Big Bad Ensemble / Western Animation

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• Adventure Time had The Lich, Gumbald and GOLB, since they served as the most prominent threats of the entire series. Other villains served as antagonists for a respective Arc or subplot such as Lemongrab, Orgalorg, Dr. Gross and the Vampire King. The Ice King manages to be a partial example, since he was the Big Bad in Season 1.
• Adventures of the Gummi Bears at first has only Duke Igthorn as the recurrent villain (although some episodes don't featured him at all), but other recurring villains are introduced in later seasons, like the Trolls and Lady Bane.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In Book 1, Zuko's hunt for the Avatar is soon compounded by Admiral Zhao, who oppose each other from the beginning.
  • The second half of Book 2 introduces a new threat completely separate from the Fire Nation: Long Feng and the Dai Li, who are the primary enemies while Team Avatar is in Ba Sing Se. Averted by the last episode of the season where Azula convinces the Dai Li to abandon Feng and be loyal to her instead, cementing the Fire Nation as the sole threat.
  • The Legend of Korra, also has multiple antagonists competing against each other:
    • Book 1 started the trend of having multiple competing villains with Amon and his chi-blocking Equalists being the most visible threat Korra faces while also contending with local Corrupt Politician Tarrlok, who has his own designs on Republic City but is also opposed to Amon. After Korra discovers Tarrlok is actually a powerful bloodbender and the son of a notorious gangster Aang defeated previously, Tarrlok takes her captive and tries to flee Republic City, but is stopped by Amon, who takes away his bending and then takes Tarrlok prisoner, leaving him as the sole villain for the season finale.
    • Book 2 has the Dark Spirits, renegade spirits on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against humanity due to Tonraq desecrating their sacred forest, Unalaq, the dictator of the Northern Water Tribe who seeks to conquer the South and forcibly convert them to spirituality, and Varrick, a Corrupt Corporate Executive Magnificent Bastard who is playing both sides of the North/South conflict and ensuring it escalates into all out war so he can make a profit selling weapons to both sides. However, the overarching Big Bad of Book 2 turns out to be Vaatu, as Unalaq's true intentions for bringing troops to the South was to release Vaatu and unleash armageddon.
    • Book 3 has Zaheer and the Red Lotus vs. Earth Queen Hou-Ting. Once they meet, it ends badly for Hou-Ting, who was easily defeated and got asphyxiated.
• Very much so in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The show starts with a mass supervillain breakout, and while most of these villains are essentially powerful mooks, several of them are of Big Bad calibre, such as Baron von Strucker, Baron Zemo, and the Leader — to say nothing of villains who weren't imprisoned at all, like Loki and Kang the Conqueror. All of these guys have distinct agendas; sometimes they work together, more often they are at cross-purposes. Ultimately, it was revealed that Loki was directly or indirectly behind everything except Kang, cementing him as the Big Bad.
  • The second season is similar, though with Alien Empires being the big bads in this scenario. The first are the Skrull, and the other major one is the Kree (who are also fighting each other, of course). Then all of a sudden, Galactus arrives.
• Though most seasons of the Ben 10 franchise only have one Big Bad per season, Season 2 of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien ends up aligning no less than three Big Bads fighting or scheming against each other: Vilgax, Sir George (though he turned out to be a good guy opposing Ben), and Diagon.
• The first story arc in Beware the Batman featured the League of Assassins and their leader, Ra's al Ghul, as the major threat, though with Anarky plotting in the background. Come the second story arc after the League's defeat, Anarky plays a bigger role, though he is now rivaled by Harvey Dent and his Special Crimes Unit hunting down Batman and Katana, as well as Deathstroke's own vengeance against Batman and Alfred. All three villains work together and against each other at various points.
• The two main antagonists from Bump in the Night were Destructo, a toy robot who militantly enforces the rules and often goes after Mr. Bumpy when he breaks them, and the Closet Monster, a living pile of dirty clothes who frequently tries to devour the main characters.
• Most of the plot of DOTA: Dragon's Blood is driven by villainous plans of either Terrorblade, Selemene or The Invoker, that spend a lot of time either working together or against each other, with an occasional Interim Villain in form of Kashurra. By season three The Invoker manages to elminate the others and take the spot as true Big Bad only to have to deal with Radinthul and Diruulth, Ancients Radiant and Dire.
• In Dragon Age: Absolution Magister Rezaren Ammosine is clearly the Big Bad, but we later find out that Sapphira has been manipulating everyone on behalf of the mysterious Crimson Knight actually Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard Back from the Dead
• The Fairly OddParents!: There are occasionally some episodes where Vicky and Mr. Crocker would either team up with each other or serve as the episode's antagonists with little to no interaction (such as the episode where Tootie receives Timmy's fairies for her birthday).
• F is for Family has Roger Dunbarton, Big Bill Murphy, and Chet Stevenson who all serve as an antagonist to Frank Murphy.
• Gargoyles initially had the Big Bad Duumvirate of Xanatos and Demona, but after they went their separate ways and new villains of Big Bad caliber such as the Archmage, Thailog, Oberon, and Castaway were introduced it ended up like this.
• Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 has had at least two Big Bads per season. Season 1 has Kalus leading the Vandals and Zemerik leading the Sark as the main villains. Season 2 introduced the Red Sentients lead by Krytus, Sage's Evil Twin brother, as a third Big Bad. While Zemerik was pushed aside somewhat, he still remained a main threat. Now, only the Red Sentients remain, but Sage states something worse than her brother is coming and a Sark Cult called the Alpha-Code has shown up, implying that Season 3 will also have one with at least these two groups.
• Invincible (2021): Season 2 establishes previous season’s Greater-Scope Villain the Viltrumites as the preeminent threat, hunting down Omni-Man for his defection and looking to continue their long-term invasion of Earth. However, Angstrom Levy also serves as a dangerous foe and the main character’s Arch-Enemy.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures: While Tony deals with any number of Villains Of The Week and rapidly develops quites the Rogues Gallery, his main rivals are Obadiah Stane and the Mandarin, with Justin Hammer joining the roster in the second season.
• The Legend of Vox Machina:
  • Season 1 has Sylas and Delilah Briarwood and their subordinates: Kerrion Stonefell, Anna Ripley, Professor Anders, and Duke Vedmire. While the Briarwoods are Vox Machina's main targets, the others have their own agendas: Anders has a personal vendetta against Percy and goes so far as to slit his sister's throat in front of him just to taunt him, and Ripley enters a very tense Enemy Mine situation with Vox Machina to defeat the Briarwoods.
  • Season 2 has the Chroma Conclave, a quartet of chromatic dragons working together in an unprecedented move to become rulers of Tal'Dorei, and avenge their fifth member, Brimscythe. Their members are Umbrasyl the Hope Devourer, Vorugal the Frigid Doom, Raishan the Diseased Deceiver, and their leader, Thordak the Cinder King. This alliance turns out to be extremely tense however — Umbrasyl is revealed to be working with Ripley on the side, and Raishan approaches Vox Machina for help to overthrow Thordak because she fears he has gone dangerously insane.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, while usually limited to Arc Villain's and One Shot Villains, it switches to this in the final swason after Grogar, who turns out to be Discord in disguise and leaves before the end, revives King Sombra, summons Tirek and Cozy Glow from tartarus, and pulls Queen Chrysalis from the forest. While King Sombra refuses to help, and Discord!Grogar gets betrayed, the rest team up to take over the world in the Grand Finale
• Season 9 of Ninjago has both The resurrected, soulless, newly-crowned Emperor Garmadon leading the Sons of Garmadon against Lloyd's resistance composed of the Elemental Masters, PIXAL, Nya, Misako and Dareth, and a new villain called The Iron Baron who leads the Dragon Hunters against Kai, Jay, Zane, Cole, a de-aged Master Wu, and the dragons in the Realm of Oni and Dragon. Their goals don't appear to align, nor do they meet each other in this season.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes averts this in the first season; while there are other, less-prominently-featured villains around (such as Shadowy Figure and Professor Venomous & Fink), Lord Boxman is the pretty clearly main antagonist. The second and third seasons, however, play this straight as more characters begin to rise in prominence:
  • In the second season, Boxman and Venomous form a permanent alliance to threaten the main characters together as a Big Bad Duumvirate, but their Duumvirate forms an Ensemble with Foxtail, the leader of P.O.I.N.T. who serves as the Arc Villain of the mid-Season 5-episode P.O.I.N.T. Prep arc, and is also the main antagonist of the season finale (which is a follow-up to said arc). At the end of the season, though, Foxtail has a Heel Realization and changes her ways.
  • The third season starts with the Boxman-Venomous Duumvirate as the main villains once again, but the aforementioned Shadowy Figure rises in prominence and becomes another branch of the Ensemble as discovering his goals and real identity become the main focus of the season. He's revealed to be the Split Personality Turbo form of Venomous (who was unaware of his existence), with goals and motivations separate from his, and ends up becoming the final Big Bad of the series by taking over Venomous's body, ousting Boxman from the company as "Shadowy Venomous", and convincing T.K.O. (who himself took over K.O.'s body) to work with him.
• Phineas and Ferb has Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Candace Flynn. While neither is particularly evil, Doofenshmirtz's inept attempts to take over THE ENTIRE! TRI-STATE AREA! and Candace's attempts to get her brothers in trouble are the source of most of the conflicts in the series. However, Doofenshmirtz falls squarely into Big Bad Wannabe territory.
• The Powerpuff Girls: The girls' main Arch-Enemy is Mojo Jojo, who seeks to destroy the Powerpuff Girls and take over the world. However, their other worst enemy is HIM, the show's equivalent of Satan, who is one of the most powerful villains in the series. He has no interest of taking over the world, but instead takes advantage of the girls' flaws and insecurities to destroy them, such as manipulating Bubbles into causing destruction, using a Hate Plague to turn everyone against the girls, and even destroying Townsville when the girls time travel 50 years into the future.
• Samurai Jack (Season 5) has Aku, the High Priestess and Inner Jack/Mad Jack. Aku no longer gives a hoot about Jack, so it's up to the High Priestess to be Jack's primary opponent in Season 5. As for Inner Jack/Mad Jack, he has been unconsciously haunting Jack in the decades since he lost his sword and the last time portal was destroyed, driving him to acts of violence, making him lose all hope in his cause, and even nearly driving Jack to suicide. While he is in many respects a product of Aku's scheming, he ultimately caused as much harm to Jack by himself as Aku ever did. He effectively serves as the Disc-One Final Boss of Season 5, and Jack cannot defeat or even fight Aku until he beats Mad Jack.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The most active villain throughout the first season was Professor Pericles, but the finale revealed that Mayor Jones was the true instigator of the plot, and had been manipulating the gang throughout the season.
• The Simpsons being an episodic comedy, doesn't really have a central antagonist. But Homer's boss Mr. Burns serves as a major source of villainy towards the town of Springfield as a whole that often trickles down to the titular family, Patty and Selma serve as an antagonistic force for Homer, Helen Lovejoy and the other gossipers often conspire to make Marge miserable, Sideshow Bob and the numerous bullies at Springfield Elementary serve as personal enemies of Bart and Lisa to a lesser extent (the former probably being the most legitimately dangerous out of the recurring threats to the family), and Russ Cargill serves as Big Bad of the movie, on top of the many minor and one off antagonists that plague the family and the rest of Springfield.
• The Smurfs (1981) have Gargamel as probably the most recurrent villain, but other antagonists like Hogatha, Chlorhydris and especially Balthazar represent menacing foes in a lot of episodes. They also tend to team-up often.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man started out with one Big Bad, Tombstone, but gained more as it went on in the form of Doc Ock, Green Goblin, and Venom. Hammerhead thinks he's another one in the second season's Gang War arc, but he was just Green Goblin's Unwitting Pawn all along.
• South Park:
  • The "200/201" episodes has the celebrity alliance (with Tom Cruise, Rob Reiner, and Barbara Streisand being the foremost of them) and the Ginger Kids led by Scott Tenorman.
  • The Big Damn Movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, has Sheila Broflovski, Saddam Hussein, and Satan. Satan actually manages to be the most sympathetic of them all.
  • Season 20 has Skankhunt42 (aka Gerald), Mr. Garrison, Lennart Bedrager, and the Member Berries. As the season progressed however, the Member Berries started taking control of Garrison, which leads to him winning the election & them becoming Out of Focus and Skankhunt got held captive by Bedrager & TrollTrace. These events would lead to Garrison & Skankhunt to go through Heel Face Turns and leave Bedrager to be the sole Big Bad of the season.
  • Season 21 has Eric Cartman and President Garrison. The former has returned to his Sociopathic Jerkass self, is emotionally abusing his girlfriend Heidi, and manipulating her into staying with him by feeding her junk food and corrupting her with his Anti-Semitic beliefs, turning her into his Distaff Counterpart. The latter becomes a Serial Rapist towards his staff, sends tweets challenging North Korea inadvertently killing children along the way, nukes Canada because of tensions caused by Kyle's Millennials Against Canada group, and in the season finale, the residents hunt him down to turn him in to Justin Trudeau, while he lurks around South Park like the creature from IT.
  • Season 22 has ManBearPig and Jeff Bezos. The former is parallel to Global Warming, committing large scale massacres and killing Satan, while the latter is the CEO of Amazon who opens his fulfillment center in South Park to close down many businesses and take control of the town.
  • "The Pandemic Special" Has Randy Marsh, Mickey Mouse, Harrison Yates, and President Garrison. Randy is responsible for causing the COVID-19 pandemic by having sex with a pangolin and his attempts at creating a cure end up making this worse. Mickey Mouse urged Randy to have sex with the animal and is now trying to kill Randy to hide his own role in the pandemic. Harrison Yates shoots Token Black, leading to everyone in the school getting quarantined, and uses the children's attempt to escape as an excuse to shoot more of them. President Garrison intentionally destroys a potential cure for the COVID-19 virus because it suits his purposes to let it continue.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Seasons 1 and 2 have Ludo, Toffee, and Miss Heinous of St. Olga's Reform School of Wayward Princesses. Ludo is bent on stealing Star's wand to take over the universe, while Miss Heinous seeks to annihilate Marco for his uprising against her institute. Toffee overshadows them all, though, usurping and eventually possessing Ludo as part of a grand revenge scheme against Moon Butterfly and Mewni, probably followed by Mewman genocide had Star not entered a Super Mode and vaporized him in the moment of his victory.
  • Following Toffee’s death and Ludo taking himself out of the game, Season 3 continues Miss Heinous’s path and introduces Queen Eclipsa. Now free, Eclipsa is influencing Star and is implied to have big plans for the kingdom (although it’s presently unclear if she is truly evil or just misunderstood). Miss Heinous discovers she is Meteora Butterfly Eclipsa’s long lost half-monster daughter, pushing her into new and far greater reaching aims and powers. This is ultimately subverted when it's revealed that Eclipsa was never truly evil to begin with and Meteora is left as the sole Big Bad.
• Star Wars Rebels: In season three, the primary antagonists are Grand Admiral Thrawn, who is out to crush the fledgling Rebel Alliance, and Maul, who wants to take revenge against all those who have wronged him (which includes the Empire) and corrupt Ezra into becoming his new apprentice. Maul is Killed Off for Real by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Twin Suns, the final episode before the Zero Hour season finale two-parter, leaving Thrawn as the sole Big Bad.
• The two most important villains in Static Shock are Edwin Alva, the Corrupt Corporate Executive responsible for the industrial accident that released the gas which created the Bang Babies, and Ebon, a gang leader mutated by the gas who gained the ability to control darkness. Alva will stop at nothing to obliterate any evidence of his involvement, Ebon will stop at nothing to gain control of all metahuman crime in the city, and as such they represent very different types of threat for Static to face. Surprisingly, it's Alva who loses out, genuinely repenting out of gratitude for Static saving his son's life, and Ebon becomes the sole Big Bad from that point until the finale.
• Steven Universe starts off with the Gem Monsters and later reveals the Homeworld Gems. While the Gem Monsters pose a danger to Beach City, The Homeworld Gems are the reason for the Crystal Gems protecting it, and drove them off their world. In Season 3, Jasper, a Homeworld Quartz soldier, becomes a Rogue Agent and becomes an independent main antagonist.
• Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters features the rival villainous factions of Stretch Monster and the Tech Men, but their rivalry doesn't really become evident until Season 2, where it becomes a major plot point.
• Super 4: Black Baron and The Colossus, Baba Cara, Sharkbeard, Fourchesac, and Skyronior are the show's main antagonists but are in opposition of each other. Dr. X is usually Obliviously Evil as well. Pretty much all of the antagonists darken the tone of the series whenever they show up to cause trouble, and all of them besides Dr. X (due to causing trouble through incompetence) are played seriously.
• TaleSpin had Shere Khan as the ruthless business tycoon of Cape Suzette, Don Karnage and the Sky Pirates as the more chaotic evil and Col. Spigot as the funny dimwitted foreign enemy and bureaucratically blinded.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) did this in its fourth and sixth seasons. For Season 4, there were a number of villainous characters attempting to fill the power vacuum left after the Shredder was exiled to a deserted asteroid by the Utroms. The Big Bad Duumvirate of Agent Bishop and Baxter Stockman were The Heavy throughout most of the season, with the Shredder's adopted daughter Karai (having inherited her "father"'s trademark armor) and Dragon Ascendant Hun occasionally swooping in for a shot at the heroes, as well. Bishop's artificial plague, once he loses control of it, necessitating a teamup with the Turtles to stop it, might count as well, even though it's not sentient. The season finale also revealed the Foot Mystics, who until that point were assumed to just be Elite Mooks, had their own agenda, as well. For the sixth season, Fast Forward, there two main villains in the form of Darius Dunn attempting to take over O'Neil Tech, and Sh'Okanabo, an alien warlord attempting to usher the Day of Awakening and take over the planet with Kanabo drones. They form a brief alliance in the first half of the season, but outside of one or two instances, they scheme independently of each other.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) the first villains the Turtles face are the Kraang, followed by the Shredder's Foot Clan. While the former are the most dangerous to the planet as a whole, the Shredder is the most personal foe the Turtles face. The Turtles spend Season 1 actively seeking out and fighting the Kraang in an effort to rescue April's father while the Foot are the ones hunting the Turtles down due to the Shredder's grudge against Splinter. The Rat King briefly had a tenure as this since he poised as much a threat to the world as the Kraang and the Foot in his sparse appearances. The Triceraton Empire, introduced in the third season finale, outright wipes out the Kraang and takes over as the main antagonists for the first half of Season 4, and upon their defeat, Shredder is left as the sole Big Bad until his death in the season finale. The final season, which is told in the form of several arcs as opposed to one season-long one, features several antagonists for each arc.
• Elmyra and Montana Max are the two most recurring threats in Tiny Toon Adventures. Aside from general slapstick of course.
• Total Drama: Pahkitew Island, unlike other seasons of this show, does not have one obvious Big Bad. Amy is a bitch, but mostly just to her sister. Max is open about his "ee-vil" plans and is a budding Mad Scientist, but usually hurts himself rather than anyone else. Scarlett is suddenly revealed to be one of the franchise's most dangerous antagonists, nearly killing the other contestants, but is understandably eliminated right afterwards. Sugar takes over until the final episode, where Dave, of all people, is the Final Boss.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers: Season 3 has the Quintessons in addition to the Decepticons. While they team up a few times, it usually turns out to be a trick on the Quints' end, with their true goal being to eliminate both the Autobots and Decepticons.
  • Beast Wars has Megatron, Tarantulas (with the Tripredacus Council acting as his superiors), and the Vok.
  • The second season of Transformers: Animated had Megatron as the main villain, but Starscream was also running amuck and causing trouble for all sides during the season and poised a serious threat to anyone who crossed him. There was also Porter C. Powell, the greedy businessman who seized control of Sumdac Systems from Sari, causing a lot of trouble for the Autobots. Meltdown, a mad scientist, was also chief among the human antagonists, performing amoral genetic experiments and being the first human supervillain to pose a direct threat to the Autobots. Rogue bounty hunter Lockdown was also very dangerous, very personal threat to the Autobots for the duration of the series despite the rarity of his appearances.
  • Transformers: Prime: In Season 2 — while Megatron is recognized as the main villain, Silas and Airachnid have taken on equal standing as threats, with the role of The Heavy shifting between them depending on the episode. Starscream is also running around independently, but with his recent string of bad luck he's more of a cross between a Big Bad Wannabe and a Wild Card. However, by the end of the season, Starscream has rejoined Megatron's command, Airachnid is frozen in a stasis pod for the majority of the remainder of the series, and MECH is wiped out and Silas eventually dies as a result of his own actions, leaving Megatron as the sole Big Bad.
• Wakfu:
  • A brief, yet unique example with Rushu and Qilby that occurs in the final episodes of the second season, as it occurs after their alliance.
  • The OVAs have Lady Echo and Ogrest, although the former isn't confronted by any of the Brotherhood of the Tofu, besides Adamaï, and is only a Big Bad because she commands her organization, whose members have the most conflict with the Brotherhood during the OVAs' events.
• Xiaolin Showdown starts out with only Wuya as the Big Bad, but adds Chase Young and Hannibal Roy Bean in successive seasons, with the various alliances between the villains changing almost every episode by Season 3. Technically, one could call Jack Spicer a Big Bad in his own right after Wuya ditches him, but he mostly ends up getting manipulated by the other villains,Taken in a literal sense in the finale, when all the villains line up at the heroes' doorstep.
• Young Justice, being an exploration of a more "realistic" DC universe has quite a few. Primary among all the enemies is The Light, who has a myriad of partners and acquaintances they work with, including The Reach, Darkseid and General Zod. While the Light wants to turn Earth into an intergalactic superpower. the others want to conquer and expand their own assets. All of them usually only keep up a pretense of helping each other, as their endgames all have them on top, though Darkseid at least is more interested in maintaining good relations since he can afford to be patient.
• Zorro: The Chronicles: Monasterio, Malapensa, and Dona Verdugo are the series' chief contenders for the most intimidating villain, often swapping out the title from episode to episode...when they're not working together against Zorro.

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