When the villains win or at least benefit.

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One defining trait of David Xanatos is that he not only accepts his losses, but will often find victory amidst the failures.

While many villains/antagonists can't make that claim there are some who do walk away with victory or get something in the end. Which situations would you say come to mind?

Keep in mind you can't just list the character, but provide their prideful moment. So far I have:

1. Parasite (Superman): He got that cable tv he wanted in Two's A Crowd. Not much, but he does enjoy it (much to the dismay of his fellow inmate).

2. Spellbinder (Batman Beyond)- Gothan Police as headed by Barbara Gordon have buckled down on the Anti-Vigilante policy since the days of James Gordon. Spellbinder uses that to his advantage in Eyewitness to implicate Batman in the supposed murder of Mad Stan. While he does get arrested at the end of the episode, he does take pride in the fact that he succeeded at pitting them against Batman in the first place.
 
That one episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show where they think they've won, but turns out King Koopa still has the magic staff, and Mario is like, "even Super Mario can't think of everything" and it ends with all four of them running off being chased by Koopa shooting at them with it.
 
Jetix’s “Yin Yang Yo!” has a decent number of episodes where one of the villains comes away with a victory. For example, in the episode “Shadows And Light”, Brother Herman knocked Yin and Yang unconscious and stole a device that he hoped would allow him to block out the sun. Granted, the Night Master ultimately stole the device from him, but seeing as they’re both villains, it doesn’t change the fact that a villain won. In the episode “Old School”, Kraggler lost to Yin and Yang, though gained the power to absorb the youth of any living creature due to the broken chronologicum. There are other examples, but seeing as hardly anybody on this forum really cares about “Yin Yang Yo!”, I’m not going to bore anybody with additional details.
 
The She-Ra episode 'The Price of Freedom' found both She-ra AND He-Man losing a fight against the Horde, losing an entire village (Just the homes, the people got away safely) to Hordak.
 
I think that the Ultra-Humanite in "Justice Leauge" got a victory in that episode where Luthor wanted revenge on Superman for giving him cancer, or atleast benefitted them for it. Even though he lost he got Batman to donate money to a PBS like program in his name, that annoyed Luthor to hell, and the fact that they mentioned his name at the end of the program had to be a bonus for him.
 
There's also the PPG episode "Moral Decay", where all the villains get their vengeance on Buttercup for destroying their teeth.
 
I know a few of the villains that win:

The Gremlin(Bugs Bunny) - Before when the plane ran out of gas, he did got some victory by easily bashing/outsmarting Bugs.

Chromosome Quint(Timon & Pumbaa) - From the SuperDuper Hero X episode, he got away with it at the end for capturing Speedy the Snail driving a mechanical sea gull.

Jerry(Tom & Jerry) - That little monster always get his victories for abusing poor Tom.

The Masked Mouse(Sylvester & Porky) - That little creep easily gets his victory for beating poor Sylvester at the end.

Earl the Bulldog(Rocko's Modern Life) - From Trash-O-Madness, he got his victory at the end by beating up on Rocko when Spunky was in trouble.

Ren Hoek/Ren's evil half(Ren & Stimpy) - From Sven Hoek's episode, he got his win by whizzing on Stimpy's electric fence game & the episode "Ren's Bitter Half," Ren's evil half got away with it at the end by marrying a female half of Ren while dragging Stimpy & Ren's other half along with the ride, dark hilarious episode which his evil half is really evil/scary & worse than the old Ren.

Sharky(Eek! the Cat) - He mostly wins by always chasing poor Eek at the end when bad luck comes to the mutt from Eek's accidents, so hilarious.

From South Park, some villains got their victory at the end:

Eric Cartman - He got revenge on Scott Tennerman by killing his parents & won the bet when he's General Lee thanks to Bill Clinton at the end.
Josh - He got away with it at the end after calling Officer Barbrady, he goes to teepee the White House, my favorite episode.
Scott - That Canadian jerk sort of got his victory by telling the Prime Minister on not letting Ike be back with Kyle before when the Prime Minister's secret was revealed by Stan.
The Scientologists - They were such mean jerks to get their victory by suing Stan at the end & covering up the scam as well when Stan knew.

On Powerpuff Girls episode "Moral Decay," the supervillains get their revenge on Buttercup for getting their teeth from what Jave said, funny episode, but Buttercup deserved it.

XANA(Code LYOKO) - He gets his few victories by bashing on poor Aelita in season 1/2, picking on Yumi in season 1, impersonating Franz Hopper, & brainwashing William before the start of season 4.

Paul(Pokemon Diamond/Pearl) - He does get away with it at the end on any episode he's in for being a mega abusive monster towards his Pokemon especially poor Chimchar.

Naraku(Inuyasha) - In Inuyasha's ending episode, he totally got away with it since he's immortal he'll never die for making the good guys' lives miserable.

Itachi(Naruto) - He totally got his victory at the end by easily beating Sasuke after telling him that he doesn't have enough hatred to destroy his brother & escaping from Jiraiya's weird technique along with his partner Kisame.

Colonel Dewey(Eureka 7) - Even though he committed suicide, he got his victory for sending those Corallian monsters into the real world & lying to the people along with it.

Taishi(TOKKO) - Due to the show's lame ending on Sci-fi's Animonday, that disgusting old freak got away with it who loves to torture the poor TOKKO group.
 
I suppose one could make a case that the Decepticons were winning in the "first act" of the 1986 TF movie. They had already taken over Cybertron and they were wiping out major Autobot characters (including no less than Optimus Prime!) in about those first 20 minutes....
 
Well she did it in the name of her father and the Fire Nation. But also don't forget the Northern Air Temple episode even though they lost, they still won in the long run, using the old Xanatos, Slade method of losing battles to win the war.

Here is another example, and yes going from Avatar to this show is real 180 LOL

Beastly (Care Bears) - in the episode Care Bears Safety Game he won though by pure dumb luck he broke the scoring machine. Even though his price wasn't to his desire, he still won by accidently cheating. While on the subject he should have won in Care - A Lot Games, they found no proof that he cheated, they desqualified him for no good reason. That wasn't fair, where is Johnny Cacrine when you need him?
 
Xaolin Showdown, especially at the beginning even Jack Spicer could win from time to time. Such as "Camelion" where he stole all the Shen Gong Wu but one. Even though Jack stops winning after the first season other villains would come off with wins or benefits at the end.

More for Yin Yang Yo, yeah the Badguys have came out on top quite a bit, in season two so far two season one villains have came out with massive power ups (The Kung Pow Kitties might have gotten a massive power up to but I don't know if it stuck)

And in TMNT 2k3 and even Fast forward the villains have benefited or one. Shredder came out with quite a few victories in season one until the Turtles Finally defeated him and Hun Benefited greatly in some episodes as did Bishop. Even Shokanobu in Fast Forward benefited at the end of "Bishop to Knight." Stockman was really the only villain that got little good out of well anything.
 
Gundam has some notable 'villain' victories.

Zeta Gundam:
The Titans were successful in taking Von Braun City and destroying a number of colonies. Ultimately, they all die in the end, but the AEUG fails to seize control, and Axis is the true victor out of all this.
Beast Wars: One of the most notable 'victory' episodes happened in Season 3. "Changing of the Guard" resulted in the Predacons getting the Sentinel programme. "The Cutting Edge", in which cyber-raptors paved the way into the eventual creation of the Transmetal 2 Dinobot clone.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of any.
 
TMNT: S3 (original series): "The Big Rip Off" While the Shredder was distracting the Turtles elsewhere, Bebop & Rocksteady were able to rip off enough supplies to bring the Technodrome to full power and release it from the Earth's core.
 
This show is the epitome (or at least damn close) of this thread's topic. Each season (yes, even season 4) has ended with XANA benefiting in some way if not outright winning.

Season 1: Jeremie completes his materialzation program and suceeds in bringing Aelita to Earth. However, a virus implanted in Aelita during her initial materialization by XANA links her lifeforce to the supercomputer; if it gets turned off, Aelita dies. So while Aelita has gained some amount of freedom from XANA at this point the Lyoko team isn't completely free of him.

Season 2: XANA successfully steals the Keys to Lyoko from Aelita's memory, killing her in the process and shutting down Lyoko as he escapes. Intervention by Franz Hopper brings both Lyoko and Aelita back, but the damage has been done - XANA is free.

Season 3: XANA uses Aelita to destroy the four outer sectors of Lyoko to keep the kids from reaching Sector 5 and preventing him from destroying the Core. When William is added to the team as a much-needed sixth man, XANA takes advantage of William's cockiness by taking control of him and using him to destroy Lyoko.

Season 4: Yes, at the end of this season XANA was finally destroyed. However, it takes Franz Hopper sacrificing himself for XANA's defeat to come about. So the death of Aelita's father could be seen as a final feather in XANA's cap.

-Kim
 
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