Are Pure evil/Complete Monster villains realistic?

What makes a Complete Monster?

• Stupid Evil: building a Doomsday Device to blackmail a planet

• Generic Dooms Day Villain: building a Doomsday Device For the Evulz

• Pure Evil Complete Monster:
  • Building a Doomsday Device because you're a Visionary Villain, either the other side will tremble in fear and surrender, you will use it as a test and they will surrender or you'll use it and wipe them out. The End of the World as We Know It for the other side, All in a day's work for you because A Million Is a Statistic.

  • Building a Doomsday Device because the otherside is seen as the other and it's okay to give them The End of the World as We Know It as part of the Guilt-Free Extermination War.

  • Building a Doomsday Device because the otherside wrecked your Doomed Hometown. Despite the leadership's attempts at peace they other side keeps with the Blood Knight act. So a General Ripper sees that Unstoppable Rage and says he has money and funds for your "ultimate weapon". Because they took your family away. Because they kept on going. Because they were a bunch of JerkAsses and they deserve to die too. See also Who's Laughing Now?.

edited 12th Feb '14 10:09:21 PM by TairaMai

clearly you have never poked your nose into a discussion on rape or domestic violence. That kind of thinking is very much extant on both sides of the argument - in both our reality and our fiction.

While no one is born evil, if a person becomes corrupted to the point that they will no longer commit any good action, then they can be considered pure evil. After all, saying that something isn't pure evil is the same as saying there is still some good left in them, so if there isn't any good left in them, then by default they are pure evil.

So the real question is whether you think it's possible for someone to stop being or doing anything considered good. If it is, then being "pure evil" is possible and realistic.

Depends: Is said villain have some sort of internal justification for their actions or is it simply being evil for the sake of evil? If it's the latter, I'd be really careful about using it.

While I'd say that human beings can be horribly cruel and aren't inherently good by any stretch of the imagination, apart from severe mental illness which causes violent tendencies/a complete lack of humanity, it's not realistic to do things purely to be a complete bastard.

I agree. Though there are a lot of realistic monsters that a lot of people THINK are simply evil for the sake of evil (like Jim Moriarty or The Joker), despite having genuine motivations for their actions.

A villain doesn't have to be evil for its own sake in order to be a Pure Evil Complete Monster.

The big thing in a villain is Lack of Empathy:

• Joffrey Baratheon in Game Of Thrones, Royal Brat who treats people as objects, a sociopath in the purist form.

• Gul Dukat in Deep Space Nine who is a nice guy, but has a mean streak and wants power. When he loses power he goes Ax-Crazy.

• The Joke from The Dark Knight, an Anarchist? A Death Seeker? Or just a psycho who wants to watch the world burn? He knows how society is supposed to work and uses that to his advantage.

In contrast, Star Trek Voyager had Annorax, Captain of the "time ship". The guy had wiped out whole civilizations in a quest to restore his people. And over the two part arc of "Year of Hell" we see his descent from scientist to madman. Not evil For the Evulz but he was driven to evil.

edited 16th Feb '14 10:12:30 AM by TairaMai

Idk can you make a realistic story about a child rapist

Then yes

That is a monstrous person. Not an archetype of pure evil. People are never that easy to sum up.

first, I know this thread is old and I still want apologize for all the trouble I caused years back.

but on topic, I have what I feel is the ultimate example on how the Complete Monster and For the Evulz tropes are realistic and do happen in real life, like I said on the former's discussion tab.

the United States' first serial killer, H.H. Homes. he may have done other, more petty criminal activities but they were all to fund his Murder Castle, it was the only thing he ever did with his life and he described himself in a way that is basically this wiki's definition o Complete Monster with his 'I was born with the devil in me' speech. witch he wasn't saying he literally had the devil possessing him, he was saying he has a complete Lack of Empathy, using religious language to describe non supernatural things was just more common back in the early 1900s.

and I still don't buy the idea that Hitler had any good in him. his reasons for what he did was racial supremacist ideology, not any concern for his country's economy or whatever, he only valued certain people based on their physical characteristics and not their actual character.

I love the pure evil villain's, they are immensely fun to watch and very satisfying to see fail.

Technically, no. Complete Monster is NRLEP not just because it’s a morality trope, but because real people are more complex than fictional people and everyone has both flaws and redeeming qualities. But just because something is unrealistic doesn’t mean it’s not fun to write and read. And they have plenty of basis in reality—many realistic works have CMs, some even dramatizations of real people like Amon Goeth.

I don't quite agree; yes, most people are too psychologically complex to be considered "pure evil", but some psychologically aberrant people like psychopaths lack that level of psychological complexity. While some non-psychopaths can be considered immoral and some psychopaths can be moral, a particularly immoral psychopath can exhibit behavior that would qualify them as a Complete Monster were they a fictional character.

And in response to many other posts on this thread — no, a Complete Monster is not necessarily motivated by For the Evulz. That's its own, separate trope.

Those characters are so realistic that I could write a dozen of Real Life names in seconds.

And as Clancy Gardener has mentioned they can have a lot more motivations than For the Evulz. Usually It's All About Me and Lack of Empathy as they just think they can do whathever they want and dont care or enjoy the suffering they cause.

EDIT: Also, even if the page is NRLFP, a lot of fiction works that have historical figures as characters, have those same historical figures as "Complete Monsters" in the YMMV section of those works precisely because they have been depicted accurately or even less evil than in real life.

Edited by Oculto on Jul 15th 2021 at 6:38:56 PM

Where would Frollo fit into this spectrum?

As an example, that is.

If you mean Judge Frollo in the Disney movie, he already has a complete description in The Hunchback of Notre Dame section.

Edited by Oculto on Jul 15th 2021 at 6:35:05 PM

...Would my villain Wolfang Richler qualify?

He's completely empty of empathy for anyone - even when he has some people he's vaguely nice to (family) its because he views them as extensions of himself. And even then, he's not entirely nice - it's more a situation of playing favorites. And even his favorites get a helping of gaslighting. He sees everyone around him as pieces he can use in his experiments and ideas, using people for purposes of pleasure, experimentation, establishing control, and furthering himself. His psychology is deeply impacted by the fact his reality altering powers let him kill simply by saying "Die".

And yet, at the same time, it's mentioned he spent close to 2.5 million years locked away in a pocket dimension consisting only of darkness with no light or anything for him to interact with. He emerged from that a totally different character than he was when he was thrown into it. Does this impact his classification?

I really wouldn't say so. Barring a few exceptions, they're meant to be seen as not people but simply forces of nature beyond our understanding.

That´s not what you see in the examples. In fact, Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a character very similar, as millions of years of isolation have turned him in a completely selfish creature, and it´s listed as Complete Monster.

But also depends on what he does to other people, after all. Your character must be causing pain and suffering knowing it and willingly (if not, he would be Obliviously Evil).

Edited by Oculto on Jul 15th 2021 at 2:50:50 PM

A "force of nature" wouldn't count because there needs to be some evidence that they have the capacity to make moral choices, and enough characterization to establish a pattern beyond "generically evil". That's why Generic Doomsday Villain characters don't count- they aren't characters moreso than one-dimensional plot devices with no other characterization.

Precisely. Complete Monsters aren't necessarily Anthropomorphic Personifications of archetypal evil, although they can be sometimes (for example, Michael Myers). Oftentimes, they're emblems of a comparatively banal sort of evil with comprehensible motives (e.g. Judge Frollo, Amon Goeth, John Doe).

Who are also the most realistic ones because there have been a lot of people like those around since our species existed. And a lot of them have become kings or "Presidents for life" too.

Edited by Oculto on Jul 16th 2021 at 1:15:09 PM

@ Occulto: ...Oh yeah. He definitely knows he's causing people pain and suffering - the pain and suffering is what makes him feel amused. The worst is done to his own family, though its ambiguous if he knows its actually the worst. He places more or less a "Cycle of Torment" on his family - he does horrible things, then the victims end up so messed up and insane, accepting and normalizing it that they undertake similar actions to regain their power over their lives. It might also be a curse. The most fucked up part is Wolfang thinks the familial abuse stuff is all normal.

Then he is clearly one.

And, sadly, I could write some Real Life names that were similar to him and enjoyed ordering the deaths of millions of people while also being specially cruel to their own families.

Edited by Oculto on Jul 19th 2021 at 3:29:43 PM

My stance is that while people who have no redeeming qualities don’t exist, people who are as evil as Complete Monsters do exist, sans the no redeeming qualities part. For instance Amon Goeth, who is listed as a Complete Monster, was actually worse in real life. Hell pretty much any atrocity like the Holocaust counts. Even a man as cynical as me can’t comprehend how normal people can be conditioned to take part in genocide.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Aug 13th 2021 at 2:20:27 PM