Basic Trope: A villainous character brings up a valid point.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz calls out a heroic character's flaw. The protagonist can't disagree.
- Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz points out the flaws of everyone.
- Downplayed:
- But the villain's point is easily nullified by a positive quality, or the villain's actions are worse.
- Evulz is right about the hero having that flaw, but it's not as bad as Evulz describes it.
- Jerkass Has a Point
- Justified:
- Evulz, being a Well-Intentioned Extremist, is correcting Bob, a Book Dumb Idiot Hero, on an objectively-proven scientific fact.
- Hero has just committed an act so horrifying that even Evulz is capable of providing moral correction.
- Evulz dabbles in Pragmatic Villainy, and doesn't do malicious things that hurt his goals. Bob is a Stupid Good hero who harms himself doing a "good deed" that damages his own goals.
- Inverted: The hero has a point in calling out the villain.
- Subverted: The villain's point is wrong.
- Double Subverted: Emperor Evulz' point initially seems wrong, but turns out true.
- Parodied: Evuls says that 2 + 2 equals 4. Bob doesn't believe him because Evulz kicked a dog once.
- Zig Zagged: It seems like this trope at first, but as the plot progresses it becomes increasingly clear that Emperor Evulz was never truly the villain of the story, while Bob never had a point, or a moral compass, to begin with.
- Averted: None of the villain's arguments are valid.
- Enforced
- The Aesop of this episode is to not judge wisdom by its source.
- The writers want to make the villain/setting more three-dimensional by having them be right about something.
- Lampshaded:
- "He may be the Big Bad, but he's not wrong."
- "Wow, wisdom from the gutter much?"
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz manipulates Bob into a position where the former would be in the right...Just so he can rub it into Bob's face.
- Exploited:
- Bob decides to not disregard Evulz just because he's evil, and the advice he's offered is enough to save the day-from Evulz, no less!
- Evulz uses his correctness on this point to spin himself into a Villain with Good Publicity.
- Defied: Emperor Evulz resists the urge to correct our hero, because he doesn't want to give him and advantage. Plus, he'd just be ignored on account of being a villain.
- Deconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz set up the entire scenario where the hero would be made to look bad so that none of his arguments could be countered and put him in a bad spot, even though the audience knows nothing Evulz says is actually true.
- Evulz is right about his statement, but because he's evil barely anyone agrees with him.
- This is how Emperor Evulz had loyal followers in the first place, and they are willing to do anything he says including the most heinous of crimes.
- Reconstructed:
- It's made clear that the people who disagree with the good points Evulz has made are in the wrong themselves and the heroes learn that listening to villains can actually help them improve themselves.
Back to Villain Has a Point.
