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
Same opionion as before on 8mm: "Machine" is the heinous standard, but the main problems with all the examples is that they are mostly a spiel against Snuff Films, like the Leon Vorgitch example in Law and Order mostly being a spiel on the Death Penalty. Cut all but "Machine"'s entry.
P.S. I hate Completely Missing The Point potholes.
edited 15th Sep '13 7:51:47 PM by VeryMelon
Here's my question...
Machine is the standard, yes. But can we say he's altogether worse than someone who puts the film together, gets the girl and sics Machine on her? I'm not sure I can. Machine is a monster because he joins these voluntarily so he can vent his sick appetites, but a person who organizes it, gets Machine involved and gets a girl so Machin can rape and kill her, all so he can film it?
It seems on the same level
edited 15th Sep '13 8:12:19 PM by Lightysnake
So, I just finished watching the first season of Elementary. A while back we cut most of the one-shot villains, and Sebastien Moran (who by the way, will remain a cut. He has a sister who he cares about enough to sacrifice his life to save). Now that the season is over, however, I think we need to discuss Moriarty. This is going to be a difficult discussion however, due to the massively spoilerriffic nature of just who Moriarty is pretending to be. I'm going to try my best to limit the spoilers, but it's just not going to be possible when examining possible redeeming features, because those possible traits are very much tied up with the assumed identity. Oh, and if you're a Holmes purist, you are not gonna be happy. Then again, given that this show has Lucy Liu as Watson and is set in New York, you probably weren't real happy with it to start out.
From here on out there will be spoilers, marked and unmarked. You have been warned.
Who is Moriarty? What has Moriarty done?
Moriarty is a self-described "Assassin Pimp", a sociopath with a good eye for recognising serial killers and psychopaths who are trying to pass. Putting this talent to good use, Moriarty acts as the middleman in the assassination game, planning out murders on behalf of clients, and then handing the jobs over to one of many agents, the two most notable being Sebastien Moran and Daniel Gottlieb. Between them, Moran and Gottlieb have killed close on seventy people, though most of that is, of course, offscreen. Onscreen, Moriarty:
- Has Sebastien Moran kill one man, and try to kill a woman (he is interrupted by Holmes). Moran performs these murders (as he does all of his others) by suspending the victims from their feet by a tripod, then cutting their throats, causing them to bleed out.
- Sets up Moran (whom Holmes believes to have killed his girlfriend, Irene Adler) to be captured by Holmes, hoping Holmes will kill him (which he almost does).
- Hires Daniel Gottlieb for three separate murders. One involves electrocuting a man to death by hacking into his pacemaker, the second involves dropping an air condishioner on another man from an apartment window, and the third involves using African killer bees to kill an allergic woman. This is all done at the behest of a client who does not want a building designated an historical landmark.
- Has the agent who first hired Gottlieb shot and killed when Holmes locates him.
- Offers Moran a choice—he kills himself, or Moriarty kills his sister. Moran takes option one and beats his brains out against his cell wall in prison.
- Hires Holmes to prove that the head of a security company committed a murder. This lets Moriarty buy out the company, which is necessary for the finale.
- Has an agent, Isaac Procter, killed when he outlives his usefulness. When Procter dodges the first assassination attempt, Moriarty tracks Procter to Holmes' house and kills him in person.
- Is revealed to be Irene Adler, whose apparent death drove Holmes into drug addiction.
- Kidnaps the daughter of a shipping magnate, and uses her as leverage to force the magnate (an ardent Greek nationalist) to kill two Macedonian nationals. The magnate is then killed by the Macedonians' security chief (who only got the job because Moriarty bought out the company after his boss went to jail for murder). This is done to stop Macedonia from joining the EU, and cause Moriarty's collection of Macedonian currency to skyrocket in profit.
Are Moriarty's actions heinous by the standards of the story?
Yes. Moriarty has the single highest bodycount of any villain this season, and unless The Big Bad of Season 2 is Lex Luthor, I don't see that fact changing any time soon (and given that Moriarty is in jail, and not dead, there's a decent chance that we'll get a redux next season). Only Sebastien Moran and Daniel Gottlieb come close to Moriarty in nasty, and their just killers on the Diabolical Mastermind's payroll.
Does Moriarty have a Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?
None. Straight up psychopath, no bones about it.
Does Moriarty have any redeeming characteristics?
This is where things get tricky, and spoilers get unmarked. Are you ready?
Moriarty is Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes' supposedly dead girlfriend. Or perhaps more accurately, Irene Adler is a fake identity, assumed by Moriarty when Holmes disrupted several of her operations in London. She adopted the Irene persona to figure out what Holmes was like, and after deducing that his intellect was, in her words, inferior to her own, faked her death, causing his downward spiral into heroin addiction and self-loathing.
Now, where the situation becomes complicated, is Moriarty's feelings towards Holmes. Despite her claim of superiority, she remains obsessed with him, moving her base of operations to New York when he gets out of recovery there, and making a point of not killing him, even when she has the chance to. In fact, they ultimately catch her by having Holmes fake an overdose on heroin. She breaks into his hospital bedroom, where she says she never meant for this to happen, and tries to persuade him to come with her so that she can put him back together and show him her side of the world. At that point, Watson and the police march in and arrest the bitch.
A lot of the fandom (if our character sheet is any indicator) has taken this as proof that "Irene" was actually in love with Holmes. Holmes himself uses the word "love" to describe her attraction to him. However, here's the important part: Moriarty does not use that word. Here's Moriarty on her feelings for Holmes and why she won't kill him:
"I would never kill you. Not in a million years. You may not be as unique as you thought, darling, but you're still a work of art. I appreciate art. But, what I can do - what I will do - is hurt you. Worse than I did before. I have reserves of creativity I haven't even begun to tap. So please, for your own good, let me win."
That quote, and others like it, coupled with the fact that the woman clearly cannot fathom emotions like loyalty or love (in a conversation with Watson she is convinced that sexual attraction is the only reason Watson could possibly be loyal to Holmes), lead me to believe that Moriarty does not love Holmes. Rather she appreciates his intellect in the same condescending way that a great artist might appreciate the work of a slightly inferior, but still superb rival. She's not upset about his drug addiction because it hurts him, she's upset because in her mind, Holmes taking drugs is like graffiting the Mona Lisa. You just don't do that. Her offer to rebuild him on her terms in couched in similar language; it's not that she wants him for him, more that she wants to see how far he can go without any moral restraint. She's looking to manufacture an intellect that can rival her own, and sees Holmes as the best possible candidate for that title.
Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she'll come back in Season 2 and the writers will demonstrate she actually does care about Holmes as a person. But with her current characterisation, I seriously doubt that.
Final summation
I think Moriarty is a qualifier. The character hits all of our requirements, and any affection that she might show is, I would contend, shown to be little more than intellectual interest. Would like to hear the opinions of others however.
edited 15th Sep '13 11:24:46 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Vote for Moriarity!
Okay, rewrites.
- William Hamleigh of The Pillars of the Earth begins as an arrogant, boorish young aristocrat with some sketchy ideas about a woman's consent whose nastiness is shown when he threatens Tom builder's life in an argument over wages Tom is fairly owed. After his fiancee Aliena breaks their engagement, William takes advantage of her father being deposed as Earl of Shiring to rape her, murdering her faithful steward and forcing her younger brother to watch before allowing his groom to rape her as well. William later discovers he is now important unless he commits violence, as seen when he beats and rapes a prostitute. William soon becomes Earl and becomes a scourge to the people: brutalizing and raping when he isn't given his 'proper due.' He fixates on Aliena, doing everything he can to ruin her life further and attacks the town of Kingsbridge, burning and killing, causing the death of Tom Builder personally. When he finally gets married, William finds himself impotent on the wedding night, and beats his wife bloody when she gives him a reassuring smile over it.
Here are rewrites for
- District 9 had several very nasty monsters...
- Wikus's father in law is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who helps keep the prawns oppressed in the alien ghetto. Initially a cold man, when Wikus is infected and finds himself turning into a prawn himself, his father in law has Wikus taken in and plans to have him vivisected in order to study him further, calmly watching his own son in law beg for his life without even a trace of emotion and later lies to his own daughter about Wikus being a criminal
- Koobus Venter, a sadistic Blood Knight of a special ops team gets his jollies off murder, and relishes being ables to kill without repercussion. Koobus guns down a prawn after it's been subdued and later leads a violent hunt for Wikus, with full willingness to murder whoever gets in the way. Koobus psychologically tortures the Prawn Christopher Johnson while beating him and threatens to kill him regardless of getting Wikus, gleefully saying he can't believe he's getting paid to do hat he loves: he just loves watching the Prawns die.
- Obesandjo, The Evil Cripple wheelchair bound leader of the Nigerian gangsters sets up his racket in District 9 and distributes cat food to the aliens which is like a drug that keeps them hooked. He also offers 'interspecies prostitution,' offering them human women. The worst, however, is when he has innocent aliens butchered, so he can eat their flesh and gain their power. When he captures Wikus, he fully plans to cut off his Prawn parts and eat them himself.
and the Conan rewrites...also, I should note that this entry is on the YMMV page. It's in the spinoff novel continuities, but I think it stacks fine:
- King Numedides, who Conan slew to gain the throne of Aquilonia, was a madman who bathed in the blood of virgins to gain immortality (at the advice of the equally evil sorceror, Thulandra Thuu.) Conan only came to oppose the king when Numedides had him tossed in prison for being a bit too popular. He also had a dancer who Conan fancied skinned and had his men toss a scrap of her flesh into Conan's cell to taunt him.
And for the Conan Darkhorse comics
- The Conan series from Dark Horse has two horrible sorcerers.
- Ra Sidh of The Midnight God commits mass murder on his own people to summon the Eldritch Abomination deity he worships: a deity so terrifying and nightmarish it frightens even hardened devotees of other dark gods. He lures Conan into confrontation by murdering his unborn child, and to summon his God, uses a boy Conan had formed a bond with solely to hurt the Cimmerian more. The world Ra Sidh intends to create is a horrible tyranny where he and his God reign supreme, which frightens even the kings of the dead empire Acheron who are only too willing to lend their aid to Conan to stop the evil sorcerer.
- While Thoth-Amon is sometimes portrayed as a Noble Demon or given redeeming qualities, The Book of Thoth reveals him as a selfish, horrible monster. Starting as an ambitious orphan, Thoth murders his friend Amon and takes his name to steal Amon's new place in the Ibis Temple. When Thoth's mentor discovers Thoth has been worshiping the Serpent God Set, Thoth magically lobotomizes him to admit he is the 'real' heretic. Thoth has every member of the royal family in front of his chosen puppet killed to place him on the throne and magically lobotomizes him to use him as a puppet and convert all of Stygia to Set's worship, turning it into a hellhole. Thoth proceeds to have his mentor's son crucified, only rescued by the intervention of allies, and is so far gone that he considers having his friend crucified again after said friend saves his life. Thoth unleashes a plague to consolidate his power, which kills his own sister. when he discovers this, he no longer cares and sets about making new plans, any conscience he once had long gone.
edited 17th Sep '13 3:06:14 PM by Lightysnake
- John Ryder from The Hitcher (1986 original). When a character, in just the first ten minutes of a film, butchers at least a dozen people (including children) for the hell of it, any semblance of empathy is long gone. His most despicable act is ripping Nash, the protagonist's love interest, in half in the movie's most infamous scene.
Sounds like a keeper but needs expansion.
- Marissa Wiegler in Hanna is even more ruthless than her henchmen, even Issacs, which is fitting considering she could be considered one of the most depraved and sadistic madwomen in film history. Marissa terminated the Super Soldier program, killing 19 out of 20 children along with their parents. She follows this by ambushing and killing Hanna's mother as Hanna and Erik escaped to the forests. After systematically hiding her nefarious program details from her colleagues and murdering Hanna's grandmother, she captures, interrogates and presumably kills Sophie and her family, who have been traveling with Hanna for a while - and enjoys every second of it. Her death at the very end gets an added touch with an echo from the beginning of the film.
Ok there's a Mama Bear entry for her. It says implied, but I'll show it just in case.
- Mama Bear: Implied with Marissa. She's not the biological mother, but it's touched on a few times that she may consider herself something of a mother to Hanna as Marissa had headed the project that created Hanna. Epitomized when she screams, "Don't you walk away from me, young lady!" at the end.
I think the Michael Myers entry could use some tinkering.
- In the original Halloween films, Michael Myers was described as nothing but pure and simple evil: he doesn't have any rudimentary sense of, really, anything; all he knows how to do is kill, kill, kill. Before the series started, he killed his older sister when still a small child. The scary thing about Myers is that there's no indication he gets pleasure out of it, or any other reward. He's also seen as more of a force of nature and the lack of motive is played for all the horror it can be.
- The lack of motive carries over to the remakes; Word of God from Rob Zombie says that Michael doesn't kill because of his shitty childhood; he kills because he's evil. The abuse and terrible living conditions were incidental.
Honestly, I think the Ryder entry covers the bases. For Hanna...that misuses Mama Bear. She views Hanna as a possession more than anything there, and a weapon.
![]()
That one for Michael Myers needs serious fixing. For one thing, the blatant sadism Michael displays in the first film would show he does in fact get a kick out of it. You don't memorialise your murders if you don't find them significant.
As to the comment about the remake, that's gotta go. Regardless of what Rob Zombie was going for, the film gives Michael such a godawful backstory that it becomes less a horror flick, and more a character study of just what it takes to turn somebody into a horror movie villain. Also, he cares about his sister and spends most of the film trying to reunite with her.
Here's a rewrite for the original:
- Michael Myers in the original Halloween films is a cold-blooded Serial Killer with a hatred of teenage sexuality and a fondness for carving knives. After killing his sister at the age of six, Michael breaks out of prison as an adult and goes on a killing spree through his hometown of Haddonfield, on his way to kill his surviving sister, murdering three of her friends before targetting her. He's stopped, but the horror doesn't end there. Michael returns again and again, making numerous attempts on Laurie, her daughter Jaime, and anybody else who gets in his way. Incapable of feeling empathy, and driven by a loathing of seemingly everybody he encounters, the unstoppable and perpetually silent Michael helped to define the slasher as we know it, and remains one of the most bone-chillingly evil.
edited 15th Sep '13 11:41:27 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
I agree with that rewrite, but please use Halloween (1978).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I can do that:
- Michael Myers in the original Halloween films is a cold-blooded Serial Killer with a hatred of teenage sexuality and a fondness for carving knives. After killing his sister at the age of six, Michael breaks out of prison as an adult and goes on a killing spree through his hometown of Haddonfield, on his way to kill his surviving sister, murdering three of her friends before targetting her. He's stopped, but the horror doesn't end there. Michael returns again and again, making numerous attempts on Laurie, her daughter Jaime, and anybody else who gets in his way. Incapable of feeling empathy, and driven by a loathing of seemingly everybody he encounters, the unstoppable and perpetually silent Michael helped to define the slasher as we know it, and remains one of the most bone-chillingly evil.
edited 15th Sep '13 11:49:11 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Film.Halloween 1978, actually, not Halloween 1978. That's not even page.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanRewrites now:
- Szilard and Fermet of Baccano. The first will do anything to gain knowledge and wants to give people immortality just so that he can absorb them and gain their knowledge and memories. The other, upon gaining regenerative immortality, killed a similarly immortal child repeatedly in incredibly painful ways for an unknown number of years. His excuse for doing this is that they need to learn the limits of their immortality and he's testing to see if there's a level of damage they can't recover from. The real reason is simply sadism.
Rightoh, to rewrite this and give them both their due...
- Baccano has two very nasty customers
- Szilard Quates, the immortal Mad Scientist and alchemist. Szilard believes in knowledge being the most important commodity in the world, and to that ends devours immortals for their knowledge. After becoming immortal, Szilard devoured the brother of the immortals' leader before being driven away. Szilard creates Artificial Human homunculi to serve him, abusing them mentally and physically. He also developed his own immortal potion which he feeds to intelligent people before devouring them to amass their knowledge without working for it. He isn't above straight up murder for his purposes either. It's mentioned at one point he gains no greater joy than in devouring others.
- Fermet, another of the original immortals, was the caretaker of the immortal child Czeslaw Meyer. However, once they were immortal, Fermet revealed his true colors as a vicious sadist who Would Hurt a Child by torturing Czeslaw for years and years, with new, inventive ways, ranging from throwing him into a roaring fireplace, to making him bathe in acid. The excuse was to test the limits of immortality. The excuse was simply sadism.
Now to rewrite Sicks from...this:
- A little known manga named Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro had Sicks, who takes this trope Up to Eleven. He's so evil that he is a completely different species genetically. He had done this so many times that one may wonder that if he's a Stealth Parody of this trope. Let's list what he has done.
- During his introduction, he murders his son's love (albeit in a weird sense) in cold blood, then mocks him about it. Also, he had infiltrated the investigation team by making a mask of a person's live skin.
- Right after that, he makes his subordinate who failed on finding the above-mentioned son commit suicide by gutting himself with a rusty saw.
- He then makes a mansion's worth of people butcher each other to appeal to the main character, Neuro. When that doesn't work, he simply blows up the mansion, killing the survivors out of boredom. This manages to disgust even NEURO, the demon who, throughout the whole series, barely ever broke his smiling and calm personality. He gives possibly his ONLY frown in the series.
- Whenever he recruits his so called Fingers, a Moral Event Horizon is bound to happen.
- To recruit the Second Finger, he presents him a cube, made of all the faces he ripped from everyone precious to him, including his family, friends, and co-workers.
- For the Third Finger, he forced him to kill his father using his talent of medicine and some of the aftermath includes the victim's eyeballs popping out.
- That guy was a monster from the moment he was born. He slashed all the others infants' necks in the nursery room in one night and slept peacefully the next morning! Then he killed his own mother and father at age 2 and 5, for god's sake.
My rewrite:
- Sicks from Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro absolutely revels in his evil. A monster from birth who slit the other babies' throats in his nursery and later murdered both his parent Sicks comes into conflict with the Anti-Hero demon detective Neuro. Sicks tracks down his clone, X, and murders X's love, infiltrating the police by wearing the skin of a man he killed. he punishes a subordinate who had failed to find X by making him saw himself open with a rusty saw, admitting he didn't care about a fair punishment: he just wanted to see the man die. To present a meal for Neuro, a demon who eats mysteries, Sicks forces a mansion's worth of people to commit murders in inventive ways...and then blew them up when Neuro was repulsed by the gesture. when recruiting his 'Fingers,' Sicks presented one with a cube made of the faces he had ripped from everyone close to him, and with another he forced him to murder his own father. Sicks' goal was nothing less than the absolute annihilation of humanity as well and on his orders, Japan suffered catastrophic death tolls before he and Neuro finally engaged in a Duel to the Death
Final:
- Friend of 20th Century Boys. The first Friend is responsible for 150,000 deaths by spreading a virus over the globe, a virus of his own creation after reading the Book of Prophecy that Kenji (one of the heroes) created, then framing Kenji's faction and calling them terrorists. He becomes the 'savior of the world' and sends people who just write manga to high security prisons. The First Friend (Fukubei) is simply an egocentric asshole sneering at every other person while simultaneously being a massive attention whore, who decides to do what he does out of some really petty grudge against Kenji. The Seconds Friend's actions, on the other hand, are even more extremely horrible than the ones of the First. Then again, even though the Second Friend is revealed to have had a truly horrid childhood to the point of contemplating suicide - it doesn't manage to engender sympathy.
Rewrite:
- Both Friends of 20th Century Boys were absolute monsters of a different variety
- The First Friend was responsible for 150,000 deaths by creating a plague and spreading it around the world, also causing widespread death and destruction in order to seize control of the planet and run it with an iron fist where people are sent to nightmarish 'reeducation facilities' or high security prisons just for drawing manga. Friend successfully demonized the heroes and made himself a savior of the world. His whole motivation? Being a massive Attention Whore and egocentric tyrant who wanted to be worshiped by everyone while satisfying a petty grudge against The Hero Kenji
- The Second Friend is an Omnicidal Maniac Straw Nihilist who, upon taking over from the first, proceeds to run the world even further into the ground. While the first Friend was a tyrant, the second simply wants to see everything burn. His actions are far more depraved and more and more people are killed under his reign. Even worse, he manufactures a new plague that he sends out with a twist: there is no antidote, only placebos. He simply wants everyone on the planet to die to satisfy his own cruelty.
edited 17th Sep '13 3:09:44 PM by Lightysnake
The Stephen King CM sandbox is locked, so I'll ask a mod to add Atropos directly to the King subpage.
![]()
for your rewrites, and if anyone is wondering if the second Friend's "horrible childhood" constitutes a Freudian Excuse I'll just note that his stated reason for going after the hero is because when they were kids, the hero stole some candy and let him take the blame.
King Sandbox is now Stephen King
Please also add Atropos to Insomnia
EDIT: You can make the request HERE
edited 16th Sep '13 2:57:59 AM by ACW
Oh no, the devils page.
Anyway, just a few edits: Nietzsche Wannabe needs to be replaced by Straw Nihilist, and the Baccano example belongs in the Visual Novel page.
edited 16th Sep '13 4:28:38 AM by randomtroper89
Baccano! originated from a Light Novel; it's a book, not software. Dunno where that should put it (since light novels are so entrenched in the anime and manga subculture, and the anime beats out the original novels in terms of exposure and was probably used as the basis for these examples), but it's certainly not with visual novels.
May I ask about that, seriously?
- The Incredibles: How could Syndrome's past be considered as a Freudian Excuse? It's not a sympathetic backstory at all. It's more like a Never My Fault situation. Buddy Pine blames Mr. Incredible for driving him away, even though it's clear that he himself had always stalked the hero, and let alone distract the guy from doing his superhero work.
- The Lion King: In what way is Scar's backstory canon? Unless the creators can confirm that the Six New Adventures series is canon to the original Disney film, the backstory is anything but. Yeah, we're sorry for Scar that when he's young, his father, King Ahadi, had refused to go hunting with him to solve the drought in Pridelands. But that does not make him not a sociopath for acting like the way he was when he plans to kill Mufasa, his older brother.
Because they say "never to be discussed again". Is that really so hard to understand?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Hodor
I guess we'd better find something momentous to talk about on this page. Anybody got a really good example that they've been sitting on for a while?
In the meantime, I'm going to lend my support to Lightysnake's rewrites. I'm also going to recommend cutting Grue, Garren, and Shaw from the literature page. Nobody has defended their inclusion, and they're just taking up space as is. I'll also post the Michael Myers write up tonight. And seeing as there seemed to be consensus to remove Semirhage and just keep Ishamael, I'm going to do another rewrite for Ishamael tonight, and then ask that it be swapped out for both the current examples on the lit page.
- Johnny Wong of Hard Boiled tops John Woo's other villains in terms of sheer nastiness. He and his men have absolutely no qualms in blowing away innocent bystanders who are unfortunate enough to get in their way, as shown during the very first shootout of the movie. And they only get worse from there, culminating in the hospital sequence where they kill patients for trying to escape the hospital, take a room hostage, and fire on the SWAT team even as they try to evacuate the babies of the hospital's maternity ward. Johnny's most despicable act is firing his Uzi into a crowd of patients standing between him and Alan, and then killing his Dragon Mad Dog when he blasts the gun out of his hands. The following quote by Johnny during the hospital sequence says it all.
Okay, when we were removing group examples, we took out Johnny Wong's men, but they're still mentioned in the entry. Here's the entry from YMMV.Hard Boiled:
- Complete Monster: The Big Bad, Johnny Wong. He has absolutely no qualms in blowing away innocent bystanders who are unfortunate enough to get in his way, as shown during the very first shootout of the movie. And he only gets worse from there, culminating in the hospital sequence where he kills patients for trying to escape the hospital, takes a room hostage, and fires on the SWAT team even as they try to evacuate the babies of the hospital's maternity ward. Johnny's most despicable act is firing his Uzi into a crowd of patients standing between him and Alan, and then killing his Dragon Mad Dog when he blasts the gun out of his hands. The following quote by Johnny during the hospital sequence says it all.
Other than that Johnny Wong looks good.
- Waingro from Heat. Murders unarmed guards who he thinks looked at him funny, as well as rapes and kills multiple prostitutes. His final horrid act is to murder Danny Trejo's girlfriend and beat Trejo half to death, but not kill him because that would be a Mercy Kill. This all shows you how much better Neil Mccauley is, even if he is a thief himself.
This seems good.
- The Kurgan from Highlander. An ancient immortal warrior with Rape, Pillage, and Burn as his raison d'être. If murdering Connor's mentor, raping his wife, and later claiming that she liked it doesn't cement his status as in irredeemable bastard, nothing can.
This came up awhile back. Was there a consensus?
edited 16th Sep '13 9:29:24 AM by TVRulezAgain
I've seen Hard Boiled. John Woo has no clue how police departments work (the number of murders that his "undercover cop" becomes involved in to maintain his cover his beyond ludicrous). Anyway, while Wong is a major asshat, I'm not sure he stands out given that this is apparently a universe where policemen masquerade as assassins and kill people in order to keep an op going.
The Heat example needs to be rewritten so that it isn't calling characters by the names of their actors. Danny Trejo and Neil McCauley are not characters in the film.
I think there was consensus to keep the Kurgan, but I don't actually remember.
Am waiting for opinions on Elementary!Moriarty (though I suppose that may take a while given the spoilering nature of that discussion).
edited 16th Sep '13 9:38:01 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Does Johnny Wong stand out? Absolutely. He attempts a large scale massacre of the sort that has no precedent by that film, and is treated as the most heinous thing to happen potentially in the entirety of Woo's Heroic Bloodshed films. He's one of the easiest keeps on the page.
The Baccano entries I can submit to the Anime and Manga subpage, as well.
I should note, though, that Neil Mc Cauley is indeed a character in the film. Robert De Niro's actually.
Danny Trejo's name in the film btw? Apparently it's...Danny Trejo.
Here's a rewrite for The Kurgan
- The Kurgan from Highlander is the Big Bad of the first movie and the Arch-Enemy of The Hero Connor Macleod of the Clan Macleod. Originally a brutal black knight who killed Connor in battle, the Kurgan spent years hunting him down to claim his head and Quickening. Upon finding Connor's mentor Ramirez, the Kurgan dueled Ramirez, took his head and then proceeded to rape Connor's wife Heather to drive in his victory. In the present, the Kurgan has no compunction killing innocents while he strives to be the final immortal standing and kidnaps Connor's present-day lover to gain an advantage. His backstory even reveals he had murdered his own teacher, the only man who had ever shown him kindness and trained him for the Game. Upon finding out Heather was really Connor's wife, the Kurgan wasted no time gleefully rubbing in how he had raped her to Connor's face.
edited 16th Sep '13 10:23:13 AM by Lightysnake

The fact that the entry listen his paralysis and disfigurement is seriously off putting given Lecter did that to him in return for him having raped children, and in the book, his sister since they were kids.
Verger's the only one in the Silence of the Lambs saga I'd put in, aside from maybe Grutas and potentially Hannibal in the NBC show depending how this pans out