Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

May I request Jeff Fecalman from the Family Guy episode "Screams of Silence"? Here's why.

-He Beats up his girlfriend (Brenda, Quagmire's sister). - He almost kills Quagmire for trying to take him down. -Assaults other people, verbally or otherwise.

What really seals him is how dead serious the show portrays him. Peter and Lois show these above traits, but they are played for comedy. Stewie (from the first few seasons) is a sociopath, but not only is THAT played for comedy, he mellowed out as the show went on. Jeff? When he comes in, the comedy grinds to a dead halt. All the other characters decide to get rid of him, alive or dead. And, he is the only antagonist in the series to get killed. By QUAGMIRE, no less.

I don't think that the multiple personalities ever exist in a vacuum; it's a question of which is stronger. I agree that, in the movies, Norman Osborn does love his son (though he's bad at showing it well; he's better at showing Peter paternal love, although that is equally DQ-worthy for this trope). And if you take Osborn as a comflicted individual, yes, he would totally have to be removed as a CM. However, the way they show the split personalities is consistent with how Hollywood usually depicts distinct personalities within an individual (compare to Smeagol/Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, where they were a bit more explicit in delineating between the two personalities).

I would personally only give credit to the Green Goblin personality as a Complete Monster; if you don't think it counts as a distinct individual from Norman, I would agree to remove the example completely. Still, I think the movie plays him like a distinct character, and thus should be included.

For that Family Guy example - well, we did allow that one to remain on the YMMV page for the show after scrubbing the entry as a whole. If you go over to the appropriate thread to request an edit to a locked page, you can request that a version of the entry that includes a return link to Family Guy be included, since said entry did get worked on in this thread.

I'd recommend using the wording of the entry already on the Family Guy YMMV page if we're going to crosswick the part about Jeff. *

Still though, the whole "aspect of personality as separate character" thing just seems too abstract to count such a separate character as a CM, especially when the extent of that aspect of his personality comes about partly because of Osborn's backstory.

EDITED IN: Back to the Family Guy example... I decided to make the edit request myself.

edited 22nd Jun '12 10:07:22 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

Spider-Man can't really show GG sinking to the levels of depravity that would qualify him for CM in my mind, because it's a kid-friendly franchise.

I'd disagree on this one. Ultimate Kingpin, for instance, bombed schools. There are kid-friendly works of fiction within the franchise, but that doesn't make the franchise as a whole kid-friendly.

Also, "kid-friendly" and "completely monstrous" are not mutually exclusive, just that they are a little difficult to combine. It can be done, though; look at Oliver And Company's portrayal of Sykes, for instance.

edited 22nd Jun '12 12:28:30 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

I missed it- is the question about the Goblin/Osborne in the Raimi films or the character in general. I ask because from what I know of his current presentation in the comics, he would probably fit the trope in that depiction, as would his version in The Spectacular Spiderman, in which he doesn't even have his redeeming love for his son.

In contrast, in the 1990's animated show and the Raimi movie, he wouldn't fit, as in those versions, Norman was a villainous character, albeit one with some positive traits (including love for his son), and the Goblin is a split-personality he can't control.

Actually, despite being a kid's show, the Spectacular Norman is probably the worst of the bunch, because while the current comics have Norman as saneish (albeit sociopathic) and evil and the Goblin as Ax-Crazy and evil, Spectacular Norman didn't have his sanity affected at all by the serum (well, according to himself anyway) and doesn't have a personality split.

edited 22nd Jun '12 3:58:31 PM by Jordan

It's about film-Osborn.

For the record, I don't think he counts either. Hollywood Psych or not, the Goblin is not really a separate character, and Norman as a whole certainly doesn't qualify.

Thanks. Sorry for the long discussion I posted then. But yes, that version of Osborne wouldn't count (the Goblin might, although he's played for laughs to a degree). Osborne himself, while evilish is horrified by his alter-ego's actions.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to ask about the criminal from earlier in the movie who tried to shoot Peter Parker after Peter saved him from getting arrested. I'm inclined to think that action would qualify as a Moral Event Horizon, but does the guy himself get enough characterization to count as a CM?

EDITED IN: Apart from Footsteps' point about split personality, I think the discussion so far is agreed enough to justify removing Green Goblin from the entry. Done and done.

edited 22nd Jun '12 4:37:52 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

As much as it pains me to say, I don't think anyone agrees with me on the idea of treating a Split Personality as distinct from the other personality facets in terms of this trope. Ah well, can't win them all; cut movieverse Osborn.

I wouldn't put the guy who tried to kill Peter after Peter saved him (I really don't think that requires spoiler tags; that's fairly early in the movie) under this either. Doesn't even come close to the heinous standard.

Wish to add some examples from the Diablo series to the Monster.Video Games page.

• The Diablo series is home to quite a few monsters, and we're not just talking about the demons here (though the Great Evils and their minions definitely qualify).
  • Archbishop Lazarus, who played an integral role in King Leoric's descent into madness, feeding Tristram's villagers and the odd adventurer to the demonic Butcher in the first game, and having Albrecht, one of Leoric's two sons, made a vessel for Diablo himself.
  • The Skeleton King. While King Leoric is quite sympathetic despite his mad deeds, the same can't be said about what he became when Diablo resurrected him as one of his deadlier servants. His undead reign of terror upon the people of Tristram would not end until his own son, Aidan, was forced to destroy him.
  • Maghda and the Dark Coven from Diablo III. In addition to their service to the evil Belial, they are very fond of Cold-Blooded Torture through magical and other means, and use it for many of their sorcerous rituals, such as the illusion over the Black Canyon Bridge in Act II. And that's not even mentioning their murder of Deckard Cain and their torture of human Tyrael.
  • The Inquisitors of the Templar Order, who were responsible for forcibly recruiting Kormac into the Order, piling false sins upon him, and torturing him into Laser-Guided Amnesia so that he would have Undying Loyalty toward the order in general.
  • Zoltun Kulle. This is a man who attempted to usurp his Horadric brethren by using the Black Soulstone to control the Great Evils, even murdering and dismembering his own wife just to fuel his twisted experiments with the Soulstone. Is it any wonder the Horadrim went to such extremes to keep him down?
    • One of the achievements related to him is even called "Murderer. Torturer. Monster.", which is pretty damn accurate.
  • But the worst monster of all besides the Great Evils has got to be Adria, who pledged herself to Diablo's service since first meeting Aidan in his Dark Wanderer guise, and had Leah with him for the sole purpose of using her as the vessel for Diablo's resurrection as the Prime Evil by means of the aforementioned Black Soulstone, which she does in one of the most despicable betrayals of the entire series. The worst part is that you don't even get to kill the witch in-game, and we will have to wait for the expansion pack before we get our chance to make her pay for Leah.

edited 23rd Jun '12 9:50:26 AM by TwoGunAngel

Ok, now that season one is over, I think we can add this to the list.

• Yakone from Avatar: The Legend of Korra. He was the king of the Republic City underground and a user of bloodbending, something considered evil and illegal inuniverse which he used with a sickening glee. He had absolutely no qualms about bloodbending an entire courtroom to get free, then trying to kill Aang. Instead of just going for a quick Neck Snap as he tried to cap it off with, he first starts twisting Aang's limbs in painful and sickening directions to torture him. After Aang debends him, he has two sons, Tarrlok and Noatak, whom, when he learns they're Waterbenders, he abuses to a horrifying extreme to mold them into his weapons of vengeance by forcing them to learn Bloodbending. He makes them practice it on animals, despite Tarrlok clearly not enjoying the pain it inflicts on them. His big Moral Event Horizon is forcing his sons to use Bloodbending on each other. Oh, and this makes him directly responsible for the events of the series, as Tarrlok became a corrupt political mastermind. As for Noatak? He becomes Amon.

Add that he even makes Ozai, whose still a Complete Monster, better in comparison.

Between the eagerness with which people have been trying to add this guy, and the fact that he comes from a troper-popular series, I'm fairly leery about him... but I don't see anything there that looks like an obvious disqualifier.

I assume he's never played for laughs or taken less than seriously?

Never has been. He's been played as a monster from day one.

Okay, Diablo first. Keep in mind that I haven't played any of the series, so I will require some amount of clarification at points.

Bishop Lazarus seems like a pretty clear keep.

The Skeleton King looks like he should not be in there. Beyond the fact that he's the resurrected form of a character that still has sympathy, there's two other issues - no actual misdeeds by him are actually being described, and it's suggested from the post that he's actually enslaved and forced to do those actions.

Maghda should stand on his own, unless the Dark Coven is a democratic body that went for those actions. Beyond that, the spoilered examples will need much more detail before I think he can meet the heinous standard.

Zoltun looks like a good keep.

For Adria, a few things. One, you should not have a completely spoilered example. That's officially at the "what's the point of writing this example?" question that drives many up the wall. Beyond that, that example offers almost no detail as to what makes her evil and betrayal so much worse than anyone else's (pronoun usage is leaving me to wonder just who did what in that). Plus, it also reads at the end like it's an avenue to complain about DLC, which definitely has no place in a Complete Monster entry. Regardless of any actual qualifiers, that entry as written will not fly for the page.

For Yakone... I know I can't be the only one starting to have brony99 flashbacks. Both due to the Single-Issue Wonk levels of obsession on the topic as well as how poorly the would-be example is written. Quite simply, while that entry is a great argument as to why Yakone is The Sociopath, it doesn't actually show just why he would count as a Complete Monster. It fails to address all of the qualifications, and the fact that you felt the need to basically just write the same thing that you previously wrote as soon as the season ended strikes me as an obsession with this trope as a yardstick to prove how "awesome" the show is.

This isn't to say that I'm going to vote no on the character if someone else can present a reasonable and rational argument for letting Yakone in. However, if you continue to press the issue, Godzillawolf, I'm hollering for a mod.

I didn't want to be the first to mention brony99, but you're not the only one getting that feeling.

That said, while that writeup is pretty bad from a 'technical' standpoint, I'm not quite sure how it doesn't qualify him. I'd want to run this by someone who's familiar with the show and has a more objective attitude before adding him, but just going by what's there, he does seem to fit.

I'm sorry I ended up sounding like that, the only reason I didn't change it most was because the sole objection to it was the series was still early in its run and they said I should wait. Season 1 has finished, so I felt it'd be time to try again, especially since Yakone, if nothing else, added more qualifications due to what was revealed about him in the finale.

I'm sorry I came across as a rapid fanboy or something, I'm REALLY not. It's a good show, but I'm not THAT big on it.

Shouldn't Yakone automatically be disqualified on the basis that he actually loved his wife? Or was there a part in the episode I missed regarding that?

For Diablo, remove the fact that you can't kill Adria atm, otherwise it's DLC complaining. All the examples pretty much qualify except..............................................

.................Skeleton King, since the fate of Leoric can generate sympathy and no one knows if it's More than Mind Control.

I've found some Fallout examples I want pointed out and hopefully cut.

• The third installment also gives us the Talon Company, which has no apparent redeeming qualities. Every last member is a Psycho for Hire.

That's Always Chaotic Evil, and once gain, murderers and raiders are too common in the Fallout Universe for this to stand out.

• The Enclave in the first two games were definitely this. First of all, all of those utterly horrific Vault Experiments? They were behind every single one of them. That's right; Vault 11? They did it. Vault 112? They did it. Vault 97? You get the idea. Their first onscreen action in the series is to massacre a whole vault full of innocent men, women and children, just because some of them had a trace of radiation in them. That's right, they are so obsessed with rebuilding a "pure" America that they are willing to commit genocide on not just Ghouls and Mutants, but literally anyone with even the smallest bit of radiation in them. That's over 90% of America's remaining population. They don't care. Among the worst is Fallout 2's Agent Horrigan, who is best described as a "genetically engineered cyborg psycho total homicidal maniac." He always murders someone whenever he appears, the first victims being a group of unarmed peasants.

There was a discussion about the Enclave not qualifying as a faction as there was a significant amount of sympathetic people in the video game CM discussion page, and the admin for this page actually found the Legion to be worse than them. The Enclave Remnants were all sympathetic, for one, and they, for the most part, served in the Enclave in F2. Just limit it to Horrigan and some people who do qualify. Eden dosen't through, he's an AI and he operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality.

• Werner from The Pitt. All his talk about being a slave freedom fighter is a lie. He's really a disgustingly selfish Manipulative Bastard whose sole concern is taking control of the city from the much more fairminded Ashur. He views his fellow slaves as little more than pawns to move around in his quest for power. Oh, and he knows full well that the Trogg cure is really Ashur's infant daughter, but he doesn't care. If he has to kidnap and quite possibly torture an innocent child just to rule one city, he's exactly as monstrous to do it. In summary, Wernher literally cares for nothing but himself, and is willing to lie to and kill anyone who gets between him and his selfish goals.

Bethesda intended The Pitt to be Grey And Grey mortality, which shows a good amount of bias for this entry. Unless Word of God retracts this statement proves he's a CM, he's cut because it goes against their intentions. Also this is spoiler overuse.

EDIT: Wernher may actually qualify, given what he says that implies a lot of selfishness and some of his motives, but the question is: is it what Word of God intends? If this reaction(Wernher being a CM) was not what Bethesda intended then...............................................

1)There is significant case to remove him from this trope.

2) Bethesda made one faction more sympathetic than the other in morality balancing and it's their fault, so he qualifies out of that.

The other ones I noticed should be cut through.

edited 23rd Jun '12 7:03:09 PM by xie323

Regarding Diablo, when you consider that it is the objective of the Big Bad to tear down Heaven itself, it's hard to see how other villains can compete for heinousness, but I'll bite.

• Leoric/The Skeleton King: Nope, no way. He was goaded and mind controlled into his descent to madness.
• Lazarus: Absolutely yes. Not only did he betray his king by selling his soul to the literal Devil, he prodded Leoric to torture and murder his own family by convincing him they were traitors. He deliberately engineered Diablo's resurrection, but he also went out of his way to be as sickeningly horrible as possible along the way. Keep.
• Maghda: I don't get the same vibes from her. She's a manipulative bitch to be sure but she's just doing the whole Evil Overlord wannabe bit. I'd throw her in Magnificent Bastard before I'd throw her in Complete Monster.
• Adria: Damn. Umm, what to say here? She may go down as possibly the most vile traitor in all of Creation, but that is literally the only thing she does that proves her evil. At no point do we see her being sadistic, cruel, malicious, or in any way nasty on-screen. No CM for her simply because she hasn't done enough to qualify.

edited 23rd Jun '12 9:45:01 PM by Fighteer

After watching the finale of Korra, I'd say that Yakone does not count. All of his henious actions take place off screen, are less henious than Ozai, and he does have some redeeming qualities; when his oldest son ran off he spent days looking for him, even though said son had utterly rejected him before and would have no part of his scheme for revenge. After that he also abandoned his crusade to make Tarrlock follow in his footsteps, implying a What Have I Done moment.

YMMV on wether or not he did the spoilered actions out of stubborness to continue his evil or out of genuine love, I still say it firmly cements him out of CM territory. That said, if we could get a verdict so we can settle the Korra YMMV page once and for all.

Adria not only betrayed her own daughter, but humanity itself by what she did in the finale of Act III. Diablo would not have been able to run roughshod all over the High Heavens in Act IV and kill all those people in Bastion's Keep if it hadn't been for her. If she didn't cross the Moral Event Horizon long ago by pledging herself to Diablo's service, she definitely crossed it then. And you don't even get to kill her in-game, meaning that she's still out there until such time as an expansion is released.

edited 24th Jun '12 12:22:28 AM by TwoGunAngel

I want to discuss few villains from Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes animated series and whether they qualify for Complete Monster trope or not.

Grim Reaper: He is cold-blooded sadist who joined HYDRA just to satisfy his destructive urges and likes to hurt and cause pain, in one episode he even said "Finally, someone to hurt" with a sadistic glee. His bio◊ in the series official site (before it was replaced with Marvel Universe block site) even states that he is a sadist and that he was that way even as a child. And let's not forget that when AIM was about transform his brother into Wonder Man, MODOC warned him that no one has survived the process and Reaper briefly smiled and said "That's life". I don't see anyhing sympathethic about a guy who doesn't care about his own brother and who likes to cause pain For the Evulz.

Surtur: In my eyes, he definitely qualifies for this trope. He commited genocide against the dwarves in his debut episode and did same to the Korbinites, then he and his demons relentlessly pursuited them, entirely For the Evulz. He wants to unleash the Ragnarok and destroy everything, just because. Asgardians show deep concern when he escapes imprisonment and even other villains are afraid of him: the Enchantress was terrified of him when she fell in his hands and he's so bad that Loki, the Big Bad of season one, didn't even bother trying to open up his realm, Muspelheim, let alone take it over. If the Big Bad doesn't want to do anything with you, you know that you are a monster. And let's not forget that when the Enchantress temporary broke free from his control, she asked Thor and Beta Ray Bill to kill her and end her misery.

Ultron: While he wants to bring order and annihilation chaos and believes that his actions will bring peace and order, this does not justify his actions: attempting to wipe out ALL LIFE on Earth, down to the ''bacteria'', attempting to replace humans with cold, emotionless robotic doubles, while keeping the real humans in Electric Torture, And I Must Scream situations to feed the information from their brains into their robotic counterparts in episode "Ultron Unlimited" and seeing emotions as weakness. Finally, his actions made Hank feel guilty, resulting in Hank leaving the Avengers and everything that happens to Hank in season 2, episode "Yellowjacket" comes to mind", is Ultron's fault. And when Hank programmed Ultron not to hurt Wasp, Ultron wanted to eliminate that programming and flat-out told it to Wasp.

Do any of these villains qualify for CM status and can we include them?

edited 24th Jun '12 2:18:29 AM by Tropemasterx2

Surtur is more of an elemental force of destruction than a person. Killing things and bringing about the end of the world isn't his choice so much as what he is. I don't think he counts.