Basic Trope: Villains display admirable (not necessarily redeeming) qualities, such as bravery, in a life-threatening situation.
- Straight: General Drake sincerely offers to hold the heroes off as they move to kill Emperor Evulz.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz selflessly holds off the heroes to make sure his Always Chaotic Evil race escapes while the heroes are distracted.
- Evulz declines and insists they share their Last Stand together. The two proceed to use their skills and cunning to give the Five-Man Band an incredibly difficult battle, severely wounding almost all of them before finally being killed.
- Evulz' top enforcers, from Drake to Head Scientist Butcherstein to Clay the Violent Southpaw Glaswegian, all get into a collective Last Stand against every last one of the Big Good's forces.
- Downplayed: Evulz remarks that it was an honour to have Drake serve under him before leaving as offered.
- Justified:
- Despite their evil nature, Drake and Evulz are selfless to both each other and their empire, which doesn't make them hesitate to put their own lives on the line if it means saving the other or their empire.
- Drake and Evulz have a Villainous Friendship. The Power of Friendship cuts both ways.
- Both characters are high-ranking villains because they believe strongly in their vision.
- Both characters are concerned with principle.
- General Drake's a hardened soldier. He wouldn't have made it as far as he did without some serious courage.
- Inverted:
- Bob fights without honour or skill, abandons the battlefield when things get tough, begs for his life the moment the previous tactic fails, has constant fear and paranoia, and is generally pragmatic at best.
- Heroic Sacrifice
- Drake is a Dirty Coward and folds even under minimal pressure.
- Drake surrenders himself to the police and attempts to draw himself and other people away from his overlord's ways.
- Subverted: "Remember that you're not paid to try and flatter me..."
- Double Subverted: "...I suppose that's why you were my favourite. You are the only honestly helpful minion I've ever had."
- Parodied: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: The villain does not display admirable qualities in a life-threatening situation.
- Enforced: The scene needs to emphasise the Grey-and-Gray Morality conflict set up for almost the entire story.
- "How do we show the villain's tough? Make him really brave!"
- Lampshaded: "Did you really think I'd scamper off like some frightened vermin instead of sticking around to hold the damn line?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Evulz wants Drake killed, so he orders him to make a stand against the heroes, expecting it to be a well-applied use of The Uriah Gambit (at the absolute worst-case scenario Drake will make the heroes bleed, and at best he will take a few with him before going down).
- Defied: General Drake is killed by The Starscream, who immediately orders a retreat or tries to exploit the assassination to ask the heroes for a chance to parlay.
- Discussed: "Wow, General Drake is holding the line instead of running away? That's.... actually kind of admirable."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: General Drake was brought up in a warrior culture that idealized fighting to your very last breath as the most noble death imaginable, and the society that shaped him was structured to send many of their citizens to this sort of demise. Drake's guardians, in particular, wanted him to go out swinging so badly that they neglected other important parts of his development, like his empathy and sense of justice, and shaped him into the sort of man who would work for an evil overlord while also being fearless in the face of certain defeat. Sure, he's brave and resourceful enough to fight on while outnumbered and outgunned, but the events that led to this lopsided battle have left him an incomplete human being.
- Reconstructed: General Drake comes from a relatively normal background and suffers a near-death experience that establishes his healthy fear of dying. This makes it all the more shocking when he offers to help his lord escape at his own expense. He is clearly hesitant when he makes the offer, and in the ensuing battle, he pulls out every trick in the book to keep the heroes' attention away from Evulz and onto him. It becomes clear that Drake, despite being clearly frightened of what might happen to him, has pushed past his fears for the sake of his emperor and his mission.
Back to Villainous Valour.
