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Char MSG Ep1 (11)

Char Aznable has declared Mastermind is to be renamed to
Category:Masterminds

for the following reason(s): plural, also do not remove this template unless you are an admin
Please discuss it on the talk page for this article.
"I told you I am not Casval, I am Char Aznable."

Stop hand

Spiders spin their webs, yes. But I spin them larger.
~ Megatron plotting against his insubordinate minion Blackarachnia.
It was then that I made the discovery that was to change my life for a second time, viz., that the criminal underclass - the thieves, burglars, counterfeiters and con-men who were the plague of London - were all unremittingly stupid. I thought I would be afraid of them. As things turned out, I would have felt more anxiety walking through a field of sheep. I saw that once that what they lacked, crucially, was organisation and that, as a mathematician, I was ideally suited to the task. If I could bring the same discipline to their nefarious activities as I could to binomial coefficients, I would create a force that could take on the world. I will confess that, although it was the intellectual challenge that first interested me, I was already thinking of personal profit for I was growing tired of living hand-to-mouth.
~ James Moriarty on becoming the greatest criminal mastermind of all time.

Masterminds are highly intelligent villains and are characterized by a personality in which they will plan things to amazing lengths and always have a backup plan. As such, they tend to be particularly skilled in fields like strategy, manipulation, leadership and organizing. These characters may often be non-action or even weaklings, but they should not be underestimated, as they can be extremely difficult to catch or defeat due to their incredibly complex schemes. They are usually referred to as "the brain behind it all" and just like master manipulators, they rarely show themselves directly towards their enemy. They are also often characterized for being the leader for any events such as competitions, Olympic-related events, contests, showdowns and more (examples include John Kramer/Jigsaw and Front Man, who hosted a Last Man Standing contest involving death called Squid Game, which is has an entire Netflix series of the same name). Most of the time, masterminds do have henchmen, guards, servants and/or (a) right-hand.

Masterminds are generally defeated if the hero or another character (whether evil or not) finds a way to exploit their arrogance or egotism (e.g. in Hannibal, Mason Verger was pushed by his assistant amongst the boars and then eaten alive by them), if the hero(es) are of similar intelligence (e.g. in Death Note, Near eventually cornered and forced Light Yagami to confess he was Kira the whole time), or by a huge stroke of luck (e.g. in The Dark Knight, Batman caught the Joker off-guard at the very end of the movie).

Examples of well-known masterminds include Lex Luthor, Norman Osborn, Joker, Bill Cipher, Emperor Palpatine, Sōsuke Aizen, David Xanatos, Dr. Eggman, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Satsuki Kiryūin, Hannibal Lecter, Light Yagami, Johan Liebert, Walter White, James Moriarty, and Emperor Zarkon.

To qualify as a mastermind, such characters have to be rarely caught off-guard and must have a plan B, C, or D to fall back on should their original plan be foiled. They are the complete opposites of Dimwits, who are stupid and cannot make any smart decision. This means those two categories are completely different and a character can never be both a mastermind and a dimwit. Those two categories must be kept separated. However, it is possible for them to be incompetent like schemers for example, albeit rarely. They are generally as such if they are a comical character whose failures are played for laughs (e.g. Wile E. Coyote, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Sideshow Bob, Dr. Neo Cortex, and Plankton).

Also, manipulative machiavellians, or skilled tricksters (e.g. It and Skitzo) are not necessarily masterminds unless they meet the aforementioned criteria and are proved to be successful in most of their plans (e.g. The Coachman).

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