Basic Trope: The heroes keep the Big Bad around because they know how he works.
- Straight: Hiro and his team don't kill Emperor Evulz because they know that they can beat him, and they're not sure they can beat whoever may take his place.
- Exaggerated: They don't kill any villain they beat, and the worst they ever do is throw them in jail without ever crippling them.
- Downplayed: Hiro and company disable Evulz physically rather than kill him.
- Justified: A worse evil could ultimately take Evulz' place, and they don't want to deal with that.
- Inverted: Better the Angel You Know: Emperor Evulz avoids killing Hiro and his team because he knows that they don't actively attack him, and other heroes might be different.
- Subverted: After a few times of letting him live, they decide to kill Evulz.
- Double Subverted: But it's only revealed they did this because his son, the heir to his throne, is similar to him.
- Parodied: Evulz firebombs orphanages for fun, but Hiro still acts like anyone who takes his place would be worse.
- Zig Zagged: ...then they kill the son too.
- Averted: The heroes defeat Evulz and kill him.
- Enforced: The writers can't think of a different villain besides Evulz, so they make sure he isn't killed off.
- Lampshaded: "Aww, c'mon. You know you won't kill me."
- Invoked: Lance believes in giving villains second chances and hopes that Evulz will reform if allowed to live, having seen the error of his ways.
- Exploited: Evulz, upon realizing that the good guys won't kill him, starts pushing the envelope a little more each time to take advantage of his effective immortality.
- Defied:
- Evulz begs for mercy, but everyone else would not hear it and The Big Guy swiftly hacks off his head.
- Alternatively, Evulz will try to warn the heroes of someone who's worse that will replace him, Hiro retorts that they will simply make sure his evil throne stays permanently empty after they kill him.
- When Evulz brings up the possibility someone worse will replace him, Hiro rebuffs him: He knows exactly how irredeemably awful the Emperor is, and so the gamble is in the heroes' favor.
- Hiro and his team make a point of assassinating anything and anybody who has even the most infinitesimally small chance of replacing Evulz as the Big Bad of the story before they come gunning for Evulz (this has its own possible backfire, but it's better off discussed elsewhere).
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Evulz seems to have Joker Immunity. When Lance complains about this, Hiro says the alternative could be much worse. He refuses to elaborate on what he means.
- Deconstructed: As soon as Evulz realizes why Hiro keeps sparing him, he changes up his style and becomes much more dangerous.
- Reconstructed: Hiro knows Evulz so well he can anticipate the way Evulz attempted to change and react accordingly.
- Played For Laughs:
- Evulz is an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and Hiro has done many a crazy scheme to keep him around.
- Evulz is "the devil Hiro knows" because he is a Friendly Enemy.
- Evulz tries to become good. A more effective villain steps into place. The answer of the heroes: "We Want Our Jerk Back!".
- Played For Drama:
- People get upset that Hiro keeps Evulz around, calling this a flimsy motive.
- Moore kills Evulz, calling Hiro a coward who never had the guts to do the hard call. Annihilus comes out of the woodwork and starts peddling drugs to children and ignites a Mob War in Heropolis, things Evulz never had the vileness to do. Hiro points out that Moore will go down in history as the trigger-happy idiot who turned Heropolis into a Place Worse Than Death and whatever message he wanted to sell is definitely going to be lost in the "idiot" part of the argument.
- Played For Horror: Evulz dies. Annihilus takes his place. He immediately establishes he is the Viler New Villain by going on a campaign of Rape, Pillage, and Burn the likes of which have not been seen since at least the 1940s, and that is just the beginning. Furthermore, the "new villain stench" means he is unstoppable by the means Hiro and his allies have at the moment, and he really wants them all very dead before they can develop new tricks — and he is succeeding. He truly is the devil the heroes did not wanted to know.
Back to Better the Devil You Know, and no, you can't delete the page because a worse one might come along.
