Discussion Main / BiggerBad

That is rather heavily caption-reliant. Also, spoiler tags ought not to be in a caption, since it's above the example line.

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

I changed the caption. I hope it's better.

Edit: Also, I know it's caption reliant, but it's the best picture of a Bigger Bad I could find.

Edit: Made picture larger so you can see Sigma better.

Edited by 71.171.109.182

It's textbook JAFAAC. Not to mention it's not even an example at the time, since Sigma's directly involved with the plot at the moment. Not to mention he's not gone bad at all yet. I don't think Sigma even really qualifies, to be honest... he's the Man Behind the Man to the Meta (though really, he is the Meta... part of it, at least).

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Sigma is the Bigger Bad for two reasons.

• One, he is only part of the Meta. The Meta is a collective conscious of the AI's gathered so far, and Sigma is the one who started the collecting. But by the time we get to the Recollection Trilogy, Sigma is not fully in control anymore.
• Two, he dies at the end of Reconstruction, so even if he's not the Bigger Bad of Reconstruction, he is the Bigger Bad of Recreation of Revelation.

Also, the picture shows (admittedly not well) the influence that Sigma had that caused the Meta's Start of Darkness. So while at the time he is directly involved, it is only in the past, showing that his influence on the Meta made him insane.

It's a weak picture in my mind that relies a lot on the caption and looks somewhat foggy to me. I'll have to thumb it down.

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

You know what, I don't actually think my picture is that good anymore. I thought it was good at first, but I was wrong. I decide reject my own picture.

Edited by 71.171.109.182

^^^ Those don't really describe Bigger Bad, though. Bigger Bad is "a malevolent force of evil that overshadows the Big Bad, but isn't directly part of the plot." Sigma is certainly not bigger than the Meta, since he's part of it, and is most definitely part of the plot.

He's textbook The Corrupter and The Man Behind the Man for the Meta (since we were led to believe it was the person who was the Meta, but really it's the AI). Honestly, I'm going to pull the Sigma example.

Edited by 156.33.241.3 Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Let's see:

• "a malevolent force of evil that overshadows the Big Bad": Well, he doesn't overshadow the Meta in the Recollection Trilogy. But he has the smarts and creativity while the Maine relies solely on brute strength, so in intellegence. In Reconstruction, Maine appears to be more of The Dragon to Sigma's Big Bad.
• "isn't directly part of the plot": He is only directly involved in Reconstruction, but he dies after that with only his influence remaining. But the Meta is still alive and still affected.

Conclusion: Sigma is the Big Bad of Reconstruction, but the Bigger Bad of Recreation and Revelation since he's dead after that.

Edit: I changed the description on Sigma to be more clear when he is the Big Bad and when he is the Bigger Bad.

Edited by 71.171.109.182

He's not the Bigger Bad after that because he's dead. He's not part of the setting anymore...

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Well now that I think about it, he is part of the cause of the fall of Project Freelancer. His influence extends as far back as the Blood Gulch Chronicles since he is the reason why all these Freelancers are running amok.

See, I think your issue is the idea that influence means something in regards to Bigger Bad. It doesn't. The Bigger Bad shouldn't have influence on the plot. He's the biggest, baddest force in the setting... but doesn't directly affect the story.

Really, the Bigger Bad during BCG is the Covenant. They're the biggest threat in the setting, but don't really interact with the narrative itself.

Edited by 156.33.241.3 Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

I thought the Bigger Bad could have an influence, but it just had to be indirectly. If the Bigger Bad doesn't have any influence, then the description needs to be changed.

Edit: Also, Sigma has an influence on the setting of the BGC, but remember, we don't know he (or the Meta) exists. We just know that something caused Project Freelancer to fall, but we don't that it was Sigma. Sigma is not the Biggest Bad, but he is more threatening than O'Mally.

Edited by 71.171.109.182

(oops, double post.)

Edited by 71.171.109.182

I think one possible picture could be from the Iron Maiden album "Number of the Beast" where we could see that mascot having puppet strings from his hand to the devil who in turn had the same to some poor human.

It's still not an excuse to add a piece of natter saying "both of the above examples are wrong". I'm afraid that was inappropiate.

135 - 158 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

I cut a bunch of bad examples (and the offending natter) just now.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

It was launched nearly 4 years ago and has more than 2500 wicks, so that is definitively not going to happen. A forum discussion might be more suitable.

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

I'm the trope launcher, and "villain not under the big bad" is not and never was what this is. "Greater evil not directly involved in the story" is what this is. Honestly, I wanted to call it "Ultimate Evil", but that, alas, was taken.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

I never argued about what it is but what it should be. There are a lot of possibilities for villains not unconnected to the big bad of the story and they don't all need different pages. Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon is not the Big Bad, nor a "bigger bad" but he a bad guy who acted independently of the big bad. Sometimes a character might be doing bad things out of view, instead of Hero of Another Story it would be villain of another story. He wouldn't need to be "greater" than the big bad, just separate. Shinichiro is the big bad of C'mon Digimon but just cameos in Digimon V-Tamer 01. On the whole, he's a much lesser threat than Demon but he's also totally unconnected and you wouldn't even know he's a villain just reading V-tamer. Two that do have separate pages are Diabolus ex Nihilo and Giant Space Flea from Nowhere but honestly I have to question those two even having different pages since they are the same trope. I suppose they could be different from this one, the big bad could be revealed with no build up, but I think those duplicates get across why I find this page too narrow.

Now I didn't realize there was no hat system in You Know That Thing Where at the time of launching. I was just generally going through tropes with only one hat I did not feel had not been discussed sufficiently before launch.

That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes

Personally, I do think that this could stand to go to TRS but I just don't have the energy for it. It sees a comical amount of misuse as The Man Behind the Man.

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Lots of people add bad examples for this one; I try to trim them out when I see them, but unfortunately many of them are from works I'm not familiar with (I watch very little anime, for example, and have next to no familiarity with anything with Hannibal Lecter in it). Expanding the trope to include villains who aren't the big bad but aren't "bigger" seems like a waste of time, however, though I'm admittedly biased. If a character isn't a greater evil largely disconnected from the plot at hand, then IMHO they shouldn't be on this page and you should find some other trope for the examples you bring up that are "separate, not greater" (which seems like it would just be Big Bad Ensemble to me, but that' speaking as somebody who knows none of the works Indirect Active Transport brought up).

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

I don't think an expansion is the answer, but more of a rename. I agree, this is a trope in its own right for sure, but the name lends people to think it's "The Guy Who's Stronger Than The Big Bad" which is usually The Man Behind the Man, Eviler than Thou, or Make Way For New Villains.

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Honestly, when I came up with the name, I never intended to launch the trope under it - like I said, I wanted "Ultimate Evil", but it was already taken. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a better one that wasn't horribly bland or technical.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

Trope launcher here. When a character moves from Big Bad to Bigger Bad or the reverse, I generally interpret it as requiring different stories that share a setting, rather than something that happens in a single continuous narrative (if you've got a story where the apparent Big Bad is actually working for someone/something else, that's The Man Behind the Man; if you've got a story where the apparent Big Bad is later upstaged by a more threatening but unrelated character, that's Big Bad Ensemble where one member is more threatening than the other(s)).

To use an example of a character who is sometimes a Big Bad and sometimes a Bigger Bad, let's look at Morgoth from Middle-earth. Morgoth is, very explicitly, the most evil being in the universe, and the second most powerful. During most of The Silmarillion, he's either the bad guy at hand or giving the marching orders to the bad guy at hand. Then he gets defeated and turned into a Sealed Evil in a Can until the world ends, and his former Dragon Sauron takes over as the main villain, carrying out his own plans that aren't really related to Morgoth. This works because there are several distinct chunks of the Middle-earth mythos, and distinct narratives going on there. If you take the story of the world as a whole, then Morgoth is Big Bad. If you're just looking at Lord of the Rings, he's an ominous name that gets dropped every so often, but has essentially no direct relevance to the story at hand, which is concerned with Sauron. Sauron's Big Bad, Morgoth's Bigger. Worth noting that Sauron himself sometimes gets to be Bigger Bad too; The Hobbit is about thirteen dwarves and a hobbit trying to reclaim a mountain kingdom full of treasure from a dragon; Sauron (as "the Necromancer") is mentioned several times as the greatest evil power active in the world, but he has absolutely nothing to do with the story beyond worldbuilding and establishing a good reason for Gandalf to go running off partway through.

Basically, I feel like there need to be several stories or levels of story going on in a setting for the Big Bad / Bigger Bad line to be permeable, with each dealing with the character in question on a different level and with different degrees of involvement. In one continuous narrative, the line probably isn't going to change that much, unless what was previously assumed to be a distant Bigger Bad starts unexpectedly taking a more direct hand. Does this all make sense, or am I just rambling incoherently?

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

I think so. Thank you.

Huh? This is almost the opposite of The Dragon.

This is about a force worse than the Big Bad in the setting, but usually doesn't directly interact with the plot. The Dragon is a minion of the Big Bad (who usually drives the plot MORE directly).

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No. While the Skynet doesn't appear in those movies, it still was the reason behind the whole conflict: it wanted to eliminate the threat to it's existence, and tried to achive this through the terminators who were it's dragons, and The Heavies of their respective movies.

I put in an HP Lovecraft quote about Azathoth instead. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it illustrates the concept. Opinions?

"[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity — the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."

Edited by VVK

...That actually works much better. Thanks.

I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

The Red Vs Blue quote did illustrate the Bigger Bad... the Director wasn't really the Big Bad of any of the seasons, but it eventually became apparent that everything was his fault (he wasn't even a character until the sixth season, and even then the Big Bad slot would've gone to the Meta).

But the quote is no good because of the spoilered text. Doesn't make sense to me to have a quote with that much spoilered out.

And the HP Lovecraft one is too.. wordy.

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So will it be OK if the Director himself is spoilered out, but not "the Freelancers, and the AIs, and the Meta"?

I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

Yes. Well. I've noticed there's a missing trope here. What the quote was illustrating was something like "Retired Big Bad". The Bigger Bad is supposed to be someone who's the most powerful force of evil and just is not behind the conflict. The old quote and a number of the examples are about someone who is behind the conflict even more so than the active Big Bads but is no longer active. The latter is still a Sub-Trope of Big Bad, I guess, and it's definitely not what the definition says this is about, although some parts of the description are ambiguous in this respect (like the "test whether this character could be replaced with an impersonal force"). Saying that this is not a Man Behind the Man doesn't seem to capture all the nuances.

Someone should just make the new trope for the second trope, which I'm mentally calling Retired Big Bad now. (Edit: Actually, Backstory Big Bad would be better.) I would if I had the time.

But for this particular discussion, no, the previous quote did not illustrate the concept. My argument for that in the first post (and repeated here) has not been refuted. Well, I suppose it's slightly ambiguous if you think about "isn't causing the conflict of the story," but I don't think it can be sensible disambiguated more than one way.

And I think the Lovecraft quote's wordiness serves to emphasize just how much BIGGER, so to speak, which is the real point.

Edited by VVK

You never made an argument in the first post, just quoted the article. Kinda hard to refute what doesn't exist.

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So what are we gonna do about the quote?

I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

I say keep the one I put in.

I considered that it was enough of a proof of my point to quote the article saying "This trope is about round things" and also quote the quote that went "Boy, he sure is square" to show that they're not talking about the same thing. Putting it in my own words would have involved saying much the same things.

Well, if you want it explicated, the argument is: The trope description says this is about a thing that is not behind the plot. The quote is about someone who is behind the plot, just further back behind. These are not the same thing and are in fact contradictory. Therefore, the quote is not illustrative.

Edited by VVK

Very well. Reasoning sounds solid.

Edited by foxmccloud4387 I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

Actually, I personally think your quote is kinda wordy, and doesn't exactly help illustrate the trope as well. I think we should just revert this to being a quoteless article.

I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

Well, that would be better than having the wrong kind of quote. But anything in the lines of "This is the biggest evil force there is, but it just sits there." seems like a good way to illustrate the point.

A character can be both of those.

A Man Behind the Man is necessarily a Big Bad- or, at least, in the villain hierarchy to a specific plot. A Bigger Bad, in contrast, can not be the Big Bad.

You could make a case for Thanos as the Bigger Bad for the MCU as a whole- after all, he's the most powerful villain we know to be out there and wasn't really interested in Earth at all until the end of Avengers- but for Avengers itself, he's clearly The Man Behind the Man (since Loki's running the invasion, the Other is running Loki, and Thanos is running him). Of course, with it looking like Thanos will be taking a more direct role in Phase 2, in the long run he'll probably end up the closest thing the MCU overall has to a Big Bad, not this trope.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

Yes, it will. But it's kind of spoilerriffic.

Total sentence imposed is 天

Ok, thanks. I'll put a whited-out version on the page.

I stopped listening after you said "We need a plan."

Pariah Dark- You are making the trope to specific. Just because we had never heard about him before does not make him this trope. He fits everything.

Dark Danny- You may have a point here however he is still one of the most powerful foes in the series, and one of the most emotionally jarring foes ever. He is also made of evil. Also that is general rule of thumb not an always true rule.

Ecto Asteroid- Actually kinda agree with you, never saw it.

Edited by jjjj2 You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the mid

The trope is supposed to be about a very specific kind of character. Pariah's a borderline example- I don't personally consider him one, though I can see where you're coming from. If you want to put him back in, I won't stop you- though I also won't add him myself.

But I have to draw the line on Dark Danny. A Bigger Bad is, by definition, a distant and/or impersonal force of nature. Dark Danny is Danny's own darker nature externalized and exaggerated in a vividly disturbing way- if he'd been given the Bigger Bad treatment, he wouldn't have been nearly as creepy or effective as he was. He's not a god, not a force, not a distant evil leader- he's the hero's Enemy Without, and the episode pretty much rubs our face in it. The distance is the key feature in differentiating a Big Bad from a Bigger Bad, and Dark Danny just isn't distant. He's not this trope.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

okay I thank you for compromising, and I'll allow it.

You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the mid

Sorry, clicked on the wrong button. Ignore this.

Edited by Werebazs

Image changes and removals should always go through the Image Pickin' forum; start a thread and explain that it isn't an example. Personally, I think it's still a good image, since Darth Vader is widely known to be bad and the darkness and black clothing emphasises this. It is then clear that he's taking orders from someone who must be the Bigger Bad.

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.

Except... that's not what Bigger Bad is. The Bigger Bad is what you get when the most powerful villain in a given setting is beyond the scope of the story while a less powerful villain actually functions as Big Bad. Many Big Bads have nothing to do with their respective Bigger Bad, if one exists, or may only pay lip service to them. Vader is The Dragon to Palpatine's Big Bad.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

Fair enough; that makes sense. Thanks for starting the thread!

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.

I think the Death Note itself is the Bigger Bad, because as Light put it, it's mere presence and existence temps people to just try and see if it's real, and also Near said that it was the Death Note's power that corrupted Light. Ryuk is merely the intermediere.

I've gone and made the page for John Devil

In Skyword Sword he's Man Behind the Man in the the latter Zelda History he's the Bigger Bad.

Actually, the description of the trope, given in the first paragraph, is "the setting has a villainous presence that is more significant than the Big Bad in the setting as a whole, but isn't causing the conflict of the story (and may have little to do with it at all)."

And the sentence right before that part implies that the trope contrasts Big Bad's "directly responsible for the plot, but is not necessarily the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting" nature, i.e. the trope is "indirectly responsible for the plot (if at all), and is also the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting".

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Actually, the first phrase implies the Big Bad is "directly responsible for the plot" and the Bigger Bad is "the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting". In other words a Bigger Bad is not behind the plot and is most powerful/significant than the Big Bad.

If "the most powerful or significant evil presence in the setting" is the defining trait of Bigger Bad, then that doesn't prohibit the Bigger Bad from being indirectly responsible for the conflict.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The Bigger Bad is, necessarily, most powerful or significant than the Big Bad. And Big Bad is- following the description of the trope- "is behind all of the other bad happenings", "Note that Big Bad is not a catch-all trope for the biggest and ugliest villain of any given story. The Badass leader of the outlaw gang that the heroes face once or twice is not the Big Bad. The railroad tycoon who turns out to be using the gang as muscle is the Big Bad. In general, if there is a constant Man Behind the Man story going on in order to reveal the big bad, then whoever is behind it all is the Big Bad, not every major villain in the lead-up." The second paragraph to Bigger Bad says a similar thing. By the way, i not watched Enemy At The Gates, but, based in the description in this wiki, the true Big Bad in the history are the guys what given the orders to kill Vasily.

Edited by MagBas

Yes, I knew that already; my issue now is that you seem to be implying that every Bigger Bad has to be divorced from any degree of even indirect control or responsibility for the conflict, which clashes with several of the listed examples (like Adolf Hitler; see the Multiple Media folder).

And no, I'd say that Enemy at the Gates has no defined Big Bad, because the conflict of the story — that is, Vasily trying to survive the ever-worsening situation in the Battle for Stalingrad — is not driven by one antagonist; he has to take down Nazi Mooks, he has to deal with Nazi artillery barrages, he has to deal with a Nazi elite soldier hellbent on taking him down in a Sniper Duel no matter what it takes (even if he had to use a little boy as a spy and, ultimately, bait), and he also has to survive the deadly jealousy of Danilov over their shared Love Interest Tania.

Edited by MarqFJA Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

To use the Hitler example I had in mind for this trope when putting that bit into the descritpion, Raiders of the Lost Ark- the bad guys in that movie are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers and they are therefore ultimately working for Hitler. But he's not there, there's no indication they're in direct contact with him, and Belloq (the most developed of the three main villains) is plainly just using the Reich's resources as part of his own plan to nab the Ark and have a chat with God. Hitler's indirect involvment adds context and depth to the premise, but really, he's not the point of the story and Indy never has to confront him in any way to resolve it. Raiders of the Lost Ark is about Indiana Jones saving the Ark of the Covenant from a specific group of Nazis and sympathizers, not about stopping Hitler or toppling the Third Reich. A Big Bad, by contrast, has to be dealt with in some fashion for the story to conclude.

In a more general sense, the Big Bad is at the heart of the story as much as The Hero is, because they're directly causing things to happen. A Bigger Bad is more of a background presence that adds depth to the setting (and in some cases foreshadows the next step up on the Sorting Algorithm of Evil) but is only tangentally involved at most with the matter at hand.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

Probably, but the problem with troping Big Brother in general is that the novel leaves it decidedly ambiguous how much actual power he has, if it's been the same guy all along, or even if he really exists in the first place as anything but an avatar for the Party. It's an interesting question, honestly.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

does Shinnok count as a bigger bad

Edited by allday

I've seen the song, but not the whole movie- are they directly giving him orders, or are they just feeding him power with the general intention that he'll do evil with it, while he comes up with his specific schemes on his own? If the former, they're The Man Behind the Man, and if the latter, they're the Bigger Bad.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."