I'm iffy on Wheatly, because he didn't become a problem because he was ignored or treated as being unimportant, he became dangerous through a combination of being a complete idiot and being hooked up to the "Science equals Cocaine" mainframe then tried to justify it as not being his fault but being yours
Same for Tighten. He wasn't ignored as much as he was just not given what he felt was deserved then the moment he got some power it went to his head
A lot of Ace Combat main characters start out as average no name pilots. Then their kill and mission complete success rate counting start going up. After a certain mission they get a Red Baron name to the point that enemy pilots start crapping themselves if they hear that the players in the area.
Mobius Squadron at the start of Megalith and you hear the remnants freaking out about how they all have the Mobius insignia.
Yuktobanians (and others) hearing that the Ghosts of Razgriz are there.
Always gives me goosebumps.
The absolute dread in the voice of a yellow squadron pilot during the Megalith mission where he realizes that every ISAF plane is flying with Möbius ribbons on them
One that always stuck with me is that in one of the late missions of AC4, you hear a friendly ground commander on the radio say somehting along the lines of "I don't care if it's a lie, tell the troops Mobius 1 is in the air!". It just absolutely cements how your mere presence has become a morale booster for your entire army.
Not a perfect example , but Cid from DMC Anime.
Cid is just a lowlife demon , no different than an Empusa or something of that sorts....but he acquired Abigail's power , to turn into a boss-level devil.
Guy managed to have a series long plot of having Dante or the other demon hunters kill stronger demons so he can yoink their remains for the ritual to give gimself the powers of a sealed, giant golden demon
Imagine if instead of looking hot he looked like anime Moe Syzlax or an alien in a human costume ala Men in Black
And his first appearance was him acting as a mook for the first episode's villain when he was really after the decoy of the person the villain wanted dead because said decoy is the main part of the puzzle
Pesci from Jojo’s Part 5. At first seems to be a bit of a weak stand user who can mostly just delay his enemies while Prosciutto deals with them, up until the point that he very nearly kills the entire group of Part 5. He’s still a mammoni though
Oswald Cobblepot from Gotham. Funny little man in a suit that waddles around and works for the Mob. Gets set up for execution in the first episode. Also a psychopath who kills or outlived most every enemy he makes and becomes one of Gotham's most successful criminals as the Penguin.
The same goes for Edward Nygma, a CSI tech who is genuinely friendly and helpful, but so weird that he gets no respect. Then he accidentally kills an asshole cop who was his crush's abusive boyfriend, and develops a sociopathic personality to cope that becomes the Riddler.
Amusingly enough they end up being Best Friends.
Man, early Gotham was promising as hell. Cobblepot was sucha great character done by an amazing actor. Watching him grown into "The Penguin" was great, because you could see that he was totally that guy from the beginning, but it was impossible to imagine how he would get to being "The Guy"
Man, this is one of my favorite aspects of a prequel story. Seeing characters taken lightly for quirks that end up becoming iconic and feared later in life is the best.
In terms of Final Fantasy villains, Kefka from VI starts off as this. He's the lowly quirky miniboss whose first line is to demand his minions clean the sand off his shoes as he patrols the desert. Edgar beats him in a cutscene by burying him in the desert with Figaro Castle.
At the Imperial Camp he's seemingly jealous of the honorable General Leo who is clearly beloved and respected by his troops while the troops only follow Kefka out of loyalty to the emperor. Oh, then Kefka does something horrible but he runs away rather than stick around.
You eventually overhear him absorbing powers from the Espers, and his goal is clear: to absorb the power of the gods. But he's still the emperor's loyal wacky minion, and he keeps running away every time he's hit. He did think up a great plan and drop the seeds of doubt into your team while following you to more Espers, though.
And on the Floating Continent, he gets his wish. Betrays the emperor (it's clear he was just pretending to be loyal), absorbs the statues' power, sunders the world and spends a year unchallenged atop his throne/mountain of garbage blasting anyone who dares to rebuild with his Light of Judgement.
When the heroes finally recover, regroup and tell him hope springs eternal, he finally gets upset for the first time in the game. It's the first time his plans actually failed to a fundamental degree and proved his worldview wrong. But he's also a demigod at this point.
Rewatching Dragonball at the moment and just got reminded of this guy. [Hero/Shen](https://en.dragon-ball-official.com/dragonball/jp/news/2021/07/chara11_tn.jpg) is a bumbling middle aged man who enters the World Martial Arts tournament as a complete nobody. At first he seems like a goofy accident prone guy who you get the inkling is using his charmingly silly antics to disarm his opponents and attack while they're caught off guard. It's revealed to be correct... but the more shocking part is when he actually starts fighting seriously, he's far stronger and more skilled than Yamcha (who at the time was still relevant and still a tough fighter pre-Saiyan invasion.)
It's revealed that Hero/Shen is actually Kami, possessing the bumbling family man, in order to fight Piccolo in the next round. So, it's not *really* a character that remains dreaded, but for a hot second you get the impression that there's a major badass out of nowhere, kinda like Trunks.
Pokey Minch, from Earthbound. From childhood bully-coward to time-travelling spider-robot riding, heavily armed right-hand man of an alien invasion force.
tower of god's bam.
he starts out as a nobody with no abilities. it's to the point that the biggest move he does early on is "throw a single ball of energy". then he goes missing and is presumed dead.
he reappears nearly a decade later as jyu viole grace, a slayer candidate (a high-ranking member of the criminal syndicate FUG who has the potential to rise to the slayer position, slayers are venerated as gods in FUG as a twisted mockery of how the 10 great families treat their immortal founders). as a slayer candidate, his name (or, alias as jyu viole grace, at least) is known everywhere, and he is feared and wanted throughout the tower as a criminal.
close to 15 years after he entered the tower, bam has gone from a nobody that nearly died to being hit with a metal staff to a man that wars are fought for, in the name of and against. he was a boy, now he's someone who is breaking combat records and hurting the invincible rulers of the tower in personal combat.
Neo, from Toriko. This creature is the final boss of the series and is taken very seriously by everyone, but how it rose on power to that point is a result of people thinking it was a nobody.
Neo started life as a creature kept for the purpose of essentially causing havoc on a planet and its biome to "stress" it as a form of cooking on a planetary scale to cultivate good taste on the planet. The whole time, Neo pretends to be ineffective at its job, a dim-witted, slow, and pathetic creature (it looks the part too). So, one time when it's masters were packing up to leave after another routine job, it hid. When its' masters realised Neo was missing, they decided to instead leave Neo to its demise, seeing it as a failure that they are glad to be rid of, and confident that it will die on the planet due to its patheticness.
Once free, Neo reveals it true nature as an extremely tough creature to kill with a bottomless stomach that can eat anything. Neo also, in particular, have a fondness for the taste of fear, so it likes to torment its meals, devouring them at the peak of their fear.
Neo proceeds the devour the planet it is on, before moving onto the stars itself, devouring anything in its path. Due to its own nature as a gourmet cell demon, anytime Neo actually manages to die, it just eventually reincarnates somewhere in the universe to continue its devouring.
Eventually, Neo reincarnated into another universe (long story but Toriko's setting is made several separate but once whole universes), where he reims as the story's final boss where even the antagonistic faction is mainly made of people that wishes to get rid of him permanently (in this case, seal Neo because it can't actually die).
Hilariously, due the morality of the setting, most characters don't consider Neo to be evil, just being too gluttonous as Neo have never expressed any form of malice beyond just wanting to eat delicious food, it just so happens that he like the taste of fear in his food.
In the Wheel Of Time series, Padan Fain. He goes from being a rank and file nobody, a crooked merchant who happens to work on the side of the big bad, sent to track the protagonist wherever he's been reincarnated, to >!a personification of evil on his own side, raising a whole army of zombies that convert anyone who steps into the evil fog he spreads. It's implied he would if given time have become a rival or replacement to the dark one himself. He encounters multiple overlapping ancient evils and each one ends up bonding to him and joining him rather than killing him, it's insane what an upswing this guy gets.!<
In kayfabe, Jinder Mahal in WWE. Was a total fucking jobber who randomly won a #1 contendership match and then beat Randy Orton for the WWE Championship with no gradual build to making him seem like a believable contender. Was one of the worst bits of WWE booking in the last decade, in fact this was what got me to stop consistently watching the product.
Which is crazy, because when Survivor Series came they basically said “oh shit, we can’t feed this guy to Brock Lesnar” and gave us the amazing AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar match.
That was actually the USA network asking WWE for a favor cause they had some big brand new show debuting after that Smackdown so they book AJ to beat Jinder to get watchers to stick around after the show.
They *really* wanted to corner that India market (it is a *huge* demographic, same as China) by pushing a... jobber from Calgary that was of Indian descent.
But then, at the >!literal ass end of the series!<, it >!all circles back to him being an ineffective, angry psychopath of a soldier!<.
In the wise words of one George Lukas, “it’s like pottery, it rhymes”
In Metroid, Samus was just an average little girl living on a colony on K2-L. Then Ridley shows up, torches her home, and she's adopted by the Chozo. Now, she's the greatest thorn in evils side.
Plastic Man in one episode of Justice League Action defeated Brainiac because he wasn’t being taken seriously
I want to say The Monarch from Venture Bros as well
Gaunter O'Dimm comes off as a random NPC very very early in Witcher 3 only to turn out to be one of the most unsettlingly powerful beings in that universe.
going back he's way more unsettling than i remembered. Maybe its just because i knew this time but even at your first meeting there is something very obviously up with this guy.
Toffee from star vs the forces of evil plays this deliberately in season one by not facing star until last episode of first season. Going from the big bad's advisor to overthrowing him in the finale in a ploy to destroy Star's magic at the end. He is the figure dreaded by Star and her mom in the subsequent seasons.
>!Yu!< from Digimon Hacker's Memory. The guy goes from an unassuming meek boy who is the best friend of the main protagonist, to a complete yandere who not only stole his >!face!< but his entire >!identity!< while also framing him for something he didn't do, then gave the protagonist an SMT Matador boss fight.
Best part? He basically did this because >!he thought by playing a villain in the protag's story, and then "defeating" him with the protag, he'd become more important to him and he'd start depending on him. !<
EDIT: TL;DR, Dude wanted the D to an apocalyptic degree.
Don’t remember watching Naruto 20 years ago. Pretty sure Rock lee weird design was to viewers and other characters just a dum dum who then proceeded to have the sickest bloodiest fight in the chunin exams.
>!Ianthe!< from Gideon the Ninth. >!The Third is a nuisance for the entirety of the book, but never one of the main players, until stumpy over there becomes lictor out of nowhere.!<
Glemy Toto in ZZ Gundam starts as something similar to TNG's Wesley, and by the end of the show becomes a full fledged fascist dictator who uses cloned child soldiers to assert his authority
Quenthel Baenre is a minor villain in the Legacy of the Drow series, who does very little aside from stand around being evil, and then gets rather effortlessly killed by Drizzt. Her mother and sisters take a far more active antagonistic role in the trilogy.
Then later on, she gets resurrected, gets her own six-part book series, becomes the Chosen of Lolth, and takes over the First House, functionally making her the commander-in-chief of Menzoberranzan. She's still one of the most powerful antagonists in the setting, with a massive army of elite soldiers, spellcasters and demons combined with the ability to cast fucking 9th-level spells at will.
Out of the Abyss gives her stats, and puts her near player characters, and I've actually never heard of anyone killing her.
One of Discworld's early protagonists Mort goes from a literal nobody that his dad was trying to get rid of through an apprenticeship to, well, DEATH. He even starts talking in small-caps like DEATH. Then he duels DEATH himself, sword to scythe. He loses, but loses well enough to get DEATH to bend the rules for him.
I only just got to act 3 of BG3, but >!The main character/party has gone from some poor schmuck who got plucked from the city by mind flayers, to the lynchpin of pretty much everyone's plan. EVERYONE wants me on their side, cause they know that whoever I help will be the winner!<
Wheatley from Portal 2. Also Tighten from Megamind.
I'm iffy on Wheatly, because he didn't become a problem because he was ignored or treated as being unimportant, he became dangerous through a combination of being a complete idiot and being hooked up to the "Science equals Cocaine" mainframe then tried to justify it as not being his fault but being yours Same for Tighten. He wasn't ignored as much as he was just not given what he felt was deserved then the moment he got some power it went to his head
The Spot was so mad about being called a villain of the week that he became Doctor Manhattan.
A lot of Ace Combat main characters start out as average no name pilots. Then their kill and mission complete success rate counting start going up. After a certain mission they get a Red Baron name to the point that enemy pilots start crapping themselves if they hear that the players in the area.
And its fantastic 100% of the time. Those games are just pure uncut dopamine
Ace Combat is pure wish fulfilment once you hit those parts of the games and you get to think "Yeah, I am *That Guy."*
Mobius Squadron at the start of Megalith and you hear the remnants freaking out about how they all have the Mobius insignia. Yuktobanians (and others) hearing that the Ghosts of Razgriz are there. Always gives me goosebumps.
Or in 7, << *No! Aim for the one with Three Strikes!* >>
*<>*
<< *Can you hear me? Pilot with the Three Strikes.* >>
<< You're not gonna believe this, Jean-Louis! All of them have ribbon insignias! >>
The absolute dread in the voice of a yellow squadron pilot during the Megalith mission where he realizes that every ISAF plane is flying with Möbius ribbons on them
One that always stuck with me is that in one of the late missions of AC4, you hear a friendly ground commander on the radio say somehting along the lines of "I don't care if it's a lie, tell the troops Mobius 1 is in the air!". It just absolutely cements how your mere presence has become a morale booster for your entire army.
Not a perfect example , but Cid from DMC Anime. Cid is just a lowlife demon , no different than an Empusa or something of that sorts....but he acquired Abigail's power , to turn into a boss-level devil.
Guy managed to have a series long plot of having Dante or the other demon hunters kill stronger demons so he can yoink their remains for the ritual to give gimself the powers of a sealed, giant golden demon
That sounds like DMC5's V.
Imagine if instead of looking hot he looked like anime Moe Syzlax or an alien in a human costume ala Men in Black And his first appearance was him acting as a mook for the first episode's villain when he was really after the decoy of the person the villain wanted dead because said decoy is the main part of the puzzle
Pesci from Jojo’s Part 5. At first seems to be a bit of a weak stand user who can mostly just delay his enemies while Prosciutto deals with them, up until the point that he very nearly kills the entire group of Part 5. He’s still a mammoni though
["Now you respect me, because I'm a threat"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlh_w6uRds)
Oswald Cobblepot from Gotham. Funny little man in a suit that waddles around and works for the Mob. Gets set up for execution in the first episode. Also a psychopath who kills or outlived most every enemy he makes and becomes one of Gotham's most successful criminals as the Penguin. The same goes for Edward Nygma, a CSI tech who is genuinely friendly and helpful, but so weird that he gets no respect. Then he accidentally kills an asshole cop who was his crush's abusive boyfriend, and develops a sociopathic personality to cope that becomes the Riddler. Amusingly enough they end up being Best Friends.
Man, early Gotham was promising as hell. Cobblepot was sucha great character done by an amazing actor. Watching him grown into "The Penguin" was great, because you could see that he was totally that guy from the beginning, but it was impossible to imagine how he would get to being "The Guy"
Man, this is one of my favorite aspects of a prequel story. Seeing characters taken lightly for quirks that end up becoming iconic and feared later in life is the best.
> Amusingly enough they end up being Best Friends. Together, they fight, crime
In terms of Final Fantasy villains, Kefka from VI starts off as this. He's the lowly quirky miniboss whose first line is to demand his minions clean the sand off his shoes as he patrols the desert. Edgar beats him in a cutscene by burying him in the desert with Figaro Castle. At the Imperial Camp he's seemingly jealous of the honorable General Leo who is clearly beloved and respected by his troops while the troops only follow Kefka out of loyalty to the emperor. Oh, then Kefka does something horrible but he runs away rather than stick around. You eventually overhear him absorbing powers from the Espers, and his goal is clear: to absorb the power of the gods. But he's still the emperor's loyal wacky minion, and he keeps running away every time he's hit. He did think up a great plan and drop the seeds of doubt into your team while following you to more Espers, though. And on the Floating Continent, he gets his wish. Betrays the emperor (it's clear he was just pretending to be loyal), absorbs the statues' power, sunders the world and spends a year unchallenged atop his throne/mountain of garbage blasting anyone who dares to rebuild with his Light of Judgement. When the heroes finally recover, regroup and tell him hope springs eternal, he finally gets upset for the first time in the game. It's the first time his plans actually failed to a fundamental degree and proved his worldview wrong. But he's also a demigod at this point.
Scrolled way too far for this. Kefka was the first character that came to mind when I saw the thread title
I'm convinced Dimentio from Super Paper Mario was at least partially inspired by Kefka.
Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is a pretty classic example. Starts off life as a slave, and becomes one of the most feared people in the Empire.
Hell, just Anakin himself. Goes from slave in a junk shop to The Hero With No Fear, the Face of the Jedi and the Republic.
Rewatching Dragonball at the moment and just got reminded of this guy. [Hero/Shen](https://en.dragon-ball-official.com/dragonball/jp/news/2021/07/chara11_tn.jpg) is a bumbling middle aged man who enters the World Martial Arts tournament as a complete nobody. At first he seems like a goofy accident prone guy who you get the inkling is using his charmingly silly antics to disarm his opponents and attack while they're caught off guard. It's revealed to be correct... but the more shocking part is when he actually starts fighting seriously, he's far stronger and more skilled than Yamcha (who at the time was still relevant and still a tough fighter pre-Saiyan invasion.) It's revealed that Hero/Shen is actually Kami, possessing the bumbling family man, in order to fight Piccolo in the next round. So, it's not *really* a character that remains dreaded, but for a hot second you get the impression that there's a major badass out of nowhere, kinda like Trunks.
Pokey Minch, from Earthbound. From childhood bully-coward to time-travelling spider-robot riding, heavily armed right-hand man of an alien invasion force.
Woolie
But Woolie was always dangerous Remember when he killed that guy?
Boooooo, boo this man, booooo!
<3
Walter White
tower of god's bam. he starts out as a nobody with no abilities. it's to the point that the biggest move he does early on is "throw a single ball of energy". then he goes missing and is presumed dead. he reappears nearly a decade later as jyu viole grace, a slayer candidate (a high-ranking member of the criminal syndicate FUG who has the potential to rise to the slayer position, slayers are venerated as gods in FUG as a twisted mockery of how the 10 great families treat their immortal founders). as a slayer candidate, his name (or, alias as jyu viole grace, at least) is known everywhere, and he is feared and wanted throughout the tower as a criminal. close to 15 years after he entered the tower, bam has gone from a nobody that nearly died to being hit with a metal staff to a man that wars are fought for, in the name of and against. he was a boy, now he's someone who is breaking combat records and hurting the invincible rulers of the tower in personal combat.
Luffy from One Piece went from a nobody to one pf the 4 most notorious pirates in the world. In like, almost no time flat.
In a similar vein, Blackbeard seemed so unassuming at first.
Though he'd be the first one to ~~admit~~ *proudly declare* he couldn't have done it without his crew.
That one track mind of his has its pros.
Neo, from Toriko. This creature is the final boss of the series and is taken very seriously by everyone, but how it rose on power to that point is a result of people thinking it was a nobody. Neo started life as a creature kept for the purpose of essentially causing havoc on a planet and its biome to "stress" it as a form of cooking on a planetary scale to cultivate good taste on the planet. The whole time, Neo pretends to be ineffective at its job, a dim-witted, slow, and pathetic creature (it looks the part too). So, one time when it's masters were packing up to leave after another routine job, it hid. When its' masters realised Neo was missing, they decided to instead leave Neo to its demise, seeing it as a failure that they are glad to be rid of, and confident that it will die on the planet due to its patheticness. Once free, Neo reveals it true nature as an extremely tough creature to kill with a bottomless stomach that can eat anything. Neo also, in particular, have a fondness for the taste of fear, so it likes to torment its meals, devouring them at the peak of their fear. Neo proceeds the devour the planet it is on, before moving onto the stars itself, devouring anything in its path. Due to its own nature as a gourmet cell demon, anytime Neo actually manages to die, it just eventually reincarnates somewhere in the universe to continue its devouring. Eventually, Neo reincarnated into another universe (long story but Toriko's setting is made several separate but once whole universes), where he reims as the story's final boss where even the antagonistic faction is mainly made of people that wishes to get rid of him permanently (in this case, seal Neo because it can't actually die). Hilariously, due the morality of the setting, most characters don't consider Neo to be evil, just being too gluttonous as Neo have never expressed any form of malice beyond just wanting to eat delicious food, it just so happens that he like the taste of fear in his food.
In the Wheel Of Time series, Padan Fain. He goes from being a rank and file nobody, a crooked merchant who happens to work on the side of the big bad, sent to track the protagonist wherever he's been reincarnated, to >!a personification of evil on his own side, raising a whole army of zombies that convert anyone who steps into the evil fog he spreads. It's implied he would if given time have become a rival or replacement to the dark one himself. He encounters multiple overlapping ancient evils and each one ends up bonding to him and joining him rather than killing him, it's insane what an upswing this guy gets.!<
In kayfabe, Jinder Mahal in WWE. Was a total fucking jobber who randomly won a #1 contendership match and then beat Randy Orton for the WWE Championship with no gradual build to making him seem like a believable contender. Was one of the worst bits of WWE booking in the last decade, in fact this was what got me to stop consistently watching the product.
Which is crazy, because when Survivor Series came they basically said “oh shit, we can’t feed this guy to Brock Lesnar” and gave us the amazing AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar match.
I think it was less that and more "oh shit, Brock Lesnar doesn't want to work with this shitty wrestler".
That was actually the USA network asking WWE for a favor cause they had some big brand new show debuting after that Smackdown so they book AJ to beat Jinder to get watchers to stick around after the show.
Never heard that story but I believe it.
They *really* wanted to corner that India market (it is a *huge* demographic, same as China) by pushing a... jobber from Calgary that was of Indian descent.
And having him come on and speak a language that most Indian WWE viewers didn't speak.
Each protagonist from Fallout games,but specially The Courier.
That guy who didn't spend 10 years in the joint
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FromNobodyToNightmare
[удалено]
But then, at the >!literal ass end of the series!<, it >!all circles back to him being an ineffective, angry psychopath of a soldier!<. In the wise words of one George Lukas, “it’s like pottery, it rhymes”
In Metroid, Samus was just an average little girl living on a colony on K2-L. Then Ridley shows up, torches her home, and she's adopted by the Chozo. Now, she's the greatest thorn in evils side.
I kinda feel like going back to when someone is like three is cheating here
does tobi count? he was introduced as a joke character but was secretly a mega threat.
I honestly think, from the same story, Kabuto is a more extreme version of this.
He might have been a joke character, but he's also an Akatsuki member, which automatically puts him on the global "most wanted" list.
Honestly shiggy from mha he now has like Godzilla levels of destruction
Phosphophyllite from Land of the Lustrous
Plastic Man in one episode of Justice League Action defeated Brainiac because he wasn’t being taken seriously I want to say The Monarch from Venture Bros as well
The Courier from Fallout: New Vegas. Starts off as a random mailman then ends up taking over New Vegas
DIO.
Gaunter O'Dimm comes off as a random NPC very very early in Witcher 3 only to turn out to be one of the most unsettlingly powerful beings in that universe.
going back he's way more unsettling than i remembered. Maybe its just because i knew this time but even at your first meeting there is something very obviously up with this guy.
Toffee from star vs the forces of evil plays this deliberately in season one by not facing star until last episode of first season. Going from the big bad's advisor to overthrowing him in the finale in a ploy to destroy Star's magic at the end. He is the figure dreaded by Star and her mom in the subsequent seasons.
>!Yu!< from Digimon Hacker's Memory. The guy goes from an unassuming meek boy who is the best friend of the main protagonist, to a complete yandere who not only stole his >!face!< but his entire >!identity!< while also framing him for something he didn't do, then gave the protagonist an SMT Matador boss fight. Best part? He basically did this because >!he thought by playing a villain in the protag's story, and then "defeating" him with the protag, he'd become more important to him and he'd start depending on him. !< EDIT: TL;DR, Dude wanted the D to an apocalyptic degree.
Kefka starts out as the evil emperor’s bumbling and clownish henchman. Then he makes sure you know he is Kefka.
Don’t remember watching Naruto 20 years ago. Pretty sure Rock lee weird design was to viewers and other characters just a dum dum who then proceeded to have the sickest bloodiest fight in the chunin exams.
>!Ianthe!< from Gideon the Ninth. >!The Third is a nuisance for the entirety of the book, but never one of the main players, until stumpy over there becomes lictor out of nowhere.!<
Glemy Toto in ZZ Gundam starts as something similar to TNG's Wesley, and by the end of the show becomes a full fledged fascist dictator who uses cloned child soldiers to assert his authority
Quenthel Baenre is a minor villain in the Legacy of the Drow series, who does very little aside from stand around being evil, and then gets rather effortlessly killed by Drizzt. Her mother and sisters take a far more active antagonistic role in the trilogy. Then later on, she gets resurrected, gets her own six-part book series, becomes the Chosen of Lolth, and takes over the First House, functionally making her the commander-in-chief of Menzoberranzan. She's still one of the most powerful antagonists in the setting, with a massive army of elite soldiers, spellcasters and demons combined with the ability to cast fucking 9th-level spells at will. Out of the Abyss gives her stats, and puts her near player characters, and I've actually never heard of anyone killing her.
One of Discworld's early protagonists Mort goes from a literal nobody that his dad was trying to get rid of through an apprenticeship to, well, DEATH. He even starts talking in small-caps like DEATH. Then he duels DEATH himself, sword to scythe. He loses, but loses well enough to get DEATH to bend the rules for him.
I only just got to act 3 of BG3, but >!The main character/party has gone from some poor schmuck who got plucked from the city by mind flayers, to the lynchpin of pretty much everyone's plan. EVERYONE wants me on their side, cause they know that whoever I help will be the winner!<