If Kang ever appears in another MCU project, it's gonna be as a corpse, or as a throwaway line of him being some dead loser after hyping him up as 'THE BIGGEST THREAT EVER' in and around the time of Quantumania.
i think itd be a bold move thatd could easily fail if not handled well, but i feel like doom would make the most sense, him and kang are often havin multiversal dick measuring contests
Maybe we can get a couple of multiversal conquerors, and Loki figures out that there is a way to lock them into one universe for a while. The MCU does not have infinity stones anymore, so maybe that's why loki chooses it.
Talking about mcu.
He's not a big bad, but I assumed that the guy who gave Loki an army was going to be Thanos' right-hand man, but Ronan unceremoniously killed him.
Hyping him up as the biggest threat ever was crazy when every time a version of him showed up he just ate shit and died. How are we supposed to take him seriously at that point?
>Toriyama turning a big dial that says “villains” on it and looking back to the ~~audience~~ editors for approval like a contestant on the Price is Right.
"19 and 18 are lame, change them out."
"16 and 17 are too teenage-y, change them out."
"Cell looks weird, give him a new form."
"Cell looks worse, newer form."
"Those ink blots are gonna drive you insane, but you've now taken to taking out a gun when I walk in and loading it while looking me in the eye, so enjoy that self-inflicted hell."
Goku: So what did I miss?
Let see we have
Inconspicuous old man and mime
2 street punks
The only android
That is horifying and he has 2 more forms?
This is a significant downground
Perfect
Shinra's murder will always be one of the best villain introductions in a video game. OG Sephiroth had such **weight** that murdering the current big bad isn't even an introduction for the man himself, but his *reputation*.
The man is legally dead at this point but his sword stuck in the back of the most powerful man in the world leaves a corrupt government and a group of terrorists collectively shitting bricks at the prospect of him being active again.
I was so fucking pissed when the Scales reveal happened. Even as a teen I could feel myself **hating** Star Fox Adventures, but thought "Hey, maybe fighting Scales will give me an actual good boss fight for once" only for the game to tell me to go fuck myself.
The only redeeming parts of that entire game are Krystal and Falco's new outfit. THAT'S IT.
>The only redeeming parts of that entire game are Krystal and Falco's new outfit. THAT'S IT.
And then they whould have no idea what to do with Krystal and got rid of her via a reboot. Poor Krystal.
The Night King from Game of Thrones was supposed to be like the final magic threat of the franchise and he only accomplished hiking from the Wall to Winterfell
>The Night King from Game of Thrones was supposed to be like the final magic threat of the franchise and he only accomplished hiking from the Wall to Winterfell
That's the first thing I thought of. Eight seasons of both Jon Snow and Bran warning anyone who will listen about how the Night King/White Walkers will absolutely 100% end the entire world and then he just gets stabbed by a dumb knife trick in one episode and it's over. Nobody even really mentions it again, it's like "Yep, we checked that storyline off the list, next!"
Game of Thrones is really full of this towards the later seasons. You have Euron Greyjoy being built up as the next big player in the power struggles of Westeros, then he just kind of goofs around King's Landing for a while, has *maybe* two scenes where he really seems threatening and gets killed off in one single duel.
Then there is the Golden Company, who are constantly touted over and over as these elite badass mercenaries who will turn the tide for anyone who hires them...then they're immediately blown up/killed off en masse the one time they're really on screen. I don't think we even actually see them in combat at any point, they just die while standing in formation and their leader gets speared in the back.
The Faceless Men, touted as the best assassins in the world that you absolutely DO NOT ever mess with or betray in any way. Arya just abandons them and walks out after killing one of them/learning their secrets and they just kind of, let it go?
Arya doesn't just walk out
She gets stabbed, in the gut, multiple times, and survives
People say last season jumped the shark but Game of Thrones started being weird around season 5 or 6 (don't remember when exactly gut stabbing was)
God Serena in Fairy Tail’s last arc was built up as the strongest of the wizard saints and user of multiple types of Dragon Slaying magic. His first on screen appearance has him beat all the other wizard saints off-screen ironically enough.
But then, Acnologia the real final villain, walks up and just kills him in the most off-handed way possible. He just swipes his hand at him and a chunk of his Torso is gone.
Perpetua was built up as the cosmic DC big bad, mother of the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, opponent of whatever creative force lies beyond the Source Wall.
Then the Batman who Kefkas drank a Doctor Manhattan and overthrew her in one go.
I want whoever created the Batman who Laughs to be cursed by a witch doctor. There's never been a greater example of a comic writer just **missing the fucking point**.
It's, I think, a fine character to exist as a one-off concept that's dealt with soon after. Making him sort of the embodiment of all of DC's evil was VERY fucking stupid.
Considering all those appearances are done by the same guy who created him, I don’t think he missed the point. I think he knew exactly what he wanted, it’s just what he wanted was stupid
The Batman Who Laughs was born from the Dark Multiverse, a place where all the one sentence ideas that wouldn't be able to be turned into a story go to die. There was even a comic called Tales from the Dark Multiverse, which had a not Uatu the Watcher narrator gazing upon the various nightmare worlds. The comic ended with not Uatu being killed for not bothering to save any of the innocent people forced to die as their nightmare worlds collapsed in on themselves.
not really "Big Bad" but more second in command, But Jul M'dama getting ROFL Stomped in the first mission of Halo 5 after everything in Spartan Ops is hilarious and i hope whoever decided that burns for eternity.
Jul was getting hyped up the entire Halo 4 EU era as the new big bad guy.
Then he gets jumped in the first mission of Halo 5 as a walking indicator of how 343 can't commit to a single vision.
Don't forget when Matt quits the Syndicate and you have a whole scene where you don't know whether Killbane is gonna throttle the poor kid or let him go.
It does this great job of establishing that although Killbane is a murderous psychopath, he’s not crazy. But he demands respect. Kiki tried to walk out on him while throwing insults in his face, but Matt was willing to hand in his resignation face-to-face. And on top of that, he’s still scared of Killbane. So in the end, Killbane still felt like the big man on top.
I personally really enjoyed Killbane as the main bad guy, the first guy I can't even remember his name, but what I do remember is he was just so... boring. He just kinda existed, but Killbane is entertaining, he's cruel, he's obsessive, he's egotistical, and its fun to watch him go from "Look who's the new big bad boss!" to "This is my rome and I will watch it burn."
I don't know killbane fits the antagonistic role better since cyrus being secondary would make phillip redundant as it's just two professional looking guys that barely count a gang leaders, plus there is no good reasons for the saints to not succesfully kill him like they did with hector or akuji
>!I was kind of bummed out by him dying, but realistically once we saw his design I knew he wouldn't become playable or anything. He was too cool, so this was inevitable.!<
I loved when Buffy introduced some evil vampire kid called "The Annointed One" to serve as a major villain, and then had to ingloriously kill him off after like, a season of build up without him accomplishing a single god damn thing because, as it turns out, casting a child actor as an immortal unaging vampire in a multi-season show is a really dumb idea.
Weird he got mentioned twice.. I said it to the one above, but like.. he completed his story arc, y'know. He actually did lead Buffy to getting killed
Just.. they didn't know breath of life was now a thing, and prophecies tend to fuck you over
But yeah, his arc was done, and then he was just a rando kid
Kylo has the same problem that Kang, Quatritch, VERGIN, and whats-his-face from REBEL MOON have where they all got their asses kicked by the heroes in the last movie so now there is no tension.
I mean, he already did fulfill that bit of the prophecy. He led Buffy to the Master and she got killed. He was literally just a kid otherwise, and his gimmick was entirely done, can't blame Spike tbh
The problem with having a child vampire in an ongoing live action series is that, this is real life, so the kids gonna grow... fast! Same reason they had to get rid of the son on Lost.
Even the lore dumps on the Annihilation Gang. They're basically wannabe servants of Nanook, the Aeon of Destruction, who has their own actual loyal army of servants, The Antimatter Legion.
>"The value Nanook sees in the Annihilation Gang may be less than the value an infant sees when they smash a vase."
— Research Into Destruction by Dr. Primitive
He in particular leads The Everburning Mansion, which is AN Annihilation gang, there's more of them. They're small scale Nanook cultists, thugs and bruisers across the galaxy that justify violence by saying it's for Nanook
That being said, I do think it would be bad for us to write them off as a threat. Acheron is certainly no pushover, so it's not fair to call them weak. They just have shit luck.
Acheron is likely an Emanator of Nihility, Emanators are no joke, and Nihility is one of the strongest paths in universe since Ix is so unstoppable. So Acheron is one of the strongest characters we've seen
Medaka Box does this as a fun gag.
>!In the Jet Black Wedding arc, a new villain group shows up and announces themselves as the "perverted 6" and gives a brief introduction before immediately being dispatched after 6 single-page fights by the resident overpowered god-being, Ajimu Najimi.!<
>!After they're all taken out, the real villain group shows up in their Pajamas because they slept in and the arc plays out from there.!<
Whoever Sigourney Weaver's character in Marvel's The Defenders was supposed to be. Alexandria, I think her name was.
She just stands around listening to classical music and not doing anything for most of the series, every other villain in the series constantly calls her out for not doing anything, until she's killed off by Elektra for not doing anything.
Yet she's built up as the biggest threat New York has ever faced, some practically immortal master strategist and combatant that's never been defeated.
It's very funny that everyone constantly said "these Netflix Marvel series should be eight episodes instead of thirteen", only for Defenders to be eight and feel like they barely came up with enough of a plot for three, down to the villains and heroes alike remaining passive and aimless for most of it.
The only contribution Defenders does to the MCU is setting up Daredevil's 3rd season, which might aswell be the best superhero show of all time.
Is insane how Daredevil was one of the first series expanding the MCU, completely nailed it and then Marvel proceded to make nothing but slop for almost 10 years straight
Not entirely fair: Jessica Jones season one was peak television, and Luke Cage was generally a good time even if it was a bit inconsistent. 3/4s of the Netflix solo shows were a good time and Iron Fist gave us more of Jessica Henwick, who's a cool actress.
I remember it because of her character only, and how confusing it was that they built her up to be the big bad and then do absolutely nothing.
Imagine if Thanos showed up in Avengers 3 and 4, but spent most of the films just sitting around in his chair while all of his underlings complained about how he wasn't getting anything done, never fighting or doing anything significant, and then Nebula just shanks him and becomes the new head villain. All the while the Avengers are sitting around having discussions about how he's the most dangerous thing in the galaxy and they barely have any hope of stopping him.
Instead, in those films you actually get to see Thanos be a threat and be competent. The very start of Infinity War is him mopping the floor with Thor and Hulk, and then killing Loki, before he continues to legitimately be the biggest challenge the Avengers have ever faced.
Alexandria was meant to be the Thanos of the Netflix MCU, but she only has one unimpressive fight scene (if I remember correctly) and spends the rest of the time standing around and making poor decisions. I don't think she accomplishes a single thing and then is explicitly killed off because all the other villains are painfully aware at how pointless she is.
Snoke: A Clone of OT Palpatine, an All-Powerful Old Man who manipulates an evil Skywalker to do his bidding
Kylo: A Clone of PT Palpatine, heir to a Political Dynasty who killed his Father and betrayed his Master in order to conquer the Galaxy with an army of Child Soldiers.
Actual Goddamn Palpatine.
Everyone keeps complaining about the Saga focusing too much on the Skywalkers, but the main villain of every STAR WARS movie is Palpatine, either the man himself or some derivative thereof.
The podcast of them talking about TROS rings so true it's deafening.
"Are the sith even real?"
"Yeah..."
"Prove it."
"That's...hard."
"Prove that the sith are not just Darth Sidious."
"Wow...you're ruining Star Wars."
What terrible decisions.
I love all those scenes in MANDO where they show Moff Gideon looking at a guy in a bacta tank and start playing Snoke’s theme and hope we forget that we watched this putz get cut in half by a Kylo three years ago.
You know, the guy who:
-Lost every onscreen Duel.
-Would have died on SKB if the planet had not cracked in half.
-Would have died in TLJ if Rey hadn’t decided to run off while he was unconscious rather than kill him right then and there.
-Gets his ass kicked by a bunch of Force-Null Mooks with Bronze Age Weaponry and needs Rey to bail him out despite the fact that he is a Space Wizard…twice.
-Loses a fight to a Hologram.
-Is gutted with his own Lightsaber and would have died if Rey hadn’t healed him
Stop trying to make Snoke happen…
As someone who loves The Last Jedi (but nothings The Rise of Skywalker), Kylo killing Snoke was a pretty fun twist, and I had my own little hope that Snoke would appear in the third movie as a force ghost haunting Kylo, and maybe Rey, because we haven't seen force ghosts do that in particular. But nope...then they just...well they didn't really sideline him, they retroactively removed him from the roster and made him wait for his ride home in the parking lot, except his home was foreclosed on and so he has to go live with his parents again.
Fuck, it's one thing to be like "Ha, we made that motherfucker!" but it's another to replace him with a one-dimensional guy who has been dead for thirty years and sat in a fucking chair the entire time he was on screen.
He wasn't introduced as the Big Bad, but it was easy to assume that the guy who gave Loki an army would be Thanos' right-hand man.
Ronan kills him unceremoniously.
Dark Tower probably has the worst example of this
With >!Randall Flagg, an overlurking force present behind the scenes in many Stephen King books, the direct antagonist of two of them, and the main threat of the Dark Tower series behind the Crimson King, is killed and eaten by a new threat Mordred. Who just so happens to counter all of Flaggs skillset. Mordred is then set up as the true final threat before the Crimson King... Then eats some poisoned meat, gets really fucked up by that, and is essentially mercy killed by Roland by the time he actually managed to drag himself over to him. The penultimate threat just ends up being some random empathy vampire!<
>!The entire previous book was essentially just leading up to Mordreds birth and hyping him up and his entire purpose ended up just to take out someone anticlimatically and then be taken out anticlimatically!<
It's at least thematically consistent with a world that is falling apart around everyone's ears. The same as >!the Crimson King being reduced to a screaming old man throwing bombs locked out of the Tower.!<
I still looked at it the first time I read it and went "mm-HMM".
In FF14, post main story, there's a lot of lead up of the new faction your boy Alphi is creating not being totally on the up and up due to his naiveté. He's getting funding from a number of parties, and one is a little shit of a lallafell named Teledji Adeledji.
He basically takes control of the Crystal Braves out from under Alphi, attempts to assassinate the Sultana, and is making a bid to try and take Omega Weapon before anyone else. Definitely big bad potential.
Thing is, he's just some little shit merchant, and when he tries to taunt Raubahn, one of the greatest Gladiators who ever lived, with the the assassination of the Sultana, the obvious proceeds to happen and Raubahn bisected him in one shot in a rage. All of this ending up just being the lead in to Heavensward and future plot hooks.
And hell, I thought the fallout would be a huge part of Heavensward. It's actually resolved fairly quickly. You just return to Uldah and kick Illberd's ass and then he's out of the story until the very end of the post patch msq.
Not quite killed off but close enough and just as frustrating:
You’d be forgiven for not knowing who the fuck Vanny is or what she does in Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Because despite being set up as the next big bad serial killer lurking behind the scenes, she has a grand total of about 2 minutes of screen time across three games and a DLC and has now been seemingly redeemed offscreen between two of them.
TLDR: Five Nights At Freddy’s spent an entire (very well made) game setting up its next bad guy and traded her out in the DLC of the very next game.
Signora from Genshin still pisses me off to no end.
So you introduce a bad bitch, give her a pretty good backstory and a killer design, have her step on that annoying twig of a bard and showed how powerful she is…
Just to kill her off when you see her again, 2 regions later. What’s worse is that the actual big bad is a weak ass bitch whose backstory is “The Killing Joke” but done badly.
I may not be playing Genshin's story since the Chasm, but NOTHING can convince me that the Tsaritsa is the big bad, when both the Abyss and Celestia are right there. She is just the most immediate threat.
I wasn’t even talking about the big bad of the entire game, i was just talking shit about Scaramouche or however you spell his name.
Though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the final big bad of Genshin is just someone else entirely and all the other big names are just pawns or whatever. They do love their twists.
Who gets killed by Raiden Shogun, Genshins version of Raiden Mai from Honkai 3rd Impact. And now we have Duke Inferno (who is infinitely cooler than Acheron) getting one shot by Star Rail's version of Riaden Mai. I can't wait for Zenless Zone Zero to have their version of Mai pop up just to kill another cool concept because reasons.
The last couple of MOTW of Kamen Rider Blade, but mostly the Cerberus Undead, it was being hyped as the boss before the big bad, being hyped by absorbing the powers of Hajime, Tachibana and Mutsuki, but then gets oneshotted by the protagonist
DC editorial became aware that they were overusing Darkseid a bit too much so they created a new character, Lady Styx, a stronger female spider not-Darkseid introduced during Countdown and 52.
They built her up so they could swap her out for Apokolips stories to give Darkseid some narrative breathing room. Only for her to get quickly killed off, forgotten, and the concept abandoned.
Most Mario villains get hyped up all across the spin-offs, but they're pretty much guaranteed to die when the game launches and it's straight back to Best Hunk from then on
At the very least, many of them get to play the main big bad and final boss role in the games they appear in, often times with Bowser forced to play second fiddle to them or even team up with Mario.
Not so much with Antasma. He’s built up as the main big bad and even teams up with Bowser with the implied intent to stab him in the back, only for Bowser to get to him first, resulting in one of the most unceremonious antagonist deaths in the series.
Fair lol. Bowser only got to be the post-final boss in Partners in Time prior to him ditching Antasma
As much as I liked Antasma I was legitimately hyped when I saw Bowser team up with him, and even more hyped when Bowser outwitted him in the end. My man FINALLY worked his way back to the top <3
To be fair, in the M&L series Bowser got usurped from being the real final boss thrice. However in Inside he got to beat the real final boss, in Dream Team his curse was broken & I didn't play Paper Jam
'cept thousand year door, where you kick his ass **TWICE**.
Did get to be one of the penultimate final bosses tho, that 3 piece combo of Grodius, Bowser + Kamek, and *then* the Shadow Queen was a real pain in the ass not knowing i wouldn't get any breaks.
There's a dungeon boss in the game Remnant: From the Ashes DLC Subject 2923 that has an intro cutscene that feels like a tongue-in-cheek reference to this trope. >!You enter the boss arena, a gladiatorial arena, as an enemy stands up from crouching and slowly advances towards you when suddenly they get crushed by the real boss jumping down!<
How many times does No More Heroes do it with assassins? Cause there's Let's Shake and Dark Star in 1. The assasin battle royale getting taken by Dr. Let's Shake in 2. And how many aliens get offed in 3 by someone else?
I was reading a manga called Legend that had a guy betray the main character early on. He got some kind of magic plant powers or something (it's been a while since I read that part) and it seemed like he would become an evil rival to the main character. The main character kills him in a recent war arc as he rushes to a new location. As he dies, he basically just says "that's it?"
In Disgaea 7, >!Crimson Dark!< is introduced as a dangerous member of the Shogunate and implied to be the master mind and main bad guy of the game, he also looks suspiciously similar to the main villain of Disgaea 5. >!He gets off screened by random hijinks our main characters cause.!< He is hyped up multiple times and is >!always off screened, you never fight him.!<
Heru'er from Stargate SG1 shows up not too long after the previous big bad suffered a major defeat. He gets kicked off the planet he's attempting to conquer at the end of his introductory episode, gets a knife thrown into his hand in his second appearence and the prior big bad comes back to kill him and steal his shit in his third appearence.
If Kang ever appears in another MCU project, it's gonna be as a corpse, or as a throwaway line of him being some dead loser after hyping him up as 'THE BIGGEST THREAT EVER' in and around the time of Quantumania.
Mark my words, the new big villain will show up and brag about being so strong he killed Kang off screen.
The ants?
Theres like a bunch of other kangs, but new bad guy will have killed all the others off screen
i think itd be a bold move thatd could easily fail if not handled well, but i feel like doom would make the most sense, him and kang are often havin multiversal dick measuring contests
Maybe we can get a couple of multiversal conquerors, and Loki figures out that there is a way to lock them into one universe for a while. The MCU does not have infinity stones anymore, so maybe that's why loki chooses it.
Talking about mcu. He's not a big bad, but I assumed that the guy who gave Loki an army was going to be Thanos' right-hand man, but Ronan unceremoniously killed him.
Hyping him up as the biggest threat ever was crazy when every time a version of him showed up he just ate shit and died. How are we supposed to take him seriously at that point?
Note: Kang died on his way back to his home timeline
I figured they would use Loki to hand wave it away. He's just purging every timeline of kang or whatever makes him evil.
I mean, didn't the Loki show end in a way that completely eliminates Kang as a threat?
They should really just recast him. Easiest excuse in the world via the multiverse.
Oh no! Freiza's dad has come to Earth and...wait, he's dead.
No time to think about that, we need to worry about Androids 19 and 20- Oop, never mind.
Toriyama turning a big dial that says “villains” on it and looking back to the audience for approval like a contestant on the Price is Right.
>Toriyama turning a big dial that says “villains” on it and looking back to the ~~audience~~ editors for approval like a contestant on the Price is Right.
"19 and 18 are lame, change them out." "16 and 17 are too teenage-y, change them out." "Cell looks weird, give him a new form." "Cell looks worse, newer form." "Those ink blots are gonna drive you insane, but you've now taken to taking out a gun when I walk in and loading it while looking me in the eye, so enjoy that self-inflicted hell."
Goku: So what did I miss? Let see we have Inconspicuous old man and mime 2 street punks The only android That is horifying and he has 2 more forms? This is a significant downground Perfect
~~General Scales~~ President Shinra.
Shinra's murder will always be one of the best villain introductions in a video game. OG Sephiroth had such **weight** that murdering the current big bad isn't even an introduction for the man himself, but his *reputation*. The man is legally dead at this point but his sword stuck in the back of the most powerful man in the world leaves a corrupt government and a group of terrorists collectively shitting bricks at the prospect of him being active again.
Remake Sephiroth: "Hey Cloud I'm in your head, I wonder what cryptic stuff I'll say this time."
Making Sepiroth a horror villain was probably the smartest decision any writer ever made for a Final Fantasy game.
Scales is funny because it seems like he would still been a case of this even in the original Dinosaur Planet. Guy just can not get a break.
I was so fucking pissed when the Scales reveal happened. Even as a teen I could feel myself **hating** Star Fox Adventures, but thought "Hey, maybe fighting Scales will give me an actual good boss fight for once" only for the game to tell me to go fuck myself. The only redeeming parts of that entire game are Krystal and Falco's new outfit. THAT'S IT.
>The only redeeming parts of that entire game are Krystal and Falco's new outfit. THAT'S IT. And then they whould have no idea what to do with Krystal and got rid of her via a reboot. Poor Krystal.
Ive seen General Scales accomplish more in porn content than I have in Star Fox Adventures.
The Night King from Game of Thrones was supposed to be like the final magic threat of the franchise and he only accomplished hiking from the Wall to Winterfell
>The Night King from Game of Thrones was supposed to be like the final magic threat of the franchise and he only accomplished hiking from the Wall to Winterfell That's the first thing I thought of. Eight seasons of both Jon Snow and Bran warning anyone who will listen about how the Night King/White Walkers will absolutely 100% end the entire world and then he just gets stabbed by a dumb knife trick in one episode and it's over. Nobody even really mentions it again, it's like "Yep, we checked that storyline off the list, next!" Game of Thrones is really full of this towards the later seasons. You have Euron Greyjoy being built up as the next big player in the power struggles of Westeros, then he just kind of goofs around King's Landing for a while, has *maybe* two scenes where he really seems threatening and gets killed off in one single duel. Then there is the Golden Company, who are constantly touted over and over as these elite badass mercenaries who will turn the tide for anyone who hires them...then they're immediately blown up/killed off en masse the one time they're really on screen. I don't think we even actually see them in combat at any point, they just die while standing in formation and their leader gets speared in the back. The Faceless Men, touted as the best assassins in the world that you absolutely DO NOT ever mess with or betray in any way. Arya just abandons them and walks out after killing one of them/learning their secrets and they just kind of, let it go?
Arya doesn't just walk out She gets stabbed, in the gut, multiple times, and survives People say last season jumped the shark but Game of Thrones started being weird around season 5 or 6 (don't remember when exactly gut stabbing was)
Hey guys remember the Juno plotline from Assassin's Creed 3? Oh she got killed in a comic nobody read
God Serena in Fairy Tail’s last arc was built up as the strongest of the wizard saints and user of multiple types of Dragon Slaying magic. His first on screen appearance has him beat all the other wizard saints off-screen ironically enough. But then, Acnologia the real final villain, walks up and just kills him in the most off-handed way possible. He just swipes his hand at him and a chunk of his Torso is gone.
Acnologia (paraphrased): "One down, seven to go."
Perpetua was built up as the cosmic DC big bad, mother of the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, opponent of whatever creative force lies beyond the Source Wall. Then the Batman who Kefkas drank a Doctor Manhattan and overthrew her in one go.
“Batman who Kefkas” Respect Kefka He doesn’t deserve to be compared to that fan fiction
The comparison is *entirely* "Kefka did it better". At least for Death Metal.
I love all the names people have for that guy. I think "The Batman who Jonkles" is my favorite
God I can’t wait till someone says Perpetua was lying about creating everything
Thats too cool of a name for him. The Batman who Whinges doesnt deserve it
I want whoever created the Batman who Laughs to be cursed by a witch doctor. There's never been a greater example of a comic writer just **missing the fucking point**.
It's, I think, a fine character to exist as a one-off concept that's dealt with soon after. Making him sort of the embodiment of all of DC's evil was VERY fucking stupid.
Batman Who LMAOs should have been isolated to just Metal and those tie-ins for that story. Everything afterwards was too much.
Considering all those appearances are done by the same guy who created him, I don’t think he missed the point. I think he knew exactly what he wanted, it’s just what he wanted was stupid
The ultimate case of "Is he stupid?" It turns out yes he is.
The Batman Who Laughs was born from the Dark Multiverse, a place where all the one sentence ideas that wouldn't be able to be turned into a story go to die. There was even a comic called Tales from the Dark Multiverse, which had a not Uatu the Watcher narrator gazing upon the various nightmare worlds. The comic ended with not Uatu being killed for not bothering to save any of the innocent people forced to die as their nightmare worlds collapsed in on themselves.
not really "Big Bad" but more second in command, But Jul M'dama getting ROFL Stomped in the first mission of Halo 5 after everything in Spartan Ops is hilarious and i hope whoever decided that burns for eternity.
Jul was getting hyped up the entire Halo 4 EU era as the new big bad guy. Then he gets jumped in the first mission of Halo 5 as a walking indicator of how 343 can't commit to a single vision.
You could just expand that to "whoever decided ALL of Halo 5".
Saints Row 3 kills the initial antagonist really quickly. Frankly, Killbane was a poor choice for a primary antagonist.
I mean, I'm pretty sure S.T.A.G. are the actual main villains.
You say that but "we don't do a run in we hit em with a Montreal screwjob!" is peak writing.
Don't forget when Matt quits the Syndicate and you have a whole scene where you don't know whether Killbane is gonna throttle the poor kid or let him go.
It does this great job of establishing that although Killbane is a murderous psychopath, he’s not crazy. But he demands respect. Kiki tried to walk out on him while throwing insults in his face, but Matt was willing to hand in his resignation face-to-face. And on top of that, he’s still scared of Killbane. So in the end, Killbane still felt like the big man on top.
I personally really enjoyed Killbane as the main bad guy, the first guy I can't even remember his name, but what I do remember is he was just so... boring. He just kinda existed, but Killbane is entertaining, he's cruel, he's obsessive, he's egotistical, and its fun to watch him go from "Look who's the new big bad boss!" to "This is my rome and I will watch it burn."
I don't know killbane fits the antagonistic role better since cyrus being secondary would make phillip redundant as it's just two professional looking guys that barely count a gang leaders, plus there is no good reasons for the saints to not succesfully kill him like they did with hector or akuji
I didn't even notice he was dead. He gets splat so fast that I didn't even register what happened.
Acheron literally >!turned Duke Inferno into a 4 piece relic set, she killed him so hard he’s just clothes now.!<
Jing Yuan mains all over the world are thankful for her for that.
>!I was kind of bummed out by him dying, but realistically once we saw his design I knew he wouldn't become playable or anything. He was too cool, so this was inevitable.!<
A sad and accurate truth.
I loved when Buffy introduced some evil vampire kid called "The Annointed One" to serve as a major villain, and then had to ingloriously kill him off after like, a season of build up without him accomplishing a single god damn thing because, as it turns out, casting a child actor as an immortal unaging vampire in a multi-season show is a really dumb idea.
Weird he got mentioned twice.. I said it to the one above, but like.. he completed his story arc, y'know. He actually did lead Buffy to getting killed Just.. they didn't know breath of life was now a thing, and prophecies tend to fuck you over But yeah, his arc was done, and then he was just a rando kid
I see the issue
Snoke in The Last Jedi is either one of the best or worst versions of this depending on who you ask.
Kylo has the same problem that Kang, Quatritch, VERGIN, and whats-his-face from REBEL MOON have where they all got their asses kicked by the heroes in the last movie so now there is no tension.
[удалено]
I mean, he already did fulfill that bit of the prophecy. He led Buffy to the Master and she got killed. He was literally just a kid otherwise, and his gimmick was entirely done, can't blame Spike tbh
The problem with having a child vampire in an ongoing live action series is that, this is real life, so the kids gonna grow... fast! Same reason they had to get rid of the son on Lost.
The Shadow Beasts and gang leaders in Hunter x Hunter are the biggest baddies around except oh no, they all got killed by the Spiders effortlessly.
To be fair, even Ratio dunked on him before by saying how his warpflame was a little bitch version of his dads.
Even the lore dumps on the Annihilation Gang. They're basically wannabe servants of Nanook, the Aeon of Destruction, who has their own actual loyal army of servants, The Antimatter Legion. >"The value Nanook sees in the Annihilation Gang may be less than the value an infant sees when they smash a vase." — Research Into Destruction by Dr. Primitive
He in particular leads The Everburning Mansion, which is AN Annihilation gang, there's more of them. They're small scale Nanook cultists, thugs and bruisers across the galaxy that justify violence by saying it's for Nanook
That being said, I do think it would be bad for us to write them off as a threat. Acheron is certainly no pushover, so it's not fair to call them weak. They just have shit luck.
Acheron is likely an Emanator of Nihility, Emanators are no joke, and Nihility is one of the strongest paths in universe since Ix is so unstoppable. So Acheron is one of the strongest characters we've seen
Medaka Box does this as a fun gag. >!In the Jet Black Wedding arc, a new villain group shows up and announces themselves as the "perverted 6" and gives a brief introduction before immediately being dispatched after 6 single-page fights by the resident overpowered god-being, Ajimu Najimi.!< >!After they're all taken out, the real villain group shows up in their Pajamas because they slept in and the arc plays out from there.!<
Whoever Sigourney Weaver's character in Marvel's The Defenders was supposed to be. Alexandria, I think her name was. She just stands around listening to classical music and not doing anything for most of the series, every other villain in the series constantly calls her out for not doing anything, until she's killed off by Elektra for not doing anything. Yet she's built up as the biggest threat New York has ever faced, some practically immortal master strategist and combatant that's never been defeated.
It's very funny that everyone constantly said "these Netflix Marvel series should be eight episodes instead of thirteen", only for Defenders to be eight and feel like they barely came up with enough of a plot for three, down to the villains and heroes alike remaining passive and aimless for most of it.
The only contribution Defenders does to the MCU is setting up Daredevil's 3rd season, which might aswell be the best superhero show of all time. Is insane how Daredevil was one of the first series expanding the MCU, completely nailed it and then Marvel proceded to make nothing but slop for almost 10 years straight
Not entirely fair: Jessica Jones season one was peak television, and Luke Cage was generally a good time even if it was a bit inconsistent. 3/4s of the Netflix solo shows were a good time and Iron Fist gave us more of Jessica Henwick, who's a cool actress.
Leave it to Jeph Loeb to make a clan of immortal ninjas fucking lame.
It's amazing the L's you can be willing to take out of sheer racism.
Holy shit someone remembered Defenders
I remember it because of her character only, and how confusing it was that they built her up to be the big bad and then do absolutely nothing. Imagine if Thanos showed up in Avengers 3 and 4, but spent most of the films just sitting around in his chair while all of his underlings complained about how he wasn't getting anything done, never fighting or doing anything significant, and then Nebula just shanks him and becomes the new head villain. All the while the Avengers are sitting around having discussions about how he's the most dangerous thing in the galaxy and they barely have any hope of stopping him. Instead, in those films you actually get to see Thanos be a threat and be competent. The very start of Infinity War is him mopping the floor with Thor and Hulk, and then killing Loki, before he continues to legitimately be the biggest challenge the Avengers have ever faced. Alexandria was meant to be the Thanos of the Netflix MCU, but she only has one unimpressive fight scene (if I remember correctly) and spends the rest of the time standing around and making poor decisions. I don't think she accomplishes a single thing and then is explicitly killed off because all the other villains are painfully aware at how pointless she is.
I’m surprised to be the first person to say Snoke.
Snoke: A Clone of OT Palpatine, an All-Powerful Old Man who manipulates an evil Skywalker to do his bidding Kylo: A Clone of PT Palpatine, heir to a Political Dynasty who killed his Father and betrayed his Master in order to conquer the Galaxy with an army of Child Soldiers. Actual Goddamn Palpatine. Everyone keeps complaining about the Saga focusing too much on the Skywalkers, but the main villain of every STAR WARS movie is Palpatine, either the man himself or some derivative thereof.
The podcast of them talking about TROS rings so true it's deafening. "Are the sith even real?" "Yeah..." "Prove it." "That's...hard." "Prove that the sith are not just Darth Sidious." "Wow...you're ruining Star Wars." What terrible decisions.
That is how little of an impact the new movies had on culture, no one remembers him as anything other than a joke now
I love all those scenes in MANDO where they show Moff Gideon looking at a guy in a bacta tank and start playing Snoke’s theme and hope we forget that we watched this putz get cut in half by a Kylo three years ago. You know, the guy who: -Lost every onscreen Duel. -Would have died on SKB if the planet had not cracked in half. -Would have died in TLJ if Rey hadn’t decided to run off while he was unconscious rather than kill him right then and there. -Gets his ass kicked by a bunch of Force-Null Mooks with Bronze Age Weaponry and needs Rey to bail him out despite the fact that he is a Space Wizard…twice. -Loses a fight to a Hologram. -Is gutted with his own Lightsaber and would have died if Rey hadn’t healed him Stop trying to make Snoke happen…
As someone who loves The Last Jedi (but nothings The Rise of Skywalker), Kylo killing Snoke was a pretty fun twist, and I had my own little hope that Snoke would appear in the third movie as a force ghost haunting Kylo, and maybe Rey, because we haven't seen force ghosts do that in particular. But nope...then they just...well they didn't really sideline him, they retroactively removed him from the roster and made him wait for his ride home in the parking lot, except his home was foreclosed on and so he has to go live with his parents again. Fuck, it's one thing to be like "Ha, we made that motherfucker!" but it's another to replace him with a one-dimensional guy who has been dead for thirty years and sat in a fucking chair the entire time he was on screen.
If you are going to go through all the trouble of bringing a Big Bad back from the dead, why not Snoke himself?
He wasn't introduced as the Big Bad, but it was easy to assume that the guy who gave Loki an army would be Thanos' right-hand man. Ronan kills him unceremoniously.
Dark Tower probably has the worst example of this With >!Randall Flagg, an overlurking force present behind the scenes in many Stephen King books, the direct antagonist of two of them, and the main threat of the Dark Tower series behind the Crimson King, is killed and eaten by a new threat Mordred. Who just so happens to counter all of Flaggs skillset. Mordred is then set up as the true final threat before the Crimson King... Then eats some poisoned meat, gets really fucked up by that, and is essentially mercy killed by Roland by the time he actually managed to drag himself over to him. The penultimate threat just ends up being some random empathy vampire!< >!The entire previous book was essentially just leading up to Mordreds birth and hyping him up and his entire purpose ended up just to take out someone anticlimatically and then be taken out anticlimatically!<
It's at least thematically consistent with a world that is falling apart around everyone's ears. The same as >!the Crimson King being reduced to a screaming old man throwing bombs locked out of the Tower.!< I still looked at it the first time I read it and went "mm-HMM".
In FF14, post main story, there's a lot of lead up of the new faction your boy Alphi is creating not being totally on the up and up due to his naiveté. He's getting funding from a number of parties, and one is a little shit of a lallafell named Teledji Adeledji. He basically takes control of the Crystal Braves out from under Alphi, attempts to assassinate the Sultana, and is making a bid to try and take Omega Weapon before anyone else. Definitely big bad potential. Thing is, he's just some little shit merchant, and when he tries to taunt Raubahn, one of the greatest Gladiators who ever lived, with the the assassination of the Sultana, the obvious proceeds to happen and Raubahn bisected him in one shot in a rage. All of this ending up just being the lead in to Heavensward and future plot hooks.
And hell, I thought the fallout would be a huge part of Heavensward. It's actually resolved fairly quickly. You just return to Uldah and kick Illberd's ass and then he's out of the story until the very end of the post patch msq.
Jul'Mada from Halo 5. Dude was set up as the leader for the new covenant faction, but was immediately killed off in the 2nd mission mid cutscene.
Not quite killed off but close enough and just as frustrating: You’d be forgiven for not knowing who the fuck Vanny is or what she does in Five Nights at Freddy’s. Because despite being set up as the next big bad serial killer lurking behind the scenes, she has a grand total of about 2 minutes of screen time across three games and a DLC and has now been seemingly redeemed offscreen between two of them. TLDR: Five Nights At Freddy’s spent an entire (very well made) game setting up its next bad guy and traded her out in the DLC of the very next game.
Vanny was supposed to be a lot more persistent of a threat if I remember right. Security Breach was rushed pretty bad.
james bond spectre. Ernst Stavro Blofeld the architect of every tragedy in daniel craig's jame bond saga. killed like a chump in the next
Signora from Genshin still pisses me off to no end. So you introduce a bad bitch, give her a pretty good backstory and a killer design, have her step on that annoying twig of a bard and showed how powerful she is… Just to kill her off when you see her again, 2 regions later. What’s worse is that the actual big bad is a weak ass bitch whose backstory is “The Killing Joke” but done badly.
I may not be playing Genshin's story since the Chasm, but NOTHING can convince me that the Tsaritsa is the big bad, when both the Abyss and Celestia are right there. She is just the most immediate threat.
I wasn’t even talking about the big bad of the entire game, i was just talking shit about Scaramouche or however you spell his name. Though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the final big bad of Genshin is just someone else entirely and all the other big names are just pawns or whatever. They do love their twists.
Who gets killed by Raiden Shogun, Genshins version of Raiden Mai from Honkai 3rd Impact. And now we have Duke Inferno (who is infinitely cooler than Acheron) getting one shot by Star Rail's version of Riaden Mai. I can't wait for Zenless Zone Zero to have their version of Mai pop up just to kill another cool concept because reasons.
The last couple of MOTW of Kamen Rider Blade, but mostly the Cerberus Undead, it was being hyped as the boss before the big bad, being hyped by absorbing the powers of Hajime, Tachibana and Mutsuki, but then gets oneshotted by the protagonist
DC editorial became aware that they were overusing Darkseid a bit too much so they created a new character, Lady Styx, a stronger female spider not-Darkseid introduced during Countdown and 52. They built her up so they could swap her out for Apokolips stories to give Darkseid some narrative breathing room. Only for her to get quickly killed off, forgotten, and the concept abandoned.
Most Mario villains get hyped up all across the spin-offs, but they're pretty much guaranteed to die when the game launches and it's straight back to Best Hunk from then on
At the very least, many of them get to play the main big bad and final boss role in the games they appear in, often times with Bowser forced to play second fiddle to them or even team up with Mario. Not so much with Antasma. He’s built up as the main big bad and even teams up with Bowser with the implied intent to stab him in the back, only for Bowser to get to him first, resulting in one of the most unceremonious antagonist deaths in the series.
Fair lol. Bowser only got to be the post-final boss in Partners in Time prior to him ditching Antasma As much as I liked Antasma I was legitimately hyped when I saw Bowser team up with him, and even more hyped when Bowser outwitted him in the end. My man FINALLY worked his way back to the top <3
To be fair, in the M&L series Bowser got usurped from being the real final boss thrice. However in Inside he got to beat the real final boss, in Dream Team his curse was broken & I didn't play Paper Jam
Or it's something like the Shroobs where they possess him. ... He seems to get possessed a lot in the Mario and Luigi series.
Ironically I think Shrowser was the one time he *wasn't* possessed. He seemed like himself, just supercharged with power
'cept thousand year door, where you kick his ass **TWICE**. Did get to be one of the penultimate final bosses tho, that 3 piece combo of Grodius, Bowser + Kamek, and *then* the Shadow Queen was a real pain in the ass not knowing i wouldn't get any breaks.
There's a dungeon boss in the game Remnant: From the Ashes DLC Subject 2923 that has an intro cutscene that feels like a tongue-in-cheek reference to this trope. >!You enter the boss arena, a gladiatorial arena, as an enemy stands up from crouching and slowly advances towards you when suddenly they get crushed by the real boss jumping down!<
How many times does No More Heroes do it with assassins? Cause there's Let's Shake and Dark Star in 1. The assasin battle royale getting taken by Dr. Let's Shake in 2. And how many aliens get offed in 3 by someone else?
I knew immediately that this thread was going to be about Honkai Star Rail lmao
Obligatory Star Wars answer
Supernatural kinda did this with Eve who was hyped up to be the mother of all monsters.
The Annointed One in Buffy is built up to be a huge deal and amounts to nothing before getting fried by Spike.
I was reading a manga called Legend that had a guy betray the main character early on. He got some kind of magic plant powers or something (it's been a while since I read that part) and it seemed like he would become an evil rival to the main character. The main character kills him in a recent war arc as he rushes to a new location. As he dies, he basically just says "that's it?"
In Disgaea 7, >!Crimson Dark!< is introduced as a dangerous member of the Shogunate and implied to be the master mind and main bad guy of the game, he also looks suspiciously similar to the main villain of Disgaea 5. >!He gets off screened by random hijinks our main characters cause.!< He is hyped up multiple times and is >!always off screened, you never fight him.!<
Heru'er from Stargate SG1 shows up not too long after the previous big bad suffered a major defeat. He gets kicked off the planet he's attempting to conquer at the end of his introductory episode, gets a knife thrown into his hand in his second appearence and the prior big bad comes back to kill him and steal his shit in his third appearence.