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. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
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
I'm going to give a yes to Toffee, actually, not that it matters at this point. Even without Moon's mother's death being onscreen, he still does enough to pass and it's not apparent in the effortpost what he does to Ludo's life. It was already bad enough, but he esentially drives him insane through the wand, which you can tell through his general mannerisms in season 2. Just the way he acts is more unhinged than in season 1. And everything Ludo does throughout the course of the season is really thanks to Toffee: like putting a ton of monsters into a forced slavery ring. Not to mention his final Kick the Dog to Ludo, when Ludo asks if he had any part to play in his plan, he responds to him bluntly: "No." He could have simply ignored him, but he chose to Kick the Dog. It didn't end well for him, either. Him not showing emotions in regards to the people here is just him putting on his stoic face again.
That's not mentioning how seriously Star's Disney Death is played, too. Moon and Marco have a Heroic BSoD, causing Marco to punch a hole through Toffee, (Toffee then hits him so hard he cracks a wall) and Moon's life is esentially ruined at that point. That's what Toffee wanted, not to simply kill her, but to put her through a Fate Worse than Death by killing her daughter, but leaving her alive. I really do think he does enough to count, and if he's brought up again later and is apparently disqualified, we can cut him, like what we said when we put the Enchantress from Shovel Knight up.
He passes all of the criteria for a CM: I see no compelling reason why he doesn't count, to be honest.
Not sure on the demon quite yet.
edited 29th Jul '17 7:16:22 AM by MahStache
Not voting on Toffee because the EP is gone and I don't watch the show. ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to the demon box, seems like more of a plot device rather than an actual character.
I didn't see the Toffee EP on TV Tropes, but Austin posted it on the Villains Wiki as a blogpost 2 weeks ago: here.
If you can't click it:
Who is he?
Toffee. The Immortal Monster. The Lizard. These are the many names that this notorious individual goes by. In short, Toffee is a reptilian humanoid who hails from Septarsis. Renowned as the most wanted criminal by the Magic High Commission, Toffee had engaged in several nefarious misdeeds such as the imprisonment of a magical creature, and taking over a castle in violation of a treaty written years ago (according to the canonical book Star and Marco’s Guide to Mastering Every Dimension). Years ago, Toffee was the general presiding over an army of monsters. He also had the habit of keeping the skulls of the many Mewmans he had killed as souvenirs such as using skulls to decorate the drapes of his tent, and using the skulls of Mewman royalty as cufflets. Anyway, at some point during the war between Mewmans and the monsters, Toffee –together with his army – overtook the queen and killed her. Naturally, the young Princess Moon inherits her mother’s war as well as the pressure coming from it. Not knowing what to do, she resorted to striking a deal with Eclipsa, the Queen of Darkness. Eclipsa is temporarily taken out of the stasis from her crystallized prison, and she agrees to help Moon learn to use a spell designed to permanently kill an immortal in return for her freedom.
Thusly, Moon arrives to the campground in which Toffee and his men are situated at. Instead of killing him then and there, however, Moon severs his finger with the darkest spell, thereby preventing it from growing back. The army flees, and Toffee gives Moon a hateful scowl before leaving. Now, unto the present day.
What has he done?
Toffee makes his first appearance in the season one episode “Fortune Cookies.” Fed up with the idiocy of his minions, Ludo decides to hire an evil efficiency expert. After numerous failed attempts, Toffee seemingly manifests into the room, and manipulates Ludo into hiring him. Seeing how Star believed that fortune cookies were credible, he formulates a plan in which Star will believe that she should be more graceful towards the monsters, thereby making her vulnerable. Even though the plan fails, Ludo is impressed by how close they were to obtaining the wand.
In “Mewnipendence Day,” Buff Frog began to become suspicious of Toffee. Realizing this, Toffee sabotages Buff Frog’s attempts to acquire the wand, and convinces Ludo to fire him. As such, Buff Frog is expelled from Ludo’s gang and his palace. Always the schemer, in “Marco Grows a Beard,” Toffee sees Ludo mistreating his minions, and he uses this to his advantage. After Ludo fails to retrieve the wand (due to childhood trauma), Toffee turns the minions on Ludo, and he is kicked out of his own palace.
In the season one finale “Storm the Castle,” Marco is captured by Ludo’s minions, and is held for ransom. Together with Buff Frog, Star dashes towards Ludo’s former palace to confront Toffee. Marco himself had been placed inside of a glass box; Toffee gives Star the choice to either surrender her wand, or watch Marco die. Toffee even activates the glass box to slowly descend to make his point more clear. Before Marco could be crushed to death, Star relents and hands over her wand. Shockingly, Toffee demands Star to destroy her wand with a spell her mother taught her: the Whispering Spell. Reluctantly, Star obliges and she recites the spell. Once the magic was removed from the wand, it began to self-destruct. Toffee gives an ominous smile at this before seemingly perishing in the explosion. While Star’s wand was restored, she only received one half of it.
In season 2, the other part of the wand was found by Ludo. The wand began to telepathically speak to Ludo, which ultimately caused him to be driven further into madness. Additionally, magic was being siphoned from the universe by mysterious means. As a result, many magical users became limited with their powers, causing concern to many. Eventually in “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown,” Ludo steals Star’s Magic Instruction Book. Since Glossaryck was bound by the book, he is taken as well. Eventually, this leads to “The Hard Way.”
The wand informs Ludo that Glossaryck had been keeping a chapter of the instruction book a secret from him. Enraged, Ludo demands Glossaryck to open the chapter not caring that it was tainted by Eclipsa’s black magic. Glossyarck obeys and Ludo is quickly overtaken by the tainted magic. Toffee is confirmed as the voice Ludo was hearing, and he possesses him. In the season 2 finale “Starcrushed,” Toffee drains Queen Moon of her magic by exploiting Ludo’s personal issues. Moon is revived by Lekmet and she goes to aid the Magic High Commission in taking down Toffee!Ludo. However, Toffee had become immensely powerful from absorbing magic, and he swiftly wipes the floor with the Magic High Commission. He then kills them by robbing them of their magic. Lekmet, the leader of the Magic High Commission revives the group several times, costing him his life. With Moon as the sole survivor, she takes a pair of dimensional scissors, and rips open a portal. Before she left, Toffee asks her to inform her daughter that he was coming for his finger. In order to save Star, Moon forces her to return to Mewni.
As for the two hour movie, Toffee is revealed to be the one behind the siphoning of magic from the universe as he had accumulated so much power. After Glossyarck suggests to Ludo that he should speak with the instruction book (long story; he wanted to write his own chapter in the book, but the book wouldn’t allow him to), he laughs at how Ludo fell for his joke. In an act of rage, Ludo tosses the book into the fire. Glossaryck foresaw this happening, but he was still surprised by it. The whole reason as to why Toffee wanted Ludo to destroy the book was because he had no further need for Glossaryck. Ludo temporarily returns horrified with what he had done; this doesn’t last long, however, as the wand infused into his hand draws his attention to the Butterfly Palace. Ludo quickly usurps King River and takes over.
Star, Marco, Moon, and Buff Frog infiltrate the palace later on. Relieved that Star had arrived, Ludo begs Star to help him get the piece of the former wand off his hand since he couldn’t eat or sleep for a while. Star uses the Whispering Spell on the piece of the wand, and it removes the tainted magic from it. Unfortunately, this in turn causes Star to get cleaved into it. There, she confronts Toffee who confesses that he had corrupted the magic in her kingdom and turned it into black goo. Toffee resurfaces in Ludo’s body, holding Star for ransom. In a sadistic choice, Moon would either have to give Toffee his finger, or her daughter’s life was forfeit. Moon accepts the former, and Toffee reclaims his finger. However, he then smashes the (now black) piece of the original wand, thus making it nearly impossible for Star to return.
Luckily, Star manages to get the last remnant of un-corrupted magic, and she uses it to enhance her Mewberty form as well as upgrading her wand. To his horror, Toffee receives a full blast from Star’s wand. Toffee is reduced to a black mass of a body with exposed bones and an eye lying out of its socket. Toffee declares that they hadn’t won as he knew how everything would end. Ludo finishes him by dropping a pillar onto what remained of his body.
Freudian Excuse? Mitigating factors?
As of now, there are none. With the whole instance of Toffee getting his finger blasted off, it isn’t played for sympathy at all. Rather, it’s there to accentuate his ego. He was so enraged at what Moon had done to him; he had spent countless years trying to find a way to exact his revenge. So, that’s a no on a Freudian excuse.
Keep this in mind; Toffee is not affably evil. He puts on an array of sophistication to hide the fact that he is a homicidal maniac. With Ludo’s monsters, while he did treat them relatively better than Ludo could do, it’s made clear he only did this to manipulate them to his side. Once his plan of destroying the wand was realized, he doesn’t even bother to warn them that the wand was going to explode; he was fully intent on taking them with him.
In “Storm the Castle,” sure he does give Marco a sandwich, but it’s more out of mockery than genuine showmanship. As for him keeping his part of the deal by letting Marco go…yeah, he does, but what keeps this from being mitigating is the fact that he knew full well that the wand was going to self-destruct; even if he kept his promise, it’s ultimately moot as he was fully expecting them to die in the blast. And then you have the crap he pulled in “Battle for Mewni.” Even when Moon kept her part of the bargain, Toffee decided to thrust the knife further into Moon’s side by ensuring that Star would never escape.
Now, I have heard that Daron Nefcy, the creator of the show, personally stated that she saw Toffee as being something akin to a knight templar, claiming that he is trying to achieve a goal, but kind of goes overboard with hit. Barring the fact that we disregard Word of God, from what we have seen of Toffee thus far, there is no indication that he is well-intentioned in any shape or form. He is a self-serving, sadistic sociopath who is perfectly willing to crush a 14 year old boy to death or trap a young girl in another dimension for eternity as long as he gets what he wants. In the off chance that this does end up being the case, he could either be removed, or if it’s similar of a situation to say Unalaq, then maybe that could be emphasized down the line.
Unlike a majority of the villains in the series, Toffee – in spite of his name – is played seriously at all times. Each of his appearances tends to be dark in some way, with the final episode of season 2 and the movie being no exception. I wouldn’t say that he’s the most disturbing villain to come out of Disney, but he’s certainly abhorrent. That’s not even getting into how graphic his death scene is. Disney: scarring your kids since 1937!
Heinous standard
He sets it so far. Toffee has the highest body count in the show thus far with the many slaughters he performed on the Mewmans (as well as keeping souvenirs of his victims), and his actions nearly cost all magic in the setting to be destroyed. I also think what sells it for me is how petty he is. Him losing a finger in a battle is one thing; however, murdering people for their magic, subjecting children to life threatening dilemmas, pitching sadistic choices to further the anguish of his victims even more…all of this for a finger. If that doesn’t make Toffee qualify, I’m not sure what will.
After thinking, no to the demon box. It seems like, as someone pointed out, a plot device opposed to a real villain.
edited 29th Jul '17 7:46:45 AM by MahStache
Do we have anymore on Biara? What is it with the thread for ignoring this candidate?
@Satoshi Bakura: I got you! Check it!
The magical demon box. Generic Doomsday Villain at it's finest. It's more of a plot device.
EDIT: Actually the effortpost on Villains Wiki changed my mind. ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Toffee. His manipulation and high amounts of homicide is making me say yes and he does enough considering he's dead now.
edited 29th Jul '17 8:24:01 AM by ReynTime250
I will vote on Toffee, but at the same time, I want to wait to see what happens.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
x5 You think you can put the effort post in a quotebox? Remember that not everyone can or wants to click on a link to see what you are talking about, and it would also help if people can actually see the effort post on this thread.
Oh and giving a to the music box and a to Toffee.
Done, thanks for pointing that out though.
Just noticed that the King Boo and Dimentio entry isn't on the Super Mario Bros. page (The franchise as a whole). May I add both of them to the page?
Toffee on the basis that his arc is not over.
Rodrigo, no new information
Toffee died. His arc is probably over unless he can revive himself.
Messenger from another dimension.
Where is Toffee from?
Welcome to the world of greatest media!
Emperors he's from Star vs The Forces of Evil.
Messenger from another dimension.
Since the EP is from Villains wiki, and we said not to use it as a source, I will abstain for now.
Welcome to the world of greatest media!
Believe it or not, I'm really unsure on Toffee. Great as he was , I think there's something... missing about him.
Much of his ultimate plan is pretty much left to speculation. What we see onscreen is that he wanted to get his finger back and...that was it. There was no other motives shown- we can assume he wants to destroy Mewni, but doesn't appear definitive.
There is also the matter that it has been established that monsters suffered from heavy racism in the show's universe, shedding a new light on the show as a whole. It is perfectly possible for Toffee to have been a (once) pro-monster revolutionary, which would take him out of CM status. Again, this hasn't been shown on screen.
He is a massive Knight of Cerebus and is a firm display of Vile Villain, Saccharine Show. Yet, he directs most of his aggression solely towards the heroes. Complete monsters usually have innocent casualties on their side. Toffee spends most of Season 1 actually fighting the villains rather than the heroes: getting Buff Frog and then Ludo kicked out their own empire.
However, what does to Star and Marco is too unusual and rather cruel for a villain. He doesn't kill them in an epic combat: he almost crushed Marco to death and trapped Star inside him, making her suffer a slow death and hurting Moon personally. His cold dismissal of Ludo doesn't really count to his status, IMO.
I'll try giving him a for now. Though I feel more information on him will come up and possibly take him away from CM status.
The EP on Villains Wiki is by Austin. I think we can use it in this case.
edited 29th Jul '17 8:54:32 AM by MahStache
@Beast I still need to catch up on most of PLL, but does Lyndon get cut when compared to all the others?
I just bought my ticket for The Emoji Movie. Pray for me.
You should of never gave them money in the first place.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Toffee would be Michael C. Hall's second CM.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
In the grand scheme of things, it may not even matter if the film bombs.
Meldar could maybe be a Knight of Cerebus, but not a CM. I have a feeling Tim Allen will never play a CM, even though he's played at least two villains I know of.
Micheal C. Hall was in a Disney cartoon?
To head off any more complaints, does anyone else have thoughts on Biara?
edited 29th Jul '17 5:54:02 AM by ReynTime250