Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

May be best to wait for a proper ep

and Fine. I was just wondering. I didn't remember the exact number.

Edited by Bullman on Sep 6th 2020 at 11:59:35 AM

@Bullman: I'll get the Gredenko EP up later tonight. Been busy trying to finish up a story of mine first and playing shiz and things.

No worries, it's fine.

Edited by Tyk5919 on Sep 6th 2020 at 1:51:42 PM

@Tyk: Cool. I wasn't trying to rush anyone. I was just curious. I'm sorry if it came off that way.

Edited by Bullman on Sep 6th 2020 at 1:35:32 PM

to Gregorious, Preston and Wentworth.

Oh, Ti M Ber 1566, I just wanted to comment on what you said earlier. I personally think villains believing themselves to be good and that they're doing good things is a Mitigating Factor. An unjustifiable act is an unjustifiable act, of course, but if a villain sees themselves as good, then that means they're deluded and can't see the wrongness of their actions. If a villain realizes that what they're doing is evil but still do it, then there's no excuse. Like the guy who says "I Was Just Following Orders" and thinks that's enough when he could have disobeyed those orders.

But I do see your point. A villain's insistence that they're good despite all evidence to the contrary can be grating in its own right.

Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 6th 2020 at 4:04:15 PM

I sort of see what you mean there. But you need to keep in mind that there's a fair share of Knight Templars who thought they were in the right that more than make the cut. Examples being Light Yagami, Zamasu, Yhwach, Ego, and John Doe.

Sargeras is perhaps the most stand out example of someone not counting solely because they think they are doing the right thing even if said thing is universal genocide.

Knight Templars are allowed for this trope as long as their supposed noble goals are simply an excuse to gain power/a cheap rationalization and they're not really aiming to do actual good. If they do have any sincerely altruistic motiviations they fall under Well-Intentioned Extremist and cannot qualify, no matter how heinous and evil they are.

Edited by WaryHoglet on Sep 6th 2020 at 12:24:35 PM

Which is basically the issue with Sargeras as Lore said. Even if his goals and methods are absurdly contradictory, nothing else overwrites him truly believing that when he's done, new life not tainted by the void will return.

I mean Seymour from Final Fantasy X commits mulitple attempted genocides and wants to become an Eldritch Abomination to wipe out everyone on the planet, but is disqualified because he sincerely believes that death is just a "sweet, endless dream" and that killing everyone is more merciful than having them continue to live in a post-apoclyptic wasteland, so yeah characters who supposed good intentions can only qualify if it's clear that they don't really believe in them and the actual goal is purely selfish.

The thing about being a Knight Templar is that it doesn't matter how brutal or hypocritical you are, if you have any genuine altruism, you simply can't qualify as a Complete Monster.

With one interesting exception: Charles Holcombe, profiled as "Cleaning house- fixing what's wrong with the world. He's deeply rationalized this behavior, and while he certainly knows the killing is wrong, he truly believes that he's doing the world a great service."...except he doesn't just Kill the Poor, he puts them through a Death Course first, making him count.

Well, that's why I said I saw it as a mitigating factor, not outright disqualification.

So essentially, he counts because even though he has an altruistic (for him) goal, some of the things he does are purely For the Evulz and not justified by his motivation, which is why Yhwach and Zamasu also count. Is that right?

Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 6th 2020 at 4:57:15 PM

That's part of it. Another part of it is that, at least in Zamasu's case, he's fully aware that he's the only one who will benefit from his Zero Mortals Plan.

Can't speak for the other 2, but for Holcombe, yeah. If he JUST killed the people and wasn't so sadistic about it, it'd be a much tougher case.

Certain things I don’t vividly remember about Gredenko, so be interesting to discuss when the time for an EP comes.

Yeah pretty much.

Yhwach has been a pretty controversial figure on this thread to my knowledge with many trying to get him off. Even knowing that he wanted to undo the original sin and create a world of immortality and that he wanted to inflict a Mercy Kill on his father, what cements Yhwach as a CM in my opinion are two things: his selfishness, and his sadism. His primary motivation is to escape death, and he will kill anybody, even his devoutly loyal Dragon Haschwalth, if he deems it necessary. He also enjoys himself a little too much when he is torturing those two arrancars in his first scene, and takes sadistic pleasure in mentally tormenting Ichigo when he reveals his future manipulation power.

If it weren't for those two traits, I would probably vouch for him being cut.

Yeah, I agree. Backstabbing his most loyal followers in the way he did seems quite monstrous to me, and none of it is justified by his motivation.

Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 6th 2020 at 5:08:54 AM

Yeah, we've had enough multi-page discussions about Yhwach and if anything can be read as sympathetic enough in him to warrant a cut and concluded he's a keep for now at least enough times to call him closed until something new actually comes out.

Additionally, a Knight Templar can count if they have Ignored Epiphany moments where they realize what they’re doing is wrong, but rationalize themselves back into their evil ways. There are a few such C Ms.

• Constantine, by John Shirley: Mammon, son of Satan, decides to kick-start the apocalypse and bring Hell on Earth. To do so, he takes possession of the scavenger Francesco, corrupts him with false promises of power and luxury, and drives him into a killing spree, claiming the life of ten people. He also sends assassins after Constantine and his allies. Abducting the psychic Angela Dodson, Mammon attempts to break her will by forcing her to watch human misery and crimes, and when this fails, offers her to be raped by Francesco. Eventually to rise on Earth, he takes possession of her body and attempts to have her sacrificed by his accomplice Gabriel.
• King Constantine III, from part 1 of season 2's "Avalon" and issues 10-12 of the "Clan-Building" comic book arc, is a greedy, ambitious Scottish lord who manipulates the noblewoman Finella so he can murder King Kenneth and seize the crown. A brutal tyrant, Constantine also directs his wrath against the Gargoyles, slaughtering all he finds and intending on their complete eradication. Showing no care for the rules of war, Constantine has a messenger executed and intends in massacring the forces and allies of would-be King Kenneth III, even threatening to kill Kenneth's young son in front of him.
• Daclaud Heinfroth, aka Dr. Dominiani, is the first of the Cerebral Vampires, Desperate to uncover the truth behind madness, Dominiani experiments on all those who fall into his clutches with horrific mental torture until they are insane, wasted shells. Those he tires of are given to his vampire orderlies or hungry dogs to rip apart. To seize greater power, Doniniani attempted to manipulate a bloody war against Kartakass to murder its lord Harkon Lukas and his own lover, Lukas's daughter Akriel. Involved in the plot to destroy famed monster hunter van Richten, Dominiani only cared that he could break the mind of such a famous stalwart against the darkness of Ravenloft.
• Feast of Goblyns: Radaga is a ruthless, vain cleric who made a deal with the Dark Powers for youth and beauty. Obtaining the Crown of Souls, Radaga drains the life from women to stay beautiful, twisting other men into goblyns or undead monsters and directing them to massacre all in their path. Torturing a handsome woodsman's wife and family to death for the "crime" of not adoring her before torturing him in turn, Radaga utilizes his dying curse against others for her amusement. Radaga is also fond of Human Sacrifice and torture, intent on killing until she has carved out her own domain.
• What if the Incredibles Got Older ?: The Screenslaver and Winston Deavor are made into a Composite Character, and lack the redeeming or sympathetic qualities of the former, while being much more villainous than the latter. This version of Deavor was a disgruntled former agent of the Superhero Relocation Program, who felt society has lost its way by accepting Supers back into the public. As the Screenslaver, he brainwashes hundreds of Supers into an army and attacking the public, such as what he does to Frozone, and promotes fearmongering of a Super uprising in society in hopes of turning the public against them. After he brainwashes Bob and Helen Parr, it's revealed Deavor plans on having his army commit a terrorist attack and kill civilians at an amusement park. When foiled by the Parr children, he arms himself with a bomb and takes a roller coaster full of people hostage, intending as taking as many as he can with him. During the ensuing fight, his attempts to justify himself are shot down, showing his motivations boil down to seeing Supers as "lesser" than normal people.
• ProudNintendoFan's series (part 1, part 2, part 3): Shao Kahn is the brutal tyrant of Outworld who is solely motivated to conquer other realms. Upon invading Edenia, he wipes out entire villages and murders its ruler, King Jerrod, but not before taunting him that he'll take his family as his own. When his attempts to merge Earthrealm via the Mortal Kombat tournament fails, Shao Kahn beats Shang Tsung and only spares him when the latter formulates a plot to lure and kill the Earthrealm warriors in an Outworld tournament, in which Shao Kahn orders his forces to raid the Shaolin temples and slaughter the monks there to lure Liu Kang. When he learns that Reptile was defeated in the tournament, he informs Reptile that his entire race went extinct to increase his loyalty, leaving out the fact that Shao Kahn himself was responsible for exterminating them. During his fight with Liu Kang, Shao Kahn tries to strangle Kitana when she intervenes, murder Liu Kang after he's defeated, and then orders his forces to slaughter the Earthrealm warriors anyways. He later invades Earthrealm illicitly, where he wipes out entire cities and absorbs the countless souls lost in the conflict to increase his own power.
• Let Us Prey: Sergeant Jim MacReady is a police sergeant who hides behind his devout Catholicism to act out on his murderous lusts. Having claimed the lives of several young men, MacReady brutally beat his latest victim to death all with his bare hands while calling him a "slut", keeping the dismembered remains of his victims in his house. After Six discovered his secret, MacReady loses whatever sanity was holding him together, setting fire to the police station and violently murdering two of his constables and an inmate. Zealous and depraved, it speaks volumes that even Satan himself viewed MacReady as irredeemable.
• Message from the King: Paul Wentworth is heavily involved in Duke's prostitution ring with many of his patients also prostitutes; one of them is Bianca King. Hired by Mike Preston to deal with Bianca, Wentworth viciously tortures her before beating her to death. Wentworth would then hire cops to kill Bianca's brother Jacob and would kill Preston's employee when he arrives at Preston's home to collect the money for killing Bianca.
• Random Acts of Violence (2019-2020): The Man is a retired Serial Killer who is obsessed with ''Slasherman'' creator Todd for supposedly keeping his work alive. Having killed a young Todd’s mother after Todd witnessed him committing murder, the Man spared Todd only because he drew a picture of his murder. After hearing that Slasherman is coming to an end, the Man took it upon himself to come out of retirement and brutally murder people in the style of the comic—children included—in order to provide inspiration for Todd. Killing Todd’s friends and wife Kathy to provide more inspiration, the Man hopes the final Slasherman issue will inspire other killers around the world like himself to go on a murder spree in order to "kill the world."
• Unhinged: The man who calls himself "Tom Cooper" is a deranged psychopath who opens the film breaking into his ex-wife's house to murder her and her boyfriend. Enraged when protagonist Rachel Hunter doesn't apologize for honking her horn at him, he dedicates himself to showing her how bad her day can get by stalking and terrorizing her; killing her best friend and lawyer Andy; attacking her younger brother Fred, killing his fiancée; and forcing Fred to write a hate letter to Rachel, and has him recite it to her over the phone. After attempting to burn Fred to death, "Tom" gives chase to Rachel once more, showing no care or concern over the resulting collisions and civilian deaths, and tries to strangle Rachel's 15-year-old son when he gets his hands on him.
• The Bad Girl: Fukuda is a shady Japanese businessman that participates in illegal trades and the worst of the many lovers of the titular Bad Girl, offering her protection and a new identity as "Kuriko" in exchange for becoming one of his many mistresses and partner-in-crime. Revealed to be a degenerate fetishist, Fukuda uses the Bad Girl as his Sex Slave and forces her into humiliating and painful sexual acts to satiate his own lust and break her will, making the Bad Girl develop genital injuries and Stockholm Syndrome towards him. A heartless man with a seemingly inoffensive appearance, Fukuda's torture of the Bad Girl would haunt her for years.
• Stargirl (2020): Dr. Shiro Ito, the Dragon King, is a sociopathic Mad Scientist of the Injustice Society of America who had crafted plagues during World War II and had attempted to destroy New York in the past. Ito frequently abused his daughter Cindy to turn her into a tool, even gassing her when she objects to him imprisoning her. Having captured Shining Knight, Ito broke his mind to force him to live as a mundane janitor, amused at his suffering. Designing a device to focus the power of Brainwave, Ito shows no care for the tens of millions who will die to satisfy his scientific curiosity in Project: New America.
• X-Men: Evolution:
  • Duncan Matthews started off as a typical Jerk Jock, but become something far worse in his final appearance. After Jean Grey dumped him when he described her mutant gifts as a problem, Duncan slowly develops a hatred of mutants. After graduating high school, Duncan got a job at a mining company and harassed mutants in his spare time. After trying to harass a couple of the younger X-Men students, former X-Men Spyke drives him off, destroying his car in the process. In revenge, Duncan steals some mining equipment from his job and he and his friends attack the Morlocks, mutants who live under the sewers. Duncan and his gang throw bombs down the sewer, attempting to kill as many Morlocks as they can and then force the survivors to the surface, so Duncan and his gang can kill them with laser torches. While confronting Spyke, a mutant child named Leech intervenes, trying to protect Spyke, so Duncan decides to try and shoot him.
  • Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's half-brother who uses magic to unlock his dormant mutant gene and became the unstoppable Juggernaut. Resenting his brother since childhood, Juggernaut attempted to kill Xavier, but Xavier defeated him and had him sent to prison. Later, Mystique frees Juggernaut, wanting him to get Xavier's computer Cerebro for her. Juggernaut goes on a rampage, derailing a train, before reaching Xavier's mansion. Juggernaut attempts to kill both Xavier and Mystique after Mystique yells at him for destroying Cerebro. The X-Men and Brotherhood defeat Juggernaut, but Mystique frees him again later. Juggernaut goes on another rampage, heading towards a dam near a small town, attempting to destroy the dam and flood the town in order to wipe out 63,000 lives.
  • Mesmero is a mind-controlling mutant and a servant of Apocalypse. Originally having limited mental powers, Apocalypse boosted his mental powers and promised him more if Mesero freed Apocalypse. Mesmero takes a job at the circus and encounters the X-Men. Mesmero torments Jean Grey with nightmares to break her will and make her his puppet. Mesmero forces Jean to mind control other teen X-Men, forcing them to steal 3 rings that serve as a key to the first door imprisoning Apocalypse. Mesmero forces the X-Men he mind controls to fight their teammates, while he escapes. Mesmero gets the second key by tricking Magneto into destroying a spider creature that was a guardian meant to keep Apocalpyse imprisoned. Later Mesmero allies with Mystique and take her to Apocalpsye's tomb and announces she is the third key. Mesmero tells Mystique to put her hand on the final door, which turns her to stone and frees Apocalypse. Mesmero knows that Apocalypse will kill millions of people to achieve his vision of a better world when freed, but does not care, wanting the power Apocalypse promised him.
• Golden:
  • Golden Book Hardcovers Masters of the Universe series: Skeletor is the sworn enemy of the Masters of the Universe, who constantly tries to take over Eternia. Always insulting his minions, Skeletor at one point flooded an entire village full of people, nearly drowning them, solely so he could enslave fishermen to force them to dig for Eternium. Later on, Skeletor has his minions seek out the components to the Sunbird, weapon and after building it, sent it towards the Royal Palace in hopes of destroying the whole palace and all people within it.
  • Golden Super Adventure Princess of Power series: Catra is She-Ra's nemesis who does everything she can to make life miserable for the heroes. At one point, Catra kidnaps Glimmer to force her mother, Queen Angella, to surrender the kingdom of Bright Moon to her; Catra later on tricked Glimmer into wearing the Crooked Crown, leading her to nearly drown a group of sailors and then almost flooding the entire village and all the people in it, while Glimmer herself felt the unbearable pain from the effects of the crown. After being defeated, Catra decided to ruin the wedding between Ellanella and Daniel by having Ellanella turned into a deer, and then sent her black panther to turn her and Daniel into stone and petrify them.
• Apophis's "Choirs of Bitterness"; "Reincarnation of the Serpent God"; & "Tear Down Your Walls": Apophis is the god of chaos and destruction, who despised all life and thus came into frequent conflict with Ra, the creator of life, for the fate of the world. Conquering a region for himself where all "light and joy are gone", he sows chaos among humans to revel in their destruction and tries to destroy the souls of those traveling to the afterlife. His ultimate goal was to destroy Ra and the Sun to destroy most life on Earth and condemn the survivors to eternal agony.
• Dog Fashion Disco's "Pogo the Clown": John Wayne Gacy, despite being a respected pillar of his community, hides a secret sadistic streak. Stalking the bars at night, Gacy picks up teenage boys and young men, ostensibly for sex. In actuality, he kidnaps them and locks them in his basement. He then dons clown makeup and tortures his victims to death before dismembering their bodies and hiding them in his crawlspace.
• Beast of the Airwaves: The Fall of a Television Icon: Ted Bundy is a Serial Killer who becomes Washington State Press Secretary and then a popular talk show host. Continuing his activities during these careers, he moves his hunting grounds to New Jersey after his show relocates to New York City. After his car is stolen and the body of a teenage girl is found in it by the police, Ted manages to shift the blame onto the carjacker, getting the man falsely convicted of her murder. When his wife discovers a shoe box containing Polaroid pictures of many of his victims, he tries to kill her as well to cover up his crimes. Having murdered at least 231 women and girls, Ted Bundy demonstrates just how terrible a celebrity can be.
• Project: ZERO: Doctor A is an alien pirate who sends androids to planets across the galaxy to exterminate all life there and sell its resources. Setting her sights to Earth, Doctor A first sends Zero, later named Nick, to continue her genocidal pursuit, but when he rebels against her, she sends other androids to finish Nick's goal. When One captures Nick, she orders One to torture him as punishment for his betrayal. After all of her androids are defeated, she decides to destroy Earth by firing a beam from her spaceship to rupture its crust and create enough volcanic explosions to blow the planet into oblivion or lower the global temperature to freezing levels. After Nick defeats her, she still tries to fire the beam onto Earth as one final act of spite.
• WinneToons (a.k.a. WesToons): Chief Matto-Sih, unlike the other largely peaceable Natives, is an arrogant renegade who only cares about wealth, power, and eliminating his rival, Winnetou. Matto-Sih conducts violent raids against both settlers and Natives alike, and during one of them nearly kills a baby with a hail of Flaming Arrows. Matto-Sih frequently collaborates with the unscrupulous logger Santer, but just as frequently betrays him, at one point abandoning Santer's men to die in the wilderness while also planning to later dispose of Santer. Matto-Sih has enslaved Winnetou's tribe in order to force them to dig for gold; framed other Natives for potentially deadly attacks on railroad workers; attempted to burn down an entire town full of people; and brainwashed another Chief into siding with him for the sole purpose of using him and his tribesmen as disposable Cannon Fodder against the U.S. Cavalry.

Edited by ACW on Sep 7th 2020 at 2:36:56 PM

So I've got a cut to propose here, specifically cutting Boticelli Remorso from The Tale of Despereaux. In short, I think that he should be cut because he's one of those candidates who only exceed the heinousness standard if you apply Fridge Horror.

To get them out of the way, the only three crimes we can definitively attribute to Remorso are 1) forcing Despereaux (the protagonist) into a gladiator match with a cat, 2) ordering his rats to kill Princess Pea, a human that they capture, and 3) trying to feed Despereaux to a cat. The other crimes that were attributed to him by the write-up are how he's killed others and placed their skeletons across his domain and how he forces other mice into a gladiator match. The first crime is honestly a case of overselling it because, looking over the scene that shows his territory, most of the "skeletons" are just fish and chicken bones that they've obviously scavenged from human dumps. Sure, there's like one human skull shown, but there's noting to imply that the rats actually killed that person and they could've just scavenged human remains. This is one case of Fridge Horror being applied here, as I mentioned previously.

Onto his other crime, the fact that he keeps an arena would imply that it has been used a couple of times, but there's no concrete evidence that he uses it to force multiple mice to fight off a cat. We don't get to witness it on-screen, there are no mice remains to even imply that they were killed by the cat, and it's not even mentioned if it has even killed anybody. Sure, the mice residents do fear that the rats will "eat" anyone banished to the dungeon, but, again, this is just off-screen and we're not even sure if they were even killed via the gladiator match. Again, this is Fridge Horror at play here, though not to the same extent as the previous crime, if I'm being fair.

In the end, we have a villain who has three counts of atttempted murder and his other crimes are based on Fridge Horror. Just like Admiral Zhao and Ghetsis, I don't think there are enough on-screen crimes or even deeds that are strongly implied enough to veer out of Fridge territory. Therefore, I'd say he's a , though I'll leave it up to you guys. What do you all think?

I checked through the Disney CM page. Most of the villains there seem pretty appropriate, but there is a duo I want to contest.

Sir Miles Axelrod and Professor Zundapp are the villains of Cars 2. And, having watched the movie more times than I care to admit, I don’t think they meet the baseline heinous standard.

Let’s start with the body count. Their body count is limited to two cars, with four others that they attempted to kill. That’s low, but we’ve had other keepers with low body counts. But of those six cars, five were believed to be spies (only four were in reality, but they didn’t know that), and killing spies is pretty standard villain fare. Even the torture of one of the spies isn’t really much to go on, because the torture was a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique for the identity of the spy’s accomplice and not Cold-Blooded Torture, and the Professor doesn’t extend it any longer than he needs to. The alternative was killing every car the spy talked to, so the torture was the Lesser of Two Evils. Despite injuring several pro racers, the villains don’t actually kill any of them (and they could have if they wanted to) until the third race, where they attempt to kill Mc Queen, but only because he became a Spanner in the Works and simply injuring him would not have had enough impact to get the public to abandon alternative fuel. And it’s not like oil is scarce; the film only says it will run out eventually, but at the moment, there’s plenty. Yes, they’re evil, but nothing special.

Additionally, there is their shared Freudian Excuse that “lemons” like them are victims of Fantastic Racism; many factories won’t even produce parts needed for their engines. This is admittedly an Informed Attribute, but Mater claims it’s true and not just rhetoric. So I think we should cut them.

I'll vote on the Cars 2 baddies later, but Botcelli sounds like a cut.

EDIT: I'll vote to keep the Cars 2 duo.

Edited by falcontalons on Sep 6th 2020 at 2:19:35 AM

I'd disagree with cutting Sir Miles Axelrod and Professor Zundapp. They also have the crime of attaching a bomb to Mater to both kill him and anyone else near him, which could've killed dozens of innocent cars. Within the realm of Cars, I'd say that's enough to pass the heinousness standard. They're Freudian Excuse also falls flat because 1) they're targeting cars who didn't even harass them and 2) they're more concerned of making a profit from discrediting alternative fuel rather than actually getting justice.

Edited by DrUnknown on Sep 6th 2020 at 2:09:53 AM