Big Bad Wannabe / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Seemingly serious threats who fail to measure up to their supposed threat level from this Shared Universe setting.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Moonstone of the Masters of Evil and Thunderbolts, archenemies of The Avengers, really thinks that she's a brilliant manipulator who could lead the Masters better than Baron Zemo. She's certainly dangerous, at least in a straight-up fight, but she doesn't compare to Zemo at all. A big part of her problem is Complexity Addiction; she's powerful enough that she could easily win through sheer force thanks to her powers, but she's convinced herself that she's also a psychological genius and so always wastes time and resources trying to break her enemies mentally instead of just getting the job done. She's also a major Jerkass, making it difficult to get the other Masters to follow her instead of the charismatic Zemo. Thus whenever Moonstone tries to manipulate her way to the top, Baron Zemo runs mental circles around her and puts her back in her place.
• Daredevil: The Owl took on this role in the 2000s after his original niche as a physically powerful crimelord was taken over by Daredevil's Arch-Enemy (and Spider-Man Rogues' Gallery Transplant) the Kingpin, who fills it much more effectively. Since the 1980s and 1990s attempts at Retooling the Owl as a mutated supervillain or The Atoner didn't take, Brian Michael Bendis simply rolled with it and used the Owl as an example of how not just anyone has the brains or the brawn to rule the mobs and act as Daredevil's Arch-Enemy. Most writers since have followed his lead.
  • This was used to humourous extent in a Spider-Man storyline; when the Owl angered the Absorbing Man, he attempted to turn state's evidence for protection, but only got Spider-Man rather than the mass of SHIELD agents he had been expecting, Spider-Man bluntly informing the Owl that he was nothing more than a two-bit local hood with bad teeth and a stupid haircut whose plea had been bumped down to the appropriate levels for someone of his non-importance.
• The Skrulls and their leader Queen Veranke in the Marvel Crisis Crossover Secret Invasion (2008). To wit, thanks to Queen Veranke and her big plans, the Skrulls managed to capture three superheroes, including Spider-Woman, Yellowjacket (one founding member of The Avengers), and Dum Dum Dugan BEFORE big events like House of M, all not through direct combat. To make it even more "big", they also used the same method to capture Black Bolt of the Inhumans, considered as one of the Marvel Universe's most overpowered characters. But for all of Queen Veranke's big plans and ambitions to conquer Earth to restart her people's empire, the Skrulls' eventual invasion turns out to be an Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion, although they still caused the death of the Wasp. Hercules kills their God with ease; then, Veranke (disguised as Spider-Woman at the time) ends up getting shot in the head by Norman Osborn. And thanks to killing Veranke, Norman immediately kicked off the Dark Reign era, which causes much bigger problems for the Marvel Universe.
• In Dark Reign, Norman Osborn himself qualifies. While he's one of the biggest threats to Spider-Man on a personal level, trying to be the Big Bad of Marvel's Earth and punching well above his weight class (he forms an organization called the Cabal which includes Loki, Doctor Doom, and Emma Frost, among others, and all of them betray him for their own ends) causes him to lose what little grip on his sanity he has left.
• Deadpool: While Vetis is by no means harmless, Mephisto himself notes that in the larger spectrum of things, he's just a low-level demon with delusions of grandeur.
• Marvel villain The Hood tries so hard to become one of the verse's Big Bads after getting a taste of power from his magical clothes. Problem is, he's still a street thug at heart and doesn't really know how to best use the vast power he has at his disposal. He does accomplish a lot, but he's ultimately a slave to his own hunger for power and to the entities who feed his addiction. The one time he tries to claim power without making any deals with otherworldly entities he attracts the attention of a much worse villain and loses that power in short order. His greatest act of villainy was having a bunch of his thugs beat up a captive superheroine, and said heroine paid him back in spades.
• Shang-Chi:
  • MI6 agent Ward Sarsfield is tasked with killing or silencing Shang-Chi and his allies when they resign, largely on the basis that They Know Too Much. With access to all of MI6's resources he's able to send two brainwashed assassins after them, reactivate dead supervillain Mordillo's robots and capture most of the team. For a Non-Action Big Bad, he seems a credible threat. Then Shang-Chi's half-sister changes sides and her lover Zaran the Weapons Master simply kills him.
  • This has also happened with Shang-Chi's sister Zheng Bao Yu (formerly Fah Lo Suee) herself. She's a credible Big Bad in any arc that doesn’t include their father - but if he's also onstage, her plans are likely to abruptly collapse.
• Spider-Man:
  • Jason Macendale desperately thought he had what it took to be a deadly archnemesis to Spider-Man and tried to take up the Hobgoblin identity, but while he was willing to commit terrible crimes (even more evil than stuff the real Hobgoblin, Roderick Kingsley, does), he was also horribly incompetent at actually pulling them off. The only people who couldn't effortlessly kick his ass were either untrained civilians or rookie heroes who didn't know anything about him. Worse, his incompetence often led to him ruining the schemes of other villains and his own employers, making it near impossible for him to get any work as a bad guy. This ended up being Macendale's downfall; when the real Hobgoblin came back, he was so enraged at what Macendale had done to his gang and title that he murdered Jason for his failures.
  • Raniero "Blackie" Drago attempted to replace Adrian Toomes as the Vulture by causing an accident that would kill Toomes to trick the older man into telling Drago where he'd hidden his costume, but after defeating Spider-Man while the hero is suffering from a bad cold, Drago then gets his head handed to him when caught in a three-way fight between himself, Spider-Man and Kraven the Hunter, and subsequently gets released from prison by the still-living Toomes just so that Toomes can defeat him and prove his own status as the true Vulture. He has recently been shown apparently locked up in the super-villain prison the Raft, and the fact that he hasn't escaped from it since despite various later break-outs make it all the more apparent that his ambitions to be a major villain never amounted to anything.
  • Angelo Fortunato, the timid son of a Maggia don, inherits the Venom symbiote after his father purchases it from Eddie Brock in an attempt to get the kid to grow a backbone. Though eager to embrace his new role as a super-villain, even managing to successfully kill a luckless civilian who'd happened to be dressed in a Spider-Man costume, the real Spider-Man quickly turns the tables on him in their first and only fight, causing him to flee for his life. Which, in turn, causes the symbiote to become disgusted with how pathetic he is and it abandon him mid-jump, letting him fall to his death.
  • Kraven the Hunter in Ultimate Spider-Man comes across as this in his initial appearances, proudly boasting how he will hunt down and defeat Spider-Man on live television. After pages and pages of hyping his audience, he finally comes face-to-face with his target; Spider-Man, already having had a long night taking down Doctor Octopus, isn't in the mood and decks Kraven with a single punch.
• X-Men:
  • Azazel, an immortal mutant with teleportation powers and a demonic appearance, has tried to launch grand schemes but has never been a world conquering villain. X-Men Blue: Origins (2023) reveals that In other timelines he would have been a true cosmic threat, defeating the X-Men, the Avengers and Doctor Doom. The precognitive mutant Destiny derailed all of those plans by tricking him into believing that Nightcrawler was one of his own children, and his obsession with the hero has left him much less dangerous.
  • The Hellfire Club's Black King, Sebastian Shaw, is a high-functioning version. He's got a formidable mutant power, isn't a half-bad schemer on his good days, and has mountains of cash to fund those evil schemes. Trouble is, he's not exactly good to the help and has a penchant for getting into Villain Team-Ups with people who are smarter and higher up on the Sorting Algorithm of Evil scale than he is, leading him to be outplayed or in the worst cases used as an Unwitting Pawn.
  • A less successful example is Amanda Mueller, the Black Womb. An immortal Mad Scientist who worked for several decades as the assistant of Mr. Sinister, she eventually decided she was a better schemer than her boss and decided to become The Starscream to him. Unfortunately for her she was stuck as a Dark Lord on Life Support by this time and wasn't quite the mental equal to Essex she'd fancied herself to be.
  • Holocaust from the Age of Apocalypse had ambitions of succeeding his father and ushering in an era where "none will be fit to survive". Unfortunately for him, he had the bad habits of both picking fights with people above his weight class (namely Nate Grey) and of underestimating people who weren't in his weight class, leading him to be beaten anyway by mutants such as Blink.
  • X-Force (2008): Matthew Risman, leader of the Purifiers and Stryker's Dragon in New X-Men. Once Bastion is brought online, he quickly usurps the Purifers from him, and Risman ends up dead by the end of the first arc.
  • X-Men: The Krakoan Age: For all his pretensions of grandeur, Doctor Stasis's just one of many pathetic anti-mutant bigots, albeit a moderately dangerous one. But it's telling that the only response Cyclops has to Stasis's attempt at a Hannibal Lecture is that he's heard that same speech a dozen times before from scarier people.

Films

Films

• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Raza Hamidmi Al-Wazar in Iron Man captures Tony Stark and orders him to build Jericho Missiles for the Ten Rings, otherwise he would die. However, while Obadiah Stane ordered Raza to kill him, Tony was still alive, albeit barely. Though Tony manages to build the first Iron Man suit behind their backs and escapes, Raza still manages to lay death and destruction upon Afghanistan due to Stark Industries still dealing arms to them. After Tony busts up the attack, Raza talks with Obadiah Stane about building various Iron Man suits to conquer all of Asia, though Stane paralyzes him with a sonic taser and takes the first suit while ordering his men to kill Raza's lackeys.
    • In an alternate timeline, Obadiah himself is on the receiving end of this trope ironically when Killmonger exposes all his secrets for the whole world to see, causing Tony to order security to arrest him, and Happy Hogan to knock him out with one punch.
  • Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2 believes he's going to take down Tony Stark, especially since he just "hired" Ivan Vanko, a brilliant tech wiz that can create gear rivaling Iron Man's. When he presents his idea he comes out dancing or at least a poor imitation of it, to Average White Band's 'Pick Up The Pieces' and goes on with bad jokes that make no sense ("The newspapers are about to run out of ink!") to outright showing what is clearly Stark technology (the second Iron Man suit, the one with the icing problem), only with a lot of guns welded on, all to scattered applause. All Tony does is show up in his new suit, during Hammer's presentation, and he gets a standing ovation. Hammer has absolutely no control over Vanko as the latter hacks into his system, derails his Powered Armor prototypes into unmanned drones, and so on. Vanko even plays up You No Take Candle for no other reason than to annoy Hammer and get him out of his way. Hammer is most clearly shown as pathetic when he tries to force Vanko into line... by taking his pet bird. And his shoes. Even his goons are pathetic, armed only with tasers and mace and taken down with zero effort by Vanko (also Black Widow, but we're not exactly blaming them for getting their asses kicked by her).
  • Loki Laufeyson in The Avengers has got the Chitauri backing him up and he puts on a big show, but in the end, he is nothing more than a self-absorbed pawn to Thanos. Thanos' emissary, the Other, easily bullies him into submission. According to the Evil Plan, Loki will get Earth, but Thanos will get the Infinity Stones and pretty much the whole universe.
  • The Stinger in Captain America: The Winter Soldier made Strucker out to be the next great threat, and he was talked up a lot in season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a Greater-Scope Villain. Then in Avengers: Age of Ultron, he quickly surrenders in the first few minutes and later is unceremoniously killed off-screen by the actual Big Bad, Ultron.
  • Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy seems to think he's the biggest threat around, when in reality he's basically just a glorified courier bringing a stone to Thanos. While the Other's attempts to cow him result in his death, Thanos puts him in his place, giving a blistering "Reason You Suck" Speech in the process.
    Thanos: The only matter I do not take seriously, boy, is you. Your politics bore me. Your demeanor is that of a pouty child.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has two, mostly to distract the audience to the real villain Ego, the Living Planet.
    • Taserface believes that Yondu's going too soft and leads a mutiny, but only succeeds with help from Nebula who has no problems overriding his order. Even after the mutiny, Rocket can't take him seriously thanks to his Atrocious Alias and after Yondu gets his weapon back, he and the rest of the traitors are dispatched in a truly devastating Curb-Stomp Battle. Even his dying wish gets laughed upon by the Sovereign because of his name.
    • Ayesha is the queen of an incredibly arrogant race, the Sovereign, and swears vengeance on the Guardians for daring to offend them. When the Sovereign forces try to pursue them, they end up getting easily swatted away by Ego. They try to hire the Ravagers to find the Guardians, resulting in the aforementioned mutiny. Once they find the Guardians, they try to capture them again but end up only distracting the Guardians while they're fighting the real villain. As of The Stinger, Ayesha's still at it, but even the other Sovereign are getting tired of her wasting resources on the Guardians. Then, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, she's revealed to ultimately be a flunky of the main villain the High Evolutionary, who is much more of a threat and treats her with no respect and ultimately indirectly gets her killed.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp has Sonny Burch. Sonny is an arms dealer with connections to the Black Market and a mole in the FBI. While this makes him a credible threat on his own, Ghost is a greater threat than he is, because unlike Sonny, she actually has superpowers of her own, and she's desperate to cure her condition before it kills her. By the end of the movie, he and his goons are taken out by Scott's friends and are handed over to the cops.
• Shingen Yashida really thinks he's the mastermind in The Wolverine, with his plan to have his own daughter Mariko killed because his father Ichirō named her as the heir to the company. He tries have Mariko killed at Ichirō's funeral using the Yakuza, but both Wolverine and Kenuichio Harada the Black Clan archer throw a wrench into this plan. Even when he is able to find Mariko his Yakuza henchmen are easily cut down by the Black Clan, and he is killed by a repowered Wolverine. The real mastermind is Ichirō who planned to take Wolverine's abilities to gain immortality.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • On his own, Edison Po is a dangerous villain, and he is one hell of a threatening and smart enemy, but he’s in way over his head in comparison to the Clairvoyant, who he only manages to be The Dragon and Mouth of Sauron to before the Clairvoyant has him killed after his efforts at torturing Coulson for information prove ineffective and subsequently promotes Raina into serving as his replacement. Speaking of…
  • Raina may be a Manipulative Bastard and may think she's meant for something great, but ultimately she's just an expendable pawn in the schemes of HYDRA and Mr. Hyde. This is even reflected by what happens to her when she undergoes terrigenesis. Raina was expecting to be a beautiful and powerful angel blessed with amazing powers. Instead, she was turned into a gnarled, spikey, and pathetic monster who is in perpetual agony and is left with painful prophetic powers that she can't even control.
  • While Dr. Whitehall is certainly a dangerous HYDRA leader, Cal notes that he still has no clue what the purpose of the Obelisk is even after all his extensive research, comparing him to a monkey scratching hopelessly at it. Then there's the fact that Coulson just shoots him In the Back in the most hilariously anticlimactic manner possible right as Cal is seconds away from engaging in what he'd hoped to be a climactic showdown with the man… 10 episodes into the 22 episode season.
  • In Season 3, Grant Ward tries to rebuild HYDRA from the ground up to take revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. But while he's Team Coulson's most personal enemy, he's far from the biggest threat: his one attack that managed to cause some damage, assassinating Coulson's Love Interest, also provoked Coulson into killing him...which subsequently allows him to be possessed by the far worse threat Hive.
  • Season 4 has Anton Ivanov, the so-called "Superior Man". He's the head of the Watchdogs, who plague S.H.I.E.L.D. throughout most of the season, all as part of a decades-long vendetta against Coulson for a previous encounter. Except not only does Coulson not even remember him or the event in question (robbing him of much of his significance), but he ends up easily defeated by Daisy, after which the season's real main villains usurp his resources and turn him into a pawn.
  • HYDRA ended up being far less of a threat than they were initially made out to be. Their motto "cut off one head, two more will take its place" is designed to make it seem like they will be around forever and there’s no point in fighting them. And during both their time overtly working to achieve their world domination agenda in World War II and their time covertly influencing the world for their benefit without anyone else being any the wiser, they genuinely gave Captain America quite the challenge in foiling their plans. But as it eventually turns out over the course of this series, they are ultimately only truly capable of causing real damage when they don't have a dedicated force going after them and trying to take them down. To start, during Season 2, Coulson is able to trick most of HYDRA’s leaders into killing each other, and the season finale has a Mook Lieutenant inform Ward that the heads were not growing back. Then it was revealed that they were just a cult waiting for the return of a powerful Inhuman, whose return ended up ironically accelerating their demise. After said Inhuman, named Hive, kills Gideon Malick’s daughter, Malick gives S.H.I.E.L.D. everything he knows about HYDRA’s operations, resulting in S.H.I.E.L.D. and the United States military launching a coordinated strike that leaves General Hale as the last HYDRA head standing. Speaking of which...
  • General Hale thought she could manipulate S.H.I.E.L.D. into helping her take over the Confederacy. Not one of her schemes worked out, she was never in a position of power over the Confederacy, and she was unceremoniously killed off by Graviton, ending the last remnant of HYDRA (all this happened in the TV series; to fans who only watched the MCU movies, HYDRA would appear to have fallen victim to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome).
  • General Hale's daughter Ruby believes it is her destiny to become the Destroyer of Worlds by assimilating all of the obtained Gravitonium into her body. This backfires horribly, as she can't even absorb eight percent of it without the voices of those who were previously trapped inside of it driving her beyond crazy and completely out of control, after which Elena ends her threat before it truly begins via Slashed Throat with one of her own chakrams. Ultimately, the one who becomes Graviton is General Talbot.
  • The Confederacy believed themselves to be much more powerful than they actually were. They were easily cowed by Graviton before subsequently getting destroyed off-screen by the Chronicoms.
  • Atarah is one of the leaders of the surviving Chronicoms whose planet was wiped clean of life by Izel. Her obsession with using Fitz Simmons' brains to learn how to time travel and restore her species' homeworld causes her to undergo Sanity Slippage and delve further into Stupid Evil tendencies. Malachi shoots her and takes leadership over the rest, intending on making Earth into their next home planet… except he is Demoted to Dragon by Sibyl in the final season with virtually no fanfare. It is possible that she was the real boss all along, of course.
  • Sibyl herself, despite being the only character who fulfills the Big Bad role for the entire final season (having Luke form a Big Bad Duumvirate with Wilfred Malick in the first half before forging one herself with Wilfred's now-superpowered son Nathaniel in the second half) and being potentially the most powerful and dangerous threat of them all by virtue of being able to affect time itself, shows tendencies of being outplayed by S.H.I.E.L.D. more than once, to the point where both she and Nathaniel dismiss her own calculations and probabilities. She also gets Killed Offscreen after Coulson and May trick her one last time while Nathaniel serves as the Final Boss for Daisy, who quakes him into one of the reactor cores, obliterating him, Sibyl, and their entire space armada.
  • Nathaniel, despite being The Heavy and a much more direct threat who really earns the enmity of the heroes, is another hilariously Stupid Evil Smug Snake who deludes himself into believing that Sibyl and her armada work for him rather than with him, even though he had to resort to asking Sibyl to give him some of her Hunters, plus he has no idea of the "new world order" structure he's even building, his postulations about giving power to those who are more deserving being an excuse to cause anarchy in the world and then step in to "fix it" himself and rule the planet, even though he's been told more than once that Sibyl wants to make Earth into her people's new homeworld. This guy has Unwitting Pawn written all over him, making Sibyl the clear dominant partner between the two of them. Finally, despite being Daisy's last opponent in the series, even though he has Daisy's and Kora's powers combined, Daisy is still holding back to avoid annihilating the warship. When her team is safe and she finally cuts loose, she obliterates him and the entire armada with a single attack, although nearly at the cost of her own life.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Avengers Assemble
  • While a genuine threat, the Leader can't seem to get to Big Bad level there no matter how hard he tries and gets usurped every time.
  • Wolfgang Von Strucker may be the leader of Hydra, but compared to his predecessors (Red Skull and Baron Helmut Zemo), he's far more incompetent. His worst defeat had him being betrayed by his protege.
  • N'Jadaka / Killmonger has shown to do poorly on the Big Bad role in some moments and even gets usurped by Madame Masque.
  • Justin Hammer wanted to join the Cabal. Unfortunately, his attempted audition didn't impress Red Skull. His robot, on the other hand, did. He tries again in "Savage" and comes close, again, to join the Cabal before getting overconfident and getting his ass handed to him. It's a good thing he didn't join anyways because Red Skull would have wiped him out.
• Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.: In Planet Monster, The Leader's down to this, unsuccessfully forming an alliance with the Supreme Intelligence and Ronan, only for him to get absorbed, and the fact that they consider him insignificant.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures
  • Count Nefaria is cited as the leader of one of the most powerful crime organizations in the city, but is always one-upped by Iron Man or whoever happens to be the true big bad at the moment. Then he was transformed into a zombie by Hammer, basically ending his threat there.
  • While Justin Hammer a major threat throughout most of Season 2, he's not half as smart as he thinks he is, often getting humiliated in fights, and doesn't even come into any sort of contact with the protagonists' quest for the Makluan Rings.
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Hammerhead is this, considering (Norman, Otto, the Jackal, Toomes and Venom) are more competent threats to Spider-Man than him.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series
  • In the greater scope of the series. Doctor Doom steals the power of the Beyonder, but has no real control over them. After the arc, it is revealed that even if Doom did manage to control that power, he would have ultimately doomed the multiverse, since using up the Beyonder's power would have exhausted it and allowed Spider Carnage to destroy virtually all of reality.
  • When the Spot realizes his abilities made him all powerful, he decides to upstage the Kingpin: "I am the new Kingpin now!". Until the next scene where his girlfriend is held hostage and the Kingpin order him to go after Spider-man again.
  • Prowler / Hobie Brown has dreams of attaining power but lacks the cunning to hold on to it. Kingpin's betrayal is a very brutal wake-up call to him.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man
  • Hammerhead attempts to betray Tombstone in the second season but is ultimately only an Unwitting Pawn for the Green Goblin's own rise to power, as his successes largely stem from piggybacking off schemes the Goblin has already put into motion.
  • Once a powerful crime lord, Silvermane (Silvio Manfredi)'s long imprisonment has left him woefully unprepared for the new age of supervillainy consuming New York. His powerful exoskeleton allows him to go toe-to-toe with Tombstone and Octavius for a short while, but he's ultimately the first of the three crime lords to be defeated by Spidey—who easily sniffs out his weakness in a few minutes—and his very first appearance in the show ends with him quickly arrested once more at the machinations of the Goblin.
• The Super Hero Squad Show: Doctor Doom spends much of his time in the second season desperately trying to reclaim his old position as top villain.
• Ultimate Spider-Man
  • Doctor Octopus was The Heavy for season 1's first half, and far more active in the field than Norman ever was. However, his plans are much more conservative and he lacks the genetic power versatility Norman has. Finally it's completely subverted now Osborn choose not to be the Goblin again, even if forced.
  • Arnim Zola pretty much thinks of himself as the Big Bad of Ultimate Spider-Man vs the Sinister 6 with Doc Ock as his lackey only for Doc Ock to be the Big Bad and betrayed Zola. Doc Ock later gloats to Zola's projected face about retrieving the "proper" nanotech research he had originally intended to use, which was held back and twisted by Zola for some reason.
  • Taskmaster first couple appearances aren't much to speak of, as he's Only in It for the Money. But come season 3, he takes a much more personal role in fighting Spider-Man's newer team, but as mostly normal guy, he's still outclassed by the more genius planners like the Green Goblin.

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