Basic Trope: There are many villains who could very well be the Big Bad, but only one of them is the main villain.
- Straight: In the Police Procedural Troperitania Central, after being made to turn in his badge for failing to abide by the law in his fanatical search for the man who killed his father, though on friendly terms, by Da Chief David, Private Detective Bob, along with Intrepid Reporter Alice and Hard Boiled Detective Charlie, investigate the scene of a gruesome murder of the well known philanthropic senator Emily. The suspect was an minor, Ax-Crazy street criminal, but since seemingly isolated incidents reveal massive plots, it turns out that he was armed with a gun and a license by the Corrupt Politician Frank as a hitman with a target placed on Emily's head for her dirty dealings on the Black Market for information that could jeopardize Frank's career. But he is not the Big Bad, just an Arc Villain who was bought up by The Syndicate to have the government and law enforcement turn a blind eye to their actions, and Alice, while she was a rotten egg, supported the hated Mafia, and needed to be ridden of. Yet even they aren't the Big Bad, as they are merely tools of OmniCorp, tasked with sabotaging the industrial hubs, mines, and shipping companies associated with rival corporations, particularly Peace & Love Incorporated, such that it would look like symptom of management incompetence and internal factors, and in such a way that it doesn't effect ManuCom, one of OmniCorp's allies.
- Exaggerated: It turns out that OmniCorp was merely an Unwitting Pawn of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness, which had deliberately sabotaged the material shipments of ManuCom in a False Flag Operation to set into motion it's undercover war against Peace & Love, whose upper management is composed of people who cannot be easily disposed of but have access to deeply classified information and lost nuclear weapons. But then it turns out that these guys aren't the Big Bad, as it's actually the Government Conspiracy, with operatives everywhere- even Da Chief is one of them-, tricking them into believing that Peace & Love was a threat, to create a war that would lead to the mutual annihilation of the companies which the economy is dependent on, and together with the constant terrorist attacks, would keep the populace too poor and afraid to care about the already existing problems created by this conspiracy. But it turns out that even they aren't the true Big Bad, and it is actually the emperor of Evilus, God-Emperor Evulz, behind everything and manipulating everyone without retribution. And then Evulz reveals to Bob that he is his father and that he faked his death because of Bob were to ever to learn of his dealings with Satan, who is really just a superpowered hobo, he would Go Mad from the Revelation and kill him, taking his power and destroy human civilization. Even though he truly cared about him, and sold his soul to lift Bob from poverty. Cue dawning horror as Bob realizes that the true Big Bad is him.
- Downplayed: The chain of Big Bad candidates only goes up to Frank.
- Justified:
- Stable villainous organizations are bound to generate a hierarchy of higher-ups passing out directives to people lower on the chain of authority.
- The Big Bad is big on non-action and is not a One-Man Army; he has to get things done, often through using applied force, so he has to work through delegates, subordinates, and hired muscle. Of course, it's also in his best interests to remain The Ghost, as that gives him Plausible Deniability should he ever be caught.
- Inverted: After Lucius alerts Evulz to the existence of a prophecy that foretells of the birth of an intrepid hero who shall rise and topple his empire, Evulz decides that, since Prophecies Are Always Right, consulting his advisors for advice is the wisest course of action. Immediately, General Ripper suggests genocide to expunge this threat, to which the rest agree. Problem is, the Science Director interjects, is they have millions of people to sort through to find this hero. It would be impossible in this situation for Evulz to just capture the child and raise him as his own successor, the only option going forward is to sterilize everyone (but not before storing away their genetic material in sperm/egg banks!), and anyone who rejects this offer can burn in hell. Usually, burning down villages will make more heroes than necessary by giving them reasons to hate the villain, but Evulz knows this, and is actively exploiting this fact; Improbable Infant Survival applies, often with babies floating downstream or otherwise being squirrelled away by mysterious waifs, so finding these children possibly means finding hero candidates. But when Evulz ordered the glassing of the ignorant backwater town of Troperitania, the floating child- Hiro Goodall- that his army found wasn't the actual hero, but rather the young girl Alice who had found him, for that action would teach her how Good Feels Good and would inspire her that she does have the power to defeat The Empire if she would only try. But then it turns out that Alice saving the baby was contrived by Heroes "R" Us to inspire the hero inside who they suspected was The Chosen One, to fight in their crusade against Evulz- they had sabotaged the wagon train en route to a marketplace in The City, forcing them to stop off at an inn just outside of Troperitania. The town was bombed, and while they were frantically packing up their supplies to escape from the fray, Alice ran into Hiro, whose family escaped through a gate that Heroes "R" Us just 'happened' to leave open, and even if his parents didn't make it, he did. But then it's revealed that they were tricked into thinking Alice was The Chosen One, when she was merely a conduit to retrieve the Sword of Plot Advancement and unseal the Goddess Of Good Justitia. And then she reveals to Evulz that, by setting off the chain of events that freed her from her prison, Evulz is the true Big Good.
- Subverted: With Frank and his criminal connections thoroughly busted, and with the lawsuit against OmniCorp underway, the trio gather their scruples and consolidate their resources in preparation to uncover a greater conspiracy- records from the criminal underworld are predictably scarce and what little information they can glean from there are well-hidden, and it can be inferred that The Government has both Emily and Frank's domcile under lockdown and is in the process of raiding it for resources regarding the underworld; but, worryingly, The Government is being very opaque on the nature of it's discoveries. Furthermore, the late Emily was found to have previously unknown relations, not only to The Mafia but also to many other politicians, world leaders, and other high-profile persons, all of which could be threats to The Government, and Alice, Bob, and Charlie were collectively growing suspicious of David's insistence upon feeding the interpersonal information to his district. Surely, there must be something going on here. But sure enough, their search came up inconclusive.
- Double Subverted: Yet the trio are Properly Paranoid; The Conspiracy is just very Genre Savvy and good at hiding, sometimes in plain sight. See Exaggeration.
- Parodied: Bob runs into a 66 million year Gambit Pileup between unimaginably ancient conspiracies, dozens of alien civilizations, million-year old demigods, all starting with extinction of the dinosaurs. If he should choose to find the guy behind this morass of insanity, he'll have to comb through trillions of individuals and hundreds of millennia of history to find him.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: There is only one clear-cut, Obviously Evil bad guy, and his Mooks.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Three bad guys candidates down, fifty more to go..."
- Invoked: Evulz keeps inserting distractions in the way of the heroes to throw them off track and prevent them from throwing a wrench in his plans.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstruction: After uncovering Frank's criminal connections and watching him become the centerpiece of a major political scandal, preferably with the suffix 'gate' appended, Bob is Driven to Madness, not by anyone but himself- the Paranoia Fuel of anyone you know, anyone you love secretly conspiring against you, or any common street criminal being puppets of some greater, mad conspiracy beyond all mankind will certainly erode at your trust, and your sanity. Bob hasn't slept in three days, and three nights, subsisting on coffee alone while staring at his obfuscating wall of connections, rambling to himself like a madman, seeing connections where there are none, cursing enemies that do not exist. Alice is worried for her friends rapidly deteriorating mental well-being. Last she asked, he went on and on about the Syndicate being a pawn of OmniCorp, and then all-seeing council of lies, an ancient conspiracy, the devil, his father...
Back to The Big Bad Shuffle, for we are many, but only one is us.
