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
Well as long as I'm in the mood for it, Xenu would be in it's own biblical canon. Offscreen Villany and dubious moral agency would be the main reason to disqualify it.
edited 19th Jul '14 5:40:42 PM by VeryMelon
Moving off this topic...I'm working on my effort post for Garrett, but I have a few things...
Didn't we discuss the main villain of Murdered Soul Suspect and all? I think we said yes to her...and Sanfran was going to do more on the old Kamen Riders and Ultraman ones?
I also have a proposal now that this arc is almost done: Hendricksen from the manga nanatsu no Taizai or "The Seven Deadly Sins.
The story is a relatively new Shonen manga set in the kingdom of Liones, taken over by the 'Holy Knights,' a group of powerful warriors led by two Great Holy Knights. Ten years previously, a group of former criminals turned knights called the Seven Deadly Sins, were accused of the murder of the Great Holy Knight Zaratras and things went to hell.
The princess Elizabeth has gone on a quest to find the Sins to liberate the kingdom, where she meets the former commander of the group Meliodas, the Dragon's Sin of Wrath. Shortly, they encounter other members of the team. The Sins had been framed and are mostly good, heroic individuals. Since Zaratras's death, the two knights who lead the organization are Dreyfuss, Zaratras's younger brother, and Hendricksen.
Hendricksen is the Big Bad of the series. His faction is noticeably far more sinister than Dreyfuss's.
Hendricksen is revealed to be artificially empowering his 'new generation' of Holy Knights by offering them the blood of a demon corpse he keeps in a basement. The result is 50/50: half the knights who drink it gain great power, but at cost of morality. Half the knights who drink it explode into a gory mess.
Hendricksen poisoned Zaratras years past and murdered him with Dreyfuss. Since then, Hendricksen's goal has been to undo the barrier between worlds and allow the demons back into the world to create a massive war that could exterminate humanity. Hendricksen gives an excuse of how the Holy Knights need a war to prevent their irrelevance, but in reality, he's simply a psychopath who enjoys suffering.
his evil deed thus far? Hendricksen mutated a kind Holy Knight named Dale, well known for loving his children, into a demonic abomination and later had Dale's own daughter destroy the corpse to hide the evidence. His right-hand man Helbram? Helbram was resurrected from the dead after being givena Mercy Kill by his best friend King. Hendricksen revives him as a mindless, grotesque corpse and gleefully states that King can have the 'pleasure' of killing his best friend yet again.
When the eldest princess of Liones, Margaret, saw Hendricksen and Dreyfuss murder Zaratras, she told Zaratras's son Gilthunder. Hendricksen had one of his top minions, the sorceress Vivian, enslave Gilthunder by keeping an invisible monster near Margaret to kill her if Gil put so much as a toe out of line.
When King Arthur of Britannia visits the kingdom, distracting Hendricksen, Hendricksen opts to attempt to murder him. After Gilthunder is freed from his bondage by Meliodas killing Margaret's jailer, Gil joins the fight against Hendricksen and kills him...only for Hendricksen to revive in a younger form and force every Holy Knight who'd drunk Demon blood to mutate into a twisted abomination that begins devouring anything close by, knight or civilian.
He proceeds to have Vivian hold Margaret and Elizabeth hostage before cutting down Gilthunder and Meliodas, saying if Vivian wants Gilthunder for herself, he'll revive him as a mindless zombie for her. Vivian is pretty horrified by this given her...caring for Gil. He only relents from murdering them when Elizabeth offers to go with him and allow him to unleash the demon clan without a fight.
With the arc at its end, I think Hendricksen is a solid contender for the list and thus far has shown himself a very clear keep. He's the most heinous in the series bar none, with a huge body count, lots of examples of sadistic cruelty and very far reaching goals.
Sounds like a good keep.
This candidate is a rare villain from a children's movie who might qualify: Steele from Balto. I can find only two mentions of him in the thread (and a short thread on the trope's discussion page which showed confusion with the conscious attempt/success criterium), one of which calls him "a Jerkass who doesn't do anything heinous". I think he should at least be discussed, since he does cross a number of lines.
The animated movie centers around the sled run to Nome, Alaska in 1925 to deliver medicine to the dying children in the town.
For the first half of the movie Steele is indeed only a Jerkass, bullying Balto for his half-wolf ancestry. It's in the second half that he goes off the rails. When he gets the sled ride with the needed medicines lost, he refuses to listen to reason and gets them all stuck and his sled rider critically wounded. That would make Steele just incompetent, but when Balto shows up with a way home Steele refuses to let him take it back to town simply because he can't get the glory for the rescue himself. When he loses the fight, he then goes out of his way to prevent Balto, his former colleagues and his comatose master from reaching the town. It's at that point that it crosses into calculated murder. The sled dogs do indeed almost get killed several times as a result, and the town's inhabitants start building tiny caskets for their children.
His villainy therefore amounts to: trying to get Balto, all his colleagues, and his human master killed by ensuring they'll die in the wilderness (when he returns to the town himself, he specifically notes that they all perished; he is not expecting them to make it back alive at all), and kill every child in the town out of nothing more than wounded pride. He's played straight, does some very heinous things, and has no sympathetic traits to speak of, simply being an egomaniac. Calling him just a standard Jerkass is seriously underplaying his crimes.
I'm not sure if it's a Moral Event Horizon moment or if it makes him a Complete Monster as well, but he reaches a pretty low level with his acts.
edited 20th Jul '14 6:27:43 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
Yeesh, I'm leaning
. He may not kill the kids himself, but the fact that he's willing to let them die just out of wounded pride...
BTW, here's a condensation of Wyatt:
- Wyatt Mathewson is a professional hitman working for the Company under its leader General Jonathan Krantz. He's the worst and most chilling Psycho for Hire the Company has to offer, with nearly every scene involving him killing someone or torturing people to death while talking to them in a calm, soothing tone. He kills or tortures many people (mainly, anybody working against Krantz); this includes women and even murdering Cameron Mahone and blowing the child's head off post-mortem to mutilate the corpse just to spite Mahone further. When he's given intel on Scofield and his crew by the Sixth Ranger Traitor Roland, he promises to give Roland $1 million and to let him go in exchange for the others. Once there, Wyatt progressively shoots Roland in the kneecap, then his thigh, and then in his stomach to watch him bleed out.
edited 20th Jul '14 11:30:38 AM by ACW
for Abigail.
Also, I am pleased to present the first batch of classic Kamen Rider candidates. For your consideration, Colonel Zol of the original and N-Daguva-Zeba of Kamen Rider Kuuga.
First things first...
Who is Colonel Zol, anyway?
Colonel Bakarashin Iinodevitch Zol is the leader of Shocker’s Middle East branch and one of the senior officers of the terrorist organization. After a mutation process, Zol can also transform himself into a werewolf kaijin.
What does he do?
Later episodes in the original series reveal that Colonel Zol was a Nazi officer who served as the superior for Neo-Shocker’s General Monster. Zol participated in atrocities in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he lost his eye after a gas leak. After World War II, he joined Shocker and allowed himself to be transformed into a werewolf. Still obsessed with hatred, he helps the organization wreak havoc in the Middle East before being called to Japan to deal with Kamen Rider #2.
EDIT: Here are some additional crimes committed in the original series.
- In Episode 27, Zol tricks Goro's clasmates into an ambush by a team of elementary school Shocker guerilla soldiers (just run with it). He later reveals that he planned to have children brainwashed to become undercover Shocker agents.
- In episode 31, Colonel Zol unleashes Antgabari (an anteater kaijin) in Mount Tengu in order to test the kaijin's instant-killing bacteria. Upon realizing that one of the mountain-climbing victims is not dying while infected, Zol orders the kaijin to convert him into becoming a carrier of the disease and use him as a start of an outbreak.
- Episode 36 sees Zol receiving a mummy from his Middle East branch. He orders the organization to revive the mummy into becoming Egyptus, a mummy that uses its power to incinerate victims. This episode proves that Zol is a Bad Boss, as he praises his revived creation for testing his abilities and ultimately frying one of his underlings to a crisp. He later forces an archaeology professor to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs by holding Yuuji and Taki hostage. Once Zol finds out the treasure is in the Ainu's hands, he whips the professor and orders him and Yuuji to be burned alive.
- Episode 37 follows suit with him hiring Wolfsbane and using the kaijin to gas attack Goro's town.
Upon being resurrected in the sequel series Kamen Rider V3, he collaborates with Doctor G to initiate Operation: Japan Annihilation. This plan has him going to Hokkaido to unleash a toxic gas to kill innocents. Zol clearly sees no value in his allies either, as he tries to have fellow Destron officer Ambassador Hell executed for failing to defeat Kamen Rider V3.
Any Freudian Excuse, redeeming qualities or other mitigating factors?
Zol has no Freudian Excuse to speak of. If anything, he takes ‘’pride’’ in his atrocities. Case in point: Zol keeps his Nazi uniform as a sign of pride of his criminal past. As seen with his approach toward Ambassador Hell, Zol doesn’t care about his fellow officers in the organization.
How does he hold up by the standards of the setting?
Zol is a nasty officer who shows no sense of shame for any of his crimes and fails to see any value in his own allies. The only villains I can see coming close to his deeds in heinousness from the original series are the Great Leader of Shocker and General Black.
Now, let's get to our second candidate of the day. With a bizarre 3-part name like our first candidate from Kuuga, you're probably asking...
Who is N-Daguva-Zeba, anyway?
N-Daguva-Zeba is the lord of the Gurongi and the Big Bad of Kamen Rider Kuuga. After being defeated by the original Kuuga, he is sealed up in Kuuga’s sarcophagus until being awakened by archaeologists.
What does he do?
Upon being reawakened, he releases the Gurongi and murders the archaeologists, thereby kicking off the series. By the time he shows himself to Yusuke Godai (the modern Kamen Rider Kuuga) near the series' end, Daguva kills 152 of his kind in Nagano. He then reveals himself to the police by killing Gooma for using his armor and disappears for another six days. He then resurfaces under a guise of a white-suited late-teens/early-20s man with an aura. Daguva unleashes endless heavy rain in Japan before ambushing Godai after the latter defeats Gadoru. There he mercilessly beats up Godai in his Amazing Mighty Form and cracks his Amadam (the main piece of Godai's henshin device). Daguva only spares Kuuga so he could get stronger as a favor for giving Daguva time to move around the country in peace. Before leaving Kuuga behind, Daguva proceeds to kill numerous people in his wake.
We next see Daguva in Nagano, where continues his systematic genocide of all humans in Japan. Eventually he tells Yusuke to meet him at Mount Kuro for a final confrontation. After exhausting themselves to the point that they are too weak to maintain their fighting forms, Daguva continues to fight Godai as humans with their bare hands to the death. There, Daguva finally dies, laughing to the very end hoping that Yusuke would be corrupted by violent hatred.
Any Freudian Excuse, redeeming qualities, or other mitigating factors?
In a word, nope. Daguva is a Social Darwinist Blood Knight if I ever saw one, as he enjoys fighting others and despises the weak. Case in point: although he is the lord of the Gurongi, he murders 152 of his own kind (wiping out the Be and Nu groups of the Gurongi in the process) and kills both Nu-Zaijo-Re and Zu-Gooma-Gu (thereby driving their respective groups to extinction as well) for attempting to use his own power for their own. Moreover, Daguva’s main goal is to make humanity as violent and hateful as he and he attempts to corrupt Kuuga into giving into violence and hatred toward others. The fact that he is happily ready to die for his twisted scheme really says how fucked up he is.
How does he hold up by the standards of the setting?
And I thought the Eyes Dopant was bad. While N-Daguva-Zeba only appears on-screen for 4-5 episodes, his amount of on-screen atrocities blows many other Heisei villains' acts sky-high. He clears the heinousness standard and then some.
edited 20th Jul '14 3:58:50 PM by sanfranman91
I have a rewrite for Monster.Fan Works:
- Vocaloid fanfic From Concert to Chaos: Miku Zatsune and Rin Arakawa had respectively been dating Mikuo and Len until the boys became disillusioned by the girls' rotten behavior and broke off the relationships. Zatsune and Arakawa absolutely refused to believe it was their fault, and instead convinced themselves that Mikuo and Len were somehow responsible and they decided that the two would have to pay big time. So during the live Tanabata concert, they mercilessly and senselessly attack them on the stage, cut off the other Vocaloids from the stage with an electric barrier, and trap the 16,000 fans inside their seats with a 2 meter high wall of fire. It's clear that they are enjoying every moment of their victims' suffering. When they are arrested, Zatsune manages to escape from jail, charges over to the hospital to kill Mikou and Len, and only relents after she is shot two times and has a gun is pointed right at her head.
edited 21st Jul '14 1:10:12 PM by randomtroper89
I've re-watched the Kitsubs version of the original and I can confirm that, while not exactly shown, Zol outright admits his own previous crimes during his time in the Middle East and shows zero regret for them. He even meets up with fellow former Nazi officers who joined Shocker after World War II in Episode 39 as he planned to unleash a virus that would turn Japan into a country of wolf kaijin. The fact that the show's target audience are kids probably has a lot to do with his Holocaust crimes (and losing his eye) as being Off Screen Villainy.
I can, however, confirm the following crimes he committed in Japan.
- In Episode 27, Zol tricks Goro's clasmates into an ambush by a team of elementary school Shocker guerilla soldiers (just run with it). He later reveals that he planned to have children brainwashed to become undercover Shocker agents.
- In episode 31, Colonel Zol unleashes Antgabari (an anteater kaijin) in Mount Tengu in order to test the kaijin's instant-killing bacteria. Upon realizing that one of the mountain-climbing victims is not dying while infected, Zol orders the kaijin to convert him into becoming a carrier of the disease and use him as a start of an outbreak.
- Episode 36 sees Zol receiving a mummy from his Middle East branch. He orders the organization to revive the mummy into becoming Egyptus, a mummy that uses its power to incinerate victims. This episode proves that Zol is a Bad Boss, as he praises his revived creation for testing his abilities and ultimately frying one of his underlings to a crisp. He later forces an archaeology professor to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs by holding Yuuji and Taki hostage. Once Zol finds out the treasure is in the Ainu's hands, he whips the professor and orders him and Yuuji to be burned alive.
- Episode 37 follows suit with him hiring Wolfsbane and using the kaijin to gas attack Goro's town.
- While planning to blow up a power plant in Episode 38, he kidnaps Dr. Seki's daughter Akemi as blackmail. When she refuses to sell out her father because of love, Zol laughs himself sick and presses Akemi to luring Dr. Seki back to Shocker.
Proposals for the Great Leader of Shocker and Go-Jaraji-Da are on deck.
to John Garrett
edited 21st Jul '14 3:07:33 PM by sanfranman91
Alright, so we have a tie breaker for Garret.
I also have this question that comes with my vote - do you have to have a body count to be a Complete Monster, or is attempted mass murder enough ? If so Steele has my vote.
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."
Intended is enough. Doesn't matter if the plan succeeds. We've talked about whether a character who never even attempts to kill (or otherwise severely wrong) anyone can qualify, and IIRC the consensus was this can only happen in a work where no characters die, period - and then we'd have to worry about baseline heinousness.
Can we get any more votes for Hendricksen?
Steele...I'm not sure how heinous the film seems to think he is, as his only punishment is being ditched by everyone around and being exposed as pathetic...
ACW: good condensation for Matheson and the others.
Sanfran: Yea for Zol and N-Daguva-Zeba. Can you write up Abigail Williams?
Also gonna second Scraggles Fanfic recommendations
Actually, Steele being made into an outcast at the end of the film is actually karmic in and of itself. Sure, he wasn't killed for his actions, but being made into an outcast by his peers would be even worse for him, because he thrived on the attention that he received from his peers, so with him being revealed as being a remorseless individual, he was made into a shell of his former self once the crowd began to leave him.
Two works gave her a Historical Villain Upgrade? How interesting. Though somewhat sad, as in Real Life she was pretty much just an Unwitting Instigator of Doom.

Let's disregard all the Church of Happyology stuff; seems like Offscreen Villainy to me.