Evil Tower of Ominousness: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Barad-dur by itself2 1898.jpg|link=The Lord of the Rings (film)|frame|...in the land of [[Mordor]] where the shadows lie.]]

 

{{quote|''And yet

''Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

 

After the [[Elaborate Underground Base]], this is perhaps the most common form of supervillain lair. A jaw-droppingly massive tower that, well, ''towers'' over everyone and everything around it.

* In the ''Gatchaman'' OVA, this is Cross Karakoram (although it's disguised throughout).

* The giant skyscraper where immortal Marcus Octavius lives in the anime movie ''[[Highlander the Search For Vengeance]]''. Pretty much the center of his empire.

 

== Comic Books ==

 

== Fairy Tales ==

 

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Star Wars]]'': The Death Stars, if not in shape then in spirit. The second Death Star had a tower at its north pole, containing the Emperor's penthouse suite, complete with handy-dandy bottomless pit that led into the reactor core for some reason. The first Death Star had a similar tower in it, according to ''[[The Force Unleashed]]''.

* ''[[The Brothers Grimm (film)|The Brothers Grimm]]'' took its cues directly from [[Fairy Tales]], so naturally a tower was needed. In the middle of a [[The Lost Woods|Haunted Forest]], a tower with no doors, surrounded by 12 stone sarcophagi, and the nest for [[Ravens and Crows|a murder of shrieking crows]]. Jakob wants to get in to meet the girl of his dreams. [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]]?

* The headquarters of [[I, Robot (film)|US Robotics]] in is the tallest building by far in Chicago. Guess where the Evil AI of ''[[I, Robot (film)|I, Robot]]'' is situated? {{spoiler|If you said "the basement", shame on you.}}

* The White Tower in Robert Jordan's ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' books, especially after Elaida's [[Face Heel Turn]]. Mazrim Taim builds and rules the Black Tower, but this is actually a village; the name was chosen specifically as a reference to the other one. Taim does build a palace that he rules from that counts though. And that's not including the Tower of Ghenji, which is probably a portal to a dimension with ''Alien Geometry''. Or the Towers of Midnight, which were the place where the a'dam, a collar to enslave magic users were made. Or, for that matter, the tower that Moridin has recently started using in the Blight. While the 13th book probably won't show the (for the series) literal Towers of Midnight (they're several thousand miles away), it's probably not called Tower of Midnight for no reason. There's a lot of ominousness to go around.

* Southwatch in ''[[Shannara|Heritage of Shannara]]''.

* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' [[Ultramarines (novel)|Ultramarines]] novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', the end point of their [[The Quest|quest]] is an evil tower, bordering on [[Ominous Floating Castle]] because it is suspended over a void.

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'': Dark Apostle had the construction of one of these by the Word Bearers as the main part of the story, it went into vivid detail of it being built using the enslaved populace of the world as both labor and ''[[wikipedia:Mortar (masonry)|mortar]]'' for the slabs of stone. The foul corruption of the tower eventually made the work force grow to love the tower and some jumped to their deaths in the pit surrounding it to become closer to it, dragging any who were on the chain line with them but not under the tower's sway with them.

* The Iron Tower of Carcë in E. R. Eddison's ''[[The Worm Ouroboros]]'', lair of the [[Sorcerous Overlord|sourcerous King]] Gorice of Witchland.

 

* ''[[Frasier]]'': Played for laughs and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when the staff of the radio station have to confront their boss in an office building known as The Black Tower.

* [[Angel|Wolfram & Hart's]] Los Angeles branch corporate building. Angel partially lampshades this: "You set things in motion, play your little games up here in your glass and chrome tower, and people die - innocent people."

* In War and Remembrance the transportees are shown being taken through the gates of Auschwitz and it makes Barud-dur seem like a luxury hotel. Not only that but they used the [[Nightmare Fuel|real Auschwitz]] for a movie prop in that scene making it Truth in Television.

 

== Music ==

* The song "The Dark Tower of Abyss" by Rhapsody is about such a tower.

 

== Radio ==

* Novacom's radio tower in ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]''.

 

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'': The Daemon World of the Iron Warriors, Medrengard, is an entire world covered with evil towers reaching into space.

** The [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Tyranid Hive Fleets]] of ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' also build large [[Organic Technology|living towers]] that function as [[Planet Eater|straws so they can siphon away the resources of the planet!]]

** Halfway up the Spire is the fortress of a [[Big Bad|Slightly Less Big Bad]]. He plunged most of a continent into winter for years as a weapon of mass destruction, created monstrous laboratories in which to create monstrous armies, and generally was bad news for everyone and everything. And he measures up to the halfway point of the original big bad.

* The ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' gamebook (kinda a halfway-house between an RPG and a [[Choose Your Own Adventure]] book) ''Tower of Destruction''. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|There's one of these, and it flies around destroying things]]. Oh, and demons.

 

== Video Games ==

 

== Web Comics ==

* In ''Radio Active Panda'', students from a rival ominous tower of mad scientist-type evil (from the OTHER mad scientist tower/academy of mad robotics who has a moon base) pull a prank by stockpiling garden gnomes all the way to the on the 42th floor. The pile of gnomes is a third ominous tower in its own right - considering the pile is probably telescope-visible from earth as a red spot and the largest known nuke wouldn't remove them all.

* The Templar Towers in ''[[Twokinds]]'' actually turned out to be giant magic batteries {{spoiler|which have the nasty side effect of slowly turning the brains of Bastins and Keidrans into mush, making their lands ripe for a Templar invasion.}}

* In [[Endstone]] the Eternity Spire. [http://endstone.net/2009/02/15/issue-1-page-3/ Where Jon intended to destroy the world].

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* The first ''[[Shrek]]'' movie did a [[Lampshade Hanging]]; when Shrek sees the towering castle of [[Big Bad]] Lord Farquaad (an [[The Napoleon|ill-tempered, tyrannical midget]]), his first thoughts are "Do you think maybe he's compensating for something?"

* From ''[[Gargoyles]]''; the Erie Building is the world's tallest, located in Manhattan. It's the home and office of villain David Xanatos, and just to crank up the ominous factor, it's topped with a real Scottish castle from the 10th century. Plus live gargoyles, at the beginning and end of the series.

* Aku's Tower in [[Samurai Jack]].

* On ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', Doofenschmirtz Evil Incorporated is headquartered in a big purple skyscraper.

 

== Real Life ==

* [[Termites]] build mounds that get as high as thirty feet. Stay the [[Gosh Dang It to Heck|heck]] away, aardvarks.

* [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ax5ZIdFoW1U/SbZAZsRmpZI/AAAAAAAAL2I/p3RdShBUWkM/s1600/burj-dubai-tower-05.jpg The Burj Dubai], the tallest building in the world. (no relation to [[Mordor|Lugburz]], another dark tower in the middle of the desert.)

* [[Truth in Television]]: pretty much anything designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.

* ''[[Disney Theme Parks|The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror]]''.

** [[North Korea]]’s [[wikipedia:Juche Tower|Juche Tower]] and [[wikipedia:Ryugyong Hotel|Ryugyong Hotel]] are two rather creepy-looking and rather tall monuments to the ego of Kim Il-Sung. The latter was even creepier-looking before they started putting the glass in. The Soviets, at least, had the good sense to notice how oppressive and money-wasting these sorts of projects looked.

*** To be fair, the monuments are perceived as Towers of Ominousness largely due to their associations with the fanatical regime that constructed them. Stylistically, the Washington Monument (ironically, it's pretty much of the same height as Juche) dominates the surrounding empty space no less than the Juche Tower, or any other obelisk built since the Egyptians, and the Empire State Building once towered over blocks and blocks of buildings 1/6 of its height no better than the Ryugyong Hotel, and considering the Great Depression, most of its offices were just as empty as the unfinished hotel rooms of its Korean counterpart.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Tower]]

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Home Base]]

[[Category:Older Than Print]]