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"The ultimate villain of the story, who's causing the problem the heroes must solve."

Note that Big Bad is not a catch-all trope for the biggest and ugliest villain of any given story. The Big Bad is the one who turns out to be behind several other seemingly independent threats.


  • Mercury, from Dungeon Keeper Ami. No, really, she'd Evil!
  • Baal in Disgaea: Disgaea: Jewel of the gods
  • Princess Jody from Super Milestone Wars
  • Voldemort in My Immortal, who can timetravel in this story, and also has a band.
  • In the Azula Trilogy, the overarching Big Bad is Zhan Zheng, the spirit of War. Each of the three fics also has its own Big Bad:
  • Radcliffe in Keepers of the Elements.
  • Ho-oh in Poke Wars
  • The Vizard Trilogy had an interesting variant. Each of the four stories has its own Big Bad, all of whom are part of the Five-Bad Band, but the most involved in the overarching plot is Asayama Shiba. By contrast, her leader, Takeshi Katano, is a Non-Action Big Bad; he's the most powerful of the Five-Bad Band and the leader of the Visoreds, but he barely does anything present-time, apart from sending an underling to save Ami and Rukia after a fight. However, it should be noted that the reason Asayama got so far was because Katano let her continue her machinations.
  • In the Battle Fantasia Project, each 'arc' will have a big bad. As of July 2011, said Big Bads are...
    • Arc One: The Nightmare Factory, headed by The Oneirovore.
    • Arc Two: The Magical Alliance, who want to discredit the infant Magical Girl Alliance, and 'disprove' magic as a 'silly supersticion' once more.
    • Arc Three: [INFORMATION PENDING]
    • Arc Four: The Incubators, and whoever's in charge of them.
    • Arc Five: Jedite and a horde of Dark Kingdom survivors.
    • Arc Six: Jail Scaglietti.
    • Arc Seven and Up: Little has been discussed beyond Arc Six. That said, it seems to be the consensus of the board that Quattro from Strikers will escape and come back as the Big Bad at a later time.
  • The My Hostage Not Yours trilogy:
  • The Teen Titans Saga: While Slade and the Fifth Director/HIVE Master are the overall Big Bads of the series' two main Story Arcs, each story has its own:
    • The Abyss Gazes Also: Dark Raven
    • The Art of War: General Immortus
    • Child of the Stars: Blackfire
    • Luck of the Draw: The HIVE Mistress
    • Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter: Veneficus
    • Sins of the Father: Slade
    • Shadow of the HIVE: The HIVE Master
  • Bowser Koopa often plays this role in Calvin at Camp.
  • ATLAR has Zotu and Azul's father, Aizo, set up as the Big Bad in book one, with an expanded role in comparison to the original series' first season, but once Azul is properly introduced, it is clear that she will drive the plot far more-so than her father.
  • The Big Bad of the Mass Effect fic The Council Era is set up as the Krogan Overlord, Kurvok. In fact, Kurvok is swiftly usurped by his advisor, Halak Marr, and Kurvok is dead by the end of Part One, while Marr is present until the very end of the series.
  • Ponies Make War has King Titan, Celestia and Luna's Archnemesis Dad and the creator/original ruler of Equestria. He also happens to be a Social Darwinist God of Evil bordering on being a full-blown Eldritch Abomination, which is why the princesses sealed him away in the first place.
  • The Pony POV Series is an interesting example: while Discord is only the direct Big Bad in certain Story Arcs, he's also the Bigger Bad of the series as a whole, as even the arcs where he doesn't show up in person are still all the fallout from his actions in canon and the Backstory and there's also a subplot running through the series about his backup plan to escape his prison again. For the sake of precision, we'll break it down by arc:
    • Naturally, Discord himself in the original Discorded Ponies series, as it's set during his canon appearance. This also includes the Alternate Ending Epilogue, which shows what would have happened had he actually managed to win.
    • The first half of the Reharmonized Ponies series has Loneliness—maybe not the arc as a whole, but the subplot about saving Trixie, which runs through a good chunk of it.
    • The second half has Princess Gaia/ Nightmare Whisper, Fluttershy's Super-Powered Evil Side.
    • The "AJ's Dream" two-parter has Nightmare Mirror, Applejack's Alternate Universe Super-Powered Evil Side.
    • Strife, Discord's sister, could arguably be said to be the Big Bad of the Generational Transition arc, as of all the Draconequi she was definitely The Heavy of the arc, and also served as the Final Boss for the last survivors of the Gen 3.5 universe. Though, she was just doing her job and was trying to give them a chance to prove their right to exist.
    • Discord takes center stage again in Origins, due to it being his Start of Darkness.
    • The Mind Games arc has Discord again as he manipulates Diamond Tiara into freeing him.
    • One could also argue that even when Discord is the Big Bad, the series still has a Bigger Bad in his father Havoc—after all, he's the one who created Discord in the first place, and is also responsible for pretty much everything he's done in Equestria since he fed Discord his own brother (as well as Havoc's own avatar) in order to increase his power, before having him reborn in the mortal world.
  • In the Tamers Forever Series, BlackWargreymon fills this role in the second book Omni-Tamer by virtue of being the only recurring threat.
    • In the third book: Forget the Y 2 K, This is Madness!! The sadistic Nightmare virus becomes the prominent threat to the Tamers
    • However the Nightmare itself pales when compared to the overwhelming power of the psychotic Daemon, who sends his Agent to weaken the Tamers during the fourth book: Theory of Chaos, before terrorising them personally throughout Silent Sorrow
    • Nightmare/Kenny Afton the Crying Child from FNAF 7 Fanfiction Brother's Revenge serves as the true main villain of the fnaf fanfiction.