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Sure. One villain out of the ensemble may or may not be more prominent/important than the others. Best example I can think of is Star Wars: The Clone Wars: you have Dooku, Grievous, and Maul running around, but in the end everyone is Palpatine's bitch.
^ That sounds closer to Co-Dragons to me.
Edited by ReynTime250
I believe that Big Bad Ensemble is counted as sub-trope of Big Bad. As it is normally the case that only the sub-trope is listed in such cases because any example of the sub-trope is automatically an example of the super-trope and would therefore be classed as duplication. Therefore it shouldn't be listed unless the example is vastly different to Big Bad Ensemble.
From the onset, it appears Big Bad Ensemble is meant to be more than one Big Bad who don't work for each other and share equal roles in the story. I get why listing Big Bad itself would be incredibly redundant if the work already has two or more or them, unless one of the Big Bads takes center stage above all others.
For context, this discussion came about from Genshin Impact, which has two confirmed Big Bads: the Tsaritsa of the Fatui, and the other Celestial Twin; Aether/Lumine of the Abyss Order. It's possible the Unknown God may be one as well but, given how little we know of her at the moment and how little of a role she plays beyond kickstarting the plot, that may be overstretching it as of now. Genshin Impact is still new with content confirmed to be coming in the future, so the context of Big Bad may very well change in due time.
^^^ Couldn't really think of a better example, sorry (though I feel that Co-Dragons is an oversimplification). I was answering under the impression of "one singular Big Bad but a multitude of other slightly less important and unaligned villains running around."
I don't know much about Genshin, but in the context of it being a new work with multiple villains, neither of which are overly prominent over the other, then yeah, Big Bad Ensemble works best, and a singular Big Bad should not be listed.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor
I'd say rule of thumb is, if none of the villains stand out as more of a threat, then Big Bad Ensemble stays. But if there's one of them who's clearly the central villain then they can still be considered the Big Bad.
If a story has a Big Bad Ensemble, would it still be okay to also put Big Bad as an example?