killing it, as it's literally thousands of kilometres long and hence not capable of being fought by human-sized characters. Besides, killing it might cause it to destroy the world in its death throes. And if that didn't happen, its death might still irreparably damage the balance of order and chaos and destroy the world anyhow.
** The Terrasque is similar in most respects.
* The [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] of the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' tend to be treated similarly, but then again, the manifestation of any of them was explicitly a sign of the apocalypse.
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* The title characters of the ''[[Overlord]]'' games are meant to be classic stereotypical [[Evil Overlord|Evil Overlords]] and thinly-veiled [[Lord of the Rings|Sauron]] [[Captain Ersatz|copycats]]. While the characters are often doing evil and the players do get to determine how evil they are, it's really [[Evil Chancellor]] Gnarl that [[Card-Carrying Villain|carries their villain cards]] for the [[Silent Protagonist|Silent Protagonists]].
** What makes it worse is that, in the entire time you're trying to build yourself up as the [[Villain Protagonist|incarnation of evil]], you spend the entire time fighting heroes... Who are now the corrupted embodiments of various sins, so you're not even being THAT effective a bad guy. While it could be said that by defeating them you prove you are the "most evil", the [[Karma Meter]] in the game basically sways between (very!) benevolent dictator and [[Omnicidal Maniac]]. At least in the sequel, the "hideously evil" path means you have to slaughter everyone in the villages you took over while the "domination" path meant magical [[Mind Control]].
* The [[Final Boss]] and ultimate threat of ''[[Battle Moon Wars]]'' is {{spoiler|a devil}}. Yeah, that's it. Doesn't help that it's quite the [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]]. They could have at least given it ''a name''. Also, as the game is a [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]], it also falls victim to "More powerful than anyone they've faced before!" Syndrome.
* Zeromus from ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' wants to destroy all life on the Blue Planet. There's some handwaved justification that it's so the Lunarians can move in, but none of the other Lunarians want this, so it's still pretty pointless.
** Exdeath from ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' is basically this, his sole purpose being to pose a menacing threat in an otherwise lighthearted game. He wants to use THE VOID to [[Take Over the World]] because, really, he can. Because he was spawned from an evil tree.
** And of course, who could forget Necron from ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', the game's [[Final Boss]] who comes ''right out of left field'', having received virtually no build up beforehand, has no personality beyond being a evil, destructive demon, and wants to return the entire world to a state of nothingness because he thinks that's the ideal state of things for some reason.
*** The following games' [[Final Boss]], Yu Yevon of ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', is an interesting take on this since he's a Generic Doomsday Villain minus the "villain" part. He's said to be neither good nor evil: he lives only to keep summoning, which is what is perpetuating the cycle of Sin. Unlike the above examples, not only does he have no personality, he has no ''voice''. Or ''face'' for that matter!
* The Archdemon and darkspawn of ''[[Dragon Age]]'' are a rampaging force of nature, but they frame a backdrop for more complex and nuanced character conflicts. Only after confronting the antagonists native to Fereldin can the player wrap up the overarching invasion-of-evil epic.
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* Several of the villains in the ''Kirby'' series, like Nightmare, Dark Matter and Zero, Drawcia, and Necrodeus are this, being villains who attack Kirby's homeworld with little to no motivation or characterization to go with it.
* Odio in ''[[Live a Live]]'' is a reincarnating force of destruction. At any point in time there would be a hero to rise up, Odio will manifest during that time, causing terror, death, and annihilation, and directly oppose the hero. Odio will always bear a similar-sounding name that fits with that time period (such as Odi Iou for [[Jidai Geki|feudal Japan]] or Odie Oldbright for late 20th century America), making him easy to spot for the player, but the idea is that while the heroes may consistently defeat Odio, it will always rise up again in some other time. {{spoiler|...Except no, [[Subverted Trope|he isn't that at all]]-he's actually the mind of [[Fallen Hero]] Oersted, who has [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|very well-defined motives]]. The reason he opposes the protagonists, as it turns out, is because he takes umbrage at their [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|idealism]] and wants to prove a point to himself.}}
* While the reapers of ''[[Mass Effect]]'' always have had shades of this, having next to no characterization besides Sovereign and Harbinger, the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] of ''[[Mass Effect]]'' and ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' respectively, it was heavily implied that whatever motivated the reapers was something organic lifeforms could not hope to comprehend. When their motivation was revealed at the Climax of ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'', it pushed them into this trope. Apparently, the reason the reapers exterminate all spacefaring civilizations to a man ever 50,000 years is to {{spoiler|prevent the creation artificial intelligences- known as synthetics in the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' galaxy-which would ultimately kill all organic life in the galaxy.}} Beyond making next to no sense on multiple levels, this motivation contradicted practically everything the previous games had established about {{spoiler|synthetics}} in subtext. and felt extremely out of place in the setting, and more like a [[Hand Wave]] for the [[Sadistic Choice]] that was [[Mass Effect 3]]'s ending. The fact that this motivation was literally related to the player in the last five minutes also doesn't help.
* While Ganondorf himself is more into [[Take Over the World|conquest]], some other [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] are evil for evil's sake (''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages|The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]]''' Onox, ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass|The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass]]''' Bellum, ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks|The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks]]''' Malladus, etc...).
* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'' ''Nightfall'', Warmarshall Varesh wants to wake a dark god and its legion of demons, unleash Torment upon the world, and bring about eternal night and suffering because ... [[And Then What?|hmm]].
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** Pretty much every evil character in ''[[MS Paint Adventures]]'' total is in it [[For the Evulz]].
** And then His killing spree of the Trolls was out of [[Unstoppable Rage|pure anger]] after {{spoiler|Jade dies again}}.
* [[Goblins]] has Kore, a legendary Dwarven [[Light Is Not Good|Paladin]] who kills anybody even vaguely connected to the [[
* The Snarl from ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]''. Not a major player in the story, but ready to obliterate everything if it ever gets loose.
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** Most of the Legion of Doom henchmen assembled in the third season, because there's way too many of them and too little time for them to get much characterization.
*** Also, there's Doomsday himself. Even with the ability to talk in full sentences, he can't escape being this trope.
* A few of the ''[[Sushi Pack]]'' villains fall into this, most notably the Titanium Chef, who wants to spread chaos throughout the world for no other reason than he has [[Tome of Eldritch Lore|a book that tells him how]].
* ''My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic'' has King Sombra, the [[Big Bad]] of the Season 3 premiere. He's built up as a huge threat to the Crystal Empire, and is revealed to have set up an intricate security system to prevent anypony from getting the Crystal Heart. But seeing as he's become a dark force of nature, his characterization is nonexistent whenever he shows up, especially in comparison to the show's previous villains. There is barely any backstory or motivations for him to speak of, and he actually has only ''five'' lines of dialogue in the entire two-parter, none of them being spent on any meaningful interaction with the other characters.
* ''[[Megas XLR]]'' featured many of these as one-shot villains, most notably Ender, who existed to "end" things, and Gurrkek the Planet-Killer.
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