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
What subpage would the Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes entries go on?
- Complete Monster: The Evil Monkey in Bolero who kills animals with sadistic glee as it discovers new uses for the tools it devises. Eventually climaxing into it evolving into a mechanical titan who kills the rest of the animals during the construction of its new city. Why? because the animals were causing a racket making it leave the forest it was born in.
Okay, this film is a parody of Fantasia so I doubt it has any keepers. What's more, the Bolero segment is a parody of The Rite of Spring making it even less likely for the monkey to count. But I'll look up the Bolero segment to see for myself.
EDIT: Just watched Bolero. The monkey has no more characterization than the T. Rex from Fantasia. If he's a Complete Monster, I'm the king of Tibecuador.
edited 8th Nov '13 2:20:16 PM by TVRulezAgain
Okay, I'd say we've got the votes to break the DC page. This is going to be a pain in the backside. I'd ask if we should also split Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, but we've only got one or two examples that belong solely to the Pre-Crisis era (Commander Blanx and Bronze Age Mongul I are the only two I can think of). First thing I suppose we should do is actually put Post-New 52 on the page somewhere and move Anton Arcane's second entry under there.
@ACW
Yeah, Brainiac's the standard for Superman heinousness in both Pre-and-Post-Crisis continuities. Nobody—not Luthor, not Mongul I, not Superboy-Prime—can equal him when it comes to sheer bodycount, and personality-wise he's Lack of Empathy personified. The New 52!Brainiac apparently keeps most of Post-Crisis Brainiac's final characterisation, but adds a desire to save the Multiverse from destruction at the hands of "The Multitude" (an apparent army of 5th dimensional beings; as I previously noted, the universe should be over if that's happening) and a wife and son as something of a Morality Pet (he keeps their home city, which they still live in, shrunken on his ship). Yeah. Because that makes sense.
Then again, this is the reboot that's tried to turn Black Manta into a human being by having Aquaman kill his father for reasons that don't fit his characterization at all. The reboot that thinks Jason Todd should be a functional person, be friends with Arsenal, and sleep with Starfire. Colour me annoyed.
edited 8th Nov '13 3:47:54 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Should Mongul, Prime, and Zod be cut then? Or all they all EQUAL in heinousness? Or just different powers? And the same Black Manta that killed a baby and tried to kill his own son? Eesh. I guess we could use Folder Control; anyone wanna start up a DC Sandbox?
edited 8th Nov '13 4:28:31 PM by ACW
Speaking of DC, Vandal Savage needs expansion (BTW, is Grendel the same from Beowulf?). Also, the Marvel animated shows may need a subpage.
I found this on YMMV.Sonic Adventure:
- Complete Monster: Tikal's father Pachacamac who sails over the Moral Event Horizon over a petty desire for power and refusal to accept a peaceful solution. He was retroactively given a Freudian Excuse and made somewhat pitiable by Sonic Chronciles but considering that game is Canon Discontinuity he still applies.
I can't find any discussion on this thread about the character, so it seems to have been added without discussion and approval.
@18750: QUALITY WRITING!
@18753: Hmm, well I did express the opinion I didn't believe Leland counted in the past, but looking over all his deeds again... I can't really think of a good reason not to include him. He's heinous enough, he doesn't have anything redeemable about him, etc. My reservation could be because he's just such an archetypical Corrupt Corporate Executive and wannabe Bond-villain that I don't feel any particular revulsion towards him. But, since he meets the criteria, I guess I'll withdraw my initial objection to him.
@18754: Agree on those cuts and the new write-up for Kane looks a hundred times better.
@18755: I think now everything's mostly good on Ace Attorney. Someone just make a new Kristoph Gavin write-up and it'll be fine.
As for When They Cry, I don't know anything about the series but here are my initial thoughts after reading the page...
- The Orphanage Leader from Miyo's backstory: Since this is from a character's backstory, I assume this is all Offscreen Villainy. If that's not the case, then the entry should make it clearer that we actually see some of his crimes.
- Teppei: Cut. He's described as being abusive but it's never elaborated on how he's abusive. I'd say he fails the heinous standard since the page mentions serial killers and rapists being common.
- Rina: Cut. According to the entry, Rena tries to kill one person and otherwise just gets men in debt. Say that makes her insufficiently heinous.
- Nomura: From the sounds of the entry, the most heinous thing she does is help cause the Great Hinamizawa Disaster... however, since the entry doesn't say what this Disaster is at all, I'm going to say cut until someone can elaborate on her.
- Bernkastel: Huh, that's not a good entry at all. I think we voted she counts but that entry's just bad.
- Black Battler: Sounds like he counts, would prefer a more detailed entry on him though.
@18759: None of the characters from Alice's mind should count since, as mental constructs, they really don't have any choice but to play the role Alice involuntarily created for them. So cut Jabberwock.
Also, the Dollmaker is listed on Monster.VideoGames under Alice: Madness Returns. He should be removed since he's another Wonderland-mental-construct counterpart and his real-world counterpart, Dr. Bumby, already counts and has his own entry.
@18769: Those all look good to me, but the first word in the last sentence for Aki's entry needs to be capitalized.
@18770: I share your reservations and weirded-out-ness on possibly including Myx. I think I'm going to vote against him, not because he says he may act good in the future or for Blue-and-Orange Morality, but because he doesn't sound heinous enough. No other villain may have broken Supes so thoroughly, but when Joker took Myx's powers he turned the world into a hellscape and tortured Batman so horribly that he was left insane. I realize these are in two different ages but if Myx had the same power in the Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? storyline as he did in the Emperor Joker storyline, then Myx could've done a lot worse. You said that Mongul and Brainiac have higher bodycounts then Myx, but with his power levels, couldn't his actions easily dwarf theirs if he cared to? Usually we use the caveat that a lower-tiered villain must be as heinous as possible with what he has. In Myx's case, he has a lot of power and could do substantially worse but he willingly choses not to. He may be as bad as he's ever been written in that storyline, but I'm not sure it's bad enough.
@18773: A Well-Intentioned Extremist Brainiac? Well that's just silly. Agree with separating the current examples and the New52 examples.
@18781: Good entry for Lady van Tassel.
@18782: I'm personally alright with including children in this trope but only if whatever show they're on plays them as they would any other unrealistically "pure evil" human being. I think they should only be discounted on the basis of being children if the show plays these children realistically, i.e. the characters on the show don't write them off as just being "evil" because whatever developmental stage they're in causes them to think and feel differently. Like that Criminal Minds example.
@18801: Cut all those Harvester examples. Mr. Pottsdam, the Sergeant of Arms, and Steve's Mom are characters in a computer simulation, they have no choice but to behave in the way they've been programmed to. The Harvesters are a group and Steve's actions depend on player choice. They all fail so all should be cut.
@18804: Like, zoinks, Scoob! It's the Creep—oh, wait, nevermind. Wrong one. Anyway, prefer the YMMV example for the Creeper.
@18805: Good idea to blank those out.
@18813: You mean worse things happened in the series, or there's worse things he could do in general? If it's the latter, I don't really think that matters so long as he fits the heinous standard for the show.
@18816: Agree with cutting the Evil Monkey. Insert Family Guy joke here.
@18821: I'd say cut unless someone can provide a good argument on why they count.
edited 8th Nov '13 5:19:06 PM by OccasionalExister
Okay here goes..
- Kristoph Gavin from Apollo Justice Ace Attorney after spending much of the game as a supposedly helpful mentor. He is also the man responsible for ushering in 'The Dark Age Of The Law' by getting Phoenix Wright disbarred. When one of Kristoph's old students, Zak, hired Phoenix instead of Kristoph as his lawyer, a furious Kristoph had already been planning to frame an innocent woman for Zak's crime. He had gotten a shy artist named Vera to unknowingly create fake evidence to deal with Phoenix. When Zak resurfaced under a new identity years later, Kristoph took the chance to murder him and frame Phoenix. After this, it was revealed Kristoph had poisoned Vera and her father Drew, intending both to die. Vera survived, barely. To pour salt on the wound, Kristoph gloated how Apollo and Phoenix had triggered his plan, causing Vera to bite her nails- when he had planted the poison as nail polish, knowing her nervous habit. Kristoph enjoyed seeing Vera face conviction for her own father's murder. In the end, he was little but a cruel, petty, selfish man obsess with glory and destroying those who stood in his way.
@ACW
Bronze Age Mongul I, Prime, and AU!Zod haven't had nearly as much time to ratchet up Brainiac's bodycount. As one of the longest running Superman villains around (1958, which to put it in perspective makes him older than almost every Marvel character not named Captain America), and one of the best known, Brainiac has had decades, and countless appearances in both Pre-and-Post-Crisis continuity to wrack up a bodycount somewhere in the tens or even hundreds of billions (in contrast AU!Zod appeared in one storyline, Bronze Age Mongul I hasn't been seen since well, the Bronze Age, and Prime's only been a villain since 2007). Throw in the fact that his modus operandi inherently garauntees a high bodycount, and that he has access to resources that most of the other Superman villains do not (armies of probes, the most advanced technology imaginable), and comparing other villains to him becomes downright unfair.
@Exister
I guess my counterargument to that would be that this version of Mxy wasn't out to end the world. He was out to psychologically cripple Superman and chose to do so by causing the deaths of everybody he knows. His end game was to cause the mental destruction of one man, so I'm not sure that we should be taking into account what he could have done if he'd wanted to.
And here's hoping WIE!Brainiac doesn't last.
edited 8th Nov '13 5:52:46 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
I did a write up on Kristoph myself so here it is so you guys can compare it with Lightysnake's write up.
Kristoph Gavin, mentor to the eponymous attorney and brother of Klavier Gavin is truly awful. To start, he was fired by his former client after losing a game of poker. Kristoph took this personally and killed his client seven years later with a grape juice bottle and framed Phoenix Wright for it. He also forged evidence for Wright's trial so he'd lose his badge and then decided to watch everyone involved in the case. It's implied Kristoph has been forging evidence for years. The then 12 year old forger he requested the evidence from was starting to get in the way, so Kristoph hatched a plan to kill booth the forger and her father to prevent them from being potential witnesses. When only one of his intended victims was murdered, Kristoph pinned the crime on the 19 year old forger. He also plays the role as The Corruptor to his former protege. Had Apollo not found him guilty, he likely would have killed Trucy to satiate his vengeance.
Also could someone add that the national event Phantom sabotaged was a rocket launch and by extension he attempted to murder the astronaut Solomon Starbuck in addition to killing Metis Cykes, Clay Terran, and the real Bobby Fulbright?
@Lightysnake: My point was merely that it's an exaggeration that it was the most heinous thing in the series. And success rate has been brought up as an argument before anyway, when it comes to upstaging.
Check out my fanfiction!Maybe we should have a separate folder for Marvel animation, we have two examples from Spider-Man The Animated Series, a couple examples from X-Men The Animated Series and Red Skull from Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Plus we can add new examples as need be. I'm not sure there any examples from Marvel's Animated DT Vs.
edited 8th Nov '13 10:27:04 PM by TheOverlord
Spiderman The Animated Series and X Men The Animated Series are in the same continuity, Marvel Earth 92131
, so like the DC Animated Universe has it's own subpage of every monster from that collection of series, we should put all of Spider-Man and the X-Men's monsters on their own subpage.
That means Red Skull from Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes will only be put in Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes, as it's a different continuity.
edited 8th Nov '13 11:01:08 PM by VeryMelon
The Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four have none. The Avengers: United They Stand doesn't even have any entries in it's YMMV page.
Iron Man however has this guy:
- Dark Aegis. In the episode he appeared in, he wiped out an entire planet and showed no remorse over the deed, even expressing Fantastic Racism when Iron Man comments on it; used a superweapon to destroy a moon; and was willing to destroy a sun, not caring what'd happen to the solar system they were in.
Given that, he sounds like a keep to me.
edited 8th Nov '13 11:17:57 PM by VeryMelon
Yeah Dark Aegis is likely a keep, Titianium Man was working him in order to get weapons upgrades, but when he found out that Dark Aegis nuked a planet, he turned against him and regarded his actions with moral disgust. A CM is usually subject to Even Evil Has Standards moments and its not like Titanium Man is a saint, but he drew the line at planetary genocide.
Now we don't see Dark Aegis destroy all life on the planet, but we do see Iron man visit the planet after Dark Aegis' destroyed and its a ruined husk with no life on it and we established the planet was populated before Dark Aegis decides to destroy it. Is that a Villainy Discretion Shot or Off Stage Villainy? We do see him destroy a moon and was planning to destroy a sun with his weapons, not caring about the death toll that would cause.
edited 15th Mar '14 7:57:47 PM by TheOverlord

Well, I've not taken part of much of the extra material and alternate universes. Kagato may fit in those. There's worse than attempting to destroy Earth, though.
edited 8th Nov '13 1:08:45 PM by AnotherDuck
Check out my fanfiction!