Misused (alt names crowner Feb 9, 2020): Those Two Bad Guys

I think if we make a Disambig page, it should also contain Evil Duo, Big Bad Duumvirate, Dual Boss and perhaps Those Two Guys. Something similar to what happened to Fat Girl.

Edited by Snicka on Mar 5th 2021 at 6:47:02 PM

Hope it's okay to post in this thread. Based on my media viewing (especially Shakespeare-adjacent things and British works), I feel like what complicates this trope (or maybe tropes) is that there are sort of Venn Diagrams in how villain duos are characterized.

Apologies. Long post ahead.

One fairly concrete idea is having one member of the duo being a quiet, hulking brute and the other being loquacious (either genuinely Wicked Cultured or with Delusions of Eloquence). Depending on the work, the characters can be comical and/or threatening, and I don't think it's a requirement for them to be bumbling.

So like Gaiman's Croup and Vandemar and Pratchett's Pin and Tulip clearly fit this framing, and anecdotally, I'd say that this version is more distinctly British. Thinking for instance of a completely straight example of "Blue and Grey" in Reginald Hill's first Joesixsmith novel, as well as an episode of Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators in which a character is menaced by two sinister gangsters calling themselves R and G, who completely fit the dynamic although they are actually just harmless actors.

As I was typing, I noticed that all of these examples have pseudonyms and/or are otherwise framed in a way that calls attention to them being archetypical figures.

There is also a related framing, which places more emphasis on the two as a (humorous) double act, and downplays the physical and temperamental differences, although one of the pair will probably be the smarter/correct one in conversations. Bumbling is probably more likely but again I'm not sure if it's required. Anecdotally, this seems more common in non-British media.

I think this would characterize the Two Men in Kiss Me, Kate and I think also Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction. I kind of wonder how much the latter has to do with Tarantino's love of French cinema, because the noir film Shoot the Piano Player has a fairly humorous gangster duo as antagonists, as does another French film, Coup de Torchon, with the pair of pimps.

Incidentally, I just saw another French film, Cyrano My Love, which has a comical pair of Corsican brothers funding the play (who are actually pimps and clearly gangsterish). It also includes what I understand to be a Shout-Out / Inspiration Nod to Kiss Me Kate.

As a sidenote about Shakespeare, it recently struck me that while they are generally part of a larger band, Nym and Pistol are a pretty good fit for the trope(s), because the whole joke is basically that both are the Know-Nothing Know-It-All, but Pistol is bombastic with Delusions of Eloquence and Nym is an affected laconic "man of few words".

Also, I recently learned that the anonymous play Arden of Faversham (possibly by Shakespeare) includes a pair of incompetent but vicious killers called Black Will and Shakebag (the two are apparently historical figures). So, this may possibly be the Ur-Example.

An interesting essay, though to be honest I only skimmed through it. I'd like to respond to the first paragraph:

The "one eloquent, one thuggish" part is currently covered by Evil Duo. A lot of villainous duos are indeed not bumbling - Bumbling Henchmen Duo is a typical staple of children's media such as family comedies and cartoons, as making the villains bumbling can make them less threatening and thus more child-friendly.

Thanks for the reply. I apologize for the length.

To give a tl; dr, I think the original Those Two Bad Guys trope, which IIRC was heavily based on the very meta Gaiman and Pratchett examples, correctly identified a specific dynamic of two villains with distinct appearances and personalities.

And I think there is also a somewhat overlapping dynamic of villains with a humorous double act.

I say overlapping because for instance, Pratchett himself alludes to the Pulp Fiction characters, who are more like the second type than the first. Conversely, the two comical gangsters in Kiss Me Kate are definitely the second type and are also basically the same person, but tend to be cast in a way that evokes the "different appearances and personalities". Basically, invoked Divergent Character Evolution.

I do think that Evil Duo and Bumbling Henchman Duo probably works as a good way of sorting the two separate types, although right now, the descriptions of those tropes seem kind of vague.

Edited by Hodor2 on Mar 5th 2021 at 3:24:31 AM

Some of the examples that you talk about also seem like they fit the trope being discussed over on Mister X And Mister Y’s thread. I recommend you check that out and vote in the crowner. We’re probably going to keep a trope for the archetype, but it was already decided it won’t be called Those Two Bad Guys.

I think it's a little unfortunate that we have two separate threads for Those Two Bad Guys and Mister X And Mister Y when these two overlap so much, but that's the way it is...

Oh, that's interesting that Mr X And Mr Y. While I don't remember if they literally call each other Mr. X or Mr. Y, that would probably be the best fit for the Blue and Grey / R and G examples I mentioned that the most "classic" version of Those Two Bad Guys.

I think most of the others I mentioned would probably be Bumbling Henchman Duo.

I'm honestly not really sure which if any of the proposed tropes the Pulp Fiction duo would fit into, despite having a love of Seinfeldian Conversation that is fairly common to these tropes.

Edited by Hodor2 on Mar 6th 2021 at 4:01:50 AM

Pintel and Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean also fall into this "bantering villainous duo" trope, don't they?

FYI, the Crowner for Mister X And Mister Y agreed on creating a page for "bantering hired goons", the original concept that Those Two Bad Guys aimed to cover.

With that created, I think we should turn Those Two Bad Guys into a disambiguation page, which includes Bumbling Henchmen Duo, Evil Duo, Big Bad Duumvirate, Dual Boss and the "bantering hired goons" trope that's going to replace Mister X And Mister Y. That should also speed up the clean-up (which is currently working against the tide, since people assume Those Two Bad Guys is still a valid trope and thus keep adding wicks). The current content on Those Two Bad Guys can go to a sandbox.

Edited by Snicka on Mar 25th 2021 at 4:08:48 PM

That sounds like a good idea.

How's this for a disambiguation page?

Looks good.

If there's no objection, I'll swap the Sandbox and the Main page. I'll hide Bantering Baddie Buddies until it gets launched.

EDIT: I made the swap. Hopefully this will make the cleanup faster.

Edited by Snicka on Mar 28th 2021 at 7:37:52 PM

So what's needed here is to disambiguate these wicks?

^ Yes. I've been trying to change / disambiguate them for a while, which is why there's now only 1400+ instead of 2100+ wicks; but people keep adding more and more wicks, because every time there's a duo of villains in any work, people will sort them as Those Two Bad Guys. I'd appreciate if others also carried forward with the disambiguation, because honestly, it's very toiling to read through more than a thousand pages and decide which option should we replace the wick with.

When Bantering Baddie Buddies, the trope proposed in the thread for Mister X And Mister Y, gets launched, that gives one more trope to replace the wicks with.

Edited by Snicka on Apr 24th 2021 at 12:59:42 PM

Here's a sandbox: Sandbox.Bantering Baddie Buddies. It may be best to go through the TLP as a lot of the wicks hint at the trope but don't provide quiet enough context.

I think it looks good but yeah I think running it through TLP will help with example farming.

Yeah, might as well.

Created the TLP

Restarted clock.

Your link doesn't go to the draft.

Sorry here is the draft

So, what needs to be fixed before the thread is locked? We made the disambig page, but have over 1300 wicks to clean up and Bantering Baddie Buddies has not been launched yet.

Wicks down to 1300. It feels like more are sprouting up even as we remove them.

Bantering Baddie Buddies is coming along nicely but not yet ready to launch I think.