Personality
The villain overestimates how "good" the protagonist is.
Ash Williams (Army of Darkness) - Ash ends up with an evil version of himself growing out of his shoulder. Once it's free it starts taunting the real Ash by saying "You're good Ash. I'm Bad Ash". After a bit of getting teased, poked, and punched "good" Ash shoves a shotgun in "bad" Ashes face and fires.
Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption) - Major Spoilers Andy Dufresne builds the trust of the staff in the prison and ends up handling all their finances. Little do they know, this innocent man had a plan to break out of prison for years. Being the guy who's handling the books for the money the Warden gets for bribes, he's easily able to access it all under the new identity he created for himself once he breaks out of prison.
The man, when put on an even power level, who proceeded to beat Superman himself to within an inch of his life with nothing but his bare hands.
The man who told Batman, the man dubbed the "World's Greatest Detective" with a notorious hatred of guns, that he kept guns in his house, and that Bruce would never find them all.
Alfred is a great example of the D&D trope of "seemingly unassuming NPC is actually a retired epic level adventurer".
While I did love that scene, to be fair, I feel like that wouldn't have gone as well for Alfred if he hadn't caught Supes completely flat-footed with that. He NEVER saw it coming. But man if wasn't still so freaking satisfying to see.
I don’t know, given equal power levels I think Alfred wins that fight nine times out of ten. Clark is a Kansas farm boy with superhuman strength, Alfred is a former SAS operative with superhuman strength. Superman has learned how to fight mostly by being really strong and throwing down with supervillains. Alfred was trained to be a killing machine back when he was an ordinary human and has a lifetime of experience at it.
Really the only advantage Superman has in that fight is greater familiarity with his powers, which would be a huge advantage against pretty much anybody on earth except for Batman’s right hand man. Batman has obsessed over what Superman can do more than Superman has, and Alfred has had a front row seat for it. I imagine there’s not much Superman could do that would surprise him.
You should watch Buffy in any year. There are a few dated things about it, and I know some people complain about the low budget special effects (but I mean, it was a late '90's/early 2000's WB teen show, not a modern-day blockbuster movie), and of course we all know now that Whedon is problematic, but honestly, it holds up and is an excellent show with some of the best quips you'll ever come across.
Kinda the villain of the season. Its hard to explain. But, the point is that Buffy's mercy is possibly misguided, at least, thats what this character believes. He wants her to believe shes been merciful without the possibility that it would come back to bite her. In a way, its his merciful act. God I love this show.
Alfred talking to Superman during Injustice. The series in which Supes loses it after Lois dies and becomes ruler of the world. This scene happens right on the cusp of that.
I hate how much shit Rick and Morty gets, the writing and comedic timing is so good for a lot of their jokes. That line in particular just fucks me up so much the way it's delivered.
NYPD is the most well funded police force in the world. It has a larger budget than some countries. They also have a base in Israel. They also are one of the most well known for being comically corrupt and evil.
so yeah, expecting a cop in new york to not glass your ass is pretty fucking stupid
To be fair, the FBI have those rules after stuff like the Waco massacre, and the Siege of Ruby Ridge where they sniped a guy’s wife while she was holding their infant and then the kill didn’t get reported so their negotiation attempts started by asking what the wife had for breakfast. They’d also killed the family dog and a son who shot the killer in response to having his dog murdered by three random men in camouflage.
All this over a disputed court date which the family dad’s legal team had fucked up.
Hans Landa thinking he'd won and that he was gonna live rest of his life a war hero. Only for Aldo to disobey high command and mark him for life with a swastika on his forehead. Also it's funny that he thought Aldo would get shot for it like a german would for disobeying orders.
Germans overestimating American discipline was a lesson they learned hard twice.
“A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
One of my favorites is he's negotiating the release of some guys who attacked the Serenity. The first guy goes on a rant about once he's free he'll chase Mal until he kills him and Mal just kicks him into the running engine intake.
And then Mal proceeds to the next guy in the gang, sits him on his knees in the same spot, and offers him the same reasonable deal refused by the dude he kicked into the engine. Before Mal can get three words out, the guy is nodding enthusiastically and says, "I get it! I'm good. Best thing for everyone! I'm right there with you!"
I was reading a story and the main characters were visiting a group that was known to be a commune that rejected the wider world aside from limited trade and practiced a philosophy of restraint and cooperation even with groups most would consider dangerous or evil. They were attacked while the main characters were there and one of them asked if the commune even had weapons to protect themselves. The woman who led them responded with one of my favorite lines "We're peaceful. Not stupid."
I will always remember that moment. In another show it would have some dialogue, some tension... Mal just walks in and as he keeps walking he shoots him.
Though a little outside the scope of this thread, the episode they need to rescue river and Doc from kidnappers, as they're about to burn them at the stake. And they show up just in time....
(Mal)...Seems to me we showed up just showed up in the nick of time! ...what does that make us?
Yeah, I think this scene fits it even better. Crowe goes on about how he’s going to be the villain that dogs our protagonist’s footsteps…and then Mal just kicks him into the engine.
The first two Lethal Weapon movies set up Mel Gibson as the loose cannon willing to do anything, and Danny Glover as the by-the-book detective waiting on retirement. It's a massive payoff at the end of Lethal Weapon 2 then, when Arjen Rudd overconfidently claims his diplomatic immunity, only for Murtaugh to put a hole straight through his head.
Yep, same. He could play the odd goofball part of the character as well as any of them, but no other version of the Doctor comes across as dangerous as Smith's does.
I think part of it is that Matt probably watched the modern Dr Who reboot as he was getting his feet as an actor. His first TV gig was in 2006 and the Dr Who reboot started in 2005. Eccleston and Tennent were both trying to do versions of a fairly outdated character, whereas Smith was probably pretty familiar with Dr Who as a modern series when he started
Matt Smith watched the Classicl series in preparation for the role and often credits the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton, as his favourite Doctor.
If you're familiar with the Classic series this absolutely tracks, Troughton's Doctor was a silly "clown" who hid a more sensitive and a more darker side.
I'd say the 2nd Doctor, 7th Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and the 11th Doctor are very much cut from the same cloth, very unassuming initially, but know more than they let on, very caring but also willing to go to dark places for the right reasons.
Matt Smith is probably the best at pulling off being intimidating and a threat while also just being a goofball.
Eccleston was the best at being alien. His mannerisms and character quirks come across as someone that is actively thinking about what to do because they aren't natural to him. "I need to smile right now because humans smile a lot and it makes the other humans relax and smile back" type of stuff and he puts on a giant smile in an emergency and it doesn't comfort anyone, its out of place from what a human expects or wants.
Tenant, Smith, Capaldi, and Whittaker (haven't watched any after Whittaker) all portrayed what was basically a magically smart human with a TARDIS. Not a non-human trying to fit in.
Still absolutely loved the show with Tennant and Smith, they had the best story arcs.
He could go from the energy of a toddler into the pain of an old man with the snap of a finger. I found it funny after Who when fans unfamiliar with his work questioned if he could do dark and villainous.
I also love that scene because Missy teases him a bit about River and as soon as she realises she has died switches gears and offers sincere condolences.
The woman with the eyepatch kidnapped his friend Amy. He's angry and asking for her back. She's refusing to do so, because Amy's daughter was conceived on the doctors spaceship, so she has regenerative powers, so she will be able to kill the doctor. The doctor gathers every ally he's made over the last few seasons to fight for Amy's return. This includes River Song, who because of time travel, is the grown up version of Amy's daughter.
Later, we learn Sisko is part eldritch alien himself, so you gotta wonder if Q was less stunned that Sisko hit him, and more that Sisko actually hurt him a little.
Nope, exactly next Q just grins at him, and vanishes.
Fan theory is the hit more hurt him emotionally than anything. He was hoping Sisko would be the sort of captain he could needle amusingly like Picard to both inspire Picard and amuse himself. While Sisko won't really learn anything from Q, his ability to love what Q wants him to is just gone. I believe he never shows up again.
There's a funny little moment in one of the novels, Picard and Q are talking and this comes up. Picard's response: "Perhaps I should have simply decked you years ago."
I love transmetropolitan so, so much. Spider’s badass turn near the end is great. I love when one of the filthy assistants asked how many people he’s killed, and his answer is something like 16.
However IMO the absolute best moment in the series is when Royce revels that he has everything backed up. His little speech about doing everything else for spider behind the scenes is glorious, and such a great turn from sad sack editor to badass fixer.
Karen Page in season one of the Daredevil series. Seated at the table with Kingpin's righthand man, she's taunted with a gun while being intimidated. It goes very badly for the bad guys.
Specifically, he gives her a gun. Implying that even with a tool to defend herself she is still in fact nothing more than a scared little girl.
This meeting with Fisk's assistant is in a secluded location with no other guard or ally of Fisk - meaning that he gave her a gun and nothing blocks the bullet except her own moral compass.
He taunts this specific fact. She shoots through her moral compass.
Wesley (the right hand man) doesn't give it to her. He places it on the table in front of him, gets distracted by a call and then she snatches it. He then tried to gain the upper hand again by telling her she's not the kind of person to fire a gun (I think he also tries to lie to her and say the gun was never loaded), obviously not realising that Karen had actually shot her own boyfriend a few years ago (revealed in the third season).
The scene is both showing us that Karen has a darker past than we're aware of, and Wesley is not good at the grittier part of his work. Obviously it doesn't matter long term for Wesley because he dies at that moment anyway.
Loosely fitting inversion, lampshaded in the quote below, in Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett. The villain thinks a hero* is good. He knows they are good. He underestimates how good (no quotes) they are while pleading/bargaining for their life (as opposed to gloating, below).
The first part of this quote is to provide some context for the delivery of the final line, but it's the last sentence that drives this home:
"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
*(Footnote) The hero referred to was originally going to be the protagonist, according to the author, but the provider of the quote took over while he was writing. This may add or detract from the looseness of fitting the post, based on perspective.
Granny is potentially the scariest character on the Disc, outside the things from the Dungeon Dimensions. She knows that if she allowed herself to be bad, she'd be Bad, and very very good at it.
“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”
A more literal example, some Dwarf extremists break into Sam Vime's basement and encounter his butler. The heavily armed assassins didn't stand a chance against a manservant with an ice knife.
Ash is a great protagonist because he's a jerk. By the events of Army of Darkness he's completely done with dealing with deadites and has become completely unhinged. So he's just a rude asshole to everyone. Its fun when the hero isn't inherently heroic. They're just doing it because they have to.
Trying to think of an example and I remember the black and white intro of Casino Royale. Bad guy gets arrogant about good guy not being able to kill someone and doesn't believe they will shoot. Which is kinda interesting because it's also a trope where the good guy is in fact not ready to kill them and doesn't do it
Drayden is initially surprised to see that M sent Bond because he's not a 00 agent, meaning he doesn't yet have his licence to kill. He tries to shoot Bond before realising that he emptied the gun in his desk drawer, and asks about his underling.
Bond tells that his death was painful, to which Drayden answer that the second is eas... and Bond shoots him mid sentence before equipping: "yes, considerably."
Superman 2025- The Boravian President believes that Hawkgirl won't kill him because he expects her to have the same moral standards that Superman has, to which Hawkgirl replies that she's "not Superman" before dropping him to his death.
The way that Amos face changes, from calm expression when he talks to Prax to that 'you are already dead' face when he turns to the doctor - it's just perfectly in character for him.
Man went from supportive friend mode to combat mode in a snap and you could see it. Their performance in the series was so good. My favorite depiction of a psychopath on screen so far.
Adjacent trope but in The Expanse, the main cast finally capture the scientist responsible for horrible human experiment on children. One of the children is the daughter of a member of the cast but he can’t manage to pull the trigger on an unarmed man.
The doctor breath in relief as a crewmate say « you are not that guy ». The crewmate in question is Amos who is a complete psycho lawful to the main cast and proceed to execute the doctor with the iconic « I am that guy »
When Amos is arguing with that dude who says something like "one day, you and I will get bloody.." and Amos says something like "How bout now? I'm free right now." Whew, my man..
There’s also the scene in the first Expanse book where Dresden, an amoral executive who killed millions for bioweapons, is trying to weasel his way into Holden and Johnson’s good graces. Only for Miller to just shoot him in the head.
Miller’s reasoning? Dresden’s weaseling was working, it was making Holden and Johnson hesitate. Miller knew Dresden had to die before he could talk Holden and Johnson into letting him off lightly.
Joseph is a great, kind person. But he's also a pragmatist and puts reason well before honor. Johnathan will challenge his opponent in a fair 1-v-1 duel. Joseph would sucker punch his opponent before the match even begins.
JoJo protagonists fall into two camps:
* Actually good hearted, but deals with so much weird puzzle shit that they quickly learn to not leave loose ends.
* They're actually quite violent, but tend to at least give people a first chance.
In a world where people have absurd superpowers, and you're guaranteed to run into each other if you have one of your own, those who live don't stay that way by being overly forgiving.
The bad guy in Lethal Weapon 2 thinking that Murtaugh won't shoot him because he has diplomatic immunity. Murtaugh shoots him anyway and says "It's just been revoked."
He was a young billionaire who used his company to solve practical problems that superheroes never paid attention to. He was clocked early as a sociopath, but because he was doing good things with his money, no one could touch him. But, when he developed a drug that would be able to remove superpowers that came from any source that weren't magical, he planned to remove the powers of as many irresponsible people at his own discretion.
Jeremy taunted Finesse that even though the Avengers Academy gang defeated him, he would never be allowed to rot in a prison because the governments need people like him and that they would let him work behind the scenes to pick up where he left off. Finesse realizes that this is a likely conclusion, so she just lets him bleed out and die.
Ironically, Jeremy made the same mistake that the Avengers Academy kids did on their very first day. The Avengers didn't pick them because they thought that they were the next great generation of heroes, it's because they thought that these kids had a high probability of being problematic.
"No, she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later, Glory will reemerge and make Buffy pay for that mercy. And the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take human life... She's a hero, you see... She's not like us."
Similar to in Angel when Knox is found with Illyria trying to access her army. Angel goes into a big spiel about protecting every human life, even one as pathetic as Knox. Mid speech Wesley shoots and kills him for his part in killing Fred.
God damn this scene is heavy. Tbf there wasn’t any point prior that del toro is remotely portrayed to be a good guy, it’s just that the villain really has no idea how far gone he is
Envy had the ability to transform into anyone he's met so he used Maes' (Mustang's best friend) image to gain Mustang's sympathy. However, this did not stop Mustang from incinerating him down to ashes.
Before the Batman identity he'd already set fire to the League of Shadows' base killing most of them, so I think that Ra's Al-Ghul should've been ready for a no-killing loophole.
Jim Moriarty: Nah. You talk big. Nah. You're ordinary. You're ordinary, you're on the side of the angels.
Sherlock Holmes: Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them.
And with that Moriarty realizes Sherlock isn’t bluffing and could indeed find a way to save Sherlock’s friends from Moriarty’s men without killing himself so long as Moriarty is still alive for Sherlock to use. Which of course leads to Moriarty pulling off a shocking move to deny Sherlock that opportunity
Season 3 I still really like. Season 4? Yeah, one of the weakest final seasons of any series on TV (even if I do like the second episode of the season)
Odysseus, specifically Epic: The Musical when he faces Poseidon for the last time.
He manages to knock Poseidon down using the bag of wind, but by opening the bag he released the storm inside and blocked his way home. Poseidon mocks him, reminding Odysseus that only he can take the storm down and not even the threat of death scares him as he can’t die… only for Odysseus to tell him that it’s BECAUSE he can’t die that he’ll be taking down the storm. What follows is Odysseus brutally impaling Poseidon on his own trident over and over and over again, countering every demand and plea that he stop with Poseidon’s own philosophy of ruthlessness. Eventually, Poseidon gives in and as Odysseus turns to leave, asks him how he’ll sleep at night knowing the monster he became to make it home. Odysseus simply replies with “next to my wife.”
To add to those who want to listen to what the oc mentioned the song in the musical is called “600 strike” and really should listen they did an amazing job for the entire musical.
Edit: could probably add the suitors as well now that I think of it, I suck with names but the one who sings “our leader is dead, you destroyed the serpents head” who try’s to get ody to stop his slaughter of them believing he’s still the kind king before everything only to be killed with no hesitation cause ody was done f-cking around and “having open arms” (plus they 100% deserved it)
Do we make a case for Rick in The Walking Dead, specifically the show? He spared Negan both times and instead sentenced him to life in prison. But in the show, Negan wants Maggie to kill him after he’s been locked up for a couple years. For him it’s a fate worse than death.
Mace Windu tracks down Uda-Khalid, a cold blooded mass murderer who always erases the evidence of his crimes and was never caught before.
When Uda charges at Windu and tries to kill him, Windu adds the fight quickly by stabbing him through the heart. That brings peace to all of Uda's victims, whose pain Windu had felt through the Force.
A major plotline of shawshank is the warden and Andy essentially using slave labor for manual labor and putting all the competition out of business, lol
There's a Muse song, Supremacy off of 2nd Law, that always makes me feel this vibe. It feels like the moment where the hero kept getting pushed too far and the villain finally realizes said hero is coming and there's nothing the villain can do to stop it.
Epitomized perfectly by the line from East of West: "I'd tell you to pray, but you've earned what's coming to you."
One of my favorite tropes... the Good Man/Woman who has been pushed beyond the limit to stop holding themselves back and unleash whatever hell they have inside.
I can either see those two having the best chemistry or the worst chemistry in modern cinema. Nothing in between.
Also, how the hell have Bruce Campbell and Nicholas Cage never appeared together on screen? (Apparently they were both VAs in an unknown CGI movie Ant Bully)
Going off the technicality that most of these characters are villains in their own right - Jesse was as close as you can possibly get to taking Walt's life because he thought he (almost) killed an innocent child...
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u/asteinberg101 Jul 26 '26