Top 10 WORST Villain Tropes in Science Fiction and Fantasy

My least favorite villain tropes and cliches in sci-fi and fantasy! Dumb villains, "sympathetic" villains with badly written tragic backstories, queercoded villains, monologuing villains, villains shipped with heroines, love redeems the villain...all the bad tropes that are guaranteed to make me hate the antagonist for all the wrong reasons.

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[Joopitor]

A villain trope I’m not a fan of is the underdeveloped villain. Basically, they have badass designs and are established as major threats, only for them to be underused and just die. Two examples I can think of are Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace and Infinite in Sonic Forces

[JP-]

My least favorite trope or plot contrivance is "the real crime is trying to break the status quo"; when the villain is basically right about things but the heroes make no effort to work on those things after they've defeated them. This happens all the time with Marvel, specifically Captain America. So many of his villains are people who want to fix the problems of the country/world but they must be stopped because they do something uncharacteristically evil (can't have audiences sympathizing with them TOO much, now), and then after they're defeated, Cap proceeds to not help solve those problems. The Red Skull is constantly flxing on Cap about all of America's problems THAT DON'T NEED TO EXIST and Cap is always "Well, America isn't perfect blah blah" and I'm just sitting there thinking "Okay but can we at least try to move the dial so that it's closer to perfect?" And this dovetails very well into the villains only being villains because the heroes didn't give them a chance". Like, would it kill the heroes to help the villain realize their goals so that they don't feel that they have to resort to villainy? I bet you a LOT of villains would give up crime in a heartbeat if the heroes helped them.

As Ultron said in the second Avengers movie, "You all want to save and protect the world, but you don't want it to change..."

[WritingRandR]

Yes!!! Hate it when villains kill their own henchmen. Like who the hell is gonna work for someone like that?

[danielg.knipfer]

Being evil just to be evil. Bad guys do not think that they are bad guys. Everybody is a hero in their own narrative. Everybody justifies their actions; and actual villains are just the people who are justifying the very worst behavior as necessary.

[stephanieebarr]

The first three kinda go together - bad guys with incredibly huge ambitions and zero smarts. The problem is, in real life, these are all too common. Bad guys are so stupid in real life that I actually have a bigger beef with villains that are "smarter" than the good guys. Evil--including the rationales on why you should do evil things--usually come from a lack of big picture thinking. It's stupid. Hitler, Stalin, similar bad guys - not smart, but good at garnering power and they had all the support they needed because greed never goes out of style. Supergenius/mad scientist bad guys are among my most hated tropes.

Sometimes I write a villain and I think, "Damn, this guy is too stupid and hateful to be believed." Then I turn on the TV and realize I'm not even scratching the surface of what's out there. HR violations also have plenty of historical support. Sad but true.

I'm totally on board with the health bad guys villain disgust and I'm sick of people trying to get me to see the villain's side of it (unless they really REALLY do a good job). I do have reformed villains among my characters. But I usually write out how they get there and none of them crossed certain lines. They're rarely the MC or the main villain of the story either, more like coworkers you want to slap now and then.

[RazorRex]

My least favorite villain tropes:
The villain pulling the “you and I are not so different” quote
The forced twist villain trope. EG Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises and Hans in Frozen.

[emadSciFi]

Watched the video and am happy to find that Kylo Ren is mentioned there!!

Nothing beats Darth Vader and the T-1000 as far as bad guys go. I'd suggest that one of the reasons you have villains portrayed as stupid and incompetent is wartime propaganda. I remember when I was a kid watching the Woody Woodpecker Show, listening to my mother wondering why Germans were always portrayed as stupid. Wartime propaganda that has sadly seeped into popular culture. Same with Arabs and Muslims if you watch movies like 'True Lies' and 'Hidalgo'. Racism and Orientalism is also part of this vilification.

You mention homosexuality. Interestingly the badguy in 'Birds of Prey' was originally scripted to be gay, according to Filmento on youtube!!

[andeeharry]

I am glad I listened to this, as I have two characters that fit the bill here. I will need to change that. One is the female teacher at school that is determined to rescue her family that was imprisoned. She does all she can do get them out of the Eitherworld Rings, but she fights people and kills someone. Not sure if she is bad, or if she is protecting herself. But locking people up in magic cages though will prove otherwise. The second is the dark skinned Usha. She is a nice girl until we find that she been caught up in some bad stuff when she was younger, and being a member of some group that enslaved the world. She lived in fear of being found out, and tried to change her name to change it. However, then she admits that she never changed, and kidnapped a child for her own purpose. While serving the evil group, as they wanted to use the kid for thier own prophecy making. Yeah, after watching this, I need to change it slightly...thanks for uploading

[breebird]

"Are the allos okay?" I honestly ask the universe this everyday...

[sandysaidak]

I'm really glad I found your channel, because I'm loving these videos. However, if you've never seen a male hero/female villain romance, please check out Flash Gordon, and all the other serials of the 30s and 40s. If the villainess was hot (usually the daughter of the main villain and generally the only female character with any agency) she can be redeemed by a good man and take up baking.

[Acesahn]

The 'Alas, poor villain' is my least favorite trope in all of tropedom. I almost never see it used well and its often pulled out of the writers back pocket in the final moments of the villains life.

[JackSardonic]

Hey, congratulations on your transition, you look great!

[emadSciFi]

So I suppose they had to dumb down her opponent even more!!!

Concerning terrible villains and incompetent villains, would you also say that 'men' are increasingly being castigated, if the hero is a woman, as in the Charlie's Angel's reboots? Kylo Ren himself was up against Rey, and she always beats him in lightsaber battles, compared to Luke Skywalker up against Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back.

[JoeyPaulOnline]

Not a fan of the tragic backstory, and the ableism always pisses me off!

[Acesahn]

I have to disagree on killing your henchman being called stupid. You're thinking like a good or civil person raised in a civil culture. Evil people/cultures are often ruled by fear and obedience where the price of failure is death. Hell even the Roman Empire/Republic handed out death sentences like candy when it came to their soldiers and generals failing.

[JustinMJ]

One of my MCs is a gay male while his villain is a female. Her main reason for being evil is the corporation she used to work for killed her husband to use the power he had in order to further their cause, and they tried to cover it up. They are a secret underground organization to a upper ground superhero society. Most of the super heroes in this society that work for the main group, is unaware of the secret base. This villain wants to do everything to expose this organization and destroy it.

[ruskyalmond]

I hate to annoy you by asking but have you done a video on race concepts or fantasy races in general? I would love to hear you give advice and discuss it. :)

[edsongutierrez]

Me noting down everything for my characters 😂

[Monsteretrope]

Is the black villain, white hero thing really that widespread? I can honestly say i have never seen it tbh. Only read a couple of hundred books so far tho. Are there any famous examples of this? Not really familiar with the sexist example either but it sounds like medieval thinking...and most fantasy books at least are medieval. I'd also say that a women without a child or one who has lost one is more likely to be a villain then a mother with a kid no?

[JohnEvansSparky]

The wokey wokeness hit my woke gag limit