Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
Sorting Algorithm Of Evil
|
Black Mage: Where do all these dragons come from anyway? Red Mage: This is the endgame. Endgames are at least 70% dragon. Demons are also fairly popular. — Eight Bit Theatre #1009, "Demon-stration"
An unfortunate necessity of most Action Series and Video Games. It just makes good sense that as our heroes fight the forces of evil, they should get better at fighting the forces of evil. Now, the logical conclusion is that as the show progresses, the fights should get easier and easier. Of course, that's just bad drama.
So, you have to consistently increase the threat value of each obstacle the heroes face. This results in the premise of the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil:
Villains must appear in strictly ascending order by menace.
Which means that the first villain you meet is the weakest, and the last is the strongest. In theory, as the heroes get strong enough to defeat their current enemy, a new enemy will emerge that forces them to reach another skill level. Also, the viewer does not have to feel a sense of Anti Climax and breaking of Willing Suspension Of Disbelief when, the hero(es) having already defeated the Baddest Ass, they now have only lesser baddies with which to contend.
This is all fine and dandy for a while, because even though it seems like a pretty stupid strategy to us, we can at least believe that the Big Bad is working to a strategy by sending out his henchmen in order. The problem (well, a problem) comes up when a show runs long enough (and possibly past its Grand Finale). We may believe that the Evil Overlord is enough of a tactical dunce to think that sorting his henchmen was a good idea. But why should it be that, just by coincidence, the new (and unrelated) Big Bad should happen to be even stronger? Sometimes, though, the Big Bads might form a string of Men Behind The Men, making these slightly more sensible. Although this leads to new Fridge Logic issues - like why the Man Most Behind does not use the presumably unimaginable power coming with his position to just wipe all the heroes out.
Another downside to this system is that if you become interested in a show during season 8, when you go back and watch it from the beginning, the first seven seasons are going to seem awfully lame by comparison (Pshaw. Come on. We're supposed to be worried about this guy? He can't even blow up a galaxy!) Villain Decay can be used to soften this blow; if the Big Bad ends the season a lot lamer than he started, the next season's enemy doesn't have to actually be any stronger to give the impression of an increasing level of tension.
In a series centering around Humongous Mecha or military units, this can be explained by the tendency for technology creep. The heroes will typically acquire new weapons, strategies, and better technology, and so will the enemy. Prototypes will be fielded, refined, jury-rigged weapons will be developed, and new technology from elsewhere in the world will filter through to the heroes.
In a series where a team or group is involved, the villain progresses from weakest to strongest in a Battle Royale With Cheese. Usually justified when said villains obey Asskicking Equals Authority.
For obvious reasons, a necessary factor of video game logic, where menace is often laid out geographically (which arguably makes sense; some places are more dangerous than others), and the player must proceed through these regions in strictly ascending order by menace ( Mount Doom? It's right over there, but you have to go through the Hills of Moderate Evil, which are themselves on the far side of the Forest of Slight Peril. No, the Plains of Perfect Safety aren't anywhere near there).
Occasionally, a particularly strong or evil villain will ignore this law and arrive early, only to leave the heroes alive because they're not worth killing.
Villains who use this as a tool are often Not So Harmless.
This trope has ancient roots. Possibly the earliest example, at least in the English language, is the epic Beowulf, making this Older Than Print.
See also: Sorting Algorithm Of Villain Threat, which breaks down the scales of villainy. Compare Lensman Arms Race, So Last Season. When this happens involving entire breeds/species of villains, it's changing the Villain Pedigree.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Dragon Ball Z went so far as to give characters an explicit, numbered "Combat Rating", including villains. A very strong human had a rating of about 100, while the heroes' rating was over 9000. This held out until the middle of the third arc, when the devices that were used to calculate these combat ratings were destroyed; at this point, the Big Bad's strongest form had a rating of around one hundred and twenty million. Generally, however, the plot set up the progression well; Raditz arrived first, and called on a pair of stronger allies; the heroes went after their boss next; the next Big Bad was created from said boss's cells, plus those of the powered-up heroes, and so on. The final villain was a mild subversion because, while it was weakest in its final form, its unique physiology made it nearly impossible to kill. If you go back to watch the series again, you soon realize that even the first fight was equally as tough as the last. It seems the hero increases in power just enough to get totally beaten by the next big bad. While there are episodes where Goku casually dispatches villains who fought toe-to-toe with him in his youth, these are naturally filler.
- This was actually subverted in Dragonball GT, where the new Big Bad turned out to be pathetically weak, but had the ability to possess the bodies of the various insanely superpowered supporting characters surrounding the hero.
- Unfortunately, the evil group after that appeared to be even weaker. Most of them only take a single episode, and only the last one actually posed any sort of threat (by absorbing the powers of the defeated 6).
- Similarly subverted in Osu! Kaitte kita Son Gokuu to Nakama-tachi, in which an alien menace arrives and is easily defeated, because it arrived a bit too late in the chronology, and everyone was so enormously powerful that it really didn't ever have a chance at all.
- Robotech carried this off by declaring that Zentradi < Masters < Invid. Robotech: Shadow Chronicles added The Children of the Shadow to this progression.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yu-Gi-Oh GX presented villains not only in ascending order by menace, but also, for some reason, effeminateness. For instance, the first Big Bad in season 1 of GX was a withered old man; Season 2's villain was a younger, more strapping adult male. Season 3 had a Hermaphrodite Duel Monster. Of course, the effeminateness of the villain ties directly into...
- ... their personal interest towards the hero. At first, the Big Bad is usually just interested in a certain trinket or item carried by the protagonist, while the next is usually more interested in the protagonist's actual abilities and strengths. The biggest of the Big Bads always seemed to have some kind of intimate interpersonal relationship with the hero, which would border on Ho Yay (since both sides in this series were invariably male), if only the Big Bad wasn't trying to enslave/murder them for some deep, scarring betrayal they blame on the protagonist. There are only two exceptions: Dartz, in the Doma Story Arc, and the Big Bad of the Capsule Monsters arc, which, as far as the rest of the series is concerned, never even happened. Even the original series (never released beyond Japan and taking place before the anime we all know and love) has most of the villains being random thugs met in chance encounters, fitting into the algorithm perfectly.
- The opposition on Sailor Moon also sorted itself out into ascending levels of power per season, starting with the Dark Kingdom (which could barely field a single youma at a time) all the way up to Galaxia, who threatened the entire universe.
- The only exceptions seem to be Eiru and En who, regardless of probably being weaker than the last villains, had to face senshi with unusually strong attacks. Naturally this filler was forgotten later. It also seems to have been the original M.O. of the Amazon Trio, explaining their penchant for disguising themselves; likewise, there aren't real arc villains either.
- The strange thing is that the five big bosses of the villain groups (Queen Metaria, Death Phantom, Pharaoh 90, Queen Nehellenia and Sailor Galaxia/Chaos) are all portrayed as having the same dark power to destroy or conqueror the universe which would mean they were at the same level of power.
- In the manga, it's because they're all the same villain being reincarnated.
- Codename Sailor V, set before Sailor Moon and telling the story of Sailor Venus before she became part of the group appropriately has a big bad who though a threat to Sailor V is an extreme small fry in the scheme of things. He's one step below the first arc's Quirky Miniboss Squad being an underling of Kunzite. The Codename Sailor V manga debuted before Sailor Moon but wrapped up shortly after.
- Naruto plays with this one a bit. The first major enemy, Zabuza, is so strong that the Genin can't be expected to hold their own against him (the same goes for his Battle Butler, Haku, who is about as strong as their sensei). In addition, the Big Bad, Orochimaru, shows up in the second major arc. Those kids aren't lucky...
- The series largely averts the Algorithm after this point, since it takes over 300 chapters since his introduction before anyone is actually able to beat Orochimaru. For the longest time, even the strongest characters could, at best, manage a tie. And even then he was only beaten by someone attacking him when he was at his weakest. Once Orochimaru was defeated, however, the other villains suddenly started showing what they were really capable of, and the Algorithm returns in full force.
- Justified in One Piece: As Luffy and crew get further along the Grand Line, they can expect that tougher opponents will appear, since the Grand Line is said to get more and more dangerous as one travels along it, and only the most powerful pirates can survive there.
- Subverted with the Flying Fish Raiders, who are actually much weaker than the Straw Hats' previous enemies, and the Marine admirals, Mihawk, and Kuma, who have wiped the floor with the Straw Hats in all of their fights so far.
- Though in Kuma's case they were all badly injured and their strongest member was down, so perhaps not a complete subversion there.
- Kuma Shows up again later, at which point he mops the floor with all of them at full power.
- No, they had a battle before that too and didn't recover well, and Zoro didn't recover from his last fight with Kuma either
- In Bleach, this trope's existence is acknowledged by the ghost/shadow/illusion/whatever of the Bount Arc's Big Bad Kariya. In fact, the reason for everything Kariya did in life was his desire to escape the neverending fighting the trope enforces.
- This also occurs in the wider series, with a cycle where Kurosaki Ichigo goes through a long list of tougher enemies as follows: get the crap beaten out of him by the enemy, somehow power up, fight again and he's now on equal terms, some mid-battle powering up, at which point he can just about stomp the bad guy and it's time for a new more powerful one... the process has now slowed down, but it's still present.
- The seemingly slower level up is partially explained by the fact that fights are taking longer and longer to finish, not to mention that due to the many friends he has aquired who also need their epic level upedness...
- This fails to mention the Espada, a group of 10 arrancar arranged in order on the basis of strength. Also somewhat subverted in that a few of them fight out of order, and some of them don't even go after The Hero. Further subverted with 10th Espada Yammy Who turns out to be Espada number 0, and was abusing this algorithm to his advantage.
- Monster Rancher mostly subverts this. Pixie is the first of the big bad 4, but stronger than Gali and Greywolf (it takes the entire team sans golem to beat Pixie, but only Moochi or Tiger to beat Gali and Greywolf). also they meet Moo (the Big bad) on the road quite early, and the encounter plays out like a Hopeless Boss Fight.
- Although it's played straight in a sense, since Naga is the strongest of the big bad 4, and after that it's Moo in his Dragon Body who is incredibly powerful. But is subverted again, because in the next series they're up against one of his captains, who is obviously much weaker than Moo was.
- Averted in Rurouni Kenshin. The characters make a point of stating several times that the villain of the third arc (Enishi), while very powerful, is just not on the same level as the villain of the previous arc (Shishio). Enishi manages to make up the difference by striking while everyone's still recovering from the fight with Shishio, and by pretty much freaking Kenshin right the hell out with every sentence out of his mouth.
- Not really averted though. The impression that the protagonists got from Shishio was really just the latter beating up a bunch of half-dead guys and getting a couple of lucky breaks. At the point where they criticized Enishi's skill, they were only judging based on a few sword slashes and no techniques shown. Once the Watou-Jutsu came into play, they quickly changed their tune. And in RK, it's hard to judge strength solely based on pure power. The skill and styles of the various characters also played a large part, so the only measuring stick we have is how badly they owned Kenshin before he owned them.
- It's not much of a stretch to assume that Enishi specifically trained to battle Kenshin's particular style. With so many years to focus on how to counter a set of specific techniques, he might not need to be stronger.
- Shishio's victory over Kenshin, Saitou, Aoshi, and Sanosuke may have indeed been legitimate and not an example of "beating up a bunch of half-dead guys." Saitou had a tough time with Usui, a blind fighter who was specifically stated to be beneath Shishio, and sustained serious injuries from him. Kenshin himself was nearly killed by Soujirou, Shishio's very own student(usually students aren't better than their own masters). Also it's worth noting that Shishio got back up despite being severely injured by Kenshin's ultimate attack whereas that very same attack incapacitated Aoshi. Even if they hadn't been injured, the fight with Shishio may not have turned out all that differently.
- It's difficult to measure how strong Enishi is compared to Shishio. For one thing, Enishi is much younger than Kenshin, Saitou, and Shishio and does not have the sheer amount of battle experience they do. However, in his first encounter with Kenshin, Enishi did give him quite a difficult time. Whether this is because his fighting style is superior to Kenshin's or because Kenshin's too emotionally distraught from seeing Enishi and being reminded of his past sins is up in the air. Even Saitou, a man who fought Kenshin many times before, stated and agreed with Sanosuke that Enishi wasn't as good as Shishio but during that same battle, Enishi defended against and defeated Kenshin's ultimate attack, severely injuring Kenshin in the process. Also, it is important to note that Enishi has never fought against any other character in the series aside from Kenshin whereas Shishio has fought against Kenshin, Aoshi, Shisio, and Sanosuke so it's not really clear how Enishi would do against other characters such as Saitou and Aoshi.
- This trope is invoked by Shishio's Dragon, Hoji, who feels that the weaker members of Kenshin's Nakama pose too much of a threat to ignore. So Shishio leaves the three strongest members of the Juppongatana to fight the heroes, and sends the weaker members to go fight the others.
- DGrayMan would justify this, since the Akuma all have specific Levels... except that, as the heroes get stronger, they start fighting higher-leveled Akuma in larger groups.
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, every villain is billed as the most powerful, strongest, blah blah blah. Then, by the end of four arcs, we're wondering why, if the King himself couldn't protect against C-level nobodies like Kurama and Hiei in Season One, can Yusuke go one-up against S-level demons in Season Four. Does the King of Spirit World really have security that terrible? Don't think too hard...
- It's revealed at the end of the manga that this is because he hired them, in hopes that they'd be defeated by his people, thereby making himself look better. This arc is completely skipped in the anime, which ends with the second-to-last arc.
- In this Troper's opinion, Hakusho had probably the most broken sorting algorithm in the history of anime. Its pretty bad when even the MAIN character couldn't keep up, leading to some of the annoying aspects of the Chapter Black Saga.
- It actually worked pretty good for the first few bad guys, as Yusuke was only beating them out of sheer luck. Suzaku of the Four Saint Beasts was only barely beaten out of desperation and his underestimating Yusuke. At the beginning of Toguro's turn, you almost think he is about as powerful as Suzaku, only more careful. But after Toguro was beaten, he was apparently a "B" class, hardly the most dangerous of Demons.
- Saiyuki inverts this with its seasonal big bads. The first series has Homura, the God of War. Reload has Dr. Nii's disciple Kami-sama, and Gunlock features Hazel, a mere priest from the west. It also plays with the trope by making the villains harder to defeat in other ways - Homura was unquestionably a bad guy, but is followed by Psychopathic Manchild Kami-sama, who just didn't work on the same level mentally. Then there was Hazel, who was in all appearances a good guy, creating a huge ethical backlash to fighting him.
- The classic example of the technology creep variety would be the Zeon mobile suits in Mobile Suit Gundam. They go from the rather pathetic Zaku which was designed for fighting conventional vehicles rather than other mobile suits, to the fast, heavily armed & armored, though somewhat unwieldy Dom to the powerful & agile Gelgoog, which nearly matches the Gundam's performance, with a few Ace customs & Super Prototypes along the way for flavor. This would be a fairly realistic setup... if the war had lasted longer than a single year. The novelization is somewhat better about this as the war drags on for two years & the Gelgoogs never show up. It also subverts this trope, as the antagonists use a slightly less advanced Mobile Armor to fight the Gundam in the climactic battle due to supply shortages and though the Gundam defeats it, it proves to be enough of a distraction that a Mauve Shirt piloting a lowly Rick Dom is able to finish Amuro off.
- The entirety of battle in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a combination of this and a Lensman Arms Race. The Big Bad actually goes explain why they intentionally do it. It does not work.
- Digimon uses this alongside a set series of Evolutionary Levels (Baby, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega). The next enemy to beat is just one evolutionary step further down the line, which requires the team to go and reach another evolutionary level. This gets a little ridiculous in later series, where every bad guy seems to be the final "Mega" level and some are just that much more powerful then other Megas.
- The original Digimon Adventure had one of the better usages of this trope. First, there was Devimon, an evil Champion-level Digimon. Then there was Etemon, who was purely comical as opposed to the serious Devimon, but was at the Ultimate level and thus considerably stronger. Then came Myotismon, an Ultimate digimon of great strength who was the first Digimon in the show to evolve to Mega form. Lastly came the four Dark Masters, who were all Mega level.
- The V-Tamer manga went a step further and introduced Arca Demon, which was the "Super Ultimate" Digimon ("Ultimate" being the Japanese term for Mega). Among other things, it killed Sigma's Piedmon (a Mega level) while still at Rookie level. In one hit. Its Champion level did the same to Seraphimon (a considerably stronger Mega) with about as much effort. Consider that for most Digimon, a single Evolutionary Level is often an insurmountable hurdle.
- Played straight in Magic Knight Rayearth. While the first enemy the Power Trio faces, Alcyone, is a powerful Ice Mage in her own right, she's easily dispatched. Then come Ascot, Caldina, Lafarga and, finally, Zagato himself. While their power levels are all over the place, they have specific skills that make them increasingly dangerous, and it would have been easy for any of the later foes to eliminate the Knights had they been dispatched earlier. In particular, one wonders why, since Zagato knew all about the Magic Knight legend, why he didn't go after the girls himself as soon as they arrived.
- In the anime, Zagato does show up for a few moments to show the heroes just a tiny portion of his power. Had he actually attacked them, they would not have survived. Then again, exactly what Zagato wants to do isn't really too clear. He may not intend to kill the Magic Knights, regardless of what that will mean for him.
- Ascot himself is particularly guilty of this. Although his first few "friends" are indeed strong enough to squish the Magic Knights into paste, they have glaring weaknesses that the girls discover and exploit within minutes. However, his very last Summoned Monsters are titanic foes that can go toe-to-toe with the ancient Rune Gods, and continue to be powerful presences in the second arc whenever the Knights need rescuing. He always had access to them, so why he didn't call these right off the bat is a mystery to everyone.
- CodeGeass. Lelouch faces off with increasingly improving resistance from The Empire, but manages to cope because his allies also get better mechas over time. In the first major battle, he faces inept commander Prince Clovis and a bunch of regular Knightmares with his terrorist allies using mostly outdated Knightmares of their own, and they own the field... And then Suzaku shows up... Algorithm leaps somewhat later when Lelouch tries to do this again against much better leader Princess Cornelia, and his (different group) allies are totally slaughtered. He later however turns the tables when he tries this again, only using the enviroment to his advantage, supported by the JLF, and with Ace Pilot Kallen in a better mecha. He nearly has Cornelia beat... And then Suzaku shows up... again. Eventually his allies begin to power up faster than The Empire, and he's likely have won the war, if not for some extreme circumstances and misfortunes. Eventually Kallen's able to easily turn Suzaku's mech to scrap, even after it gets an upgrade. By the end of the series however, his terrorist army has gotten so good, that when he's forced to fight them, this time commanding the forces of The Empire, he's no match.
- Played straight then subverted in History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, in the manga at least. The storyline covered in the anime plays it straight, with Kenichi fighting stronger opponents as his skill improves; high school bullies, Ragnarok mooks, the Eight Fists of Ragnarok, and finally their leader Odin. Kenichi's struggle against YOMI, the next antagonist group subverts it. YOMI's leader Sho Kanou, touted as the strongest fighter of them all and inheritor of the styles of YAMI the series' Big Bad organization... is the second YOMI member Kenichi defeats. However Kenichi then gets his ass handed to him against another member of YOMI. Possibly justified since each of the YOMI members and their masters in YAMI believes that he or she is really the strongest; some of the YAMI members believed that Sho was unsuitable to be YOMI leader. That and Kenichi's fighting ability is highly dependent on the circumstances involved; even though he's practically superhuman at this point he's still slightly intimidated by high school bullies.
- Eyeshield 21 and other such sports manga tend to increase in scope as the story goes on. Athletes face opponents from other cities first and other countries later.
- This is also played straight and subverted earlier in the manga, where the Devil Bats' first opponents are a very weak team, followed immediately by the uber-talented and powerful Ojou White Knights, then the moderately challenging but not all that Zokugaku Chameleons. But, naturally, once they get to the fall tournament, the easy games all happen first.
- Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure both plays this trope straight and averts it. While the enemies fought in each series grow stronger the closer that you get to the end, the fact that each volume stars a different hero means that Big Bads don't necessarily have to be stronger than what came before. For example, while Dio of Part 3 was quite dangerous, he wasn't as immediate a threat to the world as the Pillar Men of Part 2.
- Saint Seiya: by Law Of Chromatic Superiority, the heroes must first battle their peers, the Bronze Saints (and, later, their Evil Counterpart Black Saints) in a local skirmish for the Gold Cloth; then, the Silver Saints, who hunt them down for said Cloth; and finally, the Gold Saints, who never leave the Sanctuary. Then come the Asgardian God Warriors, who can give Golds a run for their money; Marine Shoguns, likewise; and then Hades' Spectres. The last foes they encounter are actual Gods, and the teaser movie for Chapter of Heaven hints that the Bronze Boys are raring to take on the Olympian Gods themselves.
- Subverted in the manga when Gold Saint Virgo Shaka seeks out and nearly kills Bronze Saint Phoenix Ikki before the actual plot even begins. Their battle, such as it is, is shown as an extended flashback.
- Averted in Mahou Sensei Negima, where the first major antagonist that Negi faced (Evangeline) is probably the strongest adversary he's faced yet, only winning the fight by a combination of luck and the fact that Eva wasn't really taking the fight seriously.
- This trope is straight out mocked in the second episode of Haruhi-chan. After being 'defeated', Asakura warns Kyon and Yuki that she is "the weakest of the radical four", which will now come after them. And above the radical four, are the top three leaders..!
- Played straight for most of Fist of the North Star. Shin, Ken's initial rival and the man who engraved the seven scars on his chest, isn't even the strongest of the Nanto Seiken masters, but rather Souther, a character who is introduced a bit later and is shown to be immune to the effects of Ken's martial art at first. Jagi, the first of Ken's adoptive brothers to the appear in the story, is a petty thug who never truly mastered Hokuto Shinken, but is still stronger than the average mook, in contrast to Raoh, the eldest and the last one to appear, who is the big bad for most of the first series and ends up killing most of Ken's allies. Then there's Kaioh, the ultimate big bad of the second series, who was the only villain that was actually immune to Kenshiro's ultimate technique of Musou Tensei and almost killed him during their first encounter. Subverted in the final chapters of the manga, in which the final villain, Bolge, was just an average wasteland thug no stronger than Jagi.
- In Buso Renkin, the series begins with the main characters fighting off animal- and plant-type homunculi. Then of course comes along a stronger animal-type homunculus, and then the humanoid homunculi, and then Victor, and then Victor AND the Alchemist Army, and then Victor in his third stage...
Films
- James Bond movies, however, frequently have the main villain's henchman reappear after the main villain has died and his plot has been foiled. Bond will then dispatch them, often by forcing a backfire of their trademark gimmick.
- Kung Fu Hustle has a rather clearly evident Algorithm, starting with basic Axe Gang members that are countered by the Pig Sty Alley's three martial artists, who are then countered by the Axe Gang's hired Musical Assassins, who are then countered by the Landlord and Landlady, who are in turn countered by the Made Of Iron and superhumanly-fast Beast, who is in turn countered by the Heel Face Turn-ed Unsympathetic Comedy Villain Protagonist. In a slightly jarring subversion, the Beast attempted to use a pile of basic Axe Gang members to soften up the hero before properly fighting him.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean began with the enemies being a crew of cursed undead pirates. The second movie had them facing against the mythological Davy Jones. The third was a battle royal against Davy Jones and the entire British navy, with the God of the Ocean thrown in for good measure. Good thing they had the Pirate council and Elizabeth Took A Level In Badass.
- Lord Of The Rings is an exception to the Sort Order of Evil — the Big Bad sends out his uber-henchmen first to get the Ring from Frodo.
- Resulting in a rather awkward situation in the literary version when said henchmen content themselves with stabbing him with a poisonous dagger and retreat instead of slaughtering everybody, as they're fully capable of doing, demonstrating that the algorithm exists for a good reason. Jackson's film tried to remedy this, with mixed results.
- However, it's stated that Sauron is slowing growing in power throughout the books, so the Nazguls aren't at full strength when they inflitrate the Shire
- The algorithm is nicely averted in the book, when, after the war is over, the hobbits return home and are forced to deal with a bunch of thugs and an effectively powerless [[Spoiler: Saruman]].
- The Karate Kid had an annoying algorithm of villains, when one thinks about it. In the first movie Daniel-San was useless against his nemesis, but after receiving training he beat him. In the second movie was useless against his new nemesis, but after receiving new training he beat him. In the third movie was useless against his new nemesis, but after receiving new training he beat him. That means that the third nemesis was much better at karate than the Bad Ass nemesis of the second movie...
- Each of the Terminator sequels introduced a more advanced Terminator model as the antagonist. Given they can be sent to any point in time Skynet likes, pretty much impossible to justify not just sending like 5 of the best the first time.
Gamebooks
- Oddly subverted in the Lone Wolf gamebooks, then played straight. Lone Wolf actually manages to kill two of the Darklords in the first five books; each was the leader of the Darklords at the time of their deaths. Later, Lone Wolf goes on to fight more powerful opponents. Book 12 justifies the subversion by stating that the Darklords are severely weakened by clean air; they could only fight at full strength in utterly corrupted environments. After the Darklords are defeated, the trope is played straight, as Lone Wolf's victory managed to piss off Naar, the god that created the Darklords in the first place.
Literature
- A literary example comes from the Lensman series of novels, which worked up from interplanetary gangsters to an evil older than the formation of the solar system whose goal was domination of all intelligent life in the universe. These books justified the algorithm by revealing in each book that the Big Bad of this book was The Man Behind The Man of last book's Big Bad. Then again, the nesting that would be present in the beginning is somewhat mind-boggling.
- Which was present — the prologue of the first book was dedicated to describing it.
- That prologue is actually a retcon. The original Lensman series consisted of Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, and Children of the Lens, all originally published in Astounding Stories magazine. In this version, the Eddorians weren't revealed as The Men Behind the Men Behind the Men Behind the Men until the last set of stories. When Doc Smith sold the rights to a book publisher, his editor felt the lack of foreshadowing made the series a bit silly and asked Smith to write a prequel introducing the Eddorians from the beginning. Smith took an old, unrelated novel of his, Triplanetary, added the prologue and tweaked the plot to fit the Lensman universe. He then wrote First Lensman to bridge Triplanetary with the original series.
- Justified in the Harry Potter series. Voldemort starts off as a powerless relic of his former glory in the first book and slowly works his way back up to Big Bad over the course of the series. Thus, the threat Harry faces grows without the villain changing.
- Also averted: when Voldemort learned about baby Harry's existence, he set out himself to destroy him. It just didn't work.
- Justified in the Honor Harrington series. The People's Navy starts out commanded by a bunch of inept bureaucrats and politically-appointed admirals, but the Committee of Public Safety's coup kicks most of the garbage out of the system and allows the best Havenite admirals to rise to the top. Then when Thomas Theisman overthrows Chairman Saint-Just and restores the original Republic, the State Sec apparatus and political commissars are cleared out, and the finest generals Haven has available can use whatever means they have at their disposal to fight the war. The second war does not start out well for Manticore.
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer generally had a far more dangerous Big Bad each season than the last. Again, good thing Adam didn't show up in season 1. By the end of the series, the only thing strong enough to be a serious inconvenience to Buffy was the personified root of all evil itself (an actual god had already been defeated).
- To be fair to that show in particular, though, the entire series is a coming of age story and the threats get bigger as they increase in metaphoric resonance with "being a grown-up". Of course, by the last two seasons most of that metaphor has flown out the window.
- Again to be fair, the Big Bads of seasons 2 and 6 don't really count. The Anointed One, the original Big Bad for Season 2, is a weak little kid vampire that's killed off pretty quickly, and replaced by Spike and Dru—vampires that are more brutal and can move around Sunnydale, but aren't really that scary or evil compared to The Master. When they're upstaged by Angelus, he is only threatening because of his personal relationship with Buffy. As for Season 6, The Trio are essentially joke villains, who Buffy is only unable to crush because of her various insecurities. When they're replaced by Dark Willow, this trope is played more straight, but again much of her threat is not so much her enormous power level by her personal relationship to the Scoobies. And she's defeated with The Power Of Friendship, too, not by the mighty Buffy, but the powerless Xander. In Season 7, the First Evil was incorporeal and couldn't directly hurt the heroes, so he had to rely on minions to carry out his work.
- Power Rangers usually uses this, with the villains choosing to create/summon progressively stronger monsters as the season goes on and the Rangers grow stronger. Justified somewhat in Jungle Fury where the Big Bad is a recently released sealed evil who has lost much of his power, and thus grows stronger throughout the season much as the heroes do. Also justified in RPM (which is superb at justifying, or at least lampshading, standard Power Rangers tropes) with the assertion that the evil Venjix computer virus is developing increasingly advanced technology over time.
- Stargate SG-1 started out with Apophis, and it seemed like they were never going to get rid of the guy. But when they finally did, even stronger Goa'uld showed up. But that's okay, the team got good at dispatching Goa'uld. So Anubis shows up, with the full knowledge of the godlike beings who'd created the stargates. But they took care of him — though it was a close one. So, the universe is finally at peace, right? For almost a whole month before the Ori, who more or less actually are gods, show up.
- On the other hand, there may be something of a subversion as it appears that the most powerful and influential Goa'uld in history, Ra, was the one they killed off before they'd even gone to series.
- Also, the series has quite a few times hung a Lampshade on this, particularly through the Tok'ra, by pointing out that every time the Tau'ri defeat a System Lord an even worse one inevitably takes his or her place at the top.
- This counts as explanation as much as Lampshade. By killing Ra, and others, SG-1 kept disrupting the Goa'uld balance of power, allowing more aggressive Goa'uld to sweep up now-leaderless forces and rise in threat level. They didn't cause Anubis, but probably sped up his timetable. They did make the Replicators more dangerous, by giving the nanotech precursor of the Replicators to the Asgard, from whom it was then captured. A self-application of Stop Helping Me? I know of no excuse for the Ori, however.
- The Ori only found out about the Milky Way galaxy when Daniel Jackson and Vala accidentally warped over to their home galaxy and caused a scene. An unfortunate coincidence, perhaps, but still their doing. I guess we should mention that the Stargate Atlantis team woke up the Wraith and turned on the Asurans' hostility switch. Nice Job Breaking It Hero indeed.
- The first season finale of Heroes has Molly tell us at point-blank range that there is another, much bigger bad than Sylar, who hasn't shown up yet.
- Of course, the one Molly's scared of isn't even the Big Bad of Season 2; just the disciple of someone nastier.
- But the algorithm looks to be subverted as of the second season finale: Big Bad Adam may have become Sealed Evil In A Can but his successor appears to be none other than Sylar.
- Pretty much out the window with season four, where the Big Bad is a powerless government agent who leads SWAT teams with dart guns. Then again, Sylar's helping them...
- 24 is a serious offender, when the first season, "the longest day of" Jack Bauer's life, is about Drazen's personal vendetta against him and Palmer. The second is about a threatened nuclear attack on Los Angeles. This escalates to a successful nuclear attack at the beginning of Season 6.
- Partially seen, partially reversed on Charmed, which actually followed a Bell Curve of Evil. At first, the villains grew progressively more powerful, from warlocks, to demons, to the Source of All Evil himself. Once the Source of All Evil was blown to bits (3 consecutive times, too!) halfway through the show's total run, however, things went a bit downhill. Later Big Bads included a Well Intentioned Extremist angel, the Source's slightly less powerful rival, and finally the show's last Big Bad were basically the heroine's Evil CounterParts, who were roughly at the same power level they were.
- Reversed on Mission Impossible, largely as a result of plot decay. While in the first few seasons the IMF went up against international terrorists, tyrannical dictators, and the Red Menace, later seasons mostly found them up against the Mob.
- In the first season of Lost, the villains are mainly unseen: the monster in the pilot, then Ethan, about whom not much is known. The main antagonist is arguably "the unknown." The second and third seasons are more about the Others. The fourth season introduced the freighties, who made the Others look more like the "good guys" they've always claimed to be.
- The new series of Doctor Who does this with their season finales. In the first season, a future earth is invaded by Daleks. In the second, the contemporary earth is invaded by Daleks AND Cyberman. In the third season the Master's invasion of the contemporary earth actually succeeds and he turns in into a dystopian wasteland. Then in season four Davros threatens the desintegration of all universes in all of reality. Since the writers where already forced to resort to Deus Ex Machina in the very first season, this troper wonder about the wisdom of this upping of the threat.
- Farscape had an odd way of upping the ante each season while making old villains "join the team". First season had Captain Bialar Crais pursuing the protagonists with his one warship. At the end of the first season, Crais is usurped by Scorpius a rival commander of the Peacekeeper force, and Crais becomes an ally. By the third season, Scorpius is on the outs due to the machinations of the more politically powerful Commandant Grayza, so he tends to hitch rides and help out the heroes, although he clearly remains more evil than Crais. The fourth season does a switch half-way through and makes the evil reptillian Scarrans the main bad guys, supplanting the Peacekeepers for top evil.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 poses an unusual problem for the algorithm: start with the Tau, but then where do you go? Seriously, read the its article on Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
- This troper feels a good order would be Friendly Communist Tau > Aloof Space Elf Eldar > Repressive fascist humans > Bloodthirsty Orks. After that it sort of breaks down into a three-way tie between the all-consuming Tyranid hordes, the forces of Chaos that are so bad that Nurgle, the god of pestilence and horrible diseases, is the "nice one", and the Necrons who want to kill everything and are controlled by semi-gods who eat stars when they're not eating souls of the dead. All three are bad enough and mysterious enough that they can and sometimes do jump up on the Sorting Algorythm of Evil past each other as another aspect of their backstory is revealed. The forces of Chaos, who are clearly the most evil, would probably be the most threatening if not for the fact that they are led by General Failure. The Tyranids just want to eat you and the Necrons just want to eat your souls, but they're both good at what they do. Whenever one bad group is temporarily kicked out of Imperial space, one of the other big bads comes back and is now twice as nasty. It's an unpleasant universe to live in.
- The Imperium also use this trope to determine forces sent on a planet - the worse it gets, the more Elite Mooks, Tank Goodness and Humongous Mecha are sent (and they have different sizes of mecha and tanks to consider also). Worse comes to worse, they call down Exterminatus on the planet. By Nuke Em, we mean the planet.
Video Games
- The videogame Final Fantasy XII has a few major exceptions to this. Many of the early stages have extremely powerful enemies wandering around that eclipse the normal small fry. A normally leveled party at this point has absolutely no chance against them, and are advised to avoid them at all costs... though a few determined level grinders choose to go after them anyway, for the experience they give makes it very easy to reach level 50 before even fighting the first boss.
- The first two Final Fantasy games avoided this trope entirely; walking ten feet from the starter town led you into the midst of insurmountably powerful enemies.
- Played painfully straight in Baldurs Gate, in which your character is targeted by various trained assassins. It starts with some utterly worthless mooks who pose no threat to even a 1st level character (they're actually less dangerous than giant rats). Then comes a moderately powerful spellcaster with the questionable MO of approaching your party in the middle of the street, loudly boasting that he is a master assassin, and proceeding to engage all of you (plus one or two guards) at once. And so on, until you finally meet the godlike Big Bad himself and easily dispatch him with all the loot and experience you've taken from his minions.
- Not quite as Wall Banger terrible as you think when you think about it. After killing each assassin, you can find the assassination order that they hold. The reward for killing you starts at a paltry 50 gold pieces, which no self-respecting assassin is going to bother with. By the mid-game, the offer increases to 1000 gold pieces, which makes the higher-level assassins take notice. By the end game, the Big Bad isn't even bothering with assassins anymore, sending his personal army to take you out.
- Also averted somewhat, however; the games allows you to wander wherever you want, and some of the starting areas are directly adjacent to areas with creatures that can kill you in one shot if you're still very low level. The Ankhegs in the area north of the Friendly Arm Inn spring to mind.
- Exception: In the MMORPG City Of Heroes, Paragon City is divided many different zones, each of which has its own difficulty level. But except for a few limited-access areas, characters can go (and possibly die) anywhere they want in the city.
- Most MMORPGs are structured like this; the only thing stopping a low-level character from reaching high-level areas are the powerful monsters. The sorting algorithm is there, just pointed out as how you should do things, not enforced. Typically, the very high-level areas are an inordinately long walk from the low-level areas, or behind a locked door for which the key is easily acquired on the high-level side, in order to at least suggest the intended progression. However, not always: the Forsaken starting area in World of Warcraft contains a mid-level dungeon in one corner, and is directly adjacent to one of the max-level areas, with some helpful NPCs hanging around to tell new players not to go past; and the Blood Elf and Night Elf starting regions aren't much better.
- One could teeechnically consider all of City of Villains this trope incarnate.
- Inverted in Half Life 2: Episode One, where the Combine forces become gradually weaker as the protagonist moves from the Citadel (the previous game's Supervillain Lair, where he starts) all the way to the outskirts. The player also gets gradually depowered in the process; first, his Eleventh Hour Superpower reverts to being the normal Gravity Gun, and near the end, his sidekick Alyx stops following him.
- The PC game Vivisector: Beast Inside has this in abundance: the animalistic enemies are faced based on their level of feralness and anthropomorphism. The Human enemies also get stronger as the game goes on. In a subversion, though, the final leg of the game contains "unfinished" versions of the animal enemies that are pathetically weak and easy to take out..
- Strangely included in Final Liberation: even if the game allows the player to get stronger units and a better army as he wins battles, the opposing forces will always have the same overall level as the player's army.
- Infamously present in the otherwise-excellent Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where the entire universe is exactly as powerful as you are at any given point in the game. One can (and often does) complete the game's main quest while remaining at level 1; paradoxically, this makes your boss encounters much easier. In other words, the game punishes you for playing it as it was intended. As you progress, wolves suddenly become extinct throughout the entire game area, only to be replaced with bears, mountain lions, ogres, etc., etc., etc. This editor was so annoyed by this that he was forced to use mods which deliberately make the game extremely difficult from the very beginning, thereby giving you some sense of accomplishment.
- Really? I recall the game having a difficulty slider and a developer at some point (or maybe it was the manual) saying it was there to allow the player to change it as they played to allow themselves to be challenged more. Unless you're just too 1337 and the hardest setting was too easy for you.
- It's not so much the difficulty of the game, but the lack of any sense of accomplishment in levelling up. Sure, being an uber level 35 warrior is nice, but not if common marauders are wearing the exact same super-armour as you. Furthermore, as you level in the vanilla game it actually becomes harder unless you plan your levelling extremely carefully in order to pick up all skill boosts and so on. The difficulty slider just tries to avoid the issue.
- Present in NetHack: The game generates enemies of level equal to the average of your level and the current dungeon depth. This avoids Oblivion's "every level is just as tough as you are" while still providing the same progression.
- This trend seems to be notably missing from the individual episodes Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory series of PC [=RPGs=], while still being present in the larger arc of the game. For instance, if you attempt to venture into the forest when you first begin Quest for Glory 1, you will almost certainly not escape alive without prior knowledge of its layout. As you acquire skills, equipment, items, and experience, you are soon able to survive the forest during the day — but you still had better stay the hell out of there at night. Even as a top-level player, a nighttime venture in the forest is nigh-suicidal, thereby really giving it a sense of menace that seems to be missing from modern, dumbed-down kid-friendly [=RPGs=]. However, as you progress from game to game, enemies as a whole become globally stronger so as to keep up the challenge. A Quest for Glory 1 character imported into Quest for Glory 4, for instance, would probably be killed from the suspense alone.
- ...at least, that might happen if each game didn't up the minimum skill level. A Qf G 1 character maxes out their stats and skills at 100, but the minimum for Qf G 4 is 200 (for imported characters), so they become twice as awesome by virtue of being imported. Which is still horrifically weak for the fourth game: the freaking bunny enemy will probably pose a challenge.
- Super Smash Bros Brawl. The story mode begins against the robotic Ancient Minister, then onto the Nintendo villains, led by Ganondorf and Bowser, then the series' perennial antagonist Master Hand and finally Tabuu, ruler of Subspace.
- Fire Emblem 9 (Path of Radiance) averts this somewhat. Early in the game, your group is not seen as a big threat, then you journey through independent countries that Daein has less control in. Later in the game it's a little subverted when a knight questions why Ashnard is spreading his force so thin near the end of the game. Ashnard's response is that he's fascinated by the strength of the group and it's implied he wants to personally fight the strongest force possible. Also, he's just plain vanilla crazy.
- The sequel's Endgame played it straight. The first part had you fight a politician who was blessed by a goddess. Then you fight the Black Knight, who has also been blessed. Next, you fight an army of dragons led by their king, Dheginsea, who in addition to being blessed is also am ancient being who helped defeat the goddess of chaos. Next comes another ancient being who is also blessed by the goddess. Finally, you reach the damn goddess who blessed the bastards from before.
- Drakengard follows this formula for The Evil Army that Caim is fighting across the vast breadth of the land. By the end of the game, he's fighting the gods themselves, and then the Mother of the Gods, but you don't know that at the time. It is important to note that according to series canon he never actually fought the gods, as they went with the one ending of the five that was bittersweet and not a downer.
- Used and subverted in Prince Of Persia Warrior Within. With an almost WideOpenSandbox style to the game and more difficult enemies, you can go back to the beginning and fight the guards that you initially had to dispose of with a stick! Using the most powerful weapon in the game, the Water Sword, you can beat them with one hit. The Two Thrones had something similar with the Fathers' Sword, if you got a solid hit on most footsoldiers they were gone.
- Partially Inverted in Wild ARMs 4. The game seems to follow this trope until you face an ancient demon with total control of space whose lover you just killed. When the enraged demon goes after you, you're only able to kill her because she expends too much energy creating and supporting Another Dimension designed to kill your party and she goes after you again despite her wounds to ensure she takes you out while collapsing the dimension. Her death causes Lambda's strategist to propose a plan to have the remaining Brionac Lieutenants attack the heroes all at once, which gets rejected because The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness had other ideas. From that point on, it seems like you fight the Quirky Miniboss Squad in descending levels of power, culminating in a battle against a scientist who just stands there while you wail on him.
- Subverted (perhaps unintentionally) in Painkiller. While the first boss is a skyscraper-sized undead giant that requires massive amounts of punishment to bring down, the following bosses get successively smaller. The 4th boss is "only" about King Kong sized, and the final boss (Satan himself) is a pathetically easy Puzzle Boss who can literally be killed in seconds.
- Play largely straight in Season 1 Sam And Max Episodes, where each episode's villain was secretly The Man Behind The Man of the previous episode's villain, and would increase in important from local criminals all the way up to President Abraham Lincoln, the Internet itself, and finally the Big Bad himself. Mildly subverted in the end, as the Big Bad was revealed to have been, all along, an annoying recurring secondary character that had appeared throughout the season. Though the first episode villain was acting alone.
- Lampshaded in Perfect Cherry Blossom in the Reimu's Extra Stage, which consists of a midboss fight against Chen, the boss of the second stage. When you meet Ran, her master and boss of the stage, Reimu notes that she has already fought Chen but didn't think it was anything special because she was a Stage 2 boss.
- Also subverted in Mountain of Faith, where the first midboss you encounter is supposedly a god, yet goes down in less than two minutes. Even less if Marisa B's power level is between 3.00 and 3.95
- Seemingly subverted in the final boss fight in Zelda: The Twilight Princess: Ganondorf goes from gargantuan teleporting boar, to a demon head made of pure energy (Sadly, you run from that fight), to a man on horseback who can summon ghost horsemen at will, to a final fight between you and him on foot with swords. Somehow, though, the difficulty ramps up with each successive battle.
- Most Might And Magic games starting with #3 follow the trope. You start the game in the easiest town and the more you move away from this town the harder the game becomes. Might And Magic III had a very tough dungeon (the aptly-named Maze From Hell) not too far from the start point but it was locked and could only be entered much later in the game. The trope is completely subverted in Might And Magic VI though. In this game, the starting area has 3 dungeons: Goblin Watch, the starter dungeon; the Abandoned Temple, a slightly harder and longer dungeon meant to be completed next; and Gharik's Forge, one of the most difficult areas in the entire game (possibly the series) and meant for the second half of the game. The Forge is unlocked and the only way to tell it's best left for later is to enter it and watch the entire party get slaughtered within seconds.
- Shadow Hearts Covenant takes this to an extreme. Every time the heroes defeat the apparent Big Bad threatening to destroy the world, a new one appears to, yes, threaten to destroy the world. Somehow it gets softer each time; starting with the threat of demonic global annihalation, and ending with the threat of having the war-torn recent history rewritten into a more peaceful one by the unusually benevolent final Big Bad.
- While they aren't exactly evil, the peak bosses in SSX 3 follow this pattern roughly; The boss of Peak One is arrogant upstart Mac Frasier, followed by the gargantuan, destructive human wrecking ball Nate Logan on Peak Two, and finally Psymon Stark, an unstable musclehead who might be violating his parole by competing, on Peak Three. Note that if you're playing as any of these guys, the peak boss is changed to 11-year old Griff Simmons on Peak One, riot grrrrrrrl Zoe Payne on Peak Two, and megalomaniac egotist Elise Riggs on Peak Three.
- Justified in Okami: Orochi's flunkies, the Spider Queen and Crimson Helm, pose very little trouble, and the Orochi himself is severely weakened after awakening from a 100-year imprisonment. The other major villains are already active presences in the world, but they are likewise diminished and can't regain their power, or even cause harm beyond their immediate area of influence, until they absorb the malevolent Life Energy of their slain brethren... culminating with Yami, Lord of Eternal Darkness, who takes all their evil power unto itself.
- Lampshaded in the end of the X-COM: Apocalypse Lets Play: As a bonus, after the game's done, there's a scene with what would've happened had the aliens sent their biggest and baddest ships through first. It's not pretty.
- Not just played straight, but formalized in [1], in which you fight your way up the ranks of the official top ten assassins.
- Partially averted in the early Pokemon games as Viridian City, the first town Ash travels to, was the home of the game's most powerful Gym Leader. The gym, however, is closed when he arrives and does not reopen until he has beatean everyone else and come back.
- Played strait in that he's Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket and the guy you've battled a few times as a boss anyway.
- Subverted in Tsukihime and its sequels. The power and abilities jump all over the place. Nero Chaos is easily the strongest adversary, much tougher than Roa or any of his opponents so far have been. Satsuki presumably comes after this at some point and doesn't amount to much yet. Then we have Kagetsu Tohya with Nanaya, someone Shiki can't beat, then Kishima Kouma who mainly has the advantage of almost literally being made of iron. Not much good against Shiki's eyes, though. Wallachia really only seems to be a problem because even Shiki's eyes can't kill him normally. In direct combat he appears to be rather weak.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Jackie Chan Adventures justifies this by saying that if an evil is destroyed, it only gives another, stronger evil a chance to take its place. Other than that, the series more or less kept Big Bad Shendu as the strongest foe of choice.
- In an aversion, while he's received some upgrades over the years, Megabyte from Reboot is not only still the main villain, but with the exception of the now-deleted virus Daemon, he seems have become the most powerful virus in existence!
- In Code Lyoko XANA's power increases every time they return to the past.
- Avatar The Last Airbender is an interesting variation. They started with Anti Villain Zuko, who was superseded by Admiral Zhao as the main threat. After Zhao's death came Zuko's Magnificent Bastard Psycho For Hire sister, the main threat for the second season, who posed far more of a threat than Zuko and Zhao combined and whom Zuko rejoined in the season finale. The variation comes from the Fire Lord being identified as the Big Bad from the very start of the series, both the audience and the protagonists fully aware that no matter how many enemies they face he would remain their ultimate goal.
- Of course, after seeing how much of a Magnificent Bastard Azula is, many thought that she would end up being the ultimate enemy, and planned to usurp her father. However, we eventually discover that he's not only much stronger than her, he's much stabler, which really comes in handy.
- Ozai is also the only character in the series who can truly command Azula's loyalty. This atually establishes him as more evil than she is- Azula seems to genuinely love her father, if no one else. He repays this by using her up and casting her aside so he won't have to share his glory. And as anyone who's seen the series can tell you, being more evil than Azula pretty much puts you at the end of the Algorithm by default.
- Surprisingly, The Fairly Oddparents... Timmy first starts off having to deal with mean babysitters and school bullies, eventually upgraded to his crazy fairy-hunting teacher. Now he routinely has to deal with the Xanatos Gambit-loving Pixies and Anti-Fairies who seem to be content with nothing less than the total domination and remaking of both Earth and the magical world.
- To be fair, this could simply be a result of him getting deeper into the world of magic, where the stakes are higher.
- Inverted in Ben 10, where each progressive seasons' Big Bad would actually be less powerful than the previous one (along with having smaller plots and fewer episodes dedicated to their plot arcs). Season 1's Big Bad was the hero's Arch Enemy, the most feared alien in the galaxy, bent on galactic conquest, who punches mountains apart and bodyslams buildings hard enough to make them explode. The following seasons featured as Big Bads an 11 year old who shared the hero's superpowers and whose sole goal was getting revenge on the hero, an alien ghost who "only" wanted to Take Over The World, and finally a guy in Powered Armor who only appeared in one episode (albeit a 2-part, 1 hour one), who had to assemble a team of previous secondary villains to do all his fighting for him, and whose big plan was basically to steal a Applied Phlebotinum battery that allowed his power armor to shoot Eye Beams.
- Subverted in WITCH, where the relative power levels of Big Bads, Dragons, and Mooks seem to spike up and down from time to time. The most powerful evil entity in the series is Prince Phobos, fought by the girls at the end of season one and a bit at the end of season two. He's always dangerous, and always requires the guardians to pull some kind of Xanatos Gambit to beat. Season two's villain is Nerissa, less powerful but more cunning than Phobos. Season two's Quirky Miniboss Squads elevate in power throughout the season (from Phobos' former mooks to custom-created elemental monsters and finally to the former Guardians themselves), but despite this, Nerissa's power remains generally the same, even as she absorbs Hearts throughout the season. Nerissa frequently runs from the guardians rather than fight them, as she gets trounced whenever she faces them directly. She's still a threat because of her planning, however. By the end of it all, the final battle of season two is against a bad guy who's as powerful as Phobos and Nerissa combined: The Dragon Cedric, who has consumed Phobos in order to absorb his and Nerissa's powers, along with the powers of the former Guardians, but because he doesn't know how to shot elements, he goes down in a few minutes in spectacular fashion.
- In its four movies, Danny Phantom played with this one a bit. In each successive movie, the villain's physical power and general imposingness decreased, but their actual threat level increased. The first movie villain, Pariah Dark, was by far the most powerful character in the series (four Dannys in four Humongous Mecha could barely restrain his de-powered form), yet he only managed to control the town for a day. Next came Danny's Magnificent Bastard future self, followed by a frail ringmaster named Freakshow who nonetheless manages to warp the entire country to his liking. The biggest bad of the series ultimately turns out to be an asteroid.
Web Original
- As the Dimensional Guardians from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes continue on their journey, the Dark Overlords, despite having equal control over Creturia, seem to escalate in power. Interestingly, their forces do, as well.
|
|
