Evil Is Bigger

The David Versus Goliath plot is where the hero is the underdog in comparison to the villain. One of the easiest ways to have this come across visually to audiences is to literally make the villain physically larger.

Aside from the villainous characters themselves being big, their tools and resources also tend to be bigger. If the hero has Powered Armor, the villain has a Humongous Mecha. If the good guys come from The Kingdom, the bad guys come from The Empire. If the hero has an average-sized Cool Sword, the villain has a BFS. At the climax of a Speculative Fiction work, the villain may go One-Winged Angel to increase his size and strength. In High School settings the local Alpha Bitch tends to be taller than the Cool Loser heroine (and she usually wears heels, so she tends to look even taller). The list goes on and on.

This is the reason why Large and In Charge is more common among villains.

Examples of Evil Is Bigger include:

Anime & Manga

• In One Piece, most of the evil guys tend to be veritable behemoths of muscle or fat, or at least very tall and imposing. Our heroes, except for Franky and Brook, are average sized.
• Bleach. Almost all Soul Reapers are human size, while most hollows are larger than human size (some of them are a lot larger than human size.
  • Many Arrancar hollows have Resurreccion forms that are much larger than their normal human-like forms.
• The climactic battles Goku faces against both Demon King Piccolo and his Reincarnation namesake in Dragon Ball involve the latter supersizing themselves - and Goku wasn't all that big to start with.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam The Federation focuses its resources on producing one kind of mobile suit. The Principality of Zeon, in contrast, squanders its resources on the construction of a number of huge mobile armours, including the Brau Bro, the Elmeth, and the colossal Big Zam (itself piloted by seven-foot tall Admiral Dozle Zabi).
  • In Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the Titans are the ones who build the Psyco Gundam and the Psyco Gundam Mark II, both of which stand the height of a small skyscraper. Those mobile suits designed by Paptimus Scirocco, while not as huge, still tend to be larger than average, with his final ride, the PMX-003 The O being a hulking Lightning Bruiser taller than any AEUG mobile suit and two or three times as wide.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny the Destroy Gundam is put into action by Blue Cosmos, the coalition of racist groups behind the Atlantic Federation. An Expy of the aforementioned Psyco Gundam, the Destroy is a walking Weapon of Mass Destruction that burns its way across Eurasia before being halted in downtown Berlin.

• Sesshomaru and Naraku are similarly sized in Inuyasha being taller than Inuyasha himself (and much taller than Kagome), Sesshomaru was the original villain of the series before his own face turn and Naraku would be the villain of the rest of the series. Many other enemies would be taller than Inuyasha.
  • Kirinmaru in Yashahime is also about Sesshomaru's size, being much taller and physically imposing than the three heroines Setsuna, Towa and Moroha. He is even shown to be a good bit bigger than Inuyasha later and especially Kagome.

• In Digimon Adventure 02 there were not as many giant evil Digimon as season 1, but one notable example of an evil (initially) Digimon who was bigger than all the Ultimates of the team in BlackWarGreymon. Though the non DNA Digivolution Magnaangemon almost defeated him despite the size and power difference.

Film

• Star Wars has Darth Vader, who stands over 2 meters. (though the good guys have Chewbacca, who's even taller) The Empire also has much larger war machines; the largest Rebel ship, the Mon Calamari cruiser, is absolutely dwarfed by the largest Imperial ship, the Death Star.
• Sleeping Beauty: Maleficent is shown to be very tall, practically dwarfing most of the cast in the film in just her human form. This screencap gives a pretty good comparison between her and not just the three good fairies, but also King Stefan, Queen Leah, and King Hubert (with Stefan in particular only being able to stand eye to eye with her while elevated by two steps).
• Cool Cat Saves The Kids: inverts this rather disturbingly. The main antagonist, Butch the Bully, is a child while Cool Cat is an adult in a costume. Your Movie Sucks in his review of the movie pointed out how strange the scene was where when Cool Cat, an adult male in an animal costume, was chasing Butch a police officer simply stopped and arrested Butch without questioning the situation.

Literature

• Sunday, from The Man Who Was Thursday is described as "too big to process." He's not more than eight feet tall, however, but his terrifyingly jolly personality can't possibly hurt...
• Gregor Clegane from A Song of Ice and Fire, AKA "The Mountain that Rides", known to some fans as "The Mountain that Rapes", possibly the worse ordinary human in the series, and also the largest.
• In Redwall, Vermin are invariably larger than Redwallers, though badgers tower above all others (and are good guys).

Live Action TV

• In Stargate, bad guys always have big armies, big ships, big empires, and big egos.
• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers often had the monsters/enemies taller and bigger than the rangers. Some of the female rangers have even gotten Over-the-Shoulder Carries from the monsters with little difficulty on their part. The size difference continues in following seasons
  • An aversion was Lord Zedd, who despite his status and power he was rather short, shorter than his minions and around the same size, if not shorter than, the white ranger.
  • A notable time was Goldgoyle in the Turbo season, who Dimitria stated was bigger than any Megazord, he proceeded to cleanly destroy both the Rescue and Turbo Megazord who then were stated to be the first and second strongest Megazords up until that point.

Tabletop Games

• Most of the factions in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 are taller than humans: the Elves / Eldar, Orcs / Orks, the forces of Chaos (especially Khornates), Lizardmen, Kroot... An exception in 40K is the Tau, who are shorter and less physically capable than humans (which is why they prefer to shoot their enemies from miles away) - but by the standards of the setting, they tend to be a bit nicer than humans. The Skaven are also smaller but have far, far greater numbers... and definitely count as evil.

Professional Wrestling

• An era that sticks out is the Smackdown era just before the second draft lottery where the main heels in Brock Lesnar, Nathan Jones, Matt Morgan, A-Train and Big Show were physically bigger than the main faces of Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio (obviously), Chris Benoit, John Cena and Hardcore Holly. These pairs were often paired against each other.
• Rey Mysterio was always a face in his WWE career and often had David Versus Goliath matches against huge dudes. Though because of his size even opponents such as the aforementioned Kurt Angle could qualify when they were heel.
• WWE tries to have their main wrestler be a heavyweight division face IE Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold, John Cena and often they are faced against heels who are much larger such as Andre the Giant for Hulk or Big Show for John Cena.
• Omos is taller than any other big man and he is currently a heel who is paired against smaller babyfaces.
• Big Show (obviously) when he was a heel played this trope, and inverts it as a face.
• Nia Jax is bigger (and more round) than the women of the roster and has been a heel for most of her career.
• The latter half of Gunther's iconic Intercontinental title reign had him defend against smaller babyfaces such as Chad Gable, Miz and Sami Zayn though he has also defended against large men such as Braun Strowman, Drew McIntyre and Sheamus and even large heels such as Big Bronson Reed.
• Braun Strowman has been a reverse of this recently often getting into battles with similarly sized heels who batter smaller opponents such as Gunther, Bronson Reed and the Judgement Day before Damien Priest left.

Video Games

• Ganon of The Legend of Zelda is always bigger than Link and Zelda combined. Even in his human form, he can be up to twice as tall as them.
  • The fact that Ganon is an adult while Link and Zelda are children in most of the games could somewhat account for this.
    • Even when Link and Zelda are adults this is the case, though not twice as tall as them. He is also much more physically imposing, especially in Zelda's case where she tends to be thin with very little muscle/physical prowess. In terms of raw height Link and Zelda tend to be similar however.
  • Being 7 and a half feet tall probably helps too.
• Archimonde in the final level in Warcraft III is far larger than any other unit and is basically invincible. In addition, all the demonic units have far more health than the player's units or his computer allies', are physically larger, and do "chaos damage" which is resisted by none of the armor types.
• In Infinity Blade, almost everything is bigger than you, except the final boss.
• M. Bison of Street Fighter is a man of very large stature, mainly in the Alpha series. Gill is similarly big.
  • In Street Fighter II the four kings are made to be taller than the regular fighters except M. Bison oddly who is about the size of Ryu and a little taller than Chun-Li. The sizes were adjusted in later games.
  • Street Fighter III: Has Gill and Urien who are 6'10 and both are taller than Alex, the main protagonist of the series though he is much more jacked than they are. Still Hugo is the tallest and he isn't necessarily evil... but he was before.
  • Street Fighter IV: Did this with Seth who is sized similarly to Gill and Urien and he is likely to be taller than many of his opponents.
  • Street Fighter V did this both ways in it's story mode.
    • First the good duo of Zangief and Guile confront Balrog and Ed while Balrog is not small by any means Zangief is just downright massive in comparison, while Guile isn't far off. When Balrog can't hurt Zangief they rely on Ed's trickery to take their MacGuffin.
    • Later when Ibuki and Mika are confronted by Ed and Balrog the roles are reversed, as while Mika and Ed are comparable in size he has a more built masculine body shape compared to Mika and Ibuki is one of the smallest girls in the series at 5'4 (with the HP and speed to back it up). This time the good team in the form of the girls can't damage the massive in comparison to them Balrog and they have to depend on teamwork and skill to get the MacGuffin back.

• Birdie is a rather interesting one. He still claims to be a villain (though debatable) and indeed he is much taller than the ladies of the mostly girl squad he is associated with, even Mika who is rather tall herself. Though obviously he is also much more heavy than the girls.
  • Zangief due to being taller than the other playable characters would often be paired with the villains in early side media.
  • Averted with Juri Han, despite being evil she is about as tall as the teenage fighters such as Ibuki and Sakura. The size difference between her and Bison in Street Fighter X Tekken when teaming is remarkable. Played straight with other evil teams Such as Balrog/Vega and especially Heihachi and Kuma, a team comprised of a big guy and a giant bear. Even if one can consider Nina Williams "evil" for teaming with Kazuya she is still taller than many of the other girls in game.
  • Speaking of Seth in the fifth game he was given a female body and while this body is smaller it is still bigger and more imposing than many of the other girls in the roster.
• In the 2D Final Fantasy games, enemy sprites were always bigger than the player sprites.
• Dracula in the Castlevania games, post-Vampire transformation, anyways, is shown to be twice as tall as the protagonists of the various games, many times outright requiring the protagonists to jump up just to hit his sole weak point in his human form: his head.
  • Pretty much every enemy including most females is at least around Johnathan's height in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, even Astarte is taller than he is. Charlotte gets this 100% as does Maria.
• Pretty much every Streets of Rage boss is bigger than the heroes, with the main exceptions to the rule being some Mirror Boss types.
• In Rumble Roses the Lady X robots are meant to be taller than the Roses.
  • Evil Rose also could count as this against most of the Roses except Dixie. She being 5'10, much taller than Roses like Reiko and Becky and Evil Rose is also the heaviest Rose in terms of confirmed weight at 141. She is also originally stated to be Anesthesia's "ultimate creation" before the Lady X line of robot debut and Evil Rose turns good later on.
  • Sebastian being the only male is taller than all the Roses and even the Lady X robots. When standing straight he is a head and a half taller than Becky who is 5'7 herself though his stats in game are downright abysmal.
  • Kuma (the bear) is debatable whether or not he is evil but not only is he taller than the Roses but even Sebastian himself though in gameplay his stats are comparable to Sebastian's
• In The Simpsons Arcade Game many of the bosses are bigger than the adult playable characters in Homer and Marge, and the mooks tend to be a little bit taller than Marge, even in an all female example the female enemies in Moe's Tavern are also larger than Marge and are capable of sending her flying (and any other member of the Simpson family) by opening the door on them. This is taken further if the player selects Bart and even moreso if they select Lisa.
• Resident Evil 4, In the original game the Ganados are similarly sized to Leon but the Zealots are taller than him. The effect is only amplified taller when playing as Ashley or Ada as Leon is already taller than they are and the Zealots even when not standing straight will look down on the standing straight resident lady. Of course bosses are even larger/taller.
  • Poor Ashley gets this worse in the remake especially. Leon is similarly sized to mooks but they are still taller than her. Of course the same mooks can lift and carry Ashley just as the first game but some rather large enemies join the fun in handling Ashley with Mendez and Krauser both getting a turn in carrying her over their shoulder with much more ease the mooks do and one kidnaps her by lifting her with one arm with minimal issue despite her resistance.
• Shantae has the main antagonist Risky Boots and most Barons, aside from Squid Baron who is just as tall as Shantae but much more burlier, taller than the titular heroine. Though worth noting Shantae is smaller than her friends and even most NPCs with Risky about as tall as Sky.
• Similar to the Zelda example Mario from the Super Mario Bros. series is always much smaller even in his big mode than Bowser. Peach is also taller than Mario but he both is taller than her and is much more physically imposing.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim the Thalmor are portrayed as evil, secretly kidnapping and abducting people they suspect as well as openly attacking those who oppose them in some occasion. High elves not associated with the Thalmor still are usually portrayed as massive jerks at best most of the time. They are the tallest race naturally in the game meaning they will likely be bigger in size than the player. While the Ebony Warrior is taller than them he isn't necessarily evil even if he is difficult to defeat.
  • Alduin is the main enemy of the game and he is a massive dragon, being much taller than the Dragonborn even if they are high elves themselves.
  • He isn't necessarily evil but the Ebony Warrior is the strongest enemy of the game and is human rather than the creature and he is set to be taller than the tallest a player could be which would be playing as a male high elf AKA Altmer.

• Cave Story the evil rabbid Mimiga are much bigger than the ones that are in control of themselves. The Doctor is taller than every good character in the game, Ballos is similarly sized to the Doctor and is much bigger than his sister Jenka.
• In the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Arcade Game many mooks and most of the bosses were taller than Jupiter, the tallest scout the player could play as. Of course if one played as the other scouts some of the mooks shorter than Jupiter could still count.
• Pretty much every enemy in Time Gal is taller than Reika, the heroine, as most are male. Some like the cave men are even much more physically imposing than her not just taller and are actually able to hold Reiko up with one arm while she is trapped in a net. Of course she does face some genuinely massive creatures such as dinosaurs.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Spirit Caller made the Sacred Beast that were the main focus of the first 75% of the game and used by the evil Kagemaru be bigger than other monsters, with the camera having to go higher when focused on them than regular monsters. They did share this attribute throughout the DS era of games with the Egyptian Gods.
• Especially true with Marie Rose in Dead Or Alive 6, her being good and standing up for her friend Honoka despite being less than 5 foot tall. She even receives an Over-the-Shoulder Carry effortlessly in the story, Also true to a lesser extent with the female ninjas of Kasumi and Ayane.
  • Helena is above average height and curves for women even in DOA standards but she is feuding with many males who are taller than she is.
  • Ayane is a tiny female ninja and Hayate is an average sized male but Raidou towers over both of them.

• Amplified in the video games of Home Alone where in the second game many more people than just the Wet Bandits are adults and want to get Kevin for one reason or another who is still a child. Still applies in the first game where Kevin is even smaller while trying to fight off the Wet Bandits.
• Haunting Ground has the player play as Fiona Belli, who is a young 18 year old woman of average height and mostly slender build (aside from a rather large chest) for her age, helping Fiona is Hewie, a average sized white German Shepherd. All the stalkers are at the very least one head taller than her, even Daniella, and she is often bear hugged, Neck Lifted, and she even gets a Bridal Carry from one of them and all with very little effort in their part.
• Averted in Clock Tower, Jennifer is much taller than Bobby Barrows the Scissorman, though she is also more slender than him. Then the player meets Dan Barrows... Jennifer and the rest of the adopted girls also are all smaller than Mary Barrows.
• Resident Evil Outbreak if one plays as Yoko then pretty much all enemies count. The rest of the cast, male and female, are more average sized and on par with the zombies but every boss will be bigger than them
  • Yoko herself inverses this if you don't play as her in the second scenario. She will be found as a zombie later on and despite her size she will be just as dangerous as any other zombie.

• Inverted in Rule of Rose where the player plays as a 19 year old woman called Jennifer who is being attacked and tormented by people younger and smaller than her.
• Also averted in a way in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks where Zelda despite taking over a giant Phantom's armor she will still fully retain her fear of rats.
• Dynasty Warriors 4 secret mission has The Two Qiaos who feature the Qiao sisters that are rather tiny and two averaged sized men trying to save them from the rather large both in height and rotundness Dong Zhou.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising has Pit, though it isn't exactly clear if he is small or everyone else is tall, as he is dwarfed by seemingly normal sized women such as Palutena and Phosphera, pretty much all bosses except Dark Pit is going to be bigger than he is. This is probably in most effect when Viridi is doing the goddess duties for pit as she is also very small in stature.
  • A strange situation is going on with the Chaos Kin, as in some artwork he is shown being much larger than Palutena but later in gameplay Palutena appears to tower over him... not that it helps her.

• Stronghold is rather odd, as it states The Pig is rather large in height as well as wideness and he only has evil intentions. He appears to be more physically imposing than all the allies of the player. The Wolf isn't as imposing as The Pig but he still appears more built for battle than The Rat and Snake.
• While they are not necessarily evil, the enemies of Punch Out all tower over the protagonist Little Mac.
• Often the case for final bosses of the Marvel Vs series
  • Apocalypse appears initially to be Juggernaut sized (who in most instances could be the subject of this trope itself) before turning way bigger, and Onslaught in his first form is about the size of Hyper-Megaman before he just grows to astronomic proportions.

• In Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet Pokemon found in Tera Raids are portrayed as being larger in size than those battling it owned by trainers. If it is captured said Pokemon becomes normal sized.
• Tekken: Blood Vengeance had pretty much EVERYONE taller than Xiaoyu, which isn't surprising as she is one of the smallest fighters on the roster. Anna and the Mishimas all stood shoulders above her.
  • Asuka Kazama also tends to get this, She goes after Jin Kazama who is both older and taller than her. Her rival is the tallest female human in the roster (though thin). In Tekken Tag 2 in Feng Wei's ending it is shown Asuka barely reaches his mid-chest with her overall height, the size difference between them was so much that she bounced off him and landed on her rear while he didn't even flinch from the crash.
  • Ogre in the third game was taller than his supposed victims.

• Final Fight: Guy and Cody are about average sized men and Mike Haggar is quite the specimen but even in Haggar's case the members of Mad Gear who were smaller than him were the exception not the norm. One promotional artwork shows poor Jessica (Haggar's daughter) have her vision of the heroes covered simply by the large men of Mad Gear standing in front of her.
• This is the basis for Xiao Qiao's Legendary Mode in Dynasty Warriors 4 XL where you play as the small fast but frail Xiao Qiao against multiple large Wei empire generals (who are the bad guys in this mission) such as Xiahou Dun and Cao Cao himself who dwarf Xiao Qiao alongside other similarly tall and much larger horizontally men such as Xiahou Yuan. Later as Xiao Qiao the player has to rescue her big sister Da Qiao from Cao Ren. A cutscene is shown near the end of Cao Cao's final attempt to capture the two sisters and the size difference between Cao Cao and both Qiao sisters is quite a sight.
  • This also happens in The Two Qiaos where everyone, but especially the Qiao sisters, are smaller than the tall and rotund Dong Zuo. If a sister runs out of HP a special cutscene is shown of Dong Zuo holding the Qiao and their heads barely reach his upper belly.

• Maria Christel is the nun turned bad and main enemy of Pretty Fighter X and she is at least as tall as the tallest playable girl and towers over the vast majority of the rest.
• Somewhat happens in Street Fighter X Tekken if the player uses 2 Street Fighter side characters and doesn't use Hugo, first they battle a Pandora Jin Kazama and Ling Xiaoyu, Xiaoyu being very tiny and then they battle Ogre, who towers over the vast majority of the SF cast.

Western Animation

• Justified in the various versions of Transformers, as most of the Decepticons tend to favor larger military vehicles for their alt-modes as opposed to the smaller civilian vehicles favored by most of the Autobots.
  • One exception is the movies, which in attempt to keep a realistic scale, lead protagonist Optimus Prime (whose alternate mode is a HUGE truck) to be taller than most Decepticons.

• Jackie Chan Adventures: Often times the smallest enemies were around the size of Jackie, often times Jade, who herself is only 3 foot tall, would have to contend with them. Many fights would have Jackie dealing with a huge dude and Jade dealing with a normal sized adult and some scenes could end with both Jackie and Jade like this. Some episodes would take this further by keeping Jackie and the big guy on the good side Tohru away from larger enemies while Jade had to find a way around huge dudes notably in Pleasure Cruise.
  • Tohru himself is an inversion of sorts. He originally was the big man of the Dark Hand, being easily bigger than the others he worked with, most were around a similar size to Jackie. per the norm Jade often had little success against him. For reference of the size difference between Jade and Tohru during one of their encounters she was trying to recover a talisman he took from her and Jackie and while he was keeping it away from her she literally had to climb around him every time he moved his arm. Later he turned good and he was still notably bigger than his replacement Hak Foo.

• The Legend of Zelda Link and Zelda were of appropriate height/size for men and women respectively and even though they were comparable in height to Ganon (vertical wise as he was much more round than them) many of their foes that Ganon sent against them were giant monsters. Even a human shaped enemy called a Zola outsized Zelda and had enough leverage over her to Bridal Carry her from her castle entrance to an entrance to the underworld with minimal effort despite her resistance.