Powerful villains that rely on stupid, incompetent, cowardly and disloyal henchmen?

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Shorty03

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Seems like in every old 80s cartoon all the villains that were constantly defeated were overlooking a blindingly obvious flaw in their operations. The help. Their plots were always being screwed up by dumb henchmen that they relied on too much.

Picture Skeletor, sitting around in his Snake Mountain playset, rubbing his hands together. "This will be my only chance to breach Grayskull and obtain ultimate cosmic power. My plan must be executed exactly, I can't allow anything to go wrong. Who should I choose for this mission? Oh, Beast Man, come here!"

I guess they needed to give the good guys some advantage, but it's hilarious. What other examples can you think of, especially if you can remember times when the henchmen screwed up?
 
No Heart from The Care Bears Family. He seemed like a pretty formidable bad guy, a shapeshifting sorcerer with a serious mad-on for the Care Bears. You have to wonder why he felt he needed minions at all, let alone why he'd hire someone like Mr. Beastly to do his dirty work for him.
 
I immediately throught of skeletor when I saw this thread title. In the 03 series, he only had only two henchmen who were smart, and only one of those who didn`t try to betray him constantly(Tri-clops).

In the original TMNT series, shredder and Krang always used Rocksteady and Bebop and never throught of getting better henchmen.
 
I also wonder why Megatron kept Starscream around. He might as well have been cartoonishly tiptoeing up to Megatron's back with a knife, but for some reason Megatron was too stupid to vaporize him and eliminate the threat.
 
Well in order for them to be a threat they have to be powerful.I guess to keep them from destroying the heros the first episode they get stuck with bumbling morons
 
Bumbling henchmen... Ugh. So cliche and unecessary. A villain can be defeated without having to chip in on the process by hiring idiotic goons. Take Wasabi from Chopsocky Chooks as an example. Bubba is a complete moron. And when Wasabi replaced him with the Chesthair Brothers or whatever they're called the brothers turn against him. Real convenient. And now that freak Bubba is back making a complete fool of himself again. Smithers. There ought to be more Doctor Watson sidekicks to villains, like with heroes. Aside from Walon Smithers (putting aside his affection for Mr Burns) i can't think of many truly loyal and effective villainous sidekick elements. Heroes however often have their own bumbling helpers, such as Ron Stoppable, but quite often they pull through in the end nonetheless unlike their villainous counterparts. Indeed bar realistic or pseudo realistic realms it is hard to find a single villain with a worthy ally. And then i think of miss Shego who was a worthy partner to Doctor Drakken in Middleton realm, she was most worthy...

They mention i don't use enough paragraphs sorry but i don't know where to put the devils. Anyway she was a worthy ally to Drakken. But the Bubba type servant is so unreliable. maybe if villains teamed up like heroes do and formed gangs they'd be more powerful in battle? I.E Team Rocket but a more effective allyship (although their failure is usually unfair as they try their best usually and its that pokemon that ruins their victories unworthily) Now take Teen Titans for example. If villains formed a group like that to defend a common cause in a Drakken Shego type manner you'd have not only loyalty (and none of that snide remarking butlerism) but trust and friendship between the villains. Grant the characters effectiveness in battle and you would have a fine fighting force.
 
Well, Dr. Two-Brains from Word Girl seemed pretty competant but his two henchmen would usually be the reason why he failed. Of course, he cuased some of his own downfalls but the two henchmen he hired were bringing him down more a lot.
 
I thought the Drakken / Shego partnership was reverse of the status quo, and a fresh take on the villian / henchmen characters. In their case, it is the henchman or henchwomen in this case that is compident, while the boss villain is a bumbling fool.

The other Disney show from that era that did the more traditional formula of evil series villain with bumbling henchmen is the Huntsclan in American Dragon: Jake Long, the Huntsman was a serious baddie, why did he have those two idiots 88 and 89 to go on important missions?

Anyway I never understood why these powerful villains needed and used this buffon henchmen to do their work for them.

No Heart is a great example, he is an awesome villain (if you ignore who his enemies are), but why does he use that bumbling Beastly is beyond me. No Heart made a lists of villains who shouldn't lose to these heros, and when I heard about that, I defended him in it wasn't really No Heart that lost to the Care Bears, it was Beastly that lost to the Care Bears. No Heart flaw is he is too lazy to do the job himself.
 
I'll make it easy for you. Most of the time simply put a paragraph break every two sentences.

If it's a really long sentence and a complete thought, you can put a paragraph break after one sentence.

If you have three short sentences that are part of the same thought, you can make a paragraph of three sentences. But only if they are short.

A really short sentence, like two or three words, can also be nestled comfortably within a paragraph that contains two middle length sentences or one longer sentence. But never go more than three.

Do this and people will stop throwing "wall of text" and "tl;dr" complaints your way.
 
[Scruffy]Second.[/Scruffy]

Then again, this isn't just confined to animation...see Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor in the original Superman movie, leaving the success of his grand criminal schemes to the inept, bungling likes of Otis and Miss Tessmacher. :mad:

I prefer the James Bond tradition of the villain's top henchman actually being the most intelligent/dangerous of 007's foes before he meets up with the brains of the outfit. How can we take a bad guy seriously if he relies on absolute morons to do his evil bidding? :shrug:
 
Actually, Abis Mal from Aladdin did have a competent henchman who would even finish his train of thought for him. Abis Mal is the incompetent one.
 
I know. I reckon it's better if henchmen are good at what they do...

And to the poster who posted the paragraph thing i'll read it over and hopefully i'll be able to remember some of it, though 1. my memory is terrible, 2. i have a habit of rambling a trifle when i am talking and 3. i forget things a lot
 
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