Thread:Mesektet/@comment-3581997-20160615160106/@comment-3581997-20161029092508

It is up to the heroes or the setting to be light-heated, the villain, indeed no one character in the work needs to make it their priority to be a punch-line. Though some times even that can work. Albert Simon is one the most competent antagonists in RPG history, his evil laugh as a city is engulfed by a stellar god he summoned, is still cut off when he gets thwacked in the head by a stray rock from the debris. The Ultra-Humanite is a super-smart scientist who always thinks his plans through and can manipulate scenarios within scenarios, Flash being the sort of guy he is, still makes fun of how sill he looks in the body of an albino gorilla. GLaDOs is literally in control of everything in the Portal institute during Portal and very, very competent at what she does. She still goes about her sadistic designs with an air of utterly pitch-black humor - In that case the setting actually has humor because of how cruel/cleaver/antagonistic the villain makes it.

Remember, the base of humor is pain. Spin that in the right way and you can make anything humorous, no need to get your laughs at how useless a villain is. But don't just throw pain in and expect others to laugh. The further removed from the average person it plus the amount of pain applied plus ironic timing equals laughter. Or in the immortal words of Mel Brooks

"Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die."