Basic Trope: A powerful, heinous person has a perfectly ordinary name.
- Straight: The antagonist of a story is selfish, wicked, and wields an Artifact of Doom to rape minds and ruins lives just to be immortal and famous...and his name is Fred Smith.
- Exaggerated:
- Fred Smith, blond, stereotypical all-American boy, is the avatar of a world-devouring eldritch horror.
- The resident puppy-punting, baby-consuming, line-crossing, Complete Monster of the show unironically goes by Teddy Cubs.
- Downplayed:
- Fred Smith is selfish, egotistical and throws people under the bus left and right.
- The villain has a name such as Wilbur. A fairly unusual name, but still a common enough name for ordinary people to have.
- Fred's full name is Frederick Jeremiah Smith III.
- Justified:
- When Mr. and Mrs. Smith named their son, they couldn't possibly have known he'd turn out the way he did.
- Fred Smith is a Ron the Death Eater case, where he is a hero with an otherwise normal name in canon, and keeps said name but now has a malicious personality in fanon.
- Fred Smith is a normal human in a work of media where Humans Are Cthulhu.
- Fred Smith is otherwise a normal human being who just happens to be incredibly evil with no supernatural qualities.
- Fred Smith is the avatar of an Eldritch Abomination trying to blend in with the rest of the world.
- Fred is only considered one of the most evil beings in the galaxy solely due to the fact that he's the accidental cause of all of the terrible things that has happened.
- Inverted:
- An unimportant peasant with no outstanding qualities whatsoever is named Draugorn Deathfire.
- A truly honorable, kind, and noble Knight in Shining Armor is named Darkin Doombringer.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast
- Deathbringer the Adorable.
- Subverted:
- "Fred Smith" is just a nickname. His real name is Fredegar Smithsonius.
- Fred Smith turns out to be a hero.
- The fearsome supernatural crime boss is known simply as "Lou"... which turns out to be short for "Louis Cypher".
- Double Subverted:
- Fredegar hates his full name and prefers being called "Fred".
- Fred Smith is later revealed to be The Man Behind the Man.
- Lou is making that up, his real name is Louie Johnson.
- Parodied: His name is treated as the evilest name in existence and people cower in fear when it's spoken.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The villain goes by many names that fall under Aerith and Bob.
- The villain has dissociative identity disorder, where one identity is named something common while the other is named something more intimidating.
- Averted: The villain either has a cool and intimidating name or no name at all.
- Enforced:
- The writer named the Big Bad as a Take That! against someone he hates.
- The writer doesn't want to associate an uncommon name with evil so they chose a name that is common among the people.
- Lampshaded: "You'd think someone who's such a big deal wouldn't have such a bland name."
- Invoked: Fred Smith chose this name as a cover identity, helping him fly under the radar while he carries out his evil plan.
- Exploited: An alien invader with an out-there name takes on the moniker of "Fred Smith", the better to infiltrate Earth institutions.
- Defied: Fred Smith gives himself a scary nickname to make people take him seriously.
- Discussed: "If you grew up to become an all-powerful Evil Overlord, would you still keep your boring old name?"
- Conversed: "This villain is actually scarier with a commonplace name than he would be if he were called, I don't know, 'Monster Evil.'"
- Deconstructed: Fred can act like a perfectly ordinary person when not planning and consolidating his reign of terror, but nobody suspects him.
- Reconstructed: Fred Smith becomes infamous through his evil deeds, and eventually his name bears the same negative associations as any "evil" name.
Back to Tom the Dark Lord. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the name.
