Offstage Villainy: Difference between revisions

{{quote|"In one fell swoop the movie has its would-be hero mocking and yelling at an essentially innocent villain. If a large number of truly despicable actions by Graves had been shown, perhaps we could accept our hero calling him names, or mocking his education. As it is, how many actual representations of villainy by Graves do we see or hear about: one. Raines and Marcus are discussing the position of harbor master, when Rains says "Schuyler Graves has expanded its scope. It's got a lot of people angry around here". And that, oh my Brothers, is it. Based upon that, we are to take him as a villain."}}

* ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' has Luigi and Pavi, brothers stated to be a murderer and a rapist, respectively. While we see Luigi stab several people to death, all the girls we see with Pavi are quite willing. This could be because while violence is always fun, it's ''really'' hard to joke about rape.

* Frank Miller for most of ''[[High Noon]]''. The hero Kane threw him in prison for unspecified charges before the start of the film, but Miller gets pardoned and decides to take revenge on Kane. Kane runs around town insisting that Miller is a menace to them all, but people refuse to stand with him. Some even sympathize with Miller and insist that Kane is trying to drag them into a personal feud. When Miller finally arrives, he sports some [[Good Scars, Evil Scars|evil scars]] to prove his villainy, but he still doesn't do anything except go after Kane.

* An interesting example is [[Riddick|Richard B. Riddick]] who, despite being the protaginist, is considered by all to be evil incarnate. While in ''[[Pitch Black]]'' he certainly starts off as sinister character, in all of his screen time across the number of games and movies he appears in, he never really ''does'' anything explicitly evil. Most of it can easily be recognised as a man with a strong survival instinct who just wants people to ''[[Chaotic Neutral|leave him the fuck alone]]''.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In [[Sherlock Holmes|Professor Moriarty]]'s first appearance, we never actually read about anything he did; he just "has his hands" in villainy. This was remedied in the later ''The Valley of Fear''. Granted, his villainy is still technically offscreen, but it's one hell of a punch in the gut all the same.

* One of the most common complaints about the ''[[The Inheritance Cycle]]'' is that for the longest time the reader was never actually shown [[Evil Overlord]] [[Big Bad|Galbatorix]] [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything|doing anything particularly evil]] to the people of Alagaesia other than raising taxes and fighting the Varden rebels, neither of which are inherently particularly heinous. Indeed, it's acknowledged by Eragon at one point that most of the people of the Empire get along perfectly well under his rule. Just the fact that he successfully overthrew the [[The Order|Dragon Riders]] seems to be enough justification for the war waged by the [[La Résistance|Varden]], the elves, and the dwarves in the series. This is despite the fact that the Dragon Riders were stated to have been corrupt and fighting each other anyway, meaning that Galby's crime was...winning. [[Author's Saving Throw|Rather belatedly]] he was given some unquestionably villainous actions, such as in ''Brisingr'' (the third book) where it's stated that {{spoiler|he enslaved the souls of the dragons he killed, and magically enslaves many of his soldiers}}. Though by this time a sizeable chunk of the reader base had started [[Rooting for the Empire]].

* Other than the fact that he created a game company despite already owning a game reviewing magazine, participating in a Scooby-Doo ripoff, and being unable to see Skull (which apparently only happens to the "extremely self-centered"), we are forever kept in the dark why the ''[[PvP]]'' crew, especially Cole, hates Max Powers. Especially considering practically EVERYONE in the magazine has done far worse things. Laid out quite nicely [http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/10/because_i_keep.html here].

** Finally explained in a storyline where Cole reveals he hates Max out of pure jealousy of the fact that Max is a much better person than him.

* [[Evil Diva (webcomic)|Evil Diva]] [http://www.evildivacomics.com/?p=938 is freaked out by sitting on a human]. [[Satan|The Big Guy]] tells her she wouldn't think so if she knew what he did to get there.

* Shaenon K. Garrity loves this trope: