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
After reading the arguments against Kang, I'm changing my vote to abstain.
As for Zhao, he gets a
for going against Ozai's order to not act on his suspicion that Zuko is masquerading the Blue Spirit. When you're willing to defy Fire Lord Ozai's orders AND make him look like a decent father looking out for his son, you know you have outdone the overarching Big Bad in the heinous factor (though it helps that the movie didn't get any sequels for Ozai to get worse).
Edited by Shadao on Mar 3rd 2023 at 8:30:57 AM
to the film version of Zhao who "conducted a raid on the Great Library that few were aware even existed". Haha. So that's the second for Aasif Mandvi and first for Shyamalan as a director? Yeah, since the sequels never got made, it's clear that that heinous standard is still incredibly young with just the one movie and while Ozai probably would've counted eventually—Cliff Curtis have any CMs already?—it's fair to say he's way too green now as is.
I never had the seething hatred for that movie that everyone else did—though I do acknowledge now though it's really bad. Maybe it's just because I had such low standards going in (the film adaptations of OotP and HBP were not what I hoped they'd be and this was a 20 episode season adapted into an hour 43 minute movie including end credits) and as a result, had little to no expectations. It's not just that it's such an amateurish movie, but that it had such a high-standard of quality to also live up to as well.
As for Tai Lung, I saw the first two movies all the way through for the first time a few months ago—oh my God I was missing out!—and I don't really remember him doing anything of particular note. Also, I think his tragic past is probably still supposed to have a lot of weight now too.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Mar 7th 2023 at 1:37:36 AM
Okay so with the book versions of both the Monger and Jack Horner getting approved along with a version of Zhao getting an uphill of
, I decided looked back into the Assassin's Creed franchise and there may be a version of a certain character that was unable to count in a game due to heinousness that could count in the novelization of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood so let us discuss it.
What’s The Work?
Assassins Creed Brotherhood is the novelization of the game of the same name serving as an immediate sequel to the book Renaissance, which also serves as a novelization of Assassin's Creed II. Basically Master Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze has avenged his father and brothers deaths and would eventually travel to Rome to established the Assassin Brotherhood. Now then here’s the Big Bad of the book, Cesare Borgia.
Who Is He? What Has He Done?
Cesare Borgia is the Big Bad of book who like his game counterpart is the son of Rodrigo Borgia as well as his captain general of the Papal Army who got his position by killing the previous Captain General, aka his older brother Jaun.
When his father became Pope, Cesare basically becomes the de facto tyrant of Rome where he and his soldiers commit hundreds of murders, if not more, throughout the city all to establish his reign of terror in the city and even forms the Followers of Romulus so they could terrorize and kill people, scaring people into becoming dependent on the church, and thus become dependent to Cesare.
Cesare’s would also send his personal killer, Micheletto to kill whomever Cesare wants dead, with it already confirmed that Micheletto has already killed at least 14 people on Cesare’s behalf, including Cesare supposed “oldest friend” and three innocent children, and would also command him to kill an innocent actor Pietro when Cesare learns he’s in a relationship with Lucrezia
Also speaking of Lucrezia, she’s Cesare’s sister whom Cesare lusts after and having her second husband killed, and manipulates Lucrezia into partaking an emotionally and even physically abusive relationship with him, one where he has total control over, while also using Lucrezia for his own ends, even convincing Lucrezia to continue her Parental Incest thing with Rodrigo if it could benefit himself.
Now then Cesare would learn from Rodrigo about Ezio and the Assassins where without Rodrigo’s permission would launch a massive siege in their hideout of Monteriggioni killing countless hundreds in that city alone, including Ezio’s uncle Mario by using the weapon he forced Leonardo Da Vinci to make to execute Mario with.
Oh and the novel gives Cesare the added crime of forcing Ezio’s friend Leonardo Di Vinci to watch as Cesare kills Mario while also decapitating Mario’s head and waving it to Ezio saying he’s next. Cesare also has his troops make sure that there are no survivors of his slaughter, while also laying siege in Flori in similar slaughter while taking Caterina Sforzo as his prisoner to his castle with plans to torture her.
Cesare would then force Leonardo Da Vi to make Cesare weapons for him to use to kill hundreds of thousands of people in throughout Italy and subjugating the cities Cesare has conquered to his tyrannical rule where countless of innocent people would be oppressed and killed with plan on conquering all of Italy, and bring the country to his tyrannical rule.
Cesare also partook in Human Trafficking having his subordinates kidnap innocent men, women and children, where Cesare would then sell them to slavery and profit out of. An example of such is when a group of slavers working for Cesare kidnaps the courtesans, Madonna Solari, and sell her off as a Sex Slave unless Ezio pays for her ransom. Of course when Ezio pays the ransom, the slavers kill Solari, (this action does not end well for the slavers).
Also as Cesare tries to conquer all of Italy, Rome gets taken by Ezio while Ezio sends his assassins to destroy all of Cesare’s war machines throughout Italy, resulting in Cesare returning to Rome and demanding that his father help him. However, he would learn that Rodrigo tried to poison Cesare through an apple, resulting in Cesare shoving a poisoned apple down Rodrigo’s throat killing his own father.
Lucrezia then intervenes where Cesare would brutalize his own sister, beating and strangling her until she tells him where the Apple of Eden is. Lucrezia complies to Cesare demands but Ezio overhears the commotion, and retrieve them Apple and uses it to undo what’s left of Cesare’s influence in Rome before he gets arrested by the new pope.
However behind bars Cesare would contact Micheletto and have him and his remaining followers wreak havoc in Rome leading to more bloodshed which nearly killed Ezio’s sister Claudia at one point before braking free from his imprisonment with Micheletto’s help where Cesare would then kill Micheletto when the latter tried attacking him having enough of Cesare’s mistreatment and ungratefulness towards him before heading off to Spain to command King John III of Navarre’s army.
Cesare would use the King’s army to siege the city, Vianna, killing hundreds more, (his total body count is at least in the thousands now) wether they be defending soldiers or innocent villages caught in the crossfire with one example has Cesare ordering his men to stab an innocent woman when she pleads for him to help her child, which leaves her child to die in the flames and carnage Cesare has inflicted in Vianna.
He would then come to blows with Ezio where he declares his intentions to conquer both Spain and Italy, while also saying that he’ll kill Ezio, his assassins and everyone that Ezio loves in the slowest most painful ways possible. Luckily Ezio defeats Cesare and throws him off the city walls killing the ambitious monster and ending his conquests for good.
Freudian Excuse? Redeeming Qualities?
Cesare came from a wealthy and prestiges political family who became cardinal at the age of 17 with him choosing to become a sadistic warmonger, kill his own brother to take his position in power, and conquer everything that he sees while kill thousands that stand in his way, all to fuel his own ego and lust for power while having no well-intentions behind his actions whatsoever, and shows absolutely no gratitude for Micheletto calling him a failure and telling him to die in a ditch before killing Micheletto despite Micheletto being Cesare’s most loyal minion and the reason why Cesare escaped his imprisonment in the first place.
Even his incestuous lust for his sister, is just lust, as she shows no genuine care for Lucrezia as a person, merely viewing her as a possession that he wants complete control over and abuse whenever he likes, even coercing Lucrezia to seduce their father for his own personal gain and when Lucrezia asks if Cesare ever loved Cesare, he merely responds that she is only his sister nothing more, before attempt to beat and strangle her to death until he gets what he wants. In the end the only thing Cesare truly cares about his himself and his lust for power, and supplementing his ego by conquering and slaughtering all that he sees
Heinousness
Okay so the reason why Cesare in the games couldn’t count because the heinous standard in those games was too high for him to count. That said, the book is set in its own continuity separate from the video game series, which only follows the other books adapting the Ezio trilogy, where the events in the books differ from the game series (such as Ezio saving Lucrezia’s lover before attacking the French, Cesare holding Di Vinci hostage and forcing Da Vinci to watch he decapitates Mario before waving Mario’s head as trophy to Ezio which he didn’t do in the games, the Da Vince, Thief, and Courtesan missions being done by other Assassins instead of Ezio like in the games, the entire modern day storyline being taken out of the books, Machiavelli accompanying Ezio to the Coliseum to hide the Apple while Ezio did that alone in the games). Also villains that appear in the games like Il Carnefice, Tomas Torquemada, Silvestro Sabatini, The Cardinal behind the Romulus attacks, the other Templar agents, and Juno being Adapted Out here thus lowering the Heinous standard drastically.
Really the only person Cesare to compete with in terms of heinousness is his father Rodrigo, the Big Bad of ;;Renaissance;;, I which think Cesare surpasses his father in terms of heinousness by a mile I being the most heinous villains in Ezio’s book trilogy, having killers run rampant in Rome and kill hundreds if not more in one city alone, while also inflicting this same amount of cruelty and death to other regions in Italy, with his methods and tactics of conquering Italy are more vicious than Rodrigo's own attempts to conquer the country, already exceeding Rodrigo in body count and atrocities ten times over in only 7 years, (Rodrigo's villainy lasted 20+ and has more resources than Cesare being the Grandmaster, while his sons supposedly his second-in command).
He’s also in charge of the slave trading business, inflicts sadistic cruelty and murders towards his enemies, innocence, and own allies, killed his own brother for power, kills his own father in a rather brutal way brutalizes his own sister (he would have killed her if he wasn't so focused on trying to obtain the Apple), and lays siege to many cities, from Ezio’s home, Flori, the entire region of Romagna, and other parts of Italy, as well as the big Spain city of Vianna leading to thousands if not more dead, and plans to conquer Spain, Italy, and other European countries. Oh and while it is never made clear what happen in Micheletto in the games, the book shows that Cesare remorselessly murders Micheletto in the book after cruelly insulting him, so yeah Cesare is a bit worse here than in the game.
Final Verdict?
I will leave it to you guys.
Edited by G-Editor on Mar 3rd 2023 at 11:39:59 AM
My sandbox of EPs and other stuff![]()
![]()
Still not enough for a page, Echidna. I believe a franchise needs to have eight or nine C Ms at minimum to justify a page.
Edited by Fireball246 on Mar 3rd 2023 at 8:41:21 AM
Having seen it I'm personally a
to Kang the exile. I don't think those redeeming features hold up personally, and I think it leans enough in the direction that he's dead for the time being(The fact he is dead is being used as the catalyst for the next big phase. With the council of Kangs reason for gathering being how one of them was killed).
Also happy
to film!Zhao. Meant to get to him for a while, did a great job Rav! Only thing I'll add, for mitigating factors, is that he's not even loyal to Ozai in this version. Ozai tells him to leave Zuko alone and Zhao lies that he will, before going behind his back and trying to get Zuko killed.

Yes to Zhao. At least it doesn't call Aang Avatar.