User talk:DocColress

Well, I decided that it's probably for the best that I set up some sort of topic where potential examples are discussed for the Complete Monster trope given it's controversial nature, so I was thinking about simply making a big one here assuming you don't mind of course. If you do, I'll think of something else. Since I've had an admittedly bad habit of adding examples that I feel count without any discussion, I'd like to be more diplomatic about future additions since I quite like discussions and getting more involved with others in this community.

But since I don't want this to be an empty topic, I'd like to get it to use for just one minor example for now since I'd hate to waste your time. Yesterday, I had a bit of a Disney movie marathon with some cousins of mine, and that got me to wonder about a potential example I'd like to run by you. Specifically, the candidate is Stromboli from Pinocchio. Now I feel a bit silly about suggesting someone who ISN'T that terrifying Coachman, but due to this site's more lenient (But still firm) views on the trope I think I can make a case for him. Now admittedly, he's MUCH lower key than the Coachman, and the fact that his evil is directed only to one character (Pinocchio, as you know) hurts his chances. But I think it's the moral nature of what he does to Pinocchio that I feel could make him a contender for the role, though admittedly far outclassed by the Coachman.

Who is Stromboli?: Stromboli is a traveling puppet-master who puts on shows for money. Nothing too heinous here... yet. However, whenever he realizes that he could make a fortune off of Pinocchio for being a living puppet, his truly unpleasant qualities surface.

What does he do?: He decides to let Pinocchio star in his puppet show to see how much money he could make off of a puppet who needs no strings to move. He at first comes off as amusing and jovial, but a bit of his true nature slips out whenever Pinocchio trips and falls at the beginning of the show. He reacts by grabbing him, then yelling and threatening him (And his body language seems to suggest that he may have been considering inflicting physical harm on him as well) before realizing that the audience was entertained by his screw-up. The show proved to be successful, and Stromboli is pleased by the huge amount of money he earned from that night's show. Once again, he acts very jovial and friendly at first, but when Pinocchio goes to leave and tell his father Gepetto about what happened that night, Stromboli grabs Pinnochio and locks him in a birdcage. It's here where we see Stromboli's cruel and unpleasant side come out: he reveals to Pinocchio that he's far too profitable to be let go and says that he'll tour the world while making more and more money off of him. And once Pinocchio gets too old to perform, Stromboli will kill him and use him as firewood. Once Pinocchio starts to freak out upon hearing this, Stromboli simply responds by yelling at him to shut up then threatening him with physical violence before leaving to drive the horses pulling the cart, laughing to himself as he imagines the future influx of cash heading his way. While he comes off as silly and hammy as well, he isn't played for laughs and is more of a Laughably Evil villain whose deeds are taken seriously.

Is he heinous by the standards of the story?: This is where I think it gets tricky. The Coachman is a lot worse than Stromboli, there's absolutely no debate there. However, I'd say Stromboli would be a close second simply because he doesn't have the Coachman's resources available to him. And out of the five antagonists shown in the movie, I'd say he handily beats out three of them: Honest John and Gideon (two conmen who get Pinocchio roped in with Stromboli and help the Coachmen with collecting boys, but don't count at all due to being horrified by the Coachman's plot and are only helping him because they're intimidated by him) as well as Monstro the whale (who also doesn't count at all due to being a wild animal, and only chases Pinocchio and Geppeto down at the film's climax because they lit a fire in him, which pretty much provoked him into violence). Unlike Honest John and Gideon who are shown to have standards when committing illegal acts, Stromboli has no problem whatsoever with putting a child into slavery and killing him at the end, as long as he makes a good amount of cash doing so.

Any Freudian Excuse?: Nope, he's simply a greedy asshole who is willing to do whatever it takes to make some money.

Verdict: I'd say he arguably counts. Yeah, he may pale in comparison to the Coachman, but the fact that he's willing to enslave and kill a little boy speaks volumes about his character and helps him stand out among the other villains shown in the movie who either have standards or are a mindless animal.

I'm not sure about Stromboli getting any write-up for the Disney page unless you can propose a good one, but he actually is already mentioned on the film's YMMV:

• Stromboli qualifies as well. Even if he is a puppet, Pinocchio is still a child. How do you threaten to keep him caged, exploit him, and then murder him by chopping him into firewood after you're done with him, and live with yourself?

And yes, I think he is a qualifier or at least contender. I have an Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Characters, and the writer talks about what makes both Stromboli and the Coachmen almost equally heinous (I say "almost" because even the book flat out states that the Coachman is the worse of the two). The two things that stand out about Stromboli is how for one he's the anti-Geppetto, an artist or creator who does what he does for profit rather than the art of it and is more into disposing of his work once he's done using it rather than preserving his creations. And for another thing, it mentions how horrifying it is that he seems so friendly with Pinocchio, almost like a second father figure to him, before completely betraying his trust and revealing his true monstrous nature. The betrayal of trust is an even greater horror than his actual murderous intentions and display of venom towards Pinocchio. As the book says: his "friend" is not a friend at all and very evidently never has been. It also says Stromboli's power as a villain is, despite being on-screen for such a short amount of time, he comes off as a genuine person rather than a straight-forward cardboard thug character. He appears friendly, generous, and jovial only to be revealed as greed, mean, and downright murderous, which is the film's first "loss of innocence" moment. The book caps it off by saying "Stromboli is a character from nightmare: such characters are often found in the real world, too, which makes Stromboli all the more terrifying." So yes, that's pretty convincing that he'd count in this trope.

So, looks like I didn't make a fool of myself for once! I'll come up with a write-up later as I have a lot of other stuff I'd like to do at the moment, but thanks to this Encyclopedia you mentioned, I think I may have even more of a justification for asking about him!

And I apologize if I come off as annoying or anything when I come to you with questions regarding this trope, I'd just rather get other people's input given the controversial nature of this trope. I'll keep suggestions down to a minimum, and only make suggestions maybe once a week if I feel like it.

You could use some of what I said the encyclopedia stated as reference for what to put in the write-up, BTW. As far as Disney movie villains go, the only other one currently not on the trope page that I could see qualifying as a CM is Maleficent, but she might be a harder case to make because of things like Kingdom Hearts (where she fails to measure up to the heinous standard set by Xehanort and has a few, though small, redeeming features) and that damn Angelina Jolie movie that rewrote her entire character and story. Oh, and I also think a case could be made for Glenn Close's Cruella DeVille, which is sort of strange since that character's animated counterpart doesn't even remotely qualify.

No, don't you go thinking you're being annoying. I really REALLY appreciate people like you coming to me with questions or proposals and stuff like that. Helps keep the tropes clean and gives clarification. A minimum would be nice, but it doesn't half to be so little as once a week. You can contact me for whatever, whenever. :)

I think I'll get on that write-up tonight. But as for Maleficent... you're right, she is a tricky example indeed. I mean, within the movie Sleeping Beauty she comes off as pure evil and not only curses a baby to die purely out of spite and pettiness, but is also responsible for a lot of the kingdom's problems in general. She's feared by other characters in the story, and within the movie isn't shown to be redeemable at all. She seems to like her raven assistant, but I'm not sure if that would be a redeeming quality or not. But then again, there's the fact that within other Disney properties she doesn't come anywhere close to meeting this status. Given that not only is she shown to be a tragic hero in that live-action movie (Boy oh BOY do I hate the direction they took in that movie... but that's neither here nor there) but also shows a few noble traits in Kingdom Hearts (I'm specifically thinking in 2 where she's willing to hold off a swarm of Heartless to let Sora and co. get to Xemnas) seems to show that others view her as redeemable, or at least not pure evil.

But then again, I'm personally more inclined to list her as an example because her situation reminds me a lot of Sweeney Todd in how in the original stories he was shown to be a monster, but was written as more sympathetic in later adaptations. Or Ganondorf, who becomes a lot more sympathetic and even noble in Wind Waker but still qualified as a monster in not only the earlier Ocarina of Time, but in Twilight Princess which was made later and took place in another timeline. When I really look at it, I can't see why we couldn't list her as an example for the original Sleeping Beauty and mention that it was with later adaptations where she started moving away from Complete Monster status. I'll admit that I'm not fully sure if she should qualify, but I'm leaning towards a yes.

As for Cruella... well, not sure how much I can help there since I haven't seen either live action Dalmatians movie. If she didn't meet the cut in the animated original despite being hell-bent on stealing and butchering tons of puppies for the purpose of making fur coats and going as far as to hunt them down when they escaped from her, I'm not sure if she'd qualify in the live-action films. Now I did some research regarding the live-action movies and it seems that she remains hellbent on killing puppies and only stopped because of some sort of therapy that became undone later... but I'm still not quite sure if I'd say yes to her simply because I'm lacking context. How was she presented in the movies? Were there extremes she took that she didn't in the animated film? I'd rather try to avoid passing judgment on examples from media I'm not familiar with since I don't want to make any uninformed decisions.

I think I'll have to check her relationship with her raven again to see if that counts as Pet the Dog or not. Because otherwise she's at least a borderline example of the trope in the original movie, being The Devil incarnate and heinous by the standards of that world and it's story. In KH she certainly isn't a CM, but then again, Shan Yu most certainly was a CM in his movie but just a Generic Doomsday Villain in KH2. Only Scar and Frollo retained their status. (Oh and I hate how the Maleficent movie turned out too. What the Hell were they even thinking?)

Well we can definitely say that Jolie's Maleficent is nothing like the Disney version. Neither is the one on Once Upon A Time. It's mainly the Disney animated version and how she's used in stuff like House Of Mouse or KH that gets me. Sweeney Todd and Ganon are cases where their incarnations differ, where Maleficent is like Cyrus: he was redeemable elsewhere in the franchise, so him being so in the games universe doesn't seem as unlikely. Does the same hold true for Maleficent? I feel the same as you, really: I lean more towards yes but because the issue is so tricky, I'm not sure she should be listed on the main trope page.

It's mainly for two reasons. One is Glenn Close, while hamming it up, did deliberately play her as 100% devilish and vile. And two is the additions they made to her character in the first film, where she's now seen as the head of a fashion business that Anita works for but has secretly been having her minions abduct animals and take them to a skinner who kills them and skins the fur hides off for Cruella to use as new outfits that she could profit off of, in short, a secret illegal poaching operation. The way this is shown to us is her having a rare Siberian tiger abducted from a zoo, meaning that she's greatly inconvenienced animals and humans for who knows how long just to benefit herself. Out of greed and love for fur fashion in general, not to mention a very clear disgust for animals in general. In the sequel she has been forcibly changed by therapy to be a better person and model citizen, but it gets undone due to a mental breakdown triggered by loud noise, played as Cruella's "true nature" coming back as she remembers who she really is, suggesting that she was never truly redeemable in the long run. Afterwards she frames a guy for dognapping, manipulates said guy's lover into letting her guard down while her minions go after the puppies she's after, tries to have the puppies killed at a skinning factory, and locks the two human protagonists up in a cellar to rot when they intervene. Oh, and she deals out a lot of abuse to her main employee, Alonzo. In general, her character is still very camp but there's notably more menace added to her as well.

So this Cruella is the head of a poaching operation and engages in all sorts of forms of animal cruelty, manipulates and abuses the people around her, and goes to the extent of leaving people to die all to satisfy her greed and lust for money and fur? Eesh, now she's the kind of person I'd consider to be a Complete Monster. Unfortunately I just get that sinking feeling that she'd probably be shot down by the delightful denizens of TV Tropes if she was proposed there, but it seems to me that she meets all criteria: she's as evil as she can be within the standards of the story, is treated as a serious threat by the characters within the story, and has no Freudian excuse or redeeming qualities (And her one redemption was forced and didn't stick). So yeah, I'd be more than happy to welcome her to the Disney section for Complete Monsters!

And I also have a write-up for Stromboli if you're willing to read it!

• Also from the same movie, we have traveling puppeteer Stromboli. A seemingly friendly and jovial man with a bit of a temper, Stromboli allowed Pinocchio to perform in his puppet show because he thought that a puppet with no strings attached could make him a fortune. Having been proven right, he celebrates later that night with Pinocchio who is happy to have been able to help this new friend of his, and can't wait to tell his father Gepetto about what happened that night. It's here however when we see Stromboli's true nature: having found Pinocchio to be very profitable that night, he never had any intention of letting him go and instead tosses him into a birdcage and reveals to the horrified boy that he intends to travel the world and exploit him for profit. And when he gets too old for more performances, Stromboli intends on killing him and using his remains for firewood. Despite his small amount of screentime, Stromboli is able to establish himself as a disturbingly realistic villain: he's able to come off as genuine and affable at first which allows him to take advantage of a naïve little boy, only to betray his trust when he reveals the true monster within.

It sounds good to me when I read it, though I'm afraid it's a bit lengthy (It's a common thing with me, I tend to make wordy Monster entries so I can make sure readers know why they qualify). That being said though, I feel it's because I wanted to include that great bit from the book about how Stromboli comes off as a realistic manipulative sociopath: charming and friendly at first, until you really get to know him and see the monster he truly is!

Yes, pretty much. To me, it really comes down to how she treats animals and people, and the severity of her treatment and actions. In the animated version, she was only a threat to animals but just a petty Jerkass to all the human characters (Roger, Anita, Horace and Jasper), and while trying to make a coat out of 99 puppies is sick and wrong, it's ultimately still standard cartoon villainy as opposed to truly heinous. Live Action Cruella uses, abuses, and inconveniences humans and animals in pretty big ways, and the deeds coupled with the performance really sells what a loathsome piece of work she is. I'm reminded of another character listed here as a Complete Monster despite having no body count: Mr. Potter of It's A Wonderful Life. He managed to be a CM purely by being in the business of inconveniencing or flat out ruining the lives of others and being a despicable human being to every single person he interacted with, and this was reflected in the actor's performance that made him truly seem like The Devil incarnate. Same case with Glenn Close as Cruella. Of course TV Tropes would veto her because they associate Cruella in general with Laughably Evil standard villainy, but here she matches the criteria. Also, the main female human in the sequel pretty much takes the stance that some people are incapable of changing because she never buys Cruella's rehabilitation, saying that someone capable of doing the things she did is just rotten to the core beyond salvation. And this proves to be true, so yeah, she counts.

No, lengthy write-ups are good at describing the vileness and heinous nature of the villain! I'll proofread it and if you haven't put it up yet, I will. As for Cruella, I'll do that write-up!

Sorry for not thanking you earlier, I was going to post Stromboli's writeup but I got sidetracked before flat out falling asleep! The Cruella entry looks great as well! But I've noticed that you've been going ahead with putting up examples that shouldn't be listed in the subpage talk section for various works. It seems like it'll be a pretty big project, you mind if I help out?

You're welcome and thanks! :) Well since I'm an admin, I was planning on doing it myself, but if you're to help, what do you have in mind?

I think I can handle a number of the Video Game pages, as well as Western Animation to a point. Not quite as sure with Anime, but I can also add non-examples to the Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood and Manga, I'm not familiar with the 2003 anime) and One Piece. Heck, I'll do a couple of Disney ones too.

How about you let me finish my contributions to the discussion pages first before you get around to it, just so we don't bump into each other. If I've forgotten any, you can add them. Though, out of curiosity, which particular characters do you have in mind?

A couple of Disney examples I've been wanting to stress as non-monstrous are Gaston (I remember him popping up as an example back in the old days of TV Tropes) Mother Gothel, and CLU on the Disney pages (Atoning for old sins of mine), pretty much everyone not named Ghetsis in the Pokémon page (For the mainstream games at least, also Ardos and Lovrina in XD in regards for spinoffs), the Baron from one of the One Piece movies, and Sadist Show characters in general for Western Animation (As in characters from the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park).

Hmmm, I might end up naming them once I reach those discussions, but if you feel you want to make edits, you could. Would you like for me to notify you once I'm done doing my part?

Sure! I'm actually doing some other things myself in the meantime, so I'll be more than happy to wait for you to finish up!

Aaaand I'm finished! Feel free to do contributions and edits of your own now if you so choose.

So over the past week, I was able to play Infamous: Second Son and I believe I may have found a potential contender, a woman named Brooke Augustine! The key word however is "believe", because she's a bit of an odd case. I'll go over it more in the effort post.

Who is Brooke Augustine?: Augustine is the head of an oppressive government organization which captures super-powered people known as Conduits, despite being one herself. She not only partakes in the oppression of people like herself, but normal humans as well.

What does she do?: When we first see Augustine, a security truck holding three Conduit prisoners crashes at a Native American reservation where protagonist Delsin Rowe lives. After Delsin who is a Conduit himself accidentally obtains smoke powers from one of the escapees, he stumbles upon Augustine as she apprehends the escaped Conduit by encasing him in concrete. It's here where we see Augustine's sadistic nature already on display: due to the fact that she suspects Delsin of being a Conduit sympathizer, she tortures him for information by growing concrete spikes from his bones to where they stick out of his legs, and even if he admits to being a Conduit himself, she won't believe him and subjects the rest of his tribe to this torture. But unlike what she did to Delsin, she grows concrete spikes IN their organs and flesh, which is shown to be very painful and will slowly kill them unless she removes them, and she absolutely refuses to do so, putting Delsin on a mission to absorb her concrete powers so he can remove them himself.

Later on it's revealed that she intentionally let loose the Conduit prisoners from the truck, intentionally allowing them to put innocent people in danger during the ongoing "War on Conduits" that she created, simply because her organization was doing too good of a job capturing conduits, having even gone out of her way to train two of the conduits to hone their powers and make them more dangerous.

Is she heinous by the standards of the story?: Definitely. She not only keeps humans in Seattle under an oppressive military regime and is willing to torture and slowly kill people who won't sell out one of their own, but also intentionally staged an escape where she let loose dangerous superpowered humans for the sake of keeping her organization running. Everyone who isn't one of her troops loathes her for good reason.

Any Freudian Excuse or redeeming qualities?: This is what I mentioned by Augustine being a weird case. It turns out that when her powers awoke in a past confrontation with a highly dangerous Conduit, normal people became terrified of Conduits and would murder them in broad daylight. Because of how Conduits were treated by people, Augustine decided that Conduits couldn't be able to co-exist peacefully alongside humans, which is the real reason why she captures them and is secretly trying to protect them... or so she claims.

Really, this is where it gets tricky. Despite her claims that she's trying to save Conduits from people, she's actually making their situation worse: whenever she captures a Conduit, they're kept locked away and are subject to torture and all sorts of inhumane experiments. And hell, the first Conduit she subjected to this fate was a little girl who trusted her! However, she also genuinely believes that this is the only way to protect her fellow Conduits as well, but is this redeemable? I know some Complete Monsters can genuinely believe that they're in the right such as Frollo or Admiral Akainu, so would this go for Augustine? The main reason why I don't think that she's a proper Well-Intentioned Extremist is that her actions speak far louder than her words: experimenting and torturing the people you claim to protect shows that her priorities are incredibly skewed, and there's also the fact that she knowingly doomed an entire Native American tribe to die and takes sadistic pleasure in growing concrete in people's bodies.

Verdict: I personally argue that she qualifies. It's really hard to sympathize with someone who takes a lot of pleasure in hurting others, intentionally causes more disasters to keep her little government project running, and experiments on and tortures the people she claims to care about and protects.

Okay, this one actually calls to mind a very recent example of a villain who is a Complete Monster: Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. A key exchange that defines his character and motives is when he claims that he has been fighting for his ape brethren so that they may be strong together, but Caesar counters it with the truth of the matter: "Koba fight for Koba." Similarly, it would seem that "Augustine is fighting for Augustine." She may claim that all of her actions are done for her fellow conduits own good, but when she constantly treats them like either tools or yesterday's garbage, arguably giving them worse treatment than what she's allegedly protecting them from, she shows that what really motivates her is the desire to have absolute power over all these extraordinary beings (on top of normal human beings) so that they can all seem like lesser beings compared to her. It's I Just Want to Be Special taken to a warped, disgusting extreme, coupled with being a sadist and a bully. Heck, TV Tropes actually lists her claims of altruism coupled with her deeds towards the people she's supposed to be altruistic towards as Insane Troll Logic. She's not protecting humans from conduits, nor is she protecting conduits from humans: she's screwing both over in order to elevate herself. So yes, this one's definitely a keeper.

I'll get her write-up posted then! And man, I need to go see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, I've heard nothing but good things about that movie.

But anyway, have you made a decision regarding Maleficent's inclusion on the Disney page?

Yes, you gotta see it while it's still out! It was phenomenal: easily the best movie to have "Planet of the Apes" in the title.

I lean more towards no, honestly. I think Maleficent as an example is a pure YMMV thing that shouldn't be on the main page. The YMMV page of the film has this: "Complete Monster: Maleficent could be viewed as one, since she is the mistress of all evil!" and her possible status as a CM is also mentioned in her entry on the Magnificent Bastard film page. And really, that's all that's needed for this wiki.

The main reason I can't include her is that her most truly heinous on-screen action is her very first one: cursing Aurora as a baby to die by her sixteenth birthday. All her subsequent on-screen actions don't really go beyond standard villainy. She blasts her mooks for their incompetence, sends her raven to gather information, lures Aurora to her doom and then mocks the fairies, abducts Philip and locks him in the dungeon while taunting him, and then does everything in her power to try to kill Philip before she herself is killed. That's pretty much it: all Kick the Dog and things that villains do. So I think Maleficent is one of those cases where the character would be clearly a CM if we saw more of them on-screen and what earned them their in-universe reputation, but what we actually see is very limited.

I'd say that's pretty fair.

And I'm getting off topic as this is more towards the "NOT a monster" discussion pages, but freaking EDGAR of all people was actually listed as one?! Yikes, I underestimated the abuse this trope got in the past!

Thanks. I added why on the Discussion for Disney CM. Might also need to do the same for Chernabog, who's a similar case: virtually The Devil, yet doesn't do anything notably heinous in his screentime - or in his case, much of anything.

Sadly, yes. It went like: "Edgar, according to some fans. Yes, he's one of the least threatening villains in Disney history, but his intended victims are a family of adorable cats." To which it was correctly rebuked with "But you can see he never tries to kill them. Even when they come back, he just tries to send them away. Justified because he thinks that Cats Have Nine Lives. Plain and simple, Edgar is probably one of the least Complete Monster-y Big Bads in Disney." And really, when even his worst action (nearly skewering O'Malley with a pitchfork) was accidental, you know he far from qualifies for a trope about the worst of the worst.

I think the Disney CM page is pretty much finished in terms of pre-existing Disney material now.

I'd say so, there's no one who I feel really qualifies that isn't on the page yet. I do have my eye on Yokai from the upcoming Big Hero 6, but that's just a future potential example anyway.

Yes, Yokai's the one to look out for this Fall.

Also saw you found the "example" of Edward on the Camp Lazlo YMMV. I actually didn't delete that one myself because I was waiting to see when/if anyone would notice it. When it was brought up on the trope clean-up thread on TV Tropes, it was called "the worst example I've seen" for good reason. XD

I have to say that it's hard for an entry to make me cringe, but that one... I may not have seen the show since middle school, but I know that one asshole moment in one episode that was likely played for laughs given the show's nature does NOT qualify you. At all. Not sure if this is even an accurate comparison, but it reminded me a bit of the time whenever some people kept insisting that Mr. Krabs or even freaking Squidward met the qualifications and got into a serious edit war over it.

It was totally Played for Laughs. He wasn't even a major factor in the episode's plot: the main characters were just hanging for their lives, Raj's hand could've slipped at any moment causing them to fall to their deaths, so Edward (who's among many onlookers in the scene) pulls a bullhorn out of hammer space and shouts "GO FOR IT, RAJ!" It was such a brief moment too, yet somehow someone managed to abuse both Complete Monster AND Moral Event Horizon out of it!

I remember that, the whole "Mr Krabs is TOTALLY played seriously enough to count!" argument. Similar case to people arguing that Peter Griffin or anyone from Family Guy counted. Honestly, looking back at the History on this wiki shows how misused and abused the trope used to be on TV Tropes, it's downright embarrassing. While I don't agree with the overtly anal, heavy-handed, and restricting approach TV Tropes has taken to "repairing" it, I have the idiots who could not seem to grasp what the trope was meant to entail to blame for making it needing of repairs in the first place.

I think to get our minds off of silly non-examples and the like, I'll propose a very definite one who I feel a bit bad about not remembering until recently. Now from my Junior and Senior years of High School Literature, I read about all sorts of lovely villains such as Bob Ewell, Napoleon, as well as Abigail Williams and Danforth. This woman however I believe sickened me more than any of those people and for good reason as she is basically everything wrong with the sex-trafficking industry all bundled up in a loathsome human form. Her name is Mumtaz, and she is from a book called Sold.

Who is Mumtaz?: Mumtaz is a sadistic and greedy madam who runs a brothel called The Happiness House in an Indian red-light district.

What does she do?: Hoo boy. Whenever the innocent, naïve thirteen year-old protagonist Lakshmi is tricked into going with a mysterious man from her Nepalese village down to India, she doesn't quite know what she's been signed up for until Mumtaz leads her to a room where a rather gross old man paid for her sexual services is lying in wait. Whenever she realizes what exactly is in store for her, she fights back when he makes an advance and runs away, only for Mumtaz to chase her down and lock her in a small room where she's starved and savagely beaten unless Lakshmi submits. She refuses, and this treatment goes on for about five days until Mumtaz gets fed up with waiting and drugs her up so she can make her "please" her customers.

There's also the fact that Mumtaz has Lakshmi and the other girls at the house up to their eyeballs in debt that she forces them to make up for with their services. But of course she has no intention of letting them go as long as they can make money for her, as she adds to their debt buy making them pay for condoms, medicine, and other things and basically keeps them stuck in their situation for good. There are a couple of workers there who are there of their own free will and can leave at any time, such as a sickly mother named Pushpa, though their situations aren't much better. For example: Pushpa works at the brothel so she can take care of her young son and infant daughter, and is constantly in agony due to her constant sickness. She needs a day off to rest that Mumtaz of course denies her, threatening to kick her family out onto the street if she does since that's a day where she isn't earning any money. And once Pushpa gets too sick to work any longer, Mumtaz makes good on her threat and orders her and her son to leave and never come back. She does offer to take care of her baby for her... though it's far from noble as she wants to make her a prostitute when she becomes old enough.

And then, there's another thing that I feel truly and irrevocably put her up in this status that still gives me the shivers to this day: the most horrifying fate she has in store for employees who try to escape or receive gifts from clients. For this punishment, she has the brothel's cook grind up chili-peppers into a spicy mixture that Mumtaz dips a stick into. She then takes it and SHOVES IT UP THE GENITALS of whichever girl "needed to be taught a lesson." I apologize for the sudden caps, but still, how sick do you have to be subject someone to that kind of pain and not regret it in the slightest? Thankfully, she ends up getting arrested as the girls from the brothel are saved after a successful police raid at the end of the book.

Is she heinous by the standards of the story?: Do you really have to ask? While other unpleasant characters are in the book such as the Lakshmi's greedy stepfather who sells her into prostitution and the guy who made the offer and took her down to India, Mumtaz eclipses them and everyone else in terms of heinousness.

Any Freudian Excuse or Redeeming Qualities?: Hell. No. She is incredibly cruel and savage towards the girls and is properly feared and loathed by the girls she has at the Happiness House. There IS a brief moment where Lakshmi feels that she loves her after being nursed back to health after being afflicted with a disease, but she was delirious and not in her right mind at the time, and she continues to fear her afterwards. Mumtaz does have one loyal worker who will rat out any of the girls who are trying anything funny, but I don't remember her and Mumtaz having a good relationship or anything, she's more or less a crony of sorts and doesn't get a lot of characterization if memory serves. And while she gives medicine to girls who are feeling sick and won't have them work if they contract HIV, it's pragmatic villainy as she doesn't want to lose customers and views these sick workers as being a hindrance to her business. And leaving the girls to die in the streets of a red light district in a country that isn't kind to prostitutes is hardly a redeeming quality either.

The Verdict?: I'd honestly be surprised if she didn't qualify, she exploits children for profit by putting them into prostitution for god's sake, and happily makes money off of them without caring about them in the slightest.

And this is my last example for a while. Truth be told I would have suggested her around the time I bought up Augustine (Who I feel I need to do a re-write on as her entry is HUGE), I just wasn't thinking about her until now. As for now, Mumtaz, Stromboli, and Augustine were the only characters I wanted to present for the time being and I'll likely be gone for a while unless I take in another form of media with another of these delightful creatures in it.

She does all THAT...for profit? For personal gain? With a mix of straight up cruelty in there as well? Say no more, this is a VERY easy keep.

Had a feeling.

OK, Milked1992 needs to be straightened out in regards to how this trope works on this Wiki. He AGAIN tried to remove Scroop from the page and also tried to remove live action Cruella, probably because they weren't "sufficiently heinous" enough. Maybe by TV Tropes standards, but not here.

If it happens again, I'll block him for a little while and give him a warning.

You can do the same, since you now have sysop powers.

Oh, didn't see that feature. How do I do it?

Go to the page of the User you want block, look on the sidebar, and you'll a block user option.

You'll be given a list of options to block a user for, like length of time, whether they can edit their talk page or not, etc.

Check the options you want, then block the user.

You can also use this to change the length of the block.

OK, thanks for letting me know. ^^

Have you seen The Huntsman: Winter's War? It's the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, and I feel it pushes Queen Ravenna straight into CM territory. She was very close in the first film, but just barely fell short due to being shown in a tragic light. In the sequel, all mitigating factors are long gone and she's well and truly beyond the pail. Her absolute worst crime is murdering her sister Freya's baby daughter by forcing the baby's father to burn her alive in her cradle, for no apparent reason other than to destroy her sister's belief in love. She has other new crimes under her belt too, but the above atrocity combined with her crimes in the first film really seals the deal.

Just out of curiosity, how familiar are you with the Ace Attorney series? There are around three characters that I think meet the criteria for Complete Monster that haven't been listed yet, though I of course want to hear your thoughts on them. I'm only going to be going over one for now as he always stuck out to me as being among the nastiest of the series' villains and it always bothered me that he was cut back at TV Tropes: Redd White.

Hailing from the first game in the series, Redd White is a CEO who at first seems like a goofy, flamboyant man and comes off as merely obnoxious, but the man has a much darker side to him. In reality, his company Bluecorp is more or less a company that specializes in blackmail: he obtains information on powerful individuals and companies that would ruin them if it got out to the public and uses them to do his bidding. Many of the people he has blackmailed have committed suicide, which Redd couldn't give a damn about as long as he gets to line his pockets with tons of money and lord it over everyone around him. Whenever the protagonist Phoenix Wright's mentor Mia Fey tries to take his company down, he learns that she's onto him and murders her for her trouble and goes on to create false evidence that makes her kid sister Maya the prime suspect, though he later shifts the blame onto Phoenix himself whenever Phoenix confronts him personally. And because Redd has dirt on the chief prosecutor and possibly the Judge himself, he almost succeeds in getting Phoenix acquitted before he's able to make a comeback and present the evidence showing that not only did Redd murder Mia, but that he was responsible for the suicides of many others as well. It should also be noted that in the past, he leaked information that a spirit medium (Who was Mia and Maya's mother) was assisting in the investigation of a murder to the public, destroying not just the medium's reputation, but her entire family name as well.

In conclusion, Redd's crimes consist of blackmailing countless individuals, driving many of those same people to suicide, soiling the good name of a spirit medium clan, murdering a woman who sought to expose his illicit activities, and attempting to pin the murder on her teenage sister and later her apprentice. All in all, he has one hell of a rap sheet, and I'd make the claim that he's up there with the series' nastiest villains (including Manfred von Karma, who he shares the same game with). He lacks any and all redeeming features, as he only cares about himself and the money and power he can aquire, and knows damn well that the law can't touch him and demonstrates it by punching Phoenix and is able to have him put on trial just by his command alone.

I feel he's an easy keep, though I wonder what your stance on him is.

Not sure if blackmail counts as heinous by the standards of Ace Attorney, though. Aside from his one murder and all the suicides, are there any more deaths he's complicit in? Is he aware that his blackmail victims will kill themselves, thus leaving their money up for grabs or something? Small details like that might push beyond just "scumbag" and into CM territory.

From what I remember there was no implication that he was intentionally driving people to suicide to get at money they'd leave behind. Basically, he'd keep people in line so they would be forced to surrender money to him, give him anything he wanted, that sort of thing. I'm not sure if he intentionally drove them to suicide, but he certainly doesn't care that they do it and is implicated as still being responsible for their deaths all the same.

The problem is that suicide is a choice on the person committing it's part. Pointing the finger at the guy who ruined them doesn't sit right with me, even though he is at least partially culpable.

Maybe I'm letting my personal views on suicide get in the way, but the way I view it is that if you antagonize and hurt someone to the point to where they commit suicide to escape the pain you put them through, you're no better than a murderer since they would still be alive if it weren't for what you did to them.

That's a solid point too. If you could do a writeup for this guy, it could probably pass for YMMV, but I'll have to determine if he goes on the main page or not.

Well, Redd DOES have a writeup on the YMMV page of the Phoenix Wright trilogy of Ace Attorney games... but it's a bunch of arguing. The kind of writeup I'd go for will be listed down would go as follows:

• Redd White from Case 1-2 seems like a flamboyant, clownish buffoon on the surface, but in reality is a money-hungry, self-serving, absolutely ruthless weasel of a man who is responsible for the suffering of countless people. His company Bluecorp specializes in digging up dirt on influential people such as celebrities, members of law enforcement, and other such people so Redd can relentlessly hound them to do his bidding for the sake of boosting his ego, ruining their lives to the point to where a number of his blackmail victims have committed suicide. Whenever Phoenix's mentor Mia Fey was in the middle of collecting evidence to take Redd to court with, he caught on to her and savagely murdered her, going on to pin the blame on her teenaged sister Maya and later on, Phoenix himself just on word alone thanks to his connections with law enforcement. Not just responsible for the direct death of a good woman and ultimately responsible for countless other lives lost, Redd also ruined the name of the Fey clan of spirit mediums by leaking information of Mia's mother's involvement with the police to the public. Thanks to his colossal ego and lack of empathy towards anybody else, Redd has ruined countless lives in pursuit of money and power.

Is this good? I feel it's a bit long compared to others on the page, but this is the best I've got if we were to keep him. Funnily enough, he's not only responsible just for these crimes, but for also indirectly corrupting Mia's boyfriend Diego Armando, a former Defense Attorney who turned into a hateful, bitter shell of his former self whenever he learned of her death, causing him to pin the blame on Phoenix for not protecting her. Given that it's indirect, I'm not sure if it would belong on his list of crimes, but I thought it was worth bringing up. :p

From what I've read up from here and elsewhere, Redd seems to be a thoroughly toxic person who radiates that toxicity around towards others and destroys their lives. Though not quite as heinous as other villains like Manfred Von Karma, Kristof Gavin, or Dahlia Hawethorne, I can see him making the cut. At least on YMMV - how's the writeup there "a bunch of arguing"? I'd better check...

I'm a bit frustrated right now because of how crappily CM is getting handled on the Villains Wiki. Ghetsis got cut AGAIN because his off-screen saving of the Shadow Triad's lives is supposedly a clear PetTheDog moment, and G4 Tirek seems to have disappeared too. This is why I'd rather rely on this wiki for clarity on this damn trope.

It was basically people going back and forth about how Redd was not a monster because him murdering Mia and framing Phoenix was justified because he didn't want to be arrested, and other people saying he was one because he wouldn't have to murder Mia and frame Phoenix if he hadn't been up to his eyeballs in awful activities, and saying that him knowingly sending an innocent man likely to his death if he got a guilty verdict was still CM material. I'm going to have to edit it later.

And oh yeah, Villains Wiki's handling of the trope is AWFUL. What I think is worse is that freaking OROCHIMARU has been cut from it, and is a mandated cut there. I really wish I was kidding. Mainly, it's because they say that he has redeeming qualities and actually went as far as to use NON CANON material to disqualify him. Just... just look at his talk page, it's beyond stupid.

I think Redd is either a CM or a 99% one depending on who you ask, but he certainly seems to be close in the trope's territory enough that regarding him as one on this wiki would not be inappropriate.

Oh geez, even TV TROPES hasn't cut Orochimaru from the trope! What the Hell? And to say nothing of the guy who argued that Frollo isn't a CM because of interpretations of him that are flat out untrue based on what's actually there in the movie, all because he seems to share some views disturbingly similar to his own.

So to clarify: Are you okay with Redd going on the main page, or should he just be on the Ace Attorney YMMV page?

And yeah, basically they said that "We're correcting TV Trope's mistake" in regards to Orochimaru (Mainly it's because he chose to help save the world, though he was clearly doing it so he could continue his experiments and not because he had turned good or anything). I think that's what made me ultimately give up on that site. I won't deny that TV Tropes has made some incredibly questionable cuts (Ghetsis, Hopper, Majora, looking at you guys!), but keeping Orochimaru is in no way a mistake.

Are you talking about Weedle Mchairybug?

Yes, that's him. A seriously disturbed individual, that one.

I think Redd is either a CM or a 99% one depending on who you ask, but he certainly seems to be close in the trope's territory enough that regarding him as one on this wiki would not be inappropriate.

Oh geez, even TV TROPES hasn't cut Orochimaru from the trope! What the Hell? And to say nothing of the guy who argued that Frollo isn't a CM because of interpretations of him that are flat out untrue based on what's actually there in the movie, all because he seems to share some views disturbingly similar to his own.

Hey, after looking back on the Pokémon page for Monsters, this may sound incredibly weird but hear me out! Did you ever do the Pokestar Studios segments back on Black 2 or White 2? Because I think I found a potential candidate in the villain of the Mystery Doors of the Magical Land films: Queen Bellelba, an evil sorceress played by the gym leader Sabrina.

From what I remember, her whole thing is that she uses strange doors to trap people in her world, and will drain the life out of them or enslave them, and attempts to do this to the spoiled prince/princess protagonist and already did it to a man turned into her plush doll gatekeeper and reveals that she ultimately has plans to enslave humanity as well.

I know it's weird suggesting someone who ISN'T Ghetsis, but given that unlike the other mains series games' standard villain and Well-Intentioned Extremist villains, Bellelba is an evil witch played dead straight and is a fictional villain within the context of the Pokémon universe as well. So what are your thoughts on her?

Queen Bellelba was actually cited as an example once on TV Tropes before deletion. The thing is, she's one of those cases where it's better to cite her in YMMV rather than give her a writeup. If she's a fictional villain within the context of the Pokemon universe, then she fails the heinous standard when the work features real villains in the Pokemon universe (Ghetsis being featured in this very game, too!) doing heinous shit that effects real people rather than movie characters. So mentioning that Sabrina plays a CM in the Magical Land films is okay for YMMV below Ghetsis' entry, but cannot be on the main trope page for these clear reasons.

Alright then! I can only wonder if we'll ever get someone as bad as Ghetsis in a Pokemon game again. I'm not the type who believes that a Complete Monster makes a work better and I'm sorry if I ever made you think that was my thought process, but I just liked having such a loathsome scumbag to root against, and it's so satisfying breaking Ghetsis at the end of the sequels that I wish we had another villain like him in the series. Yet at the same time, I liking having morally complex villains a bit more.

Speaking of Ghetsis though, is it just me, or is TV Tropes just dead set on keeping ANY incarnation of Ghetsis from qualifying? I remember they cut an example of him that had an apparently huge rapsheet from some fanfiction (I know a lot of fanfiction tends to be garbage, but I think that if he counts there, he ought to at least be a keeper all the same regardless of the work's quality), and to my knowledge his manga counterpart (who sounds a lot nastier than his game counterpart) didn't make it either.

Even if we don't ever get another one, I'd still be satisfied with just Ghetsis being "that one guy" among the main series villains who's just a total asshole for the sake of it, rather than being a more reasonable villain like Giovanni or having warped ideals of the greater good like Archie, Maxie, Cyrus, or Lysandre. Those latter two are the ones who compete with Ghetsis in heinousness, but both are painted as potentially redeemable tragic villains (Cyrus not so much in DP, but certainly in Platinum.)

I'm actually going to be fair to TV Tropes on this one. The fanfic example had a really bad writeup that didn't really tell us much about Ghetsis that we didn't already know, a few new evil deeds aside. And his manga counterpart can't be considered yet on that site because his arc technically hasn't finished - the B2W2 chapter still hasn't concluded. I let manga!Ghetsis stay as an example on this wiki since as of now he totally fits the bill, but it's reasonable to keep it up in the air on TV Tropes 'cause for all we know he could show some redeeming or negating feature like possibly a VillainousFriendship with Colress (though I personally don't see them as much beyond acquaintances as of now, and if Colress is like his game counterpart, he actually despises the guy too).

Fair enough, as I feel that Complete Monsters really can be uninteresting if written wrong (Example: I found the completely irredeemable Unalaq much less interesting than more morally complex villains like Zaheer and Amon. I'm not sure where Kuvira lies on the morality scale as I'm waaaaaay behind on Book 4, but the Hitler and Stalin comparisons I see fly her way from fans aren't really helping her case... or it could be Godwin's Law at work. :p)

I actually genuinely didn't know that the Unova arc of the manga hadn't concluded, I haven't kept up with it in forever. I thought it would be on X and Y by now, so that's a lot more fair then.

Unalaq was not only the dullest main villain on the show, but the dullest main villain in the Avatar universe, period. The series ended to day, and as I thought, Kuvira's definitely not a CM. She showed remorse and even tears towards the end, and is left alive to pay for her crimes but potentially redeemable since she apologizes to Su for everything. She was a realistic facist dictator character, but not inhumane like Unalaq.

The BW chapter of it concluded, but the B2W2 chapter still hasn't. We're gonna have a long wait for that I'm sure, given this manga's crappy release schedule.

I've been thinking back about the Pokémon Colosseum games, and I actually have a few things to ask you.

1. I'm thinking that Ein should be the only keeper for the first game, at least as far as the main page is concerned. I have no problem with Nascour or Evice staying on the YMMV page, but as far as the main page goes, I'm having a harder time justifying them keeping their spots. I mean, we see for ourselves the effect Ein's work has had on the Shadow Pokémon themselves as well as his research notes and desire to make the process perfect... but what do Ein and Nascour do? A whole load of nothing, at least as far as evil deeds go. Sure, they're complicit in the whole process and are unrepentably evil, but neither of them really does anything truly unforgivable. At the very least I think Evice could stay, but since he was the one truly behind everything (At least before Greevil took charge in XD) and Nascour was pretty much relaying his orders, Nascour should probably be on the game's YMMV page.

2. I honestly think Ardos counts by this wiki's standards if Evice and Nascour are keepers. Sure, his father and brother were redeemable, but that's because Eldes from the start wasn't exactly evil so much as a bit too dedicated to his father and Greevil seemed to realize how wrong he was in the end. I'd say the grounds of Ardos being potentially redeemable are faulty since unlike his family, he's completely unrepentant about the whole Shadow Pokémon process and quite clearly wants to rebuild Cipher (Damn it Nintendo, where's our third Shadow Pokémon game?! I swear, I never imagined the day where freaking Pokémon Trozei would get a sequel but not the Gamecube games...) and was even very okay with the thought of killing everyone on the island as long as Michael died as well. And notably, Snattle, Gorrigan, and even Lovrina of all people make peace with Michael in the post-game, if memory serves Ardos sends you a death threat or at the very least a warning that you're on his shit-list. I hope I don't sound confrontational, I just think that if we're keeping Nascour and Evice, Ardos should count as well.

1. We see the admins, even Ein, taking orders from Nascaur though. And since Nascaur works directly for Evice, than this makes all of them equally heinous. Ein could not have gotten as far as he did with his scientific atrocities had Nascaur not given him the go-ahead for it, and Nascaur wouldn't have done that had Evice not given HIM the go-ahead as well as been the one leading and directing Cipher to begin with. So consider all that and then consider do any of those three characters have any redeeming features? Ein was portrayed as a pure evil sociopath from start to finish, while Nascaur and Evice are literally put in a demonic, monstrous light. I say they all pass the trope.

2. The thing with Ardos is that I could've bought him as meeting the heinous standard had GREEVIL not been redeemed. He was THE founder and leader of Cipher, meaning that he sets the heinous standard of the story (of XD, not Colosseum - those Cipher characters operated separately from the XD ones, thus are judged by their own story and scale). Not only does Ardos not quite measure up aside from one Moral Event Horizon moment towards the end, but there's nothing about him that suggests he's more OR less redeemable than the father who corrupted him in the first place. He doesn't repent by the end of the game, but neither did Cyrus or Lysandre, and they're not CMs. Basically, I do not believe what we have on Ardos is sufficient enough for him to pass a trope that his father and brother could not pass. If we'd gotten a third Orre game where Ardos got more heinous and stayed unrepentant, THEN he'd pass. But as it stands, I really think the Pokemon CM page is fine the way it is.

Hey, I've been giving some thought as to various forms of Spider-Man media, and I've been wondering: are you aware of any potential candidates among Spidey's Rogue's gallery (Which by the way, has a few examples on TV Tropes who I'll give entries on this site to) who could potentially count? I was thinking back to two villains who were proposed but rejected: Kron Stone, the Venom from the Marvel 2099 universe as well as the Marvel Noir universe's Norman Osborn. The two were deemed to have justifiable Freudian Excuses, but I kind of want to contest that.

First, there's Kron. The guy is a mass-murdering lunatic who grew up as a childhood tormentor to that universe's Spider-Man Miguel O'Hara, and only got worse as he grew older. He has a thing for killing all but one member of happy families, and only leaves that one member alive so they can feel the pain from losing their loved ones, and is shown doing this to the 2099's Punisher Jake Gallow's family which kick-starts his vigilante career. What's worse is thanks to the fact that his dad Tyler Stone is a high-level CEO in the ridiculously corrupt 2099 universe, he's allowed to get away with these crimes with no repercussions whatsoever as he can simply pay a fine, and since he was born in a rich family he has cash to blow. Whenever Jake tries murder Kron in retaliation, the heavily injured Kron finds the 2099's universe's Symbiote, and combines with it to become Venom. With his newfound power, he tries to murder his dad but soon shifts his interests over to Spider-Man whenever he interferes. He eventually finds out that Spider-Man is Miguel, and soon murders his girlfriend Dana D'Angelo in order to torment him. As Venom, he also murders scores of innocent people.

Norman Osborn from the Noir universe is a mob boss known as The Goblin, and he's basically responsible for a lot of the corruption running through New York City. He regularly suppresses public protests and assassinates prominent figures who try to fight against corruption, and is even responsible for this universe's Uncle Ben's death whenever he has his cannibalistic troubleshooter Vulture eat him. As for other crimes of his, unfortunately I can't find a whole lot of information on the internet unlike with Kron, and I don't have the money to buy the Noir comics myself. I mean, there's more information on his appearance in the video game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions for Pete's sake!

Now, we need to take a look at these guy's Freudian Excuses. Kron had a genuinely shitty childhood as his dad didn't want to spend time with him, and had a robot nanny watch over him. The nanny was a victim of faulty programming, and would treat him like a dog by forcing him to eat dog food, keeping him in a kennel, and so on and so forth. In fact, he even tells the Punisher that his hatred for happy families comes from his home life. However, while his Freudian excuse explains his hatred for happy families, it does not excuse his other atrocities, such as murdering innocent people who don't fit his MO as well as killing Spider-Man's love interest. I believe he's an example like Koba, who while he does have understandable reasons for committing some of his crimes, his other ones are completely and utterly inexcusable showing that he's just a genuinely terrible person all around. Hell, his Freudian Excuse is even deemed as weak in-universe, with the Punisher dismissing him as being another freak with a sob story. And just in case you were wondering if his moral agency is affected by the symbiote, he's less like Eddie Brock or Mac Gargan and more like Cletus Kasady where he's already a psycho, and seems to have control over the symbiote just fine.

As for Norman, he hides a genetic condition that makes his skin green and scaly, hence his Goblin moniker. He was born into a freak show and was mistreated by people because of this condition, which he rants at Spider-Man at around the end of the comic. At the same time however, he was still willing to cozy up to New York's corrupt rich elite and claw his way to the top so he can lord it over innocent people who he can have killed on a whim, so it's up to you if you find his Freudian Excuse valid or not.

I personally think that Kron Stone is an easy keeper, though I do admit that Norman has a stronger case against him, if only thanks to a lack of information available and no way to read the comics on hand. Plus, Norman also has to compete with Noir Doctor Octopus (Who is a disgusting Nazi who performs inhumane experiments on black men) and Noir Crime Master (who assists in Octavius's inhumane experiments and resorts to mass murder).

I'll have to give some thought to Norman, but Kron sounds like a definite example. Give him a writeup and add him to the trope!

Kron has been given a write-up!

So, Spider-Man's section on the Marvel page is pretty big: as the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn, Carnage, The Thousand, Noir Doc Ock, Noir Crime Master, Vulture 2099, and Venom 2099 add up to a total of seven candidates, which could potentially be eight if Noir Norman Osborn is approved. Should Spider-Man get his own page, or at least his own section like the X-Men do?

Nah, not even eight is on the level of the X-Men section. I think we're fine for now. XD

Alright then. But you know, speaking of the Marvel section, I have a few questions.

First off, I was sprucing up some entries that were a tad skimpy, and noticed that Zebediah Kilgrave/Purple Man's barely goes into his bigger crimes and mainly consists of his crimes in the X-Men animated series. I'm going to give him a proper write-up later, but I was wanting to know if his actions also warrant a spot in the Western Animation section: Zebediah is a Villain With Good Publicity who takes in several mutant children, only to brainwash them with his mind control powers into attacking a governor's house so he can be coerced into handing a waterfront project over to Zebediah. When Cyclops finds out about his less-than-legal activities, Zebediah tries to force those children to kill him before burning down the orphanage they came from in order to nail Cyclops as well.

Keep in mind though that he has three bona-fide monsters from the same show to compete with: Apocalypse (Tries to enslave humanity in his first appearance as well as takes advantage of four mutants and forces them to become his Horsemen that he has rampage across the globe, and in his second creates a plague to wipe out most humans and mutants and later tries to destroy the timestream himself), the ever-cuddly Sabretooth/Victor Creed (infilitrates Xavier's school and tricks the X-Men into helping them before attempting to kill them, straps bombs to citizens of an Inuit Village to spite Wolverine, and abandoned his old Spec. Ops team to die at the hands of Omega Red), and his son Graydon (Self-Hating child of two mutants who regularly attacks businesses sympathetic towards mutants and attempts genocide). They make for some steep competition, but you've allowed lower-level villains to qualify in similar shows (Ferris Boyle, Boss Biggis, Sewer King, Warren Lawford, and Arkady Duvall in Batman the Animated Series, Tony Zucco and Black Mask in The Batman) so that's why I'm asking you.

He sounds like the kind of guy who'd usually qualify on principle since his default characterization is that of a child exploiting scumbag.

I got him a write-up. Now another question I had was regarding one of the villains that you left on the list: Mister Hyde. When I spruced up/added entries, I thought about cutting him since the only crime he had listed made him sound more like a glorified bully, but he's actually done some downright disgusting things that make his almost-murder of Jarvis one of his less evil deeds. Atrocities of his include:

• Trying to blow New York City sky-high, which would kill countless innocent people just for the sake of murdering his former partner in crime. Notably, his current employee Batroc the Leaper turned on him out of disgust due to this.

• Kidnapping a homeless man and gruesomely murdering him, going as far as to carve his name on his flesh.

• Spirited away homeless people as well as teenagers and put them through unethical experiments to replicate Spider-Man getting his powers.

However, he was disqualified on TV Tropes because of one Pet the Dog moment: in one story he took in a homeless drug addict, helped her kick the habit, and was upset when another villain killed her. Normally this wouldn't be up for discussion, but I'm only asking because not just here, but even at TV Tropes moments like these have been ignored for some comic book candidates (I'm assuming due to the nature of different writers working on one character over the years runs the risk of out of character moments like this), and Hyde is pretty much always written as a brutish bully at best and a morally depraved monster of a man at the worst with this one moment being the only (to my knowledge) redeeming moment he's ever had. Do you think he should stay, or were they right in cutting him?

Were his motives for the Pet the Dog ever explained?

I can't really find anything explaining his motives for helping that woman, most of what I've read go more into his villainous actions and kind of skip over this one good deed. Even the TV Tropes post that pointed it out merely said that he did this, but didn't provide context or reasons as to why he did it.

Then the info doesn't seem sufficient enough to outweigh his primary characterization. He stays on the trope.

By the way, and I don't mean to be rude here, but I've noticed that in your writeups you've been using "whenever" in places where just the word "when" would suffice and make the sentence clearer. Why is that?

It's not something I intend on doing, it just kind of happens. I'll make more of an effort to be self-aware about this kind of thing in the future though.

OK thanks.

BTW, the Controller WAS in the show - he was the villain of the first season finale, with his character and story lifted directly from the comics, attempts to control Superman and Ferro Lad's sacrifice included.

Well that was silly of me. :p

Yeah, but that's OK. :P

Working on getting them restored, MW 1.26 changed up a few things on how CSS/JS works, so I'll have to make sure they work fine on a MW 1.26 wiki running the same stuff we do (already in progress), and once I confirm that, I'll port it over here and give you an update.

Alright, thanks! ^^

The Talk/History Gadgets are fully functional and restored. Turn them on if they aren't already. May take a day or two for all changes to apply.

Seriously, thanks for elaborating more on the Batman Arkham examples on their respective "Qualifiers" and "No hopers" lists respectively! Since you seem to have some knowledge about Arkham Knight whether it be through playing the game or doing research, am I safe to assume that Penguin gets no redeeming qualities in Knight? Unfortunately, I still have yet to get a PS4 and Arkham Knight at the moment so I still want to remain spoiler free (Though I did get a few Knight spoilers by looking at the Non-Examples before realizing what I was reading. Still, that was my own fault!). :(

I've only done some research (I got no PS4, though I finally got and am playing the first two games on my PS3!) And no, Penguin barely factors into Knight and remains a repulsive asshole. It's also settled that Riddler and Hush definitely don't qualify in the long run - the only new qualifier the game gives us is Scarecrow, who was already pretty nasty in Asylum but in this one is just holy shit.

I'm honestly anticipating seeing Scarecrow in action once I get Knight, if nothing else due to John Noble voicing him and doing a brilliant job from the clips I've heard.

Yeah, I had a feeling Riddler wouldn't count in the end. At the time though Hush did seem reasonable to keep an eye out for considering how he established himself in City. Hell, given the type of stuff he did when he was introduced in the comics, I wouldn't be too surprised if an incarnation of him counted in the future.

So you've played Asylum and City? Awesome! I hope that you've been enjoying them,I certainly did! As far as I'm concerned, those games were really on point in terms of atmosphere, combat (moreso in City), and voice acting. The only voice I wasn't too big on was Harley in City. Tara Strong has gotten better since then, but all I heard when playing was Timmy Turner on helium. I kinda wish they got Hynden Walch because she does a near-perfect job at replicating Arleen Sorkin's Harley.

Yeah, Hush was such a letdown in Knight. They gave him such a chilling build-up in City and yet he's pretty much a footnote in the final game.

Exactly how I feel regarding Harley's voice! Hynden Walch actually did voice her in Assault on Arkham and I couldn't help noticing how much better she was than Tara Strong. I feel Hynden Walch and Troy Baker ought to be considered the successors to Arleen Sorkin and Mark Hamill's Harley and Joker.

I can totally get behind that! Especially since Troy was brilliant as the Joker in Origins (though it unfortunately came at the cost of stealing Black Mask's thunder... -_-). Other than them, my favorite casting choice is Wally Wingert as the Riddler, he's amazing.

So in other news, I noticed that on the wikia fork, you've been having issues in regards to Percy from The Green Mile. Maybe I shouldn't really weigh in since I haven't watched the movie or read the book, but I have no problem with him qualifying: drawing out someone's death by making it as slow and painful as you can manage, along with it being death by electric chair is fucked up, even if Wild Bill has a higher bodycount.

Also, it looks like you went ahead and added Bill Cipher. I haven't watched Gravity Falls so I allowed myself to get hit with some heavy spoilers, but I have to say he's one of the most screwed up villains to come from a Disney Cartoon, let alone Disney itself. "I'm gonna make some children into corpses" is the last line I ever thought I'd hear coming from one of those shows.

Wally has become the definitive Riddler voice for me too!

The main thing is that the narrative and other characters within it treat Percy and Wild Bill as being just as equally reprehensible but in different ways. Wild Bill's the more common type of monster while Percy's the one who hides his monstrosity beneath a legalized position and lets it out only to people he feels he can get away with bullying. Both of them are sadists to the extreme and both are responsible for truly horrific deaths in the story.

You REALLY ought to watch Gravity Falls, it was INCREDIBLE. Another line from Bill that he said like three minutes after that one was "Times up, Ford! I've got the kids! I think I'm gonna kill one of them now just for the heck of it!" and then he actually gets ready to do just that until Ford submits to his earlier demands. This guy was a very good mix of both very funny and very terrifying at once for most of the show, but in the second half of that finale his lines and actions became entirely laugh-free, instead being played totally straight and horrifying.

Oh I'll definitely get around to it at some point. Unfortunately, it's going to join an ever-growing backlog of shows I've been meaning to watch. Ah well, such is life.

So I don't know if you've been following any Pokemon-related news, but we're getting not a Z or X2/Y2 like I thought, but Sun and Moon instead. On one hand, I can't say I saw it coming. But on the other, if I'm correct, this game might be taking place in a new region with new Pokemon. I'm kinda glad seeing how I thought we had an incredibly underwhelming amount of new Pokemon this gen! Now if they could actually give us somewhat compelling characters and a story that feels like they somewhat tried again, that would be nice.

Also, what is wrong with this site now? The format looks all wrong here ("Reply", "Parent", "History", "Edit", "Delete", etc. are all visible one after another) and you have to use "Edit Source" instead of just "Edit" among other things.

I have no clue, but it's certainly ugly-looking.

That's the VisualEditor extension. I'm getting it removed due to those issues.

Seeing how today marks the announcement of the final batch of Smash Bros DLC, I think it's relevant to discuss a character that I've had on my mind for a while. Are you familiar with Super Smash Bros Brawl and it's story mode, the Subspace Emissary? Because I would like to see what you think about the Subspace Emissary's antagonist: Tabuu.

He's the story mode's true villain, and is an odd spectral blue humanoid figure. Tabuu lives in a dimension called Subspace that he plans to suck the World of Trophies (Basically, every playable character is a living trophy/action figure kind of thing) into it. Since he can't leave Subspace himself, he uses an army of bizarre creatures (as well as a few villains: Bowser and Ganondorf) to do his bidding. He's also forcing an entire species of friendly robots (R.O.B's, like that robotic NES controller) to swear loyalty to him on threat of annihilating them all, and uses them to detonate special bombs he had created called Subspace Bombs which consume all the land around them up to a certain radius and cast it into subspace, which turns anything living that they catch into motionless trophies (essentially killing those they consume, though they can be restored back to normal). For extra cruelty points, the bombs are designed so the R.O.B's HAVE to remain attached to the bomb until it detonates, which wipes them out along with everything else. Their leader, who is portrayed as being the Subspace Army's figurehead leader is shown to be deeply saddened at the senseless sacrifices made by his subjects, and evnetually turns on Tabuu once the game's heroes infiltrate the Subspace Army's headquarters. Unfortunately, ALL the R.O.B's are ordered to detonate all the bombs in the facility and are unable to be stopped, and upon detonation they destroy the R.O.B's home and drive the race into extinction, with the Ancient Minister being the sole survivor of the group.

All in all, he's a nasty guy, though there's one big problem: the story itself is one told without words, and since no one talks and Tabuu himself only shows up a few times during the endgame, it's hard to get a good read on him. What we DO know is that he's a pitiless, ruthless guy through supplementary materials, though I'm not sure if he fits the bill as a Complete Monster, or if he's a Generic Doomsday Villain. Plus, the scene where all the R.O.B's are ordered to kill themselves via mass detonation was directly done by Ganondorf, and I don't exactly remember if he did it of his own volition, or if he was ordered to give the order by Tabuu (Who was using the character Master Hand as a puppet to give his orders in return. It's kinda complicated).

So what are your thoughts? Is he a keeper, or no?

I remember playing that and don't really think Tabuu was quite bad enough to qualify. He'd be YMMV at best.

Really? I could understand if you had GDV-related hangups, but enslaving a peaceful race, forcing said race's leader to systematically kill his own people, and twisting a world into becoming a part of your hellish dimension with the added bonus of effectively killing all life in said world are all bad enough to qualify in my book.

But he doesn't really have much of a character or a sufficient amount time on screen. If he did, even if still a silent role, he'd likely qualify in the same vein as the Purple Guy/Springtrap, but as he is he's more GDV than CM, though again, I think he's worthy enough to get a YMMV example.

Turns out he's already listed under Smash Bros YMMV, so I guess that takes care of itself.

This may sound like it's coming out of nowhere by the way, but are you familiar with Steven Universe? I'm not proposing anyone (yet, though I DO have my eye on a certain character set to appear on the near future), I'm just wondering.

I think Yellow Diamond is the one everyone's keeping their eye out for?

Yeah, assuming she WAS the one who okayed a lot of the nastier things conducted by the Homeworld (Their Fusion Experiments, the Cluster). Even if it's not her, I have this gut feeling that at least one character is going to qualify (Not Jasper, who I made a note for in Cartoon networks list of non-examples. I said that she may count in the future, but even I'm seriously doubting that) since the Gem Homeworld sounds like a nasty place.

But anyway, I assume you're familiar with it? It's quite the fun, cute little show that I find to be very well written. But if it's not your thing, I understand, especially since the infamously hostile fanbase has done a lot to make a bad name for itself.

I've watched it occasionally, though not followed it too much. The fandumb is a big turn-off as well.

Speaking as a guy with little patience for the antics of the "Social Justice Warrior" crowd, I learned to live with the crazies the show attracts. Say what you will about Bronies, but I don't remember hearing about any of them driving an artist to nearly comitting suicide. :I

Alright, enough of the negative stuff. Is everything holding well on your end? I hope you're at least having a good holiday season!

Oh yeah. I enjoy MLP more despite the Bronies, so I try to do the same with the SU fandom but it's hard sometimes.

Yes, I am! ^_^

Ho ho ho, merry Christmas, as good old Saint Nick would say! I hope everything's going well for you!

I just got back from a brief visit to my cousin's house, where I was able to play through most of Oracle of Ages in order to form an opinion on Veran, who was discussed a while ago. The game is fun (if a bit annoyingly vague in regards to what you should do at times), and I got over to where you have to help a Fairy Queen un-poison the ocean before I have to leave.

And from what I've seen, Veran is an easy qualifier: enslaving a lot of men and working them to death through continuous back-breaking labor in order to construct a tower, freezing tons of innocent sentient animals (and a kid) into statues, causing a city to be destroyed in a volcanic eruption, poisoning an ocean which is shown to have fatal consequences down the road, uses Nayru as a human shield during her brief "boss" fight, and given some bits of dialogue she has, it's even implied she collects people that she freezes into statue form... honestly, I can't see how she wouldn't qualify, as she sticks up quite well with the other examples currently listed on the Zelda page. I'm just surprised that she didn't ultimately qualify over at TV Tropes, though she may have gone over better if it wasn't for the guy who proposed her...

Aaaaaanyway, yeah. If you don't mind, I'm gonna get her written-up in a bit, I'd just like your input before doing so. Oh yeah, and I haven't played Seasons yet, though I plan on doing so when I'm done with Ages. Is that game's villain General Onox worth keeping an eye on?

I think Veran's a qualifier in the game and manga adaptation, but Onox is definitely just a generic baddie in the game - what he brings about is horrific but the character himself is a vague, under-developed Orcus on His Throne type until the final battle. His manga incarnation might qualify but I'm forgetting the exact details on him.

I got Veran written up! I have to say, it's disappointing that Onox sounds pretty bland as a person, he has a pretty cool design (Same with Veran, who I appreciate for getting screentime and more of a personality) at the very least.

So with that, I think that Zelda doesn't have any potential contenders left, at least for the time being. Assuming of course that I'm missing out on someone from Hyrule Warriors, that is (I have yet to play that one). Zelda U and other titles could change it of course, but I think what we have is pretty good at the moment provided that the various Manga adaptations didn't upgrade any existing villains into being worse than their game selves.

Oh wait, I forgot: we DO have a qualifier: the development team behind the CD-I games! Of course, you could argue that in spite of the horrible gameplay, Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon being unintentionally hilarious could count as redeeming qualities, but those went out the window once they made Zelda's Adventure, which was just terribad all around...

I'm joking please don't hurt me

I know. I loved his design for most of the game, and evenmoreso he's scary ass "true form" at the end. I'll have to see if the manga dedicated some more time to his character, 'cause with more of that, a guy whose plan threatens to drag an entire land and it's population into the underworld could likely qualify.

Hyrule Warriors has no candidates - the primary antagonist, Cia, is something of a joke who's infatuated with Link and is ultimately a pawn of Ganon who sees the error of her ways, and while Ganon, Zant, and Ghirahim are as evil as ever in terms of characters, they don't get to do a whole lot compared to their other game appearances.

I dunno, even the CD-I games did some pretty downright unforgivable things, such as spoiling Ganon's good name by making him a copy of Disney's Pete. xD

Don't know about him being a Pete clone, but CD-I Ganon was still a rather sillily written character.

By the way, I don't know if you're keeping up with One Piece, but it looks like the current story arc is going to have yet another Complete Monster in the form of its villain Jack. The guy's a sadistic, torture-loving, unreasonably violent brute who actively sneers at the thought of peaceful resolutions to conflicts. So far he has annihilated most of an island nation, blew up a city with a chemical weapon of Caesar Clown's out of annoyance towards the battle he was in taking too long for his liking, and tortured people through lopping off limbs. And keep in mind, this is before we even see him in the present day. And let's not forget to mention that he has the first bounty at around 1,000,000,000 shown in the series, which is likely for a damn good reason. Don't know if it's an accurate comparison, but I consider this guy to be One Piece's equivalent to Gregor Clegane.

Oh yeah, and he just so happens to be Kaido's right hand guy. Almost makes me scared to see what all Kaido will do once he takes up proper Big Bad status. Either way, I'm a bit impressed with Oda: pre-timeskip we had villains see-saw between asshole bullies like Morgan, Wapol, and Krieg to scumbags like Arlong and Spandam, but so far the post-timeskip arcs seem to be Oda trying to outdo himself in making his antagonists purely evil.

I suspect Kaido and Jack will end up as qualifiers too, but we can't be 100% certain until their arc has either concluded or gone on long enough to solidify their status.

Oh I wasn't going to propose Jack yet, after all he could have a softer side to him we haven't seen yet. A fondness for puppies and Michael Bolton's more tender love songs, perhaps... XD

But nah, I was just noting that he's definitely someone worth keeping an eye on, considering his love for pure, animalistic brutality and the fact that he already has a few notable atrocities under his belt, same for his boss, for that matter.

Out of curiosity, are you fond of One Piece? I like it a lot myself mainly for the unique art style, gripping storyline, and awesomely diverse and memorable cast of characters, but have allowed myself to behind in recent times. Out of the original "Big Three" of Naruto, Bleach, and this series, I think it's the only one of the bunch that has stayed genuinely good (If ridiculously long) its entire run.

I definitely think One Piece is the best out of it, Bleach, and Naruto, and I loved it in it's earlier arcs, but from the CP9 Saga and onward I lost my investment in it because, as you said, it's overly-long even when it oughtn't need to be. So now it' just alright for me - don't love it, but don't dislike it either.

'Tis the danger of becoming fond of an incredibly long series!

But anyway, I'm curious: have you seen any of the series' movies? I'm curious as to if they have any villains that could serve as potential candidates. I HAVE seen the sixth myself, and would like to propose one of its villains. However, I'm not sure if it will go over well and want to ask in advance if you're at least familiar with that movie.

I don't think TV Tropes has even taken any notice of the movie villains, but which one do you think might be a contender, or at least a YMMV example?

Lily Carnation, this evil, eldritch plant demon thing (It's never really explained what it truly is) that works alongside the movie's more active villain Baron Omatsuri. Together, they might just be among the most vile villains in the franchise, but the Baron himself has a few mitigating features that prevent him from qualifying. LC might, it might not, that's why I want to discuss it.

Basically, it's this plant monster that offered to bring back Baron Omatsuri's dead crew in the form of living plants affected by hallucinations as long as the baron delivers it power pirates to feast on. In order to preserve his memory of his fallen comrades, the baron has delivered it dozens of crews and eliminated most of them as offerings to sate the monster's appetite. It doesn't do a lot of active villainy (That's the baron's job as the Carnation is mostly immobile), but this thing is responsible for everything that went wrong during the movie's plot. If it helps, it's constantly attached to the Baron's shoulder in the form of a tiny, adorable avatar (until it reveals its true monster form during the climax) and supplies him with the arrows he uses to hunt down its prey (and even giggles maniacally as it helps him aim when they attack Robin). Plus, there's how it eats its prey: it slowly absorbs them in its huge true body's stalk and slowly kills them. Thankfully most of the Strawhats that are absorbed appear to be unconcious except Zoro, who seems fully aware of his predicament and appears to be wordlessly screaming. It also tries to kill a friendly pirate itself in its monster form.

I really, really want it to count, but there are two issues that may get in its way. First off, it's not really conversational. it has a clear personality: it acts cute, cheerful, and somewhat absent minded when it's putting up a facade, but downright creepy and maniacal when it and the Baron's true colors are revealed. It's just not the talkative type.

Plus, I'm a bit concerned that Omatsuri may outclass it in heinousness since he's the guy physically doing evil things. Since he's been driven mad by his crew being slaughtered, he wants other pirates to feel as lonely and hopeless as he is by luring pirates to his resort island, driving various crews apart through manipulation and sowing distrust between them, and killing them one by one, only to leave a broken final survivor that he allows to sink into despair before also killing. He's presented as so loathsome, that Luffy flat out kills him with his bare hands and even deals the killing blow in a way that is drawn similarly to the punch he used to cave in Saint Charloss's head in the anime (Basically, the colors are drained out and leave a demented mess of black and white). If it wasn't for the fact that the Baron loves his missing crew and deeply misses them, I'd propose him in a heartbeat.

So what are your thoughts? Does the Lily Carnation's eldritch nature and status as being more of a Bigger Bad hurt its chances? Or do you view it as a true example?

There's another factor that you glanced over but sort of pointed out right at the start - "it's never really explained what it truly is." For all we know, it's in Lily's very nature to nourish itself with the powers that these pirates' possess, and so it's doing what it's doing in order to live and survive the only way it knows how. That would mean it doesn't have the choice to try not eating powerful people, putting it in a Made of Evil territory. So not only does it fail the heinous standard compared to the baron, but it fails moral agency and probable excuse factors as well. So as repellent as it might be, I don't think it counts by the standards or criteria of the trope. Sorry. It and the Baron do seem pretty interesting, so I am glad you brought them to my attention.

No need to apologize, I'm not losing any sleep over Lily failing to qualify.

And the movie is pretty cool! It has a weird, beautiful, almost Studio Ghibliesque feel at the beginning when everything's all happy and fun, but it spirals into truly creepy territory and feels more like a straight-up horror film by the end.

One last thing regarding One Piece: I feel so ashamed for admitting this, but years back I was convinced that Morgan, Don Krieg, and Wapol were complete monsters. I'm glad I never came around to adding them and making an ass of myself, but yeah. Don't know why, but I suppose I ought to let this shameful confession out in the open. ._.

Damn, now I want to see it...

Morgan comes the closest to the trope and is disqualified more due to narrative issues than character issues (he's not taken as a super serious menace by the narrative and he's eclipsed in heinousness by later villains, some like Kuro who operate with lesser resources). But yeah, Don Krieg and Wapol never really even approached this trope's territory compared to all the worse villains in this series.

I think for those two, it was me letting their scummy behavior override my common sense. Because let's face it, Oda does a damn good job at making his villains people you want to hate. Spandam in particular is one of very few villains I've seen whose defeat made me cheer out loud due to how horrible of a human being he was.

Agreed. Horrid behavior doesn't always make a villain belong in a category for being the worst of the worst, especially if they lack the rap sheet and extra qualifying factors. Spandam, though, I'm still unsure why he got voted down on TV Tropes. That he could cause so much damage on many levels and be so thoroughly horrible a person despite being a "small potatoes" weakling is an indicator that he IS among the worst there is in the One Piece universe.

It may be because the Buster Call was an accident, though I thought a character could still qualify if they're proud with accidentally causing a ton of destruction. Spandam sure as hell had no problem throwing all his guys to the wolves after his big screwup, though that seems to be yet another case of the site's users being really inconsistent with criteria. Ah well.

Speaking of which, apparently Spandam has shown up again, his back fully restored and now serving under his former subordinate Lucci. Hopefully he runs into Robin again, and this time she does a more "thorough" job with him if you get my meaning.

Oh, I sure hope so!

I don't know if you care, but as of the latest episodes, I think I made the right call on keeping an eye out for Uellow Diamond. She made her first appearance and here's what we know so far:

She doesn't give a rats ass about the Gems who serve under her and reacts with casual indifference to the report of a loyal soldier's supposed death, holds organic life in contempt, has an awful temper to the point to where she immediately tries to murder a minion of hers for insulting her, and was confirmed to have overseen the creation of the Cluster. Basically, she had an enormous creature created by melding tons of dead Gems together, which revived them and leaves them in a state of constant agony, and plans to use it to destroy the Earth, and actively ignores the option to keep the planet around to use for resources purely out of spite towards the late leader of the Crystal Gems. God damn.

Of course, it's far too early to propose her yet (and given the show's awful hiatus-addled schedule, we're likely to wait a looooooong time), but she's already shaping up to be one of THE most evil characters I've seen in western cartoons just for the Cluster's creation alone. Sorry if this was a waste of time or something.

If Yellow Diamond truly is the root of all evil in this show and showcases no redeeming qualities, than she'll definitely be a keeper.

What have I been blocked from ATT for? I haven't done anything there for ages.

You were doing quite a lot at of damage the ATT Wikia (under a different username) and I didn't want to take my chances here.

That was my sister, not me.

Honorshipper? She already had a working account, what would she need it for?

Also, you are continuing your insolent behavior here by deleting or adding things on the CM trope without warning. Please stop at once?

She created a backup account in case she got banned from Villains Wiki, which she did, if you want to know the details ask B1bl1kal.

I don't know what to believe at this point.

It appears that Allthetropes ate my previous question, so I'll keep it brief: Have you ever watched the Princess Bride? I was contemplating bringing up its villain Prince Humperdinck as a potential candidate for this trope and wanted your thoughts on him. I feel kind of like I'm asking a stupid question though, and you'll probably know what I mean if you've seen the film.

Humperdinck's a major asshole, but certainly not a CM since the narrative lets him live and get off pretty scot-free while still deeming him suitably punished, and he's eclipsed in nastiness by Count Rugen, the six fingered man. If anyone's a CM in that story, it's Rugen.

I only asked because I recently rewatched it, and I forgot about him trying to start a war with another country under false pretenses. That coupled with him cranking the torture device Rugen made all the way to its highest setting out of spite towards Westley and Buttercup made me wonder.

Just forget it, it was a complete waste of time for me propose him.

Oh and also, I forgot to ask where you've been this whole time and why you said you were done with this site?

I wanted to leave and distance myself from troping as a whole, but at this point I can't leave. I've used this site too long.

Time off every now and then is a good idea, but it shouldn't be permanent. What's the sense in doing that?

I don't know.

In any case, please don't feel afraid to ask anything to me here if you feel the need.

I actually do have a question, but man, do I feel embarrassed just wanting to ask it. Just... PLEASE don't view me as being a moron or anything for doing so, please?

I'm writing a fanfic. Yeah, a 21 year old writing a fan fic, how stupid is that, right? But anyway, it's for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and I was wanting to write one of its main villains with this trope in mind. Basically, I want him to be a Knight of Cerebus type character who commits horrifying acts that repulse even his own comrades... but at the same time, I'm genuinely trying to avoid making him come off as edgy or too "tryhardish" in his villainy, if you will. If you don't mind me going into detail for how I plan to write him, would you be willing to give me pointers at making him repulsive, yet not too out of place in his setting?

If you don't, I understand. Fanfiction is a cringeworthy thing to talk about in general.

Hey, good fanfiction exists. Even ones that aren't too outstanding are at least fun to write and read.

I'll have to hear more info regarding the character's status in the story and what he's all about doing.

He's a Garchomp (whose name I haven't decided yet. I wanted to go with something Slavic and intimidating sounding, but I've got nothing at the moment) that is basically a bloodthirsty barbarian in the form of a Pokemon, and is a high-ranking member of a group of Pokemon (led by Yveltal. Cliche, isn't it?) seeking to put an end to existence itself. But unlike his comrades (And Yveltal herself, who I plan on fleshing out as a tragic villain) who genuinely believe that life itself is a pointless cycle of despair and pain for all involved and view ending it as an act of mercy, he's simply a violent psycho going along with the ride since he views it as an excuse to cut loose and go wild on whoever he pleases and is a clear-cut sadist among a group of Pokemon who prefer to only inflict necessary suffering (If that makes any sense to you).

He's also meant to be very important to the backstory of a major character, and is responsible for killing the two most important people (well, Pokemon) in her life: he was once a member of a rescue team that the character (A currently unnamed Gliscor, then a Gligar) was an apprentice for, and joined it with the intention of using it as an excuse to kill criminals to satisfy his bloodlust. But after realizing that a rescuer's job does not involve police brutality, he grew bored with it and started killing other Rescuers on the sly (Which aren't shown, but discussed since I don't plan on including gore). Since he and his violent nature drew suspicion from his fellow rescuers, he lured his teammates to a secluded location in an attempt to kill them and run for the hills, and successfully butchers two of them: an also currently unnamed Sandslash and Quagsire (Who are going to be written as his childhood friends) by throwing up a sandstorm to throw them off and slicing them up from behind. The psycho planned on doing the same to the poor young Gligar, but is stopped by a Rescue Team that tailed him and seriously wounded, forcing him to flee into the wilderness for his life. The Gligar however is left traumatized by him, and grew a crippling phobia of sandstorms in the fallout of his crime.

Fast forward to the present day where he leads a band of vicious outlaws that attack and abduct Pokemon, and drag them away to an underground arena where his victims are forced to fight against other Pokemon to the death for his entertainment, and will slaughter "champions" that are doing too well himself in order to keep them from potentially escaping. When two lackeys of his return from unsuccessfully destroying records that could provide information that would help the heroes defeat two of Yveltal's more powerful servants, he punishes them by smacking them both into a stone wall with a powerful tail slap that kills them both through blunt force trauma, and decides to handle things himself. He draws out the heroes by single-handedly destroying a village, and has a few choice flunkies of his wait nearby in order to get the jump on the heroes when they investigate the carnage. He attacks and kills a few before having most of them dragged off to his arena, which kicks off a story arc involving liberating his "city" and swiping an important item of his needed for summoning a powerful Pokemon.

That's about all the big, heinous things I have planned for him so far, though he's going to show up during the final story arc for a final battle where he tears through his allies and enemies alike in one final, brutal bout with Gliscor as she fights to avenge her fallen mentors, during which he mentions that he's going to leave her barely alive long enough to force her to watch him kill her friends as painfully as he possibly can.

So yeah, the story is meant to deal with some heavy subject matter, namely suffering and people's ways of coping, with the heroes believing that you need to take the good parts of life with the bad and fighting for a fulfilling future while the villains believe life is pointless thanks to the crappy hands they've been dealt and seek on ending "life's tyranny" in order to alleviate everyone's suffering. I hope he doesn't come off as too unnecessarily grimdark and edgy, but I want him to serve as a sort of personification of the kind of brutality and viciousness that drove the villains to insanity if that makes any sense. So do you have any pointers as to how I could handle him once I introduce him (I actually DO have a few chapters written... though as of now, the story is at its very beginning)?

(EDIT: Yikes, that was long! I hope it's not too much of a chore to read, I genuinely didn't mean to make it so taxing of a thing to look over)

Evil Garchomp - LOVE the idea. (I also love the idea of Yveltal seeing bringing death to all as a mercy, since in a way, that's not an invalid perspective to take on the subject of life and death in the universe - a bit akin to Cyrus' "incomplete human spirit leads us to strife and pain" before he went down the Slippery Slope and got all "so I must wipe out all creation in order to wipe out spirit, and also become the new God because reasons!" ). The Garchomp reminds me of Luciano Bradley from Code Geass, joining up to fight for a cause solely because you can torture and kill people and get away with it because it's for that cause.

In terms of how you handle him, I'd say his crimes are just the right amount of unsettling and heinous for this setting. You could add at least one big action at the climax of his arc just to cement how far gone he is, like attempting to decimate a populated area with the power of whatever Pokemon he summons. As far as characterization goes, be sure he possesses no decent, altruistic, redemptive qualities or any mitigating features, and make sure to expose his thought process to the reader, since that makes it clear that he doesn't even have true loyalty to the side he's on and secretly mocks their beliefs and cause as being worthless - he doesn't believe in death as a mercy and if he could have his way, he'd choose inflicting Fates Worse Than Death on people rather than sparing their lives or killing them, but since he often lacks the resources to make that happen, he opts for killing them instead, but in the most painful way possible as compensation. His attitude and core belief should basically be "you can't live your own life to the fullest unless you thoroughly wreck the lives of others in the process!"

Just as a point of information: 53-year-old professional writer here. And I write fanfic. I even have explicit permission from Mercedes Lackey to write fic in Valdemar. And I'm an admin here at ATT.

You will not be shamed or looked down upon here for writing fanfic.

Well that's relieving to hear! It's just easy to feel paranoid considering the craft's reputation. I do want to move up to writing my own stuff, but I feel fanfiction is at least a nice place to start.

Same here - I gotta get on that as soon as I can!

I just checked the Abuse log, our spam filter hit a lot of legit users, so I promoted them to avoid that. I suggest checking the spam filter (I changed it to be less harsh) and promoting anyone to confirmed/auto-patrolled who made legit edits, possibly with a talk page message just to be sure they know.

Hey, you seem to be familiar with quite a few Marvel movies. By any chance, have you seen Age of Ultron yet? If you haven't I won't go on due to spoilers but I feel that he's worth discussing because I felt that he was an easy qualifier due to what I saw in the trailers, but from what I've read (I haven't seen it. Hell, the only Marvel Cinematic Universe movies I've seen are the Iron Man movies. I'm way behind on everything!) he's a bit more complex and may not qualify. I don't know: if you've seen the movie, I wouldn't mind seeing if what I've read is lacking context or if it's being misinterpreted as being truly redeemable or whatever... ah what the hell, I'm blabbering on mindlessly at this point. if you've seen it, let's talk Ultron and get my questions answered. If not, oh well.

I haven't seen the movie yet and probably won't until the weekend after this coming weekend, so I have no opinion on him now. I've heard that he shows care for Scarlet Witch at one point, but I'd have to see the scene play out in order to determine whether or not it's actually genuine. Because aside from that he does sound close to qualifying...

Hey, why are you getting rid of the spoiler tags on the CM pages? We're not TV Tropes (Like you've said to me in regards to their images policy), we shouldn't have to follow their rules on spoilers. A lot of monsters do VERY spoilerific things, with the identity of some or the parts they play in a story being spoilers in and of themselves. This was hardly an issue before, so why fix what isn't broken?

I haven't gotten rid of ALL spoiler tags on the CM Pages - I just decided that they shouldn't be over-used, since it's really only the BIG spoilers that should be tagged. Some of the things that got spoiler tagged are at this point something of common knowledge for people who've even so much as heard of the series and characters. If a villains monstrosity is well known, their descriptions ought to be as non-spoilered as possible as to give people clear ideas for what in canon backs up the conception of them as monsters.

It still doesn't feel right to me though. I mean, not EVERYONE will know certain plot twists or deeds that make a villain notable (Assuming I'm making any sense), and navigating through a spoiler is as easy as clicking and scrolling over the spoilers. Like I said before, there was nothing wrong beforehand, and I don't see the need to "fix things".

Spoiler tags have never been consistent here, though - some whole entries or entire pages were already completely spoiler free, like Ace Attorney, Dragon Ball, and Yu-Gi-Oh. The ultimate roles of villains like Ghetsis, Wiseman/Death Phantom, and Dark Bakura are technically spoilers and yet their entries were unspoilered for a while now. I figure rather than having to add spoiler tags to more entries, we cut down on the amount of what gets spoiler tagged in entries. I personally just thinks it looks better that way - damn near entire entries shouldn't have to be covered in white.

Well, I disagree. This getting dangerously close to TV Tropes territory and to be honest, I don't like it in the slightest. You have a problem with spoilers? Click. Scroll over. It takes maybe half a second.

When has TV Tropes ever been picky about their spoiler tags? We may disagree here, but I seriously don't think cutting down on spoiler tags damages the trope any. Again, it's not like ALL the spoiler tags got removed. I'm fine leaving the rest of the spoilers as they are.

I'm sorry I wigged out over spoilers, it's just that TV Tropes adopted a no-spoilers rule in regards to some things, and I was a bit worried that the same would happen here. In fact, I trimmed down on spoilers a bit too in regards to the Zelda page.

But that's not important, as the important thing is that I've been continuing playing through Xenoblade. I should be ready to propose Lorithia if I feel that she's worth discussing (Though when I mentioned her earlier, I misattributed one of her crimes to another character. My bad!) in a few days, but for now I want some help with another character I've been wondering about.

He's an early-game villain named Xord, and like Metal Face he's a Faced Mechon: a Homs (Xenoblade human) who has been assimilated by the Mechon (Evil robotic creatures) and placed into a towering robotic body. Despite being basically the game's starter villain however, he's quite nasty indeed. Like Metal Face he's introduced in a brief cutscene leading a horde of lesser Mechon in an assault on the human establishment of Colony 6, burning the city to the ground and basically leaving it a crater, and actually does a more thorough job than Metal Face since the only refugees from the city are a sniper, her brother, and a few other civilians not able to fight. Anyone captured alive by Xord and his crew are taken down to the mines below the colony where he ate them all, and recalls it with a disgusting glee before laughing about it to Sharla's (the sniper) face, and gets sickeningly giddy when remarking that her little brother (A young child) will "make a tasty dessert!" He's killed soon after this, and no tears are shed after his demise.

Yet, there's one major problem and that's with the creation of Faced Mechon. It's like I said, the guy in charge of the Mechon, Egil, has Homs assimilated into gigantic Mechon and uses them as troops for his army. Before anything is cast into doubt, Metal Face has absolutely no problems with Moral Agency: he willingly sold out his own species and did all sorts of evil acts to spite an old friend he was jealous of. Xord on the other hand... I can't tell to be honest.

On one hand, he's certainly not fully brainwashed because later on long after Xord dies, Egil starts assuming direct control over his Faced Mechon and begins wiping their memories since the earlier Faced Mechon are too attached to their previous lives (which is what got Metal Face killed, he was too obsessed with spiting his former friend) and Xord is bursting with personality as he's an incredibly hammy, sadistic, gluttonous brute not to mention that he's explicitly bought up as an example as a Faced Mechon attached to their previous life, yet he states that he has some trouble remembering details from his previous life (He knows his name was Xord but that's all he discusses), and we have no idea what he was like in his previous life (he has a daughter back in Colony 9) so for all we know: he could have either been a good man in his previous life or he could have been unlikable before then.

Other than that though, there's nothing suggesting that he's being forced to do evil against his will: he mentions while dying that his eyes were opened in regards to the truth about Shulk's weapon (The Monado, and that it was wielded by a very evil god who from what I can tell does count as he's listed on TV Tropes) meaning that he very may be willingly helping Egil lay waste to all organic life (But it's not a redeeming quality: he just enjoys killing and devouring Homs and his relationship with Egil isn't disclosed) and while dying shows no regrets for what he's done ("Was a good ride while it lasted" in his own words).

He's basically without any redeeming qualities and I'd say that he's easily as heinous as Metal Face on the scale that they occupy (Albeit not as spiteful, petty, and vindictive), yet I just can't tell if his status as a Faced Mechon (albeit pre-brainwashing) hurts his moral agency to the point to where he doesn't count. I don't know! I'm sorry this question is super long, but I just want to make sure that every detail regarding him is here for you to see so you can decide for yourself.

Well I'm not touching any more spoiler tags anyway - the trope pages look good as they are now.

If Xord is still attached to his previous life, than that suggests he was something of a killer or sadistic bully prior to becoming a Faced Mechon. If we assume he's a CM, there's a perfect comparison to him: Shrieker from Bleach. He also was one of THE earliest appearing villains in the series, he too had a hammy and sadistic personality, and was established to be a Serial Killer as a human before he became a Hollow and that he still has the memories and personality of his previous life in tact. Going by that, I'd say Xord is also a solid qualifier.

He was a blacksmith back at Colony 9 though, there's no reason to assume that he was a murderer or jerk... though he DID fight in the military as well and went missing during his time of service, so for all we know he could have grown a liking for killing others before becoming a Mechon. I don't know, there's very little information surrounding his life as a Homs besides the fact that he was a master craftsman and that he joined the military. I'll put him up then, so thanks for clearing things up with me.

EDIT: Looked back at what his daughter says, she never states that he misses him, just that he was a master craftsman and no indication that he loved her. In fact, she was more bothered by the fact that she couldn't keep his shop open and thus had nothing else to do than the fact that he went missing.

Someone discovering they enjoy killing upon their first kill is not unheard of. The indication seems to be that he became a Blood Knight due to his military services and that led him down the path to becoming a Mechon.

Alright, I've played far enough that I'm ready to propose Lorithia and see what your thoughts on her.

Basically, she's the minister of defense for the High Entia empire and pretends to be a loyal servant to Emperor Sorean Antiqua as well as a friend to his daughter Melia, yet she assists her racist stepmom in attempting to have her assassinated for... well, reasons that are never actually made clear on Lorithia's end (Melia's stepmom wants her dead purely for being half-Homs which she views as sullying her bloodline). So that's bad, but nothing too heinous, right?

Well, she also happens to be a member of a trinity devoted to Zanza, the god of the Bionis (an enormous titan where all organic life is born. It's weird to explain) who wishes to eliminate all life living on it and recreate it so he can constantly devour their ether (Life Force). She and Dickson (Who counts as a Complete Monster) willingly sold out their own kind so they could get access to godlike power and thus willingly help usher in the apocalypse and obtain immortality when Zanza recreates the world.

Along with helping bring about doomsday, she gets a scene where she betrays and forcibly transforms a large amount of High Entia soldiers (Including their prince) into Telethia, mindless rampaging monsters that only exist to destroy other life and collect ether for Zanza. The transformation process is shown to be nightmarish and agonizing and is treated as one of the game's most horrific events by far. And it gets worse when during her boss fight, she assimilates herself with the Telethia that Melia's brother was transformed into with the intention of forcing him to kill his beloved sister as a sick "present" for her.

Basically she's a very haughty, ruthless, and an all-around cold-blooded woman who has no redeeming qualities to speak of. I want to know though: when compared to her partner Dickson, do you think she's heinous enough to count? Like with Lorithia, Dickson at first seems like a cool, friendly old guy but is revealed to be a cold-blooded monster who shoots Shulk in the back and releases Zanza since he refused to kill the Mechon Leader Egil and reveals that despite adopting Shulk and acting as a father figure to him, he was only grooming him so he can serve as a vessel for Zanza. He goes on to assault the party with a herd of Telethia before Lorithia shows up and transforms the soldiers sent to stop him, goes on to lead another attack on the rebuilt Colony 6 with the intention of murdering all the survivors gathered there on top of helping Zanza annihilate all life in exchange for power.

I'm unsure on this one. If she's on the same side as Dickson and does similar things yet doesn't stand out as much as he does, she might not count. However she does seem to fit the criteria, so...

If you're unsure, I won't add her or anything since I understand your hesitation completely. She and Dickson both are without any redeeming qualities whatsoever, though Dickson is more involved with the story. She seems more like a YMMV example since she comes off as a monster thanks to her role in bringing about the end of the world, but doesn't quite commit as many evil deeds as Dickson aside from when she forcibly transforms the High Entia into Telethia.

Putting her as a potential exmaple in YMMV sounds best.

I've been thinking back to the Zelda game Twilight Princess, and I'm sorry, but I absolutely do not believe that Zant was too "weak-hearted" or too crazy to not count. True, Ganondorf used him, BUT Zant was more than aware of the choices he was making and still committed unspeakable atrocities regardless. I don't remember anything about Ganondorf ordering him to transform innocent Hylian civilians into Twilight beasts, executing the Zora Queen, or any of his other cruel deeds. Hell, if that vision Ganondorf has at the end indicates anything, he even turns on the god that he was supposedly so devoted to!

I'll have to look up on it. My memory's fuzzy, but I recall the flashback of how Zant first met his god, he was acting as crazy as he is now, which suggested to me he had serious mental issues even back then, which would also explain why he'd fall so easily for Ganon's manipulation. He motives were that he didn't like being stuck in the Twilight realm, right? That could be seen as vaguely sympathetic, even if selfish and ultimately misguided. And I always took that vision as Zant, in death, now seeing Ganon for who he truly was, so he was severing the tie between himself and Ganon, also killing him.

His goal may have been sympathetic... until he turned his realm's inhabitants into mindless beasts (you see a group roaming around the entrance to the palace), and began to conquer and lay waste to Hyrule. As for his mental state, it's another case to where I might be willing to consider it as a mitigating factor... if it also wasn't for the fact that he's more than capable of acting perfectly sane, cold, and calculating for a huge chunk of the game showing that he is capable of self-control and restraining his wild side until the very end. And as far as the ending scene where Ganondorf sees him snapping his own neck, you seriously seem to be the only person I've ever seen interpret it like that. Most people view it either as Zant turning on Ganondorf out of spite (a taking you with me sort of thing, or viewing Ganondorf as pathetic and not what he's hyped up to be for losing to you, take your pick) or as symbolism for Ganondorf losing his ground with the Twilight Realm.

He was always FAR from altruistic, in fact always thinking all about himself, but he was under the delusion it was all for a higher cause and that he was in the right. He did terrible things and he's a nasty, selfish, power hungry sociopath, and if he were the sole true Big Bad, he might easily qualify. The trouble, I think, is that Ganondorf's involvement kind of alters my perception. Not only is there now a bigger villain that a lot of Zant's actions can be traced to (his choices or not, he would not have been able to pull any of it off without the power Ganon bestowed upon him), but it adds a particularly nasty crime to Ganon's rep sheet - making Zant his pawn. I'm reminded of the pilot episode of the show Elementary, which featured a crazed serial killer who committed terrible murders of women who matched a specific profile. It turned out he killed the victim of the episode because the victim's husband, a perfectly sane doctor who wanted to inherit her life insurance money, had got his wife to make herself over to match the killer's profile and then sent the killer, who was his own patient he was supposed to be treating, after her. The situation was summed with the exchange of the doctor telling Sherlock Holmes "You're insane" for accusing him of this, and Sherlock replying "No, HE was insane, and you took advantage of that." Similarly, Zant was insane, entitled, power-hungry and cruel to start with, and Ganon took advantage of that to make him a pawn in his plan.

The "taking you with me out of spite" was pretty much my interpretation. I didn't mean that Zant had any real moral standards against Ganondorf, but that he could see that he wasn't the god he'd made him believe he was and in fact used him, which would be a blow to Zant' ego. Point is that he had part in taking out the bigger villain, though after all he did, it's not much atonement for anything.

At this point I'm unsure where Zant lies. He's either a Complete Monster, a 99% Monster, or a Subverted Trope altogether.

That's the tricky part about Zant: Ganondorf did take advantage of him and gave him the power that he needed, yet Zant went beyond the pale with what he did to others. To me, Zant is the kind of person who had the potential to do completely horrible things to others, yet lacked the means. Ganondorf simply provided the power he needed to subjugate and hurt others with, while Zant made the moral choices necessary to abuse that power to its best potential. I kind of think about what you said about Abigail and Danforth when it comes to how I view Ganondorf and Zant: Ganondorf got the ball rolling when he appeared before Zant and granted him his power, but Zant kept that ball rolling whenever he began his crusade against Hyrule with merciless glee.

And I hope that I'm not coming across as aggressive or irritating, I'm just trying to be more assertive and argue my points on certain things better. At times I feel that I tend to be a bit of a doormat. I do not however want to start flame wars at all whatsoever.

That's a good interpretation of Zant too - if he had more resources, privileges, and powers at his disposal, he'd use them to their fullest extent in trying to take over the world outside the Twilight Realm. The real question now is whether or not Zant should go down on the trope page or is he too YMMV?

No, it's OK. I understand some people feel differently about how heinous a villain comes off as. I always just saw Zant as a typical power-hungry and crazy villain doing the dirty work in a bigger villain's plot, and none of the things he himself did left any impact on me outside of thinking "wow, what a psychotic, evil creep." But that's just me.

I don't really view Zant as being too YMMV to be honest. Sure, he talks on and on about how he wants to lead his people to a better future outside of the Twilight Realm... but he also transformed them all into mindless, savage beasts that he can easily control, which shows that despite all his talk, he was only ever looking out for himself. And heck, Midna even tells him to his face that he was turned down for the throne because even before meeting Ganondorf, he was already known to harbor an unhealthy lust for power. I can see how Ganondorf's involvement in his rise to power would raise some eyebrows, but it's like I said before, Zant already had the potential to hurt others and forcibly subject them to his will, Ganondorf merely gave him the means to do so. While Zant is fanatically devoted to Ganondorf, the scene where he snaps his own neck which also kills Ganondorf (according to how you look at it) shows that he's more than willing to bump off his own god for not meeting his expectations.

As for his deeds, his rap sheet is pretty impressive: transforming all of the Twilight Realm's denizens into mindless monsters and doing the same to Hyrule's inhabitants, murdering the Zora Queen so she can serve as an example to those who get in his way, freezing the grieving Zora's alive, attack Zelda's castle and putting it to the sword unless she surrenders to him, and turning Hyrule into an all around hellish Twilight world. While his deeds can be traced back to Ganondorf, Zant takes in active role in the suffering of both realm's inhabitants and loves the terrible things that he does.

All in all, I think him getting a spot on the actual page is justified, though we'll see how he holds up in the future when this site presumably gets more members.

What's YMMV for me is whether or not he crosses the line from mere Classic Villain to Complete Monster. It's obvious he was selfish since no other Twili had any issues with being confined to the realm like he did, and he couldn't dare say he was looking after his people when he'd transform them into his tools. Though, evil or selfish or not, it's really hard to blame him if what you said was his reason for taking Ganon down with him. It'd be liked if Teru Mikami killed Light Yagami - seeing that your god doesn't meet expectations and in actuality never has kind of kills the whole devotion. xD

Another issue is the only one of those we see on-screen is his attack on Hyrule castle, and there he actually does spare Zelda's life when he could very have have killed her like he did the Zora Queen. Transforming people and freezing the Zora's alive have on-screen results that speak for themselves, but his murder of the queen was entirely mentioned, and turning Hyrule into a hellish world is something Ganon did before him in "Ocarina", and he may well be credited for this one too.

Zant was despicable and terrible no doubt, but he's a less clear cut example than others. Mainly 'cause Ganondorf stood unopposed in "Ocarina", and Ghirahim and Yuga were shown to be above Demise and Ganon respectively in how cruel and heinous they were in their games. With Zant, he has to compete with his "god" Ganondorf in the same game and it kind of becomes blurry if one eclipses the other or if they're both equal.

For the death of the queen, what sells it for me is that we see how affected people are by her death: if memory serves, most of the local Zoras are shaken up quite badly by what happened to her, even moreso in the case of her son. Plus, we do meet her ghost, so I suppose that Zant's actions do speak for themselves in a way. :p As for sparing Zelda, I don't know if they ever went into why he did so. For all we know, he did it to show her exactly what he was doing to her kingdom, as it was still slowly suffering under his rule. And as for the state of the world under the Twilight Realm's influence, I feel that Zant deserves more credit than Ganondorf for that since he was the one who came to Hyrule and actively attacked it.

And I'll admit, Ganondorf makes for some steep composition, especially since his rapsheet from Ocarina includes murdering the Great Deku Tree, trying to starve the Gorons to death, turning most of Hyrule into a monster-overrun wasteland, murdering the Composer Brothers, forcing Ingo to sacrifice horses to him in fear of his wrath, turning the Kokiri Forest into a monster breeding ground, tried feeding the Gorons to Volvagia, froze over Zora's Domain, and brainwashed the denizens of Gerudo Valley so they would be loyal to him all on top of him providing Zant the means to give Hyrule hell.

However, Ganondorf did all of this over the span of seven years, which I think is important to remember. Zant rising to power happened pretty recently in the context of the story, yet he already succeeded in doing his fair share of nasty things too. His rap sheet is pretty small compared to Ganondorf's, but I feel that if he had more time available for oppressing Hyrule's citizens, his crimes could easily equal his master's.

I hope that doesn't sound like a cop-out by the way, I'm just trying to show you how I'm thinking. As of now, Zant is the only Zelda villain among the ones that aren't listed who I see realistically having a shot at CM status.

I'm now more convinced that Zant as a Complete Monster is a valid interpretation of the character, but I'm still undecided about if we end up putting him on the main trope page or not.

Chances are that I'm being gung-ho about this, but I have no problem listing him on the page proper. His insanity is a legitmate concern, but said insanity is basically chalked down to him being a spoiled brat of a manchild taken to terrifying extremes, and he's more than capable of acting cold and rational when needed.

As for Ganondorf and how he measures up, I agree that Ganondorf's list of crimes in Ocarina of Time make for some steep competition, but as for Twilight Princess Zant was the more involved one when it comes to the terrible things that happened and caused quite a bit of damage despite not having his powers for too long.

I apologize in advance if I'm going in circles at this point, I just feel that I've said enough on the subject. If it bothers you though, I won't raise a stink about it.

Try making a writeup for him and presenting it to me here and I'll see what I think.

Well, here goes nothing!

• Zant the Usurper King from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was once an embittered, hateful servant to the Twilight Realm's royal family. Furious that he was passed over for the crown due to his power-hungry nature, Zant soon found Ganondorf, who had been banished to the Twilight Realm and came to see him as a god and became fanatically devoted to him. Having been granted godlike power from him, Zant transformed the realm's inhabitants into dangerous, mindless monsters while he also transformed its rightful ruler Midna into an imp-like creature and set out to leave the world that he hated so much by conquering the Realm of Light. Leading a violent campaign against Hyrule, Zant forces its ruler Princess Zelda to surrender on threat of him slaughtering its inhabitants outright, and imprisons her while slowly transforming the kingdom into a Twilight hell. When Queen Rutela of the Zoras fought back against his forces, Zant personally executed her to show what would happen to those who defy him, and froze over Zora's Domain entirely in order to kill its inhabitants. As for the rest of the kingdom, his evil is felt everywhere, with Shadow Beasts attacking and transforming people into more of the foul beasts and the kingdom's citizens fearing for their lives against this new threat. And whenever Link and Midna finally confront him in their final battle, Zant reveals that under his cold and ruthless mask, he's truly a psychopathic brat whose motives can basically be described as a spoiled child being told "no".

So what do you think? I feel that it could use some tweaking myself, but I tried my best to capture everything monstrous about him in this theoretical post.

I did some tweaking and Zant's entry is now on the page. The compromise is that while he's still said to be mentally ill and weak hearted, he's said to have veered into this trope's territory upon gaining power from Ganon and using it to commit his atrocities. Whether he's a straight example or subversion is kept YMMV, but he's definitely close enough to the trope to be listed.

Yeah, I saw the example when it went up, and I'm quite happy! It's like I said, outside of the four already on the list, he's the only other villain who I believe fits this trope as of now.

I would have taken a break from this, but I have another example to propose mainly because the game I'm talking about came out very recently: he's an unnamed serial killer who is usually called the Purple Man/Guy (Not to be confused with Zebediah Killgrave of course) by fans who inhabits an animatronic costume called Springtrap. Whichever you prefer, this guy is not just the Big Bad of the recent Five Nights at Freddy's 3, but the Bigger Bad to the series as a whole. However, I should tell you all about what he's done, huh?

Basically, our dear friend Purple Guy was a child murderer that moonlighted as a security guard who worked at the restaurant called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (And maybe its earliest incarnation Fredbear's Family Diner, but that's not important) presumably so he'd have access to a constant supply of victims. Donning a yellow costume of the restaurant's mascot Freddy Fazbear, Purple Guy lured five children backstage and murdered them, going on to hide their bodies inside of the animatronic suits of the restaurant's mascots before running for it. He's also heavily implied to be responsible for the deaths of six other children... but we'll get into that later. The children that he murdered came back as vengeful spirits, possessing the animatronics and used their bodies to murder security workers at the Pizzeria due to them thinking that all adults are evil thanks to the circumstances of their death, unable to find peace until the murderer came back to the restaurant to hide the evidence of his murders (The children's bodies were never found) and hid in one of the costumes from them when they came after him, getting himself killed in the process since the suit he hid in was full of dangerous components that gave him a brutally horrific yet very deserving death. However, his spirit in turn was tied to the Springtrap animatronic he died in, and in the third game he serves as the main antagonist, doing all he can to murder the night watchman protagonist.

He seems like a straightforward example, but the lore in the FNaF games is handled... interestingly. Basically, in these games you basically spend all of your time trying to prevent haunted animatronics from getting in your room and murdering you, so the backstory is found via odd newspaper clippings/weird ATARI-esque games (Where the murderer is represented by a purple guy, hence the name). In the first game we knew about the Missing Children Incident (The murder of the five children) via newspaper clippings, though we do see the dead bodies of the children in one of the sequels Atari games in a gruesome aftermath. And since we do see his victims in the form of the vengeful animatronic, his actions speak for themselves.

However, he could easily be worse but due to the vague nature of the ATARI games, it's hard to be sure. The sequels minigames show a purple man murdering a little boy outside of the restaurant, one stopping the titular Freddy Fazbear from saving the murdered children (This one is the one hinted the most at being the killer) while another has a purple man hanging around an area where five other dead kids can be found. It's never truly made clear if all of these purple men are our murderer or not, this means that our killer has eleven child victims that we know about if we assume that all representations of a purple man are him.

It should also be noted that he's not really explored too indepth: it's not known why he murders children, though given the fact that the purple men who represent him smile widely, it's likely that he does it for fun.

In case if this was way too long, we basically have a child-murdering madman who definitely killed at least five children, and very likely may have his body count at eleven confirmed kills. And since he haunts the Springtrap animatronic that serves as Five Nights at Freddy's 3's villain, his hateful, murderous nature is still intact even after death. It's the rather odd way the game presents it's backstory that makes me come to you for wisdom.

I don't have any strong feelings of opposition or agreement for this one. If you want to add him, go ahead.

I understand. I hope I wasn't doing anything wrong or something.

No, you weren't. :)

I just so happened to be looking at the YMMV section for Pokémon in general, and I saw that a character from some obscure Pokémon Diamond and Pearl manga named IO was listed under there. Do you think she deserves a full entry? I looked her up, though I wasn't too impressed by her deeds which Bulbapedia listed as kidnapping a girl and controlling Darkrai in order to shroud the land in darkness. She sounds kind of generic to me, though I haven't read the manga, and Bulbapedia's entry for her was pretty vague on details. Have you read the Phantom Thief Pokémon 7 manga, and if so, what are your thoughts on her?

From what I recall, she also had the girl she kidnapped brainwashed and turned against her brother, and she wanted to shroud the entire planet in darkness, as well as take over both Team Galactic and the world. Basically she's to Team Galactic what the Iron Mask Marauder was to Team Rocket, so I think she qualifies. Still not sure about how to do a full entry, though.

By shrouding the world in darkness (Sorry if this is a stupid question), do they elaborate on what IO means by that? After all, Darkrai's powers revolve around trapping people in horrific nightmares that they can't wake up from without help from a Cresselia. If that's her goal, then I'd say that she sounds like an easy qualifier when you add that with kidnapping and brainwashing a child as well as seeking to impose her will on the world.

And speaking of potential examples, it appears that Andross is actually gaining a lot of steam over on TV Tropes. I personally think he does qualify after truly looking at his deeds (I was unsure beforehand mainly because I'm not super familiar with Starfox in general), so should I go ahead and give him a write-up?

I think that's pretty much it, except I think she'd get to dictate what nightmares people get trapped in so that the outcome best serves her and her self gain. I have to agree: she's got traits of Charon, the Iron Mask Marauder, Hunter J, Sird, AND Darkrai, and if they all qualify, she does too.

I always saw Andross as presented in the games to be a pretty generic Evil Overlord villain, but I admit I'd also forgot about the crucial backstory details that DO indeed push him over the line into this trope. Let's wait 'til I writeup is proposed on TV Tropes - I'll then edit it to make my own version of Andross' writeup and it'll go here then.

So who's putting up IO's entry, you or me? I suppose I could just look up the manga and read it myself, but if you want to I won't stop you.

In other news, I have more questions regarding any future Pokémon examples. I've listed characters like Archie, Maxie, Cyrus, and Xerosic as not qualifying due to having good relationships with their Golbats which is why they'd have Crobats (among other things)... but in Colosseum, Ein has a Crobat as well. I don't think this raises an issue with Ein seeing as how he's shown to be heartless in regards to Pokémon welfare (And given that his Golbat and Crobat have different genders, he may have disposed of his Golbat in favor of a new one for all we know), and Mega Evolution is in a similar boat. Should a villain having a Crobat or a Pokémon capable of Mega Evolution really be a disqualifying factor in the future?

What I mean is that especially in a final battle with a prominent organization member, the developers probably want to make their battle climactic by giving them a Pokémon capable of Mega Evolution, and Crobat is in a similar boat, an unevolved Pokémon in a big climactic showdown doesn't make sense from a developmental standpoint either. I know the lore says that Pokémon are only capable of mega evolving if they share a close bond with their trainer, but I'm pretty sure that the devs wouldn't pass on say, giving Ghetsis a Mega Hydreigon if we see Gen 5 remakes years from now, and it's obvious that Ghetsis doesn't give two shits about his Pokemon. I'm sorry about making a big deal over what's likely a non-issue, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

You can I you want. Propose it to me first once you got it written up.

It was honestly never too much of a disqualifying factor to me. Cyrus, for instance, has a good deal of factors that prevent him from entering the trope, but treating his Golbat well isn't exactly one because we KNOW he doesn't do it out of love - he says himself that to him, love and compassion are illusions of the weak, incomplete human heart and that such sentiment is useless emotion. Treating his Golbat kindly would thus be done out of pragmatism rather than love, since this is all about what Golbat feels for it's trainer as opposed to what the trainer feels towards Golbat. If treated well, Golbat/Crobat doesn't give any shits about how bad the person raising it is. It'd have to be the same case with Ein since he also doesn't seem to believe in love or any such emotions, least of all when it comes to Pokemon.

Also, if someone like Ghetsis ever had a Mega Pokemon, there's a high probability it's stolen. The man is a criminal, after all.

Cyrus only pretended to love his Crobat. It was stolen.

The "stolen" theory makes sense, and as I said, it's actually easy to treat a Pokemon right and make it happy without actually *loving* it.