Big Bad / Web Original

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"The ultimate villain of the story, who's causing the problem the heroes must solve."

Note that Big Bad is not a catch-all trope for the biggest and ugliest villain of any given story. The Big Bad is the one who turns out to be behind several other seemingly independent threats.

• Later seasons of Arby 'n' the Chief have Big Bads.
  • Trent Donnovich in Season 5. The CEO of video game company Bad Games, he's to be wed to Arbiter's friend Claire. It's eventually revealed though that Trent is cheating on her, prompting Arbiter and Chief to crash the wedding.
  • Clyde, leader of Chaos Theosis, in Season 6. His gang of hackers seeks to get rid of TOSERS via fragbanning all of the organization's members and shut down the Online Multiplayer Network. It's revealed later on though that the clan was actually being employed by Trent Donnovich.
  • Season 7 has Eugene and his trolling clan. At first, they seem like a band of harmless, annoying trolls whom the duo befriend. This changes once The Smart Guy, Colin, acquires an upgraded version of Fragban, and the clan goes on a fragbanning spree throughout the OMN.
  • Season 8 has Adam McIntyre, a former member of Chaos Theosis now seeking to carry out a destructive plan to bring down the OMN and all of its users. In the finale though Arby and Chief meet the real force behind all of their struggles — Jon Graham himself.
• Ascension Academy: The Darkness serves as the main Big Bad of the series, acting mostly through the Dark Order.
• Doctor Insano certainly fits this for the Channel Awesome team, being the Arch-Enemy of Linkara and The Spoony One, as well as an enemy of many others such as Angry Joe, The Nostalgia Critic and Paw Dugan.
• CPU Championship Series: Dark Vincent, a version of Vincent from an alternate timeline who crossed over into the main one to replace it's Vincent.
• Critical Role:
  • Vox Machina: Vecna is the true mastermind behind the Briarwoods, having tasked them with taking over Whitestone to bring about his return. After the party takes a long detour to deal with the Chroma Conclave, Vecna returns with a vengeance when his acolytes successfully summon him back to the physical plane, and he proceeds to plot his ascension to godhood by attempting to destroy the holy city of Vasselheim in a grand "miracle of terror".
  • The Mighty Nein: Lucien Tavelle, Molly's past life, is the Nonagon, a vessel for the Somnovem Mind Hive that rules the eldritch city of Cognouza. Upon Molly's death, Lucien retakes his body and plots to summon his masters to Exandria so they can assimilate the world, but his growing exasperation with their madness eventually drives him to usurp their power for himself.
  • Bell's Hells: Ludinus Da'leth is The Heavy as the chief acolyte of Predathos, an ancient god-eater sealed within the Ruidus moon. To satisfy his grudge against both the Prime Deities and the Betrayer Gods, Ludinus has been collaborating for centuries with Predathos and its imperialistic worshippers on the moon, with this alliance plotting to free the god-eater by creating powerful Ruidusborn — individuals that the entity has gifted with seeds of its power to turn them into potential vessels for its apocalyptic return.
• Daisy Brown: Alan the Monster, after maturing and subsequently gaining the ability to actively impact the plot, becomes this — his bullying and abuse causes almost every problem for Daisy, and later Lithop.
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared has Roy, who is implied to have created the DHMIS universe to punish Yellow Guy via a console used to summon and control the teachers. Each installment has its own Big Bad, and they are collectively known as "the Teachers":
  • The original Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared/"Creativity": Sketchbook... kinda; it's unclear if they were actually evil or if things just spiraled out of their control.
  • 2/"Time": Tony the Talking Clock. While at first appearing to be affable and somewhat goofy, he shows himself to be evil when he speeds up time to rot the puppets alive for questioning time.
  • The "HELP" videos: The Money Man (not a teacher, but kidnaps the characters and ransoms them).
  • 3/"Love": Shrignold the Butterfly, head of a Love Cult who worship a giant stone face named Malcolm.
  • 4/"Computers": Colin, a talking computer who traps the puppet trio in Cyberspace.
  • 5/"Health": The Healthy Band, who tell the puppets contradicting things on what and what isn't healthy, with the steak being the most prominent. They're laughable as ever, but horrifically, they go as far as to kill Duck Guy by having his friend eat him.
  • 6/"Dreams": The Lamp is set up as a decoy Big Bad, while the Big Bad of the whole series is revealed: Roy, the father of Yellow Guy.
• Door Monster: Garret Meyer in "The Guards Themselves", imprisoning most of The Anarchists and trying to take control of the entire city.
• A Game of Gods originally had Omega as the Big Bad, who was behind all the disappearing Champions and was possessing a doomsday device. However, after he kicked the bucket, Lambda came in and some Fridge Horror came up, resulting in them going back for Echidna and confronting the true Big Bad, Digamma.
• KateModern: Michelle Clore is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for nearly everything that goes wrong over the course of the series.
• Marble Hornets: The Operator, a tall, faceless, humanoid creature that has been stalking the cast, is the prime antagonist in the series, though he often works in the background and controls the villainy of the series through various characters. Alex is often treated as the greater immediate threat and a straighter example of this trope by the characters, although it's clear that for all his actions, the Operator is pulling his strings from the background.
• Petscop has two antagonists. Marvin V. Mark is the primary, in-game threat, as he is Care and Belle's abusive father (and kidnapper in Care's case) who wants to "rebirth" Care, believing her to be he reincarnation of Lisa Lezkowitz, and all the mysterious happenings in the game tie back to him. In the real world, Aunt Jill, leader of The Family, took over the Petscop YouTube channel and is holding Paul hostage, forcing him to play the game for some reason.
• Popocalypse: The CEO of Music, who has banned pop music purely because he doesn't like it as the latest arm of a long-term plot to censor, destroy, and rewrite information until the entire populace is dumb and complacent.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The Mysterious Somebody, Bracket Fungus and League of Mary-Sue Factories take this role. Despite being long dead, the Mysterious Somebody could be said to be the most influential Big Bad, as his actions more or less shaped the PPC's identity in-story; the League is a series of offshoots from his original Mary-Sue Factory, and the organisation of the PPC itself is a reaction to his actions as its head.
• Puppet Reviews Stuff has the Puppet's Arch-Enemy Vonstrucker who is planning on enacting revenge on him for past offenses unclear.
• The Quest For Geekdom: Originally, it was implied that Ozzie Arcane was the Big Bad, but it was eventually revealed to be Eric Rosethorn.
• Shadow of Israphel: Israphel is this, having antagonized Knight_Peculier all his life, and is currently trying to destroy the world, and we still don't know who he actually is. Then it turns out he may have actually been working for the Sand God/Jade Sentinel, but we may never know.
• Slimecicle Cinematic Universe:
  • For "Minecraft, but every 5 minutes there's a natural disaster", it's Schlatt, who torments Charlie and his friends throughout the video.
  • "Patient Zero"/Tommy fulfills this role in "We Spent 100 Days in a Hardcore Minecraft Apocalypse" as the one who started the whole apocalypse and the one responsible for the zombie hordes.
• Stampy's Lovely World: No matter what the problem, whether it be missing dogs or an army of clones, it is a safe bet to assume HitTheTarget is behind it.
• Survival of the Fittest:
  • Danya commands the terrorist organization in charge of the Deadly Game, and is therefore primarily responsible for the students being abducted and forced to kill one another. At least until he's killed by Dorian Pello.
  • Each Endgame tends to have one major villain from the students too. V1 had Cody Jenson, the killer of Adam Dodd's girlfriend and best friend, V2 had Mariavel Varella, the biggest killer on the island, who further cemented her status when she killed Bryan Calvert's girlfriend, and V3 had J.R. Rizzolo, who actually ended up winning.
• Toro League: This role is occupied by whoever currently controls Team Noir. This was originally Shadow X, though later the role was taken over by the since-defeated-but-not-yet-replaced Reaper Z.
• Twitch Plays Pokémon: Yes, the entire "canon" is made up of Ascended Fanon, but surprisingly each instalment so far has had one character whom the Mob basically all agrees to blame for anything bad (Pokémon getting released, countdown timers, etc).
  • Twitch Plays Pokémon Red had the Dome Fossil, a Satanic Archetype God of Order and Democracy said to be served by Bill (and therefore, by extension, the PC).
  • Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal had Lord Helix, Big Good of the previous game, God of Chaos and Anarchy.
  • Twitch Plays Pokémon Emerald had Bill ascend into this role himself as a mastermind.
• Uncle Samsonite: The eponymous demon serves as one throughout the whole series as he continually tries to fully possess one of the Bowens (Jake Bowen and Mr. Dad) in order to break a bond sealed long ago through their ancestor, regain his full power and take over the world.
• Yandere High School: Yuki killed the first main teacher, Gareth's wife, leading to his haunting of the school, because Taurtis jokingly had an interest in her. She also framed Chan-Yandere for running over Salex, Taurtis' girlfriend, and led her father's Yakuza against Sam and Taurtis in the first season's finale. The showdown resulted in Sam, Taurtis, Grian, and Dom having to go into the witness protection program and move.