Villain No Longer Idle

"There is an old saying: If you want something done right, do it yourself."

— Hazel Rainart, RWBY, "Our Way"

Something that the Evil Overlord List would agree most of all is not to rely on barking orders at your subordinates. Sometimes, they might be too stupid or too incompetent to do anything. Or rather that kind of barking intimidates them so much that they can't do anything over the fear of what will happen. In either case the subordinates do a poor job, and so the Evil Overlord decides to do things himself instead.

The trope can be used when the Big Bad is above his minions in both power and competence. Usually lampshaded if the villain is Surrounded by Idiots; at some point after one too many failures, the villain will tend to say "If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself!" and then proceeds to do far better at any given mission than his underlings have ever done, making you wonder why he didn't just do this in the first place.

This trope can start when The Pawns Go First. If the villain gets angry enough to kill his henchman along the way, it's an example of You Have Failed Me. It can be a buildup to a Final Boss, especially if the Big Bad is one.

Subtrope of Let's Get Dangerous!. Contrast Non-Action Big Bad and Orcus on His Throne, when the Big Bad remains on his chair and lets all his subordinates do the work for him. Compare It's Personal, which can be a motivation for this trope.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure, the vampire-like villain Myotismon sends henchmen to do his feeling throughout Tokyo during the day because he can't handle the bright sunshine. He later puts a fog barrier that spreads throughout Tokyo, eliminating this obstacle and enabling him to become much more dangerous in very short order.
  • There's also a Running Gag where Big Bads become enraged by their mook(s) being unable destroy the DigiDestined, destroy said mooks, and go after the kids themselves. This happens no less than five times.
• Dragon Ball:
  • After being released by Emperor Pilaf, King Piccolo spends most of his time on Pilaf's airship, leaving it to the Pilaf Gang and his sons to gather the Dragon Balls and carry out his plans. Once Goku and his friends kill Cymbal and Tambourine, however, Piccolo is done sitting on his ass and goes to take care of Goku personally.
  • For the vast majority of the Namek Saga, Frieza spends most of his time on his spaceship while his mooks do everything, and calls in Elite Mooks and the Ginyu Force when that fails. It's only when every last member of his army has been killed that Frieza finally goes to confront the Z-Fighters.
• Played With in the Excel♡Saga anime adaptation: About 2/3 into the show, Il Palazzo, the boss of the ineffectual Villain Protagonist Excel, grows tired of her making a mess of his plans to Take Over the City and throws her out, assuming a more hands-on approach to his organization's affairs. Having done that, he almost achieves all of his goals within a couple of episodes — only to be foiled again by Excel's incompetence, as she tries to get back into his good graces, with the city turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare as a result.
• Fruits Basket: Ren Sohma spends most of the series as a non-active Manipulative Bitch, finding ways to screw Akito over and dupe the Sohma family and staff into siding with her over her daughter. When her attempt to manipulate Isuzu into stealing Akito's backfires when Akito catches her in the act and locks her up, Ren is done playing around and breaks into Akito's room with a knife to demand the box herself... only to be rendered an Empty Shell when Akito voluntarily hands it over, revealing the box is empty and was actually given to her by the head maid.
• Full Metal Panic!: After the loss of Gauron and Gates, Amalgam takes matters with Mithril more seriously. Their first response is both occupying Merida Island while Leonard, who has been sitting out much of the first few arcs, personally trashes the Arbalest and retrieves Kaname, something they continuously failed until now.
• IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix: Averted with Team White Snow's true Captain. Max carried out all operations for the team and simply acted behind the scenes. Only in the final race, when things don't go their way does she more explicitly step in as the true mastermind.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: DIO, after his Praetorian Guard have all been defeated, personally steps out to confront the heroes and annihilate them himself.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: After spending much time hiding as Kosaku Kawajiri, Yoshikage Kira gains a new confidence after obtaining Bites The Dust, which he sets up to deal with the heroes once they learn of his whereabouts.
  • Golden Wind: After Team Bucciarati defects from Passione, Diavolo sends out his Elite Guard to eliminate them. After half of the squadron has been killed, Diavolo decides to head towards Sardinia in order to destroy evidence that would unveil his identity.
  • Stone Ocean: While working on the Evil Plan left behind by DIO, Enrico Pucci bides his time, sending Stand Users to deal with Jolyne and her allies. Later on, he's forced to reveal himself as Whitesnake's user in a grand attempt to further the next phase of obtaining "Heaven".
  • Steel Ball Run: After his agents were taken out and discovering Johnny and Gyro are nearing the full Holy Corpse, Funny Valentine heads out to take it for himself and restore the corpse and receive its power.
  • JoJolion: The leader of the Rock Humans, Toru, starts dealing with Josuke and the Higashikatas after the deaths of both Damo's group and his own Locacaca Research Group members, especially once Josuke confronts The Head Doctor at the hospital.
• Kagurabachi: After the military cancels the bounty Sojo placed on Chihiro's head, he decides to take matters into his own hands, starting with casually murdering the henchmen who failed him. Within a day, he's already pinpointed Chihiro's location and casually entered Hinao's café to confront him.
• Found in both Big Bad Wannabe villains in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED:
  • Azrael suffers a mutiny by Nartele, who locks him up in the command bridge during a critical battle with the Archangel. Therefore, he personally operates his flagship's weapons. If it wasn't for Mu La Flaga's intervention, he might have won.
  • Patrick Zala likewise ends up having many soldiers questioning his orders to fire GENESIS at Earth, especially since they already won the battle (and probably the whole war). He ends up shooting a soldier for questioning his orders and operates the controls himself, despite being warned that he will destroy his own forces as a result.
• Partway through Monster Rancher, Moo captures Holly and takes on the heroes to obtain information, then spends a lot of the series excavating his original body for use against them. When he achieves it, he goes off to kill them, and nearly succeeds before the sun drives him away, necessitating life support and sending in The Dragon to attack them while he recovers.
• My Hero Academia has All For One lurk in the shadows for the majority of the story's first part, intent on having Tomura Shigaraki lead the League of Villains in his place so he may build him up into being the next Big Bad... up until Shigaraki requests his help and he relents, happy with the progress he's made. His final battle with All Might serves as the climax of the U.A. Beginnings Saga. This is part of his long-term plan, as it leads to his escape from prison several months later and springs the country's most dangerous villains back into the wild to create the chaos necessary to wear down series protagonist Izuku Midoriya and steal his inherited Quirk: One For All. The remainder of the series is dedicated to Izuku untangling the mess he made springing himself back into action.
• One Piece: The Gorosei/Five Elders have been The Omniscient Council of Vagueness for such a long time it was very easy to assume they were just a heap of old bureaucrats, and not combatants in the least. The fact their fellow aristocrats, the World Nobles, have been utterly pathetic in actual combat so far (only dangerous because the Admirals would be on anyone that dared touch one) made that thought even easier to believe. Just one of them, St. Jaygarcia Saturn, crashing on Egghead Island to take out the Straw Hats by himself thoroughly disabused everyone of that notion, showing abilities that border on black magic unlike anything the manga's shown before. And once Luffy proves too much to handle quickly, Saturn directly brings the other four along to try and get things under control - and the others are just as monstrously powerful (with emphasis on "monstrously").
• Sailor Moon Crystal: Queen Beryl, who spent much of her time sitting back in the manga and anime, gets off her throne for once in the middle of the Dark Kingdom arc. She successfully defeats Tuxedo Mask and retrieves him the first time. However, the second time she does so, she's defeated long before the Shitennou are.

Fan Works

• Better Left Unsaid: As the Akatsuki struggle to achieve their goals, Tobi and Nagato decide to start dealing with some of the problems themselves, with Tobi capturing Gaara while Nagato targets Orochimaru.
• The Karma of Lies sees this actively Invoked by Ladybug and her allies when they set up a trap to lure Hawkmoth out of hiding. They have to Run the Gauntlet of all the akumas he sends after them in rapid succession before he finally comes after them himself.
• Kimi No Na Iowa: In Chapter 31, the leaders of the Abyssal Fleet realize that they were being complacent in assuming their weaker units would suffice. This spurs them to start attacking humanity themselves.
• Throughout the fic Manly Magi Kamina Magica!, the Incubators watch over Kamina to make him a Witch, in addition to get Madoka to make a contract, with the Anti-Spiral watching over them. After several repeated failures, and a clear distinction between their philosophical views, the Anti-Spiral decides to take over. It then proceeds to seize control of the Incubators’ Hive Mind, kidnap Goddess!Madoka, and unleash the Mugann to kill off all the Puella Magi.
• Skylanders Academy: New Horizon: In the final chapters, Omen decides to stop relying upon Cyrus and the Knights of Solitude, declaring that "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself".
• Stallion of the Line: With Vice-Admiral Garp having quit the Marines, the War of the Best seems to be slanted more in the pirates' favor... until one of the Five Elder Stars, Shepherd Ju Peter, opts to join in the fight personally and demonstrate why they're so feared.
• What Goes Around Comes Around (Miraculous Ladybug) opens with Hawkmoth doing this, as he learned Ladybug's Secret Identity and attacks the Dupain-Cheng bakery.
• Near the end of Won't Tell a Soul, Hawkmoth gets involved in order to personally take Nino hostage.

Films — Animation

• Partway through The Little Mermaid, Ursula decides Flotsam and Jetsam's interference in Eric and Ariel's relationship isn't enough and decides to "take matters into her own tentacles".
• At the climax of the movie Recess: School's Out, the Big Bad gets impatient with his understandably timid scientists to the point he knocks one away to engage the tractor beam himself.

Films — Live-Action

• In Enchanted, Nerissa goes down to New York to poison Giselle after Nathaniel fails to do so three times. She succeeds on her first try.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thanos initially never leaves that throne, preferring to let others do the work for him, and this costs him three Infinity Stones in various ways. In The Stinger of Avengers: Age of Ultron, he decides to get off the throne to take matters into his own hands, which he finally does in Avengers: Infinity War. It proves to be a great decision.
    Thanos: Fine. I'll do it myself.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: The Big Bad initially just sends demons throughout the multiverse to hunt for America Chavez. Partly because multiversal travel is extremely difficult (that's the entire reason people want America), but also because it seemed more... reasonable. Once Wanda is revealed as the villain, she explains everything to Strange, and politely asks for America so that she can use her power to get her children back. Strange says no, so she decides to stop being reasonable. At which point she personally cracks the greatest magical fortress in the world like an egg.
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: When Lando's citizen fleet arrives, the tide turns against the Final Order... until the restored Emperor decides to personally intervene. When he does, Sidious zaps the enemy fleet with Force lightning, incapacitating thousands of starships.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: Darkseid spends much of the film on Apokolips while letting Steppenwolf retrieve the Mother Boxes for him (he doesn't even address him directly when Steppenwolf reports his progress, instead having Desaad speak for him instead as an intermediary). When Steppenwolf is foiled by the newly formed Justice League, Darkseid decides to go about achieving his goals personally.
  Darkseid: Ready the armada. We will use the old ways.

Literature

• Wars of the Realm: Niturni spends the entirety of the series unleashing wave after wave of Fallen troops to defeat Validus and his team and eliminate Drew Carter. Finally, in the very last chapter of the series, he invokes this trope:
  Niturni: I decided that I would not use an army to destroy you. I would come after you myself.

Live-Action TV

• Denkō Chōjin Gridman: Khan Digifer resides within Takeshi's computer for the entire time until the finale. When he enters the battlefield, he's so powerful that even Gridman is forced to retreat.
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: For the first half of the series, Diabolico is content to send out his monsters to try and level Mariner Bay. Then he starts running out of monsters, and Queen Banshera returns, making it clear if Diabolico doesn't do something soon, she'll take away his power (and, knowing her, kill him). After his last three monsters go down, Diabolico confronts the Rangers personally. And had it not been for something neither party had seen coming, he would've won.
• Seven Star Fighting God Guyferd: Zodiac spends most of the series lurking behind the scenes, but as soon as he runs low on monsters to send out, he takes to the field himself, pummels Guyferd and obtains the last of the pieces needed for his Doomsday Device.

Pinball

• Heist!: Mr. Big spends most of the game opposing the protagonists through various proxies (such as the police in his pocket). However, at the start of Crane Multiball, he throws the operator out of the cab so he can personally steer the crane against the player.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Once The Consortium starts turning against him, C decides to take matters into his own hands by obtaining the power of Hinterland by force with any means necessary.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Big Bad Alduin, the draconic Beast of the Apocalypse, Subverts this twice:
  • The first occurrence is at the very beginning of the game, when he attacks the village where the Dragonborn is mere seconds away from being executed by the Empire. His reason for attacking the village? To kill the Dragonborn.
  • Later, about 2/3 of the way through the main questline after the Dragonborn has likely killed dozens of his draconic minions, Alduin himself attacks the Dragonborn once again at the top of the Throat of the World. Again subverted as, not only does he fail to kill the Dragonborn, but he flees the battle. To a Proud Warrior Race like the dragons who believe death is preferable to running away, this is inexcusable. This causes the other dragons to question his leadership and one, Odahviing, to support the Dragonborn instead (ultimately leading to Alduin's defeat).
• In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, after Leongar is beaten, Fecto Elfilis decides to break free from its containment with the intent of consuming everything until it merges back with Elfilin.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, after Mario acquires the sixth Crystal Star, Grodus decides to interplant changes into his plan rather than waiting. He instead allows Mario to collect the last star and have him open the door so he could gain entrance.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • In the first game, Qwark and Drek do this as part of their boss fights. The former sends his pet creature the first time, and during his boss fight, he sends out a squadron of fighters to attack Ratchet. After they get destroyed, he says it word for word that if he wants to finish the job in defeating Ratchet, he'll have to do it himself. The latter has him personally press the button for the Deplanetizer aimed at Ratchet's planet, additionally armed with a large robot to confront the duo.
  • The third game has Dr. Nefarious, who relies on his minions, including his butler Lawrence (much to his annoyance). When even he is absent in a crucial moment against the duo, Nefarious decides he will just fight them himself.
• River City Girls 2: After learning of his daughter's humiliation, Sabu breaks out of jail with his bare hands, with intent on getting revenge on Misako and Kyoko.
• Happens in both the Brotherhood and the Ronin arcs in Saints Row 2. The Brotherhood leader Maero holds back his retribution against the Saints even after they scar him with radioactive tattoo ink, but after they kill his girlfriend and maim his Best Friend, he goes out of his way to destroy them. The Ronin arc, meanwhile, has Kazuo Akuji, the Ronin overboss, fly over from Japan to personally deal with the troubles his American branch is having with the Saints (in a subversion, he does an even worse job of it than his US-based underlings, due to lacking all cultural context).
• Skylanders: After his minions failed to evilize three of the Ancient Elementals in SWAP Force, Kaos decides to go all out on his assault on the Fantasm Forest and the mission to evilize the Ancient Tree Spirit, including being there himself to supervise everything.
• StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty: When invading Char, Kerrigan finally gets fed up with relying on her Zerg minions being unable to break the heroes' unrelenting defense and personally goes after the Terrans to retrieve the Xel'Naga artifact herself.
  Kerrigan: I'm tired of working through others. It's time I took a personal hand in your demise.
• Under Night In-Birth: Hilda's Arcade Mode is an example of what would happen if she stopped playing around with minions and used her full might to get what she wants. End result, half the cast, the trained fighters Vatista and Yuzuriha, the unaligned newcomers Nanase and Byakuya, the Noble Demons Seth and Chaos, the Guest Fighters Akatsuki and Eltnum, and protagonists Hyde and Linne, all end up dead by her hands, some for just being in her way.

Visual Novels

• In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, when Kaede's trap failed to kill Rantaro, Tsugumi, the mastermind, took it upon herself to finish the job to ensure a Class Trial will happen with Kaede taking the fall.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • In the first arc, it's unclear whether or not the witch Beatrice is anything more than a legend. In the second arc, Turn of the Golden Witch, she appears in front of multiple people, and is summoning demons by the second day. Played With, however, as Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane is a major Running Theme, and Battler's goal is to prove that her fantastic version of events can all be explained through mundane ends.
  • In the final arc, Featherine Augustus Aurora goes from being The Watcher and steps onto the stage themselves as a Physical God capable of one-shotting other witches without lifting a finger.

Web Animation

• Meta Runner: After Belle fails to stop Tari from executing the Deep Mountain Clip, Lucks decides to take matters into his own hands, initiating a backup plan and drawing his gun. Things quickly go downhill for the heroes after that.
• RWBY: Salem spends most of the show's history, as well as the first six volumes, preferring to work from the shadows, through subordinates that turn humanity against itself; this leaves people pointing their fingers at each other instead of her while attracting the Grimm, who respond to their negative emotions. After learning in Volume 6 that Ozpin has already reincarnated and is taking the Relic of Knowledge to Atlas, she decides to intervene personally. Although she arrives at Atlas with a Grimm army, it's after Watts and Tyrian have turned Atlas and Mantle against each other, exhausting Ironwood and his military in the process. However, although overseeing the battle for Atlas personally, she conducts the battle from her base of operations and only confronts the heroes directly when they infiltrate her base. Nevertheless, she emerges from Volume 8 having successfully obtained what she wanted.

Web Original

• As part of the Evil Overlord List 101: "I will not order my trusted lieutenant to kill the infant who is destined to overthrow me — I'll do it myself."

Western Animation

• Ben 10: After spending the majority of season 1 in a healing chamber, Vilgax steps out ready to fight in the season finale.
  Vilgax: The Omnitrix is being wasted on pointless heroics!
  Drone Lieutenant: Shall I dispatch more drones to retrieve it?
  Vilgax: No...
  (the healing chamber opens, and a giant metal foot crushes a medical drone. Pan up to the fully healed and empowered Vilgax.)
  Vilgax: I will see to this task myself.
• The Cuphead Show!: The only time The Devil ever decides to take action in stealing Cuphead's soul is when something goes wrong or when Stickler harasses him to do so.
• Mega Man: Fully Charged has Sgt. Night go out into the field as Lord Obsidian midway through the series, decisively defeating Mega Man at first before being driven back.
• In Miraculous Ladybug, Hawk Moth is generally content to sit in his lair and send out an akuma to create a Villain-Possessed Bystander every episode. However, in the two-part season two finale, after creating and using Catalyst to let him create multiple akuma at once, he personally takes the field to command his akumatized villains. After the heroes defeat him, forcing Catalyst to use the broken Peacock Miraculous to save him, he returns to sending out akumas from the safety of his lair, only coming out in his civilian identity unless he's certain he can win.
• Samurai Jack: Played for Laughs in "Jack vs. Aku". Fed up with the constant failures of his minions, Aku decides to take matters into his own hands by demanding Jack to battle him one-on-one at some ruins, which is secretly one of his schemes that Jack easily sees through.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Horde Prime sets course for Eteria after several planets under his rule start rebelling due to She-Ra's actions and upon seeing her take down one of his main bases.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Darth Sidious is usually content to act in his public guise as Palpatine. But when Darth Maul takes over Mandalore, Sidious personally intervenes to put his former student in his place, not least of all because Maul and his brother Savage are on track to become a major threat to his plan.
• Steven Universe: After not receiving any progress on The Cluster, Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond arrive on Earth to awaken and activate it themselves. On top of that, they also came to finally stamp out Rose Quartz and the Crystal Gems after "Rose" (Actually Steven himself) escaped from Homeworld.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): In "The Gauntlet," after Bradford and Xever have repeatedly failed to find Splinter or destroy the Turtles, Shredder decides to go out and face them himself.

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