Literally that year.
Well, after the incident with the Intruder, I suppose that PopCap official never truly has a PE. However, digging further through nostalgia, and looking at a sequel of a game, I think I found a potential qualifier, if it's okay with you all. I will not make the same mistakes ever again.
Special thanks to JakeFlix for the help with how to write a decent proposal.
What's the work?[]
Bookworm Adventures series is about the character Lex going on adventures and defeat enemies. It contained two games, the first being the adventures that Lex was on an adventure of saving Princess Cassandra from the hands of Dracula, who was later revealed to be framed by Professor Codex. After Lex defeated Codex, he successfully saved the Princess and became the new guardian of the Library, thus ending the first game.
The second game happened when Mother Goose got chased by the Big Bad Wolf, and as Lex rescued her from him, the adventure expanded until the defeat of the Queen of Hearts, where Rifts started to open. After the robots appeared, Lex and his team went after them, and after a long adventure with new companions, Lex finally met the main antagonist of the game, Bigger Brother.
Who's the candidate?[]
Bigger Brother is the main antagonist of the game. He is based on Big Brother of the book 1984, who attempted to feed the machine with words to destroy all realities.
What has he done?[]
After Lex and co. returned to the library, they noticed that the robots stole the books from the library and they entered a book called Astounding Planet.
The heroes then ended themselves up in space, and thus, they battled various space creatures. The team then crash-landed on a planet filled with mutants, and after a while, Lex realized that the planet they landed on is Earth, albeit in a negative condition.
After defeating the boss of the chapter, our heroes encountered H.G. Wells, who was captured by the Troglocks and a book author. Lex then went to the cave and saved him from the Troglocks as well as defeating them.
Lex and the others found themselves with the robots, and the boss of the chapter, Skeletrox, who is Bigger Brother's minion. Lex wanted to find EviLex for the Magic Pen. After defeating Skeletrox the first time, they went after EviLex.
Back at the library, it was revealed that EviLex is an alternate timeline version of Lex, and of course, the helmet activated and went back in time to the Jurassic era. Lex fought against the dinosaurs, and finally beat the Butterfly. Although, our clumsy hero left behind the Magic Pen back at the Sci-Fi era.
Lex and co. arrived at the dance floor to fight against the dancing robots as well as Skeletrox. When Skeletrox is defeated and reprogrammed, the redeemed robot began to reveal the heroes Bigger Brother: as Bigger Brother's scientists found the Magic Pen and found other realities, the brother of all robots proceeded to enact a plan where he will- oh, that part was redacted from Skeletrox, so let's move on.
Arrving at the virtual world, our heroes defeated viruses that guarded the area. When Mother Goose detected fire, the heroes went after the scene. After encountering Bigger Brother, the robot revealed the reason why the books were blank, as he extracted the words and fed them to the machine. Lex and the robot had a battle, until Bigger Brother is defeated. However, this did not end there, as Bigger Brother performed he self destruct sequence with the machine - the true final boss of the game, where it will commit self-destruct that can damage the fabric of realities, as well as endangering lives within books.
The heroes went after the machine, and Lex successfully destroyed it. However, The Magic Pen finally gained sapience, as it was about to cease to exist, and thus, everyone in the book are freely to travel to the real world and other books, causing instability to the library.
What happened to him next is unknown, although, if he got away with his crimes, I'd say that this is one heck of a bittersweet ending, considering that Bigger Brother is a Karma Houdini and may return in further installments, which, I will never know when considering how PopCap treating the games like right now. But that's another discussion for another day.
Mitigating factors?[]
As much as I would say no, I need to clarify the reason why.
Bigger Brother may be a machine, but there is no indication that he is made out of evil. There are, of course, evidences that the scientists built him. However, that does not mean he is under their control. Rather, according to Skeletrox, he conducted the plans on his own, thus creating the chaos that happened by his own volitions. We don't even know about those scientists either, and they lacked characterization. They only discovered the Magic Pen, and that's about it. So to summarize, Bigger Brother may have conducted this form of plans by his own volitions rather than his programming, proving that he has agency. We do have villains like Ultron who has no MA issues even if they are machines, because they have their own volitions for their actions, yet they showed no regret for their acts. There's also the fact Skeletrox can do good, which might help the case as well.
And this is, well, a PopCap game, everything is of course, being portrayed to be light-hearted. Especially when it comes to games like Feeding Frenzy, Peggle Blast, and especially Plants vs. Zombies, where characters never presented themselves serious or fully antagonistic. And if you look at the color at the games, yeah, you can tell that it is too bright to have a Pure Evil. But of course, that never stopped the N. Tropys from being PE, because they are taken dead seriously in-universe and their crimes. So, is this applicable for the Bigger Brother? Absolutely! Bigger Brother changed the mood of the story to the darkest time, where reality is being endangered by him. There are also no jokes spawned from him either, not even during the fights, so, bold to assume that he is a serious villain with a serious goal.
Everything in his plans is set in motion, with enough on-screen evidence. The machine is there, serving as the final boss, and the Magic Pen is at the brink of death, which, for me, is enough to say that this is not Fridge Horror.
Heinous standard?[]
Bookworm has a very low heinous standard, considering that the villains in the books are just generic kill-the-heroes. And yep, they don't even have enough characterization beside one-liners with vague personalities.
And of course, the first game has at least two major antagonists, Dracula and Codex. So let me analyze them both.
Dracula is, well, in fact, not even a villain, he was framed by Codex of holding Princess Cassandra hostage, so that can be taken out of the equation.
Professor Codex, ho boy... Where do I begin? Dude has like a library, an army of monsters, and the access to the magic pen. Yet, like the fellow birdie named Bradford Buzzard, he holds back too much on resources. Like, you have a freaking army, yet, why don't you use it for mass murder or something. And his goal is plain taking-over-the-world standard villainy, so yeah, dude could just use it to like, access to that book as well and enact the destruction on realities as well, yet he never did, even for a smart guy like him.
And for the second game, kill-the-heroes enemies, and not only that Skeletrox who simply followed orders. Yet, he did not do much while he was under Bigger Brother's influence. Dude's also just another kill-the-heroes nothing else, and he redeemed himself, or most likely a faux, as he was reprogrammed himself to do good.
So, for Bigger Brother? Well, he is technically the heinous standard, trumped over every villains in the game, by willingly endanger reality itself. Not to mention, he also succeeded in a murder, albeit indirectly, which is the Magic Pen, who later grew some sapience after the machine is defeated. As for me, he is safe to say, the most heinous villain of the work, or actually in PopCap's history.
To summarize, he passed, with his attempted omnicide, with nobody in the work did that before.
Verdict?[]
So as much as I covered, I am going for a yes, but it's all up to you.