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
What is the work?
"The Devil's Chord", an episode of Doctor Who.
SPOILER WARNING for those who have not seen the episode.
Who is Maestro and what have they done?
Maestro is essentially a trickster god who feeds on music. Their overall goal is to have music all to themselves and they will stop at nothing to achieve that.
Any redeeming qualities? Freudian Excuse?
Maestro is the child of another Doctor Who villain, the Toymaker. They claim he was "mean" to them but this is not elaborated upon. Considering that they both have godlike powers and are evenly matched, it is unlikely that the Toymaker could have done much lasting harm. Maestro had a child of their own called Harbinger. Once he had served his purpose, Maestro apparently destroyed him (though he did reappear at the end of the episode).
How heinous?
Maestro first appears in 1925 and kills a man by feeding on his musical genius. They also kill an elderly woman in 1963 when she listens to the Doctor's companion Ruby play the piano. Between those two kills, humanity has gradually lost interest in music to the point that even the Beatles are reduced to playing insipid songs about dogs. This means that Maestro has spent decades murdering countless musicians by feeding on their talents.
By 2024, the world has been reduced to a wasteland due to a nuclear war breaking out. Without music, people lost the ability to express themselves creatively and instead expressed themselves through violence. Maestro is shamelessly gleeful about this outcome and tells the Doctor their plan to is to continue their reign of terror throughout the universe until all other sentient life is eliminated, leaving them the only being who can play music.
Final verdict?
Maestro is among the most powerful and destructive villains the Whoniverse has ever given us. Even the normally unflappable Doctor is utterly terrified of them.
I don;t mind up voting this one. But could we wait till the end of the season since the pantheon are the main threat of this season (trickster, toymaker, etc). I wanna see how she compares to the others.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes:
- Proximus Caesar is the ruler of the titular kingdom, who uses proclamations of protecting his kind to mask his selfish hunger for power. Determined to break inside an abandoned human military vault so as to use its weapons to conquer the world and wipe out all remnants of humanity, Proximus creates a cult-like worship of the legacy of Caesar to accumulate an army. He sends out raiding parties to kill humans and capture hundreds of apes, burning down their villages and killing any who resist before enslaving them. The captive apes are forced to risk life and limb on a daily basis to open the vault with haphazard methods, and Proximus threatens any who resist with torture and death. When Noa tries to save the apes from captivity, Proximus takes his family and friends hostage to force his compliance, and tries to beat Noa to death in front of his tribe to assert his dominion. Valuing himself above all else, Proximus uses his servants as human shields; laughs at the death of one of his lieutenants; and shoves his minions aside to save his own skin.
What's the work?
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is a classic Marvel video game, one of the greats from the PS2 era. It features, obvs, the Hulk himself as he goes up against a variety of villains to protect those he cares about, and while Emil Blonsky aka the Abomination genuinely cares about his wife, the other half of the Big Bad Ensemble isn't so complex:
Who is the Devil Hulk? What has he done?
- "You've opened a door to me, Bruce. A crown of light on my face that I never had before. Did you imagine I'd ever let you close it on me? We're going to be gods in this world that's rejected and feared you for so long. We're going to tear it into a billion pieces. I'm the inevitable conclusion. I'm the ultimate you. I'm the DEVIL."
- A dormant personality buried inside Banner/Hulk's mind, the Devil Hulk is a vicious, evil being who wants to take over the Hulk's body. Taking center stage after Hulk has gone through several hard battles, Devil Hulk begins influencing Hulk throughout his missions to be more destructive, goading him to slaughter and crush all around him and no longer hold back. Devil Hulk takes on the voice of Hulk's ally Doc Sampson to further trick Hulk into laying waste to "enemy bases"—that are in truth civilian populations that are ravaged by Hulk.
- Eventually initiating a straight-up Battle in the Center of the Mind with Hulk, Devil Hulk gleefully brags that once he annihilates Hulk from Bruce's mind, he's going to use Hulk's body to bring about devastation on the human world the likes of which are apocalyptic, bragging in the Non-Standard Game Over "The end of your world is nigh!"
- Hulk luckily overcomes the Devil Hulk, erasing it from his mind for good and leaving only the Abomination left as a threat in the real world.
Mitigating features?
He's a Superpowered Evil Side but nothing really suggests agency issues. Fridge Logic can lead you to theorize that Devil Hulk is perhaps a manifestation of Bruce's abusive father—as Devil Hulk loves to refer to Bruce as "my child"—but it's only a theory and what we get of Devil Hulk isn't presented as "Bruce's trauma incarnate" or anything, he's just an evil persona of Bruce's who wants to take over it all. It helps things that when questioned, Bruce outright says that the Devil Hulk "is real. As real as the Hulk.", just furthering that Devil Hulk is meant to be seen as a "separate" being.
And while some of his dialogue is him claiming he wants to "help" Bruce, it's all in extremely creepy, body-jacking terms and just Devil Hulk trying to sway him into giving up and letting the Devil overtake his mind.
Heinousness?
He regularly tries to push Hulk into killing everything in his way and eventually tricks him into outright attacking civilian buildings and at least threatening hundreds of lives, and his endgame is very explicitly the annihilation of most-if-not-all life on Earth so he can reign as a "god".
Final Verdict?
Keep.
Edited by Ravok on May 25th 2024 at 3:31:54 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!Now that Armand is out of the way, I got one more proposal from yet another Dark Fantasy work, specifically Van Helsing. This guy has been overlooked for quite a while
Who is he?
- Portrayed by Kevin J. O'Connor—best known for his role as Beni Gabor, another greedy backstabber working for a Universal monster—Igor is Count Dracula's personal Mad Scientist, completely lacking the positive qualities of his boss and his other servants. Once Dr. Victor Frankenstein's assistant, Igor was easily swayed to Dracula's side when the count offered to pay him for his services, betraying Victor with a smile on his face and watching as Dracula murdered the man to obtain his creation.
"You have been so kind to me, doctor. Caring, thoughtful, but he pays me."
- You see, Dracula wants to use Frankenstein's Monster as a living battery to power the machine that gives his progeny life... And by progeny, I mean a legion of thousands of ugly little bat creatures. Dracula and his brides kill only one or two people a month, it's firmly established that if these creatures come to life, it'll be Hell on Earth for all of Transylvania. Igor... doesn't really care about that, gladly assisting his master in his plans to unleash his progeny upon the whole region and personally commanding the Dwergi, Dracula's mooks, to use them as his lab assistants in his experiments.
- When Frankenstein's Monster goes missing, Dracula opts to use other subjects in the experiments. The experiments conducted—supervised by Dracula and Igor himself—involve strapping a person to a table and letting extreme amounts of electricity run through them. This results in father of monster hunters Anna and Velkan Valerious being burned to a crisp, and Velkan himself—Dracula's unwilling werewolf minion—having to endure the torture. The experiment with Velkan is a near-success, with the monsters attacking a nearby town before exploding when Velkan proves to be insufficient to keep them alive.
- Unfortunately for the heroes, Igor and some vamps eventually find Frankenstein's Monster, with Igor personally delivering him to his master and helping re-assembling the laboratory to Dracula's castle. Things go very wrong for Igor when Van Helsing, Anna and Friar Carl infiltrate the castle to stop their plans, capturing Igor in the process. With Van Helsing having been infected by Velkan, Igor tries to save himself by leading Anna and Carl to a room containing the cure to lycanthrophy... It's an obvious trap but our heroes fall for it—"You try to get Igor, Igor get you!"—leaving them at the mercy of Dracula's last surviving bride.
- Igor's defeat happens by sheer bad luck
... While Igor is busy chasing Carl and the two are running on a bridge, Frankenstein's Monster frees himself from the table, falls from the tower, grabs onto a cable and it breaks, that cable pushes another cable in Igor's direction, and he falls from the bridge to the abyss below.
Mitigating Qualities? Not a single one, he's not even a loyal supporter of Dracula's cause, he just wants to get paid.
Heinous? I can understand why he was overlooked for so long, a bunch of other characters receive more attention and screentime. Igor surprisingly passes—during the experiment with Velkan, we see him giving specific orders to the Dwergi and personally working on the machine that keeps Dracula's progeny alive, as a matter of fact, it's Igor gladly pushing the switches on Dracula's orders that bring the creatures to life. While the final experiment—the one with Frankenstein's Monster—happens without Igor, it's still him who brings the monster to Dracula, allowing the count to almost doom the people of Transylvania.
Conclusion? Surprising
Edited by TheMadCr0w on May 25th 2024 at 7:45:24 AM
@Larry: Id suggest saving the ep and reposting it after the season is done. Heck reserve the whole season so if anyone else counts you can do them with her
devil hulk and Igor
Wow. We posted at the exact time
Edited by miraculous on May 25th 2024 at 3:32:53 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Bronco-Tank. What a name.
It's Spooky Month!