#villain tropes

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

there's a very specific trope I love that's kind of the opposite of villian escalation that's like "well normally I would hate your guts and fight you on the spot, but I just had to spend a long time with someone who sucks way more, so you're actually pretty chill by comparison"

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

I love villains who convince themselves they have noble goals and/or a code of honour but are ultimately just vain, self-centred monsters whose noble goals are a paper thin self-delusion and whose honour falls away if they want to do something horrible badly enough.

[i-am-trans-gwender]

I don't know what this type of character is called but I like it. Any other examples?

[saintofdaggers]

so here are some slightly weird or underrated tropes that always make me go heart eyes

seemingly normal character suddenly reveals unexpectedly specific niche and/or disturbing knowledge

irredeemable female villains

when a person assumed to be a good guy and/or dead reveals themselves to be the villain hiding in plain sight

kissing/licking a blade, a bullet or some other kind of weapon (or casually gesturing with it)

seeing a character off duty in an outfit that's a completely different style from what they wear to work

villains wearing animal masks or having an animal motif associated with them (bonus points if it's symbolic)

tools for specific jobs being used as weapons in a fight (syringes, hammers, nail guns, power saws, chainsaws etc.)

Pyrrhic victories (victories that come at such a cost that they're practically equal to a defeat)

morally ambiguous characters recognizing themselves in an outright evil villain (seeing the villain as someone they could or could have become)

predictions, hints or clues getting misinterpreted (especially if the consequences are tragic!)

feel free to add your own!!

[jokingmaiden]

absurd villains with unusually realistic boundaries are great actually. i love you mass murderer who would put their life on the line to save a child. i love you cartoon joker who pays his taxes to placate the IRS

[thingsthatcometomymindwheniwrite]

I love you villains who try so hard to redeem themselves but no one lets them. I love you villains who never feel remorse, only the hurt that’s been done to them and the endless rage about it. I love you villains who are soft but clearly try to hold up their facade because they are afraid of being perceived as weak. I love you villains who bend and break the world for a (lost) lover/loved one. I love you villains who bend and break the world because they never experienced anything good in it. I love you villains who are so emotionally unstable everybody is constantly afraid they will lash out any second. I love you villains who are so so apathetic and cold inside, like their heart is made of ice. I love you villains who give the hero jealous looks because it could have been them, if life had been just a little less cruel. I love you villains who are insecure. I love you villains who turn pain into radical passion. I love you villains who are highschool bullies that just suffer through child abuse at home but no one knows. I love you villains who give their all for the one shred of love that is being handed to them by the narrative, knowing they will kill it with their rotten hands and yet proceed because h o p e infects even the darkest mind. I love you villains who were doomed from the beginning. I love you villains who have all the best intentions but a very fucked up way to go about their goals. I love you villains who don’t know what it feels like to not be in pain. I love you villains who are just some guy. I love you villains that are evil for the sake of being evil. I love you villains that are evil because someone said they couldn’t. I love you cliché villains. I love you villains who confusedly soften up a little when someone treats them like a human being for once. I love you queer-coded villains. I love you villains who were forced to eat cement when they were six. I love you dramatic villains. I love you villains that aren’t actually evil, the narrative just hates them. I love you villains that are just some teen girl with mental health issues. I love you villains that get the long awaited happy ending. I love you villains that never kill the hero because then they would feel really bored and lonely. I love you villains who know exactly they are turning into one but continue anyway. I love you villains who criticise societal norms and the flawed status quo. I love you villains who wake up from violent nightmares all the time. I love you villains who don’t have a single glimpse of light in their empty eyes. I love you villains who are children that were manipulated into doing awful things. I love you i love you i love you i love you villains.

[ohfugecannada]

Peak media trope is where the heroes have the same type of queer coding the villains do.

[deconstructthesoup]

The trope that will always, always gut me like a fucking fish is "Oh, you want a villain? I'LL SHOW YOU A VILLAIN" and it dates all the way back to seventh grade, when little me first pulled Nimona off of the graphic novel shelf because she thought the dragon girl on the cover looked cool

[residences-of-the-darkforest]

My all time favourite trope that I will never ever get tired of is the “you love me more than life itself, but you still hurt me so badly that I will never be the same, and you can never take back what you did and it will haunt you forever” story plot

This can take place in many forms too

“you do love me but something in your life made you bitter and you took it out on me and it turned me on a path to darkness and I’ve become a horrible person because of you and you can’t take it back”

“you love me but the last thing you ever said to me was something mean and hurtful and you can never take it back because I died before you could apologize”

“I know you love me but you keep lashing out and I used to love spending time with you but now I fear that anything will set you off so it’s better I just don’t speak to you again”

Just the theme of “you messed up and you can never take it back”

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

One of my favourite things in fiction is when a type of character that so often turns out to be a twist villain that you expect it turns out to not be villainous at all.

The Celebrity Hero, dude who looks like Superman in shining armor and is adored by everybody, and everyone is telling incredible tales of his exploits? He’s every bit as heroic and capable as people say, even if some of the stories are a bit exaggerated.

The Popular Girl, conventionally beautiful, constantly partying and crushed on by all of her classmates? She’s beloved not just because of her looks, but also because she’s genuinely the nicest person around.

The Royal Spymaster, a shady, queercoded fellow in a black cloak who has their little birds everywhere and probably does some dark magic in their basement? They’re the most idealistic and loyal protector of the people in the capital.

The Village Priest, a severe old man with a posture of a scarecrow, who looks like he’s never told a joke in his whole life? His fancy, Church-assigned residence is empty because he sold all of his furniture to help the local peasants get through a famine.

Bonus points if they turn out to be completely useless to the driving conflict and/or profoundly self-destructive because they don’t have a villainous bone in their body.

The Celebrity Hero is such a pure-hearted himbo that he’s easily tricked into believing the protagonist is a villain.

The Popular Girl, behind a smiling facade, is an absolute dysfunctional mess because she keeps making everyone’s problems her own and never opens up because she doesn’t want people to worry.

The Royal Spymaster outright refuses to believe the evidence that the king, whom they’ve known since he was a baby, has been scheming for years to backstab them because they’re one of the last obstacles on his way to absolute power.

The Village Priest is completely sidelined and a laughing stock of his horrifically corrupt Church, because he seems to be the only guy around who actually treats its tenets seriously.

etc., etc.

[wyrm-with-a-why]

What if the villains eyes turned bright blue or yellow when they became evil huh?

[tiptoethewordsgo]

can we bring back the dumb villain trope in media plz

im tired of these overpowered villains with super depressing backstories who the fandom feels bad for (even though they’ve committed more crimes than eric cartman) or villains who get redeemed halfway through the show because the creators got bored .

wheres the villains with a billion henchmen they secretly adore, villains who consistently lose and get beaten up by the main characters every episode and instead of giving up they just continue to make up the most stupid inventions to beat them . villains who have been fighting the main character for so long to the point where they are basically frenemies who fight purely for the sake of routine. villains who loudly tell the hero’s their evil plan because they’re way proud of it and want to show off

i dont want 5 episodes of the villain trying to explain to the protagonist that they actually aren’t a bad guy and are just super misunderstood i need villains who know their evil and get super offended when someone dares suggest anything different or get jealous when the mc finds a new arch nemesis who’s way eviler than them .

like yea having well written villains who are angry at society or whatever is cool but what about the episodes where the mc and villain reluctantly have to work together to fight off a greater evil and realize they are actually a great team but they both pretend to be disgusted with each-other when caught by the side characters laughing .

what about the episodes where the hero and villain abandon their duties to compete against each other in something just for bragging rights (like a race, or hotdog eating contest— opening up restaurants and seeing who’s more popular. even better when the mc opens up their shop simply because the villain did so first and they want to fuck with them) .

wheres the villains who are just completely obsessed with the main character and the main character who’s equally obsessed with the villain ( not that they’d ever admit it, ew. )

and dont get me wrong i LOVE a good backstory but its so much funner when instead of the backstory redeeming the villain its so stupid you can’t help but laugh . or when they DO have a really sad backstory and the protagonist is like “damn i know a real good therapist but unfortunately i still have to beat ur ass”

( i doubt many ppl will see these but plz give recommendations for shows with villains like this 💔 i am DYING over here . )

[enbeemagical]

btw you know how the villain often wants to Take Over The World?

yeah, Shadow and Light is set in a world where that happened. a thousand years ago. yeah he's still ruling and makes everyone worship him as a god. it's a pretty good life, from his perspective, he gets to shape the world as he likes and all that

[3gremlins]

do you ever think about that villain trope of them sitting in a chair stroking a cat and wonder if maybe the cat is their emotional support animal and they're actually deeply anxious about the villainous monologue they're about to give (or possibly also, they weren't planning on giving the monologue sitting but the cat came and sat there and now they're stuck there)

[klarolinexluv]

I’m all for letting villains be villains but why the backstory erasure? Like why ignore the fact that maybe they were a good person once and something awful happened to them and they snapped. Or maybe they were manipulated and brain washed and now they are a killer… like let villains be villains but let’s also remember how they got there.

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

The older I get the funnier cartoon villains become to me. Like imagine having mortal enemy beef with a 12 year old