| abstract | - Some villains commit horrific atrocities to bring about a better world, usually with the architect taking over to ensure paradise is brought about smoothly. And some villains just want to take over. Sometimes the catastrophe you engineered to bring yourself to power was not all for the Greater Good. Sometimes, it really was just to get you into power. Whether it is to eliminate the competition or to dissuade any future rebellion, you find that World Domination is hard to achieve without crossing the Moral Event Horizon, sometimes just because Evil Is Easy. Now, the world might turn out to be a better place with you running the show, but just to be clear -- that's not why you are trying to do it. Nope -- you sacrificed your friends and family, your fellow countrymen (and theirs), and perhaps most of humanity in the name of social advancement. It might turn out to be a Crapsack World -- but hey, c'est la vie. Total global domination is the most common of all villainous goals. But with this trope, the Big Bad takes it too far. They will, if they deem it necessary, nearly destroy the world in pursuit of this goal. Power and position are what they are after and they are not particularly fussy about the state of the world insofar as those ambitions go. Ideology and especially morality are secondary, which means examples of this trope often fall into Complete Monster territory. This is not to say that they will not care what society looks like after they take over, or that they will have no visions for the future. It simply means that power is their primary goal, and they will do anything to achieve that, even sacrifice whatever beliefs they may have. On the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, they tend to be very much on the Cynical side. In other words they may suffer from Motive Decay when it turns out that the Utopia they promised to build has been sacrificed for the sake of their own personal power. For cases when the created Dystopia really is their endgame, more than power, see Dystopia Justifies the Means. For cases in which the despotism has positive side effects, see Pragmatic Villainy. Examples:
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