Thread:AustinDR/@comment-25008763-20170426130052/@comment-2175012-20170426135822

A work can have more than one complete monster: however, they have to do something to stand out. In short, the heinous standard exists in two forms: baseline heinousness and relative heinousness.

Baseline heinousness is pretty much where the separation between normal villains and the pure evil ones come in. Here, we can expect some things to come from the antagonists. What do you expect for a villain to do? Villains kill people, try to kill heroes, etc. In a fantasy setting, you can expect an evil overlord to use magic to kill people, etc. This is part of the reason as to why it's difficult for a children's show or film to have a CM, because they hardly ever breach the baseline established for the show. For people like Frollo, in the Disney version, he is a genocidal madman who tries to force a Gypsy woman to be with him (whether she wants to or not). He qualifies because of that fact, while villains like Ursula or Gaston don't. Or take a crime series where you'd expect things like murder to take place. Having a villain run a human trafficking network breaches the baseline. In summary, this is supposed to separate normal villains from the complete monsters. Ask yourself "does this villain's actions strike me as heinous by the story's setting?"

The absolute heinous standard is the ultimate determining factor. Simply put, what is nasty in the work itself? When you have a show like Tales from the Crypt where murder is commonplace, the only one that qualifies killed about seven people, while others who had killed less don't count. However, take shows like DBZ where destroying planets is so commonplace, you'd have to do more to stand out. This is also where the resources test come in. It states whether or not the villain has enough resources to be as bad as they could be. Of course, this doesn't automatically put one on the CM list if their actions amount to commonplace.