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alt title(s): Monologuing 
This is the villain's moment. He's destined to be defeated anyway - there's no hiding it. But allow him this one perfect shining example of all that is right about his own deluded way of seeing how the world would be a better place if only everyone listened to his genius. But of course they don't, and therein lies the tragedy.
Gloating. It's what villains do. Maybe they " set up us the bomb" and are calling to rub it in and take credit, perhaps he's just snatched the MacGuffin from the hero's very hands and insist on staying just out of reach to taunt. Maybe the villain finally has the hero at his mercy and just has to taunt him one last time before shooting him.
Or perhaps this is the place where they finally have a chance to get all the reasons they despise the hero personally off their chest. Any mistakes the hero makes are also fair game for villainous gloating. At any rate, while this is a villainous staple on par with a hero and In The Name Of The Moon, it's still one of the things the Evil Overlord List strenuously warns against, as any villain caught gloating is sure to be either killed or foiled. In their defense, it's really fun and gives you that warm evil feeling in the black pit of your soul when you utterly grind your opponent's face into the dirt. Unfortunately, most villains fail to grind hard enough.
This goes hand in hand with other evil plots like the Xanatos Gambit and Roulette, where it's practically required to give the hero and viewer exposition of just what the heck is happening. Expect the villain to let out an Evil Laugh and start to Trash Talk about how the hero(es) are powerless to stop his Evil Plan.
Heroes tend to not gloat, which is why villains facing a Sword Over Head will usually either be allowed to live or killed without (much) fanfare.
Compare with Just Between You And Me (where the villain has the hero captured and at their mercy) and Victory Gloating.
If they've just finished owning The Hero, this is sure to become The Reason You Suck Speech, but don't worry, a Thwarted Coup De Grace is coming up. May overlap with Trash Talk. See also Villain Ball and Did You Actually Believe?
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- "Sayonara, Ray Penbar."
- "I am Kira." Just so he could see the look on Naomi Misora's face moments before his Artifact Of Doom kicked in.
- Light also gloats evilly at the end of the penultimate episode. While it wouldn't have changed the outcome had he not done so, it was pretty reckless of him, and he only did it as a matter of pride to show how confident he was that he had successfully tied up all remaining loose ends.
- While the manga and anime adaption of Chrono Crusade disagree on quite a few things, there's one thing on which they agree: Aion loves to gloat.
- When Tomoe confronts Arika in Mai-Otome after acquiring her new battle suit, she wastes no time bragging about her involvement in Miya's disappearance, Erstin's leg injury, and Arika's costume damage right before she and three of her companions attack. However, she was only supposed to capture Mashiro and get back to base as quickly as possible to avoid drawing attention.
- In both the anime and manga versions of Bleach, the 9th Espada, Aaroniero Arruruerie, fights Rukia, breaks her sword, and skewers her with his trident. He pulls her closer so that he can gloat effectively. This is when Rukia pulls out her third Shikai which reforms her sword through Aaroniero's head instantly killing him. Sure, Rukia's sword reforming and her subsequent rescuing are major Deus Ex Machinas, but in Bleach, we lost count long ago anyway.
- And that's not even going into Sousuke Aizen, who just loves to listen to himself talk, going by the fact that he has on a few occasions taken the time to fill the good guys in on every little detail regarding exactly how bad he's screwed them over.
- To be fair to his villainous willpower, he will wait years for the opportunity for these gloatings. His Un Clarking monologue was stored up over well over a hundred years of playing the nice guy. Of course, he did get to let it out sometimes, so long as he was sure whoever it was was about to die. Letting Urahara and Shinji and company get away alive had better bite him hard in future.
- Quattro, Smug Snake that she is, did some big time gloating as she forced the main character of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha to fight against her daughter. In retrospect, this probably wasn't a very good idea.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has Chao doing this to Negi's friends after sending them a week into the future when she'd already won the battle by sticking a note gloating about her victory on the side of Eva's resort.
- Evangeline is also fond of evil gloating, especially when she isn't doing anything evil. She probably wants to remind everyone she most definitely has not gone soft.
- The villains in One Piece love this Trope. Somewhat subverted in that their gloating usually doesn't bring about their fall, Luffy's endless willpower does.]
- One example from Umineko No Naku Koro Ni's Banquet of the golden witch, "And for you, just as expected, it's 'tears please,' and you're down!! I~diot, what a truly simple person!!" That said, it's not a good idea to make the person you're trying to get to sign something feel like crap. It's used far more effectively in the arc just before it. "You are incompetent!"
- Okay... so you have a hostage and PE#1 trapped in an airtight cable car, which you just flooded with water, leaving them without a way to breathe. To add insult to injury, you summon your pet shark and sic it on them, only for PE#1 to summon a metal rhino to break its teeth off. Of course, they still don't have a way to breathe. Do you...
- [A] Keep an eye on them to make certain they don't do stupid shit or have a game plan if they do?
- [B] Sit there and go into full-on gloating as your shark's teeth pop back out?
- or [C] have your summoned pets knock the last remnants of air out of them just to be sure?
- If you picked B, congratulations, Ark! You just won an ass-kicking from Sapphire, who used those teeth to cut open the glass and drain all the water while you were gloating! Enjoy your dirt nap, sucker!
Comic Books
- Watchmen plays this straight, but with a nod to the oft-fatal habit of monologuing, but adds the already infamous twist to the end. When confronted by Rorschach and Night Owl, Ozymandias coolly explains his masterplan to them. The heroes expect to be able to stop him yet, but he bluntly tells them his plan is already complete.
Fanfic
Film
Live Action TV
- Done successfully by Londo Molari in the Babylon Five episode 'The Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place' He explains to Lord Refa, via recording, his entire Xanatos Gambit for no reason other than to grind Refa's face into his failure and imminent demise. Of course Refa is then horribly murdered by a mob of angry Narns and framed posthumously for treason, fulling the rant and the gambit both.
- Ethan Rayne from Buffy The Vampire Slayer likes doing this. And its the only thing The First Evil ever really did, being intangible. Angelus was good at it too.
- It's never a good idea to do this in the Buffyverse, however, as it tends to signal a villain's defeat, usually because speechifying leaves them open to attack or buys the hero time to recoil. Villains like Rayne are aware of this, but can't seem to help themselves: "I really got to learn to just do the damage and get out of town. It's the stay-and-gloat that gets me every time."
- In the 6th season premiere of Stargate SG-1, Anubis does this when he finds a way to overload the Earth stargate.
- In the first season finale of Supernatural, the Yellow Eyed Demon does this. Dean lampshades it with "Just kill us, 'cuz I just can't take the monologuing." This just fuels the Demon's Hannibal Lecture. It should be noted that Demons are practically the only type of evil the brothers face who pull this one. Occasionally some other malevolent beasty will indulge but every single demon does it when most creatures just get right to the killing, or at least attempted killing, of the brothers.
- In the episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled "The Vengeance Formulation," Sheldon makes foam fall on Kripke from the ceiling tiles in his office to get back at him. The plan goes horribly wrong when the president of the university and the board of directors are drenched with the foam too. Then, to make matters even worse, a pre-recorded video comes on to Kripke's monitor. It contains Sheldon gloating about the "classic prank" that Kripke has just fallen prey to. He also gives congratulations to Leonard and Raj for helping him with his plan.
Literature
- The Tad Williams book The War of the Flowers features Lord Hellebore explaining to his rivals their imminent destruction through a Magitek television. Lampshaded when the Remover complains about him wasting valuable resources to send them the message for no reason other than to gloat.
- In Discworld this is a common feature of villains. Commander Vimes considers that an evil man always likes their enemy to know they've been beaten, thus giving them a chance to turn the tables, while a good man will kill you with hardly a word.
- Cats and witches also prefer an enemy who knows they're beaten. A key difference is that cats and witches know the dangers of monologuing, so they instead just make sure their opponent is so good and beat that there's no question.
- Coraline gets out of the Other Mother's clutches by fake-guessing that her parents are hidden behind the door that leads out of the world, causing the beldam to open it so that she can gloat about Coraline being wrong.
- In the Thursday Next novel The Eyre Affair, Big Bad Acheron Hades launches into a gloating soliloquy right when he has Thursday cornered. In the time it takes him to gloat, Thursday is able to figure out his one weakness (silver) and shoot him dead with a silver bullet.
Video Games
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has Marluxia mocking Sora and Co. before one of their final fights. link
 . The scythe summoning from a blossom petal and tension music make this a Crowning Momentof Awesome
- Imbeciles...You would knowingly shackle your heart with a chain of memories born of lies? You would be one who has a heart, yet cast aside your heart's freedom? You turn from the truth because your heart is weak—You will never defeat me!
- In Mass Effect, Sovereign definitely embodies this trope. It states that the Reapers are coming to completely annihilate and obliterate everything in the universe, and there is not a single damn thing any sentient life can do about it. Sovereign is just that awesome.
Sovereign: We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.
Sovereign: Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction.
- Lord Crump, of course, does this in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, not realizing you've been Cursed With Awesome at your last destination, and can therefore escape his silly prison. (Of course, now you have to free the others...)
- Zero Wing has the rather infamous scene with Cats phoning into the heroes' ship's huge viewscreen to gloat about how all their base are belong to him, and that they are on the way to destruction.
- Kane does this to the player midway through the GDI campaign of Command And Conquer,
completely unaware probably aware that GDI is Faking The Dead.
- Subverted in Ratchet And Clank 3 where Ratchet throws a wrench at the big bad as soon as he opens his mouth to gloat.
- Strictly speaking, he throws his wrench at the remote control for his uber weapon just about to target Veldin. Nefarious just stood in the way.
- In Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, ALL the villains do this. Gig also does this from time to time, despite being on your side. This troper's favorite example of Evil Gloating comes from Levin, aka Raksha the World Eater.
Levin: You don't like that I've learned all these fancy new words? Well tough shit! I'm feeling verbose!
- In one of the last stages of Jedi Outcast Fyyar goes off on a monologue, while Kyle casually finishes the objective he was performing before he was interrupted.
- Several World Of Warcraft raid bosses do this, especially if you start wiping. Kael'thas and Malygos have raised it to an art form.
- Arthas is so incredibly fond of this that it prevents him from actually accomplishing anything. He shows up and gloats at you, then just goes away and lets you interfere with his plan.
- Keal'thas also does this in the Frozen Throne Campaign, where he tells Arthas exactly what his and Illidan's plans are, though in that case he is far less of a villain. It does, though, help cause the plan to fail in a similar manner as other villains. Once Arthas knows the plan, he takes a faster route to the Lich King, and arrives in time to organize the forces and fight back.
- In the last quarter of Resident Evil 5, Wesker's speeches are pretty much nothing but this, intermixed with his truly epic Villainous Breakdown.
- Gravemind. 50% Eldritch Abomination, 50% Evil Gloating. 100% Magnificent Bastard.
"Now the gate has been unlatched,
headstones pushed aside;
corpses shift and offer room,
a fate you must ABIDE!"
- Awwww, what did they do, Jackie? What did they do to Jenny?
Web Original
- Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog has both Captain Hammer's gloating to the Doctor that he is going to sleep with the girl of his dreams, and later on, Horrible's awesomely gloating counter in the form of "Slipping."
- Also subverted earlier, as Dr. Horrible tries to get his gloat on but gets sidetracked by his romantic problems:
All right. The wait is over. This, my friends, is my freeze ray, which, with the addition of the Wonderflonium I obtained at my famously successful heist last week... I say successful in that I achieved my objective. It was less successful in that I inadvertently introduced my arch-nemesis to the girl of my dreams, and now he's taking her out on dates, and they're probably going to...French kiss or something. She called him sweet ? How is he sweet? [long pause] Right, freeze ray!
- Another suspension-of-disbelief moment in lonelygirl15, when Edward Salinas broadcasts a video straight to TAAG's IP address for this purpose.
- Pretty much every villain from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes displays this trait to some degree.
Webcomics
- In The Order Of The Stick, after Elan defeats Lord Kubota and is about to bring him to trial, Kubota proceeds to gloat that he will never be charged, and that he will get off scot-free due to being an apparently Magnificent Bastard. Vaarsuvius disagrees.
- Girl Genius takes a stellar use of this trope when Lucrezia Mongfish, in Agatha's body, turns Klaus Wulfenbach into one of her slaves and gloats about a wonderful Heterodyne-Wulfenbach alliance to come. Klaus even says, "Heard you gloat too many times." However, the self-congratulater is undone by her own pride. Watch it here.
- In Nodwick, a captive explains that he knows the entire plan because the villain has gloated about it. Over and over and over and over and. . . .
- In Sluggy Freelance Evil!Aylee likes to do this now and then.
- So does Jane.
- For some reason, in the chapter bROKEN, Bun-bun goes curiously genre blind and does this to Oasis after trapping her, even though he's not even the villain in that situation. Of course, right then something new is revealed that makes it backfire.
Western Animation
- Lampshaded in The Incredibles, when Syndrome and Mr. Incredible first meet:
Syndrome:...How do you think I got rich? I invented weapons. And now I've made a weapon that only I can defeat, and once I unleash it I'll-
(Mr. Incredible hurls a log at him, Syndrome dodges it and immobilizes him)
- Lampshaded even earlier (and more hilariously) in this conversation:
Frozone: So I'm in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray, and I'm an epitaph. I somehow manage to find cover, and what does Baron Von Ruthless do?
Mr. Incredible:(chuckling) He starts monologuing.
Frozone:: He starts monologuing! He goes into this prepared speech about how feeble I am compared to him, how inevitable my defeat is, how the world will soon be HIS!! Yadda yadda yadda.
Mr. Incredible: Yammering...
- Even good guys gone bad suffer from this. In an episode of Beast Wars where Rhinox is turned into a Predacon and nearly takes over, this is what trips him up:
Megatron: Even now, Rhinox, you're teaching me a valuable lesson...
Rhinox: Yeah? What's that?
Megatron: Sometimes Predacons gloat too much! *ZAP*
- "Nice working with you, Danny! Ahahahahaha!"
- Endlessy parodied in Kim Possible, where Dr. Drakken just can't quit gloating, no matter how many times the Genre Savvy Shego warns him about it. Of course, the otherwise Dangerously Genre Savvy Shego lost when she was Evil Overlord because she gloated herself, pressing Ron Stoppable's Berserk Button.
- Lampshaded and averted in Superman The Animated Series "In Brightest Day":
Kyle Rayner: "Wait! Don't you want to talk first? You know, banter back and forth to show me your innate superiority?"
Sinestro: "No."
- When Starscream of Transformers Animated wanted to destroy Megatron by using his clones as bomb decoys, he just had to gloat instead of detonating the damn things, giving Megatron and crew time to get clear and let the Autobots save the city. In fact, in this series Starscream is addicted to evil gloating, spending time bragging instead of offing the people he wants to off, like Megatron.
- This is averted with Megatron (the only TF canon where it is averted, come to think of it), who stands over Optimus and gloats that he's going to finally destroy the person who left him as a head for fifty years before turning right around and killing Starscream, the guy who actually did it.
- Trust me, this guy takes his evil gloating really seriously. He got pissed off when Bumblebee interrupts him.
- In The Great Mouse Detective, Ratigan causes Basil to have a Heroic BSOD by gloating about how he led Basil right into his trap, then describing his overly complex Death Trap.
- Said Death Trap including a recording of Ratigan gloating through song.
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