Monster of the Week

Now you're just embarrassing yourself.

T-Bone: "Crud! What is that thing?" Razor: "Giant monster of the week?" —from the Swat Kats episode "Unlikely Alloys".

Episodes where the characters fight a villain and the whole story is wrapped up at the end never to be dealt with again. Can be seen as the complete antithesis of a Story Arc. Can also be seen as a Big Bad arc compressed into one episode.

The term (a play on Movie Of The Week) was originally coined by the writing staff of The Outer Limits (1963), which sought to distinguish itself from its biggest competitor, The Twilight Zone, by promising viewers a new monster every episode.

Variations crop up from time to time, though the most genetic term is "Villain of the Week". The 4400 and Smallville for example are sometimes discussed in terms of the "Freak of The Week." Mystery of the Week is the detective series version of this trope.

Sometimes, the monsters get ridiculous, especially in fillers, where they are almost always themed after the plot of the episode. Futari wa Pretty Cure had a giant vacuum cleaner early in its run, for example; Digimon Adventure, a walking garbage dump.

This actually is not a bad thing. Monster of the Week can be used to establish characters or setting. Or perhaps lead to a much bigger Story Arc.

Subtrope of One-Shot Character. Often used in collaboration with Adventure Towns, may or may not be Mono-Gender Monsters. See also Robeast, Monster of the Aesop, and Single Specimen Species. Contrast Monster Mash, Rogues Gallery.

Examples of Monster of the Week include:

Anime

• Pokémon, Sailor Moon and others in their genres are well-known for this. This trope is very common in some varieties of Anime, and in anime it tends to take an Egregious form that, after watching a few episodes, causes the audience to start asking uncomfortable questions like "Well, why don't the bad guys attack all at once instead of one at a time?" Writers usually stoop to handwaving if they deal with the question at all.
  • Sailor Moon is the most famous of this, with the monsters of the week — at least 80% of the time — also being Mono-Gender Monsters, females in this case. Also, with only one exception (Cienicienta, but not because she's strong, smart or otherwise special, just because the authors wanted to make Usagi's birthday-episode into a two-parter)none of the monsters ever survive the episode they were introduced in. While in some cases the monsters are mindless beasts (Cardians), other times they are shown to be intelligent beings capable of emotion — some not being outright evil even -, which makes it kind of odd how the Sailor Senshi never show any mercy to any of them. This is notably absent in the manga, where the Senshi do fight a few monsters, but the Quirky Miniboss Squads are either finished off quickly or more of an active threat. Either way, the bulk of the arcs are spent dealing with other crises related to the storyline or fighting the Big Bad.
  • Which caused a Dub Induced Plot Hole in the English Macekre of Tokyo Mew Mew. If there's now an "army" of Monsters of the Week, why do we only see one at a time?
  • Both parodied and played straight in Magical Project S, which has Pixy Misa summoning a new "Love-Love Monster" in half of the episodes. The show and its characters are quite aware of both the futility of these creations (as the incantation of "Calling Mistakes" suggests) and their formulaic nature (in an episode where Misa introduces a small army of them, Sammy dryly says "I've seen all those already").
  • Pokémon is well-known for this — some Pokémon get to be the Monster of the Week multiple times. Within the first 24 episodes, Gastly was monster of the week twice: when he was impersonating a statuified woman, and as part of the Lavender Town episode with its evolutions.
    • http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Character_of_the_day This Bulbapedia article shows a bunch of characters, even friendly ones, that only appear once in an episode and never come back.
• Fist of the North Star, moreso in the anime than in the manga, varies between these and genuine story arcs.
• Voltron, the 1980s paragon of the trope.
• Mazinger Z is the 1970s paragon, although Dr. Hell sometimes sent two or three at a time as well. Subverted in Mazinkaiser, where Dr. Hell a large number monsters at once against Z and Great Mazinger, and wins.
  • Averted in Shin Mazinger, ironic considering how the original series played out. Dr. Hell never just sends one monster out into battle, and usually has backup plans should his monsters fail.
  • Also averted in the original manga. The monsters gang up on Mazinger more often than not.
• Samurai Pizza Cats. Lampshaded in one episode, where the Big Cheese introduced the robot menace he'd prepared for this episode with "Monster of the week, please enter and sign in."
• Nightmare in Kirby of the Stars would provide King Dedede with a new monster with which to try to kill Kirby every episode. Naturally, Dedede is just too cheap to buy more than one at any one time. He did go into debt buying them. Nightmare actually had to send a monster to collect the debt without him realizing (At first). Still was defeated though.
• Fullmetal Alchemist played this for the first volume before going into the main plot (which it would keep through the entire series); interestingly it was still only one of the chapters of the first volume that didn't affect the story in any way.
  • Likewise, some early episodes of the 2003 anime adaptation had a version of this: if there's a plot important character in the episode we have not seen before, he is probably the Villain Of The Week. The main exception to this rule is Rose. 'Course, a fair share of these episodes turned out to be important to the plot later.
• Played with and used straight by RahXephon. The Dolems mainly show up on a one-a-week basis, although some of them survive their initial appearance and go on to reappear later.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arguably boils down to this... except it's "villain for the next month and a half", due to the length of the fights.
  • The series didn't adopt this format until Part 3 began and Stands were introduced, as Parts 1 & 2 were arc based. Interestingly enough, this format helped the popularity of the series, as the fights were unique and the Stand users diverse.
    • It goes back to the arc based format with Part 7/Steel Ball Run
• For about the first half of Speed Grapher, Suietengu's plan to recapture Kagura is to have his henchmen sic a different Euphoric on Saiga. They never live more than two episodes after being introduced.
• Early chapters of Yu-Gi-Oh! generally featured a "Bully Of The Week." His role was typically to scam or beat up Yugi's friends, at which point Yugi would challenge him to a Cooking Duel or the local equivalent. Most notably, The Rival Kaiba started out like this, but then...
  • The anime based on the manga, and its spin-offs, have a Duelist of the Week who pops up with a new deck gimmick and quirky personality to challenge the hero. With very, very few exceptions, these characters will be defeated in a single episode and will never appear again. If they're lucky, they'll get a two-part episode before they vanish.
• Every season of Digimon starts out this way as the new characters learn the ropes and the viewers learn the new characters (and in some seasons, new universe.) Furthermore, this sort of thing continues into the main storylines to an extent, as main villains have weekly henchmen for the heroes to fight, and this time kill. Sometimes, there are still other episodes with unrelated Digimon threats to the main bad guys.
  • In the case of Digimon Tamers this is generally held to be what killed the show's American ratings as a true big bad was not introduced until the trip to the digiworld 24 episodes in. Save maybe season 4 where it states that most all monsters are sub races of Digimon, save a few, from the start, and season 6 having the enemy Digimon in armies.
  • Some seasons, such as Ghost Game are almost entirely MOTW-based, which in particular led to Young Hunters never being dubbed.
• The anime Dai-Guard hangs a lampshade on this one by having scientists predict that the conditions necessary for the alien giant monster invaders to appear will repeat themselves roughly once every week.
• Figure 17 plays this completely straight, although there is strong continuity as well. By the end of the series the monsters don't even look different from each other- they just get slightly upgraded powers.
  • This does become less prominent as the plot goes on, however, as emphasis shifts toward Tsubasa and Hikaru's relationship, with some episodes not featuring a Maguar at all, and others being dedicated to particularly large and important, multi-episode fights.
• Witch Hunter Robin got a new witch every week for the first half. Then things changed rather abruptly...
• Hell Girl sends one soul to Hell almost every week.
• Mobile Suit Gundam, while extremely arc-based, still managed to introduce a lot of new enemy mobile suits (and Mobile Armors) in a monster-of-the-week fashion, with many later returning as more common suits. A lot of these were cut from the movie re-edits, but regardless return in later material. This would be gradually downplayed over the rest of the Universal Century, especially as starting from F91 many of them would become Toyless Toyline Characters.
  • G Gundam is THE best example in Gundam, because this was the entire point behind the series, to draw on the Monster of the Week fan base, or more specifically the robot of the week fanbase, because that was how most robot shows were done prior to Gundam. Other dueling-focused Gundam series, like The Witch From Mercury and the Build subseries, also tend to do this, but not to the extent of G.
• Played straight in GaoGaiGar with the Zonders, though taking things in canon time passage it could more likely be considered the "Monster-of-the-half-a-week".
• Bizenghast did this a lot until book 6.
• The majority of Martial Arts and Crafts opponents in Ranma ½ ended up like this, from the comical and ridiculous (Sentaro Daimonji of the Martial Arts Tea Ceremony School, Picolet Chardin of La Belle France School) to the serious and dramatic (Prince Herb, Ryu Kumon, Saffron.) Then the anime took it above and beyond with outlandish Rivals of the Week who used toys, eggs, calligraphy, or even crepes. Only rivals who had preexisting relationships with the cast, such as Ryouga, Mousse, and Ukyou, were given the chance to stick around and become regular characters.
• Played straight by Genesis of Aquarion, though at first the monsters were just regular Cherubim Soldiers with some kind of new ability that the team had to find a way to overcome by using lessons from earlier in the episode to unlock a new attack.
• Bleach started out like this, with Ichigo fighting a different hollow each chapter. Though after Rukia got taken back to Soul Society, it became more Story Arc focused.
• Inuyasha was this for nearly every episode outside the last anime story arc. Once the manga got past the point of the anime ending, it changed up a little bit.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha started out like this, then Fate intervened.
  • Even before that she collected some Jewel Seeds off-screen and several per episode
• Often overlooked, but Neon Genesis Evangelion also started like this. JesuOtaku's review even calls it the best Monster of the Week show ever.
  • From the 13th angel's attack on though, the trope gets deconstructed. Even though each monster's still gone at the end of the episode that introduced it, the mental scars its attack leaves behind on the main characters remain...and build up over time. In sheer contrast to the typical monster-of-the-week show where the protagonists are usually ready for the next challenge at the start of each new episode, Evangelion's cast is on its last legs by the time the 17th angel kicks the bucket. CUE End of Evangelion.
  • Even the early angels are a minor subversion, as all of the more traditional kaiju-style angels except Matarael (when the standard of "weak" is "you can be hurt by bullets the size of "cars"...) are extremely powerful and durable- in the first episode, Sachiel curb stomps the entire conventional military effortlessly, including what seems to bunker-buster kinetic missile, and tanks a Non Nuclear Nuke with only moderate damage. Zeruel, the most conventionally powerful angel, takes several to the face. And completely ignores them. And every single one of them is capable of wiping out humanity, should it enter Central Dogma.
• Kaze no Stigma. See Shana above.
• Rosario to Vampire started as a pretty typical Unwanted Harem Monster of the Week manga, but it soon became focused on longer and more serious and involved story arcs.
• Hokenshitsu no Shinigami plays it completely straight with a few small arcs scattered here and there.
• Mai-HiME started out this way with the appearance of the Orphans. Then the various Ancient Conspiracies started executing their plans one after another and Nothing Was The Same Anymore.
• Madoka Magica starts out like this. The format gets dropped before the halfway mark.
• The Getter Robo series did this a lot. The original, G, Go, and to an extent New all used this trope. Even the crossover movies were Monster of the Week.
• In Sonic X, the first 26 episodes of the first series had Dr. Eggman's randomly-deployed robots, each one with an E-(insert number here) as their serial number, and the first 11 episodes of the first half of the second series had random Metarex encountered by Sonic and co. along their journey to save the universe from the Metarex.
• Kekkaishi follows this trope, with a strange new Ayakashi or two attacking the Karasumori site every night. But it's Justified through the actual behavior of the ayakashi, the motives of more dangerous ones, and the steady plans of the Kokuboro.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann plays this straight. In the first episode, the Lagann is introduced as well as a minor enemy. Next episode introduces some more mecha, including the Gunzan (later Gurren). Third episode introduces the first actually recurring villain, who's more of an anti-hero. By episode 6, the show actually starts straying becoming more serialized rather than episodic, but maintains its Monster of the Week standard until episode 15, where the MOTW is actually the first Big Bad. The second half reversed this, by having the good guys introduce more and more powerful mecha to kick the enemy's ass, most notably after Team Dai-Gurren goes to space.
• Kinnikuman first began this way, Monster Extermination arc, before it became the Professional Wrestling series it became famous for.
• Kimba the White Lion alternates between this trope and a Big Bad Ensemble.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has two types of episode: "Stand-Alone" episodes that deal with a one-shot villain or case, and "Complex" episodes that advance the overall Story Arc of the season.
• With the exception of the series' recurring antagonist Vicious, most Cowboy Bebop episodes centered around a single villain or group of villains that was never heard from again after the end of the episode (some were two-parters).
• Raideen would feature a different giant monster in each episode; the first half featured the Fossil Beasts while the second half featured the Colossal Beasts.
  • What’s unique with the Colossal Beasts was that there would be two of them in each episode where they had to fight each other and the winner gets to fight Raideen.
  • The follow-up series, Chouja Raideen, featured human-sized monsters, the Chouma, or Super Devils, but most of them had the ability to grow into giants, despite the show being a Henshin Hero show instead of a Super Robot show like it’s predecessor.
• The Brave Series played straight with the Monster of the Week trope throughout the series.
  • Brave Exkaiser had a different Geister Robo in each episode.
  • Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird had the Mecha Beasts
  • The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn had the Combat Troopers, Armored Beasts, and Killer Dolls. It was the first in the series where the weekly monsters came from three different organizations.
  • The Brave Express Might Gaine had the Underworld Mecha where some built by recurring villains and others were made and piloted by different criminal organizations.
  • The Brave Police J-Decker had the Unlawful Monsters. What's unique about the weekly monsters in this show was that each one was their own individual threat and weren't connected to one big organization. The show also had a Criminal of the Week as well, where some of them would even pilot a weekly giant robot.
  • The Brave of Gold Goldran had the Walzac Machines. The first half were all piloted by the exact same villain of the first half of the show until the second-half where they were now operated by autopilot.
  • Brave Command Dagwon had Sargasso Prisoners. What's different with these ones in the series was that they weren't all giant robots and were mostly living alien beings who came in different shapes and sizes throughout the show, most of which were human-sized.
  • The King of Braves GaoGaiGar had the Zonder Robos in the first half and the Primevals in the second half.
• The Eldran Series also played straight with the trope.
  • Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh had the Jaku Beasts.
  • Genki Bakuhatsu Ganbaruger had the Makai Beasts.
  • Nekketsu Saikyō Go-Saurer had the Mechanized Beast.
• Kishin Dōji Zenki had a Hyouijuu-of-the-Week.
• Genji Tsūshin Agedama had a Synthetic Beast-of-the-Week.
• Sei Juushi Bismarck had different Deathcula Mecha in each episode for the first half of the show. The second half featured Battle Mecha, though they each had the exact same appearance with the only difference being their body colors.
• Medabots features a brand new Medabot in each episode, usually being in the antagonistic role.
  • The sequel, Medabots Spirits, first started out with a Kilobot-of-the-Week until halfway through where the characters started facing recurring Kilobots more.
• Each episode of the first half of Plawres Sanshiro has Sanshiro and his PlaWrestler robot facing against an opponent and their own PlaWrestler as part of a robot fighting tournament.
• Gaist Crusher has a Gaist-of-the-Week, which are giant crystal-like monsters.
• The Shinkalion Series had Giant Monstrous Beings throughout the show.
• The second anime entry of the Tomica Series, Tomica Kizuna Gattai Earth Granner, has a Spinger-of-the-Week for the first quarter of the show.
• Sonic Soldier Borgman has various types of Youma in each episode.
• Fighting Foodons had different types of Foodons in each episode, many of which were in the antagonist roles.

Comics

• In the old The Dandy comic strip, Jack Silver, the villianous Captain Zapp had a device known as a Duplicator, which could create a living, breathing copy of any picture that was fed into it. Every week, he would use the strange creatures the machine produced to commit crimes, before being stopped by Jack Silver and his gadget of the week.
• Many comics tend to have a story with a one-shot villain every now and then. It would be easier to list comic books and comic strips that DON'T utilize the Monster of the Week trope.
• Marvel Comics
  • The Fantastic Four avoids this with their constant encounter with Doctor Doom, but they still manage to have plenty issues where they face other villains and aliens.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man comics first started out with a Villain-of-the-Week. As the comic book series continued on with ongoing story arcs, most of the first villains Spider-Man faced made frequent appearances and became his well-known Rouges Gallery. Once in a while, a brand new villain will appear
  • The Iron Man comics had Tony Stark facing a different villain in nearly each issue. Some of them would also make frequent reappearances as well.

Film

• The Godzilla series would have the titular king of the monsters himself fighting against a different Kaiju throughout his movies, mainly during the Showa era. Later eras would have Godzilla more often than not face off against pre-established enemies such as Ghidorah, King Kong, Mothra, or just the human government. Regardless, the Heisei and Milennium era still had their share of this sort of thing, and even the Legendary era started off this way.
• The Gamera series would also have the giant turtle face off against a different monster in each film, similar to the Godzilla movies. Out of all the monsters Gamera fought, the only recurring enemy of his is Gyaos, and that’s only different variants of the enemy Kaiju.
• Each Terminator film would have a different Terminator sent back in time to find and kill its’ target.
• The Urban Legend horror series would have a different killer in each movie with the last one being the only supernatural one.
• The Men in Black film series would feature a different alien criminal who poses a threat to the very earth. These include a giant killer bug, a vine-growing alien, an alien covered with fingers and armed with a weaponized parasite, and so forth.
• Ghostbusters had a different supernatural threat in each film with only Gozer making a comeback for the fourth film. These also include the different types of ghosts the team has to bust in each film.
• The Running Man 1987 movie had the main character, Richards, and his friends forcefully taking part of a violent TV show where they get hunted by killers called Stalkers, where each one has their own gimmick such as a killer hockey player and a man armed with electric cannons. Richards faces a different Stalker where he manages to kill one after another as he tries to survive the game.
• The 2007 Ghost Rider movie had Johnny fight a different fallen angel where he manages to kill each one. The first one was bonded with earth, the second one was bonded to air, and third one was bonded to water.
• The Kung Fu Panda series has Po facing against a different villain in each film. The fourth film even brought back the previous villains for a short amount of time along with some other villains that Po had faced before off-screen, even one villain that he couldn’t remember the name of.
• The Shrek films had the main characters dealing with a different villain in each film. The first one had Lord Farquaad, the second had Fairy Godmother, the third had Prince Charming, and the fourth had Rumplestiltskin.
• Another Dreamworks animated franchise, How to Train Your Dragon, had a different villain in each film of the trilogy. Although, the villain in the first movie was the only one that was a dragon where as the villains in the other two films were human.
• Pretty much every single super hero movie that had a franchise would always use a different villain in each film, most noticeably in the MCU.
  • The Batman film series, both the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher series and the Dark Knight Trilogy, had a different villain in each film.
    • The initial series first started out with the Joker, but then the other films featured more than one villain in one movie such as Penguin and Cat Woman in Batman Returns, Two-Face and Riddler in Batman Forever, and Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and Bane in Batman and Robin.
    • The Dark Night Trilogy had Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins, Joker in The Dark Knight, and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
  • All three Spider-Man film series had different villains in each of the series' films.
    • The Sam Raimi films had Green Goblin in the first film, Doctor Octopus in the second, and the third one featured three villains such as Sandman, New Goblin, and Venom.
    • The Amazing Spider-Man films had The Lizard in the first film and Electro in the second. Although, the second one also included Green Goblin and the Rhino at the last minute. The ending was even trying to set up a Monster-of-the-week trope where the mysterious figure came across Norman Osborn's hidden room of super villain costumes such as Vulture and Doctor Octopus.
    • In the MCU Spider-Man series, the first film had Vulture and Shocker where as the second one only had Mysterio, unlesss you count the holograms of Sandman, Hydro-Man, and Molten Man. The final film of the MCU series brought back all the past villains from the previous Spider-Man film series. Sadly, it was only one villain away for it to be considered a Sinister Six film.
  • The only Super Hero film series that didn't use the Monster-of-the-Week trope was all the Fantastic Four films, the Christopher Reeve Superman film series, and the Aquaman movies.
    • The Fantastic Four films, in any series, would use Doctor Doom to death as the main villain. One time they used Galactus in Rise of the Silver Surfer, but Doctor Doom still remained as the main villain of the movie.
    • The Superman series always kept using Lex Luthor as the main villain. Although, there was Nuclear Man who appeared in one of the films.
    • The Aquaman films only used Ocean Master and Black Manta as the villains in the two movies. Although Ocean Master was the main villain in the first one where as Black Manta was the main threat in the second.
  • The X-Men films worked differently with this trope. While each film had different villainous mutants, Magneto is usually kept as the main villain. Although, other X-Men films, such as prequels, did use different villains as the main threats.
• Besides just Ivan Ooze in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie, the rangers do encounter different types of threats as they venture through their journey such as the Oozemen, the Tengus, a reanimated alien dinosaur skeleton, the gatekeeper monsters, and the Ectomorphicon Titans.
• Each film in the Puppet Master (film) series would either feature a new villain or a new addition to the cast of killer puppets.
• 9, the animated movie, had the main characters fighting against a different robotic monster constructed by the Fabrication Machine throughout the movie.
• Each film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series has a different supernatural pirate as the main villain who usually has a past with Jack Sparrow. Davy Jones, however, was the main villain in two of the movies.
• The Swan Princess animated films would feature a new villain who has mastered the Forbidden Arts in each movie.
• The Xtro trilogy would feature a different alien monster in each film. This is due to how the films are unrelated to each other outside sharing the same movie title.
• The Troll trilogy would also feature different monsters in each film. Despite the movies sharing the "Troll" title, the first movie was the only that featured any actual trolls where as the second one featured goblins and the third one featured killer plants.
• The Jurassic Park movies would have different human villains in each one.
  • They would also feature different dinosaurs as the main threat in each movie.
    • Although, the T-Rex was the main threat in both of the first two movies until the third one that featured a Spinosaurus.
    • The Jurassic World movies are better examples of this trope as each film featured a different type of dinosaur that the main characters had to face against.
• The Indiana Jones series had a MacGuffin-of-the-Week in each movie that's sought after by a different villain.

Literature

• The Doc Savage novels are always this except one because Doc is so good at what he does (lobotomies).
• In the books of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, earlier-written ones in particular, the vast majority of villains are only there for the book or trilogy, and books set later or earlier completely forget that these villains ever existed. Odd, considering that they tend to be Imperial forces. The exceptions are Aaron Allston's run on the X Wing Series, which had the campaign against Warlord Zsinj; the Coruscant Nights trilogy, which had one-book guest appearances by Prince Xizor and Aurra Sing; and roughly anything Timothy Zahn writes.
  • The villain usually had a new superweapon, too: The Death Star But Better sums up all of them. The Tarkin was the Second Death Star Before The Writers Knew About The Real Second Death Star, World Devastators are The Death Star But Slow And Productive, the Nightcloak was The Death Star But With Climate Change, Darksaber was The Death Star But Minimalistic, the Eclipse was The Death Star But Also The Executor, the Galaxy Gun was The Death Star But With Really Long Range Nukes, Centerpoint Station was The Death Star But Also Long Range, and the Sun Crusher was The Death Star But God Mode Sue. As you can guess, people who prefer the Death Star as an ultimate weapon hate every single one of them. Particularly since about half of these have characters popping up to exclaim that this superweapon is worse than the Death Star, omg!
• The Harry Potter series started off with each book covering a fairly stand-alone story. A Story Arc emerged at the end of the third book and gradually overtook the plots of the individual books.
  • The Potter series was always supposed to run to seven books and have an overarching plot, but the first couple of books — particularly the first one — were written so that they could be relatively standalone, just in case they didn't become a runaway multi-zillion-dollar publishing juggernaut and J K Rowling wasn't able to finish the series.
• This trope is actually Older Than Steam. Journey to the West is lately made up of monster of the week encounters, or in this case monster of the chapter.
• In the Trixie Belden series, there's almost always a new villain in every book.
• In the Animorphs series, whenever Visser Three (Big Bad of the series who possesses the same shape-shifting abilities as the titular heroes) would personally participate in a battle, he would do so by assuming the form of a new exotic alien creature that clearly outmatched the Earth animals that the Animorphs themselves had taken the forms of. Subverted by the fact that it is the same character every time, only in a different form.
• In the Beast Quest series, each book features a different Beast that the main characters have to face against.
• The SeaQuest book series, written by the same author as Beast Quest, featured a different monster in each book as well. Much like Beast Quest, the books advertise the weekly monsters on the covers.
• Played with in various ways in Princess Holy Aura. The supernatural incursions they have to face accelerate to circa one per week as the story progresses, though most are just named.
• The Boy Vs Beast: Battle of the Worlds Series has the main character fighting against a different monster in each book.
• D-Bot Squad book series has a Dinosaur-of-the-Week.
• Michigan Chillers features a different monster in each book.
• American Chillers, written by the same author as Michigan Chillers, also features a different monster with each book taking place in one of the 50 states of America.
• In the Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot series, Ricky and his giant robot face against a different alien animal villain in each book.

Live-Action TV

• Red Dwarf goes this way after about the third series.
  • Although, to their credit, the crew is pretty genre-savvy about it, especially in Series 6. (For example, Rimmer explains to one monster that everybody they'd met to that point has tried to kill them.)
  • It also swings the other direction in Series 7 & 8, having the storylines cover multiple episodes. (Although they are still self-contained.)
• Practically every Super Sentai series (and by extension, every Power Rangers series). There's no point in listing them all, just click the link to see them. Plenty of lampshading. "Just send them all" has in fact been tried before. If it's a small number the Rangers have a hell of a time with them. If it's a large number, Conservation of Ninjitsu kicks in and they go down as easily as Elite Mooks. Except for the time they had to kill Zordon...
  • The 47th season of Super Sentai, Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger, only had the Monster-of-the-Week for the first half of the season where as the second half focused more on a Myth Arc.
• The X-Files almost always had a weekly monster. The X-Files is also famous for not quite wrapping up a MOTW and closing with a The End — or Is It? ending.
  • Unusually, while most fandoms considers MOTWs to be fillers, a large group of The X-Files fans considered the weekly monster episodes to be superior to the Myth Arc episodes, especially in later seasons... mostly because the latter were made up as they went along.
• Fringe started out as primarily a monster of the week show, and it still has them, but now they're either in service of or as a distraction to the Myth Arc.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer interspersed Monster of the Week episodes with Story Arc episodes, especially toward the beginning of the season. This became less common in later seasons.
• Just under half of the episodes of The 4400 were like this. Several episodes would focus on a specific person out of the forty-four hundred people who had disappeared and been returned (and, later on, people who had taken the Promicin shots handed out by Jordan Collier), what sort of supernatural power they had developed, and a problem they had created (either willingly or otherwise) that would be resolved by the end of the episode. As stated above, it could in this case perhaps be more accurately called something like 'Freak of the Week', as the people in focus weren't always deliberately antagonistic.
• In SF author David Gerrold's book about writing the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", he recounts seeing the first episode broadcast, which featured a creature that sucked all of the salt out of people's bodies, thereby killing them. He hoped Star Trek wasn't going to turn out to be a Monster of the Week show, which ironically for him, it did.
  • While later series rarely had weekly monsters, Star Trek: The Next Generation and especially Star Trek: Voyager had stellar anomalies of the week that were always solved by a healthy amount of Techno Babble.
  • The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation started to become a god-like alien of the week show, but fortunately found sturdier footing in subsequent seasons.
• Doctor Who was originally supposed to be an edutainment program... until the Daleks showed up, whereupon it careened irreversibly into Monster of the Week territory.
  • Notably, the old series was made up of serials, usually three or four parts...making it more like monster of the month. Though, the new series follows this trope straight, while also including more Story Arcs.
    • Supposedly the new series production team will not accept scripts that don't feature a monster of the week.
  • They even lampshade this trope in "The Eleventh Hour", during Matt Smith's epic speech: "Cause you're not the first to have come here, oh here have been so many!"
• Torchwood...at least, the first two series. After the successful switch to "mini-series focused on a single threat" of Children of Earth, RTD decided to drop the MOTW format altogether.
• Kolchak the Night Stalker could be considered the ultimate archetype. It was, in fact, even mockingly dismissed by some as "Kolchak's Monster of the Week" when its transfer from a pair of movies to a TV series ended up not quite panning out.
• The second season of Dark Angel is a good example of this trope.
• In the Tremors series, monsters of the week were produced by a chemical compound called "Mix Master" which, once released into the valley, randomly scrambled together the DNA of all living things except humans. This created monstrosities ranging from acid-shooting plants to giant shrimp.
  • And one of them was defeated by the resident monster, El Blanco.
• Almost every episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and several other 60s SF shows produced by Irwin Allen.
• Common in Toku, especially Kamen Rider, Super Sentai (and by extension, Power Rangers) and the Ultra Series. This isn't terribly surprising, as the action and fights are the main draw of these shows (not that's a bad thing, nor that good storytelling can't go along with that) Indeed, Super Sentai has multiple-stage monster of the week fights, culminating in a robot vs. daikaiju showdown.
  • Super Sentai's first two shows kept the monsters human-sized throughout, it wasn't until the third show, Battle Fever J, where they started to add in daikaiju fights.
    • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has a twist on this near the end of the series. On the same episode where the Bigger Bad shows up, he sees the Gokaiger destroy one of his Co-Dragons and says to hell with the whole Monster of the Week thing and spends the next few episodes preparing for a full-scale invasion of Earth, with a frighteningly gigantic fleet of warships. While MotWs still show up in the following episodes, they're completely independent of the Emperor and his plans.
  • Power Rangers may well be your average Westerner's introduction to the very concept.
    • Parodied in one episode of Power Rangers Ninja Storm. Lothor tries to send six giant monsters at once against the heroes, only for his device to fail citing a "memory error". His general informs him that they did not pay for the memory upgrade, so they can only enlarge one monster at a time. Lothor curses at this complaining that as future ruler of the world "I need big monsters!'" and settles for enlarging one and making the rest fight while small.
  • While the first Kamen Rider show wasn't the first tokusatsu to have a consistent Monster of the Week, it did cause a Henshin Boom where other Henshin Heroes were made and had their own line of weekly monsters that they face in each episode.
    • The 51 Undead in Kamen Rider Blade are actually in conflict with one another to see which will be the dominant species on Earth (the human Undead was the winner of the last such competition, hence us). It can probably be assumed most of them are simply laying low and gathering their strength at the beginning of the series.
    • At least since Den-O (if not earlier), Kamen Rider series have tended to go with a "Monster of the Fortnight" variation.
    • The Monster of the Week, as well as the "Monster of the Fortnight", became less common in the Kamen Rider Series as the show goes on, practically during the Reiwa era as the show started to focus more on Rider vs Rider sub-plots.
    • Kamen Rider Geats had a Mooks-of-the-Week where the Riders fought against different variants of the Pawn Jyamato as the show goes on. The only difference between each of these variants is that they only wear different outfits. The Riders do fight against other monsters, but there are only 7 of them in the entire season.
    • The next season, Kamen Rider Gotchard, returns to the Monster-of-the-Week format with the added twist where even the main villains can transform into the weekly monsters.
    • In Kamen Rider Gavv, after the first three episodes had a Granute-of-the-Week, the show returns to the Monster of the Fortnight format.
  • The Metal Heroes series actually experimented with the trope in some of the shows.
    • The Space Sheriff trilogy played the trope straight out with each episode ending with the main hero getting sucked into the villain's world and dueling against the weekly monster.
    • While Kyojuu Tokusou Juspion had the titular hero face against human-sized aliens at times, he mainly fights the kaiju-sized MegaBeasts throughout the show. How the show was never considered a Kyodai Hero show is baffling.
    • Choujinki Metalder was more unique with this trope as all the monsters, robots, and villains Metalder faced had all appeared in the first episode of the show. Some would be kept as background characters before they get to fight against Metalder for only an episode. Ones that did get killed by Metalder were able to get rebuilt or revived in the show. Although, there were some that only appeared in one or two episodes before being killed off and never appearing again.
    • Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya had a Ninja-of-the-Week where instead of them being monsters, they were human beings with super ninja abilities. Some of them would reappear again in the show or just have their mantles be reused by a relative of theirs. Some of the Ninjas Jiraiya faced even ended up becoming his allies later in the show.
    • The Rescue Police Series trilogy had a Criminal-of-the-Week where they were mostly normal human beings, most of which got their hands on special technology to use for their own evil purposes. There were times in the trilogy where the heroes also face against aliens, mutants, and killer robots.
    • Tokusou Robo Janperson also dealt with human criminals while also having killer robots, cyborgs, and mutants.
    • Blue Swat had the team face one of the three different types of aliens in the first half of the show. It wasn't until when the Space Mafia arrive where they started facing against other different types of aliens.
  • Basically every Kyodai Hero show would always feature a different Kaiju in each episode.
    • The Ultra Series is the best example of this trope. Although, they do bring back some past kaiju in the newer shows due to their popularity. They did this so much that nearly all of the newer Ultraman show's line of Kaiju consist mainly of returning Kaiju.
      • The first show in the series, Ultra Q, which was a Twilight Zone-esque anthology show, wasn't restricted on just Kaiju-sized monsters. The show had monsters in any shape and size.
      • Ultraman Nexus managed to avoid this but still managed to have a good amount of Kaiju appear throughout the show.
    • Some Kyodai Hero shows such as Ambassador Magma, Spectreman, Daitetsujin 17, and Kaiju Prince had more of a Kaiju-of-the-Fortnight where the Kaiju would appear in more than just one or two episodes.
    • The first half of Silver Kamen had the main characters facing against human-sized aliens. It wasn't until the second half where they started facing against Kaiju-sized monsters after the titular hero gained the ability to become a giant.
    • Super Robot Red Baron and its' sequel, Super Robot Mach Baron, featured solely on giant enemy mechs for the titular robots to fight against
      • Ganbaron, which was suppose to be the third show of the Baron Series, avoided this trope almost entirely where only a few episodes had an actual giant monster. This was due to the show being made more like a traditional superhero show and had little to no giant robot/Kaiju action.
  • Other Toku did different takes on the trope themselves.
    • In Seiun Kamen Machineman, the titular hero faced against a different Android Soldier(which is basically the same costume only with a different arm weapon) in most of the episodes while also facing against human criminals and evil human beings. When Machineman fights against a human villain, he uses his powers to turn them good.
    • In the first seven episodes of Diamond Eye: Warrior Of Light, the titular hero faced against a different Zensei Majin in each one. After that, he fought against Zensai Majin that have the exact same appearances as the ones he defeated before. Word of God states that they're not the same ones as before but are actually from the same clans as them, explaining why they look exactly alike.
    • Dinosaur Sentai Koseidon didn't have a Monster-of-the-Week until Episode 12 after one of the characters became a full-fledge Henshin Hero.
    • Kikaider 01, sequel to Android Kikaider, had the main hero fight against the Hakaider Butai in the first quarter of the show. He did fight against their different individual forms in a Monster-of-the-Week style. It wasn't until the appearance of the World Crime Organization Shadow where the show started to have an ordinary Monster-of-the-Week.
    • The Kagestar first started out with a Supervillain-of-the-Week as the show was influenced by American comics. However, complaints from the shooting staff forced the show to have a regular Monster-of-the-Week starting at Episode 12 where the main heroes faced against mutants created by one organization.
    • Uchuu Tetsujin Kyodain had a Dadaroid-of-the-Week where some appeared for only an episode where as others appeared in two. Halfway through, the show dropped the trope and instead had the main heroes fight against a recurring villainous group throughout the rest of the show.
    • Shiro Jishi Kamen had different yokai in each episode. What's different here is that each episode features more than one of the same type of yokai featured in the episode as they would always appear in groups.
    • Tomica Hero: Rescue Force avoided this by instead having a Disaster-of-the-Week.
      • The sequel, Tomic Hero: Rescue Fire, featured actual monsters in each episode. Although, unlike most tokusatsu, the monsters were animated through CGI.
    • The Chouseishin Series had a mixture of human-sized monsters and Kaiju-sized monsters.
    • The Power Rangers rip-off, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills, had recurring villains for the characters to fight against.
• Reaper had an Escaped Soul of the Week where the main character has to hunt and capture a soul who escaped from Hell after the Devil gives him the assignment. There were a few times where an episode had an Escaped Soul only for them to not have any connection to the plot and would even get captured early in the episode.
• Brimstone had an Escaped Soul of the Week as well with the only difference is that each soul was one of the 113 souls that all escaped from Hell in one big breakout. Shares the same premise as Reaper where the Devil assigns someone to hunt all of the Escaped Souls, only instead of capturing them, he has to send them straight back to Hell by penetrating their eyes.
• Tracker had an Alien Fugitive of the Week where each episode featured an alien life-force taking possession of a human body and the main character, Daggon, has to track the life-force down and suck it out of the human body with a device.
• Supernatural had actual monsters as well as ghosts, gods, and cursed objects in almost every episode. Each season would have a story-arc going on but the show would feature a filler episode where the Winchesters hunt a supernatural entity. The characters would even discuss whether they should even be on a separate case while they still have bigger fish to fry in the season. There are even a few episodes where the Winchesters face human psychopaths that have little to no connection to anything considered supernatural.
• Heroes is normally entirely serialized, but volume three would often put the arc in the background for a one-off evolved human. Examples include the man who could create wormholes and the Haitian's brother.
• Big Wolf on Campus. Since it's technically a Monster Mash, that's reasonable enough.
• Charmed utilized this, although it became less prevalent in later seasons.
• Primeval, just what will come through the Anomaly this week?
• Smallville has both Meteor Freak of the Week, mutants who gained powers from being exposed to kryptonite, and a villain of the week where a human villain is featured in an episode. Season 6 also gave us the Phantom Zone escapees-of-the-week. As the series has progressed, it has much more of a Story Arc, and the Monster of the Week format becomes less frequent.
• Criminal Minds has a new case almost every week (through at least season 3)- usually dealing with the type of people you could call 'monsters'.
• Angel started by following this trope, but the format was discarded in favor of an arc-based one. Executive Meddling in the fifth season brought it back full circle.
• The Prisoner had the No. 2 Of The Week, who tried the Scheme Of The Week to attempt to break No. 6.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 is this trope.
• To Catch a Predator.
• Space: 1999. One of the most common fan complaints about the second season was that it dropped the metaphysical and psychodrama aspects in favour of more Monster of the Week action-oriented stories.
• Farscape had monsters of the week interspersed with the Story Arc episodes throughout the series.
• Warehouse 13 revolves around the Artifact of the Week, which can range from purely a MacGuffin all the way up to an actual Monster.
• Haven revolves around Supernatural Mystery Disaster of the Week. The town seems to attract people who are "troubled" and have supernatural abilities.
• Lost Tapes on Animal Planet features a different cryptid tormenting the Point of View character(s) each week.
• The West Wing does this metaphorically, with Political Crisis Of The Week, caused by Idiot Politician Of The Week (in fact, many episodes are around one week long).
• Dark Shadows often had season-long arcs like this with one supernatural villain.
• This was a big part of the first series of Merlin, and the Big Bad only appeared in 4 of the 13 episodes. From series 2 onwards the writers concentrated more on a singular villain (Morgause, Morgana and Agravaine, though occasionally a one-off monster will appear for a Filler episode.
• Babylon 5 had these from time to time, most often in the first two seasons, with Story Arc episodes mixed in and becoming more common as the show continued. By the third season, such episodes became very rare as the plot began to reach critical mass.
• Nickelodeon's The Troop is built around this trope.
• The Black Scorpion TV show has a different supervillain in each episode. Some of them would make another appearance in later episodes of the show.
• The Bone Chillers tv show had the cast facing a different monster in each episode. These include a lunch lady who can turn into bug monster, a teacher mutated into a frog monster, a reanimated undead turkey, monsters drawn to life from a magic sketch book, a female gorilla thawed out from the cafeteria’s freezer, and much more.
• Monsters, true to its name, would feature a different monster of any shape and size in each episode. These include a man-eating monster bed, a humanoid dinosaur, a long finger, and so forth.
• Mutant X has both a Villain of the Week and a New Mutant of the Week where each episode would feature a human being with super powers and a human villain, who may or may not have powers of their own, would hunt down the New Mutant.
• The live-action Cartoon Network show, Level Up (TV series), had a Leak-of-the-Week, where the main characters face against a different enemy that escaped from an online game and they must use their weapons to send it back.
• The Fox Kids sci-fi show, Galidor, had a different alien in nearly every episode. Although, only some of them worked for the main villain, Gorm, while others were different types of threats. Even the ones that work for Gorm weren’t technically evil.
• Another Fox Kids show, Los Luchadores, had a different villain in each episode that would be working for the Whelp.
• Another Fox Kids example, The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog would have plenty of episodes that featured monsters, usually summoned by Queen Maeve, that the knights have to take down with their weapons. No surprise as this show was Saban’s attempt at making an American Tokusatsu without adapting any of the Japanese shows.
• Monster Warriors revolves around the trope as each episode has the main characters facing against different types of monsters.

Tabletop Games

• Although a different medium, episodic RPG campaigns also fall into this pattern, as gaming groups usually get together to play once a week.

Video Games

• The monthly Full Moon Shadows that the party fights in Persona 3 at first seem to fall into this category; however, later on, it is revealed that they are all actually fragments of a single Shadow, Death, who is the herald of Nyx, the one destined to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
  • The true Monster of the Week was typically whichever Tartarus Boss your party was ready to fight on that night's run.
• A literal example in The World Ends With You for the DS: each week of the Reaper's Game is presided over by a "game master". These are especially powerful reapers who, what do you know, transform into monstrous versions of themselves when you get to fight them.
• The sets of 8 Robot masters (six in the first) in the Classic Mega Man series easily fall into this. The Game Boy spin-offs do this with the Mega Man Hunters (and Quint) and the Stardroids as well, while the sole Genesis game in the series (Wily Wars) had the Genesis Unit. The even more obscure spinoffs, Challanger from the Future and Rockman Strategy sport the Dimensions and the Constellation Droids respectively. Then, there's the many fake major villains replacing Dr. Wily... except for Ra Moon from Super Adventure Rockman and Rockman Shadow from Challenger From The Future who actually did replace Wily
  • The sequel series followed up with the Mavericks (whatever the game calls them by), Mythos Reploids, Pseudoroids, and Reaverbots (and Tron's creations and whatnot), while the Network Timeline has the Netnavis and EM Beings (FM-Ians, Wizards, etc). Whatever fake major antagonist group who replaces Sigma, etc also counts, as well as a few times (X8, Command Mission) where Sigma did get replaced. Zero retroactively linked its previous villains (tenuously) to Dr. Weil, as did ZX. Star Force plays it even straighter, as even the Big Bads aren't connected to each other. That version of Megs still has a Rogues Gallery of commonly-fought FM-Ians, though.
• The recent Sonic the Hedgehog games, starting from Sonic Adventure generally have one as the final boss. In some games, like Lost World, the "monster" is an entire Always Chaotic Evil race, though only a few representatives are battled. Eggman in recent years has stepped up to be the final boss.
• A large amount of Kirby games' plot follow this, each game being based on one big bad at a time. Of these include Kirby's Adventure with Nightmare, Kirby Super Star with Dedede, Dyna Blade, Wham Bam Rock, Metaknight, and Marx in their respective games, Kirby & the Amazing Mirror with Dark Mind, Kirby: Canvas Curse with Drawcia, Kirby: Squeak Squad with Daroach (later being Dark Nebula), Kirbys Epic Yarn with Yin Yarn, Kirby: Mass Attack with Necrodius, and Kirby's Return to Dream Land with Magolor.
• Taken up a notch in the Super Robot Wars franchise. Not only do the heroes have to deal with most (if not all) of the villains and monsters from their respective series (including those mentioned above), but there's also a new latest threat to stop on top of everything else.
• The Sly Cooper series, similar to the Mega Man example above, has a perfunctory new group of antagonists in each game, and each stage has you take on one at a time. Most of the Big Bads are connected to the original main villain Clockwerk, however. Muggshot in particular managed to recur after his original defeat.

Web Comics

• Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy parodies and plays this straight (albeit, in an arc-based way) with its Instant Monsters ,for obvious reasons. So far, three of them have been defeated, with the former two being sentient everyday objects, and the third being human (however, the side effects of the potion on him were unintended).

Web Original

• The web fiction serial Dimension Heroes often has the Dimensional Guardians fighting a new monster in every chapter, though it must be pointed out the fights still help to advance the story arc.
• New York Magician: Not many (as there aren't that many stories, all told), but they definitely have this vibe.
• Quirky Misadventures of Soldine the Cyborg: the first three mini-movies follow this format. The fourth one contains Night of the Living Mooks and a Quirky Miniboss Squad, but the fifth one returns to the classic format.

Western Animation

• The various varieties of Scooby Doo usually had a Guy In A Monster Suit Of The Week.
  • Some incarnations even occasionally fought actual monsters!
• Ben 10 lives on this. Considering the strange and varied varieties of trouble that tend to occur wherever Ben goes, one feels sorry for this kid's hometown if summer vacation ends.
  • Yeah, it gets toasted.
  • Sometimes inverted in a few seasons, where the Monster Of The Week wasn't just what Ben faced, but what he became.
• Lilo and Stitch: The Series: the titular pair try to find a peaceful place for each monster to live.
  • Then there's Rufus from the Kim Possible crossover.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man has Spider-Man fight a Super Villain of the week.
  • Though a lot of these were the result of the machinations of one or more of the show's three Big Bads — Tombstone, Doc Ock, or Norman Osborn, rather than isolated encounters.
    • What's really interesting is the show's justification for why there are so many supervillains running around: The Big Bads had them created to keep Spider-Man busy and thus unable to interfere with their standard criminal operations.
• Megas XLR practically lives off this, along with a fair bit of lampshade hanging. "Cool. Lets go see what kinda monster I get to beat up this week!"
• The various ghosts of both The Real Ghostbusters & Extreme Ghostbusters fit neatly into this trope.
  • So do the ghosts of Filmations Ghostbusters.
• On Swat Kats, this phenomenon also cropped up as the "Missile of the Week" used to deal with the current problem at hand.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force usually follows this rule, with the monster somehow spawning out of Shake or Carl's short-sighted actions or out of nowhere.
• When not facing their Rogues Gallery, the Powerpuff Girls mostly just take on different monsters.
• Spoofed in Sev Trek: Puss in Boots (an Australian parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Lt. Barf: Captain, we are being hailed. I recommend we go to Red Alert! Captain Pinchhard: We haven't even met them! Isn't that a little premature? Lt. Barf: Every week we encounter aliens who try to destroy or take over the ship. It would save a lot of time if we assumed the worst now.

• Martin Morning demonstrates this, with the odd twist of the protagonist being the new monster each episode.
• The whole point of Martin Mystery.
• An episode of Batman: The Animated Series, "The Underdwellers", spotlighted a villain called the Sewer King who never appeared again. He was sufficiently creepy for a Batman villain, but it's just as well he never returned, since he was really only good for one story (that is, showcasing the evils of child slavery).
• Regular Show seems to be establishing itself as one of these; but you'd probably prefer to call it "Weird Crap of the Week."
• Courage faces this all of the time in Courage the Cowardly Dog.
• The Mutraddi Beasts of Sym-Bionic Titan.
• Underdog often fights one of these (usually an alien) when he isn't fighting Simon Bar Sinister or Riff Raff.
• Teen Titans have a couple of villains who are Monster of the Week (Besides of the ones where the Brotherhood of Evil reunites them). Some villains were lucky to have two appearances.
• The Divinos of Combo Ninos.
• Dr Claw of Inspector Gadget had a new special MAD agent almost every week, who would never be seen again after the episode they appeared in. Gadget and the Gadgetinis did the same, but also had some one-time villains with no connection to M.A.D. or Dr. Claw whatsoever
• Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog tends to feature a new Robotnik machination in each episode to serve as a threat, who would usually be destroyed and never seen again. Breezie and Robotnik. Jr managed to pull Heel-Face Turns (probably because they were cute) of their own volition with a little help from Sonic, and became recurring characters. Occasionally, episodes would feature one-off flesh-and-blood villains as well, sometimes working with Robotnik, sometimes against him. The most notable of these was probably Katella.
  • Breezie later showed up in an arc of the Archie comic having returned to villainy (this time independent of anyone else).
• The Tick 1994 animated series would feature one-off villains throughout the show with only some of them making a recurring appearance. These range from a woman who can control furniture to a Santa Claus-dressed criminal who can create electric duplicates of himself.
• Static Shock had both a rogues gallery and a monster-of-the-week where Static would face against a one-off Bang-Baby through out the show. Some Bang-Babies would be humans with super powers while others would be actual mutated monsters.
  • This is more of a Freak-of-the-Week as not all the one-off Bang-Babies were evil but were merely misunderstood beings who can’t control their metahuman powers.
  • Also, not all of the one-off villains Static fought were Bang-Babies, but instead were super villains who acquired their powers through anything else that wasn’t related to the Big Bang gas explosion.
• In Class of the Titans, the Titans face off against a different Greek God and a Greek monster throughout the show where the first Greek monster they faced was the Typhoeus.
• While Tuff Puppy had a Rogues Gallery, it had plenty of episodes where the Tuff Agents faced against a one-off villain.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • While the 1987 show is well-known for the turtles on-going war with Shredder and Krang, the show manages to have plenty of episodes that feature a one-off villain. Sometimes the one-off villain would be a mutant or an alien while other times they would be ordinary human villains that range from mob bosses to mad scientists.
  • The 2012 show that aired on Nickelodeon first started out with a “Mutant-of-the-Week” before the turtles started facing Shredder and the rest of their Rogues Gallery. And when they did started facing their Rogues Gallery more, the show would still feature episodes with the turtles facing one-time threats.
• The Hero Factory TV show would often feature more than one criminal in a single episode of the show. Not surprising as each villain would get a LEGO figure of their own for the toyline.
• Bureau of Alien Detectors has the main characters facing a different alien threat in each of the 13 episodes.
• Each episode of Kung Fu Dino Posse featured a different dinosaur mutant when a crystal gets blasted by Skor's Dino Expander, transforming it into a giant dinosaur with characteristics of whatever the crystal was near when being blasted.
• Phantom Investigators has the main characters dealing with a different supernatural creature in each episode. What's unique about the trope in this show is that while everything else is animated through stop-motion, with some live-action actors for the ghosts that appear in the show, most of the weekly creatures are animated through puppetry.
• Pretty much a majority of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons that has a focus on either action or mystery, with the Scooby-Doo series as mention above being the prime example.
  • Frankenstein Jr. has a different giant monster in each episode for the titular character to fight against.
  • The Impossibles, being a superhero show, has the three heroes facing a different supervillain in each episode.
  • Space Ghost has the titular hero and his sidekicks facing against monsters, aliens, and supervillains. Some of these villains would reoccur in the show such as Zorak and Brak and some of them would even join together to form the Council of Doom to overpower Space Ghost.
  • Dino Boy in the Lost Valley, which aired alongside Space Ghost, had the main characters dealing with prehistoric creatures and other strange beings they encounter in the valley.
  • Birdman had the main hero fighting against his own assortment of supervillains, some of which only appearing once.
  • The Galaxy Trio also faced different villains in each episode.
  • The Herculoids had an endless stream of villains that appear throughout the show.
  • Shazzan has plenty of one-shot villains. Out of the villains in the show, only two of them were encountered more than once.
• Ozzy and Drix has the titular duo facing against different types of threats against Hector's body such as criminal pathogens and monstrous parasites, most of which get killed off in the end of the episode they appeared in.
• Archie's Weird Mysteries has Archie and the rest of his friends coming across a different monster in each episode. There are even some episodes where some of the characters actually BECOME the monsters themselves.
• ProStars, the 1991 super hero cartoon show starring sports stars Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson, feature a different villain in each episode who usually threatens the environment.
• Men in Black: The Series would usually feature a different alien criminal in each episode for Agents J and K to deal with.
• Godzilla: The Series, based off the 1998 movie, had a different giant monster for Godzilla to fight against in each episode. This is considered an improvement over the original movie.
• Jackie Chan Adventures has done variations on the trope.
  • Season One had a "Talisman-of-the-Week" where one or two episodes would feature a different talisman that would gift its' user a certain type of power.
  • Season Two had a "Demon-of-the-Week" where Shendu and his men would unseal one of his demon siblings in a single episode. The season also properly established the trope in the show as it started featuring episodes where Jackie would face against other human villains or other types of monsters in an episodic manner.
  • Season Three had an "Animal-of-the-Week" where Jackie and his family search for the noble animals that hold the talisman's powers after they got destroyed.
  • Season Four had an "Oni Mask-of-the-Week" as well as a "Shadowkhan-of-the-Week" where one of the characters would be wearing an Oni Mask that allows them to summon different types of Shadowkhan.
  • Season Five had a "Demon Chi-of-the-Week" where one of the characters would be in possession of Chi belonging to one of Shendu's demon siblings and would gain their powers as well as their appearance.
• Fangface had different villains and monsters in each episode.