Take Over the World: Difference between revisions
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'''The Brain:''' [[Once an Episode|The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!]]|''[[Pinky and The Brain]]''}}
What's the goal most every villain has in mind? Why of course, it's World Domination[[Tradesnark™|®]]! [[Ambition Is Evil|Ambitious]], [[Pragmatic Villainy|more logical]] and sometimes [[Easily-Conquered World|easier]] than [[The End of the World as We Know It|destroying the world]], as [[Evil Plan
Villains who want this will occasionally [[Evil Versus Evil|combat other villains]] who want to destroy the world, and sometimes, just sometimes, [[Eviler Than Thou|team up with the heroes to do it.]] After all, you [[Evil Versus Oblivion|can't conquer the world if it's destroyed]], right? Whether or not the villain attempts to stab the heroes in the back the instant the world is safe, or they nod and civilly go back to their Secret Lairs in a gentleman's agreement to face each other tomorrow depends on the villain.
This trope is sometimes subverted when the villain [[The Bad Guy Wins|actually succeeds]], and it turns out that ruling the world [[Wanting Is Better Than Having|isn't nearly as gratifying as they thought it would be]]
The reverse is if they did it with [[Mass Hypnosis]] to get rid of [[The Evils of Free Will]], then it'll be considerably easier to rule... and so dreadfully boring they undo the whole thing just to have someone to talk to.
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** ''[[UFO Robo Grendizer]]'': Planet Vega had become unstable due to the overexploitation of ores of vegatron, a highly radioactive material. King Vega needed to find another world to settle his people on, and so he began conquering other worlds. That expansionist campaign finally led them to Earth.
* Tadase's goal in ''[[Shugo Chara]]'' (or at least his [[Ghost in the Machine|would-be self]]'s goal) is pretty clearly spelled out as World Domination.
* ''[[Princess Tutu]]'s'' [[All There in the Manual|Japanese official website]] listed profiles for most of the major
* Il Palazzo of ''[[Excel Saga (manga)|Excel Saga]]'' wants to take over the world, which he believes has become corrupt. He decides a more reasonable goal is to start with just Japan, and the best way to take over Japan is to [[Take Over the City|start with one city]].
* After {{spoiler|Chao Lingshen}} is revealed as the [[Big Bad]] of the Mahora Festival in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', we finally get a peek at her character bio. Listed under her Likes? World Domination.
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* General Zod in ''[[Superman II]]'' did take over Earth after defeating the pesky son of Jor-El. It just didn't last because of Superman.
** Technically he is only shown taking over the presidency of USA.
* ''[[The Blood Waters of Dr. Z]]'': Dr Z wants to take over the world. Dr Z wants to take over the
* ''[[Star Wars]]'': Senator Palpatine, AKA <s> Rapmaster</s> Darth Sidious, didn't just take over a world, he took over an entire ''galaxy''. Beat that!
* M. Bison himself in ''[[Street Fighter (film)|Street Fighter]]''. [[The Nostalgia Critic|Of course]]!
* ''[[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra]]'': the goal of Cobra is
* In ''[[The Shadow]]'' the villain is a descendant of Genghis Khan. He says that his ancestor conquered half the world and he's here to "finish the job".
* Recurring villain goal in the ''[[Scanners]]'' movies:
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== Literature ==
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': Sauron already controlled the greater part of the world by the main story opens. Two ages before that, his
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': Lord Voldemort has this goal, now that he's {{spoiler|functionally immortal}}.
* [[Deconstructed]] in ''[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]''. As he works on his latest [[Evil Plan]] (and afterwards) Doctor Impossible wonders what "taking over the world" even means, having tried everything from [[Time Travel]] to [[Noodle Incident|an army of fish]]:
{{quote|What does it mean to conquer the world? Is there really a way to do it? Do you have to be the richest one, or the smartest one, or to beat everyone in a fight? Or just to know you could? Is it to be invincible? ... Does it just mean to get the girl you really wanted?}}
* ''[[Ender's Game]]'': Peter Wiggin, the brother of Ender begins putting his
* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]'s ''[[John Carter of Mars|A Fighting Man of Mars]]'', this is the jeddak of Jalar's
* It is eventually revealed late in the ''[[Everworld]]'' series that this is the master plan of {{spoiler|the witch Senna Wales.}}
* ''[[The Draka]]'': The Draka seek to conquer the world so that there are no other competing ideologies or worldviews to their own. The existence of liberal democracy is considered a direct threat to their empire.
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* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': In "Tomb of the Cybermen", Kleig, a human helping the Cybermen for power, goes on a rant about how the world is a disorganized mess of conflicting ideals, and only his superior intellect could bring it together to solve all its problems. A few seasons later, in "The Invasion", Tobias Vaughn, also helping the Cybermen, would make almost word-for-word the same rant.
** In the new series Series 3 finale, The Master takes over the world. [[Reset Button|It gets undone]]. He does however seem to [[For the Evulz|enjoy it]], [[Awesome Music (Sugar Wiki)|playing music]], [[Foe Yay|torturing his prisoners]] and [[Ax Crazy|planning to take over the universe for all time]]. In The End of Time, {{spoiler|the Master takes over the world again. Once again, [[Reset Button|it gets undone]].}}
** It's probably worth noting that in the new series, at least, when an episode takes place on Earth, chances are good the [[Monster of the Week|Alien of the Week]] is trying to take over the world or some variant on that theme. Recurring villains the Cybermen are also proponents of
* The ultimate goal of every single villain in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' is the conquest of the Milky Way galaxy. Every. Single. One.
* ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' makes Rita's motivations clear the moment her <s>can</s> [[Sealed Evil in a Can|space dumpster is unsealed.]] ''"After 10,000 years I'm free! '''It's time to conquer Earth!'''"'' Same goes for the motivation of every other [[Power Rangers]] villain ''ever''.<ref>
** To be fair, some villains have slight differences in objective. For example, in [[Power Rangers Dino Thunder]], [[Big Bad]] Mesagog wants to return the world to being reptiles. This even gets [[Lampshade Hanging]] by Tommy: "Why can't you just want to take over the world like all the other freaks?"
* This is [[Big Bad]] Herrick's ultimate plan in season 1 of ''[[Being Human (UK)]]''.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Risk]]'', "The Game of World Domination".
** In the german version, it has been ''[[
* ''World War IV'', which is ''Axis and Allies'' meets ''[[Fallout]]''.
* ''History of the World''.
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** Shar is an exception: the Lady of Loss wants to ''[[Omnicidal Maniac|destroy]]'' the world, not rule it.
* In the Kalamar D&D setting, the holy book of the [[Lawful Evil|god of tyranny]] is a [[Author Tract|political manifesto]] that not only proclaims the deity's intention to do this, but why it's ''absolutely imperative'' that his followers make it happen, [[Knight Templar|for the greater good of all sentients]].
* ''[[Cartoon Action Hour]]'': All three sample series' [[Big Bad]] (Nekkrottus, General Archnid, and Maxilliam Mercy) have this trope at their
* The ''[[Net Runner]]'' card "[http://www.netrunneronline.com/cards/world-domination/ World Domination]". If the corp manages to score the card, it wins the game.
{{quote|So, Wilson, how in the frack did you know the fileset was secret plans for world domination?
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== Webcomics ==
* [[MAG-ISA]]
* Tony of ''[[Real Life Comics]]'', being the [[Mad Scientist]] that he is, does [http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/020104.html set out] to accomplish this goal for one story like because, according to him, [[Card-Carrying Villain|that's what evil people are supposed to do.]] He manages to succeed in the end, even defeating a challenger to his reign, but relents when he starts to discover just how much work is involved.
* ''[[Bob and George]]'' [[Deconstructed Trope]] the trope in a short-lived sub-comic ''Raw Lemons and Baked Pizza''. After having it up to here with Dr. Wily, Mega Man finally spells out just what taking over the world will require. Namely, having to sort out the already noticeable mess of differences between various nations, having to deal with the various uprisings, learning ever language known to man just to communicate with them, getting people to accept his rule in the first place and the insane amounts of stress that would be implied. It ends on a nice humorous note as Dr. Wily, having clearly gone too insane to recover, laments that he already had a custom gold world-domination crown made.
* Subverted in ''[[Girl Genius]]'', where by the start of the story, the [[Mad Scientist|evil mad genius]] Baron Wulfenbach has ''already'' taken over the world with his [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040806 no-nonsense straightforward plan]. It is then doubly subverted by the Baron hating being the ruler of Europe, but doing it anyways because he believes [[Vetinari Job Security|the world needs him]] (and it probably ''does''). Indeed, the Baron took over the world largely to stop everyone else from trying to do so and wrecking everything in the process. Because the comic takes place in a world full of [[Mad Scientist
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'': Happens a number of times. Bun-Bun and K'Z'K have both tried to take over the main Sluggy universe (Bun-Bun actually succeeded, for all of ten minutes). The Dimension of Pain demons apparently took over their home dimension in order to make it "of Pain," and tried to do the same thing to the Dimension of Lame. This is also the long term goal of the Hereti Corporation and the K'Z'K cults that have sprung up following the Demon's death.
* ''[[Friendly Hostility]]'': Collin, is a megalomaniac who has dreams of becoming a dictator to politically unstable third world countries. Several arcs have sprung from this desire.
* ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'' used the subversion - in a plotline where it appeared that Herdthinners CEO R.L. had been eaten by bears, his even more ruthless wife, Angelique, took over the company and slowly replaced the normal employees with ones that suffered from domestication. Since domestication causes absolute loyalty, she planned on creating an army of them to eventually Take Over The World. After her husband returned alive and well, he reminded her of the headaches of trying to run the whole world and they agreed to just make gobs of money instead. But the last strip in the storyline did show her encouraging her children to play Risk and learn from it.
* ''Evil, INC'' is also an
* ''[[Dr. Nonami]]'': Mechano's goal is world conquest. So far it's not going very well.
* [http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/everybody-wants-to-rule-the-world/ Deconstructed] by ''[[Bug (webcomic)|Bug]]''.
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* If you count humanity as one deeply fractionated empire then we've already achieved this. [[Galactic Conqueror|But as we all know, one world is not enough.]]
* The person in real life who set the record for most land conquered was Temujin, better known by his title Genghis Khan (even more, if you also count the conquests of his sons). He even invoked this goal when choosing that title, which roughly means "Oceanic ruler".
* [[Alexander the Great]] conquered what was the known world of ancient times, all before he was 33. In fact, he took massive slabs of territory that [[Ancient Greece|the Greeks]] ''hadn't even heard of'' before he started conquering the places in between. Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to cement his control over most of it, or raise a good
* [[The Roman Empire|Caesar Augustus]] accomplished this, in that he took over an already-powerful republic and made himself absolute ruler. Contemporaries would compare him to Alexander the Great, but Augustus pointed out that it was far more difficult to rule an empire than to conquer one.
* While Peter the Great's infamous challenge to his successors to conquer the world is a fabrication of Anti-Russian propaganda, the [[Tsarist Russia|Russian Empire]] at its height covered more than one-sixths of the Earth's landmass.
* [[Napoleon Bonaparte]], maybe. What is certain in sure terms is that he wanted to make France the principal state in Europe, a large and prosperous military power full of national pride that would dominate the continent and lord over a vast colonial empire; essentially a new Roman Empire with Paris as its capital instead of Rome. He changed his tactics to accomplish this goal several times, but it was always a constant of Britain (which traditionally tried to undermine any continental power that it perceived as growing too powerful) and a shifting coalition of European allies opposing France to break the new empire. He did manage to take over all of continental Western and Central Europe, but was eventually outdone after the disastrous venture in Russia and the War of the Sixth Coalition. He escaped his exile on Elba to try again, but Waterloo proved to be the hypothetical nail in Napoleon's coffin, not the turning point of the wars.<ref>Even if Napoleon's forces had managed to beat Britain and Prussia there and then and managed to occupy the Low Countries there would be still more Russians, Austrians, ''more'' British and Prussians, and others ready to oppose him, all now using the same once-revolutionary tactics of Napoleon.</ref>
* The British, through a combination of trade and military action, created [[The British Empire|an empire that covered a quarter of the globe]], across so many lines of longitude that famously "the sun never set" on their Empire.
** As well as, arguably, all of the world's oceans.
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