Villain Ball: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"For all you aspiring villains, remember: When victory is just a push of a button away, you are required to complicate the matter in the most ridiculous way possible."''|'''Cracked.com''', ''The 5 Most Needlessly Evil Super Villain Strategies''.}}

Evil sows the seeds of its own destruction. At least that's what every [[Aesop]] and fortune cookie says, anyway. There seems to be some truth to it, though, at least in fiction, because regardless of [[Genre Savvy]], villains tend to inherently draw the kind of heroic attention to themselves that leads to their demise, or at least the demise of their [[Evil Plan]]. Basically, they're saddled with carrying their own version of the [[Idiot Ball]]: the Villain Ball.

 

 

Inevitably, it's their own inherent [[Fatal Flaw|Fatal Flaws]] that lead to [[Hoist By His Own Petard|their downfall]], possibly even an apropos [[Karmic Death]] or [[Cool and Unusual Punishment]].

 

* [[Asshole Victim]]

* [[Designated Villain]]

* [[Evil Chancellor]]

 

Related Plots:

* [[Bond Villain Stupidity]]

* [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]]

* [[Genocide Backfire]]

* [[Insult Backfire]]

* [[Just Between You and Me]]

* [[Hostage for Macguffin]]

* [[Mistreatment Induced Betrayal]]

* [[Murder Is the Best Solution]]

* [[Pride Before a Fall]]

* [[Revealing Coverup]]

* [[Humiliation Conga]]

* [[Karmic Death]]

* [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]]

* [[Revenge Before Reason]]

 

 

 

Also see and contrast [[The Villain Makes the Plot]].

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** He admits he is Kira to Misora, when he's written down her name in the notebook in front of her, in broad daylight on a city street. Had Mogi been paying slightly more attention before he walked out of earshot, or had Mogi not been using an umbrella due to the providencial rain, Light would've been caught.

*** {{spoiler|Again, when he believes that he killed the task force. Leading to his complete reveal that he is Kira when they didn't die.}}

** Orochimaru had a tendency to do things that were counterproductive towards his goals for no real reason other than that [[For the Evulz|he likes being a dick]]. The best example is probably when he killed the Kazekage... after the Kazekage had agreed to attack Konoha. So Orochimaru killed off a powerful ally, pretty much just because he could.

*** Same goes for Tobi when he released the Kyuubi upon the Leaf Village. Granted, he didn't expect the Fourth Hokage to seal away his control over the Kyuubi, then seal it inside the newborn Naruto.

** The series do what they can in terms of justifying it; most of the [[MacGuffin]] collections can ''only'' change hands in a duel and so forth. Then there was that time one of the "Player Killers" in the Duelist Kingdom arc decided to protest his defeat by Yugi... using a pair of ''flamethrowers''. It didn't work. Yami's Mind Crush on the other hand worked just fine.

*** This is how Saiou breaks the tradition. He pretends to be playing along with this, and then while the hero is bound in the fight, he sets off [[The Plan]]. Because all he needs to do is press a button, he can do it during the match. Judai/Jaden and his duel spirits can't leave the match. Of course, he started to break it when Juudai first challenged him to the duel and Saiou's reaction was, paraphrased, "No. I've got what I need. I don't need to duel you." The only reason he did duel Juudai was because Neos manifested to keep Saiou from getting the keys to the SORA satellite. *THEN* he used the duel in order to weaken Neos, which allowed him to steal the satellite keys and give them to his nearest brainwashed flunky, who could and did run off to get the satellite going while Juudai was tied up in the duel. Saiou (or more precisely, the Light of Ruin) didn't count on Kenzan and Mizuchi, Saiou's own sister, teaming up to put a halt to things.

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds]]', 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.

* 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]]...

* 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.

* Alt-history novelist Robbie Taylor came up with a wonderful subversion of this idea: at the moment of defeat, the Antichrist ''accepts Jesus as his personal savior'' and therefore qualifies for admission to Heaven.

* 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.

* [[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!

* 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.}}

* [[The Dragon|Drake]] from ''[[Gone]]'' seems to be aware that hurting [[Dark Chick|Diana]] would be pushing a [[Berserk Button]] of the [[Big Bad]], [[Stalker With a Crush|Caine]], and, while he openly hates her, he saves most of his taunting of her for when Caine isn't around, even though she often provokes him. But then in ''Hunger'', he {{spoiler|picks her up with his whip-hand and bashes her head open against a rock ''[[Disproportionate Retribution|because she yelled at him]]'', all in front of Caine.}} This does not go over well. Of course, he's not exactly mentally stable, so...

 

 

== Video Games ==

* 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.

*** Well, he is the Lich King. It's not like when they die he can't just bring them back anyway. But really, why waste the time? Kill the snots that are screwing with you and just be done with it already.

** Face it, with the kind of power Arthas can throw around, if he hadn't swallowed the Villain Ball there's no way in hell anyone would ever be able to even slow him down.

*** That was a [[Villain Ball]] in itself. At the same time we learn Arthas was building us up to be his champions, we also learn that if the Lich King dies, the mindless Scourge will be left uncontrolled and wipe out all life on Azeroth in a [[Zombie Apocalypse]]... Which means the Scourge, as it was, was already powerful enough to defeat the Alliance and the Horde. [[Complexity Addiction|Why Arthas felt he needed the heroes when he already possessed an unstoppable army is anyone's guess.]]

** Deathwing was even worse in ''Cataclysm''. In the Dragon Soul raid, after Thrall shoots him with the titular object, Deathwing flies back to the Maelstrom and tries to cause another Cataclysm. He apparently could have done this at any time, yet inexplicably waited until his enemies had killed all of his lieutenants, united the other Dragon Aspects, retrieved one of the few weapons powerful enough to kill him, and attacked him with it a couple times to try. At least Arthas had the somewhat flimsy excuse of wanting to make the player characters his champions, with Deathwing the writers didn't even try to justify it.

** On the other hand Illidan was doing it for Kil'Jaeden had he succeded, we can quite imagine what he might have rewarded Illidan had he finished the deed.

* [[Nightmare Before Christmas Oogies Revenge|In the game NBC Oogie's Revenge, if Oogie]] had not left Jack a trail of breadcrumbs to follow and skipped to cutting Halloween off from the Hinterlands and killing Santa he would have succeeded. Heck, if he didn't make his presence so well known to Jack he might have been able to lull him into a false sense of victory and captured him (he even already had a cell for him), making room for him as the Seven Holidays King in the absense of all the other leaders.

** In the good ending he does have a moment of cleverness after being defeated the first time. He reverts to his child form and tries to pretend to be an ordinary kid who was possessed. [[Idiot Ball|Right when your character reaches out to him]], Vincent the vampire hunter (who only survives in the good ending) [[Big Damn Heroes|saves you]] by exposing the ruse with holy water. Cue [[Final Boss]] fight.

** Not completely. He could still potentially be taken out by a particularly well-executed ambush. {{spoiler|Like the one Sakura pulls in Heaven's Feel.}} Though you could argue that not immediately going out and unleashing his full power at the very beginning of the war is already holding the [[Villain Ball]], since he could probably easily win in an hour or less if he were smart enough to try that.

** It's grown to such a point that fans are starting to joke that one of Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasms in [[Hyperspace Arsenal|the Gate Of Babylon]] is either a [[Villain Ball]] or an [[Idiot Ball]]. That, or he has a hidden Passive Phantasm.

* In the more recent Sonic games, [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Dr. Eggman]] has (on numerous occasions) either unleashed or sought to unleash a creature of extreme power ([[Sonic Adventure (Video Game)|th]][[Sonic Unleashed (Video Game)|re]][[Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (Video Game)|e]] [[Sonic Adventure 2 (Video Game)|gods]] and [[Shadow the Hedgehog|one prototype of the ultimate lifeform]] for starters). For a while, his plans go great, and he usually is a step or two ahead of his nemesis, Sonic. However, just when his plans are at their highest, everything goes horribly wrong. The god reaches its highest potential, and then Eggman realizes that he made a huge mistake and ends up having to work with Sonic to get rid of his own mess. The villain ball part comes when you realize something: Given his past experiences, why in the hell would he continue this pattern just to be embarrassed and defeated? Also, he constantly blabs about his schemes to the ''one guy who always defeats him'', even going so far as to have a '''worldwide broadcast about his plan when Sonic and his gang didn't have an idea of it before then'''. The only thing you can't accuse Eggman of is not trying to kill Sonic with his godlike creatures, because that is just something he naturally fails at, but is in no control of whatsoever.

* Lampshaded by a Team Plasma grunt in ''[[Pokémon Black and White]]'', in N's Castle. He states that the reason why other villain teams (Rocket and Galactic being mentioned in particular) failed was because they made themselves and their plans public. Plasma on the other hand had been secretly building and preparing for their ultimate plan while masquerading as PETA-esque Pokemon liberators.

* Osmund Saddler's evil plan in ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'' would have stood a much better chance of succeeding if he hadn't decided to [[Evil Gloating|monologue]] about it in front of Leon Kennedy and {{spoiler|inject him with the parasite}} while he was conscious. Then there's the fact that he keeps around a machine that can {{spoiler|kill the parasite without harming the host}}, without any previous experience at using it or the need of a password or other lock-out mechanism

* In ''[[Starcraft]]'', Arcturus Mengsk decides to not send Kerrigan the requested dropship when the Zerg overrun Tarsonis for apparently no reason at all. She's been his most important lieutenant who had never shown any sign of not being completely loyal to him, and there seems to be no reason at all why saving her would have been impossible. The result of this is that Kerrigan gets captured alive and turned into a general and eventually supreme commander of the Zerg and Raynor deserting him, both becoming his most dangerous enemies. Up until that point, there has been no indication that he would have wanted [[Uriah Gambit|to get rid of her]] or that she even contemplated turning against him. All it does is create two powerful armies that want to kill him.

** Justified by the [[Starcraft II|sequel]] and the novel ''I, Mengsk''. It was revenge: {{spoiler|Kerrigan was the Ghost that assassinated Mengsk's family, so the moment [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|She Outlived Her Usefulness]] as a soldier, he left her for dead. However that justification gives the [[Hero Ball]] to Kerrigan: she probably shouldn't have ever trusted the son of a man she decapitated}}.

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', Hereti Corp should have realized that, when they turned Aylee into a [[I'm a Humanitarian|man-eating]] monster bent on [[Take Over the World|world domination]], it was probably a bad idea to leave Riff, [[True Companions|one of her friends]] with a penchant for [[Save the World|Saving The World]], not only alive, but ''on their payroll''. That's got conflict of interests written all over it.

** Hereti Corps carries the [[Villain Ball]] less idiotically now that Dr. Schlock has taken over. But in that instance at least, Riff was 'one of her friends' who wanted ''kill her'', so if anything, they should've been alert to the possibility of attacks from him.

* ''[[Fans]]'': The Order of the Dragon first appear as a group of near omnipotent individuals with supernatural powers and represent the greatest threat AEGIS has encountered so far. Members include Robert, a cunning illusionist and conman, or Keith, Rikk's former nemesis. [http://www.faans.com/index.php?p=1957 Then there's this guy.] And you can rest assured that the others are no better. The fact that their plan involved literally KILLING the alphabet and eliminating all written forms of comunication doesn't help.

* In the comic ''[http://ilikefish.comicgenesis.com/ Pearls of Mer]''. The more senior agent of the [[Evil Organization]] tells the new comer to sit back and watch Arra the mermaid until they get word from [[High Ups]]. So what does the guy do? He runs out, tries to kidnap her and ends up shooting her human boyfriend. Things did end well from her wrath.