Magnificent Baddie Wiki

To vote for the Magnificent Baddie Proposals of the day:

  1. Needs More Votes: Aeolus from EPIC: The Musical. - Ends February 17

To vote for the Magnificent Baddie Removals of the day:

  1. Optimus Prime from the original Transformers film series. - Ends February 18

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Magnificent Baddie Wiki
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A Magnificent Baddie is any type of character who is morally questionable at best who, despite their questionable qualities/crimes, manages to remain incredibly likable and charming through their charisma, intelligence, manipulation, and overall competence.

Basics

Here are the basic requirements for a character to qualify as an MB:

  • They are highly intelligent. Even when their original plans fail, they easily think on their feet and adapt to new plans.
  • They are manipulative. Not just somewhat decent at lying or whatever: they must have chessmaster levels of manipulation.
  • They have a goal and will resort to great lengths to achieve it.
  • They are charismatic. As bad as they are, they are still charming enough to win the audience's respect, and even in the face of defeat, they never lose their composure and drop their charisma, often accepting their fate with dignity. They are never cowards either, and are rarely sadistic or arrogant.
  • As the name of the category suggests, they need to be baddies. They can't just limit their actions to hurting people who deserve it or having some flaws anyone would have. They need to go the extra mile by having at least one or two unwarranted crimes and either harm innocents or give someone a fate they didn't deserve.
    • But at the same time, they can't be too much of a baddie. There is a limit before they cross into despicable territory, which will then detract from their charm. A pedophilic serial killer, racist or sexist won't make it into the category.

Categories

Categories that would fit all the time

  • Charismatic
  • Master Manipulators
  • Mastermind
  • Strategic
  • Trickster

Good additions

  • Affably Evil/Faux Affably Evil: Having a pleasant demeanor would certainly help a villain have charm, even when the friendliness is faked.
  • Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero: Being sympathetic, well-intentioned, and/or multifaceted would greatly help the villain win the audience's sympathy.
  • Businessmen/Crime Lord: Corrupted businessmen regularly need to use charisma and manipulation to get people to work for them while getting away with their crimes.
  • Con Artists: Just like with the Businessmen category, being a con artist requires a lot of intelligence and charisma.
  • Corrupting Influences: If there's anything better than being a skilled manipulator, it's the ability to corrupt people into committing crimes in the MB's favor without even having to directly manipulate them.
  • Crackers: Being a hacker is an effective method of showcasing one's intelligence and skills.
  • Evil Vs. Evil: Rooting a villain against someone much worse than themselves will make audiences hope for their victory.
  • Extremists: Similar to the Anti-Villain category, having a noble goal makes it easier for audiences to understand and relate to the villain.
  • Femme Fatale: These type of villains are usually attractive while at the same time being highly manipulative.
  • Fighters: What better way of proving one's competence than to show their fighting skills?
  • Game Changer: It's next to impossible for some incompetent dimwitted character to be taken this seriously.
  • Grey Zone: Many morally ambiguous characters are complex, and the less evil a villain is, the more difficult it is for the audiences to find him too hateable.
  • Gunmen: Yet another great way of showing your skills.
  • Hidden Villains: These type of villains always possess some kind of charisma.
  • Honorable: If a villain shows respect to his enemies, then chances are, the audiences will have some respect for the villain too.
  • In Love/Protective: Having loved ones will make the villain seem more humane than your typical mustache twirling villain.
  • Karma Houdini: Being able to get away with your crimes often requires some levels of competence.
  • Laughably Evil: Making audiences laugh is a great way of being easier to like.
  • Liars: Since MBs are masters at trickery and deceit, this is a given.
  • Master Orators: These villains need to have charisma for obvious reasons.
  • Non-Action: Pulling off all sorts of clever schemes without getting your own hands dirty is pure excellence.
  • One-Man Army: Singlehandedly wiping out entire armies? Competence at its finest.
  • Opportunists: These type of villains tend to think on their feet and cleverly take advantage of things.
  • Psychopath: While this is a category that should be used with caution, if done right, it can make the villain more likable, since psychopaths (namely high-functioning ones) are very cunning and intelligent and can play people like fiddles.
  • Redeemed: Having a villain change their evil ways can definitely make them more likable if done right.
  • Successful: The more competent and clever a villain is, the more likely it is for them to succeed their goals.
  • Tragic: This is another category that will be very effective if done right since a well-written tragedy never fails in evoking sympathy from audiences.

Caution Categories

Categories that are allowed to be made on this wiki

  • Insecure: It is great to give some flaws to prevent villains from being Villain Sues and at the same time give certain sympathetic elements to a character, but it has to be overall balanced with their moments of brilliance. If the story puts too much emphasis on insecurities, it portrays the character as too flawed to be magnificent.
  • Tragic: Giving villains some sort of sympathetic elements in itself can help mitigate a villain's vileness and help the audience endear to a villain, but at the same time, the story shouldn't go overboard in sympathizing with the villain as it can portray the villain as too much of a broken being to the point of coming across as too pitiable for the trope and undermining magnificence.

Categories that aren't allowed to be made on the wiki due to being mere exceptions

  • Pure Evil: By virtue of how vile they are expected to be it's rare for them to not be too vile and while some Pure Evil villains do manage to avoid being too vile even those that do often tend to have other issues anyways.
  • Xenophobes: Xenophobes are characters that generally don't count as magnificent baddies as hating people on the basis of race, creed, nation, etc could hamper audience's respect for the character, but exceptions can be made if it is a case of Fantastic Racism that has little real life parallels to disgust the audience, or if it is tied to more sympathetic and/or genuinely well-intentioned motives.

Categories that can NEVER overlap

  • Cowards: MBs can never show any cowardice and must keep their composure at all time.
  • Dimwits: Self-explanatory since intelligence is one of the core requirements.
  • Hate Sinks: For obvious reasons, MBs are supposed to be likable.
  • Incompetent: Being an MB requires a lot of competence.
  • Misandrists/Misogynists: prejudice against another gender is unjustified hatred that results in a character being unlikeable.
  • Rapists: Rape, due to its abhorrent nature and its reputation as one of the most serious crimes that rivals even murder, is a crime nasty enough to disqualify almost anyone as an MB. However, it is possible for very rare exceptions to occur, particularly if it's done out of necessity and/or to another rapist with the purpose of giving them a small dose of their own medicine.

Additional Notes

  • In spite of the somewhat misleading name, Magnificent Baddies, despite having "Baddie" as half of their title, are not inherently evil or malicious. Any character on the morally ambiguous scale, from anti-heroes to irredeemable villains, has a shot at this category so long as they exhibit the expected amount of magnificence, as well as the shadier aspects.
  • MBs cannot be too magnificent. Otherwise, audiences will just find the character unrealistic and even annoying. MBs are supposed to fail at least one of their plans, but they either think on their feet and come up with a new plan, or they accept their defeat with dignity.
    • In addition, we also gave it some leeway if a Magnificent Baddies were defeated or having set-backs through sheer unpredictability of future events or the environment surrounding them.
    • Following the "MBs cannot be too magnificent" note, cheaters can qualify as an MB as long as it is done in a strategic or cunning manner to outwit the heroes that doesn't undermine their competency and not in a cowardly manner. However, if an MB is simply become too powerful to the point it makes it hard for the competitors to defeat the MBs such as being a powerful omnipotent god with several superpowers on his/her disposal that manages to easily beat his/her opponent without any effort put into it such as scheming or having the plot bend-over towards the potential MB candidate just so that he/she can win the competition, it's where the MBs become a full-blown Villain Sue to the point it's disqualifying.
  • An effective way of showing just how, well, magnificent an MB is is by pairing him up with a far more loathsome villain for the sake of making him stand out.
  • An MB who is outplayed or up against an opponent on equal (or near-equal) footing faces competition, and thus, they need to either accept their defeat with dignity, bounce back and come out victorious in the end (both in the case of the former), or outplay said opponent themself (in the case of the latter).
  • Redeemed villains can also qualify as long as they keep their magnificence and were both magnificent and villainous at some point.
  • MBs should typically be approved after their story arcs end just in case they no longer qualify in a future installment.
  • Villains can start as non-MBs but end up meeting the criteria later on. For example, if a character started out as a smug, entitled coward, he can end up qualifying as an MB as long as he loses those unlikable traits over time. If a character started out as more of a hero but became darker as the series they came from progressed, they can also count.
  • An important thing to remember is that when it comes to MBs, it's always magnificence first and baddie second. If a villain's villainy is more significant than and overshadows their magnificence, then they would have a much harder time qualifying. Even when the villain is an irredeemable monster, they still need tons of charm and entertaining qualities to make you forget just how evil they truly are.
  • Following the above rule, Pure Evil Magnificent Baddies are sometimes treated with caution due to two tropes extremely clashing nature. While there's no denying crossover exists, they are treated with several scrutiny and at the very least, an exception, not general rule given how rare it is, as Magnificent Baddie limits what Pure Evils that are accepted here. If you want to propose a crossover characters, be very careful when it comes to discrepancy between the information provided in both on your EPs and possibly other sources which can potentially causes misinformation and such discrepancies would not be appreciated. Also, much like other category, do not treat PE-MB crossovers as a badge of honor.
  • Smug Snakes are not compatible with Magnificent Baddies. They might be devious and they might be brilliant in scheming, but they have tons of overinflated ego and delusions of grandeur which would bite them in the back and disqualify them as one. Sometimes, their unpleasant personality can also turns other people off. Despite this, one can evolve from a Smug Snake into this if they learned from their mistakes. (See the above note regarding Villains that can start as non-MBs)
  • Most of the time, Blue and Orange Morality and Made of Evil does not disqualify a Magnificent Baddies. In some cases, Made of Evil and Blue and Orange Morality can enhance a Magnificent Bastard qualifications due to lack of understanding of what good and bad is and could also be used as an argument to prevent them from being too deplorable. However, when it comes on committing acts that are pretty deplorable, although there are some exceptions, they still need to be treated with caution. (Atrocities like rape and still having an excessive sadistic personality will still be a no-go however even if Blue and Orange Morality and Made of Evil is still in effect).
  • Potential Magnificent Baddies that are being Unwitting Pawn or at the very least, brainwashed, would sometimes be a no-go as basically it indicates that they ended up being out-gambitted or at the very least being played by a bigger schemer. However, they can still be a Magnificent Baddie if they manage to outdo the manipulation that they had endured or at the very least, tried to make the person who manipulate them paid the price or defeating them or having some stints of sketchy deeds that still qualify them as one after getting over their brainwashed period.
  • Anti-Heroes can qualify as a Magnificent Baddies so long as they had done several sketchy things that can possibly harm some innocent people to reach their goals.
  • Laughably Evil personality does not detract MBs for qualifying as at times, it can enhance the MB credentials. While we are looser on the standard regarding Laughably Evil baddies unlike the Pure Evil category where they need to be played as serious threat and their Laughably Evil moments need to go hand in hand with their villainy or at the very least, have their jokes being treated as a horrific thing in-universe, it should be noted that when an MB suffer several humiliating moments or having a horrible Villainous Breakdown that ruin their MB credentials, it should be treated with absolute caution.
  • About Villainous Breakdown: While it is case-by-case basis, It should be noted that we treat Villainous Breakdowns with caution. A poorly done breakdown such as screaming or throwing a temper tantrum when things won't go in their way would reduce the potential MB candidates into nothing but pathetic wreck which could potentially affect the qualifications of an MB badly. However, if the potential MB candidate manages to rebound from the breakdown he/she had experienced, we might consider it. This is possibly the most subjective part but a Villainous Breakdown for a Magnificent Bastard can, and has been done well. It will depended on the format of the story and how long it is: For example, if a Magnificent Bastard can recover in a midst of a show with several episodes, movies with sequels or at the very least, story with tons of chapters while manage to recovers from it with grace and style, the audience won't probably mind. In fact, there are some cases that a Breakdown could add a depth to a character while keeping him from Villain Sue territory. Whereas if it's on one movie or book and the Villain has a nasty breakdown, at best treat this one with caution.
    • Pertaining to the message above, keep in mind that you don't need to avoid yourself when proposing candidates with Villainous Breakdown. Keep in mind that after the breakdown, a character can be changed most of the time unless they manage to pull their stuff together. It could be making them change for the better such as going into a route into a Harmless Villain or at the very least, seeking an atonement or a redemption, or it could change for the worst such as after throwing a temper tantrum without recovering, it will turn a potential candidate into a pathetic wreck.
  • Unlike PEs, we are lenient with shows with no continuity as sometimes, a shows with self-contained story but with no continuity can help you find some potential MBs. If a potential MB candidate only appears as a one-shot, it will also help his credentials qualifying as one.
  • Sometimes, an excessive brutality doesn't necessarily disqualify a potential candidate or at the very least hindered their qualifications. If a certain potential candidate inflicts an excessive brutality towards an asshole victims such as rapists or said potential candidate have a Blue and Orange Morality, personally we are fine with it. As long as said brutality doesn't involve sexual assaults and the like, we are fine with it.

How To Do An MB Proposal

Now that all of the requirements for this category have been described, it is time to list the necessary contents in an MB proposal. Here are all the required sections:

  • What's the work?
  • Who is the character and what does he do?
  • Is the character magnificent?
  • Does the character think on their feet?
  • What's the competition?
  • Is the character a baddie? And if so, is he too much of one?
  • Conclusion?
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