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Mega Corp: Difference between revisions
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Perhaps there is one company that is a [[Privately-Owned Society]] in its own right. This goes beyond the definition of "monopoly."
Rarely are Mega Corporations portrayed with anything other than unremitting negativism; rather than being a simple business making things that people want to buy, they are almost invariably the villains of the setting, and depicted as exploitative, oppressive and [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|screwing the rules with their money]] while maintaining a [[Peace and Love Incorporated]] facade. They are home to the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]], [[Bad Boss]], [[Pointy-Haired Boss]], and [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]], and usually have [[Amoral Attorney|Amoral Attorneys]] on the payroll.
Mega Corporations are shown as being private institutions and therefore doesn't have to play by most rules the government has to, such as freedom of speech, because it's always "nobody is forcing you to work for them or buy from them or use their institutions or buy their products." However, more darker versions will also show these guys pretty much buying off or eliminating their competitors, brainwashing the masses, and coming up with [[Evil Plan|Evil Plans]] to ensure they have a monopoly and making it so that you still ''have'' to buy their products, while their employees are sometimes portrayed as oppressed, paid pitifully low wages (if at all), and treated as expendable. Dictatorships inside democracies.
They may also [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them|be shown controlling the government either through having employees in important positions or through lobbying]], or taken to its extreme, may have [[Private Military Contractors]] or other [[Hired Guns]] (or even [[One Nation Under Copyright|an entire country or world]]) at their disposal, and become [[NGO Superpower|Superpowers]] in their own right.
A more benign version may be owned by a [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job]]. However, in [[Post Cyber Punk]] stories, some [[Mega Corp|Mega Corps]] can aspire to be [[Big Good]] , providing the hero with [[Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?|amazing equipment]] in their quest to literally snuff out the competition. There do exist some rare benevolent portrayals of a Mega Corp; in which they merely may just be a large business who employs a lot of people but isn't shown practicing in unethical trade practices.
Monopolies, Duopolies and Oligopolies (market structures which usually are home to several Mega Corp entities) ''do'' exist in real life, and indeed, very large multinational corporations do exist. And yes, ''some'' of these corporations do engage in unethical practices or political influence. Of course, it is an exaggeration (at least) to claim ''all'' [[There Are No Good Executives|corporations act in this way]].
{{examples}}
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*** Diversification, yes. Good concept. Yet, I think the average 12-year-old would still be impressed with a company having leverage in every public company '''in the world'''. (Considering their Meganess, they may even have leverage in private companies.)
** Yiliaster from ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' is even closer to this, considering they have so much technology and money that they can actually {{spoiler|manipulate the time stream.}}
** One rather interesting thing about the dub of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]!''. In the Japanese version, Alistair's grudge against Kaiba Corps was that they supplied the tanks that killed his brother. In the Dub? Kaiba Corps bought the land he (among many others including his family) were living on and were forcing them out with tanks. Sound like something you'd expect out of a Cyberpunk story?
* Genom Corporation from ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' is a sprawling global economic powerhouse which manufactures everything from toasters to military cyborgs (Boomers). It exerts tremendous influence on the world's governments and entertains plans for overt world domination through the use of the so-called Overmind Control System, which is presumably capable of remotely controlling all AIs on the planet.
* Daiwa Heavy Industries from ''Vexille'' succeed in {{spoiler|assuming complete control of Japan, eradicating most of its population and turning the survivors into cyborg drones. They also have plans to do the same on a worldwide scale.}}
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* The Marvel Universe counterpart to Wayne Enterprises is [[Iron Man|Stark Industries]].
** While their counterpart to LexCorp is [[Spider-Man|Oscorp]].
** The universe also features a few smaller megacorps, like the hero-run Rand Industries (Iron Fist) and Worthington Industries (Angel) and the villainous Oscorp (Norman Osborn).
* Marvel's ''2099'' titles had the world run by Mega Corps. How bad were things, you ask? The person that eventually overthrew their control and ushered in a fairer regime was none other than ''[[Doctor Doom]]''.
* [[Watchmen|Veidt Enterprises]], run by Adrian Veidt. Makes everything from hairspray to music television to tachyon particle emitters.
* ''[[The Authority]]'' once battled an interdimensional mega corporation.
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* Clay Industries in ''[[PS238]]'', which seems to sell all the materials needed to build the elaborate superhero bases, security systems and other useful pieces of equipment used by the school, many of the superheroes and {{spoiler|Praetorian Academy}}. They're also implied to sell 'instant-buildings', explaining how a universe so rich in superheroes manages to survive all the inevitable property damage. It seems to be a fairly benign company, as the founder and owner appears to be the school's janitor.
* The Zinco company, which serves as the [[Hellboy (comics)|Hellboy]] universe's rough Lexcorp equivalent. Was run by a pair of Nazi occultist supervillain fanboys until they both got themselves killed in separate attempts to defeat the BPRD and kick-start [[The End of the World as We Know It]].
* The Starship Corporation from [[Nintendo Power]]'s [[Star Fox (series)|Star
** Which may just be the reason said Big Bad orders his armies to [[Damsel in Distress|kidnap the daughter]] of the [[Benevolent Boss|Starship Magnate]].
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* [[James Cameron]] seems to love this trope.
** Cyberdyne from the ''[[Terminator]]'' films. While not exactly evil like Cameron's other Mega Corps, they're certainly unscrupulous to the point that they can convince the military to have all its defenses run by Skynet. Their high-tech invention ends up causing [[The End of the World as We Know It]] and the subsequent [[Robot War]].
** Weyland-Yutani, ''[[Alien]]'' franchise. Famously evil enough to sacrifice squads of colonial marines, entire colonies, and even the security of the Earth in its attempt to weaponize the eponymous alien critters...and in the fourth film eventually bought out by an even ''more'' evil rival, Wal-Mart. In this case though Cameron did not make the mega corp; it was already present and evil in the original ''Alien''; Cameron just fleshed it out.
** ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' brings us the Resources Development Administration, an interstellar mining and transportation firm which swings more meat than most countries.
* Omni Consumer Products, ''[[RoboCop]]'' is another iconic example: they have divisions in such diverse fields as consumer products, healthcare, prisons, space exploration, law enforcement to military grade weaponry and their ultimate goal is to turn Detroit into Delta City, [[One Nation Under Copyright|One City Under Copyright]].
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** Also from the [[Expanded Universe]], Kuat Drive Yards is the Empire's primary manufacturer of starships. It should be noted that this company is powerful enough to have a security fleet comprised mostly of Star Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts that dwarf the Empire's iconic [[Carrier Battleship|Star Destroyers]], each of which is in turn, powerful enough to literally scare ''an entire star system'' into submission. Talk about overkill.
*** Granted, Kuat is under exclusive contract with the Empire, and is thus allowed to maintain said security force. In addition, the Empire has ''even more'' of said Star Dreadnoughts, the most famous of which is the ''Executor'', Vader's Super Star Destroyer. And also includes the Emperor's personal Super Star Destroyer, the ''Eclipse''...which has as its main armament a ''[[Wave Motion Gun|miniaturized Death Star Superlaser]]''. Which luckily was still under construction at the time of the movies.
** As with KDY, the Corellian Engineering Corpooration (CEC) enjoys its own ''huge security fleet'', though it is not involved purely in military contracts (which one could argue simply makes CEC all the more alarming). Its success has made it arguably the most prolific of the huge manufacturing supercorporations in the [[Expanded Universe]]. Oh, and they happen to jointly own a military subcontractor with Kuat, and purchased one of their Corellian rivals when a ''travel accident'' killed off the executive staff.
** Czerka Corp. in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' doesn't have its own navy, but it does own and enslave entire planets (Kashyyyk being one of them) and is utterly indifferent to the outcome of the Jedi Civil War.
*** They're also outside the law, pretty much. One of the loading screens in the game says that Companies like Czerka police themselves because they're too big for authorities to handle.
** The Corporate Sector Authority, first seen in the early Han Solo Adventure novels, owns an entire sector of space (the Corporate Sector), in which the Empire permits it to harvest and exploit resources with impunity. Strip-mine entire worlds? Enslave whole populations? Execute workers for conspiring to form labor unions? Check, Check, and Check. As long as they pay their tribute to the Emperor (which is much lower than what their taxes would be if they operated in the Empire proper), anything goes.
** The Offworld Mining Corporation in the [[Jedi Apprentice]] books.
** Adascorp in the Knights Of The Old Republic comic series, allied with Czerka Corp, also count.
* Buy N Large, from ''[[WALL-E]]'', a [[Brand X|barely-disguised]] scathing satire of Wal-Mart. It's so large that the CEO is literally President of the World - we even see the White House press room redone with the Buy N Large logo.
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* J Corp in [[Tad Williams]]' ''[[Otherland]]'' is one of these. While not as large as some of the other examples (it has competitors), it's still big enough to own a private army, cofinance a project to build the world's most powerful computer network, and pretty much tell governments to piss off.
** Helps that in this version of the future corporations hold seats in the American government, with the number of seats being determined by shares of the market.
* The Syndicate Worlds from ''[[The Lost Fleet]]'' are an interstellar nation seemingly comprised of several Mega corps. Officers in the fleet are even referred to as CEOs.
* [[Philip K. Dick]] loved this trope:
** Trails of Hoffman Inc appeared in ''Lies Inc''. The company offered teleport services to a far-off world. It was a one way ticket, no way home. But the company definitely had its fingers in other pursuits, and whatever they were doing on Whale Mouth was not what they claimed.
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* General Products from [[Larry Niven]]'s ''Known Space'' series is the most famous company in the known universe.
* The Bulero corporation in George Zebrowski's ''Macrolife''.
* Benevolent example: World Enterprises in ''[[The Man Who Fell to Earth]]'' starts with and specializes in electronics but quickly grows into this because its products are so innovative; it is actually able to launch a space program. The secret? The mysterious man at the top is actually an alien who brought his dying world's technology to Earth specifically to make enough money and obtain the resources needed to save the rest of his people, who will blend in with humanity as he has and positively influence it.
* INITEC (Interstellar Nanoatomic Independent Terran Empire Corporation) in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Virgin New Adventures]] novel ''Original Sin''. Its specialty is robotics, but it also produces weaponry (including the [[Weaksauce Weakness|glitterguns]] that [[Doctor Who/Recap/S12 E5 Revenge of the Cybermen|saw off the Cybermen]]) and spaceships. Oh, and it's run by {{spoiler|a robot [[Virtual Ghost|with the mind of]] [[Doctor Who/Recap/S6 E3 The Invasion|Tobias Vaughn]]}}. Small surprise, considering the real significance of the corporation's name. {{spoiler|Interstellar Nanoatomic is a [[Significant Anagram]] for International Electromatics.}}
* ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]: Legion'' claims that Hargreave-Rasch is so big and powerful that even real-world giants like [[wikipedia:Monsanto|Monsanto]] and [[wikipedia:Halliburton|Halliburton]] are small fry compared to it.
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* In ''[http://misspentyouthgame.com/ Misspent Youth]'' by Robert Bohl, you play bomb-throwing teenage anarchists in a Dystopia with an Authority that is out to personally destroy them. Groups who choose to play with a Corporate Authority frequently create evil megacorps.
* Hudson-Cosmos, Stahl, Phi, Trilex Pharmaceuticals and... too many others to name, in [[Cosmopol]]. Most people are not aware that Hudson-Cosmos and Stahl actually outright own ''almost all of the other companies'' and the ''entire cities'' that they are based in.
* Pentex, in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]''. They're a front for the [[Eldritch Abomination|embodiment of entropy]] and its efforts to poison the entire universe. They have hands in everything from fast food to toys to pharmaceuticals to energy to firearms -- in fact, most people in the setting don't even know Pentex ''exists'', or if it does, that it's simply an independent entity without any ties to its constituent companies.
** The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' has the Cheiron Group from ''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]'', a gigantic multinational organization that controls a dozen front businesses. One of those departments [[Theyd Cut You Up|hunts, captures and studies supernatural creatures]], both to find new product possibilities and to utilize their powers (by harvesting bits of them) for the company's own use. Their employees are given a handbook containing near-useless information as their only guide to what they're dealing with, so turnover is insane (giving the player characters a job opening).
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' has several interesting examples. Economic cartels like the [[De Vayne]] incorporation are more powerful that most governments on provincial worlds, they have private armies and small fleets to their name, more than enough to conquer a backwater world. However, all that power to nothing compared to that of the feudal orders of the Imperium.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' has ten Mega corps that produce nearly all the goods and services one can find in 2070.
** Interesting in that real-world corporations such as Microsoft and Wal-Mart are included in the Shadowrun universe, but are decidedly inferior in size and influence compared to any several dozen other businesses.
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* In [[Mutant Chronicles]], the big powers of the solar system are called "mega corps" and fit pretty well with this trope, but in a slight aversion they have by now evolved into [[Feudal Future]] noble houses of a sort. Exceptions are [[Eagle Land|Capitol]], which is still technically a corporation, and hence a democracy of sorts - you have one vote per piece of stock you own, and the company president serves basically the same role as an [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|American]] president. There's also Cybertronic which is focuses on creating electronics and cybernetics, it does have bits of an Orwellian society style.
* In [[Eclipse Phase]] the mega corps that were unable to adjust to a post-scarcity economy died out while those that could evolved into the Hypercorps. Most are small and decentralized, often existing wholly in [[Cyberspace]] ([[We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future|as labor is almost fully automated]]), but hold a great deal of influence in the Inner System. Mars is run wholesale by the Planetary Consortium, which poses as a republican democracy, but whose power is divided proportionally among the hypercorps who own shares in it. Venus used to be under Consortium rule until the habitats formed the Morningstar Constellation almost by accident.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has a high fantasy example in The Guild, a vast trading concern that uses mercenaries and assassins to dispose of its rivals, is the world's biggest trader in narcotics and slaves, sells live humans by the thousands to the Fair Folk who devour their minds for food. And because that wasn't evil enough, they buy the emotionless unfeeling husks ''back'' from the Fair Folk so they can be resold as obedient manual labourers.
** The Guild also distributes medicine (when it's profitable), and by selling the soul-eating trickster fairies meals, they hold back a second Balorian Crusade...well, except the one time they nearly started it, but that was an accident.
* ''Cyberpunk 2020'', of course, with Arasaka and [[Mili Tech]] as the two most prominent examples, the former pure evil and the latter unscrupulous but not ''as'' evil.
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** By ''Doom 3'' one of their catch phrases is "The UAC is making safer worlds through [[Peace Through Superior Firepower|superior firepower]]."
* TriOptimum from ''[[System Shock]]'', where the "tri" stands for military/science/consumer... that's an evil combination in any <s>sci-fi</s> setting. Mega-corporations dominated the ''[[System Shock]]'' world in general and national governments were very weak, but the corporations were greatly undermined by the events of the game. The world population rose against the massive corporate corruption responsible for the Citadel Station scandal and reinstalled [[The Government]] as the Unified National Nominate to regulate what remains. By the time of the second game, TriOptimum was on its last financial legs before an employee invented a working [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|faster-than-light drive]]. In predictable corporate fashion, as many corners were cut from the ship built around the drive, to the point where the engines leaked constantly. Then the captain [[It Got Worse|brought some alien life forms on board]]. And you, a UNN soldier, [[It's Up to You|have to fix all of this]].
* The Guilds in ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' are like this; but are actually one of the rare benign/benevolent versions, showing us that [[Tropes Are Tools]]. The various guilds appear to own their own land and cities, one of which rivals the capital city, but it's implied that Guild members aren't actually empire citizens, so they practically govern their own lands that don't fall inside the Empire's jurisdiction. Whenever they're in the empire it's typically to conduct business. The two factions rarely work together; but when they do, they literally build an ''entire town'' in only a matter of days. In a further subversion of the trope; the guilds are actually all headed by people who want profit, but actually aren't bad people with the exception of Barbos. Even Yeager, who is a minor antagonist who is implied to have ''two'' guilds under his thumb, has redeeming qualities, too.
** A small version of this trope is seen in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' with Chesedonia. Chesedonia is pretty much a neutral land that most people go to conduct business and trade in. Despite an apparent lack of government, they seem to do a pretty good job of handling themselves, it's implied that Astor, the richest man in the city, is able to run things when necessary. In this game; the Mega Corp actually is merely an implication and is more of a third-party, along with Daath.
* The various goblin cartels in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' are [[Dungeon Punk]] versions of the Mega Corp, offering all variety of arms, [[Applied Phlebotinum]], and services equally to all comers.
** The Steamwheedle cartel is the largest of the goblin cartels, and has a huge monopoly on goblin business.
*** Despite being the largest, they're actually a little more...benevolent than most Mega Corps often are; as they're often giving the players jobs and money. The only way they would be out to kill the player character is if they decide to join the Bloodsail Bucaneers or [[PvP]] inside the neutral zones. (Course, most of the people who did this were [[Griefer|Griefers]]...)
** And then there's Venture Co, who are a much less morally ambiguous version of this trope. They're strip mining the mountains, polluting a few of the only oases in the Barrens, and, if you do the rogue quests, are developing a necromantic plague that will ensure its workers are efficient and compliant by turning them into zombies.
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*** [[All There in the Manual]]: not only is the government of Earth at the time of the first Ground Control essentially a council of Mega Corps, the Order of the New Dawn is - legally speaking - one as well.
* Omni-Tek from the [[MMORPG]] ''Anarchy Online''.
* The FutureTech Corporation in ''[[Command
* ''[[Armored Core]]'', where every faction you work for (except for your mercenary organization, a terrorist group, or the mercenaries themselves) are these. According to the [[All There in the Manual|backstory]], in most of the continuities, the corporations also serve as the [[One Nation Under Copyright|government]].
** For an example, in the first series is Chrome, with its Chemicaldyne subsidiary. Opposed by ''another'' Mega Corp, Murakumo Millennium, who has no qualms about contracting a terrorist group, known as Struggle, to carry out their plans. A third, smaller company called ProgTech is introduced in ''Master of Arena'', but is shown to be a benevolent actor as opposed Chrome and Murakumo.
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** The third series continuity sees Crest, Mirage, and Kisaragi. At first suppressed and kept in check by a supercomputer AI, they grew large (well, Crest and Mirage does, Kisaragi crushed in-between) after they broke free in Silent Line, Nexus introduces a new corporation, and Last Raven sees all companies band into one.
** The fourth in the series has the various companies destroy the various nations of the world in what is known as the National Dismantlement War and establish "Pax Economica", where survival depends on peoples' loyalty to a company. Ten years after that, in ''For Answer'', they form the League of Ruling Companies, which still basically rules the world and has these companies band together to become a single superpower, in theory, at least.
* Czerka Corporation from ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', shown as almost ''always'' being on the bad-side, and they're pretty much too big for Authorities to handle and police themselves.
* ExoGeni Corporation and Binary Helix, two human MegaCorps in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' fall under this trope perfectly. During the course of the game, Shepard discovers that ExoGeni let its employees get possessed by a malevolent [[Starfish Alien]] ''just to study what the effects would be'', and when things got out of control decided to kill everyone involved and erase all the evidence. Binary Helix, meanwhile, discovered a cryogenically-frozen [[Bug War|rachni]] egg on a derelict spaceship. Two thousand years earlier, the Council races fought a centuries-long war aganst the rachni and were finally forced to commit genocide to end it. Binary Helix decided to ''breed new rachni soldiers and market them as a superweapon for the [[Big Bad]]''; the solution once they inevitably rebelled was to kill everyone involved and erase all the evidence. Both corporations are linked to the human-supremacist [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|well intentioned extremists]]/[[Complete Monster|complete monsters]] organisation Cerberus.
** ''[[Mass Effect|Mass Effect: Ascension]]'' introduced us to the Eldfell-Ashland Energy Consortium, one of Cerberus' shell companies and responsible for multiple "accidental" in-utero exposures to element zero. About 10% of foetuses exposed develops biotics; 30% develop fatal cancers.
** ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' gives us Elkoss Combine, a volus Mega Corp which produces, amongst other items, weapons, food, omni-tools, medical and beauty products. An ad on Illium advises users of one of their beauty products that uses sonic waves to cease using it immediately. Another ad mentions one of their weapons, which ''also'' uses sonic waves. Even better - Those two are the same ad, and its implied that the beauty project and the weapon are one and the same.
* The Shai-Gen Corporation from ''Crackdown'' and also {{spoiler|the Agency itself}}.
* Houses in ''[[Imperium Nova]]'' can seem more like this than [[Feudal Future|feudal nobles]]. Especially those operating in the mercantile, transportation, technology, financial, geological, or [[Private Military Contractors|military]] spheres.
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* Surely Acme, makers of innumerable [[Warner Bros]]. cartoon products, must qualify? Certainly they're the only company big enough to arrange [[Product Placement]] whenever the coyote makes a purchase.
* Misery Inc. of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]''. It's CEO, [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Lucius Heinous VII]], is identified as the mayor of [[A Hell of a Time|Miseryville]] on the [[Disney XD]] website, which still accuratly describes his position.
* Depending on how one looks at it the Irken Empire of [[Invader Zim]] could be this, or at least striving to be.
* Possibly [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "Got Game" where we see a company named "Mega[[My Nayme Is|lo]]corp" in passing. [[One of Us|Knowing the creators, it wouldn't be a surprise.]]
* Alomst every product in ''[[King of the Hill]]'' is made by Mega-lo-Mart.
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== Real Life ==
* Cracked gives us [http://www.cracked.com/article_18845_6-secret-monopolies-you-didnt-know-run-world_p2.html Six secret monopolies you didn't know run the world].
* The British and Dutch East India Companies, as already noted in the ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' example above. Until the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, the BEIC owned India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (all of which was simply called "India" at the time). The Dutch company owned Indonesia until 1800, when it went bankrupt. Both were among the very first joint-stock corporations, as well.
* [[Your Mileage May Vary|Depending on what you personally believe]], The Church of Scientology can be viewed as an organization that, at least, ''aspires'' to achieve this.
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** [http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/362/emerson.pdf A citation] for those who like such things. Disney does have that sort of legal authority but the Florida legislature can remove it.
* The Hudson's Bay Company owned the vast majority of the land now known as western Canada up until the late 19th century. It acted as the de facto government for the area, issuing its own currency and enforcing a monopoly on trade. The company survives into the present day, though it's no longer the Mega Corp it once was, being best known as the owner of several Canadian department store chains. It lost its independence after being bought out by the Zucker family in 2006, having lasted for more than ''three hundred and thirty years''.
* Inco, subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale, can sometimes look like an evil Mega Corporation right out of a Cyberpunk story. Richer than whole countries, it buys and takes lands away from their people to mine metals (mostly nickel), bribing politicians to pay the least possible amount in taxes and fees. Once on their land, the union and employment laws of the country do not even apply anymore, and things have sometimes gone so far that the company was removed from the [[FTSE 4 GOOD]] index for failing to meet their human rights criteria. It also created a lot of problem for the environment, for example their plan to let go of their acidic waste directly in the Unesco classed lagoon in new caledonia (a "coincidence" when the Unesco decided to enter the coral barrer reef on the World Heritage List means that the part where their waste pipeline leads is one of the few not under the protection of the List).
* [[The New Russia|Russian]] company Transmashholding doesn't make ''everything'' but it does own all the locomotive, wagon, and other railway-related manufacturers, so it's only competing with itself. It acts like a cross between a close subsidiary and business partner of Russian Railways, itself technically a large corporation, albeit one owned by the government and whose president is a political appointee.
** [[The New Russia]] is, in fact, chock full of Evil Mega Corps; during the 90's, they were bigger than the government. The most notorious is certainly Gazprom, which produces natural gas used to heat most of Europe; other ones include LukOil (oil), RusAl (aluminium), MTS, BeeLine and MegaPhone (cell phones; MTS is in fact a subsidiary of the much larger but lesser known AFK Sistema, a [[Mega Corp]] that makes everything but is most known for telecommunications and a recurring egg-shaped logo that comes in various colors for its various subsidiaries).
* For decades, corporations that owned coal mines in the U.S. Appalachian Mountains could get away with pretty much anything, and this led to a cautionary tale of what exactly this kind of behavior tends to result in. When the miners formed a union, the union leader was gunned down by 17 hired goons, and when a sympathetic sheriff investigated they had ''him'' killed as well and promptly tried to crush the union with yet more copious brutality, which resulted in the union militarizing and [[Bomb-Throwing Anarchists|radicalizing]] to the point where, when the actual law enforcement (who, granted, likely had had bribes from the companies) were called in to deal with "scabs" being sniped at, they were attacked by several thousand armed and angry miners talking about forming a [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|"workers' state" and of exterminating their oppressors and anybody remotely connected to them.]]<br /><br />This led to the [[wikipedia:Battle of Blair Mountain|Battle of Blair Mountain]], between 13,000 miners and a 2,000-man, hodge-podge army consisting of [[Pinkerton Detective|Baldwin & Felts agents,]] probably corrupt cops, ROTC graduates who had been rapidly shipped to the scene by a rightfully alarmed Federal government, and miscellaneous [[World War I]] veteran volunteers, who eventually managed to defeat the miners. Nearly 1,000 miners were charged with treason and would likely have resulted in the largest mass execution in U.S. judicial history if not for the fact that the rampant corruption of the corporations came to light as being responsible for everything in the first place, leading to a public outcry that prevented it from being carried out. Unfortunately, it took until [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s election for most of those on trial to be pardoned and the beginning of modern labor laws.
* Comcast. They even have localized Monopolies in some areas of the world. As a result of a localized monopoly, they can allow their customer service to slack because what choice do people have during monopolies? There are many places in America where you have to buy Comcast and deal with any data caps or restrictions they provide, or else you do not get internet. At ''all''. This is especially prevalent in their tech support, which is handled by another outsourcing company where the average employee retention span of ''a month''.
** Not to mention, Comcast and other ISPs made it illegal for small towns to run their own ISPs -- when some of these ISPs were actually ''better'' than what they had!
** They have only gotten bigger, too; they are now the majority partner in [[NBC]] [[Universal]].
** A lot of ISP companies in general. The only reason they even ''have'' customers was the aforementioned lobbying and making sure they are the only options available instead of just ''providing better service''.
* The [[wikipedia:IG Farben|IG Farben corporation]] was a German chemical conglomerate that consisted of such present day firms as Bayer and BASF to name a few. By the 1930s, it had grown to become the 4th largest corporation in the world behind Standard Oil, General Motors and US Steel, but more importantly for this trope it had become intimately involved with [[Those Wacky Nazis|the Nazi party]], providing much of the German economy's exports as well as a sizable amount of its domestic industrial base. This economic importance buttressed the Nazi party through taxes, jobs and war material, and IG Farben worked hand in hand with the Wehrmacht taking over the chemical industries of conquored territories, becoming one of the largest users of slave labour in the process. Some of IG Farben's wartime low-lights were the construction of a synthetic rubber plant next to the Auschwitz concentration camp making use of over 80,000 slave labourers, and the patent on the Zyklon B poison gas that killed millions at the same. After the war, the company was deemed to be too corrupt due to the high number of war crimes that it committed and was broken up into its constituent firms.
* The [[wikipedia:United Fruit|United Fruit Corporation]] came to dominate the economies of several Central American countries in the early 20th century due to its near monopoly in the Caribbean fruit trade. At one point United Fruit took effective control of the entire nation of Guatemala, giving meaning to the term [[Banana Republic]] in the process. Or, in other words: Chiquita is the devil. Seriously.
* Costco has become a variant of the "makes everything" in that it sells almost every single thing a human being needs to live, from cradle to [http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/17/news/fortune500/costco_caskets/ grave]. One could theoretically go one's entire life on Costco-sold products except for the textbooks you take to school and the tux/dress you are married in.
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