During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.
Specific issues include:
- Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
- A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
- Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
- Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
- Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.
It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk
to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.
Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:
Please see the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List before suggesting any new entries for this trope.
IMPORTANT: To avoid a holler to the mods, please see here for the earliest date a work can be discussed, (usually two weeks from the US release), as well as who's reserved discussion.
When voting, you must specify the candidate(s). No blanket votes (i.e. "
to everyone I missed").
No plagiarism: It's fair to source things, but an effortpost must be your own work and not lifted wholesale from another source.
We don't care what other sites think about a character being a Complete Monster. We judge this trope by our own criteria. Repeatedly attempting to bring up other sites will earn a suspension.
What is the Work
Here you briefly describe the work in question and explain any important setting details. Don't assume that everyone is familiar with the work in question.
Who is the Candidate and What have they Done?
This will be the main portion of the Effort Post. Here you list all of the crimes committed by the candidate. For candidates with longer rap sheets, keep the list to their most important and heinous crimes, we don't need to hear about every time they decide to do something minor or petty.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Here you discuss any potential redeeming or sympathetic features the character has, the character's Freudian Excuse if they have one, as well as any other potential mitigating factors like Offscreen Villainy or questions of moral agency. Try to present these as objectively as possible by presenting any evidence that may support or refute the mitigating factors.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
Here you compare the actions of the Candidate to other character actions in the story in order to determine if they stand out or not. Remember that all characters, not just other villains, contribute to the Heinousness Standard
Final Verdict?
Simply state whether or not you think the character counts or not.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:14:10 AM
Huh? Darth Maul a spoiler? That's absurd. He shows up in the first third of the film. Unless you're talking about the EU, in which case ... whatever. Qui-Gon's death is a spoiler, to be sure, but I could have sworn that we'd established that Darth Maul is not a CM.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Regardless, we agreed not to spoiler tag entries under discussion. If they need to be spoilered in the actual article text, that's a different issue.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"First things first - while I voted to remove Cardinal Delacroix from YMMV.Final Fantasy Tactics, both for being less heinous than other characters and for being a stub, I should go into more detail on the former point.
Cardinal Delacroix is the character who irrevocably shifts the focus and tone of the game. While the game up to him is about a civil war that the main characters try to influence, he's the point where it actually becomes about preventing demons from running loose upon the world. He is one of the officials trying to manipulate the war so that the demons can take over things. Finally, he's actually the human host of Queklain/Cuchulainn, the Impure King, one of the demons in question.
So, first and foremost, since it's eventually shown that the Impure King (stupid inconsistent translations) is really in control the whole time, he's actually the one who should be under consideration. So, regardless of whether he qualifies, Delacroix is a footnote at best.
Beyond that, there are legit Made of Evil questions with all of the Lucavi, of which the Impure King is one. Even if that isn't considered, though, the Impure King is actually low on the totem pole for the Lucavi, and he's basically following marching orders from the two Lucavi in charge of everything - and we've already cited the human hosts for said two Lucavi. Plus, those other two commit more atrocities than the Impure King regardless. So in short, I don't think that either Delacroix or the demon masquerading as him qualify.
@8124 Well, the third Omen movie was really forgettable (at the very least, the novelization was); the only thing I remember about it was that I saw clips of it after Jurassic Park, so I kept going "Hey, Dr. Grant is the Anti-Christ!" and that he's essentially defeated by the Anti-Judas. Regardless, as that's the only movie in the series where Damian's embracing his heritage, it's the only one in which he could count. I'd have to review it to determine if he should.
Also, thanks for getting to the Final Fantasy VII example, Fighteer. To be honest, I was just relieved that someone didn't try to sneak Sephiroth onto the page before it got locked (I believe Word of God claims that he should qualify... another case as to why we judge examples without considering that, because the writing certainly indicates several reasons why he shouldn't).
@8136 If nothing else, we'll need to make the listing on the subpage match YMMV.Cold Case, and the latter is extremely poorly written. Going off of Monster.Live Action TV:
- John Smith: Keep, though it could stand a rewrite.
- Jim Larkin: Keep, but with a heavy rewrite.
- George Marks: Cut, due to Freudian Excuse being cited.
- Roger Mulverny: Cut, doesn't sound nearly as heinous as the first two.
- Mike Delaney: Cut, not as heinous as Larkin, also Offscreen Villainy.
- Charlotte Bayes: Cut, fails heinous standard.
- Lauren Williams: Cut, stub.
- Johanna Kimball: Cut, fails heinous standard.
- Wayne Nelson: Rewrite or cut; too much moralizing, not enough analysis of what's actually done on-screen.
- Major Kitchener: Cut, fails heinous standard compared to Smith.
- Josh Freely: Leaning towards cut, as it sounds like he goes less far than Larkin, plus it's not clear how much is shown of his own crimes.
- Jane: Cut, fails heinous standard.
- Becca Abrams: Not sure; order of events sounds like she set up the rape as revenge for someone killing someone else (which would imply Revenge for a crime being taken way too far, which is edging into the Well-Intentioned Extremist vs. Knight Templar debate).
- Truitt (from YMMV.Cold Case): Cut, not completely heinous (cited as genuinely loving someone).
- Truitt's mother (also from YMMV page): Cut, stub.
@8143 You have to admit, when you first hear "the nanny from The Omen", your first thought is "It's all for you!"
Mrs. Baylock... do they ever confirm much of anything about her? She does push Damian's adopted mother through a window, but I think that's the only thing she does, which is pretty low-key for a horror movie (I don't recall them ever confirming that she's a demon). Okay, she does try to kill Ambassador Thorne to prevent him from killing Damian, but that's kind of her job (regardless of his status as the Antichrist or her status as a demon), so I'm inclined to not hold that against her. I know she has the most evil actions among the characters in the first film... but if nothing else, Damian's actions in the third movie alone overshadow her. She should be cut.
@8144 You really should gather more opinions before cutting - if it is as easy as pointing to a citation for Well-Intentioned Extremist, it'll be easy to get the votes.
@8150 This trope is a bit spoier-tastic by default. We actually have problems with too many spoiler tags in the entries. Asking for more is counterproductive. And we definitely shouldn't use spoiler tags here.
@8156 I already gave my thoughts in @7822. I voted to keep only Kevin and Roark, Jr.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.Actually, with Cold Case we could PROBABLY just link on the YMMV page to the CM page; I get a feeling there'll be enough to give it its own page.
The entry was extremely vague and had no real points against Cid aside from pointing to Moral Event Horizon.
I'll put the entry back up so people can vote on it, but I don't think it's going to stay.
His worse crime is planning to bomb his own capital.
Edit: I put the entry back up so we can vote on it, with additional information that I gathered from the character page.
- Complete Monster: Cid. He planned to bomb his own capital and acts as a dictator to his own kingdom.
I'm on the fence about him now. I don't think I should have cut him so hastily when he's a dictator. I don't see him having any positive qualities either.
edited 6th Feb '13 11:49:02 AM by Klavice
In The Loop's Linton Barwick is listed as a CM on the film's YMMV page. I don't think he qualifies.
Barwick is an Armchair Military Blood Knight who wants to start a war. He uses an active grenade as a paperweight. There are two problems:
1. He is never shown doing anything evil aside from trying to start a war.
2. The protagonist isn't much better. Malcolm is a political spin doctor working with Barwick to start said war because that's what Malcolm's bosses want.
@ Fooptsteps: On Becca: The rape wasn't revenge, it was just her being a bitch. Basically Becca is the head cheerleader who takes charge of initiating two new members of the squad, the episode's victim and the victim's best friend. Part of the "initiation" is to kiss the entire football team, which the victim objects to and stomps off, leaving the friend, not knowing that the next part of the "initiation" is to have sex with the football team, and when she refuses they gang-rape her. At the end of the episode, the friend poisons the victim because she felt the victim had thrown her to the proverbial wolves. The episode paints all of this as Becca's fault.
I'd also keep but expand Truitt's mom; she's absolutely terrifying and genuinely believes that genocide is the most logical thing in the world. The one sticking point may be that she doesn't kill anyone herself, though she is accessory to the episode's main murder and blatantly dominant to the guy who actually pulls the trigger.
edited 6th Feb '13 12:12:39 PM by HamburgerTime
Footsteps,
You, too? I couldn't stop drawing the Sam Neil distinction when I saw The Omen 3. Which, granted was years ago.
I think Damien does some pretty horrible things, and more if we impute the actions of his cult on him. If he qualifies it'd be for that film. Unfortunately, my memory is a mite vague on it for me to weigh definitively
Update on Cid.
I found more on him on the character page.
Demonic Possession: He is possessed by the servant of Lindzei and transformed into the Lulusathian Judge near the end of the story.
I think The Emperor from FF 2 was cut for the same reason, but here's more I found.
Here's the citation for Well-Intentioned Extremist.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ultimately desires above all else for the world to be free from the eternal repetition of cruel experiments of the fal'cie and their crystals.
What I don't quite understand is the fal'Cie from FF 13 were cut for also being Well Intentioned Extremists so I believe he's trying to seize power from the fal'Cie which I don't think is a really strong case.
Here's more on his We Have Reserves way of thinking.
We Have Reserves: Has no hesitation in sending Qator out to root out a Class Zero infiltration upon the capital of Milites with an Ultima nuke secretly installed upon his Gabriel meant to detonate at any time. Not if Qator had anything to say about that.
I'm still on the fence about him.
Also we have an additional Complete Monster that was added to the Final Fantasy pages that I noticed on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates.
Complete Monster: Galdes and especially Cu Chaspel, with the utter glee that he takes in destroying the twins' lives.
Also Larkeicus was added to the Echoes of Time page with a rather convincing case.
"Larkeicus. He brutally murdered an innocent village down to the children, abducted the only survivor and forced her to produce crystals for his experiments for two millenia, turned his unwilling apprentice into a Baleful Polymorph, duped the hero into doing his dirty work and then tried to kill him/her... plus, he is responsible for the hellish deathtraps that are the Ruins and Tower."
Again, I'm not sure on these two.
If they qualify, should we move them to Monster.Final Fantasy?
edited 6th Feb '13 12:52:09 PM by Klavice
I'd like to talk about the Law and Order series examples(mainly due to them not having their own sub-pages)
- Law And Order SVU had Victor Paul Gitano, a notable suspect that completely topped anyone else Benson and Stabler have ever encountered. Gitano was a sadistic pedophile, and, as you find out later, absolutely proud of it. He lures kids in, then rapes, tortures, and kills them. He doesn't discriminate by gender either. On top of that, when trying to hunt Gitano down, things don't quite go as planned. Not only does he kill one of the two kids he had with him in a subway station full of people by slashing his throat, he almost killed Benson the same way. And then, when they corner Gitano in a warehouse, he manages to get behind Stabler and hold him at gunpoint with a shotgun. Gitano, despite knowing he'd get caught or killed at this point, outright boasts that he killed the other child he had (who was a girl) and bragged that she was a "slut" and a "real little whore" before killing her, even though he never got the chance to molest her. Fortunately for Stabler, Gitano gets killed by a police sharpshooter. Compared to any of the other serial killers on TV (even on Dexter and Criminal Minds), Gitano tops them ALL on the creepiness factor. By the end of the episode, you're glad he's dead. Oh yeah, and he's based on a real guy.
- Another episode also had a particularly sadistic pedophile on his deathbed. During an interview, he actually stated "I can't wait to go to Hell... all those unbaptized babies."
- The episode Justice reveals that the Victimofthe Week's stepfather was a corrupt judge who sexually abused her for years, impregnanting her with his child. What did he do about this? He sent her off to a juvenile detention camp in order to silence her about the abuse while taking the resulant child in as his "son". However he is not the real monster. That role would be reserved for the girl's biological mother, who was perfectly aware of what was going on, but because of her vow to rise above her poverty stricken background, ignored it because that would mean forfeiting her wealthy husband's money. And when the girl finally tried to speak out about it, she murdered her! As this is found out, she even has the temerity to ask Olivia if she is a bad mother or not for her actions. Olivia's shocked silence says it all...
- A Man Child who rapes children and tapes it with a POV camera is bad enough, and then we meet his father, who made his son watch him have sex with prostitutes as a child, then had the son have sex with them as a teen, and after learning his son had a problem with little girls, made the son tape the rapes all because he was having a harder time getting off. And to top it all off, he declares that his son is dead to him as he yells "Daddy I love you!"
- SVU had another one in the episode "Dominance" in the form of one Charlie Baker: by the end, he has murdered eleven people in about a week, after forcing them to have sex with each other first—including men with other men—or raping the victims himself. And he kidnapped two women, killed their boyfriends, and kept them captive on a roof. Oh, and he's also been raping his little brother and beating his alcoholic father all along. And he's played by dear, sweet, clueless Boone, of all people.
- Mark and Jana Whitlock in the episode "RAW", members of a white supremacist organisation who adopted a black boy so they could have him killed in a school shooting and collect on a $750,000 life insurance policy. Jana's closing justification when he is found out: "We aren't racist, we just needed the money."
- Brian Ackerman and, arguably, his son Kyle from the same episode also qualify.
- The first episode featured one - as the VICTIM! Ostensibly an innocent cab driver brutally murdered, "Victor Spicer" turns out to be Stefan Tanzic, a particularly Sociopathic Soldier and a perpetrator of the Serbian genocide. We receive anecdotes about him killing a little boy with a hatchet, as well as having all the men in a certain village killed, presumably so he and his cronies could have the women to themselves. He was indicted for raping 67 women. His killers turned out to be two women whose lives were ruined and families slaughtered by him; after one is Driven to Suicide, the ADA decides that pursuing charges against the second would be an absolute joke since nobody would convict her, and they simply elect to send her home.
- Larry Moore from "Signature" would torture his victims through every conceivable means, meticulously record the sessions, and constantly play the tapes on a loop to torment current and future captives, and occasionally abduct more than one woman at once so he could have a captive audience. His Torture Cellar was pure horror, and they implicate pretty heavily that he raped his aunt while still a teenager.
- Sebastian Ballentine from "Pure" (played by Martin Short) is a serial killer and rapist who targets virgins. He's also a Phony Psychic who spends the episode convincing the mother of his latest victim that he can help her get her daughter (who she doesn't yet know is dead) back for her and tormenting the detectives (who suspect he did it, but can't prove it). At the end of the episode, when asked why he did it, when he could have probably gotten away with it if he'd just skipped town, he replies, "I just had to see what I had set in motion. The expressions on your faces were priceless. This place was like a big beehive that I poked with a stick."
- "Honor" featured Afghani ambassador Saleh Amir, who was absolutely this, fittingly enough for someone who worked for the Taliban. When his daughter commits the horrible crime of losing her virginity before marriage, he has his son (the girl's own brother) rape and murder her, and later kills his wife himself when she turns testimony on the son in court. The son is convicted based on his mother's testimony, but this is barely even treated as a victory, as Saleh pulls Diplomatic Immunity and flees back to Afghanistan.
- While the original Law & Order certainly wasn't lacking in complete monsters, perhaps the most striking one was the character of Mark Bruner from the episode "Bodies"; a cab driver who, over a few years, brutally raped and killed over a dozen teenage girls and kept their bodies in a secure location where he would go to admire them as he left them out to rot. But what makes him more monstrous than that is his amusement at the suffering of the hundreds of mothers of the missing girls who he may have killed, and his utter refusal to disclose the location of his victims so that they may be identified and their parents given closure — he wanted them to suffer not knowing, and he wanted Jack to suffer knowing that he couldn't move him to tell and couldn't give the parents the closure they so needed.
- Let's not forget Jacob Lowenstein, from the 1st season episode "Indifference". Using his job as a psychotherapist as a cover to sell cocaine, the man would routinely beat his wife on a daily basis, then watched as she got high on his product and turned her anger towards their children. Beating her six-year old daughter and burning their young son's hands was the only the tip of the iceberg for this woman. Their father did nothing, coming home one night and ignoring the fact that his daughter was unconscious on the floor, with her head sitting in a pool of her own blood. And when she finally succumbed to her horrendous injuries, he tried to get off scott-free by pinning all the blame on his wife. Class act. The scariest part of this little story is the fact that it was based on a real-life monster
- The Russian mob boss in the two-parter "Refuge". He ordered an innocent man murdered and dismembered because he had a relative who wouldn't go along with a money laundering scheme. When he finds out that the key eyewitness for the prosecution is a six-year-old boy, he sends assassins to kill him. They murder his mother and an A.D.A. The boy lives, but only because they didn't cut deep enough into his throat. In the second part, he orders the bombing of the precinct where the police protagonists work, just for giggles. He makes most of The Mafia seen on the show look like pikers.
- The defendant in "Hubris" was a Domestic Abuser who murdered his girlfriend some years back, but was never charged because he made her body disappear. Years later, his current girlfriend finds out what he did (because he gave her a brooch he took off the body as a gift). What does he do? He kills her. And the old couple who were employing her. And her six-year-old daughter. Then he gets away with it at the trial by seducing a coworker into giving him an alibi, and seducing the jury forewoman into voting to acquit. A particularly well-deserved Karmic Death.
- Think Children Are Innocent? Think again...the episode "Killerz" brings the viewers Creepy Child and Enfant Terrible Jenny, who killed an 8 year old boy simply because she Does Not Like Men and her Freudian Excuse (her father in jail and watching her mother sleeping with several men in front of her) is not enough to balance out her depravity. Not enough for you? Well then, during her interview with the psychiatrist, she admitted to poisoning her neighbor's cat for absolute no reason and with no remorse at all. Said psychiatrist even said that Jenny's an extreme sociopath and a lost cause. But the worst part is that she got away with it, with the judge agreeing that institutionalizing her is too extreme at her age and believing that Jenny can be treated. The Downer Ending of it all is that the scene ends with Jenny staring and smiling at a frightened little boy, imply that she will strike again...
- "Deadlock": Leon Vorgitch was given a death sentence for massacring a restaurant and killing five people. But the law changes, so he gets to live. He uses this to kill two guards and escape from prison. The detectives hunting for him results in even more deaths, including a classroom of children. When Detective Green asks Vorgitch why he killed the kids, he laughs and says "Why not?" He also treats the justice system as a joke; his plea at arraignment was "kiss my ass", he said he would only plead guilty if he could get a cool new television, and he bragged to Jack and Connie that he would escape again and kill both of them. All the while laughing, since he knew the worst thing that the justice system could do to him was put him in jail. All this makes it particularly satisfying when the father of one of the dead kids gives him that death sentence anyway. The man freely pleads guilty, but only after discovering his attorney was manipulating him for headlines, which he should have figured from the start since she helped orchestrate Vorgitch's murder.
- Rudy Amendariz and Betty Drake from the episode "Wedded Bliss." They run a sweatshop in which their workers (some of whom are literally children) are kept as prisoners and physically abused. When a city labor inspector stumbles onto their crimes, they murder him. Then they murder the two teenagers who witnessed the crime. Then they murder the seven other workers in the sweatshop to keep them from testifying that the other two worked for them. And not only do they show no remorse for their crimes, they show open contempt for their co-conspirator who does.
From SVU:
- Victor Paul Gitano: Keep but rewrite to remove grave-dancing and real-life referance.
- Unnamed criminal on his deathbed: Cut.
- third bullet point: The entry mentions the judge not being the real monster compared to the mother but bothered listing his crimes just to make her look worse so this looks like another misogyny entry, not to mention everything the judge doing being off screen. Cut.
- Manchild: not as bad as his father, so I'd cut.
- Charlie Baker: Keep
- Mark and Jana Whitlock: Fail the heinous standard. Cut
- Brian Ackerman and his son Kyle: Zero Context Example. Cut
- Victor Spicer aka Stefan Tanzic: Offscreen Villany. Cut
- Larry Moore: Keep
- Sebastian Ballentine: On the fence with him honestly.
- Saleh Amir: Cut.
From Law and Order:
- Mark Bruner: Keep
- Jacob Lowenstein: Keep but remove real-life reference.
- Viligante mother: Cut, sounds like misogyny and fails the heinous standard anyway.
- Russian Mob Boss: Keep
- The defendant in "Hubris": Keep but remove grave-dancing
- Jenny: Cut, fails the heinous standard.
- Leon Vorgitch: Keep
- Rudy Amendariz and Betty Drake: Both are a Keep.
edited 6th Feb '13 1:10:33 PM by VeryMelon
Could you please put some paragraph breaks into that post so that it becomes less Wall of Text-y?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanACW, we actually have a Star Wars sandbox....eventually, all SW examples will go there
Can I suggest a rewrite for Bester from Babylon 5.
- Bester has sympathetic backstory, but the fact that he does all of his actions with a smug smile erased any sympathey for him. He manipulates people for his own goals, and planned genocide. Probably his worst action was when he brainwashed a main character, making him turn against everyone he cared about. And after he had completed Bester's mission, Bester revealed everything he had done and how it furthered his goals in painstaking detail.
edited 6th Feb '13 1:16:00 PM by randomtroper89
"[T]he fact that he does all of his actions with a smug smile erased any sympathy for him"
Oy, I'm not sure why people think doing something "smugly" (or something to that effect) makes them a Complete Monster. I mean yes, sometimes a heinous act is worsened when the character doing it shows enjoyment/a lack of remorse, but these kind of bad examples are saying "X is evil, but even worse, {s}he is a jerk."
I'm not sure whether or not Bester would qualify. He's a very hateable guy and does some pretty bad stuff, but I"m not certain he's evil enough, both on his own and compared to other villains in the series.
Edit- Also, those examples Hamburger Time mentioned don't sound sufficiently heinous.
edited 6th Feb '13 1:23:35 PM by Hodor
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki

It's been long told in this thread that spoiler tags are bad. Getting conflicting messages