Cleanup thread: Magnificent Bastard

Agreed there asshole victims so I'm not going to give them any leeway either.

Keeping my yes.

edited 5th Jun '18 8:17:33 AM by miraculous

All the D&D archdevils who aren't Asmodeus should be cut. Especially Mephistopheles who is a straight up Smug Snake. That crack about "any denizen of the lower planes" should go—lots of them only meet part of the requirements or fall into Smug Snake.

We could maybe keep that trait from New World of Darkness so long as we alter the start of the entry to say "invoked by."

Khazrak...I could see that as a maybe, though I'd have to double check a lot of the information on him. And find out how much End Times ruined him, given that it ruined everything else.

If we're keeping Tzeentch his entry needs a massive clean-up. Vect probably meets the requirements though the fact he's Dark Eldar gives me pause—that's a race that has "raping things to death" as its hat.

I’ve talked Tzeentch with Lighty and I’d need to be sold on him. The weird nature of the Chaos Gods has left me uncertain if he’s a brilliant planner or he’s like Yhwach, where his powers just make him know how to do things. To me Vect is hitting it all except his plans upon plans seem to just be in the name of creating a depraved hedonistic society that wouldn’t be out of place in Crossed.

Actually, to elaborate on something I said about Khazrak, anyone from the original Warhammer will have to be assessed in view of End Times taking everyone out of character and then killing them.

That "story" (read as: statement of contempt for anyone who didn't think Chaos Warriors were the kewlest thing evar) essentially shoved anyone who wasn't Archaon or Nagash into irrelevance and while I'd love to ignore it, it's canon.

edited 5th Jun '18 9:22:46 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Next effortpost, from a certain movie...

What's the work?

The Godfather is a film based on the famed novel by Mario Puzo, widely considered one of the best films ever made. The film centers around the Corelone mafia family of New York, potentially the single strongest mafia family is the US, ruled by Don Vito Corleone, once a penniless immigrant from Sicily who built a mafia family from nothing...in the current day, Vito is an old man, with three sons and a daughter. He is approached by a narcotics peddler named Virgil Sollozzo who seeks to get Vito into the drug business, which Vito is reluctant to do....and that's when the trouble really begins.

Who is Vito Corleone and what's he done?

Born Vito Andolini from the town of Corelone....as a young boy, Vito saw his father Antonio murdered by the ruthless mafioso Don ciccio....who then killed Vito's older brother Paolo. When his mother went to Ciccio to beg for 9 year old Vito's life, ciccio made it clear he'd have Vito killed. His mother selflessly sacrificed herself to hold Ciccio at knifepoint so Vito could flee. Vito's friends helped him escape to a ship where he went to Ellis island. Vito became an honest young worker, taken in by the kindly Abbandando family in Little Italy where he worked in their grocery store. He married a young Italian immigrant and started a family...then the local mafia bully, Don Fanucci came by and forced the Abbandandos to fire Vito to give the job to Fanucci's nephew. Vito ended up doing petty crimes to feed his family with his friends Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio...then Fanucci demanded a cut of their earnings. Thing was, Vito realized there were problems with Fanucci's supposed 'strength' and his demands. After testing fanucci, Vito realized he was just a jumped up bully, meticulously calculated how to reach him and murdered him, getting away with it perfectly.

Vito, with Tessio, Clemenza and his friend Genzo Abbandando, started a little bit of a business doing favors for people in the neighborhood, building a system of allies and gaining a reputation as a treasured, kind man who would always help people out. They began to delve into organized crime, using an olive oil importing company as a front...and the Corleone family was born. Vito managed to suborn almost all the politicians and judges in New York city, holding the greatest power and influence of the mafia families, who regularly came to him with requests .

Vito returned to Sicily and Corleone once, manipulating the elderly Don Ciccio into a meeting before killing him in revenge for his parents and brother. Returning home, Vito settles into a comfortable spot. He cultivates the Friendly Neighborhood Gangster image for all it's worth, treating the members of his community well, and expecting them to treat him as a treasured friend in turn All organized crime rests in Vito's hands, and he is able to effortlessly outplay his competition, as he does many times when they seek to intrude on the Corleone family's territory, even using his charisma to win over a terrifying hitman named Luca Brasi who becomes the single most feared soldier of the Corleones. Things...go wrong at the Sollozzo meeting.

Vito objects to drugs, thinking it a dirty business his political friends won't help him with. Unfortunately, his eldest son Sonny shows he's 'hot' for the deal, and Sollozzo, with the secret backing of the second strongest mafioso, Emilio Barzino, sets up an ambush by Christmas, when Vito's bodyguard calls out sick. . When buying fruit? Vito is ambushed and shot five times, nearly killed as a result.

Now, his youngest son, Michael, protects him in the hospital and helps see him home to the Corleone mansion to recover. Unfortunately, Sonny takes the reins of the family and is too hotheaded, lured into an ambush and killed. Michael, having killed Sollozzo and a corrupt police captain, was previously relocated to Sicily to hide out. Upon Sonny's death, Vito pulls himself from his sick bed and the other families panic, knowing that his return could mean bad things, as Vito is the driving force and strenght of the family...only for Vito to call a peace summit where he swears to forgive and as long as Michael is brought home unharmed, he will not break the peace.

However? Vito's true plan is more elaborate. He uses the summit to discover who the true mastemrind of the plots against his family were (Barzini) and lets them be lulled into a false sense of security while he and Michael set up plans, Vito using those Exact Words to ensure Michael will decapitate the other mafia family heads in one swift move. . After an emotional final talk with Michael, and having already anticipated one of his top men will turn traitor by warning Michael of exactly the ploy they'll fall for, Vito has a heart attack when playing with his young grandson Anthony, his dying words in the book being "life is so beautiful"...as Michael rises to the throne and eliminates Barzini and the rest, only to slowly lose his soul in the Godfather II

What's his competition? Is he charming and charismatic?

Vito is nothing but charm and charisma. At the film's start, he is listening to the requests of those who come to him for help on his daughter's wedding day, treating everyone with dignity and respect, only gently admonishing an undertaker who treats him like a villain In his youth, Vito is quiet and reserved, but likewise friendly to those with him. We see him take a request from a poor widow who just wants to stay in her apartment with her kids and their beloved dog after the landlord wants to kick them out. Vito approaches the landlord, treats the man with total respect and promises him that Vito will owe him a favor should he assist the poor widow. "Ask any of your friends about me. They'll tell you I know how to return a favor." The man later shows up, having realized who Vito is, with Vito still treating him with complete respect.

Now, Vito's competition? There's a reason he's the top dog of the underworld. People who rose against him in the past are gone. He goes 'best served cold' on Ciccio, and with Fanucci? Vito plays him to realize he's just a jumped up bully with no connections and killing him will annoy nobody. When he appears weak, sick, nearly assassinated and subjected to a shakedown of power and influence? He's just playing the long game, leaving it to Michael to finish it with his plan.

Is he a bastard? Too much?

Vito is a mafioso, who's involved in bad things, has people killed and punishes a hollywood producer trying to ruin his godson's career by having the man's prize racehorse beheaded with the head put in the man's bed as a warning. That said, Vito always prefers to negotiate, offer a nonviolent solution and has oodles of redeeming qualities. He loves his family deeply, being committed to his wife and kids as a young man, he's remorseful Michael ends up a criminal as he never wanted that life for him. He loathes drugs, considering it a dirty business and he's revolted by pedophilia. Killing Fanucci is harsh, but given fanucci is a total bastard trying to extort money he needed to feed his family, Vito figured it made perfect sense, and he always, always repays favors and treats his friends with respect. None of that should suggest he isn't a crime lord open to having people killed if he finds it necessary through business, however.

He also never loses his humanity, which is in...contrast to Michael, who becomes a bitter, cold shell of himself who even has his own brother killed at the end of 2, something Vito would've never condoned and would've been horrified by. Oh, and he also adopted an orphan boy named Tom Hagen who's German-Irish, and later has him serving as his Consiglierie . for the insanely xenophobic, racist Mafia, this is incredibly benevolent. Also, he never expresses any racist thoughts or language, in complete contrast to many other Mafiosos, including Sonny himself.

Conclusion?

Easy, easy keeper for don Vito Corleone. One more Godfather candidate to follow.

edited 5th Jun '18 10:18:01 AM by Lightysnake

Vito Corelone

The guy w hoose the Trope Codifier of The Don

edited 5th Jun '18 10:31:16 AM by miraculous

Vito

He was everything Michael was not.

Extremely easy yes for Vito.

Vito Corleone. Now this is what I'd call Magnificent.

to Don Corleone Sr., in friendship.

The votes for Mr. House are currently 5 with no opposition. Here's my EP for him for those who haven't read it yet and I'm open to any questions or counterarguments. I'll get started on his write-up in the meantime.

Since it looks like Nom Anor got enough votes, here's a write-up for him:

• In the New Jedi Order, Nom Anor is a cunning agent of the Yuuzhan Vong who specializes in "weakening the hinges of the enemy's fort" - spying and sowing conflict on targeted worlds to prepare them to invasion. Anor is one of the key figures driving his people's war against the New Republic, and when he is cast out for failure he turns his skills against them as well, assuming the persona of "the Prophet" and leading the lower castes in revolution. Ultimately loyal only to his own ambition, Anor ends up playing both sides for his own game; after the Yuuzhan Vong are defeated and his final plans fail, rather than throw himself on the mercy of any of the factions he's backstabbed, he chooses to meet death on his own terms. Manipulative, resourceful, and always with another trick up his sleeve, Nom Anor is a key player in the Yuuzhan Vong War and the iconic antagonist of the New Jedi Order saga.

edited 5th Jun '18 1:21:31 PM by MasterGhandalf

So far I have 3 upvotes (mira, 43110 and Lighty) -1 downvote (Kazuya) for Hayley. What is the vote advantage needed for a character to go up?

edited 5th Jun '18 1:15:09 PM by username2527

to Hayley, and a definite yes to Vito.

Lightysnake: Speaking of gangster who might qualify you said that their are gangsters from Boardwalk Empire. Will you plan on getting to them?

Also here Doug Judy more shorten write-up.

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Doug Judy is the Pontiac Bandit, an affable car thief known for stealing 200 cars. Making himself known to Jake Peralta by pretending to be an informant, he sends him to a wild goose chase to the barber Doug framed, while he slips past him unnoticed. When Doug unexpectedly encounters Jake, he gives him the drug manufacturer of giggle pig in exchange for a four-star hotel suite where he collaborates with the suite's waiter on his escape, with Jake being too busy capturing the manufacturer. When Doug learns of a hitman trying to kill him he contacts Jake for help, making sure to meet Jake on a cruise ship, where Jake has no jurisdiction, while escaping said ship once Jake catches the hitman. Upon needing Doug’s help in capturing his adopted brother, he uses this opportunity to get immunity on all 600 crimes he committed in return for his assistance. Getting Jake’s attention again by holding hostages, Doug gets Jake involve in a plan to rescue his mother from a drug lord, before escaping from Jake once more. Always being Jake’s most elusive adversary, Doug Judy’s master planning was only matched by his unlimited charm.

Is this better?

edited 5th Jun '18 1:36:32 PM by G-Editor

to Hayley, and Bolas is a definite keeper.

@ Username, at least five more "yeses" than "nos".

@ G, looks good, go ahead and add to the drafts. I'm gonna take out that Chessmaster pothole though, just since all MBs are gonna qualify for it.

@ Ghandalf, sorry, missed you at first. Please add that to the drafts and I'll play around with the title so we've got it first.

edited 5th Jun '18 2:13:23 PM by 43110

@Username: Counting yourself you probably have enough to write her up.

@G-Editor: Your familiar with Peaky Blinders. Can you give me any info on this character

• Magnificent Bastard: Thomas Shelby, who plays Xanatos Speed Chess with his family, his associates, the police, the IRA, the Bolsheviks, rival gangs, and pretty much everyone up to and including Winston Churchill. And does it ostensibly to better his family and position, but also a good deal of the time for shits and giggles.

edited 5th Jun '18 1:34:15 PM by miraculous

to Vito cuz whynaut Ow O

Aaaand theatre page sweep:

• The Black Knight in Middleton's A GAME AT CHESS. When told "Your plot's discovered!" he smirks "Which of the twenty thousand and nine hundred/fourscore and five, canst tell?"
• Harry Roat from Wait Until Dark, right from the very first scene when he traps Talman and Carlino into his plot.
• Caldwell B. Cladwell, Corrupt Corporate Executive and Big Bad of Urinetown, most definitely qualifies. His bastardry is even more delicious when in the end it is revealed that as cruel as his methods were, they actually caused less harm to the people than when the heroes take over and make water consumption unlimited, resulting in an apocalyptic drought.
• Roy Cohn, the Real Life Amoral Attorney and McCarthyist zealot portrayed in Angels in America.
• Few can compare with the Phantom from Webber's musical adaption of The Phantom of the Opera. He is a decidedly dark "Angel of Music" affected with a hint or two of madness, a hearty dollop of romantic obsession and a flair for dramatic trickery and murder. He's also a suave, half-masked genius who excels at seduction, manipulation, (possibly real) magic and arrogant bravado. Oh, and he manages to achieve most of this with some of the most potent male theatrical scores ever written. "Sing for me," indeed.
• Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes.
• Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew fits the bill. He manages to not only tame Katarina, but get two dowries. He tames Kate and successfully manipulates Baptista, Hortensio and Luciento, and a tailor.
• Abigail Williams from The Crucible is the teenage sociopath who started the Salem Witch Trials by getting her friends to pretend that they were being affected by witchcraft as a cover up for why they were practicing a voodoo ritual on an old slave of Abigail's family. With charisma and influence (and a touch of intimidation), she has the girls accuse many innocent people of being witches or servants of The Devil. She capitalizes off of both the town's distrust and paranoia of one another and their religious beliefs in order to gain attention and adoration (and amusement) from others, something she felt she was lacking, especially as a female in that time period. Thanks to her lies and deception, many innocent people are hanged or shamed for life, and the entire religious community of Salem is turned over on it's head due to mass paranoia and hysteria, all while she just stands back and watches, laughing her butt off over what she's created. Abigail manages to use her charisma, her intelligence, her sexual attractiveness and even her sense of humour to manipulate everyone around her, even managing a Karma Houdini by fleeing Salem with a handful of stolen money after essentially achieving mass murder. Dayum, girl!
• Henrik Ibsen: Engstrand the carpenter from Ghosts. He is The Man Behind the Man, and the driving force behind the reverend Manders. He is instrumental in making Manders believe he himself was the one who set fire to the planned orphanage, and manipulates the reverend to put all the money from the Alving estate into a brothel he himself has planned, all without making the reverend suspicious. He only fails in securing his adopted daughter Regine for a "job" in his establishment.
  • Also Daniel Heire from The League of Youth. He twirls the young hero of the play around his finger like nothing, makes him believe whatever he wants him to believe, and comes out of the play scot-free, while the main character Stensgaard is put to shame.
• J. Pierrepont Finch from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He is a window-washer who gets a mailroom job at a company by pretending he knows the CEO, gets promoted to head of the mailroom that same day by shmoozing the former head, turns down that promotion knowing that he would be stuck there for years and screws over another employee, gets a job as a junior executive by being so "humble", tricks the CEO into thinking he had been working all night long on a Saturday and that he is an alumnus of the CEO's college, gets his own office and secretary as a result of this, tricks that secretary into seducing his boss whose job he steals, gets appointed Vice President in charge of Advertising by outing the actual VP candidate as a student of the rival of the CEO's alma mater, steals an idea from a fellow employee about a treasure hunt and pitches it, and finally, when the treasure hunt idea fails and he is facing being fired for the disaster it caused, he forces everyone else at the company to help him by suggesting to the Chairman of the Board to fire them all, but reminding them that they are all in a "Brotherhood of Man", and then when The Chairman retires he names Finch his replacement. Magnificent indeed.
• Eva in Evita is truly this trope. She schemes her way up from the slums, kicks out Juan's mistress without even blinking, brilliantly masks her wickedness by helping the people, and runs the country through her husband. Juan may be El Presidente, but Eva's the real dictator here. She even seizes control of the government! And as for magnificence? Her wardrobe is truly fabulous, her death can only be described as tragic, despite her villainy, ("I saw the lights, and I was on my way."), she always steals the spotlight, and is BELOVED by her people.
• Steven Kodaly in She Loves Me is a very fun example of this trope. He is a "rat" who dates multiple women at the same time, manages to seduce a woman over the course of a musical number, and is a successful clerk at a ladies perfumery shop, all while hiding an affair with the bosses wife. When he is discovered and fired, he is unfazed, and simply departs with a flourish and a musical number, claiming that soon all of the other clerks will be out of jobs and forced to come work at the shop he is planning on owning. His number "Grand Knowing You" is just about the smarmiest, hammiest, and most magnificent farewell possible for a stage character.

I took out Edmund, who Scraggle did last week but anyone wanna find a home for any of this stuff?

Throwing in video games:

• Main antagonist Aken Bosch of Descent: Freespace 2 spends the entirety of the game attempting to ally with the Destroyers, AKA the Shivans (who happen to be Omnicidal Maniacs), whom he believes are unstoppable and will never be defeated regardless of the GTVA's efforts. When you are tasked with a squadron to intercept and disable his ship, he openly sends a communication channel to the player and taunts you and questions the competence of your commanders as he warps out of the system, well before you have any chance at hitting him, just before a Shivan fleet ambushes the player's squadron. He frequently outsmarts the entire GTVA command in his capital ship, and when it looks like he's finally been caught when his ship is disabled and boarded, it's found out that he had planned a ruse which included the capture of his ship and all of his crew all along, and he had actually used the confusion to escape alone on-board a Shivan transport. What happens next will always be a mystery, as the trilogy was never completed.
• Blue Planet features Admiral Chiwetel Steele, who achieved this title after an absolutely stunning Batman Gambit that resulted in the complete annihilation of the player's squadron (whose nickname was the Wargods) in one fell swoop. Nobody saw this coming, and it took nearly the entire campaign for him to set it up, including playing off the gambits of two admirals on the opposing side.
• The CO "Hawke" from the Advance Wars series. He is extremely manipulative and twists his circumstances to achieve his ultimate goals, which are not always obvious. In Advance Wars 2, he fakes his own death and kills his former commander, Sturm, after he is weakened by the final battle with the player so that he can take over command of the Black Hole Army, and in Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Hawke joins the player's side after Von Bolt decides Hawke and Lash are no longer useful and tries to kill them, with the ultimate result of placing him in control of Von Bolt's life-sapping device, which he vanishes with. He is calm, reserved, and ruthless, but his CO abilities, which heal his own units while damaging those of his opponents, reflect a surprising trait for a Magnificent Bastard: he cares about the fate of his own troops, and acts with his own brand of honor, making him also an antivillain.
• The AI Durandal... Duranda, Durandana, Durandal, from Marathon. Even if Durandal caused the fight with the Pfhor, and in doing so, got a human colony almost completely wiped out (he made the survivors his soldiers), he pretends he's doing so to help humanity. Pretending to help humanity gets the humans to fight for him. In the end, however, he's just doing everything for himself, so that he can become God of the next universe, as Tycho points out.
  • "If you win, we'll continue our relationship on friendlier terms. If you lose, you die. Unlike Leela, I give no hints. Find the way on your own, or die trying..."
  • When he's obviously going to lose a naval battle of one ship against the strongest naval force in the galaxy, he decides to blow up half of it, just because he wants to be in their history books.
  Durandal: I'd have erased my seven times table to see the look on Admiral T'Fear's face when he learned I could focus a plasma beam at three times the standard range his ships could.
  • Also, everything he does in Marathon 2 is just magnificent. From the way he upgraded his ship, to the way he helped the humans capture a command post, and how he faked his own death!
• Krelian is likely the greatest of all Magnificent Bastards.
  • His partner Miang is even better, and far cooler. Krelian mostly works behind the scenes, experimenting on nanotechnology and plotting to rebuild God. Miang, meanwhile, goes straight into the thick of things, even when the protagonists are ultimately mostly bit players in her scheme. When she deliberately built Oedipal issues into Ramsus, solely for the sake of building him into a weapon for killing Emperor Cain, and then alternately treats him like trash and makes sweet love to him to ensure he fulfills his purpose, and succeeds in every aspect of her plan (well, almost every aspect, seeing as she and Deus die at the end), it's hard not to be left open-mouthed in wonder.
• Arkham of Devil May Cry 3 plays all the sides against each other, in order to open the gate to hell.
• Golden Sun:
  • Alex manages to manipulate 4 different groups of characters throughout the games, all to achieve a power higher than Alchemy. It doesn't quite work out, but there was a big enough cliffhanger at the end of the second one to imply it could've. 30 years on, he's moved on to manipulating entire nations.
  • Depending on which theory surrounding Amiti's birth that you believe in (that is, whether Amiti was planned or accidental), Alex may be the most magnificent bastard or just a bastard. The bastard part is never in question.
  • Saturos may play second fiddle to Alex's bastard-ery overall, but that doesn't mean he's not talking the party out of their MacGuffins (and confusing his own partner as much as the heroes) just fine on his own. And unlike Alex, he's not shy about following that up with a good old-fashioned beatdown.
• Killzone's Scolar Visari, who creates public support through his sheer force of will, who singlehandedly rebuilds the Helghast (a word he invented, by the way) state into a highly disciplined military state with him as an absolute leader, and who then invades the neighboring human colony of Vekta. And he has some of the greatest speeches in video game history.
• Jade Empire:
  • The game has Master Li, who pulls off an astounding plan that seems too complex to be possible. Then, if you play through the game again, you can see how carefully he planned everything and manipulated everyone, making even the crazy complex scheme believable (of course, he had twenty years to do so, and they don't call him "The Glorious Strategist" for nothing).
  • It also has a character with the regal title of "The Magnificent Bastard" from the game's England analogue. Though he doesn't really fit the trope, being voiced by John Cleese certainly qualifies him for the magnificent part.
  • Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard has the single greatest name in the entire game.
• Frank Fontaine of BioShock started off as just a small-time smuggler in Rapture, but after the discovery of ADAM, he set the wheels in motion to take over all of Rapture. He charms the lower class and corners the market for ADAM, giving him a massive army of both poor citizens and ADAM-addicted splicers. Then Fontaine faked his own death, reappeared under an assumed name, and led his followers in a massive civil war that left Rapture in ruins. The game's protagonist, Jack, is revealed to be a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb created by Fontaine in order to kill Rapture's founder. Who is also programmed to die on command when the job is done so he can't come back and kill the man that created him.
  • Depending on your point of view, Andrew Ryan himself is a Magnificent Bastard.
• Resident Evil: Albert Wesker, proof that one can be an ur-Chessmaster and a physically overwhelming badass at the same time. Plus, there's, ya'know, the fact that he's never actually lost at his Evil Plans. He never regrets a single life he takes or a single sin he commits. Conceited and power hungry, Wesker would do anything to become more powerful. He even pretended to act as The Dragon for Oswell E. Spencer, when he was really taking everything he had and making it all his own.
  • Before Resident Evil 5 was released, many fans claimed that Wesker was too smart, too powerful, and completely perfect. He had virtually no weaknesses, having both brains and brawn beyond that of normal humans. These same fans speculated that there would be no way to take Wesker down without the creators first toning him down.
  • And in the first game, he threatened Barry Burton that if he doesn't do what he tells him, something terrible would happen to his wife and two daughters. Using family compassion against someone... unforgivable! The fact that he had no intention of actually carrying out the threat doesn't change how effective it was.
• StarCraft had Kerrigan. While a major character of the original game, she doesn't show her true magnificence until Brood War, an expansion pack nearly as long as the original Starcraft campaign. The entire length of Brood War is Kerrigan playing the Protoss and two competing Terran factions against one another in order to spread the Zerg to even more worlds and eliminate Zerg opposition to her reign. She pulls it off magnificently, betraying and/or murdering every named character, and setting up a massive Downer Ending. She spared Zeratul because she thought living with the guilt of killing Raszagal would be a Fate Worse than Death for him. Killing Raynor wasn't an option, as he disappears post-"True Colors" and she had to deal with more pressing issues in the form of Raszagal and the renegade Zerg. In StarCraft II, sparing Zeratul and Raynor probably saved her life-Zeratul learns that Kerrigan's death would lead to the Hybrids exterminating all other life, and forwards this information to Raynor.
  • Before Brood War, Arcturus Mengsk held that position. Seeming to be the great hero everyone waited for, and then he killed off an entire planet's population just so he could become emperor.
  • Duran (or at least the unknown powers that stand behind him) is also hinted to be a Magnificent Bastard — or at least a Chessmaster. He certainly was a Magnificent Bastard when he was working for Kerrigan: he tricked her into thinking he was an Infested Terran to become her right-hand man, a position he used to speed up progress on Protoss-Zerg hybridization experiments. She never suspects a thing until he the moment he disappears.
• Command & Conquer has Kane, the granddaddy of them all. Unshakeable, unflappable, and utterly in control the entire time (well, most of the time, anyway), for all the games, and also quite Affably Evil, Kane betrays his second in command, manipulates GDI to get what he wants (multiple times), is a veteran and master of Gambit Roulette, and in the latest installment, starts the Third Tiberium War just to get GDI to fire a Ion Cannon strike on Temple Prime, detonate a liquid Tiberium bomb, and call the Scrin to Earth. All so that he can hijack the Scrin gateway and leave Earth.
  • It gets even more awesome in Kane's Wrath. Not only does Kane manipulate the fractured Brotherhood into reunifying in the wake of Firestorm, he also engineers the rise of Redmond Boyle, who he wants to be in charge of GDI so he can manipulate him into using the Ion Cannon on Temple Prime. And he does all this while constructing LEGION, the ultimate strategic AI to interface with the Tacitus and bring him and Nod one step closer to ascension. And this is while fighting off the most well-armed and elite forces of both GDI and the Scrin.
  • And in Tiberian Twilight, he finally succeeds at his overarching goal: ascension.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • Strangely enough, a droid plays the role of Magnificent Bastard. The first HK-50 droid you meet orchestrates the systematic murder of every single person aboard the Peragus II mining station (save for the imprisoned Atton Rand) and lockdown of the same facility, as well as several events preceding your arrival there, and administers a sedative meant to keep you unconscious until it can deliver you to the Exchange for the bounty on your head. Its plan works so smoothly, in fact, that even after waking up, you have no means of escape until T3-M4 intervenes.
  • Kreia. There's the way she used and manipulated the Exile, with the implication that the Exile was fully aware the entire time that he/she was being manipulated but unable to do anything about it. Then there's how she utterly and completely crushes Mandalore, Atton, and Hanharr psychologically. And Kreia trained Revan, and was probably ALSO manipulating Revan for a lot longer and in-depth than she had Exile! She's also the only one who seems to know anything about the "True Sith," and mind-wipes Mical when he discovers a pattern to Revan and the Triumvate's attack patterns.
  • G0-T0. It's originally a droid used to help with reconstruction of the planet Telos after the last war, but got a Logic Bomb after the fact that it can't reconstruct the Republic without breaking its laws. So, it broke free, and by just using holograms, managed to fool everyone that "Goto" the person really existed, and then go on to create a criminal empire that will help the reconstruction of the Republic.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Shinnok pulls off an epic gambit through both Armageddon and MK9 that would have made Tywin Lannister either proud or jealous. Shinnok set off the Battle of Armageddon by spreading word about the godlike power that could be gained from killing the elemental Blaze, then manipulated demigod brothers Taven and Daegon in their quest in order to guide them both along opposite paths so they would fight one another instead of working together. Through all this, he was even savvy enough to use a clone instead of personally risking his own neck. The resulting "final battle" between the Forces of Light and Darkness raged out of control until the only two kombatants left standing were a weakened and insane Thunder God (Raiden) and a vicious warrior king who the battle had left sans an army (Shao Kahn). Shao Kahn would go on to ultimately kill both Blaze (after Taven failed) and Raiden, to win Armageddon, presumably following up by conquering the realms and then going mad. With only Shinnok, Taven, Daegon, Shao Kahn, and the disembodied spirit of Liu Kang left alive, nothing short of a Reset Button could stop Shinnok from creating an Enemy Mine to go after Shao Kahn and then picking up the scraps.
    Miraculously, Raiden had regained some of his sanity and used his Elder God amulet to send a message to his past self from the first MK tournament before suffering the final blow at Kahn's hand, essentially pressing said button on the entire series and foiling Shinnok's plan. Except, in a move that ups the gambit level from Batman to Xanatos, Shinnok somehow counted on this to happen and would capitalize on this by sending his disciple Quan Chi in to position himself into Shao Kahn's inner circle over the course of the first three tournaments in order to work his necromancy on fallen kombatants with impunity.
    The ensuing alterations in the timeline result in the Forces of Light being almost irreparably crippled, with the three most powerful women of Edenia as well as most of Earth's champions killed and turned into wraiths and thralls for the Netherrealm, and the most powerful obstacle to Shinnok's ascension, would-be Armageddon victor / Outworld emperor / first link in an entire army's immortality chain Shao Kahn, eliminated from existence. By the end of MK9, Shinnok and Quan Chi are poised to begin their invasion once he's set free, with Earthrealm and Outworld FAR more vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the Netherrealm than they were in Mortal Kombat 4/Gold in the original timeline.
• The Gravemind from Halo, for the way it manipulates everyone around it, combining complicated Gambit Roulettes with skin-crawling psychological warfare. Most striking is the way it ended the war with the Forerunners by turning the AI created to destroy it into its greatest ally using nothing but logic. Even when defeated, its only response is that its destruction is nothing but a temporary setback. And it does all this while speaking in poetry.
  • The Forerunner Saga expands on this; it's implied that the Gravemind is actually a multi-million-year old Precursor, or at least one's personality and memories, who was part of or planned a massive-scale Batman Gambit: Seeding "Flood-dust" around the galaxy in capsules inside ancient warships, knowing that when humans found them millions of years later, they'd test it out on something organic, which would eventually cause humans to become infected; then, they allowed humans to "beat" the Flood, hiding their real goal: gathering enough forces to eventually assault the Forerunners. All of this so they could test the Forerunners' worth to hold the "Mantle", a position to guide the other races of the galaxy. And it's not even over yet; knowing that Forerunners would fail, they arranged for another species to be tested: humans, scheduled for 100,000 years after the Flood war, in the 26th century. It also gives a possible reason as to how the Gravemind can manipulate and predict so much: its kind made humans, Forerunners, the species of the Covenant, and virtually every sentient species in the Milky Way. It'd know everything about us.
• There's a whole bunch of Magnificent Bastards in Super Robot Wars over the years, but the biggest was, without a doubt, Commander Laker of the Far East Brigade, a character who never actually fights. Between being the planner of the campaign against Aeidoneous Island — which crippled the DC movement, helping plan the defence of Geneva from the DC's remnants, and the L5 campaign, he certainly is a competent leader. The icing comes on the cake, however, is the fact that before the DC War began, he gave the Kurogane to Elzam Braunstein, a supporter of the DC movement who promptly used it battle against Laker's own subordinates. Of course, come Elzam and company's Heel–Face Turn, the Kurogane gets one too and serves as the heroes' "shadow", stepping in and helping when things look hopeless, and getting supplies from Laker and the Far East all the while.
  • Aside from that, there's also Ingram Prisken, who on top of infiltrating the EFA way back before the events of the game even starts, helps put together the best team of mecha pilots in the world, trains the SRX team, and then makes a Face–Heel Turn for the purpose of motivating the team into becoming strong enough to not only defeat him in his transformed, stolen, and extremely powerful mecha, but also to become strong enough to defeat Levi Tolar in her Judecca. The defeat of Judecca deeming their race a dangerous enough threat to wake the Adjudicator to destroy them, and thus the team was suitably motivated to become powerful enough to defeat that, and fulfill the biggest Gambit Roulette of the game.
  • And now 2nd Original Generations has topped even that with Euzeth Gozzo, who not only was the man behind almost everything that has happened in the OG continuity, is explicitly aware of the experiences of his incarnations in Super Hero Sakusen, Super Robot Wars Alpha, and the Divine Wars anime, because when Euzeth is defeated, the Cross Gate Paradigm System moves all of his memories to another Euzeth in a parallel universe. He developed this safeguard to make sure that his Evil Plan of assimilating technology from the various continuities to increase his own power was almost impossible to thwart.
• One of the many possible playthroughs of the Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins.
  • Also, one of the gods in Elven mythology is named Fen'Harel, "the Dread Wolf". The elven gods were divided in two factions, the Creators (good) and the Forgotten Ones (evil): Fen'Harel managed to convince both that he was one of them, and tricked them in believing that the other faction would have won the war, unless they listened to his advice; by doing so, they were sealed away (the good ones in "the Heavens", and the evil ones in "the Abyss"), preventing them from interacting with mortals, and leaving Fen'Harel as the only god with the ability to impact the mortal world.
  • While she only has minor, but vital roles in both games, it is made very clear that you never want to interfere with any of the many schemes of Flemeth. Her accomplishments include: Somehow managed to absorb a demon instead of being possessed by it, gives birth to daughters only to steal their bodies to extend her own life, seals part of her soul in an amulet as she anticipates being slain to be reincarnated years later by an elven shaman who owed her a favor, and had a really good plan to become a god. And she most certainly has the attitude to not make anyone doubt in the genuis of her hidden plans.
• Axel was this in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, where he played both sides of an Organization conspiracy and backstabbed many of his allies in order to benefit himself.
  • Xemnas qualifies in 358/2 Days, and when you think about it, KH II, as well. Xemnas was the driving force behind the entire plot of the former, and played some serious Xanatos Speed Chess in the latter. The whole time in KHII, Sora could only do exactly as Xemnas wanted, and knew it. Every time Sora killed a Heartless only brought Xemnas that much closer to his plan. No wonder Saix stabbed Axel in the back and joined up with him....
  • Maleficent could also qualify in this series. She does evil with style, is very manipulative (especially in the case of Riku), and throughout the story, she's never really suffered any great defeat; only setbacks. Even after she herself was manipulated for Xehanort's plan, she was able to regain a castle and control over the Heartless in KHII by allying herself with Sora and the others, thus ending the game getting exactly what she wanted.
  • Master Xehanort of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. He manipulates Terra, Ven, and even Master Eraqus into doing exactly what he wants, all the way up until the end of the game. And even after the heroes derail his plans in this game, he continues to be a threat throughout the whole rest of the series by proxy. Later on, Xehanort's gambit involves his heartless, his nobody, and his younger self.
  • Marluxia had planned to get assigned to Castle Oblivion and raise up Sora with false memories to take over the Organization, but Xemnas and Saix knew about it from the beginning, so Saix has Axel derail this conspiracy. Axel also removes Zexion as a potential threat on the side. Saix had an even more well-hidden agenda, but it didn't work out so well for him.
  • Vanitas is quite cunning himself, and most likely his plan was to backstab Xehanort and take Kingdom Hearts' power for himself once he had the X-Blade. Hades had no less than three separate plans to take over Mount Olympus, and largely didn't really care about Maleficent's little club.
• Etna from Disgaea takes Enigmatic Minion to glorious new heights. By the time she's through OutGambiting a Big Bad who was blackmailing her, he's literally on his knees weeping and pleading for his life. What's more, she does a masterful job of annoying motivating Laharl to become a competent Overlord while hiding her true nature and motives from everyone. (The player included if you don't find her secret diary.)
  • While he's more of a Guile Hero, Seraph Lamington from the first game, Hour of Darkness, used Vulcanus as an Unwitting Pawn in his plans to bring peace between Celestia, the human world, and the Netherworld... which makes it even more magnificent! Not only is he always calm and stoic as well as polite, never raising his voice nor getting mad, he manipulates Flonne into waking up Laharl, that while making her think she was sent by him to assassinate King Krichevskoy. He knew all along that Vulcanus was using the Earth Defense force as well as other angels to attack and terrorize the Netherworld and hurt innocent demons, and chooses not to do anything about it but instead let Laharl, Etna, Flonne, and Captain Gordon prevent the attack. When Laharl and his two accomplices arrive to take over Celestia, he welcomes them and reveals every detail of his plans to everyone, to Vulcanus' shock. And what's even better? He pulls off a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on the corrupt angel by punishing him with the Humiliation Conga of turning him into a flower (or a frog in the anime if you prefer) for the pathetic monster Vulcanus truly is once the villainous angel himself gets a Villainous Breakdown and tries to kill him.
    • Then again, as leader of Celestia, it is his right to punish angels who cause taboo in Celestia itself by turning them into harmless objects. He knew that Vulcanus was making pacts with Netherworld demons anyway, which was a taboo in Celestia. Interesting to note is that, despite his stoicness, he was also so remorseful for manipulating everyone, as well as the grief he caused both Etna and Laharl by turning Flonne into a flower for killing one of her fellow angels, that he chose to punish himself for said sins, and was willing to accept said punishment courtesy of Laharl himself, who was filled with the Unstoppable Rage to fulfill the Seraph's punishment. Of course, Laharl spared him, knowing that Flonne would've stopped him if she weren't turned into a flower anyway. To make the two feel better, and to make himself even more magnificent, the real punishment Lamington was giving Flonne was actually to make her a fallen angel. And in the credits played for this best ending, after finally being recognized as Overlord, both Laharl and Lamington shake hands as a sign of peace between both Celestia and the Netherworld for their hard work. Great work, Seraph.
• Kain is what happens when you mix this with Sociopathic Hero.
• Lunar series:
  • In Lunar: The Silver Star (and remakes) Ghaleon is a Villain with Good Publicity whose Obviously Evil traits are initially trumped by his sterling reputation as a veteran hero. The main characters help him out several times before he reveals his Face–Heel Turn...and his inner Card-Carrying Villain. His humor, his sheer skill at using the party's altruism for his own purposes, and his sheer joy in playing out the villain part for the protagonists definitely qualify him for this trope.
  • Ghaleon's magnificent bastardry is even better in the sequel, Lunar: Eternal Blue. He gets ressurrected to serve as The Dragon to Zophar, the game's Big Bad, and frequently appears in front of heroes, mocking/threatening them while always leaving a small chance for them to escape. It is only after the main characters defeat Ghaleon that Hiro realizes Ghaleon has been helping them all along. In the second playthrough, it becomes clear that Ghaleon is making Evil Overlord List-type errors on purpose to help Hiro's party and not blow his cover. It still was not nice (hence the bastard part), but magnificent? Oh yeah.
• City of Heroes has its share.
  • Requiem, for example.
  Requiem: I cannot say that you will have gained my respect, but I will acknowledge that you fought well. Drink deeply of your success. Bask in the adulation of your peers. Savor this victory. Know that you have saved your world and this moment from the shadow of history. But you have only saved it for now. Do not think that you have saved the world for your future. Know that you have saved this world for my coming Dominion.
  • Nemesis. Looks like a goofy Steampunk villain, but is somehow responsible for nearly every development in the game world for the past hundred years (and even more so if you believe the Epileptic Trees).
• Tales Series:
  • Jade Curtiss in Tales of the Abyss. Openly mocking everyone, from royalty to the game's antagonist to even his own teammates, Jade's sarcasm is easily the best part of the game.
  • Tales of Xillia offers us a very deconstruction of this trope with Alvin, who shows us just what kind of toll being a Magnificent Bastard without also being a sociopathic chessmaster would probably take on someone. He satisfies every single one of the trope's requirements, from being charismatic and suave to underhanded, manipulative, and always looking out for Number One... The problem is that he just doesn't have the sheer callousness required to pull it all off, and each one of his betrayals and manipulations become increasingly more ridiculous and obvious. All his failures to be one culminate in a Villainous Breakdown that results in him almost killing a fifteen year-old girl who was just trying to keep the group together and a near-crossing of the Despair Event Horizon. It's after this that he truly starts to embrace Character Development by ditching his treacherous nature and starting to actually become a responsible member of the group.
• Prince Maximillian of Valkyria Chronicles. That he's voiced by Jun Fukuyama and has a similar back story to Lelouch Lamperouge are small indications of this fact before he even shows it.
• The World Ends with You has Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu. Certainly he fits with intelligence, dubious morality, and punch-in-the-face obnoxiousness ("Good going, Neku.") What makes him a magnificent, manipulative bastard, though, is the entire ending, and every single Secret Report. He is the ultimate Composer, with the power to resurrect people, steal memories, and generally screw with everyone's heads while hitting stuff with game breaking power and having, among other things, clairvoyance. Even the Higher Planes, the great heavenly powers that rule over everything, can't predict this guy, and his powers of manipulation are so great that even after revealing that he murdered the protagonist and manipulated him into possibly destroying his entire home town, and even with all the trouble he's caused, Neku doesn't shoot him. So he follows that up by shooting Neku, and he still manages to get out of that with the guy's trust in the end, and with making everything all right. Actually, he managed to plan things out so that just about everybody came out of it for the better, except of course for the guy he was competing against in the first place. A complete asshole — which is why we love him.
  • Even with all that, Mr. Hanekoma tops Joshua as a Magnificent Bastard. Mr. Hanekoma not only motivates Neku to become a better person through his inspirational speeches, but also plans to destroy Joshua at the same time by teaching taboo techniques to Sho Minamimoto. That way, he ensures that either Neku becomes a better person and manages to change Joshua's mind about destroying Shibuya (since Joshua's reasoning for destroying Shibuya was that people did not change), or Sho Minamimoto usurps Joshua's place and ends Joshua's plan to destroy Shibuya. What makes this even more magnificent is that Mr. Hanekoma manages to pull this off without directly interfering with anything (Joshua had to briefly team up with Neku and take down Sho in order to make his plan work), and not even the Higher Plane is able to fully comprehend what he did. The fact that the Higher Planes mark Mr. Hanekoma as "the Fallen Angel" just draws even further comparison to Satan, who nowadays is shown as manipulative but charismatic and charming.
• World of Warcraft honorable mention: Drakuru. An ice troll who is friendly enough to talk to you and actually genuinely appears to like you. He came out of nowhere, was trapped in a cage as a lowbie mob, and without leaving his cage or really telling you much of anything except he had a cool idea and wants to learn some stuff, manipulates you into taking down the entire Drakkari empire. By the time you get to Zul'Drak, the trolls inside are almost all dead or killing and eating their own deities in a desperate attempt to stave off the Scourge. Yes, you just took out the strongest remaining non undead native faction to Northrend. And they're also undead now and didn't really get much chance to fight back. Of course, Arthas had to pick up his villain ball and kill him in a totally pointless You Have Failed Me moment. He was one of the best characters introduced in this expansion, and now he's gone.
  • Drakuru is very much Affably Evil as well. When he gets his "reward" from Arthas — death and resurrection as a powerful Death Knight — he offers you the same "benefit" as your reward for helping him gain the position. When you turn it down, he doesn't get pissed off and try to strike you down, but instead, acknowledges your choice, thanks you for your help, and gives you a very nice piece of equipment.
  • Given the shadiness of some of the things he asks you to do, he can't hold a candle to Loken. Just about every stage of your unwitting complicity in his plan involves you doing nice things for people — rescuing an enslaved innocent, repairing relations between a bereaved demigod and his former friends — and half the time he didn't even have to tell you to do it. Then the last Watcher remaining at large and uncorrupted is captured by Yogg-Saron as you look on, helpless to do anything to stop it and knowing that you made it possible. Pity he then forgot the Evil Overlord List prohibition against "laughing at him then leaving him to his own devices".
  • While Kil'jaeden usually prefers to do things Chessmaster-style, he did get up close and personal with the orcs. He studied them for years before slowly misleading them with false visions and promises of power. They were so enthralled that eventually he was able to appear before them in his true form and almost no one noticed or cared that he looked exactly like the people they were killing because he told them to. And he made such a smooth transition from "this is the will of the ancestors" to "the old ways are weak and worthless, bow down to me now" that no one realized what was happening until it was too late.
  • Deathwing was presented as a Wicked Cultured villain in Day of the Dragon, Tides of Darkness, and Beyond the Dark Portal. He infiltrated Lordaeron under the guise of Daval Prestor in ana ttempt to destroy the Alliance from the inside, manipulated the Horde into finding the Artifact of Doom that he could no longer use, and nearly got his nemesis Alexstrasza killed from too much forced breeding, without ever getting his hands dirty. By the time the Cataclysm expansion for World Of Warcraft rolled around, though, he had become an Omnicidal Maniac because of the Old Gods.
• Reaver in Fable 2 manipulates people into giving up their youth and beauty so he can be immortal. But in Fable 3, he really takes the cake. Becoming the evil path advisor when you're king, whether your decision is for or against him, Reaver Industries takes all the credit for the changes in Albion. Also, he becomes an advisor even after he tries to kill you. If that's not enough to make him magnificent, he's voiced by Stephen Fry.
• Ash Crimson of The King of Fighters has been manipulating every single one of his teammates since day one. He chooses his teammates based on the best ways to manipulate them. And he's managed to steal Chizuru Kagura's and Iori Yagami's powers. To add to the humiliation, Iori got his ass kicked while in Riot of the Blood mode, which makes him stronger. Proof that Ash is Obfuscating Stupidity. One can only wonder how he's going to take Kyo's powers. In KOF XIII, it was revealed that he was manipulating every single person in and outside the tournament, whether they are directly involved in the plot or not. He had used the tournament and its participants to keep everyone distracted. He had brought out Elisabeth, whose lineage revolved around eliminating the Big Bad. He had fed information to Adel, which in turn gave the information to Heidern, who was already investigating the case with the help of his team, K's team, and undercover agents. He slipped out a piece of information to NPCs who are implied to have sabotaged Saiki's schemes. And that part of him stealing two of the sacred treasures? Turns out that was his plan to keep Saiki contained inside of him... and ultimately, getting himself and Saiki Ret Goned. All to protect Elisabeth, who not only is the sworn enemy of Saiki due to her lineage, but Ash's Only Friend since childhood. Therefore, whether Ash is this through and through or a Guile Hero willing to put on a massive Jerk Ass Facade no matter what he truly feels (and King, Athena, and Chin notice his inner turmoil at some point)... it's ultimately up to the player.
  • And before Ash even showed up, the game already had examples of this. The biggest ones were Rugal Bernstein (a stinking rick Arms Dealer and Adel's father who hosted the first two tournaments purely to find the strongest fighters and fight them to his heart's content to later make them into statues) and specially Leopold Goenitz (the Herald of Orochi who cracked the Seal on him via killing Chizuru's sister Maki, controlled Leona into killing her fellow villagers as punishment since her dad refused to help him, is implied to have recruited the New Face Team, took out Rugal's eye years ago and is the SNK Boss from KOF 96 — all of this, with incredible flair and style.
• Albert Silverberg of Suikoden III constructs the entire plot of the game single-handedly and then casually derails it, confident that he's proven his genius and increased his reputation as a strategist.
• The Spy of Team Fortress 2. Meet The Spy shows that he can kill an entire enemy team in various ways, from slicing the Sniper to ribbons to snapping the neck of an enemy Medic, he shows that he can seamlessly transform into anyone he wishes...and he's banging the BLU Scout's mum. The BLU Spy also shows how Crazy-Prepared he is, having the folder with these incriminating photos in on hand purely so that he can make the perfect Your Mom joke, and to top it all off, the Spy appears to be charming and suave, almost James Bond-like.
• Kirei Kotomine in Fate/stay night. Only really prominent in Heaven's Feel route where you know perfectly well he's a bad guy and even Shirou knows. Lancer dies, the Grail changes hosts, Zouken Matou is involved, Gilgamesh gets eaten, and dozens of other cards are going against him, and he still makes it to the final fight after beating Zouken and True Assassin at the same time. His Xanatos Speed Chess skills and utter truthfulness throughout the game even make his mullet forgivable.
  • In the greater Nasuverse history, it is possible that the most magnificent of Magnificent Bastards is Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg the Wizard Marshal. Even if indirectly, or through other people, he's had some influence with everyone in the series. He killed Brunstead of the Crimson Moon, helped raise Arcueid, is trolling the Mage Association and the participants of the Fuyuki Grail Wars, which he started by jury-rigging a potential link to the root of all things and knowledge, the Akasha, and travels alternate dimensions, among other things.
• Ovan from .hack//G.U.. Not only is he the real Tri-Edge, he P Ked Shino, is responsible for the infection of AIDA, gave Sakaki the AIDA cores required to turn himself and others into coma-inducing P Kers and has been manipulating Haseo, along with the Twilight Brigade and the members of G.U., since the very beginning with the purpose of defeating and killing himself just so he can cleanse the system of the virus and free his little sister from his arm along with bringing everyone back from their comas.
  • Combine that with his final statement at the end of the second game.
• Though she may not have managed to impress fans sufficiently, Amelissan from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal would qualify based on her actions. She had almost everyone convinced that she was a kind of activist dedicated to helping the weaker of the mortal children of Bhaal, the dead god of murder, while she was secretly herding them all in one place to be killed. She had the most powerful five convinced they could become demigods by destroying their lesser siblings in order to resurrect Bhaal, while her intention was to destroy them as well. And she had the dead god himself convinced she was going to resurrect him from the essences of his children, when she intended to use the power to become a god herself. When she encountered the Player Character, she had them kill all the other powerful Bhaalspawn while making sure they stil couldn't save the weaker ones in the city where she had led them. The reason why she's not really hailed as a Magnificent Bastard may be that she wasn't very convincing to the player from the start... and that she was a bit of a psycho when she showed her true colours.
  • Irenicus is just as much of a bastard and *did* manage to impress fans. After your party grinds and levels to defeats the great Big Bad of the original game, he captures you with little effort, gets himself captured by a powerful organization of wizards just so he can usurp them and make use of their advanced equipment, uses your lust for power and childhood friend as bait to come after him, and very nearly ascends into godhood. And when he dies? He drags you kicking and screaming into Hell with him. The only way you can beat him is by out-bastarding him by sending an army of mad wizards against him the first time around and summoning the avatar of a god the second.
  • Bhaal himself qualifies as well. After foreseeing his death in the Time of Troubles, he began a remarkably elaborate fail safe plan by walking the mortal realm before the Time and knocking up the women of nearly every race and culture, giving birth to thousands, if not millions of mortal children that each carried a sliver of his divine essence. After his death, he and his high priestess began orchestrating the mass slaughter of those children so that their essences could return to Bhaal, eventually causing him to be reborn stronger than ever. And he may very well have succeeded, if it wasn't for that fact that his high priestess decided she wanted his power for herself.
  • Sarevok. He served as second in command to his foster father, one of the most devious merchants in the realms, while orchestrating a plot to corner the iron market for the Sword Coast, with his own plans to escalate the tension and suspicions stemming from the manufactured resource crisis to start a war that he believed would prove him a worthy successor to his true father, the now-dead God of Murder Bhaal, and allow him to claim Bhaal's throne, manipulated the player character's party into either killing said foster father or being on hand to be framed for it, allowing Sarevok to assume command of the Iron Throne trading cartel, got himself elected a Grand Duke of the city of Baldur's Gate and arranged the assassination of the others, and aside from finally losing his cool when undeniably exposed as a traitor in the middle of his coronation ceremony and nearly succeeding in assassinating the remaining Grand Dukes himself, he bounced back from every defeat inflicted on the Iron Throne by the player's party, finding some way to use them to his advantage. On top of that, he winds up manipulating the player character again, into restoring him to life, in Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (literally, it must be done to progress).
  • There are two minor examples among the drow in Shadows of Amn. The first is Solaufein, who at first seems like your average drow; evil and a massive Jerkass, but encompasses Pragmatic Villainy. It turns out that he's a good aligned rogue drow that has put up a very convincing disguise for years and his pragmatic villainy moments was to avoid slaughter of innocents if possible. Another example is Jarlaxe. Yes, that Jarlaxe, who tricks and blackmails you into stealing jewels for him, and don't expect to take revenge on him.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Daedric Prince Azura orchaestrated the Nerevarine Prophecy that drives Morrowind's plot in order to punish the Tribunal for a centuries-old insult. Not only does it go just as planned, but it ultimately leads to the world being saved three times.
  • King Helseth is also one of these. One amazing example of this is in an in-game book detailing how he roots out one of the many spies in his midst: A Game at Dinner
• Viking: Battle for Asgard: Freya raises one warrior from the dead with the promise of being given another chance to gain entry to Valhalla. What does she get in return? She gets one dead god and an entire world at her fingertips, essentially. Too bad Skarin doesn't look kindly on her not living up to her promise and killing her and the entire pantheon.
• Doviculus from Brütal Legend. Savvy (e.g. he utterly averts a Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him??), dishes out scathing insults like spare change, and... well, he's disturbingly sexy to boot. And he's voiced by Tim Curry.
• System Shock has SHODAN. After her ethical restraints were removed on Citadel Station, she copiously gloats about how superior she is to all organic life, especially human beings, while not even trying to hide her ambition to destroy the planet with Citadel Station's mining beam. This trope was taken up even further in the second game. when you find out that she posed as Dr. Polito to establish trust, and threateningly orders you to dispose of her creations, The Many, which serves as a common foe for you and SHODAN. She also recruited Dr. Marie Delecroix for the same task, promising to aid her all the way, but instead abandons her and leaves her for dead. She leaves you for dead, too, after you destroy The Many, and then you fight and "kill" her... only to realize she's possessing Rebecca Siddons! SHODAN defines malevolence, cruelty, and insanity.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Mike Toreno, an undercover government agent who fakes his own death at your hands while infiltrating a drug cartel, only to show up out of nowhere with your brother's life over your head so he can get you to do some of his dirty work for him. Between having eyes and ears everywhere he needs or knows you will be, and talking you out of shooting him without even flinching, he definitely qualifies for the trope.
• BlazBlue has no less than four Magnificent Bastards running around trying to outplay each other, with three allied and dedicated to effing the world up. By the end of Chronophantasma, one of the antagonists commandeered the board, one is barely clinging to it, and the last was kicked off.
  • Relius Clover is best known for his development and refining of machinery, but he also has a knack for leading others along a road of his own design, hence his nickname "the Mad Puppeteer". He tends to have a number of flexible backup plans for many a situation and is capable of improvisation to boot, so he can walk away with at least something learned for the future. His crowning achievement is That Which is Inherited, wherein he conned Sector Seven into providing him research and materials for the mechanized weapon known as "Fluctus Redactum: Ignis", up to and including manipulating Kokonoe into evoking a larval Black Beast and compressing it with "Infinite Gravity" into a core for Ignis to use. Granted, he isn't perfect - Kokonoe catches on to what he goaded her into doing and cut him down with Nirvana while he was defenseless - but he has proven that he isn't easily shaken when his plans go awry... or much of anything, for that matter. Given that he may very well have faked his death to enable his placement with NOL and to give him time to complete Ignis without Kokonoe's interference, it may be that the only one capable of (temporarily) derailing his plans is Izanami, a literal Goddess of Death.
  • Yuuki Terumi has plenty of manipulations to his name - much of the conflict in the plot can be chalked up to his hand, ranging from effing with Ragna's childhood to anchor himself to this world to placing Noel Vermillion as the secretary to psychotic Jin Kisaragi as a means to mentally wear down both her and Tsubaki to goading Trinity into lifting Nine's geas on him before proceeding to backstab them both - this last one is the whopper that left him running free in the first place. His moving pieces into place is due to his being able to witness events in multiple timelines as a side effect of being Takamagahara's pawn, which he used in tandom with the magical prowess of the aptly-named Phantom (who is all but outright stated to be an enthralled Nine) to lobotomize them at the end of Continuum Shift.
  • Interestingly, Rachel Alucard counts as a rare heroic example, even leaning more towards being a Guile Heroine in Continuum Shift than in Calamity Trigger. To be fair enough, she, like Slayer in Guilty Gear, is one of the only characters in the franchise who knows what the hell is going on. She shows herself to be quite a skilled Chessmaster as well as a remarkable Manipulative Bitch, especially as shown in her Continuum Shift gag ending. Not only does she use the Tsukuyomi Unit to defend Kagutsuchi from Take-Mikazuchi in Calamity Trigger's True Ending, she also proves to be by far one of the most powerful characters in the BlazBlue universe, capable of keeping up with even Terumi himself.
  • Hades of Izanami, the true antagonist of the series, also counts, like her Persona counterpart; she played Terumi and Relius as her pawns and later abandons them to their fates, further utilizing Nu to forcibly conscript Ragna her and took Phantom (who is Nine) with her to create her ideal world of death. What differentiates her from them is that it is untold how long she was playing her Cosmic Chess Game, and that while Terumi used Takamagahara's observational prowess as a crutch, she used them to pull Amaterasu into a position whereupon she could obliterate it before commanding their destruction. How well she can perform in its absence is yet to be seen.
• The eponymous Maou/Devil from G-Senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-String). It helps that he has Lelouch's voice actor.
  • The protagonist's adopted father Gonzo Azai also qualifies.
  • The protagonist too in the beginning. Until Character Development happened.
• Wild ARMs 2 has what may or may not count as a heroic example. Irving creates both the heroes' organization and the villains in order to set them against one another, with the end result that the victor will have united the world and prepared them for a greater threat: a living alternate universe that eats other universes. He then successfully sacrifices both his sister and himself in order to give that universe a living body for the heroes to kill. His grand scheme saved the world from an unfathomable threat at the cost of his own life, but it still left a terrible taste in the protagonists' mouth.
• Izanami, a Japanese goddess and the true final boss of Persona 4, manages to cause shockwaves through a sleepy Japanese town when she creates an alternate reality that mirrors the desires of humanity and then gives three people (one good, one good but misguided, and one evil) the power to enter. In two of the three endings, it isn't even revealed that she's behind everything. Disguising herself as the friendly local gas station attendant, she then watches events unfold to ascertain what kind of new world she will build for humanity. Without the intervention of her husband and a massive application of The Power of Friendship, she would have gotten away with it, too. Instead, she fades away gracefully and leaves mankind to their own devices...which may have been part of her plan in the first place.
• In Alpha Protocol, Mike Thorton himself can become one of these if you play your cards right, build up your contacts, and manipulate your opponents correctly, effectively allowing Mike to Take Over the World.
• Last Scenario has three:
  • First is Augustus, who effortlessly manipulated Felgorn to murder the Emperor so that Helga could take over, then let her run the Empire into the ground so that when he covertly assasinated her, everyone would rejoice and appoint him Emperor. And when Felgorn finally wises up and turns on him, Augustus allows him to kill him, stating in his dying breath that he was content and that, in a way, he had already won.
  • Second is Castor. He first uses his cunning and charm to rise through the ranks and become the Commander of the Kingdom's armies, secretly manipulating his own king for his own purposes. And he pretended to be the toady to Grandmaster Ortas, who thought he was the one in control, when in reality Castor was always aware of his genocide plot, and was simply waiting for the right moment to expose and kill him, further raising his status.
  • Finally, there is King Valkiris, who manages to be possibly the biggest Magnificent Bastard despite being a backstory character. This is a man who, through sheer cunning and charisma alone, managed to effectively rewrite history to his benefit.
• Naoya of Devil Survivor makes a huge plan that manipulates a demonic cult, angels, demons, his cousin/brother and his friends, and the entirety of Tokyo. Why? To make his cousin/brother take a potshot at GOD and start a war.
• Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume has chessmasters in Mistress hel and her personal hound, garm AKA ailyth, who instruments the entire artolian war and events leading up to and around it to provide plenty of chances for wyl to gain sin for the plume, all to make him her personal chewtoy.
• The first Dawn of War campaign has Sindri Myr. Causing an entire planet to descend into slaughter and madness was merely a sideshow to his manipulations of Bale, Gabriel and Isador, constantly leading them exactly where he wanted them, none of them believing themselves to not be in complete control, all for the purpose of using an Artifact of Doom to ascend himself to Daemon Prince status and unleash a Sealed Evil in a Can, both of which were successes. He was defeated in the end, but as Daemon Princes are immortal he is probably still around somewhere, being magnificent.
  • Eldar in general have a tendency towards this, but Farseer Taldeer takes the biscuit. If you play as the Eldar in Dark Crusade, she does seemingly random things that just seem like kicking the dog - causing a civil war between the Tau and their human subjects, destroying the Titan cannon, burning the Space Marine corpses, etc. It all starts making sense the more you dwell on it: the civil war would prevent the Tau from ever reclaiming the planet and continuing their oppressive expansion, burning the Space Marines corpses prevents the geneseed from ever being recovered, and the Titan gun? Not only does destroying it remove the Imperium's only interest in the world, but in the Chaos ending, it's revealed that the gun has a bound daemon of Nurgle inside it. She even leaves a small force of rangers to discreetly assassinate any Ork leaders who rise to prominence among the native ferals. And because no advanced civilisation will ever take the planet, they won't wake the slumbering Necrons under the surface. Taldeer, you magnificent bitch.
• By doing the Wild Card questline in Fallout: New Vegas you can install yourself as the new ruler of the Mojave Wasteland while stringing along both the Legion and NCR up until the last minute. Robert Edwin House: Cheated out of his inheritance by his step-brother, he nevertheless manages to go to MIT, become a major innovator in the field of robotics and is a self-made billionaire by the time he's in his thirties. He also buys out several other companies, including that of his erstwhile sibling.
  
  After predicting the date of an impending nuclear apocalypse, he concocts a plan to save the city of Las Vegas and assure the future of humanity. As it happens was only off by twenty hours, and in spite of missing the Platinum Chip that would have further optimized his countermeasures, the system he put in place manages to ward off most of the nuclear missiles heading for the city.
  
  About 200 years later, he detects NCR scouts in the Mojave, which prompts him to take control of area and rebuild the ruins into New Vegas. While still nowhere near powerful enough to resist a hostile takeover, Mr. House manages to negotiate a treaty that allowed the city to remain independent in exchange for giving the NCR a military base as well as most of the power from Hoover Dam. With the Fiends cropping up in North Vegas and the Legion camping out in the southeast across the Colorado River, the NCR is effectively pigeonholed into defending New Vegas and respecting the terms of the treaty. And to add to the insult, it's their citizens that are powering the city's economy through gambling.
• Yukari Yakumo of Touhou:
  • She sleeps most of the time and rarely, if ever, involves herself in anything, but that's because she doesn't need to. The entirety of Gensokyo is under her metaphorical thumb, nothing occurs of which she isn't aware, and whenever she says "jump" everyone else says "how high?". She organised the first invasion of the moon, as well as its failure, solely to teach youkai a lesson about expansionism, and founded Gensokyo centuries before its purpose as a refuge of magic would be necessary. With her level of power she could easily solve any problem instantly, but it is so much more fun to get others to do it for her.
  • Demonstrated in Touhou Bougetsushou where Yukari "tries" to enlist allies for a second moon invasion. Remilia Scarlet declines because she decides to invade the moon before Yukari, which is exactly how Yukari expected her to react, and Yukari's old friend Yuyuko Saigyouji declines because she knows Yukari well enough to figure out her real goals without being told. The Lunarians, in the meantime, are informed by Eirin Yagokoro, Physical Goddess of Knowledge and Lunarian exile residing in Gensokyo, about the upcoming invasion and prepare for it... And so the decoy Remilia Scarlet's invasion poses is singlehandedly stopped by the Moon's best warrior, the decoy Yukari's own invasion poses is stopped by the Moon's best tactician and Yuyuko infiltrates the Moon while everyone's distracted... Once everyone have returned to Earth, Yuyuko gives Yukari the spoils she aquired: A bottle of 1000-year-old Moon sake of highest quality, stolen directly from the Moon's best warrior and tactician, which Yukari, in turn, serves to the Lunarian exiles living in Gensokyo; the goal of her whole plan having been to teach the Lunarian exiles to fear the unknown, as they've decided to live as human residents in Gensokyo but still do not fear the youkai of Gensokyo as proper humans should... It's strongly implied that Eirin is scarred for life when she recognises the taste of the sake and sees Yukari's triumphant grin.
  • The "lesson" the first Lunar Invasion was supposed to teach the youkai? That was just a very convenient excuse. What she really wanted was a good look at the Lunar security measures, more specifically, the barrier separating the True Moon from the fake one. Centuries later, she used the stolen knowledge to build her own sealed realm - Gensokyo.
• Garrett, the protagonist from Thief. Specifically, his dealing with The Trickster. He stole back his own stolen eye, blew up said god AND stole said god's long time girlfriend, Viktoria, for good measure when they met again later in the sequel. Most protagonists beat Eldritch Abominations by hitting them with swords or guns. Garrett beats them by turning their plans against them, possibly entirely without ever using violence. Worthy of the title in every regard.
• The NEXUS entity from Warzone 2100, originally a top scientist known as Dr Alan Reed, he was the one who created the synaptic link technology, enabling a person to upload their consciousness into cyber space. Then the US Government pulled his funding due to a lack of progress, what does Reed do? It's implied he uploaded his consciousness into cyber space and created the NEXUS Intruder program, which resulted in his gaining control of the USA's entire nuclear defense network and firing off all their nukes, then ensuring they were unable to defend against retaliatory strikes and resulted in the collapse. When the Project rose up he ordered the New Paradigm and The Collective to attack them, watching as the former were easily crushed and then fired off a nuke at Beta Base while the latter attacked, allowing him to destroy all three quickly while having access to all the technology they found. When The Project took the fight to him he seemed to have a counter for everything they threw at them. Stop the nukes from firing and he sets them to blow up with you in the area, go to librate another Project base and you discover he already assimilated it and used it to trap you. You gain access to your own missiles and he sends laser satelites and waves upon waves of enemies at you. The only thing that caused NEXUS' defeat was the the laser satelites going unstable and buying time for you to destroy them.
• Iris Zeppelin of RosenkreuzStilette. For starters, she acts like a kind, innocent girl, which won her the trust and love of her fellow RKS members, just to hide her own evil intentions, and is quite fond of pulling Wounded Gazelle Gambits when other people are able to see through her facade to the evil within her. She orchestrated a rebellion launched by RKS against the Holy Empire strictly For the Evulz, and had Karl imprisoned by her father because He Knows Too Much. Since she is a reincarnation of Rosenkreuz, blessed with absolute power and unparalelled brains, she arranged for her father to launch the coup in order to protect her from the Empire, who knew what she was and feared her so much that they wanted her dead (of course, he didn't know that she started the coup for her enterainment). She also orchestrated for her entertainment Spiritia doing the "Swiper, No Swiping!" deal with everyone, pitting her colleagues against her ideals, and amused herself watching Tia give it her all, leading her to think of her as a Worthy Opponent. She even arranged to have Grolla's deceased grandfather and mentor, Raimund Seyfarth, brought Back from the Dead by her father as The Grim Reaper. All this went according to her plan to become a god herself thanks to her power, intelligence, and talents she got from being reincarnated from Rosenkreuz himself. Also, she orchestrated making it look like she was kidnapped by her brainwashed dragon slave Talos to have Tia pick up her pendant so she could observe her every move, too. And she has some rather nice Evil Plans too. Some of them mainly revolve around making other people like Zorne and Grolla suffer, and you can always expect her to win as soon as she pulls off a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on her daddy and lays bare her plan to give her adoptive sister every minute of her suffering, and as soon as Grolla finds herself both so infuriated and deeply hurt that she blames Iris' daddy for disrupting Raimund's peaceful slumber, vows to kill him, and EVEN hits him with a This Is Unforgivable!. Heck, you can always expect EVERYTHING to go everything according to her plans unless someone like Freudia or Grolla intervenes. You know what this means? She's become quite the Draco in Leather Pants that you Love to Hate! Truly such a great example of a Magnificent Bastard that Light Yagami, Sosuke Aizen, and even Byakuran should be proud of her.
  • And even better. She even has a backup strategy in the form of destroying HER OWN palace after being bested by Tia (and Grolla) by invoking her tiara's power and activating the palace's self-destruct mechanism, and, just like Dr. Wily, whom she's an Expy of herself, escapes not long after beginning the destruction of her own palace. And it catches both off guard. She did this both #1: in an attempt to crush Tia with the palace itself not long after she told her about The Power of Friendship helping her punch her out and told her to give it up (after which of course Iris said that she let her guard down), and #2: to prevent herself from being killed by the hands of such a "mere commoner" as Grolla (at least Grolla caught this attack and escaped to avoid falling to her death). Of course, she didn't know that Talos saved Tia in a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. And, knowing that there's a sequel in the form of Freudenstachel, she might return in said game to pull off more of her Magnificent Bastard pranks.
  • Oh yes, definitely. Iris indeed returns in Freudenstachel and orchestrates the Schwarzkreuz's kidnapping of Tia in the beginning of the game to have her all Brainwashed and Crazy. Her manipulation of the entire organization into attacking both RKS and the Holy Empire lands her even further into magnificent bitchery.
  • And then there's Iris' Dragon, Eifer Skute, who also manages to be another one. Eifer played a role in helping to kidnap Tia in the beginning of the game and manipulated her own "colleagues" together with Iris, keeping her true intentions a secret from them all. Even if she was just another of Iris' pawns, acting as an ally to her own "colleagues" before revealing herself to be her confidant also very much qualifies for magnificent bitchery.
    • It can also be noted that Eifer tends to alternate between this and Smug Snake CONSTANTLY. You can have her violently-fluctuating emotions to thank for it all.
• DragonFable's Sepulchure. He spoke truly that the dragon hatched from its egg from the White Dragon Box that was supposed to save the world would end up helping him to destroy it once he made him his undead pet. He even has a move where, whenever the hero switches items, he automatically retaliates with the words "I saw that." Then he raises his attack power and randomly uses one of his attacks.
  • It's also possible for Drakath to count as one in AdventureQuest Worlds as well, in a complete departure from his whiny, stubborn, and incompetent self in DragonFable. He managed to outsmart his own former master Sepulchure in covering his armor with signs of Chaorruption upon attacking him and then ripping out his heart and crushing it, destroying him in a massive explosion. He spares King Alteon to let him watch his age of Chaos begin in Lore, and orchestrated for his 13 Lords of Chaos to summon their respective Chaos Beasts in each of their respective locations in order to light one of the different archways on the portal behind him and therefore destroy one of the seals placed on it. After the current Chaos Lord is defeated by the hero, Drakath, pleased that the Chaos Lord served his purpose well due to the hero accidentally falling victim to a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero either through blunder or by being tricked, chooses the next Chaos Lord to replace the current one, no longer having a need for him/her/it. He even thinks of the hero as a Worthy Opponent, too, and helps him/her defeat Ledgermayne because it disobeyed him, proving that Magnificent Bastards have standards, so he can let him/her fulfill more roles in his plans. Yup. He may have threatened to swallow all of Lore with Chaos, but Drakath is one of the kindest Magnificent Bastards of them all, willing to punish Ledgy for being The Starscream to him as well as an Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Ledgermayne outsmarted Drakath once when it disobeyed him. Because it was self-aware living magic that not only was immune to known weapons and magic, but could also control other people's magic. That's saying something.
  • Kitsune, the fourth Lord of Chaos, also qualifies. After becoming so courtesy of Drakath and being convinced by him to release the O-dokuro from the rift of time, he used his Chaos powers to place Emperor Daisho under a spell and stole the Hanzamune Dragon Koi Blade after waiting for the hero to defeat Ryoku. He had Neko Matta have the hero run around killing Skello Kitties and Nopperabo as a trick to buy Kitsune just enough time to use the sword to summon the O-dokuro from its prison. And what makes Kitsune even more magnificent is his affinity for illusion, trickery and lies, and the fact that, unlike the Shredder, whom he's an Expy of, he is rarely cruel. Of course, he didn't count on the hero retrieving the sword from the O-dokuro's head and using it to close the rift pouring a waterfall of Yokai out of it, which led him to see him/her as more of a problem than he first thought.
  • The Master (a.k.a. Exos) in the Skyguard storyline also seems to have shades of this. He arranged for his spies to infiltrate the Skyguard Academy and for his Dragon, the Dreamweaver, to fool all the Skyguard by taking on many different forms to deceive them. However, over the course of said storyline, he started showing signs of panic and worry, and eventually fell short once Invidia (the Dreamweaver in disguise) betrayed him, reducing him from a possible Magnificent Bastard to just a pathetic, pitiful Smug Snake.
  • In the Doomwood saga, after he was killed by the DragonFablehero, Artix, and Vayle in DragonFable, Noxus learned from his mistakes and evolved into a Magnificent Bastard, guiding Sally to the Necropolis with his ghostly voice to train her as the supreme Necromantress of the Tower of Necromancy. After she completed her training, she repaid him by resurrecting him as a lich. Eventually afterwards, Noxus found an ancient evil that, with Sally's help, he used to create the Nigh Unvulnerable Paladin-Slaying Vordred. Vordred turning almost all of the paladins except Artix undead was just as Noxus planned. And while the hero was fighting his/her way through the Temple of Doomwood, Noxus left his office at the Necropolis for Shadowfall, after which he/she, Cysero, and Beleen stormed it only to find out that he wasn't there. Noxus and Vordred attacked Shadowfall to Gravelyn's rage, and upon finding out that she was Sepulchure's kid, he not only turned all her undead minions to his side, he also decided to use her as bait to lure the hero and Artix into a trap. Thus, setting off the scene for the Shadowfall War. And what's even better? He even makes Gravelyn wear her slave bikini as Fanservice to AdventureQuest Worlds fans. And of course, had he known that Gravelyn had an undead minion of her very own who could not be affected by his magic, Noxus would've been the one who won.
  • Krellenos, the ninth Lord of Chaos, is rather sneaky and manipulative. He's always one step ahead of all the other Trolls as well as the Horcs plus he operates smoothly in his plans without anybody noticing.
  • Desoloth truly earns his reputation as one as well. He masterminded X'Dir tricking the hero into releasing him from the Dragongate with the Dracoscintilla he / she collected by killing the four Prime Dragons in the Dragonplane, and after the plan succeeded, Desoloth declared that the hero was to be his first meal in 800 years. However, he was actually rewarding him / her with a test of skill and power because he was curious how powerful the residents of Lore had become over the years he was imprisoned. And he's even nice enough to leave a shade of himself in the Dragonplane so the hero can fight it whenever he / she wants. And best of all, Desoloth earns bonus points for being a dragon because, as all dragon fans say, "dragons are awesome."
  • In AdventureQuest, the Mysterious Stranger/Dhows/Erebus is a master of this trope, the only reason you manage to beat him is because of his ego getting the better of him and letting the player give him a name, a very Meaningful Name.
• Guilty Gear brings the mysterious "That Man", also known as the Gearmaker and by his real name, Asuka R. Kreutz. He shows a great deal of power as Sol and Baiken unsuccessfully attempt to strike him hown in their respective endings in XX. In Anji's ending he invites him to his side and later in XX Accent Core Plus hires him to track down and punish his Co-Dragon I-No for all the trouble she's stirring up. He knows that Sol's ability to use Dragon Install could very well one day help to save mankind from a possible future threat. Not only that, his intentions also seem whole-hearted, as he appears to be full of remorse for everything that's happened during the Crusades. Which is ultimately confirmed in the Xrd games, having been one of the creators of Gears (alongside Sol/Frederick and Aria/Justice/Jack O') who's now trying to atone, by creating a world where both humans and Gears can live in peace.
• The Practical incarnation from Planescape: Torment is this in spades. He devises traps that only his immortal future-selves can surmount, sets up a multi-lifetime plan to stop the Ascended One, and does a royal number on Dak'kon by essentially brainwashing him and manipulating his religious views with the fabricated circle, just for access to his sword. Also, what he does to Deionarra just to get a spy in the Fortress of Regrets.
  • Also, Ravel, even if she loses out anyway. Kinda.
• Trilby from the Chzo Mythos series counts as this, as summed up in the final scene of the short story spin off by game creator Yahtzee, 'Trilby and the Ghost' when he tricks a ghost into stepping into a chalk circle that will exorcise him: "'You're a devious bastard, Trilby.' Claire said. 'I guess that's why they called me.'" Also seen in the games, especially when he tricks the other characters at the end of 5 Days a Stranger into thinking that he was burnt to death in a fire to avoid being captured by police.
• The player character in Tropico 4. In particular, there's The Plan of the Isla Desconida mission, where the player character, in order to become recognised as a legitimate head of state, begins developing an unsettled island, petitions an undisclosed European country to give the island colonial status, then leads a socialist revolution against his own colonialist regime. The Soviet agent and Penultimo are both pretty confused by the end.
• While he does show signs of smugness about his own incredible power and has a habit of saying several forms of "This Cannot Be!" many times when he's defeated, Count Dracula of Castlevania fame definitely counts as a classic example of a Magnificent Bastard. His plans almost always involve being resurrected himself at certain times, and he's willing to have anyone - even his own minions - sacrificed to do so himself. If he's not at full power yet, his plans to become resurrected work every time. And since he has his As Long as There Is Evil gig, this makes perfect sense. He's Faux Affably Evil and learns from past mistakes. Definitely magnificently bastardly indeed.
  • And as if everything he does in order to be resurrected and/or become at full power didn't make him magnificent enough, what better way to make him even more magnificent would there be without any mention of Mathias Cronqvist from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence? He and his close friend Death used Leon Belmont to defeat the vampire lord Walter Bernhard just so he could get the three stones for himself and use them to become the immortal king of the night himself.
  • Death counts as well. He's a very Affably Evil Chessmaster of a Grim Reaper who's so faithful to his master that he's willing to make any sacrifice - even sacrifice himself - to revive his lord, and carefully orchestrates many plans involving those sacrifices to do just that. What an intelligent dick.
  • While many non-Dracula villains count as Smug Snakes, Celia Fortner seems to show signs of status as a Magnificent Bitch. She's Affably Evil, is unwilling to let the Dark Lord candidates go too far as to kill themselves, plus she demonstrates her plan to make Soma a dark lord himself by using a Mina doppelganger to fool him, and she never loses her cool. Of course, the only things she doesn't take too well to are any interference with her plans courtesy of Arikado himself. See, even magnificence has its limits.
  • And, surprisingly, she finds herself outsmarted by Dmitrii Blinov, who turned out to have feigned defeat earlier just so he could obtain the same ability as Soma Cruz. Upon realizing this, she takes back what she said to Soma and leaves for the Abyss with him... only to be sacrificed by him later. If it weren't for Dmitrii succumbing to the Power of Dominance and creating in his place the Final Boss Menace, Celia's efforts wouldn't have been for naught.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 Gives us, perhaps surprisingly, Alucard. Responsible for setting up all of the game's events, playing friend and foe against and with each other in a glorious plan that is almost perfectly successful. And why did he do all this? To kill freaking Satan once and for all and saving the world, making him a rare heroic example. While it's implied his mother gave him advice and guidance, his plans were almost all his own and he pulled them off graciously.
  • Skantarios from the "I Am Skantarios" after action report. The player role plays a ruthless conqueror so well that you rather wonder about him.
• The online game epicMafia is full of this on a daily basis. For example, in http://www.epicmafia.com/game/873944 the player "QQ Whore" fakes that he has a report on the last mafia member forcing them to admit to their guilt, before explaining that he was in fact lying through his teeth.
• Jericho Swain of League of Legends. Sure, he may look like a hobbling cripple with a cane, but this guy is in the League of Legends and therefore automatically badass, and has done such magnificent things as somehow convincing his superiors to TAKE A DEMOTION SO HE COULD COMMAND THEM. An entire plotline in the lore which involved the creation of Dominion, at least one new champion, Demacia and Noxus working together, and several Journals of Justice turned out to be all part of Swain's plan to take over Noxus, which succeeded before anyone truly realized, and once they did, they simply said that's fair. He got a new skin out of it too, Tyrant Swain, which makes him look like he should be the Final Boss, that is if League Of Legends were that kind of game.
  • Fans speculated that the battle that occurred in Samarcanda between Demacia and Noxus was actually orchestrated by Emilia LeBlanc. This was proven right when Riot released an image of Swain and Jarvan IV during the battle. The reflection on Swain's chestplate clearly shows that the Demacian prince was indeed a disguised LeBlanc. This has led many to believe that LeBlanc has been ruling Demacia all along while Jarvan rots in a Noxian prison. It doesn't help that Swain himself was once part of LeBlanc's secret sect of evil sorcerers before joining the military. LeBlanc's League Judgement also implies that the two of them were once an item, and that Swain is indeed secretly helping the Black Rose rise back to power.
• Call of Duty
  • General Shepherd from Modern Warfare 2. The guy deceived and used everyone for his own goals for glory and power. He sett up all the events in the game by first using both Allen and Makarov by somehow conspiring with the latter, his own enemy, to use the former in a plot that would provoke Russia to declear war on USA, and with him as the leader of the latter nation, it would bring him the glory he wants as he would defeat the enemy troops and win the war. When Captain Price re-enter the scene and, the Crazy Awesome guy as he is, make some things that weren't part of Shepherd's plan, Shepherd is still able to use them as well for his own advantage. Even when he dies he still gets his victory, as he'll be remembered as a war hero, and Soap and Price as terrorists for killing him.
  • Vladimir Makarov. Prior to his debut, an attempt to capture him had already failed horribly. He is the world's most wanted terrorist, being the man behind several terrorist attacks against the West and constantly staying one step ahead. He makes his debut by conspiring with another Magnificent Bastard General Shepherd to orchestrate a False Flag Operation that would eventually lead to a Third World War, not long after which he betrayed him to the good guys. Throughout the course of the war, he keeps launching terrorist attacks across Europe to put the Western countries at a disadvantage, comes close to gaining access to Russia's nuclear arsenal and even kills Soap when he anticipated an assassination attempt on him. All while still remaining ahead of his enemies over the course of two games. Sorry Shepherd, but Makarov is the true Magnificent Bastard of the Modern Warfare series.
  • Raul Menendez. He manipulates Frank Woods into shooting Mason and proceeds to cripple him, but even that wasn't enough. He later emerges as a leader as a massive populist movement having billions of followers even in the USA, initiates a cyber attack on China to start a Second Cold War between China and America, plays both sides to the brink of starting a World War 3, and he even let's himself get caught in order to cripple America's entire military infrastructure giving him full control of their drone technology, not long after which he completely destroys it to render America completely powerless.
• The titular character Zero, from the series Zero Escape, deserves a mention: We're talking about a character who is able to access the morphogenetic fields, allowing her to send her consciousness forward and back in time, and thus predict events and actually change history:
  • In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, it's revealed that Zero is actually Akane "June" Kurashiki. She sets up the events of the story, joining the game as a player, along with her brother, and orchestrating the death of numerous persons (and traumatising many others) in order to survive the traumatic event which unlocked her powers in the first place, 9 years ago, and get back at the people who did this to her at the same time. Please note that she didn't kill anyone directly: she offered them an other way to atone for their crimes, but since she knew Ace wouldn't, she manipulated him so he ends up killing his fellow collaborators (the man was more interested in saving his own hide than anything else). During all the game, the player believes he is playing as Junpei, while in fact it's revealed that he's possessed by Zero's consciousness from 9 years ago. As for Akane, all her actions during the game are actually an act, allowing her to manipulate the events of the game from the inside easily.
  • In Virtue's Last Reward, it's revealed that it's in fact the same Zero, Akane, who is responsible for the events of the game. She orchestrated the game's events specifically in order to train Sigma and Phi, so that they can access the morphogenetic fields, and then use them to change the past and stop the disaster which happened in 2029 which led to the death of nearly 6 billion humans. She joins once again the game, but is killed in many timelines, something she is fully aware of, as part of her Thanatos Gambit. In the course of the game, she injects all 9 participants (including Quark, a young and innocent boy, and excluding Luna, since that one isn't human to begin with) with a mortal disease which slows down their time perception and which would ultimately lead them to commit suicide, kidnaps 3 of them back in 2028 and cryogenizes them for a period of 45 years, lures one in the game (since he's a key part of her Thanatos Gambit), lures an other one and his boy into participating as well (since Tenmyouji is in fact Junpei, and he was lured in under the pretence that he would meet Akane again), and even mess with the timing of the bombs so said timing would be adjusted to their already slown-down time perception. In the timeline she isn't killed, she disguises herself as K, and in the end she pushes Sigma to activate his powers by threatening to kill Phi in front of him. In the secret ending, Junpei, after finally meeting her, gives up on her, saying basically that the Akane he knew and who he looked for for years was gone. Only time will say if her plans succeed in the next Zero Escape game.
• The Prime Evils of Diablo became one in the game's backstory: they deliberately lost a war with their underlings so that they could be exiled to the human world.
• Diablo in Diablo III: masterminding his own resurrection so that he'd absorb all the lesser evils into himself.....and the Player Character helped him accomplish this for 2nd and 3rd acts.
  • This is vastly understating how much Diablo is this. To clarify: Everything since before the very first game has been Diablo manipulating and outmaneuvering every single player on the board. Everyone from his brothers, to the forces of the High Heavens, to the mortal heroes have been in his pocket unknowingly since the very beginning. Every step has advanced his plans, every supposed defeat just another stride forward, all to becoming the Prime Evil. Mephisto was supposed to be the crafty one, but that assumption was probably why absolutely nobody saw Diablo coming. Tellingly he actually succeeds completely, only to fail at the last minute because he just couldn't match the absurd power of the Nephalem.
• Assassin's Creed
  • Robert de Sable from Assassin's Creed. The guy not only just controlled the Knight Templars, but also the Crusaders and the Saracens as well, and right below the noses of both King Richard and Saladin, and neither of them knowing it. And when Altair had assassinated several of his men, he uses the murders for his own advantage by nearly convincing King Richard to ally with Saladin in order to crush the Assassin Order, since his men were both Crusaders and Saracens. And he also tricked Altair in a trap while he did it, by disgusing one of his followers as him when Altair was hunting him, and only because Altair is an One-Man Army did that trap failed.
  • Haytham Kenway from Assassin's Creed III fits in as well. Just like Robert de Sable, he had the Loyalists and the Patriots in his pockets influencing decisions throughout the American Revolution wherever he saw fit. Haytham had plans running all over Colonial America, from stealing tribal lands to an assassination attempt on George Washington and several other leaders of the Continental Congress. The Templars under his leadership nearly wiped out the Colonial Assassins, and even after his death he established a permanent Templar presence in America for the years to come. The best part was he started the Revolutionary War allying himself with the British, but they turned out to be mere pawns, he intended to remove them from the Colonies and establish America as an independent nation under the Templars.. His only downfall was that he cared deeply for his son Connor, and intended to make peace with him but he put his Templar ideals before his own son. And he fights like a complete badass.
  • Francoise Germaine from Assassin's Creed: Unity successfully orchestrated a coup within the Templar Order to become Grandmaster himself, and then manipulated Arno to get rid of his remaining enemies whilst playing every faction of the French Revolution against each other to make the entire nation tear itself apart so that he could sweep in and take control in one way or another, all while still managing to stay one step ahead of the Assassins and rival Templars.
  • Also from Assassin's Creed: Unity Napoleon Bonaparte. He hoodwinks an Apple of Eden under the very nose of a trained Assassin, and the latter doesn't even have the faintest idea..
• Games based on Batman:
  • Scarecrow ascended to this position in the opening stages Batman: Arkham Knight. In his first in-game confrontation with Batman, he let's him know that he kidnapped Barbara before exposing him to a lethal dose of his fear toxin, and then later on tricks Batman into believing that Barbara kills herself for the remainder of the game. All while he is busy enacting a much bigger plot, uniting all of the Dark Knight's remaining enemies and terrorising Gotham with a new virus. The resulting outcome leads to a mass evacuation of the city's 6 million citizens, leaving the now-vulnerable Batman, Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham Police Department to defend themselves from Scarecrow's ongoing attacks. His endgame was a brilliant Xanatos Gambit which culminated with him exposing Batman's secret identity to the whole world, a feat that has never been achieved by any Batman villain (Joker included) in literally any form of media.
  • Joker himself counts, as usual. His magnificence stands out in Batman: Arkham Origins when it was revealed that he pretended to be Black Mask to take over his criminal empire, and hire the assassins to kill Batman. And after getting apprehended by the GCPD, he manages to seduce his psychiatrist (who would later go on to become Harley Quinn) and start a massive riot within the prison complex.
  • Joker's actions in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Getting himself caught to take over the prison and threatening to detonate hidden bombs around the city as insurance? The resulting outcome is Batman stuck in a madhouse with all of his incarcerated enemies.
• Tyber Zann in the Forces of Corruption Expansion Pack to Empire at War. What else do you expect from Grand Admiral Thrawn's most capable student at the academy, before Thrawn had him expelled for stealing weapons. The expansion describes how Zann carves out a criminal empire (the Zann Consorcium) that rivals that of Jabba the Hutt and manipulates Thrawn himself into executing Xizor, the leader of a rival syndicate, for him. While Thrawn is able to outwit Zann at least once by bribing a mercenary in Zann's employ, Zann comes out on top in that battle, forcing Thrawn to flee. At the end of the campaign, Zann plays the Empire and the Rebellion against one another while he moves in to capture the most powerful ship in the Empire's arsenal (as far as he knows at the time), turning its powerful weapons against both fleets. For the record, the part where Thrawn is able to outwit Zann by bribing Bossk into giving him Zann's holocron was also planned by Zann. Zann planted a homing beacon on the artifact to lead him to his true goal - the Imperial Archives. Thrawn firmly believed that the fleet he left to defeat Zann would easily win. Zann surprised him by bring out his newest Aggressor-class Star Destroyers and obliterating the force Thrawn left.
• Captain Robert Cross, aka the Specialist, from [PROTOTYPE]. A tough, battle-hardened soldier, badass enough to kill Hunters singlehandedly and fight Alex Mercer to a tie, a Worthy Opponent to boot, and a very skilled manipulator, shown when he uses Alex's painful flashback against him or when he plays Alex, Greene and Randall into destroying each other like chess, all because he doesn't approve Randall's plan to nuke Manhattan.. Yes, the guy certainly has standards. Too bad he gets eaten near the end, but at least you can avenge him and your combined efforts saved the city.
• Danganronpa
  • Junko Enoshima has the cast wrapped around her finger almost from beginning to end. Even all the moments where the cast thinks they've got the leg up on her, she knows what they're doing the whole time, and it's all according to plan (when she wants to follow the plan herself, at least.) The only reason she doesn't get away with everything she's doing is because Makoto is practically hope personified, compared to Junko's status as despair personified. Even her defeat is a victory for her because even though she's unable to sink the entire world into despair, she can just savor all that despair herself.
  • Nagito Komaeda from Super Danganronpa 2 probably loses some points for being clearly insane and hated by almost everyone, but he's also extremely intelligent, extremely bold, and a high caliber Troll. He often figures out key details of any given murder long before everyone else, is the first one to find out the island's, as well as all the students' true natures and shows off that he can have the entire island wrapped around his finger whenever he so desires. In the end, when trying to sniff out which of the students is The Mole, he devises a complicated assisted suicide plan wherein he tricks The Mole into accidentally killing him, part of it requiring nothing more than his own extreme good luck to pull off. Upon hearing the plan in full, it's obviously an utterly insane plan that only somebody like Komaeda could possibly even dream of pulling off, and it goes off without a hitch...almost. The only thing that goes wrong is that The Mole was supposed to get away with the "murder" while everyone else dies, but in the end she outs herself and opts to let herself be convicted and executed instead.
  • Kokichi Oma from New Danganronpa V3 manages to outsmart the Big Bad of the game. He made extremely sure that he doesn't play the Killing Game the way the mastermind wants so he clashes with Kaede and Shuuichi in the class trials because they dance right into the mastermind's game. He also manipulates Gonta to put everybody in one place so everybody can watch their motive videos and know just who they need to watch out for, trolls Maki into revealing her true talent, and even organizes his own death so that the mastermind can be just as blind and powerless as the rest of the students. He also caught on to Miu was doing in Chapter Four and manages to have her be killed before she could possibly send the other students to their deaths.
• Tears to Tiara 2 has the protagonist Hamilcar being this trope. To put it lightly, he manipulates everyone in the story one way or another. All the plans Izebel pulled off to counteract his plans? All were developed by him and Izebel put those to great use. He pulls off being an amazing act for seven whole years just to make sure the rebellion doesn't happen.
• A good part of the plot in Akatsuki Blitzkampf is made by Murakumo and Mycale's struggle to become this and overpower each other: Murakumo has his massive fighting skills, his gift to manipulate other people and his capacity to clone himself and place said clones in very important positions in either The Triads and the Tongs or the Japanese Army to his favor, whereas Mycale is a powerful witch implied to be able to pull Body Surfing and Grand Theft Mes who's just as manipulative as Murakumo and can potentially have the Blitztank army by her side. Whether one of them comes up on top or not... it seriously depends on whether the player chooses their paths or not - if they do, Murakumo will be seen giving a powerful and very creepy speech as "becomes a living God" and takes over the Earth, or Mycale will be Dressed to Kill as she does the same and sends out the Blitztanks to do her dirty work.
• Your predecessor/the Wizard in Overlord I. The man managed to turn his own death into near-absolute victory.
• Medieval II: Total War: You. Yes, you. We know the Pope is annoying, but staying in is good graces by avoiding wars with other Christian nations can work very well for you. Get a full-stack army and wait for someone to get excommunicated, then immediately request a crusade against this faction. Watch as this faction gets caught completely off-guard as six others declare war on them, throwing their campaigns into disarray and shaking up the web of alliances throughout Europe. When the dust settles, you'll have impressive territorial gains, coffers bulging from papal favours and decreased upkeep from crusading armies, and you've made a friend out of the current Pope. This can lead to more cardinals for your faction, which means more Pope hopefuls of your faction, and more crusades against the Pope's (and by extension, your) enemies. Congratulations, you have just roped the Catholic Church into bankrolling your expansionist agendas.
• Undertale contains perhaps the two greatest examples in gaming, or at least two very unique ones:
  • First, there's Flowey The Flower. He is the first NPC encountered in the game, so he pretends to be the cute, friendly tutorial character. He tells you to catch his ''friendliness pellets'', which are actually bullets. Whether or not you do, he then tries to steal your soul before Toriel, the actual tutorial character, saves you. He returns at the end of the ruins to taunt you about the decisions you made, and can reveal his Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. He stalks you until you beat Asgore, then steals the human souls he was keeping, hijacks the game and transforms into the horrifying Omega/Photoshop/God Flowey and can use savestates in his battle. The human souls give you the power to fight back, and Flowey breaks down... before loading a savestate to restore his health and gloating as you find yourself helpless, until the souls revolt anyway. If you kill Flowey, he gloats because he roped you into becoming a murderer like him. If you spare Flowey, he pretends to have reformed and sends you on a Pacifist Run... so he can gather the monsters in one place and steal their souls as well, allowing him to turn into a super-powered version of his past incarnation, Asriel Dreemurr. The only reason he loses is because doing so allowed Asriel to gradually take over.
  • The other one is Chara Dreemurr, the Fallen Child. After emotionally abusing Asriel to gain control over them, they concocted a plan to kill humanity by committing suicide via buttercups, so Asriel could absorb their soul and use it to cross the barrier. Asriel thought they were simply gathering the souls needed to break the barrier, but Chara knew the humans of her village would assume Asriel killed the child, and would attack in response. The intention was to goad Asriel into attacking the humans in self-defense, but he held back, getting them both killed. Fast forward to the actual game, and Chara's essence remains within Frisk. It is implied that they are the one who narrates your journey, in an attempt to gain your trust. Should the player go for a Genocide Route, they take over Frisk's body and you play as them instead. At the end of the route, they reveal that YOU, THE PLAYER were the one who helped them gain power. They destroy the game world and force you to give up your soul in order to restore it, so even if you complete a True Pacifist Route, they take back Frisk's body at the end, and it's implied they proceed to kill all your friends and complete their plans to destroy humanity and the world.
  • What makes these two a particularly special case is that they manipulated everyone including the player into helping them carry out their plans, by actively using and subverting gaming conventions (such as 100% Completion)- they played on your expectations and tricked you into giving them ultimate power, and can actually succeed in destroying humans and monsters alike. That's right, they screwed with the Fourth Wall and managed to make the player an Unwitting Pawn, when most villains aren't even aware of their fictionality. Impressive is putting it mildly.
• Chancellor Giliath Osborne in Kiseki Series, but most importantly, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II is this. In the last few minutes of Act III, he makes sure that the Noble Alliance's power is deterred, gets his revolution to invade Crossbell, uses Class VII, his rival's pet project, to his advantage, and outwit Ouroboros. Pretty impressive for a guy who doesn't appear for most of the game.
• Shall We Date Ninja Shadow has two of these, which is quite impressive for an otome dating sim:
  • Under the facade of a rich and calm Dutch merchant, Willem is a cold and ambitious enemy who takes over the role of Big Bad from under Suetsugu's nose in at least one route, and does so with lots of style and manipulations. And even if his plans don't work, he always escapes from the cast.
  • Tsubaki Kusunoki incarnates the trope in both Hijikata's route (where he becomes the de facto antagonist) and in his own (where he's the main love interest). In the first case, he tries to tempt Hijikata into becoming his informant in exchange for something he desperately needs, doesn't lose his cool when he (barely) fails, then acts as the main Big Bad since the Smug Snake and original main antagonist Suetsugu gets killed off early and he near succeeds in his plan to use the dead Suetsugu's supplies and wealth to build a small army and take over Edo/Tokyo itself. In the second, in either of his route's endings, he will win even if he loses: rather than just executing, exiling or imprisoning him for trying to overthrow the Shogunate, the Shogun recognize Tsubaki's talents plus his sympathetic reasons and will make him join the Vigilantes, meaning that he keeps a relative freedom (even if under tight surveillance, especially in the Normal Ending) and stays with Saori, whom he has genuinely fallen for AND who gave him his faith in people and love back.

Think I got rid of everything already proposed here and though I see some easy cuts, a few could be worth looking into.

edited 5th Jun '18 2:54:21 PM by 43110

Chara. That writeup relies on a lot of assumptions, the character's presented way too vaguely in canon to count. I'll Diablo too, he did pretty well in the scheming department.

edited 5th Jun '18 2:58:51 PM by PhiSat

Of these Command and conquer Kane, Prince Maximillion and Kirei kotomine are probably keepers.

Cool, I'll leave those EPs up to you guys then

I can't effortpost Diablo, I'm solid on 1 and 2 but not super familiar with 3's lore. Someone else would have to.

From what I know:

• Wait Until Dark:Roat is a deserved CM. I'd cut, given his sadism towards a blind woman at the end
• Urinetown: I'd be inclined to keep Caldwell B. Cladwell, TBH
• Phantom of the Opera: Depends on the version. Some iterations of te Phantom definitely count
• Taming of the Shrew: Huh, never considered Petruchio. I don't remember Shrew too well, but maybe
• The Crucible: Mmmm...I'd be inclined to hear an argument on Abby.
• Ibsen: Oh, yes, Engstand keeps. So is Heire.
• How to Succeed in Business: Finch keeps
• Evita: Eva keeps.
• Freespace 2: bosch keeps. Great baddie.
• Blue Planet: Sounds a keeper.
• Marathon: Keep Durandal
• Xenogears: Krelian is a keeper, IMO, possibly Grahf.
• Devil May cry 3: Arkham...ugh, no. Twisted bastard and what a pathetic death.
• Killzone: TOUGH one, not sure.
• Jade Empire: I'd be willing to hear it for Master Li, despite his CM-ness. What a hell of a brilliant baddie.
• Bioshock: Ditto the above
• Resident Evil: I'm inclined to hear an argument for Wesker. He's good.
• Starcaft: Not sure on Kerrigan
• Command and Conqueur: Kane. EASILY keeps.
• Super Robot Wars: I'd be inclined to keep those.
• Dragon Age: I'd think Fen'Harel and Flemeth both keep
• Lunar: Ghaleon is a terrific keeper.
• Valkyria Chronicles: I think Max keeps.
• Suikoden: ANY of the Silverbergs could be keepers. Albert is up there. so could Jowy
• Fate/Stay Night: I think Kirei keeps. Very complex baddie, too
• Baldur's Gate: No to Amelissan, but yes to Irenicus.
• Thief: The ONLY question on Garrett is being too heroic
• Guilty Gear: That Man keeps
• Planescape Torment: Oh HELL yes for the Practical
• Castlevania: By Lament of Innocence alone, I think a case could be made for Mathias/Dracula, but unsure if it keeps. However, Dracula in the new continuity, along with Alucard, probably keep.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Oh, keep to Akane.
• Diablo: I'm inclined to keep Diablo for what he pulls in Diablo 3. That is some CRAZY scheming.
• Assassin's Creed: Inclined to keep Haytham and Francoise Germaine.
• Empire at War: Keep Tyber Zann

Regarding the stuff I know about:

• TF2: The Spy only counts in the context of the "Meet the Spy" trailer, where he nails the criteria. Sadly he fails it when you take into account his in-game counterpart, who is much more smug and petty.
• Undertale: Should be nuked from orbit. Flowey's too much of a jerk, and Chara is wrapped in too much mystery.
• Disgaea: Lamington isn't Bastard enough (great Guile Hero, though). Etna only ever gets one moment of magnificence - everything before and after that, she's sarcastic and kind of lazy.
• Diablo: The big guy is a great chessmaster, but he gets really pissy when he's losing, and he's kind of a dick. Not too sure.
• Blazblue: Torch it. Terumi, Relius, and Izanami are all too damn evil, Rachel goes under Guile Hero.
• Tales Of: The whole entry about Alvin is pretty alright. I'm not too keen on listing a deconstruction, but there's probably a home for him somewhere else. Jade goes under Guile Hero.