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

Starring. Is anyone willing to do the work?

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

Since there's a pretty clear consensus here that Gero is not an example, I have removed him. Cut a couple of others whose entries flat out say they are not examples (the Death Note is an object. Gotham City is a place. Both affect the story directly).

edited 2nd Mar '15 7:18:17 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I'm wondering about Don Thousand from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. I haven't seen the series (yet; I plan to), but I've heard he's a lot more involved in the actual plot than previous Eldritch Abomination villains like Zorc. For instance, he rewrote one of his henchman's mind to make him more evil, which seems quite a bit more personal than someone who could be "replaced with an impersonal force."

Anyone know more about him?

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

We already have a trope called Predecessor Villain so why, oh why, do people keep adding Predecessor Villains to this page. It was decided pretty clearly here that Gero didn't count, yet I just had to cut him again, along with Fallon from Daredevil—who is a Predecessor Villain, not this—and Hans' brothers from Frozen who aren't anything. I also had to cut the bear from The Fox and the Hound because that's not " the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting" it's a bear.

I'm not one to say that a page is a lost cause, but I think this one is. The explanation is clear, but it isn't stopping people from adding any villain who is at any point even tangentially connected to the big bad.

I guess that people don't know about that trope. Check if putting in a commented out note about these people fitting another trope works.

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

The bear by default is the biggest and most powerful villain in The Fox And The Hound. It's clear from the onec scene it's in that it's a bigger force than Amos Slade, the Big Bad. Watch this to see why.

Have you not seriously been paying attention to the whole conversation. We already decided to change the definition to a more broad "bigger than Big Bad, but not as involved so that they are not a Big Bad themselves". That means that Predessor Villains can count they are proven to be a bigger force than the Big Bad. In other words, here is the replacement description we came up with a while back, but never implanted.

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A Bigger Bad is a threat that's actually more dangerous, or affects more people, than the story's current Big Bad. While the Big Bad is directly responsible for the current story — the Big Bad is the villain or situation that the protagonists are attempting to defeat or overcome — a Bigger Bad isn't a major force in the plot. They are just responsible for a anything evil or just bad that fuels the at least a part of the fictional setting (how much of it depends on how scope of the Bigger Bad's influence) in which the story takes place. A Bigger Bad may be the Big Bad's superior, but just as often they're completely unrelated — indeed, a Bigger Bad may threaten the Big Bad just as much as they threaten the protagonists. Whatever the relationship between the Big Bad and Bigger Bad, the Bigger Bad is always Out of Focus — the threat they pose is general and in the background, while the threat posed by the Big Bad is specific and immediate.

A Bigger Bad doesn't always have to remain a Bigger Bad, however. One arc's Bigger Bad can become the next arc's Big Bad if the previous Big Bad is defeated and the Sorting Algorithm of Evil kicks in to provide a bigger threat for the heroes to face. Alternatively, the Bigger Bad could show up and try to ruin everyone's day, becoming the new Big Bad and possibly forcing an Enemy Mine situation between the heroes and the previous villain. Inversely, a Big Bad can be Kicked Upstairs to become a Bigger Bad.

There can also be more than one Bigger Bad — either multiple Bigger Bads working together (a la Big Bad Duumvirate), multiple Bigger Bads each with their own agenda (a la Big Bad Ensemble), or in multiple layers of Bigger Bads, each bigger than the last (eg, the Big Bad threatens a city, the first Bigger Bad threatens the country, and an Even Bigger Bad threatens the whole world).

Not to be confused with The Man Behind the Man. Usually, it is when it turns out that the character that you thought was the Big Bad actually had someone else pulling the strings. However, The Man Behind the Man and Bigger Bad can overlap if The Man Behind the Man remains distant enough from the story. The Bigger Bad must not give orders to the Big Bad, but they can corrupt the Big Bad to make the Big Bad work for them. They allow the Big Bad to do their own thing and don't interfere unless it's in their interests to do so.

See also Sealed Evil in a Can and Villainous Legacy, which are often a Bigger Bad.

edited 20th Mar '15 12:11:09 PM by SatoshiBakura

I've seen the movie. The bear is neither of those things. It is a bear. It doesn't talk, it doesn't express any malice or any actual evil. It fails to be "the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting" because it isn't evil (it possesses no malice) and its presence doesn't hang over the setting.

"A Bigger Bad is a threat that's actually more dangerous, or affects more people, than the story's current Big Bad."

That's the start of your new description and it applies to none of the examples I just removed. It doesn't apply to Fallon (who was a small time crime boss), it doesn't apply to Gero (who's plan got away from him completely and was taken over by his former subordinates), it doesn't apply to Hans' brothers, and it sure doesn't apply to that damn bear.

EDIT: Just saw your edit to the page. The bear does not talk. It has no personality. It acts like a wild animal in a way that Tod does not. Under this logic we should put up the bear from Balto as well, since it was more dangerous than Steele. Oh wait, no we shouldn't, because it also doesn't talk, doesn't have a personality, and doesn't effect more people than the Big Bad.

edited 20th Mar '15 12:17:57 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

That bear has it's own character sheet on The Fox and the Hound. The excuse that your using is that the bear is not a character. Your argument has just been contradicted, because having tropes means that it's a character.

It's best to discuss these things instead going on autopilot and removing them. My description clearly states that has to be more dangerous or has to affect more people than the Big Bad.

edited 20th Mar '15 12:22:55 PM by SatoshiBakura

I could put the shark from Jaws on a character sheet. That would not give it a personality or make it capable of being the Big Bad or Bigger Bad (it's neither). Please describe the bear's personality to me.

Anyway, while you're doing that, let's go through more of your description:

"They are just responsible for a anything evil or just bad that fuels the at least a part of the fictional setting" The bear does not do this. It hasn't made the setting the way it is, or effected it in anyway.

"Whatever the relationship between the Big Bad and Bigger Bad, the Bigger Bad is always Out of Focus — the threat they pose is general and in the background, while the threat posed by the Big Bad is specific and immediate." The bear is not out of focus for most of the story. It is non-existent. There is no mention of it, not even a "there's bears in them-thar woods". It simply appears, attacks, the cast, and is removed from the story. That's Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, not this.

The bear fails most of your own criteria and most of the original criteria. It is not an omnipresent evil force that effects the setting but not the plot. It is not responsible for making any of the characters the way they are. It is not a source of power, the main villain is not looking to overthrow it and take it's place; nothing that you would associate with the spirit or the letter of the trope. It's a dangerous animal that barges into the plot for the climax, and leaves just as fast.

You want an animal that could maybe, with a little stretching, qualify for this trope? Moby Dick. You could make a darned good case for Moby Dick. But not for that bear.

No to the bear. It's just an ordinary predator from the sound of it. It may be the biggest threat in the movie, but it's just a bear.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Exactly.

Look, if the film had had an early mention of "Bob the Man-Eating Bear", and Amos had noted that one day he was going to kill Bob the Man-Eating Bear, and various scenes in the woods hinted at the presence of Bob the Man-Eating Bear, and then all of a sudden, in the climax, here's Bob the Man-Eating Bear, a case could be made. But that's not what happens.

Should we add a "moral agency clause" or whatever like the Complete Monster clean-up thread did? I don't think non-sentient beings should count for this.

edited 20th Mar '15 1:23:01 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I don't think non-sentient beings should qualify either, at least not without there being some extraordinary circumstances at play. You can't have a non-sentient Big Bad, so I don't know that a non-sentient Bigger Bad should be possible either. At the very least, I think that any non-sentient example should be heavily discussed before being put up.

edited 20th Mar '15 1:46:37 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Well, there are various giant monster/rampaging animal stories; does that qualify for "nonsentient Big Bad?"

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Yes, as they are non-sentient, but still causing the conflict of the story. Really, if it you can put character tropes on it, then it counts as a character. Big Bad is a character trope, not a sentient character trope.

edited 20th Mar '15 2:01:46 PM by SatoshiBakura

Don't know. The page description for Big Bad sort-of says yes but also sort-of says no, with the first line saying the Big Bad could be a "thing" rather than a character, but the rest of the description being devoted to characters. Regardless, I think it's safe to say that it's pretty hard to pull off.

As far as this trope goes, I could see a non-sentient Bigger Bad in say a fantasy setting. Example given: Some Godzilla sized dragon or whatnot has flattened a kingdom and is still out there, flattening others. Our heroes live in the wreckage of the first kingdom, trying to eke out a living, and their main foe, and the guy causing all their problems, is the warlord who wishes to take over the rubble. In that case I think you could make a good case that the warlord is the Big Bad while the Kaiju, which never actually appears onscreen is the Bigger Bad. Still, it's pretty rare, and specific example under discussion, the bear, is not a case of that at all.

EDIT: Removed Bigger Bad from Gero's entry on the DBZ character sheet since that's probably part of why people keep re-adding him here.

EDIT:It currently stands at three votes to one to remove the bear. Will wait a little longer before doing so though.

EDIT: Anybody have a particular problem with just burning all the Zero Context Examples? Wiki policy is not to allow ZCEs on a page, and they certainly aren't helping with fixing the trope. If no one objects I'll delete the lot sometime this weekend.

edited 20th Mar '15 2:43:55 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Going to agree with cutting the bear from The Fox and the Hound. It's not a greater evil, it's just a dumb animal that blunders in for the climax.

I also had a question about whether or not an example counted. Searched to see if there was any discussion on the character here but I couldn't find any. In Boardwalk Empire, the primary antagonist of the third season is Gyp Rosetti, a New York underboss who wages war against Nucky Thompson. While Rosetti is subservient to The Don of the Morello Crime Family, Joe "The Boss" Masseria, Rosetti makes the decision to wage war against Thompson completely on his own over a perceived slight, with Masseria never ordering it or approving it. Halfway through the season, Masseria calls Rosetti back to New York and plans on killing him because of his failures. Given that Rosetti was acting on his own as the season's primary threat, I'd assume he'd be the Big Bad and Masseria would be the Bigger Bad, but here's where it gets tricky. Rosetti is able to talk Masseria out of killing him, then convince Masseria to provide him with assistance in the war, with Rosetti planning on taking over Atlantic City to add it to Masseria's empire. Rosetti still handles all the details of the Mob War, but Masseria is now backing him, giving him muscle, and Nucky Thompson now plans on assassinating Masseria too to end the threat to him. Eventually, Masseria withdraws support from Rosetti and orders his men back to New York after striking a deal with Thompson's ally, Arnold Rothstein, and Nucky has Rosetti killed. Now, on top of all of this, Masseria is also serving as a frequent obstacle in the same season to Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky's heroin business. My question is, what's Rosetti and what's Masseria in relation to this trope? Is Rosetti the Big Bad of the third season with Masseria as the Bigger Bad or does Masseria become the Big Bad halfway through the season when he officially enters the Mob War? Does his presence in Lucky and Lansky's plot in any way effect his status as Big Bad, Bigger Bad or something else?

4 votes to cut.

As for that example...sounds really, really complicated. Still, given the previous example of Theo Tonin, Robert Quarles, and Nicky Augustine (wherein we determined that Quarles was the Big Bad with Tonin as Bigger Bad in Season 3 while in Season 4 Augustine was The Dragon to Tonin's Big Bad) I'd say that Rosetti was The Big Bad with Masseria as Bigger Bad, but that Rosetti was Demoted to Dragon and Masseria took over as Big Bad halfway through.

You know what, screw it, you can cut the bear already. I thought about it, so now I see your point.

Alright then. Have removed him from there and the character sheet. Am going to try and do the same with any future cuts; I suspect the reason why some of the ones we've taken off have been readded in the past is because they weren't taken from the character sheet.

Got an opinion on the one Occasional Exister posted, by the way?

edited 20th Mar '15 6:15:56 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Question, just out of curiosity: say there's a work that takes place in a historical dictatorship such as (examples selected entirely at random) Saddam's Iraq or Milosevic's Serbia. The messed-up state of the country is part of the conflict, but the dictator himself is never seen or directly referred to. Would the dictator be a Bigger Bad of such a work?

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

I think there was agreement earlier on that if the dictator is never mentioned by name, they can't be counted. If they are though, fire away.

I don't have a specific work in mind, to note. Just wondering if there was consensus on this sort of story.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

I see that the page description has been changed. Personally I don't think it's any clearer than what was there before, but that's not my call to make and so long as it was what was voted on that's all that matters. I have changed out some words that weren't being used correctly, removed a trope that was being misused, and cut one sentence that didn't make sense but otherwise left it alone.

I had a question about a character I just randomly remembered today, and whether he's a Bigger Bad or not.

Remember that movie Spy Kids? One of the villains in that was a Corrupt Corporate Executive named Mr. Lisp, the guy bankrolling Alexander Minion's robot army. He's only really in two scenes, once at the beginning where the viewer learns about the evil plan, then again at the final confrontation. Minion, despite the name, is clearly the main villain and the cause of every problem in the movie, but his scheme is made possible on Lisp's dime. Otherwise Minion basically does his own thing. Also, Lisp is definitely not an impersonal force as he's involved in the scheme and even gets a tiny bit of Character Development when it's revealed he has a son he cares about.

So is Lisp a Bigger Bad? Man Behind the Man? In a Big Bad Duumvirate with Minion? I never thought I'd be thinking so hard about the ins and outs of a 15-year-old kids' movie...

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."