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A sub-genre of Pyrrhic Villainy where The Bad Guy Wins, yet the win is short-lived as something bad happens which renders everything they've done up to that point useless.

Examples of Meaningless Villain Victory include:


Comic Books[]

  • Watchmen (comics). Veidt ends the Cold War by faking an alien invasion (that kills millions of people). Everyone who learns of his plan discovers it too late to stop him. On the other hand, it's not clear if the false peace will last, and Rorschach's journal could reveal the conspiracy to the public.
  • Starscream's default state in Transformers Robots in Disguise and 'Till All Are One. While he's able to mass an army of combiners to enforce his rule over Cybertron, he's painfully aware that the only people sane enough to form stable combiners are Autobots who are loyal to Optimus Prime and are only going along with Starscream's machinations because Optimus insists that they acknowledge that Starscream is the legitimately-elected leader of Cybertron. What few Decepticon combiners there are would only ever follow him in an Enemy Mine situation.

Films - Animated[]

Films - Live Action[]

Live-Action TV[]

  • A season 2 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has her meeting an old friend who joined a vampire cult because he was dying of a terminal disease. He gets what he wants and becomes a vampire, but she kills him as he rises from the grave.
  • Game of Thrones
    • Season 6 ends like this for House Frey. Lord Walder celebrates the downfall of Houses Tully and Stark, not knowing that Sansa Stark and Jon Snow have retaken the North. Arya Stark then kills him and all the men in the family.
    • House Lannister is the master of this trope. Every time it wins, something else happens which undermines their victory and leaves them weaker than before. Not that this bothers Lord Tywin or Queen Cersei.
  • In the Victorious episode "Tori Gets Stuck", Jade succeeds in forcing Tori to drop out of the play. While Jade is more than ready to take up her role as the understudy, Sikowitz decides that she's been such a gank this week that he boots her from the production entirely.

Western Animation[]

  • Catra in Season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Yes, she conquered all of Etheria... but she spread her forces so thin to do so, while overworking them, that Glimmer is able to launch quick attacks to retake all the captured territory. More than that, seeing the Horde make such a push convinces Light Hope that the Heart of Etheria must be deployed.
  • The Vengers in Ben 10: Omniverse. Ben steps aside and allows them to slander his image, letting them become the new heroes of Bellwood. But then the Vengers' own issues and egos tear them apart in short order. Just as Ben predicted.
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