Villain Decay: Difference between revisions

** Charmcaster may not have suffered any decay in ''Ben10'', but she was hit by it pretty hard in her second ''Alien Force'' appearance, where she killed Gwen of an alternate timeline and kept on boasting about it to the present Gwen...[[Anticlimax Boss|only to get her ass kicked by Gwen several times afterwards]] [[Faux Action Girl|despite her claims of power.]] Her first appearance in ''Ultimate Alien'' then made it worse, turning her into a mook who barely held off Kevin, the team [[The Worf Effect|Worf]], for a few minutes, and needed the help of two other bad guys to stand a chance against the heroes. So basically, at this point, it's probably for the best that her next appearance had her as an [[Anti-Villain]] who makes a [[Heel Face Turn]].

** Darkstar was fairly threatening in ''Alien Force'', but was hit by decay when he reappears in the first season finale of ''Ultimate Alien''. He is so starved for energy that he's been reduced to skulking in alleyways preying on stray animals just to survive. He has also become predictable in his treachery -- the heroes stop his attempt to backstab them in the very end with a [[Anticlimax Boss|literal push of a button and he gets taken out with a single punch.]]

* Satan was big and scary in his first appearance in ''[[South Park]]'', but he's become "a whiny little bitch" in God's own words ever since he was first established as the lover of Saddam Hussein. It's arguable that he started out pre-decayed, though. He LOOKED intimidating, but his master plot in his first appearance was conning the city out of a lot of betting money, rather than, you know, the End of Days or anything like that.

* Mandark's first appearance in ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' established him as clearly superior to Dexter in terms of brains, to the point where he could read minds, and saying his name invoked [[The Scottish Trope]]. He was quickly brought down to being Dexter's equal, with his telepathy disappearing. In fact, "[[The Movie|Ego Trip]]" even stated he had to resort to stealing Dexter's ideas to get ahead. Justified in that Mandark was badass until meeting [[Achilles' Heel|Dee-Dee]] in that very episode, so as long as she's around, he's too lovestruck to do anything, even while she wrecks his lab. The '''real''' [[Villain Decay]] for Mandark came in the final season where he [[Retcon|has a Flashback episode, revealing his birth name was "Sue," an innocent flower child that met Dexter years ago, taking the name Mandark after being refused friendship by Dexter,]] despite the fact that his debut ep introduced his real name as Ivan Astronomonov with the aforementioned nickname [[The Scottish Trope|Mandark.]]