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<   No. 1384   2006-11-10   >

Comic #1384

1 Dr No: {seated at a dining table with Stud and Honey} And now, over a civil dinner, I will explain to you exactly how I intend to dominate the world.
2 Dr No: I believe you are the only person who would understand my brilliant plan.
3 Stud: Oh please... that line is so clichéd.
4 Dr No: This is your first movie! It's not a cliché yet!

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I think that cliché pretty much was started with the James Bond stories.


2016-06-07 Rerun commentary: Hrmm. I thought this one would be an easy one to add a TV Tropes link to. I'll just look up that trope about a villain explaining his evil plan to the hero, because the villain considers the hero to be the only person smart enough to appreciate the true brilliance of the plan. A worthy adversary*, if you will.

* That's not the trope I mean. I mean the trope which is quite specific about the villain thinking he's so much smarter than everyone on the planet, except his heroic adversary (who is still dumber, but only a tiny bit dumber), and so therefore the adversary is the only person to whom the villain feels it is worth the effort of explaining the plan.

I kind of remember seeing something like this, with the title "Only you are smart enough to understand". But searching for a trope like that has ended in vain. The closest I could find was Just Between You and Me, in which the villain feels an urge to gloat to the captive hero - but that doesn't include the important aspect of the villain feeling superior to everyone and the hero being the only person smart enough to comprehend the true depths of the villain's genius. Even Bond Villain Stupidity doesn't mention this aspect of, well, Bond villain stupidity.

Edit: TV Tropes calls the generic "gloating villain" supertrope Evil Gloating, and this page lists no less than 38 different subtropes, but not one of them contains the all-important aspect of the villain respecting the hero as being the only person intelligent enough to comprehend the true brilliance of the villain's plan.

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