![]() ![]() If there is a Legion of Doom, you can expect the Big Bad to be involved somehow. ![]() If a show has a series of Big Bad jeopardies, they can function like a series of Monsters of the Week that take more than one week to finish off. Each season can easily be defined by who the Big Bad was. The structure of Buffy placed the Big Bad as being crucial to the Half-Arc Season, half the episodes are filler dealing with unrelated enemies while the other half involved the ongoing Myth Arc with the Big Bad. Occasionally, characters would even refer to themselves as "the Big Bad" - whether they were a true Big Bad or just a Big Bad Wannabe is another matter. It was characteristic of Buffy's seasonal Big Bads for their identity or nature, or even the fact that they were the Big Bad at all, to remain unclear for a considerable time. The term "Big Bad" was popularized in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In its most general form, a Big Bad will be at the center of the Myth Arc rather than just any Story Arc, but this doesn't always have to be the case when you look at a season-long story or a major Story Arc and you can identify one problem being the cause of everything, that is the Big Bad. At other times, the Big Bad is an Arc Villain who causes trouble for a period of time only to be replaced by another Big Bad. Sometimes the Big Bad is the grand enemy of an entire franchise. The Man Behind the Man is very common for this trope, leaving the reveal of the big bad as The Chessmaster behind it all and proving themselves far more clever and resourceful than the Villain of the Week. The railroad tycoon who is using the gang as muscle is the Big Bad. If it is a villain, though, it should be identified correctly the badass leader of the outlaw gang that causes the most personal trouble is not the Big Bad. In fact, it doesn't have to be a villain at all, it could be an omnipresent situation such as a comet heading towards the Earth. This trope is not a catch-all term for the biggest, ugliest, most dominant villain of any given story. Known as the Shadow in The Hero's Journey. A Big Bad is typically a character with Evil Plans, and helps drive a central conflict. In a serial story the Big Bad exerts an effect across a number of episodes, ranging from a Story Arc to an entire season, even up to being the dominant villain of the entire work. In a singular story they are the one who is coordinating opposition through various factors, whether it is their minions, their control over politics or their impact on public opinion. The cause of all bad happenings in a story, a central source that forms the primary threat to the protagonists.
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