Villain Sue/Playing With
Basic Trope: A villainous Mary Sue.
- Straight: Darkness, the King of Dark, is blessed with extraordinary beauty, a powerful and varied set of abilities, and genius level intellect. He's also a mean bastard that keeps curb-stomping our heroes into oblivion whenever they met. But at least he looks good in leather pants...
- Exaggerated: Darkness, the King of Dark, is so beautiful that women and men die on him due his extraordinary looks; so powerful that no one can really oppose to him, and he keeps getting new powers to boost; and so intelligent and skilled that he puts super-computers to shame and can built an entire fortress out of scrap. He likes to ruin the lives of countless individuals just for the kicks of it, and even after the end of the story, he doesn't get to pay for his crimes. Oh yeah, but the fan-girls adore him!
- Justified: The heroes are weak at the beginning.
- Darkness is an Eldritch Abomination (or some form of god). He cannot be beaten by conventional means.
- Darkness is powered by an Eldritch Abomination or some form of god. It makes sense that he'll take a while to be beaten while proving a constant pain in the arse.
- Inverted: Darkness gets his ass handed to him at every opportunity.
- Subverted: Darkness the King of Dark appears to be a villain but he's on the heroes' side...
- Alternately: Darkness has a crippling Weaksauce Weakness which renders him a Harmless Villain, or at least puts him at a more reasonable spot in the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.
- Alternatively, Darkness is incredibly prideful, and this leads to a fatal mistake and his demise.
- Or: Darkness finds himself unable to live up to his own hype
- Double Subverted: ...or so they think.
- Alternately: The Weaksauce Weakness was a lie Darkness fabricated to find his enemies, who get curb stomped when they try to use it on him.
- Parodied: Darkness is absurdly powerful but he's also a dunce.
- Deconstructed: His Mary Sueness is provided by someone more powerful than him; once he loses his master's favour, Darkness is stripped of his power and can finally be thrashed.
- Reconstructed: Send in the Showy Invincible Hero to fight the Villain Sue in the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Watch the fireworks fly.
- Zig Zagged: Darkness the King of Dark is insanely powerful, trashing all who oppose him. But in a straight-up fight with the heroes, he gets completely thrashed by The Power of Friendship, and his secret benefactor strips him of all his lent powers in disgust. Busted down to lowly Mook status, he promptly makes a meteoric rise through the ranks on his own strength, earning back his gifted powers... just in time to get slammed back down by the heroes in a Curb Stomp Battle.
- Averted: Darkness appears to be tough but he's defeated for real on his first appearance.
- Enforced: The writers want an absurdly powerful villain to build up anticipation, and sales, for his inevitable defeat.
- Lampshaded: "Isn't there anything you can't do, Darkness?!" "Yeah, I cannot be humble about it, pathetic fool!"
- Invoked: "This kid is the incarnation of a powerful cosmic entity. I'll instruct him into the dark arts, so he'll become a power ally on the future."
- Defied: "I feel great power on this kid; he has the potential to become of the most powerful beings on the entire planet, but there's also great evil within him. We got to kill him before that happens."
- Discussed: "Something tells me the great powers from beyond didn't held any barrels when they created this invincible jerk. We are screwed..."
- Conversed: "I'm not particularly fond of those heroes that cannot be defeated at all, but a similarly unbeatable villain even more annoying!"
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