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

I would say that this is similar to the Justified example I mentioned above—Skynet is The Big Bad with the various Terminator models acting as its Dragons.

Here's the problem: Skynet never actually directly gives the Terminators orders in the present day timeline. It just gives them the orders before they travel back through time and follow the programming that Skynet gave them. Skynet would be the Big Bad in the future timeline, but for the present day timeline, I'm not so sure.

They're still following Skynet's directive though. Skynet said "kill these people" and the Terminators proceed to try and kill the people in question. How they go about it might be up to them, but they're still following Skynet's instructions.

Skynet directly effects the plotline. It builds the Terminators, gives them their marching orders, and then sends them back in time to carry out its agenda. That's the role of a Big Bad not a Bigger Bad.

edited 8th Nov '14 1:58:50 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

They set the plot in motion and give directives to their agents. That is a tangible influence on the story, even if they have no specific personification.

and Moved the entry to Non-Action Big Bad, since Skynet doesn't actually do anything and lets the Terminators do all of the work.

Okay, now lets discuss Dr. Gero. Looking at his discription, he did in fact appear to be a Big Bad Wannabe, as his creations were the true threat. I went to his character sheet to check it out, and this is what I found under Bigger Bad.

• Bigger Bad: He holds this position in the Android and Cell Sagas though he is killed early on by Androids 17 and 18, his programming continues to influence all his creations' actions in large part even in death. Similarly, after long suspecting that 17 and 18 would eventually kill him, it was he that programmed a supercomputer to complete his ultimate android, Cell, as an insurance policy for obtaining vengeance against the Z Warriors as well as the very androids that betrayed him. In this manner, all the atrocities committed by Cell and his other creations arise from a Xanatos Gambit he initiated long before meeting his demise.

Yeah, it seems that he still had a pretty big influence even after death.

edited 10th Nov '14 4:42:49 AM by SatoshiBakura

He was also the designer of Android 8 which was used during the Red Ribbon Army arc in Dragon Ball 20 years earlier, never named till 20 years later and the anime created a later non-canon filler arc with someone else in an attempt to explain that.

Though it does seem like a lot of the other Bigger Bad examples just seem to follow Big Bad that are not The Heavy.

The problem with that is that the character is also treated as an absolute joke. Nobody in-universe is scared of him, he gets a humiliating beating from the main cast, and in the end, is betrayed and murdered by his own creations. Cell, for the record, explicitly has free will (I know this because it was discussed at length when Cell came up in the CM Clean-Up thread) and is not in any way following Gero's programming.

As for his having influence after his death, wouldn't that fall under Villainous Legacy, rather than this? Because when it comes to the majority of qualifications for this trope—being bigger than the current big bad, effecting the setting as a whole, peripheral involvement with the plot—he fails on all counts.

Heck, even if the Androids and Cell were following Gero's programming and nothing else that wouldn't be a Bigger Bad qualifier. That'd be him have a direct involvement with the plot, making The Man Behind the Man and/or an alternate Big Bad, much like the Skynet example.

edited 10th Nov '14 9:44:12 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

The problem with Dr. Gero is that he sets the plot in motion but he is not the biggest threat, the one driving the plot or some greater enemy with an indirect influence on the plot. He is someone whose Evil Plan got away from him, and once that happened he is irrelevant to the story (except with some posthumous study/discussion of what he was doing).

The argument made in that example says his programming of the Androids and Cell continue on, but the plot revolves around the fact all his creations eventually turned against him and acted of their own accord. Unless, somehow, all of the chaos was shown to be intended by Gero, the fact he dies unceremoniously early on in the saga undermines any claim to Big Bad or Bigger Bad / Greater Evil.

edited 10th Nov '14 1:16:55 PM by KJMackley

The best term for Gero is Big Bad Wannabe. He aimed at being the villain of a season, he got stomped by the heroes, killed by his own subordinates, and in the end, was a total failure.

Looking at the rest of the page there seem to be a fair number of examples that confuse similar cases of Villainous Legacy and/or Predecessor Villain with this trope. It's not that the two can't overlap, but it certainly isn't as common as some of the examples would suggest.

Right now Greater Evil is winning out by a solid margin.

I think a solid approach would be to identify three or four solid scenarios as to how the Bigger Bad / Greater Evil typically plays out. Such as:

• A more powerful being the Big Bad is aware of, possibly they are: afraid of them, seeking to overthrow them, looking to earn favor with them, trying to hide from them. At least when it comes to the immediate plot, they are not in communication or coordination with each other, any interest they have on what the Big Bad is doing is passing at best and they do not offer support.
• An ambivalent cosmic entity that has no physical form and maybe even their sapience is unknown, but are as such they can exert a corrupting effect (which is sometimes vaguely defined). Sometimes this is merely a concept that is elevated to a literal religious aspect, ie. "I worship chaos and chaos guides me."
• An enemy who may have some involvement in the story, but is not involved with the plans of the Big Bad. One-off characters may make mention of being on the errand of a more powerful enemy.

It should be noted that, like a lot of tropes, when this information is revealed kind of matters. We could get 5 seasons of seemingly unconnected Big Bad's and the 6th reveals someone big enough who links them all together.

A few comments on those...

The first scenario you've listed would cover both the Gihren Zabi and Theo Tonin examples that I brought up. It's also more or less the role that you see Hitler slotting into in many WWII films—the heroes are fighting Nazis, which means Hitler is out there somewhere, but he is not taking a hand in the on the squad level combat that the protagonists are involved with.

Second scenario is one you see a lot of God of Evil types. Melkor/Morgoth is there after he becomes a Sealed Evil in a Can, as is The Idea of Evil in Berserk. Smallville's version of General Zod ended up there as well, since once he was in the Phantom Zone nobody could communicate with him. Brainiac was acting on his own to try and free him, and we see a few of his old projects get revived, but he himself stays offscreen, save for two appearances, one of which he was not himself during.

The third one should probably be rewritten to specify that it is still a more powerful enemy (otherwise people will try and list every non-affiliated villain in the show). Best example I can think of off the top of my head is the Akatsuki in the first half of Naruto. We know this group exists, we know the current Big Bad used to work for them (and is himself motivated in part by fear of them), and two of their agents show up to stomp through the town, but they really aren't part of the main plot.

edited 10th Nov '14 4:47:03 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I'm not familiar with Justified but from your description Theo may count in the third season if he is merely referenced to, while he and actual agents of his organization are not a part of the story. You said the main bad guy in the third season used to be a part of them but broke off, which is very common with this trope.

I think those three are a good start, maybe refine the wording a little but they are distinctive ideas that weed out the bad examples. But we should be careful about the "Hitler" examples with WWII stories, you can't be a Greater Evil unless referenced in the story. Just being in the same timeframe and historically being a part of the same organization doesn't count. It's important to keep real life and fiction separate, and minimize speculatory examples like "He's not referenced in the adaptation, but it's possible he could be there behind the scenes."

edited 10th Nov '14 5:01:37 PM by KJMackley

There's a reason I said "many WWII" films, not "all WWII films".

Theo's a definite example of the first type in Season 3. The season's Big Bad, Robert Quarles, is his adopted son, and used to work for him as a hitman. After Quarles snapped and put a male prostitute in a coma, Theo exiled him to Harlan, Kentucky, where he figured Quarles couldn't do the organization any serious damage. Quarles is left to his own devices; so long as he makes money and sends it back to Detroit, Theo really doesn't care what he does in Eastern Kentucky. When Quarles has another breakdown and threatens Theo's biological son, Sammy, with a gun, Theo cuts him off, and starts sending killers after him. The emphasis is all on Quarles, with Theo remaining in the background and taking no active role in the main story. The only thing that the hero, Raylan, and the villain protagonist, Boyd, want to do is get rid of Quarles, and the only time Theo even enters the picture is when Boyd considers claiming the bounty he's put on Quarles.

edited 10th Nov '14 6:14:50 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Not to nag, but do we have a consensus on Gero? I'd say he's pretty clearly not this, but I don't know what others have decided.

He is a Bigger Bad but only in Dragon Ball and his name was not known to the viewer till much later. Power Creep made him into a Big Bad Wannabe.

He's not even a Bigger Bad in Dragonball, he was an unknown enemy working for the Red Ribbon Army that Goku destroyed. He wasn't behind General Red, but a scientist who created the androids in their ranks.

^^^ It's just important that distinction is made clear. Hitler is generally considered the "Big Bad" of WWII but he had little to no involvement in the Pacific, which was mostly America vs. Japan.

edited 11th Nov '14 10:00:29 PM by KJMackley

Right, if Hitler counted as a Bigger Bad for WWII works, he would only count for those focusing on the Western theatre, not for the whole war.

Talking about the Dr. Gero example made me think of something; we need to come up with a consensus as to if there is such a thing as a "retroactive" Big Bad or Bigger Bad, where a character who has a hand in events or is even the direct superior of The Heavy but isn't mentioned until much later in the work or in its sequel.

As for Dr. Gero himself, I really don't think he counts. In Dragon Ball, all of his androids/cyborgs were minor villains, and he dies early in the android/Cell story arc of Dragon Ball Z. Yeah, his actions affected the whole story, but he did not in any way affect the story more or in a greater way than the androids or Cell.

edited 12th Nov '14 1:48:19 PM by shiro_okami

Well, beware of Red Vs Blue spoilers, because that series has one.

The Meta is believed to be the Big Bad of Season 6, as he is trying to gather all of the AI fragments to form a full AI. Then Season 10 reveals in flashbacks that it was Sigma, one of the AI fragments, that was pushing the Meta's actions in Season 6 all along.

^^ Or even the time frame with just a war element to it. Hitler isn't the Bigger Bad for A League of Their Own.

Truthfully, it's really an issue in the greater wiki discussion when it comes to tropes being altered via Retcon. A Big Bad is established, then 20 years later it's revealed someone else was pulling the strings. Does that information supersede the 20 years everyone considered that person to be the Big Bad? Similar discussions are had with tropes like Moral Event Horizon, anything that claims There Can Only Be One.

Bump.

Greater-Scope Villain is currently winning with a 15:7 ratio.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I have understood that Skynet was the man behind the man. (With the the Terminator being the big bad/ Arc Villain.)

I thought the difference between a Bigger Bad and the man behind the man, is that the second gives direct orders to Big bad.

For example Xanatos despite being a member of Illuminati, generally his actions aren't orders from them.

Then the Big Bad is Xanatos while the Bigger Bad: Illuminati

edited 29th Dec '14 7:03:01 PM by dantecito

Any given Terminator was a villain, and also The Heavy. Skynet is the Big Bad, and also The Man Behind the Man. Xanatos was the Big Bad, and if the illuminati had an effect outside the scope of the Gargoyles, then they are the Greater-Scope Villain without being The Man Behind the Man.

Note that your listing violates super/sub sorting on Example Indentation in Trope Lists.

edited 31st Dec '14 11:14:31 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Calling for Greater-Scope Villain.