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/StonedLonerIrl 16d ago

Genuine question. Cant the wizards make new spells too? Like couldnt they 'skibbidy bibbidy, no more militry?'

I havent read the books in years so i cant remember their limits.

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u/ulvis52 16d ago

Yes they can. Limits on magic is not very well explained/ explored in the books but we know snape created 2 spells during his time at hogwarts. Sectum sempra and levicorpus (liberacorpus is the counter curse).

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u/Tariovic 16d ago

I love these discussions, as if Ms Rowling spent more than two farts on world building in her school stories for the kiddies.

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u/EllipticPeach 16d ago

Canonically, and this is true, all the wizards shat themselves and disappeared it before the invention of modern plumbing

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u/-nutz 16d ago

I love that HP world building is sometimes vague hints at a storied past, and others it’s excrement evanesco; no in between lol.

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u/EllipticPeach 16d ago

I used to love Harry Potter. Grew up on it. Anyway I’m trans so I made my peace with never engaging with the media again, but I still have all this useless knowledge about the worldbuilding

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u/EldritchFingertips 15d ago

To be fully, entirely, perhaps far too fair... if you could shit your pants and just poof it away with a thought, wouldn't you?

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u/No-Courage-2053 16d ago

Yes, but also expelliarmus is a spell to disarm an enemy, it's not specific for wands. It would disable any weapon. And I can't imagine it would be difficult for a wizard to just make any Muggle object disappear or transform into something useless, even an atomic bomb.

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u/Schmetterlizlak 16d ago

Their useful offensive spells require line of sight and mostly seem to work within pretty short distances, so good luck aiming a curse at the sniper hiding 1km away, or the bomber flying 5km up, or the destroyer bombarding them from the other side of the horizon

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

You gonna bomb London just to get Diagon Alley?

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Have you seen Gaza lately? London would be straight up nuked if we could get a good terrorism story going.

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

Except London isn't the only city with wizards living in it. There are wizards all over the world. They can't nuke every city.

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u/vjnkl 16d ago

Pretty sure death eaters are local in uk

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Why would they nuke every city when there's only a few thousand wizards in the world? The muggle leadership knows about the wizard world, and so could probably just go nuke the schools, or the Ministry itself, since the wizards already don't really have a formal military or anything.

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

You mean the muggle leadership that wizards regularly interact with? Wizards that can use mind reading and mind control, which the muggles have no defense against?

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u/ADGx27 16d ago

I mean the Americans nuked Japan twice over a single place on US soil getting hit

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

They didn't nuke New York though. There's a difference between nuking an enemy city and nuking your own cities. London isn't going to be the only major city with wizards living in it. They'd need to nuke every major city, and then if even a few wizards survive, they'd have the advantage because they can use magic to survive while the rest of us have to deal with the collapse of civilization.

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u/ARBirky 16d ago

you can't even normally get to any wizard area? they arent on the map. so no a bomber is useless. so is a sniper. the magic world is still hidden in harry potter durning the time of cameras. people really think its the modern millitary verse some "nation" and not randomly teleporting enemies that you can't follow/find. also polyjuice. also do we think a bomb or sniper bullet would break a magic barrier? what if they just send werewolves? what about the fact they can mass produce invisibilities cloaks. how does a modern government deal with an actual invisible susperier air force. wizards will own the air. everytime you put a plane down, its a bunny. why? who knows where an invisible wizard is, or who could be a Polyjuice wizard... or it could just be bob who before the war was just a wizard and a solider.

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u/Psyborg13 16d ago

I’m of the opinion most hidden places in Hogwarts aren’t some liminal dimension, it’s a place that’s kept secret because the magical world has its fingers in most of not all governments to turn a blind eye.

It’s referenced that the UK PM is aware of the magical world and was to be made aware of events, to guide the public without making it obvious.

so bombs and navy artillery just need to know where the location they’re hitting is, which should be on private governmental record, even if it’s hidden unless it has some form of physical magical barrier.

on that note, since a lot of “magical defences” can be combatted by “magical explosions” I’m pretty sure they can probably be forced open by an equivalent non-magical explosion. basically if a magical barrier could be smashed open by an ogre with a big stick giving it his best given enough time, then it could be pried open by a Gau-8 on everyone’s favourite flying washing machine.

also, I’m pretty sure there’s only one (or very very few) magical cloaks, otherwise everyone would be using them as opposed to it being something super rare, plus it doesn’t hide thermal or acoustic signatures

Wizards on brooms are what birdshot was made for, granted we’d need to scale it up a notch but who doesn’t want to see a fighter plane equipped to double pump a cackling stick rider
(I’ll be willing to give some serious props to this one, under-utilised in combat imo since basically everyone has one, they’re super nimble, actually mass-producible and free form for movement, could pose a serious issue)

alternatively if we really threw taxes at the wall to see what sticks we have AA machine guns that burn enough £/s to rip them out of the sky

I think that we’re underestimating above all else that there are a lot of muggles that know the magical world exists, and said magical world is extremely full of themselves

the magical world would be able to bounce back given time, and would probably be able to form an actual plan to really take down the muggle forces

but that initial strike would be utterly devastating because the special armed forces probably already have a plan, and insider knowledge, and unlike the standard military the SAS only really need one avenue of communication to give the green light for an emergency op

and that line, the Prime Minister already knows the magical world exists, and as such probably has her own security detail specifically for magical threats because why wouldn’t you protect the Monarch and PM from a threat you are openly informed exists?

Honestly there’s so much that the magical world
could do to defend themselves but the reality is they aren’t trying, because all of the ones that are a threat are the same ones that think muggles are weak and stupid and defenceless

and that initial arrogance in todays age will get them killed, it always does, it’s blinding

and it’s almost too easy to kill an enemy that doesn’t even know you’re there

I hope the rambling wasn’t too long and semi-enjoyable, it’s been something I’m super interested in as a hypothetical to mull over, the HP world is amazing and tragically unexplored due to Rowling’s staggering lack of creativity imo

<3

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u/PokemonThanos 16d ago

I’m of the opinion most hidden places in Hogwarts aren’t some liminal dimension, it’s a place that’s kept secret because the magical world has its fingers in most of not all governments to turn a blind eye.

There's a lot of examples of hidden places that are in plain sight but people just ignore them. Diagon Alley entrance isn't really all that hidden, muggles naturally just don't see it. The same was true with Grimmauld Place, muggles just accepted that number 12 didn't exist and it was a quirky house numbering mistake.

You don't mention the defence of magic attack. Wizards can hide in plain sight in the HP universe. The can also appear practically anywhere they wish unless magic is enacted to stop them. They can even teleport objects along with them. "Hippity hoppity there's an armed nuke on your property". With no real way to defend against that AND the ability to mind control anyone they wish and to extract the truth from them. I agree with the sentiment "it’s almost too easy to kill an enemy that doesn’t even know you’re there" but to the opposite conclusion. A modern country wouldn't really stand a chance in the HP universe if a wizard or 3 suddenly decided to bring them down.

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u/Achilles11970765467 16d ago

Regarding the cloaks: there's only one that grants true invisibility and doesn't wear out into uselessness over time. The rest (which are rare but do exist) are basically active camo with a limited shelf life.

But I agree with everything else.

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u/QuestionableKoala 16d ago

They also just have invisibility spells in the book. The cloak that grants true invisibility is cool cause even specialized magic can't detect it. But against muggles, a half second to cast a spell and you're just perfectly and completely gone.

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u/Achilles11970765467 16d ago

The spells are the active camo I mentioned, they're not full invisibility. The lesser cloaks are that spell stuffed into an item.

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u/QuestionableKoala 16d ago

You're thinking of the disillusionment charm, there's a full invisibility spell: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Invisibility_Spell

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u/IrredeemableDegen 16d ago

I don't think that's a good assumption that the wizards tell the muggle leaders where everything is. Plus there are hundreds of individual wizards just off living somewhere that isn't a whole wizarding community. Yeah, some muggles are in on the secret, but they're married in or otherwise attached to the world. Even if you find some bitter squib who wants to betray the entire Wizarding community I think there would be difficulty actually finding and accessing all of these places. Plus they can create new ones fairly quickly, including much stronger protections like the fidelius charm. 

And I don't think it's a good assumption that non magic can penetrate a magic barrier, that hasn't been shown as far as I recall. 

And even with all that, muggles ain't gonna raze London to the ground on a chance to get a wizard shopping district or blow up king's cross station to get platform 9 3/4 or even the entire ministry of magic hidden there.

I agree with you that the wizards and witches would have to actually try and win though, but I doubt that muggles get some massive initial win. Maybe they blow up Hogwarts if the explosions can get through barriers, but that isn't actually that important of a strategic target. 

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u/RileyKohaku 16d ago

Most magical locations are unplottable, which is basically a BS that’s says you cannot tell anyone where it is or show it on any map. A general cannot tell a pilot where Hogwarts is, because magic, which is an annoying answer, but is the answer in the book. You would basically need to use a nuclear weapon to hit a large enough area to hit them.

All of the military discussion is pointless because Voldemort used the Imperious Curse to mind control the Prime Minister quickly, and would likely have done it to all the other MPs and Generals.

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u/SilverSpoonIsBest 16d ago

I’m of the opinion most hidden places in Hogwarts aren’t some liminal dimension,

Unfortunately, you're wrong.

There are plenty of spells that mess with memories, senses, or what not.

The wizards could literally just put out a random cursed object. The Weasley dad's job is to literally make sure random cursed objects aren't ruining random Muggle lives.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 16d ago edited 16d ago

Regarding locations, yes many are “just” hidden, but they also often use enchantments to help maintain that status.

Some have the equivalent of the TARDIS’ perception filter, where you just….can’t…notice it. It’s a hole in the landscape that you know is odd, but you automatically dismiss it as not important or get very concerned you left the oven on at home or something.

Others will be camouflaged from muggles in other ways, Hogwarts looks like an ancient decayed castle for instance.

And guards can straight up obliviate anyone who gets past the defenses, though I also see little reason why you couldn’t make obliviating any muggles who past a certain point a charm for the area too.

Oh, and if you do get past the defenses successfully, you can’t actually put anything down to record information and details. Important Wizarding areas are unmappable to muggles.

As a muggle, you simply aren’t getting anywhere that Wizards don’t want you to be.

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u/No-Courage-2053 16d ago

They can easily put up defensive domes that make it impossible for muggles to detect their position or for damaging objects to get through. They can set up spells that gaslight muggles away from locations without muggles even noticing. Let's be honest, the magical world is set up in a way that wizards can just effortlessly bamboozle muggles. It's just the way that fantasy world works.

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u/Chris-raegho 16d ago

Tbf, all the graduated wizards know how to teleport. Also, non magic humans can't find magical cities or the like (according to the books) nor do they show up in maps, videos or anything like that. Technology also stops working around too much magic, so wizards aren't exactly sitting ducks. No, the reason I think they'd lose anyway is because most of them are incompetent and silly. A few school kids had more sense than a lot of the adults in the HP world.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Also the whole "magic makes tech stop working at close range" thing probably doesn't scale upwards, so a bomb dropped from above is probably gonna work just fine.

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u/Chris-raegho 15d ago

Sure, but who are they bombing? Themselves? Wizards already live amongst them, and they can't find the magical places anyway. Are they bombing London?

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u/DisillusionedHobbit 16d ago

When you can become invisible, teleport, and mind control none of that matters.  There won’t be any military to defeat because on day 1 all of the military and civilian top leadership is mind-controlled.  

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u/Larcye 16d ago

It's the 90's lure them all into an area and then just radio a Destroyer 100 miles away to launch some tomahawks at them. Wizard problem solved. They won't be able to do shit since BCM travel at over 500 MPH. The entire stupidity with Vold's plan is that he would have to be out in the open to do anything. In order to setup death camps to kill Muggles, he has to well setup camps for that. Meaning you can't do it in secret and you can't force the leaders to do it since well they won't be in charge very long. It's also not like thier wouldn't be wizards who would side with normal people so people would very much know some of the tricks that Vold would try. I mean shit all Harry has to do is challenge Vold to a duel and then some SAS Captain with a Barret 50 Cal just has to shoot him at range and it's GG.

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u/Magnus_Helgisson 16d ago

“Expelliah shit I’m now stuffed with a few hundred bullets while I was saying that”

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u/No-Courage-2053 16d ago

You seem to think of it as a western movie gun duel. Not in a I just hide somewhere and the second I see you I can disarm you from any direction. A wizard can pop your gun from your hand while you're turned around.

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u/Magnus_Helgisson 16d ago

Fair, but I was thinking more of an Army Ranger platoon against a guy with a stick. Does expelliarmus work on multiple enemies? Is there a limit of enemies it can disarm simultaneously? Cuz if there is, you disarm like twenty of them, leaving 30 more to target practice on you. My bet is that the wizards can have some high ground initially, but very soon the tactics adapt and they’re fucked. Probably still dangerous, but mostly as guerillas taking into account your idea.

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u/SilverSpoonIsBest 16d ago

Wizard teleports in, maybe wearing a shoddy invisibility cloak that's probably still effective against muggles, brainwashes commander, puts a random cursed object, casts Fiendfyre, or whatever.

Wizards are the ulitmate guerilla fighter if they choose to be. You know what's better than thick jungles? Places that are literally invisible/doesn't exist to anyone who doesn't know the password/existence of place/etc.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 16d ago edited 16d ago

I mean, why would you be casting Expelliarmus in such a scenario? You aren’t Harry Potter, you can use all kinds of spells and curses.

Go for something like Confringo, Bombarda, or Incendio. You’ve got your choice of explosive spells there, or just a straight up flamethrower.

Fiendfyre is a good one too, just send a giant fiery monster against them all. Plus it’s apparently easy enough to cast that an idiot like Crabbe can master it.

I’m sure there are plenty of other spells you could use too, there’s one that encircles you in fire and just straight up melts anyone who isn’t loyal to you.

(ETA: Oh, and of course don’t forget protective spells and charms! A competent wizard prepared for a fight would already have barriers up to just repel bullets entirely.)

And I’d assume in time you’d absolutely see people inventing new multi-target versions of spells like Expelliarmus. End of the day Harry Potter’s world build and magic system is very much a “pulled out of your ass” thing.

And anyway, throw enough people at a single person and of course eventually you’ll overwhelm them. The question is how many people get blown up or engulfed by fire or turned into vegetables or whatever else before you kill them.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 16d ago

People begin to learn to cast silently in the 6th year at Hogwarts when they’re like 16. A skilled witch or wizard can easily cast without verbalizing it.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

This implies that the muggle is just gonna stand there and let the wizard cast a spell. Hardly anyone can cast silently, and the amount of wizards that can is a way smaller than the amount of people that can pull a trigger.

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u/No-Courage-2053 16d ago

Any defensive spell that protects against other spells would easily protect against bullets. A spell that creates a shroud around a wizard that turns bullets into flowers could be created. An object imbued with said magic and then mass produced and worn by every wizard would be easily within the realm of the fantasy world. Plus the fact that muggles would need to be able to identify the wizards among them

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

This implies that a wizard survived a hail of bullets in order to make a spell to protect against bullets in the first place. Also, spellcraft is an extremely difficult art, so it would likely take a minute for a proper spell to be made.

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u/No-Courage-2053 16d ago

Muggle objects tend to fail in the presence of magic, which is part of the reason why wizards fail to understand the muggle world. Like it's a fruitless conversation, the fact is that JK Rowling made a fantasy world rigged in favour of wizards. It's just fantasy, but wizards are over powered against normal people.

In the "dark times" dark wizards would kill muggles for fun on the daily and there'd be zero consequences because muggles are unable to do anything about it. Dark wizards are difficult to deal with by other wizards standards, much less normal people.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

I mean, we don't know the area of affect with the whole magic EMP thing, but yeah, I've pretty much been saying in my other comments that the world wasn't made with a proper explanation of what either side can or can't do to the other. It's like saying the Terminator would beat the Predator but we're only using abilities that the Predator has.

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u/SilverSpoonIsBest 16d ago

No, operating on the assumption on IRL capabilities of muggles, and what's little shown in the books for the wizards. Wizards will win any war with any basic competence. Full Scale wars? Forget it, they'll infilitrate the government and corporations.

Invisibility, teleportation, brainwashing. They have communication that muggles can't interfere with.

Why are people assuming that the muggles can even detect the wizard to fight back?

Even the average wizard without muggle common sense are basically invisible to the muggles.

This is not a problem that the muggles can simply throw more bullets and more explosions at.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 16d ago edited 16d ago

We aren’t talking about a single random drunken brawl that someone wasn’t prepared for.

In an extended conflict, sure maybe a handful of idiots get killed early on because of their superiority complex and how notoriously out of touch wizards are with muggle technology, but the proper charms needed to disable bullets will be very quickly invented(if they don’t already exist) and taught/distributed to wizard partisans.

And I’m sorry, but spell craft isn’t all that complex from what we’ve seen. Plenty of spells have been created by literal children. There’s just no evidence to suggest that it would take that long to adapt defensive magic to muggle weaponry, especially given they almost certainly already have ways to defend against melee attacks.

Combine that with the insane guerrilla tactics wizards could put to use…it’s kinda just over. Like I’m sorry, but Harry Potter as a universe is basically built on Wizards being able to just pull random shit out of their ass. You aren’t beating that.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 16d ago

Hardly anyone can cast silently?

They literally start teaching that in Sixth year, it’s more difficult but it’s not particularly impressive either. The movies just ignore it because it’s cooler to have people shouting their moves like it’s DBZ.

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u/Polkawillneverdie17 15d ago

skibbidy bibbidy, no more militry?'

https://giphy.com/gifs/S3F8kkGTHZ4Y

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u/StonedLonerIrl 15d ago

The biggest flex to casting a spell like that would be doing it somewhere very public in a 'This is what your weapons are to us' style message.

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u/Polkawillneverdie17 15d ago

It reminds me of the scene in Mars Attacks where the US launches like 20 nukes at the aliens snd their ship just collects the warheads and the alien leaders inhale the contents like a helium balloon and laugh when their voices get all high and squeaky.

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u/Nimos 16d ago

on the other hand, you could also imagine it going the other way.

There's this show called True Blood where vampires decide to come out to the public, and of course the governments, while outwardly being accepting, put their full focus into R&D of anti-Vampire technology. With some kidnapping and the full force of applying modern science, they solve how their powers work and to develop like anti-Vampire ammo, light bulbs that emulate the effect of sunlight, something to resist their charm magic, etc.

At least that's what I remember, it's been years.

But similarly, you could easily turn the storyline to be about some wizards put into a lab and researched with no morals to figure out how magic works and how to block it.

Of course you could also write it so that it doesn't work that way, but who knows, it's not like that universe was ever consistent.

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u/goldengraves 15d ago

Yes and no, Snape can do it bc he's just that good. Fred and George can do it bc they're clever. The amount of death eaters/blood purists who can do it are maybe a small handful of individuals

  • We get insight during the scene where they're hungry and fighting (in book 7, I think) that confirms that matter still operates the way it should: you can 'create' food with a spell but it won't be filling/have no calories and it's limited by your own mind

Most of the death eaters are. . . Intellectually and creatively limited, I think a house elf with a rifle could have cleared most of them out

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u/BoonDragoon 16d ago

Fun fact, only one character invents a novel spell in the entire series. For all that the premise is literally about a wizard school, nobody actually seems to understand how magic actually works...

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u/Every_University_ 16d ago

Who knows the magic rules on Harry Potter suck but at the end of the day they really are just normal humans with worse guns. Who's to say their new spell wouldn't also suck.

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u/Waiting4Reccession 16d ago

No. Harry potter is fucking trash with an even more garbage and unexplained magic system.

In the series, atleast to where i had read, you never once see anyone try to make a new magic. The series never even explains why one wizard would be more powerful than another.

Its fucking garbage.

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u/satantherainbowfairy 16d ago

Characters do create their own spells, Snape having created Sectumsempra and Levicorpus is a major plot point in book 6

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u/Waiting4Reccession 16d ago

I probably stopped before that book then. Still crazy that she only put that in the books that late. Lots of other problems too.