Misused (titles crowner 10/2/14): Bigger Bad

I've been saying that since the beginning. The "scale" goes

1. Villain Antagonist
2. Arc Villain
3. Big Bad
4. Bigger Bad

But Big Bad gets used as any of the above.

Edit: yes, and have it better. Villain Antagonist is a super trope.

edited 25th Sep '14 6:14:21 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Even that's not really accurate. "Villain Antagonist" shouldn't even be part of the scale.

The first tier should be Monster of the Week.

Here, like this:

• 1: Monster of the Week
• 2: Arc Villain
• 3: Big Bad
• 4: Bigger Bad

Also, can their be a Non Action Bigger Bad? Like a Non-Action Big Bad, they may not be physically dangerous, but they have control over their servents or are just good at manipulating. Like The Director from Red Vs Blue: he openly admits he has never fought in a battle, yet he founded Project Freelancer and led it along to set the course of the series. He is not physically dangerous, but he certainly affects a lot more people.

Physical power is generally irrelevant to being a villain. Quite often it is their mental capacities or the army they command that tests the hero the most. Quite often they are a bigger bad because they have no physical power and can merely influence others.

Here's the thing: Big Bad is a pre-existing term, coined by the Buffy The Vampire Slayer fandom and adopted by some other fandoms, and its definition is pretty much exactly the same as Arc Villain: it's a villain who, rather than being defeated in a single episode, causes problems for the heroes across many episodes (often an entire season). Just check out the Wikipedia page.

Trouble is, that definition was designed to work for television shows, specifically ones that follow a Half-Arc Season format with a different Story Arc starting up each season. It wasn't meant to be applied to books or movies, which usually exist outside the episode/story arc paradigm, or to ultra-serialized stories where every episode is part of the same Story Arc. By using Big Bad to refer to villains from all sorts of stories, we've really made a mess of the definition.

That's why I suggested we rewrite Bigger Bad's name and definition to remove all references to Big Bad, and replaced it with the term "current villain".

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

The thing is that I'm not sure what value Bigger Bad has if not connected to at least the concept (not execution) of the Big Bad. The Bigger Bad as a concept is that there is a villain who is beyond the scale and scope of the Big Bad(s), but has no direct influence on the story to be considered as the Big Bad. You take Big Bad out of the definition it would amount to "Another villain who has been active longer than we've known/heard of them."

The Big Bad as a concept is that there is a villain who does not think the same way as the weekly bad guys and has long term goals in mind (which works beautifully in a Half-Arc Season, as you said, but becomes more complicated when applied to something outside of that). Arc Villain should, in practice, be a stepping stone where a villain can cause problems over a couple of episodes but not necessarily have the same impact on the story as a Big Bad.

and Well, there is solution: make Arc Villain a Sub-Trope of Big Bad. Infact, the first paragraph of Arc Villain says:

---

The Super-Trope to Filler Villain and Starter Villain, an Arc Villain serves as the Big Bad for one Story Arc, having an Evil Plan, The Dragon, and Mooks with which to threaten Our Heroes. After that, though, he's killed off, sent into a Humiliation Conga, or makes a Heel–Face Turn, and Our Heroes go on to unrelated adventures and the next arc.

---

In my eyes, Arc Villain is a type of Big Bad, not a totally different trope. Again, we should make Arc Villain a Sub-Trope of Big Bad.

edited 26th Sep '14 3:43:19 AM by SatoshiBakura

The Big Bad is "The cause of all bad happenings in a story." Its right there first thing on the page. Or as the laconic says: "The ultimate villain of the story, who's causing the problem the heroes must solve." Looks pretty clear to me.

Yes, the description is written from a TV serial point of view (and could probably use some tweaking to be more media-neutral), but the trope works just fine regardless of the degree of serialization in a work. A work released in a single installment, like a movie, can still have a Big Bad. A work with multiple installments can have different Big Bads in each installment, if each installment is a separate story. And if every installment is part of the same Story Arc then they would all have the same Big Bad.

The supposed mess and media-dependence only comes in when people decide to argue about the meaning of the word "story" or its application to a particular work. When the end of one Story Arc and the beginning of the next is ambiguous or controversial. But that's not Big Bad's fault.

EDIT: I agree on Arc Villain being a subtrope.

edited 26th Sep '14 4:14:27 AM by DiamondWeapon

The thing is Arc Villain, by its very name, will only ever be "A villain for a Story Arc." I think it diminishes both tropes by saying one is a subtrope of the other, when they are simply different forms of villains. You could be an Arch-Enemy whose conflict with the hero spans multiple stories that make up a Story Arc and not be a Big Bad.

And quoting the description or laconic and holding that as a golden standard does nothing, as we are saying the trope is broken and may need a rewrite. The wiki is not peer reviewed. Raven already said that the rest of the world uses the trope in a much more narrow way and the troper community has been adapting it for scenarios well outside its original purpose.

I will start a repair shop on Arc Villain (if it needs a repair shop. Does it?). There, we can discuss this.

Alright. Trope Talk it is.

edited 26th Sep '14 1:56:33 PM by SatoshiBakura

Why does Arc Villain need a repair shop? Mere trope discussion is what Trope Talk is about.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

@ Diamond Weapon: Again, Big Bad is a pre-existing term. It wasn't created for this wiki, and is known by many people who have never heard of this wiki. So we don't actually get to decide what Big Bad means; we have to reflect what it already means.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

edited 27th Sep '14 2:51:09 PM by m8e

Casting a Go-Ahead Vote To Rename. From the description:

Note that despite the name, this is not a subtrope of Big Bad.

Bolded as original, italics mine. Everythings Worse With Snowclones is the Justification. There are some Snowclones that I believe in, but when the description specifically contradicts the implications behind the current one, (How can you be a Bigger Bad when you're not (necessarily) a Big Bad in the first place?) then the clone has to go.

edited 27th Sep '14 9:00:08 AM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

Pointing out that with 25-12 renaming is gaining support, although the numbers are still shifting.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Its not a subtrope of Big Bad, but it is defined relative to Big Bad. A villain that is more powerful but less involved in the plot than the Big Bad.

Got a problem with my Atlantis The Lost Empire entry.

• Atlantis The Lost Empire has the Leviathan, a rouge Atlantian robot who's only role in the movie is to completely destroy the Ulysses submarine and kill off the majority of the crew on the expedition.

This would count as a Bigger Bad by are current definition as it's a much greater threat than Rourke (destroying an entire sub, for crying out loud), but it is only involved at one point in the plot. Yet, it has been deleted twice for reasons like "it's not autonomous" and "it has no control over the Big Bad", which are proposed definition of Bigger Bad states nothing of (or the current description, for that matter).

This is one of the reasons why we made a rewrite of the Bigger Bad description: to allow more examples like this one in there.

I would consider that a horrible example. Being more dangerous does not make them a bigger threat. It's like a story set during a violent storm, it is certainly a bigger danger than any mob boss and may cause problems for the heroes but that doesn't make them a greater evil than the Big Bad.

How about this example(not put up by me) from The Goonies?

• Bigger Bad: Could be applied to One-Eyed Willy as, having been dead for around 350 years, he plays no direct role in the plot and all that is seen of him is his mortal remains. However the heroes must battle through his traps to reach his treasure and Mikey certainly views their quest as a personal duel between himself and Willy. Also, in his time, Willy was a far greater Big Bad than the Fratellis (he did kill all of his men) and Ma Fratelli seems to regard his corpse with a certain mutual criminal reverence.
  —>Mikey: Come on One-Eyed Willy, what does this have to do with the map? Is this just another one of your tricks?
  —>Mikey: We've got you now One-Eyed Willy, we're coming up right behind you!
  —>Mikey: I made it, I beat you
  —>Ma Fratelli: Thank you Mr Willy, thank you. You've made my day

edited 29th Sep '14 3:35:53 PM by VeryMelon

You know, I'm starting to think we just have too many potential examples that have little to do with each other but somewhat applicable to the broad definition. Cause this is what we seem to be getting:

• A villain with greater physical/metaphysical power, but has at most an indirect influence on the story that eliminates them from being the actual Big Bad. This is what I consider to be the core of the trope.
• A villain who has a considerable influence on the plot but who does not have a physical presence, or possibly even a posthumous character like the Goonies example.
• A threat that is greater than the primary villain, but not as significant to the plot like the Atlantis example.

And that's bad because why? I think the wider range of examples is a good thing. This trope needs to be less restrictive on its examples.

The quality of examples is important, if the majority of examples don't seem related to each other that indicates a fundamentally broken trope. It's not a Lumper Vs Splitter debate but evidence of a poorly defined concept that attracts bad examples. Each of those ideas I just listed are not "subtropes" or variations of a single concept but radically different ideas that have a completely different impact on the plot.

I'm pretty sure only the first one is this trope. The other two aren't examples unless they also fit the first one.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I don't think the Leviathan counts as an example. It only shows up in a single scene and doesn't do anything afterwards, nor is it mentioned afterwards.

While One-Eyed Willy does not wield any current influence during the story, I could buy him as a posthumous example of the trope, as a large part of the story would not have existed without him, and is treated as an actual character.

"A villain with greater physical/metaphysical power, but has at most an indirect influence on the story" and "A threat that is greater than the primary villain, but not as significant to the plot" are basically the same thing worded differently.

Whereas "A villain who has a considerable influence on the plot but who does not have a physical presence" is not a Bigger Bad at all because the point of Bigger Bad is he's not responsible for the (current) plot. He could still be a Big Bad, though. Big Bad doesn't require a physical presense.

Can't really comment on the Goonies or Atlantis examples, not having seen either.