Thread: What do think are the most unoriginal villains in video games/tv?

I think making Villains is a dellicate art, either you can make an awesome, respectible classic of a villain, or you can make a plain, everyday peice of crap like Exdeath here:

.....

Ok looks like he didnt show up today to help so... i guess ill have to go solo.

Here are my top 5:

5. Exdeath (final fantasy), He just does the same crap everybody else does, nothing special

4. Darkrai (Pokemon myster dungeon explorers of sky/time/darkness) Dont get me wrong, i like PMD, but this guy just doesnt cut it for me, he just too plain.

3. Smithy (super mario RPG) Basicly bowser but more pathetic, and all he is is a F**KING HAMMER with eyes that never talks. Laaaaaame

2. Nightmare... moon? (MLP first two episodes) "what the F**k?" you bronies might be saying, but lets face it, watch the first two episodes and see if you can spot these traits:

Peanut3423's unoriginal villain checklist (copyright Peanut3423):

1. Boasts
2. Monologues
3. Evil laugh
4. Screems NOOOOOO! when defeated

You probably checked of every one.

1. Mother brain (metroid) Giant brain? really, how many times has that benn done before? way too many. nuff said.


Well, there's my list, Post your own if your want, or just discuss.
See ya later!

Emperor Palpatine: Although the prequel trilogy gave him more motivation, he still falls into the generic evil master personality wise.

Master Hand: Design wise, he's just a floating glove of doom.

Seth: This guy takes unoriginality to the extreme. Not only is his design just an anatomy body, he's also a clone of the eight original Street Fighter 2 characters.

Originally Posted by Ghetsis-Dennis

Emperor Palpatine: Although the prequel trilogy gave him more motivation, he still falls into the generic evil master personality wise.

Despite how weak his motivation (the age old Jedi-Sith conflict), I can give the PT credit for at least giving him one.

Mehrunes Dagon, The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion: "herp derp ima d3m0n l0rd so ima g0nna h8 evrythang n tak over teh wurld lolz"
The EDF, Red Faction: Guerrilla: Typical, oppressive organization that owns the economy and military
Mac, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Even he didn't know which side he was on
Mayor Lynch, Rango: The mayor is almost always the villain in Westerns
The T-X, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: SkyNet must've been kinky
Hades, Clash of the Titans (2010): Why don't people understand that Hades was never considered evil in Greek mythology?

Definitely villains of Disney sequels (with a few exceptions). The biggest offender of this is Morgana from little mermaid 2. She's basically just a skinny Ursula. And the fact she has the same voice actor as her sister doesn't help.

Kefka in FF6 perhaps, but that's what we like about him :)

I love the Resident Evil series but I think the villains in that are terribly cliche, everything down to their voice and the way they look. It's a bit cringe worthy, not that it spoils the game.

I'd go more with villain types than specific villains.

I think a lot of the "oversized henchman" villains, like Crabbe from Harry Potter and practically every evil bodyguard in every movie, are unoriginal. If you want to have henchmen, you don't need to make them oversized to be scary.

Evil uncles and wicked stepparents are unoriginal too. C.S. Lewis LOVED the "evil uncle" trope - pretty much every character who is an uncle or aunt is unpleasant (though none are actually evil except for Miraz). Wicked stepparents are because of the enduring popularity of fairy tales. I admit, I do use wicked stepparents sometimes.

Any villain with a cliche villain last name, like Borgia, also counts. Borgia is a rare surname in real life. Yet that doesn't stop it from being used frequently. Same with surnames of real-life dictators like Mussolini or Khomeini (some, like Franco and Castro, are common enough in real life as to not be solely associated with dictators). Villains with "first names to run away from really fast" are even worse. A villain with a normal, neutral name like Daniel or Elizabeth is much more exciting than yet another Hannibal or Lucrezia. Even the Biblical names get old - Cain and Judas are pathetically cliche. There are a lot of other bad people in the Bible, such as Herod, Haman, Zimri, Lot, Herodias, and Abimelech, and yet their names aren't that widely used as evil-doers' names.

In media taking place in high school, there's the bitchy popular girl. Bonus points if she's as conventionally attractive as possible - tall, thin, blonde and blue-eyed. More bonus points if she has a stereotypical "bitch" name like Brittany or Francesca. There's also her spear counterpart, the jerk jock. You know, the pretty boy meathead who beats up nerds. Bonus points if he has blond hair, a rich family, and/or a guy posse. (Draco possesses all three, but at least J. K. Rowling makes him well-rounded.)

Even Disney gets old with its villains. There's got to be a basic formula for Disney villains somewhere. Can anyone think of a good formula for Disney villains?

Originally Posted by Feanor

Even Disney gets old with its villains. There's got to be a basic formula for Disney villains somewhere. Can anyone think of a good formula for Disney villains?

Late 80s->90's Disney films usually employed the Foppish Flaming Homo English Bad Guy(TM) in the villain role. While the intentions behind having such stereotypical villains are debatable, the fact that the villain gets the best song is not.

Earlier Disney films were a bit more diverse in most respects, villain roles included, though there were still plenty of foppish characters. Given the studio's idealistic image villains tended to be irrevocably evil and petty with little to no redeeming qualities in contrast to the "pure", innocent protagonists. Evil witches, hags, hunters and carnivorous animals (especially in movies about about herbivorous animals) were some of the most common characters in the antagonist role.

I think Nazis are kinda cliche. They're the go-to villains for history movies. And basically it's annoying that a lot of them will look like stereotypical "Aryans" - basically they'll do it in any ethnic group that has blonds. That's what annoyed me about The Kite Runner - the villain looks German despite him being Afghan, plus he's a Nazi. The movie makes it more palatable by giving him dark hair. (It's one of the few cases where I actually prefer the film.)

I do agree that the Nazis were probably among the most horrible people ever, but there were so many other wicked governments in history. The Soviet leaders were even worse in some aspects - they treated their entire population like property. The Japanese colonial government was insanely cruel to the Koreans, and the British were pretty horrible to the people of India. And Iran and North Korea are still oppressing their own people.

On a side note, I am SICK of people using non-cute animals as villains. Basically, stuff like hyenas, opossums, vultures, crocodiles, and snakes are marked "evil". In older works, wolves are usually villains too. And why are rats always evil while mice are always nice? (There is one exception I can think of: Mrs. Fieldmouse from Don Bluth's Thumbelina - she's a mouse and she's pretty nasty.) They look the same - it's just that rats are bigger. Sharks are pretty much portrayed as the spawn of Satan, despite the fact that only one percent of all shark species are dangerous. Less than 50 people are killed by sharks annually, and yet people kill millions of sharks every year. Pokemon is occasionally guilty of following this (especially the Mystery Dungeon games), but usually they're not. One episode has a Houndoom who makes friends with Togepi. And one episode showed that Team Rocket's Ekans and Koffing had no real hostility to Pikachu.

As for Hades, it's because people are applying Christian standards to the ancient Greeks. They don't realize that Satan only exists in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Hades actually fits the "dark is not evil" trope. In fact, Hades was a much better husband than his brothers. Hades largely remained faithful to Persephone, while Zeus and Poseidon slept around. And there were gods and goddesses who were more sinister than Hades. The closest deity to a living nightmare was actually Nyx, a primordial goddess who personified nighttime. She would definitely have more qualifications for evil than Hades, though she does not feature in many myths. (Nyx was the mother of Eris, the goddess of chaos.) Yet again, the original Clash of the Titans uses Calibos as its villain - who didn't even exist in Greek mythology! The Kraken isn't Greek either - it was called Cetus (which means whale; the Greeks also had a sea goddess named Ceto, whose children included the dreaded Medusa).

Movies don't do their research with Greek myths. I remember one animated movie where the Titans were portrayed as ugly, gigantic monsters. In fact, they looked like regular Greek gods. And not all of them were evil. None of the female Titans were evil - most were neutral. A few Titans were even held in high regard.

I think the idea of British-accented villains in American media is so trite and stale. (And they always use the upper-class London accent - as if non-London accents don't exist.)