(Loved Trope) When the villain isn’t just defeated, but utterly HUMILIATED by the hero
One of my favorite things about a haughty villain is seeing their ego get knocked down in the end. But I’m not talking about just the hero winning the fight, I mean the hero winning in a way that specifically targets the villain’s ego and destroys it before grinding those pieces into dust.
Po defeating Tai Lung (Kung Fu Panda): Tai Lung spends the entire film believing he is the Dragon Warrior, and he very nearly proves it, defeating the Furious Five and Shifu in battle. But then when he fights Po, he suddenly becomes the victim of slapstick injuries left and right. Then when he stops chasing the Dragon Scroll and actually focuses on fighting Po, the panda wipes the floor with him. You can tell by the end of the fight that he’s in disbelief after getting bested by someone who can’t even properly climb stairs.
Godzilla defeating King Ghidorah (Godzilla: King of the Monsters): Ghidorah had essentially been an unstoppable force throughout the entire movie, until Godzilla got his Burning power up and incinerated his body. Sounds like a pretty badas way to go out, right? Well it is… until Godzilla picks up his last remaining head and *smokes it like a cigarette. That’s got to be embarrassing.
Katara defeating Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender): Azula spends almost all of her screen time up to this point being virtually invincible, if you beat her now, she’ll just learn from that battle and defeat you later. Then in the finale, after she cheats and nearly kills Zuko, she focuses on Katara, and she’s winning that fight, until Katara manages to catch her off guard, freeze her, and then lock her in chains. Making matters worse for Azula’s ego was that she had been dismissing Katara as a mere peasant for the entire battle, only for Katara to end up being one of the only characters in the series to score a solid W against her. Probably not helping matters is the fact that Azula, one of the smartest characters in the series when it comes to fighting, got defeated by blundering straight into a trap.