Unlocking.
I can understand how you're getting here, but actual redefinition is going to require checks of usage: representative samples of both on-page examples and a wick check.
EDIT: My bad, I shouldn't have opened this. I'm still wrapping my head around the batch system, sorry about that.
Edited by StarSword on Jan 2nd 2025 at 3:52:19 PM
Trust me, I'm an engineer!Uh, Star, I don't know if we're allowed to open things that aren't in the batch
, and TRS threads require evidence of a problem... I'm inclined to just kick this over to Trope Talk honestly since that's where these things generally get discussed right now. We can't act without proof.
Reading the OP this does sounds like a common Trope Talk question and not something intended for TRS. And yes this isn't in the TRS Batch Drop Queue.
Edited by Amonimus on Jan 2nd 2025 at 11:17:24 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupAnything not in the batch drop should not be opened.
OP, we're not accepting any new threads other than what was in the TRS queue. We'll start accepting new threads in April.
You can discuss the intricacies of the trope in Trope Talk. Locking here.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - FighteerOkay, so Lu gave me permission to reopen this thread in Trope Talk. Paging ~Snowy 66 to the thread.
Trust me, I'm an engineer!I think the page is supposed to be Flat Character + Omnicidal Maniac (and that does seem to come up quite often in comics and video games). However, the longer a work lasts, the greater the chance that some episode will flesh out the villain.
Well more specifically, it needs to be a Flat Character where their destructive desire is their only characterisation. A lot of those guys on the page have more than just this baseline characterisation. I’ll copy paste over a few I listed:
- Anubis in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light. No reason is given for why he wants to destroy the world. If there is a reason, it's just that a god of death is supposed to end life. - Has far too much personality, with his complex scheming. Plus wanting to destroy because he’s a god of death is a motive in itself
- Russel Van Pelt in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle pursues the protagonists to get the Jaguar's Eye for himself, but no reason is given what he wants to do with it. Justified since he's solely created to be a generic threat to inconvenience the heroes and make the video game the kids got sucked into challenging to win. He cannot even truly be said to be the Big Bad. That would be Jumanji itself. - His character page has an Ambition Is Evil entry stating his archaelogical desires pushed him to find the Jaguar’s Eye and after he takes the eye he gets corrupted by the power
- D.A.V.E. in The Batman (2004) is a deconstruction. While he believes himself to be a human imprisoned inside a computer, he's actually a robot programmed by Dr. Hugo Strange with the memories and abilities of Batman's worst foes for the sole purpose of giving Batman a challenge; to this end, he proceeds to easily curbstomp Batman and steals all of Gotham's money just to commit the ultimate crime. He's defeated when Batman asks him about his origin, at which point he realizes that he has no actual motivation or purpose beyond fighting Batman, which distracts him long enough for Batman to (quite ruthlessly, actually) kill him . - Far too much oersonality and cunning. Plus his motive is because he’s following Strange’s programming to be the ultimate villain. Even if he doesn’t have a traditional origin, he’s as far from this trope as you can get
I'm on the fence about Freeze Lord Fredrik as his page says this:
Generic Doomsday Villain: He's an evil ruler of Snowmads who invaded the Kongs' island and turned it into a frozen wasteland... and that's all we know about him.
But on the other hand, we have this from Alternative Character Interpretation from the YMMV page:
There may be more to the whole Snowmad takeover than one might think. When the Pointy Tucks sees Donkey Kong's treehouse, his reaction is to panic and alert Lord Fredrik, and when Fredrik sees the island from his distance, he nods as if to say "Yep, that's the place." This could imply that the Snowmads have some bitter resentment against the Kongs, whether it's jealousy of their luxurious lifestyle, or the intent on avenging the previously defeated Tiki Tak Tribe. The Snowmad ship landing on top of the volcano that was once the Tikis' home, and the evil laugh of Tiki Tong heard at one point in Meltdown Mayhem suggest the latter.
Hi!That reads to me like an Ambiguous Situation or Alternate Character Interpretation situation; the motive is described as speculative. In situations like that I think the trope usually still applies, as long as one of the primary / most obvious interpretations is that they're a Generic Doomsday Villain. The nature of the trope means viewers will often read their own motivation, backstory, etc into the void.
(Although if it is portrayed as intentionally mysterious in-universe and never clarified to "no motive" then it's not this trope, even if left as a Riddle for the Ages, since that implies an unseen motive rather than an absent one.)
But that particular example, based on what was posted, reads as a reader not wanting the character to be motiveless and scrambling for Wild Mass Guessing to avoid it, rather than any indication that the writers ever intended the character to have a motive. Remember that while Tropes Are Not Bad, GDV is still often seen as negative and the apparent lack of motivation will always attract speculation - if a fan going "but he laughed evilly this one time, that implies It's Personal, right?" was enough to disqualify an example, we would have like zero examples.
Edited by Aquillion on Jan 5th 2025 at 4:51:49 AM
Well unknown motive and no motive isn't the same thing. Just because we don't have the motive spelled out, doesn't mean one can't be discerned from their personality (often one that is very prominent).
Like for example, Michael Myers doesn't speak so no one has any idea what his end goal is, but he demonstrates enough sadism and craftiness that he's definitely not a GDV.
As for this specific example. Looking at the wiki page, yeah he might count considering there is no characterization given to him at all aside from being a boss fight.
Quite possibly. Though Anbuis example has been there for a long time as far as I remember.
Edited by Snowy66 on Jan 5th 2025 at 5:01:38 AM
Just as an aside, I think the Anubis thing reads like it was taken from the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged Movie" which just strips Anubis's personality to "most disappointing movie villain since General Grevious" when in the actual film, he had a far more developed personality and motive. Not to mention, the Japanese version says he's not the mythological Anubis, just some guy using his name.
Hi!My understanding of GDV is that they're more of a force of nature than a character. Like if you replaced the character with a particularly destructive tornado or something and the plot doesn't change, then you might have a GDV (sort of like the "sexy lamp" test). But in practice that's not an easy line to draw.
Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 5th 2025 at 7:56:38 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall...I think "Doomsday" is being used as a synonym for "apocalypse", like a destructive force. If Doomsday is the trope namer that's literally never been explained.
Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 5th 2025 at 8:08:06 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall![]()
It depends on the version of Doomsday. Although, having a backstory doesn't necessarily disqualify from GDV either, just so long as they have no baseline personality outside of destruction.
But yeah I don't think he's the Trope Namer, it's just used as a placeholder for "destruction"
Edited by Snowy66 on Jan 5th 2025 at 5:28:36 AM
Note that this was originally drafted
(and possibly originally launched?) as "Boring Invincible Villain". I would say that would suggest that it was originally about "complaining about villains with nonexistent or poorly-fleshed-out motives", but it's been through so many TRS threads that I'm not in the mood to rifle through them to see if and when the scope was ever explicitly clarified, or to what.
As I recall, I was the one who suggested "Generic Doomsday Villain" in the rename thread (it was renamed to reduce the negativity and complaining-ness of it), and my thinking was "this is a good name that happens to also have an iconic example in it." It wasn't intended to use Doomsday as a trope-namer, but the fact that he was in there was noticed and discussed in the thread.
I think Doomsday is also a complex example of the sort that the description discusses (or did at one point, anyway) - in serial works, especially Long Runner ones, it's not unusual for a character to start as a Generic Doomsday Villain and then to have motivations, characterization, etc. retconned in by later writers. In that case their early appearances are examples but the example should note how they changed.
Of course there's some haziness here (was it actually a retcon, or was this intended all along?) but in this case it seems clear enough. It's not uncommon for the tropes that apply to a comic-book character to change over the course of their history or Depending on the Writer - eg. Thanos started as an Expy of Darkseid (Marvel editor Roy Thomas told his creator to literally "rip off Darkseid" in as many words) but grew into something different, to the point where you could even argue that modern Darkseid writers are taking notes from Thanos. In that case I think we can just note that in the example description, eg. "character X started out at this during [writer's] run, but later writers [name-and-name] added motivations and backstory."
Edited by Aquillion on Jan 6th 2025 at 9:05:21 AM
I basically interpret this as referring to villains with little characterization other than being The Bad Guy. For example, take Sauron absent the characterization he got in The Silmarillion (bearing in mind that I got a headache trying to read chapter 1 and have yet to try again): He's not even really a character, so much as a plot device to motivate the protagonists.
Trust me, I'm an engineer!

Hello, I've been thinking for a while that Generic Doomsday Villain needs discussion here. It's a very ill-defined trope that attracts rampant misuse.
The trope page description flip-flops between vaguely defined parameters of "villain with no backstory", "villain with no motive", "villain with no personality" with the only shared commonality between them being Apocalypse How / Omnicidal Maniac. However a lot of the listed examples on the page end up being either: villains who do stuff For the Evulz or Then Let Me Be Evil, a villain with an unknown motive i.e. Hidden Agenda Villain, villains with a weak motive, or in some cases just a villain with little personality i.e. Flat Character.
Also for some reason, I've noticed the trope sometimes gets used as some sort of "anti-badge of honor" on character pages in an inverse to Complete Monster, where people slap this onto a villain who they deem uninteresting.
As I understand, the trope can only apply if the villain in question is lacking in intelligence / sapience that physically prevents them from having reasoning behind why they are so destructive, i.e. a Feral Villain. However many examples listed do show villains with personality (no matter how generic).
A lot of tropes already cover Generic Doomsday Villain, some of which I listed above including: Flat Character, Feral Villain, Hidden Agenda Villain, Mysterious Past, Omnicidal Maniac.
For the moment, would just like to get some thoughts and discussion before any official wick check is done. What do you guys think?
Edited by Snowy66 on Jan 2nd 2025 at 10:57:07 AM