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In classic Fairy Tales and folklore, the hero must often slay a dragon, or other semi-intelligent monster, before he can confront the intelligent (but weaker) master villain.
The Dragon is the second-biggest Big Bad, posing the greatest physical challenge to a hero. The hero must vanquish the Dragon before they can defeat the Big Bad.
The Dragon is one of the Evil Minions, generally second-in-command or at least the second greatest challenge to the hero. Can be used to mean a villain's Sidekick. The Dragon is an integral part of the Five Bad Band dynamic, where their role remains largely the same. If there's a Quirky Miniboss Squad, the Dragon is often the unofficial leader.
Note that in very old Western stories, actual dragons aren't that smart. This was subverted by writers like Tolkien, and now dragons are almost universally depicted as ancient and intelligent (as they always have been in China). In the same manner, some recent series subvert the trope, by having a villainous sidekick that is smarter than his/her boss, even if they lack ambition or scientific genius.
See also The Man Behind The Man, The Radar, Psycho For Hire. For literal dragons and their permutations, see Our Dragons Are Different.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the Jem'Hadar served as a collective Dragon for that show's collective Big Bad, the Founders.
- On Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
- In Season 1, Darla was The Dragon for the Master.
- In Season 2, Drusilla was The Dragon for Angelus.
- In Season 3, Faith was The Dragon for the Mayor.
- In Season 7, Caleb was The Dragon for The First Evil.
- On Buffy's spin-off Angel, the series finale featured Adam Baldwin as Hamilton, The Dragon for the series' Big Bad "The Senior Partners", who are never faced directly by Angel or his friends.
- On Supernatural, Meg is the Dragon for her father Azazel in Season 1. Jake is briefly the Dragon in the Season 2 finale.
- In 24 Season Five, Christopher Henderson is The Dragon to Charles Logan.
- In most versions of the Robin Hood legend, The Sheriff of Nottingham is The Dragon to Prince John.
- In the current BBC Series, The Sheriff is the Big Bad, and Sir Guy is his Dragon.
- Lampshaded (kind of) in Sea Quest DSV 2032; first episode, 3rd season. The Big Bad is Alexander Born, his general uses the callsign 'Dragon' when calling in the attack.
- In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Goldar fills this role to a T.
Anime
- In every Sailor Moon season except the last one, the first villain whom the audience believed to be the Big Bad was not, and was paving the way for an even more powerful Big Bad. And even in the fifth season, although the Dragon (Nehellenia) was shown being manipulated by an even more powerful evil from the start, it was not until she was defeated that the true Big Bad (Galaxia) was shown; until then, she appeared as a disembodied voice. Though it may be said that Galaxia was also a Dragon of sorts, as she was possessed by Chaos, the Big Bad of the universe.
- Bit of a subversion here: Soukou No Strain sets Medlock up as Ralph's superior; we're almost certain that he's going to overtake her as The Man Behind The Man because of Sara's personal motivation, and he does, but then he holds her hostage; she does a Heel Face Turn and suffers for it.
- "Nero" Chaos in Shingetsutan Tsukihime. Actually, he's here for Arcueid, who's here for Roa, who is a friend of Nero, but close enough.
- Legato Bluesummers in Trigun. Somewhat subverted, as his physical strength is in fact below average, and his primary strength is his mind-control ability.
- Debonair/Kiishim in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle serves as The Dragon during one of the first missions though in a triple subversion of the trope, she is both smarter than her boss, is being made to serve him via mind control, and is in the end the one who gives him what's coming to him.
- Chloe in Noir can be seen as The Dragon to her mother figure/boss Altena, and whether this was in fact part of Altena's plan is hotly debated among fans.
- Psycho For Hire Roberto in Monster is Johan Liebert's dragon and Battle Butler.
Comic Books
- The Batman villain Ra's al Ghul is usually accompanied by an extremely large thug named Ubu. Apparently this is a title, rather than a name; he tends to replace Ubus fairly frequently. Ubu was absent from the film, but Ken Watanabe's fake Ra's could be said to fulfill this function.
- In Ultimate Spider-Man, Elektra serves as the Dragon to the Kingpin of Crime. Not that the Kingpin isn't capable of quality violence in his own right...
- In the same universe, the Ultimate X-Men have to deal with the Weapon X project, led by a human military officer named John Wraith. He isn't particularly tough, but his personal Dragon is the gigantic mutant killing machine Sabretooth.
Film
- In the movie Die Hard, John McClane is hunted by Karl, The Dragon, and must defeat him before he can defeat Hans Gruber, the Big Bad.
- James Bond villains often have a Dragon: Oddjob in Goldfinger, Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me, etc.
- In Enter the Dragon, Bolo is The Dragon for Mr. Han, the Big Bad. Oddly, killing The Dragon falls to Roper the Con Man rather than Lee the Hero (who goes straight for Han as soon as Bolo is defeated, and who is The Dragon but not The Dragon).
- In Layer Cake, the evil Serbian warlord has a Dragon hitman named, appropriately enough, Dragan. He makes constant threats to decapitate Daniel Craig's character.
- In the Star Wars movies IV-VI, Darth Vader is The Dragon between the heroes and the Emperor. In I-III it's Darth Maul and later General Grievous. Darth Tyrannus doesn't quite fit the mold.
- Tyrannus does, however, have quite a few of his own Dragons: Jango Fett and Grievous (again), and in the Expanded Universe, Durge and Asajj Ventress, along with various other "Dark Acolytes" (yes, this editor is aware how corny that sounds).
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade serves as a nice comparison of the roles The Dragon and the Big Bad. The Dragon, Colonel Vogel, fights Indy in a climactic battle atop an Egyptian tank. The main villain, Walter Donovan, goes against our hero in a battle of wits to locate the true Holy Grail.
- In Mystery Men, Tony P winds up playing right-hand-man to Casanova Frankenstein. Tony P, in turn, has a Dragon of his own in Tony C.
- Almost every single Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie has a Dragon, typically played by stuntman Bolo Yeung, defending a swarmy white or Asian criminal mastermind.
- O-Ren Ishii, in Kill Bill, seems to collect them, having two chief bodyguards -- Johnny Mo, leader of the Crazy 88, and of course Gogo -- and a right-hand woman besides.
Literature
- Although Morgoth's minions in The Silmarillion include actual dragons such as Glaurung, Sauron most clearly fulfills this role, particularly in the story of Beren and Luthien.
- Sauron's own Dragon in the Lord Of The Rings saga is none other than the Witch King of Angmar, though Saruman also plays a Dragon role in the movie (though in the books, he was by no means a servant of him).
- Walter o'Dim in Steven King's Dark Tower series serves the enigmatic Crimson King.
Radio
Western Animation
- On Kim Possible, Shego is the dragon for Doctor Drakken (which ironically means dragon). She is a good deal more practical and clever than he, even if she can't build doomsday devices. In one Time Travel arc, she takes over the world on her own, upstaging all the other bad guys.
- Azula to her father Ozai, in Avatar The Last Airbender. In a Dream Sequence, she is even represented as a literal dragon.
- In the animated film The Flight Of Dragons, the evil red wizard Omaddon has an actual dragon as his bodyguard, the devilish Bryaugh. Bryaugh is strong enough to decimate the entire crew of good guys alone, but falls before Sir Orin who uses his own fire against him; he allows himself to become engulfed in it before tossing his flaming sword right into Bryaugh's heart, burning him from the inside and finally killing him despite sacrificing his own life beside his comrades. Omaddon then appears only to be challenged by the story's true hero, Sir Peter.
- From Jem episodes: "The Beginning" to "Hot Time In Hawaii", Zipper is the Dragon for Eric Raymond. Zipper is arrested by the Holograms. In the same cartoon, Techrat & "The Stingers" could be considered Dragons to Eric Raymond.
- In Teen Titans, Terra is The Dragon for the Big Bad, Slade. Slade himself becomes The Dragon to Trigon later on. Both involve The Dragon turning on their master, to varying degrees of effectiveness. In the fifth season, a new Big Bad was introduced in the form of The Brain; he had a Dragon (part of his Quirky Miniboss Squad) in the form of an intelligent gorilla named Monsieur Mallah.
- In Superman The Animated Series, Darkseid's son, Kalibak, functions as his Dragon - only for it to turn out that Darkseid himself is even stronger.
- Mercy Graves probably counts as Lex Luthor's Dragon, but outside of her memorable catfight with Harley Quinn in the "World's Finest" crossover, she never got to do much Dragon-ing. (After all, when your main adversary is Superman...)
- The premiere of Batman Beyond has Mr. Fixx as Derek Powers' bodyguard, hit man, and all-around Dragon. He is killed off by the time it's over, but that's okay - a little dose of I Love Nuclear Power, and Mr. Powers is set for the season.
Video Games
- In the Street Fighter games, Sagat is often portrayed as the dragon for M. Bison.
- In the original Mortal Kombat, Goro acts as the dragon for Shang Tsung. (In fact Goro is described as a "half human dragon.")
- Shang Tsung himself later becomes a cross between The Dragon and The Starscream to Shao Kahn's Big Bad, though in MKII and MK3, you have to fight Kintaro, another Goro-like Shokan warrior, and Motaro, an incredibly tough centaurian, before reaching Shao Kahn.
- In the Metroid series of games, the fairly dragon-like Ridley often functions as The Dragon for something more sinister, including the Mother Brain, Dark Samus and Metroid Prime itself. It is worthy of note that, with the exception of Mother Brain, Ridley is actually unaffiliated with the Big Bads, making the application of this trope a bit unclear. He does show an uncanny timing for appearing right before the actual final bosses, though.
- In Jade Empire, while initially thought to be the Big Bad, Death's Hand is in fact the Dragon for two successive Men Behind The Man. Oh, and there's also an actual dragon, but it's not The Dragon.
- In the original Fatal Fury, the game would have you believe that Billy Kane, Geese Howard's right hand man, is the final fight, but not long after the game starts, it becomes fairly obvious that Billy is only The Dragon, and that Geese Howard, the Big Bad, is the true final boss. Subverted later on in Fatal Fury 3, where Billy is defeated in story but not in-game, Geese is apparently The Dragon, with Yamazaki seeming to be the Big Bad, until Yamazaki's defeat reveals the Jin Twins, the true Big Bads of the game.
- Death in the Castlevania games almost always plays The Dragon for Dracula himself, and is occasionally referred to as Dracula's most loyal servant.
- Final Fantasy VIII has a chain of dragons: Raijin and Fujin act as Dragons for Seifer, Seifer is Dragon to Sorceress Edea, and Edea is Dragon to Ultimecia.
- Final Fantasy IV's Golbez, who is very much a Darth Vader figure, turns out to be Dragon to Zemus.
- The Time Crisis series has mercenary terrorist Wild Dog. In every single game. And yes, you do get to kill him every time. Interestingly enough, the first game had you offing the Big Bad at the end of the second act, saving Wild Dog for the finale.
- Lord Recluse, Big Bad of the City Of Heroes games, has four Dragons: Scirocco, Ghost Widow, Black Scorpion, and Captain Mako. (It may be more accurate to call them a Quirky Miniboss Squad.) Each of these lower ranking Arachnos members have a Dragon of their own, namely Ice Mistral, Wretch, Silver Mantis, and Barracuda, respectively.
- Grodus from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the Dragon for the Shadow Queen. He attempts to command her, but is zapped for his trouble.
- The Black Knight serves as the Dragon for the Fire Emblem games Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. In the first, he serves the Big Bad Ashnard as a member of the Four Riders. He does this in conquering Crimea and searching for Lehran's Medallion, not to mention killing the main protagnist Ike's father. This eventually leads to a Duel Boss fight between him and Ike. (Although Ike's sister Mist can help with healing Ike).
- In Radiant Dawn, he turns to serve as the Dragon for his true master Sephiran under his true identity of Zelgius, the noble leader of the Begnion Central Army. There he has a true Duel Boss fight with Ike by creating a magical barrier that separates the two of them from their respective forces.
- Of course Sephiran can be considered a Dragon as well, as he must be fought and defeated so the party can reach the goddess Ashera, whom he serves.
- Every game in the series seems to have one of these. Particularly bizarre in the first game where a priest takes this role for a literal Dragon.
- An even more bizarre example happens in Fire Emblem 6: An actual dragon can be the Dragon to Big Bad Zephiel, but if you get all the Infinity Plus One Sword-esc weapons, you actually get to have an extended story where the the dragon is acually the Dragon to Zephiel who really is the Dragon to the exact same dragon. To make it even more confusing, said dragon can have another dragon who is her Dragon. Try to wrap your brain around that one.
- Inuart, after suffering from mind-bending torture, becomes The Dragon to the Big Bad in Drakengard
- Barbatos Goetia from Tales Of Destiny 2 exemplifies this trope, being The Dragon of 'Holy Woman' Elraine.
- In Shadow Hearts: Covenant', there are multiple Dragons: in the first half of the game Rasputin ends up playing the role for Nicolai, who later plays The Dragon himself for Kato.
- Super Robot Wars Original Generation LOVES these.
- In the first OG, we had Ingram Prissken who acts like The Dragon for Levi Tolar (unwillingly, actually)
- In the second OG, we have lots of them:
- Axel Almer acts like The Dragon for Vindel Mauser
- Alfimi is like The Dragon for (Stern) Neue Regisseur
- Strange that both The Dragons end up joining you in OG Gaiden
- Oh, and Mekibos is actually The Dragon for Wendolo, as he seemed to lead the rest of the Quirky Miniboss Squad the Inspectors. And he joins you too, temporarily before he's offed. He may be back, though, if the SRW 4 story is to get implemented to the Original Generation
- In OG Gaiden, Duminuss is The Dragon for Dark Brain. It's also arguable that Wilhelm von Juergen is unknowingly playing The Dragon part for Duminuss.
- The Wing Commander series has an interesting variation of this trope - The Dragon is an ace pilot you must dogfight with before destroying the real bad guy (who usually isn't a fighter pilot.) Prince Thrakhath plays The Dragon to the Wing Commander III Big Bad, the Kilrathi emperor (whose death is in a Cutscene, not directly killed by the player); Seether plays The Dragon to WC 4's Big Bad Tolwyn.
- For extra value, Seether flies a fighter commonly called the Dragon, in the final flight mission.
- Ramirez from Skies Of Arcadia is The Dragon of Galcian. He's also the last boss because the heroes, in adherence to the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil, destroy the weaker Galcian first. Ramirez does not take that well.
- In Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, Prince LaCroix of Los Angeles has a gigantic, mute Nagloper vampire as his right-hand henchman and Sheriff (basically the one responsible for enforcing Camarilla law in the prince's territory). The Sheriff is, in all but one ending, the game's final boss -- LaCroix himself does not put up much of a fight.
- While it's open to interpretation, like many other things in the game, Metal Mario has always seemed for this troper like the Dragon for Master Hand in the Super Smash Bros universe.
- In Kingdom Hearts II, who the Dragon is in Organization XIII (or if there even is one) has had some mild debate, even on this wiki. The general consensus seems to be between Xigbar, who actually is Number II, has a bit of a backstory, and has the most battle prowess, and Saix, who acts in a possition of authority, gets more screentime, and is actually the boss fight before the final boss.
- Each of the three Big Bads in Seiken Densetsu 3 has their own pair of Dragons: the Darkshine Knight and Koren, the Wizard of the Red Lotus; Jagan and Bigieu; Deathjester and Heath.
Webcomics
- In Erfworld, the color-coded Evil Overlord's second-in-command is a powerful Croakamancer and far smarter than her boss. However, he has a divine artifact, indulges her hobbies -- and she knows how to "arrange it so that he thinks it was his idea."
- Also, the laws of her universe dictate that she obey his commands.
- In Order Of The Stick, Redcloak is The Dragon and right-hand-man to Xykon, as is the Monster In The Shadows. Recently, Tsukiko could be considered yet another Dragon for Xykon
- For a while, Miko appeared to be The Dragon to Lord Shojo, but it turned out that he was actually a good guy, and Miko was just a little overzealous.
- Therkla the ninja serves as the Dragon to the corrupt Lord Kubota.
- A prequal book (Start Of Darkness) shows that Xykon was, at one point, the dragon to Redcloak before becoming more powerful and carrying and a rather nasty gambit which involved making Redcloak kill his brother and then ordering him to turn the corpse into a zombie.
- Ysengrin is Coyote's dragon in Gunnerkrigg Court.
- In Evil Overlords United
 , the second in command is literally a dragon. He's also not overly bright and seems to have a thing for human females.
Other
- On the Neopets website, Doctor Sloth's Dragon is Commander Garoo, although he hasn't enjoyed much screen time.
- In the Madness Combat series of Flash animations, Jebus/Joe/the one with the halo was originally The Dragon for The Sheriff, but he has since taken over as Hank's arch-nemesis.
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