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Crossover-Exclusive Villain - TV Tropes

️Sun Nov 29 2020

A grand Crossover story needs a suitably grand villain, but what happens when the already established bad guys aren't enough to fill the Big Bad shoes?

That's when you bust out the Crossover-Exclusive Villain, a completely new character whose role in the story is to be the ultimate villain.

What differs a regular Big Bad and a Crossover-Exclusive Villain are a few related tropes that form a quite specific archetype. A Crossover Exclusive Villain often has any number or all of these traits:

No connection to previously established canon, or if there is, it's extremely Hand Wave-y. The most common origin of these characters tend to be from Another Dimension.
Immense amount of power, enough to be considered or actually is a Physical God. Often with a dash of Reality Warper powers.
Often with little personality, or none whatsoever beyond their immediate threat and menace. Tends to be either an Eldritch Abomination or a Multiversal Conqueror.
If there is a Villain Team-Up between the franchise(s) established villains, they're the leader or the Man Behind the Man.
Tend to be the reason why the characters are in a crossover anyway.

A Sub-Trope of Original Generation. Compare Crossover Combo Villain. Contrast Crossover Villain-in-Chief, who are already established villains elevated to Big Bad status in crossover works.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Marvel Versus DC: The villains of the Crossover are "the Brothers", cosmic entities that the DC and Marvel universe each exist in. In order to decide which of them should continue to exist, they pit the heroes of their respective universes against each other, with the side with the most wins deciding the outcome.
- The subsequent miniseries featuring the Original Generation character Access had as its villain Dr Strangefate, the last survivor of the Amalgam Universe. The sequel had a Big Bad Duumvirate of Magneto and Darkseid, but The Man Behind the Man was a Bad Future version of Access himself.
The Disney Afternoon Comics crossover, The Legend of the Chaos God, featured a new villain called Solego as the Big Bad, possessing several Disney Afternoon characters (such as Rebecca, Dale, Fat Cat, a car owned by Pete and the Gizmoduck armour), before being sealed in a crystal by Darkwing Duck.
During DC's "Worlds Collide" event, a new villain called Rift attempted to merge the mainstream DC universe and the Dakotaverse, forcing a team-up between Superman and Icon, as well as the various heroes of their respective universes.
The first crossover with IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters series has Chi-You, a lost member of the Pantheon who ended up in the Ghostbusters' universe after the Turtles and their allies used a dimensional transporter. After both teams manage to trap him, he gets sent into deep space back in the Turtles' universe, but he has yet to come back outside of a single throwaway mention.

Films — Animation

Rugrats Go Wild!: In this crossover between Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys, the closest thing the film has to a villain is the clouded leapard, Siri, who tries to eat the babies.

Films — Live-Action

Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers: The Black Silhouettes were created for the film as the main antagonists and have not appeared in other works of the franchise ever since. The same goes for their trump card, Giga Khimaira.
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster introduced the title character as this trope, an extraterrestrial threat so severe that he necessitated the crossover team-up of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan. Unusual for this trope, however, Ghidorah would not end up as a simple one-off villain, and gradually became Godzilla's most iconic foe of all.

Live-Action TV

Arrowverse:
- In Crisis on Earth-X, Green Arrow, the Flash, Supergirl, and the Legends of Tomorrow team up to fight their evil counterparts and Nazis from Earth-X.
- In Elseworlds, Barry and Oliver have their roles switched by a reality altering book being used by Dr. John Deegan.
- In Crisis on Infinite Earths, the heroes team up to save the Multiverse from the Anti-Monitor. Though mentioned throughout the season leading up to Crisis, the Anti-Monitor only shows up proper in the crossover event.
Kamen Rider has too many of these to count, due to the yearly crossover movies starting in 2008.

Video Games

Fire Emblem Warriors uses Velezark as the Big Bad of this Crisis Crossover for the Fire Emblem franchise, opening Outrealms that let in various characters from across the multiverse and ultimately threatened their worlds in addition to the original world he inhabits.
In FusionFall, a MMORPG combining elements of many of Cartoon Network's popular shows, the enemy is a group of aliens called the Fusions lead by Lord Fuse, whose only appearance is in this game.
The story of Hyrule Warriors involves a plot to revive main The Legend of Zelda villain Ganondorf, whose evil essence was split into four parts and scattered across different eras. This is mainly carried out by Cia, a character unique to the game whose time travelling abilities makes this gathering possible. Cia’s two henchmen, Wizzro and Volga, are also original villains.
Jump Force: Prometheus serves as the Big Bad of this crossover between various Shonen Jump series'. Exclusive to this game, Prometheus is a powerful entity who desires to merge the various Jump worlds into one which would allow him to rule them all as a god.
Kingdom Hearts started off as a fairly straightforward crossover game between various classic Disney franchises, with Final Fantasy gameplay elements and character cameos. For most of the game, the classic Disney villains serve as an Omniscient Council of Vagueness and Arc Villains of each world. However, towards the end of the game, The Man Behind the Man is revealed to be an Original Generation character: Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, setting up the Myth Arc for the series as a whole.
- The sequels would bring in newer villains tied to Ansem in some way, but the most important one is his creator—Master Xehanort, the Greater-Scope Villain of the franchise.
Nicktoons Unite!:
- The villain of the second game, Battle for Volcano Island, is a purple monster called the Mawgu. Said villain has never been in any of the four shows.
- Globs of Doom features a giant orange Blob Monster called Globulous Maximus as the Big Bad, who is technically based off the Nickelodeon slime imagery but doesn't actually appear in any of the represented shows.
- While not a part of the same series, the arcade racer Nicktoons Nitro has its own example in the form of Lord Nitro, an alien who forces the Nicktoons to race for his amusement.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2: The game introduces a new villain called Abyss, a mysterious creature with vague motivations and not much personality, who creates a miasma that threatens to destroy both the Marvel and Capcom worlds. Regardless, its menace proves to be so great that both heroes and villains agree that working together is the only way to solve the crisis.
The plot of PlayStation Move Heroes involves Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly and Bentley, being pulled into a realm outside of their universes by Gleeber and Lunk, two aliens who want to harness the natural resources of what used to be an alien world they conquered to kill the heroes and take their places in the respective universes.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has the respective protagonists and their assistances pulled into a medieval world of witch trials by a man known only as "the Storyteller", who supposedly makes everything he writes come true. True to the roots of both series, his supernatural powers are just conjuring tricks and he's even an Anti-Villain to boot, but the truth is even more convoluted than the supposed "magic".
Project × Zone: The new villains belong to the Oros Phlox organization, whose objective is to warp reality and mesh multiple worlds together by tampering with a mysterious artifact called Portal Stone. However, the members receive little focus, as they mostly resort to sending established Namco, Capcom and Sega villains to do their work. The true nature of the organization isn't revealed until the final chapter: They are all well-intentioned extremists who want to create a new reality without any of the flaws from the preexisting worlds.
- The original basis for Project X Zone, Namco × Capcom, also has an original villain named Saya, a were-fox who works for the Ouma origination, which wants to merge all worlds together. She also appears in Project X Zone and it's sequel.
Super Robot Wars: The formula for the crossover games eventually refined themselves into regularly having a Big Bad and Final Boss be an Original Generation villain, often manipulating or teaming up with the Big Bad of individual series.
Super Smash Bros., being one of the biggest crossovers ever, has quite a few examples:
- Master Hand has been around since the first game, and has appeared as the Final Boss in every game after. Meanwhile, their counterpart Crazy Hand started appearing since Melee either alone or helping Master Hand.
- Super Smash Bros. Melee: In addition to introducing Crazy Hand, the game also marked the debut of Giga Bowser as the True Final Boss in Adventure Mode as well as Event Match.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl has Tabuu, the Big Bad of the Subspace Emissary mode. He has no connection to any of the franchises present, has no dialogue, his only real goal is to drag the world into his home dimension of Subspace, and his design is completely unlike anything else in the game.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has Galeem and later his counterpart, Dharkon as the Big Bad of Adventure Mode. The Lord Of Light is an angelic creature who, like Tabuu, also has no dialogue and very little known motivations. Its Establishing Character Moment is to wipe out all of the Fighters in the intro cutscene, with only Kirby managing to survive.
Warriors Orochi has Orochi, depicted in this series as a powerful demon lord who creates a dimension that fuses China's Three Kingdoms and Japan's Sengoku era in order to battle with the warriors of said eras.
Battletoads & Double Dragon involves a Villain Team-Up between The Dark Queen and the mysterious Shadow Boss, leader of the Shadow Gang. The former is the established Big Bad of her series, but the Shadow Boss is a Legacy Character and this specific Shadow Boss is completely original character who never appeared anywhere else in the Double Dragon franchise.

Webcomics

In Crisis on Two Comics, a crossover between Doc Glasgow's two comics Ennui GO! and Black Hole (2019), the villains are a tantric sex cult called the Gardeners. According to their leader Mother Rose, they are a self-help group that focuses on radical sexual exploration. However, it's revealed that their true intentions are much more sinister as members of their group are mysteriously disappearing and a member of Key Manati's diamond guard is caught as an infiltrator, thus inspiring Izzy to contact Diana Nox for her assistance. After the leader's plan is revealed and the cult is defeated, they were sent away to Key Manati's prison, where Mother Rose implies that she may return to face the protagonists again.
In Strange Tales of the DA Multiverse, a crossover between a number of superheroes created by DeviantArt users, the villains are original characters Lord Dies and his Protectorate, each member of which is an Evil Counterpart to one of the heroes or a character connected to that hero (Marv the Demon for Merv the Griffin, Tango for Burst Lion, Rush for Astro Lass, etc.) To date, none of the evil counterparts have been seen outside of the comic.

Western Animation

Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United, features the main Antagonist Alpha. Despite never having appeared before or since, he was made into a big player in the Generator Rex world, having been Ceaser's original control nanite before the Omega. However, due to being unsustainable and too dangerous, he was banished to a parallel dimension, later revealed to be the Null Void. He manages to return to his homeworld, in search of a new body but defeated by the combined efforts of Ben & Rex. He is sent back into the Null Void, trapped in a spherical form, though The Stinger shows him breaking free of his prison.
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue: Characters from many popular cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, Michelangelo, ALF, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Garfield, Baby Kermit, Baby Piggy, Baby Gonzo, Winnie the Pooh, Slimer, and The Smurfs, team up to convince a teenager, Michael, not to do drugs. The villain is a one-off character, Smoke, an anthropomorphic puff of smoke voiced by George C. Scott, trying to convince Michael that smoking is cool.
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman join forces to take on the wizard Winterbolt.
The OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Crossover Nexus" features a villain named Strike who does not appear before or since. He lives in CN City, which is portrayed as a sort of Hub World where the heroes of various Cartoon Network shows once lived and met up before Strike began terrorizing them by stealing their powers, turning them to stone, and stamping them with a red "X". Strike also summons heroes from other dimensions into CN City so he can destroy them. The episode focuses on K.O., Raven, Garnet, and Ben Tennyson teaming up to defeat Strike.
The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour: While the first two specials use the regular villains from The Fairly OddParents! and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, the third one, "The Jerkinators!", has Timmy and Jimmy create a new villain to fight; Shirley. But things take a turn for the worse when Shirley steals Cosmo and Wanda's magic powers and Jimmy's intelligence.
Pibby: The Eldritch Abomination seen in the trailer invades several different worlds, absorbing and taking control of their citizens. It's not from any of the real shows included in the crossover because Pibby's target demographic is far more adult than theirs – underscored by the disturbing manner in which it assimilates its victims (all of which are children's cartoon characters).