Discussion Main / DesignatedVillain

• Books of Kings: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been labelled as one of the most evil women in The Bible. It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and wonder if she really was that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the cities of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is devoted to the old pagan religion of her home country, even after she becomes the queen of Israel. And she also supposedly made her husband, King Ahab, join her in the worship of her pantheon, mainly Baal. And that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel is accused of doing a thing or two, which will sound terrible even to a modern secular audience. But the narrator's wrath over Jezebel's persecution of Jahve's prophets is very hypocritical, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from Jezebel's two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys belonged to his religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame the innocent Naboth and has him executed because he wouldn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still sounds harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as her Henpecked Husband, but still) seems to never inform his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she did anything wrong, because Ahab would never stop her or even reprimand her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make anybody Unintentionally Sympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, and her body gets crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even get a proper funeral. But apparently, she deserved this because she belonged to a pagan religion from a foreign culture...

This example needs to be rewritten -it's trying too damn hard to paint Jezebel as misunderstood rather than nasty, handwaving her falsely accusing Naboth, even though bearing false witness shows up as illegal in several ancient cultures, and claiming "well Ahab didn't tell her X", when there were LOTS of people around who could have told her X. At least one prophet talked to her, and women of status throughout history have had personal servants -many a woman married off to foreign lands knew her maid servants would be vital to her establishing and maintaining her position. Jezebel also did not isolate herself -if she was paying attention at all, she would have learned how things worked in Israel.

However, since I have bias of my own, I feel this should be a crowd-sourced decision, to rewrite or permanently pull it.

I will say 1) her death was horrific and overkill and 2) Jezebel was a terrible politician.

Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett

• The Wizard has two villains: one is a true villain type - a jerk kid (Lucas) who goes against the heroes in the big video game contest; the other is a guy (Putnam) who tracks down runaway kids for a living, but everyone accuses him of somehow exploiting the kids. Given that he has an attitude and uses tactics more befitting of a child abductor than a professional private detective, there could be some off-screen truth to it. He also actively tries to prevent Sam (the two boys' father) from finding them first just so he can collect the reward. At one point, he slashes the man's tires. Certainly doesn't justify all of Sam's interactions with him (such as trying to run him over later), but Putnam was hardly just some well-meaning authority figure caught up in a misunderstanding. The guy could actually be considered an in-universe Designated Hero.

This example's arguing with itself all over the place. Could some who's seen the thing please sort it out?

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett

Would Thunderbolt Ross from the 2003 movie HULK fit this trope? There is really nothing villainous about him. He just had the misfortune of ending up on the wrong side of the plot.

His entire motive is to protect innocent people — as when he learns that Bruce's character is very different from that of his father, he even becomes regretful of the fact that the only way that he can protect most innocent people is to sacrifice the freedom of one innocent person.

He really is a heroic guy. He just happened to end up on the wrong side of the plot.

Is this the trope for him?

Would Hachiman from My Romantic Teen Comedy SNAFU count as an example? From what I've witnessed in the anime, his methods of solving any social problems involve him playing the pseudo-villain, willingly sacrificing himself for the greater good. It does get defied later on, as his friends express their contempt for his methods. I believe it comes from not the method itself, but due to the fact he holds himself with little to no regard.

I think Killmonger from Black Panther is an example of this trope. He is seen repeatedly kicking the dog, but none of his positions are actually evil. The protagonists (fallaciously?) compare him to colonial masters when he is attempting to lead, as I see it, a resistance, against the neocolonialist West.

I don't know though; I might think this way because I was born outside of the West and because of my political slant.

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• Most of the antagonists in Christian Humber Reloaded. If you're not familiar with the source material, they hardly seem evil compared to Vash, since apart from marshaling their forces to attack the good guys, their canon misdeeds are rarely described in detail. This especially goes for one group of "snobs" that Vash attacks, killing thousands and doing trillions of dollars worth of damage in the course of doing so. And while there is no apparent reason for this, they are apparently meant to be seen as evil enough to deserve it.

Yeah, well here's a thing. This is a FANFIC. Most Fanfic Writers Are Fans. Most of the time reading fic when you don't know the source material isn't exacly a good idea and just because you haven't read the parts where it happen doesn't mean it didn't happen. Unless the fic as an AU where these events didn't happen in the first place(and judging from description it's not) then this is hardly the case.

• Final Fantasy VII has Rufus Shinra, who the group actively oppose for the simple fact the he's the ex-president's son. Though his father was a tyrant responsible for the deaths of everyone in Sector 7, Rufus never actually kills anyone. In fact, he turns out to be a pretty fair ruler, who's only act of antagonism is preparing to have Tifa and Barrett executed to throw off all the blame. Justified in that they're terrorists, and he's hoping to quell public fears by having them killed. Rufus also launches an attack against Sapphire Weapon, successfully destroying it, then plans to use the Giant Materia to destroy Meteor. Cloud and the gang deliberately intercept his attempts by grabbing the materia for themselves, making them seem like glory hogging jerks in comparison. Granted, Rufus' plan wouldn't have worked, but Cloud didn't know that at the time.

Yeah, well, Rufus's first meeting with Cloud's group involved him giving a speech about how he'll rule the world with fear. There is also the small fact that Shinra's Mako reactors are literally killing the Planet (Which is why Avalanche is fighting Shinra in the first place) and Rufus doesn't seem to have any intention of stopping it. He hasn't really crossed Moral Event Horizon, which is why he can be roughly a good guy in the Advent Children, but that doesn't mean he did nothing wrong (or at least didn't mean to).

• A common complaint about Crest Of The Stars is that the United Humankind Alliance is this, as the author is blatantly favoring The Empire of Space Elves that tricks or conquers through military force any human world it encounters in order to strip them of any capacities for interstellar travel that are not dependent on the Abh to run them. Grey-and-Gray Morality is involved (the United Humankind Alliance, whilst it does only accept worlds that request to join, is a lot more politically/culturally meddlesome than the Abh), the Abh are still pretty obviously Designated Heroes.

Haven't seen it but from what i know the story runs on Gray-and-Grey Morality which means thast neither side is good or evil, they just have different perspectives. so may favor alliance, some may favor the empire, but are they really considered villains?

Why Linkara quote? Do most tropers enjoy his stereotype-embodying nasal whine?

stay golden

Which episode of Linkara does the page quote come from?

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence" Hide / Show Replies

• Age of Wonders. We're told that the Elves, Halflings, and Dwarves are good, and the Orcs, Goblins, and Dark Elves are evil. While the good races are described briefly as having peaceful, wholesome habits and the evil races are supposed to be violent and aggressive, we don't really see any of this in action. In gameplay, the difference doesn't show up at all: both sides are equally warlike, and have the option of fighting or buying off neutral races. Furthermore, a central gameplay mechanic is the ability to repopulate captured cities with a population of a friendly race; it's plain cultural imperialism at best and the good and evil races do this with equal impunity.

That seems more fitting for Gameplay and Story Segregation. While we don't see dark races doing anything evil in gameplay their unit descriptions are rife with Offscreen Villainy. In terms of actual story characters are NOT treated as good or bad depending on their race but on actual actions and there are good and bad people among both light and dark races.

I deleted this from the main page due to Justifying Edits:

• Danzo, one of the most notable ones, was a Designated Villain because he actually wanted to uphold the law of Leaf Village by ordering a hit on known traitor and criminal Sasuke Uchiha, who just so happened to be the main character's best friend (from Naruto's perspective. Sasuke wanted nothing to do with him).
  • No, he was a villain (or at best, a Well Intentioned Extremist) because he trained little children to become his emotionless tools, sabotage the Leaf Village defense for his own gains, mind controlled the Fire Daimyo and believed that he can do any vile thing he want to gain power and influence due to the believe that he and only he can save the world. Even the kill order on Sasuke was less about the law and more with his desire to obtain his eyes.
  • False. He trained children to become emotionless tools, true, however that is expected of most ninja especially ANBU in the Narutoverse. We don't know if he used Kotoamatsukami on the Fire Daimyo (hell, the bureaucrat could have been convinced by anything). The kill order on Sasuke was because Sasuke is a Missing Ninja, and now had become an international criminal by attacking Kumo to get Killer Bee. Kakashi himself said that the stint Sasuke was without being labeled a Missing Ninja at least was due to Naruto's influence on Tsunade. And finally, he wanted to kill Sasuke to prevent Orochimaru from gaining a new, strong Uchiha body.
  • Danzo trained children to become emotionless tools by making them be friends with other children and then forcing them to kill each other. He was fully willing to massacre an entire clan (because obviously everybody of them was irredeemably evil), kill innocent children and didn't even try to negotiate with them. Also he assisted Orochimaru in his experiments and apparently didn't care about the snake's other innocent victims at all, killed the messenger frog from contacting Naruto (although he had a good reason to do so, did he really need to kill it?) and didn't help protecting the village from Pain. Finally he plucked the eyes out of the men and women he ordered to massacre and fought with the stolen eyes against the sole survivor of the clan who's gone completely insane because of him. Well-Intentioned Extremist or not... there's a line and Danzo crossed it long ago.

Edited by moonytheloony Hide / Show Replies

Moved this here:

• In1408 the hotel manager is portrayed as very sinister and unethical. His crime? Trying to stop the protagonist from staying in the titular room, despite the fact that over 50 people have died there and that the entire horrific events of the film would have been avoided had he not have done so. As stubborn as he is and the lengths that he's willing to go to (such as bribing the protagonist with a rare and very aged bottle of wine) nothing he does could be considered wrong or harms anyone.

This seems like misuse, because I really can't recall this character being portrayed as "sinister" or "unethical". The movie stresses that he was right all along but the protagonist ignored his sincere pleas.

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!" Hide / Show Replies

Can anyone find the Doctor Who fic that was mentioned? I've been looking myself and can't find it. Can whoever put the example up post a link?

RIGHT ONNNNN!!!!! Hide / Show Replies

Removed Don Jon. Just because Claudio is a Designated Hero doesn't mean that Don Jon is a designated villain. You can't have a designated villain without a designated hero but you can have a designated hero without having a designated villain

Edited by KSonik Hide / Show Replies

Under Theatre:

• In the play Alcestis, King Admetus is the villain. He wins the favor of Apollo so that when it's time for him to die, another may take his place. The only person willing though was his wife Alcestis so that her children will know him and not be fatherless. Since she is the one dying for a noble cause, he is the de facto villain.

I don't see how this fits the trope at all (and Admetus isn't portrayed as the villain in the play). It seems more like it should go under Designated Hero.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

Maybe there's a point in these, but it's lost in a blatant US libertarian slant which, to say the least, isn't a universal value set. I'd like to know in which values set a "slushee bar" qualifies as "progress" though.

• The Odyssey episode of Wishbone dealt with the main characters wanting to save a park from being bulldozed by a developer who wanted to build a slushee bar. The developer was labeled a greedy bastard for daring to pave the way for progress. He was not a good, honest person because the sign announcing the bulldozing wasn't in plain sight. (When really, there are numerous explanations as to why that sign could have been on the ground.) At the end of the day, the tree was saved, the developer had been humiliated in court. Many of the villains in the original work were like this, though it's doubtful that played into the original considerations.
• Heartland had a rather idiotic example in their Christmas movie. We're supposed to cheer for the heroes who, among other things, rallied a town against the old man who's trying to stop them from rescuing a bunch of horses trapped by a landslide, while they mount a rescue effort. Except, the old man owns the horses in question, so he IS entitled to tell them to piss off, and he DOES have the right to shoot the sick horses to put them out of their misery! At the end, they are even wondering if they should let him have them after he has his change of heart?! To sum up those points, a bunch of strangers come into town, get themselves involved in his business, get everyone against him, deny his basic right to do what he wants with his property, and actually consider rustling them for themselves. They were going for a Broken Aesop, right?

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The current page quote (from Richard III) doesn't seem to really fit. The trope is for times when a villain isn't really all that bad; Richard III, on the other hand, goes on to do truly villainous things in the play. Seems to me like the page quote might've been chosen because it's the trope name taken literally (someone "designating" themselves the villain), but it doesn't fit the standards of the trope and doesn't really exemplify it. Can anyone think of a better one?

Edited by Kid Hide / Show Replies

Is Designated Antagonist really a good redirect? Villains and Antagonists are not the same character-type. Best examples are Hero Antagonists — they're designated to be antagonists, but clearly meant to be the good guys. If there's no good reason to keep this, I'll put it on the cutlist.

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In the movie Twister, Bill specifically accuses Jonas of 'stealing his design' (for Dorothy), to which Jonas replies that the design was 'unrealized'. (Jonas also renamed his gadget.) This definitely puts the whole 'realizing' into a grey area, but there is the point that apparently Bill never took a patent out on it (stupid) or really explored it much further. It was others, both on Jonas' team, and on Bill's old team, who developed the idea into something workable. At that point, the rights to the idea of Dorothy will go to whoever gets it to work. (I was curious about who did have the rights to Dorothy, and researched it. US Patent law has the applicable legalities.)

What Jonas did was unethical, but developing an idea that someone else abandoned is a mainstay of tech and science.

Jonas did have an Idiot Ball moment, when he refused to listen to Bill telling him that the Dorothy spheres weren't working the way they should. And then he got splatted before he had a chance to think about it and realize, 'guy might have a point.' Jonas was an arrogant snot, but not stupid.

Anyone else feel sorry for Bill's fiancee? I felt bad about what she had to go through, until she dumped Bill and walked out. (And I don't really blame her, even without Helen Hunt.) Yet, somehow she's supposed to be a bitch.

Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett

Considering a lot of the landlords in NYC and Phila are effectively slumlords who require lawsuits just to apply the codes I find it hard to take the "poor villain" nonsense on top of the page.

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Removed:

• X-Men Evolution set up Avalanche as a villainous character on his first appearance, despite the fact he was quite obviously just a troubled teen with a few too many berserk buttons but a more or less genuine good heart. In the second season, he even had some straight-up admirable qualities (he did get some recognition with a relationship of sorts with Kitty Pryde).
  • The epilogue suggests he left the Brotherhood and joined SHIELD instead.
  • Also, most of the "Evil" the Brotherhood did, aside from their initial Kick the Dog moments, paled in comparison to their comic counterparts (who were legitimate villains). Aside from being Mystique's errand boys, the Brotherhood mostly seemed interested in Wacky Fratboy Hijinks.

The Brotherhood Were not this. Toad, Avalanche and whichever female is currently with them, were mildly sympathetic at times, and even there, Avalanche only became sympathetic after Character Derailment took away his Unsympathic characteristics, leaving behind his only, and even there only recently added, characteristic of having the hots for Kitty. Yeah, they had less villainous moments after the first season, but that's because season two was the only time they did act like Designated Villains (not even that, they weren't treated as villains, just another group) and Season three and four they were Out of Focus as the Acolytes and later Apocalypse replaced them as the villains. Being a former archnemesis out of Focus and being a Designated Villain are completely different things. When they did do 'Wacky Fratboy Hijinks', such as trying to steal a device and essentially doom Kurt to life in another dimension, cause a riot and try to reveal mutants to the world, and then pretend to act heroic to get money. yeah, totally just Wacky Hijinks, I do it all the time. Remember, that these are the things they did when they weren't being instructed by Mystique or Magneto, when they were working for Mystique, that was most definatly not simple. When they compare them to their comic selves, people forget that in Comics, they can do things their Cartoon selves can't do. On a kids show, you're not allowed to commit acts of Terrorism, you can't do things that they did in the comics. Lastly, the note about the ending. While it shows them aparently joining SHIELD, Xavier doesn't sound as if its a good thing "And some people, never change", they don't look too heroic (Toad has a Slasher Smile, Blob, Pyro, Wanda and Avlanche looks just like himself only old, only Pietro looks even remotly heroic but we all know that isn't true). If I'm not mistaken, I remember reading something about the series director saying they join form Freedom Force, essentially working for the goverment to hunt down other mutants who aren't registered on the Mutant Registration Act in order to avoid jail term (Imagine Osborn's Thunderbolts only for mutants), which of course means they're not heroic. So to sum it up, Avalanche and the Brotherhood went through Villain Decay and Character Derailment before slipping Out of Focus, they were NOT Designated Villains and after a while stopped being considered villains anyway.

"Remember that you can't have a Designated Villain without a Designated Hero, but the opposite isn't true."

If anything you'd think it's the other way around. You can have a perfectly legitimate hero on paper rallying against something that isn't really evil, but I can't think of a way someone can be the designated hero when faced with a genuine evil.

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Can we get a ruling on this section:

• In the second Iron Man film, Whiplash's father would appear to be this. His father worked with Mr. Stark senior on products, but ultimately only wanted them for financial gain instead of helping mankind. Rather than recognize an inventor might want to make money off his own creations, Stark fired him and used their mutual creations to become a billionaire, and Vanko died in poverty. It's kinda easy to see why Whiplash would want Tony Stark dead. The fact that Tony occasionally comes off as a Designated Hero doesn't help.
  • It's especially hypocritical, seeing as Howard Stark (and Tony Stark in his pre-90s days) is a symbol of the power and legitimacy of Capitalism, in contrast to the evils of Communism. The fact that Stark had Vanko deported to the USSR for being a capitalist is a Moral Event Horizon crossing that the movie doesn't pick up on.
  • Lesson learned : you can do pretty much anything if you tell the right phrase. In this case, the phrase was For Great Justice.

It keeps getting removed because of the claim that Anton Vanko was a Soviet spy. Can anyone but the anonymous poster and I confirm whether or not he was spying for the USSR? I've heard it stated that Vanko was framed as a spy by Howard Stark, but the charges weren't true. It appears that, in reality, he was a sincere defector that was deported out of personal spite. The rest of the film hinges on the fact that Stark senior seriously screwed over the Vankos. If Vanko really was a spy, the entire film falls apart thematically.

Edited by MatthewTheRaven Hide / Show Replies

Why is this separated into "Examples" and "Sympathetic Examples"? Whether something is sympathetic or not is usually a YMMV thing, and even when it's not it has no bearing on the example. I see a lot of stuff in the examples section I find sympathetic. Could we just combine them?

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• The Kuhoin family of Kurenai keep the female member of the family isolated in an area of their family estate so that they can bear the children of their brothers and other male relatives. While this does of a certain element of Squick to it. It is justified by the fact the entire family suffers from a condition that means that this is the only way *any* of them can ever have children, so really, they are just doing what that have to do in order to survive and insure the next generation of their family.
  • But if you're trying to pin anything on Benika or Shinkurou, remember that they were hired. They grew fond of the job, but still, they were hired first.

Cutting this example. Sure, the Kuhouins may need incest to survive, but that doesn't explain why the have to lock their women up and hide their existence from the outside world.

• Final Fantasy XII: Vayne's big evil plan throughout the whole game? Stop evil gods from treating humans like puppets.
  • To be fair the heroes also want this; the problem is that Vayne also wants to conquer everything and install himself as the new, Nethicite-powered Dynast-King, which isn't really necessary. While the protagonists agree with freeing Ivalice from the Occuria, replacing one evil with another isn't quite desirable.
  • The whole point of Vayne and by extension, Venat was that he was a bloody hypocrite. Sure, the evil gods are treating humans like puppets...but the cold hard truth is that he just wants to be the puppeteer. So we go from overthrowing one set of tyrannical, enslaving beings to just one tyrannical, enslaving being. Um...yay?

Also cutting this for reasons stated right there.

I always got this vibe from Tom Zarek that he really didn't give a shit about his positions, and cared more about them as a means to manipulate people.