• Comic book writer John Byrne is famous for chewing out people for disagreeing with his pronouncements, no matter how much they may contradict his own works. He also frequently bans people or deletes threads that don't play along with him. He refers to Marvel Comics as "M** ***" to show his disdain for it, which a lot of users adopted, and at least one user has gone even further, using "^^*** **"". People who have problems with Byrne are sometimes referred to as "Byrne bashers", and are treated as cultish obsessives by the forum. When people post of having a bad personal story involving him, it's sometimes explained away or refuted by Byrne, and is considered by Byrne and some board users an attempt by "Byrne bashers" at making him look bad.
  • The most egregious example in recent memory is John Byrne starting a flap by egregiously and repeatedly using the word "nigger" in a conversation and acting all surprised and shocked when the black person he was arguing with took offense. The argument started over Byrne's dogmatic insistence that the phrase "thought bubble" was incorrect and should be replaced with "thought balloon", somehow leading to him equating this hairsplitting semantic hang-up to the reasons "black people" prefer not to be called "niggers".
  • He once reportedly responded to criticism of his writing with this Producers quote: "You are the audience. I am the [writer]. I OUTRANK YOU."
  • And then there's that time he started an Edit War on his own Wikipedia entry, claiming that "MOST OF THE INFORMATIONS POSTED HERE ARE JUST TRASH!" and deleting most of the entry. Wikipedia users bit back, hard. The ensuing flame war now takes up an entire archived talk page by itself. Since that, he outlawed making references to Wikipedia on his forum. Anything pointing out to Wikipedia there will get deleted.
  • Byrne's practically pushed himself into Complete Monster territory by having been pointlessly cruel to a preteen boy at a comic con, and then mocking the kid in front of the boy's own father half an hour later.
  • Let's not forget that the page image used to be from a Powers story, where Byrne is drawn as "Ultimate Ego, the Living Planet".
• Pat Lee, of Dreamwave Productions fame. Mostly known amongst the Transformers fandom for overhyping his own art style, he's also implied that Dreamwave was solely responsible for reviving the X-Men and Batman. And let's not even get into Darkminds, Warlands or Neon Cyber...
  • He has referred to himself on more than one occasion as a "superstar artist", leading to his (mocking) Fan Nickname, "Superstar Funana". (The "funana" part comes from his hilarious attempt at Gratuitous Japanese... just follow the link.)
• Another Transformers example is Shane Mc Carthy. He's written only a handful of forgettable comics, but during his one-year stint on All Hail Megatron at IDW, he shown rather bad attitude towards any criticism of his work, giving non-answers at best and accusing the critics of "rudeness" at worst (He apparently sees every critic as a Caustic Critic)Even when not rebuting critics, his posts on the IDW forums and other websites show a air of smugness.It doesn't help that Chief Editor Chris Ryall is treating him like he's Stan Lee or something.
• Rob Liefeld apparently used to have some of this going on, but has since turned it around and made his schtick more about being self-deprecating. But that hasn't stopped him from claiming he is better than Alan Moore in every way possible as recently as 2007. Amid his mockery of Moore was the occasion that Moore asserted that their collaboration, Youngblood, was their Teen Titans; Liefeld must have forgotten the interview that he himself gave in 2005 revealing that Youngblood was a reworking of a rejected Teen Titans pitch, nor has it stopped him from trying to get people to use the nickname "King" for him.

  • On the "Self Deprecation" note, Liefeld's ego hasn't actually diminished any, he's just gotten more subtle about it; he calls himself "the most hated artist in comics" or something similar. Just because it's true doesn't diminish the ego required to make the claim.
  • Hey, he's actively working to earn that title.

• Dan Slott. He has frequently gone on internet message boards to pick fights with comic readers who've criticized his work. Back when he was working on She-Hulk, he even took time out of an issue to go on a rant about people on the internet who would rather point out continuity mistakes instead of looking for obvious solutions. He's also had arguments with Newsarama for being biased against the Spider-Man creative team and how they've covered Spider-Man post-OMD/BND. He was also repeatedly warned by the moderators of the Spider-Man Crawl Space message board to stop pointing out that site's negative bias (despite the fact that almost all of the moderators were part of a virtual "frat house" dedicated towards being "Anti-OMD and BND").
• Alan Moore. Don't get me wrong, the man is an awesome writer and he has been unfairly treated in the comics industry. But back in the 80's, after his "Twilight of the Super-Heroes" proposal was rejected (since it was going to literally end The DCU), the man complained that comics were running out of ideas and would retread and become awful. Recently, after being asked about his opinion on Blackest Night, he said it's shameful that "DC is stealing my ideas." Yes, Mr. Moore, your short 8-page story "Tygers" from the 80's Green Lantern Corps comic (good in it's own right) is indeed the origin of this event. And it's soooo true that your ideas for the rival corps, Emotional Spectrum and zombie Black Lanterns were stol... wait, you didn't come up with that, only how the Corps would end? Wow. What a rip off.
  • And for those who don't know, "Tygers" was about Abin Sur going to meet the Five Inversions and being told about the Blackest Night/end of the Green Lantern Corps. It included Ranx, the Children of the White Lobe, Sodam Yat, and Mogo (so it was more the origin of Sinestro Corps War than anything). Why Moore thought that DC wouldn't use a perfectly good Chekhov's Gun prophecy is anyone's guess.
  • What makes this even worse is that in this same interview where he's talking about how awful DC is and how bad their current material is he admits that he hasn't actually read a mainstream comic book in years.
  • Of course, DC didn't technically "steal" these ideas from him, since he sold them to DC in full faith.
• Brooke McEldowney of 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn - two very Love It or Hate It comics has a large, and easily bruised ego. After an arc where Pibgorn's cast acted out A Midsummers Night Dream - he inserted himself into a comic, telling anyone who did not appreciate the arc was an illiterate moron who could not appreciate the classics. Then there is his asking Comics.com admins to disable commentary on his blog - siting he doesn't want to read the 'babbling' of haters, and also removed Pibgorn to another group and off newspapers - citing critics as being prudes. Right now, he has Thorax writing up "cartoon physics" including such gems as:

  "For every cartoon created in the universe, there is an equal and opposite imbecile to object to it"

  • Although that line could just as easily be a Take That to the Moral Guardians who complain about a lack of role models in modern comics, everything else is completely true.
• Brian Michael Bendis, who basically is the poster child of why Small Name Big Ego people shouldn't go throwing stones at other Small Name Big Ego people. Bendis first came to fame by mocking John Byrne's SNBE status, only to go off and prove to be WORSE than Byrne in the Small Name Big Ego department. An unhealthy mix of They Just Didnt Care, Critical Research Failure, Screw The Rules I Have Connections, Protection From Editors, Internet Backdraft-level of Fan Dumb.
  • Avengers Disassembled was filled with countless Plot Holes and clear examples of Bendis not bothering to read a single issue of the Avengers EVER, which led to Bendis infamously declaring that he "knew more about the Avengers than anyone else" and "reread the story knowing what you know about Scarlet Witch".

• Chris Davies got a reputation in the Sailor Moon fanfic community in the '90s for famously proclaiming his fanfics to be superior to the franchise they spawned from and actually demanding on Usenet that the creator, Naoko Takeuchi, write him an admission that he was a better writer than her.
  • After that, he went on to threaten the lives of several other fanfic writers and their families — most notably making the one word comment "Good," in response to the news that one of them had suffered the loss of their mother — as well as earning a very bad reputation in the Wold Newton community — most notably responding to claims that he had no enemies by saying "Would that bin Laden had you guys as enemies".
• Usagi Kou. a Sailor Moon cosplayer whose antics are numerous, but best summed up like this: she has proclaimed that other Sailor Moon cosplayers are not cosplaying the character, but are trying to cosplay as her. It has been theorized that she may even believe she is Sailor Moon. She was also accused of cheating in Cosplay Contests and had to give back her rewards when people realized she did not make the costumes herself. She supposedly demands that any boyfriend she has MUST cosplay/act like Mamoru.
• Another Sailor Moon Example. Miss Dream, a team of "Translators" that focus on Sailor Moon merchandise, manga and Sera Myu etc. They were beaten to the punch by Sailor Moon Fansubs on a Sera Myu, and harassed the owner until he shut down the site. They'll try and sway you into thinking they're good translators (They're not. They add an extra step by writing it in japanese instead of translating directly) and should you stand up for SMFS they'll tear you down just as bad.
  • Alternatively, the owner of SMFS is a batshit insane psychopath who demanded Miss Dream's crew work for him—not with him—and went postal when they politely refused on the grounds that SMFS's subs weren't of the quality that MD wanted. SMFS's owner then compared MD's crew to literal trolls, Nazis, pond scum, subhumans, etc. because they didn't want to translate for him. Granted, MD did create a satire group on LJ to make fun of SMFS, but it's not like the owner of SMFS has been any bit nicer. He sent a package of correspondence to one of MD's translator's family, and suggested said family should disown their child for daring to make fun of someone online. This is not the only thing he's done; he even tried to sue MD. If anything, *he's* the BNSE.
  • He also has a tendency to compare himself with Megan Meier as seen on his new site Here. This was made soon before the LJ community vanished so now it's just him extending this drama further then it needs to be
• Possibly because of the behavior of the author of the source material as noted below, Twilight fandom seems to be spawning these.
  • AngstGoddess003: Have an interview.
  • Segolily: Doesn't like being called a fanfic author, despite admitting that her recently self-published book is heavily based on Twilight and is actually an old fanfic of hers that she's dolled-up and sanitized of copyrightable elements like the original names.
  • Aaaaaand we now have the QUEEN of this trope for Twilight fandom: Lady Sybilla, whom no one had apparently ever even heard of before in the fandom before she became the writer of "tribute sequel" Russet Noon, and was convinced the entire Internet is made up of one person with a grudge against her after the fandom at large and fandom_wank told her that her understanding of copyright was... flawed at best. She was banned from Wikipedia after refusing to believe that her "highly controversial" unreleased fanfic wasn't notable enough and continually reinstated its article. Try to read the Russet Doom Saga in all its glory and not boggle.
    • A sample from her latest "press release", as she calls it: It appears that Russet Noon has already achieved taboo status without having even been released yet. That's what happens when a Darth Vader figure like Lady Sybilla is created. And now she's found a worthy opponent: Peter David.
    • She actually has a link to this page on top of the front page of the "book's" site. Truly, any publicity is good publicity...
• No one is exactly sure whether the Doctor Who fanfic writer Sparacus is an example of this trope played straight or a parody of it. In either case, he repeatedly insists that The Ben Chatham Adventures, his series of horribly written, thinly veiled wank fantasies "starring" one-time soap star Adam Rickitt, are the most popular works of fan fiction in the history of Who fandom, and are part of the show's canon. Any attempt at criticism is met with accusations of homophobia or, more frequently, just the word "Unfair!" Perhaps the crowning glory of Sparcus's insanity (real or otherwise) happened when he wrote to Doctor Who Magazine demanding that they run a feature on Chatham and his adventures (to which the magazine's writers replied "Er, who?!").
  • "Eh, what's that? Chatham who?"
• Nick "Nightelf" Leifker doesn't like it when you don't like his fics. He's gone as far as removing actual recommendations because a contradictory opinion apparently constitutes slander.

• Uwe Boll. He makes low-budget, badly written movies based on videogames which tank on a regular basis, but to hear him talk, he's Shakespeare and Coppola rolled into one, and anybody who disagrees with him is in for a world of hurt. Literally. He once tricked several of his most vocal critics into stepping into a boxing ring with him under the guise of a charity boxing event, while stiffing them on promised boxing training and not mentioning to them that he is a trained amateur boxer. He then proceeded to beat the snot out of them, one after another.
  • But he never quite got back to Seanbaby, one of his most outspoken critics, when he learned said critic was a boxer himself who dabbled in Muay Thai.
  • He's posted a video in which he refers to Michael Bay (see below) as a "fucking retard" and cries that nobody sees the genius of his films, in response to a petition demanding that he give up filmmaking. Sadly, the entire population of the planet Earth could sign that petition ten times over and Boll wouldn't get it.
  • As summarized by The AV Club in its discussion of Postal's Commentary: "If you are offended to see that movie [Postal], it is your mistake, because you got the wrong education, and the wrong childhood, and the wrong things, basically, the wrong thinking. You have to change, not the movie."
    • And a possible comment by the creator himself: Very funny, AV Club. I thought hipster website would know better than dominant American media image. So-called hipsters have wrong thinking, don't know what their missing. I mean every word I say in commentary, and I am right, so why do I care what you think? If you ever become open-minded, and are not offended by what is called politically correct, then come see my movie.
    • If Boll can be said to have a redeeming feature, however, he's one of the few directors on this page who's not unpleasant to work with on set.
• M Night Shyamalan is becoming less and less known for his movies, and more and more known for believing that he's the best filmmaker ever. He put himself into Lady In The Water as an underappreciated Messiah, and including a film critic just to kill him off.
  • Adopting "Night" as part of his professional name was also the source of some mockery early on.
• Quentin Tarantino. Read some of his interviews following Pulp Fiction. He announced that he was "in talks" with Pierce Brosnan about doing an adaptation of Casino Royale as a movie with him directing, despite the studio not being involved with this process in any way. When Brosnan was not recast as James Bond, Tarantino angrily declared that he was through with the project and would never, ever work on it, despite never having been invited to work on it in the first place. Tarantino's ego is apparently big enough that he believes that any directing job is simply his to turn down.
  • And if he hadn't been such a colossal Jerk Ass, we might have actually seen a Tarantino-directed Bond movie.
    • Proving that even when it's being a Jerk Ass, Tropes Are Not Bad since it resulted in us being spared Bond rambling about Spider-Man being some sort of commentary on mass media, or somesuch thing, before graphically shooting someone in the face. Then doing a little dance.
• Spike Lee. Read any interview wherein he gets on his soapbox and lets loose for an example.
  • Or recall that his ego was big enough that when a popular cable network decided to rename itself "Spike TV", he claimed they were trying to cash in on his popularity.
• Lars Von Trier, who proclaimed himself "the world's greatest director" after releasing Antichrist at Cannes.
  • Lars Von Trier directed Bjork in Dancer in the Dark. They did not get along. In fact, she told him that "I despise you, Mr. Trier" every day and once got so angry that she disappeared for three days, causing production to grind to a halt.
• It has been said that a few directors were greater than Fritz Lang, but none have been greater than he thought he was. He wasn't so bad in comparison to some of the other people on this page, but he also had Protection From Editors, and you can imagine how that went.
• Orson Welles was famously difficult to work with because of his massive ego and oversized sense of entitlement. His tantrums were the stuff of legends, and he felt most projects he was involved in were beneath him. RKO studios brought him to Hollywood from New York with a two film contract and an unheard-of contract concession for the time: complete artistic control of his films. This was based on his work with the Mercury Theatre. Citizen Kane cost him that concession: his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons was edited by the studio, not him. He also burned his bridges with John Houseman, who had been a huge part of the success of the Mercury Theatre and Campbell Playhouse radio companies. By the end of his life, he was doing ads for wine and frozen peas. His last role was the voice of Unicron in Transformers The Movie... another role he disdained.
  • There's a story that while working on The Long Hot Summer, director Martin Ritt got so fed up with Welles' prima-donnaism that he drove Welles into the middle of a swamp, kicked him out of the car and forced him to find his own way back. They got along famously after that.
• James Cameron. The Terminator and Titanic director can be certainly abusive, and sometimes, not just verbally. He once dphysically threw an executive out his trailer because he dared to ask him to reconsider some rather expensive scenes he was shooting. Generally speaking, if the mere suggestion of you even considering an alteration your artistic vision is so abhorrent to you that you feel physical assault is a valid response, then it's possible that your self-belief in your own excellence is a bit out of control. If the cast of his first film in over a decade, Avatar, are to believed, however, he seems to have mellowed out slightly in his years away from film-making.
  • A recent profile in Rolling Stone Magazine implied that Cameron's abusive directorial style is the result of him being savagely bullied as a child/teenager, which Cameron all but admits as to why he's such a jerk-ass as an adult.
• Marlon Brando was considered a nightmarish prima donna up until the end of his life. One of the more famous instances included the trouble he caused playing Jor-El in Superman. He demanded an exorbitant salary of $3.7 million, plus he refused to work it unless he was not required to memorize lines and that cue cards would be displayed off-camera for him. The 10-minute role amounted to two weeks of work. His antics on his own film Mutiny on the Bounty are legendary. They included such things as his refusal to film with Richard Harris, leading to him delivering many of his own lines to a log and cutting Harris' half of the scene in later, taking the entire crew off set to furnish a wedding in Tahiti, instructing the camera crew to take directions from himself and not the director, and splitting 52 pairs of costume pants on the set from overeating. Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse revealed just how much crap Brando put Francis Ford Coppola through on Apocalypse Now. He showed up massively overweight, had refused to read a line of the script, demanded that he only be shot from the shadows, and was left to improvise most of his dialogue because of the tiny time frame he was available.
  • In the remake of The Island of Dr Moreau there is a scene where he wears a champagne bucket on his head. He just put it on and everyone working on the movie was too afraid to ask him to remove it.
    • Also on the set of Island of Dr. Moreau - David Thewlis (AKA Professor Lupin) mentioned in an interview that he's writing a book about how incredibly awful it was to film that movie between Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer's huge egos. The film was released in 1996 - that means either Thewlis has serious ADHD or there's at least fourteen years' worth of stories to tell. It's worth noting that Thewlis played the main character yet Brando walked all over him, from what he said in the interview. And Thewlis gives the impression of having a rather big ego himself (nothing in Brando territory but, still, he certainly ... has a lot of confidence in his talents in various areas.) God help the poor, poor director who had all three of them on one set.
• Linda Fiorentino. Never heard of her? Her best-known roles are the coroner (later Agent L) in Men In Black, and Bethany Sloane in Dogma. If you listen to the director's commentary for the latter movie, Kevin Smith spends much of his time going on about how horrifying she was to work with, how demanding she was, what a prima donna she was, how horrible she treated other cast members, et cetera. He also states repeatedly his greatest regret was not giving the role to Janeane Garofalo, who had a bit part at the beginning of the film and originally auditioned for the role of Bethany, and giving Fiorentino the smaller part so she would have been out of their lives faster. (This may have been why her character was unceremoniously unreferenced in MiB2.)
• While he seems to have settled down in recent years, Russell Crowe was made of this trope for a while. Famously, he threw a well-publicized tantrum when he one a BAFTA Award for Best Actor and his acceptance speech was cut short (note, it was a rather lengthily composed poem/speech). He said something to the programmers akin to, "How dare you edit me?".
• Val Kilmer has admitted that being difficult to work with has cost him opportunities.
  • Quoth Mike Nelson: "It's well known that Val Kilmer is difficult to work with, a fact I have to admit needles me. He's Val Kilmer, not Edmund Kean! Kilmer being difficult is like Jaleel White being difficult - He's Urkel, there is no room for difficult."
• Jennifer Lopez is famous not only for her lush hindquarters, but for her excessively opulent demands and ego.
• Most examples of ego on this page are about people who have established themselves in their respective mediums, but what about a person who grew an overinflated ego before his career even got off of the ground? This is exactly the case when it comes to Troy Duffy, he of The Boondock Saints fame. Duffy's ego developed when he received a contract to direct this movie and a record for his band, and then proceeded to fall just as quick as he rose, mostly thanks to his abrasive ego. The documentary Overnight highlights blatant examples of his ego, which was commissioned by Duffy to showcase his rise and success in Hollywood.
• To a lesser extent George A. Romero. When his third zombie movie tanked he blamed Executive Meddling...then just kind of stopped making movies for two decades. He finally came back with ''Land of the Dead'', after which he made Diary of the Dead, and spent the first five minutes of that movie trashing Zack Snyder because he had made a zombie movie that made people give a shit about zombie movies again.
• When Tucker Max began producing his first movie, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, he was convinced the movie was going to be huge. He'd released a book by the same name earlier and it actually had become huge, so perhaps he expected the same to happen. However as the movie went along, his claims about it got more extravagent, to the point that he claimed IHTSBIH was going to change the film industry forever. Then it hit, with his obsessive Hatedom savaging it at every opportunity, and more reasonable reviews calling it So Okay Its Average, or "a decent debut effort". Shortly afterwards, Max dismantled his Rudius Media publishing company and shut down his popular message board.
  • Of course the entire point of the book and the movie is basically "I'm a huge douche" so at least hes self-aware about his ego. It doesn't make it any smaller, though.

• Many consider Christopher Paolini to fall into this, at least at the start of his rise to fame. For instance, he was known to insist that he strove for a writing style comparable to Tolkien and translations of Beowulf, which really didn’t come out well considering his writing quality, especially at the time, was, at the least, very debatable. He was also known for such things as publishing a (admittedly positive) review of one of the Harry Potter books in which he talks rather condescendingly about JK Rowling, despite her series being considerably more popular than his, as well as rather gratuitously emphasizing that he got published at age 18. Overall, he’s generally agreed to really not act nearly as humbly as he should considering that, among other things, his books have hardly received unanimous praise, and only got on the shelves in the first place because his parents published them.
• Chancery Stone is better known for going on about how her detractors are self-hating bitches who don't understand her genius than for her self-published magnum opus, DANNY. You can see her somewhat...unique take on an ad campaign here.
• Laurell K. Hamilton is going the way of Anne Rice with her Anita Blake books. She claims her work is perfect from the first draft, that she needs no editors, and anyone that criticizes the numerous continuity errors, the gross fumbling of spelling and grammar, and the massive IKEA Porn-to-Plot is clearly a jealous hater who has no idea what talent is. Notice that after her first husband divorced her, she immediately turned the character into a buttmonkey, and replaced him with Micah, the avatar of her current lover, and that many fans suspect that Anita is a Mary Sue, and things get ugly.
• Terry Goodkind, author of the completely not-a-fantasy Sword Of Truth series. The quality of his series is...debatable. Reading any interview though quickly reveals that the man himself is convinced he has changed the face of fantasy forever, that each of his books should be cited as novels of deep philosophical reach, and that fans who found his later novels too preachy hate that his novels exists, and thus live only to destroy that which is good. At one interview, he was asked by a fan about some "similarities" between his works and those of popular fantasy author Robert Jordan. Goodkind responded "If you see similarities between my books and Robert Jordan's, you're too young to be reading Sword of Truth."
  • Additionally, any time the stars of Legend of the Seeker are giving interviews, the first thing they mention is that it's based on the Sword of Truth. It happens to frequently and without fail that this Troper believes it's stated in their contracts that they have to stroke his ego in this way.
• Stephenie Meyer went on record insisting that Twilight was a better romance then anything written by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, William Goldman and even William Shakespeare, and that Edward was better romantic lead then any of their protagonists (mostly because they were flawed and Edward supposedly wasn't).
  • And because Bella is actually "pro-active" and "doesn't just sit around looking pretty and waiting for man to save her", unlike, say, Juliet or Buttercup from The Princess Bride. [1]
    • ... She doesn't?
    • Not entirely. She's at least proactive enough to get herself in trouble so she can be rescued (cue: Kim Bauer).
  • Since this is Stephanie Meyer we're talking about, shouldn't this belong in the Fan Works section?
    • *rimshot*
• Richard Morgan not only claimed he was a better fantasy writer then Tolkien after having written only one fantasy book, he also claimed his book was one of the first fantasy books to be truly 'adult' and 'sophisticated', and that he had revolutionized the fantasy genre by writing it, coining the term 'fuck fantasy' to describe it and claiming to have created a brand bew subgenre. What he failed to realize was that very little of the book, "The Steel Remains" was particularly ground breaking outside of graphic, some would say gratioutous, content and many of the themes and issues explored had already been explored in other, none 'fuck fantasy' books. It was a well written book, and he is a very good writer, but not the revolutionary in the genre he seems to think he is. The way he went about criticizing Tolkien was also largely childish, he labelled it 'immature fiction for immature readers' in his review after putting in a plug for his then only recently released fantasy novel, harping upon its grander sophistication and going ino detail about how if he had written the lord of the rings it would have been a much better book with much more 'mature' content. When a few internet critics and Tolkien fans took exception to his review, mostly to the claim that they were immature for enjoying the book, he was quick to lambast them as not understanding his review or his point and that they were afraid of the changes he was bringing to the fantasy genre.
• Robert freaking Stanek.
• Parodied with R. L. McSterlingthong. "I am fantasy."
• Scott Westerfeld. Not only does this man deny the obvious source for his inspiration, the Uglies Trilogy, he also decides to bash it as well.
• Ayn Rand. While she was alive, she surrounded herself with a collective dedicated to singing her praises as the greatest philosopher in the history of humanity.

• Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Yes, he did create possibly the most influential Science Fiction franchise of all time. But his outsized ego alienated cast, crew, fans, and networks alike. Roddenberry notoriously hawked credit for the contributions of others and displayed an almost dictatorial complex. When Leonard Nimoy (Spock) wished to leave the set of The Original Series early one day so that he could make a celebrity appearance, Roddenberry allegedly said to him, in essence, "What you need to learn to do is to beg properly." Even if that wasn't the verbatim quote, Roddenberry's conduct, verified by several sources, makes the exchange very probable.
• William Shatner also has a reputation like this, though for the most part only because it's played up for parody and laughs. Then again, he really did say "Don't tell me how to do it. It sickens me." after simply being told to pronounce "sabotage" correctly.
  • He also offered his apparently sincere apologies to the rest of the original Star Trek cast for falling into this soon after Star Trek Memories devoted many, many pages to calling him out for it.
• Although not as bad as some of the examples on this list, there is some evidence that Joss Whedon tends to buy into his own reputation and hype more than he perhaps should. Not long after the release of Serenity, he made a posting on a fan website lambasting a critic for "spreading hate"... by giving the movie a not-particularly glowing review and suggesting that there was a chance it might not do well. And this assertion wasn't even based on its quality, but on the not-entirely unreasonable observation that, since it was a movie adaptation of a cult television show that, Executive Meddling or not, had failed to pick up an audience and been cancelled, it might struggle to pick up a mainstream film audience as well.
  • This Cracked.com article also notes that, when something does go wrong with a project that Joss Whedon is involved in, according to him it's almost always someone else's fault; it's not possible that he wrote a corny line of dialogue for Storm to say in X-Men, it's Halle Berry's fault for saying it wrong. It's not possible he wrote a script that at least partially didn't work for Alien: Resurrection, it's the fault of everyone else involved — including the well-respected French director and the actress who starred in the previous movies to high acclaim and an Academy Award nomination in one instance, and who thus could presumably be said to know what they were doing to some degree — for completely mangling his script and making a bad movie. It's apparently not possible for him to put a foot wrong.
• Ricky Gervais, co-creator of The Office, appears to have let at least some of the hype that has surrounded him as a result of being dubbed 'the savior of British comedy' by numerous sources go to his head. Whilst the nature of his 'on' and 'off' personae can make it difficult to tell at times if he's being ironic or not, he does appear a little too keen to stress how many awards he's won and exactly how many people have bought his DVDs and how famous and well-known he is, thus suggesting that it's possible that his 'self-obsessed big-head' public persona might not entirely be an act. He's also developed a reputation for being somewhat thin-skinned when it comes to criticism, having responded to even mildly negative notices with rather vicious and ad hominem responses — which, given his own out-spoken tendency towards criticising people and things he doesn't like, is also somewhat hypocritical.
• Aaron Sorkin officially graduated to this with the entire premise of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The protagonist was a blatant Marty Stu, who was going to save network television from the utter dreck of, say, SNL, as only his amazing underappreciated talent could do. Now, SNL has arguably had this coming for years, so that level of arrogance might be excusable...if Sorkin were at all competent at writing sketch comedy. Sports Night and The West Wing proved that he is indeed a brilliant writer, but a comedy writer he is not, at all. The few Studio 60 sketches we saw were at least as bad as, if not worse than, anything SNL has put out recently. And then there was the rest of the cast, almost all of whom were based on people Sorkin knew. Most notably, the Christian love interest was based on his ex, Kristin Chenoweth, and seemed to exist purely so that Sorkin could rehash all of their arguments and, of course, come out the victor.
  • The fact that the series was also incredibly self-indulgent made matters worse. A pair of two-part episodes in an hour-long drama series isn't too unusual, but Sorkin also wrote a three-part episode in the first season.
• Shannen Doherty is infamous for her monstrous ego and bad attitude, causing her to either leave or be forced off of nearly every project she's ever been involved in. Most notably, she was fired from Beverly Hills 90210 after four seasons when her controlling behavior on set and lewd behavior off set, which brought negative publicity to the show, forced the producers to let her go, despite the popularity of her character. Even Luke Perry, known for being soft-spoken and friendly, once described her as a total nightmare to work with and said he'd never do it again. When she later got a leading role on Charmed, at first she got along well with her castmates, but eventually her ego took over again, with Alyssa Milano feeling the most friction with her. It got so bad, Doherty demanded top billing in all promotional materials, and that her character be placed in the center of all publicity photos. The writers, near the end of her time on the show, even wrote an episode where she spent the entire thing as, literally, a female dog. To this day, stories vary on whether she quit or was forced to go, with most of her former Charmed castmates claiming she was fired after they refused to be in any scene with her or have lines that forced them to interact with her unless it was completely necessary, and Doherty maintaining she chose to leave the show to pursue other opportunities. To this day, most everyone who has ever worked with her describes her as a first degree egomaniac and absolute terror to have to work with.
• Harlan Ellison, if accounts of him are to be trusted. See also his multiple copyright lawsuits, which occasionally seem to be based on shaky ground. Or his treatment of Penny Arcade's Gabe, a fellow guest of honor, at one convention. Or his treatment of Connie Willis, a fellow guest of honor, at another convention.

• There's a song by Carly Simon called "You're So Vain" which is centered around this trope. There's been a lot of mystery over who the person Carly is referring to when she sings... "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you."
  • Simon herself said that the song was about several vain men she knew, but "there's nothing in it that's not true of Warren Beatty."
    • And yet Simon also says she refuses to publicly disclose the identity of the man the song is about, although she allowed her confiding the name to be put as a lot in a charity auction. The winner was Dick Ebersol, president of NBC, and he was forced to sign a contract saying he would never release the name publicly in his lifetime or face legal action.
• Michael Jackson really was the biggest star in the world in The Eighties, with good cause too, but fell far. Perhaps the definitive examples of his ego were the 1995 HIStory promo and thinking he'd been declared the "Artist of the Millennium" at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards and proceeding to give an acceptance speech when Britney Spears referred to him as such in her introduction for a brief observance of his birthday. (Your Mileage May Vary as to whether the second example was entirely his fault.) It is also widely believed that he created the "King of Pop" nickname for himself; in his later years, "self-proclaimed King of Pop" was commonly used by reporters. He had a tendency to blame everything bad that happened to him on professional jealousy, racism, the mass media, etc., when a lot of this could in fact be chalked up to his own poor choices. He might have diluted all this ego with his artistic output but in his final 15 years or so, as one reviewer put it, he "spends much more time telling us how great he is than he does proving it". He recorded little new material in the last 10 years aside from Invincible (2001), and didn't tour after the late 1990s. He planned 50 London concerts over 2009-10 that were to be his last, but died before they could take place.
  • The fact that he'd quite obviously gone completely round the twist at some point in the above proceedings frankly did not help.
  • His movie Moonwalker was a tribute to himself, starring himself, by himself. Obligatory Nostalgia Critic review is here.
• Kanye West. In 2006, the man claimed that if the Bible was being written today, he was important enough that he would be included in it. And in 2008, he claimed that he was the voice of this generation, never mind the fact that this generation is far from over.
  • A rapper named Royce da 5'9" who formerly collaborated with him actually made a diss track for him even daring to claim the former.
  • Also, his diva-like, and utter bitchy tirades for not winning certain awards. I could write a list of them. At the 2006 European Music Video Awards after not winning Best Video for the "Touch The Sky" video, he jumped on stage, took the microphone from the winners - French electronica duo Justice - and said "Fuck dis! My video cost a million dollars, and had Pamela Anderson in it! If I don't win, the whole awards loses all credibility." He backed down later.
    • Also, he had enough of a sense of humor to lampoon himself (and play himself) in a skit on SNL which directly addresses this. He interrupts other awards shows, as well as a Nobel Prize ceremony and a pumpkin patch contest. He later claimed the European Music Video Awards incident stemmed from him being a little drunk.
  • This article illustrates that it may not be simply his ego but his behavior may allude to something else...Or it is indeed his ego, coupled with that something else.
  • How many times do I have to tell you, I am not gay and I am not a fish! I'm a genius!
  • His latest stunt? Humiliating Taylor Swift because she beat Beyoncé out for the Best Female Music Video award at the MTV Video Music Awards, by interrupting her acceptance words with a whiny tirade about how Beyoncé should've won, because she had one of the "best music videos of all time". Which prompted a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming from Beyoncé: when she won the MTV award for Best Music Video, she went on stage and immediately called up Taylor to finish her speech.
    • Hey, TV Tropes, I'm real happy for you and Imma let you finish, but The Other Wiki had the greatest webpage of all time.
• Just because Marilyn Manson is savvy enough of this trope to work it into his lyrics and stage persona doesn't mean he doesn't indulge in it properly. Of note is the band's perpetually rotating members and Manson's notorious backstage antics and tantrums. But the biggest example may be his divorce from Dita Von Teese, internationally acclaimed fashion model and burlesque queen, due to his chaotic partying and alleged affair with the 19-year old Evan Rachel Wood.
• Mike Love. A full list of reasons why Mike Love belongs here would take up half the page, but one of the big reasons would be his persistent and transparent efforts to rewrite history to make it seem as if he was the genius behind The Beach Boys, and not Brian Wilson, who by and large deserves a lot more of the credit. This usually results in Love outright claiming credit for things that he had absolutely no involvement in and did not do. His case is not helped by the fact that a large portion of Love's individual contributions to the band are quite sub-par.
  • When Wilson finally completed Smile after nearly 40 years and released it under his own name, Love actually had the nerve to sue Wilson over it, claiming that since the songs had been originally written under the Beach Boys banner, he was entitled to a cut of the royalties, despite the fact that Love played no role in the writing of the songs at all. Worse yet, Love's opposition to the Smile project had a lot to do with the album not getting released in the first place.
    • However, arguably some good did come of this. Wilson was extremely mentally ill in the late 60s and 70s and his abusive father and the record company took advantage of this to take control of the publishing rights to his songs and sell them (which they had no right to do). It was only because Love decided he wanted a cut, and was in a far better state than Wilson to pursue his claim and understand the extent to which they'd been ripped off, that these arrangements were set aside and Wilson gets anything at all now. This is all detailed at quite some length in a couple of chapters of Nick Kent's book The Dark Stuff if you're interested.
• Axl Rose, who not only sought to be the next Freddie Mercury, but singlehandedly drove away an entire band in the process and replaced them, with no chance at all of reconciliation. He also claims that his ego was justified in that he came up with the name "Guns N' Roses," (which itself was an amalgamation of two bands, LA Guns and Axl's Hollywood Rose). He continues to tour under this name, and released Chinese Democracy as such, despite the fact that he's the sole remaining original member; to all intents and purposes, Guns N' Roses fired him and renamed themselves Velvet Revolver.
• Billy Corgan: aside from bringing a fan on stage only to berate him, one of his most infamous antics was having Pavement kicked off Lollapalooza after he felt insulted by a lyric from "Range Life" directed at The Smashing Pumpkins.
  • It's worth mentioning that Billy Corgan is the only original member of the Smashing Pumpkins still willing to collaborate with Billy Corgan.
• Sean "Puffy" Combs. While much of his antics were written off or overlooked by his die-hard fans, it all ended when he made a video with Nas called "Hate Me Now" which ends in Puffy being crucified in the same manner as Jesus Christ (no, you didn't misread that). When the controversy became too hot, Puffy called MTV demanding that they pull the video. MTV refused since they paid a lot to have it produced and aired. So Puffy decided to sock an MTV executive! He then proceeded to show up for his arraignment with a Bible tucked under his arm. Yes folks, the man who glorified liquor, cars, and loose women, and then disrespected the Crucifixion in one of his videos, conveniently shows up to court with a Bible. A son of a bitch if there ever was one.
  • ...Cars?
• Al Jolson was the king of Screw The Rules I Have Fame And Popularity. He got talented supporting players fired from musical shows and routinely stopped the show to sing whatever songs he chose. However, he seems to have been a good (albeit Jerkass) performer in part because of his high self-esteem, and many do consider him the world's greatest entertainer, a label he first bestowed upon himself.
• Michael Cretu of Enigma. He refuses to acknowledge that Frank Peterson and Fabrice Cuidad (aka David Fairstein) co-founded Enigma. He's done it with later collaborator Jens Gad too, demoting him to "studio assistant" in interviews when he clearly had a much larger role (instrumentalist, for one.) And then there's the general pretentiousness he displays about everything he does. His fans don't help.
• From the country known as Poland, let me introduce Szymon Wydra. In an interview he has infamously stated that "music piracy is more evil than killing people with a gun". He has also recently demanded a salary of ten thousand zlotych (currently a little over $3500 USD) on a benefit gig. With him being a contestant (and a winner, to boot) of a certain Talent Show (such are known to spawn a lot of egotists) this is totally unsuprising.
• Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis.
  • Noel is indeed guilty of the trope, but also somewhat self-deprecating. It is not unusual for him to make an outrageous statement in one interview and then apologise for it the next, to slag off a band but then later hang out with them and say they're great (or vice versa) and so on. He's also one of the few musicians that takes some criticism on board, and has been known to go through the band's much-maligned third and fourth albums pointing out where each record went horrendously wrong. Suggest Live Forever is anything other than unpolished genius in his presence and you will be in trouble, however. And, oddly, given that Noel is usually seen as the reasonable brother and Liam the hotheaded one, it was Liam who made peace between Oasis and Blur after their late-1990s rivalry turned bitter and personal.
  • Your Mileage May Vary heavily here, but Noel's bashing of other bands is sometimes Actually Pretty Funny. This Troper personally laughed at his dissing Keane ("The three biggest twats in any band are the drummer, the keyboard player and the singer. I don't need to say anything else.") and saying that his ideal 40th birthday present would be "James Blunt's head."
• The Radio 4 pop music Panel Game All The Way To Memphis quoted Donovan's autobiography as saying that he did the same kind of thing as Dylan only better. According to one of the panelists, Donovan claims to have invented not just folk-rock, but all related genres.
• Megadeth is a fantastic metal band and Dave Mustaine deserves all the accolades and success he's gotten as their frontman (and only original member), but he's also well-known to be one of the biggest jerkasses in metal. Highlights include habitually slagging his former lead guitarists whenever he hires a new one (which is, on average, every four or five years), downplaying the contributions of former members (especially longtime bassist Dave "Junior" Ellefson) and most recently, letting his #1 ranking in Joel Mc Iver's book "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists" seriously go to his head.
• David Gest is a music producer who was best known for being married to Liza Minnelli. They're estranged now. A story making the rounds of the internet several years ago told of how Minnelli and Gest stayed at a top London hotel. The staff were prepared for outrageous demands from Minnelli, but Gest shocked them with a series of demands that topped when he demanded zebra milk.

• Take a look at the bottom of the Made Of Win page. See the title "A Tally for the Egocentric"? See how that's linked to this very trope? Yeah. That's not an accident. But at least we're self-aware.
• Alexiuss of Deviantart. While the man is indeed an awesome artist, his ego often gets the better of him. As of late, his journals have toned down, but the ego is still there... lurking just below the surface...
• To add to deviantART people: Kay Fedewa. Just go take a look at the page about her on Encyclopedia Dramatica (complete with screenshots).
• A certain You Tube Caustic Critic (in a vein of The Angry Video Game Nerd, as he freely admits it himself) we'll call 01100001011011000110010101111000011000010110111001100100011001010111001000110100001101000011100000111000. Even though his fanbase is rather small, he seems to insist that he's one of the best things to hit the internet. And God help you if you mention him anywhere (especially if it's something critical), as he will do everything in his power to explain himself and show that he is as big as he thinks (as well as proceed to plug in his links). No wonder why we've written his name in binaries here.
• In terms of Lets Plays, UltraJMan was the epitome of this in that community; split between his delusions of being an awesome You Tube LPer and an awesome Something Awful Goon, he had verbally assaulted his fans for supposed crimes against him with the expectation that they apologize to him for the outburst, and had gone completely and totally insane in his LPs in general. Two major Internet Backdrafts between the various Lets Play communities had always had him at the forefront.
  • The "Schildkrote Foundation" drama-fest blew over and away, and UltraJMan himself seems to have mellowed out some (he even made a video apology to all the people he'd offended, which is a rarity in itself during You Tube flame wars). However, many of the other people who were in his bizarre camp during that fight have stepped up to fill the void left.
• For all of UltraJMan's ego, Cloud8745 had one as big AND started demanding money for the priviledge of voicing his walkthroughs (though those are commissions). His whiny drama videos dragged on for 10-40 minutes complaining about how he's the victim of society and other crap, from before he purposefully got himself banned from Youtube the last time.
• Soulja Boy seems to have a big ego when it comes to video games. He made a few You Tube videos challenging gamers everywhere to take him. He did accept a Street Fighter 2 challenge with an obvious newb paid by MTV.
  • He would also ban you just if you would be talking about his groupies on his forum.
  • Speaking of said challenge, he was directly called out by the Screw Attack faculty, which includes Stuttering Craig (who accepted his Street Fighter 2 challenge back when Soulja Boy made the initial challenge), and requested to appear at SGC. Soulja Boy made a video retort for the challenge they made to him and pulled it the next day - never responding since.
• icycalm A.K.A Alex Kierkegaard of Insomnia.ac. Known for writing long articles on the rest of the video game industry's shortcomings, banning and flaming anyone who disagrees with him on his forum (about half the people in any one topic usually end up banned), banning anyone who doesn't use perfect spelling and grammar pretty much instantly, using the words "gameplay" or "core mechanics" gets someone banned and their post deleted and said user posts every single page ever found linking to one of his articles, and then pretty much mocks it on said forum. He's also said that competitive gamers should "set the standards" for the gaming industry, and will refer to anyone who disagrees with him as a "retard," several times. Basically, he's the embodiment of every negative stereotype associated with Stop Having Fun Guys.
  • Furthermore, the registration form for the site's forum has this mandatory question: "Is Insomnia the best game website in the world?"
  • There's also the fact he may not even play the games he "reviews": sometimes he agrees that a game sucks when someone else reviews it...or is that his forum admin? Or are they the same person?
  • Not to mention this. Plagiarism of other's work? Bad. Saying that you're right to steal it because their site sucks and their review will be more popular on your own site and then saying 'I'll use your reviews (and edit them) whether you like it or not and there's nothing you can do to stop me?' No comment.
  • Icycalm's entry into the "Game reviews" thread on Rllmukforum was a magnificent sight to behold, until it was deleted - now the response thread on his own forum is all that remains. By the time the topic was locked, his posts had featured: proclamations about how he's the only one who really genuinely understands the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, George Orwell and others on his website's reading list (including a lengthy debate about Jean Baudrillard with Trigger Happy author Steven Poole, who had written The Guardian's obituary of said philosopher); announcements that he's working on a book that will unite game reviewing and quantum mechanics; and descriptions of Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman as "shallow-pate" physicists. Plus, repeated use of his favourite terms "cryptogay" and "artfag". He might sound like a standard troll/joke poster, but trust me, he wasn't - truly a thread that had to be seen to be believed. (On the other hand, his forum avatar was the Big Brain from Futurama, which suggests he might have some sense of humour.)
• Serebii of Serebii.net can get like this sometimes. He's made it known that he thinks his Pokémon site is the greatest in the world, and has been known to attack people (both on his own forums and at least on Gamefaqs as well) who even suggest that another site might be better in some aspect. For example: on another site, if you search for "your mom" in the Pokédex, you come up with Wailord. Someone made a joke that this made that site's Pokédex better than Serebii's, who responded with a list of reasons why his was better. And the thread had, until that post, been a few dozen posts that has nothing to do with his site.
• Perez Hilton. When asked about his... ahem, craft, he once said, "In my own subservient way, I am trying to make the world a better place. I will push the envelope. I'm not afraid to offend or be dangerous, whatever—because I can." This from a man whose claims to fame include outing people he's never met, cursing out a beauty queen on You Tube...and drawing penises on celebrity photos with a Sharpie. This is supposed to make the world a better place?
  • It. ..it isn't?
  • It is not without reason that the majority of the gay community utterly despises him.
  • Ironically, he swears he doesn't have a big ego; of course, he also claims that what he does is "noble" and that anyone who doesn't find his blog funny simply lacks a sense of humor. Oh, and that he would have loved to have a man like himself as a gay role model when he was a teen. Really. Because drawing penises on celebrity photos is amazingly hilarious in each and every way.
• Parodied by Linkara; while in-character, he often berates his his fans for their many requests. (Out-of-character, he's quick to add an "I love you guys!")
• Jimmy Wales, leader and co-founder of Wikipedia. Highlights include shrugging it off when a highly respected editor was found out to have lied about his credentials (including to the New York Times) and pretending he had sincerely apologized for it (which, as anyone who actually read his post will know, is not true) and denying Larry Singer's role as co-founder (Larry responded by posting a mountain of evidence that lists him as a co-founder. Jimmy did not). He's also been accused of ruling by fiat, using money donated to Wikipedia for his own personal use, and editing his girlfriend's profile to remove negative information about her. He also treats Wikipedia as the greatest thing ever created, and anyone who criticizes it just doesn't understand it.

• Kurt Angle, post-WWE. Just read or listen to his interviews, and you'll catch my drift. Among his most outrageous claims that Angle made at the time was that he "carried Hulk Hogan to a five-star match in 2002", and would constantly boast that he's going to try out for MMA, despite his fragile body not being to handle it.
  • Angle is legitimately talented. The problem is that he thinks he is or was a media phenomenon on the level of Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock, which he's not. Wrestling's last golden age was from 1998-2001 (the Attitude Era), where Stone Cold and The Rock made their revolutionary mark on wrestling with their almost legendary charisma which attracted millions of fans from all walks of life. After the Attitude Era ended roundabout 2001, wrestling was no longer mainstream, and dropped out of the eye of mainstream pop culture. Despite what he thinks of himself and despite being an admittedly incredible wrestler, Kurt Angle has most certainly not revitalized wrestling and brought it back to the same position of mainstream popularity and success it had during the Attitude Era.
• Kent Jones, the self-proclaimed YouTube "shooter" as well as an "anti-WWE, pro-TNA" preacher. He proclaimed himself "controversial" and "a icon of the Internet". For his videos, he would disable the ratings and comments, and claimed that he coined the phrase "Worst Wrestling Ever" when referring to the WWE. As of 2009, he's on his sixth account, because his previous accounts were suspended. He would also hack into other people's accounts.
  • A list of what he claimed to be responsible for is on this page.
• Damien Demento, whose biggest claim to fame is having jobbed to The Undertaker in the main event of the first episode of WWE Monday Night Raw, has gone through several YouTube accounts where he's done things like called out the WrestleCrap webmasters, threatened to sue WWE for using his image, threatened to make a webcast that will steal all of WWE's viewers, etc. To mis-quote one James E. Cornette, "It'd be sad, if it weren't so funny."
  • Also, he hates being called a "jobber."
  • Or, alternatively, to quote the Joker, "It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Oh, what the hell. I'll laugh anyway."
• Joanie "Chyna" Laurer was quite the star during the late 90s and early 2000s. She was the first woman in wrestling to be treated as if she was on equal footing with the men: she is the only woman to win the WWF/E Intercontinental Title and compete in the Royal Rumble, she had very entertaining feuds with Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho, and she was always around the main event angles (thanks in part to her allegiance with De Generation-X). However, she started thinking that she herself was a main event level talent when, frankly, her wrestling skills weren't up to par. When Triple H dumped her for the bosses daughter, she got depushed and eventually Future Endeavored from WWE. Post-release she wasn't able to get work anywhere else in wrestling because she wouldn't settle for less than a main event push. She went through a highly public meltdown in her personal life, appearances on shows for washed up celebrities, and released a rap album and a porno, all because she wouldn't sign anything less than a main eventer contract anywhere in wrestling. Her ego really comes through in the documentary 101 Reasons Not To Be A Professional Wrestler, where she explains why she deserves this main event contract she hasn't gotten.
• James "Warrior" Hellwig. He had a moveset that consisted of "three consecutive clotheslines, press slam, running body splash" and wound up getting the WWF title in the 1990s. Then he left for a while, came back, left again, went to WCW for approximately eleventy-kajillion dollars while wrestling precisely one match, left WCW, then after around a decade or so, won the title in NWE, an Italian promotion run by Kishi (formerly known as Fatu, or Rikishi Fatu, or Junior Fatu, or Sumo RIKISHI), dropped the title... He doesn't really seem to have much in the way of consistency. Also, allegedly "The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" was supposed to have his involvement, but he refused to work with WWE, so it wound up being rather unflattering. He sued for defamation of character; the case was ultimately dismissed.
• Teddy Hart (real name: Ted Annis, which rhymes with... well, you know...), the nephew of Bret Hart, who is THE definition of a spot monkey. He was known for doing backflips, no-selling his opponent's finishers, and showing off to the crowd AFTER the match, most infamously, after a Scramble Cage match at Ring Of Honor in 2003, which caused him to be blackballed from the company, as well as earning the ire of C.M. Punk. Also, because of his attitude, he was released from the WWF/WWE three times.

• Kevin Tewart, once-head of the Yu-Gi-Oh! branch of Upper Deck Entertainment, seems to think he can run the game's production better than the game's creators Konami, forcing in his own changes to the TCG and blocking any attempts by fans to look to the OCG for info on what the new cards are and when they're coming out.
  • Unfortunately, Tewart's influence has trickled down into the entirety of UDE's Yu-Gi-Oh! department; Ever since Konami announced they were going to take over the TCG and cut their contract with them, UDE has attempted to demonize Konami and make themselves out to be saints, stating that "[UDE] always has been and always will be the sole owner of the game", throwing out names like Shueisha and the franchise's own creator Mr. Takahashi himself as supposed "supporter" members of their "conglomerate", and going so far as to say UDE "raided Chinese factories" to find the perps without Konami's aid. No duelist alive believes them, except for the die-hard UDE drones, but that doesn't stop them from glorifying themselves as the one true spotless Yu-Gi-Oh! company that the "evil" Konami is trying to destroy.

• In the independent gaming scene, there is a individual by the name of Matthew Dickie who produces games on his own which depending on your taste are either all right, So Bad Its Good, or So Bad Its Horrible. Yet, in his commentary he states he is "A great artist painting the Chapel" and says that he is obviously the "best" independent artist ever. Despite a few self-deprecating remarks, he sets himself up as the greatest despite being a moderately good bedroom programmer.
  • Similar thing can be said for Denis Dyack during the development of Too Human.
  • In the Doom community, one is George Fiffy, a.k.a. King REoL. His abrasive behavior and delusions of grandeur have gotten him banned not only from the leading Doom community sites but also from... just about every website on the Internet he's been to, most notably Something Awful. His levels are generally considered not very good. He once had a rant-filled homepage on which, among other things, he infamously claimed to be "the Metallica of Doom".
• Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw reached this point early in his Adventure Game Studio career. After releasing Rob Blanc, people praised him, his ego grew. He continued making games, people kept praising them, he became a grade A ranking douche. He eventually explained himself with a Freudian Excuse and put a self-imposed "exile" on the community (which he breaks by posting under different names, by his own admission). Some argue his latest project is making history repeat himself—to which he responded "I'm not a jerk, people are just creepy". Some people say he has a point. Others say he's just shifting blame. Recently he's been trying to mend fences with others however.
  • Ironically, once he got a second weekly feature in The Escapist (which would ordinary have ballooned anyone's ego even further), a column called "Extra Punctuation," he seems to be growing quite a bit more civil.
  • Fans who only know him from his Zero Punctuation reviews would probably see any inflated ego he shows as just joking around because of the kind of character he portrays (for the sake of comedy) when doing his reviews.
• Tim Langdell. The man seriously believes he owns the trademark over the word "Edge", having just took legal action against the developer of an iPhone game called just Edge and a studio who were making Edge Of Twilight. It helps that he hasn't actually produced a single game for over 20 years.
  • Has he gone after WWE wrestler Adam "Edge" Copeland yet?
    • He might have gone after THQ for the SmackDown! vs. Raw series having Edge in them. His trademark on the word "edge" apparently only applies to the videogame industry...and even that's in jeopardy, as Electronic Arts (of all companies) is trying to nullify the trademarks.
  • The behaviour of Langdell may be closer to fraudster willing to exploit other people if he believes that he can get away with it. He doesn't necessarily believe his own rhetoric. At least he doesn't believe in the sanctity of intellectual property when it comes to the work of other people:
    • The infamous "MIRRORS A new game from EDGE" advert.
    • Several instances of using stolen art without permission or compensations to original authors.
    • Attempts to rip off other people (with varying success) while taking advantage of their creative work.
    • While not related to the above cases, Langdell also managed to get a restraining order against himself after stalking a certain actress.
• Another on the indie gaming scene, PseudoLoneWolf. Wonderfully talented game designer, but...just read some of his rants and you'll see what we mean. For all the good he is at coding, he plays the "snobby elitist ethnocentric Brit" stereotype almost painfully straight.
  • He used to write thought-provoking journals on his dA account (allegedly to start discussion), mostly about religion. He once asked the question, "Do you believe in any kind of god?" Turns out, whenever a person said yes, he would immediately shut them down, telling them why they were wrong and how "misguided" and "naive" they were any why atheism is Just Better. He later admitted that he did it purely to troll and patronize anyone who disagreed with him.
• Adam Coate. Another of the indie game community, has already spawned a Meme in the form of a t-shirt stating "Miyamoto never had to work for press like this", with an epic confrontation in a comment thread, in which he makes claims of his game being the best ever - and then he pulls it after only 4 days on Xbox Live.
• Sean Malstrom. Boy howdy, Sean Malstrom. A video game blogger whose only credentials he has ever truly claimed are that he read up on Blue Ocean Strategy and accurately predicted the rise of the Wii, Malstrom has come to make pathetic statements such as: that video games should totally abandon all narrative, that all of those he sarcastically calls "Game Gods" (read: game developers such as Shigeru Miyamoto and Yoshio Sakamoto who have rightfully earned the respect of their fans) are bringing down the video game industry, that only the customers are the ones who should have any say in what games should be made, and that Legend Of Zelda should return to its "arcade roots." Whenever anyone disagrees with him, he makes ridiculous Ad Hominem claims such as that they are actually "viral marketers" who are afraid of their covert gaming forum marketing campaigns being jeopardized or that they are annoying teen hardcore gamers who, unlike the casuals that Nintendo is now targetting, were never true gamers to begin with. As of this post, he has been in the middle of very childish Flame War with Metroid fans who didn't take kindly to an unnecessarily fear-mongering blog post he made about the Metroid: Other M teaser site.
  • "Have you ever worked with a genius? They are horrible to work with! It is because they think they are right in everything!"

• Shmorky. While Life In Greytown was winding down, he started up a short, random comic that was basically a near-continuous complaint about perverted furries wanting him to draw freaky porn... interspersed with freaky porn. Then he basically declared himself too good for all of it and far above those stupid perverse furries... and became a Something Awful goon, where he now draws them freaky mockery porn comics and flash games.
• Tim Buckley, creator of Ctrl Alt Del, is notorious for his tremendous ego and narcissism:
  Tim Buckley: In a single hour I get more email than you get in a week, so if you want to bitch and moan about me somewhere else, by all means, knock yourself out.
  • Not to mention that the majority of said e-mails is most likely hate-mail.
  • And in very extreme cases he just tries to sweep it under the rug and then the real drama and fireworks start. Although the reason you never see any criticism, even constructive and polite kinds on the forum is because the moment someone posts it it's quickly deleted and the user banned before many people can catch on.
  • There's more, of course. There's an infamous story about Tim screwing over the WOW guild his comic's fandom created and then banning anyone who asked any questions, mentioned that this was rather jerkish, etc etc. He also has been accused vandalizing other webcomic entries on That Other Wiki, preventing any criticism of his own webcomic from ever being added, and generally being a class act. Oh, and that's not even mentioning the "jailbait incident".
    • To expand: Rumor had it Tim showed Little Timmy to an underaged girl, with her name scrawled on... well, yeah. Areas. He caught wind of this rumor, got pissed, banned everyone who spoke of it, heard of it, or who might have been around for it. Then (if I'm remembering correctly,) his mods revolted, unbanned a bunch of people, and he ended up banning a whole bunch more and closing down a part of his forum forever. Even now, I'm fairly certain you can catch a banhammer for mentioning the name of the forum or the incident (obviously.) Oh, and the pictures can be found online, if you want to see them. God only knows why you would, but...
    • Supposedly, Brian Clevinger says he was hanging out with Buckley on the night in question and says its all bullshit, but you'd have to ask him. If it helps, Clevinger seems more tired of the rumors than he is liable to ban people about it.
    • He also has a severe case of Follow The Leader going on — if Penny Arcade does a joke / arc / charity / etc, you can be fairly certain that Tim will be "inspired" a few weeks/months later. The WOW guild actually sprung up from that — Penny Arcade and PvP started a pair of WOW guilds for fans of those respective webcomics, so he had to start up one of his own, too.
    • It gets better-the point of Panda Attack and Penny Arcade's guild (I forget the name) was a friendly rivalry between the two comics, with player-versus-player and all that. The CAD guild wasn't created by fans, it was created by him, in an attempt to join in on the gag, essentially making Buckley the kid who hangs around the popular kids pretending he's one of the gang. He disbanded the whole thing when someone inevitably noticed and called him out; the last I heard, some fans who were in it for the caramaderie reformed the guild on their own.
  • Visit the boards. The mods hate you.
    • Especially since he fired all the mods who don't.
  • When he donated his hair to charity, he went on about (paraphrasing) "how lucky some kid with cancer would be receiving his gorgeous hair."
    • He...he was probably kidding, right? ...Right? ...Fuck.
  • Not to mention that his response to people inquiring about Scott, the long-unseen roommate, is to ban anyone who asks about him, rather than maybe bringing in a character that the readers are genuinely curious about.
• While not a comic per se, online anthromorphic artist Goldenwolf recently signed up too late for a convention's art show, and was put on the waiting list. In response, she created a very heated message complaining about not being allowed to skip the line.
• Jennifer Diane Reitz, who made Unicorn Jelly and Pastel Defender Heliotrope, calls herself a "Creatrix", god save us all. Some of her more public outbursts have included a revenge comic against the sole breadwinner in her house for not making her a game. Here is a good summary of the madness.
  • She also insinuated that John Solomon, who wrote a typically scathing review of her comic and herself, could be murdered for writing it.
• David Gonterman is legendary in both the fanfic and webcomic communities for his thin skin, inflated opinion of himself, and the offensive nature of some of his works. Listing all his individual offenses would triple the page length, but the "fan comic" NiTRO alone is awe inspiring.
  • However, he seems to fit this trope less now than he once did. See David Gonterman Discussion.
• Bobby Crosby, the author of several webcomics. We won't link to any of them, because if we do, Bobby Crosby will come here. That's exactly what happens on this blog entry. A choice quote:
  Bobby Crosby: I'm correcting lies obviously, which is how I spend 90% of my time on the Internet, it seems, since everyone in the world is such a huge liar and they lie even more online. It annoys me.
  • Crosby also finds it difficult to be nice to his fans. Many fan comments which point out minor flaws in his work — no matter how genuine the flaw or how glowing the rest of the comment is — will be immediately attacked. And once Crosby has decided you're a moron whose intelligence is too meager to understand his work, no amount of apologising or explaining your logic will change his mind. Positive comments, meanwhile, are generally ignored, unless he sees a quote he feels he can use as a springboard to whine about how mean and stupid 90% of his readers are.
• Christian Weston Chandler, author of the Sonichu comic. Really, just read the NSFW article by Encyclopedia Dramatica and wonder.
  • Or you can read the more SFW and far more in-depth article over at the CWCki. Yes, an entire wiki devoted to his miserable failure of an existence. It is absolutely amazing to consider that nearly everything on that wiki is the truth. He stubbornly refuses to better himself or to take the well-meaning advice of others, and he has a nasty personality.

• Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has often been accused of this by his detractors.
  • Really, its more of a situation where he is perceived as a Jerkass more than having a large ego.
    • Designated Jerkass?
• Floro Dery, the self-proclaimed designer of "all" the Transformers. In reality, he only slightly tweaked the designs of the toys for the first two seasons of Transformers Generation 1. In spite of this, he seems convinced that he is the ultimate creator of all things Transformer-related, and goes as far as to post vitriol-laden rants on random message boards whenever someone so much as insinuates that they were designed by anyone but him or that Transformers as a franchise would have had any long-lasting success without his input.
  • In addition to this, he's also trolled the Transformers wiki under various pseudonyms, also claiming that he created all Transformers designs ever, despite obvious evidence suggesting that he did not. His attempts to hide his identity by using various pseudonyms is, as always, hampered by his somewhat limited grasp of the English language, which is hilarious.
  • For the record, the original Diaclone Optimus Prime/Convoy toys are patented to Hiroyuki Obara, but the production actually involved several people.
• John "K" Kricfalusi, creator of Ren And Stimpy, is well known for his elitist attitude when it comes to cartoons, and his belief that the height of animation was during the 1940s. His behavior was so bad, combined with the fact that he didn't complete his work on time, that eventually he was fired from Nickelodeon.
  • Billy West has never had a kind word to say about the man, and has gone on record noting how much Kricfalusi harassed every member of the show that didn't quit in protest over his firing. He still refuses to ever work with him again.
  • He also used to do cartoon reviews where he'd rant about how much the shows sucked without ever having watched them; in his review of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, he claims that those should be rated "thousand of points in the negative".
• By many accounts, Bob Clampett, a former Looney Tunes director, probably belongs here. While his contributions to animation were legendary, he was accused by his former coworkers as being "a shameless self promoter who took credit for ideas that were not his." In later years he would identify himself as the "creator" of Bugs Bunny, despite the fact that Bugs wasn't so much created as contributed to by several people and, if anyone, Tex Avery, who directed his first offical short, probably has more claim to the current incarnation of Bugs. Chuck Jones in particular disliked him, and refused to even mention him in his autobiography or acknowledge him as one of Bugs' "fathers" in The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie. Even the normally affable Mel Blanc disliked him. When he wrote his autobiography, he called Clampett "an egotist who took credit for everything."
  • No surprise then that Bob Clampett is John Kricfalusi's all-time hero.

• L. Ron Hubbard. Biographies of him that are written and published by Scientology often read like the memoirs of a God Mode Stu. Amongst other things, Hubbard was a descendant of several distinguished naval officers and a French count, grew up on his wealthy grandfather's ranch which took up 1/4th of the state of Montana, was a protegé and blood brother of the Blackfoot tribe at the age of 4, was the youngest Eagle Scout ever at age 13, was a decorated naval officer during World War 2, and was an accomplished and celebrated aviator, film maker, photographer, engineer, mariner, nuclear physicist, explorer, philosopher, songwriter, musician, singer, artist, and author. Not to mention that he was the first and only person to discover the way to save the universe from the evil grip of psychiatry and the legacy of Lord Xenu. But what do you expect from the "friend of all mankind"? The fact that his wife's name was Mary Sue is probably just a coincidence—either that or Hubbard is a time-traveling troll.
  • Of course, there's the matter of all of them not being true.
• Kenneth Eng is a self-proclaimed Asian supremacist who claimed credit for inciting the Virginia Tech massacre (insisting that it was a good thing) and used the byline "Kenneth Eng: God of the Universe." His hubris-filled resume and book proposal have to be seen to be believed.
  • He eventually got in hot water, and apparently he lost his newspaper column. It wasn't for his ego, or rather not just his ego—he wrote an article called "Why I Hate Blacks," and the backlash undid him. (That was not an ironic title, incidentally.)
  • Impishidea has devoted an entire section to mocking his self published book.

TV Tropes servers would shatter if we listed how many examples there are here of Small Name Big Ego, especially as we aren't really counting the small name part. But here are a few notables..

• Boxing in general has no shortage of this, but special mention must go to Anthony Mundine, who has, among other things, proclaimed that Australians would talk about him the way they talk about Don Bradman. Of course, there's a strong possibility that he's deliberately acting the Heel so that people will buy his fights on PPV in the hope of seeing him get beaten up.
• Jay Cutler (NFL, quarterback) is part of this new breed of quarterbacks who think the league needs them. While with Denver, Cutler's talk seemed to far outstrip his actual skills. When he was traded to Chicago, Cutler talked down about the Denver fans, the coaches, and the league. And he backed up his talk with a massive meltdown in Chicago's opening day loss. Nice going there, Jay. Also: 26(!) interceptions.
  • In the case of Cutler, it's more of a case of Fan Dumb and Did Not Do The Research on the part of sports fans (and those who watch sports stations that discourage critical analysis. Cutler doesn't have a bigger ego than anyone else, his Denver fans turned on him only after he was traded, and his Chicago detractors look at his on-the-field facial expressions to justify their Small Name Big Ego belief, rather than the fact that he actually is the only skilled player on the Bears.
• Terrell Owens (NFL). Of course. What is tragic is that he really is one of the best receivers in recent memory. But when you look at how much he loves himself and expects others to love him as much, you cringe because he hasn't accomplished a tenth of what somebody like, say, Jerry Rice has, and Rice isn't a fraction as arrogant.
  • Owens has now pretty much built a reputation as a locker-room cancer because of his ego and his tendency to publicly whine about how he's being mistreated or misused by the teams he's on.
  • I'd love to buy Owens for what he's worth, and sell him for what he thinks he's worth. I'd never have to work again.
• Though both players are far from small names, friction between the considerable egos of former Los Angeles Lakers (NBA) teammates Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant was what lead to Shaq being traded to the Miami Heat. When Phil Jackson was let go, Shaq accused the club of catering to Kobe's demands at the expense of everyone else's concerns, causing him to demand to be traded. And Kobe is apparently an extreme prima donna himself. Jackson, in a book released after his separation from the team, referred to him as "uncoachable".
• Stephon Marbury personifies this trope. He declared that he was the best point guard in the NBA while his Knicks were in the midst of a 2-19 stretch, and was so shitty and such a bad teammate that the owner of the Knicks choked down his $18 million salary to essentially bench him for a season. He is the Uwe Boll of basketball.
• The massive ego of Rickey Henderson (MLB), especially later in his career, is well-documented. Be it from his references to himself in the third person, blatant narcissism, and his stubbornness to realize that he was a shell of his playing self in the 1980's when he boasted that he could still outsteal anyone in this league... in his 40's.
  • While not able to outsteal "anyone", he did remain a legitimate threat on the basepaths...even into his 40's. But yes, his ego far dwarfed his actual accomplishments.
• Jose Mourinho of Chelsea appeared to be this when he first joined the club. True, he'd just had a spectacularly successful season with Porto, but most considered it a little too far when he began calling himself 'The Special One'. Of course, history vindicated him... mostly.
• According to legend, 19th century Cricketer W.G. Grace (not a small name by any means) was once out clean bowled in the first over of a match. He simply re-set his stumps and took block again, telling the bowler, "They've come to watch me bat, not you bowl."
• Note, there are several cases in Sports where the person has not done an Evil Laugh and declared "Kneel before Zod". However, in sports, there are general conventions of conduct, better known as sportsmanship, and several players an coaches have violated it, in a way declaring themselves exempt due to their success. One example is New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, who more than once has famously refused to shake hands with his former assistant coaches when they've become head coaches themselves. Or former NY Yankees manager Joe Torre's smutty tell-all book about his time with the team, when he himself stated that nobody was to put team business in the street.