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
@Hamburger Time
Cut them some Slack. The Troper is new and Conrad would have had a chance if it wasn't for the fact his attempted body count is Fridge Horror.
Also Condolences Bull.
Edited by Kylotrope on Apr 30th 2019 at 8:21:16 AM
Things are really about to get Fun around hereI told Michealthehero21 to tell the person who added the Bob the Builder example to the YMMV page without approval that examples must run through this thread. Said example was added in early April 2019, before the Cars 2 effort post.
Let's not bite the newcomers. It's discouraging and rude.
Edited by Brainulator9 on Apr 30th 2019 at 11:25:18 AM
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!Just doing a little thinking on Z-Ron. On one hand Boris the Animal seemed to be from a pretty nasty race, given that when he brings them to Earth they all just seem to want to wipe it out, though he's the only Bogoldite we meet. That being said, the film puts no further emphasis on how evil the race is collectively beyond what we can surmise from the destruction they bring. By comparison, Z-Ron specifically gets called out as being par the course for what he is. Wish I could see him up because to me it seems close to a Boris situation but unfortunately with the evidence tipping over on the Always Chaotic Evil side: no there.
Also, condolences, Bull, wishing well to you and your family.
Edited by 43110 on Apr 30th 2019 at 12:16:16 PM
I won't lie, sometimes I've one or two candidates I've wanted to propose but felt like people would down vote them on principal. A recent one was Jonas Venture from the Venture Brothers who I figured everyone would see as a character from an Adult Swim comedy and not think twice about.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.![]()
yeah definitely EP Jonas Venture if you want (you can definitely do better my EP of Danny)
For anyone else who has watched the show, the big thing that makes me unsure is the Papa Wolf moment he has in the episode Spanikopita. Jonas beats ups the Greeks who kidnapped his son and has Rusty taken away before the beat down happened, but it's literally established the kidnappers treated him better than Jonas ever did and they gave him a day of fun after feeling pity when Jonas didn't answer their ransom calls and didn't come for Rusty for days after the kidnapping. It's listed as a Pet the Dog moment on the character page and it's valid just enough to give me seconds thoughts.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.Right, then. Here's the edits I planned to make for the Arkn Mythos entries:
- Complete Monster: In a Forever War with a vast cast of morally ambiguous characters, a few stand out as truly, irredeemably evil:
- The Hooks Killer is among the worst, particularly in the Extended Universe canon. He's a repulsive Serial Killer whose hobbies also include torture, mutilation, rape (with a particular preference for infants), consuming the flesh of his victims, and using their skin to make masks (in order to hide his identity and disfigured face). He has part of The Carver's soul in him — and uses the knowledge it bestows to become a "perfect killer", jumping between various timelines and eras and reinventing himself under a different identity in every reality to ensure that he never gets caught. His vast Historical Rap Sheet includes murdering over 100 people as The Dreaded, mysterious Wild West outlaw Barnabelt Kinnard; inflicting torments on an entire kingdom as the English monarch Comshine Orok; and slaughtering an entire religious cult, including his pregnant sister — whose baby, which he cut out and ate, might have been his own child — as Adam Spirit. He later becomes a Psycho for Hire, actively assisting The Carver in his plans; during The Hooks Killer Documentary, he cuts open a young filmmaker and transfers the fragment of The Carver's into his body (possibly while the original host is still in it), allowing The Carver to roam freely throughout .Reality. In one of his final onscreen appearances, Hooks confesses to having committed 643 murders over the course of 40 years; this is hinted to merely be his body count for the town of New Comshine, with his total body count suggested to be somewhere in the thousands.
- Hooks's Universe A incarnation is, though seemingly confined to a single timeline, virtually identical in terms of his sadism, twisted nature, and love of atrocities — such that even The Carver himself refers to him as a "monster". This version of Hooks is also Carver's partner, and is hinted to have given him a vessel in a similar manner; not content with this extremely risky act (which, due to The Carver's Hethian power, causes a power surge in .Reality), he decides to go public with his knowledge of the Arkn and Dekn, causing a catastrophic system crash that obliterates multiple timelines and erases countless lives — for no reason other than he could. The last time he's seen onscreen, he guts Michael Knight, sending him to the Infernous to be tormented by The Carver (who then claims him as a vessel, using his body to cause chaos and destruction). Hooks may be a mere human, but he proves himself to be far more deplorable than most Arkn or Dekn.
- Elius'Exe'Deus, or Elias Exodus (a.k.a. Elliot Kenneth), is Asmodeus's teenage, sociopathic, power-hungry Nephilim son. Described by his own father as "a true psychopath", he tortures and kills for no reason other than the sheer, sadistic pleasure he gains from it. As a child, he and his fellow Nephilim were saved from genocide by being hidden in a realm called the Hybrid Grounds; Elias wasted little time in slaughtering several hundred of the other Nephilim and absorbing their powers. In 2015, as an amnesiac teen suffering from "voices inside his head", Exodus has his powers re-awakened after Vine (one of the Dekn who initially saved him) stops him from committing suicide; as his memories return, he reveals that the "voices" he hears are his victims, screaming inside him — and that he enjoys it. Once his true personality asserts full control, Exodus thanks Vine for saving him (twice) by absorbing his powers and trapping his soul inside a cube Prison Dimension, leaving him to rot in the Hybrid Grounds for all eternity. He departs from the Hybrid Grounds with the intent of consuming both the Arkn and Dekn to become a living god. He visits his uncle, Raphael Tobit Kestler, tortures him, and sends him to the Vale of Nightmares, before murdering Raph's unsuspecting, human twin brother, Tobias — mocking him as he dies in agony. All while he does these things, Exodus laughs and gloats about the suffering he's causing, and having effectively driven his own race to extinction.
- The Hooks Killer is among the worst, particularly in the Extended Universe canon. He's a repulsive Serial Killer whose hobbies also include torture, mutilation, rape (with a particular preference for infants), consuming the flesh of his victims, and using their skin to make masks (in order to hide his identity and disfigured face). He has part of The Carver's soul in him — and uses the knowledge it bestows to become a "perfect killer", jumping between various timelines and eras and reinventing himself under a different identity in every reality to ensure that he never gets caught. His vast Historical Rap Sheet includes murdering over 100 people as The Dreaded, mysterious Wild West outlaw Barnabelt Kinnard; inflicting torments on an entire kingdom as the English monarch Comshine Orok; and slaughtering an entire religious cult, including his pregnant sister — whose baby, which he cut out and ate, might have been his own child — as Adam Spirit. He later becomes a Psycho for Hire, actively assisting The Carver in his plans; during The Hooks Killer Documentary, he cuts open a young filmmaker and transfers the fragment of The Carver's into his body (possibly while the original host is still in it), allowing The Carver to roam freely throughout .Reality. In one of his final onscreen appearances, Hooks confesses to having committed 643 murders over the course of 40 years; this is hinted to merely be his body count for the town of New Comshine, with his total body count suggested to be somewhere in the thousands.
Edited by JadeEyes1 on Apr 30th 2019 at 1:06:18 PM
Danny from This is The End? No. A thousand times over "no". I can understand discussing Russ Cargill since he is a Knight of Cerebus who is taken somewhat as serious as The Simpsons can get, but nothing Danny does changes the tone of the film. If anything his actions make the film more darkly humorous. There was literally no reason to bring this guy up. At the very most you can call him a Hate Sink but nowhere in the same world as this trope.
So, while I was sleeping, turns out a lot of people were either not convinced by my effort post on Conrad, or thought it was a joke and made snide remarks.
First off: no, it was not a joke post. If it was, I'd have used Humor Mode on the whole thing.
Second: yes, I know Bob The Builder's target audience is younger viewers, and wouldn't really seem like something to have a villain that poses a serious threat, let alone a CM. However, I read the administrivia page on the subject, and Conrad does seem to fit the bill. As I previously explained, his plan is to flood Spring City to ruin Bob's reputation, and while nobody ever outright says it, it's implied that Spring City being flooded would kill (or at least seriously injure) many of the people living there. After all, Bob and his team take the flood threat completely seriously and make every effort to stop it.
And if you want evidence of how it could lead to death, there is a scene where one of the characters (Leo) is trapped in the dry riverbank where the floodwater is coming. Scoop reaches him with just enough time to see him trapped under some rocks, rescue him, and drive away before the flood waters come and drown them both.
And to top all this off, one of Conrad's Mega Machines (Ace) asks him "Are you really sure no one will get hurt?" earlier in the film. Conrad says yes, but as it turns out, he's lying, and he knows it. Later Ace calls him out on this with the following statement: "You said no one would get hurt! Spring City will be destroyed!" Which Conrad dismisses by proclaiming they'll just "rebuild that too."
And if you don't wanna take my word for it, you can see for yourself; I'm pretty sure the whole film's on YouTube. He's at the very least a Knight of Cerebus.
Edited by MetroidPeter on Apr 30th 2019 at 8:25:18 PM
"You are what you choose to be." -Hogarth Hughes, The Iron Giant "You've got to fight to make a wish come true!" -Fantasy, The PagemastDid I miss anything...
Hmmm need to think about Z-Ron
And Yeesh!!! @Bullman I hope you got better soon. Being robbed sucks.
Also, @Lore Deluxe I can relate to that. I'll be honest that there is some guys I want to relitigate but I think they will be downvoted regardless... PM me if youre interested.
"Making screw-ups and mistakes was I ever really good at. Because everything I touch went to hell."My opinion on Conrad's only been sealed, honestly. Here's the thing; for a Complete Monster to truly hit the grounds for "heinousness", the full atrocity of the action needs to be explicit and onscreen. We don't go by "implicated"—that's Fridge Horror left unstated in-universe and does not count toward qualification.
The rule applies all the same to kids' shows and it's why we're so traditionally so stringent on candidates from them (and it's why we comparatively have so much fewer from them than other media). Given the target audience, what can be portrayed on-screen in something like Bob the Builder is obviously going to differ from what's portrayed on-screen in, say, Game of Thrones (or, hell, even Adventure Time); obviously "being heinous by the standard of a preschooler show" is going to be a lot different than "heinous by the standards of Real Life" (which is how we measure the baseline standard, or basically just the general level of how heinous one has to be to really qualify).
Sometimes a mixture of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? and Vile Villain, Saccharine Show comes into play—it's why we have once-in-a-blue-moon candidates from stuff like Rainbow Brite and Animalia—but that's because they treat the subject matter explicitly and don't downplay anything, which is the exception rather than the rule in kids' shows. We treat this stuff skeptically for very good reason.
Edited by Scraggle on Apr 30th 2019 at 11:07:35 AM

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