Old Complete Monster cleanup thread
Welcome to the Complete Monster proposal thread! This is the thread where new Complete Monster examples are vetted, approved, and written up. If you're looking for the general cleanup thread (for cuts, rewrites, expansions, and the like), please go here
Important: Before suggesting any new examples, please read the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List; if you have any questions, the odds are high they are answered there. Additionally, please check here for the earliest date a work can be discussed (usually two weeks from the U.S. release date) and whether the work has already been reserved by another user.
Here is how the process works:
- If you have a candidate to propose, you can simply come right in and propose them! If the character's run is brief, such as a single issue of a comic book, then a simple summary of their actions and any potential redeeming qualities will be enough; for longer-running candidates, an effortpost (EP) might be helpful for organizing the proposal. An EP is not outright required, but please be mindful that if a post becomes too clunky and unorganized, it can be very hard for other people to follow.
- After the proposal, there will be a 72-hour discussion and voting period, where people may ask questions and vote on the candidate. The number of upvotes must outnumber the downvotes by at least five for the character to be considered "approved".
- Three days after the proposal has been made, if the character has been approved, you may post the writeup (the text to be posted on the trope page itself) on the thread and send it to the drafts page. Your candidate will soon be added to the CM subpage. If the work has a page, you should add your candidate to the relevant YMMV page. Voila! It's that simple!
Outside of this process, we do have a few ground rules:
- To keep the thread moving at a reasonable pace, there are some restrictions on when a proposal can be made. There should only be a maximum of four EPs posted both per page and per hour to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle; additionally, each individual troper should only be proposing or writing up characters from a maximum of three works at a time (from initial proposals to end of their voting period). If your proposal would fall outside of either of these guidelines, we'd like to ask you to please wait until they would fit within; feel free to type them up on an outside document, and then when the time comes, you can just copy, paste, and post!
- No plagiarism of any kind. This is a very serious matter site-wide, as the website could get in actual legal trouble over this; as a result, this can very quickly lead to mod intervention. This can take many different forms:
- Direct plagiarism, i.e. wholesale copying. This is not only the easiest to find, but is also the most likely to warrant quick moderator intervention. To be clear, quoting in some places is perfectly acceptable, but it has to be very clear you're quoting from something else and it cannot be anything longer than a sentence or two - if you're quoting an entire work summary from Wikipedia, no one is going to believe you've actually consumed the work, so even if you cite your source, your candidate will be downvoted anyway.
- Self-plagiarism. Even if you can prove that you wrote the same text in both places, the site itself can't contain any of the duplicated text. If you already wrote something once before, it's not too hard to write it a second time.
- Using another site's work as a template for a proposal. Just because you don't copy and paste something directly doesn't mean it's any harder to detect if you're basing parts or all of your proposal on text someone else wrote. To be clear, this doesn't violate site rules and won't lead to mod intervention, but just like if you directly plagiarize, no one will believe you've consumed the work if you're clearly basing your proposal on something else. This thread largely operates on the honor system, and tweaking someone else's work to pass it off as your own is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
- Don't delete an EP unless you intend to swiftly repost it. We know that there are reasons why you might want to delete an EP, especially if it's being downvoted - rejection is hard, even in a low-stakes environment like this. However, deleting it renders the current discussion null and void, makes it impossible to reference the discussion in the future and can confuse tropers who didn't read it before the deletion. If the issue is temporary (such as formatting problems or a post getting overlooked as the thread moves on), then deleting and quickly reposting the EP is a valid option, but to fully retract an EP, please use the [[strike:]] markup instead.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- 'If a work is already reserved by another user , please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite CM" are off-topic and can lead to thumps. That's the kind of question to take to people's PMs if they're willing. Similarly, while we encourage friendliness and familiarity with other users, posts should always have some kind of thread-relevant purpose; for instance, if you want to wish someone a happy birthday, feel free to, but if it's the only thing in the post, it's off-topic and needs something else alongside it. Again, though, while we strive for a friendly atmosphere, this is not Facebook; life updates are fun, but unless they have some kind of impact on your thread participation, please do not bring it here - we have Yack Fest
for that.
- Please refrain from asking anything along the lines of "How Did We Miss This One?" In almost every case, the answer is simply "No one thought about it before". This Is a Wiki where everyone has different interests, and the fact that people missed a particular candidate, even one that seems like a textbook example of a trope or a character who is particularly iconic in pop culture, means absolutely nothing. The question is disruptive, has a simple and consistent answer, and provides nothing to any discussion.
- If you are suspended from parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
- For users who are suspended from editing the wiki, you still have full access to this thread. You can propose candidates and write them up with no issues whatsoever; while you will have to ask someone else to post the entry to the relevant pages once it is done, all write-ups are considered thread-approved - as in, done by consensus - and thus doing so does not violate any rules regarding meatpuppeting.
- If you are suspended from the forums, your participation is limited but not impossible. It is still possible for a forum-suspended user to assist in creating the write-up for a character who has already been approved; as previously mentioned, write-ups are inherently considered a consensus-based edit and thus not tied to any one particular user. However, you can not assist in the proposal of a character; as a proposal is based around the forum rather than the wiki, doing so with a forum suspension qualifies as meatpuppeting.
- Please keep all discussions "in-house".
- What other wikis use for CM equivalents is irrelevant here.
- Please be wary of using other wikis, Fandom or otherwise, as sources of information. They are just as fallible as a site like Wikipedia in regards to accuracy because they can be edited by any user, just as this site can.
- Do not attempt to force a communication with an author in an attempt to gather evidence or settle a debate; besides the fact that this is a YMMV trope and thus author intent has variable weight depending on the circumstance, doing so may cross the line into drama exportation, which is prohibited site-wide.
If you would like to use an EP for your candidate, here's the general format. This format does not have to be followed exactly, but these are the main topics that need to be covered:
What is the work?
This is a brief summary of the work you're going to discuss. We don't need a full plot summary here, just however much we need to understand going into the discussion — it can even be as simple as quoting the summary on the work's page.
Who is the candidate and what have they done?
This is essentially the character's biography — who they are, their story, the crimes they commit, and, preferably (though not required), what happens to the candidate at the end. It does not have to include every single thing they ever do — for some villains, we'd be here all day if that was the case — but it should include the highlights of their journey.
Any redeeming qualities? Freudian Excuse?
This is where any potential redeeming characteristics or tragic backstory should be discussed. Do they have a tragic past? Do they show that Even Evil Has Standards or Even Evil Has Loved Ones? Maybe a Pet the Dog moment or two? This is where these should be discussed in full. Not every potential redeeming moment is a clear-cut disqualifier, but we should hear of any potential issues to ensure the character is discussed in full.
Are they bad enough?
A Complete Monster has to be particularly vile by the standard of the work they appear in. Therefore, you should look at what the character does compared to similar characters in the same work. This takes into account things like:
- Their resource level (a human Serial Killer can't stand up to an alien Omnicidal Maniac, but they can be bad by the standard of other human serial killers)
- The amount of time they have to work with (such as a one-shot character versus long-running antagonists)
- The quantity vs. quality of their crimes compared to others (someone with a lower victim count but far more visceral and personal crimes could be considered as equally bad overall as someone with a higher body count but less horror involved)
Essentially, this section is an analysis of the kinds of villainy shown in the work and an explanation of why this particular character's villainy stands out within it.
Final verdict?
This is where you post your final conclusion on the character in question. You can continue elaborating on your reasons or even just say a simple "yes" or "no"; at this point, we've heard everything we need to hear.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This thread tackles very serious and dark matters on a daily basis. We will be discussing things like murder, rape, torture, human trafficking, crimes against children, and in particularly dark cases, several of these issues at the same time. We keep a lighthearted air, but all candidates carry the general assumption that these are awful individuals committing disgusting crimes. We ask that if you participate, you do so with the requisite seriousness such dark topics require; exclamations of how gross something is, whether serious or sarcastic, are disrespectful to the topics at hand, and if you cannot handle such topics, please do not participate.
And that's everything you need to know. Welcome to the thread!
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:13:36 PM
Classical Movie Vampire would work better for Venom btw. Guy is meant to be an old school show up to vampire villains of that type.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Is it? She's not obsessed with wielding it herself like he is, and her devotion to it goes back to before she was malfested. Beyond making her The Ageless and (maybe) giving her a split-personality, it's not clear how it affected her.
Edited by Arawn999 on Feb 4th 2023 at 4:30:40 AM
Not sure if this should be to the cleanup thread or not, but here goes. So I wanted to bring up a realization I just had. Something I think makes a lot of sense about Strack:
- Darkman novelization, by Randall Boyll:
- Louis Strack Jr.note is the conscienceless CEO of Strack Industries and is ultimately the man behind Dr. Peyton Westlake's mutilation and transformation into Darkman. Strack is the one paying Robert G. Durant to torture and slaughter his way through anyone who refuses to acquiesce to his corporate takeover of the city, from the mob outfit in the opening to Peyton and his innocent assistant. Strack has no compunction using Peyton's Love Interest as a hostage after having dated her himself; in the same scene, he reveals he arranged for his first wife to die in a plane crash. In a storyline excised from the film, Strack resolves his differences with his own father by paying Durant to murder him.
As both this version and the comic—which is noted in the entry itself as well—are virtually the same; official adaptations and by different writers; I think it's fair to interpret the added benefits of Strack murdering both his father and his wife could translate to the film too then and be canon. Be like how both Mayor Tortoise John and Capitan Armando Salazar each had things that the novelizations confirmed too—to the same degree, Sentinel Prime as well. If I'm not off-base, my recommendation is to rework this for the film version and have the bits from the novelization/comic added in to the bottom too.
Thoughts? I think it's a very reasonable idea. Suggestion for the tree plus the rewrite:
- Darkman trilogy:
- First film & The Return of Durant: Robert G. Durant is a Psycho for Hire-turned-crime boss who is introduced having a potential obstacle's entire outfit executed before he tortures the boss by chopping off all his fingers with a cigar cutter. Later, on behalf of Louis Strack Jr., Durant attacks Dr. Peyton Westlake in his lab, setting him on fire, killing his lab assistant and ruining his life by turning him into the titular Anti-Hero Darkman. Durant thinks nothing of betraying and killing allies—not even when he learns Darkman tricked him—and when he returns in the second film, he shows himself as even nastier than before. He hires crazed scientist Dr. Alfred Hathaway to build a high-powered laser weapon to mass produce to anyone who can afford it; has scientist Dr. David Brinkman beaten and murdered in order to steal his lab; and has David's sister Laurie threatened to get to Westlake when he discovers his archrival Darkman's return. Durant also has reporter Jill Randall killed for bringing his activities to light and showing an unflattering picture of him.
- First film only: Louis Strack Jr. is the conscienceless CEO of Strack Industries and is ultimately the man behind Dr. Peyton Westlake's mutilation and transformation into Darkman. Strack is the one paying Robert G. Durant to torture and slaughter his way through anyone who refuses to acquiesce to his corporate takeover of the city, from the mob outfit in the opening to Peyton and his innocent assistant. Strack has no compunction using Peyton's Love Interest as a hostage after having dated her himself; in the same scene, he reveals he arranged for his first wife to die in a plane crash. In a storyline excised from the film—but included in the novelization by Randall Boyllnote , Strack resolves his differences with his own father by paying Durant to murder him.
Also replaced Psycho for Hire in Strack's entry with The Dragon.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Feb 4th 2023 at 6:20:26 AM
Fanfic!Gingema writeup:
- Gingema's Revenge: Gingema is even worse than her canon counterpart. Before summoning the hurricane that she intended to destroy most of the Earth's living beings, she places her heart in a lake under her cave and creates a spell that would suck out all the magic from the Magic Land a few years later. The spell is intact even after Gingema is killed, and in due course the magic suddenly vanishes, with hundreds of Animate Inanimate Objects and magical creatures getting effectively murdered and thousands of talking animals reduced to nonsapience. Via her Soul Jar, Gingema lures her hated rival Stella into a trap and prepares to watch her slowly die of hunger and thirst. All the while, Gingema gloats that even though, without her body, she can't use all the magic she has stolen, the suffering she has inflicted on the Magic Land delights her in itself.
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I'm not sure what the issue would be with just listing him in the Comic and Novelization. Like maybe you could make an argument to squeak him by in the film through that, but it seems odd to use non-canon stuff to get a version up that doesn't qualify.
The Sentinel Prime comparison doesn't really seem to make sense since he does count in the film. Salazar had Word of God that confirmed that was his canon backstory, and John, I am not really sure on him, and I have wondered before if it would be best to move him to the Literature section.
Edited by Ordeaux26 on Feb 4th 2023 at 4:11:52 AM
Idk about Strack but Tortoise John is fine to stay in film, the film already heavily implies the crime that the novelization spells out plain as day (the routine killing of sheriffs). It's one thing if it was entirely new crimes that were the only reason he counted, but no, the film of Rango already indicates John has been killing the sheriffs...the novelization just includes a POV segment where John spells it out.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!I haven't fully spoken about this, but while I do understand the points for what we have done with John, I am starting to get worried that his case is setting a rather bad precedent. This is hardly the first time someone has tried to argue doing something like this, I remember it happening with the Novelization version of Goblin, the film version of Greyback, the 2017 film version of Cassetti, and others. I would really like for this case to stop getting abused.
Anyway, next up, hailing from The Closer episode "Help Wanted":
Who is Joe Meyers? What has he done?
Meyers is an ICE agent with an especially nasty MO: he targets illegal immigrants who work as nannies. He ambushes them, tortures them with a stun gun, and rapes them "brutally". Meyers then uses his status as an ICE agent to quietly deport them or threaten as much to silence them and continue his spree.
Meyers has a young son, Ruben, birthed to him by his wife Maria. One day in the past, Meyers took Ruben and Maria to Mexico, and when they returned, Meyers did something to Maria in Mexico that resulted in her never being seen again. Meyers uses Ruben to sus out nannies that are illegal immigrants, and keeps the boy in line by beating him bloody.
When his latest victim, Adriana Gomez, revealed to Meyers after the assault that she wasn't an illegal immigrant, Meyers responded by beating her to death. Panicking at the fact that the cops will potentially close in on him, Meyers rushes to hunt down every single woman he's raped that is still in the country, planning to kill them all before the cops can get to them. He attacks, beats and chains up 3 of his victims by the time the MCD tracks him down, where he is currently holding a 4th victim at gunpoint. Meyers uses her as a hostage with a smirk on his face, sneering "If I'm going down, I'm taking this wetback with me!" before trying to shoot Deputy Chief Brenda for interfering, earning himself a lethal bullet instead as his victims are saved and Ruben is given a better home.
Mitigating features?
Nnnnnnnope, he's a racist and rapist using his position of power to abuse women for lulz.
Heinousness?
He's been using his son—who he horribly abuses—to find illegal immigrants that he can rape then deport/threaten to silence them, having done it to at least 5 women by the time of the episode and indicated to have done it to even more. He beats a woman to death when he can't threaten her immigration status, and then tries to round up and kill all of his past victims still in the country.
Final Verdict?
That's a yep from me.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
to Joe
@Ordeux
The thing is those situations are not the same. And having a 'precedant' did not make it so those characters went up. John is a case where he is the exact same character in both versions, and indications of his worst crime are all there in the original film. The novelization simply confirms that is what the story is going for.
Bow to the PrototypeBased on the EP,
to Meyers. May vote on Christakis later. Meyers being ICE agent resorting to rape and murder?
Well that just runs the trifecta.
@Ordeaxu It really doesn't happen that often and we've only actually successfully done it a few times, so it doesn't really have that big an impact after all. We either have not entertained the idea—in most cases we haven't—or have approved someone with elements like that whether or not that's the exact reason why. We obviously won't approve something like that unless reasonable to do so though.
Excised or not, it was an idea that was intended to be used in the movie for Strack and just…wasn't. Then two separate official adaptations done by different people—Randall Boyll and Ralph Macchio respectively—utilized it. Even if not implied, it can still be possibly accepted as canon for that reason.
I admit I was definitely off-base with the 2017 Cassetti, but this is different from that. If no one else agrees, I can drop it though. It's acceptable as is.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Feb 4th 2023 at 5:54:21 AM
Tira debuted in Soulcalibur III, and is portrayed as a 17-year-old implicitly bipolar sadist who loves killing people, and flips from being cheerful to grouchy as a stance system. All her profile there states is that she was raised as an assassin from a very young age, got separated from the rest of her guild during the Evil Seed, and became a serial killer after being unable to become accustomed to a normal life. Hearing about Nightmare and considering him a kindred spirit due to his similarly insatiable appetite for bloodshed, she sought him out and swore fealty to him, and was tasked with helping him reclaim Soul Edge and finding a replacement host.
In her semi-canon story mode, Tira learns about Sophitia and decides that her children would make good replacement hosts for Soul Edge, then hunts for Siegfried until she finds him battling with Nightmare. Zasalamel tries to absorb Soul Edge and Soul Calibur's power to break his curse of immortality, but is Malfested into the monstrous Abyss. After vanquishing Abyss, Tira takes Soul Edge and goes to Sophitia's home. One ending has her be chased off by Sophitia and Cassandra before getting bodyjacked by Soul Edge, while the other ends with her giving Soul Edge to a young Pyrrha.
Soulcalibur IV is the first game to outright give Tira split personalities, with the explanation that being exposed to Soul Edge's energy during Siegfried's climactic battle with Nightmare malfested her and caused her mind to shatter and reform into "Jolly" and "Gloomy" — both of whom enjoy killing equally. Tira kidnaps Sophitia's daughter and blackmails her into serving Nightmare, while also manipulating Astaroth and Voldo into swearing fealty to Nightmare and goading Cervantes and Maxi into trying to claim Soul Edge for themselves. Her non-canon story mode ends with Nightmare dying due to his makeshift body being unable to withstand Soul Edge's power, Jolly begging Nightmare not to leave her and despairing at the thought of being alone only for Gloomy to shrug Nightmare's death off, telling Jolly to get over it and that that they'll never alone since they're stuck together.
Soulcalibur V is the first game in the series to have a concrete storymode, wherein Tira is the primary Big Bad — scornfully dismissing humans as pathetic creatures only fit to be killed, and gaslighting Pyrrha into worsening her malfestation and eventually becoming Soul Edge's host.
New Legends of Project Soul is an artbook released alongside Soulcalibur V that tries to iron out the canon storyline of the games, and fleshes out some of the characters' backstories and lore. Tira's section contains a very brief paragraph saying that she had a mentor who she idolized for her combat skills but was ordered to kill during her rite of passage, and that the trauma of doing so scarred her soul and caused her to develop split personalities (something that isn't backed up by the other games' lore).
In the games themselves, Tira's mentor isn't mentioned at all, nor is Tira shown expressing remorse for anyone she's killed.
Soulcalibur VI is a reboot set in a new timeline, going back to the events between and during Soul Edge and SoulCalibur while taking the plot information that was previously All There in the Manual and working it into a canon story mode. Tira's story mode picks up right after she butchers her foster family, but her backstory is reworked so that she develops split personalities after doing so and is given an Age Lift to make her ~17 right off the bat.
Unlike other lore details from New Legends of Project Soul that were worked into the story, Tira's mentor is once again not mentioned at all in the game.
Edited by Arawn999 on Feb 12th 2023 at 10:36:14 AM
Even then, if she's bipolar rather than being a sane sociopath, that might give this Wiki an unintentional anti-mental health stance and I'd rather not list someone who is outright said to be bipolar. Where does it say she's bipolar anyway? I don't remember seeing that in the games the only thing that got me against her inclusion was that, and the fact she's a villainous Broken Bird from killing her mentor. If she wasn't bipolar, I'd probably say yes but again, Soul Edge just tampered with her already fucked up mental state. She may not be interested in wielding it but when we see her POV in Soul Calibur III it's VERY warped which gives moral agency issues as I've said before. If VI doesn't mention her feeling empathy or grief, and she's not bipolar, I might at least rescind for that game.
Edited by Klavice on Feb 4th 2023 at 6:01:23 AM
Wait where does it state that CM's are not allowed to be bipolar? We allow villains with some kind of mental problems as long as they have an understanding of right and wrong, and real world wise that doesn't inhibit your ability to tell right from wrong. If you mean it in a taste way we aren't allowed to reject villains for poor taste anymore.
Edited by Ordeaux26 on Feb 4th 2023 at 6:04:42 AM
Might be thinking of the old trope definition. I was more worried about the implications with listing a character with Bipolar depression. And nothing has been brought up that she had a choice to be anything but evil. I could see us including her if there was an instance where she expressed an opportunity to be good but rejected it. That's my only hiccup.
Edited by Klavice on Feb 4th 2023 at 6:08:26 AM

Lemme do this now. Any more will come tomorrow. I think there are like 70+ this week.