This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Discussion prior to rename:
Whogus The Whatsler: Here's a common plot, I saw it the other day on SVU: the bad guy is some kind of smartass sicko who is leaving the detectives a trail of cryptic clues, as if to see if the detectives are intellectually "worthy" of catching him.
All I need to know is: has this been done already on this wiki? It felt like something that must have come up already, but I can't seem to find it.
Tabby: Possibly a cousin to Phantom Thief?
Looney Toons: Sounds more like a classic Batman villain. Don't we have a trope for that?
Idle Dandy: We definitely should. I feel like I've seen this a hundred times. Natch the only one I can think of is the movie In the Line of Fire and not a TV example, but it's probably been done on every Cop Show ever. It's almost a variety of It's Personal where the villain makes it personal by singling out the detective to "play" with.
Seth Wasn't that the entire plot of films like The Bone Collector and Allong Came A Spider seems like this really needs a trope entry. They usualy have a lot of "Your not so different you and I" moments as well.
Names- Along Came A Spider sounds nice, named for the film and pretty catchy.
Whogus The Whatsler: Since nobody can seem to pin down an existing entry, I'm going to go out on a limb and add it. Along Came A Spider sounds about right.
Ununnilium: Weird — about a week and a half ago, I was looking for this entry (to add the Death Note example) and couldn't find it. I even specifically searched on Riddler.
Lale: Took out the Not So Different paragraph because there's absolutely no connection between the tropes. These criminals are no more prone to point that out than any other villain out there.
Sherlock Holmes himself had to deal with his share of Along Came A Spider type villains, making this one of The Oldest Ones in the Book.
Alania: Really?? 'Cause the only one I can think of who was anything like this trope is the dude in A Study in Scarlet who wrote Rache on the wall in blood. And that wasn't even much of a clue.
Vert: Could we possibly change the picture of this page? Its Nightmare Fuel Unleaded for some...
