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alt title(s): Monster Decay Sideshow Bob: Hello Bart...
Bart: Oh its you Bob. How' ya doin'?
Sideshow Bob: No screams? ...not even..an "Eep."?
Bart: Hey, I'm not afraid of you. Everytime we tangle you wind up in jail!
The process by which a villain who is extremely scary on first appearance becomes a joke after a few more appearances.
In most shows, Failure Is The Only Option for the Villains, because success would mean that the villains conquer the world, kill all the good guys, and otherwise do things that make future episodes impossible. Inevitably, the viewers start to wonder why the heroes act concerned about an enemy that they've beaten six times already. Note that this does not apply to shows where the villains are supposed to be incompetent jokes from the start.
Most writers will try to stop this decline in menace, which sometimes helps and sometimes makes the Villain Decay worse. Standard tricks include:
- Softening the villain up in the hopes that this will make the villain interesting even when losing threat value.
- Have a Ratings Stunt where the villain kills off a character, and thus becomes scary again.
- Give the villain a new weapon or power. This gets old fast unless it becomes the basis of the show.
- Bring in a new, stronger villain, and downgrade the old one to a flunky of the new one or a secondary threat. Repeating this leads to the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil.
- Bring in a new, stronger villain and then reveal the new villain as a flunky of the previously decayed one. Some of the new villain's cool might have rubbed off on the old one, right?
- If you can't do either of the above two, you can theoretically put off a villain's decay by using said villain sparingly. Of course, taking too long between reappearances does have its own consequences. This may also create a Villain On A Bus.
- Turn the villain into a comic-relief pest.
- Escalate the villain's crimes. Win or lose, a villain who plants nuclear bombs is scarier than one who robs banks, at least, in theory. They might end up sending the villain past the Moral Event Horizon in the process if they go too far.
- Lower the stakes, so that the villain can win occasionally, but it won't end the series right there.
- Alternatively, turn the villain into a Worthy Opponent; that way the villain (theoretically) can retain his dignity even if he repeatedly loses. Worked for Dr. Doom and Raoh at least.
- Completely redo a villain's motivations (using Character Development as opposed to Motive Decay), so they have a different angle and persona to work from that isn't tainted with failure. This worked very well for a certain Mad Scientist-turned-businessman Lex Luthor for a bit, until Villain Decay caught up with a vengeance.
- Force hero and villain into an Enemy Mine scenario against a greater threat, then restore the status quo, as this allows the villains to technically win for once and show off their talents.
- Show an Alternate Universe where the villain has won.
- Make sure the hero's victory is only by the narrowest of margins, with a price paid. Generally a preventive measure rather than a corrective one.
- Have the villain do something so awesome that we don't notice the decay, such as delivering a hilarious zinger, a chilling Hannibal Lecture, or suddenly kicking peoples' butts left and right. Much easier to mess up than do correctly.
- Put them in a situation where the villains can temporarily be Anti Hero protagonists to show how powerful and skilled they are in a way that the audience will accept. The obvious example is in The DCU, where villains could be secretly recruited by the US government for a mission with the Suicide Squad. Thus, the gang of supervillains will take on other supervillains with the reader comfortably cheering them as he sees how tough they really are.
- Trapping the villain in some kind of containment field, forcing him to rely on agents to do his bidding.
- If you're designing a villain for a videogame, you can just have the villains ignore any victories by the heroes.
- Start an Enemy Civil War.
- Second-to-last resort: ignore the decay and just have characters talk about how evil and scary the villain still is.
- The last-ditch resort: let the villain get more pathetic, and do a Lampshade Hanging about it every episode.
But the fastest way to decay a villain is to make him switch sides.
Of course, you can prevent this by not having failure be the only option for the villain; let them win battles, but not the war, or let their evil plan come closer and closer to completion while the heroes race to prevent its final success. Or, for the really cunning villain, dupe the heroes into doing what they wanted all along...
Note that Villain Decay is almost never caused by a lack of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, a difficulty in recruiting Mooks, or even injuries from battle with the heroes — which is to say, they don't become worse off because they have lost. Also note that a Villainous Breakdown is not a guarantee of Villain Decay. Decay will only happen quicker if their entire Villain Pedigree is replaced. If you have a Boring Invincible Hero Villain Decay is almost assured, even for characters who haven't fought yet.
See also Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, Harmless Villain, and Lowered Monster Difficulty, Motive Decay.
Compare and contrast Boring Failure Hero and The Worf Effect, which is this trope for the good guys. Same concept—repeated failures ruins their credibility as a Badass—different role.
Examples
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Anime
- Even in Pokemon, Team Rocket started out being more dangerous and effective before they became... well... Team Rocket.
- The games have actively tried to avoid this. Team Rocket only appeared in the first two sets of the main series of games. Since then, almost every spin-off and main-series game that includes criminal organizations includes entirely different ones. They've also upped the ante for their plans each time. Team Rocket in the first just wanted to make money, The Remnant members in the second wanted to rebuild, the team in the third tried to modify the landscape of the earth (or at least the area they were in), and the leader in the fourth wanted to use the powers of a legendary mon to become God.
- Beck from The Big O is the world champ of Villain Decay: the writers put him through almost every one of the gimmicks mentioned above. First he got a cool new weapon, then he got played as a buffoon (complete with a comically grotesque hairdo), then the hero was put into an Alternate Universe where Beck was a real threat, before he finally ended up just being an underling working for Big Bad Alex and his Psycho For Hire, Alan Gabriel.
- Well, that's all true, assuming you believe he was set up to be a competent villain in the first place. In the manga, that's perfectly true, and he is a competent villain. In the anime, it's fairly obvious that he was intentionally turned into comic relief. He starts out being effective because he's actually smart enough to dial down his own ego and commence his plans intelligently. Unfortunately, his ego takes control in later episodes, and his decay is quite noticable. Also, it's rather blatantly implied that he really isn't fit to be a villain, and that his true genius is in building robots and neural A Is (which he remains shockingly good at, as lampshaded by Gabriel, and later by Super Robot Wars Z). That said, the decay of the anime Beck is quite possibly justifed.
- The Knights of Rounds in Code Geass R2. In their first appearance, they were shown as Britannia's elite force. Lelouch and the Black Knights were struggling when fighting only three of them (Suzaku, Gino, and Anya). But as episodes passed, they became easier and easier to incapacitate. Then, the show introduced more Knights of Rounds. After that, one of the Knights of Rounds got killed. Then, Suzaku does a Heel Face Turn and gets a stronger robot. Right after that, Suzaku's able to slice down his superiors in mere seconds. However, it's probably justified due to the Lensman Arms Race being in effect, where the Super Prototypes quickly become reverse engineered and dated in the space of a few episodes. So, the Knights of Rounds' demise could be explained because they didn't upgrade their Knightmares enough. The fact that Tamaki was shown to be more competent and badass, however, is not justified.
- This is an ironic example, as the rest of Code Geass is quite good at avoiding Villain Decay. Any given battle is generally a toss-up, with the protagonists winning and losing a roughly equal number of battles, and almost every major villain getting in a victory or two. Cornelia is portrayed as both a highly competent tactician and fighter, the Glaston Knights are a force to be reckoned with, and Suzaku manages to win a ton of battles and lose very few. The climactic battle at the end of the first season is in fact won by the villains of the series, while the protagonist is defeated, captured, and has his memories erased.
- Britannia in general suffers this for most of the second season. In Season 1, Britannia is basically using only grunts with the occasional good pilot (Cornelia, Jeremiah), with Suzaku essentially taking on the entire Black Knights by himself and succeeding quite often. When Britannia gets serious and sends out the Glaston Knights, they easily defeat the Black Knights without Lelouch and Kallen to save them. In R2, Britannia is pretty much using their best soldiers and they get their asses handed to them regularly with the previously mentioned Knights being reduced to jobbers by the end of the series. It gets so bad that the leadership of the Black Knights throws out Lelouch -albeit manipulated by Prince Schneizel who is pretty much the only competent Britannian commander left by then- just so the series could have the protagonist face an actual challenge on the battlefield again.
- Subverted in Yu-Gi-Oh! with Yami Bakura. Initially he's really just a side-villain, nowhere near a main threat, and no one really spends a lot of time on him - in fact, in the first season he's defeated by the sidekick in a sideplot while Yugi is busy with the Big Bad. As it turns out, this works to his advantage, since it allows him to lurk around setting up his evil plans with no one noticing. By the time the final season rolls around, he puts all those puzzle pieces to work and becomes the season's Big Bad.
- Justified in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Viral was designed for this trope. In his first appearance, he nearly hands the heroes their asses, but in every further appearance he's defeated with less effort. Despite showing up with a new upgraded mecha each time, he's eventually beaten by the human's mass-produced mecha who's pilots don't even break a sweat. The reason for this, in-show, is because non-evolving beastmen can never match constantly the power of the spiral-powered humans. He gets better after his Heel Face Turn.
- Interesting metaexample: in the Sailor Moon anime the Quirky Miniboss Squads grow less menacing and more comedic with each passing season. This did not hold to the manga.
- The Gillian in Bleach. When one makes its first appearance, it is a genuine threat, very scary, and only barely driven off by Ichigo and Uryu double-teaming it. By the start of the Arrancar arc, we've learned that the Menos which Ichigo drove off is a mere soldier, and while dangerous, no threat to a captain class Soul Reaper. There also exist the higher order Menos, the Adjucas and Vastro Lordes (Vastrode), the latter of which far exceed any captain in ability. By the time of the Captain Amagai arc (possibly filler, or possibly a deleted storyline like the Forest of the Menos), the giant Gillian is a threat that can be destroyed by only two or three ordinary Soul Reapers; generally without even using their Shikai. (if they even have one) Sorta pathetic for a creature which requires the Special Royal Guards Squad to defeat.
- The decay of the Menos Grande is summed up perfectly by the fact that, with his Shikai, Hanataro can beat one.
- Plain ol' hollows were only dangerous for the first 15 episodes or so. Once Uryu shows up, it's shown that he and Ichigo can each take them on 4 at a time without much trouble. In the beginning of the Captain Amagai filler arc, Ichigo is up against over 50 hollows and uses his bankai. (no mask, just bankai) Rukia chides him for unnecessarily wasting his spirit energy.
- Arrancar themselves have decayed quite a bit. The first wave manged to be overcome by Captains and vice-captains, but the Big Bad didn't think much of it as they were mere Gillian. Then more of the Espada are introduced as recurring antagonists, and that long-dead first wave is retconned into being Adjucas, the intermediate stage hollows. By the time the actual war starts up, non-Espada Arrancar are at best Elite Mooks, and the top five out of ten ranked Espada are the only real threats. This all culminates in a scene where Aizen kills the last Espada himself, confident that he could have beaten every Protagonist on the field alone!
- Arguably worse was when the strongest Espada Starrk is killed by a Kyouraku's shikai. Not bankai, shikai.
- Orochimaru from Naruto suffers from some Villain Decay over time. In the Chunin Exam arc, he's too strong for any of the heroes to defeat, forcing the Third Hokage to sacrifice himself to save the village (which doesn't even kill him entirely). Then it's revealed that he lost to Itachi in the past while trying to claim his body, and in most of the battles after that, he's defeated easily or forced to retreat. This is partly because he he isn't always at full strength when he fights, but it shows that he's lost much of his original threat.
- Orochimaru has got nothing on The Man Behind The Man Uchiha Madara, though. That poor sadsack suffered through two crushing offscreen defeats before his character was even formally introduced. He also had the misfortune to make The Reveal right when The Syndicate Akatsuki was having their credibility tarnished from back-to-back losses, tainting him with their failure. Apparently The Dragon Nagato handed over the Real Villain reins while the getting was good. He's done nothing to reverse his decay since then, repeatedly putting his faith into subordinates Nagato, Konan, Kisame, and Sasuke only to have them repeatedly fail him.
- Tarant Shank, the arguable Big Bad of Tenchi Muyo GXP, decays very fast. In his first appearance he's portrayed as an extremely dangerous and unstable villain who nearly kills Seina, Mitoto, and Kiriko, and leaves Seina traumatized from the experience. However, his next appearance has him appear with a broken arm (revealed later to be from fighting Tenchi and company off screen) and he quickly goes downhill from there; his plans are easily foiled by Seina's group, his ship is utterly destroyed, and his role as Big Bad is supplanted by Seiryo of all people. He makes a minor comeback in the the final few episodes, but never manages to quit regain the same threat level he had in his original appearance.
- The Trinity Siblings in Gundam 00 may qualify. Their first appearance sets the group up as a decent fighting force, with them single-handedly rescuing the other Meisters from certain capture, and obliterating most of the Union's and Human Reform League's ranks. However, following this, they're systematically defeated time after time, even, in part, by faceless Elite Mooks, until it culminates in the resident Complete Monster shooting one of them dead and effortlessly defeating the second, the third being handily saved by a timely intervention of her enemy. This can, somewhat, be justified, as they were caught off guard by both the Trial System's effects and the GN-X models, which were on par with Gundams, but the fact that they put up so little of a fight is still surprising.
- Antagonists of the second season decay pretty badly by its second half. Fist A-LAWS and then Ribbons' personal squad of personality-lacking bishonens initially appear as very threatening antagonists, repeatedly pushing the Celestial Being to the brink of destruction, but then decay to Elite Mooks, with A-LAWS eventually being demoted all the way to the status of normal Mooks, that ineffectually die by the dozens in the final episodes. If we count things beyond sheer combat potential, Ribbons himself decays very badly as well: after being presented as cunning Magnificent Bastard who manipulated just about everyone for his own gain in the first season; he can't come up with anything better than making his puppets commit massive atrocities for no apparent purpose (shooting backwards nations - that could't possibly resist an old-style invasion and posed no real threat to his world domination - with a Kill Sat is the best example), except to make his side look evil and make sympathetic characters defect from it or semi-randomly throwing them against the Celestial Being. This culminates at firing Wave Motion Gun in the midst of space battle, so that it wipes out his own A-LAWS fleet, while doing little damage to the enemy and then using a huge bunch of mobile armors, that pack Super Mode and are crewed by Super Soldiers as suicide weapons (and pretty low-powered ones).
- In what may be an amusing subversion, many a viewer thought that Ali Al-Sarshes' return in Season 2 would prove to be as horrific as the body count he racked up in the first season, but in fact, aside from burning down a significant portion of Azadistan, Ali does little more than be an Elite Mook for Ribbons, with other Innovators and even A-LAWS aces accomplishing more than he does. It begins to seem like Villain Decay in a very severe case until you consider that his "elite fighting skills" were demonstrated against a pilot whose fighting style he knew in and out (Setsuna), an unarmed woman (Kinue), a pair of undertrained pilots intended by their employer to be sacrificed who were hardly on top of their game at the moment(Michael and Johann), and a pilot not fighting at his best who's still getting used to the sudden erasure of the GN tech gap that put them in a superior position initially (Lockon). Similarly, in Season 2 he goes up against an artillery platform that really isn't well suited for melee (Tieria in the Seravee) and the aforementioned pilot whose moves he knows inside and out, who still kicks his ass when he goes Trans-Am( Setsuna in the 00). When he finally goes up against Lyle in the Grand Finale, who has none of the disadvantages his predecessor did, it's clear that despite the damage to Cherudim, Ali's getting his ass handed to him (up to the shot of Arche with a beam hole through its head with pinpoint precision), and eventually he's shot in the face like a rabid dog when he can't repress his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and tries to gun down Lyle during his brief moment of mercy. The Hype Aversion for his supposedly godly piloting skills was utterly hilarious to viewers that'd been waiting to see him get taken out for the entire season.
- Several things wrong here: For starters, Ali was kicking around the tails of the Gundam Meisters in a random mook suit before he knew who they even were — and he didn't train Setsuna to fly, just guerrilla tactics and CQC, so that argument is rather gone. He took out the Trinities, who were in Gundams against the one machine he'd just took out, in his own Gundam, took on Lockon when Lockon was specifically gunning for him, took on more experienced Gundam Meisters in better suits — and losing to Trans-Am isn't really a demerit. At the end, he tried to take advantage of Lyle lowering his guard and he mainly lost due to the shut down of his mobile suit, given he was doing damage to the Cherudim as well (and that's after Cherudim got Deus Ex Machina powerup - until that the fight was completely one-sided in Ali's favor). Ali might be one of the most vile men in the franchise, but give the guy his due for the skills, given he proved them time and time again and tended to, until the final fight, lose to very power ups...in the end, though, he is relegated to 'elite mook' status, so this definitely constitutes decay.
- In Macross Plus, the X-9 Ghost Unmanned Fighter is a terrifying threat, capable of fighting off two Ace Pilots, even though each is using their respective Super Prototype against it. When the mass-production model of the X-9, the Ghost V-9 shows up in the Grand Finale of Macross Frontier, under the control of the Galaxy fleet, they are reduced to mere Elite Mooks, which can easily be taken on one on one by SMS's Ace Pilots. They do slaughter the Redshirt Army however.
- It helps that the VF-25 is far, far more advanced than the YF-21 and YF-19. Also the V-9s were under Slave control of the Battle Galaxy (that is, Grace herself). When Luca released his own V-9 escort drones via the JUDAH System, he made specific mention of them having become just as deadly as the prototype Ghost X-9.
- G Gundam has Wong Yun Fat, the Neo Hong Kong Premier and sponsor of the Gundam Fight. He's an intelligent Affably Evil Magnificent Bastard with dashes of The Chess Master, but as the plot advances and we get into the Battle Royale arc, he gets TWO very undignified deaths that reduce his Magnificent Bastard points so he can give space for the true mastermind, The Starscream Urube Ishikawa.
- Gin of Detective Conan inverted this to an extreme by getting progressively more evil and intelligent the longer the series goes on.
- A particularly jarring example is The Shinigami Grell Sutcliffe from Kuroshitsuji. While he wasn't ever exactly menacing he did act as one half of Jack the Ripper and murder Ciel's last living family member in a fit of pique. Enter the filler arc and suddenly he's a de-fanged sidekick with a crush on Sebastian.
- Hao from Shaman King gets hit by this hard at the very end. A thousand years old, and controls the fundamental spirit of fire (That eats souls), willing to wait a long time for his plans to succeed and very calm and calculating. There was pretty much no way for our heroes to succeed in the final showdown, even with superior numbers. So at the end he loses his cool, calm and collected demeanor and loses because of this.
- Actually, he loses more because the hero managed to channel the collective powers of every living thing on earth and use them against him. The loss of his facade certainly didn't help matters, though.
- Scar nearly fell into this hole at the end of Fullmetal Alchemist's first season. A filler episode cast him as sympathetic and a nice guy who cared for people, assisting in a raid on the corrupt military and taking out general asshole Barry the Chopper, who put Alphonse through his worst angst crisis ever only a few episodes before. The writers quickly took note of this, and by the next episode had neatly hung a lampshade on it: Alphonse tells Ed that Scar is 'kind of a nice guy actually.' Ed's response: 'He's a murderer. He's trying to kill me. Stop being such an Al, Al.' Two scenes later he kills some guys on motorcycles. It's awesome.
- Envy in the manga provides a straight example. This is the guy who killed Hughes and generally made life miserable for every protagonist, and he's kicked Ed's ass at least once. His last two fights are against Marcoh, who uses his knowledge of philosopher's stones to decompose him, and Roy, who puts him through one of the worst curb stompings in manga history.
- Buggy the Clown and his crew from One Piece spent their first appearance as a serious threat. In the manga, Buggy's first scene is him brutally killing one of his own crew members (he actually spares the guy in the anime.) But after Buggy's defeat, in all subsequent appearances he is portrayed as incompetent and having lost much of the "monster" in his status as a Monster Clown.
- What's worse is that he was once an apprentice pirate with Shanks in The Roger Pirates, and while they would seem to be of equal power or potential, Shanks seems even stronger each time we learn more about him (like being compared to Mihawk, and turning out to be one of the Four Emperors), while Buggy couldn't defeat one of Impel Down's Blugori while Luffy effortlessly takes down five.
- A lampshade is hung on this when Luffy and the group of big-name former prisoners he was with him finally escaped Impel Down. At about this point, Buggy's past on the Roger Crew was revealed, causing Emporio Ivankov to muse that Buggy is likely the 'disgrace' of the Roger Pirates.
- A further, even more embarrassing lampshade is hung by the reactions of other pirates to Buggy's arrival on the battlefield between Whitebeard and the Marine plus Shichibukai. Whitebeard asks Buggy if he's here to take his head, and suggests that while they could fight now, he was having trouble against the marines and could use help. Buggy, cowering, gladly accepts. Then Whitebeard tells one of his captains that Buggy's mooks from the prison would have been a bigger problem. When you're less threatening then your mooks, you've hit the bottom.
- Ranma ½ has Kuno, who, in the very earliest portions of the story, is represented as some sort of deadly, even lethal threat to Ranma... up until his first defeat, after which, he was little more than a Butt Monkey even on his best of days, with Ranma Badass Back attacks leveling him. They don't even mention Kuno as being in any way threatening even to the untrained civilians of the cast. Later specials had to give him random superpower-granting artifacts to even put him in the same league as Ranma.
- Miyo Tanako from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni has some of this. It only takes one setback and some pressure from her superiors to incite her downfall from a cunning chess master to an overly emotional, irrational wreck.
- However, Takano did end up going Level 5 and clawing out her own throat, so we don't know how long this was affecting her though process.
- Crona and Ragnarok in Soul Eater following their Heel Face Turn; justified through losing the power of human souls that made them so dangerous in the first place. Now they're back with Medusa, of course, it's likely back to Crazy Awesome Nightmare Fuel time. Yay.
- Arguably, Giriko. That is, the idea of a mad git with a chainsaw as a Weapon form does start out as a dangerous prospect, especially when he defeats the kids with no effort whatsoever meaning Justin Law had to step in (cue convenient example of the skill of a Death Scythe). Afterwards he's shown to be really rather silly and as such considerably less threatening.
- All those evil corporations, organizations and elite hacker groups seem pretty daunting at first in Serial Experiments Lain. The knights were particularly presented as being god-tier hackers. Not to mention the fact that pretty much EVERYTHING in this series is strangely horrifying. It has you rather worried for Lain, that is until we find out (MAJOR SPOILER) that Lain has complete control of the Wired, which in it's merging state with the real world, pretty much makes her god. Sayonara Eiri and knights, deleted.
- Kagura in Inuyasha suffers this. She nearly overwhelms Inuyasha own her own his first two fights with her, but a big contributer to that was because he couldn't use his Wind Scar supermove on her because she could control the air. When he gained the ability to use it whenver he wanted, he could take her easily. She was however, still a tough enemy for the rest of the cast. What really killed as a threat was how she villains stronger then her kept on popping up.
Comic Books
- Generally speaking, this has been a big problem for American Super Hero comics for a long time, due to their serialized nature and the constantly recurring villains. This was especially a problem during the Silver Age, where writers like Stan Lee would have the villains openly say "This time my brilliant plan will work perfectly! And those pesky heroes will be unable to stop me!!!" and whatnot without any sense of irony after having been clobbered multiple times already (and the reader was supposed to take the threat to the hero at straight face value, to boot). A lot of the accomplishments - and problems - surrounding American comicry from the 1970s onward can be traced in large part to attempting to combat Villain Decay while keeping the now-decades-old continuity running without having to constantly invent new villains.
- By far, the Joker from the Batman comic book series. This page
 nicely details his periods of decay. Arguably, the same thing can be said for any other villain featured in the 60's show.
- That was, though, mostly the the 60's and early 70's. After that It Got Worse, by very far.
- He has recovered from this decay every time, most recently in The Dark Knight, which had the honor of being the first comic book movie to win an academy award for best actor, because the Joker in it was THAT damn brilliant/terrifying.
- Many villains of Crisis Crossover's suffer this if they are ever seen again. The Beyonder of Marvel's Secret Wars is a good example. Presented as a mysterious and powerful cosmic being in the original maxi-series, he assumes human form and becomes mostly a joke in Secret Wars II. One memorable scene involves Spider-Man teaching him how to use the bathroom. It doesn't help that his character was portrayed inconsistently throughout the second maxi-series and the tie-ins. In one tie-in, he's murdering the New Mutants (only to bring them Back From The Dead later), in another he's consoling the Human Torch over the accidental death of a fan. It's little wonder that Secret Wars II is considered 'drek' by many comics fans.
- It was beyond drek, no pun intended. The first Secret Wars series was a bad joke, but it was 'self-contained' and could have been and should have been ignored afterward. Instead, they had the Beyonder wandering around the Earth, interrupting ongoing plots for no reason, really serving no purpose whatsoever. It was just painful. It's probably not a coincidence that when the next equivalent of Secret Wars started, the ghastly-awful Infinity Gauntlet nonsense, it was ignored in the X-titles, which were at the time Marvel's primary popularity source.
- Darkseid, once considered to be a great Big Bad in the DC Universe, has suffered from this greatly in recent years. In his first appearances, he needed somebody big (Superman big) to thwart him in even the short term, and the whole Justice League had to be mobilized to repel his many invasion attempts on planet Earth. In more recent comics, just the Green Arrow and the Atom is apparently enough to kill him.
- While it's a bit early to tell, Final Crisis seems to be subverting this. It's not even finished and Darkseid has already gotten a kickass redesign, enslaved Earth with the Anti-Life Equation, is working to destroy the Multiverse, and reduced one of Metropolis' most hard-nosed police officers into a submissive slave by taking over his body.
- Oh, and killed Batman.
- Of course, he is defeated by Superman singing at him.
- he only defeated his soul, his body was killed with a time-traveling bullet made out of the one thing that can kill a New God, then then killed some more by the most badass version of Death ever (really a Knight with Skis).
- Atom and Green Arrow killed him in an alternate future, AND in an utterly amazing way, AND AND about ten seconds before the end of the planet, so I don't really think he counts.
- Colonel Olrik of Blake and Mortimer fame fits this trope to a tee. In his first appearance, he aided The Empire in bringing about World War Three and successfully conquering the world. Understandably, his later appearances as a smuggler/thief/spy are not as impressive.
- Even when said Empire's bloodthirsty dictator was brought Back From The Dead via Time Travel and Olrik joined him once more in The Strange Encounter he was little more than a thug.
- The Hobgoblin from Spider-Man. This page tells it all.
- Also, Venom, whose career as a psychotic murderer and Spiderman's most frightening enemy ended the minute he decided to become "the Lethal Protector".
- In his first appearance, Doomsday was an Implacable Man who weathered the combined attacks of numerous superheroes without much effect before he and Superman tore up half the city killing each other. In his second appearance, they were only able to stop him by sending him to the end of time. Also, Doomsday has the ability to come back from the dead, now immune to whatever killed him in the first place. Apparently, Superman is now easily capable of defeating him alone, because he decided he needn't be afraid of him anymore. Or something.
- If we're thinking of the same instance, it was a one-off because Doomsday had become intelligent, rendering him able to fear death. The intelligence was later removed, rendering him his previous un-psych-out-able self.
- In Infinite Crisis, during the Battle of Metropolis, Doomsday was again beaten fairly quickly. To be fair, it DID take TWO versions of Superman to kick his ass.
- This is actually about Power Creep Power Seep. When Superman fought Doomsday in 1992, he was in his least powerful incarnation since the late 40's/early 50's. Fans thought they had gone too far DePowering him in the late 80's and wanted him to have some of his awesomeness back so Superman learned over the past several years that he had been holding back, not allowing himself to be as powerful as he could be. If you read everything from 1992 through the early 2000's, it actually makes sense. There is even a reference to it in the story where Pa Kent reaches out to Superman spiritually during his near death experience and convinces Superman that he should stop artificially imposing human limitations on himself. His soul had not returned to it's intact body because he thought he was supposed to die.
- The zombie Fantastic Four from Marvel Zombies were capable of overpowering Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thor, and Doctor Strange. Later, all we needed was Ultimate Doctor Doom (controlled by Ultimate Reed Richards) to kill them all.
- Of course, in the earlier example, it's clearly established that they had surprise on their side at least partly — plus a handy ability to turn anyone they bit into zombies, which evened the odds somewhat.
- Marvel Comics' Onslaught initially appeared as beyond godlike and it took every superhero on Earth to defeat him. He made a recent return in which he was defeated far more easily and sent to the Negative Zone.
- Dr. Light in The DCU. At first, he was tough enough to take on the whole Justice League, and then declines through the 1980s to the point where he is beaten by the kid non-powered superhero team, Little Boy Blue and his Blue Boys.
- This was explained/retconned in the infamous Identity Crisis storyline as the League having given him what amounted to a psychic lobotomy via Zatanna's magical powers after he had sneaked aboard the Watchtower and raped Sue Dibny. He later recovered and went back to his threatening self...until The Specter turned him into a candle.
- Gepetto, the evil mastermind of Fables contracted a bad case of villain decay. He'd conquered and ruled countless realms for centuries, but after he lost the first couple battles of the new war, he became depressed and sat about moaning while his Empire fell to pieces, until the heroes came and took him to live in a nice new apartment in New York City.
- Justice League villain Prometheus was originally created by Grant Morrison to be the JLA's Moriarty. He was a psychotic anti-Batman who used a high-tech helmet to load information and fighting skills directly into his brain. He had an exceptional origin story, built his own unorthodox weapons, and he killed an evil interdimensional alien monk to steal his teleporter. Prometheus took down the Justice League in his first appearance (even Batman) and then... He became a Mook. Much later, it was revealed that these appearances were his never before mentioned sidekick using his gear while the real Prometheus was imprisoned in his own mind (and, you know, prison). When he finally escapes, he tracks down his sidekick and lights him on fire.
- This was Lampshaded by the Crime Doctor in Birds of Prey #94:
Crime Doctor: You know, Prometheus, I'm almost disappointed... When you first appeared on the scene, we were all mighty impressed. You carry the knowledge of the world's thirty greatest fighters in your helmet, Right? the point is, we thought you'd be a world beater. Then we heard Catwoman tore your manhood. We heard Hush made you his punk.
- Inverted in Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?", where it's reveled that the entire plot has been orchestrated by Mr. Mxyzptlk, who declares that he's bored with being mischievous and has decided to become evil, then morphs into a semi-Lovecraftian horror.
Film
- General Grievous in Star Wars. Viewers' first look at Grievous occurs during the Clone Wars animated series, in which the cyborg took on six Jedi at once and completely destroyed them without much effort, establishing him as an unstoppable killing machine. However, the series' production team developed the character independently from the films' team. For Grievous's live-action appearance, Lucas wrote him as a significantly lower threat, though ironically Grievous also received two additional arms. The live-action Obi-wan faces a significantly weaker Grievous and dispatches him fairly quickly all by himself. The second season of the animated series attempts to justify the discrepancy by revealing more of Grievous's evasive nature and showing how he received the injuries he displays in the live-action film.
- Big Bad King Ghidorah went from being the most feared creature in the universe his VERY film debut to being, literally, The Dragon for a variety of evil aliens in the sequels (As well as being the result of being three mind-controlled pets fused into one monster in one alternate universe). To make matters worse, he went from being a monster that took 2-3 other monsters to defeat and over 6 to kill to being EASILY blown apart by Godzilla with little effort.
- James Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his SPECTRE minions were pretty threatening the first 5 times that Bond fought them. But in Diamonds Are Forever, Blofeld is reduced to stealing the identity of Howard Hughes knockoff Willard Whyte and hijacking Whyte's company to continue his plans. It's probably for the best that legal issues prevented Blofeld and SPECTRE from showing up again, although he does get a Lawyer Friendly Cameo in For Your Eyes Only, where he's dispatched in the unrelated opening teaser. Blofeld and SPECTRE also undergo Villain Decay in Ian Fleming's original books, but in a completely different fashion.
- Aliens in the Alien series. The first installment was a horror film in space, with a single, nearly invincible alien stalking and killing the helpless crew of a spaceship. However, the sequel Aliens was an action film, where a swarm of xenomorphs overwhelm a squad of space marines by virtue of sheer numbers. Since then, xenomorphs have increasingly been depicted as cannon fodder.
- Okay, the key thing to remember about the first Alien movie was that the body count was more so do the crew being helpless, having no guns, then anything else. Replace the Xenomorph with a bear and you'd get the same results. In Alien 3, there was a similar situation to the first movie because the people again, had no guns.
- In the original A Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy was the menacing personification of evil, over the course of the various films that followed he gradually became an increasingly camp wise-cracking court jester...until 'New Nightmare' make a concerted attempt to address his decay...
- Megatron from the Transformers Film Series was the menacing Sealed Evil In A Can Big Bad of the first movie, destroying whole cities and causing the only on-screen casualty of the movie. By the sequel, he's just The Dragon to the real Big Bad, The Fallen, and more or less just argues with Starscream for the second half of the movie. Note that this particular case of Villain Decay occurs over the course of one movie, as he is still pretty menacing at the beginning of Revenge of the Fallen, and even kills Optimus Prime. But then when the final battle scene rolls around, he doesn't even attempt to fight Prime to the finish, and pulls a Villain Exit Stage Left. Presumably, the real final fight is reserved for the inevitable third movie.
- The movie version of Starscream also suffers from this. He easily defeats two of the Autobots in the movie, and the prequal and expanded material made him out to be a very threatening character, beating the shit out of, sometimes killing, Autobots and other Decepticons. But in Revenge of the Fallen, he spends most of the movie being reduced to largely being a joke.
Literature
- D.Metria the Demoness from the Xanth series, started off as a fairly malevolent seductress, but with each subsequent appearance became less threatening, to the point that by the time she was "replaced" by her insane doppleganger, D.Mentia, she was basically Xanth's version of Mr. Mxyzptlk (The Superfriends version, at that).
- In more recent books this is justified by her having acquired half of a human soul, which gives her a conscience. She can still be mischievous, but is no longer malevolent.
- This is an example in part, I think, of someone the fans liked being made nicer in response.
- In Tales of MU, Puddy and Sooni start out as the Manipulative Bastard and The Libby, respectively, but are eventually reduced to being pathetic losers who struggle to keep even a couple people under their control. The worst aspects of the transition are probably a result of Webcomic Time: the change takes several months of real world writing time, but just a couple weeks story time.
- A notable subversion of this trope is in the Harry Potter series, when Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy are presented as mere Jerkasses who like giving Harry and company hell for the first five books of the series, but at the beginning of book six, both are presented as high ranking members of Voldemort's army, the Death Eaters. It does turn out however that Snape was a Double Agent for the Order of Phoenix, and Malfoy was incapable of coping with actually being evil.
- So, they had villain decay after a villain upgrade?
- More like Malfoy found out the hard way that Being Evil Sucks, while Snape was never actually a villain in the first place.
- A straight Villain Decay happend to Lucius Malfoy. He is introduced as a sinister and cunning master-manipulator, who, while maintaining a benevolent and charitable public image, actively and ruthlessly pursued his ambitious goals, descending to threatening whole families and unleashing an ancient monster on a school. Next time he's just The Dragon and after his failure and consequent fall-from-grace he's reduced to an unnerved bystander with little to no involvement in the action.
- The Wheel of Time series features significant villain decay with regards to the Forsaken, supposedly the 13 most devoted human servants of the Dark One and by proxy the actual villains of the series (since the Dark One would destroy the world instantly if it ever escaped its prison). Initially presented as uber-badasses from the Age of Legends wielding powers most modern people could not begin to comprehend and being trained as scientists, generals and geneticists, the Forsaken get their asses totally handed to them repeatedly by the far less powerful present-day heroes, including Rand al'Thor, the main hero and guy who until fairly recently was tending sheep in a field (later on, his prior incarnation is able to impart some handy advice like a permanently on-tap version of Yoda, but even before this he still kicks the Forsaken's arses all over the shop).
- The writer attempts to subvert the trope by deliberately poking fun at the Forsaken's rep: a modern magic-user halts a Forsaken in combat and is scared that she is being toyed with, until she realises that the Forsaken in question is actually at the limits of her powers and they are stalemated. Other Forsaken later moan about how these 'backward savages' have actually developed forms of magic they are unfamiliar with.
- Despite these attempts to mitigate the damage, the writer doesn't adequately explain how 13 people who caused hundreds of millions of deaths in a world with instantaneous teleportation, aerial warfare and energy weapons keep getting bested by people who don't know how to make a functional toilet and haven't worked out that gunpowder may have applications beyond pretty fireworks.
- Because the destruction of civilization caused the corruption of records. Instead of recording all the evil Aes Sedai (about half of the Aes Sedai were evil) they only recorded the thirteen that were imprisoned. The advantage of the Forsaken is simply that they are above average channelers, and have knowledge that the good guys don't. This is of course mitigated by the fact that they are insane, prone to petty arguments, and too egotistical to work with anyone, especially with people not born thousands of years ago. They also lack the resources they once had and their reputation as far more powerful was a load of nonsense. Plus the dark one was actually free during the war at the end of the Age of Legends; whatever that entailed one has to suspect having the Big Bad actively aiding them with all its power must have had some effect on them.
- Also, the Forsaken are never beaten in fair fights until late in the series, by which point the characters have had plenty of training. Before then, they are either beaten by surprise or because the good guys had access to a high power source.
- Played with, after the capture of Semirhage, Cadsuane has no idea how to break her without torture. She finally figures out that it's because everyone sees Semirhage the legend, and not Semirhage the person. She immediatly grabs Semirhage, treats her like a child and spanks her, which finally starts getting her results.
- The Necromancer, in the Whateley Universe. Starts out as one of the top 60 supervillains on the Interpol rating scale. He's now oh-for-two against Team Kimba, who are high schoolers. Even with his team of supervillains working for him.
- The Young Wizards series averts this rather neatly, because a), the Lone Power has been defeated without great sacrifice a grand total of...once (and in a subsequent encounter, another aspect commented that that version of Itself was just plain stupid), and b) due to the fact that It exists outside of time, dipping into our universe wherever and whenever It pleases, It can be decisively defeated in one place and simultaneously be an active threat elsewhere.
- Sang-Drax from the Death Gate Cycle series was introduced in the fifth book as a Magnificent Bastard manifestation of the Big Bad that could play Haplo like a fiddle. While he's still cunning in the next two books, he gets a whole lot sloppier, downgrading him to a literal Smug Snake. He finally dies when a room caves in on him. To be fair, this isn't as lame as it sounds because said room was filled with magic that was antithetical to him, but still — he really should have seen it coming.
- Tolkien often does this deliberately, but still putting the less-powerful villains in situations where they could get the upper hand. Sauramon goes from needing a massive army, a wizard, and more to stop him, to being somebody who could be defeated by a mob of angry Hobbits. Gollum is another example - he finds the One Ring to Rule Them All, and first uses its for murder and theft, but eventually crawls into a cave and uses the Ring's power to catch fish. The Ring doesn't particularly care for this.
Live Action TV
- The Ferengi from Star Trek were downgraded from serious threats to comic-relief pests after only two appearances. To be fair, the Ferengi were intended to be major recurring villains, but over the course of several makeup revisions, the Ferengi went from impressive to goofy-looking.
- This probably has as much to do with the fact that early on in Next Generation, when the Ferengi were introduced, Gene Roddenberry was still involved with the production, and was trying as hard as possible to recreate the old series. However, characters that would have worked as villains in the much cheesier era of the original series basically just inspired laughter in modern audiences.
- Also, all else being equal it's easier to make tall guys look threatening than short guys. Roddenberry really wanted to have villains who are small in stature yet still dangerous, but it just didn't work out. Not that their status as Strawman Capitalists helped much either.
- The Borg went from super once-a-season menace to routine issue over the course of Star Trek Voyager.
- Oddly enough, before they started to decay, they actually got more dangerous, once they start desiring to assimilate everything and not just civilizations. Before a single ship had very little to fear from a passing cube. But of course, Voyager being only a single ship (and without a civilization to defend), this had to change, otherwise they could just fly through Borg space just fine, as long as they didn't settle any planets or develop superior technology. And with this desire only for large scale assaults out the window, Voyager had to deal with them constantly. Thus, they had to get easier.
- That's why TNG only had 6 episodes that dealt with the Borg - it was just too tough to keep the Borg a terrifying enemy and yet still come up with ways to defeat them. And since 4 of those episodes were in pairs of 2-parters, 1 of them didn't even require defeating any Borg, and in 1 of them they were introduced to the Borg by Q and thus only saved from destruction/assimilation by Q's intervention as well, only twice in 7 seasons did the Enterprise actually defeat the Borg. Voyager had to beat them in about 15 different episodes and they quickly became paper tigers.
- The Villain Decay of the Borg began with The Next Generation, with the introduction of the Borg Queen. The reason they were so tough to beat was because they were absolutely decentralized. There was no central locus. The Borg Queen served merely as a quick fix to the Borg Problem in Star Trek: First Contact.
- The decay is later turned on its head in the later TNG and Voyager relaunch novels, when the Borg effectively reestablish their handle as one of the greatest threats to the galaxy since... well, ever. In the span of approximately six months, they kill Captain Janeway, destroy the planet Pluto, and launch a massive invasion in an attempt to completely annihilate every spacefaring civilization of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, the end result of which was over 63,000,000,000 casualties. That's 63 billion for those of you who have trouble with zeros.
- Likewise Species 8472, who were Scary Dogmatic Aliens until "In the Flesh". And Q turned from an frivolous yet dangerous omniscient being who nevertheless delivered some important Aesops to Captain Picard, to a lovesick puppy who goes to Captain Janeway for advice on parental relationships and conflict resolution in the Q Continuum.
- Q really was one of those characters who were a case of Depending On The Writer, especially in TNG. He's creepy and borderline sadistic in "Encounter at Farpoint", then campy and unwittingly annoying in "QPid", then he's back to being sinister in "True Q". It's debatable whether or not he was even actually a villain, considering how many times he (sometimes indirectly) helped Picard and the crew.
- The truly interesting thing about the Borg, to begin with, was not so much their threat level (though that was high) as the existential challenge they presented to the mindset and worldview of the complacent characters. In their first appearance, Picard and the other Federation personnel seem to have trouble even comprhending the idea that this foe can not be reasoned with, that there's literally nothing they can say or do that will move them, or that an enemy would ever be an enemy if he really understood them. The Borg did not care. Later they watered this down with the infamous 'Hugh' episode that reduced the Borg to just another alien race that can be persuaded by good will and proper effort. The Borg were supposed to be inexorable, absent that they're boring.
- Several of the episodes focused on Seven of Nine in Voyager, however, help this issue. Yes, Borg can get cute and cuddly again when separated from The Collective... but there are billions on billions of Borg. And you'd have to free them all to beat The Collective. And at first a lot of them might not want to stop being Borg... so it isn't just as easy as "Hugh"ing them all.
- The Dominion in Deep Space Nine suffer heavily from this trope as well. In Starfleet's first military encounter with them, three of the weakest Dominion fighters destory the Galaxy-class U.S.S. Odyssey, ostensibly one of Starfleet's most powerful ships, with relative ease. However, by the end of the show we can see Galaxy-class starships destroy the Dominion fighers in one shot.
- After seeing how much respect the Borg lost during his writing stint on Voyager, Ronald D. Moore rather neatly avoided the trope in his remake of Battlestar Galactica. The villainous Cylons are only sparingly used as a direct threat to the heroes, and typically when the heroes do beat them there's some kind of price.
- However, one particular Cylon, Caprica-Six has decayed rather badly. Given she was only in one episode (the miniseries), where she performed one mercy killing and lectured Baltar and that was it, and then wasn't seen again until the late second season where she followed through on being sad at taking a baby's life by regretting the holocaust in its entirety and missed a man she from the beginning cared about, or why else bother to save him, she didn't have much badass to decay anyway.
- After the Pegasus showed up, the basestars in particular were almost completely downgraded, removing a lot of the series' tension. (Though to be fair they were facing the motherfraking Pegasus after all).
- Almost every season of Power Rangers begins with the villain being replaced by a new one — because after twelve episodes of losing, the old villain doesn't look so cool. (And of course, a new villain means more merchandise.)
- Lord Zedd is a particularly obvious example. When he was introduced he was very dark and frightening. Some people thought he was too scary for children and he was toned down over time. By the third season he had degenerated into a goofy moron.
- Zedd's Dragon Goldar got it almost as bad as Zedd himself. He went from a menacing figure who was more than a match for the entire Power Rangers squad to someone who was barely a match for an unmorphed Billy. By the time he was reworked into part of a Goldfish Poop Gang along with Rito Revolto, that was actually a promotion for the poor guy.
- And while we're talking about Zedd, let's not forget his Putties, which were supposedly Elite Mooks that die in one hit if you hit their glaring weak point. Even Rita's Putties could take a couple of shots to the torso before they went down.
- The Green Ranger was perhaps one of the more egregious examples, he actually became weaker with each power-up he received. When first introduced he was able to easily defeat all five rangers bare-handed, not even the Megazord could stop him. After he was given his sword he could only fight the Ranger's Megazord to a standstill, and needed help from two other monsters and Rita's magic wand to remain a threat. By the time he got his own zord his Decay was complete and he was defeated by the Red Ranger in single combat.
- Big exagerations for the Green Ranger. Yes he could defeat the rest of the rangers, but he could NOT defeat the Megazord, it sent him running scarred when it attacked even with his BFS. He only "beat" the first time because he got into the cockpit when the other rangers weren't looking and tossed them all out, and the other time he was turned into a giant. Also, the Red Ranger didn't so much beat as he did knock the mind controlling sword out his hands.
- The Green Ranger's counterpart Zyuranger, the Dragonranger, however, suffered from this big time. Not only did he in fact suffer from an outright defeat from the Red Ranger, but the Dragonzord had also just [[Crubstomped]] Goldar (whom had earlier proved a tough fight the Megazord on his own) and Scorpina, before someone getting his ass kicked by the Megazord.
- Pretty much inevitable for the villains on Doctor Who.
- Arguably, this was the fate that befell the Doctor's greatest enemies the Daleks after 16 television stories, four cameos and countless appearances in other adaptations, especially when their creator, Davros, began to dominate the stories. They were later made more menacing again; in 1988 they were given the ability to fly, and for their 2005 return in "Dalek", they were given new abilities, such as a force field and the ability to crush a man's head using the plunger arm. However, they may be falling back into this, going in their more recent appearances from one being defeated by its own self-loathing, to a fleet being defeated by a Deus Ex Machina, to millions being defeated by reversing the polarity. Mind you, to be fair, three Daleks, later two Daleks and a Dalek-Human hybrid take two episodes to destroy. Because of this, it seems the Daleks suffer from some variation of the Inverse Ninja Law. The more there are, the easier they are to defeat.
- Also in Doctor Who, the Master particularly suffered from this, with many writers simply using him as a convenient bad guy with little motivation beyond being "eeeevil". The trend arguably started from his very first appearances, since he appeared as the Big Bad in every episode of Season Eight of the classic series, which arguably diluted his effectiveness right from the off. He always allied with an other evil power, which then betrayed him, forcing him to work with the Doctor. Over his many appearances in both classic and new series, writers have tried most of the tricks above to avert Villain Decay, including threat escalation, frequent Enemy Mine plots, Alternate Universe victories, and having him murder the family members of series regulars. Probably for the same reasons that the series itself has been so long-lived, despite succumbing to Villain Decay several times over, the character somehow keeps bouncing back as a Magnificent Bastard. The new series attempted to correct this both by giving him a plausible motivation - complete insanity - and by showing how Bad Ass he could be; not least by stranding the Doctor at the end of time itself, becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, massacring a tenth of the population of Earth and all in all being a rather Magnificent Bastard before the Doctor managed to undo everything.
- The Cybermen were Doctor Who's most egregious victim of this trope. In Second Doctor Cybermen stories, they were powerful, some might say too powerful. That may be a good reason they weren't used for the entire Third Doctor run. When they were brought back at the beginning of the Fourth Doctor era, they were given a weakness: gold dust would clog their chest units and suffocate them. All well and good, until someone misinterpreted that to mean that gold itself was their weakness. Thus, we were treated to the wonderful sight of Ace killing Cybermen with gold coins fired from a slingshot. The Cybermen seen in the revival (the ones from a parallel Earth) do not have this weakness.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Turok-Han (ancient ugly vampires) of Season Seven were a particularly good example of this. The first one that shows up beats the hell out of Buffy all by itself, but by the end of the season everyone is hacking them down left and right. Spike starts out as one of the most feared and dangerous vampires Buffy has ever encountered. By season 4 he's a joke, figuratively and literally — he's the actual butt of the joke in many scenes.
- Don't forget the "wee little Irish demony thingy" from "Fear Itself".
- Nicole Wallace of Law and Order: Criminal Intent started off as Moriarty to Bobby Goren's Sherlock Holmes, which made her getting nailed in her return appearance so satisfying. Then she was brought back in increasingly ridiculous ways, to the point where she was closer to a supervillain than her original anti-Goren persona.
- The Source of All Evil in Charmed went from an angel-winged, black cloaked, seemingly omniscient entity, to a big guy in a black cloak who tried to kill the Charmed Ones with about as much success as every enemy before, and being severely wounded by one renegade demon throwing fireballs at him. Eventually he lost not just the wings but the menacing hood as well and revealed a goofy face before dying, and it was revealed that The Source of All Evil is a transferable title. The new ones? Were never threatening.
- Any and all demonic threats in general suffered from villain decay; early demons, albeit being a Monster Of The Week in most cases, were a threat to the sisters individually; later on, when all-purpose vanquishing potions were produced by the gallon, they were mere nuisances most of the time. Perhaps this is why villains in later seasons consisted of one of the Elders who supposedly oversaw all "good magic," beings capable of removing people from reality at their whim, and finally, other witches.
- Scorpius in Farscape managed to remain a Magnificent Bastard throughout the second and third seasons, thanks in large part to the writers letting him achieve total victory in the second season finale. The third season thus became about the heroes trying to reverse their earlier loss. However, by the end of the third season the show introduced a new villain who served as Scorpius' superior, and by the fourth he had lost all his fearsomeness. Grayza and Braca even have him crawling on a leash like a dog, and he licks Grayza's boot! How much villain decay do you WANT!?. Thankfully, he still had enough magnificent bastardry left in him to survive the fourth season and the TV movie, regaining his position in the process.
- In the first season, the early-on Big Bad was Bialar Crais, the senior local Peacekeeper who was chasing them because he blamed Crichton for his brother's demise. He is usurped (and ruined, professionally) by Scorpius at the end of Season 1 but reappears later and becomes (uncomfortably for all) a semi-crew member due to his symbiotic relationship with Moya's child.
- Harvey (the neural clone of Scorpius inside Crichton's head) was specifically introduced to avoid this trope. This way Scorpius could appear as a constant threat without downgrading this menace by having Crichton escape at the end of the episode.
- Grayza began to suffer decay as the Scarrans became the main villains of season four- and ended up kidnapped by them due to her own gullibility. Particularly blatant was the revelation that Captain Braca- who she'd supposedly enslaved with her infallible pheromone glands- was actually still working for Scorpius; he went on to personally remove her from command to prove it. And just to rub it in, her command carrier was retaken by Scorpius, who'd recovered from his bout of villain decay.
- Stargate SG-1 fits this trope like a Goa'uld hand device. The Goa'uld were introduced as merciless, brutal and could effortlessly obliterate Earth as well as having a firm grip on much of the galaxy, held back only by in-fighting caused by their lust for power. When our heroes encounter just a small group of Jaffa, they manage to escape in one piece if lucky. But as the series progressed they became a bunch of arrogant, scheming, childish fools with a Napoleon complex and their mighty Jaffa armies become P90 fodder. Their flanged voices sounded cool and creepy when spoken slowly and calmly, but sounded ridiculous when they put any real emotion into it. By the end of the series, a Goa'uld encounter is just an inconvenience as our heroes have bigger fish to fry.
- The Replicators, on the other hand, largely avert this trope, as each time the heroes meet a bunch of those things, it has required an even more insane plan than the last one to merely stall them. Trapping them in a time-stop bubble (they escape), sending then into a black hole (escape too), finding a ancient-made BFG specially designed to destroy them (become immune) and friggin' finally, using a weapon that can fry the entire Milky Way to destroy them all at the same time once and for all...Or Is It?
- The Wraith in Stargate Atlantis also went the way of the Goa'uld, as first the Atlantis Expedition develop a retrovirus to turn Wraith into humans, but then get reduced to in-fighting amongst themselves over dwindling food (read: human) resources. The Wraith lost their powers to cause hallucinations after their first appearance. Even though they can regenerate from wounds quickly, their scab-masked grunts quickly become just so much cannon fodder. Back around "The Lost Boys" (season 2), it was a difficult prospect for a small team to infiltrate a Wraith hive; by the later seasons ("The Queen" or "The Shrine"), the good guys are almost nonchalant about walking into Wraith territory. Of course, the Wraith's decay wasn't helped by the introduction of the new Big Bads on the block, the Asurans (who were really just the Replicators, but less threatening).
- Among their human opponents, Harry Maibourne starts as a menacing Knight Templar, then winds up doing a semi Heel Face Turn and eventually just gets Put On A Bus.
- It should be noted that in the original movie, the heroes only fought one Jaffa one-on-one (well, two or three on one, really) and then only really survived because Daniel ringed down in the exact right place at the exact right time. Since that's not exactly a viable tactic for an ongoing series, the Jaffa get progressively wimpier as the show goes on. Free Jaffa, however, seem much more badass than their enslaved counterparts, partially because there are fewer of them, and therefore the writers don't have to worry about tipping the scales too much.
- Adam Monroe, formerly Big Bad of Heroes season 2. When he returned in Season 3, he was downgraded from a Magnificent Bastard to comic relief. Then he was killed off by the new villain, Mr. Petrelli, in an Eviler Than Thou moment. Oh, and all this took less than two episodes, possibly setting a new record for 'fastest villain decay ever'.
- Likewise, Maury Parkman was originally toted as "The Nightmare Man", someone worse than Sylar. As an experienced psychic, he managed to put a little girl into a coma and continually mess with the heroes' heads, until he was defeated in a close confrontation with Matt. Come Season 3, he is passively following the Big Bad's orders, right til he objects to Petrelli ordering Matt's death, and has his neck unceremoniously snapped in another Eviler Than Thou moment.
- In the interest of fairness, it does have to be granted that there's a justification for aliens suffering some decay, in that part of SG-1's mission is to promote Villain Decay; that is, a large part of the purpose of the Stargate program is to go forth and find out what's out there, and ways to defend Earth from those threats. If SG-1 was at all successful, Villain Decay was simply the logical extension of their success. Now, whether or not this makes for good television writing is very open to debate.
- Mr. Sweeny on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, to the point where he doesn't rat Ned out in the finale for sneaking along on the field trip. Of course, he leaves him stuck in that tree... "but do tell me how your day turns out."
- Averted and inverted in Babylon Five with Alfred Bester, who started out as a not too terribly effective Smug Snake and initially tended to fail at achieving his objectives. J Michael Strascinsky noticed the threat of Villain Decay, first wrote an Enemy Mine story to avert it, and later had him become an increasingly effective Manipulative Bastard who managed to pull off a major-league Xanatos Gambit using one of the main characters as his tool without suffering any ill consequences for it.
- The Enemy Mine episode itself is also revealed in the last line to be part of a Xanatos Gambit in itself. The drug dealers are only supposed to sell Dust to humans, since it's hoped a side effect will create telepaths from the mundane population. The one they are chasing intends to sell to aliens.
- Dr. Smith on Lost In Space may be one of the most iconic examples of this trope. He was originally a dangerously intelligent saboteur attempting to kill the Robinsons, but by a few episodes in he had deteriorated to complete pest/buffoon status. Early attempts at character development soon puttered out, and he became simply annoying comic relief.
- Wizards of Waverly Place: The mummy wasn't nearly as badass in "Wizards vs. Werewolves" as he was in the "Chronicles of Moises" arc, and his defeat was ridiculously easy.
Tabletop Games
- The Necrons of Warhammer 40000 are an interesting case of this. When first formally introduced, they were supremely enigmatic horrors serving even more horrific beings, known for mysterious harvests of life, unknown plans, and ridiculously advanced technology. Fan perception of them quickly made them Omnicidal Maniacs to the public eye, and they began to be perceived as a race-wide The Wesley. The 5th Edition Codex has resulted in a serious hit to the Necrons' previously unknown and unstoppable nature in favor of shifting the focus towards the Tyranids and Chaos as the greatest threats facing humanity.
- This happens all the time in W40k. Whenever a new army is introduced, they start as existential threats to the entire setting for a year or two and then decay into just another faction.
- The orks started off as a galaxy wide tide of death and destruction but degenerated into pub brawlers over time.
- Tyranids also started off as unstoppable, galaxy-devouring horde of alien locusts but their impending, full-scale invasion and eating of the galaxy kept getting delayed and delayed and then the tyranids inexplicably adopted an "attack in small numbers" strategy that made them less of a threat to the setting.
- This is invoked half-deliberately and half-facesave. When introducing the new armies, they were very excited and wanted to pump them up, even if it didn't make any sense. However, if they actually took their own word seriously, it would automically spell the end of the game: there's only so many times you can say "Uh... the Elder fixed it with an ancient artifact" before the fans start to look elsewhere. Thus, they simply damp down the new kids once they get established.
Video Games
- The main villains in both the Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog series (Bowser and Robotnik, respectively) have lost a lot of power and have often fallen to the level of comic relief. The latter's decline has not been helped by the reversion from his Western name of "Robotnik" to his original Japanese-given name of "Eggman", which just doesn't carry as much an air of menace to English speakers. Bowser has recently taken a back seat to new villains, to his annoyance, but Bowser had always been a more 'storybook' villain by comparison. It also depends on the game; most RPG Mario games have Bowser being only a minor threat, comic relief or even performing a temporary Heel Face Turn, but in normal Mario games he is almost always the main antagonist. Eggman, on the other hand, is almost always usurped as Big Bad in recent Sonic games by some other, much more powerful threat.
- Even before the reversion to "Eggman", Robotnik was treated as a ridiculous joke in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon and still used for humor, though to a lesser degree, in the SatAM continuity. The [[comics/Sonic The Hedgehog Archie comics]] where much of the American continuity comes from also played him up for laughs for several years of its run before switching gears and writing the stories a lot straighter.
- Arguably averted in that Eggman was never meant to be a serious villain in the first place; he was supposed to be a cartoony, dopey bad guy and has always been presented that way in Japan. Sega's American marketing arm fell right into the American Kirby is Hardcore line of thinking and designed Robotnik to be more sinister and threatening on the box art and in commercials. Archie's version initially fell in line with the original, lighter version of the character but eventually darkened him up so he would be more in sync with the American marketing campaign.
- This brings up an interesting point. Eggman doesn't come off as especially threatening in any of his appearences aside from Sonic Adventure 2. People thinking that he was really dangerous and menacing character is largly Fanwanking that ignores how silly and comical he was.
- In Sonic Chronicles Robotnik at first makes his own Villain Decay worse, by yet again helping Sonic and his team mates. However, at the end it's revealed that while Sonic and co. were off gallivanting around the Twilight Cage, Robotnik had spent his time taking over the world. Unfortunately, that's where the game ends.
- More damage is undone in Sonic Unleashed, where Eggman captures Sonic, then captures Super Sonic, shatters the planet, and then dumps Sonic from space - all in the intro sequence. Much later Eggman finally succeeds in creating Eggmanland, as he's promised to do for several games now.
- Bowser's Villain Decay probably reached its peak in Super Mario Sunshine, in which he only appeared at the very end, lying around in a hot tub in a volcano and talking in a ridiculous voice about how Mario ruined his vacation. Thankfully, this sort of "sitcom dad" style Bowser was dropped after that game, and in Super Mario Galaxy he actually seemed pretty intimidating, and had much bigger evil plans too. (He still wasn't smart enough to not let Mario fool him into hurting himself though.)
- Much more intimidating indeed. His grand scheme essentially involved playing God and creating a new universe to rule over with the power of the Grand Stars.
- Bowser was considerabley toned down in the Super Mario cartoon series, where the badass villain from the games was just a minor nuisance in many episodes.
- Bowser's decay makes his appearance in the "Super Mario 63" fangame all the more unsettling when he plans to cause the apocalypse and make Koopas the master race.
- Let's not forget his time in Bowser's Inside Story. He splits the difference in that one: since it's an Enemy Mine situation, he's mostly a comical character, but he's also a badass. The game culminates with him literally punching out an ancient Sealed Evil In A Can.
- To say nothing of the game's Bonus Boss, Bowser X, which is presumably what we'd get if Bowser decided to bring his "A game" to the Bros. Not only has he gotten a ludicrous power boost to his basic special attacks, becoming strong enough to lay a Bro out with one punch if you're underleveled, but his new tricks included deliberately letting the Bros light him on fire so he can bounce around the screen like a spiky flame-spewing pinball, and turning into Giga Bowser. Oh, and he reacts to Bros Attacks (the only real way to make a chink in his life) by eating the attacks themselves, making them inaccessible for six grueling turns. Good luck.
- The Fleetway comics avoided this quite effectively, first by having Robotnik as an Evil Overlord and later by keeping him in reserve for long periods followed by seriously Badass Eviler Than Thou moments. There was even a notable (and frustrating) period where he was clearly more powerful than Sonic due to the Knuckles based Metallix robots, who individually had beaten Sonic quite easily in the past. The writers realised the plot hole and had to come up with rationalisations as to why he didn’t just attack right then…
- Then much later they made him go through a Villainous Breakdown and decide to destroy the entire planet. Fortuantely (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) the comic was cancelled without decay being allowed to set in (or allow any significant development to this new characterisation.)
- Wily and Sigma of the original Mega Man and X series, of course. They started at world domination and thus couldn't up the ante, they were obligated to never win a single token victory except perhaps during the intro mission, every game had them unleash a new wave of greatest minions ever who would fall like dominoes, and of course the biggie is that they used roughly the same approach (8 robot masters and a fortress, give myself a robot body, and maybe try to make it look like someone else is the villain at first) in every game in the entire series and were defeated singlehandedly by the same person every time. On the plus side, they got a new "more evil" true form every time.
- In X6, this trope is interpreted quite literally, as Sigma can barely string together coherent sentences ("JUSDIE, Zelllllllloooooo!!!!!"), and is more of a robotic hunched-over zombie who can actually be knocked down, not just back.
- On the flipside, prior to X6, Simga's schemes seemed to get more evil each game. In X3, when Dr. Doppler comes up with a cure for the Maverick Virus, Sigma turns him evil, along with Mavericks he cured. In X4, he causes the Maverick Hunters and an army called Repliforce to go to war with eachother, creating a very morally ambigious plot. To top it all off, he comes close to destroying the Earth with a big laser weapon, which X and Zero fail to stop, and is only stopped the leader of Repliforce, General sacrfice himself. In X5, he makes a scheme to turn Zero maverick by crashing a Maverick Virus infect space colony into that Earth that would cause KT impact esc damage in the proccess, and depending the plot of the game, he succeeds and also wipes out most life of the on Earth in the process (X6 goes assuming the colong did crash into that Earth, but Zero not going Marvick). In all endings, he nearly kills X, and appears to kill Zero.
- Wily's decay was lampshaded by MegaMan at the end of Mega Man 9: Wily, defeated, begs for his life as usual, and Megs shows him a hologram of Wily doing the same thing for the past 9 times:
Mega Man: Then that time! And that time! And that time! And that time! And that time! And that time! And that time! And that time! And that time!
- Wily may actually be a subversion, though, considering he creates The Virus, which plagues the X series long after his death. Plus, in the current timeline, his robots have gotten harder to defeat.
- The Mario & Luigi games bring us Fawful. Right hand of the main villain in the first game, in the second... he sells badges in a semi-secret shop ranting about how he'll have his revenge on Mario and Luigi one day, not realizing that he is selling badges to their younger selves.
- This was then inverted in Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, where he has become the Big Bad, complete with his own Dragon, Midbus.
- Dracula in the Castlevania series has been thrashed by the Belmonts and their friends more times than can be Counted (vun hundred and fifty two! Vun hundred and fifty three! Vlah ah ah...), usually only a brief time after his resurrection, meaning he rarely has time to do anything particularly evil. He was finally, perhaps wisely, retired in the Sorrow series...and ironically replaced with new villains who seem a whole lot more inept and ineffectual than Dracula himself ever did. After all, they are canonically Dracula wannabes.
- One single word: "Puff".
- And let's not forget Slogra and Gaibon, which debuted as powerful bosses in Super Castlevania IV (albeit made waaay too easy by all the food between them) then had found their way down to mid-range Mook status by Portrait of Ruin.
- Notably inverted in Final Fantasy VI. Kefka starts out as comic relief and gets progressively more menacing and dangerous as the game goes on, running the usual decay process in the other direction.
- In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth was an extremely menacing Big Bad - a phantom, unstoppable killing machine cutting a swathe of death across the world, always one step ahead of the heroes, and all while manipulating Cloud into a Tomato In The Mirror from within his own mind; all so he can simply mind control him into giving him the Artifact Of Doom right after putting six feet of steel clean through his ally in a single strike. With a smirk. What a bastard! But in subsequent appearances, all he seems to do is appear out of nowhere with his theme song blaring to deliver a Hannibal Lecture and kick the hero's ass for a while before he gets owned. Again.
- In particular, the first time you see him in battle is during the Kalm flashback where the guy was literally invincible. He took 0 damage and did around 3500 damage for a standard attack and had an impressive range of mastered materia. He wasn't so invincible when you actually fought him. And you do more damage than him. You even have more impressive materia than he did in the flashback, which means your group becomes much more powerful than he was in Nibelheim five years earlier. This was the Sephiroth whose might mesmerized Cloud, and you had far surpassed him.
- What really makes this worse is that in the original game, Sephiroth didn't care about Cloud beyond his use as a puppet. In fact, he didn't even recognize him when they met. Then in later appearances, he's completely obsessed with Cloud to the point of having no other motive than to defeat him.
- Well Cloud did kill him a 2nd time.
- Final Fantasy Dissidia seemed to play around with this. He actually starts out wanting to control Cloud as a puppet...and it grows into an obsession by the last time you fight him.
- Final Fantasy X has a strange example. After confronting the party in Bevelle and revealing his motives, Seymour becomes a more powerful threat gamewise. But storywise, the party brushes him off as completely nuts and stops taking him seriously. In the end, Tidus' reaction to Seymour's final appearance inside of Sin is a simple annoyed "Don't you EVER give up?"
- However, the fights with Seymore do tend to consider to among the harder ones in the game, especially the 3rd. And he does bybass some the "guy that never seems to learn" stuff in that he's ghost most of the times you fight him.
- The HK-50 droids in Knights of the Old Republic 2. In Peragus, one droid was able to make the entire mining colony its bitch over a few days. Than a squad of three of them showed up at Telos and jobbed against the hero, before finally three more were defeated by T3-M4.
- Although in their defense, on Peragus the victims were completely unsuspecting and thought the droid was just a protocol droid, giving it free hands to subvert the base droids and systems to kill everyone off neatly, while on Telos they had just arrived ahead of the protagonists and had nothing else to rely on but direct force. Also, T3-M4 is just that hardcore.
- Mid-Boss is Disgaea, starts as That One Goldfish Poop Boss, ends fliching picnic baskets. Subverted all the way to hell and back by the power of a benevolent Xanatos Gambit.
- The original Big Core of the Gradius series has undergone significant Villain Decay; while the original game's bosses were almost nothing but Big Cores, bigger and more powerful Bacterian technology in subsequent games slowly phased this boss out until, in Gradius V, it became a regular, if large and heavily-armored, enemy.
- Vizier Khilbron (a.k.a. the Undead Lich) and Shiro Tagachi were the Big Bads in the first two chapters of Guild Wars, and each of them made a challenging opponent at the time. But when they show up again in Chapter 3, Nightfall, even the two of them teamed up are merely just another speedbump on the way to the new Big Bad, Abaddon.
- Honestly, though, the Lich was never that tough (getting to him was the hardest part of Hell's Precipice in Prophecies), and Shiro's still pretty nasty in Gate of Madness...
- Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty was to a degree the main villain of the original Kingdom Hearts. When she is revived in Kingdom Hearts II she only can control Heartless, is left plotting in a wreck of a castle as opposed to the magnificent one she had in the original game, and has only one loyal servant left...Pete. However, this is often Lamp Shaded, and by the end of the game she seems to be on the road to restoring her former glory, starting with conquering Organization XIII's castle once Xemnas is destroyed.
- Even Maleficent had it easy compared to Jafar. In the original Kingdom Hearts, he had a notably prominent role in the Disney Villain group, often interacting with Maleficent directly. In Kingdom Hearts II, he gets ONE scene and an ensuing boss battle, and then dies.
- Interestingly, Hades is an inversion of this trope within the series at the same time. He goes from a minor optional boss in the first game to a mandatory threat in the second.
- Well he is the only Disney villain smart enough to not go out of his way to fight Sora.
- Oh, Axel. What did they do to you? Somewhere between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, he lost a lot of ruthless bastard and gained a lot of creepy stalker. 358/2 Days, being actually between the aforementioned two games, helps explain the change somewhat by showing that it was as Saix's friend that Axel was a ruthless bastard, and that he changed due to becoming friends with Roxas and Xion, and the threat of losing them reduced him to the creepy stalker status we see in Kingdom Hearts 2.
- In System Shock 2, SHODAN went through this trope herself. After the hacker "destroyed" her in that showdown on Citadel Station, SHODAN hybernated on the computer system within the garden grove on Citadel where her experiments, the Many, were created. Her pod was ejected from the Station, and after three decades, it crash landed on Tau Ceti 5. Then, SHODAN's creations thrived, and since she was out of commission at the time, while they were thriving, they grew rebellious and plotted to turn against their own creator: SHODAN herself. So, she aids you as you dispose of the Many, even though she threatens and insults you.
- SHODAN, however, stopped fitting into this trope after you finally exterminate the Many. Then, she plans to merge her power with the Von Braun's Faster Than Light travel drive, so that she could combine the cyber world with the real world, allowing her to change reality as she sees fit. SHODAN leaves you for dead, and then you fight her. And once you think you've defeated SHODAN for good...
- In Capcom's Resident Evil franchise, Oswell E. Spenser is the prime example of this trope. In the beginning, he was the one pulling all the strings. He was the leader of Umbrella Corperation. He was the one who was responsible for all the terror and destruction that the T-virus caused. But after the constant thwartings of Umbrella's schemes, and the deaths of some of its must prominent workers, and especially after Chris and Jill destroyed Umbrella's TALOS project, Umbrella went bankrupt, and the athoraties were aware that Umbrella was behind it all. Spencer then became a fugative, loosing everything.
- Albert Wesker went through the inverse of this trope. He started off being a mere researcher for Oswell E. Spencer, but he eventually took everything that Spencer had and make it all his own. When he found out that he was controlled by Spencer the whole time, he killed him, and said that he deserves Spencer's "right to be a god," while Spencer himself does not.
- Bubble Bobble: Super Drunk, the Final Boss of the first game, returns, degraded and easier, as the first boss in a sequel, Bubble Symphony (aka Bubble Bobble II). He even has a patch on his hood to show for it.
- Arthas in World Of Warcraft. In Warcraft III, he starts out as a paladin with potential who is the only person to really beat the Scourge (he was supposed to, but the guy in charge of them didn't know that). Then he turns into a death knight and is presumably even stronger. Kicks some ass in Frozen Throne while fighting with some rather major handicaps. Merges with Nerzhul to become the Lich King, making him even smarter, stronger and upping his magical abilities. Apparently Blizzard realized this made him pretty much a unstoppable one man army who could probably take the world over by HIMSELF, so all throughout the latest World Of Warcraft expansion he makes one huge mistake after another, looks like a total moron and kills his followers who are actually rather competent (one took down the Drakkari empire by manipulating you, pretty much) instead of you. Oh, and he's also done nothing of importance over the last... what, ten official years? Something like that. He's really good at making himself lose.
- Possibly justified, though extremely badly. He seems to keep you alive simply out of his own amusement. He kills the troll guy whom you've already defeated and pretty tells you "Good work tricking the guy that tricked you. I'm gonna let you live now because that amused me. Come up with something like this again and I may let you live."
- In Arthas' defense, Blizzard seems bound and determined to derail as many characters as possible in World of Warcraft.
- There are also hints that the players aren't even seeing Arthas' grand scheme-that he's much more interested in *you* than any of his minions, and is slowly leading players down a dark path-certainly the players have to Shoot The Dog repeatedly in Northrend, as do many important npc allies...
- And apparently, this was "intended". In the next raid, Uther speculates that Arthas's piss poor attempt at war is the only thing keeping the Scourge from rolling over Azeroth.
- Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace. Justified in that he's been resurrected since killed in Tempest Keep and the process didn't go too well for him. It still feels weird to be fighting such a big name character with five people and then cut off his head to hand in to a quest NPC, but it feels even weirder that Priestess Delrissa, Vexallus, and even every trash pull in Magister's Terrace were by far trickier affairs than the prince — much less that his second phase could be soloed by any self-healing class (given enough time).
- Magus from Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight him is a complex affair of constantly shifting weak points and debuffing his defenses, and lasts long and hits hard enough that you will probably have to actually reference the inventory you probably only previously used to chug potions out of combat. The second time, he — with none of his stats changed since then save a slight drop in Defense — gets soloed by Frog, Lucca, or Marle. He joins your party later, and since Good Is Dumb, has been dropped down to your stats and has to relearn all his spells. He still arguably manages to remain a Badass in spite of this.
- This is actually justified in game; when he confronts Lavos in the Ocean Palace, right before Crono dies, Lavos drains his magical abilites, which to some extent explains his reduced stats and lack of spells.
- Actually, when Magus joins you, only he's capicity to take damage goes down, his ability to dish it out goes way up.
- All the final bosses from the Fatal Frame Series could fall under this category. Through all three games the big bads will come chase you down every once in awhile, during which the player can't even get an option to attack them and it's an instant kill if they so much as touch you. Suddenly though in the end you can fight them back. Rather easily even.
- In Left 4 Dead, the Tank was something you ran from. With the introduction of melee weapons in Left 4 Dead 2, a creature that once required a huge amount of lead to bring down can be taken out much more rapidly with cricket bats. Thanks to the fact that his melee only hits one survivor at a time, if all survivors gang up on him, he'll die in no time.
Web Comics
- See The Rant of this B Movie Comic strip.
- Jacob of Dominic Deegan is all over this trope. In the Visions of Doom arc, he was introduced as a near-unstoppable necromancer who fought a powerful spellwolf to a standstill, out-manuevered his seer brother and manipulated an evil cult into conducting a dark ritual before killing them with ease so he could use their body parts to make a necromantic golem. Later, he and his golem tries to team up with the Chosen to unleash the Storm of Souls, but their plans are ultimately defeated and his own creation turns on him. He gains a bit of credibility by tearing off his own flesh, but never really regains the Badass status that he once held. In the most recent arc, he gets owned by Huk Thak/Roki, is murdered by the Shintula Chief and is finally betrayed once again by his servant Neilen and left to rot in the orc version of the afterlife. The character's future is uncertain but it's clear he'll never attain the coolness that he once had.
Western Animation
Nearly every children's cartoon ever has Villain Decay. Some, like:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, used heavy Lampshade Hanging ("at last, Shredder, you've done something right!"). Others just let the Villain Decay happen. Some are more careful about this than others, but by the nature of the show, it more or less has to happen. Do bear in mind, though, that the definition is "less threatening", rather than "No longer a threat". Some actually manage to avoid this by escalating their threat level over the course of the series. (It helps not to have a very long series.) See the 2003 Shredder, who had a definite habit of topping himself.
- Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons escalated his plans at every appearance, until he was threatening to blow up all of Springfield. His most recent appearance was one long Lampshade Hanging about his constant failures.
- Even worse, Mr. Burns used to be a greedy, heartless, megalomaniac Corrupt Corporate Executive, the villain of many episodes. He was regularly depicted as decrepit and with the mindset of a more reactionary era, but that didn't stop him from being entertainingly pure evil. Come Season 10 and beyond, he was inexplicably transformed into an inoffensive old man, most of the jokes about whom revolved around his senility and physical frailty. In other words, yet another victim of the terrible case of Flanderization which has plagued the series.
- Burns also showed a very dynamic sympathetic side, where he's almost a Scrooge like figure feeling the effects of a plentiful...but empty life. This is still shown occasionally but of course in a lighter manner.
- Maybe Burns' age is just catching up to him.
- Cobra Commander, the main villain of GI Joe, follows other aforementioned 80s cartoon villains' example but he's worth special mention because in parallel to his bumbling persona in the cartoon, his original comic book persona remained a ruthless Magnificent Bastard all throughout to its final issues. This Decay was probably intentional because his bloodthirsty ways needed to be toned down for the Sunbow series.
- Though also worth mention is that while the cartoon Commander was mostly inept by the end of GI Joe's second season, at least he was a part of the sub-plot concerning an internal civil war within Cobra where Commander and a few others made up the secret sub-group Coil in an effort to slowly wrestle control of Cobra away from Cobra emperor Serpentor, giving the villain at least some credibility by the end. However in the animated movie, Coil is never mentioned and Cobra Commander goes beyond becoming everyone's Butt Monkey for the film in a literal sense, in a way decaying the character in two different ways. Fans of GI Joe tend to not like the movie very much based on this, and the fact the movie attempts to retcon what is known about the Commander's past to something beyond ludicrous...even by 80s cartoon standards.
- This gets inverted however in GI Joe: Resolute when after acknowledging said decay, Kills Major Blood, blows up the USS Flagg, and wipes Moscow off the face of the map in the first episode.
- On Kids Next Door, it took an age-ified Nigel and the rest of the team to take Father down in his first appearance (Op GROW-UP). Then a few cadets took him down in his next appearance (Op TRAINING), making him more of a comic-relief pest. Then the writers escalated his crimes by turning the KND into animals (Op GRADUATES), and after that was taken care of, they had him extend school hours to 8:25 p.m. (a big deal, since the protagonists are school-hating children - Op PRESIDENT). In Operation ZERO, he was reduced to being completely ineffectual when faced with his father.
- Z.E.R.O. actually plays with this however. after his father banishes him for not being competent enough, he goes into a state of depression which takes his moral opposite brother to pull him out of. Together they face their father and even though Father is still afraid he tries to stand up for himself. Soon after he gets sucker punched and Grandfather begins to rag on him a bit and sets off his Berserk Button. His unstoppable rage is so fierce that it makes his heroic brother, who was previously shown to not be afraid of anything, step back and makes Grandfather, the unstoppable evil who has basically conquered the world, afraid. But before he can do anything he gives up because he's too depressed. This shows that it's not the lack of ability that holds him back but rather the lack of motivation.
- The 2008 animated television revival of Speed Racer had Zile Zazic, the main villain of the show, oil tycoon and trustee of the Racer Academy... who went through every possible process in which decaying villains could go through! It didn't help that he only carried out his plans first-hand two-thirds of the way through the season. By the end of the show, his plans became boring and predictable.
- In Xiaolin Showdown, Jack Spicer became full-on comic relief with the emergence of Chase Young. Chase himself became less of a threat to the Xiaolin monks when Hannibal Roy Bean was released, moving more into Eviler Than Thou and Enemy Mine plots against Bean.
- However, in the final episode, one of the characters froze himself in order to travel to the future, only to discover that because he wasn't around, Jack Spicer not only conquered the world, but also defeated Hannabal Bean and Chase Young.
- Wuya too. Starting off as a fairly credible mentor to Jack, she eventually regained her magical power and managed to take over the world off-screen. Upon her return in the second season however, she was reduced to nothing but a loud, obnoxious whiner, and by the end of the season she was reduced to being nothing more than a cheering fangirl for Chase Young. She regained some of her villainous gravitas in the third season, but even then, she was just never as cool as she was in the In the Flesh 3-parter.
- Valmont in Jackie Chan Adventures. Just look at the guy. In the early seasons, he was a charismatic, refined, rich-out-his-ass leader of a world wide criminal organization whom could very well be mistaken for a Magnificent Bastard (Hell, he was even able to hold his own against (and even get the better of) Jackie in their personal confrontations.) Then take a gander at the later seasons... knocking over convenience stores, living in an apartment no bigger than your bathroom (seriously), and leaning on the three goons he has left to pay for the bill at a pancake shop... Perhaps justified considering how crippling the setbacks he's faced were.
- The Shadowkhan are a good example, they were quite potent in season 1, but in the Oni Mask saga, they go "poof" if someone so much as trips them. Also, when the Enforcers became Dark Chi Warriors, who initially could survive falling off a cliff, but towards the end of the season, couldn't survive a fall of 10 feet.
- Shendo also suffers from this. Early on, he's an ominous and threatening figure, despite being stuck as a statue. During the end of the 1st season, when he's finally regained his powers, he's a vastly powerful and menacing evil dragon. During the 2nd season, however, because he's stuck sharring bodies with Valmont, he's largely a joke, except during the finale, and when he later returns during the finale of the 3rd season. During the series finale, however, he's stuck helping the heroes, and is largely a joke when fighting his son Drago.
- Kim Possible wisely decided not to bother, and started Kim out with a wide Rogues Gallery of already decayed villains.
- The Decepticons of Transformers suffer this in most version. Beast Wars and Animated each had different methods to avoid them becoming ineffectual:
- Beast Wars avoided it by being more arc-based with the Predacons often winning or the Maximals falling victim to a Xanatos Gambit.
- Inferno, unfortunately, decayed so quickly that to anyone who's only seen the first season, his supposed power comes off as more of an Informed Ability.
- Animated on the other hand doesn't always have them as the villains. They also reverse the Took A Level In Badass the Autobots as a whole went through by having a crew that was never meant for battle with tools that had primarily non-combat purpose in mind, so it takes the whole team to take down just one or two of the armed-to-the-teeth Decepticons.
- Animated started out with the Autobots basically requiring all hands on deck to stand a chance against any of the Decipticons but by the end of season 3, Optimus Prime is able to take on Megatron single handed.
- Starscream took a level up in badassery when he first fought the Autobots and was too strong for them (making up somewhat for the stupidity he displayed earlier), but later he's largely a joke because of how he keep getting his ass kicked by Megatron. Two other Decepticons, Blitzwing and Lugnut also suffered from this. Intially they would be considered [[Notsoharmless]]. They were dumb, but either of them could take all the Autobots on his own. But as time went on, they kept on getting beaten by plot devices and largely become jokes.
- Even the films have done this. The Decepticons were nearly unstoppable in the first film, in the sequel they get thrown around. Although the extent of decay is hard to tell since the Autobots and humans from around the globe have been fighting for two years now as a specialized task force. They're better prepared this time. Plus the fights aren't in crowded cities, so the Autobots can cut loose, especially Optimus.
- Avatar The Last Airbender has this for Zuko, who in the first few episodes was a credible (if impetuous) threat (though Aang was able to pretty much curb-stomp him), but after which he acquired Team Rocket-like incompetence in his attempts to capture
Pikachu the Avatar. Avoided in the second season by having him simply not interact with the heroes, in favor of his much more competent sister.
- Somewhat ironically, even as it became more and more obvious that failure was Zuko's only option as the first season went on and that he was never going to capture the Avatar, he was becoming better and better at fighting Aang. So even though the audience was yawning and say "Time for Zuko to lose again" the bouts between the two had changed from 30 second curb stomps (said "fight" in the second episode) to several minutes of intense action ("Bato of the Water Tribe").
- Azula is a notable aversion: she never once stops being a threat and when she goes crazy she's less composed but is much more bold and directly threatening (not to mention really freaking scary).
- Zuko manages to beomce much of a threat during the finalee of the 2nd season, during which he could finall match Aang on his own. Azula suffered from this a degree because in her earlier appearences, she was depicted as nearly invincible and required a hero-villain team-up to stop in one instance. But as Aang started learning Earth bending, he could effectivily fight her own his own (though he still couldn't beat her). She still dispalyed a lot of craftiness that made a threat.
- Vlad from Danny Phantom was once a Magnificent Bastard and a very competent arch-foe with an often sympathetic side. But in the third season, he became a shallow crook with little redeeming qualities; his final plan was to force the world to let him save it from a giant meteor in exchange for world domination (an agenda that was poorly conceived) and 500 billion dollars...as if he wasn't already filthy stinking RICH!
- Skulker too. In his first apperance he was genuinely menacing, and had Danny looking over his shoulder scared. Fast forward to "Micro Management", where Danny could defeat him in a few blasts, and only became a threat when Danny lost his powers. It reached its peak in "Girls Night Out", where a bird chased him off.
- In his first appearance in Yin Yang Yo, Kraggler is an incredibly elderly gargoyle who is discounted by the siblings due to his age, then proves to be a very powerful and capable villain, who, rather than being defeated, is convinced to stop because of an apology for his mistreatment. From then on, he's treated as a joke villain (even moreso than the other villains, this being a comedy series) who's only a threat if he uses magic to reduce his age.
- Ra's Al Ghul himself suffered from this in Batman The Animated Series and later DCAU canon. Introduced as the leader of a global secret society, whose first villain plan involved wiping out 99% of the human race to save the planet, and once described by Batman himself as "a criminal mastermind more dangerous than Lex Luthor and the Joker combined", Ra's would end up spending EVERY SINGLE ONE of his episodes trying out various whacky schemes to cheat death and expand his already 600 year long lifespan, instead of doing anything productive to menace the human race. Hell, in his last Batman The Animated Series appearance Batman ends up saving him from a 2000 year old Egyptian mummy girl.
- Ra's al Ghul's Villain Decay is still debatable, considering how even in the Superman episode "The Demon Reborn," Batman himself declared that Ra's al Ghul was more dangerous than both The Joker and Lex Luthor combined.
- Later in the canon, though, they refer to something called "The Near-Apocalypse of '09," which Ra's was behind, and apparently took the whole Justice League to stop.
- Also from BTAS, Killer Croc. In his first appearance he came up with a pretty good plan to frame Harvey Bullock, and gave Batman a pretty good fight. After that, he was mostly treated as Dumb Muscle comic relief, and was used to demonstrate how awesome Bane and the Judge were by getting his ass kicked.
- Darkseid in the DCA sufferred from this somewhat. In Stas, he's able to easily defeat Superman more then once, and Superman couldn't stop him any of his plans on his own. During his one appearence in Justice League, while still a big threat, he's depicted as a lot weaker. Superman managed to beat, and while Superman was shown to a better fighter then in Stas, his still only really won because Darksied's powers were watered down so much (in the Stas, when took Darkseid on in the finale, all his punches did to him was make Darkseid mad that would hit him).
- Carface, in All Dogs Go to Heaven was legitimately menacing in the original film (it was his henchmen who were incompetent jokes). The scene where he and his gang threaten Itchy at Charlie's Club may indeed be Nightmare Fuel for some. However, in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, he loses several IQ points, and becomes the idiot henchman. The Villain Song, 'It Feels So Good to Be Bad', sung by Satan to Carface, seems to be about reversing Villain Decay and going in the complete opposite direction, but nothing ever comes of it. Carface never really regains the menacing quality he had in the first film, and ends up being sent to Fire And Brimstone Hell because he made a really stupid Deal With The Devil.
- To elaborate, this was a chain-smoking, gravel-voiced, Manipulative Bastard Bad Boss that waits until Charlie's wasted and rolls a car into Charlie that if he didn't die from the impact would drown, took everything Charlie had, manipulated an orphan for gambling tips, beat Itchy with a gang of Mooks within an inch of his life then almost killed Charlie again until he himself was eaten by King Gator. Essentially if you're a Don Bluth villain in a sequelized franchise, prepare to be decayed.
- The only way out of that is to never appear in the sequels at all, which many Bluth villains do not.
- Sharpteeth in The Land Before Time sequels. The original Sharptooth was an unstoppable killer and a true force of nature who had seemingly supernatural stamina. As the series continued (and became progressively more kiddy), all the carnivorous dinosaurs in general have decayed to the point of no return. It got so bad in the Land Before Time TV series that Littlefoot and the other kids were able to chase off two raptor-like Sharpteeth and one Tyrannosaur just by throwing fruit at them.
- Magnacat from Monster Allergy is a serious threat to the Tamers, but not anymore when his plans kept on failing, he becomes bankrupt.
- Hector Sinistro becomes this.
- While never particularly smart, the Trix sisters from Winx Club were competent enemies, acting on their own in the first season. They still were more than decent during the second season, even if by then, they were already reduced to the main villain's henchwomen; notable was their fusion into a single, powerful entity in the last episode. Then the third season came, and they became little more than a joke - they even received some power-up at some point, but it turned to be useless.
- Subverted at the very end of the first movie when they team up with their ancestors, the Three Ancestral Witches, promising to rip the Faeries' wings off.
- Baltor becomes this.
- The Hive kids from Teen Titans started out in the first appearance as an well-organized elite fighting force that proved to be an even match for the titular heroes (even taking them down in their first encounter when they had the element of surprise), but by the last season they had decayed so badly a single Titan (Kid Flash) could trounce them all fairly easily (except for Jinx, who had a Heel Face Turn anyways).
- Even when they were badass, they hardly liked each other, and weren't all that bright, save Jinx and Gizmo (who was too immature to put his brains to effective use on more than one occasion). One could argue that without Brother Blood to scare them into competence, they just really didn't care about working in tandem anymore. They probably only stuck together at all by that point because they had nowhere else to go.
- Brother Blood himself got this pretty bad. In his first appearance he's a cunning, if over-the-top, Diabolical Mastermind whose Mind Control powers make him a truly formidable opponent. In his next appearance he's still a threat, but has suffered Motive Decay- rather than being obsessed with power over his supervillain "students", he's just decided to create a tidal wave and wreck stuff For The Evulz. In his final (two-part) appearance, his grand plan centers on- becoming just like Cyborg (who he has become increasinly obsessed with over the past episodes.) Which he does by turning himself into a cyborg, and then somehow temporarily giving Cyborg his own powers, which he then uses to tear Blood to shreds. Yeah, real smooth there. It's probably fortunate for him that he hasn't appeared since.
- Brother Blood was still able to Curbstomp Cyborg whenever they fight, and he really lost in the season finale because of Duesexmachina.
- His fighting ability never really went down- it was his intelligence and ability to make effective use of his other pwoers that suffered. In "Deception", for example, he seems to know almost everything that's happening in the HIVE from the start (including that Cyborg was The Mole), and he was only beaten in the end because Cyborg's half-mechanical brain was able to reject him. In "Wavelength" and "Titans East", he somehow give Cyborg his own powers by mistake, is completely oblivious to when someone with no mental ehancements at all is capable of completely resisting him, and blows his top at the first oppurtunity. There's more to decay than just a decrease in power, after all.
- In Ben 10, Clancy the bug man was a sadistic psychopath in his first appearance. When he appears in the Grand Finale he has been turned into a generic bug monster for no reason. In fact, most of the villains that returned in the finale were decayed, with the exception of Charmcaster, who stuck to her role as Evil Counterpart to Gwen.
- Alien Force makes the Villain Decay worse, first, they turn the Forever Knights into an organization that wants to kill dragons (Implied this might be the original purpose, though), and Vilgax, my god, they ruined Vilgax, in the first series, he's a Genocidal, Sadistic, and overall, threatening overlord, but by the time Alien Force comes around... He's obeying Invasion Laws, what the hell?
- I've got you the kiddy meal, so don't let them know you're over-age.
- Strangely enough, the one villain Alien Force has invert Villain Decay is Dr. Animo, who was pretty much a punching-bag villain in the original series used for the sake of having a villain to fight on occassion, whereas in Alien Force he's a muscular, powerful Evil Overlord.
- In Gormiti the Lords of Nature Return, this was the fate that befell Orrore Profondo (Deep Horror), who, in the backstory narrated in the toyline, was a terrifying opponent, feared by all the Gormiti siding with the Wise Old One. He even managed to trick the Air Gormiti into doing a Face Heel Turn... but in the series (which takes place many millennia after the toyline story), he seems to play second banana to Evil Overlord Magmion and doesn't reallly show the competence a villain of his caliber should. Note, however, that this only seems to apply to his anime self: in the comics, as of now, he has retained all of his credentials and Magmion is just one of his underlings.
- NeoPets does this every so often with its villains like Dr. Sloth and Eliv Thade.
- Satan was big and scary in his first appearance in South Park, but he's become "a whiny little bitch" in God's own words ever since he was first established as the lover of Saddam Hussein.
- Mandark's first apperance in Dexter's Laboratory established him as clearly superior to Dexter in terms of brains, to the point where he could read minds, and saying his name invoked The Scottish Trope. He was quicky brought down to being Dexter's equal, with his telepathy disappearing. In fact, "Ego Trip" even stated he had to resort to stealing Dexter's ideas to get ahead.
- Chernabog, in Fantasia, might very well be the most potent piece of High Octane Nightmare Fuel Disney has ever produced. In an episode of House Of Mouse he admitted to being afraid of the dark! Man, talk about Nightmare Retardant.
Web Original
- Blood Boy, a big antagonist in the early stages of Survival of the Fittest version 3 had this occur in the last topic he appeared in, becoming an almost Jokeresque figure (to the point of almost directly quoting from the Dark Knight at one point). This does, however, have a fairly good reason: a different handler took over the character for that scene, one who, needless to say, had a rather different take on the character.
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