Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Here be the renaming poll for this trope

I don't see how the Otaking video is an example of this. It actually seems to be an actual legitimate argument of the topic.

I, too, am assuming most recent on top. (I'm sure it's in the rules somewhere, but I'm at work, and I don't have a lot of surf time, of course, I just used some of it to type that explanation, and now I'm spiraling off into madness)... Umm, yeah, so, anyway, Hal Warren, Manos producer... is hiring a limo and staging a big premiere for his movie the only evidence of his Small Name, Big Ego qualifications? I mean, he was from a small Texas town and made a Hollywood movie using local talent. It sounds to me like he was just rewarding the folks who worked on the film with "a night as the stars", and would actually be the opposite of what we're going for here. But, that's just my opinion. Is there some further damning evidence against him out there?

Doctor Nemesis: That example at least does make it sound more like "Hey, we're in the big time now, might as well live it up a bit!" — I mean, it's a premiere of a movie they made; bad or not, are they supposed to go to it in riding a donkey, wearing sackcloth and wringing their hands shouting about how they aren't worthy?

Shaoken: My apologies if I'm supposed to put new discussions at the bottom of the page instead of the top, first time stepping into a discussion page this length. I'd like to propose that we remove the Red Vs Blue example from the list. From what I can see the reason for their inclussion is the following;

"Red Vs Blue is hilarious, but if one goes to the forum, one would learn that the creators are elitist jackasses, and impose the most ridiculous rules. You have to ask permission from a mod if you can start a new topic."

To which we get this response;

"Yeah, but this troper was a member for two years, and could remember morons making hundreds of identical topics every day. So take from that what you will."

As far as I can tell the original troper seemed to think that asking a mod for permission to create a topic is an example of this trope, and there is a valid reason for why they did that. So there is no real example as to why they have big egos, which is especially jarring considering the detail that's gone into every other entry. If there are no objections I'll remove it in one week. If there are, could any other tropers be nice enough to rework the current entry into something with a little more detail?

Davies: Not sure if this is the right way to go about this, but WTH. In my dubious defense, I don't recall ever having demanded that Naoko Takeuchi acknowledge that I'm a better writer than she is — if I ever did so, I certainly didn't intend for anyone to take it seriously. As to the other thing ... well, Rann Aridorn is not exactly a wonderful human being herself.

Killah Mate: I've added a "subverted" to the James Cameron entry, but it ended up being quite comprehensive - to the point where I don't think he should be in the page at all. I feel that the Terminators, Aliens and Titanic and etc. took him off the Small Name list some time ago, so his ego doesn't matter. I'm a bit biased, so could someone else confirm this? And delete the entry?

Rebochan: It doesn't matter if you're the most famous person in the world and you cured cancer. If you're a pretentious jerk, you qualify for this trope. But I've been supporting a name change for this for some time since people tend to really fixate on the "small name" part and since this is coming up again, I think it's worth seriously looking into. I'll put up a YKTTW in a few minutes.

Edit: Right here.

Neep: Not so sure this should be here.

Ron Wilson/Mystar, a friend of Goodkind, maintains a one man internet crusade against Sword Of Truth detractors, often making statement about non fans having "lack of character," and pulling out Goodkind's sales figures as an indication of quality. He was known to lie about HBO dropping their A Song Of Ice And Fire series and still holding on to said lie, ever after George R. R. Martin's significant other called him on it.

a) he's much more of a Big Name Fan

b) it's a mite petty to pick out just one of Goodkind's fanboys

c) he might show up here and subject us to lectures about how disliking Sword of Truth means that we are lemmings of discord and lacking in moral clarity.

Any objections to axing it?

Grimace: Despite the fact I just edited it to make it even more petty and snarkful (the internet feeds on snark, as we all know), you're probably right that he'd fit in another trope better. He does move from messageboard to messageboard, acting with an unentitled sense of accomplishment though, which is probably why another troper added him in the first place. That and his continual butchering of the english language. I mean, I'm not grammar nazi, but dictionaries must crumble whenever he steps near...

Mighty Kombat: Just a question, but why was the Evil Slayer X 5 entry removed? Heavens knows he has a nasty ego which borders on self-deifying.

Kitsunekun: Where is the picture from, and who is the subject? From what he's saying, it should be a picture of Joe Q, but it looks like someone in blackface.

DomaDoma: It's John Byrne, as it says in the image. But I second the motion: where is it from?

Charred Knight: I searched for it on google and found this http://www.thexaxis.com/reviews/080701.html#oni-press-color-special-2001 its from Oni Press color special 2001, which is an indie publisher.

Grimace: Why is Alec Baldwin here? He's not really a "Small Name" (not huge, but not small), and I've always felt he came across as self depreciating and quite nice.

Were Josh Peck Prince: Have you watched E!'s Most Shocking Celebrity Meltdowns? He left a rather angry voice message on his daughter's answering machine refering to her as a pig- not to mention threatening AND insulting her.

Grimace: Nope, never saw that (I avoid E! like the plague - which allows me to act snobbish with authority ;P). But I have since read of some of the goings ons at the 30Rock set. I still contest the "Small Name" bit, but hey this tropes kinda left that part behind a while back, so no foul.

Your Obedient Serpent wonders why in the world this isn't "Big Fish Small Pond". That's an old, established phrase that not only describes this trope perfectly, but would also head off half of this discussion page's debates about whether or not "X" is a "Small Name". John Byrne may be a big name in comics, but the comics industry these days is a pretty small pond.

Still leaves in James Cameron etc, who are big fish in very large ponds.

Matthew The Raven: Because that's not what Big Fish, Small Pond means. In the possitive sense, a big fish in a small pond is someone who is generally 'better' (however you'd define that) than his or her surroundings. A supergenius stuck in a trailer park would be a big fish in a small pond. In a negative sense, it's a person that's important but only in their own little niche. It doesn't matter how egotistical they are.

HeartBurn Kid: There was a panel — from Powers I think — that somebody posted on a forum I used to go to, that showed John Byrne as Ego the Living Planet. It would be absolutely perfect for this article, but I can't find it anymore, so if anybody has the same image...

Zeke: If this article is going to continue using John Byrne as its flagship example, it needs a new title. Whatever size the man's ego, he is without question a big name. In fact, this article seems to have an inherent problem: by definition, anyone who's a small enough name to qualify, most people have never heard of.

Mister Six: The man's not really a big name any more, though. He peaked in the early/mid 90s and now he's pretty much unemployable. If people were putting in Grant Morrison or Geoff Johns (obviously not big egos but you get the idea) then I'd argue with them. But Byrne's pretty much irrelevant in the current comic book market and his worth as a "name" continues to fall as he becomes more and more of a laughing stock. And it's his own fault, too. Also note that the following has been in the article since I wrote it:

Sometimes this occurs not in small-time writers and artists who cannot gain commercial success, but in more well-known creative types who have found themselves sinking in popularity in the wider world and turn to their fanbase to keep their flame of popularity alive, only to have their values warped by the insular world of their own forum.

Filby: I don't think Byrne is a "big name" at all in the greater scheme of things. You walk up to someone on the street and ask them who John Byrne is, they'll have no idea. In fact the closest things to actual "big names" in the comics industry I can think of off the top of my head are Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman, and that's for their movie work.

What I mean is that John Byrne flying off the handle is nothing at all compared to, say, Mel Gibson doing the same.

Duckluck: I'm a normal person who doesn't read that many comics, and I'd never heard of Byrne, so there you go. Also, does anyone else get the feeling that some of these (particularly the rant about furry artists) are just a little bit too heated? Let's try to keep this dispassionate if we can help it.

Rebochan: Since it's about John Byrne, I'm adding it to the longer John Byrne discussion. He does not draw Funky Winkerbean - Tom Batiuk is still the artist and author of that strip. Byrne did a 10-week stint as a temporary artist on the strip a few years ago. He's definitely not doing the art now - you can see examples of his Funky work on his website and its like looking at a completely different strip. Batiuk is a known comics fan, I'd imagine that played a bigger role in the selection of Byrne than him slumming for work and settling for Funky.

HeartBurn Kid: Axed this Conversation In The Main Page, which is almost entirely off topic:

Then again, his webcomic IS very successful. And he's perfectly fine with people bashing his work.
- Yeah, I'm sure. I'm also sure that any threads, no matter what the content, don't get locked/deleted/punished in the blink of an eye on the forums. I'm also sure that wasn't sarcasm in the slightest. If you believe me, post a topic about Buckley containing negative sentiments and time how long before the moderators bring down the hammer.
- Not to mention he showed his penis to fourteen-year old girl.
- Ah, the wonders of innocent until proven guilty.
- Also, that comic was not drawn by Buckley and seems to be an observation that Buckley-bashing helps draw traffic to him.

Tragic The Demon: Do I dare ask who Heero Yuy was/is/will be?

Geese: You daren't, but you did. If Otakukin are any indication, Heero Yuy's present incarnation is that of multiple anime fans, some of which are inevitably 14 and others of which are likely 30. I'm not really sure if it started as a joke, as one of the official sites cites "many people when faced with Otakukin jump to the conclusion that Otas are sad little fanpeople who broke their brain watching one anime too many and, no longer able to distinguish fact from fantasy, began to latch onto an anime character or characters in order to supplement their feeble personalities and low self esteem. In truth most Otas are..." blah blah normal people blah reflection and revelation blah blah legitimate spirituality. The Internet being the Internet, it's picked up serious adherents.

Fast Eddie: removed

In a single hour I get more email than you get in a week, so if you want to bitch and moan about me somewhere else, by all means, knock yourself out.

— Tim Buckley

, creator of Ctrl Alt Del

I'm correcting lies obviously, which is how I spend 90% of my time on the internet, it seems, since everyone in the world is such a huge liar and they lie even more online. It annoys me.

— Bobby Crosby

They should go in the examples.

Real Slim Shadowen: I think we should remove Anne Rice, if only because she's not a small name.

Firelegend567: "Sometimes this occurs not in small-time writers and artists who cannot gain commercial success, but in more well-known creative types who have found themselves sinking in popularity in the wider world and turn to their fanbase to keep their flame of popularity alive, only to have their values warped by the insular world of their own forum."

I think Anne Rice fits that to a tee. She used to be a big, but thanks to the fact that evidently, she can't write without an editor, as well as said hissy fit, she's starting to become more notorious than famous.

Hey, I was thinking of adding this guy [1]

to the list. A small time game devoloper who makes good games, but puts himself up to be the "world's greatest game maker ever!", and sometimes has stated that other indie people are under him.

Parcequilfaut: Why is Alexandra Erin mentioned as liking an author who's a SNBE with no other information? Are we going to put every author who likes someone on this page in a note, or is this a grudge edit?

Large Blunt Object: Pulled

Paul Phoenix from the Tekken game series. Although he somewhat lightened up a little in Tekken 5.

Because, no, he's a fictional character.

That Other 1 Dude: We have a section of the page for fictional characters...

OgreProdigy: This troper observed similar troubles with the forum moderator and creator of Warcraft III maps (Scenarios) Panther-Anthro, who through decent map-making skills created a reasonably clever map based off of Warhammer, and is now declaring himself superior to all who use his forums and writing a novel based around the aforesaid semi-plagarised map.

(off-topic (or, perhaps, too on-topic) roleplaying/trolling moved to the appropriate Contributor discussion page)

Red-Hatted Plumber: Can we get this changed to something like The Arrogance Of Power or some similar title? The current page is less about small names and much more about big egos.

Peteman: Yeah, I agree, there are a number of big names (albeit with bigger egos).

BRPXQZME: Everyone's name is about 1/6-inch tall, give or take, when you put it at 12 points....

HeartBurn Kid: Cut:

Cassandra Claire, a Big Name Fan in the Harry Potter fandom, turned her popularity into a publishing deal for her original fiction and released the Mortal Instruments series. Its similarities to her epic Fan Fic The Draco Trilogy (which gave us Draco in Leather Pants) assured her a pre-existing fanbase of readers. Some people also suspect that she has had negative reviews of her work deleted from amazon.com.

Because there's no information on why or how she's a big ego, except for the Amazon.com bit, and that's actually disturbingly common these days. It really needs something juicier.

The_Spie: How about getting her fans to pay for an iPod? Or getting her fans to replace a stolen laptop? Or her complete arrogance when she was thrown off Fanfiction.Net when she was caught plagiarizing Pamela Dean ("I wrote everything down in my notes, then forgot where I took it from")? Or her appearance at Nimbus 2003 where she set herself up in a room and only allowed select people to have royal-style audiences with her? Consult the Fandom Wank Wiki's Cassie Claire section for her history of ego-mongering.

Patsy: I pulled this-

Alan Moore. From what this troper has heard, there are dozens of Comic Con horror stories about him.

...because I'm pretty sure he's the biggest name in comics.

HeartBurn Kid: The page title is a bit of a misnomer; "Big Name, Bigger Ego" seems to fit fairly well here as well.

Zeke: PLEASE don't feed him more, Patsy. Anyway, if no one else, Stan Lee is a bigger name.

Austin: Sorry about that, I misunderstood the purpose of the article.

Zeke: Oh screw that. I'll buy putting John Byrne in here; if the title isn't gonna mean what it clearly states, well, so be it. But if he's in, there is no reason whatsoever to take Alan Moore out. I've put him back with a little more detail and some other examples.

Also, I've taken out the extra-gratuitous political shots in that Real Life entry about the history teacher. (Yes, if you're looking at it now, this is the cleaned-up version.) We get it — the guy's a jerk. There's plenty of evidence without the more general political swipes.

Austin: I apologize again, because Alan Moore wasn't who I meant to put in. I was thinking of Alex Ross. Among the things I've heard about him are slapping a little kid's hand at a convention, telling a first time reader to leave so that he could speak to his real fans, and running around screaming "We won! We won!" when DC decided to go back to the Silver Age.

Rann: Okaaaaaaaaay, some self-appointed moral guardian apparently went through the entry and deleted every single "dirty" word. Didn't even replace them with anything, just blanked them, which makes the Byrne entry about spouting "nigger" over word balloons look particularly odd. They did it to every single one, so I think someone's gonna have to do an actual revert.

Eponymous Kid: Okay, so somebody removed all the cursing from the article, even from quotes. That's bad enough, but they didn't even bother to replace the words, so none of those sentences make any sense anymore.

Big T: Apparently it was me. I use a filter on my machine to filter out words that I don't particularly like to read. However, it isn't supposed to affect any outgoing posts (and this is the first time it's done that.) I'll have to keep an eye on that. I'm sorry for any trouble I may have caused. I have no intention of actually censoring other people's words. It's just that I find that I start using the words that I read, and I do want to censor my own speech.

Anyways, I think I fixed them all. Again, I'm so sorry. I may have to redesign my filter not to work on this site. Or at least shut it off when I edit.

Were Josh Peck Prince: The more apprioate name in my opinion is "With Great Power Comes Total Lack Of Responsibility".

That Other 1 Dude: Removed

Did we mention the messiah complex?

That was a joke, and it was to go along with the "Gamers Commandments" post, and then you'd have to count everyone that made a "My Ten Commandments" joke.

Austin: I removed this sentence by virtue of being a justifying edit.

This troper is a member of AH.com and can state that Ian isn't biased, having also kicked and/or banned (even longtime) members who were rather left-wing. The above post seems rather biased itself.

I have no idea whether it's true or not, but if there is truth to it, it should be discussed here and changes made to the original paragraph if warrented.

arromdee: The tax loophole that was closed in Germany shouldn't affect Uwe Boll. There's a tax break for German filmmakers. The loophole is that foreign companies could create a subsidiary and qualify as "German" under the law. Uwe Boll actually is a German filmmaker, and doesn't fall under the loophole.

Also, I think this page has a problem: too many people included that aren't in any way minor. It's hard to argue that Alan Moore is minor, for instance.

Ninjacrat: I'm yanking the Real Life, Wiki and Online sections, which are all well decayed into Complaining About Absolutely Anything At All You Dont Like. It might be better to restrain ourselves to talking about creators of media.

Were Josh Peck Prince: Phew. That scathing entry about me is no longer included. I hope you all learned an Aesop from this. I'm not such a bad person in real life, trust me.

Rebochan: You know, every now and then I hear a whisper of Scott Ramsoomair being a prima donna, but everyone I know that's actually met the guy is absolutely mystified. I've been to one con he was at and quite frankly, he may as well have not been there for all I saw him at his table or even his panels, but being a flake is completely different from being the center of your own personal universe. The only story I can come up with is one that John Solomon seems to have fabricated out of whole cloth to punch up his VG Cats blog entry. And I've yet to google up what con he was supposed to be banned from.

Austin: Does anyone have an opinion on Lothar and Eastwood, two of the four people who work on the web comic Exterminatus Now? (The people, not the characters.) I glanced at the message board once, and Lothar seems to have a hair-trigger temper, banning people if they piss him off in the slightest. An off-the-record example, I once sent an email to him containing criticism of the comic, and his response was "Let's see you do better." Which is not only a bad argument, but pretty hypocrital because of how many things he himself criticizes. In Eastwood's case, looking at his FAQ on the message board he comes off as a huge self-absorbed prick. He bashes the Archie Sonic comic and says that they made EN to see if they could do better, and he decided that they did. Arrogant on it's own, but in my opinion EN is a mediocre comic aside from the artwork. It's amusing, but the jokes are often generic and predictable, and the characters (aside from Virus) are the standard "asshole with no redeeming features" character that's prevelant in comedy these days. On the subject of sprite comics, he said that he doesn't like them with a couple of exceptions, and said that he did his own sprite comic, and it was funny, so he doesn't know what the problem with everyone else is.

I apologize for the personal comments, but I just want to make clear why I think they should be considered for the article. The reason I haven't added it is because I only took a brief glance at the message boards, and so I don't know if this is how they're generally like.

Sabre Justice: As Eastwood would put it, Lothar is a guy who likely gets dozens of emails with people telling him how he could be writing the comic better, nearly all of which are generally dumb ideas from people who should make their own comics instead of telling other people how to do theirs. And you must never have been a Sonic The Hedgehog fan, because the canon work isn't exactly well-respected either. As for East's opinions on sprite comics, see Sturgeon's Law.

Basically, you're Complaining About Shows You Dont Like, and people for that matter, and coming off as a Small Name, Big Ego yourself. Trying not to seem like a defender here (and failing miserably), but it really seems you just have a personal grudge against them.

Austin: Removed this.

"Big ol' justifying edit coming up here because the people behind YWIBAYSFB operate under the Rule of Funny and catering to the Hatedoms of the various webcomics - for the bloggers to actually qualify as Small Name Big Ego, they'd need to display an ego. So, in the manner of that other wiki...citations needed."

I don't read the blog, so I can't comment, but this is something that should go in the discussion page. On another note, acknowledging that it's a Justifying Edit doesn't make it okay.

I put that there because the entry here is bullshit - anybody who reads the blog and takes it with the pinch of salt it's meant to be taken with would understand that.

HeartBurn Kid: For something to invoke the Rule of Funny, it must be... you know... funny.

Austin: Removed these

Politicians are known to be almost full of themselves and often two faced (not literally). One word: Hitler. Most Fan Fic writers.

The first and third are way too general and outright unfair. The second is a bad example for this page, as the people here are characterized by arrogance, not crimes against humanity.

Rebochan: I forgot to explain here, but I took out the two examples of real people that were known only to the tropers that submitted them. Partly because we have no way of evaluating whether they are good examples or not, and partly because this page could turn into a laundry list of everyone's various enemies, which isn't the trope at all.

Were Josh Peck Prince: Techically, anyone who works in politics counts.

Whippoorwill: The Agony Booth example takes a lot of the creator's stuff out of context. The admin was planning to shut down the forum partly because it had strayed from his original intention—to discuss the site's recaps (and not specifically HIS writing)—and he didn't want to continue paying for a part of the site he wasn't that interested in running anymore. And he didn't ban personal discussions because they were pathetic; he simply banned topics that dealt with such personal issues as breaking up with an S.O. and fighting for child custody, which, to be fair, was a legitimate reason since topics like that would've been more suitable for therapy-related forums or personal blogs.

Some people on the Internet have held personal grudges against the site's creator, which makes This Troper suspect a case of Complaining About Absolutely Anything At All You Dont Like than the creator actually saying, "You Suck!" to his fans.

Rebochan: I was wondering what the heck that entry was about, but I don't hang around the booth forums very much and googling for forum drama seemed to be a waste of time, so I just left it to the will of Wiki Magic. I just went by there now and found this thread though, so maybe they're connected?

The Toon Geekette: As a genuine Agony Booth forum member, I wouldn't be surprised if they are.

For those who don't feel like clicking the link, a disgruntled forum member, Ninski20/Brandon, posted a hate video on You Tube about the Booth's creator, Albert Walker. His complaints basically boil down to "He rejected the movie recaps I wrote for the site, the big meanie!" (frankly, I'm not surprised Albert did, considering the recaps he wrote are kind of a chore to get through). He also invokes Godwin's Law at least twice, and makes weird accusations like "[Albert] hasn't had sex since he was 12..." (!), and that he tries to seem like he's a wise and benevolent guy by using a Spock avatar (never mind that it's mirror Spock...)

If you have any other questions about recent Agony Booth forum drama, feel free to ask. I know far too much about this stuff than I should.

Were Josh Peck Prince: Sure thing. Whoever removed the entry about me is, I want to thank them. By the way I'm not really the Small Name Big Ego type- i'm more of a Large Ham with a villainous streak. I'm basically this site's official villain. And since i'm this site's villain I should get my own Villain Song.

Lord Seth: I'm pondering if Gene Roddenberry, Gary Gygax, and Yuji Naka really should be here. I don't really think they're "small names"...

Rebochan: The trope seems to have Flanderized more into a general drama queen direction. However, no matter how big a name you are, there are still ways to have your ego dwarf your prestige if you're whiny enough.

Austin: I doubt the name was meant to be taken so literally anyway. Even if they're well known, most of the arrogance listed here isn't justified.

Vehek: To Rebochan. On Zeality: Can you give any example of any other site with the same amount of information on CT hacking? The closest thing I can think of to "plethora of dead mods are the result of people not accepting the support of his site" was the idea of dedicating all rom-hacking resources to one project at a time instead of a bunch of poorly-staffed projects. Can you give any examples where he took credit for a news article from another site?

Rebochan: The site's status in the modding community was not what I was talking about. What I was talking about was Zeality's temper tantrum at the suggestion that other modders are hesitant to work with him because of his temper tantrums. It's in the same thread I linked about 1UP. Throwing diva fits, even when you actually have done something worthwhile, still gets you here. And for what it's worth, it may be a great resource, but is that seriously the only reason mods get going? No one has made successful mods before a single fansite popped up?

Anyway, I tried to focus specifically on his behavior and not the site itself, because honestly, the only reason I even know who this guy is was because of all the trolling he did on Game FA Qs. And considering that Game FA Qs is already waist deep in trolls, you've got to be quite special to be a notable troll. I've known about the Compendium for years, read an article or two, but since I knew the site was more heavily slanted toward Cross, I pretty much just used it as a reference and did not participate in the community. After all that trolling after the DS port came out, I got curious and seriously, I got there right after he wrote that epic Eight Point Eight rant. I couldn't believe that a guy that ran a major fansite like this was such an insecure drama queen - lurking his forums doesn't seem to change that opinion either. It's really soured my opinion of the site knowing that a guy like that is running it.

I thought I recalled him whining that someone stole content from his site, but I can't find it right now, so I'm going to take it out. If I find it, I'll put it back and link to it.

Were Josh Peck Prince: Ooh, sounds juicy. Tell me more.

Austin: Regarding Harvey Weinstein and Ron Edward, details, please? Examples aren't fun to read without details, especially on a page like this.

Kalle: Would Hinder count for the Music section of this trope? Especially concerning this

...

Were Josh Peck Prince: Listen guys, i'm like totally sorry for the trouble I caused you. And about that parody I wrote about you guys on Amiright, I didn't mean to do it- I was drunk when I wrote it and was in a state of drunken rage. You've got to help me clear my name, the people on Amiright think that i'm some weirdo named Dr Music which I am not. We've got to do something about those elists at Amiright.

Rebochan: Um, not sure why there's a big Take That! on me on the history. I only took off L. Ron from God-Mode Sue because he can't be a Mary Sue, he's a real person. I didn't say he didn't belong on pages meant for real people.

Komodin: Someone must hate you....

Rebochan: Well it'd be the second time this week O_O

Were Josh Peck Prince: Don't worry Rebo. They probably must be jealous or something.

Rebochan: I took Bill Watterson off. Anybody who read his extensive foreward on Calvin and Hobbes in the anthology from 2005, which is the last time he has spoken of the strip publicly, knows that he does not consider himself to be all important or even inherently better than Garfield. He praised his editors for shaping his work. He said that he himself, before he had to fight for control of his own work, didn't think of comics as art. It wasn't until after he had to fight his syndicate to keep them from selling his work however they saw fit that he gained an appreciation of comics as art. And even when he spoke of his syndicate battles, he never did so disrespectfully like the parade of egos we have on this page - in fact, in his 10th anniversary book, his annotations noted that he knew he was asking a lot for things like the right to control the way his comic appeared in the newspaper. Just because he's got a serious distaste for Garfield, a distaste that has been expressed by others both inside and out of comics, because it is a highly commercial work and unashamedly so, does not put him on this page. We've seen no evidence of diva behavior, of self-importance, or even of unreasonable self-importance. In fact, we've seen very little of him at all. A guy with an ego trip wouldn't be able to shut up, not turn into one of the comic's pages most notorious recluses.

Austin: There's more than one way to make this page, and taking one's views too seriously qualifies just as much as bragging about your work. If he attacked Garfield so viciously, and still maintains that he kept his integrity, then yes, that does mean he considers himself better than Garfield. He also refuses to give out autographs, because even that's too "commercial" for him. I can't picture someone taking an anti-commercialism view that far unless they felt, to some extent, elitist about it.

Rebochan: No, he doesn't give out autographs because he doesn't do anything Calvin and Hobbes related anymore. He doesn't give interviews, he doesn't make his presence known, he simply doesn't communicate with anyone except his publisher from time to time and he lives his life, deliberately, in obscurity. That's not an ego. And his complaints about the commercialization of comics were part of a complaint about the decline of comics in general. At the most, when he talked of his own strip and commercialization, he talked about how important it was to the universe he created that cheap merchandise not diminish it - and gave specific examples as to why he felt that way (i.e. he didn't want the ambiguous existence of Hobbes to be settled by the sale of a Hobbes doll, or the famous Noodle Incident to become less of a joke). Furthermore, in his case, his syndicate actually had the rights to his stuff to market freely without his permission or input, so for him, the licensing fights were personal because he literally would have no say in how his stuff would be merchandised. If he took it extremely seriously (as he said in the foreward I mentioned), it was because he had to - he couldn't give an inch or he would lose his fight.

Taking one's views seriously is not a big ego. Especially when, as I said, lots of other artists and critics have made the same complaints he has about comics and have specifically singled Garfield out for it. He also singled out in his 10th anniversary book a few strips where he ripped on his own perspectives of art, so its not like he had no sense of humor about it. Pretty much any time Calvin talks about True Art is Watterson ripping on himself.

Austin: It seems the evidence is against me. I concede.

Rebochan: I noticed Fast Eddie knocked out the examples earlier - is there some discussion on this page that I missed?

The Nifty: Urgh, this page is currently pretty awful - it's full of examples that aren't really related to the trope, just Complaining About People You Dont Like. I'm cutting:

(doesn't even list the example, is a gigantic wall-of-text)

This troper knew one who, every few years, would close down his current project/website/IRC server/forum and make a new one from scratch, claiming the new one would be huge and revolutionary. This process repeated itself at least a few times. At one point, he and his lackeys created an article at That Other Wiki about his very unknown site and an RPG hosted there. When it was proposed for deletion, this happened. Much Internet Tough Guy ensued, the man involved even making an obvious sock puppet named "Jack R. Stewart", and one of his minions clamoring about First Amendment rights being violated. He also compared his unknown gaming site to Yahoo as an example of why the article should be kept. This all occured despite the fact that his name essentially did not even exist outside of the small group of people who actually went to his sites. He even tried to set up a "government" on your IRC server, largely consisting of a huge, revolving roster of members as IRC operators with no actual knownledge of IRC, some sort of "parliament", and a "#dungeon" channel. He also called himself its "Supreme Justicar", and once claimed he was going to change his legal name to Neo Praedon. Yes, after the Matrix character. To give an idea of how seriously he's taken amongst those who have known him, if you google his full name, the first result (at least in the US) is a ytmnd insulting him.

(Not really a person, unclear as to why it's being listed)

This troper would argue that Something Awful, Portal of Evil, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and similar sites are themselves shining examples of this trope in action.

(Again, doesn't even list the example. Seriously, what the fuck is the point of doing this?)

This troper would rather not say, but he claims that someone at Blues Brothers Central acts like this.

Also, why in the name of Zeus are ridiculously famous people like Orson Welles, Alec Balwdin, Peter Sellers, Marlon Brando, Tom Cruise, Mike Myers, William Shatner etc listed here? Is the first half of the trope name invisible or something?

Rebochan: Well if you read the above discussions and the article introduction, famous people are on here because nobody is so famous that they can act like they're the center of the universe and get away with it.

Charred Knight: For example while Orson Welles was a brilliant Director, and actor he also burned every bridge he could until he was doing commercials for peas.

Rebochan: On further reflection, though, it might well be better to change this article's title to Big Fish, Small Pond (one of the alt titles) as suggested earlier, just to prevent the obvious question from coming up repeatedly. The original purpose of the trope was just to focus on internet divas, but it obviously encompasses more than that.

Hanz: I'm not sure whether or not Tomonobu Itagaki and David Jaffe deserve a spot in this page. Itagaki is rather arrogant, though his games are pretty topnotch, if Nintendo Hard (something he insults players about if they can't beat his games). I've heard stories of Jaffe, but from reading his blog he seems to be at least somewhat reasonable (if prone to the occasional Cluster F-Bomb).

Rann: I removed the following-

His runs on Astonishing X-men and Runaways were characterized by long delays, which he has neither apologized nor given a reason for. Yet when he was working on Buffy Season 8, all of the comics he wrote for the series were released on time.
- With the exception of Issue #19, which was released roughly 2 months late.

-mostly under the idea that for it to be a Big Ego, it should be above and beyond what people in the industry in question typically do. As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of people in the comics industry aren't in the habit of apologizing for delays. Since no one really does it, it seems just kind of whiny to blame Whedon for not doing it either. Someone not living up to the high standards you've placed on them yourself doesn't mean it's their ego run rampant.

Austin: There's no need to be insulting about it. Apologizing for not turning in your work on time is respectful, it's not at all a high standard. While it may not be an example of a big ego, it is at the very least unprofessional.

Kizor: I'll have to move this to the discussion page. It has too many individual opinions and self-contradicting statements to make much sense. You are supposed to edit other people's work, people... could someone who knows comics have a look at this and stick it back in?

Lots of comics writers have at some point considered themselves too grown-up for superheroes — at least the superheroes YOU like. The more popular they are, the more likely this is to happen. Warren Ellis and Alan Moore are good examples; both have done famous work with major comic heroes, but Ellis is vocal about his dislike for them, and Moore was swearing never to do it again last time we checked.
- Writers of this sort will sometimes take on a popular or classic character if they get to "rework" the character beyond recognition and/or destroy the character for future use. Moore's Miracleman and his original plan for Watchmen are good examples, as is much of Ellis's work in the mainstream Marvel universe (as opposed to the Ultimate universe, where reinvention is the order of the day, and Ellis seems content).
- In a similar vein, Garth Ennis, who is similarly vocal with his disdain for superheroes, will only work with any traditional superhero if he gets to utterly trash and humiliate the character in the process, usually derailing their character in the process. A rare exception to this is Superman, who appeared in a couple of issues of Hitman and was treated with complete respect.
- Grant Morrison set out to do this to Batman with the storyline Batman: RIP, specifically saying he went into the story with the intention of inflicting "a fate worse than death" on Bruce Wayne to make absolutely sure that he would never be able to don the cape and cowl again.
  - In Morrison's defense, he actually likes Batman, and has enjoyed working on Batman immensely. His reasoning for handling RIP as it has been is: 1) That he's addressing a real-life dilemma Bruce Wayne would eventually have to face, i.e. getting too old to be Batman (after all, Superman eventually got to be married, Flash had children... why can't Batman change); 2) Paraphrashing: "Killing him off would be too easy, too much a disservice to the character, and too much a disservice to the fans who've come to expect something more than that of Batman."; 3) Producing a well-executed step-down for Bruce Wayne that will let him pass on the mantle without leaving a bad taste in the fans' mouths (a new character taking up the name CAN be respected and accepted by the public, if done well... if you don't believe me, I've got Two Words for you: Wally West).
  - Anyone ever heard of Terry McGinnis?
  - Though, he may have gone a weeeeeee bit too far.
- In Alan Moore's defence, his refusal to work on classic superheroes seems to come more from not wanting to work for Marvel or DC, rather than on the characters themselves. After all, his run on Supreme was essentially turned into an extended tribute to Superman.

Doctor Nemesis: Since the page seems to focus more on Small Name Big Egos in general rather than those online, I took the liberty of reworking the write-up a bit to remove some of the emphasis on it being a largely online phenomenon.

Doctor Nemesis: Deleted:

Peter A. David, writer of Aquaman, Young Justice, X-Factor, some Star Trek novels, and other works. In a discussion of Frank Miller's film adaptation of The Spirit, he criticized fans who didn't like it by remarking, "Ants don’t get to condescend to eagles."

Because whilst Mr. David might have a big ego (I don't know enough about him to comment), I'm not entirely sure that coming to the defence of someone else's work, in however an impassioned fashion, is the best evidence of it. He's casting Miller (however deservedly) as the eagle in that situation, not himself.

Main Man J: How about his current war against the scans_daily community? There's some comments by him in the main blog entries and especially the comments sections that would probably count.

Filby: I took it more as likening creators in general to eagles and fans to ants. In any case, it showed a total lack of respect for fans.

(Oh, and speaking as a longtime SD member, there's really not a "war" between us. He just got cheesed off at us and his employers had us shut down, and a lot of our members including myself are sore at him, but his complaints were legitimate.)

deleted the section on Ota King. it seemed to be less of "this guy has an oversized ego in the subbing community" and more "Otaking has outspoken views on subbing and Doctor Who that conflict with mine, this cannot be allowed".

Nuked:

This troper remembers reading on his website something along the lines of: "If you wish to accuse me of being arrogant, go look up the word 'irony' in the dictionary," or something to that effect. As for the "Zero Punctuation" reviews, he often makes self-deprecating digs at himself, so... yeah.

Because: 1: Justifying edit. 2: "Get a sense of humor/You don't get it/etc." is the oldest excuse in the book for acting like a twat, and not only says something about ego in the first place but also doesn't apply to something he's publicly apologized for. 3: Making jokes at your own expense doesn't excuse or justify incidents of twattery. See: Scott Kurtz.

Kalle: Can we please cut down the EvilSlayerX5 example some?

Doctor Nemesis: This is probably not the best place to raise this, but it seems for a while now at least half the edits to this page have been someone either changing the apostrophes used from just a simple sans-serif apostrophe to what I assume is some kind of HTML code that turns it from sans-serif to serif. What's going on? Is this intentional, or is it just some kind of automatic thing that happens whenever someone makes an edit? And if it's not automatic, then why does there seem to be a bit of an Edit War happening about it — does it matter? Either suits me, by the way, I'm just curious.

Dear TV Tropes,

Please. Do not. Link. To Mr. Crosby's page. We do NOT need more edit wars tearing this up, much less from someone as tireless as he.

Signed, Terminus Est 13

Quick note:

The fact that he is, on a basic, technical level, entirely right about all of this is neither here nor there.

1: If it's "neither here nor there", it's natter. 2: Going around assigning "right" and "wrong" to arguments isn't a practice to follow.

Removed the Cruise and Cameron film examples. Two reasons a) They're not small names, they're huge names b) the level of ego- they're being self-aggrandising, there is being heartless and there is being kinda nuts and they are different. Cruise is actually quite humble when it comes to a lot of things, especially his work (and this is what the trope is about right? Connecting the ego to the work, not making proud moral judgements?) but is nuts when it comes to Scientology. Cameron- the man can be heartless, he can vary in how much he admits that but he's not much of a self-aggrandiser when compared to "I'm ze best in ze fuckin' bizneess".

I'm not defending the guy, but Small Name, Big Ego doesn't apply to just not-famous people. Huge names can be involved as well.
- Huge names can be small names? Um, okay...
  - [shrugs] I don't get it either, but them's the rules.

Jack-of-Some-Trades: While my blatant fanboying of Shigeru Miyamoto keeps me from having an unbiased opinion, I'm a bit thrown off here.

Shigeru Miyamoto, while in no way a small name at all, is, if the stories are to be believed, occasionally shows... not really egotism, but more a controlling attitude, a firm belief that he always knows best. Not entirely unexpected, given that the guy is the biggest name in video games, and is work is without at doubt brilliant. He's apparently the kind of guy who can switch between compromise and high ego at the drop of a hat.
- People should remember, though, that he is considered a big name in Japanese console games, which is firstly not the same thing as a big name in video gaming as a whole (it's a very particular genre) and secondly being roughly equivalent to being a big name in comics, which is to say not a big name at all, in comparison to real artists.

If I follow the analogy correctly, Japanese console games are to the rest of the genre (presumably Western games) as comic books are to "real art"? Far be it for me to suggest that Tropers could have small names and big egos, but someone just disparaged an entire genre.

And yes, Shigeru Miyamoto is a big name in gaming. The fact that he deals exclusively in a certain subset of the gaming population does not mean that he's a small name. JK Rowling only writes fantasy, are you about to suggest that she's only a big name in fantasy literature?

Crowley: I was bothered by that entry myself, but mostly for how vague it is. "Controlling attitude?" He's the boss, for crying out loud. The entry even says itself that it's "not really egotism"!

Terminus Est 13: Nixed it, then. —- deleted this bit again:

Paul "Ota King" Johnson, a professional translator who has gained lotsa notoriety for his elitist stance on anime fansubs, believing that all of them must adhere to Woolseyism and be as barebones as possible just like in the 90's and claiming that the current subbing community reeks of being this trope themselves. He even went as far as making a documentaryfor the sake of anviliciously slamming those points in your face and violently lashing out at what he thinks is wrong with modern subs; it naturally set many fires ablaze across the Internet. Oh, and just try talking to him about the new Doctor Who series. His Nostalgia Filter with the classic series will disintegrate you. (Jeez, that's at most six Who egomaniacs on this very page!)

having actually chatted with the man a fair few times, calling him "elitist" is pretty far from the truth, especially since his "anvilicious documentary" (aka 5 short animations on youtube) mainly focuses on elements like ill-placed Gratuitous Japanese and inserting japanese honorifics where none were used in the source material. as I said before the first time I removed this, it seems to be less about otaking having a big ego and more about someone pissed off at him trying to smear him.

Pikawil: Except that his aggressive tone does little to help that point of view froom your private conversation.

By all means, why don't you actually SHOW some concrete examples of his aggressive tone? at most, in his documentary he is somewhat condescending, which is rather expected when someone who makes their living as a professional translator is repeatedly called an asshole and incorrect by a bunch of arrogant amateurs whose choices frankly go beyond the realm of "stylistic choice" and well into the world of "not having any damn clue what they're doing". Just because you say that he's aggressive about it doesn't mean that he is, and I'm removing it again until you provide some actual evidence that he's anything other than a somewhat peeved professional who is justifiably annoyed at people who are angry at being called out on their mistakes.

Rann: Go back to bed, Paul.

because its absolutely impossible for anyone to legitimately disagree with you, so they must be a sock puppet, amirite?

Pikawil: This. Also, the comments for this video. Especially this:

"But the thing is, my superior TV watching brain is very adept at detecting crap. Therefore, when I say that most of the new D Octor Who episodes are pretty much rubbish, have the ultimate source to back my claim up - my own incredible mind."

...which sounds like that bitter guy Lawrence Miles, who's on the article without any debate.

That sounded very tongue and cheek. Since having a superior TV watching brain is very contradicting. It sounds like there are several people against him with conflicting views.

Haven't read the entirety of that animesuki thread, but for the first 9 or so pages it seems to basically consist of nothing but otaking stating reasons for what he said while everyone else calls him a troll. Also, as the person above me said, that youtube comment is almost too ridiculous to be anything BUT a joke. entry removed again.

Pikawil: Nope, not a joke. Here, let me pull another quote from the same video that's harder to debate:

"RTD is a terrible writer and has utterly ruined Davros. ["The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"] had nothing of the Davros shown in this video. No shouting, no ranting, no incredible speeches, and no Dalek voice either. Pathetic."

Go ahead, watch the episodes in question and then try denying it. And besides, talking to anonymii who don't sign their names in this very page is confusing me and making me put less credibility in them.

—-

Someguy: Deleted the following:

Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance ~~Trilogy~~ Cycle, who apparently "strives for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf" and talks down about JK Rowling. This would be bad enough if he weren't also generally considered to be a really, really bad writer.
- It should be noted the main contention with Paolini is his novels were initially published by his parents' own publishing company, thereby skipping right by the main problem suffered by many aspiring authors. One would think with such an obvious advantage, he'd be just a wee bit more humble in his statements, and not so dismissive of his "peers"...

I see nothing that really show that the guy have an huge ego ("Strive" means he want to be as good, not that he is), this seems to be simply whining by the Eragon hatedom. If someone can find a direct quote of him talking down to other young authors, I guess this can come back,

and

It gets worse. Apparently ESX 5 has recently stated in another user's video that other people's opinions are meaningless to him. you can see his words here, Page 2 of the comments area
That's not counting the number of crazy ideas he has about the American Government. Hell, it got to the point where he claimed that the government controls the weather. "WHAT THE FUCK" does not even come close to explaining it. Clearly he's been eating too much chocolate and getting too hyperactive, to believe that The Patriots control the entire world.
Recently, ESX5 removed all of his Youtube friends out of belief that one of his enemies sent all of them to masquerade as allies as a stealthy approach to control him. You couldn't make this up if you tried.
On another of ESX5's pouts, he recently made a video which, to put it bluntly, self-proclaims as if he was a martyr and a Messiah for MUGEN, thanking Alex Jones for "opening his eyes to the truth", calling most MUGENites as stupid and calling the two people referred above (WildTengu and Marc Goldstein/MarkyJoe1990) as if they were founders of an evil New World Order in MUGEN along with those authors who make characters who are "accurate" (which it's false up to some point, since Phantom Of The Server and RajaaBoy actually do not stick to game accuracy). Gentlemen, EvilSlayerX5 doesn't hit rock bottom... he just digs further to sink himself more.
...if his remark (found somewhere in that comment page) that he would outright kill his own family in case they wouldn't wake up to his insane claims didn't sunk him much allready...
[2] And now he "hates friendship" because he thinks you have to be a carbon copy of whoever you want to befriend.
In this video, he has now tried to manipulate his fanbase to stop being friends with anyone who dislikes his characters and wage guerrilla trolling against them, namely WildTengu, GF202020 and MC2. [[ And that wasn't made up.]] How lower can EvilSlayerX5 get, seriously?
And recently, due to the fact most of his "fans" (if he has any) rejecting his campaign of guerrilla trolling, he decided to do so by himself, and started downrating and trash commenting on videos from his "enemies".
And the hostilities from him towards the rest of the MUGEN world has gone so far that one of those who took offense bit back, hard, and turned his Kain_E into a mock version of EvilSlayerX5. (Warning: The video is gut-bursting hilarious)
And finally, he seemed to enter into reason and just disappeared from the MUGEN scene. Good Riddance.

Christ, this is not Encyclopedia Dramatica-lite, people.

Ganondorfdude11: I think the Paolini example should be put back in. In addition to talking down to J.K. Rowling, he has repeatedly shown an inability to take criticism as it seems his family shields him from almost all criticism. For one, users of the official forums for the series have been banned simply for referring to the Inheritance Cycle books as "bricks." Reportedly, they also filter out any negative emails he might have received. He also tends to overstate his writing abilities. He bragged in an interview about having "invented three languages" when they each have a working vocabulary of about thirty words. In the case of the "language" spoken by the Mook army, it only has about five impronounceable words. To hear him tell it, he'd invented a constructed language on par with Klingon or Quenya. Putting him on here has nothing to do with Hatedom for the series.

Something's causing some of the entries to bunch up together in one long paragraph instead of separating like they should. Can someone check up on that?

Pikawil: So, anyone wanna elaborate on Megan Fox? Or bring up some relevant articles so that I may do so myself?

AJTheBlackDragon: I was wondering, should we add Mashiruo (spell check?) Sakurai on this list? He's not all to famous except for creating Super Smash Bros and the Kirby games, but he thinks he's better than Miyamoto in many ways, even though it appears he hasn't played any other games except Super Mario Bros, The Legend Of Zelda, and maybe some Pokemon (or watched the TV shows). I'm just asking if anyone would think it would be an accepted idea.

Ganondorfdude11: He hasn't done anything to demonstrate an inflated ego. When did he ever say that he was better than Miyamoto? And it's apparent from Super Smash Bros Brawl that he's played a lot more games than you listed there. Super Smash Bros is listed under Doing It for the Art for a reason.

Ganondorfdude11: Okay, I'm all for removing examples that just further Hatedom, but cutting a broad swath across examples as they stand seems a bit much. I'm going to try to restore some examples that really shouldn't have been deleted, as they demonstrate genuine egotism.

Morven: Um, the trope is NOT supposed to be about ego in general; otherwise it wouldn't have the 'Small Name' part of the title. Superstars having superstar-sized egos is a quite different trope, I feel.

Trogga: I thought there wasn't a consensus about that yet.

Ganondorfdude11: Maybe this should be renamed to clear up confusion. I propose Planet Sized Ego or something similar, because talented people do tend to be egotistical.

Farseer Lolotea: Two possible proposals: Either there should be two tropes (stars with big egos/unknowns who think that they're knowns) or this should just be about anyone whose ego vastly outweighs their talent, fame or no fame. Small Talent, Big Ego, perhaps?

T Beholder: I propose "Too Much Ego In His Cosmos". And yes, it's a quote from Rudyard Kipling's Bimi. :)

I Like Crows: Seconding that suggestion because that? Is a wonderful name.

Doctor Nemesis: I've put a link to the renaming vote on the page itself.

Doctor Nemesis: It would seem — for now, anyway — the nays have it.

Hopeless Troper: I removed Chuck Austen from the article. Over 70% of his example was used to Complain About People One Editor Didn't Like, while the rest of the example just wasn't self explanatory.

Paireon: Just curious: how come David Gonterman isn't here?

Rebochan: He is - he's listed under webcomics. Come on, how could a page like this be complete without our Davey-kins?

Known Unknown: Think hard... is that bit about Rich Burlew really ego related? Lets see:

Spoilering spec. This is standard, or at least, others do it too, or something like it. As for his reasoning, I wholeheartedly understand it - having people give speculation about what you should do with your work can cause you to want to something "unexpected" instead, the same way a writer who finds out a ship about his/her characters he/she doesn't agree with is tempted to sink it. On the alternative path, there's a story about a fan who 'sued a webcomic artist because the spec the fan gave was easily readable in the forum and turned out to be true. So Yeah.
Banning politics on his forum - also standard, because politics are prime Flame Bait and can screw up forums something fierce. Most forums have a completely separate section, though.
As for the rest of the stuff (not allowing alterations of the standard avatars and not allowing schedule slip complaining), the second can just be due to the fact that it happens all the time, and thus, it's really a given that it will a occur, perhaps he's just tired of hearing about it? As for the first, how is that ego related? In fact, if nobody can give me a straight reason for why any of this is ego related, I'm cutting it.

Hanz: Should Harlan Ellison deserve a spot up here?

Shini: Brooke Mc Eldowney deserved a spot now with this week's run of 9 Chickweed Lane - lashing out at everyone who complained about his work. And considering this ISN'T the first time he has done something like this.

Main Man J: Bendis? Really? I don't even follow his interviews much, but I never got the impression he was this trope, and I'm not even a big fan of the guy's work. But I will say not everyone think his work's bad. Somepeople love his work, his books must sell like hotcakes for a reason. Anyway, if you want to prove he's a big ego, some specific examples would definitely help.

Hugh Man: I've deleted it until we can get some specific examples.

Jesse Baker: Why Bendis is a SMBE

1. Only became famous for MAKING FUN OF JOHN BYRNE'S SN,BE-ness only to engage in the exact same things Byrne has done to warrent the "Byrne the Living Ego" parody.

2. Can't take ANY criticism whatsoever. If you don't suck his dick, you are the enemy. Made a point to bash critics in his comics for being losers for not sucking him off, to the point of spending an entire B-Plot for in "Powers" calling the internet (where criticism of his work has steadily grown) the worst thing to happen to mankind because people can say bad things about other people on it.

3. Hypocritical douchebag: left the Spider-Man CGI cartoon MTV did because of the pointless changes MTV made to the franchise for said cartoon but went on to do the exact same thing to the Avengers, then gets pissy when people complain about him radically changing the Avengers for the worse the same way that he bitched MTV out for doing to Spider-Man.

4. Is basically a failed noir writer who can't get work doing anything else but writing comics. The closest to non-comic work he's had was the advisor job on the Spider-Man cartoon and that only lasted a couple of months.

5. Most notably: made a HUGE deal about how he never had any complaints about his writing and stated that he had a long-standing policy on buying back people's copies of his work if they didn't. But once Avengers Disassembled came out to overwhelmingly negative reviews, pulled a full-on "delete fucking everything" as far as removing all references to said "I'll buy back your copies of my comics" deal from his website and forum. However, several people (myself included) saved the information and did mail in copies of Avengers Disassembled and even then, had to publicly chastise Bendis to get him to honor his pledge after exposing how he was trying to back out of his boast (which, BTW he no longer mentions after being outed).

werdna: I've read enough about him to believe it. Heck, just read Scott Kurtz's recent letter!

BritBllt: Moving this comment about Alan Moore here...

Dork Tower once had his butler tell him that if he was going to complain about the way his comics were made into movies, he should really think before giving the rights to the first guy to ask.

Alan Moore doesn't own the rights to most of his comic book adaptations, and lots of fans could jump on that fact to natter up the comment. That said, I've got little love for Alan Moore myself. He's a great writer, sure, but complaining that the V For Vendetta movie misrepresented the anarchic political overtones of his work, while turning Dorothy Gale into an incestous nymphomaniac and Mina Harker into The Daria, is taking Hypocritical Humor to a whole new level.

Brian Michael Bendis, who basically is the Rob Liefeld of writing and basically a large-scale example of what happens when people with glass houses throw stones. Basically Bendis only became famous by mocking John Byrne's SNBE status only to go off and prove to be WORSE than Byrne. Take healthy mix of They Just Didn't Care, Critical Research Failure, and the constant stream of Take That! attacks on the few critics willing to call him out on his crappy writing (most notably on the Avengers, which Bendis scorched earth just because he could and was the turning point for a lot of people for calling out his crappy writing) and a mind-boggling amount of Protection from Editors, and you have a nightmare of epic proportions.
- I think he became famous for writing comic books not for mocking Byrne. And the rest of that post is equally unconected to the truth. Just because you don't like a popular writer thats no reason to make stuff up.

Real Slim Shadowen: Fix it, nuke it, or don't edit it at all.

Charred Knight: Oh dare god, to blatantly state that Brian Micheal Bendis is the Rob Liefeld of writing for writing Avenger Dissemble is just plain stupid. His work on Ultimate Spider-man has been nothing short of fantastic. He also is one of the best writers of Norman Osborn ever.

Matthew The Raven: I don't even know who Brian Michael Bendis is, and the current description doesn't actually say he did anything egotistical, but he must have done something horrible. Jesse Baker wants that fucker and everyone who likes him dead. And in hell.

BritBllt: This entry keeps appearing and disappearing, and I'm on the side of it disappearing. Removed...

According to Greg Rucka (at Armageddon Melbourne 2009) Christopher Nolan tried to make himself out to be the person solely responsible for the Batman franchise, going so far as to try to get DC to stop publishing Batman comics.

For several reasons. One, while TVTropes isn't generally as strict as Wikipedia on sourcing, this page is different: it's judging someone's personal character, and so the example really needs to be widely known and already have that reputation to avoid getting into personal flaming and outright libel. I searched Google for anything about Greg Rucka, Armageddon Melbourne 2009, and Nolan, or any combination of Rucka and Nolan that suggests a feud, and couldn't find anything. Two, this claim just sounds so ridiculous on the face of it, and doesn't match anything else in Nolan's history, that I'm more inclined to see it as, at best, celebrity gossip. And three, while I was looking for anything to support the entry, I came upon an interview with Christopher Nolan that came across as knowledgable and respectful of the comics, enough so as to make that entry all the more unlikely.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16888

Now, if we can find some outside support for the claim, I'm all for putting it back, but basing entries on an unsourced rumor is a quick way to get into a bunch of thorny legal issues. TV Tropes should just reflect what's already out there in terms of "big ego" reputations.

Some New Guy: God damnit, why are so many of the good tropes getting cut requests lately? Keep it.

lrrose:I put in the request because (a): most examples have led to edit wars, (b): tropes like Nice Character, Mean Actor aren't allowed to have Real Life examples (and Small Name, Big Ego is the Real Life section for Ted Baxter) and (c): the removal of the Small Name requirement makes every celebrity part of this list.

Madrugada: Leave it. A) Edits aren't edit wars. An edit war is 'take it out, put it back, take it out again, put it back again,' ad nauseam. Lots of examples here have been pulled, discussed, and then either restored, rewritten and then restored, or agreed to be kept out. That's not an edit war. b)This is a real-life trope. It's going to have real- life examples. Tropes like Nice Character, Mean Actor may be real life, but are also used in fiction. c) Every celebrity is not eligible. The definition is "Ego out of proportion to talent/fame."

Rebochan: I don't see the problem. This trope doesn't allow for people to post their personal beefs with random people they know. The only edit warring has been disputing the definition, but its been rather tame for the most part. And yea, everyone is not eligible - you have to start acting like the Big Ego part to get up here, and well out of proportion to your fame. So obviously, while someone with a lot of fame can qualify, they have higher requirements than other people do.

Shrikesnest: If a page has problems that could be solved by taking some action on it, like removing all the examples or what have you, then the correct way to resolve those issues is to take it to the forums, not to put it on the cutlist. I understand that the cutmasters get really annoyed at this...

Insanity Prelude: Yeah, it doesn't need cutting.

Ghilz: Cut the following

Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics' current Editor-In-Chief. Despite being a kind man in person, he had the audacity to think that he had to sell Spider-Man's marriage to Mephisto because he didn't like it when Peter Parker originally married Mary Jane back in the 1970s. Quesada has also taken to killing off just about every woman who isn't blonde. To quote Linkara: "Editors are not writers, so they should just let the writers do their job."

While I dislike that storyline right about as much as anyone else, this isn't an example of the trope. Authors changing works in ways that we don't like or that don't make sense are not what this page is about.

elbitjusticiero: Also, I don't see how Hendrix's rant applies to this. He is not that very well known, alright, but his argument, although certainly debatable, is not an example of Big Ego. The quality of his works has nothing to do with his reasoning that writers who publish in the 'Net for free are hurting the price of other writers' work. ~~

BritBllt: Something has got to be done about this page. In the meantime, re-deleting the ever-controversial Joe Quesada entry...

Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada. While even their critics will agree that they revived Marvel Comics after several years of abysmal neglect, they have made an equal number of huge mistakes (Chuck Austen on X-Men and The Avengers, cancelling Thunderbolts, driving Geoff Johns off of Avengers because he refused to go along with the "Writing for the Trade" writing style, Bruce Jones' Hulk run) that have pissed off their readers and damaged the properties in ways that utterly negate their earlier successes (Grant Morrison on X-Men, J Michael Straczynski on Spider-Man). Out of the two, in particular, Quesada is even WORSE than Jemas in that Quesada was largely forced to play straight man to keep the insane Jemas, arguably giving fans good stuff that made up for Jemas's various brainfarts. When Jemas left Marvel, Quesada was given free reign and promptly put Marvel onto a suicide course, which has alienated fans and critics in record numbers. Not that Quesada cares, even though Spider-Man has reached new creative and sales lows, with numbers that got the previous Editor-In-Chief Bob Harras fired, put Bendis on a book that he was utterly unfit to write and letting him scorch earth with the property, made Iron Man (who finally became a pop culture icon with his first movie) into the most hated character in Marvel this decade, and driving off people like Sean McKeever and JMS with his asshat behavior.

Being an incompetent editor who's totally out of touch with the audience does not necessarily equal "big ego". This page has a real problem with people throwing in every celebrity they don't like as "big ego", when the real complaint is that they're clueless hacks. I totally agree that "Brand New Day" is a travesty and he should be fired for it and replaced with an editor who gives that whole mess the world's fastest Reset Button, but we need direct evidence that he has an ego, like insulting fans at a convention. "He made a stupid choice and stuck with it" is not the same thing.

As for the page itself, I'd remake it so that only people who have been recognized by other media as having a big ego can be listed. That preserves all the biggest ones: William Shatner, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore and a ton of other celebrities get lampooned for their egos all the time (South Park alone could populate a whole page with its celebrity send-ups), while stemming the "any celebrity that sucks" flanderization that's taken over.

Rebochan: The only problem with that is that the page is still trying to categorize internet personalities (and I see Zeality's minions have expunged him from the page again - poor baby *eye roll*) and they're rarely recognized outside the net.

BritBllt: True, but maybe at least we can add a note saying there needs to be some direct interaction between the subject and other people to claim "big ego", and not just being stubborn, having weird beliefs, taking an unpopular stance and so on. Along those lines, removing this new entry...

The author of webcomic Instant Classic, Brian Carroll, decided that his comic on the web shouldn't be called a "webcomic", instead prefering to call it a "digital journal project", even going so far as to change the site's domain, which previously had "comic" in it. Of course, this broke links all over the site and made navigation a mess, but sometimes people taking you seriously as an artist is just more important than people having access to your art.

Because, seriously, he changed the name of his website, which he has every right to do. Geez, if updating the name of your site counts as a "big ego", we really might need to readjust the scale. o.O

Anyway, I'll try to move some of the more vindictive examples to Discussion later. Maybe a Troper Tales page would help cut down on some of it, though that might also open the door to flaming.

BritBllt: Okay, I cut out probably about half the examples. So many of them mix in legitimate egotism with flaming or blur the line so much that these deletions aren't anywhere near consistent; they're just what stuck out most. The main pattern I see is that the examples are thin-skinned rather egotistical (being thin-skinned can be part of a big ego, but I don't think it counts all by itself), or they're just general jerks, or the example's really about their lack of talent and the "ego" just comes from the person not admitting it. Since it's a huge list, I'll folderize it...

(There, finally got it to work! It's still spamming up the page, so I'll delete it after awhile...)

Dialga X: Not sure if the FF.net writer Farla counts. She is an excellent writer and a reviewer but in several of the reviews, her Live Journal and FF.net forum she tends to speak as if she were the Goddess of Fan Fiction and everyone else is below her. Not to mention that she is a condescending Jerkass but that does not count.

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It could be argued that Byrne had already become Complete Monster by the time he made these comments in the aftermath of 9/11^*
^{Of course, there was good deal of people behaving as if WTC had been connected to their frontal lobes at the time}
:
"The only acceptable response, now that we are officially in a new world, is for the American government to go Old Testament on these motherfuckers. Operation Flaming Sword. Find them and kill them. And kill their wives, their children, their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. Go Super-Israel, and let them know what it feels like to be “at war” with the United States."
"I’ve been thinking this since the various lunatic cells of the IRA began loudly declaring themselves “at war” with Great Britain, imagining immediately what woud happen if the British government said “Righty-ho, war it is!” and sent over the RAF to turn Dublin into a smoking crater."

That's offensive, intolerant, genocidal and all that, but it's not an ego.

More recently, Liefeld reacted to Rictor and Shatterstar's recent Relationship Text Upgrade in X-Factor #46 by getting into a massive flame war with Peter David, while the rest of the internet looked on and loled. It seems that Liefeld originally conceived of Shatterstar as emotionless and asexual, and objected to him getting into a homosexual relationship as being wildly unbelievable and swore that he would undo it as soon as possible - no matter how many commenters pointed out that Liefeld had given up the rights to Shatterstar a long time ago, and after several years of character development exploring his developing emotions and sexuality, it was a bit strange for him to start protesting now. Extra SNBE points to Liefeld for one of his protests being along the lines of 'Shatterstar isn't gay, because he's like a Spartan warrior'.

Okay, he complained about his character being taken in a different direction... that, by itself, isn't a big ego. And while not doing the research is also bad, it's also not a big ego.

Bendis's most blatant example of egomania was his bragging that he would buy back any copies of his work that people don't like, only to rescind the offer (and tried his damnest to delete any evidence of said offer off the face of the internet) as soon disgruntled Avengers fans started mailing back their copies of his infamously So Bad Its Horrible Avengers Disassembled arc to him for their money back.

Well that's a Jerkass move and makes him a liar, it's not a big ego.

Avengers Disassembled was filled with countless Plot Holes and clear examples of Bendis not bothering to read a single issue of the Avengers EVER, which led to Bendis infamously declaring that he "knew more about the Avengers than anyone else" and "reread the story knowing what you know about Scarlet Witch" (even though the story made zero sense given how the story got every single possible detail wrong about the character of Scarlet Witch, to the point that fans were already counting the ways the story would inevitable be retconned as someone framing Wanda for the murders), as his dismissive response towards his Critical Research Failure.

I removed everything after "knowing what you know about Scarlet Witch". The first half counts as a big ego. The second half is just complaining about the writing.

The growing tide turning against him has also lead to Bendis spending several pages of Powers bitching against the internet, claiming it was evil simply because it give people a vehicle to complain about stuff, in spite of the fact that he's one of the major writers of this last decade who's career was made off the Internet, as far as Bendis using the internet to promote his work to a wider audience.
This troper like his works, but I have to admit one thing - his ego is so big he dosn't care about anything written by anybody else. The only exception would be his work with Uncanny X-Men writer Matt Fraction and Secret Warriors writer Johnathan Hickman; even then, that's because Fraction was allowed to write two issues of Dark Avengers, as part of his X-Men/Avengers crossover and Bendis co-created the Secret Warriors plot with Hickman. Also, during crossovers with a main story lead by someone else, he really care if his story will tie in it well.

At most, that makes him thin-skinned, not necessarily egotistical. And the second one is more complaining about writing you don't like.

"Link's Queen" responded to criticism of her infamously vile The Legend Of Zelda fanfic My Inner Life by slapping an all-caps ~~rant~~ disclaimer in front of it, and by launching flame wars against critics.

Unable to take criticism, but that's not the same thing. And if we list everyone who takes criticism badly, especially fanfic writers, that's pretty much going to be the majority of the human race.

A Warcraft fanfic author who goes by the screen name "Semiiramiis" tends to react to relatively mild critiques of her long-winded, Mary Sue-ridden yarns with hugely disproportionate vendettas.

Again, flaming your critics isn't the same thing. It's a rare person of any sort who doesn't take criticism personally. A big ego should be "I'm the greatest ever", not just "I don't suck, you suck".

Joe_Cracker. Joe freaking Cracker. This IGN forumite posted on The Legend Of Zelda boards in 2003 boasting about his plans to make a full-length animated Zelda movie based on his incoherent, terribly written, and non-proofread scripts. While he got some people interested, his attempts at "filmmaking" showed that he didn't have the slightest clue how to actually make a film. He turned off most interested parties with his ignorant rants, in which he said that his film would have an All-Star Cast with Whoopi Goldberg, Britney Spears, and Bruce Willis all in the cast. When posters pointed out that he didn't even own the rights to Zelda, he countered that all he needed to do was contact DiC Entertainment (the studio that made the 1980s cartoon based on the games) and get their permission. Several IGN users used his gullibility to impersonate John Grusd, head of DiC, and ended up making threedifferentanimations based on his script, complete with misspellings. He is known to use such neologisms as "crackasized" to describe anything that he does, and the quality of his actual work ranges from So Bad, It's Good to So Bad It's Horrible, yet he maintains his delusions of making this Zelda movie to this very day, even after six years of being mocked by the rest of IGN and the Zelda fandom in general. Here is documentation of the entire saga.
- It became clear from quite early on in his IGN threads that Cracker had something rather wrong with him, and it eventually turned out that he had autism, among other disorders. This may explain his delusions of grandeur.
- Could this Joe_Cracker fellow be at least tangenitally related to Spencer David, aka writerofevangelion91, that bastard who wouldn't stop gushing about how he was going to make a Neon Genesis Evangelion movie, wouldn't shut up about his screenplay and how awesome it was to the point where most people didn't believe him at all, and when he finally did release excerpts from it, it sucked harder than a black hole?

Ignorant, delusional, a pathological liar... but I'm not seeing anything about trumpeting his ego. And the mention of autism makes me particularly uncomfortable with that example standing.

Paul "OtaKing" Johnson, a professional translator who has gained lots of notoriety for his well-intentionned stance on anime fansubs that was marred by an agressive attitude. Basically, he did a documentary pointing out valid flaws in fansubs. Good enough. However, his points were also juggled in with some ad-hominem attacks against the fansubbing community. Lemme repeat: We're talking about a professional translator vs. fansubbing. Needless to say, verbally blasting others who aren't as good as you just for the hell of it ain't the best way to provoke improvement in those people... His comportment is further proved by trying to talk to him about the new Doctor Who series. His hatred of it goes to the same level as Lawrence Miles below. (And for one, he also claims to possess a "superior TV watching brain.").

An offensive, intolerant position doesn't equal a big ego.

DBZ fanfic writer Ranchanthalas reacts to all criticism of her 'work' with name calling and infantile outrage. Unsatisfied with driving fans away from her personal webpage, she has come to TV Tropes, where she has continued her puerile behavior.

More thin-skinned fanfic writers. Also, this one comes off as a passive-aggressive flame against another troper.

Basically, a lot of fanfic authors. When this troper has left concrit on a bad fanfic, nine times out of ten the reply has been "ur so meen". Each one time out of ten is like a breath of fresh air.

We can't list a whole category of people. They might have egos, but we need names. :)

Michael Winner is notorious for this, both in the studio and restaurants.

Too vague, more details needed.

Not directly involved with the film industry, but film critic Armond White wields an enormous ego. Not only does he seem to contradict almost every single majority opinion for often stupid reasons, he also insults those who disagree with him within his reviews.

Contradicting the majority opinion doesn't mean he has a big ego. Even being a jackass and insulting other people in his reviews isn't the same thing.

Why does this count? I'd say Cameron is a pretty good director - and this makes no mention of him claiming to be Bigger Than Jesus, just that he's not nice to work with.
- Your question is legitimate. But consider this, equally-esteemed directors like Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson would never physically harm someone for "daring" asking them to reconsider a scene. Spielberg has made billions and tends to bring his movies on-budget and on-time. Cameron was throwing a bitch fit, and Titanic was running millions over budget and had already missed its Christmas release. Seriously, Jim, it was that much trouble to just rethink some scenes??

I removed that natter, and added the last bit to the main entry.

Hal P. Warren, writer/director/star of the less-than-prestigious, not-remotely scary horror film Manos The Hands Of Fate, was known to have quite the prima donna attitude, particularly considering that he was a fertilizer salesman who made the film on a bet, that all the cast and crew were inexperienced amateurs picked up from the local populace, and that said film is now a prominent competitor for being one of the worst ever made. Apparently, he turned the night of the film's release into a media event and hired a limo to carry the cast into the theater. They had to sneak out during the screening when the audience started breaking into hysterics. Even after all of this, he still tried to pitch a sequel to the damn thing.

This is pretty much "he sucks, and wouldn't admit that he sucks", which is immensely unfair to anyone. Hiring a limo to carry the cast to the premier just sounds generous to me, and pitching a sequel just sounds insanely optimistic (he did later admit that he would've had better luck redubbing it as a comedy, which sounds pretty self-depricating).

Vincent Gallo has a reputation of being a real egotistical prick.
- After starring in his film Buffalo 66, Christina Ricci developed a profound hatred of the man. This probably had to do with the fact that he made her get pawed by the middle-aged Mickey Rourke, something that Ricci claims was not in the shooting script.
- And then there was the (highly entertaining) feud with Roger Ebert. Ho, boy.
  - To be fair, Gallo did one thing that about only one other person on this list did: He eventually accepted the criticism and recut the film. The shorter version is generally regarded as better, and Ebert even gave it a positive rating.

That might make him a pervert, and a vindictive jerk depending on how personal the feud with Ebert got, but by itself, that doesn't mean he has a big ego.

Wesley Snipes. He objected to Executive Meddling on Blade Trinity. Justifiable as he was personally invested in the project. Not as justifiable? Deciding that as a means of protest he would only show up on set when it was absolutely necessary for his face to be on-screen and spending the rest of the time smoking pot and/or being a dick to everyone else. And still taking a $13 million paycheque (that he refused to pay taxes on) despite his stunt double doing the bulk of the work for him.

Being a dick isn't the same thing as having an ego. As for the paycheck, who in the world would seriously expect a Hollywood actor to say "nah, give it to my stunt double, he did the bulk of my work!" As for the taxes, being greed isn't the same thing as having a big ego.

It seems like "big ego" is being taken as a catch-all term for any jerkass behavior.

Alexandro Jodorowsky. His infamous attempt at making Dune never got off the ground because everyone involved (even Dali) was getting fed up with him.

This one needs lots more detail. Fed up with him why? Could be a big ego, but could be something else entirely (maybe he was an obsessive perfectionist, or just rude and abrasive... having not heard the story, I leave it to someone else to fill in the blanks).

Amanda Mc Kittrick Ros, a writer who released her first book, the execrable Irene Iddlesleigh, way back in 1897. The humorist Barry Pain wrote a very sarcastic review celebrating how hilariously bad the book was, to which Amanda flew into a rage:
This so called Barry Pain, by name, has taken upon him to criticise a work the depth of which fails to reach the solving power of his borrowed, and, he'd have you believe, varied talent.
- Her screed continued to call Pain "a clay crab of corruption" and conclude that he was only criticizing her because he was secretly in love with her, a conclusion often reached by many fans today. Her hatred of critics extended all her life. One, D.B. Wyndham Lewis, she named 'St. Scandalbags' and wrote a vicious rant against him. While she died before it was complete, she began writing a piece called Donald Dudley, the Bastard Critic.

Okay, so she didn't take criticism well. And frankly, I don't think anyone would take "a very sarcastic review celebrating how hilariously bad [your] book was" very well. Another case of "they suck, and they have big egos because they won't admit that they suck".

Richard Morgan is a very talented writer, but damn does he have an inflated sense of his own importance, especially with his recent foray into the high fantasy genre. After writing a critique of Tolkien which took a very negative tone, he then promotes his own book at the end of the essay and goes on to describe how The Lord Of The Rings could be improved. When certain Internet boarders take umbrage with some of his critiques, specifically the tone and the fact he referred to Tolkien fans as immature, he then goes on to the website not so much to defend himself as to attack his critics, calling them all knee jerk reactionaries who just don't 'get him', because they're all 'too scared' to challenge their own values. Good writer, A-Grade asshole.

Does criticizing Tolkien give him a big ego? Since J.R.R. Tolkien was only human, there's surely some legitimate criticisms that could be made about his writing. Likewise, attacking his own critics means he takes things personally, and he may well be an "A-Grade asshole", but that is not the same thing as a big ego.

Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance ~~Trilogy~~ Cycle, who apparently "strives for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf" and talks down about JK Rowling. This would be bad enough if he weren't also generally considered to be a really, really bad writer.
- He has also constantly overstated his own achievements. While he bragged in an interview about having "pretty much made up three languages," a quick look at the dictionary for said languages in the back of his books reveals that they have little in the way of a useful vocabulary. In the case of the Mook language, it only has about three words total. To hear him tell it, he invented constructed languages on par with Quenya and Klingon.
  - He's definitely lying there anyway. The "Ancient Language" is basically Icelandic (or possibly Old Norse, this editor was never good at telling the difference) with a few letter substitutions, which is hardly an invention. The dwarf language could be charitably described as "better", though not by much; it's essentially a mashup of several different Germanic languages peppered with a few made up words.
  - No, it's actually worse than that—while the vocabulary is based on Icelandic/Norse, the grammar is just an elaborate cipher for English.
- It doesn't help that the official forums for his books are also extremely intolerant of criticism. Users have been banned for simply referring to the books as "bricks," regardless of whether or not they actually criticized the work itself, just its length.
- His only real achievements as a writer is having published a Door Stopper as a teenager and then managing to get people to keep buying them.
- When asked what readers could expect from the sequels to Eragon, he replied: "The same breathtaking locations, thrilling battles, and searching introspection..." Sure, if you think Eragon wangsting over whether or not to eat some meat is "searching introspection."
- Is it sad that his description of the book was more exciting and well put then the entire book itself?

Most of this sounds like more "he sucks, and he won't admit that he sucks" logic. Besides, saying he "strives for" something isn't the same thing as saying he actually does it, and the rest of it just suggests he can't take criticism, and apparently has a poor grasp of what inventing a language involves.

Anne Rice. The Fanfiction Glossary defines to "Rice out" as "to make an ass of oneself by reacting to negative feedback by insisting that one's creative work is superior in all aspects. To be fully worthy of the term, the author should throw down in public and insult both reviewers and readers alike. Inspired by a notorious hissyfit thrown on Amazon.com by the inimitable Anne Rice", who accused critics of her books for "interrogating [her] text from the wrong perspective".

God knows I've got no love for Anne Rice, but answering criticism with "you missed the point" is, by itself, hardly a sign of a big ego. If there are any better examples of her egotism, preferrably aimed at either fans or other writers, it'd be better to cite them.

Stephenie Meyer, especially after deciding that the fifth Twilight book, Midnight Sun, was better off never finished since it was leaked. To be fair, she does claim she'll continue work on the novel after everyone has forgotten about it for about two years, but there's people on that case. On both sides. Then there's the fact that she has her brother filter all the negative emails out of her box before she reads it...
- Not to mention the fact that she has insulted other, much better writers than her such as Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, William Goldman and even William Shakespeare, all in a vain attempt to make her books look better than theirs.
- And there was that time she claimed that Stephen King was just jealous because he dared criticize Twilight.
  - And it was constructive criticism. One that every writer should be happy to get.
  - Didn't he just say that she "can't write worth a darn?" Don't get me wrong, I agree with his statement, but if I were Stephanie Meyer, I wouldn't consider it constructive, or be even remotely happy about it.

And I hate Twilight but again, "she sucks and won't admit that she sucks" is not a fair complaint.

Åke Ohlmarks, the first translator of the Swedish Lord Of The Rings. Or as Tolkien himself points out: The impression remains, nonetheless, that Dr Ohlmarks is a conceited person, less competent than charming Max Schuchart [the translator to the Dutch edition], though he thinks much better of himself. He mistranslated the entire book by misusing English idioms, using names inconsistently and making several dangling participles (the Witch-king of Angmar was slain by Merry, I am not making this up), among other things. Unfortunately, this didn't stop Ohlmarks from spending decades lecturing Tolkien against criticizing his own Swedish translation because apparently Tolkien wouldn't understand the Swedish language. Things were quiet for a while, but after Tolkien's death It Got Worse. Ohlmarks visited Christopher Tolkien while he was editing The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien told him some secret things about The Silmarillion, in exchange that these facts would not find it's way into an article, but somehow Ohlmarks figured himself privileged to write the article anyway (no doubt because of his awesome translation to Lord Of The Rings), so he did. It didn't turn out well. Obviously, Christopher Tolkien wrote an angry letter to Ohlmarks, which made Ohlmarks so angry that he wrote a book named Tolkien's Legacy, which is nothing more than a 100-page long rant against Christopher Tolkien. Ohlmarks presents himself as the perfect translator who has sacrificed a lot of time and effort to evangelize the Swedish population into reading Lord of the Rings, while Christopher Tolkien is presented as a maniac who's just interested in making quick money from his father's series. Ohlmarks elaborates by telling us how worthless Christopher Tolkien's work of The Silmarillion was, while he explained just how close his own translation would be to J.R.R. Tolkien's original intention if he got the chance to translate it. He even insulted J.R.R. Tolkien by describing him as a dictatorial friend who went berserk if anyone of his friends would even dare criticize his work and published another book alleging that Tolkien was a Nazi occultist.

He sounds like a complete asshole, but none of that really says "big ego". The attack on his translation quality is more "he sucks, and won't admit that he sucks" logic, and while the rest of it is definitely jerkass behavior, the page isn't just about famous jerks.

Howard Hendrix, then-VP of the Science Fiction Writers of America, whom almost nobody outside of the SFWA had ever heard of until publishing this diatribe, which could be fairly summarized thus: "If you are writing fiction for any reason save naked greed, you're not a real writer. If you're posting said fiction online without a paywall, you're depriving real writers like me of the large sums of money that are rightfully theirs. Fuck you." (He also compares himself to the Unabomber at one point. Um... yeah. Moving swiftly on.) Unfortunately for Hendrix, the ensuing Internet Backdraft focused considerable attention on what kind of a writer he actually is; at least one Amazon reviewer thought he was really L. Ron Hubbard under a pseudonym if that gives you some idea.

That's an unpopular, offensive opinion, maybe even a ludicrously unrealistic one, but that just makes him an offensive jerk, not egotistical. As for what kind of a writer he is, that's beside the point.

N.K. Stouffer wrote a book back in the 80's (and even she has contradicted herself on the exact year) called The Legend Of Rah And The Muggles about a race of radiation-mutated folk called "Muggles". She decided that because some British woman named J. K. Rowling had also written a book that contained the term "muggle," it must be plagiarism. She sued Ms. Rowling for copyright infringement, and her books' webpage still begs anyone, anyone to come forward with information that may prove her case. She lost said suit, because there are no similarities to Harry Potter whatsoever. Whereas Harry Potter is engaging literature, Rah and the Muggles is a steaming pile of human offal.
- There are also many suspicious 5-star reviews of the book on Barnes and Noble's site (among many 1- and 2- star reviews), all glowing praises of the book's quality and "strong morals," and even goes as far to accuse every low rating to come from "jealous" Harry Potter fanatics. She appeals to the religious movement of anti-Potterness, and also claims her book is "not scary" like HP- nuclear war and people getting 2nd and 3rd degree burns are less scary somehow than what can be found in "Harry Potter"? Suffice it to say, many, many people have theorized that they are written by the author herself or some very deluded close relative.

Which makes her daft, greedy and a cheater... but again, not the same thing. For an example of what would count, maybe if she'd said "I invented the fantasy genre, and J.K. Rowling's just a pale imitation of my greatness", then we'd have an ego.

Kenneth Eng is proof-positive that white supremacists aren't the only insane racist bunch around. A self-proclaimed Asian supremacist who claimed credit for inciting the Virginia Tech massacre, Kenneth Eng published obvious Flame Bait articles in the California newspaper Asian Week titled "Why I Hate Black People" and "Why I Hate White People." Once word of this got out to the mainstream media, he used the exposure to plug his science fiction book! Said book: Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate falls straight under So Bad Its Horrible, but he's been known write glowing five-star reviews of it on Amazon and even write reviews of other books just to mention it. His review of War Of The Worlds amounted to: "This book is good, read Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate." His antics on various fora doing nothing but extolling his masterpiece while pretending to be someone else also earned him the ire of almost every literary forum on the 'net. It doesn't help that he uses the byline "Kenneth Eng: God of the Universe."

Being a self-promoting racist bastard isn't the same thing as being egotistical either.

Karen Traviss, Boba Fettishist extraordinaire, calls people who like her work in the Star Wars Expanded Universe "Fandalorians". Fair enough. She also calls people who criticize some logical flaws in her work "Talifans" (So, she's calling fans terrorists because they disagree with her.). Well, no one's perfect. She further notes that she doesn't like Jedi characters — except one she's created — thus implying she doesn't like three-quarters of the protagonists, supporting characters, and even antagonists of the universe she is ostensibly a fan of... what?
- Disliking the Jedi would be one thing, Traviss goes out of her way to write them out of character to justify her very thinly veiled God-Mode Sue Mandalorians/Clone Troopers and then rebukes fans by saying they shouldn't get so upset over what is just a fictional universe. Yep, the same woman who called detractors Talifans and uses the Mandalorians as a race of Author Avatars is telling the rest of us to relax it's not real. The fact she claims she doesn't read the EU but is happy to take characters created by other authors and do with them whatever she likes is simply further proof of Small Name, Big Ego.
  - Don't forget her writing for the Legacy Of The Force series always had to feature at least a third of the book focusing on what the Mandalorians were doing. Yep, in the middle of another galaxy-wide civil war we need to know what Boba had for lunch and how the cunning and "noble" Mandalorians were going to take advantage. While the series was bad enough overall, it was certainly made worse by the fact other the other writers had to deal with less main plot development and then write the Mandalorians back in character (with appropriate lack of Stu-ness).
- A more in-depth discussion can be found here.
- She isn't exactly popular with Gears Of War fans, either, having pretty much pushed the titular Gears out of the way for her own Pesanga tribal warriors.
- And now she's flounced out of Star Wars literature because they dared to contradict her writings when she was perfectly happy contradicting or ignoring other writers' work (saying hers was more important). Karma's a bitch.
  - And there was much rejoicing.

She's got a Mandalorian fetish, and hates the Jedi, and hates criticism, but since she didn't really invent either of them, that's just fan bias. Which makes her an incompetent writer since the Jedi are supposed to be the heroes, but not a big ego, especially since she hasn't broken the fourth wall with any personal comments about her own greatness.

Kevin J. Anderson. He's most well-known for the sheer number of books he's written, having been involved in Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Files, Starcraft, and many other novelization fields. He prides himself on finishing on-time, going so far as to pump out a new Dune book every two years with each over 400 pages, when it took Frank Herbert about 15 years to write the first three books, and 5 each for the later ones. Kevin has viciously defended himself, refusing to acknowledge the many inconsistencies and blatant bad writing in his works, and instead referring to anyone that brings these up as not being true fans, but "talifan", just like Traviss above him. He's even stated that Frank Herbert, original writer of Dune, made more mistakes then he has. He further pushes his name out there by paying people to write good reviews and even collaborating with Amazon.com to remove bad reviews. Needless to say, he's not that popular in any of the universes he's gone into.

"Refusing to acknowledge the many inconsistencies and blatant bad writing in his works"? Okay, now that's the textbook example of what I mean when I say "they suck and they won't admit that they suck" examples. As for the rest of it, who knows, maybe Frank Herbert did make more mistakes (depending on how miniscule and nitpicky you get when counting them), and paying people to write good reviews (if true) would just prove he's a cheat.

So-called "senior Doctor Who fan" Ian Levine is notorious amongst fandom for being arrogant, opinionated, rude and devoted to the show to the point of naked hysteria at times, and seems to view himself as a higher-ranking fan than everyone else. This is mainly due to his efforts at locating episodes that have been presumed to have been 'wiped' from the archives (which, in fairness, was a very big deal) and his role as a 'script consultant' — or in other terms, an unofficial fan advisor — to producer John Nathan-Turner in the 1980s. According to sources in the production team at the time, his role and influence were apparently negligible, but that hasn't stopped it from going to his head somewhat.
- Levine also insists that he and Eric Saward co-wrote the story "Attack of the Cybermen", despite the fact that Saward himself denies this.
- Eric Saward, script-editor for the show during the mid-1980s, also displays some of these tendencies; he seems to like blaming absolutely EVERYTHING that ever went wrong with 80s Doctor Who on John Nathan-Turner. Of course, Eric likes to reassure us that everything good in Doctor Who in that time was either written by or organised by himself. John Nathan-Turner, being dead, doesn't have much to say about this.
- However, Nathan-Turner himself was by all accounts guilty of this to some extent while he was producing the show. The most well-known incident involved him and legendary Who writer/director Peter Grimwade, who took some of his production staff out to lunch one day after filming had to be cancelled because of some technical problems. Nathan-Turner was so infuriated at not being invited himself (despite being in a totally different part of London to where the filming was taking place) that he immediately fired Grimwade and banned him from ever working on the show again. Then, for an encore, Nathan-Turner nearly ended up firing the replacement director after catching him discussing some shots with the episode's writer, making Nathan-Turner really angry that he wasn't the one being consulted. After the show ended though, Nathan-Turner became much more willing to admit his faults, making him less guilty of this than most of his co-workers.
- Matthew Waterhouse, who played Adric, was reportedly like this as well during his time on the show, which didn't exactly endear him to his co-stars. One notable story has him take aside award-winning actor Richard Todd and offer him acting advice. Did we mention that Adric was Waterhouse's first, and only, major acting role? And that he failed disastrously to distinguish himself in it?
- If you want proof that 80s Doctor Who basically sank under the weight of all of the egos attached to it, go watch the documentary Trials and Tribulations included on the DVD of The Ultimate Foe and observe the finger pointing. By the end, my father was calling Ian Levine "that fat bastard", Eric Saward "that arrogant prick" and Michael Grade "that stuffed shirt".
- Former Doctor Who Expanded Universe novelist Lawrence Miles now spends his time crafting a blog that is often highly critical of the new TV series. His 'reviews' range from well-considered, thought-provoking critiques of the show and its place in popular culture to ad-hominem, borderline libelous attacks on the writers and production team. One thing is certain, however: he clearly believes there's only one right way to do Doctor Who—and that is his way.
  - In one particular example of his ego getting in the way, Miles compared the script-as-broadcast for the episode "Silence in the Library" with a script he had written as his idea for a potential new Who series which dealt with similar themes. Not entirely surprisingly, Miles came to the conclusion that his script was the stronger one.
  - His columns also indicate a long-standing grudge against Steven Moffat, which partly explains his conclusion in the example above.
  - There used to be a website ("The Doctor Who Bewildering Reference Guide") that annotated Doctor Who novels, and had the authors themselves contribute. In his contributions Miles reacted very strongly to suggestions that he got dates wrong according to A History of the Universe, saying that "only someone as ludicrous as Lance Parkin" would have thought Zoe's home time was before "The Moonbase", and claiming Parkin made his cats fight lightsabre battles. Then again, Parkin gave as good as he got in response (and didn't deny the cat thing). Maybe they're Vitriolic Best Buds.

Ye gods, there is so much back and forth on that mess that I'm just nuking it all.

Gene Roddenberry. On the plus side, he created Star Trek. On the minus side, he overstated his contributions, understated and took credit for the contributions of others, and treated the other people involved in Trek like dirt. And then there's his most heinous creation: Wesley Crusher.
- Just so that it's clear, some of the best parts of Star Trek were the parts Roddenberry was least involved with. The original series, for example, as much as it stands as an example of Executive Meddling, actually arguably became good because of it. If you want to know how Roddenberry would've handled it by himself, look at the first two seasons of The Next Generation. So Yeah....
  - He also hated The Wrath Of Khan, usually considered the best Trek movie, which was directed by someone who came in with no prior knowledge of the Trek franchise. Goes to show that sometimes the creator's original intentions aren't exactly the best ones.
  - It's worth noting that the DS 9 episode "In the Pale Moonlight" is widely acknowledged as one of the most antithetical to Roddenberry's original view of the Federation, Starfleet, and 24th century humanity in general, yet is also considered by many fans to be among the best Trek episodes ever made and consistently rates at or near the top in fan polls of favorite Trek episodes. Just sayin'.

That's almost entirely complaining about the quality of his work. The only sentence in there that relates to his ego is "took credit for the contributions of others and treated the other people involved in Trek like dirt". He might be a fair name to list, but it needs to be completely reworked.

J Michael Straczynski is remarkably polite when talking about Andrea Thompson's stint on Babylon 5, but it's still pretty clear what a massive prima donna she was. She insisted on being the center of every scene she was in, and left the show after two seasons due to not getting enough screen time for her liking, despite Straczynski's repeated protests that the show was a five year Myth Arc and her character's part in it would get a lot bigger the following year.
- Interestingly, this troper visited a B5 convention with Thompson in attendance some time after her departure from the show, and she mingled with her costars with no issue and joined in the friendly onstage banter, with some of them expressing regret that she had to leave the show (and not just the one - Jerry Doyle - she was married to). This suggests the problem was more on the producers' end than with her, although she admitted that her main complaint was going sometimes 7-8 episodes in a row with either no appearances or maybe just one or two lines here and there.

The Justifying Edit pretty much nulls the original entry.

J. Michael Stracyznski, although an highly talented writer, does have an impressive ability to big himself up. Some of it is indeed warranted, but elsewhere not so much. For example, he repeatedly said that his writing of all 22 episodes of the third season of Babylon 5 was 'record-breaking', which of course led to people finding several counter-examples (such as British cop show Z Cars, where the same writer wrote about 70 episodes in a row, massively outstripping JMS' record twice over) that JMS ignored. He also made repeated, ignorant comments about rival show Star Trek Deep Space Nine ripping off B5 because he'd shown Paramount the pilot script four years before either DS9 or B5 aired, and once threw a strop because the DS9 station blew up in the finale, which is what happened with B5 (except that DS9 didn't blow up in its finale, at all). He also stated repeatedly that Star Trek Voyager would be superior if he was writing it.
- Wouldn't it?
- As noted above with Rob Leifeld, simply because it's true doesn't make it stop being arrogant.

I think JMS does have a big ego, but all the same, that entry's not enough to show it. I'm not sure how he "ignored" the examples: if he was bragging offhand, then I don't know exactly how anyone could expect him to respond to counterexamples ("hold on, hold on, before we begin this interview, I just want to acknowledge for the record that Z Cars had more episodes written by one guy than me. Okay, now let's get started."). The DS 9 thing suggests he's paranoid and vindictive, but since that's been an ongoing fan debate/conspiracy theory for years anyway, I can't chalk it up entirely to ego. And honestly, most Star Trekfans were saying, nay, shouting at their television sets, that Star Trek Voyager would be better if they were the ones writing it. That just makes him another frustrated fan.

Almost any reality show like Hells Kitchen or American Idol. There will always be a few contestants who think their crap don't stink and also think they are THE best contestant ever and have the talent, even if the judges or boss plainly say that they suck.

Too vague, we need names.

Kip Winger called MTV to demand that Beavis And Butthead cannot make fun of him or his band any more after they called one of the music videos "the lamest crap they've ever seen". Quite a dumb move saying that to a satirist like Mike Judge. As if just to ruin any doubt about whether or not he deserved this treatment, when Metallica featured a Dartboard of Hate of Kip Winger in a music video, he went on record to say this:
"Our band was known to musicians, and a lot of musicians showed up to see me play — watching trying to figure out how I'm playing — we were like the 'hair band' [version of] Dream Theater — That is why it's the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy's shirt on Beavis & Butthead, because Metallica couldn't play what we play, they couldn't do it, they literally — technically couldn't do it. And I'll fucking challenge those chumps to a fight any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back. And so, I was a little t'd off about that, but in the end, none of that shit matters..."

Another "he sucks and won't admit that he sucks" entry, and an especially harsh one at that. Really, what was Kyp Winger supposed to do, say "ha ha, yeah, I totally deserve to be on Metallica's dartboard of hate"? As for his band's technical prowess, I like Metallica and can't stand the few Winger songs I've heard, but who knows, maybe they actually are more technically skilled. At any rate, answering trash talk with more trash talk doesn't really say big ego, especially since he's on the defensive in both cases. At most, it just says he has no sense of humor.

And now he's looking to top them by proclaiming himself the King of Pop after Michael Jackson passed away.
- Apparently, he claims that the statement was a hoax and the source was a satirical website. After all, that would be be little too egotistical, right?
Earlier in January 2009, he releases a video in his blog in which he tries to explain (albeit arguably unsuccessfully) he's making new personalised Louis Vuitton sneakers. He then goes on what can be described as a bizarre tirade about his titles in which he claims that because he's been called the "Louis Vuitton Don" (a title that he gave himself and everyone simply repeats), he is now changing his name to " Martin Louis the King, Jr." and ~~demanded~~ expected to be addressed as such. He then says some other stuff ending along the lines of (*sigh*) "He's rolling with $100,000 in his briefcase." This is a link to the video and if you can understand what the fuck he's talking about in the rest of the video other than what I just mentioned, more power to you.
- In Complex Magazine, West stated that the video was to be taken as a joke. The Martin Louis the King nickname hasn't resurfaced since that video.

Too much uncertainty on whether he was joking with those examples, and Kanye's entry is big enough to stand without them.

Allen Klein, former manager of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Well, he did get money....

Too vague, needs details.

[[folder: Cuts 2]]

Mike Oldfield, who used to actually be very self-conscious and self-deprecating, content to be a faceless instrumentalist and composer who hired talented singers when his pieces called for it. Then he joined a cult-like self help group to help with his self-esteem problem, and now the pendulum's swung the other way: he left Virgin Records, a company that had been kind to him in terms of his progressive and unique style, after recording two albums meant to be direct insults to the label owner (what did they do to tick him off? Told him if he records another album with no rock or pop music on it, he should name it Tubular Bells 2), and worst of all, he decided he never wanted to share credit for his success again, and took up singing his tracks as well. There's a reason why you don't hear a lot about the tracks he sung himself. Incidentally, he did ultimately release an album of that name.

Making boneheaded business moves and flopping aren't necessarily the same as a big ego.

Hey, speaking of Deviant Art... ~~Most if not all~~ some of the members of Deviant Art can be like this, to the point that some serious artists claim that Deviant Art is "too much of a social forum and too informal for me to make good art." Naturally, the opposite end of the spectrum where Sturgeon's Law can greatly apply, it's quite often that you'll be told how a said deviant has "great ideas, but poor skills" with ego being dished out in large amounts. Unfortunately for those who are in the middle, there is no hope for them to get any peace.
- This art contest is not about which artist has the best talent, but the best idea...
  - Which probably isn't such a good idea to begin with. For some those artists who aren't incredibly good but do have the big egos, this will trip them off into a state of cockiness that is impossible to stop until someone screams OMG! Mary Sue!! or He's TOO much!!, in which it can either lead to some kind of really nasty Flame War or sudden feeling that the artist who created the characters or elements is depressed because they let themselves get carried away... that is even if they admit it.
- To make it worse, there's the Deviant Art stamps. Naturally, some can be funny, but then some people will use this as a way to paste their enormous egos further on the internet. Since there's stamps for just about everything, it's not too hard to find something to forcefully vocalize your opinion on a specific matter.
  - The most egoistical stamps are easily the "I support [username of stamp creator]" ones.
- All in all, this is why Encyclopedia Dramatica has a such a field day with the site. With so many kinds of egotistical and near narcissistic users on DA, it isn't to hard to pick one up and use them as the posterboy or postergirl of 'DevianTart'.
  - Speaking of which, do not insult Yaoi or Yuri artists, unless you can be prepared for a wave of insults.
- Speaking of Deviant Art, user Dino-Master certainly applies. His so-called "redesigns" of various Godzilla monsters are essentially generic theropods with Godzilla-esque spines added to them. However, whenever anyone points out this fact, he ends up throwing a tantrum and even made a journal entry in which he whines about how people "don't understand him".
- Let's just save a lot of old wounds being reopened and say that at least 1/2 the people involved in the infamous "True Fan" VS "Anti Fan" Danny Phantom wars on DA fall under this. On the one side, you had artists who claimed that they were "morally right" because they stuck with the "canon" aspects of Butch Hartman's work and called anything else "filth". On the other, you had "fanon" artists who would complain whenever others would criticize their work for deviating from the canon of the series and accusing others of not understanding the true meaning of "art". It's a classic case of Small Name, Big Ego clashing and neither side really winning.
- In another of DA, there's the whole "Comment before you Fav" crowd who gets highly upset if you do not comment on their pieces. Sure, giving comments does help encourage artistic growth, but not everyone has the time to sit down and write a well-thought out critique, especially if a person is watching over 150 deviants and getting their inbox filled with 50+ deviations. Some people accept a simple favorite, while others will go over the moon if you don't say anything about their works. In fact, there have been essays written on this issue, in which it's pretty much just an artist complaining about how nobody inflates their ego.

Way, way too vague, and the one person cited by name just seems to be someone who can't take criticism (and "you don't understand me" as a response to criticsm isn't that notable a response... pretty much every artist ever has said that).

Probably the most hubris-filled thing Conservapedia creator Andrew Schlafly has done so far is his "Bible retranslation project", in which he aimed to alter the Bible to support his political views, most notably taking out the adultress parable in which Jesus tells an angry mob, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"—according to Schlafly, this story was "liberal" vandalization, because his God would never preach forgiveness. All that said, Schlafly apparently lost interest when he realized that translating literature from ancient Greek and Hebrew actually takes work.
- Now he's flat-out said that there has been no true "conservative" translation of the Bible, and has started another project similar to the Bible Retranslation.
- It's even funnier than that. There was no actual translation involved. They were just planning to rewrite existing English translations.
  - To be precise, he feels that the commonly used English translations are confusing, because they use terms and phrases that nobody understands anymore or that have changed over the years, and is attempting to modernize it. For instance, the bible mentions people casting lots a lot, which is what they used to call gambling. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" originally meant to apply to the god fearing, not just submissive people.

Oh, I've got problems with that guy, but being an ignorant, hateful bigot isn't the same as having a big ego. It's just... well, being a hateful, ignorant bigot.

iJustine, though an extremely prominent vlogger, is still just a vlogger. She seems aware that vloggers fall pretty low on the celebrity totem pole, but that doesn't stop her from shamelessly self-promoting herself and expecting nothing but praise from her viewers on You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, ad nauseum. She is witty and charismatic, but is not the comedienne she seems to believe she is.

Too vague. "Shamelessly self-promoting" is what any would-be celebrity does, and "expecting nothing but praise" is just the same old thin-skinned behavior. We need something more, like "says she's the best thing that's ever happened to Youtube", to count.

The Ultimate Warrior, who, in addition to the certifiably insane act of wearing that outfit in public and calling yourself "the Ultimate Warrior" (in real life, too: he has legally changed his name to "Warrior"), has made many harshly racist comments for next to no reason (particularly when, bizarrely, he was speaking at a university). When his website was named Something Awful's Awful Link of the Day in 2005, his lawyer wrote a series of emails to Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka of Something Awful. The first emails were just belligerent antagonism (and threatening to sue Kyanka for libel for calling a man whose favorite word seems to be "towelhead" a racist), but eventually devolved to bizarre name-calling and harassing Kyanka's family while claiming he can read the founding fathers' minds. Making, of course, the lawyer, Chris Lewis, an example himself. Recently, Warrior was in the process of suing the WWE for their 2005 Take That! DVD, The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior. Also, he took a shot at Heath Ledger's death, calling him "Leather Hedger", mere days after his death.
- Six words: "queering doesn't make the world work".

Which makes him a spiteful, racist and homophobic jerk, but not a big ego.

In a case of "Big Name, Bigger Ego", we have Bret Hart's acceptance speech to the Wrestling Institute and Museum Hall of Fame, which he stopped mid-stream to demand that Greg Oliver, a wrestling journalist who was also being honored that evening for his contributions to the business, leave the building, saying, "He goes, or I go." Mr. Oliver's crime? In writing a book about the greatest Canadian pro wrestlers ever, he ranked Bret as merely #13, and mentioned that Bret, while a phenomenal performer, was a bit overrated due to his being better-known than many other Canadian wrestlers.
- To be fair, Hart has suffered from a stroke and several concussions (one of them severe enough to have caused his retirement), which are believed to result in poor impulse control. He's also had his father, his mother, two brothers and a brother-in-law die in rapid succession, and he went through a divorce in that same time period.
  - And he's seen his remaining family disintegrate into vicious bickering groups who will likely all go to the grave hating each other due to said deaths (though if his biography is accurate, that was an inevitable event that was a long time coming), and he had his legacy shit on by both WWF/E (via the Montreal Screwjob) and by WCW (via their unbelievably incompetent booking of the last years of his career). Not to mention the way Vince McMahon was able to utilize the Screwjob (and its aftermath) to send the WWF/E into its second boom period, and that co-conspirator's Shawn Michaels' apparent karma of a career-ending back injury a few months after the Screwjob was seemingly withdrawn when he returned 4 years later (and becoming a born-again Christian in that gap) to wrestle all the way up to the present day. Bret's no saint, and he was clearly in the wrong here, but from the sheer amount of crap he's had dumped on him since 1997, he's inclined to get a lot more slack than most anyone in this trope.
- Bret's response to the Greg Oliver incident can be found here. While his actions towards Oliver probably weren't justified, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with where Oliver ranked him in his book.

Way, way too many mitigating factors and conflicting stories there.

Remember Chyna? That's alright, fewer and fewer people do, but during the late 90s and early 2000s, she was actually quite the star. She was the first woman in wrestling to be treated as if she was on equal footing with the men: she is the only woman to win the WWF/E Intercontinental Title and compete in the Royal Rumble, she had very entertaining feuds with Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho, and she was always around the main event angles (thanks in part to her allegiance with DeGeneration-X). So it's no surprise that Chyna starts thinking of herself as a main event-level talent. When she split up with Triple H, got depushed, and eventually Future Endeavored from WWE, she wasn't able to get work anywhere else in wrestling because she wouldn't settle for less than a main event push. From there, her career went into a downward spiral: she went into a meltdown in her personal life, appeared on TV shows for washed up celebrities, and was such a mess that Howard Stern himself put a stop to the abuse that most people on his radio show get and pleaded with her to go to rehab. To her credit, she has apparently managed to fix her personal life life, but her ego is still keeping her from getting a job in wrestling.

She made a boneheaded business move and flopped, a mistake lots of celebrities make ("Ike, do your impression of David Caruso's career!"). I suppose the "wouldn't settle for less than a main event push" is the big ego part, but if she appeared on shows for washed up celebrities, it must not be all that big.

Kevin von Erich allegedly held up the promoter of a benefit show for $2,000 that he would have made at another show (granted, the promoter told him earlier that he would cover any other bookings they had that night), and to make matters worse, the benefit show was for the daughters of his dead brother Kerry.

Which is (arguably) greedy, but not egotistical.

Paul Roma. Don't recognize the name? That's why he's here. It's to the point where the IWC makes fun of him by mentioning his name for unrelated post which makes him think people still care about him. Has gone on record blasting more successful wrestlers like Mick Foley and Ted Dibiase.

That's way too vague. If the only thing that makes him count is "blasting more successful wrestlers" ...well, fans who aren't wrestlers at all blast successful wrestlers all the time. I don't think there's a hierarchy on who can criticize whom.

Raven C.S. McCracken was infamous both for the creation of World of Synnibarr and his psychotic reaction to bad press, going so far as to send hate mail to critics. He's chilled out since then, though.

Too vague, just sounds like he couldn't take criticism.

Byron Hall. The man behind F.A.T.A.L., he and the half-dozen people who actually liked his ~~game~~ thing, started flame wars on RPGNet and several other forums, presumably to drum up attention for their 900-page clusterfuck.
- He also apparently thinks that if you don't bring up your degree at least once a page, you don't actually have one.

Troll, jerk, maybe a lousy writer, but that doesn't speak to his ego. I suppose the degree thing does, but that's too small a point compared to most of the other examples on the page.

Bryan Ansell, head honcho at Games Workshop back in the 80s and early 90s, and the man who co-created and developed the Warhammer world, has a reputation as having been this sort of character. His most famous contribution to the franchise were the Zoats, which he created as a new race to use in the roleplay system and challenged the game designers to come up with something better.
- Which wasn't that hard, since Zoats have long since been written out of the background material for more interesting races. No matter whether 8you Tau fit in 40K, its better then red centaur-things.

That kinda sounds like, again, "he sucked and wouldn't admit that he sucked". I know nothing about Warhammer or the Zoats, but it's not unheard of for a boss to set some standard and tell his team to top it. Apparently it worked, judging by the second point.

Derek Smart, developer of the Battlecruiser and Universal Combat games, is more well known for his attacks on critics of his games than for his games themselves.
- The man could give a rambling, three page long diatribe in response to a simple "BC 3 K sucks".
- A particularly infamous incident involved Derek Smart's long-standing claim that he has a PhD. Nobody can track down his dissertation, nor will he say when or where he went. Assuming he has a PhD at all, it would be from a degree mill of some sort.
- Recently, he's been releasing his games on Steam and moderating the forums there with an iron fist. First complaints receive a verbal jabbing from Smart himself, repeated complaints receive the banhammer for the entirety of Steam. This man should be the Trope Namer, but he'd probably consider it an honor.
- There was a late nineties joke rumour that if you mentioned his name three times on/in your forum or newsgroup he would appear and attack anyone who critized him.

Eh, that sounds like he's a liar and can't take criticism. But that's not an ego.

Tessera, a producer of nude skins for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Vampire: The Masquerade, has repeatedly whined about how no one appreciates his skins and as such, has shut down applications for his forums. He is also known to be unable to take any criticism of anything.
- Specifically Tessera is enraged by the uninformed opinions of the masses, namely that people seem determined to consider creating nude skins for characters in video games to be a juvenile waste of time. Instead of as Tessera views it, a bold celebration of the female form.

Again, that's just not being able to take criticism.

There's Warner, who is the "creator" of several characters, mostly taken from The Simpsons and Family Guy, including Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, the Giant Chicken, Evil Homer, and Vampire Burns. The reason "creator" is in quotes is because all Warner does is take other MUGEN characters and reskin them... without asking the permission of the original creator. If you dare to question his work, he goes ballistic. Even worse, Warner refuses to fix bugs in "his" work — Evil Homer has a blocking glitch originally seen in Evil Ken, and Vampire Burns will hover at the top of the screen when his health is low. Any offers to help him are met with rage. Of all of "Warner's" characters, only Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are well-received... and Homer has had so many people work on him that he no longer counts as Warner material.

And again, can't take criticism. That's one sign of a big ego, but it can't be the only one. By itself, it could just mean he's extremely insecure.

In the MUGEN community, while there are several people who make good characters and are overall nice, there are some who actually give the engine a bad name with their oversized egos and attitude:
- There was a chappie called EvilSlayerX5/SilverJeric/darkmagusX5. He created at least two notable characters of bad quality: Rugal_E, which combines CvS sprites with rather dodgily put together KOF FX, stiff animation and ridiculous AI, and Kain an edit which is poorly executed. However, EvilSlayerX5 will not tolerate much criticism of his characters, seeing many as "purists" which he has a raging hatred of. Should one kindly critique his characters, giving good honest feedback and helpful advice, he proceeds to flame you by calling you "retarded" and/or referring to you as a "mindless zombie of the government" even if the feedback is accurate. It got particularly maddening when ESX 5 turned his indignance and primadonna-ism into a religious movement that would make Haruhiism look like a girl scout group, with ESX 5 fashioning hisemlf as a Morpheus-style figure attmpting to "Free the masses from the lies of the purist tyranny". Eventually he saw sense and left... until he returned under several names... except one of them, darkmagusX5, was in fact a masquerade used by MC2, who initiated a very clever Xanatos Gambit to root out the real ESX 5 who was masquerading under a different name at the time.
- Somewhat more recently, a person going by the username Seravy has been going around reversing the Power Creep, Power Seep on various MUGEN characters, resulting in horrendously broken characters for normal play. His most infamous work is his Card Captor Sakura characters and his in-game avatar, Seravy. These characters are so humongously unbalanced that some fans of the original characters are calling these new edits a complete disgrace, while other MUGENites have taken to bashing them on Youtube. Seravy thinks that a majority of his critics are spammers and have nothing intelligent to say, resulting in him locking his posts to prevent any sort of criticism whatsoever. (He appears to improving on that last aspect, though, putting him up there with the aforementionned Vincent Gallo.)

The quality of work isn't relevant. More "they suck, and they won't admit they suck."

His feud with Lowtax/Something awful was hilarious and featured the dreaded "phase 6" which consisted of e-mailing all the advertisers on the site with the claim that Lowtax was a "terrist".

Which is indeed stupid and laughable, but not egotistical.

Robert Pelloni, who according to himself spent five years developing a homebrew game for the Nintendo DS creatively titled "Bob's Game", became known for his own bizarre sense of self-promotion across the Internet. He coded the entire game in his bedroom at his parent's house, and posted stories of dubious accuracy that he had secured publishing deals. Gameplay videos on You Tube would be filled with comment boxes talking about how even the most generic features such as looking through a box were unique innovations. Bob also used himself as the boss of the first stage. After making himself unwelcome on most of the net with his antics, he claimed that he was trying to get a hold of an official Nintendo DS SDK, that he had met with Nintendo executives and that Nintendo had stalled for 17 months. He finally held what he called a 100 day "develop-in" protest where he was to spend 100 days locked in his room working to get their attention. He spent his days on a web cam coding while leaving daily blog posts about how brilliant he was, how Nintendo was failing because they were not supporting his game, and how he himself was, in his own words, "better than Miyamoto, Itoi, Kojima, Carmack, and Wright COMBINED". After a mere 30 days, he gave up his "100 day protest", left a long rant about Nintendo ignoring his "genius" and showed a webcam video of his office destroyed. The police checked on Bob, who was simply asleep.
- Robert recently released a few more videos, which said this all was... well... not quite a troll, not quite insanity... one big, elaborate, ARG or viral advertisement, one of the two. Bob was the "villain" of the story, going insane slowly over time, which explains his behavior. Watch and believe.

Since that could've been a giant prank, it might not count.

John Smedley, head of Sony Online Entertainment, has mixed this trope with also being a completely clueless asshat.

Wow, no explanation at all, just cursing out the guy. This needs serious elaboration.

Yuji Naka. Sure, he had a key role in creating Sonic The Hedgehog, but tales of his ego have since tainted his reputation. The most infamous being that during the development of Sonic Xtreme, when the team was granted access to the NiGHTs engine to help them complete development, Yuji Naka threw a little hissy fit and threatened to quit Sega if he didn't get his way. This eventually led to the game being cancelled and put another nail in the Sega Saturn's coffin. It's also mentioned that the infamous voice cast change occurred simply because Yuji Naka wanted the game and Sonic X voices to be the same, either not knowing that 4Kids was responsible for this problem in the first place and completely ignoring how the American fandom would react to this change.

It needs to be more specific. The stuff cited sounds more like bad creative decisions and stubbornness: the entry should explain how he thinks he's better than everyone else, not just that he wanted things done in impractical ways.

Ex-admin of No Mutants Allowed Roshambo was so known for his disapproval of the Fallout franchise's direction that Black Isle Studios eventually fired back by putting a caricature of him in Fallout Tactics—a game which he was vocally opposed to. For a good example, take a look at his long, disjointed rant against Bethesda; which falls from the tree of Fan Dumb and hits every branch on the way down.

Okay, so he disapproved of Fallout 3 and the developers made fun of him for it. That might be Fan Dumb, but it's not a big ego unless there's a lot more to the story than that.

Tierra, aka AGDI, aka Himalaya Studios (a mountain range higher than Sierra), who made a few remakes of classic adventure games and then started to claim they "singlehandedly revived the adventure gaming genre" and how "everything they touch turns to gold" (conveniently overlooking the several projects they abandoned). Their original game was widely derided for its ripoff plot, nonsensical puzzles, and juvenile humor (not to mention the author insisting on becoming the main voice actor, which he was... not that good at). Cue angry rebuttals when this game was nominated for a "worst game of the year" award by the Adventure Game Studio community.
- AGDI doesn't really fit into this trope because while their original game did not result in as much critical acclaim as their remakes did, response to their work has still been overwhelmingly positive over the years and few in the community argue the team lacks talent or has a poor track record. (as required by the "there must be substantial proof that he or she is boasting of great works, but actually has little to no relevant talent" of this trope) The "singlehandedly"-statement in the about-us section of their site at the time of their original game's announcement years ago was admittedly very poorly worded, but it was changed as soon as people complained about it, which again goes against the nature of this trope. (people with big ego's don't change stuff just because detractors complain) The angry rebuttals were somewhat justified because the "worst game"-award was initially conceived to praise Casual Joke Games and was never meant to be turned into a stick to beat other people over the head with. The general consensus was that a handful of members nominated the game due to resentment towards AGDI/Himalaya and the community itself ended up giving the award to another game. Troper above might be subject to hatedom himself.

While there might be a valid point hidden in there, I'm in no position to untangle the Wiki Schizophrenia mess and figure out what's objectively true, so just trimming out the whole thing. At any rate, can an entire studio really count?

icycalm A.K.A Alex Kierkegaard of Insomnia.ac. Known for writing long articles on the rest of the video game industry's shortcomings, banning and flaming anyone who disagrees with him on his forum (about half the people in any one topic usually end up banned), banning anyone who doesn't use perfect spelling and grammar pretty much instantly, using the words 'gameplay' or 'core mechanics' gets someone banned and their post deleted and said user posts every single page ever found linking to one of his articles, and then pretty much mocks it on said forum. He's also said that competitive gamers should "set the standards" for the gaming industry, and will refer to anyone who disagrees with him as a "retard," several times. Basically, he's the embodiment of every negative stereotype associated with "Stop Having Fun" Guys.

Okay, that's all petty and jerk'ish, but not a big ego by itself.

Without mentioning any names, the Sim City modding community is literally nearly filled with this trope. Many creators often complain at new-comers who make buildings, lots, and mods that aren't of near professional caliber as some of the people who have been doing things for years. Worse, there's hardly any good tutorials for newcomers, let alone the community seems to sneer at the sight of a anything that isn't super realistic or over-detailed as a particular favorite modder when these new comers have to create something. It's a bad combination of both Small Name, Big Ego and "Stop Having Fun" Guy in one.

We can't list entire fandoms. -_-

Sean Howard of A Modest Destiny, a ~~sprite~~ pixel-art comic with a series of complex "terms of use" including disallowing you from saving any strips onto your computer. He's best known for threatening Penny Arcade with legal action because a user on their forums had a pixel-art avatar with feet that looked like his comic's art. He seems to have gotten better.
- Howard maintains this is a big misunderstanding which he admits arose at least in part thanks to the rather aggressive way he writes. He never threatened to sue PA, only angrily said that he has used legal action against people who have violated his copyright before — which, in the context was drastically misunderstood. The guy is obsessively serious about copyright.

Disallowing people to save pics is pretty common, though most sites that do it use coding tricks instead of To U wording. The Justifying Edit negates the second part, and it just doesn't sound like a strong enough example overall.

Jay Naylor, author of the furry comic Better Days. When someone asked him on a furry MUCK he was on "Why do people seem to rag on your work so much?" his response was "Because they hate themselves."
- "I am something that you will never understand." Not a direct quote, more of a paraphrasing, but he did actually say something to this effect once to try and silence his detractors. It didn't work.

Another case of just attacking the critics. The trope needs more than that. The second quote might count, but since it's "more of a paraphrasing", the context and exact wording might justify it.

Lothar and Eastwood of Exterminatus Now come off like this. Lothar has a hair-trigger temper, and will ban anyone on the forums for pissing him off in the slightist, and Eastwood adamantly believes that anything he works on is awesome, and obviously superior to anything similar. On the other hand, Virus, the artist, is a nice guy, mirroring his character in the strip.
- And Silversword... um...
- To be fair to Eastwood, he does consider the original setting for the comic his Old Shame, and the comic lampoons the daylights out of it.
- Given Lothar is only like that when provoked, and Eastwood has boundless self-loathing mixed with his ego, this is rather hard to credit. They're also the two most "overt" members of the creative team, so Virus would seem nicer... Because he isn't the one dealing with the idiots on the forum. And I'd argue the statement of "did better than Archie" is less to do with their opinons of their own work, and more of their incredibly low opinion of the official works.
- Lothar also loses his temper over any minor slights, and Eastwood once said that he doesn't like most spirte comics, and that he did a sprite comic once and it was good, so he didn't understand why everyone elses sucked.

Too many Justifying Edits, and sounds more like a temper problem than an ego.

Scott Kurtz of PvP has developed a reputation for being thin-skinned and egotistical. Although he tends to make self-deprecating jokes based on both his ego and his weight, plenty of accounts exist which give a clear insight into his true nature.
- Occasionally, he posts them on his website... Seriously, "I am a pioneer in my field"?
  - Pioneer is much, but considering they didn't even try to get his name right? I'd be pissed too if I was him.

Another example countered by a Justifying Edit, and really, "which give a clear insight into his true nature" just screams personal grudge to me.

Brandon "slimredninja" Clark will tell you he's the main artist for the controversial webcomic Morning Squirtz. What he won't tell you is that the comic itself is rife with uninspired jokes and abused Photoshop filters, and the alleged controversy comes from Slim's tendency to registered on countless webcomic forums with the sole purpose of advertising this comic. Upon receiving any sort of criticism, he usually has two modes of responding: assertions that having his cartoons published in Hustler grants him immunity to criticism from "novices", and continually posting images from his webcomic over and over again as though they'll change anyone's minds. Other times he'll just create his own praise:
slimredninja: Were[sic] more like a web comic version of Howard Stern. For the record we know were[sic] not "good" were[sic] fucking "great".

This one's kinda borderline, but it mostly sounds like another example of "it sucks and he won't admit that it sucks". A spamming, lying troll who can't take criticism, but not an ego. Maybe it could be rewritten to focus less on the quality and more on the ego, though.

On the note of The Simpsons, onetime executive producer Bill Oakley seems to have quite an elevated opinion of his own contributions to the franchise and a rather low level of esteem for those who would dare criticize his treatment of the characters, particularly Lisa Simpson, whom he has said to be an "Abject Admirer" of. Oakley was executive producer during the days when the Internet wasn't quite mainstream yet, and spoke in email with some of the BNFs, but these relationships fell apart when he decided all of the critics of the new direction of the show were just lame brained fans. The episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", while being credited to David X. Cohen, is widely seen as Oakley's personal Take That! to the Internet fanbase.

Generally, if someone's "ego" is just that they rail against their critics, that could just be insecurity and defensiveness. Nobodoy takes criticism well: a big ego should be attacking the fans, fellow artists and writers and so on, not just saying their critics can stuff it.

Some of the self-proclaimed elite of the Transformers fandom is like this... proudly so, in fact. One of them who openly said "Yes, Transformers fandom has a snobby, superior-acting elite... and I'm a founding member." On the other hand, this is partly Self-Deprecation, and Transformers fandom doesn't usually take itself quite as seriously as some of the others on this page.

Names, we need names.

Though to be fair, while those shows are indeed more popular and successful, their art and animation styles are nowhere near the same caliber as Ren and Stimpy was. Then again, the higher-quality animation was most likely one of the main reasons John kept missing so many deadlines.

A Justifying Edit of "but he's really good" doesn't count. Just as someone's lack of quality doesn't mean they have a big ego for not admitting it, neither does someone's outstanding quality excuse them from having an ego.

The metally-insane animal rights activist Camille Marino, who deletes every comment on her blog that she even remoteley doesn't agree with. She has the nerve to compare pet ownership to slavery, refer to the meat industry as a holocaust (thus downplaying what the Jews actually went through), compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, encourage domestic terrorism, and though the offending posts are now gone she has used her blog to cyber-bully in the past. (For details about that last part ask someone at Peta-Sucks.com. They were also the ones to discover her in the first place, This Troper included)
- One memorable moment was when she was informed about her Encyclopedia Dramatica page. She claimed that she simply laughed it off and that she loves satire, yet is now launching a campaign to take down ED, presumably due to the fact that it bruised her precious ego. One of her frequenters actually complained about not being able to post pictures of one having sex with one's pets on the internet without being made fun of for doing so.
- Oh, and what got her into the world of Animal Rights? Why, Earthlings, of course.

Being an insane, vindictive Animal Wrongs Group activist isn't having an ego. A big ego isn't the epitome of vice: there are plenty of things people can be that are worse than egotistical, and saying "they don't have an ego" isn't vindicating them in any way.

There is one guy, whom we shall only name as "01000001 01101100 01100101 01111000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01000010 01100001 01100100 01110010", aka "01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01100001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01000100 01110101 01100100 01100101" (handy translator here), who was once just another unremarkable attempt to bottle the Angry Video Game Nerd's glory and use it for his own purposes. However, he very quickly descended down the path of the most egotistical person on Youtube. He is known to Google his name and find every site where discussion of his videos takes place and harass anyone involved. ThisTroper was on a forum when someone mentioned him in a topic, and he immediately (within the day) popped up and attempted to insult unrelated members of the forum who merely posted in the same thread, then started another thread attempting to plug his "work." This has occured multiple times. He seems to also be embroiled in an Internet war with a relatively unknown "parody" reviewer, and when he was mentioned on another page here it was quickly removed and replaced with praise and insults for this other reviewer, making it a good reason of why it's rather better to just not mention his name directly at all. It is incredibly ironic when someone can praise themselves on a page about being overly pretentious.
- This Troper admits that him vandalizing that page was actually a Xanatos Gambit on his part, though it was too easy to pull off for him to want to call it that.
- Not to be confused with Chris Bores, who while he doesn't constantly google his name like the previously mentioned reviewer does (...yet), he is not himself free from arrogant episodes, notably getting Retsupurae temporarily banned from YouTube after they MST'ed his Haunted Investigators spinoff.

Being maniacally unable to take criticism isn't a big ego, it's just insecurity.

Jack Thompson.

Gonna need a lot more than that. He's a self-righteous prick, sure, but where's the ego? We can't just say "he wants to impose his will on everyone"; it's not like he invented the morals he's imposing.

Uri Geller. For 35+ years, he's been claiming to be a real, honest-to-God psychic, despite most of his predictions being wrong, several lawsuits and accusations of fraud laid against him, and the fact that when he bends spoons, it's usually with his hands. He's since all but dropped this claim, but the other distinguishing mark of his huge ego — making frivolous lawsuits against companies like Nintendo and IKEA for supposed defamation of character — still lives on.
- Geller was also a very violent person who knew martial arts. A skeptic who actually got Geller to convince he was a hoaxer was treading on eggshells around Geller the entire time.

A lawsuit-happy, violent fraud, but we need evidence of a big ego, not of those things.

Celebrity Chef Bobby Flay has gone to great pains to alienate basically every other professional chef on the planet who is a) not employed by Bobby Flay or b) forced to interact with Flay because of committments to the Food Network. While admittedly Flay is a talented chef, he's not quite as talented as he'd have you believe. There was once an encounter between Flay and Alice Waters, after which Ms. Waters remarked "Oh my Lord, I'd forgot how much of an utter tool that man is."
- Another example of his ego is his appearance on the original Iron Chef when he stood on his cutting board while celebrating his "victory" against Chef Morimoto after the hour given to cook was over. He lost the battle. Some rumor that this was staged to make him look like a stereotypical American; Flay himself claimed it was a mistake. During his rematch with Morimoto, he made a point of pushing his cutting board aside before jumping on the counter.
  - It should be noted that during the "New York Battle" rematch, the crowd was openly rooting for Morimoto
- If these stories of Flay's massive ego, self-importance, and disrespect for others are true, then he is quite possibly the finest actor in several generations. Throwdown With Bobby Flay sees him lose regularly, and always accept it with grace and a smile and usually a hug for his competitor, and on the occasions where he wins, he often apologizes at length and says he can't believe it, all without managing to look sour or gloat or any of it. It would seem odd for someone with such an inflated opinion of themselves to continue doing, season after season, a show where they consistently lose to other people... you'd think he'd have cut and run after the first season to preserve his pride.
  - Bobby has specifically said that his goal on Throwdown is to lose and thereby show off the skills of those he's reviewing, while his goal on Iron Chef America is to win. I would not be surprised to discover that his agent told him that he needed a show to deflate his ego publically. Then again, Throwdown's premise is that he's going to go challenge a chef and make them a household name by being gracious enough to lose. Remember that, in Throwdown, the chefs are told that they're about to be in a premiere! Getting to beat Bobby may be slim consolation, even though Throwdown is excellent publicity...
  - Uh, no they're not. They're told they're getting an episode about them. Which is, in fact, what they get.

Way too much back and forth stuff, and too strong a possibility that his ego's just for show.

Let's not get started on authors who flip out about fan fiction... although a few of them are big enough names that you'd think they'd know better.
- Heck, those with strong beliefs on copyright are generally not known for their manners.
  - Speaking of Anti-Piracy activits, it's official: One anti-piracy organization wouldn't even allow you to MST their stuff.
  - There are plenty of jerk pirates as well.

Too big a target.

Paris Hilton, best known for uhmm.... doing nothing worthy, has outright slammed the press for spreading supposed "lies" about her just as recently. Paris Hilton, welcome back to this list.
- Let us not forget post-prison-stay when Paris tried to convince us all that she really changed. In an interview with People Magazine, what did she have to say to people who were understandably skeptical? "They're wrong and don't know me." Um, Paris, to use another quote from that show, I guess the Lie Detector test determined... that was a lie.

Like every other human being, I wish Paris Hilton would just go away, but that's not big ego stuff. That's "she sucks and she won't admit that she sucks", except on an even more personal level. Of course she's going to say and believe that she's a good person.

A really early version of this is Reverend Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian Minister and the inventor of graham flour and graham bread. Although some of his recommendations for a healthy lifestyle didn't really help, he was right about whole grains, regular sleep, good hygiene, exercise, drinking clean water, as well as avoiding alcohol and foods with chemical additives. The reason for this was to curb lust, which was considered to be the root cause of many diseases at the time. But his dietary recommendations were seen as very radical for his time. He was considered a nut by many and even openly attacked once by a group of butchers and bakers who considered him a threat to their livelihoods. He also had a difficult personality that even alienated many of his followers. Due to his cranky, aloof temperament and overzealous attitude, it became more difficult for him to find places willing to let him give lectures and he eventually died in obscurity in 1851 and the popularity of his lifestyle changes died out about 30 years after his death, making this trope Older Than Radio.

Cranky, aloof and overzealous, but that's not a big ego.

The appropriately named MeMe Roth of the National Action Against Obesity. There is no one who hates food more than she.
- Too bad nobody told her that anorexia can be just as dangerous to the human body as overeating.
- She even insults overweight people and doesn't seem to understand why people are pissed with her.

Too big a target, and having weird, offensive, even dangerous beliefs isn't a big ego.

If we started listing political examples, the Wiki would implode.
- Plus things would get hot; it could not possibly end well.

Too big a target.

Robert Mariano is the CEO or Roundy's, a Milwaukee-based company that owns a chain of grocery stores and has its own line of food products. Despite being completely unknown to anyone outside the grocery industry beforehand, he has re-imagined himself as "Chairman Bob," the celebrity spokesperson for his own brand, appearing in commercials approving only the best ingredients for their food products. His likeness also appears on the paper and plastic bags used within the stores.

Wha? So he made himself into a mascot/spokesman, big deal. Lots of businesses do that...

Miguel de Icaza is famous within the open source movement for his ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to question his position.

That needs way more elaboration.

Richard Stallman/RMS/St. IGNUcius. It's not "Linux", it's GNU/Linux! By extension, you suck if you use vi, for Stallman ~~co-~~developed Emacs.
- Fun fact: it's easier and quicker to learn to use vi. emacs' learning curve is, as /g/ accurately puts it, a freaking spiral.
- Stallman is known for saying that the (according to himself) exorbitant amount of GNU-contributed code in Linux-based OSes makes it right to say that it should be called "the GNU Operating System", blatantly ignoring the fact that if it weren't for Linus Torvalds (the real creator of the Linux kernel) his beloved utilities would be completely useless (or in the limbo, waiting for Hurd).
- Which, while certainly true, doesn't change the fact that the Linux kernel would have been equally useless without the GNU-provided coreutils, since a kernel by itself does pretty much exactly nothing, being as it is a hardware interface. GNU, providing a selection of copyright-free tools to actually make use of the kernel, had a large part in popularising Linux as a viable platform instead of just another hardcore shut-in's pet project, so there's certainly a degree of truth on both sides of the argument.

Too much back and forth on it, and it sounds more like an attack on GNU itself.

Many moon landing conspiracy theorists qualify, if only for the simple fact that they forget the Cold War and the Space Race. Somehow, some guys looking at blurry video managed to notice "errors" that escaped the USSR. Of course, some people believe that said theorists were provoked by the USSR itself to discredit the moon landings.
- Heck, conspiracy theorists in general. They basically believe they are the only smart/sane people in the world and it's their job to open the rest of our eyes to all the massive evil plots out there that we're all too blind to see. Anyone providing evidence that discredits them immediately becomes part of the conspiracy.

I agree, but it's way too big a target.

Generally speaking, if any of you readers/editors are considering enrolling in art school (or entering the arts/entertainment field in general), good luck trying to avoid running into this personality type at least once a semester.
- And if you are fortunate enough to gain success and fame in a relatively short time, try very hard to avoid becoming this personality type.

Too big a target.

Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots. Coached the team to three (yes, three) Super Bowl wins, including one season they almost went completely undefeated. He is also such a petty snob, that when his former assistants leave and become head coaches (something most head coaches actually WANT for their assistants) he refuses to speak to them. Note; famously, when Eric Mangini's Jets defeated the Patriots, he flat refused to shake Mangini's hand. A man who was a loyal assistant, and at least a genial acquaintance, and Belichick treated him as if he were typhoid Mary. So sad that a grown man, let alone a head coach, would behave like such a shallow adolescent.
- Or so a really, really biased Browns fan might say. But if you look at his assistants who most people agree are seemingly good people (e.g. Josh McDaniels) there was a really heartwarming postgame meetup. But of course, anyone who holds a grudge towards a prick is an asshole, right?
  - I'm not sure what that was supposed to imply. But to answer your question, no, somebody is not an asshole because they dislike people who irk them. That makes them human. But we have this thing called "being a professional" about it. You don't need to be bosom buddies with someone in order to shake their hand like an adult.

I don't know that being rude to people, by itself, really counts. Maybe he just has no social skills.

You might not have realized this, but inherently, most examples of Small Name, Big Ego will be examples of folks who have no social skills. Also, you not really thinking that being rude to people counts doesn't change the fact that a great many people DO think it counts. Small Name, Big Ego is all about people who feel they are above the rules of decenct conduct.

Brett Favre (NFL). His constant "unretirements" reek of an undeserved ego, since he's proved he can't last an entire season at his age. He jerks teams around for months, waiting until days before training camp starts to announce he's really retiring (I mean it this time guys!). Then shows up a week late to training camp, after the Vikings had already told their other quarterback that the starting job was his. Some blame goes to the Vikings for not telling him to pound sand, but really Brett? You think football needs you that bad?
- And it seems that rather than reform his ways, he's starring in a Sears commercial lampshading his child-like inability to make a decision and stick to it.
  - This troper totally didn't know that was him! I don't know if it says something about how important he really thinks he is if people don't recognize him on TV.
  - Not if what he's famous for involves wearing a facemask.
  - That is indeed a great commercial. He does a Take That! to himself!

If he hasn't come out and demonstrated a big ego, we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe he really is just that indecisive about retiring: that he was willing to make fun of himself sorta mitigates the behavior.

I'm sure every example has some excuse for why they do what they do. This is isn't about what excuse they have. It's about what they've DONE. He has shown complete disregard for teams front offices and for their personnel operations. And when he does decide he wants to play he DEMANDS to be inserted into the offensive schemes. I am however, leaving in your point that maybe the commercial was a lampshading on his part of his own flaws. Competing points-of-view are necessary to understanding the whole story.

Chad ~~Johnson~~ Ochocinco. (NFL)Want proof of his ego? Just look at his last name. He actually had his name legally changed to "Ochocinco" so that he could wear his nickname on his jersey. Not to mention that he botched the translation for "85" in Spanish (when it should be "Ochenta y Cinco," but that might be asking too much for a man who prides himself the face of one of the worst football franchises in recent memory).
- Ochocinco's ego seems to generally be all for fun though, including things like making a checklist of people who successfully covered him before playing the Ravens or sending their defense a box of deodorant "because they stink". Those are done in jest, however, because Ochocinco is good friends with Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis and likes to psych himself up for those games. There was also the time he bought unsold tickets for a Bengals home game so fans wouldn't have to deal with a local blackout. And the time he beat a horse in a race, albeit with a headstart.

That just sounds like he's having fun, not being egotistical.

Once again, just cause it sounds like that to you doesn't mean it is so. But, again, I leave in the line about him maybe having fun, because balance is key.

Barry Bonds (MLB). He hired his own dietician, fitness trainer and every other job you can think of so that he wouldn't have to share one with the rest of the team.

It might count, but it needs more details. I doubt he actually said "it's so I won't have to share one with the rest of the team", and maybe there's some good reason for it.

Maybe you're waiting for Uwe Boll to say "Yes, I'm arrogant"??

Boxing in general has no shortage of this, but special mention must go to Anthony Mundine, who has, among other things, proclaimed that Australians would talk about him the way they talk about Don Bradman. Of course, there's a strong possibility that he's deliberately acting the {{Heel}} so that people will buy his fights on PPV in the hope of seeing him get beaten up.

Not knowing who Don Bradman is, I dunno what to make of it. And if he was trash-talking before a fight, well, it pretty much just comes with the territory.

I understand that. But that's your opinion..

It is unclear if this is the deal with Manny Ramirez, or if he's just a Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Both. Here is a prime example of Manny's ego. Despite winning two World Series with the Red Sox, Manny had decided that he wanted out of Boston. When whining incessantly didn't get his ass kicked to the curb, he resorted to playing with as little effort and heart as possible. As proof that Manny was phoning it in during his last days with the Red Sox, once he was traded to the Dodgers, he instantly went on a major hot streak, carrying the Dodgers into the playoffs practically by himself. Manny then proceeded to turn his ego on Los Angeles. During his offseason contract dispute, he held out for so long that he missed most of spring training and had to begin the season late- despite the fact that no team besides the Dodgers was even interested in his services. (Pretty much every other team was greatly disturbed by the fact that Manny could apparently turn it on and off at will depending on whatever suited him personally at the moment.)
- And then in Game 4 of the 2009 NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies, Manny left the bench to shower early and missed the ninth inning... despite the fact that it was a one run game and the momentum of the series was at stake. True, Manny had already been pulled from the game for a defensive replacement, so it wasn't as if he could help the team on the field anymore, but still, I'm sure the Dodgers are happy to know that beating the crowd is more important to Manny than his team's playoff survival.

Which suggests he's a cheat and a poor sport, but that's the same as having a big ego.

Most poor sports are a result of this trope.

Brian "The Boz" Bosworth probably set the record for quickest rise and fall - a top draft pick, he got the biggest contract for a rookie in NFL history and had a TV-ready persona to go with the trash talk. He then proceeded to get owned live on prime-time on Monday Night Football and retire from chronic injuries after playing just 24 games over 3 seasons.

That just sounds the usual sports trash talk mixed with bad luck.

Please notice we didn't list every athlete. Michael Jordan talked trash. But a) he backed it up in full. And b) Jordan was actually a noted team player who was more than willing to step out the spotlight on his teammates account. These do not describe Brian Bosworth. The injury was incidental. Karma perhaps?

The entire football program at Texas Christian University. Since the 1996 breakup of the Southwest Conference, TCU has endlessly whined about being passed by the Big 12 for Baylor. The school has jumped from conference to conference since, looking for one "good enough" to get its football team into a BCS bowl game; currently the Horned Frogs play in the Mountain West, where they don't have a single opponent in their time zone. The program and its fans want nothing to do with former SWC opponents Rice, Houston or even Metroplex rival SMU while complaining that Texas and Texas A&M won't play them.

The entire football program? Way too big a target...

Not in my opinion.

Yankees former manager Joe Torre. He actually built up a reputation as one of the most beloved managers or coaches in all sports, prompting the name Saint Joe. When he left to coach the Dodgers, he wrote a smutty book bashing the Yankees and the executives and players. Yes, Joe, real classy of you to air dirty laundry that was supposed to never leave the clubhouse. Especially when Torre made it a point while in New York, that the players were NEVER to air their business to the media. What a hypocrite.

He may be a hypocrite, but that doesn't seem especially egotistical, just bitter.

It takes arrogance to stoop to levels that you preached to others was simply intolerable. And not even acknowledge the hypocrisy of it all

Hopefully that'll help a little.

No, none of your edits help a little. But I'll attempt to respond so that you can see why they don't.

BritBllt: Did sports heroes kill your father and rape your mother? Seriously, this page is a mess. If you're going to list every damn celebrity that simply acts like a jerk, you're going to have list every celebrity, period. I don't know why you're hung up on the sports section (I notice you're not touching any of the others and you're taking this awfully personally, which makes me think you have a vested interest in it), but frankly, this cleanup was my last-ditch effort to try to keep the page from being Complaining About People You Dont Like. If you won't stand for that and insist on including every Jerkass behavior imaginable, I'll request a cutlist, which is what I really wanted to do the first time around anyway.

Not to mention that you keep saying "that's your opinion". Actually, it's not - I don't keep up with sports, I don't know who most of these people are. Which is the point. The examples clearly aren't doing a very good job if I can read about a person I've never heard of, in a factoid written for the sole purpose of showing their ego, and nonetheless say "that doesn't sound like a big ego". On a page that amounts to justified bashing of people, the burden should be on the person adding the example to make it very clear that their entry's a big ego (and not just a plain old jerk). The benefit of the doubt should go to the person being attacked, not the person doing the attacking.

Me: I did say I had nothing further to address to you. But since you ask, I'll humor you. I'm going to ignore the adolescent quip and get down to business.

By your admission you don't follow sports, then maybe logic dictates that you yield to those who do follow it more? Hmm? Because, if you don't really follow something, then......isn't that inherently your opinion??? Or am I missing something??

As to your observation that I'm taking the Sports section personally, I advise you check the activity on my IP a little more closely (as you seem to have great interest in it already). I have made edits to several sections including TV, Film, Books, and Music to reduce Complaining About People You Dont Like. I have a small enough "ego" to restrain myself from making wholesale changes where I don't know the whole story.

Besides, I seem to be taking the section at least as personal as you are. I'm not making empty threats to block your IP.

I understand you think that your logic is superior to all the tropers who listed them. But I must remind you, no matter how much you can't handle the truth, for you to assert your opinion above that others, you demonstrating the very trope title in action.

I have no problem with you disagreeing with examples. But you discuss FIRST then edit. Not vice versa. Also, last tidbit, unilateral editing is usually grounds for bannination, not restoration of edits. Food for thought pal.

If you

BritBllt: Oookay...

unilateral editing is usually grounds for bannination

What mirror-universe version of TV Tropes have you been editing in? o.O

Charred Knight: Frankly I agree with BritB11t. I could understand if he deleted the entire sports sections when people like Cutler, and Marbury do have egos, but Favre doesn't have an ego, his just an indecisive ass. Also TCU just had an undefeated regular season, so I think their complaints about not being in a BCS conference is justified. The reason Bonds didn't share the same personal trainer, and other stuff was the fact that he was clearly on steroids.

Me: I apologize for jumping down his(her) throat attempted to try and clean it up a little. But to answer you, I hear where you're coming from with Favre, but just because there might be an explanation for your behavior doesn't make it less arrogant. The Green Bay Packers stuck with Favre when he was a very sub-par quarterback, and he thanks them by holding them hostage every offseason. When the Packers finally had enough and told him make up his mind or leave, he storms out and then gives a press conference painting the Packers as "forcing" him out. It is selfish sense of entitlement (aka Small Name, Big Ego) in the worst degree. But I added his recent bratty attitude with Minnesota coach Brad Childress as a concrete example. The true stars in sports DO NOT question the coach out loud. You do it privately.

BritBllt: No worries, and I apologize for jumping the gun too. My concern is just that, as this isn't a subjective trope, we should err on the side of caution when calling Big Ego if there might be something else going on (as opposed to the celebs who really do come right out and say "ha, I am better than all of you!"). That stuff about Favre helps a lot, and since I don't know that much about the sports people, I'd be grateful if you, Charred Knight and others who do can flesh out the ones that really count. I just moved the ones that sounded vague to me; if they really are egotists, and some more details would make their egos clear, I'm all for putting them back on the list.

Me: Now that is a plan. *shakes hands* Defeat Means Friendship, eh? Anyhoo, I think we need to establish a definition of what constitutes an outmatched ego. IMHO, it extends beyond doing the Evil Laugh and saying "I am better than all you mere mortals, now kneel before Zod." It entails anytime, someone decides that their own interests supercede those of those to whom they have a tacit agreement of loyaltly, or they decide that their skill removes them from being subject to accepted rules of conduct.

Now, you are very correct, there are Jerkasses who are not Small Name Big Egos. Take Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella; he is a classic case of someone who lacks social graces, what with his constant rants and foul language. However, he is also a consummate sportsman and demonstrates to to his players and his bosses. A guy like Belichick thinks his Super Bowl wins free him from the same code of decency.

When Belichick left Bill Parcells, himself a legendary NY Giants coach, Parcells never treated him so shabbily. Likewise, Michael Jordan retired and unretired, as did Roger Clemens and a host of other athletes, but they don't hold teams hostage and then berate them for daring to ask them to grow up and make up their minds.

BritBllt: Just so long as I don't get a Redemption Demotion. :) To me, the trope has to stay about the Card Carrying Villains of egotism, because the slippery slope's too steep otherwise. While bad sportsmanship can definitely be egotism, I think it's a kind of egotism everyone's guilty of sometimes, and one that almost comes with the territory of being a celebrity (you might say that if they didn't think they were better than everyone, they never would've wanted to be famous). And there could be cases where bad sportsmanship, disloyalty and a lack of civility might come from other causes; if anyone with Aspberger's got into the NFL, they'd probably start World War III in their interviews without meaning any harm. Still, since the rules of sportsmanship are a unique factor for sports celebs, maybe a note in its folder could help explain those examples. Something like "In professional sports, especially in team sports like football and basketball, there's a code of sportsmanship that players are expected to follow. But sometimes, like in the examples below, a player's ego gets too big and he ends up betraying his teammates and hurting the league for his own sake." That's just a really rough phrasing, but something like that, so people who are only casually into sports will instantly know "oh, so that's why they're big egos". I admit, sportsmanship didn't even cross my mind until you just said it and it suddenly clicked.

And with that, I've gotta run - happy holidays!

{{Mc Jeff: I deleted the Karen Traviss section, which was removed during the big cut and readded. The entry read like a smear from an angry anti-fan. Not being a Star Wars fan, this is, as I understand it what she's done.

She dislikes the cannon protagonists, preferring her own race of Mary Sues, has an insulting name for her detractors, and flounced out of the fandom.

Where exactly is the big ego? I didn't see anything about her proclaiming how her genius was misunderstood, talking down to the creators, or making any of the outrageous claims and demands that other big egos have.

Libros: I think the reason she was on the page was A) equating her detractors with terrorists and B) how she supposedly messed with canon and then when she complained about authors invalidating hers she got pissed then fired.

Glowsquid: She also used her influence over a lickspittle admin on (Dark Moose) on the Star Wars blog site to ban anyone who critisced her work.

I don't think Alex Ross fits the bill. People who actually have been to cons know that Ross likes to sign autographs. Whenever people ask about him being a dick, people would say "many stories", but all they could say is that story about the kid, yet they couldn't find any substantial evidence about it.

Willy Four Eyes: Would it be permissible to add Ray "Benzino" Scott, rapper and former editor-in-chief of The Source magazine to this page?

BritBllt: Sure, as long as he's got an ego and you've got stories to show it.

BritBllt: By the way, I think this is a fairly new addition the opening...

Use caution when adding examples, we don't want somebody's Hatedom getting any bigger than it needs to be. This is not Complaining About People You Don't Like. Note that because this trope is about ego, the people on the list must have boasted about something, to qualify. There are plenty of jerks in the world, but this trope is specifically about people who are jerks because of their big egos.

A Made Of Win and my thanks to whoever added that paragraph. ^_^

General Goose: Is there an opposite for this trope? Someone who acts extremely modest/withdrawn about their talents almost to a fault?

Just so you know, Sailor Moon Fansubs isn't "shut down". Betts simply locked the forum to a members-only deal, and if you were to join, you'd see a lot of vendetta is still about from him as well as his totalitarian mentality. Nobody is allowed to be neutral, and he's even banned his own supporters or made flamewars if they've so much suggested that he's gone too far or that he should take his own advice and walk the other way. Yeah. It's that crazy.

BRPXQZME: Not directly, but Nice to the Waiter, Humble Hero, and Extreme Doormat could be some sub/tangential tropes to look at.

Archived Discussion Main / SmallNameBigEgo