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How can you bring back a villain?

Started by orionx103 Nov 29, 2003 at 2:40 AM 95 replies 13.5k views
Original Post
orionx103
orionx103
How can you bring back a villain? What method would you chose? Scenario: A main villain is killed and all that''s left of him is his head and pieces of his torso and extremities. The ideas I can think of are: (1) Have an android body built using his remains. (2) Combine his remains with a robot or android. (3) Combine his remains with pieces he''s missing from another being or a number of different beings. (4) Have his body restored by a wizard, witch, et cetera. (Ick.) (5) If in a sci-fi setting, clone him. (Ick.) What else can you do?
sunandshadow
sunandshadow
I think it would depend a lot on whether you wanted the hero to come back as good as new, or with problems. Like you could play frankenstein and now he''d be covered with stitches and his nerves wouldn''t work very well. Cloning would produce a person who looked the same and had generally the same abilities and temperament, but his ideas might be completely different. You could steal a copy of the person from an alternate world, and he would have some wrong assumptions and maybe want to go home. You could search magically or with a computer for the most similar person in the world, then use plastic surgery or magic to make them look exactly like the original. You could look for his reincarnation, if your world has reincarnation. You could go back in time and save him or make a copy of him before he was killed. There''re lots of ways...
I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.
TechnoGoth
TechnoGoth
There''s always mind swapping. After the villian dies some of his servants download his mind into another persons body. Thus allowing the villian to continue his evil this time in a completely diffrent body. One that the hero wouldn''t recognize, perhaps the villian could even take advantage of that fact to manipluate the hero in to aiding his cause in the guise of doing good.

There''s the bad cliche of you didn''t kill the villian but a shadow/clone/copy/duplicate/twin.

You could incorpate some mystisim into the process by the fact that only the villians body was destroyed. But his soul survied and by sheer force of will, and hate or as the result of some dark ritual you interupted. The villians'' soul remained in this world so in the end by killing the villian you caused him to return far more powerful then you could have ever imagined.

In the end you should just choose a method that fits in well with your story.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by sunandshadow
You could search magically or with a computer for the most similar person in the world, then use plastic surgery or magic to make them look exactly like the original.


What would be the point in that?
Oh-Dee
Oh-Dee
You could send the player to the realm of the dead where he meets the guy again in dead form. The guy is no different, only he''s dead.

---------------------------------------------
Don''t hate da playa hate da game
U can''t hate da playa so u gotta hate da game
---Anything is possible. Yep, even that.---
IFooBar
IFooBar
you can bring him back by keeping him dead.

You killed him but he shows up again becuase he''s still in between the real world and the after life thingy. So when the playes go *gasp* I thought I killed him. You can explain later that he actually is dead, he just hasnt passed over the world of reality or something.

But this kind of thing would really dfepend on the setting of your game. I mean in medievil times you couldnt scientifically explain a dead guy coming back, but you could explain magically.

In a futuristic setting you caould probably explain it scienetifically. It also depends on what the people of your world are capable of. Like if you take Final Fantasy VII and want to explain sephiroth coming back, you can say something like: His lifes stream threads were fused back into his body by using a new powerful materia. Now you couldnt say the same thing for a resident evil game. Becuase the characters/settings/concepts/beliefs are all different.


:::: [ Triple Buffer ] ::::
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Neoshaman
Neoshaman
you could also not explain at all why he come back and for the hero and the viewer it will be a complete mystery which will remain unsolve, and you can use these arguement bottom because the hero seek how the vilain come back each time he was kill, and then find clue but it''s always wrong at the very end because even when the supposed mecanism is destroy (i e the clone factory is destroy) the bad guy still come back and the hero is drive crazy at the end

another idea is that the bad bad has multiple instance of himself with a common memory but is not aware of that or simply the bad evil is tha hero in a video games and simply respawn when he lose a life (aka can find some item or save point too??)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>be goodbe evilbut do it WELL>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Neoshaman
Neoshaman
you know what?? this vilain is called boomrang whatever you do, no matter how, it will come back

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>be goodbe evilbut do it WELL>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ahw
ahw
Mmmh, in the 6th Day (the movie), the bad guy has multiple replica of himself in his cloning facility. He just has to do a transfer of his memory once in a while if he doesnt want to lose too much memory.
In Altered Carbon, the story revolves around why this uber rich guy who has auto upload of his memory chipset to his shard (host) database and unlimited supply of shards to replace his body was killed, and by whom. Normally shooting someone in the chipset makes it impossible to ressuscitate them by plugging them into a new body, but in the case of this man who is so rich, he can afford daily backup of his chipset, so an assassination attempt, even by destroying his chipset, would have been pointless. The only result is that he misses the last twelve hours in his memory (he was killed just before backup).
For most of mankind, he is immortal, a methuselah, he has lived for several hundreds years, ever youthful, ever rich.
In Gunnm (Battle Angel Alita, a manga) the big bad guy is a mad scientist. IIRC at the end of the first serie, the hero, Gunnm, dies (yep that''s right, I think in a huge explosion trying to destroy the baddie).
At the beginning of the next "season" (for lack of a better word) she is ressuscitated because despite the violence of the explosion, some bodily remains could be collected in sufficient quantity to replicate cells and recreate a whole new body.
In the 5th element, one of the holy warriors supposed to defend "the 5th element" that were killed at the beginning of the story is ressuscitated by recreating her body from what they found of her remains : a finger.

Etc,etc... I am sure there are more and more, but those are some extreme examples of "gee, I really thought he was dead this time". And yet, no, they always seem to find a way back


Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !
-----------------------------Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !
Operator
Operator
Well, I always thought the best way to bring a villain back was to use a computer program. See, given a sufficently comlicated program, and a sufficently powerful computer you could (in theory) use character traits from a person''s life to duplicate his personality in a computer. What''s worse than a villian? An all-knowing, nigh-killable super-villian who can laugh at you from a computer screen and has direct input from any number of interface hookups.

-Operator
orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
quote:
Original post by ahw
In the 5th element, one of the holy warriors supposed to defend "the 5th element" that were killed at the beginning of the story is ressuscitated by recreating her body from what they found of her remains : a finger.



actually the warrior WAS the fifth element (dont worry not spoiling the film you find that out about 5 mins after you first see her)


You''re certainly not ruining it for me. I''ve seen the movie fifty million times. It used to run on Sci-fi repetitively. And I used to love it.
orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by Operator
Well, I always thought the best way to bring a villain back was to use a computer program. See, given a sufficently comlicated program, and a sufficently powerful computer you could (in theory) use character traits from a person''s life to duplicate his personality in a computer. What''s worse than a villian? An all-knowing, nigh-killable super-villian who can laugh at you from a computer screen and has direct input from any number of interface hookups.

-Operator


I was thinking about writing a Stargate SG-1 fanfic where a Goa''uld''s conscienceness (sp?) was uploaded into a computer on an over-industrialized planet. He then would proceed to take over all industrial machinery and mass-produce Jaffa-like androids, wipe out all biological creatures, et cetera, work on creating a power source that would last forever, and SG-1 would come and detinate an EMP bomb so they can salvage nearly everything. I guess it could be done with some other villain.
orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by Neoshaman
you could also not explain at all why he come back and for the hero and the viewer it will be a complete mystery which will remain unsolve, and you can use these arguement bottom because the hero seek how the vilain come back each time he was kill, and then find clue but it''s always wrong at the very end because even when the supposed mecanism is destroy (i e the clone factory is destroy) the bad guy still come back and the hero is drive crazy at the end



Part of the reason for explaining why or how a villain came is because it''s fun to come up with stuff like this. At least for me it is. I like to come up with the origins of villains and magical items and weapons and so on so forth.
AcRiD_aCiD
AcRiD_aCiD
maybe his past self travel to the future to continue his job or maybe alternate dimensions.....like Jet Li's 'The One'

[edited by - AcRiD_aCiD on November 30, 2003 9:16:40 AM]
Ancient words of wisdom-You Suck!
Oh-Dee
Oh-Dee
quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
quote:
Original post by ahw
In the 5th element, one of the holy warriors supposed to defend "the 5th element" that were killed at the beginning of the story is ressuscitated by recreating her body from what they found of her remains : a finger.



actually the warrior WAS the fifth element (dont worry not spoiling the film you find that out about 5 mins after you first see her)


Actually the Fifth Element was love. That was the whole point of the film.

---------------------------------------------
Don''t hate da playa hate da game
U can''t hate da playa so u gotta hate da game
---Anything is possible. Yep, even that.---
orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by AcRiD_aCiD
maybe his past self travel to the future to continue his job...


That...really doesn't make sense. How would his past self know the future self was gonna die?

[edited by - orionx103 on November 30, 2003 1:09:02 PM]
orionx103
orionx103
quote:
Original post by Oh-Dee
quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
quote:
Original post by ahw
In the 5th element, one of the holy warriors supposed to defend "the 5th element" that were killed at the beginning of the story is ressuscitated by recreating her body from what they found of her remains : a finger.



actually the warrior WAS the fifth element (dont worry not spoiling the film you find that out about 5 mins after you first see her)


Actually the Fifth Element was love. That was the whole point of the film.



Yes, but Leeloo was the embodiment of the fifth element. Only her love would do it, not anyone else''s.
cowsarenotevil
cowsarenotevil
quote:
Original post by orionx103
That...really doesn''t make sense. How would his past self know the future self was gonna die?



A faithful servant, of course.

-~-The Cow of Darkness-~-
orionx103
orionx103
Well, with his disappearance in the past, it would change the future so he wouldn''t die at all. No one besides them two would know the truth. I don''t like time travel anyone. It''s far too fickle for my liking. In my point of view, everyone who writes about time travel screws up somewhere along the way.
Inmate2993
Inmate2993
You know, a great way to have a villian reemerge is to not have the villian die in his proir encounters with the hero. Its supposedly what evil deed the badguy is doing that the protagonist wants to stop him, so really you only have to have the hero stop the deed. If the villian escapes in the confusion, that means you can use him again later.

Or, the villian gets beatup pretty bad while in the fight, but manages to crawl away. Then some dastardly acomplise finds the baddude, and puts him in some kind of medical therapy thing, like the Joker.
william bubel

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