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
Yes to Troy!
Mine is from the 1975 sequel The Drowning Pool...
What has J.W. Kilbourne done?
- A sociopathic oil magnate, Kilbourne is a folksy-yet-sadistic man who is introduced humbly greeting Harper to his main enterprise...dogfighting. Kilbourne is a godawful animal abuser, breeding dozens of pitbulls purely to pit them against each other in vicious deathmatches, glorying in the bloodsport and the profit it provides. Furthermore, Kilbourne abuses and conditions these pups to be killers from the moment they're born. In one particularly over-the-top Kick the Dog moment, it's revealed Kilbourne keeps his pitbulls motivated by putting them on treadmills with caged kittens in front of them, dangling the little baby kittens like candy in front of the pitbulls to keep them constantly moving and willing to kill.
- Aside from his grotesque animal abuse, Kilbourne is a parasitic Corrupt Corporate Executive who has horned in on the local town and driven nearly all of the rivaling businesses out of town, reducing countless people to poverty. That's not all, tough; Kilbourne funds his evil businesses by dealing with every corrupt business under the sun, and viciously blackmailing anyone—or, if that doesn't work, torturing them and murdering them. Kilbourne has a nosy chaffeur named Reavis murdered by a hitman, implying he's done so many times before—his hitman demonstrates a very rehearsed familiarity with Kilborne's orders.
- Kilbourne's ultimate goal is to buy off land from an old woman named Olivia, who intends to dedicate this land to bird shelters. Kilbourne wants this land so he can reap the oil from it, and become wealthier than he already is.
- Kilbourne is also an awful Domestic Abuser who has been abusing his wife Mavis for years. When Kilbourne captures both Harper and Mavis, he takes the two to a hydrotherapy clinic he bought out specifically for the purpose of having a Torture Cellar for whomever has slighted him. Kilbourne viciously and gleefully tortures both Harper and his own wife Mavis with a high-pressure water hose, laughing his ass off as Mavis is Forced to Watch Harper being tortured before she in turn is tortured half-to-death. When Harper still refuses to break, Kilbourne decides to prolong their agony and let them stay in the abandoned clinic overnight to suffer in the cold and the wet before he returns and starts torturing them all over again, heedless of the idea he may end up torturing them to death.
- Luckily, Harper and Mavis escape, flooding the Torture Cellar until it becomes the eponymous "drowning pool" and then draining it when Kilbourne returns to torture them some more. Mavis ends up killing Kilbourne when he's at her mercy, admitting he would have gotten away with it if she'd done anything else.
- Nothing at all.
- Kilbourne has a somewhat low body count, and he's not specializing in the Human Trafficking niche that Troy does, but I think for pure hypersadism, Kilbourne pulls through. His animal cruelty is jacked up to the highest level you can imagine—it's not enough he abuses dozens of dogs into becoming killing machines, he warms them up by feeding them kittens and encouraging them to keep doing so—but even besides that, he's even more sadistic that Dwight Troy is, having bought out an entire hydrotherapy room for the specific purpose of torturing his victims. There, among many other victims implied, Kilbourne not only tortures Harper, but his own wife half-to-death, and he fully implies he would have gone the full mile and tortured them both to the point of expiration.
Edited by Starkrafty on Jun 19th 2024 at 11:55:29 AM
J.W. Kilbourne
Dwight Troy
Jefferson Davis
Koopa
Happy birthday, Scraggle
Also, I am reserving selector loth WIXOSS , the revival of the selector subseries, which apparently is treating Lostorage as a Alternate Continuity, as the trailers say the heroines haven't heard about the Selector Games for 10 years after the end of the original show (which contradicts Conflated, set 1/2 years after the series) and other details which involve a main character (so don't worry, this isn't a Happy Ending Override for Lostorage).
Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 19th 2024 at 1:25:35 PM
Watch me destroying my countryOk, now before comic!Norman gets written up, I've actually got one other adaptation of him to discuss...
What's the work?
Marvel's Spider-Man is the (thus far) latest animated series starring the webhead, kicked off in 2017 and mostly regarded by the world as a So Okay, It's Average, mostly forgettable entry in the long history of Spider-Man animation. It primarily focuses on Peter Parker's time at Horizon High, a school for young geniuses as he slowly amasses a team of fellow webslingers (namely Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy and Anya Corazon) to take down threats to New York and the world over.
Who is Norman Osborn? What has he done?
- Played by Josh Keaton, aka the Spectacular Spider-Man himself in a supremely awesome Casting Gag, Norman Osborn is one of the major overarching villains in the show.
- The same Corrupt Corporate Executive of Oscorp and abusive father to Harry Osborn as always, Norman kicks the show off by showing what a cruel, petty dick he is: when he learns that Harry was accepted into the most prestigious school for brilliant young minds, Horizon High, Norman deliberately gets the boy expelled to both damage his self-esteem and keep him under Norman's thumb. Norman then creates his own school, Oz Academy, as a rival to Horizon and drafts Harry into it, frequently belittling the boy and reiterating that he made Oz Academy to "spare the Osborn name the humiliation" of Harry being thrown out of Horizon.
- In one of his debut episodes, Norman takes applications from young students to join Oz Academy. When two young boys, lifelong partners, apply to the Academy, Norman cruelly informs them that only one can be accepted, purely to pit them against each other—when the boys' friendship is destroyed and they endanger multiple civilians with their warring technology, Norman brushes it off as "encouraging success" and chooses the "victor" to join his Academy.
- Now, Norman actually has an association with one of the other major villains of the show, Raymond Warren, aka Jackal. Formerly partners, Norman was approached by Raymond with a scheme to create supersoldier "spider-men" to Take Over the World. Norman thought the idea had merit, but his board was frustrated with Warren's mania, so Norman stole the research for himself and kicked Warren out of Oscorp. When he learns in the present that Jackal is engaging in supervillainy to finally bring about his spider army, Norman's only concern is creating his own army of robotic "spider slayers" to ensure Jackal can't damage him.
- To test the slayers, Norman frequently sics them on the heroic spider-team, uncaring of the civilians endangered in the process and even having one of the slayers set to self-destruct and nearly blow up multiple city blocks before Spider-Man stops it.
- In another early plot of his, Norman finds a powerful "lunar stone", capable of turning the user into a lycanthrope. He forces a student to undergo a transformation with the stone into a Man-Wolf, then sets him onto the student body of Horizon High, spreading a lycanthrope plague that turns multiple kids into werewolves and endangers many more before it's stopped.
- When Norman sees the potential in recruiting Horizon High student Otto Octavius to Oz, Norman concocts a ridiculously dangerous plan to get Otto into his clutches. Norman manipulates Dr. Curt Connors, a brilliant scientist missing an arm, into being a test subject for regenerative serum that turns Connors into the monstrous Lizard. Norman keeps Connors as a slave, forcing the pleading man to regularly undergo the transformation by promising that when they're done, Norman will supply a version of the serum that will grow Connor's arm back, free of Lizard consequences.
- Norman convinces Otto to make a cure to stop the "Lizard", but tampers with the cure to instead turn the unwitting Connors into a gigantic kaiju that goes on a rampage through Manhattan, threatening to "level the city." Norman goads Otto to kill Connors, and though Spider-Man saves the day and ensures Connors lives, Norman successfully frames the entire thing on Otto to get him expelled from Horizon, thus manipulating him into joining Oz Academy where Norman immediately begins stealing Otto's designs for himself.
- After waging a war on Jackal to destroy his research and end his plans to create a spider army—even temporarily forming an Enemy Mine with Spider-Man—Norman is wounded in their various encounters. Norman manipulates Harry into testing volatile chemicals on himself to "help" Norman, further convincing the boy to become the Hobgoblin and be a "hero" to bring honor to the Osborn name. Though Harry succeeds in being a hero and protector of New York, Norman is disgusted that Harry does so by teaming with Spider-Man. Norman responds by dressing as the Hobgoblin while Harry is sleeping and framing him for a variety of actions—from attacking Spider-Man to deliberately trying to kill a bus of people—and uses it to manipulate Harry into thinking he's sleepwalking and subconsciously doing all this.
- When Harry and Spider-Man discover the truth, they confront Norman, who dons the Hobgoblin armor and fights them both. He urges Harry to murder Spider-Man and accept the Osborn legacy, but Harry refuses and so Norman sneers "Then you deserve what you have wrought!"
- Seemingly killed as his headquarters explodes around him, Norman manages to pull himself from the rubble, alive but severely maimed. Going into hiding, Norman begins a new plan to get ultimate vengeance on everyone who crossed him. Connors' exposure to the Lizard serums so often has resulted in him undergoing the painful transformations even without injections, so Norman forces him back into servitude by giving him temporary cures that ward off the Lizard, promising to give him a permanent cure when their plan is completed.
- Norman forms a temporary, shaky alliance with Jackal, and begins a new set of schemes. Norman tricks Jefferson Davis, Miles Morales' father, into undergoing a transformation into mutated bees and becoming "Swarm" to "protect" his neighborhood and family. Norman uses Swarm to round up dozens of civilians to be mutated into monsters by Jackal and put into the "Underground Monster League" fight clubs as slaves to rake in black market profit. Having Connors unleash the Technovore onto Horizon High, Norman has the beast threaten the students and nearly consume an arc reactor that could decimate the whole city, just to frame Horizon's beloved principal Max for negligence and institute Connors as the new head.
- Taking Max's research on the Venom symbiote and combining it with Jackal's mutative serum, Norman captures the Spider-team and reveals his master stroke: to merge synthetic symbiote with Jackal serum into himself, restoring his physical form and becoming the monstrous Dark Goblin. To maximize the personal pain of each hero, Goblin has an unaware Swarm fight his son Miles; Jackal fight his niece Gwen; and Chameleon disguise himself as Anya's beloved stepsister to fight her.
- Taking on Spider-Man, Goblin hopes to use his amassed symbiote and serum to create a new breed of supersoldier and rebuild his Oscorp empire. In one of his cruelest moments, Norman is approached by a desperate Connors, who is beginning to mutate into Lizard again:
Connors: I can't hold it off any longer. Please! I did everything you asked! I need the full cure you promised me, NOW!
Goblin: Ha! Fool! I don't need you anymore, so I might as well enjoy finally telling you the truth: I only ever had a way to temporarily keep your transformations at bay!
Connors: What?!
Goblin: There is no full cure! There never was! Why would I waste the resources to develop a cure for someone as disposable as you? - Bashing Connors away once the horrified, outraged man fully becomes the Lizard, Goblin fights Spidey some more, nearly winning until Harry, suited up as Hobgoblin, shows up to help his friend. Goblin feigns sympathy and tries to appeal to Harry to join him, but when Harry proclaims that Norman was never a father to him, Goblin gleefully proclaims "Ever the disappointment! You're right, I'm not your father, boy! I am only the Dark Goblin!" before trying to kill Harry for defying him.
- Luckily, the rest of the Spidey team overcome their individual foes, and they all work together to reverse the symbiote-Jackal serum process, stripping Norman of his newfound powers and leaving him unconscious, awaiting arrest for his many crimes.
Mitigating features?
Nah, not a one. Unlike Jackal who has a sincere, if twisted, care for Gwen; or Venom who hails from an Always Chaotic Evil race, Norman is the only Overarching Villain who is entirely bereft of anything redeeming.
He runs a balancing act in Season 1 of having his own schemes while also trying to thwart Jackal's plots, but there's no moral quandary with anything Jackal is doing: Norman, plain and simply, just sees Jackal as a rival and doesn't want anyone else to have the power he is capable of. Any even hint of an argument otherwise is thrown out the window when Norman later teams up with Jackal.
And as for Harry, Norman actually does seem to hold a form of care for his kid early on, regularly trying to keep Harry out of harm's way and even prioritizing Harry's safety in one scene over his own. But ultimately, Norman flatout says that it's about preserving the Osborn legacy, and beyond all of the abusive shit he does to Harry otherwise (just reread the above: he gets Harry expelled from Horizon to control him more; frames Harry for attacking Spider-Man; manipulates Harry into testing chemicals on himself), he finally tries to outright kill Harry for being a "disappointment".
Heinousness?
In terms of scale, Jackal and Venom, admittedly, do have Norman beat here: Jackal turns most of New York into spider monsters while implicitly planning the same for the rest of the world, while Venom tries to stage an invasion of Earth to wipe out humanity. It doesn't help that Norman's ultimate goal as Dark Goblin is incredibly nebulous: he talks of rebuilding his empire and using the symbiote-Jackal combo to take over the world, but it's in pretty vague terms.
Regardless, I think Norman is fine here. Norman is king when it comes to personal cruelty. He's a godawful dad who abuses and tries to kill his own kid; he tortures Connors with the Lizard transformation, stringing him along that he'll first give Connors' his arm back, then cure him of the Lizard entirely, lying the entire time; he ruins Otto's life and corrupts him into villainy; he turns Miles' own dad into a villain by manipulating the man into believing he'll be "protecting" his son, etc.
And even then, in terms of scale Norman isn't really a slouch, either. He turns Connors into a kaiju that explicitly threatens to level New York; he unleashes the Technovore onto Horizon which could endanger the city; he uses the Lunar Stone to kick off a lycanthropy epidemic; and the Underground Monster League is also a uniquely fucked plot for the show.
Final Verdict?
Keep to the Goblin voiced by Spider-Man
Edited by Ravok on Jun 20th 2024 at 1:31:32 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
Norman
Kinda funny since this is the opposite of his very sympathic ultimate spiderman protrayal. Which was also the opposite of spectacular and im turn the 90's series. So maybe it's a cycle.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Yes to Davis, Norman, and Koopa.
Yes to Troy.
I'm slightly hesitant on Kilbourne. The Bad People Abuse Animals is notable, but unless they're sapient...just how many additional torture victims are implied?

Let's have us another Starkravok collab, how's about?
What's the work?
The Harper duology is a pair of 60s-70s films starring Paul Newman as the titular Lew Harper, a
sleazy assholeerm charmingly slick Private Investigator who finds himself caught up in a variety of criminal plots that intersect in the strangest of ways.My candidate comes from the first film, where Harper investigates a disappearance-turned-kidnapping of powerful magnate Ralph Sampson. Weirdly enough, our villain has nothing to do with that plot!
Who is Dwight Troy? What has he done?
Mitigating features?
Not a one, he's just a nasty slimeball and Faux Affably Evil sadist who contrasts the other villains of the film by having zero depth or tragedy to them.
Heinousness?
He's ultimately the worst in the first film, being a cruel gangster who has killed plenty of people to cover up his illegal immigrant trafficking outfit before putting Betty through a brutal Cold-Blooded Torture session as much for information as fun. While he's not behind the kidnapping (and eventual murder) of Sampson, Troy is a particularly nasty side villain who surpasses the bigger baddies in vileness.
Final Verdict?
Keep, and Scraggle/Starkrafty will follow up shortly!
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!