Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

He's heinous, no doubt. What's lacking is that he does exhibit caring for individuals.

Exactly. It ain't the heinous standard that DQs Tarquin.

Recent events have called that into question for me. Like I said, he seems to be viewing everyone as an asset or some plotline to him. If he can't control it, away it goes.

I acknowledge the ambiguity of the matter, though. Really, I don't buy he cares much for his kids at this juncture, but Malack is a whole 'nother can of ambiguity

Randome aside that doesn't have anything to do with anything, but am I the only one who's kind of surprised that Warhammer Forty Thousand examples are considered admissible? I know we've dismissed several works as "Everyone is so loathsome no one can qualify" (God Of War, for instance) and you'd think 40K would be first and foremost in that regard...

edited 13th Dec '13 4:34:15 PM by HamburgerTime

Well, we also have works like Berserk and Fist Of The North Star.

I kinda wish we'd stop retreading this old ground. We ruled guys like, say, Fabius Bile, go far enough to count here, and Lijah Cuu for the Gaunts Ghosts series. Yes, it's a dark, dark setting, but some people go above and beyond.

edited 13th Dec '13 5:16:02 PM by Lightysnake

I wasn't arguing for its removal; it was just a random comment on something that interested me.

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

anyways, I think God Of War had the final issue is Zeus and Kratos stand out, but both have mitigating circumstances.

IIRC the decision was that Kratos was the worst person in the setting, but due to his love for his family no one could qualify - that is, the worst person in the setting had a redeeming trait.

I want to bring up Todd Alquist from Breaking Bad one last time. It's nearing the end of the year so I think enough time has passed for his inclusion or exclusion to be made definitive.

I just went back to check. It's still 9 keep, 8 cut for Todd.

Yes votes: Lightysnake @ 17242, Very Melon @ 17245, Tommy Fresh @ 17268, Forsetipurge @17278, Turkish Delight @ 17279, A New Man @17282, Toonyloon @17285, Biggles Th 9 @ 17343, Crowley @ 17601

No votes: hodor @ 17396, Amitai @ 17309, Ambar @ 17328, Camberf @ 17330, Sophia Lonesoul @ 17334, Nithael is unsure, Shaoken @ 17369, Occasional Exister @ 17376

edited 13th Dec '13 5:33:56 PM by VeryMelon

Darkman

• Hard to say which one is it between Durant and Strack. An hired crime boss that moonlights as a hitman who takes too much pleasure in doing dirty work or a megalomaniac who has no remorse in hiring some bloodthirsty criminals to solve his problems? Its even also established in the first film's novelization that Durant is far more evil than Strack, who just wanted his father's company for himself and paid off Durant to do the job for him, while Durant has no motivation in the way he does things, possibly aside of Only in It for the Money.

Doesn't really explain Durant, and Strack's section on the character page has this:

• Utopia Justifies the Means: He wants to steal the Bellasarious Memorandum, destroy any of the areas in the city and build a brand new section that will, as he sees it, bring in a new era for the city.

Dead Snow

• Herzog, the Nazi official, definitely deserves this trope. In life he tortured and abused the local populace, to such a degree that his cruelty became the grim stuff of legend for the area. As a zombie he's not much better.

Needs expansion

Dirty Laundry

• The gang leader. Within the space of about 5 minutes he beats and rapes a prostitute and has his men beat and threaten to kill a small boy who refuses to run drugs for him.

Also needs expansion

I've actually been watching Breaking Bad recently so I can weigh in on Todd. I think I'll have to vote cut. He's plenty evil, but he's also exceedingly, exceedingly dim, and I get the impression he "Never had a thought Uncle Jack didn't have first."

Strack is no Well-Intentioned Extremist. He's money hungry and callous, more obsessed with glory and wealth. That whole 'think of the future' bit is when he's trying to convince someone to go along with him.

Durant, in the film's opening scene, wipes out a rival's men and then tortures him by cutting off his fingers with a cigar cutter (with implications he's going to take the next 8 after the second). Durant murders the hero Dr. Westlake's lab assistant and then they set Westlake on fire and blow him up in his lab.

Durant really comes into his own in the (far inferior) sequel, when he has another man tortured to death, kills a reporter in a car bombing after she did a piece about him on TV and is generally an unpleasant dick. Strack is as well. Everything in the first film (most of it) ties back to him and he has no real issue committing murder to cover his ass.

Dirty Laundry is a short film of The Punisher

edited 13th Dec '13 5:53:38 PM by Lightysnake

I replaced the current Majora entry with the rewrite I mentioned in 796. Here's the link YMMV.Majora's Mask.

edited 13th Dec '13 7:35:48 PM by AustinDR

I'm not sure Herzog from Dead Snow actually counts, in the movie his campaign of terror against the Norwegians in entirely Off Stage Villainy and on screen, he just tries to kill the college students who took his Nazi Gold. That's all he does, the students find the gold Herzog stole during WWII and Herzog returns from the grave to get the gold and kill the students for taking it. Herzog kills them in brutal ways, but it seems like if you just give Herzog the gold, he will leave you alone. That seems like pretty standard villainy for a Horror movie villain, not heinous enough to count as a CM.

I forgot Herzog. Yeah, cut. All his backstory is just that. Besides this, he's a generic horror movie monster, nothing more. The Dirty Laundry gangleader...not sure. It's a ten minute film so he has...limited time to say the least, but everything he does in it is vile. He beats and rapes his prostitute and has a little boy beaten and attempts possible murder there for the kid not running drugs

edited 13th Dec '13 8:44:44 PM by Lightysnake

Any comments on my vote on Todd Alquist? I just realized I tied the voting; sorry for muddying the vote even more.

Suggesting/Nominating Gozaburo Kaiba from Yugioh for a Complete Monster. To list his qualifications:

• No redeeming qualities: About the nicest thing that can be said about Gozaburo is that he's an Honest Corporate Executive who does business fairly. However, he's an arms dealer and manufactures tanks, missiles and other weapons and sells them worldwide, so even if he's honest, his business isn't exactly moral. Otherwise, he is ruthless, cruel, selfish, manipulative, and controlling. He makes shows of altruism in donating to an orphanage and giving out toys to them, but this is only for publicity. When Kaiba tells Gozaburo that when he takes over the company he wants to build a theme park, Gozaburo insults Kaiba and confiscates his games, and when Kaiba develops plans for a hologram system for Duel Monsters, Gozaburo tells him that it's a waste to use such technology on games and plans to use the designs for war machines instead.

• He is abusive to his stepson: Gozaburo adopts Seto and Mokuba, but only because Seto challenged him to a game of chess (Gozaburo was a world champ) and threatened to tell the news he was beaten by/scared of a little kid if Gozaburo didn't go through with it. Gozaburo made Seto study until he was exhausted, and encouraged him to become a ruthless businessman like him if he expected to succeed. If Seto failed to meet his expectations, he would be sent back to the orphanage. In the manga it is implied he is physically abusive as well, threatening Kaiba with a switch and forcing him to wear a collar.

• He manipulates all three of his sons: Gozaburo's only other redeeming trait is that he seemed to genuinely care for his biological son, Noah. However, he cares for him only because Noah is his heir. When Noah died and Gozaburo turned him into a Virtual Ghost to save him, he decided a digital being like Noah is unsuited to lead KaibaCorp and abandoned him. He then turned his attention to making Seto his heir, but decided Seto was too ambitious for trying to take over the company before his time, and intended to foil Seto's plan and send him back to the orphanage. He also manipulated Seto's little brother Mokuba in trying to stop Seto, and otherwise is shown to have cared nothing for Mokuba until he became useful.

• He tries to nuke the world: While Noah was a virtual ghost, just for fun he did a computer simulation which showed that KaibaCorp's missiles could destroy the world and reduce the world populace to less than 3% within 30 days. Gozaburo decided to go through with this plan and began constructing a missile satellite with his very intent, leaving only the virtual world intact. Gozaburo digitized his own mind with intent to rule the virtual world after, and years later after his death his virtual self attempted to execute this plan.

• He shows no remorse for these acts: Gozaburo is never shown to have any hint of compassion, regret, hesitation, etc, for anything he does to Seto, Noah, or his plans to destroy the world. In fact, he gloats to Seto and Noah about using Noah's simulation for real and that he will leave them to wander his virtual world forever, and even makes a crack that Noah's simulation would take too long, hence construction of the satellite to speed up the process. When Gozaburo is finally destroyed, it is in the process of trying to kill Seto and the rest of the heroes; he is never redeemed in any way.

So, to sum up: attempts to destroy the world and almost all of humanity mostly because he can, is controlling and emotionally abusive of his sons, both adopted and biological, and sees them as nothing more than pawns to be used, and is emphasized to be cruel, ruthless and heartless with no genuine redeeming characteristics. Any limited benevolent acts he engages in are for publicity or just a means to a villainous end. He furthermore has no backstory or Freudian Excuse to justify his behavior, and is presented as cruel and ruthless because that's just how he is now.

edited 13th Dec '13 9:00:48 PM by DrakeClawfang

Gozaburo was rejected a long time ago. Before I joined the thread, though, so I couldn't tell you why.

Don't worry, HT, you never need to apologize for participating. It does leave Todd as a tie, though, which means 'status quo'

I never saw the Gozaburo debate myself, either. Anyone wanna run a search of it?

I did so, saw his name brought up a few times but a quick glance (not going through the whole thread obs) doesn't show much debate or a reason for rejection.

Wait to double check, the status quo in this case is that he stays off?

Gozaburo Kaiba was cut because he's not Dark Marik and he's not The Spirit of the Millenium Ring. Both of them also tried to bring about The End of the World as We Know It, and unlike Gozaburo, who just intended to digitise the planet (which is what the missile would have done, at least in the English dub) and rule it as Evil Overlord, they planned to kill everyone/banish them to the Shadowrealm.

That's without getting into the fact that on a personal level, Gozaburo not near as sadistic as the two of them. Dark Marik in particular set the heinous bar when it comes to straight up sadism, with each of his Shadowgames being worse than the last. The Sadistic Choice that he presents Yami with in the Season 3 finale is enough to put him leagues ahead of any other contender in the heinous department. The tier system also doesn't come into play here, because Gozaburo, as dictator of the virtual world, has just as much, if not more, control over his victims as Dark Marik does.

Gozaburo's a dick to his kids and tried to Take Over the World. Dark Marik's a sadistic psychopath who cuts a swathe through the cast and tries to kill everyone. The Spirit of the Millenium Ring's a shard of a God of Evil who intends to plunge the entire planet into Hell on Earth. He's badly overshadowed by both of them, and that's without even bringing in Dartz, from the other filler arc, who in addition to being a raging Villain Sue, was also out to destroy all human civilisation, and has an even nastier track record than Gozaburo when it comes to manipulation (repeatedly setting up tragedies so that he can gain control over the kids who emerge from them). Gozaburo's worse than Siegfried von Schroder, and possibly Maximillion Pegasus, but he's overshadowed by Dark Marik, Dartz, and The Spirit of the Ring when it comes to the scale and heinousness of what he tried to do, and by Dark Marik, The Spirit of the Ring, and his own son, Noah, when it comes to personal sadism (watch Noah vs Kaiba & Yami and Gozaburo vs Kaiba back to back. Noah's by far the more vicious of the two).

Gozaburo doesn't qualify. He pales when contrasted to the other Big Bads, and is arguably less of a sadist than his own Dragon.

EDIT: If this isn't enough to convince everyone I will cheerfully do a point-by-point breakdown to demonstrate how Gozaburo is overshadowed by a host of other characters. This strikes me as a case of what Fighteer pointed out above, namely the conflation of Domestic Abuser with Complete Monster.

EDIT: I'll also note that the stuff from the manga where he's implied to be physically abusive of Seto, is not canon in the anime, while his attempt at world domination from the anime is not canon to the manga.

edited 13th Dec '13 9:13:24 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Alright, that makes sense. However, the whole "digitize the world thing" was never in the Japanese anime, Gozaburo was unambiguously planning to kill off 97% humanity with missiles. The dub changed it because, well, 4Kids.

Convincing case for why Gozaburo fails.

@ Shaoken: Yep, Toddy-Boy remaining off would be the result of a tie I believe