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
Is anyone familiar with The Magdalene Sisters? If so, does this fit?
- Complete Monster: Sister Bridget is more of a sadistic warden than a nun. She doesn't even have the excuse of her religious belief since she knowingly commits a number of the sins she preaches against.
I looked at ACW's drafts on the Max Payne entries and I have come up with a few revisions regarding spoiler tags. Let me know what you think:
- From the first game we have Corrupt Corporate Executive Nicole Horne. As a member of the Inner Circle, she was responsible for Project Valhalla, a program that was developing a highly addictive psychotropic Super Serum when it turned out to be a psychosis-inducing poison. In response to this discovery, she decided to market it as Valkyr to the public, thereby becoming an untouchable corporate crime lord who directly and indirectly killed thousands. When Michelle Payne inadvertently received information that would expose the Valkyr Conspiracy, Nicole had a horde of drugged-up maniacs slaughter both Michelle and her baby daughter. Over the following years, Horne went on to control the entire criminal underworld of New York through her pawn, Angelo Punchinello, and made a play into politics by putting a hit on the Mayor. Through all of this Horne has no clear motivations, no enlightened intent, no emotion; she is just pure evil. The worst part is when she tells Max: "The deaths of your wife and daughter were necessary, inevitable; it is DONE. You cannot bring them back. Nothing you do will make it any better."
- The Big Bad of Max Payne 3 is Victor Branco, the The Man Behind the Man who recruits Max himself as a fall guy for his criminal enterprises. In his plan to seize control of the family fortune and garner sympathy for elections, Victor has his own brothers murdered, one by being burned alive. Max soon discovers the extent of his evil: Victor runs a secret ring where the poor of Brazil are kidnapped, held hostage and are harvested of all their organs for the black market organ trade.
edited 15th Jan '14 12:08:26 AM by sanfranman91
Some entries I found
- Gaea. Her list of crimes already includes tricking Leo into burning his mother alive and forcing him to live with the guilt for years, kidnapping Piper's father and inflicting torturous Mind Rape on him, possessing Hazel's mother into nearly raising Alcyoneus (and ruining Hazel's life) and burning Frank's mansion and killing his grandmother. Not to mention her reputation in Greek mythology ("mother of all bad guys", the original Bigger Bad behind Kronos).
The series isn't over yet and the last book comes out this fall. I also found this about Gaea:
- Gaia's Revenge: In the literal sense. Gaea seeks to take revenge on the gods for usurping her children, the Titans. Interestingly, she does not have nature-based powers, as in the original mythology this was the domain of Pan.
- Complete Monster: In one story, a grandmother and her grandson are killed in cold blood by a thug named Goroemon. Why? The child had accidentally stepped on his foot. The child's uncles, one of them a monk named Denko, grab swords and seek vengeance. The father does nothing.
Aside from little context, half of this entry has nothing to do with the trope.
- Complete Monster: The most iconic example is Ma'ar, also the series' Big Bad, a man who body-hops his way through the centuries since his original death in the Mage Wars and in each incarnation manages to rack up a spectacular body count, and a record for utter depravity. Interestingly, he actually started out as something of a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but managed to Villain Decay himself into a Complete Monster.
- Special mention also has to go out to the minor villain Hadanelith, the serial rapist/Mind Rapist from the Mage Wars trilogy.
- In Foundation, the first book of the latest trilogy, we have Master Pieters, a man who puts children as young as four and five to work in a mine, makes them sleep in a basement, feeds them so little that they supplemented their diet by stealing the pig slop whenever they could and beat a child to a bloody pulp with a mallet in front of the rest of the child workers.
Okay Ma'ar is on the Literature page, but the others aren't. Though Master Pieters seems pretty bad.
Okay, Lord Vyce
, I argued against him before, and I'll do so again, he's not heinous enough. As for Mechakarra, Malachite, and Lotso, never again them, though Mechakarra in TBF I felt was more of a side villain and didn't stand out too much from his fellow villains and the executor (also Mechakarra's TBF entry doesn't get into what he does).
edited 14th Jan '14 10:32:17 PM by DrPsyche
@ Ambar - He's been brought up three or four times now, I think that is a good indication that he's going to be a persistent case that needs to be put down now.
For the Metal Gear Rising Revengeance examples, Desperado wouldn't count even if we didn't have a rule against corporations. 99% of them are Punch-Clock Villains who were forced into working for them because they lacked any other alternatives, and the mission where you get to hear their supressed thoughts gives every last mook you cut to pieces a sympathetic backstory. As for the Winds of Destruction, only Sundowner would count; Jetstream Sam gets given plenty of redeeming features, Mistral had a Sympathetic Backstory and Monsoon had a fucked up history, whilst Sundowner had a rather normal childhood, with the worst thing that happened to him being that he didn't have the money to go to college so he joined the military and learned to love the slaughter.
The nameless scientist doesn't count because he appears in one scene, doesn't even have a name, and has the excuse of Just Following Orders (since all of his heinous deeds were orders from above).
Okay, so after watching Turnabout Storm, I have to ask why Ace Swift is not considered a Complete Monster?
Let's look at the facts shall we?
First off, he blackmails other ponies so that we can win races and claim said races prizes. Dick move certainly, but so far it only qualifies him as a Jerkass, so let's move on.
Second, he was blackmailing Cruise Control by threatening to take his little sister off life support if he didn't co-operate. Threatening the life of a child just to win a race should at least put him over the Moral Event Horizon.
And finally, he was guilty of attempted murder. Which, as was stated at the beggining of Turnabout Storm is considered to be the most heinous possible crime in Equestria. And he didn't hesitate once in trying to murder his assistant, just because she didn't want to keep helping him hurt ponies anymore.
So let's recap shall we?
Heinous crime? Yes, AND petty crime to boot.
No remorse or Pet the Dog moment? None whatsoever.
Treated seriously at all times? While he DOES begin as a Villain with Good Publicity, those who DO know of his blackmail are disgusted by it, even his manager decided that he was crossing a line, and the scene describing his attempted murder is listed on the works YMMV page under Nightmare Fuel for a very good reason.
So, with all this, can anyone please explain to me WHY he doesn't count as a Complete Monster?
Except that this wasn't part of the Ace Attorney series. This was a fan work. And it was firmly established within said works universe just how heinous murder is considered. If Ace had been a human, I could understand. Murder really isn't that big a deal for us, comparatively speaking. But by pony standards, it's almost unthinkable. I believe it's been mentioned before that the crimes heinousness must take into context the standards of the setting.
Okay, I'll bite on why Swift doesn't count. He fails the baseline heinous standard. Just because it's heinous by My Little Pony standards doesn't mean it counts for this trope. And murder is not considered a crime that's heinous enough for this purpose. He only attempts one murder, and the thing with Cruise's sister only pushes him over the Moral Event Horizon.
Also, it being a fanwork isn't an excuse. It still uses Ace Attorney's continuity and references it many times, and the author intended it to fit with the continuity's of both series. She even makes a direct reference to Dahlia, One of the handful of complete monsters approved, and a subtle reference to Redd White, the first Complete Monster in the series. So he has to be compared to Wright's villains, where he fails to stand out.
Okay, I'll bite. So he's not as bad as other Ace Attorney villains.
So what?
If someone was found guitly of murder, do you really think any court would let them go free just because:
"Hey, other people have done worse stuff."
Even if others have committed worse crimes, that doesn't change what he did. And two, Ace Swift isn't from Earth, he's from Equestria and should by the standards of his own world.
So what? "Heinous by the standards of the story" is the key qualifier for Complete Monster. And we've held for long that "not as heinous as other people in the story" == "not heinous by the standard of the story".
So no dice.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman![]()
A Complete Monster is judged by the standard of the work not the planet. If we judged by the standard of planets then people would be able to qualify characters who crimes amount to "being mean."
Even in a world where murder never happens, it's still not enough to hit the bare minimum heinous factor for this trope.
edited 15th Jan '14 1:37:42 AM by Shaoken
@Shaoken
I know that Lotso has come up a lot, but hasn't it usually been in reference to other villains? Ie, so and so is not as bad as Lotso? The only actual attempt I recall at removing him was in the initial discussion.
Though granted, given that every time he's come up somebody in the thread has thought we were trying to remove him and restated the case for why he should stay, maybe he should go on the Never Again list, just so those people can feel secure enough to stop doing that.
@Lunacorva
No on that example. He's not bad enough by Ace Attorney standards, and since the work is a crossover we have to take those standards.
I am starting to agree with—I believe it was Hamburger Time's—argument that any attempt at writing MLP darkfic is inherently ridiculous and should be autocut.
Random question about Sundowner: Are the codecs necessary, or do the cutscenes show enough of his monstrosity?
Here's a new write-up for Hayes from Veronica Mars.
- Mercer Hayes of Veronica Mars stands out as one of the vilest rapists in the setting whose crimes are not treated as backstory. He selects college girls with his accomplice who sets it up for him to drug random girls at the local parties, creating a panic on the campus. He rapes the girls and shaves their heads afterwards just to humiliate them further. His reasoning amounts to "getting into a girl's pants the normal way takes too long".
From Under Siege:
- Complete Monster: More or less lampshaded by Strannix when Krill decides to drown most of the ship's crew in order to bain Ryback into killing himself trying to save them.
- The villains in 2 are even worse; they are plotting the deaths of 8 million people for profit. Several of them are also clearly sadists.
I brought these up here
, but got no response. In short, the first movie's villains are too comedic to properly qualify while the second is a group with no standouts.
Dick Jones' write-up on RoboCop (1987) mentions Clarence Boddicker to have some Pet the Dog moments (presumably letting the hookers go). Weren't these moments disqualified as redeeming traits?
Question: how are reality show examples treated? I found this odd link on Kitchen Nightmares:
- Moral Event Horizon: Samy crosses it in the first minutes by threatening violence on a customer who complained at having to wait for over an hour for one pizza, calling the police on the customer then demanding the customer pay for the pizza that he hadn't received. Amy herself crosses it immediately after when she makes a pizza really spicy in the hopes of hurting another customer, and later fires her only waitress when she asked a question. Amy is proud to have fired hundreds of staff, seeing it as a badge of honor. Her personality is so toxic that Complete Monster is something that is never applied in Real Life, but if it could as far as cooking goes she would be one.
The last line is basically passive-agressive ranting that someone can't qualify, then stating they do anyway. It skirts dangerously close to RL examples. Do I even need to say that a somewhat mean cook fails heinousness?
And last, some examples gleaned from Harry Potter YMMV pages that weren't qualified for Monster.Harry Potter. I brought them up a long time ago but forgot about them.
From Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- Complete Monster: Quirrelmort is so evil he cannot even touch Harry without burning himself, because Harry's mom sacrificed herself for him.
Quirrelmort? They're different people and Quirrel is possessed. If they mean Voldemort it should plainly state that.
From Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
- Complete Monster: Tom Riddle, aka young Lord Voldemort, qualifies big time.
Horcrux Tom Riddle is quite arguably a seperate entity from Voldemort himself and therefore Made of Evil, being a manifestation of Voldemort's will.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix just has bad indentation.
- Complete Monster: Bellatrix Lestrange and Umbridge are two of the most sadistic, repulsive characters in fiction. Many fans hate Umbridge more than the Big Bad of the series, Voldemort. At least Voldemort had some sort of Freudian Excuse (grew up in an orphanage, hated his Muggle father for never even bothering to take responsibility for him, hated everyone in the orphanage because he was "strange", etc.)
- Umbridge more so. At least Lestrange knows she's evil, admits it, and doesn't try to pretend she isn't. Umbridge, on the other hand, acts under the guise of being on the good side, caring about the Hogwarts students, acting in the best interest of the Ministry of Magic, and acts extremely happy while doing so.
- Additionally, in DH, her actions definitely confirm this and that she was not Just Following Orders. She's more than happy to stay on in the Ministry after Voldemort takes over and cheerfully presides over the show trials of Muggle-borns.
- Umbridge is certainly loyal to the Ministry of Magic, but that most certainly does not excuse the atrocities that she committed. Any decent government would have sacked her (if not prosecuted her), intense loyalty or not. Thankfully Word of God says that she was sent to Azkaban after the events of the series.
- Umbridge more so. At least Lestrange knows she's evil, admits it, and doesn't try to pretend she isn't. Umbridge, on the other hand, acts under the guise of being on the good side, caring about the Hogwarts students, acting in the best interest of the Ministry of Magic, and acts extremely happy while doing so.
edited 19th Jan '14 2:48:07 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"Ugh, just cut those Potter YMMV entries and point to Harry Potter.

I put him up for lack of objection, with a few yeas. he wasn't just in charge, he overthrew the real Fuhrer. I think he handily hits this standard for the Original Series all told.