During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.
Specific issues include:
- Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
- A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
- Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
- Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
- Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.
It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk
to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.
Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:
- Why do a cleanup?: This trope definitely exists and has a well documented history of use. That being said, it frequently gets misused to a character who meets one of the components, namely that they are smart, charming while not necessarily even being a villain, or create good plans. While these are components, there is also a certain personality required, not to mention that all of the above are required to be present for a character to be a true Magnificent Bastard. As the trope attracts interest, it unfortunately brings in a lot of misuse and I thought the best way to rectify this would be a Perpetual Cleanup Thread, as is being done and has seen success with Complete Monster.
- What makes a Magnificent Bastard: Below is a list of the individual components to make this character. Note that they must all be present, not just some, which has lead to frequent misuse:
- Must be intelligent: Goes without saying, to be a Magnificent Bastard, the character has to be smart in the first place and use their brain to work towards whatever their end goal may be;
- Must be a Bastard: While going overboard in how vile the character is can be detrimental, a key aspect is the Bastard part of the trope, whether the character is an out-and-out antagonist in the work, some manner of Villain Protagonist, or something in between, they at least have some unscrupulous qualities to qualify for this trope;
- Must not be too detestable: Again, there is a ceiling on how bad the character can be before they just become too nefarious, blocking out the Magnificent part of the trope. A genocidal racist or child-raping Sadist aren't going to make the cut;
- Think on their feet: In addition to being a Chessmaster, a Magnificent Bastard, if the character deals with situations in which their initial plan is ruined, has to be able to pull a Xanatos Speed Chess and at least come up with a competent strategy to make up for lost time, otherwise they fail for being unable to think in tough spots;
- Have charm: Even if they don't necessarily make every character they meet fall in love with them and can even be detested by others, the audience has to find an amicable social relation to the character, or they are failing to make the impact required for this trope.
- What to do if a character is listed on a page but has not been approved?: They need to be removed, all candidates need to come through the cleanup thread first. The character could well count but they need to be analyzed properly and voted on first.
- Do we list Playing With this trope?: No; as a YMMV trope, this cannot be Played With, so we only want examples that are Played Straight.
- What do I do if I want a character to be listed as a Magnificent Bastard?: The greatest success Complete Monster saw for its cleanup effort was from the invention of the effort post format, so, borrowing from that, a troper wishing to propose a Magnificent Bastard will create such a post in the following format:
- Begin by describing The work, this will help establish the setting the character is in and for the reader to understand what kind of a scenario they are in;
- Summarize The character's actions, this will provide a listing for readers to understand what they do and how it applies to this trope because charm and lack of smugness are so crucial, this is a good time to be incorporating exactly the flavor of how they operate to explain this;
- List circumstances in which the character must Think on their feet, these are times where a wrench might be thrown in their initial plan and they have to adapt on the spot or even come up with a new scheme all together, this is also a good time to explain how the villain reacts to defeat when they have to face it, a true Magnificent Bastard won't break down into tears at the thought of death, they should have known such a possibility could occur and be able to handle it with more dignity;
- The competition, similar to the Heinous Standard dealt with for a Complete Monster, this section is to deal with how successful the character is in carrying out their plans compared to other characters. While, as a villain, they probably are going to lose in the end, it is good to explain how other characters handle the same situation. There is no exceptionalism case to be made for this trope but explaining the variety helps the reader have a better understanding of the proposal.
- How do you know when the character's arc is done so they can be proposed? When their tenure as a villain or antagonist finishes. This could happen in a single Story Arc in an entire work, a single work of a franchise, or the whole series in general. We'll show lenience to Long-Runners with constantly recurring candidates or series with outstanding continuities (ex. comic books), and it's entirely possible to count in a work or two but not in general for a reason like Depending on the Writer.
- What about candidates evil because of external sources? Those Made of Evil can qualify if they show enough individuality and tactical acumen — in other words, they have the personality to fulfill the magnificence requirement. Conversely, those brainwashed, especially if they're a better person without it, may fail the individuality aspect and cannot count.
- What if they are under orders from a higher-up? Depends. If the boss created the plans down to the letter and the candidate is just following them, sounds like we should discuss the boss instead. However, if the candidate takes creative liberties with the orders, adds their own charm and flair to them, fills in holes in the orders, and/or actively deals with obstacles their boss did not talk about, the candidate shows enough individual thinking to qualify.
- What about Character Development? An MB is something a character can develop into... a nice person who plots well might become more morally gray as the work goes on and hits the "Bastard" criteria, thus making them viable. Likewise, a Smug Snake might shed their ego, become more understanding of the threat others pose and gain the personality or "Magnificent" criteria, likewise making them viable. Conversely, a character who looks like this trope might suffer from a Sanity Slippage or just get outed as not being as smart as they thought they were and become incompatible with MB.
- Can an MB be a good guy? Not in the conventional sense... it is required they have at least some dubious traits lest they fail the "Bastard" criteria. That being said, a character who pulls a Heel–Face Turn or eventually stops taking villainous actions is still fair game: as there was a point in time where they were both "Magnificent" and a "Bastard" at the same time and they've merely adapted as time goes on. Now... if such a character begins showing other issues (i.e.: becomes prone to freak outs or starts getting outwitted) then they're compromising their Magnificence and will probably be deemed a cut. What's important is stylishly operating while at least for some time being willing to take at best underhanded methods to see a job done. A Heel–Face Turn in itself isn't a disqualifier but they do have to have been "Magnificent" and a "Bastard" at the same time and afterwards can't start slipping on the former front.
- What about characters whose stories can take different routes?: When proposing a character in a form of media that has them in multiple story routes. Said character must be consistent with their characteristics in all routes. (ex.: Can't have an example who shows promise on one route yet fails in another.) The only exception is if a later installment of the series confirms the character's actions which made them worth proposing are the canon route.
- Is there a timeframe rule like with Complete Monster?: Yes, please wait two weeks until after the work has concluded before proposing a character (again, usually using the North American air date). As is the case with CM, we want to give a reasonable time frame so that everyone interested in seeing the work has done so and can participate in the discussion without having anything spoiled.
- What about groups like with Complete Monster?: This is a point of divergence between the two tropes. While CM does not allow for a single entry encompassing more than three characters lest their heinousness for crimes becomes too watered down, with MB as long as they are treated as one "unit" it is acceptable to lump all characters provided they share acts of charm and intelligence.
- Can I propose my own work's character as a Magnificent Bastard?: No, this is a YMMV subject and the creator of a content is way too biased to be able to evaluate the criteria we're looking for without a second opinion taking over. That being said, you are more than welcome to encourage someone to consume your creation and if they feel a character counts, are more than welcome to suggest them.
- My example/edit has been approved, but the example subpage is locked! How do I get it added?: The moderators do not add examples to locked example subpages in the MagnificentBastard/ namespace directly. Rather, you need to do the edit to a sandbox page that follows the format Sandbox.MagnificentBastard<Name of the example subpage> (e.g for MagnificentBastard.Fullmetal Alchemist it's Sandbox.Magnificent Bastard Fullmetal Alchemist) and on a Friday, ask in the locked pages edit requests thread
for the content to be swapped in.
Thread rules
When voting a troper must specify the effort post they're voting on and cannot merely vote on "Everything I missed" as in the past it has indicated the poster didn't read the effort post and is guessing instead of analyzing.
Resolved items
In general, a character listed on this trope is considered "settled". This means they should not be challenged unless information used to list them was incorrect or information was missed in the initial discussion.
However, when re-litigating a candidate, the same rules apply for when they were originally proposed. If they do not have five or more upvotes than downvotes for approval upon a re-litigation, including votes from the initial discussion if they do not change, then they are a cut.
This especially applies to the characters listed below, who have been discussed excessively and repeated attempts to get them listed/cut may result in punitive action for bogging down the thread.
Definitely an MB
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers: Any sadism Darkrai displays is limited in effect thanks to the game's nature and any cowardice which can be inferred about him is Alternative Character Interpretation about his tactical retreats.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Azula's Villainous Breakdown is undone in the sequel comic Smoke & Shadow where she regains her composure and ends up stable and in control enough to count.
Definitely not an MB
- South Park: The show's frequent use of vulgar comedy and mean-spirited humor leaves any potential candidates devoid of the dignity or charm to qualify.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:15:22 AM
So while I haven't rewatched the movie in a few months at least, I was gonna try to write an EP for Quintessa. If I decide to do it, once it's done, someone want to review it before it goes up?
There’s the issue of there being only one CM and/or MB incarnation (e.g. Azula only has one each). Won’t be able to find it on the character pages, and the rest of the entries look identical.
It’s not like this website has some kind of purity test, I just hoped it would work as navigation to good stories.
I would prefer it just directly added on to the entries, but I’m willing to settle for the compromise.
Sidebar: there was also discussion of CM and MB pages for real life figures. Is that in the works?
Also, I personally feel that the Characters with (both) incarnations page is redundant to the respective incarnations and crossover pages, even with the restriction.
The pages are alphabetized, so finding the info one is looking for should not be too hard.
Also, with respect, HQ, I believe I already told you why I don't think listing real life people who have CM and MB incarnations is worthwhile: it would be an exercise in futility to list every last one of them since there are just too many, just as it would to list CM or MB and Big Bad crossovers or Dragon crossovers.
From my perspective (and I know for a fact that others will disagree with me on this point because people seem to underestimate the usefulness of certain sandboxes) part of the reason we have many of the sandboxes is to keep track of discussion, especially the candidates by Troper sandboxes, candidates by Creator sandboxes, former candidate sandboxes, and to a certain extent the incarnations sandboxes.
I’ll admit I was initially opposed to the former candidates Sandboxes until I realized how useful they were for keeping track of discussion. Listing historical domain characters and living people who have incarnations would not really help in that way any more than the incarnations and candidates by troper sandbox already does.
I apologize in advance for my spiel, I just want to clarify things as much as possible.
I can sympathize with your standpoint. I have no objections to any of your suggestions.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 12:41:00 PM
So Nathaniel Flint aside, I'm lacking in any MBs from the Disney canon after I passed over Jafar's EP years ago. Well, heck, I think another version of him keeps!
What's the setting?
House of Mouse was an old Disney series that basically served as a big hub for all the Canon characters to interact with one another—it gleefully premised itself on the idea that the Disney characters were Animated Actors and the eponymous House was a nightclub at which they all frequented classic Disney shorts. It was pretty cheap, but it was the fucking bomb when you were a kid (and among other things, it popularised the whole "nobody does X like Gaston!" meme).
Disney's House of Villains was the Halloween special for this series, where all of Disney's wickedest baddies teamed up to take over the House. Their ringleader could've been any of the great Big Bads, but tonight that distinction goes to Jafar.
What has Jafar done?
The most prominent of the Disney villains here and probably the only one who doesn't suffer random Villain Decay, Jafar is the one who makes a Legion of Doom out of all the Disney villains, convincing them to help him take over the House. For the first half of the special, Jafar schemes a meticulous plot with the other villains until the time comes for Jafar to hijack the show from Mickey Mouse and take over.
And take it over he does, driving out all the Disney heroes while leading the villains in a huge Villain Song called "It's Our House Now
", pulling off snazzy dance moves while he banishes Mickey from his own house.
Mickey, of course, takes the house back at the end, but it requires a Deus Ex Aladdin coming out of literal nowhere to conjure up Jafar's lamp; even then, while the other villains chicken out, Jafar fights Mickey in a sorcerer's duel before the evil sorcerer is crammed back into his lamp.
Is he magnificent?
For the standards of a DTV Halloween special where all the Disney villains are supposed to be Animated Actors? Oh, you fucking bet. So he's conquering a dinky little nightclub instead of Agrabah—he still does it by rallying every villain from Gaston to Maleficent to fucking Chernabog (okay, Chernabog's not that impressive in this series—they reduced him from the Devil to a Maleficent simp—but still!) into a big Evil Plan that culminates with a grandiloquently hammy song. Jafar is also explicitly the planner and the Big Bad here; easy pass.
Is he a bastard?
Duh. I mean, again, he's conquering a nightclub instead of a kingdom, but he's Jafar and he relishes in every moment of his evil. Wouldn't have it any other way.
Conclusion?
DTV!Jafar is still magnificent. I have fond memories of this special, even if it is really, really cheap.
Edited by Scraggle on Feb 3rd 2022 at 12:09:24 PM
Oh of course
to Jafar. Yeah, I remember it fondly too, though I think of how weird it was to have the cartoons coming in and disrupting the action during the show. Also yeah, that Aladdin randomly coming out of nowhere moment to say "Here, use the lamp!" is funny.
Okay, this is one that I'm uncertain on, but I might as well give him a shot - we're heading back to 1-800-Missing. Brief recap - Jess works for the FBI and gets visions of missing people.
Who is the Kidnapper? What does he do?
The unnamed kidnapper is the leader of a crew of kidnappers (shocker) from the episode "John Doe". Before the episode began, he and his crew met Derek Conway in a bar, a gardener who complained about the rich people he worked for. Getting themselves a mark, the crew used Conway to get inside the mansion with a plan - kidnap Victoria, the woman of the house, and ransom her off for $1 million. With Derek getting access to the code, the crew performs the operation flawlessly - they get inside peacefully, kidnap her quietly, and even make sure to take the security camera tapes with them on the way out so they aren't seen. They then contact the husband on stolen phones that the FBI fails to trace, leading him on a while goose chase of payphones leading up to the ransom drop.
The ransom drop is timed so that it's at a movie theatre right as three different films are getting out, meaning that while the FBI are trying their best, it's a mess trying to find the kidnapper in all this. The husband drops the bag and a guy grabs it, but a random security guard sees this and tries to stop him. The kidnapper pulls out a gun, so the FBI agents reveal themselves - so then the kidnapper's other two allies appear and ambush the ambush, gunning down the two agents and getting them all out of there - just to rub it in, the agent chasing them later reveals that they managed to find and turn off the tracker in the bag after their escape.
Unfortunately, after the kidnapping, Conway figured out what had happened and wanted his cut - to prevent him from going anywhere, the kidnappers let him tag along, and when the shit gets bad during the drop he flees with the wife in the trunk - of course, Conway's a dumbass and a coward, so instead of taking her to the police, he takes her to an old properly and puts her in a broken freezer. The kidnappers then manage to track him down again, and when Conway won't give up the location of the woman even when he's tortured pretty brutally, the kidnapper decides to just execute him and be done with it - they've got a million bucks after all.
Conway, however, got insanely lucky, and the bullet to the head didn't end up killing him - he's eventually found on accident stuffed in a trunk, so the FBI get on the case. They eventually find the van the kidnappers used to get away (which they'd obviously abandoned) and use minute pieces of evidence to triangulate their position, leading to two agents going to their house. The lead kidnapper opens the door and reacts calmly to the gun at his chest, only for his two buddies to try to ambush the agents again - this time they fail and get gunned down, though the kidnapper insists to the end that he genuinely doesn't know where the woman is; he would've told them if he did.
At this point, the kidnapper's taken to lockup and interrogated, and while he originally refuses to give anything up, Nicole points out that he's facing the death penalty, which makes him calmly reveal everything from beginning to end. After this admission, with his buddies dead, he simply lowers his head in defeat while the FBI then manage to track down the missing woman.
Is he Magnificent?
For a guy who isn't even the main focus of the episode, the kidnapper is a ridiculously competent enemy. The kidnapping he pulled was flawless and covered every track, featuring them breaking in with a code so there's no force, taking the security camera footage with him, pulling a successful ransom transfer and getting rid of the tracker, and even managing to have his team successfully ambush the FBI ambushing him in order to get away alive and unscathed. He then managed to track down the guy who took his asset, and when he himself is tracked down, he's calm the whole time, even with a gun to his chest and his buddies dead. Although he ends up "losing" since he gives up the game, he ends up alive, unlike his colleagues, and ultimately he does so calmly, simply weighing his options and choosing the best alternative - and he only got found in the first place because the FBI is insanely good at their jobs (he got tracked down from a french fry, a leaf, and a bit of tar in their van). Again, he's not even the Big Bad of the episode, just the Disc-One Final Boss, and he's insanely competent.
Is he a Bastard?
His crew kidnapped a woman for ransom, shot two FBI agents (one of whom dies), and tortured the guy who tried to hide her - but all of that is pretty much child's play in this show, especially because the FBI stuff is technically self-defense, the guy he tortured is a freaking idiot who tried to hide her instead of, you know, go to the police, and it's pretty strongly implied that he genuinely intended to let her go once he had the ransom.
Final verdict?
He doesn't pop out at you, but I think he keeps - what about you?
Conway's an idiot, so they kept him in the dark to avoid him squealing - as the kidnapper says, he almost certainly knew something was happening but he didn't know what until after it already happened. All they got from him was the code to the alarm, and there's no indication of how he gave it up - whether he just gave it up in conversation or anything like that. All they knew was he was already the kind of person to loudly blab on his employer in a crowded bar, so they didn't want him in.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 2:55:55 PM

I... don't care how that page is managed. Just gonna be honest.