User blog comment:Ngh93/What REALLY makes a villain a Complete Monster?/@comment-27818776-20150326235216/@comment-1672596-20150327161823

@Swoobatman: Yeah, and even that may pose problems when a character who is treated as an undeniable good guy does exactly the same thing, even down to similar, or even arguably worse or even more invalid motivations, as the CM and it isn't treated as much despite when the CM did it it was treated as a huge heinous MEH.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of the worst aspects of this problem. To elaborate, Colonel Volgin, the game's resident Complete Monster, basically blew up the Sokolov Research Facility to give his new Davy Crockett a "test run", the game clearly treated this as an especially heinous act (where Ocelot, himself not a saint considering he took semi-satisfaction in killing KGB members, actually tried to beg Volgin not to do it), not to mention nearly brought the world into Nuclear War thanks to it being an American-made Davy Crockett, and Volgin was overall a huge sadist who enjoys the carnage. The Boss, late into the game, does something similar with the remaining Davy Crockett, where she blew up both Groznyj Grad and the Granin Design Bureau, and she actually may have had some enjoyment of it as well (she said after doing this "Life's end, isn't it beautiful?"), and it wasn't even treated as a true MEH for her. In fact, in spite of that, she's treated as being Jesus Christ in the following games, sinless at heart, even being set up.

This is in fact one the reasons why I think the entire Complete Monster category deserves to be scrapped, as it gets contradictory, not to mention is completely redundant (the entire POINT of being a villain is to do stuff the story considers heinous, even if you're merely an anti-villain, so that basically makes the CM category redundant in and of itself).