Plot Irrelevant Villain

Here we have Joe. Joe frequently appears throughout the narrative to do what he can to make Frank's life miserable.

The problem? Joe isn't actually essential to the narrative and isn't particularly interesting, either. Where a serious villain would Kick the Dog to inspire an emotional reaction, this guy barely manages to Poke the Poodle. He'll dash onscreen every so often, twirl his moustache in a Jerkass manner, and then leave with little fanfare.

In other words, Joe is a villain who doesn't do anything. He has been shoehorned into the narrative for little reason beside the conventional wisdom that all narratives need a clear bad guy. For this reason he's an especially common addition to adaptations intended to reach a wider audience than in his original form.

While the easiest way to sum up this trope is "useless character", that's more objective as what's going on here. For example, Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas, awesome though he may be, is motivated purely by For the Evulz, causes trouble only after the Denouement, and has little if anything to do with the main plot of how Halloweentown takes over Christmas.

This trope can possibly go in line with Designated Villain. If he's there to provide someone to boo because the main problem is too cool to hate or a morally neutral problem (a runaway train, an earthquake) it's a Hate Sink. Compare with Breakout Villain and Orcus on His Throne. When it's an entire unwholesome class of characters who don't seem to do of the dirty deeds of their profession, it's The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

Examples of Plot Irrelevant Villain include:

Anime and Manga

• From Pokémon, Team Rocket also fall into this sometimes. They were a legitimate threat early on, but later became more of an obligatory appearance. Though at least in Sinnoh, Jessie had her own subplot of entering contests under an alias.
  • Most of the rivals exist for the purpose of Ash and whoever his companions are furthering their goals by keeping them on their toes and occasionally helping them, rather than playing a major role in the overarching story. But Paul contributes absolutely nothing. He bullies Ash, abuses his Pokemon, delights in sending everyone he beats in battle into a Heroic BSOD, and is praised by the narrative and by fans who think he "makes the story more interesting by inspiring different emotions in Ash".

Film

• In the movie Fired Up, the stereotypical evil cheerleader captain of the Opposing Sports Team is introduced as a big villain... and does nothing in her five minutes total screen time other than badmouth the good team a couple of times and have sex with the female lead's Jerkass boyfriend (who the audience knows is sleeping around, so this role could be filled by any random girl).
• The rival climatologist team in Twister is entirely redundant and has no useful role in the story.
  • This is more of a subversion than a straight example. Jonas Miller seems to be there just to make some anvilicious anticorporate point, but it's Dr. Miller's (attempted) theft of the Dorothy concept and Dr. Harding's anger at it that ultimately pulls him back into the stormchasing team.
• The film Recipe for a Perfect Christmas had an office rival for the heroine who did not directly harm the heroine at all but still gets a verbal slapdown for offering her own ideas to the boss while the heroine has been suspended from her job.
• Although he's a very memorable character, pretty much the entire plot of The Nightmare Before Christmas happens without Oogie Boogie, and the Final Battle happens after the climax as a way of tying off loose ends rather than causing any resolution or character development.
  • Tellingly, in the original poem (found on the Blu-ray narrated by Christopher Lee) Oogie Boogie doesn't appear at all despite the rest of the poem following the movie point to point.
• Humma Kavula from the The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy movie. Oh yes. He's given little Backstory, his motives are only hinted at, and seems to exist only to push for the inclusion of the MacGuffin used to save the day at the end. No doubt if sequels were made he'd have a larger role, but sequels seem unlikely at this point. And the most aggravating point is that the movie already had villains! Do the Vogons chasing Zaphod for kidnapping the President (himself) and stealing a ship not count?
• Gigantic is an indie romantic comedy. Not exactly a genre needing a villain, yet for some reason it has a strange homeless man who attacks the male lead at random intervals for basically no reason whatsoever. One of the more bizarre examples, as there is not even a token attempt to shoehorn him into the plot, he's just there.
• The closest Madagascar has to a villain are the fossa - but they are a menace that hardly appears. The major conflict is both the protagonists being stranded in a strange place, and the sole carnivore of them becoming hungry.
• The title character in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. While he adds a tad of drama to Steve's arc, and becomes much more relevant to Captain America: Civil War, he has no impact on the plot of Project: Insight.
• Despite how vile he is and how hated he is by the fandom Prince Hans of Frozen. He takes advantage of the eternal winter but is largely superfluous when placed next to it.
• Played for Drama with the DC Extended Universe's version of Ares in Wonder Woman. Though Diana assumes that he's the cause of World War I, the sad truth is that he is not. He whispered some ideas for new weapons to the Germans but he never forced anyone to use them. Sometimes, Humans Are the Real Monsters.

Literature

• Draco Malfoy is this most of the time in the early Harry Potter books. He only really starts to dovetail with the actual villains in book 5.

Live Action TV

• The insane simulant in the Red Dwarf episode 'Justice': Aside from providing an excuse for reaching the space station, he had no purpose other than to tack on an (admittedly funny) action sequence after the plot proper was resolved.
  • The simulants are perfect for this sort of thing: Need to get the crew in a Wild West simulation? Simulant. Need a reason to get Rimmer on his own planet for 600 years? Simulant. Need a way to introduce a drugged-up twin brother of Kryten? Simulant. The only Simulant that appears that is directly related to the plot of the episode is The Inquisitor, and really, he might as well not be one, as his motivation isn't the killing of humans, but replacing them in history with those he thinks deserves life more.
• Kamen Rider Den-O worked well as an ensemble Monster of the Week show, and then basically fell apart at the very end, when they tried to introduce a primary antagonist. Not helped by the villain's motivation being rather obtuse up through the end of the series.
• This applies to most movies made by the SciFi/SyFy Channel. You have a decent monster/phenomenon story, then you throw a bunch of criminals in. Maybe they are trying to get us to root for the monster, or increase the body count without angst (because the extra victims are bad people, and they have it coming), but it usually just muddies up the movie.
• The Jabberwock in the 1985 Irwin Allen version of Alice in Wonderland is an unnecessary addition to the "Through the Looking Glass" portion of the film. In the original book, the Jabberwock never appeared outside the poem "Jabberwocky". Irwin Allen, however, believed the story needed an equivalent to the Boogeyman, so he made the Jabberwock appear and scare Alice when she reads the poem, and then turn up again twice later (once at the end of the Humpty Dumpty scene, the second during the climax). But really it contributes nothing to the story, aside from allowing the producers to put in a climax somewhat more comprehensible than the book's rather bewildering finale.
• The Master shows up in the Doctor Who maxiseries Time Lord Victorious to cause some mischief but he has ultimately no impact on anything that happens. Hell when he actually tries to have more of an impact, the Disc One Final Bosses tell him to piss off.
• Jade West was the default Big Bad of Victorious but more often than not, the show didn't need a properly villainous character leaving her hovering on the sidelines making rude comments for most of the series, unless a script needed an Alpha Bitch. And even then, it wasn't guaranteed that the writers would have her fill the role.
• Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. While Agatha was the True Final Boss, she was mainly Plucky Comic Relief for the first seven out of nine episodes. Agatha didn't create the Hex, she wasn't connected to SWORD, Vision was already pulling the thread (something that Agatha, at her worst, only accelerated) and as far as the people of Westview are concerned, Wanda is the true villain. Though Agatha reminds everyone that she's still a villain by nearly killing Wanda and stealing away her power, with her legacy going to affect Wanda's actions in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Video Games

• Midboss from Disgaea: Laharl even named him Midboss because he was a seemingly unimportant villain, and he continually returns to antagonize Laharl's troupe for no apparent real reason. Subverted when it's revealed that he was helping the seraph's Batman Gambit by monitoring Laharl and co. to make sure everything was going according to plan.
• In the Spider-Man games, Shocker qualifies. Almost every other villain has an important role in the story to some extent. Shocker is just there to get his ass whupped and not make a single contribution to the story.
• Zed from Wild Arms might qualify, too.
• To an extent, Batman: Arkham Asylum has Bane: he shows up once to fight Batman and gets taken down immediately, unlike the other villains who all come back at least once. His indirect role in the plot, however, is much greater: Joker plans to use a deriative of the Venom formula in his blood to make rampaging monsters out of all of Gotham.
  • Victor Zsasz in Batman: Arkham City largely exists to give the player some more to do, his actual role in the overarching plot is effectively nil compared to two moments of Asylum that did make him relevant. Mad Hatter seems like some optional side quest you can easily skip if you are aware of it, and it does have little plot relevance on its own. This, however, is subverted by his indirect role. Hugo Strange used Hatter's mind control to create his TYGER task force and essentially bribed Hatter with a series of innocent women to be his "Alices", knowing they'd get killed, then disposed of Hatter when he was of no use anymore. Hatter's sidequest is Hatter realizing how much he's screwed and trying to mind control Batman into working for him to claw his way out of his situation.
• Dr Eggman in Sonic Shuffle. He has no connection or role in the plot about the crisis Maginaryworld is in. Doesn't appear in the cutscenes of the story mode nor is he responsible for Illumina the ruler of Maginaryworld splitting into Lumina and Void or the Precioustone shattering. He only appears in certain mini games, mini events and acts as a hindrance for the players when on the boards. The only sort of relevance he has is mentioned in the instructions manual where he followed Sonic and co to Maginaryworld after hearing about the power of the Precioustone hoping to obtain it for himself and harness its power but this goes absolutely nowhere.

Western Animation

• The main antagonists, Duchess and Terrence, from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, were important in the pilot and pretty well ignored since. The show never really needed bad guys, and when it did, it could usually be better performed by Bloo, the resident Jerkass.
• The Christmas Special Christopher the Christmas Tree has a scene where a fox and weasel show up for no reason other than to lend the end of the special a little suspense by planting the idea that Christopher will be chopped down for firewood, rather than picked to be a Christmas tree.
• Transfer (and his boss, Sullivan) in Around the World with Willy Fog: Transfer sets up a lot of obstacles for the heroes, yes, but in the original book those obstacles arose just fine without anybody trying to sabotage the trip.
• Parodied in the American Dad! episode "Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth", where Roger is riding Stan in a horse race (Stan's mind is temporarily in a horse's body). Roger mentions his regret that he doesn't have a rival to race against and make it more exciting, so when Stan points out that it isn't too late, Roger deliberately picks a fight with another jockey just to create a rival.
• Invader Zim in the second half of Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus. Though Zim caused the Florpus Hole, its sheer destructive potential outclasses any threat he, or the encroaching Irken Armada, could ever hope to pose. GIR even lampshades that no one on Earth even seems to be aware of Zim.
• Corynthia Meanstreak and her henchmen Kirk and Dirk in Titanic: The Legend Goes On are basically knock-offs of Cruela De Ville and Jasper and Horace, but they don't really do much of anything in the movie aside from being jewel thieves being pursued by Detective Sam Bradley. All they end up contributing to the film is a few moments of slapstick.
• Odalia Blight in The Owl House. All she really exists for is to be an aversion to Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, being an Arms Dealer for Emperor Belos. And it's Played for Drama because despite this, she's an utterly toxic Abusive Parent to Amity and her siblings that she manages to worm her way to the spotlight.
• Downplayed with MECH in Transformers Prime. While their scheme of "Project: Chimera" has an effect on Starscream in Season 2, by the season's end virtually every impact MECH had is undone and CyLAS's final contribution to the show was just because he happened to be Knock Out's test subject for that particular experiment, not because of anything unique to him.