Outside Context Villain: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The Apostles from ''[[Berserk]]'' are far more powerful than normal humans, and even then, there are several Apostles above even them. The Five Godhands and the Kushan Emperor are terrifyingly powerful. The scariest part about them is that, even in a [[Crapsack World]] like the ''Berserk'' universe, [[It Got Worse|they will make things much worse if they come to power]].
* The Arume from ''[[Blue Drop]]'', all-female alien race (actually hyper-evolved humans hitting an evolution dead end) from parallel universe. Of the [[Mars Needs Women]] variety, except that they're [[Discount Lesbians|Venus]]. [[Easily-Conquered World|And they won]].
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* While he is (arguably) a regular guy, Johann Liebert in ''[[Monster]]'' is so far above everyone else in cunning and knowledge that he doesn't fit in with the rest of the decidedly normal cast. Everyone is potentially a plaything for him to manipulate with total ease and kill off when he's done with them. Just being next to him causes major psychological damage if it he doesn't cause them to [[Driven to Suicide|kill themselves]] first.
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* The storylines in ''[[Ramba]]'' normally dealt with mobsters, drug dealers, mercenaries, etc. In "Vendetta From Hell", Ramba fights a black magic coven that summons a demon in an attempt to kill her. This was the only appearance of the supernatural in the series.
* It's arguably a [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]] trope now that fighting (and beating the hell out of) cosmic beings is passe in superhero comics, but in its original context the "Galactus Trilogy" from ''[[Fantastic Four]]'' fits this. The appearance of an all-powerful "villain" that was beyond good and evil, and who immediately put the protagonists in a literally helpless situation, was pretty much unprecedented in superhero stories at the time.
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* In the "burnt offering" arc of ''[[Cable]] and [[Deadpool]]'', Cable is kicking the collective asses of Deadpool and the [[X-Men]]. The authorities call in... the Silver Surfer, whom even Cable didn't expect, resulting in an epic beatdown and {{spoiler|eventual semi-depowering}} (even though Cable breaks the Surfer's board). This is notable since the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters rarely interact, so the Silver Surfer appearing really was a surprise.
* The Anti-Monitor in [[Crisis on Infinite Earths]] was out of context for the entire DC Multiverse. A being that could and did successfully annihilate nearly all the universes and forced the heroes to collapse the five remaining universes into one, forever transforming the DC Universe and everyone in it. His power was so overwhelming even an assemblage of the mightiest beings from all remaining worlds proved little more than a distraction. Even with its shell torn away, its power drained, and its power source dismantled, it took Superman and Superboy (along with some help from Darkseid) to finally finish it off... which in turn triggered a ''supernova''. He was that nasty.
* ''[[The Authority]]'' have most of their story arcs based around these.
== [[Fan Works]] ==▼
▲== Fan Works ==
* Inverted in ''[[Finishing the Fight]]'', where the capabilities of the Master Chief and UNSC technology are beyond the ability of most of Faerun to combat.
* Played with in ''[[Dungeon Keeper Ami]]''. [[Sailor Moon|Sailor Mercury]] is transported into the World of ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'' and has a rather unconventional approach to being a Keeper, as well as the whole evil alignment. She's more like an Outside Context Stealth Hero.
* ''[[Tamers Forever Series]]'': The Triad never considered Daemon returning as part of their plan, it causes a inconvienience.
* ''[[Secret War (fanfic)|Secret War]]'': you thought {{spoiler|Taryst was the [[Big Bad]]? ehh! wrong! It's Inquisitor Edracian who's behind everything but it's a subversion as many characters excluding Attelus and a few others knew of him and his involvement already.}}
* Also inverted with The Family from the ''[[Worm]]/[[Luna Varga]]'' crossover ''[[Taylor Varga]]'', who are a group of Outside Context ''Heroes''. Their [[troll]]ish sense of humor plus their refusal to engage in usual Parahuman behaviors (like looking for fights) while instead doing things like rebuilding the city and clearing shipwrecks from the harbor confound those who expect them to act "normally". And their true nature is ''so'' alien that Thinker powers refuse to even look at them. (Those that try basically trip their circuit breakers and have to reboot -- with no results. Or worse, ''error messages''.)
== [[Film]] ==▼
▲== Film ==
* ''[[Apocalypto]]'' plays the [[Mayincatec]] [[Human Sacrifice|human sacrificing]], forest ravaging, pox ridden, corrupt and decadent civilization this way. And of course by the end, {{spoiler|the Spanish arrive}}.
** This becomes [[Fridge Brilliance]] - and [[Fridge Horror]] - if you stop to consider just how provincial these forest villagers are. As far as they know, the only other people in the known world are separate tribes very much like them. Intertribal violence, when it occurs, is a fairly open-and-shut affair involving relatively small groups of warriors - sort of the ancient equivalent of an old-time gang rumble. Expansionist armies are totally beyond the imagination of these village folk. But consider: these people have a strong folk tradition, with stories populated by dangerously clever animals and beings who possess literally cosmic power. When Jaguar Paw hears that "Our lands were ravaged," one can only shudder at the thought of who - or what - he thinks could possibly be responsible.
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* [[The Joker]] is this in ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. In the conflict between [[Batman]], the cops, and organized crime, all with their own brand of rational goals, nobody was prepared to deal with a mastermind who was exclusively in it [[For the Evulz]].
** This trope was present in the Burton/Schumacher films too.
*** At the beginning of the 1989 movie ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'', the city officials are concerned with Boss Carl Grissom and want to nab Jack Napier only because he's Grissom's "number-one guy
*** In ''[[Batman Forever]]'', Bruce Wayne is so wrapped up in stopping Two-Face that he barely even listens to Edward Nygma (the future Riddler) when Nygma tries to tell him about his pet project. Doubly ironic, in that [[Create Your Own Villain|Wayne's ignoring him is]] ''[[Create Your Own Villain|precisely what sends Nygma over the edge into supervillainy]]''.
* This is how the Aliens are viewed in ''[[Cowboys and Aliens (film)|Cowboys and Aliens]]''. As a result, they're initially referred to as 'demons', something the cowboys do have context for.
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* ''[[Dick Tracy (film)|Dick Tracy]]'': The Chicago police believe to the very end that Big Boy Caprice has kidnapped Tess Trueheart, even after it has become clear [[Dramatic Irony|(to the audience)]] that [[The Blank]] has become the infinitely more dangerous threat to the city. (And since {{spoiler|Breathless Mahoney is killed in the climax}}, {{spoiler|she}} proves to be [[The Greatest Story Never Told]].)
* ''[[Battleship (film)|Battleship]]'' involves an international naval exercise being interrupted... by alien ships coming from underwater to seal an island chain in an impenetrable force field, leaving three destroyers to fight them.
* Played for some serious laughs in the film, ''[[Crocodile Dundee]].'' Mick "Crocodile" Dundee is the protagonist version of this trope when he arrives in New York City. Nobody has any idea how to handle him, whether they be street thugs or the wealthy elite. Also somewhat inverted in that there are moments that Mick doesn't know exactly what to make of what he's seeing. However, he just takes it all in stride.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* As mentioned, the [[Trope Namer]] from ''[[The Culture]]'' series; The ''[[The Culture/Excession|Excession]]''. And when a civilization like [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|the Culture]] considers something "Outside Context", things are about to get hairy...
* This is a major plot point in ''[[Foundation]] and Empire'', when a man called the Mule shows up out of nowhere and starts conquering planets. Hari Seldon's predictions, which have been infallibly running the show for centuries, are suddenly no longer accurate because he could not possibly have foreseen the Mule's arrival, as the Mule is a ''mutant''. However, {{spoiler|Hari knew that he ''something'' was bound to happen in his thousand-year plan, so he put together a secret team to make sure the unexpected could be fixed}}. The fact that the plan still works on time after the Mule is defeated is a tip-off to one protagonist that something is up.
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* From the point of view of the bad guys (and readers), this is what happens in Weber's ''[[Out of the Dark]]''. So you got your typical science-fiction alien invasion of Earth being opposed by assorted teams of [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]], but there's really no way humans can win, since biological warfare genocide is fairly trivial for the aliens to create if they get tired of the grinding conflict...and then {{spoiler|freaking ''Dracula''}} decides he's getting tired of all this alien shit.
* The Doomsday Machine, from ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]''. It came from outside our galaxy, having been exiled for being too powerful to be allowed to exist. [[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home|Not even whales can stop it]]. It eats planets.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* The
** Interestingly, Species 8472 is an Outside Context Villain for the ''Borg'': a species from another dimension that they can neither assimilate nor destroy. It proceeds to kick their asses.
* ''[[Angel]]'' had many examples of this trope. The first was Sahjan, whose presense was not even explained to the ''audience'' until his final episode. Then there was The Beast, the cast given only vague warnings about its arrival and were outclassed by it in every possible way. ''Then'' there was [[Eldritch Abomination|Jasmine]], who had even ''less'' warning and was so beyond their experience the only way they acquired information of her at all was due to a visitor from her home dimension.
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* This is subverted and then inverted in ''[[Justified (TV series)|Justified]]''. Quarles is made to appear like a mysterious and dangerous [[Outside Context Villian]] but after the main characters figure out who he is, they are able to thwart him since to them he is just another "carpetbagger" like countless others who have come to Kentucky in the past. In turn Quarles starts to realize that he is completely unprepared to deal with a lawman like Raylan or a devious criminal like Boyd.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
* The Eldrazi in ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', being [[Eldritch Abomination]]s from the spaces between planes of existence which ''[[Planet Eater|feed]]'' on said planes, and [[Non-Elemental|don't obey]] [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|the basic rules of magic]]. Until their escape, the plane of Zendikar where they were [[Sealed Evil in a Can|imprisoned]] was presented as an adventure world. To quote the ''Rise of the Eldrazi'' Player's Guide;
{{quote|''Previous quests have been for treasure and glory. In the new ''Rise of the Eldrazi'' set ... only one goal remains: survival.''}}
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** The quintessential example might be the conquest of Thorns. An army of ghosts and undead, led by the horrifically powerful ghost [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Mask of Winters]], supplemented by the aforementioned Abyssals (being seen for the first time) and a gigantic dying monster, leading to the city being not only taken over, but converted into a Shadowland expanding at a terrifyingly unprecedented rate.
** The event of the Alchemical Exalted (or Autochthonians in general) entering Creation would play out like this.
* The history of the ''[[Iron Kingdoms]]'' basically is this: people puttering around with warriors, wizards and the like getting steamrolled by [[The Empire]] with seriously high sorcery [[Power Levels]] from across the western ocean. It took the creation of "scientific" items such as Gunpowder, Steam engines and [[Humongous Mecha|War Machines]] four hundred years later before [[The Empire]] finally got driven off
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* Lavos from ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'', who also happens to be a ''literal'' [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]]. Notably, Lavos's existence is known to various people at various times (the Zealots used it for an energy source, which wasn't that smart a move), but nobody knew its ''purpose'' until 1999, when [[The End of the World as We Know It|it woke up.]]
* The Parasite from ''[[Evolva]]'', that just as Lavos, can be seen as a ''literal'' [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]].
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** And then the sequel implies that Tatanga was ''[[The Man Behind the Man|working for]] [[Evil Counterpart|Wario]]'' to [[Kansas City Shuffle|distract Mario]]. [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]!
* Another Mario example would be the Smithy Gang from ''[[Super Mario RPG]],'' an enemy so outside normal context that it caused an [[Enemy Mine]] between Mario, Peach, and Bowser!
** ''[[Mario & Luigi:
* The Zerg from ''[[StarCraft]]'', and the Burning Legion from ''[[Warcraft]]'', who are a [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] from another part of the galaxy and an army of omnicidal demons from another dimension, respectively.
** The Zerg are out-of-context for the Protoss more than anything, since they were pretty much running the galaxy as part of their "Great Stewardship". They never imagined a [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] coming out of nowhere with the explicit purpose of assimilating them, and destroying their ancestral homeworld.
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* In the first ''[[Free Space]]'', the two known races of the galaxy, the Humans and the Vasudans are fighting a brutal war. Then, suddenly, in the middle of a skirmish between the two, weird lethal ships that nobody ever saw before jumps in and attack both races indiscriminately. Turns out those ships belong to the Shivans, a race of seriously deadly [[Horde of Alien Locusts]].
* Similarly in Crysis, the Americans and North Koreans are busily having a scrap on an island and managing to ignore various weird happenings around the mountain in the middle of it, until suddenly the aliens leap out and freeze the whole place solid.
* In ''[[Dragon Age
* Few of the factions in ''[[Galactic Civilisations]] II'' even knew the Dread Lords ever existed, and no-one expected they would ever return.
* ''[[Super Robot Wars Z]]'' has The Edel Bernal, who, unlike other SRW [[Big Bad|BigBads]], is not just some godlike being seeking power or self aggrandizement. He just started all the chaos in the game [[For the Evulz]], and the good guys actually freak out somewhat when they come to the realization ''he just doesn't care'' as they chew him out during the final battle, and it become epically clear [[You're Insane!|they are fighting a lunatic with no real goal except what entertains him.]]
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* The Reapers/Sovereign from ''[[Mass Effect]]'' are this to the entire galaxy. {{spoiler|They appear to wipe out all space-faring life every 50,000 years, and spend the intervening time asleep in dark space.}}
** Driven home in the ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' announcement trailer where it's pretty much made clear, given that the higher-ups constantly tried to silence his/her warnings about them, that no one besides Shepard knows what they are.
* The Wild Card Ending of ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' makes the Courier themself this. While the major powers of the region, the New California Republic, Caesar's Legion, Mr House, all were busy watching each other and were getting ready to battle for control of the Mojave Wasteland; no-one saw the simple Courier who was shot in the head and left for dead, suddenly come out of nowhere, turn the tables and create a free and independent New Vegas.
** Involked by the Legion, one of the reasons why Caesar based their theme off of the Roman Empire was because, compare to all other factions they're very alien.
* This scenario forms the backstory of ''[[Gears of War]].'' Sera's human population had been fighting each other for ''seventy-nine years'' and only just come to an exhausted peace when a massive, well-equipped, highly-organized army--[[The Horde|the Locust Horde]]—erupted from the ground in multiple areas simultaneously and brought their civilization to its knees.
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* The ZODIAC's from [[RefleX]] fit's this trope to a T.
** Then there is {{spoiler|Satariel}} from the [[Alltynex Second|sequel]].
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' almost everyone is blindsided by the Dragons. The only ones who have any idea where they came from are the Graybeards, and that's only because their mentor {{spoiler|is another Dragon.}}
* ''[[Guild Wars]]'' has a few examples.
** First in ''Nightfall'' was the return of Abaddon, the fallen sixth god, and his Margonite followers. The other gods had gone to great lengths to render him an [[Unperson|Un-Deity]] so much of the players' knowledge of Abaddon is learned while on the run from his various armies.
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** Third in the sequel, ''Guild Wars 2'', is the appearance of the Elder Dragons. While they have been present since long before man or god walked the land, they were largely dormant and only hints of their power were seen.
* [[Zig-Zagging Trope|Zig Zags]] a lot in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]''. There are plenty of one-game villains that abruptly appear to conquer Hyrule or some other land from time to time, but there's always a pretty good chance that [[Big Bad|Ganon]] [[Hijacked by Ganon|is really the one in charge of said villains]].
* ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]'' has {{spoiler|The Aurum, a group of planet-eating robot aliens that only Pyrrhon saw coming. They leave practically as quickly as they appeared.}}
* "Villain" is subjective, but in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses]]'', Moisture Creature is this, possibly with [[Medium Aware]]. It claims to be an alien that got trapped inside the game, which identified it as a Duel Monster. Or course, the game itself is a [[Crack Fic]] with a ''lot'' of stuff that doesn't belong.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* [[Zalgo]] is a [[Creepypasta]] that is this in a meta-sense, an [[Eldritch Abomination]] from [[Beyond the Fourth Wall]] that seeks to invade and corrupt series of other media genres, often kid-friendly ones like ''[[Peanuts]]'' or ''[[Garfield]]''.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Aku in ''[[Samurai Jack]]''. Jack himself is the heroic equivalent of this to the people of the future.
* In ''[[Storm Hawks]]'', Master Cyclonis actually manages to become this mid season 2 by traveling to the other side of the planet and bringing back some of its technology.
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* Unicron in ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' series. Originally he was a terrifying Galactus [[Expy]] in [[The Movie]] before he was fleshed out as a god of chaos later on. Still, no-one had any idea how to deal with him in the first place when he showed up.
** This was lampshaded in the original movie. Kup, the eldest of the surviving autobots had at least one story for every occasion, usually a bad one. However, upon seeing the massive Unicron, all he could mutter was "nope, never seen anything like this before".
* If there was one villain in ''[[My Little Pony:
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Surprisingly rare In Real Life -- most peoples have at least a dim awareness of the outside world. The Iberian conquest of the Americas is a good example, and the establishment of victual and coal stations and naval bases on various isolated islands also fits the bill. The annexation of Australia is also a good example, though New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi do not fill the bill so well as the Maori had experienced several decades of rather important trading with whalers and wrangling with missionaries by that point. Likewise, the veiled threat of Commodore Perry's diplomatic mission to the Empire of Japan on behalf of the Union of American States hardly occurred in a knowledge vacuum, either, but the sudden intrusiveness of his actions ''was'' a real shock. In the same manner, the Empire of the Qing also had centuries of experience in dealing with whites in a limited fashion, but their military strength and willingness to interfere in the Empire's affairs came as a real shock to many. If we had to make it a rule or something, it's fair to say that most eventually-colonised peoples had heard of westerners and their habits of setting up trading posts and bases on your land, or even planting flags and calling it their own, but just hoped it wouldn't happen to them and checked their supplies of shot and gunpowder just to be on the safe side.
* To most Americans until September 2001, the notion that terrorists might hijack airplanes full of passengers and fly them, not to some other country while making demands, but ''into buildings as giant bombs'', was either unthinkable or the stuff of wild thriller novels. It was also why the attacks (mostly) succeeded, because both the people in the planes and the people in charge of preventing it never knew to look for something like that. It also resulted in a time where flight traffic controllers were trying to figure out why hijacked planes were flying low, and not towards a runway.... Nowadays, even the average citizen knows to [[Zerg Rush]] the hijackers in case the undercover security fails, the door to the cockpit stays locked except for brief, necessary periods, and in case all that fails, [[Godzilla Threshold|fighter jets shoot down the plane.]] That is also one of the reasons the IRA stopped being portrayed as analogue to the American revolutionaires in American media, fighting against an supposed British opressor: the Americans realized exactly what [[Collateral Damage]] means.
* The US Government seems to be trying ''insanely'' hard to avert the possibility of this happening. [[Crazy Prepared|They have contingency plans for everything from]] an [[Alien Invasion]] to the ''[[Girl Scouts Are Evil|Girl Scouts]] staging an uprising.''
* If you consider [[The Singularity]] to be a "villain"... the internet. Prior to the internet boom, nothing—or at least very, very few things—in science fiction or futurism predicted something like the internet, and nobody was prepared for what such a thing is capable of, and in a matter of a few years, it became the single dominating aspect of human society. We don't consider it villainous, but that may well be the most telling. We were so unprepared for it, that we didn't even resist it. We let it completely take over our lives and our world, and general public opinion is that it's a good thing.
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