Villain Ball: Difference between revisions

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* [[Death Trap]]

* [[Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat]]

* [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good]]

* [[Evil Gloating]]

* [[Genocide Backfire]]

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** Naturally, ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'' has a field day with this issue.

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]', all Jean has to do to defeat Yusei after a long and extensive duel is end his turn since Yusei has no cards left in his deck and would automatically lose once his turn began, however he gets caught up in the thrill of the duel and attacks Yusei who defends with a card in his hand and depletes Jean's life points.

* ''[[Ojamajo Doremi]]'': Incumbent [[Alpha Bitch|Tamaki]] and Masaharu are contesting the class election. This divides the class into two. Masaharu can't stand it, and decides to concede the election to Tamaki. In response she says, "How can a candidate back out? We need to have a righteous contest, right? I'd rather you do that." Her (main) reasoning comes across as even more idiotic: "My pride won't allow a win without a fight", rather than "No one will vote for someone who wants us to clean the room 3 times a day <ref>not when my policy is to clean once every 3 days</ref>". It's supposedly awesome that Tamaki's attempt to whitewash Masaharu in the election ends up backfiring, but then he announces his intention to have a neighborhood cleanup, and that has everyone freaking.

* ''[[Dragon Ball|Dragon Ball Z]]'' had Cell ''intentionally'' hold the villain ball during his fight with Gohan. After cryptic words from Goku, [[Beware the Nice Ones|describing Gohan's hidden potential]], Cell goes through '''extreme''' measures to draw it out for the sake of having a challenge. This included creating clones of himself to [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown|beat the living hell]] out of Gohan's [[True Companions]] and finally killing [[Friend to All Living Things|Android 16]] in front of him. Considering how much of a [[Martial Pacifist]] Gohan had become now since his year-in-a-day in the [[Phantom Zone|Room of Spirit and Time]], this could be considered a Deconstruction of this trope because of everything Cell had to do to finally find Gohan's [[Berserk Button]].

** Garlic Jr. holds one of these in the movie ''Dead Zone''. He obtains the Dragonballs and succesfully uses them to wish for immortality, allowing him to utterly dominate the heroes in combat since they can't kill him. Instead of just killing them like this, Garlic Jr. opens a portal to the [[Phantom Zone|Dead Zone]], hoping to suck the heroes in. Of course, the heroes instead knock ''him'' into the portal, trapping him forever. At least untill an anime [[Filler]] arc where he escapes... and makes ''the exact same mistake'' again.

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== Film -- Live Action ==

* In ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]'', this is exactly what happens to Anakin after being warned by Obi Wan that he can´t win because of the higher ground.

* In ''[[True Lies]]'', [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]]'s character is under the effect of truth serum and tells the men interrogating him exactly how he is going to escape and kill them. He succeeds. In the poor [[Mooks]]' defense, he really didn't give them a chance to do anything else. The second he finished explaining, he went right to it.

* Khan in ''[[Star Trek]] II: The Wrath of Khan'' escaped exile, stole a starship, and marooned its crew in his place. As his right hand man points out, they can do anything they want. But Khan is determined to have his revenge on Kirk, an agenda which of course leads to his own death.

* The sheriff in ''[[First Blood]]'' could have avoided a lot of death and bloodshed had he simply let the wandering Vietnam veteran get something to eat, but instead chose to throw his weight around and treat the guy like a criminal. Not a smart thing to do to John [[Rambo]]...

** [[Justified]], at least partially. Rambo never mentions that he's a returned Nam vet, so the sheriff literally doesn't know [[Badass|what he's dealing with]]. [[Perma-Stubble|Plus, Rambo doesn't exactly look like]] [[Good Hair, Evil Hair|an upstanding citizen.]] It may be more a case of [[Wrong Genre Savvy]] than anything else.

* In ''[[Dream House (film)|Dream House]]'', {{spoiler|Jack Patterson}} clutches the villain ball during the climax. First, he {{spoiler|shoots his accomplice Boyce}} without making sure that {{spoiler|[[Not Quite Dead]] he was dead}}. Second, he ties up {{spoiler|Ann}} instead of killing {{spoiler|her}}. Not only does {{spoiler|Peter Ward rescue Ann, Boyce pours a flammable liquid onto Jack's escape path, resulting in Jack getting burned}}.

* Willy Bank and Terry Benedict in ''Ocean's Thirteen''. The former's outright betrayal of Reuben leading to Ocean and co. seeking justice is the impetus for the plot; knowing full well their reputation as capable of beating the odds. The latter in his insistence to betray them and get several diamonds.

* It does not always happen to the [[Big Bad]]: In the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] film ''[[Thunderball]]'' (1965), Count Lippe alias "sub-operator G", was handed the ball and attacked an unsuspecting off-duty Bond, tipping him off about what was happening in the fitness center. As a result, he was [[You Have Failed Me|properly dealt with]] by his boss.

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* Lampshaded in [[Heirs of Alexandria|Much Fall of Blood]]. The [[Evil Sorcerer]] plans to trap and sacrifice the heroes in a location where magic doesn't work. Of course, this means the [[Evil Sorcerer]] has no access to magic either, and the heroes are better in a physical melee.

* The leader of the [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|Psychlos]] from the ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' novel and film does a lot of things that make the viewer/reader shout, "[[What an Idiot!]]!" In an especially stupid move, the leader teaches the hero, Jonny "Goodboy" Tyler, [[Instant Expert|everything about Psychlos in a matter of seconds]], in an attempt to get him to assist their enslavement of Earth. Naturally, it comes back to bite him in the ass at the end in a ''big'' way.

* [[Harry Potter|Lord Voldemort]], amusingly enough, suffered from being more evil than needed and less evil than he could've been at the same time. If he'd just killed Lily Potter without offering her a chance to step aside or if he'd deigned to toss her aside when she refused, instead of killing her, he would've won. But in doing things that exact way he provided the conditions for her [[Heroic Sacrifice]], which eventually led to his doom.

* In the [[Everworld]] series, Senna Wales was a [[Magnificent Bastard]] up until the series was to be cancelled. At this point in the story, she had become allies with a whole pantheon, killed or weakened several ''gods'', arranged the downfall of an entire nation, removed the one species that was a serious threat to her from Everworld, built a small army for her personal use, was ''still'' successfully blackmailing and manipulating the other main characters despite them wising up to what she was doing, outmaneuvered Merlin twice and laid a trap for him, become so powerful that [[No Man of Woman Born|no man could bring himself to lay a hand on her]], had plans laid down to build her position that went entire years in advance, and needed only one more object in order to complete her master plan and become the absolute, [[A God Am I|godlike]] [[Dimension Lord]] of Everworld. How can this [[Sliding Scale of Villain Effectiveness|high-threat]], [[Sliding Scale of Villain Threat|universe-threatening]] witch be defeated in a quick, cheap manner? Give her the [[Villain Ball]] of course!

* [[K. A. Applegate]] likes saddling her truly formidable villains with this: Senna is an [[Expy]] of ''[[Animorphs]]'''s [[Sixth Ranger Traitor|David]], who is also manhandled into carrying the [[Villain Ball]] to facilitate a quick defeat. At the point in the story he starts to carry it David has defeated four of the six Animorphs in a single night (almost killing two of them), acquired an Animorph for impersonation, made the team's resident [[Blood Knight]] ''afraid for her life'', and strongarmed the Animorphs into a position where they have no choice but to give him the [[Super Empowering|Morphing Cube]]. So how does the team effectively defeat David in the span of a few short chapters? Why, the [[Villain Ball]], dear boy.

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** Omnius isn't much better. His attempts to finish off the ''[[Unusual Euphomism|hrethgir]]'' (free human) once and for all leaves him open to attack by determined humans, leaving him with one world out of hundreds in a matter of weeks.

* In the [[Dale Brown]] book ''Plan of Attack'', Russian president Gryzlov would have avoided death if he had not {{spoiler|used nukes against the ABF-taken Russian airbase}} and prompted an [[Even Evil Has Standards]] [[Redemption Equals Death]] moment. In ''Edge of Battle'' Comandante Veracruz would not have been stopped either if he did not {{spoiler|double-cross Zakharov and cause him to carry out [[Enemy Mine]]}}.

* In ''[[The Hundred and One Dalmatians]]'', Cruella de Vil owned more than 80 dalmatian puppies. ''Owned'', as in had legally bought and paid for. There were no police, human owners, or frantic canine parents looking for these puppies. One would think that would have been plenty to start her dalmatian fur farm. If not, she could have waited until there was another litter for sale and just bought more puppies. Instead, she kidnapped the Dearly puppies (paying far more to the dog thieves than she had for any litter), thereby bringing the police, human reward-seekers, and [[Papa Wolf|Pongo]] and [[Mama Bear|Missus]] down on her head, permanently putting a stop to her plans.

* Everything the Capitol does in [[The Hunger Games]] seems to be based on how evil it is than whether or not it would be beneficial. {{spoiler|Shooting an old man in a crowd just for singing a song, reducing District 12 into utter poverty to the point the protagonist wanted to rebel, rounding up a chunk of the victors of the games (people the public cherish and revere as heroes) into another game with the intent to kill, elminating any good will between Katniss by brutally killing Cinna in front of her, eliminating the good will of pretty much any major character by brutally firebombing District 12 and killing civilians on TV.}} Combined with the Hunger Games itself, it makes you wonder how the nation lasted for 75 years without any form of outward rebellion {{spoiler|which the districts are too happy to do in the span of a few months.}}

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

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** In general, Goa'Uld communication orbs [[Visual Pun|double as villain balls]]. Since only the bad guys use them, they are an easy way to make distinctions. Once a spy in Tok'Ra was uncovered because Jack O'Neil had seen him with such an orb.

* Pick a ''[[Doctor Who]]'' villain. Any ''[[Doctor Who]]'' villain. Special mention must go to [[Evil Counterpart|the Master]] however, who even originally had a [[Beard of Evil]]!

* Every villain on ''[[Supernatural]]''. All of them. Except Crowley who, in his own words, is the only one to not "Underestimate those denim wrapped nightmares!" And is therefore the only one thus far still walking around unharmed.

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

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

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== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Eternal Sonata]]'', your party is forced to surrender party member (and [[MacGuffin Girl]]) Polka to [[Card-Carrying Villain]] Count Waltz. Waltz successfully convinces Polka that if she surrenders peacefully then no harm will come to the party or her, and he will call off his army. Polka (in turn) successfully convinces the rest of the party to allow her to go with Waltz and sacrifice her freedom for the greater good. Waltz's plan would have worked perfectly... if he ''hadn't'' decided to punctuate his victory by ''slapping Polka in clear view of everyone'', proving he was a lying prick and prompting Polka (and the rest of the party) to attack.

* Arthas in ''[[World of Warcraft|Wrath of the Lich King]]''. So hard. Any dumb thing that the evil guy can do just to prove his credentials, he does. Like telling the most important part of his army (who, by a strange coincidence, are one of about three parts of his army who have free will) that they were BAIT for a guy who was supposed to mow them down in seconds, but didn't even show up for said fight until they already lost. Did we mention he laughed at them, too? Oh, and he delivered the weapon that can beat him to said guy in this ploy. OH, and it turns out that after betraying and alienating his officer corps, he's having a tough time finding commanders. Whoops! ''And that's just one example.''

** There's also his tendency of finding his few surviving commanders in mortal danger and deciding that if they can't survive the battle then too bad. You'd think after losing every single known lieutenant he has he'd stop throwing their lives away.

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== [[Real Life]] ==

* [[Nazi Germany]] fortunately held on to the villain ball through much of WWII. Their [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]] put them at war against the entire Atlantic world at once, forcing [[Enemy Mine|natural enemies]] like the Soviets and the Western allies to unite against them. Their [[Master Race|racist ideology]] caused them to mistreat or ignore potential allies, like the Ukrainians and other Slavs who hated Stalin. They invested [[Glorious Leader|absolute power]] in a [[Fascist but Inefficient]] [[Adolf Hitler|dictator]] who turned out [[General Failure|not to be a very good military leader]], (at least not when facing an enemy who wasn't easily cowed - his understanding of the military psychology of Continental Western Europe was flawless). They engaged in [[Final Solution|atrocities]] to such an [[Moral Event Horizon|extreme degree]] that there was no way left for them to negotiate their way out of the war when it turned against them, and, indeed, by the end were just spending resources committing atrocities that could otherwise have been used to prevent complete annihilation.

** Not to mention that if they had curbed their ambitions and stopped right after the Munich Agreement, [[Adolf Hitler]] may have been more fondly remembered in Germany.

*** This is unlikely, since a major motivation for Germany's war of conquest was that Hitler's powerbase was built on a higher standard of living for common workers than in any other European nation at the time, and this in turn was entirely built on the wealth stolen from the minorities, not on any sound economic system. They needed to conquer more territories, enslave more "subhumans" and steal more resources to keep this up.

*** It wasn't so much "stealing from minorities" that kept the standard of living up for the normal German - there wasn't nearly enough money. They stole from minorities out of malice and out of racism - they could have made a lot more revenue by befriending the Jews (who owned a lot of shops and banks) and helping them grow the economy. It was re-armament (in 1935, the Army couldn't spend it's budget) and socialized work programs that drove employment up - except they borrowed like crazy to fund it. So they either had to cut or go to war. They went to war.

*** The Nazi economic model has been described as a "conquest" or "looter" economy because of that. Its cartelization of businesses along with making them attain the government bureaucrats' approval for every step of production, coupled with price controls that severely disrupted things, made it ''extremely'' inefficient.

* Josef Stalin, to a much lesser degree. He had a doctor who told him to take some time off arrested and tortured. So when he had a massive and undignified stroke, nobody wanted to diagnose him. Even his fellow Politburo members were terrified of calling help in case he recovered and had them shot. His guards were also afraid to go in to help him or call a doctor. It doesn't help that he also had recently killed many supposedly for being in a "Doctor's Plot" against him. So, rather than survive to retire or even continue to lead, he died on the floor of his bedroom, soaked in his own urine. There are certain theories which say he was poisoned too, which is not surprising if true.

* The Ottoman Turkish Empire in the lead up to and during [[World War One]]. Fullstop.

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[[Category:index]]

[[Category:Villain Ball]]

[[Category:Ball Index]]