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Harmless Villain
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Villains are vile, ruthless, merciless, and bloodthirsty; any pretension of civility is just a smokescreen to hide a really twisted Big Bad. Not exactly kid-friendly, is it? So what are kids shows and movies supposed to do, if the original source's baddy Eats Babies? Why, make them a harmless villain, of course! Their goals can be as grandiose as any other villain's, but the way they go about their plans makes one wonder what they would do if they ever win. Instead of putting the heroes through a Death Course, it will merely be an obstacle course strewn with riddles. Rather than threatening to use Anthrax in the heart of London, they will use sleeping gas to get away with a heist. If they capture the hero, expect only the most benign of Death Traps (usually with a tub of Mr. Pibb instead of a Shark Pool); and instead of outright torture, they will use feathers to tickle the hero into submission. Or, they may say they are trying to do something truly evil, but they will fail, every time. And if that level of detail is too demanding for your kid detective story? Just make them smugglers. Smuggling what? Nobody knows. It is never specified. But smuggling is bad, that is why they are the villains and that is all you need to know. Specific evil plots will usually include amazing MacGuffin devices that mildly inconvenience people and get the hero involved; often, these plots are of such a scale and intricacy that if someone Cut Lex Luthor a Check, they'd be so rich, they wouldn't need that giant Gold-only Orbital Magnet to steal the world's supply of gold. But, then again, where's the fun in that? The only people "seriously endangered" by them are the Innocent Bystanders and Damsel in Distress that they occasionally capture, and they end up no worse for wear than if they'd spent the afternoon in a Time Share seminar, which is usually far less entertaining at that, and the villain will probably even provide far better snacks, along with room and board! The Harmless Villain might possess an impressive array of powers, but they'll end up using it with all the effectiveness of Misapplied Phlebotinum, or have glaring and easily exploited weaknesses that bring them to their knees just in the nick of time. Basically, they aren't saddled with a bag of Villain Balls so much as they're expert jugglers, using them to entertain rather than as signs of stupidity (it is a kid's show, after all). It's more or less as if they are enforcing on themselves the Designated Villain role. A few of them are even aware of this, and are pretty easy-going about it. These amiable villains will more often than not show that Even Evil Has Standards when that Very Special Episode rolls around. Out of all the villains, they're the likeliest to enjoy a good time with Villains Out Shopping, or even be Friendly Enemies with the hero! A true Harmless Villain will never Kick the Dog, much less cross the depravity line. However, they will Poke the Poodle...a LOT. Their minions are as often as not Faceless Goons and comically good Mauve Shirts, both of which tend to do kooky and funny things when their boss isn't looking. These supposed villains often have a degree of Karmic Protection because of the small scale of their "evil", especially when there are more serious villains around. Compare with: Big Bad Wannabe: When a villain tries to be dangerous and may be to an extent, but the more harmful villains quickly snuff them and make them know their place. Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: When a villain has genuinely malicious intentions yet constantly fails to do anything nasty because of their incompetence or because the hero is so overwhelmingly superior to themnote A good example of the differences between a Harmless and an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain is this: An Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain will plan and try to shoot you but accidentally leave their weapon at home. This trope will plan and try to shoot you... with a water pistol. And gloat about it.). The Family for the Whole Family: When an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain would be a bona fide Knight of Cerebus were they not hobbled by incompetence or the narrative. Peek-a-Bogeyman: a villain or monster whose sole intention is to briefly scare people instead of harming them. Poke the Poodle (when villain does lame and ridiculous things trying to be evil), Team Rocket Wins (when a normally ineffectual villain achieves a temporary victory) and Troll (when the most insulting thing the character does is annoy people until they become angry). Villainy-Free Villain: When the antagonist is a huge Jerkass but doesn't actually do anything especially criminal or evil beyond just being an unpleasant person who happens to oppose the heroes. Villainous Underdog: The villain is the David to the hero's Goliath, but the hero is still sympathetic. Contrast with: Affably Evil: The villain is a threat, but they just happen to be a really nice person. Big Bad: A villain who is the biggest threat. Complete Monster: Instead of (or despite) being a total goofball, the villain commits terrible acts that leaves everybody (possibly even other villains, if they're evil enough) shocked and appalled. They are never harmless and therefore can't fall under this trope. Hate Sink: When someone is just a bad person meant to be loathed by the audience. Due to how terrible a harmless villain is at doing bad, they rarely, if ever, qualify for this trope. Invincible Villain: The polar opposite of this trope in terms of threat level. While a Harmless Villain would simply poke you with a stick, an Invincible Villain would obliterate you without even lifting a finger. Knight of Cerebus: The introduction of a genuinely dangerous villain to a show marks a general Tone Shift in a more serious direction. Moral Event Horizon: The villain does the worst things imaginable. Not-So-Harmless Villain: When a villain who was previously Harmless or Ineffectually Sympathetic levels up or morally decays and becomes genuinely dangerous; or when the villain was never actually harmless to begin with but the audience was misled about them. Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: A genuinely nasty and dangerous villain appears in a work whose tone would lead you to expect this trope. |
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| Harmless Villain / int_12fd5db0 | type |
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The title character in Megamind appears to be this. Despite having 87 life sentences, it is implied that he never really causes physical harm to anyone, seeing as he chooses unoccupied areas for his base of operations (such as an abandoned observatory) and repeatedly abducts reporter Roxanne Ritchie but leaves her unharmed every time and all his threats are pure bluster that both him and Roxanne know will never go beyond that. Even after he 'wins' and takes over the city, he merely causes property damage. He even tells the citizens to proceed as usual. It's even shown that the only reason he had a rivalry with Metro Man in the first place, is because the latter deliberately pretended Megamind was a threat to him by barely trying to oppose him using his powers. To reinforce this point, he's outright horrified at the evil of the film's true villain, Tighten, and when the latter starts his rampage the news state that Metrocity had never seen destruction on the scale of Tighten's before. | |
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The Ultimate Hope is basically an exercise in turning Junko Enoshima into one, as every single attempt to cause despair just ends up making her victims' situation even better. At the end, nobody except Mukuro even believes she was ever a villain. | |
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DR. BEES has the Comforter, the perfect possible foe for Dr. Bees. His evil strategy? He invented a machine called the Comfortizer that makes you... feel really comfortable. He uses this machine to waltz into a bank, zap the security guards, and while they're enjoying a soothing nap... he leaves the bank to find more people to comfort. Even the police remark that he hasn't actually committed any crimes, but still treat him like a true supervillain and send Dr. Bees to capture him. Keep in mind, Dr. Bees released a swarm of bees in the bank immediately before meeting with the police. | |
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The Big Lebowski has the Nihilists as one of the villains that The Dude has to face. Despite having a ferret that could bite the Dude's manhood off and one of them carrying a sword, it's clear they are simply pretentious blowhards. The worse thing that they ever done was commit arson to the Dude's car. It's even shown near the ending that Walter manages to incapacitate one of them, bites the guy holding the sword's ear off and the last one doesn't even bother trying to attack the Dude and just makes weird karate moves while bragging that he's going to 'f*** him in the ass' and Walter takes him down with ease. | |
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Meet the Robinsons has Bowler Hat Guy, who isn't capable of actually committing much harm. The robotic bowler hat, Doris, is manipulating him for her own Evil Plan. And it turns out that he has a Freudian Excuse for his hatred of Lewis, the protagonist—he was Lewis' roommate back at the orphanage, and once lost a baseball game which was very important to him because Lewis' invention building kept him up all night. | |
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Connor from The New Guy. Most of his scenes have him constantly giving insults that don't make sense. When his friends point this out, he always tells them to "shut up". Doesn't help that in one scene, he is knocked unconsious by Dizzy, who looks phsyically weaker then him. | |
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Evil Belle features Sweetie Belle trying to become a dreaded villain-for some reason-, only to end up being this trope. | |
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Atop the Fourth Wall: Dr. Linksano starts out as this, especially since he was first used for a Breather Arc between the Mechakara and Lord Vyce storylines. He does show more competence later though, but mainly after his Heel–Face Turn to became a double agent for Linkara. In a parody of the badly written villains of the comic, his Fourth Year Anniversary had Phelous (wearing a suit and mask) randomly come out of nowhere as his "mysterious" new enemy "Mysterior", who kept rambling about how he was mysterious and how Linkara had to solve the "Mystery". Both he, and a later replacement (exactly the same only with a different coloured mask and a slightly different name) were immediately shrugged off by Linkara. |
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Burnt Face Man series has got Taps Man, who erodes metal over a period of time, Have A Nice Day Man, who wishes everyone a great day, and Detergent Man, who washes clothes deliberately on the wrong settings. There are many others. | |
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Lee Phillips of KateModern attempts to take revenge on Gavin and Tariq by...forcing them to play a treasure hunt game to retrieve their stolen software. He still manages to be a serious threat because there are other, decidedly less harmless villains who are also after the software. | |
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In The Dresden Files short story Day Off, Harry is confronted by "Darth Wannabee" and his gang of amateur dark wizards. He's angry because Harry removed a curse he'd laid on a woman who'd annoyed him. Normally, this would be black magic, an incredibly serious matter and something the White Council punishes with death; their treatment of warlocks is one of the things Harry agrees with the council on, even if he thinks that they are doing ridiculously little to stop people from becoming them. But the "curse" was so weak Harry thought it had been a result of bad feng shui. They run away after, on telling Harry to defend himself, he pulls out his gun. Later, they chucked a smoke bomb through his window, which at least shows they had the sense not to confront him again. | |
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SCP Foundation: Among the various horrors the Foundation houses is SCP-1370, an artificial lifeform hostile to everything else. Luckily for everything else, 1370 is poorly designed to the point of losing a fight with a potted plant. Not even a paranormal potted plant, just a regular philodendron. SCP-2006 is a potentially omnipotent shapeshifter, whose goal is to scare people for fun. Fortunately, the Foundation has it convinced that the most terrifying thing in the world are men in rubber suits from old '50s horror films (its favorite form is Ro-Man of Robot Monster fame). Because of that, it's almost completely harmless, and its scaring strategies consist of jumping out and saying "Boo!" Of course, if it were to ever realize how ineffective this is, it could quickly ascend to a Not-So-Harmless Villain. |
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In the Discworld novel The Last Hero, Evil Harry Dread has such a strong sense of professional ethics that he always chooses his guards for stupidity and designs his dungeons for easy escape. Of course, following the same professional ethics, he betrays Cohen and the Silver Horde at the first opportunity, but they're not too fussed about it. It's just what he does. | |
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The Pirates of Penzance won't attack forces weaker than they are, and make a point of never harming orphans. | |
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The two main Shark Gang characters in Our Friend Power 5 do little more than bumble around on Earth and fail to kill the Turtles. Even when the Turtles and Yesular are defenseless and asleep, they just steal Yesular's wand and leave, allowing the heroes to strike back and defeat them. | |
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Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, has never killed anyone, although he's thinking of starting on small animals soon in order to acclimate himself to the unpleasant nature of his duties. | |
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Epithet Erased: Nobody has all that much to fear from Giovanni Potage and his minions. Most of their crimes are basically just general teenage acting-out that tops out at pranks and graffiti, with the museum heist being mostly a success at all because of the involvement of other people, and Giovanni himself is so bad at being evil that he is Molly's Morality Pet rather than the other way around. In Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic, he explains that his idea of being "a villain" means looking cool, being memorable, getting the best song, and ultimately losing, because that way everyone has a good time. At the end of Prison of Plastic, he does commit a pretty serious crime, namely kidnapping...but while technically illegal, getting Molly away from the abusive conditions she's been living under is hard to view as anything other than a humanitarian act. | |
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When the Ruddigore protagonist is suddenly hit with a curse obliging him to commit one serious crime every day or die in agony, the best he can do in the first week is to shoot a fox. When he is tasked to commit the genuinely evil act of carrying off a maiden, the aging maiden fends him off with little trouble. | |
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In Zombie Blood Bath, the zombies seem to be relatively harmless so long as you don't just stand there and let them kill you. In one scene, they had to get pass an army of zombies on a staircase, and they did this by...just gently shoving them aside. The zombies groaned and flailed their arms, but didn't seem to pay much attention to them. | |
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The evil AI Omega from Red vs. Blue can qualify for this, depending on who he's possessing at the time. In the body of Tex or any other sufficiently trained soldier, he's a genuinely terrifying threat. In the bodies of the Blood Gulch crew, and most especially Doc, he's little more than a nuisance. | |
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The palace eunuchs in Farce of the Three Kingdoms. They do manage to off He Jin, but only because he was Too Dumb to Live. | |
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Victor Vivisector from CollegeHumor's "Furry Force" videos. He's a near-demonic looking supervillain with a skull-like face, laser guns, and an army of robots equipped with chainsaws. What is his evil, diabolical plan? To cut down all of America's national forests and replace them with parking lots. He's foiled twice by a bunch of kids from the Furry Force, and is so grossed out that he gives up the first time◊, and bashes himself to death the second. Come the third episode, he creates the counterparts to the Furry Force, The Scaly Squad. Problem is, the squad also grossed him out, hoping the two would mutually destroy each other. One visit from the Terminator-esque future version of Leo later (complete with seeing his future), he burns down his lair, with himself inside. His final words? "I welcome death." |
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Both Gru and Vector in Despicable Me don't really do anything overly dastardly, at least in the animated film's universe (in Real Life, the consequences of stealing the Moon would be much more horrific). Yes, Gru freezes a few people, but the freezing is implied to be harmless. And Vector is content with stealing monuments and just sitting back playing his Wii. In fact, had Vector not stolen the Pyramid at the beginning, that boy would have died. (Though Vector later kidnaps the girls and threatens them to extort Gru so he’s more of a Not-So-Harmless Villain and even some of Gru’s acts in the film such as adoption fraud would be considered serious crimes in real life. | |
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Toy Story 2 has greedy toy collector Al McWhiggen who actually poses no real threat to the toys (especially Woody, whose care is in his best interest, if just for the money he would nab by selling him). | |
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Bank and Vault of Wake of the Clash are two mismatched cartoon villains with a gang of faceless bank robbers. Both are loud and ineffective at their jobs, celebrating their minor victories to comedic effect, before being swiftly dealt with by a few passing heroes. The Hourglass may also fall under this trope, as he is practically harmless, though he is much more adept at making a sneaky getaway, and appears to keep far more threatening company. | |
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In The Calvinverse Doctor Frank Brainstorm takes this role. His inventions barely work and the heroes usually defeat him with ease. He also is completely embarrassed by his first name and demands to be called Dr. Brainstorm, which the heroes never do. He doesn't even really want to be evil, but it was pushed on him by his mother. The one time he actually managed to injure one of the heroes, he was immediately apologetic and actually assisted with his recovery. He often works with the heroes against greater threats, and is honestly much more competent then. Summed up in this exchange: | |
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The Rainbow Magic series has the goblins, who are clumsy, dumb, and very easily tricked. Jack Frost himself also qualifies most of the time. | |
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Dr. Poque from Mega64 is arguably this, while he did kidnap and lock Rocko, Derek, and Sean in his basement, he's to much of a Butt-Monkey to be a real threat. Episode six of Version 2 amps this up to Woobie status. | |
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Dr. Horrible is pretty much harmless for the first two acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Then, Smug Super Captain Hammer steals his would-be girlfriend and taunts him mercilessly about it. This drives Dr. Horrible to get dangerous, with tragic results. | |
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Played with in The Supervillainy Saga by C.T. Phipps. Gary Karkofsky a.k.a Merciless: The Supervillain without MercyTM is considered this by both superheroes and supervillains. This is averted just about every time Gary elects to use his powers and they are shown to be highly lethal as well flexible under his imaginative usage. It gets to the point that people assume he's using Obfuscating Stupidity by the sixth book. | |
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Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: Marik tries to be evil, but his evil plans usually involve things like stealing the Pharaoh's leather pants, asking to borrow Yugi's Millennium Puzzle and not returning it for three weeks, and pushing him off a boat. Into the sea. And on top of that, he is very easily distracted. During his first appearances in the Marik's Evil Council Videos, Dartz manages to be even more pathetic. Then, he suddenly becomes an Expy of Coiffio whose unfortunate accent causes both his henchmen and the audience to not be sure of whether his plans are the standard card game shenanigans or something much worse. |
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The page quote comes from The Non-Adventures of Wonderella. The rather juvenile Jokerella threatens to spray Wonderella with a squirtgun full of acid... citric acid (orange juice). | |
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In Cheat Commandos, Blue Laser's first appearance had them declaring intent to "blow up the ocean", but after that, their plans take a dive, being entirely dedicated to screwing with the Cheat Commandos. The Commandos actually let Blue Laser's commander come over for video games. | |
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Slimer from Ghostbusters. He's little more than a nuisance who wants to have a good time, which for him means munching as much of the hotel's buffet as he can, but his antics interfere with the human world. | |
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Bruce (the Thumper) from Pimp Lando is mostly this, though he does become legitimately threatening at the end of the sixth episode, "Pimp 2K." | |
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DSBT InsaniT: The only thing Boo can do is turn people invisible. As Dave points out, that is hardly a threat. | |
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| Harmless Villain / int_e6758d93 | type |
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Scion has a nonhumorous example in Ouranos, one of the avatars of the Titan of Wind. As described in Greek myth, he was castrated by his son Cronos... and in the process lost absolutely all of his ambition and passion. These days he sits around in his palace of clouds, drinking and sleeping, because he just doesn't care. This makes him a perfect hostage for determined Scions, because he won't even lift a finger in his own defense - if you can get past the guards the other avatars have put around him, he won't stop you from carrying him away. | |
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The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: Ridiculously Epic Fail combines Ridiculously Epic's intent with Epic Fail's competence, making him a character who completely fails at his attempts to do evil. | |
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Children's Party at the Palace has several villains that have harmless and lukewarm plans; just sabotaging the Queen’s party by distracting the corgis, putting a potion in the cake (which doesn’t hurt whoever eats from it; just transforms the children into mice), and stealing the Queen’s handbag. Only exception is the Grand High Witch, who mentioned about cooking and boiling children. | |
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Count Jim Moriarty of The Goon Show is a subversion. He gradually devolved into a more and more pathetic villain, but what kept him from becoming a harmless one was a) that he was usually partnered with the slightly more competent Hercules Grytpype-Thynne and, most importantly b) he acted as antagonist to the likes of Ned Seagoon, Eccles and Bluebottle. | |
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Fiona from The Princess Switch Sequel movies The Princess Switch: Switched Again is a fake princess (and Identical Stranger to the movie's protagonist Stacy De Novo and Lady Margaret Delacourt, Duchess of Montenaro) who relies on I Am Very British and Honey Trap behaviors in order to commit burglary. By the time of the events of The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star happen, she has done a Heel–Face Turn by the end of the movie. As it were, she was never a Complete Monster and she actually had lines she wouldn't cross and considered certain things to be crossing moral lines that were just too dangerous for her. In her previous movie, all she really was in terms of a threat was Poke the Poodle levels of villainy (which, given this franchise's universe, says something about it). | |
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