Villain Decay (original) (raw)

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Villain Decay (trope)

Peridot's villainy isn't the only thing that's gone down the can.

Sideshow Bob: Hello, Bart...
Bart: Oh, it's you, Bob. How' ya doin'?
Sideshow Bob: No screams? ... Not even... an "eep"?
Bart: Hey, I'm not afraid of you. Every time we tangle you wind up in jail!

The process by which a villain who is extremely scary on first appearance becomes a joke after a few more appearances.

In most shows, Failure Is the Only Option for the Villains, because success would mean that the villains Take Over the World, kill or imprison all the good guys, and otherwise do things that make future episodes impossible. However, this eventually results in a Foregone Conclusion and a predictable plot, since it makes the audience wonder why The Hero is so concerned about an enemy that they've beaten six times already. Note that this does not apply to shows where the villains are supposed to be incompetent jokes from the start.

Most writers will try to stop this decline in menace, which sometimes helps and sometimes makes the Villain Decay worse, but the fastest way to decay a villain is to make him switch sides.

Of course, you can prevent this by not having failure be the only option for the villain; let them win battles, but not the war, or let their Evil Plan come closer and closer to completion while the heroes race to prevent its final success. Another alternative is for there to be more than one villain in an evil organization with different levels of competence or seriousness, with a boss who the audience can take seriously even if his minions lose repeatedly. Or, for the really cunning villain, dupe the heroes into doing what they wanted all along or benefit from them foiling the plan. Subsequent writers may decide to make the villain Not So Harmless with a particularly shocking move on their part. Or you can make them a Disc-One Final Boss, and set up somebody who is far more evil and hasn't decayed yet.

This tends to happen as a result of the following process:

  1. An old or well-known series (particularly science fiction) has a famous signature villain that the fanbase loves.
  2. The hero beats said villain(s) in their traditional form several times.
  3. The writers become worried that fans will get bored with the villains unless they give said villains new strategies, or new forms of attack to use against the hero.
  4. As a result, a steadily larger amount of knowledge about the villains becomes accumulated, which violates the Nothing Is Scarier rule. Villains are much more intimidating if we hardly know anything about them, and they come across as just being single-minded forces of nature with no real motivation other than to destroy things for the sake of it. Once writers start psychoanalyzing them and giving them definite reasons for what they do, they lose their menace.

Villains who have gone through this process usually have three possible outcomes.

  1. They can begin the transition to Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist, as did Warcraft's Orcs, and Star Trek's Borg ultimately did in isolated examples.
  2. They can become a Butt-Monkey or source of cheap comedy.
  3. They can be retired from use completely.

Note that Villain Decay is almost never caused by a lack of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, a difficulty in recruiting Mooks, or even injuries from battle with the heroes — which is to say, they don't become worse off because they have lost. Also note that a Villainous Breakdown is not a guarantee of Villain Decay. Decay will only happen quicker if their entire Villain Pedigree is replaced. If you have an Invincible Hero - especially one who shouldn't be capable of winning but somehow always wins anyway – Villain Decay is almost assured, even for characters who haven't fought yet. Tends to be particularly hard to avoid for villains who manage to survive the heroes' climb up the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.

If the heroes are dealing with an entire villianous race, they can often become victim of Conservation of Ninjutsu: one such individual can be perceived as a dire threat, but when a hundred of them show up they often prove to be easily overcome.

See also Badass Decay, Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, Goldfish Poop Gang, Harmless Villain, Monster Threat Expiration, Motive Decay, and Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey.

Contrast Villain Sue, Invincible Villain, and Only the Author Can Save Them Now, where a villain is too effective or scary. Believe it or not, those tropes suck the tension out of the villains even worse than this one. Also contrast Adaptational Villainy, where a relatively non-villainous character in a work becomes dramatically more villainous in an adaptation, and Villain Forgot to Level Grind, where the villain never becomes any less formidable, but the hero becomes so much more powerful over time that a once threatening villain is no longer a problem.

Compare and contrast Failure Hero. Same concept - repeated failures ruins their credibility - different role.

See also Degraded Boss. Not to be confused with Redemption Demotion, where the villain's strength decays because of their Heel–Face Turn. Not related to Villainous Ethics Decay.

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Garoa's New Job

After failing to defeat the Fivemen one too many times, the once-fearsome Captain Garoa is demoted to janitor by Galactic Empress Meadow and made to scrub toilets.

Alternative Title(s): Villain Threat Decay, Villain Downgrade, Increasingly Harmless Villain, Diminishing Villain Threat, Diminished Villain Threat