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
Yes to Malkariss,Quan, Evil Overlord,Yoon Gwi-nam, Wolfstan, the Kamaitachi Killer
Cut Elio
I wonder if the Time Trapper from this movie is worth looking at again:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/JLAAdventuresTrappedInTime
He was considered a GDV at one point, but he may be worth looking at again. Heck the whole GDV trope is in the repair shop, so I think most villains relegated as GDVs may need to be reexamined.
Edited by Overlord on Feb 14th 2022 at 8:29:34 AM
Oh right, Malkariss. That was the other other villain who existed in that book I kind of forgot existed since Slagar is...Slagar.
for Malkariss regardless.
Alright, soooooo this is gonna be a fun little session. I figure I might as well start it tonight, so away we go!
What is the work?
1-800-Missing, for those of us who don't frequent the MB thread, is a supernatural police procedural based on a completely unrelated book series. It features Jess Mastriani, a teenager who gets struck by lightning, granting her psychic visions of missing people. She originally uses these visions to leave a bunch of anonymous tips, but this eventually catches the FBI's attention and they bring her in to their missing person unit. Together, They Fight Crime!
So here's the dealio - after finishing the series, I've got a total of nine potentials and at the moment I'm only confident about six. I figure that before I get into the straight-up killers, I should deal with the ones with unique niches, so our first three are gonna look a lot different from the rest. Our first guy is, who else, easily the worst villain in the entire series, from the episode "Puzzle Box".
Who is "Captain America"? What does he do?
Captain America is the nickname used for a Chinese human smuggler. Running a service out of China that advertises safe travel to the United States, Captain America's group instead holds them captive for ransom, keeping the immigrants in sweatshops until the payment is made. When the ransom is paid, he "frees" the captives - but because they're still there illegally, nowhere will take them for work, so they're forced to work in Captain America's sweatshops. These sweatshops are not only all over the country - seven states, specifically - but they're run with an iron fist, with one man being beaten to death once he stopped being able to work properly.
Eventually, a completely unrelated case brings the FBI knocking on his door. While he's posing as a helpless immigrant in his sweatshop, Cap is arrested by the agents and spins a sob story in his captivity, detailing what he does to his slaves while pretending it was done to him. After the FBI gets enough info, they release him to immigration believing him to be an illegal immigrant, but because he's actually legal, he gets released. The agents mentioned that a reporter was in one of his slave pens, so he returns to the pen and threatens every woman there in order to make her cooperate. After threatening to murder every woman unless Mai Ling gives herself up, all of the women stand up in defiance (it's a surprisingly badass moment) - this moment of confusion inspires a slave to fight back and tackle him, and during the confusion the FBI arrive and arrest him.
Any mitigating factors?
Did anything I said up there give the impression that there's something redeemable about him?
Is he heinous enough?
In case you couldn't tell by the fact that I'm leading with this guy right out of the gate, the standard for this show is surprisingly fucked - especially considering that the formula isn't necessarily predicated on murder (several episodes pass without any deaths). Luckily enough for our purposes though, while he's not the only human trafficker in the series (we'll hear from the other later - he's on a much lower tier), he is the only villain to whom the word "slavery" is applied and he's doing it in the thousands thanks to his insanely high levels of reach. Easy freaking yes.
Final verdict?
Easy keeper - what about you?
Never in my life would I have expected Howard the Duck to have an example.
EDIT: ![]()
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Spoke too soon.
Re: Examples from ban evaders. Here are my thoughts: If anyone in the thread is familiar with the work in question and they can attest whether the candidate qualifies, I'd say keep the example and just rewrite it.
But if the only person familiar with the work was the ban evader and we're relying on their words, then either move the candidate to re-litigation or cut it until someone else decides to make a case for them.
Edited by TVRulezAgain on Feb 14th 2022 at 8:50:46 AM
Yes to Malkariss and I Can't Believe I'm Saying This, Captain America too. Redwall was a childhood favourite of mine too. It kind of felt like Lord of the Rings and Disney's Robin Hood thrown in a blender.
Edited by Klavice on Feb 14th 2022 at 8:55:32 AM
Yes to the captain and Malkaris.
Rulez, I don't see why we can't just let the candidates be effortposted on their own time, regardless of if anyone is familiar or not. Keep in mind that it's easier to verify information when it's all laid out and you have accessed it recently. We can't reliably expect everyone to be familiar with every work that comes through this thread, especially works EP'd by socks.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Feb 14th 2022 at 12:03:30 PM
Now...I spoke with MGD and I have one from Wild Wild West, where Major Jim West roams the land, righting wrongs, fighting evil and stopping bad guys...we have a few monsters, but here's one of my faves...
From Night of the Double Edged Knife:
from the tropes page: "Indians are killing railroad workers, five each day, and demanding $500,000 from the railroad before they'll stop. West and Gordon are given one week to resolve the situation. The Indian chief is an educated man named American Knife whom the local authorities have been unable to bring in; after some undercover work and help from the daughter of one of the murdered men, the agents finally meet up with American Knife, but from there things only become more complicated..."
Let's talk...Major General Ball.
Who is Ball?
A former officer and old friend of West, who is far more evil than he appears. Ball dislikes that he wasn't given a promotion, IE: that his glory wasn't recognized. Setting on the railroad, he has a scheme to get rich...extorting the railroad, Ball has his men pretend to be Natives. Each day they murder five people, hanging them up so the railroad and government can see...and this's been going on for a bit now. Ball puts himself into the investigation. His intent? Blame the natives, get the money, then let the government retaliate while he esapes totally free...
As West investigates and knows the Natives are innocent, he eventually finds out Ball is the villain, who tries to have a number of people killed to cover it up, and intends to perform a train robbery before hightailing it to Mexico. Ball? Plans to waylay the train and kill everyone aboard to cover his tracks, as West manages to stop him.
He and Ball fight, when American Knife, the Native chief, saves Jim from Ball by hurling a blade into the evil general's back.
Mitigating issues?
Nope. None. Ball wasn't wronged by the military, he's an egomaniac enraged they didn't recognize how amazing he was. He's purely self serving and with a huge bodycount here. Surprisingly so, in fact, with the serial killings, attempt at a race war, mass murder and trying to kill everyone aboard the train. No good qualities, easily clears the heinous standard.
Conclusion?
Yes.
And our first from none other than Leslie Nielsen.
Ball
To be fair, Nielsen started as a drama actor, so it's not too surprising to see him play evil… but still interesting to see Frank Drebin as a CM.
Edited by therealjackieboy on Feb 14th 2022 at 10:05:08 AM
It's Spooky Month!

Also I will quickly upvote the
Jojoand Dimentio video. Actually no to the Jojo one as it is an illegal site and I can't upload that.Edited by Ordeaux26 on Feb 14th 2022 at 8:15:27 AM