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
@Demon Duck: Yeah, it may sound interesting, but the movie itself is pretty bad. Bennett the Sage did a good review of it Here
.
Having seen that piece of crap though, Lucifer is a keeper.
edited 24th Oct '16 11:09:03 AM by DrPsyche
@Demon Duckof Doom: it's a pretty fun movie, I'd recommend watching the trailer
and the music video prequel
which is a self-contained story that give you a good idea of what to expect from the movie.
Oh, and yes to Mona, Chang and Lucifer.
Okay I recently been rewatching a series that I was a fan of to refresh my memory and see if it had any potential candidates. It’s the BBC series New Tricks.
The basic plot of the series is the London Metropolitan police force form UCOS (Unsolved Crime and Open-case Squad), around a group of experienced retired officers who come back to work in a (supposedly) advisory and investigative capacity to re-examine unsolved cases, especially those which have recently regained traction due new evidence being discovered or such.
Overall it’s a pretty great series, an interesting take on police procedurals and I would recommend trying to out to anyone who’s interested. Now the series itself started out as a comedy-drama, and while it got more serious as the seasons progressed it never lost its subtle humour. Nevertheless the team do examine many serious crimes (normally murder), and as a series with twelve series and over a hundred episodes, they manage to tackle quite a lot of different cold cases.
As such I managed to find several potential candidates, my first one being Sir Edward Chambers from the Season Four episode “Powerhouse”.
Who is he: Sir Edward Chambers is a very wealthy man, and a former second lieutenant in the British army. In 1950’s during his national service he was posted in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial rule. While in Kenya he gave the order for the massacre of 15 Kikuyu civilians.
What does he do: While on leave he returned to Britain in 1953, where he was approached by Fred Tully, a Battersea Power Station wages Clark. Tully had uncovered a document proving he was behind the massacre and attempted to blackmail him with it (at the time a lot of CIA documents deemed unimportant were being burned in the power station’s furnaces. Due to not properly understanding them a number of documents were improperly burned and survived; including this one which was found by Tully’s partner Douglas Murry, a furnace manager).
To silence him, Chambers shot Tully in an empty London street. However when he tried to dispose of the gun on a public bus, he was caught by a conductor and thus forced to pretend he had found the weapon and report it to the police. Later at an identify parade he identified another man, claiming to have seen him getting off the bus after sitting where he found the gun.
Due to the corrupt police officers handling the case, he had subliminally been encouraged to identify Richard Dunn, a known criminal and fence. On Chambers testimony Dunn was convicted of the murder and hanged, being one of the last men to be executed in Britain.
Over the next fifty years Chambers left the army, and formed a rich mining company working mostly in Africa, with himself as the president. However when a briefcase belonging to Fred Tully, containing out of circulation money that was also meant to be burned, was discovered the investigation was reopened.
UCOS discovered the officers investigating the case had purposely mishandled it due to corruption (Dunn was in fact involved in a money laundering scam with Tully and Murry, but that was a coincidence that Chambers didn’t know about). They also managed to discover half of the document that Tully had attempted to use to blackmail Chambers, detailing the crimes but not who was responsible.
However Murry secretly had the other half (Tully giving it to him for safe keeping, and him keeping it all these years without knowing who it was about), and upon seeing the other half he put two and two together, and attempted to blackmail Chambers. This time Chambers sent Jason Ferris, an ex-bodyguard and former mercenary he had picked up in Africa, to kill Murry. Ferris bludgeoned Murry to death and staged it to look like a burglary gone wrong.
The police manged to apprehend Ferris, but he refused to speak as Chambers was paying to keep quiet. This coupled with the lack of direct evidence and Chambers connections meant they were forced to close the case.
However Gerry Standing was approached by Dunn’s granddaughter (she had been campaigning to expose the corruption that led to his execution) who revealed Murry had given her a copy of his half of the document to be opened in the event he died. Knowing they would never be able to convict Chambers officially, Gerry smuggled her a copy of the other half.
She published the document, thus Chambers reputation was ruined and he was forced to resign from his company in disgrace.
Freudian Excuse or any redeeming features: When confronted about the war crimes in Kenya, Chambers does briefly claims that all the civilians were really all rebels, who worked as farmers in the day and fought for the rebellion at night. He’s then immediately called out for trying to justify murdering them.
He also does mention about how he was dropped right out of school into a far off part of a decaying empire, and had to deal with a massively complicated system. And how the experiences taught the British army valuable lessons they used in other campaigns, such as in the (at the time) present war in Afghanistan.
Really neither of them comes close to justifying Chambers crimes, especially as he never shows any remorse for what he did.
Heinous Standard: Well even based on what we see, Chambers has a pretty high body count. The series likes to stick relatively closely to reality, with the majority of episodes only involving them investigating a single murder, and normally a few lesser crimes which are discovered during the investigation. If there is more than one murder, normally it was done by different people.
Only a very small number of antagonists have committed multiple kills. Chambers is responsible for eighteen deaths (assuming the Kenyan’s he had massacred count). That is (to my knowledge) the highest body count in the series, having the next confirmed highest beaten by seven victims, so I would say he’s an easy pass.
Now there is one other war criminal in the series (specifically from the Bosnian War) however we don’t get any elaboration on them other one murder that was the focus of the episode, and the discovery they’re wanted for “crimes against humanity”. So I would say Chambers is still worse.
Off-screen Villainy: This is my one point of caution. Due to the nature of the show, most of the crimes have already happened, and we only see them investigate them years later. In this case it happened decades before the episode was set.
As such we don’t see Chambers involved with Tully or Dunn, as both men died fifty years previously. However we see photos of them both, and of Dunn being sentenced (but not executed) so I think they avoid falling into it. Likewise we do see Murry’s body (the team find him).
Now the 15 Kenyan civilians may count as off-screen villainy. As we see nothing of that, other than the document confirming that it occurred and a old newsreel about the Rebellion in general. However as they are what drives all the events that occur afterwards, honestly I’m not sure what they counts as.
Conclusion: Chambers is a war criminal, responsible for massacring fifteen civilians and then sending three men (not innocent men sure, but still they didn’t deserve to die) to their deaths to cover up what he had done.
I would say even if the Kenyan’s are off-screen villainy, he’s probably still a keeper.
edited 24th Oct '16 2:08:39 PM by MGD107
Finally, I watched the Turkish movie Valley of the Wolves: Iraq that I borrowed from my Turkish friend in college. Horrible movie. Anti-American, Innacurate portrayel of Iraq War (besides the isolated the Abu Ghraib incident) and Anti-Christian. However, it does have a potential example; it has two actually but first I will talk about the more easy one.
Who is He?
Sam William Marshall is the colonel of the US Military and radical Christian fanatic who believes that it is his mission from God to kill terrorists.
What has he done?
In the beginning of the movie he arrests 11 Turkish agents and 13 civillians and forces them to wear hoods for humalation. Later, he massacres an Arab wedding. His soldiers kill lots of civillians including children. Also, he arrives at the hotel where the Turkish agents demand him to come and want to put a hood on him in revenge for their humiliation or else they will blow up the hotel with him inside. He brings up a group of Iraq children and threatens to use them as human shields. He says "I love kids because their are willing to sacrifice their lives. Adults are cowards. Imagine a world where we killed all the kids; that way they would never stop being cowards." The Turkish agents oblige and leave the hotel. Afterwards, he orders his troops to arrest the survivors of the wedding who are taken into Abu Ghraib prison and horribly tortured. Marshall later negotiates with the Turkish leader and shoots him in the head when the latter refuses to give him the agents who hunt Marshall and his men. In the end, the Turkish agents attempt to blow up Marshall in the Saddam Hussein palace but he survives. In revenge, he leads his men with the raid on the mosque and orders to kill everyone including women and children. He dies during the raid, but manages to kill The Hero's girlfriend Leyla in the process.
Heinous?
Pass. All the soldiers are shown as xenophobes and one even shoots a group of unarmed Iraqis and also kills his fellow soldier when the latter threatens to have him arrested. But Marshall is the leader and he orders most of the raids. The only one who competes with him is the Jewish doctor (the other candidate who I might later propose) who harvests organs from the prisoners and sells them to famous cities like London, New York, or Tel Aviv. However, it is again matter of resources. One is Sociopathic Soldier and one is a crazy doctor.
Any mitigating factors?
Now that is tough. He doesn't care about fellow soldiers by his own admission "I am willing to sacrifice thousands of my men to establish Kingdom of God in Iraq" but he multiple times states that he intends to bring World Peace to the world and by killing terrorists and doing God's work, the world will achieve this. But it is tough if in his ideal world, World Peace means where Christians rule the world and everyone who refuses to convert gets killed or if he genuily believes he is bringing World Peace. In one scene he prays before the crucifix and he says "Lord, I am following your commands and I will bring peace upon this land!'.
Verdic?
I would say keep, but his talk about peace makes me pause for a minute. I will leave the verdict in your hands guys.
edited 24th Oct '16 3:41:26 PM by emperors
Welcome to the world of greatest media!I'm inclined to vote
, just because it seems like an anvilicious propaganda piece (an organ-trafficking Jewish doctor? Seriously?), and not even a good one, unlike the apparently-well-made Alexander Nevsky.
Watched Aguirre, the Wrath of God. It's a good film, and I was wondering if the titular Aguirre could count, but he does show that Even Evil Has Loved Ones by continually caring and being affectionate to his daughter.
Though in the end he talks of how he will sleep with her to produce a new heir and a new race to populate the new world, but at that point he's half deluded from Fever and had earlier found his daughter dead from an arrow wound, so I don't think that disqualifies his good quality.
edited 24th Oct '16 3:49:45 PM by DrPsyche
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I think I agree, I would be wary of using characters from propaganda films and would only allow for some exceptions. I don't think we want to be watching Nazi propaganda films or really racist films from the early 20th century, for examples.
Here is what I would suggest, a character who is actively used in a work to promote prejudice should not be considered.
edited 24th Oct '16 4:02:41 PM by Overlord
on Lucifer
Gee I hope the Mafia III candidates will come soon
edited 24th Oct '16 4:04:09 PM by G-Editor
My sandbox of EPs and other stuff
Chambers
I have one question before I vote on Marshall: Does this movie portray Americans and/or Christians (and Jews, apparently) as Always Chaotic Evil? BTW, emperors, weren't you gonna propose somebody from City of Life and Death?
@Psyche: Aguirre was my favourite film for the longest time (now it's my fourth, after Alien, Cure and Mulan), and I feel like Aguirre might be worthy of discussing, even if I agree that he probably loved his daughter.
edited 24th Oct '16 4:19:39 PM by DemonDuckofDoom
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I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that nobody counts. All the Japanese are evil and the only one that has characterization is not in charge. So, I doubt anybody in City Of Life And Death. And I won't shed a tear if Marshall will not make a cut. This movie was really bad (though apperantly, it was big hit in Turkey). And yes the American soldiers are kinda presented as Always Chaotic Evil.
@ ACW And yes, it was a good comparison to Alexander Nevsky. As I said, Valley of the Wolves is a clear propaganda while Alexander while still a propaganda, is well done and actually my fifth favorite movie of all time.
edited 24th Oct '16 4:49:43 PM by emperors
Welcome to the world of greatest media!Are the Saw movies considered torture porn? Because I looked at the history of discussion dates and saw that the date for Saw: Legacy was removed with the reason
- Accprding to the thread, torture porns can't be disussed.
edited 24th Oct '16 4:48:46 PM by Awesomekid42
I'd certainly consider them torture porn... nowhere near as egregious as the ilk of Centipede but pretty tasteless drivel either way. Still, we did have a character from there listed here for the longest time and he was cut on the grounds that he had a genuine redeeming quality, not because of the genre.
I digress, though... for as crappy a franchise as it is, I don't really think Saw falls into that overall category of "horrendously pointless/exploitative bullcrap" as there is some working of a story behind it, as far as I can tell. So technically I think it'd be viable for discussion.
edited 24th Oct '16 5:49:47 PM by Scraggle
Alright, the effortpost is ready. The work is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Who is it ?
The candidate is Luke Dixon, a character who appeared in confrontation (season 8 episode 5). He is an office manager at a property management company and a former scientist at a biomedical firm. And of course, given the series it is, you've probably guessed his ''darker hobbies'', that I'll explain further below.
What has he done ?
Let's begin directly with his motivation. In a nutshell, he rapes women in order to conceive a child so he could start a "master race" because he became dissatisfied with how birth defects, genetic diseases, and sub-intelligence was generally accepted by the public.
Now, let's talk about his M.O. His victims all have a thing in common: their appartment buildings are managed by the company of his job. A job that gives him access to the master keys, making it easier to break in his victims's house. First, he make sure to break the window of the victim's bedroom to lead the police in the false belief that he broke in the house this way. After the rape, he stays with his victims long enough to make sure that the morning-after pill won't work. During this time, he forces the victims to urinate in a cup and give them a thorough bath to ensure that the police don't catch any strays with a rape kit. The urine sample serves to establish the menstrual cycles of his victims and mark on his calendar the day he will return to rape once again the same victim.
This time, let's talk about the crimes he committed. Taking into account the overall statements of the characters around Dixon's calendar and the reports, he raped no less than nineteen women, including four who were mentionned and/or appeared in the episode:
- Celeste Mott is the only named victim who doesn't appear at all in the episode.
- Gina Maylor got raped not twice, but thrice ! And considering that the SVU used officer Randa Lewis as a decoy, he intended to rape her once again. As for Gina, she eventually committed suicide around the last quarter of the episode due to her emotional trauma.
- Megan Carlisle. This time, Dixon suceeded in impregnating his victim.
- Elizabeth Hassenback, the first victim who appeared onscreen. To get her to urinate, he sliced her face with his knife to terrify her (which is why you can see a scar on her face). Elizabeth decided to take a baton and followed her rapist to confront him, against Stabler's advice. Unfortunatelly, Dixon overpowered her, snatched the baton and killed her with it.
His last crime before getting arrested doesn't involve rape, but is no less heinous. When Detective Dani Beck tried to arrest him, Luke Dixon took his knife and attempted to murder her. Thankfully, Beck took him down (albeit brutally so) and Dixon got arrested.
In the end, Luke Dixon got imprisonned for life.
Heinous standard ?
Yes, for several reasons.
Nineteen rape victims is high on its own. For comparison, even Bill Harris who is currently listed on the CM page of the work "only" committed 12 acts of rapes. Add to that the unique nature of the rapes, one repeat for each victims (two for Gina), a murder and an attempted murder on a detective. Not to mention the fact that his actions drove one of his victims to suicide.
I think he pass the heinous standard.
Freudian Excuse ?
Short answer: nope.
Long answer: the closest thing he would get to an excuse is that he lost his job as a scientist. Not only it doesn't come close to justify his terrible actions, but the excuse in itself would fall flat when you know the very reason why he got fired ("sexual misconduct"). Actually, it only makes him look worse, because it means that instead of learning from being fired, he continued his heinous ways and even took advantage of his current job, in the name of a "master race" as one would say, the feelings of his victims be damned.
Mitigating factors ?
Nope.
He has no redeeming quality, showed no guilt over his actions (he even tried to justify them), and everyone who knows about his actions dislike him. Needless to say that the episode spared no effort to portray him in a positive way.
He never showed any sign of insanity, so I assume that he has a valid moral agency. Finally, considering the type of series it is, he's obviously not played for laughs.
Verdict ?
Easy keeper
edited 25th Oct '16 6:41:27 AM by MiraiYuji

I think the franchise in general has a few good ideas, but they do get buried under the flaws.
edited 24th Oct '16 11:17:37 AM by Overlord