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
for William Taurey, "Cry," and Gozer the Gozerian.
Yes to "Cry" and Mecha-Gozer!
- Session 9: "Simon" is an evil entity who "lives in the weak and the wounded", possessing and forcing them to commit heinous acts for his own amusement. Years ago, Simon entered the mind of mentally ill Mary Hobbes when her brother was bullying her, and controlled her into butchering her entire family. Simon tormented Mary for years later, leading to her being committed to an asylum. In the present, Simon latches onto Gordon as his new puppet, and has Gordon pick off the rest of his crew in increasingly bloody ways, notably lobotomizing one of them. Simon is revealed to have made Gordon butcher his own wife and newborn baby, and goads Gordon into further self-harm, insanity and misery.
Revisiting a fan animation from a year ago.
Project Justice League is a fanmade motion comic adapting Zack Snyder's unproduced Justice League 2, including voice actors, character dialogue, concept art and animation akin to something like Fanscription. Unfortunately it adapts the scrapped first draft which would have included a Love Triangle between Lois, Clark and Burce — something that was scrapped as far back as the first movie's production.
Following the resurrection of Superman and the defeat of Stefanwolf, the League initially go their separate ways; Clark tries to resume his relationship with Lois, but initially keeps his head down due to being dead to the public. Bruce investigates Lex Luthor's escape; and Luthor himself is gathering the League's enemies in a plan to not only destroy the League, but usher in the greatest threat to the world and universe — Darkseid.
Having discussed Darkseid himself last year, I decided to take a look at the animation's take on Lex Luthor, which gave us a look at where DCEU!Lex would have gone had his arc continued.
Who is Lex Luthor ? What does he do ?
Picking up after his escape in Zack Snyder's Justice League, Luthor has been on the run for some time, being hunted down by both Batman and Lois Lane. Having previously made contact with Apokalips (in the Ultimate Cut of BVS), Lex's new order of business is to bring Darkseid to Earth as revenge against Batman and Superman. But first, he must get the League out of the way, and brings together previous villains for his plans.
To this end, Lex tracks down Isabel "Dr. Poison" Maru, who has kept herself alive over the past century through chemical experiments and has become obsessed with destroying Wonder Woman. Lex makes her an offer to do so, roping Maru into his scheme. Next they break out Orm and Black Manta from prison in the Atacama desert, before springing Leonard "Captain Cold" Snart — who apparently would have been the villain in The Flash movie — from Iron Heights. Lex offers Snart advanced weaponry to get the edge on Barry.
Meanwhile, as the Justice League get back to their individual lives, Batman tracks a lead on Lex to the Canadian Wilderness. Tracking down Lex's supposed hideout, Batman discovers that Lex has hidden the Riddler out here and exposed him to the Anti Life Equation for him to solve, calling it the riddle to life itself. The Riddler has been kept awake for weeks trying to solve the equation, driving him mad ("Luthor asked the question. I had to know the answer..."). By the time Batman reaches him, the Riddler claims that Lex will make life meaningless, and takes his own life from the revelation.
During Lois' own investigations, she discovers that Lex has uncovered three Mother Boxes. Lex gathers them at the Three Rivers, and has his team on stand by across the globe. Lex activates the Mother Box's and the Anti Life Equation; intending a partnership with Darkseid, he successfully summons the latter to Earth. When Darkseid tells Lex he intends for Superman to submit to him, Lex tells Darkseid that the pregnant Lois Lane is the key ("If you want the Tin Man's heart, you need to follow the Yellow Brick Road known as Lois Lane!")
When Superman confronts Darkseid, the latter soon finds and incinerates Lois, breaking Superman down and subjecting him to the Anti Life Equation. With this, Lex kicks off his ultimate plan; he has Dr. Mauru unleash her new chemical weapons on Themyscira, wiping off the Amazons, including Diana. In Atlantis, Orm and Black Manta attack Arthur's coronation, killing Arthur himself, while Mera escapes. In Central City, Snart attacks Flash, who is saved by Cyborg — who in turn in crippled in the process.
Believing he's won, Lex is cornered by the now enslaved Superman. His purpose fulfilled, Darkseid gives Lex his usual severance package by having Lex incinerated, leaving the world to be ruled and enslaved by Darkseid... However, this is undone when Barry is sent back from the Bad Future to warn Batman. In the restored timeline, Batman takes the blast intended for Lois, mortally wounding himself, but allowing Superman to fight off Darkseid. With this, Superman is warned about Lex's plans, and puts a stop to them, saving the League.
Soon thereafter, Darkseid plans a full scale invasion of Earth. Superman rallies the Justice League, and practically the whole world against Darkseid — including the Atlantians, Amazonians, Green Lantern Corps, rogue heroes and even villains. Darkseid is ultimately defeated when Cyborg destroys the Mother Boxes and is forced to flee. A mortally wounded Darkseid finds Lex on his flagship; vengeful over his betrayal, Lex sets off a nuclear device on the flagship, killing them both.
Mitigating Qualities ?
None. He's no more deep or sympathetic than his canon counterpart, and sinks even lower here.
As for his alleged excuse of having an Abusive Parents, it's not only nullified by how far he goes, but it's never brought up again, being treated as practically irrelevant. Not that I bought it as a valid FE for his canon counterpart, but that's beside the point. Here, Lex is just a vindictive egotist out to spite Superman and bring about Darkseid's invasion for his own god complex.
Now the animation does have Lex turning on and destroying Darkseid and himself. But rather than have it be this redeeming moment for Lex, the context and dialogue implies that Lex was paying him back for betraying him or failing him; his last words were "And now God bends to my will." All this to say, it leans to Lex's betrayal being selfish and ego driven rather than altruism. As for the Heinous Factor, while it's a mark against his canon counterpart, I'd say he makes up for it here.
It's established that Lex not only knows of Darkseid and his planned invasion, he actively hopes to spearhead it. While he doesn't live to see or enjoy it in the Bad Future, his scheming sees Darkseid enslaving Earth and other worlds, with an enslaved Superman as his attack dog. And Lex was the one who helped break Superman down for it. There's also his scheme to wipe out the Justice League, which includes having Themyscira and the Amazons wiped out, which puts him on the same league as Ludendorff.
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."

Another quick one courtesy of Ravok. This one is a first for me—it's my first Ghostbusters and Transformers baddie in one.
From the IDW Transformers/Ghostbusters crossover...
What has Gozer the Gozerian done?
- The Traveller. Destroyers of worlds, Gozer has come from world to world, destroying all life in its wake, until its rampage took it to the world of Cybertron, which was engulfed in a war between Autobots and Decepticons. Taking an audience with Megatron, Gozer tells Megatron to choose the form it shall take while destroying Cybertron. After a quick scan of Megatron's mind, Gozer immediately transforms into Megatron's greatest fear...
- ...a giant, cackling Starscream with the heads of the Autobots and the Decepticons chained around his neck like trophies. In this form, Gozer proceeds to massacre all of Cybertron and wipes out nearly all life on the planet. The war came to an immediate halt as Gozer targeted both Autobot and Decepticon. Only a few Transformers escaped the carnage (thanks to a deal with G1 foe Kremzeek) but everything else was wiped out.
- One thousand years later, the Transformers end up on Earth some time after the 80s. Gozer is already defeated here, having attempted to destroy all of Earth before being defeated by the Ghostbusters.
Any mitigating factors?- Nope. Gozer's not bursting with character, obviously, but it's no less characterized than any other iteration of Gozer to have qualified and taking Starscream's form while laughing madly as it destroys Cybertron is an interesting bit of villainy only possible through this crossover. It only appears in flashbacks, but those flashbacks take up most of the first issue and part of the third, which gives Gozer and its massacre of Cybertron plenty of time to feature.
Heinous standard?