Constantly trying to reassert how cool a character is is never cool, but it can be cute which I believe is a trope in and of itself.

Does that mean I'm a magnificent bastard? Because if so ill take it.

“Om-niche-ent”

Xanatos is the best

This reminds me when Kars kills some people in a car to stop a dog from being run over (JJBA)

I clicked on the video because looking at the thumb nail, the dude on it and me only reading "Magnificent B-" I thought this video was going to be a trope talk on "Magnificent BEARDS". while watching it I wasn't actively waiting for it to talk about beards, but I only realized it was about charismatic villains and that I hadn't payed attention enough to know what video I had just clicked on just after a minute in when the image of the TV Tropes website pops up and she said " This produces the archetype known as the Magnificent Bastard".

But that’s totally subjective and a magnificent bastard could just be a garden variety bastard -Red 2021 the woman that deserves a medal for saying this with a straight face

absolutely no one else in the comment section is going to know what i'm talking about but BELIAL GRANBLUE FANTASY

Admiral Zhao and Cutler Beckett come to mind as a few of my favorite magnificent bastards Edit: Maximilian Pegasus too

Gul Dukat from DS9, a parallel to literal real-life war criminals, still manages to come off as charismatic AND has an excellent character arc where he goes utterly bonkers over the course of the series. (Red, watch DS9)

In anime, I think Light Yagami is a magnificent bastard. Near can seem like a magical genius.

After watching Falcon and the winder soldier , I declare that Zemo is a charismaniac

Captain Nemo is a magnificent bastard for sure. Although he's a bad guy doing bad things he has a code and thoroughly charms our humble narrator and his friends.

"Kick the dog moment" John Walker is quaking-

This really just makes me appreciate how good of a villain Handsome Jack is.

Would Van Kleiss from Generator Rex count as a Magnificent Bastard? I mean, he's very charismatic, has schemes upon schemes and very goal driven. He's also likable because he's cool, but you hate him for being cool and outwitting the hero for much of the story...

low key quick tip: "magical genius" is exactly the right way to apply a clairvoyant type character. source(s): dude trust me

You magnificent bastard, I've read your BOOKS!

Came back after watching episode 12 of Star Trek Discovery My husband fell over laughing when I was like "Oh Lorca... you magnificent bastard."

I KEEP READING THE TITLE AS Magnificent Beasts AND I HAVE NEVER WATCHED THAT SERIES WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

Butch Cassidy is a Magnificent Bastard change my mind

Thrawn is a magnificent bastard, even as a protagonist. In his books his goal is to bring benefits to the chiss empire and the galactic empire. His goals may seem divided but he is always In control. He has a code but that code always must come second to the end goal.

They got through the whole video without mentioning GLaDOS or Alex The Large. The first is magnificent bastard because 1. for lack of a better term, borderline Stockholm Syndrome and 2. constant witty, sarcastic, and hilarious comments and 3. eventual redemption (sort of) The other one would be totally awful and fucked except for the fact that he’s very eloquent and kinda charming. Also he’s a bit of a victim of circumstance. So basically we will like a villain if they’re the only one to like and have a shred of likable traits.

Sounds like Batman Because it is

3:44 "om-knee-sent" xD

Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I've read your book!

For people who want an example of a charismaniac of a more modern time: Baron Zemo from the MCU. Principled, intelligent, devious but exceedingly calm.

"Do the tides command this ship?"

And here i wonder, when Red will do a colour coding episode with purple=color of evil involved. 🤔

Code-driven: John Marcone

Question: is it possible to be a magnificent bastard and a complete idiot? My example: Tatsumi Kotaro from Zombie Land Saga

The villain is always the hero of their own story. And the thing about good heroes is that they have very admirable traits. Determined, brave, quick witted, and yes, charismatic. A Magnificent Bastard is just a hero with different goals.

Lord orochimaro😂

I swear, just listening to these videos makes me want to practice writing my own stories.

2:37 - 3:47 In little over a minute you managed to explain why Sherlock, and by extension Stephen Moffat, are poorly written ego-vehicles. Bravo.

so considering magneto's character in x-men apocalypse, what do you think went wrong?

i feel like esidisi, whamu, and kars from jjba are a great example of goal vs standard villains

For me, what makes a character a good Charismaniac is that they'll often do things a hero would do, only taken to an extreme that might be somewhat uncomfortable even. A villain hero who stops an attempted rape will just beat the bad guy up but a magbas might break bones or even kill them but then likely have the charisma and personality to actually offer a small degree of comfort still despite the brutality.

How did Azula not come up ONCE?

"He kind of mellowed out" is a nice way of saying "The show moved to ABC Family, and that kind of grey thinking is not allowed there, so he either had to be pure evil or good." lol

AKA: Light Yagamis

Yoshikage Kira

This helps me understand why I would let Sire Denathrius do anything to me. He is one magnificent bastard.

3:26 you know you've read too much Sherlock Holmes, when instantly recognize the story referenced fro just those doodles.

In jojo all vilanns straight up kill dogs

Does the akatsuki count

Also kinda like Benedict from oceans 11 and 13

Tywin Lannister comes to mind

zanatos was good i think trayce kushranada from gundam wing was a magnificent bastard.

Baron Zemo

So . . . Loki

I'd call out Dr. Doom as a hybred of type 1 and type 2 Brilliant Bastard. He's type 3 because he never betrays his villainous nature. The Fantastic Four almost died several times, but Dr. Doom saved them out of pride. "Only I may destroy the Fantastic Four!" - Dr. DOOM

The 'Brilliant Bastard' is just the ENTJ personality type from the Myers-Briggs test. It's a fun character type for the Double-Crossing good guy within the bad guy group.

Am I the only one who thinks this channel and the channel, Bad Writing Advice, should do a video together?

I wonder where the joker fits here, if he even does

I love Glokta from The First Law - he doesn't really fall into this trope in the trilogy itself because he's most definitely not magnificent by the start of it, but it's always hinted at, and a short story shows off his past directly. "Glokta had everything, and what he didn't have, no one could stop him from taking. Women adored him, men envied him. Women envied him and men adored him, for that matter. One would have thought, with all the good fortune showered upon him, he would be the most pleasant man alive. But Glokta was an utter bastard. A beautiful, spiteful, masterful, horrible bastard, simultaneously the best and worst man in the Union. He was a tower of self-centred self obsession. An impenetrable fortress of arrogance. His ability was exceeded only by his belief in his own ability."

So Raymond Redington.

I call my cat my little ray of sinshine

I think Gus from Breaking Bad might be my favorite example of this trope. Who else has a favorite?

6:09 Carmen Sandiego is the antagonist in her show? Granted I never watched it nor know the premise (and I don't even know the title of the show, lol). Also, I thought it was primarily a video game where she scouts the world for adventure or something.

I would really like a trope video on villain protagonists because they don't quite fit into antiheroes, reformed villains or even the fallen heroe category .Sadly this trope isn't used very often so there probably won't be many examples for it .My facourite version of the villain protagonist is a Charismaniac where we get to see the creation and execution of their villainous schemes from behind the scenes

Desperaux in Psych? 10/10 a prime example of this trope

The film version of Artemis Fowl is a perfect example of a magical genius.

“Rommel, you magnificent bastard!”

My boy XANATOS

So I'm actually working on a story that's basically from the perspective of a magnificent bastard(goal oriented). To put it simply he is fighting an existential threat that will wipe out all life, so all methods on the table for him, but he prefers to avoid unnecessary deaths if at all possible. It's sort of an exploration in just how much you can justify your action with noble goals.

Elijah from the originals is my Magnificent bastard.

Griffith from Berserk anyone? I'm surprised he's not getting mentioned anywhere, this guy is the biggest charismaniac in the history of charismaniacs.

One strength that David Xanatos has is that (At least in the first season), he doesn't really HAVE an overarching plan. There's no grand scheme that he's working towards. No end goal. Instead, he like to experiment, run tests, play around. He's less playing chess and more playing minecraft. Toying around in a sandbox and having fun seeing what'll happen and what he can create. It's this very thing that actually makes him so flexible. Without an end goal, he has very little stakes. Little skin in the game, and that means that the losses he suffers won't hurt him all that much. Compare to Hans who had things like the detonator which were key to his plan, for David it's "Oh, the detonator was stolen? Oh well, I'll play around with robots then."

Does fang yuan count as one from reverend insanity

Oh so Bester trope good to know.

How could she forget the most magnificent bastard of them all, Thrawn?

Would light count?

I see David Xanatos, I click.

Anyone know the true meaning of Bastard?

Ghirahim

Dio’s existence has resulted in the death of multiple dogs and he still has a fan base bigger than I’d care to admit.

0:41 - Includes pushing Sucrose.

Omkneeshent

My favourite Magnificent Villainous Bastard is Thrawn. He even takes his death well. He's stabbed and all he says is 'But it was so beautifully done'.

I think my favorite magnificent bastard might be Gaunter O'Dimm from the Witcher 3. Such a well written and interesting antagonist and character

There’s a possibility that Gargoyles will be coming back with the original creator and voice actors. There’s a petition to help bring it back and I am soooooo down!

Is it me or was the spider guild from Hunter X Hunter basically a team of charismaniacs? Sorta hit me that way just before the mention of Batman but curious what anybody else might think

Lex Luthor.

I’m very tired and miss read the title as Magnificent Beard, I was so confused for a minute. I need more sleep...

I’m sorry but all I can think about is the Whiskey Tribe calling everyone a magnificent baaastard.

"Kick the dog" exist to get the audience to hate the villain. DIO incinerates the dog and becomes beloved by the readers

Basically a Chaotic Lawful will do everything within the limits of the law to f*ck you up and you can't do anything about it

Well tbh it can make a villain more memorable.

i was literally thinking about kimblee 30 seconds before he appeared on screen

Admiral Thrawn is a brilliant example of this, he seems almost omnipotent yet every time he figures out the Rebel’s plans he fully explains or even better comes to the conclusion himself.

Scorpius- Farscape

I'm pretty sure that making a video on Magnificent Bastards and not mentioning Handsome Jack is a legal felony. But seriously, I get that some people think he's over-explored, but he is still **THE** case-in-point example of magnificent bastards in gaming. So much lends to his character: he is a huge threat that clawed (strangled) his way to being the head of the universe's largest mega-corporation. He has a vast amount of power, is seemingly omniscient, and always is progressing something somewhere in the world the player is inhabiting. He legitimately believes himself to be a hero on the basis that his goals and ideals --cleansing Pandora of every person he sees as a bandit/criminal. He's written with some expert dark and fucked up comedy, and is the bastard that you both love to hate, but also can't stop laughing at his fucked up jokes, like when he tries to play the universe's smallest violin after killing the pet of one of your closest allies. But most importantly, the progression of his character, as displayed to the player characters, is perfect. It's made clear that he's the villain since you're introduced to him by finding out that the train you're on is meant to blow you up as planned by Jack. After this though, he's mostly just joking around with the PCs, lulling them into thinking that he's not an active threat to them. Things like him joking around about what he should name his diamond pony (buttstallion). A little later down the line, Jack's seeming disregard of the PCs as threats is revealed to have been him slotting the PCs into a plan to obliterate Sanctuary, and the PCs along with it. After the plan fails exclusively due to team Protagonists having a trump card in the form of Lilith, a siren (super powerful magic person only 7 in the universe blah blah blah), he slowly becomes more and more aggressive. He never loses his cool, and he keeps his maniacally whimsical touch, but the stories he's telling have transitioned from buttstallion to this: "Argh, this is so frustrating. Y'see, this is what I don't get about you bad guys. You know the hero's gonna win, but you just don't die quickly. Example: this one guy in New Haven, right? City's burning, people are dying left and right, yadda yadda yadda. This jackhole rushes me with a spoon. A fricking spoon! And I'm dying laughing, right? So I scoop out his stupid little eyeballs with it, and his kids are all, waaahh!, and, he can't see where he's going, he's bumping in to stuff, and ah... I don't know, maybe you had to be there. The moral is: you're a total bitch" Then, comes the end of the ending of the second act and opening of the third. As you near his daughter (also a siren who he's using as a power source) he 'slips'. He never expected you to make it this far (rightly so given how little the PCs have done up to this point). He is literally pleading with the PC as you get closer and closer to killing his daughter. Of course, you don't listen given that his daughter also hates him for keeping her locked up. You just killed his goddamn daughter, and he is **fucking livid**. Gone is the joking, gone is his whimsical touch. Jack wants blood: specifically yours, preferably scattered across the room. But, just to reaffirm that he hasn't lost, he kills the leader of the resistance you're a part of as well as capturing Lilith (the siren), all right in front of the player. As you progress through the third act, he shows just how much ruthlessness is behind his sadistic comedy. Tooth and claw, it comes down to a brawl between the PCs, and a giant monster that was the fruit of Jacks planning throughout the entire game.

Reminds me of The Rock wrestled as a heel , circa 98-99 WWE

14:57 the imagery she used could only make me think of Sir Rattigan... Which she then used as an example immediately after lol

Purpleman! 👊🤛✊

While I agree with a heroic magnificent bastard being great because you can actively route for them, it can make them overpowered at times. Batman has a bad habit of having plot armor, most notably in the comics. The DCAU version is perfect because it often shows that Batman doesn't always have that plot armor.

So is this all about zuko

Dio is literally the "Kick the dog" moment inside the handsomest man you will ever meet (And he literally kicks a dog)

tbh I think the "for the greater good" villain fits here as well. They know they're evil, they feel bad about it, but they feel like they have to to save the world.