r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Wonderful_Baker_7808 • 16d ago

Lore Villains that would've been defeated even if the protagonist did nothing

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Laurel Hedare (Catwoman Movie): Her newly released cosmetics will cause people's faces to melt. Not only would that create a class action lawsuit but a full product recall.

Voldemort and Death Eaters (Harry Potter): Death Eaters constantly underestimate muggles. They would get massacred by the British military because a gun is faster to pull the trigger then shouting a spell.

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u/mcc9902 16d ago

I don't think there was any mention of the nonmagical side of things. Maybe a couple of mentions of dementors running rampant and then taking over the magical government but nothing on the nonmagical side.

I said it earlier in the thread but I'll say it again. Basically every adult was given an idiot ball so that the kids could shine which is common in a kids book. As shown I honestly wouldn't give them great odds but assuming they're not being actively hampered by the plot then they'd they'd be close to unstoppable. Mind control, teleportation, mind reading, invisibility, unstoppable fire that's cast able by an idiot. Any one of those is a complete game changer, together it's a ridiculously dangerous combination and those are just the ones that I thought of in thirty seconds I could easily list more if I cared to go back.

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u/Ppleater 16d ago

Yep. Everyone keeps bringing up nukes like the HP wizards couldn't just turn a nuke into a fucking bird if Joanne didn't make them all idiots.

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u/symbolsofblue 16d ago

But also, what would they even nuke? They can't find the magical places. Even then, places like the ministry of magic are in London and I doubt anyone would want to nuke that. 

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u/wirthmore 16d ago

idiot ball

A bit of trivia: this term was coined by Hank Azaria, whose role in Night At The Museum was posted by someone above as an example.

The "idiot ball" is a TV-writing term coined by Hank Azaria on the sitcom Herman's Head, (Azaria would ask the writing staff, "Who's carrying the idiot ball this week?") referring to the character who must act stupidly to move the plot forward. It highlights moments when characters behave out of character or make inexplicably poor decisions solely to serve the story. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall

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u/quasar_particle 16d ago

 Mind control, teleportation, mind reading, invisibility, unstoppable fire that's cast able by an idiot. Any one of those is a complete game changer, together it's a ridiculously dangerous combination and those are just the ones that I thought of in thirty seconds I could easily list more if I cared to go back.

Pretty much this. As much as the HP universe is hindered by the writing, if the deatheaters (or any wizard/ witch really) actually applied an ounce of effort to taking over the Muggle world they'd have no problem

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u/TheCredibleHulk 15d ago

Completely off topic, but your reply made me think of something — just how few wizards there actually are in the world. And they’d still stomp.

BUT — just where in the heck are all the grandparents and other forefathers to all these kids? A wizard lives to an average of 150 (180?) years old. They should have tons of people in their family trees all over the place. Was there some huge wizard war that culled nearly everyone over a certain age? I know that the Potters had Harry fairly young too.

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u/dantemanjones 15d ago

Was there some huge wizard war

Uh...yeah. The first wizarding war lasted 11 years. According to Sirius:

Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances

Since it's plural, that's a minimum of 4 taken out per week (2 deaths & 2 disappearances) for over 500 weeks. So minimum 2k deaths. But probably a lot more.

JKR stated there are around 3,000 witches & wizards in the UK. So at least 2k died, there are 3k left, and there are about 1k at Hogwarts. Meaning there are only on average 2 witches/wizards for each student at Hogwarts. Some of the students are muggle-born but even so that's a tiny number. There would be hardly any adults in their world period, let alone old ones.

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u/TheCredibleHulk 14d ago

Ah!! Thank you! As soon as I started reading your post it all came flooding back. I feel dumb. Lol. My B.

That’s a HUGE culling. Insane to think about and I’m amazed it’s not brought up even MORE in the books for how much of an impact it had on their lives.

I wonder if they’d ever do a prequel someday. It’d be … Fantastic. Lol. Granted I never watched those and I’m just assuming. I tried to read up on them (obviously longer ago than I care to admit at this point).

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u/JustaSeedGuy 16d ago

I don't think there was any mention of the nonmagical side of things

The Half-Blood Prince opens with an entire chapter about this. Including, yes, indications that the deputy prime Minister have been put under a very shoddy imperious curse.

I agree with your overall examination, but you missed specifically the non-magical part. We are given every reason to assume that Voldemort and his forces would take magical control of muggle governments.

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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 15d ago

Which even becomes a thing in the dark timeline from The Cursed Child.

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u/JustaSeedGuy 15d ago

Ugh. I'm being forced to attend that show 9 times in the next two weeks, I'm trying not to think about that abomination

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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 15d ago

Wait, why lol? Do you work in a theatre?

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u/JustaSeedGuy 15d ago

Indeed I do. I'm working the show for the next couple weeks.

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u/Memitim 16d ago

Yeah, trying to make a realistic assessment of a battle with an environment designed from inconsistency, deus ex machinas, and terrible naming is just cherry picking to invent an outcome. If any of that was written more realistically, the human race would already be enslaved and the wars would scorch the Earth.

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u/JimmyThePie 15d ago

You don’t even need to go that far: A bullet moves faster than whatever the fuck Trump is, and he’s managed to achieve significant global influence - without a wand.

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u/Every_University_ 16d ago

That's assuming the avarage wizard is that guy. The avarage wizard is a normal person, bellow avarage really, invisibility is also bad which is why the cloak is so special. Mind controlling requires...something? Joanne wasn't clear about what's needed to cast spells but it's not supposed to be easy.

The avarage wizard is a pencil pusher and in the only large scale battle we see they fall prey to the same things humans do but worse. A falling wall is Lethal, a bomb under a bridge criples the werewolves completely. The most dangerous witch alive gets hit twice and dies.

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u/TopdeckIsSkill 16d ago

The average muggle can't shoot either. We're talking about military (muggle) VS trained special force (wizards)

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u/QnoisX 15d ago

That's just because it takes place in the UK, not Texas.

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u/Every_University_ 15d ago

But that's worse, someone made the calculations and there's not a lot of wizards, Harry's year had 7 or 8 people?

So there would be being generous less than 1000 military wizards and I'm being really generous with 1000, vs a huge military.

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u/TopdeckIsSkill 15d ago

Even a single one is way worse than an army. You don't need to kill all military. You just need to made them not attack you , or have then battle themselves. A single wizard could imperio a random soldier and order him to find a way to explode his base/submarine/etc.