Big Bad

In a 2014 book, Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver speculated that the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be the origin of the phrase in Buffy the Vampire Slayer[1]

Big Bad is a term to describe a major recurring adversary, usually the chief villain or antagonist in a television series or a particular broadcast season of a series, originally used by the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[2][3][4] It has since been used to describe annual villains in other television series, and has also been used in scholarly work discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[2][5]

In gaming, this term is often abbreviated BBEG, which stands for "Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal," a tradition that began on message boards for the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.[6]

  1. ^ McMahon-Coleman, Kimberley; Weaver, Roslyn (2014), Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture: A Thematic Analysis of Recent Depictions, McFarland, p. 46, ISBN 978-0-7864-9250-3
  2. ^ a b MacNeil, W. P. (2003). "You Slay Me: Buffy as Jurisprude of Desire". Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 24(6), pp. 2421–2440.
  3. ^ Brannon, J. S. (2007). "It's About Power: Buffy, Foucault, and the Quest for Self Archived 2011-09-30 at the Wayback Machine". Slayage, v. 24.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zalben was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Durand was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Baird, Scott. "D&D: Who was the first BBEG?". Screen Rant. Retrieved May 10, 2024.