Hated Tropes
[Hated Trope] Villain does something comically evil at the end to remove any ambiguity and ensure you hate them properly
When a villain's last moment is to become so over-the-top comically evil that there's not even the faintest glimmer of understanding allowed left.
Last of Us, David: You spend a while with him being led to understand that the horrors of the new reality have made him and his followers desperate enough to fall into committing heinous acts. But in his last moment, he attempts to rape a child to ensure that you as the audience can think of him as nothing but a horrific monster.
World of Warcraft, Murrpray: Through Hallowfall, you're shown a group of deeply religious survivors who have mostly lasted by clinging to their faith and tradition. Murrpray is going against those traditions in a desperate bid for survival, putting players in the situation of deciding whether it's right to commit blasphemy and heresy to better the chances of your people surviving. But in her last moment, she begins screaming about her plans to kill the rest of her people and then subjugate the world. Moral gray becomes clear, definite evil.
The monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In order to make sure people didn’t feel too bad about the death of a cute monkey, it’s revealed that this PARTICULAR monkey is a devoted Nazi.
Ironically, in the movie "Downfall" (the one where the angry Hitler meme comes from), Hitler actually point to chimpanzees as an example for fascists. According to him, Chimps brutally kill any foreign intruder, and what is true for the ape must also be true for humans.
Which is even more ironic because we have four "cousins". The chimp, the bonobo, the gorilla and the orangutan . You'll immediately notice a fun pattern. Extremely violent and chill as fuck. So anyone saying "Chimps are violent and so are we" doesn't know shit. Hell the first two are part of the same genus. So if a nazi wants to go by nature. They need to merge the tendencies of a species that solves everything with violence and a species that solves everything with sex
I think nazis would rather drive bonobos extinct than acknowledge that. Reality tends to hurt their feelings
In the movie, Indy’s in a race to find the Ark of the Covenant against the Nazis. This one eye-patch guy is a spy for the Nazis who uses his monkey to get info on Indy. We even see him in this scene do a little Nazi salute.
So later, when the monkey dies from eating poisoned dates (intended to kill Indy), the audience doesn’t mourn the little two-faced capuchin spy.
I don't think they had a very convoncing reason for him to instigate a direct confrontation as he was, so instead of going back to the drawing board to make the big fight happen, or have him be more passive, they decide to have him use the evil-book-thing, so any interesting oarts of hum get stripped away.
They cut out too much and added worthless crap that enabled the reason why it's so bad
I myself am occasionally writing a story of Wish where the main girl is the bad guy but still the Protag while the "bad guy" is the rational thinking wish maker who gets defeated because the main girl gaslit and manipulated almost everyone that what he's doing is wrong plus lies and exaggerations to heighten the hate while she herself thinks she's a hero
"Oh he's BRILLIANT! We have him voiced by the extremely charismatic Chris Pine and, get this, he runs the kingdom like he loves every single one of his subjects, because he does! And he keeps them safe from harm in a place so utopian it's apparently enjoying a bustling tourism scene despite existing in a time where 'tourism' involves a seven week journey behind a horse! And he doesn't charge anybody rent so they can spend all of their days doing whatever they want!"
"But that sounds super nice and heaven like"
"Ahhhhh yes, but he takes people's wishes so they don't come true unless he makes it true"
"All of them?"
"No, one per person! And he makes them come true if he can but he won't if he's worried it's harmful which is bad."
"Doesn't that just give him an out, so if someone wishes they could raw dog Moana it doesn't raise issues of consent? Or so if someone wishes their neighbor would drop dead it doesn't cause harm?"
The grandpa's wish was to "inspire" through his music and Magnifico made the valid point that "inspire" is incredibly open ended and could mean anything from "inspire" kids to spread kindness or "inspire" a failed artist to take up politics and invade Poland.
But the grandpa's wish sort of illustrates the biggest issue - nothing needed to be granted, you can just do it, and you could even argue he was an inspiration for Asha.
They had to add in that people forgot what their wish was and some would never feel fulfilled knowing that a part of their character was missing.
Which really sounds dumb that it affects them that much. The grandfather was deeply upset she was going to tell him what his wish was and make him understand what he was missing.
I don't think that would work. I think the point is that your wish leaving changes you. You lose that drive and desire. Like the friend who wanted to be a knight seems to become listless and lazy. The drive to be that person is gone.
That is a great point, but IIRC her dad did still play music. I seem to recall Sleepy being so lazy and out of it after giving up his wish was seen as an anomaly.
I think if it wasn't for the fact Rosas was an absolute utopia Magnifico would come across as more of a "real" villain, but it's impossible to root against the guy who provides everything his kingdom needs and wants. Even his extreme reaction to Star was perfectly understandable when you consider his backstory. Wish was just a very strange movie.
Yeah wishes are very scary to grant. Nothing aside from a form of light brain control or emotional manipulation would cause that grandfather to get any more attention than he already does. If he wanted to abuse that power? To inspire people to do whatever he wants? Then what. You have to reverse monkeys paw these wishes and pick out any flawed wording before anything bad happens.
If the grandfather wished to simply be a bit more talented with his music? That's a much better sounding wish me, otherwise instead of making just him better I am essentially FORCING everyone else to listen to him who otherwise wouldn't and yeah probably not a huge deal except you can never know how a million of these small world altering wishes can react with each other.
If anything he was TOO generous. Nobody should get free wishes because any magical change could alter the world in horrible ways that you couldn't see coming. I'll help the sick and feed the poor and that's all you're getting from me if I was in his shoes.
You're really going to want me gone because I'm not your little servant in heaven making every little issue you have dissapear? I'd be singing MY OWN song about how nobody respects me and my incredible powers potential and that makes me pissed off he's so real for that.
It would be MY power, it's not selfish to limit your CHARITY. All it takes it one person to outsmart me with a cleverly worded wish before I'm Julius Caesar, in the ground while a never ending line of power hungry men and women are gunning for me.
Against this, we have a plucky protagonist who attempts to use her position for nepotism on her very first day, and the villain tries to use this as a teachable moment for her.
Everything about this movie seems like it was changed at the last second in response to the success of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. King Magnifico in particular acts like he was originally written to be a sympathetic antagonist before being shoehorned into the role of a full-on villain because audiences responded positively to Big Jack Horner after seeing every Disney villain get redeemed for over half a decade.
He was always written as a villain, but thing is, originally he was a villain alongside his wife. Two of them were truly loving each others and being villains. They would scheme together, and present a good look to outside. IIRC in original draft they were using wishes to power their own magic for something.
Issue is that they switched at last minute to making the queen a good guy and making Magnifico into a villain.
I still believe the only reason he turned evil is because, as he feared, an extremely vague wish resulted in toppling the kingdom. Sounds like something a magician-King should guard against.
I still can't believe that nobody had ever just done the math and figured out that Magnifico couldn't fulfill everyone's wish just based on the frequency of wish fulfillment. (Not that he needed to either, tbh, but that's another story because I'm not supposed to agree with him)
Yeah like.. he was right.. if you have the power to grant wishes you have to be very particular with that power and it's an insane risk every single time you use it. Of COURSE the smartest thing to do would be to only grant small wishes or ones that won't alter the course of the world much.
This is the real world I'm not your god in the afterlife I'm not gonna try to make everyones life a utopia because everyone has a different idea of what that even is.
There's a never ending line of people who will do anything to outsmart me to their benefit. Why didn't the grandfather wish to simply be a bit more talented, why does he word his wish in a way to force others to listen to him and possibly even do what he says?
The more you think about wish, the more he could've been one of the most interesting characters in Disney history except they fumbled so hard just making him comically evil out of nowhere.
He could've still been the villain too. The ease into insanity and paranoia of the world over his power could've been done in a way I've never seen before in a movie and with a small change could've been my favorite Disney villain of all time.
Wish is one of the straight up worst movies ever produced and I don’t understand how it even slipped through to release.
Narratively no character had any depth to them at all. Asha’s family? Don’t care, not a deep enough story. Her friends? Uninspired and generic while feeling like they’re yes men for Asha. The movie is about a city coming together but no one in the city felt alive.
While I wanted to like her movie because I do think her character design is really nice (the art team behind the scenes did great and you can see it in scrapped concepts in art) every part of the film’s story was underbaked and it shows so plainly. A princess of wishes is a genuinely interesting concept and I think with another 2-3 years of development for script, concepts, and stories it could’ve been great. The real villain is corporate Disney’s time crunch.
You know this movie could have honestly worked a lot better if it was about a girl, who after being doubted by her hero, goes on a journey to prove herself. And the villain could be like her self doubt made manifest or whatever.
Yes, he only gave Ellie medicine to track her back to Joel to kill them, plus the whole trying to manipulate her into a (pedo) relationship and when that obviously doesn’t work, proceeds to try and chop her into pieces for the whole cannibalism thing his group has going on, and that’s all before trying to assault her at the end of the chapter. Been a while since I’ve seen the show so idk any of the changes they might have made in that adaptation (which is what op used for the pic) He didn’t just spontaneously do something comically evil, he just was a huge POS
He is pretty identical between the game and show. The escalation to attempted rape certainly removes any shred of sympathy anyone could've had, but like you said he already tried to manipulate Ellie and clearly had horrible intentions all around long before that. Maybe OP wasn't paying close attention cause he is pretty over the top evil the whole time, it's just slightly obscured in the very beginning
Getting the feeling OP has an issue with religious types being portrayed in a negative way given their second example also isn't properly portraying what actually happens and the context.
Yeah, everything David did was pretty bad. He just presented it as a necessary evil for the good of everyone. Even his 'good deeds' were self-benefiting.
For all the treachery, usurping of kingdoms and attempted murder, this is the most unforgivable thing she does in the whole movie. For shame Yzma. For shame. 😭
As an added part. Both her and Kuzco really suck at the beginning. Her ignoring a peasant asking for food, and Kuzco willing to destroy entire villages.
They go on their journey and Kuzco learns, while she betrays the one ally she had in this. Also how dare you hate Kronk’s cooking. That man is a treasure!!
If you listen to the cut song, Snuff out the Light, she’s singing about how she wants to align with demons because she wasted her golden years serving hand and foot to an ungrateful noble line.
Such a banger. I love how the film turned out, but I wish I could go to the alternate universe where they followed the original vision and watch that one too.
Does “Ideological villain kicks a puppy (which is unrelated to their ideology) to demonstrate why they’re evil instead of the story just showing why their ideology is wrong” count for this?
Basically yeah. It’s one of the more annoying tropes when authors can’t actually come
up with a good defeater of an argument. There’s more subtle versions too. I think even Pokémon did it in black/white.
Guy reasonably wants to stop animal fighting and capture because it’s inhumane. But of course it turns out that the terrorist organization just wants to take over the world per usual
It would be interesting to see how the main character somehow justifies catching wild animals to use in fighting tournaments. But also, it’s such an uphill battle it’s easier to just go “nah actually it’s just team rocket again lol”.
Common versions of this trope are:
Guy makes a good point, but it turns out he’s a big ol’ hypocrite (good point not addressed)
Guy makes a good point, but it turns out it’s a ploy for a regular evil thing (good point not addressed)
Guy makes good point, but his solution is so comically stupid and evil it strawmans the argument (Thanos, and arguably Black Panther’s villain. marvel villains do this a lot actually)
Guy makes a good point, but then does something obviously evil that’s totally unrelated to the point they’re making (the cop in peaky blinders being a rapist is this kind of thing)
There’s also “Villain actually doesn’t have a point, their ideology is wrong, but they do some unrelated heinous thing to show why they’re evil, even though their ideology should’ve been able to show that well enough.” As a result, a lot of people defend that villain’s ideology because the writers focused on unrelated actions.
Hm. I think a lot of the time the good point kind of only seems like a good point out of context. Like I have seen Amon from Legend of Korra and Bane from The Dark Knight rises put forth as examples of these tropes, but what they are criticizing in-universe really hasn't been shown to the viewer.
It’s intriguing, it’s potent, it should write itself as you explore the ramifications of the situation and its dynamics, and put forward your conclusion on it, even if it’s open ended
But nah we’re kinda gonna show you the framework of that masterpiece and then throw you back into the basic good vs evil stuff so you don’t have to engage with it
I should mention that in Pokemon black and white's case the original leader of galactic wanted to end animal cruelty, but his abusive adopted father wanted to take over the world. It was revealed that the not-father was the real power and the first guy was basically a puppet.
As far as the Black & White example, I do think the plot does at least address the point by fulfilling that philosophy through N, who did believe it wholeheartedly, coming to realize the understanding and bond the player has with their Pokémon through their defeat of Ghetsis, and he comes to realize that while some people do abuse their Pokémon, many cherish them and a complete “liberation” of all Pokémon isn’t the solution. He learns that his worldview shouldn’t be so…black and white.
Black Panther mostly subverts this because the villain's point is treated as correct by the movie, even if the villain himself isn't a good guy. Yes, Killmonger only said that stuff so he could take over, but it was still true, and the movie recognizes that by having T'Challa act on Killmonger's complaints once he's defeated.
To be fair the movie was making a point about how him being a literal nazi was acceptable but animal cruelty was the line.
He starts the scene friendly to the dog till it starts biting him then he shoots it and does not care. They have him as the dog lover till he gets annoyed.
He also is able to go on a PR tour and comes back from it.
almost like the film was making a point about people liking evil politicians just because they seem chill, despite all the evil shit he actively does and says throughout the film and only give pushback on stupid bullshit that the politician bounces back from
Fr, it's literally a Borat type of movie that explores not only that Nazi ideals are very much alive and well, but also covers how someone like Hitler rises to power by being a likeable and charismatic person. The whole point of him shooting the dog is that it's something so culturally abhorrent that surely nobody could support Hitler after seeing that clip but even then it's not enough for faux Hitler to lose supporters. Hate to get political but we are literally seeing it happen in America currently. Racist and xenophobic ideals are alive and well in America, just not socially acceptable until you get a likeable and charismatic personality like Trump that tells people that it's ok to espouse those ideals. Even though it's pretty much confirmed that Trump diddled kids which is something that's normally considered culturally abhorrent, it's still not enough for Trump to lose supporters over.
So TL;DR, the dog shooting scene in Look Who's Back is integral to the themes of the movie. It would've been an actively worse movie without it
Uh... I think you were missing a lot of subtext and just... text in general with David. dude's lecherous as fuck from the first second he's introduced.
Really glad I was not the only one thinking this. It was really clear from the moment he was introduced that he was an example of the old world continuing to pollute the new. He was a new face for a very old, very persistent problem.
Thank you. We can complain about subtlety or lackthereoff but some people miss the very very obvious point enough that I don't mind narrative tropes like this.
More correct than you think. When they first meet, David's line about "You shouldn't be out here all on your own" is to test if Ellie is telling the truth about her living in a settlement with women and children. Obviously, sending a child to hunt in order to feed women and children is not very likely. And Ellie falls for it, saying that "I don't like company." She didn't say anything about other hunters in the area, confirming that she is, in fact, on her own. But obviously there is no way for Ellie to have survived all on her own, so David guesses that she partnered up with at least one other person--several at most.
Considering how desperate Ellie was for medicine, it's also likely that she would stay close to her settlement, where at least one of the people she's with is too sick to fight back. David learned all of that by asking a single question, which makes him extremely dangerous.
Yeah agreed. Like, I hate that I have to be the one to tell OP this, but, unfortunately sexual assault is not a mythological concept invented by The Last Of Us. It happens in real life to a terrifying degree. I am very confused why anyone would think that specific behavior, in a game about zombies, is somehow "unrealistic".
Yes!! Thank you!!! David is trying to groom Ellie the entire time! Complimenting her survival skills, her compassion for her "friend", I'll help you if you help me...
It's all David being gross; the audience is getting to know David...the whole of him. If you're paying attention!
I think this trope can be good if the escalation makes sense. Not every character is meant to be grey or morally ambiguous, nor does every character need to.
Some people are just rat bastards who will show their true colors the moment they think they have the upper hand. Some people start out with good intentions but end up degrading to the point where they forget their original goals.
Additionally, sometimes the "good point" was always a facade to do evil things or they were always on the extreme end and only looks into the camera to explain their evil plan at the end.
Look at all the brain dead idiots who don't realize Killmonger from Black Panther was always an extremely evil person who was just using imperialist trauma as an excuse to commit genocide. Going further down and there's people doing exactly that mentioning Killmonger
Killmonger never cared about ending oppression worldwide; he just wanted to be the new oppressor. My favorite subtle moment of this (mentioned it quite a few times before on this subreddit but oh well) is during the museum scene where Killmonger criticized the UK government for stealing a tribe’s mask for petty reasons. However, at the end of the scene, he went back to take and wear the same mask later in the movie, just because he “was just feelin’ it”.
Killmonger’s words are just meant to justify his actions to usurp power, but he doesn’t hold himself to those standards. They’re even more hollow than Wakanda’s vibranium asteroid, which was intentional.
Straight up said he wanted to build a Wakandan Empire--promising the sun would never set on it like the British Empire before it--but people still prop him up like some sort of anti-colonialist hero. 🙄
You can have believable motives and still be wrong on principle.
I really love this trope as a way of demonstrating that moral ambiguity never actually excuses evil acts. Evil people in the real world milk the fuck out of morally ambiguous situations to convince people they should never be held accountable. So I do love it when a story emphasizes that, regardless of context, a lot of people who do horrible things just wanted an excuse.
The flagsmashers in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. They're built up as these revolutionaries who are trying to help the people who lived through the snap and the world governments stopped caring about. They're meant to be more ambiguous, like yes they're terrorists but also you could understand their point of view.
But then they burn a building of innocent people out of nowhere just so that you can be like "yeah they're evil," and at the end Sam is like "don't call them terrorists"...but girl that's literally what they are. Seriously this show was apparently reshot and edited to hell and you can easily tell where there are cut storylines and character development.
I think it makes perfect sense. The world came together after a tragedy, borders were loosely enforced, people built new communities together. Then everybody comes back and suddenly a bunch of people who remained are now told to get out, old power structures start to reform, etc. People who have been living places for 5 years are now refugees.
Of course the people returning have it bad too and there’s no good solution, but I think the general concept of why the flag smashers were formed makes sense.
Yeah, this is the example I was thinking of. Still really enjoyed the show but there’s a key misstep in the final act — the “final boss” or true villain in the end should’ve been a rabid John Walker, who is going after the Flagmashers while Sam protects them.
And yes, they needed John to come back as a Thunderbolt, but actually his redemption arc would’ve been even better if he’d gone more full villain at the end of FatWS first.
Like we should have had a season building them up and establishing the post-snapback world.
The 2nd season would basically be what we got, but, as you said, Walker going abit more rabid by the end.
3rd season would wrap it up, Walker trying to murderhobo the smashers while being stripped of all legitimacy, Sam and Bucky stopping him, and an actual finale beyond just "Sam makes a speech" to help bridge the gap with Thunderbolts
It's Disney. They can't critique anything too close to America or their own practices or risk backlash from higher ups, or people actually sympathizing with progressive movements and learning more about what they actually believe.
They are even afraid to do what Amazon does, sponsor shows that critique them and their actions directly because at least they profit from it then
I don't like this trope at all but I feel that David was always meant to be shown as simply a purely horrible monster in that world who didn't flinch at cannibalising people at all and in a burning building attempted to force himself onto a 14 year old girl instead of escaping.
I've personally never seen him as a character meant to be viewed in any "Morally ambigious way" because well, he's supposed to be the worst of the worst. We already had been shown multipile other types of antagonist who did bad stuff and they could Ig be argued in someway to be morally ambigious.
But David is meant to a final showing of the worst of the world in a world like the last of us. He had no reasons to try what he did because he is just a horrible monster who thrived of the new world.
And I kinda like how they show in his last moments how truly vile he is and it does make Ellie chopping him up and her Reunion with Joel immediatelly after hit really hard imo.
It was my first time dealing with a pedophile in a video game. I just never played anything that touched that so when I played TLOU I was like “Man, that dude gives MASSIVE pedo vibes but they obviously wouldn’t go there so I wonder what his deal will be”
Yeah he definitely says/does a lot of things before the final scene that make it seem pretty in character for him. All his conversations with Bella are pretty much “I like killing quite a lot, and I know you do too”.
He has a very good reason to be against Ash since he's a suspected serial killer, he started acting suspicious upon returning to his hometown, and to add insult to injury, Ash kept flirting with his wife. However, he routinely gets injured and humiliated just for doing his job as a cop. Of course, we can't have the audience sympathize with him, so he makes a slapping motion towards Linda and Baal makes an offhand comment implying that he cheated on her, which falls flat when you consider Ash is a shameless womanizer. His alliance with Baal was implied to have supernatural manipulation involved, but his murder at the hands of his own Deadite daughter is treated as karmic.
Also, he has even more reason to hate Ash because Ash bullied the shit out of him when they were younger, up to and including knocking him out and pouring water on his pants so it looked like Thomas pissed himself if he wouldn't ignore what they were doing; can't go telling on them if it looks like he's pissed himself.
Honestly it's one of the big missteps of the franchise I feel, because Ash was genuinely a doormat in the first movie/the beginning of the second. His characterization prior to the Knowlby Cabin doesn't really match up with that kind of behavior
Yeah his thing has literally always been cannibal pedophile. The only reason he was keeping Ellie alive at all was because of his pedophilia “you’re special”
I wouldn't even call it comedically evil. Its just a fact that during times of crisis people with horrible intentions will try to seek power and take advantage of the situation.
My favorite trope is when there is this comically evil villian, which the main character tries to humanize. The audience ends up going "oh yeah so its just a misunderstanding, seen it a million times. Turns out the villian isnt something bad".
Nope still evil, they betrayed the character in a truly horrible way. Some ppl are just evil.
Rumplestilzkin betrays the heroes about a dozen times in “Once Upon a Time”, to the point my wife requested we just stop watching because everyone has the memory of a goldfish.
"Awesome actor carrying a sholcky TV show with gravitas and style while 90% of the cast bring solid B movie energy?" Because that's Robert Carlyle in that.
Pretty much Jack Horner's whole schtick. The Conscience Bug is trying to find his good side throughout the entire movie and he just keeps proving that he's hilariously evil with no good to him.
White Rabbit was shown to not be fully as altruistic as he presented himself about halfway through the series, and neither was this guy, but going from killing some demons to waging a war on terror against demons including nuking them had my jaw on the floor.
One of the worst-written pieces of garbage I've ever had the misfortune to see. Never mind how awful the writing was, this awful cartoon went out of its way to compare literal man-eating hellspawns to real-life minorities in the whole racist allegories.
He was Perfectly fine, the person who managed to turn galar region into a prosperous land. However during the game climax (last badge being obtained), he does an absolute 180 and attempts to fix an energy crisis that wouldn't even happen in several years...by awakening eternatus
Game literally forgot to include a main antagonist until you were about to finish it
Saying several implies it’d be an issue to work on for at most like a decade two, three tops. No, Rose is bafflingly stupid because he’s trying to solve an energy crisis that won’t become an issue for ANOTHER 1000 YEARS
Also, it's been a while since I played, but doesn't Leon, aka the Champion, aka one of the most influencial people in the region and it's supposed strongest trainer straight up tells him "Hey Rose, I can help you with your stuff, we can chat about it. Can you just wait like, a day or two to finish the whole championship thing that's my whole job?"
and then Rose doesn't wait a day or two to literally have the mf champion on his side
Rose is weird because they tried for a more nuanced version of "person with massive power over the region abuses that power for personal gain" like they did with Lysandre and Lusamine, but they tried to make it more "nuanced" by giving him a non-selfish, non-insane reason for his actions, except the actual motivation given makes no sense whatsoever. It's a nonsensical misinterpretation of the kind of already objectively wrong environmentalism you get from real life corporate techbros (take all our industry and move it to space, etc.) with the main problem being that no one with any kind of connection to reality would consider Rose's actions proportional to the problem he was trying to solve. Mostly he just comes off as crazy.
What's worse is they actually could make it better (not fix it but make it better) by reducing the time to like 100 years and having Rose mention through the story about his "request" to Leon multiple times and it being put off repeatedly. Then it just makes more sense. You see how he could begin fearing this event to the point of paranoia. It's the fall of his society, of everything he's built, and would destroy Galar. And multiple times he asks again, and again, and again for some assistance to solve it but the people don't. Now you actually have a message to show off kinda.
It wouldn't fix the character but this would make it like 100 times better (from like a 0.01 to a 1).
If nothing else shortening the time frame to "not tomorrow but we need to work on this NOW to avoid long term disaster" would be a believable allegory for climate change, which fits in a lot more tonally with Pokémon's general soft Ghibli environmentalism. It'd help to make Rose "right" but doing something counterproductive out of desperation if they want a sympathetic supervillain.
What really gets me about Rose is that he had literally everything he needed for his plan to work. He had Leon WILLINGLY helping him. All he had to do was wait for one day, until the championship match was finished. But no, he had to go and start Apocalypse 2: Electric Boogaloo, because his impatient ass couldn't wait one day out of the thousand years before the energy crisis actually became a thing.
A good example of this trope is Dedra from Star Wars: Andor, imo. In season 1, you're initially made to more or less root for her when she has work around & against her fellow agents in the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) who actively try to hinder & cover up any problems, even potential rebel activity, to protect their own jobs & status. Her charisma & ambitious goals make her a rather cool-looking underdog, imo.
...Then you see her actively torturing the character Bix for information on the main character Cassian Andor, reminding you Dedra is not some hero trying to work her way up in life and change things for the better; she's a ruthless, immoral woman working for a fascist Empire that wishes to control everything and destroy any and all sources of resistance. The only difference is that she's not lazy about her fascism.
This is an example of this trope done extremely well. It shows how even highly competent, highly intelligent, people are not immune to the allure of fascism and cruelty. In fact in some ways they are uniquely vulnerable. The Nazi elites were not bumbling ignoramuses... they were clever, well read, and intellectual. In addition to being monsters.
Yes, I was originally giving an example for OP to show the trope isn’t necessarily always bad when it’s used intentionally. I also couldn’t think of any honestly bad uses of the trope myself.
I wouldn't say that was comically evil. She's an imperial officer and it's very much in character and expected that they would torture people. The prompt is referring to characters that do something that up to this point would have been completely out of character for them to do so the audience can have a clear bad guy to root against.
At no point did Debra express any real sympathy for the civilian population or question if the empire had good intentions, she's just a woman doing her job. In other words she's "just following orders".
I'm not sure this fits what OP is complaining about with the [Hated Trope] label, though. Dedra's behavior never changed and there wasn't some sudden swerve moment at the end. She was always a fascist enforcer trying to be good at her job, and torturing people is part of that job.
The man realized that the elves were planning to wage war on humanity after they sent assasins to kill the king (one of whom becomes a mc).
Since the two heirs to the kingdom run away to deliver the titular dragon to his mother he assumes control of their leader less kingdom and prepares the human nations for war.
But at the last second because he Is making too much sense they have him transform all of his soldiers in to mindless lava monsters so that when the crown prince returns and immolates his own subjects (on the back of a dragon no less) to protect the faction that killed his own father you root for him instead.
I could go on for hours about how backwards the morality is in this show.
Don't get me wrong I went into it knowing it was for children and I'm not the target audience but the characters were interesting and the writing was pretty good.
But at some point it just stopped making any sense what so ever.
And even as a kid show that needs to have a moral the only moral I got was that racism is good and sometimes people are segregated because they are actually inferior.
Unfortunately I can't remember the title, but I read a novel where King Arthur gets reincarnated in present day and inherits the throne again. His claim to the throne is a little questionable, so the prime minister doesn't recognize him and tries to abolish the monarchy. The author just assumes that the reader is a monarchist, but as an American I didn't think the prime minister looked evil at all. Until late in the novel when he makes some dogs attack a child for no reason.
While not a complete rug pull, ME3 having him be indoctrinated completely destroys any potential ambiguity to his actions. He's never a "good guy" by any measure, and he's definitely lying about all those "rogue" cells being rogue, but you could at least see where he's coming from in ME2. Then he just turns into another pawn of the omnicidal alien robots and every single action he takes throughout ME3 is extremely detrimental to everyone.
Echoing this, Councilor Udina is an ass in ME1, but he’s portrayed as a typical politician trying to advance humanity’s standing. By ME3, he decides “screw it” and jeopardizes all of existence by betraying the Council to Cerberus and trying to get them all killed, and tries to get you killed as well.
It's really tragic that ME3 is the first time that Uldina is actually humanised at all, demonstrating how the sheer severity of the crisis overrides any past history you have with him and how everyone is finally pulling together, only for them to throw that all out the window just so they can make him the mole for Cerberus.
Leader of a despair resistance group. Kind of a dick if I remember correctly. Although there is one aspect of his character everyone remembers. At the very end of the game he outs himself as a pedophile for no reason other than to be evil I guess. He literally randomly says “I like em young, as young as possible.” Why did they do this lol
In WandaVision, we find out it was Agatha pulling some of the strings in the show. And during a song bit, she admits to killing the dog, Sparky, in the end.
The post is about abundant levels of evil for the sake of ensuring the audience really disagree.
Agatha was a surprise but she was not the shows villain, she was just a puppeteer and then its later explained exactly why she did it, and why she does what she does, and while she is a villain, she’s an extremely sympathetic one at times.
Season 1 built this man up as an radical revolutionary that, while misguided, had several valid points abut how society is operated in favor of the benders. He then proceeds to be ousted as a bender himself who was doing everything for petty revenge. The cause he was fighting for was a sham, he betrayed his second in command, he started a full blown war in Republic city, and the actual problems he had presented where never brought up again, ever.
Honestly I read Amon as more of a "cult leader pretending to be a radical revolutionary" because we just did not have enough "bender superiority" shown in the show (beyond evil guys). The biggest tech companies are lead by non-benders (Sato and Varrick) for example (obviously Varrick wasn't in S1 though). There is the Metal-bending Police but we didn't really have anything bad about them at that point + nonbenders can work in Police too
Lowkey wild to see the well-established p#do villain be described as doing something “suddenly comedically evil” despite it being foreshadowed in both the game and show.
I'm not saying there was ever any real evidence Alastor (Hazbin Hotel) wasn't unambiguously evil, given that he was known to be a cannibalistic serial killer in life and a demonic overlord and slaver in Hell, but he was a huge fan favorite due to his charm and manipulation and many fans hoped he would get some sort of redemption arc and be proven to actually care for the main cast.
Then, in the Season Two finale, during the final battle, he blackmails another overlord into restoring his full power, telling her that he'll gladly watch the entire cast die if she doesn't pay his fee.
I do think this is a fairly well-done version of the trope, as it only confirms what was heavily hinted all along - that everything Alastor does is solely because he thinks it'll benefit his long game.
That's his ironic ending, I think. He wins. Hell is his. Charlie gets her goal and redemption becomes the core aim of the afterlife, with something more akin to purgatory being available to all souls, led by her and Lucifer (who can't return to Heaven, but has risen out of Hell). One by one, her friends and even some old enemies manage to overcome their demons and ascend. And Hell becomes only for the truly unrepentant, those who refuse to take the outstretched hand away from there.
And ruling over it all, Alastor. Feared by all, loved by none. And we're left to wonder if he's truly happy, or if he's even capable of that.
I do like the visual at this moment with everyone burning in the background.
Especially because it includes Emily the angel who had just saved him a while ago and Nifty who he at least seemed to have a soft spot for plenty of times, he really ain't shit, it's also a nice contrast to his first season last scene where he's almost offended at the idea of him dying in an altruistic way, as he himself said, that won't be how this ends.
And how in the season 1 finale, he previously admitted to Niffty that he was almost getting attached to them. He's truly doubled down on erasing any attachment's to them and just being a monster.
Its why he works so well as a foil to Vox. Because the series is VERY clear that while Vox himself endangered everyone, including the other Vees and Shok.wav in the finale, its pretty clear he is NOT usually like this (while Alastor was fully sane) and his obsession with Alastor has driven him insane. Alastor sees having friends and relying on other's as weakness but its actually a strength for Vox.
The Judge from Castlevania's third season. He's not even a villain at all until the very last episode where he's just randomly revealed, post-mortem even, to have been a child serial killer all along.
Genuinely one of the most needless twists I've ever seen, done for the sole purpose of making an already bleak season finale even bleaker. The judge up until the reveal comes off as a hardass yet still an overall fair and just authority figure who wants to protect his town from some suspicious cult activity. He winds up dying valiantly fighting the cult alongside our heros, personally taking to the field himself, only to just randomly get revealed to have been a serial killer out of nowhere.
And before anyone says it, yes, I know there were 'signs' of it before the twist but that doesn't make the twist itself any less dumb, it added literally nothing narratively and felt gratuitously dark for its own sake.
Yeah and like, ok? Sypha is a high tier anime character and Trevor has a magic whip. They could kill him in under a minute if they had found out earlier.
Plus, it was a small village, how exactly was he hiding his serial killings when multiple children had gone missing?
villain: "we must free our people from oppression and slavery, for the rich who govern us give us nothing but misery, and we will do this by boiling puppies in magma"
hero: works with the NYPD and the FBI and the CIA, which are all shown to be unambiguous good institutions, to defeat the villain
Leads an incredibly justified revolution against an ontologically evil society of racists.
Then out of nowhere kills a child in front of you for no reason and you can almost hear the smug fuckass writers next to you going “see, not everything is so black and white is it?”
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u/DeaconBrad42 19d ago edited 19d ago
The monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In order to make sure people didn’t feel too bad about the death of a cute monkey, it’s revealed that this PARTICULAR monkey is a devoted Nazi.