Thread:Overseer80/@comment-23995441-20140323031425/@comment-15895329-20140323141634

I don't think there's a clear rule on that one way or the other. If you want my personal opinion, I think it depends on just how bad the off-screen nature of it is. By this I mean that if there is literally no evidence of what this person has done except for say, a single lyric in a song ("Worse then the widows and orphans you drowned?") then no, I don't think it's enough, because that one lyric could easily be interpreted as hyperbole. The villains themselves claiming they did these things without anything to back it up I also consider to be rather iffy, because they could just be making stuff up for all we know.

Conversely, with Syndrome I feel there is sufficient proof of his deeds, as he not only says he had to kill quite a few superheroes to get the omnidroid powerful enough to fight Mr. Incredible, we also see on his computer the list of heroes the Omnidroid has killed. So that to me seems like sufficient proof. Another example of valid off-screen villainy is if the villain goes on trial for something or another and though we don't see it, we know the villain's being put on trial for it. The same holds true of a villain who is serving time for certain crimes. That to me is also valid. We assume they're guilty, or they wouldn't have been convicted.

So ultimately that's how I see it. I hope my answer helps.