Editor's note: Evan and Mark knock it out of the park with this humorous look at some of most idiotic villainous plots in video game history. -James

Bitmob Splitscreen is a one-on-one discussion conducted over e-mail on a single topic. For the sixth installment, Mark T. Whitney and I sat down (at our computers) to pick apart the flaws in some of the most poorly thought-out schemes of video game villains. Read on for disappointing contract work, crème-filled cakes, and a surprising argument in favor of nuclear weapons.

This article contains Bioshock spoilers.

Mark Whitney: While I love the Mega Man series, my first recommendation for worst scheme has to go to Dr. Wily. He gets an "A" for effort but ultimately fails: Even with his PhD, he can't outwit a cleaning robot retrofitted with a weapon. Essentially, his idea for world domination boils down to quantity over quality, and it involves sending out wave after wave of robot that all have ridiculously easy-to-exploit weaknesses. 

He also gets negative points for taking things that no one is afraid of and turning them into villains. Sheep Man? Really? Come on Wily! I'm more afraid of the lonely farmhand you built that robot for.

Evan Killham: Well to be fair, Dr. Light and Dr. Wily originally created those robots to help mankind: It was only in a fit of jealous rage that Dr. Wily made them evil. Do we know that Dr. Wily is starting from scratch every time...or is he working from contracts? I can see him sending out bids to everyone who needs a robot, rubbing his hands in evil glee, and then seeing who accepts.

In that case, he was probably as disappointed as anyone when the order for Sheep Man came in. The sad truth is that sheep require herding, and in this age of automation we can't really blame the farmhands for wanting in on the action.

So assuming you wanted Dr. Wily to be successful, what kind of advice might you offer him for the future?

MW: If he is just hoping he lands a sucker stupid enough to fall for his scheme, is it then safe to assume that Dr. Wily is the "Nigerian Prince" of the future? 

If Wily wants to take over the world and is truly dedicated to using robots, maybe he should start from scratch. I'm going to go ahead and design Wily's next robot for him: "Funny! Open This!" Man.  When you get down to it, Mega Man is a robot run by some sort of operating system. I'll go ahead and call it Light OS.

All Wily needs to do is get on the Internet and get someone to figure out Mega Man's e-mail address (robots have those, right?). Then the Robot Master would just have to forward him every piece of e-mail that dirty Uncle Wily sends him. You know that uncle: He's the one that just got the Internet and an e-mail address so that he can look at naked women, and the one who compulsively checks the ceiling of his house because someone told him that there was a cat watching him masturbate. 

I'll give Mega Man five days before his childlike innocence gets the best of him, and he opens one of those pictures up. It will either make him realize the world isn't worth saving, or the embedded virus will make him slower than an Apple II trying to run Crysis. 

World? Meet your new master.

EK: I'd call that plan crazy, but clearly the Nigerian Princes wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't work every once in a while. Maybe we've finally figured out why Wily has been trying the same plan over and over again -- he figures it's bound to work eventually. We cracked it!

Let's move on to Frank Fontaine's plan in Bioshock, which I'll admit is mostly sound. He has the whole Plasmid business, the smuggling, and he steadily makes money and gains influence until he's ready to overthrow Andrew Ryan. But it doesn't work, so he fakes his own death and comes up with another plan. He's flexible, and that's important. And then something weird happens.

I'm not going to criticize Fontaine's plan to use Ryan's bastard son as a Manchurian Candidate-style assassin because I honestly can't think of a better scheme -- or at least a more entertaining one. He had to get past the bathysphere locks and make sure that he could still control things remotely, and his solution is so far outside of the box that it's in another box entirely.

What I do have a problem with, however, is the fact that the entire plan hinges upon the assassin surviving a fiery plane crash into the ocean. Because fiery plane crashes are by their very nature unpredictable, it seems ridiculous that this was the best option for Jack's return to Rapture.

MW: I've always kind of wondered about that, actually. You would think someone as smart as Fontaine would have asked him if he would kindly take a damned boat. Do you think Fontaine asked Jack to fly the plane and thought that would magically give him the years of flight training necessary to land a 747? 

I agree with you on Fontaine's plan being a sound one. For the most part it seemed as ingenious as a murderer eating the body: It's the perfect crime. But maybe his satisfaction got the best of him, which would explain why a guy in a Halloween costume and a bunch of little girls were able to take him down so easily.

If you had the vast resources and capabilities that Fontaine had, how would you have done it differently? Needle-proof armor, perhaps? Something more?

EK: I don't know if there's anything that Fontaine should have done differently since I don't think it would have been worth it. He's taken Ryan out -- which means that technically, he runs Rapture. But honestly, what exactly is he running? The only people around are Splicers, and the place is flooded. It's like the end of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where the kids "escape" to the burnt-out husk of Sydney. Um, congratulations? This entire shithole is yours now.

I guess what I would do differently if I was Fontaine would be to realize that I'm better off staying where I am since apparently there are enough creme-filled cakes and whiskey to survive indefinitely. And then I would destroy the elevator that goes directly to my lair so that hellish mandroids couldn't come up and set me on fire. If I'm going to be stuck there, I might as well have peace of mind, right?

MW: You know, I think you hit the nail on the head with that idea. ADAM is a helluva drug though. 

I'm probably going to be crucified for this next one, but my next example of a villain with an awful plan is Bowser in Super Mario Bros. 

EK: Oh, boy...you're really going with Bowser here? At least you didn't question the methods of the ghosts in Pac-Man.

MW: I actually considered the ghosts, but I've always thought they were just huge assholes that enjoyed ruining nice things like picnics and baby-making. When it comes down to it, they're as villainous as reality TV is entertaining. 

Let's look at Bowser, though: He's a single dad with a godawful number of kids who probably pays entirely too many gold coins for child support. In order to make ends meet, he's attempting to kidnap a princess that is too poor to hire an actual hero. Who do they get instead? The fat guy fixing the toilet.  

So if it isn't for money why does he want the Princess? Sure she's a hot piece of ass, but making love to her would be like Shamu trying to make it with one of the Olson twins: The species and the size proportions just don't add up.

EK: My assumption has always been that he wanted to take over the Mushroom Kingdom, and obviously getting rid of the existing government is part of that. When you're doing that sort of thing you have two options: kill them or get them out of the way. If I've learned nothing else from European military history, it's that people of significance are more valuable as hostages than as corpses. So I think he's actually right on point there.

I have no idea what he's up to if it's not conquest, but it's never clarified either way. Let's look at this: Bowser has eight castles in the Mushroom Kingdom. How many does the "Royal Family" have? I've only seen one, and apparently it's not very well protected. Bowser also has an army of Koopa Troopas, Goombas, sentient artillery, and Hammer Brothers while all Princess Peach has is a bunch of incompetent anthropomorphic mushrooms.

So why wouldn't he try to take that place over? He clearly has the advantage.

I think Super Mario Bros. takes place during the final stages of a very successful campaign. Bowser has taken over the entire Mushroom Kingdom except for the one castle, and he's planned for everything except this plumber.

Bowser has formulated his strategy based on the fact that he expected to be going up against a bunch of indigenous Mushroom Men who can't jump very high. In that regard, it was a very good plan. How was he supposed to know some mustachioed superman -- that's what Mario is in this universe -- was going to show up and start jumping on everything?

Bowser's plan was fine. Mario was just the wild card.

MW: Honestly, I never thought of it that way. I figured Bowser had 8 different wives who had all passed away of "natural causes," and he had inherited their land. For the most part, I assumed he was attempting to spit his hot, fiery game -- or fireballs...probably just fireballs -- at Princess Peach, and Mario was essentially an otherworldly cockblock. I mean think about it, in all eight worlds a woman is hanging out in each castle that isn't Peach. Bowser is a polygamist who wants enough wives to start his own baseball team in the Toadstool League. 

It is pretty insane that a profession we see as nothing but butt-cracks and wrenches makes you a god in the Mushroom Kingdom. Would that make a janitor or a handyman even stronger? Maybe we should begin to respect the service industry a bit more before they become angry and delusional and start jumping on our heads and eating mushrooms. Admittedly, most of them probably already do the latter. 

Any final thoughts on this Mack Daddy and the hot, Napoleonic fire he spits?

EK: Just one: Those are Princess Peach's attendants at the end of each castle, not Bowser's other wives. But there's no time for you to respond. We have to move on.

My last example is Colonel Whitley from The Thing. He's got that whole "Hey, let's try to harness the evil alien menace for military purposes" thing going -- which is nothing new -- but I think there's something to be said for the nature of the evil alien menace in question. Say what you will about the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, at least they kept it simple. Step one: Unleash xenomorphs upon enemies. Step two: You know, whatever.

The military applications of The Thing's "Cloud Virus" involve nothing less than infecting friendly soldiers, not with a virus as the name implies, but with a sentient, malicious alien entity bent on absorbing and assimilating every living thing it can get its tentacles on.

Optimism is one thing, but apparently the plan was to have our boys charge into battle, become Cthulhu, kill the enemy, and then...what? Just change back? How did they think that was a good idea?

MW: Well, like most military plots, I'm sure they weren't really worried about them changing back. They probably figured it was an acceptable loss for the good of mankind, and they had enough guns and flamethrowers to take care of them if shit got real. Besides, if they do go out of control and begin to cause too much mayhem, they could always just spray some napalm, say that country had weapons of mass destruction, and call it an "exercise in stopping bio-terrorism" for PR purposes.

If you're so afraid of your enemy that you're willing to unleash the horrors of tentacle rape upon your own soldiers, a nuclear weapon suddenly sounds like springtime and rainbows as far as repercussions go. Maybe, you should take that route instead.

But I've never been in the military, so they would probably dismiss me as being unable to make the tough decisions to ensure victory, then yell "Hooah!" and start barking at me or something.

EK: Another pretty serious problem with this plan just occurred to me: Anyone that infected soldiers kill also becomes infected. And guess what? Once the Thing takes them over, they're all on the same side. The Thing will end up absorbing absolutely everyone involved in the battle, and then we've got twice the problem.

At that point, you might as well have just nuked the place to begin with because you're going to have to do that anyway to be sure that the resulting big-ass alien monster is dead. And even then, can you ever really be sure? One cell survives, and the planet is just as screwed as it was before.

So congratulations, Colonel Whitley! Your plan is so stupid that it makes dropping nuclear weapons look like a good idea. I hope Solid Snake doesn't find out about this.

MW: I've got to say that in our list of "What were you thinking?!" insane plots, Whitley certainly gets the gold, especially considering how most of these alien menace/super soldier lines play out. The test subject always escapes -- how else would they ever be able to do a sequel?

At least with the other three there was some possibility of them winning. Wily could have altered his strategy; Fontaine could have holed himself up with some hot Splicer honeys and all the cream cakes, booze, and cigarettes he could ever want (not to mention whatever kinky Gene Tonics he could come up with); and Bowser could eat Mario and continue his conquest of the now-helpless Mushroom Kingdom. 

Whitley is really just his own worst enemy in this. No matter what else happened, he would have eventually found himself in the midst of a crazy anime fetish-fest with his very own tentacle alien. Once you unleash that type of hell, there really is no stopping it -- short of Armageddon or a holy cleansing fire that would make the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bow their heads in shame.

 Thanks to Mark for his time, and for his patience while I scrambled to change topics at the last minute.