Hate Sink cleanup

From Gladiator under Commodus' character sheet:

• Hate Sink: He is a depraved scumbag with no redeemable qualities.

The director, Ridley Scott, actually saw Commodus as worthy of sympathy and tragedy on his own. While I think this may well be a Nekron situation as far as the CM trope goes in that the author intended for Commodus to be a tragic victim of the society he was brought up in, the character came off as an utterly depraved megalomaniac(through to be fair, there were people that did agree with Scott since Ambar did put up a hell of an arguement when Commodus was being debated over at the CM thread even through the "No" side lost), HS is not a YMMV trope, and with this sentiment in mind, I am going to opt for a cut here.

If it is the case that he is intended to be sympathetic, I think an Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry could work for him because his detestable qualities outweigh his sympathetic qualities.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Dec 3rd 2023 at 11:22:01 PM

to cutting Cartman and Commodus.

I feel like Cartman is situational. In some episodes, he’s just Laughably Evil or a Nominal Hero. In others, he’s an utter sociopath who, while funny, is clearly meant to be actively rooted against to make his various defeats more satisfying (“Breast Cancer Show Ever”, all of season 21, and the more recent “Dikinbaus Hot Dogs” all come to mind).

Cut Commodus, though.

One I wanna bring up is Hyness from Kirby Star Allies. I don’t know a ton about the series or the lore, but from my understanding, the game's updates reveal that Hyness is something of a Tragic Villain who was driven insane by the Jamba Heart and, upon receiving one of Kirby's Friend Hearts, is cured of his madness and returns to normal.

That uhh… doesn’t sound like a Hate Sink at all.

Cut. Hyness I recall got downvoted as a Complete Monster, so that might have inspired someone to want a “nasty” trope to cover him under and got misused for Hate Sink.

Hard cut, even before then he was more of a memorably creepy Big Bad with some legitimately funny bits thanks to how crazy he was.

He's definitely not an example, so I feel he should be cut.

So this example.

• The Teal Mask gives us the Loyal Three, perhaps the most unambiguously evil Pokémon in the mainline games. Once a group of weak and unassuming Pokémon, the toxic chains around their bodies granted them something they desired (Okidogi was granted strength, Munkidori was granted intelligence, and Fezandpipiti was granted beauty). However, they chose to use this blessing selfishly, attacking people to steal anything they think is valuable. Eventually, they came to learn of the masks owned by Ogerpon and her companion, and decided to rob the masks for themselves, leading them to severely injure (and are implied to have killed) her companion. This enraged Ogerpon enough to kill them all, but they were mistakenly believed by the people of Kitakami to have given their lives protecting them from Ogerpon, leading them to be hailed as heroes for their so-called sacrifice. However, once the three were resurrected, they go right back to their treacherous ways, attempting to settle the score with Ogerpon, and requiring the player and Carmine to come and rescue her.

I contest this. You can catch and befriend them. And their no worse than any other Mon you have. Plus uh this is just a plot summary as is.

Cut.

Your reasoning for why they don't count (and why this entry isn't well-written) both sound valid to me, so I believe you can cut it.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Jan 5th 2024 at 9:39:03 AM

I'm kind of uncertain on if Vladimir Makarov from Call of Duty should be here given that he's one of the most iconic and popular villains in the series. Granted, I've never played the games before but I would like some opinions on if he keeps or not.

Should we add Magnifico from Wish, given he's the most blatantly obviously evil villain and he doesn't have any Evil Is Cool moments in Wish to show he's anything but a hated character? Also should we add Todrick Hall from Celebrity Big Brother and Russell Hantz from Survivor given their intense cruelty with little making them "cool".

Russel does sound valid honestly, the showrunners went out of their way to show him the absolute worst light (though he didn't help with his general machinations).

No. That's a side-effect of him being upvoted as a Complete Monster. Otherwise, he's a hammy villain who gets a Villain Song and a big reference to all the Disney Villains in the past. He's entertaining and Evil Is Cool.

Magnifico is a massive no go. He was deliberately created as a return to form for unambigiously evil Disney villains after multiple twist villains, antagonists that could hardly be called villains, characters that could be easily seen as villains but are dead by the time the story starts, twist antagonists that could hardly be called villains and legit No Antagonist growing stale for the audience. He is also a homage to the "old days" of classic Disney villains too. And the fandom reaction is generally Evil Is Cool and Love to Hate.

I'd say Makarov too. The reaction for Makarov tends to be that he was the best villain COD ever created and very positive at that. It is another pure evil villain with a huge satisfying Catharsis Factor defeat but whom is overall not loathed enough for this trope.

Edited by xie323 on Dec 7th 2023 at 3:27:06 AM

I was looking on the character page for the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, and found this for Scrappy-Doo:

"Hate Sink: He appears in a flashback showing how he was kicked off the team, though he's portrayed as a massively egotistical jerk instead of merely being overconfident. He's also the main villain of the movie, acting out of a desire for vengeance over being kicked off the team."

I don't really think he counts. He may lack redeeming qualities, but he's literally just a joke about one of the most hated cartoon characters ever being a villain.

Eh, while he is played for laughs, I think he could be seen as a hate sink. I feel that the writers of that movie deliberately tried to make him a villain because "they didn't like the fact that scrappy existed"

Scrappy Doo was made into a villain because James Gunn didn't like the character and thought everybody would cheer because of course, The Scrappy.

It isn't done with any meaningful narrative other than "People hate Scrappy" and his One-Winged Angel form is made into a joke with Scrappy getting a beer belly gut. I literally cannot see Scrappy Doo in that movie to be anything but Gunn's attempt to make him into a legit, obnoxious Hate Sink.

It's not like Jar Jar Binks being revealed as an evil Sith Lord manipulating Palpatine. That one at least makes Jar Jar likable and awesome to a certain section of the fanbase.

Edited by Shadao on Dec 8th 2023 at 9:26:43 AM

(That version of) Scrappy Doo sounds like he's meant to be hated by the audience, so I believe he's valid. From what I know of Survivor, Russell also sounds like he counts.

That said, Magnifico sounds like he's intended to be enjoyable, so my vote for him is a. I'm not sure about Todrick Hall and Makarov, though.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Feb 4th 2024 at 2:40:22 AM

Scrappy... yeah they intentionally played up his worst traits, while making him a Jerkass, while making him a soul-stealing body-snatching wannabe-murderer cult leader, none of which is played as anything other than him just being arrogant and jealous. I say he keeps.

The way people are describing him sounds more like a parody of Hate Sink. I know HS' can be made annoying rather than jerkish 100% of the time, but like...that movie's version of Scrappy moves in and out of Knight of Cerebus to the point where he's basically just a fucking Venom prototype and it feels like it's hard to take objectively seriously. I'm not saying he couldn't be taken that way; I could be way off (especially as someone who watched the movie once over a decade ago) but this is an...interesting case, to say the least.

Alright, so with the knowledge that groups cannot be Hate Sinks, i got two of em from Half-Life that wouldn't count anyways, first being The HECU:

• Hate Sink: The more evil soldiers, specifically the ones who not only show no remorse or hesitation in killing the Black Mesa staff, but state that they are happy that they get to kill someone and complain about how easy it is to kill the Black Mesa staff due to them not putting up a fight. The ones who hate Gordon for killing their buddies are also this, since they don't care that it was in self defense after they had betrayed and started killing many members of the Black Mesa staff. The commanders who leave their troops to fend for themselves are also this. While many of the others can be seen as punch clock villains, these other assholes deserve to be killed and serve as good human antagonists that serve the role of someone the audience can hate.

Yeah no, they're universally portrayed as badass soldiers that are fun to fight, and the entry outright asks you to ignore the multitude of ones that are portrayed as sympathetic.

Next is Black Ops:

• Hate Sink: While some of the H.E.C.U. troopers could be seen as Punch Clock Villains, the only redeeming quality about the Black Ops is that they look cool.

A complete ZCE that ignores that they're also badass ninjas that really don't *do* anything really disgusting.

Neither sound like examples to me, so they can both be cut in my opinion.

Having recently watched Stone Ocean I am not sure if Viviano Westwood counts. Like sure he’s an complete Jerkass to his prisoners, but pretty much everything about his actual fight, from his Blood Knight tendencies, to how much of Jolyne‘s Ora Ora barrages he tanks (despite that not even being in any way related to his actual Stand) to him being able to summon literal meteors just screams Evil is Cool to me. And unlike the likes of well, Cioccolata, Kenzo or Steely Dan, he doesn’t really do much either particularly vile or particularly loathsome during his screen time and is partially brainwashed during the fight anyway.