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
To get back to a few earlier candidates, I suppose Nicholas Quinn from Crownies can go up for now since his crimes are onscreen. I'm not sure what the status on Harry Warden (My Bloody Valentine 3D) is, since we've gone back and forth on him. He kept coming up without being resolved and bobg eventually did a write-up but I'm not sure if he had a net positive for keep or not.
Lightysnake, do you want to do a write-up for Ryunosuke Tsukue? I believe he was judged a keep the last time he came up.
Here are some more cuts/keeps from YMMV:
Dirty Laundry
- Complete Monster: The gang leader. Within the space of about 5 minutes he beats and rapes a prostitute and has his men beat and threaten to kill a small boy who refuses to run drugs for him.
Came up here
. He sounds pretty bad, but since this is an unofficial work in The Punisher I think he may be way too insignificant to stack up to any other villain's heinousness even with his very limited screentime.
First: Do No Harm
- Complete Monster: Violet's husband. He keeps her chained to a wall under guard, naked, beats her almost every day with his bare fists because her Healing Factor keeps her alive and it just annoys him. At one point he briefly considers cutting out her ovaries and womb, just to see if her Healing Factor can handle it. Then he decides not to because he might need her to bear another 'tool'. He's also in his 50s, with a 15 year old daughter, whom he considers as nothing more than a disposable tool. He also sent armed mercenaries after her in an attempt to kill her because he felt she was out of his control.
Not sure. He may qualify but he only seems to target one person, since it's unclear if the armed mercenaries were sent after his daughter or his wife, though I suspect the latter.
Girls with Slingshots
- Complete Monster: Candy is an attempted rapist, relationship and wedding saboteur, mixes up feminism for misandrism and is just all around abrasive, crabby and cruel. When Hazel calls you out on how mean you are, something is definitely wrong.
From a webcomic. Aside from the attempted rape, none of this is bad enough. There's also this from the main page:
- Karma Houdini: Candy tried to rape Chris. Everyone's response? Get her a job as a dominatrix so that she has a healthy outlet.
- She finally gets her comeuppance for everything—after her prank at the wedding, the entire group turned their backs on her. She hasn't appeared in the strip since...unless you count some stuttering steps toward redemption in crossover strips from Something Positive. She eventually reappeared, greatly alarming Jameson. The way he acted, you'd think he was the one she tried to rape (although it's possible the entire attempted date rape has entered Canon Discontinuity since none of the characters ever mention it even when mention other bad things Candy's done.
Where to start? First, apparently not even the writer realized that a woman trying to rape a man was heinous until it was probably pointed out to her. Second, it says that she was possibly redeemed. Third, her single sufficiently heinous act might all be Canon Discontinuity.
Internet Personality Vangelus
- Complete Monster - Amusingly, nearly every appearance of Optimus Prime so far. The reviews for the various Animated Primes don't feature anything too untoward, but...
- Powered Convoy carries around a rocket launcher and a briefcase full of drugs.
- Masterpiece Prime gladly talks about how being rich is awesome and how poor people are terrible.
- Revenge Of The Fallen Leader-class Prime is the worst, merrily singing lullabies as he brutally slays and deconstructs Megatron, vowing he will continue his reign of terror.
- Hybrid Style Prime seems pretty nice, even after Dragonzord beats him without a reason, but reveals his true colors when Drift comes to him for advice.
- War For Cybertron Optimus Prime shows that he has qualities in common with Jack Torrance, when he gets his hands on the Corbot V War Axe set, causing WFC Megatron to flee in fear.
Came up here
. This is a mess first of all, and it looks like he's played for laughs ("Amusingly"?) in the same way the SF Debris's version of Janeway is portrayed as a Memetic Psychopath.
Iron Kingdoms
- Complete Monster: Toruk, an Omnicidal Maniac who turns a whole set of island nations into a mix of undead and mutants to serve as his army, all with the intent of slaughtering as many of the inhabitants of the mainland as possible to make a bigger army, so he can use it to aid in killing his children that are the only thing he sees as a threat.
- His children are just as bad as him, they all have the same goal of eating each other, and beyond that, they're only aim is destruction. Everblight manages to give his old man a run for his money though, having turn the Nyss elves into a Slave Race to serve as part of his army.
Toruk sounds like he can qualify, but his children should be cut for being a group. If any of them individually qualify they can come here to explain it.
Ivy League Killer
- Complete Monster: The Ivy League Killer. He committed a series of gruesome murders just to draw the police and the U.S. Army into a booby-trapped forest.
Sounds like a keep. The work page is a stub, though.
Jennifer Government
- Complete Monster: John Nike.
- And later in the book, he kidnaps Jennifer's 8-year old daughter Kate, and makes it quite clear he has no qualms about killing her if Jennifer tries to arrest him. He even laughs about it.]] He is also Kate's biological father
Sounds like a keep. He's a Corrupt Corporate Executive who kills teenagers and is willing to reduce his society to chaos solely for profit, and tries to kill his own daughter.
edited 2nd Jul '14 7:08:58 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"Regarding Dirty Laundry: Uhm, no. It's a Short-Film and we should evaluate it from this basis, not because it is a hommage to The Punisher. Connecting the Gang Leader (who is a SOLID contender, just watch the shortfilm) to Comic Book Villains of the Punisher in terms of heinousness makes no sense. Keep.
edited 2nd Jul '14 7:50:28 AM by Forenperser
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianCut Optimus. Keep Nike, Ivy League Leader and Turok.
I think we should for our writeup of Morgoth in Children of Hurin do it based on his crimes in there, just like how we did it for Palpatine in TCW.
Also if no one objects(its now 3
1
, and 1 abstension), here is my writeup for Kil'Jaeden
- Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver, the current leader of the Burning legion in the absence of Sargeras, is one of the most evil demons in Warcraft, and behind much of the bad things that happened in the lore. He was once one of the wisest leaders of the Eredar, but quickly and willingly embraced his demonic corruption following Sargeras' deception and vowed to destroy Velen, his former friend no less, for refusing. On a mission to look for demonic recruits for Sargeras, he found the Orcs and the Draenei living in peace in Draenor. Vowing revenge on Velen, Kil'Jaeden tricked Ner'Zhul by posing as the spirit of his mate, into thinking that the Draenei were plotting against the orcs, and subtly introduced warlock magic and bloodlust to the clans. When Ner'Zhul found out what Kil'Jaeden was plotting then worked through Gul'Dan and stripped the Ner'Zhul of his power, investing the greatest and darkest of warlock magicks into Gul'Dan so he could wage war on the Draenei. This culminated in the genocide of Kil'Jaeden's own race through the atrocities of the Orcs just because of a grudge with one person. The Orcs were then rewarded with the Blood of Mannoroth, cutting them from the elements and condemning them to Demonic corruption. When Outland was destroyed in the aftermath of the Alliance, Ner'Zhul was caught by Kil'Jaeden when trying to escape. Ner'Zhul pleaded to serve Kil'Jaeden and was rewarded with his own body being destroyed becoming the Lich King—-encased in Ice and imprisoned by the Dreadlords in order to create the Scourge. Those who are granted mercy by Kil'Jaeden is only to further Kil'Jaeden's own goals, and even they are not exempt from his Wrath—as Kil'Jaeden sought to destroy the Lich King and threatened to kill Illidan if he had not succeeded in his task, hinting that he viewed his own minions as expandable if they failed repeatedly or outlived their usefulness. Overall through Kil'Jaeden is more hands-off than many of the villains in the Lore, all of the suffering experienced by many of the characters, as well as the crimes of BOTH the original orcish Horde and the Undead Scourge can be traced back to him.
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:17:57 AM by xie323
Anyway to cut that any?
From Streets of Rage Saga:
- Complete Monster: Several examples throughout the saga, all associated (directly or indirectly) with the Syndicate.
- Mr. X, even more so than how he's portrayed in canon. He ordered the massacre of Blaze's entire tribe because he wanted the land they were on and also to get genetic material for his scientists' experiments, then set Blaze up to be imprisoned in the insane asylum in order to use her as a guinea pig for the Fire drug experiments and to keep her from revealing the truth of the aforementioned massacre...and that's just what's revealed in the second story, Origins.
- Dr. Simon Jerrin, one of the asylum's resident doctors in Origins. He rapes a captive 12-year-old Blaze, and the narrative indicates that it's not the first time he's done it to her.
- Dreadnought, the titular villain in The Rise of Dreadnought. He was a Mad Scientist who performed vile experiments on captives of the Nazi regime during World War 2, and in the present day he's an Omnicidal Maniac who seeks to bomb strategic locations as a way of asserting his power starting with the state of Florida via his Weapon of Mass Destruction.
- Shiva in Duality. He's prepared to throw Blaze to the Syndicate mooks to be gang-raped, plus he's quite willing to fire a black-hole-causing cannon that will cause Earth to implode on itself. Oh, and blowing up an entire city in The New Syndicate would qualify, too.
- Enigma, the final Big Bad of the saga. When your master plan is to merge Earth with a hellish dimension, you qualify.
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:22:01 AM by ACW
Expand and keep Mr. X and Dreadnought. The other 2 dosent should be expanded or cut.
Also found this in Monster/Fanfic, it's a Power Rangers Dark Fic no less.
- Dark Specter. The first story is primarily concerned with his rise to power, and we get to see exactly why he earned the title "Grand Monarch of Evil". While having innumerable wars and genocides behind him in his quest for Dimension Lord-dom is bad enough, it's the sheer overkill he applies to our own humble blue marble, it being prophesied to birth his destroyers, that truly pushes him into this territory. Two instances in particular stand out. In the second story, he's been revived and took the galaxy's government, but he's heard that Zordon is also on his way back to the realm of the living. Specter kidnaps all the various babies he thinks might be the reincarnated Zordon, as well as Karone, to confirm their identity. When Karone tells him that none of the babies he has are Zordon, Specter blows up the room full of babies, then teleports Karone back to the Rangers...with her throat cut. Karone gets better, but we're never told if the babies do. The second instance is in a flashback in the third story, where it's revealed that Specter sold advanced alien tech to the Nazis in exchange for them turning Earth over to him when they were done conquering it. They failed to do that, but one can only imagine how much worse he made World War II. He's also behind everyone else on this list, by the way. Interestingly enough, the early parts of the first story give him a bit of a Woobie-ish Backstory that casts him as a former Ranger millions of years ago who accepted the proto-United Alliance of Evil's offer to become their leader so he could get justice for his murdered girlfriend, but the author has gone on record as saying he's grown unhappy with this backstory and plans to write it out next time he revises the fic.
- Which brings us to King Ra. He's the absolute dictator of a race of Lizard People and a high-ranking member of the UAE. He claims to have genetically engineered humanity to be his race's slaves and wholeheartedly believes this gives him every right to abuse them in any way he wants, and does he ever. As it turns out, he's lying through his teeth, but it's then revealed that he's responsible for the Dominus Lords' control of Earth, so he still believes humanity "owes him". Naturally, few tears are shed when the Rangers cut him down, with him whining about how "ungrateful" humans are all the while.
- This next one is a big spoiler. It's Captain Logan, the apparent Big Good from Time Force. How bad is he? Well, it turns out that Year 3000's mutant crime wave problem was actually engineered by him, as a way to unite the people against a common foe and distract them from the dictatorship they're living under. Oh, and he shot Ransik's wife on the day their daughter was born, which drove Ransik back to crime just as he was about to completely atone from killing Dr. Fericks due to The Power of Love. He's also a nigh-unkillable Super-Soldier. You can't help but cheer when Ransik jams a vial of liquid magnetite (the Super Soldiers' one weakness) down his throat, causing him to crumble to dust in an extraordinarliy painful-sounding way.
- Then there's Senator John Thorne, leader of an anti-alien hate group. We realize he's this right around the time he has a refugee camp massacred. Most of his private army, used to perform the aforementioned massacre among other things, appear to qualify, too, but as they're just Mooks, it's hard to tell.
- There's also Jacob Russell, an Amoral Attorney-turned-Corrupt Corporate Executive. He bought out one of BioLabs' subsidiary companies and turned it to evil. Not only that, he murdered Trini's Uncle Howard (a character fans of the show would recognize) when he wouldn't sell his research to him, making the death look like a suicide. It's even sort of hinted he greased the authorities' palms so they wouldn't consider the fact that Howard had never displayed suicidal tendencies before.
Keep John Thorne, Logan and maybe Russell, cut king Ra cuz insufficient heinousness and CUT ALL THE CHARACTER BASHING/GRAVEDANCING!
At this point in time, Dark Specter does not qualify in this fic. IIRC he genuinely loved his girlfriend and actually turned her evil and gave her new life. Even Evil Has Loved Ones, so cut for 99% monster(it seems to be same story with Thanos in Marvel comics too...). Said girlfriend was Queen Bansheera ironically, which also turns her into a 99% monster despite her own CM status in PRLR, so despite her reputation, she is converted from a full-on CM to 99% monster too for this fic. The author does seem to not like this, but this series seems to be a Dead Fic, so cut until the author miracuously reupdated his story and makes him WORSE.
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:35:24 AM by xie323
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Problem is that in Children of Hurin itself Morgoth is a big Orcus on His Throne and only appears briefly (albeit in probably the most critical scene of the book) and his rap sheet consists mostly of "giving Hurin the We Can Rule Together spiel", "cursing Hurin and his family to destroy themselves when Hurin throws it in his face" and "monologuing a bit before sticking Hurin on a chair and granting him powers of sight so he'll have to watch helplessly as the curse unfolds". All very evil, but a bit short for a CM entry (though apparently the general consensus is that he's also directly responsible for all the stuff Glaurung gets up to, so whatever). If it was up to me, I'd just list his name and link to The Silmarillion YMMV page for details (where this is mentioned anyway, as the story of Children of Hurin is presented in shortened form in one chapter, along with countless other crimes).
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:30:14 AM by MasterGhandalf
I think then there is no viable CM in Children Of Hurin then . Unlike Palpatine as portrayed in Star Wars The Clone Wars, Dark Empire, and Darth Plagueis who has a good amount of atrocities committed that we see, Morgoth it seems does nothing to qualify in the Children Of Hurin despite being a CM in the main canon. So cut or link to the main YMMV page.
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:37:18 AM by xie323
...Children of Hurin is part of the main canon, though, and has to be understood in the context of the Legendarium (which is, after all, really just one big story of Arda). Morgoth doesn't magically become less evil because he's making an appearance in another (canonical!) book that expands on events presented in the "main" book, and though his actual appearance is brief, he's still the Big Bad and still leveled the curse (it's just more-or-less impossible to parse out which parts of Turin's life were Morgoth's curse and which were the result of his own pride/aggression/general tendency for getting himself in trouble, hence my counting the curse as one thing rather than listing every bad thing that ever happened to Turin and/or Nienor).
edited 2nd Jul '14 8:43:54 AM by MasterGhandalf
@27304: Write-ups look good.
@27316: Gotta love how "wedding saboteur" is given greater emphasis than "attempted rapist" in that write-up. Either way no, Candy doesn't count for the reasons you mentioned. I'd like someone more familiar with the work to make cases for the Dirty Laundry gang leader and Violet's husband. No to Optimus Prime for being Played for Laughs. Toruk sounds like he can stay, no to his children for being a group and for barely having individual crimes elaborated on. Cut the Ivy League Killer until others can elaborate on who he is and his crimes, but John Nike can be kept if he's given a better write-up.
@27318: I'm not really well-versed in Warcraft lore, but the write-up mostly looks good to me, although I'd recommend condensing it a bit.
@27319: Dr. Jerrin sounds like scum, but he doesn't sound as bad as the others. Personally, I'd like them all cut until better write-ups can be provided for them.
@27320: Agree, cut for having loved ones.
On to a new subject: Mr. Burke for Fallout 3
When we first started to the clean-up the subpage, I voted for Burke's inclusion due to the fact that he's willing to nuke a town full of innocent people and doesn't give a crap when his boss and all of his allies are massacred. However, recently I've found out that if you're playing as a female character with the Black Widow perk, you can convince Burke not to the nuke the town because doing so would hurt you. He immediately changes his mind about the whole thing and leaves, saying he'll send for the Lone Wanderer shortly. He never does send for her, but he does however, send her a series of love notes. Reading through them, it appears that his love for the Lone Wanderer is genuine, and he keeps talking about how he misses her and yearns to be with her. He talks about how he has important business and that other people wouldn't understand how he's acting in humanity's best interests and trying to build a better world. His final letter has him breaking up with the Lone Wanderer, not because he's stopped loving her, but because he realizes he won't be able to escape from his "duties" and that he can't be with her. He implores her to seek love and happiness elsewhere, even as, he says, it breaks his heart.
So here we've reached two problems with Mr. Burke. One, obviously, is that he's capable of both love for another human being and altruism, as he both spares the town to protect the Lone Wanderer and breaks up with her because he wants his beloved to be happy. The second is that Burke apparently isn't the straight-up sadist he seems to be. He apparently believes nuking Megaton is being done in pursuit of a better world for mankind, so he seems to think himself a Well-Intentioned Extremist. So he's got loved ones and well-intentions. Unfortunately that makes him a cut.
Also, from Fallout 2, I have a question about Myron. While he's a spineless, disgusting little weasel, I don't think he's ever actually shown experimenting on slaves to get the Jet formula right. He's said he killed over a hundred during the testing, but unless such an experiment is ever actually shown, it falls squarely into the realm of Offscreen Villainy and he may be a cut too.
edited 2nd Jul '14 9:25:13 AM by OccasionalExister
On Myron's wiki page
, it also says that if the player's Speech and Intelligence are high enough, you can convince him to get you the cure for Jet addiction. Does anyone know the context of this?
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I watched that dialogue portion of the quest with Myron. He doesn't reveal a possible cure for altruistic reasons, he's just kind of tricked into revealing a possible way to cure the addiction if the Chosen One is smart enough in science. When Myron realizes there might be a way to cure the addiction to his drug, he gets really pissed off and tries to change the subject.
edited 2nd Jul '14 12:44:31 PM by OccasionalExister
Going back to Harry Warden, it's hard to decide. Harry only appears at the start of the film and gets little screentime, in addition, he only speaks in a quick flashback, aside from that he's a silent character. He does not seem to have a motive either, slaughtering an entire hospital seemingly for no reason. Heres his whole story: he was a miner who got trapped in a cave in with 5 other miners. Harry killed them all to preserve his own air. He went into a coma and upon waking up, slaughtered an entire hospital before going to kill more people. He got shot to death, and that is it. He's either a CM or a GDV.
jjjI'll say cut on Burke. Sounds like he's capable of genuine concern for another human being. Also sounds like he might be a little crazy, if he gets that into you that quickly.
@Master Ghandalf
Often we haven't listed a character on the YMMV page of one work within a series, even if they qualify as one overall over the course of the series. For instance, The Joker isn't listed on the YMMV page of every Batman comic. There should probably be a link to the Silmarillion YMMV page though, as suggested, seeing as that act is listed there.
On Bruke. His love letters to the female Wanderer seemed quite sincere.
on Barracuda. Just because the slavers sit on the top of the Punisher CM pyramid doesn't mean that anyone bellow them can't qualify, too.
edited 2nd Jul '14 2:21:58 PM by LogoP
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

edited 2nd Jul '14 6:48:58 AM by ACW