The biggest benefit of being an Ultimate Life Form, compared to just being a vampire: getting a tan.
Eddie: So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon, for this freeway? I don't get it.
Judge Doom: Of course not, you lack vision. But I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly-prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see! My God, it'll be beautiful.
Judge Doom: Of course not, you lack vision. But I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly-prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see! My God, it'll be beautiful.
Villains commit crimes for many reasons, frequently petty and short-sighted. Occasionally though, there are villains with a clear goal behind committing their atrocities; some great, some terrible, all terrifyingly well executed. These are Visionary Villains, who see "the big picture", and have a clear head about what they want to accomplish and how to do it without juggling a Villain Ball. They are defined by the word "Ambition", and no matter how noble their intentions are, fundamentally want to change things and pridefully think they know best.
As antagonists, their morality can be anywhere on the scale from Well-Intentioned Extremist to Complete Monster; all that changes is the motivation for wanting to achieve their goal. The common thread is that they have seen the state of the world and want to change it, whether into something better or worse varies.
A sympathetic villain may want to kill the people responsible for their Dark and Troubled Past and Freudian Excuse so it never happens to someone else, perhaps becoming an avenging angel or Anti-Hero of sorts. On the other hand, a laughing monstrous Card-Carrying Straw Nihilist may want to Take Over the World (or end it) because they see society as nothing more than a poor Masquerade, and peeling it away will expose the true face of humanity.
If they assemble a team or organization around themselves, expect them to give at least one New Era Speech to less ambitious, clear-sighted, or bright minions. Their individual styles of leadership are often directly related to their goal. A charismatic Dark Messiah may gather followers and teach them Utopia Justifies the Means, an Evil Overlord will rally The Empire to realize their vision of a peaceful unified One World Order, and a Mad Scientist will create Tree People not for pure science, but to replace a planet-killing humanity. The two powers all Visionary Villains share are a big brain and silver tongue. This trope is a part of what Nietzsche said defined the Übermensch, so villainous characters who evoke that trope are also this by definition.
Contrast Cut Lex Luthor a Check and Disappointed by the Motive. The opposite of Punch-Clock Villain and Generic Doomsday Villain. Minor or petty villains who yell "Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!" frequently sneer at this. Sub-Trope of Overly Ambitious Goal.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Berserk: Griffith, the peasant boy turned mercenary who dreamt of having his own kingdom, is a... complex example. Pre-Eclipse, he wants to overthrow the current class system, not so much because he thinks that such systems are fundamentally flawed, but because he thinks there's been a mistake in exactly who should be sitting on top. (Spoiler: he thinks it's him.) At best, you could say that he's in favor of upward mobility as opposed to true equality; at worst he's simply self-serving and narcissistic. Post-Eclipse, his rule seems largely benevolent (discounting what he had to do to get there), but it's unclear whether this is how he intends to run things long-term or if he's just cultivating a good public image until he can solidify his rule, so while he very well may be this trope, he might also simply be a power-mad Pragmatic Villain who's found that a reputation as a visionary best serves his purpose. He's playing a long game, and his ultimate goals are still largely unclear.
- Bleach: Although Aizen's initial motivation seems to be primarily Despotism Justifies the Means with a dash of For the Evulz, the end of his fight with Ichigo suggests a deeper motivation concerning a disgust with how the Soul Society is run, especially in regard to the role (or seemingly lack of one) played by the Soul King. Claiming that just accepting the world as it is like Urahara told him to be the mentality of the weak while the strong force the world to conform to their ideals.
- Chrono Crusade: The manga presents Aion as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who plans to change the corrupt systems of the world. The anime version is much more of a Card-Carrying Villain, but he still has a very clear goal in mind (switching Heaven and Hell) and carefully plans his actions to reach it.
- In Code Geass, both the motivation of Emperor Charles and Marianne's Assimilation Plot and, if you consider him a villain, also the motivation of Lelouch Lamperouge.
- Death Note has Light Yagami, an example of a Visionary Villain Protagonist. He uses the titular artefact to perform vigilante justice and dreams of ruling over a perfect world free of crime and corruption.
- Digimon Fusion: Lord Bagra prides himself on being this. In his case, his ultimate goal is to fuse the Digital World and the human world into one, allowing him to recreate both humans and Digimon into what he believes to be perfect beings. In a case of Evil Virtues, he believes that the true sign of a ruler is to have a vision for the world they wish to create. Before he destroys his brother AxeKnightmon for good, Bagra calls him out on his lack of vision, AxeKnightmon’s true goal being little more than surpassing his older brother in power. Bagra says that it’s his brother’s lack of vision that made him the inferior of the two for so long. By contrast, Shoutmon, the little Hot-Blooded dragon with a Hair-Trigger Temper, actually earns Bagra’s respect by showing him that he has a true vision for creating a kind Digital World.
- In Dragon Ball Super, Zamasu and his partner Goku Black are this. Thinking that mortals were squandering the gifts of the gods and ruining the beauty of creation while the Gods were too lazy to intervene, Zamasu decides to take matters into his own hands, thinking to bring justice and make the universe perfect by killing every single mortal and God to create a new era of justice and peace on the multiverse.
- In Drifters, the Black King seeks a world without humans — which he intends to create by annihilating them and teach the magical creatures how to live in society, giving them religion, knowledge, and the means to survive in a single, unified front.
- Dr. STONE: Shishio Tsukasa. After being embittered by the greed and corruption of the 21st century, he decided upon waking into a primitive world thousands of years in the future that he would seize the opportunity to give humanity a fresh start and build a stone-age society in harmony with the natural world. To that end, he immediately set himself to destroying anyone who might return the world to the way it was, particularly Science Hero protagonist Senku, as well as carefully selecting others with the skills to help him achieve his vision.
- Gamaran: Jinsuke Kurogame's one of the greatest swordsmen in the world and created his own martial art school (the Muhou Ryu), composed of strong warriors from many different styles. His plans involve taking over Kyushu and turning it into an independent nation, and then use it to challenge the Bakufu, conquer the rest of Japan, and turn it into a country of warriors where strength and power are the most important things.
- Gundam:
- Quite common, dating back to Gihren Zabi in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. People like Anavel Gato, Char Aznable, Treize Khushrenada, and others fit this trope perfectly. Anavel Gato chews out Kou for not bothering to understand Zeon's objectives and mindlessly serving the Federation. Char has a very well-organized and detailed ideology he inherited from his father and resents Amuro Ray for not being similar ("Unlike you, I'm more than just a pilot!"). Treize, especially, has a vision of the glories and terrors of war and wishes to drive home to humanity the true horrors of war… but due to his suicide-through-enemy-fire, he escaped responsibility for his actions.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Ribbons sees himself as a benevolent god who lead humanity into a utopia and prepare them for contact with aliens.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and its sequel Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny explore both the great and terrible sides of this archetype. In the first, Rau Le Creuset foresees how mankind's relentless desire for progress at any cost and constant dehumanization of itself is creating a world of endless, escalating war with no chance of escape. His solution to end this suffering is by convincing both sides of the human race to trigger a WMD fueled Armageddon and wipe everyone out to end the pain. In the second, Gilbert Durandal comes to a similar conclusion, but is instead convinced he can save us all by enacting a policy of genetic determinism where people wouldn't have to reach beyond their station and battle for power. The catch? This would require absolute control of the planet, through means of propaganda, assassinations, and ultimately a Wave-Motion Gun to use on any dissenters.
- Chairman Durandal from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny is a tragic case. He firmly believes that mankind is doomed to destroy itself. His plan to mitigate this is a utopia with a rigid, genetically-determined social structure to obviate the need for war. Part of his motivation is anger at his plans being rejected, as shown by his willingness to sabotage less-radical peacemaking efforts.
- Some of the main villains from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure have ambitious far-reaching goals, using their powers or artifacts in order to bring about a new world order, and care not about how much blood they must spill to achieve that end.
- Kars wanted nothing more than to help his race overcome their weakness to sunlight and "conquer creation", thereby becoming the most powerful creatures to have ever existed. However, as he needed to sacrifice a preposterous amount of living beings in order to do so, and his fellows weren't interested in running roughshod over the world in the first place, they eventually turned on him and he was forced to kill all of them in self-defense, making him and his three Co-Dragons the last of their kind. He still wants to become the Ultimate Lifeform, just now more openly for his own benefit and pride over all others.
- Dio Brando and Enrico Pucci conclude that humanity's shortest way to happiness is "peace of mind". Thus they decide to just bring peace to humankind, but by making everything able to see their future and allegedly be able to accept their impending destinies. However, they've killed dozens to reach that and their goal isn't that far from "despair".
- The very patriotic Funny Valentine wants to shake up the hierarchy of the Christian world by gathering the pieces of Jesus Christ's mummified corpse. Not only would this relic give the United States supreme moral authority for most of the world, the relic's own powers would make it so the country would be forever blessed, anything that could be "bad" being repelled into someone else in the world. Likewise, Valentine deems it necessary to coerce and assassinate several people, as individual interests couldn't be compared to that of a whole country.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Suguru Geto views the current state of Jujutsu society as inherently unjust: non-sorcerers who can't control their Cursed Energy are the ones who unwittingly spawn Cursed Spirits from their negative emotions, and the task of stopping them falls onto sorcerers. However, non-sorcerers are at best completely unaware of the sacrifices sorcerers make for their sake, and at worst actively persecute sorcerers due to their strange abilities. Geto's goal is therefore to kill all non-sorcerers, which would free sorcerers from their obligation to thanklessly serve the ungrateful masses while also making Cursed Spirits extinct.
- Hades Vandein, the apparent Big Bad of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, presents himself to his underlings as a visionary who sponsors research into dangerous Belkan war legacy to discover new sources of clean energy. The facts are, however, that said research involves mass slaughter of innocents, that he himself has turned his body into a living weapon that has to kill regularly to avoid self-destructing in a very nasty fashion, and that even if clean energy is his real goal, it's only because he wants to monopolize it, adding white-collar crime to the list of his transgressions, for a good measure.
- Hattori from Nabari no Ou is portrayed as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to rewrite history to fix the corrupt world. Thanks to his charisma, about half of the good guys are on his side at one point.
- Pain, Obito and Madara of Naruto have clear goals and plans to achieve the utopia they envision. The first wanted to create a system similar to the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, while the latter two veer more towards a standard Assimilation Plot. As the plans of the former two were mutually exclusive, they danced around each other, trying to advance their own goals faster. Whether or not Madara's claims towards his ultimate goals are to be believed is a debatable matter for some.
- Fate Averruncus's organization in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, to the point that it's questionable whether his goal is actually that bad and the protagonists are simply opposing the means he's using to bring about that goal. His true ultimate goal is "saving" the Magical World (which will soon suffer complete magical depletion) through an Assimilation Plot, and he progresses towards it: 1: Without informing anyone but select co-conspirators about the true plan, playing the rest as Unwitting Pawns, 2: By engineering wars, unrest and disasters that cause untold suffering on a massive scale, and 3: Stopping at nothing to neutralize anyone who might pose even the slightest threat to his plans, even if that "threat" is the possibility to find out how to Take a Third Option where nobody dies.
- Despite an abundance of dickish villains who do their devious acts on a whim, One Piece surprisingly has one in the form of Hody Jones. He wants to restore Fishman pride, with his crew, The New Fishman Pirates, by fostering hatred between the people of the sea and those of the land: humans, by assassinating Queen Otohime, the greatest advocate for peace between fishmen & merfolk and humans, and using a human as a patsy, planning to kill King Neptune for his perceived "weakness", which is allowing humans to protect the island (e.g. Whitebeard, Big Mom), have his crew terrorize people who help humans, and after he takes over the kingdom and purges Fishman Island of "human-loving trash", he planned to enslave humans across the oceans, before setting his sights on becoming Pirate King.
- Shoko Makashima, the villain of the first season of Psycho-Pass, has the goal of destroying future Japan's Sibyl System, a computerized totalitarian software program that controls and judges citizens based on their emotional stability. He envisions a society where people are again free to experience "the splendor of their souls" without government control or regulation. That said, Makashima's methods of disrupting Sibyl — encouraging "latent criminals" to become serial killers, inciting riots and acts of terrorism and ultimately trying to sabotage Japan's food supply — are so extreme that it's hard to view him as sympathetic. In one episode, he even outright states that he doesn't care if his actions cause more harm than good — taking down Sibyl is to him a worthy end on its own.
- Soul Eater: Medusa Gorgon's ultimate goal turns out to be to reawaken a centuries-old Eldritch Abomination that will eventually cause The End of the World as We Know It (likely killing off the vast majority of people on Earth), and her motivation for this is that she despises the monotonous and law-abiding ways of all human civilizations and desires to "evolve society via fear" into her ideal of a lawless, post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- Batman: Ra's al Ghul is both Batman's most formidable enemy and the most visionary one. He sees humanity as a blight on Earth, and that the population needs to be culled for the good of the planet. Imagine someone taking David Attenborough's "controlling the population to allow the survival of the environment" quote and taking it to its extreme conclusion. He sees no one else but Batman as worthy enough to continue his legacy, though at the same time, he refuses to die and will do anything to avoid it.
- Superman: Lex Luthor is thoroughly convinced that he has humanity's best interests in mind in everything he does and that humanity's reliance on Superman shackles them. However, he devotes his time to trying to destroy Superman even though, as the Man of Steel himself notes, if Lex wanted to, he could've saved the world years ago. Some versions of him are more visionary than others.
- Watchmen: Ozymandias slaughtered half of New York, killing millions, in an attempt to save the rest of the world from a nuclear apocalypse — though as Doomsday Clock (2017) shows, he ends up failing when the plan is revealed and now he has a new plan involving killing both Dr. Manhattan and Superman.
- Judge Dredd: Most of Dredd's foes are motivated by either lust for power or mere sadism, but Judge Death believes that the supremacy of law can only be achieved by cutting off all crime at the root source: the genesis of life itself. With three equally insane followers, he laid waste to his world and now seeks to achieve the same goal across the entire multiverse.
- Marvel Universe:
- Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom believes to the very core of his being that what he's doing is right. He's looked in the future (his words) and only saw one potential future where everything ends up well, and that's under his reign, as per Doomwar. His Ultimate Marvel counterpart is not this trope, but in fact Ultimate Reed Richards is!
- X-Men: Magneto, at his most Anti-Villain, wants only to prevent mutantkind from undergoing the same persecution he did in WWII. Sometimes this means creating a private island/satellite for mutants, other times it means actively subjugating the human race to ensure they will never be a threat.
- Monstress: The Lord Doctor (Maika's father) claims that he wants to Take Over the World so that he can then restore the long-lost golden age of the Shaman-Empress's time, when Arcanics had such technology as space travel and time manipulation. Maika shoots back that despite all his justifications, all he really wants is to be a god.
- Scooby Apocalypse:
- The nanites created by Velma for Project Elysium were meant to eliminate humanity's negative emotions and drives, in order to bring about world peace. Instead, the project's leaders, known as The Four, secretly altered the nanites to instead remove The Evils of Free Will so that they could assume leadership of the world once everyone else was reduced to mindless sheep. Of course, their alterations caused everything to go horribly wrong, instead turning infected people into literal monsters.
- The Nanite King, an eventual embodiment of the nanites' evolving Hive Mind, comes to the conclusion that humanity is hopelessly flawed, and as such decides to use the monsters to wipe out what surviving enclaves of humans there still are. Then it intends to kill all the monsters too, leaving only basic plant and animal life to inherit the Earth.
- The Transformers (IDW): Megatron started out as a working-class revolutionary seeking to end the unjust segregation of Cybertronian society and topple the tyrannical government. Ironically for someone who kicked off a civil war that would last millions of years, he actually got his start writing seditious papers and advocating peaceful reform. Then Whirl gave him a hands-on demonstration on the effective use of violence.
Fan Works
- Ages of Shadow:
- Unlike his predecessors as Himinion, Boaz was not content to simply have the Shadow Walkers hide in the shadows and rule over countrysides, worshiping Jade/Yade Khan in secret. Instead, he turned the cult militant, to begin carving out an empire dedicated to Jade's worship and service. After his resurrection, he intends to topple modern civilization and then fuse his soul with a magical clone of Yade Khan, so that he can rule the world in her place.
- Brenner wants to gain immortality, not for personal gain but to be able to live long enough to eventually free all of humanity from death.
- Angel of the Bat: Kedar's ultimate goal in Da Pacem Domine is to see the world purged of sin, with he and his acolytes repeatedly invoking images of a world without war, murder, or sexual assault. He intends to do so via a planet-wide Mind Rape that psychically tortures anyone who doesn't meet his rigid, Knight Templar version of Catholic morality.
- The Butcher Bird: Grigori Vinci, captain of the Nightmare Pirates, seeks to find as much knowledge as possible, with the end goal of Complete Immortality for everyone. To this end, he's delved into Bio-Augmentation and Sympathetic Magic, as well as declaring war on the World Government and the Navy in the process.
- The Villain Protagonist of The Council Era (a Mass Effect fanfic), a salarian known as Tyrin Lieph, dreams of uniting the galaxy as a singular utopia. His Worthy Opponent Halak Marr seeks to overthrow the Citadel and establish the krogan as a sole-surviving Master Race. Their conflicting visions eventually erupt into the Krogan Rebellions.
- In Equestria: A History Revealed, the rebellious General Thunderhide chooses to ally himself with the clearly questionable Nightmare Moon out of his desire to shape Equestria into a better place, seeing this goal to be impossible under the continued rule of Celestia.
- Fallen King has Pegasus, who gleefully explains his plan to reshape the world in his image and to his rules.
- In The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas
, Charlotte Flair and her father, Ric Flair, have "Project Andre", a plan to turn Las Vegas back to the days where the casinos were run by organized crime. It involves the top four crime families (the Flairs, the McMahons, the Sammartinos, and the Yakuza) working together to strong-arm certain casino owners to selling and them buying them through an intermediary (in this case, investor and construction company owner John "Bradshaw" Layfield) until each one has their own casino.
- Whereas in canon he was the poster boy for Hidden Agenda Villain, Jewel of Darkness turns Slade into one of these. He firmly believes that the mounting tensions between the normal governments and the superpowered factions (good and evil) will lead to World War III and that the only true victors will be those who have gathered enough influence and reputation to become leaders in the devastated world afterwards.
- Maggie of Manhattan, a Gargoyles AU fic, has Higurashi, the Mad Scientist hired by Xanatos to takeover the Chimera project (as the Mutates are known here) after the lack of significant progress by previous director Dr. Cranley. Unlike the latter two, who saw the project as a means to an end (for Xanatos, it was another scheme to increase his power and resources, while for Cranley it was a mixture of scientific advancement and a chance to one-up the late Dr. Sevarius), Higurashi sees the project as an end unto itself — he wants to create enough Chimera to make them a self-sufficient species, and then help them craft their own culture and civilization which will remember him as the mythical figure who created them, granting him figurative immortality through legacy.
- In A Moth to a Flame, Marcy shows shades of this during her Motive Rant, as she sees conquering worlds (specifically Earth) as a way to end conflict and poverty.
- Loki, Big Bad of My Little Avengers. While he may appear to be doing things For the Evulz at first, it's eventually made clear that he has a vision of a world ruled by magic (preferably with him in charge, natch), and the entire plot is revealed to be one big Gambit Roulette dedicated to bringing this goal about. When he's defeated and killed, he still manages to die happy, knowing that the magic released by his death will permanently mutate Equestria, bringing his vision to fruition.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Sabrina dreams of a world that is a meritocracy, where people are free to try and reach the top based on their merits, rather than on things like lineage, and where there's nobody that tries to cut down those with bigger talents to make themselves look better. While that goal isn't so bad by itself, her way of achieving that world involves killing those she considers unremarkable or unworthy, or otherwise doing horrible things to them to give them the motivation to do something remarkable.
- The Powers of Harmony: Both Cetus and Eclipse have both convinced themselves that their plans for Eternal Night are what's best for the world. The only thing they disagree on is who should be in charge.
- Brox in With Strings Attached. Grunnel is frankly dazzled by his partner's ability to see the big picture, which is a trait no other Baravadan possesses, apparently. According to him, Brox is the only person with enough vision to try to do something about the problem of having no more monsters to fight, rather than just sit around hoping for monsters to turn up, like every other skahs does.
Films — Animation
- Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths has a particularly impressive example. While the Crime Syndicate of the parallel dimension mostly consists of superpowered thugs, Owlman is another creature entirely. Upon finding out about the existence of the multiverse, he comes to the conclusion that free will is an illusion as every choice we make is countered in another dimension. He decides that this makes his and everyone else's existence pointless, and in a matter of days, puts together a plan that will let him annihilate all life in all parallel dimensions that exist. He considers this act the only meaningful one he can make as it is truly unique and can only be done once by one being in all the multiverse.
- Monsters, Inc. 1: Waternoose intends to solve the looming energy crisis in the monsters' world and simultaneously revolutionize the scaring industry by kidnapping children and forcibly extracting their screams.
Films — Live-Action
- As Time Goes By: Weston wants to kill all of the sheep in the area so the farmers will sell him their land before ozone depletion leads to more rainfall and grass in Australia and lets him raise herds of cattle on land that currently needs twenty acres to support a single sheep.
- Chinatown: The hero attempts And Then What? against the villain, who reveals that he does in fact have something even bigger to strive for.
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh, my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. - The Dark Knight Trilogy:
- In The Dark Knight, everyone thinks that the Joker is "garbage who kills for money", or just a homicidal maniac who kills for kicks. However, he is adamant he has grander ambitions — he is out to give the city "a better class of criminal" and sees himself as heralding a new age of supervillainy, as well as working to expose the citizens of Gotham as just as bad as he is. He wants to tear away the veneer of civilization and watch everyone abandon the moral order they claim to value so highly.
"I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."
- Both Ra's al Ghul and Bane and Talia al Ghul from the first and third movies qualify, as well. Ra's sees the human race as inherently decadent and corrupt, with the League of Shadows acting to destroy the most significant sources of these sins at their zenith, the current target being Gotham. Considering what we see of the police force and general apathy of the citizens, he's not entirely wrong. Bane wishes to complete his vision though more dramatically, including literally showing Gotham how awful it is as even its strides towards peace and order between movies seem to be built primarily on lies and cover-ups. When it's shown later that he's merely The Dragon for Talia, and both actually want revenge for what happened to Ra's in the first film, how strong their visions remain, and how much they're just used as an excuse to blow up Gotham is called into question.
- In The Dark Knight, everyone thinks that the Joker is "garbage who kills for money", or just a homicidal maniac who kills for kicks. However, he is adamant he has grander ambitions — he is out to give the city "a better class of criminal" and sees himself as heralding a new age of supervillainy, as well as working to expose the citizens of Gotham as just as bad as he is. He wants to tear away the veneer of civilization and watch everyone abandon the moral order they claim to value so highly.
- Strack in Darkman, who bribes politicians, allies himself with gangsters, and regularly has people murdered in pursuit of a dream of creating a technologically advanced industrial complex and revitalizing the economy.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, shortly after he gains consciousness, Ultron comes to the conclusion that humans are a menace for the global peace and the planet Earth and that the Avengers actively prevent humanity from changing and evolving, so he decides that the only way to protect the world and bring about global peace is to "evolve", or alternatively extinguish, humanity and eliminate the Avengers.
- Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, the Big Bad of Black Panther (2018), believes that Wakanda has a moral duty to the rest of the world to use its advanced technology to upend the plight of black people suffering under the authority of empires. Using his birthright as the son of a slain Wakandan prince to usurp the throne, he begins deploying Wakanda's Vibranium weapons to their agents in other countries in the hopes that they will make their way into the hands of the impoverished to rise up and fight for dominance (something his father was in the process of planning as well before his death at the hands of the then-current king). However, much of the film paints him as self-serving more than seeking justice for oppressed black people, looking only to exact his own retribution and lash out at the world based on his personal trauma, with no concern for what happens along the way, and is not shy about pointing out how his goals and methods are no different than those empires he wishes to upend, which he embraces, saying that he learned from his enemies.
- Thanos believes that the universe will inevitably fall to ruin and demise due to overpopulation if nothing is done. His crusade to slaughter half the population of every world he encounters, and the quest to acquire the Infinity Stones, is all part of his grand vision to "save" the universe from itself. In Avengers: Endgame, his alternate version admits that he wanted gratitude, and seeing that people hated what he had done, decides to remake the universe to meet his vision.
- In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the High Evolutionary believes he has a grand mission of creating a utopia with the perfect species, culture, and planet. Unfortunately, it's clear this is all to feed his god complex, and his obsession with perfection causes him to always declare his creations a failure before discarding or destroying them. Even his closest subordinates realize he's not as grand a visionary as they believed as his Villainous Breakdown progresses.
- The Mask of Zorro: Don Rafael Montero desires to make a "free and independent" republic of California (with himself as the ruler of course), which involves using slave labor to dig up the Californian gold ore to use to buy it from General Santa Anna (who is completely unaware of its existence and believes it all comes from Spain). He self-describes himself as a "man with a vision," though his motivations seem to be at least partially based on how he was the military governor of California for Spain before he was ousted and forced to flee so for him, it's partially to take back his "rightful" place.
- MonsterVerse:
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The eco-terrorists' Mad Scientist accomplice Emma Russell is helping them to forcibly awaken and unleash all the dormant Titans around the world on humanity on-by-one, because she believes she can use the ORCA device to tame the Titans into coexisting with what humans survive the havoc of their awakenings and replenishing the world's ecosystems from humanity's abuse of the environment. She further justifies her plan because she's antsy about the government's own intentions to try exterminating all the Titans while they're asleep, and because she's disillusioned with Monarch's habit of sitting on their asses and not doing anything proactive or preemptive, insisting that her plan is the only rational choice left. Unfortunately for her, she massively overestimates herself — she awakens all the Titans without caring to discriminate between the benevolent ones and the truly harmful ones, and in the process she ends up awakening Monster Zero or Ghidorah: a hostile and genuinely malevolent alien who acts like a virus to Earth's natural order instead of replenishing it, the ORCA has no effect on Ghidorah except to piss him off even further, and he has designs on taking Godzilla's kingship over the other monsters so that he can annihilate and reshape the world with global destruction. This horrifies her so much that she defects back to the heroes' side at the climax.
- Godzilla vs. Kong: Apex Cybernetics CEO Walter Simmons rationalizes his plan to frame Godzilla for destroying an entire city and then having his Mechagodzilla kill him by claiming that he's returning control of the planet to humanity after the Titans' emergence in the previous movies proved that humanity isn't the dominant species. In truth, he's just an ambitious, self-serving and supremely arrogant Glory Hound who wants to prove that he's better than Godzilla via toppling him and ruling the world himself.
- In Mortal Engines, Valentine's absolutely right when he states Municipal Darwinism is unsustainable in the long term (something gone into in more detail in the books). He plans to use MEDUSA to blast London's way into Shan Guo to take their more plentiful resources instead of scavenging other cities.
- Arthur Jensen from Network initially seems to just be another Corrupt Corporate Executive like all the others at UBS. Then he ends up alone in a room with Howard Beale and turns out to be just as fanatical and crazy as Beale, just in the opposite direction; he believes that capitalism is the driving force of all reality and that he is bringing the world towards a Utopia where everyone works for one giant corporation that fulfills every need and in which every man, woman, and child has a share.
- Saw:
- After suffering a Trauma Conga Line that culminated in him attempting suicide, John Kramer developed a new outlook on life, feeling that most people are wasting their lives. He kidnaps criminals or assorted jerkasses and puts them through "games" where they must make a Life-or-Limb Decision or kill someone else and, if they survive, hopefully come away from it with a new appreciation for their lives. He's essentially a self-help guru whose idea of "self-help" involves a severed limb or two. It goes to show that he thinks the person who caused his ex-wife to have a miscarriage should be given a second chance.
- Knowing that he doesn't have long to live, John had recruited apprentices and accomplices (mostly people who survived his traps and adopted his worldview) to help him build his traps and procure new people to "test", as well as spread his message far and wide and take up the Jigsaw mantle after his death. Of all the accomplices, however, only Dr. Lawrence Gordon (who presumably couldn't succeed him due to not being an actual apprentice) can truly be said to have internalized his philosophy. Amanda Young simply murdered people outright with inescapable traps, viewing most of her victims as irredeemable, Mark Hoffman (John's first successor) never believed in his philosophy and simply followed it most of the time to cover himself, and Logan Nelson (a former apprentice who wasn't active until years after John and the other accomplices either died or were left with their fates hanging) went with his own idea of Jigsaw to enact revenge against those who wronged him.
- William Schenk, the copycat killer from Spiral, uses the Jigsaw killers' traps but has his own agenda, seeking to purge the Metropolitan Police Department of all its corrupt officers.
- The Operative from Serenity (2005) is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to create a utopia free from sin, for which he commits many atrocities. Interestingly, he knows that there's no place for him in that world.
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow has Doctor Totenkopf, disgusted with the world and planning to raze the planet and start over with an Ark of his own design full of animals collected from across the globe. He eventually has a change of heart, but by that time is dying alone on an uncharted island and his robots continue his work without him.
- Spider-Man 2: Dr. Octavius has a dream of creating fusion-based electricity for "the good of mankind". Too bad his generator quickly goes out of control upon activation, and the advanced brain-controlled robotic arms he built to handle it malfunction in the disaster and become brain-controlling robotic arms, pushing him to build a second, even bigger generator at any cost.
- Star Trek Into Darkness gives us two examples:
- John Harrison/Khan's speech about how the Augments were created to lead others to peace in a world at war.
- Admiral Marcus, who wanted to create a more militarized Starfleet in preparation for what he believed to be a looming war against the Klingons.
- Street Fighter (1994): M. Bison wants to create a race of genetically engineered Super Soldiers to wipe out all traces of race, nation, and creed so that the whole world can live in peace under his rule.
- In the Superman Film Series, Lex Luthor counts as this to some extent. Even if the goals of his plans (to make himself very rich and/or powerful) are fairly generic, the sheer scale of what he attempts (causing the west coast of America to fall into the sea and building new continents based on Kryptonian technology) is undeniably impressive.
- In Tetsuo: The Iron Man, the Metal Fetishist forces the Salaryman to view his supposed "utopia": a world that has been converted entirely to scrap metal, doomed to corrode into the dust of the universe.
- Cyrus of The Riffs in The Warriors. While not a villain from the perspective of the protagonists, his "vision" is that the gangs of New York should unite and take the city for themselves since they far outnumber the police. His assassination and the Warriors being framed for it kicks off the plot.
- Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit makes a surprisingly epic speech about his grand Earth-shaking vision of public freeways, to Valiant's chagrin. Unfortunately, his plan requires Toon Town to be wiped out first.
- X-Men Film Series:
- Magneto wants to create a world safe for mutants by any means necessary.
- Sebastian Shaw from X-Men: First Class, who wants to start World War III so that mutants can take over the planet. Though in his case it's because he's just in it to Take Over the World, with little actual regard for allowing his kind to thrive (he merely uses it as his rhetoric to recruit others). As above, Magneto is much more suited to the trope, even going so far as to applaud Shaw's vision of a mutant-dominated world but in exactly those terms, without the desire to rule over them as their supreme leader.
- In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Trask genuinely believes that uniting humanity against mutantkind is the gateway to creating world peace. Conversely, Magneto has a vision of a world where mutants lord over mankind, which, in his opinion, is the only way they can coexist with humans.
- In X-Men: Apocalypse, Apocalypse wants to destroy modern civilization in a global cataclysm which only the strongest will survive, after which he, as the strongest of all, will rule as a God-Emperor. Deconstructed, as his supposed over-idealistic ambition stems from a lack of maturity that comes with always getting what he wanted through power alone, and two of his followers (out of a mere total of four) turn on him for being needlessly cruel and ungrateful.
Literature
- Subverted in The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. Falco talks a big game about bringing back the glories of The Time of Myths, ushering the world into a new era of peace and prosperity, but is just a vicious, megalomaniacal Evil Sorcerer out for power.
- In the BattleTech Expanded Universe novels, Visionary Villain types are quite different than those who amass power for its own sake. The bigger heroes generally do things for the good of humanity overall, lesser heroes and some villains generally grab power for their own nation or group, and the real big villains are just in it for themselves. Examples:
- Hanse Davion fought several wars against the Draconis Combine and cut the Capellan Confederation in half. He always saw himself as striking against oppressive regimes run by madmen (which was true, in the case of the Confederation; debatable in the case of the Combine). He also saw himself, like many Successor State lords before him, as the fittest candidate for the 300-year vacant title of First Lord of the Star League. He was depicted as a scary man to be against, though with good intentions.
- Sun-Tzu Liao was willing to do terrible things, but his foremost goal was rebuilding the Capellan Confederation after Hanse broke it and Sun-Tzu's crazed mother all-but-destroyed the remnants. He's generally depicted as a villain and very dangerous, but one whose position was understandable and not nearly as bad as some.
- In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr aims to change the rules of the vampire narrative by learning to overcome the weaknesses and avoid the pitfalls that result in the vampires being defeated over and over again. Although his vision is of a world where vampires hold greater power, the Old Count later points out that he always gave the humans a way to (temporarily) beat him so that they wouldn't devise their own, more permanent methods.
- Cooking with Wild Game has Zattsu Suun, who cared enough about the future of Forest's Edge to murder its oppressors over a decades-long Evil Plan, yet not enough to stop his subordinates from raping its people. (He is explicitly said to be insane.)
- In the Everworld series, most of the villains are short-sighted hedonists who avert this trope, with the definite exception of Senna Wales, who has big plans for Everworld and very definite ideas of what she is going to do to it.
- The Expanse: Winston Duarte is a standard One World Order villain. He emphasizes to Singh that the people of Medina are not the enemy, but new subjects of the Laconian Empire. He is also aware that even if he succeeds, his plan will likely collapse after his death... so he uses the protomolecule to make himself into an immortal god-king. And that's peanuts compared to his revised vision for humanity in the finale, Leviathan Falls.
- The Grace of Kings: Emperor Mapidere genuinely wanted to lead the Daro States into an era of unity, peace, progress, and scholarship. Unfortunately, he couldn't accept constructive criticism and believed his vision justified any amount of human misery along the way, so he quickly took a nosedive into tyranny, but even his critics admit that there were some positive elements to his reign.
- Obould Many-Arrows from The Hunter's Blades Trilogy is an orc who has realized that the orcish traditional lifestyle of mindlessly raiding and pillaging is why the other races keep driving them back to the brink of extinction, and so he seeks to give them a better life. Using metaphorical truth, he convinces the Chaotic Evil orcish patron Gruumsh to empower him, and then uses that power to carve out the first-ever orcish kingdom and homeland. And then he stops conquering and settles for actually ruling his empire, showing orcs that there is more prosperity to be had by farming and trading than there is by being ravening hordes. Within a decade, the peace is strong enough that humans and orcs are freely trading, and even voluntarily intermarrying.
- Inheritance Cycle: Galbatorix has grand plans for ushering Alagaesia into an era of peace and prosperity. Too bad he uses such brutal means to achieve his ends...
- A Master of Djinn: It turns out that Abigail's motive in murdering her father and the rest with the ring wasn't anything petty like greed or revenge. No, she wants to ultimately restore the falling British Empire using it, perhaps even becoming queen.
- The Mental State: Zack may not be exactly 'evil', but he certainly has lofty ambitions, a brutal streak, and a devious mind. His schemes ultimately result in him imposing his own concept of morality on the entire American prison system.
- Serge Storms: Jackie Monroeville from Orange Crush runs a pretty cut-throat political campaign against a reform candidate just because she is dating the other candidate and wants to be First Lady of Florida (which, given his stupidity and malleability, would leave her in charge in all but name), but in the epilogue, once her plans succeed, she recognizes the need to actually do something useful with that power (maybe just to build a profile and legacy, maybe for Pet the Dog reasons) and cuts taxes, bring in more jobs, streamline bureaucracy, and eliminate some lobbying loopholes.
- Subverted and spoofed in the tenth entry of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Greater-Scope Villain duo boast that all their murders, arsons, and other atrocities are committed for higher purpose — when asked by a Mook about that purpose, they answer that their purpose is money and personal satisfaction.
- Smoke: Merrill Fullerton wants to re-shape the public impact of Big Tobacco by using the human genome project to eliminate genes likely to develop lung cancer and wants to use Freddy to break into the human genome project headqaurters to accomplish this goal.
- The Thrawn Trilogy: Grand Admiral Thrawn. All right, in his first-written appearance, what he wanted to do was crush the Rebellion and rebuild the Empire in a slightly less evil format than it previously was, but later-written works and a bit of Arc Welding say that he knew that the Vong were coming. By waging war against the Rebel Alliance, he could either crush them and have time to set up the Empire to rebuff the extragalactic invaders, or he'd force them to toughen up to defeat him. Either way, the victors would be far, far less inclined to rely on superweapons or lone heroes (which Thrawn regarded as excessively impractical and romantic, respectively), and much more likely to respond in a truly military manner when the galaxy was threatened again. Covering his bases, he had a clone set up in a secret base of his, just in case. Luke and Mara accidentally killed that clone while fighting off the base's defenses, but in Survivor's Quest, they find evidence that very strongly hints that There Is Another, and this time he's not their enemy.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- The Lord of the Rings: Sauron started out this way, determined to create peace and order on Middle-earth at any cost. Over time, though, he suffered Motive Decay and became a straight-up tyrant (The Dark Side Will Make You Forget is a recurring theme with Tolkien villains) determined to Take Over the World, subjugate everyone living it to his oppressive rule, and destroy anyone foolish enough to defy him. Sauron's path to villainy is later repeated on a smaller scale with Saruman.
- The Silmarillion: Back at the very beginning, Morgoth wanted to create a world of his own imagination, and when he found that impossible, settled for wrecking up the world that was actually created.
- Warrior Cats: Tigerstar dreams of ending the constant war and uniting the four Clans as one, entering a new age of prosperity as a result. Of course, his ego makes him believe that he is the one suitable ruler of this combined Clan, and it leads him down a dark path in his struggles to create it. Hawkfrost, Tigerstar's son from the Sequel Series Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy, follows his father's vision, but is just as egotistical as Tigerstar.
- Aquarius from The Zodiac Series is dedicated to a better future for humanity. Unfortunately, his plans for doing so involve flying into the sun, which will shut it off and cause The End of the World as We Know It.
Live-Action TV
- Arrowverse:
- Arrow:
- Season 1 Big Bad Malcolm Merlyn/Dark Archer has the Undertaking, a plan to "save" the city by destroying the crime-infested Glades, not caring that it will kill hundreds (if not more) in the process.
- Sebastian Blood, The Heavy of Season 2, is a Dark Messiah who wants to use Mirakuru to create an army of Super Soldiers, that he'll then use to destroy the existing elitist society of Starling City so that he can build something better in its place. When he ultimately realizes that his benefactor, Slade, intends to just destroy the whole city as Revenge by Proxy on Oliver, Blood betrays him by giving the heroes the Mirakuru cure, which leads to his death at Isabel's hands.
- Dr. Ivo, the Disc-One Final Boss of Season 2's flashback storyline, wants to use the Mirakuru to improve mankind and eliminate disease. And he's willing to experiment on and murder whomever he has to in order to achieve this.
- General Shrieve, the Final Boss of Season 3's flashback storyline, wants to use the Alpha/Omega bioweapon to devastate China, in order to prevent it from becoming a threat to America's political power.
- Damien Darhk, the Big Bad of Season 4, takes the Dark Archer's plans to their logical extreme, intending to destroy the world in a nuclear bombardment, and then rebuild from his ashes with his chosen followers.
- The Flash (2014): Clifford DeVoe a.k.a. the Thinker, the Big Bad of Season 4, spends the whole season working towards a plan he calls "the Enlightenment". It's only near the end of the season that we find out what this is — that despite his own use of advanced technology, he's an anti-technology zealot who believes that mankind's obsession with rapid technological advancement is ruining the world. Thus, he intends on using weaponized dark matter to remove the intelligence of everyone on the planet, reducing humanity to a simplified mental state, which he can then lead.
- Legends of Tomorrow: In "Outlaw Country", Quentin Turnbull's plan is to use his dwarf star alloy to take over all the US west of the Rockies and keep, in his words "The Wild West wild". He believes the Wild West represents freedom from government control, and he wants to keep it that way.
- Arrow:
- Ash vs. Evil Dead: When Ruby reveals herself as the Big Bad in the first season finale, she explains that she wants to use the Necronomicon to unite all the world's various evils under her control and bring order to the chaos.
- Blindspot:
- Shepherd, the Greater-Scope Villain of the first season and Big Bad of the second, believes that America has become hopelessly corrupt, and has a plan to save it by burning everything down and starting over. The end of Season 2 reveals that the plan to do this is to nuke DC via Kill Sat, wiping out the federal government and allowing the people she's handpicked and guided into position as emergency successors to take over, building a purer government.
- Hank Crawford, Shepherd's main financial backer and one of the main antagonists of Season 3, has a vision of building the biggest army in history, millions strong, with all its members trained to have no loyalty to any nation and thus able to create a Police State that would be a utopia. Everything he's shown to do over the course of Season 3 is to gain the monetary resources to fund this.
- In The Expanse, The Conspiracy behind the protomolecule has grand designs:
- They started researching it because they discovered that Phoebe was in fact an extrasolar object that would have hit Earth two billion years in the past. The only reason humanity exists is because Phoebe was caught by Saturn's gravity — the interstellar equivalent of a Pocket Protector.
Dresden: Without this work, humanity will be left unarmed, ignorant, vulnerable, to an enemy who's already fired the first shot.
- Their chief researcher is an Evilutionary Biologist who seems even more interested in it because it's Imported Alien Phlebotinum.
Dresden: We become our own gods. Imagine human beings able to live in hard vacuum without a suit, or under the crushing atmosphere of a gas giant. Or able to hibernate long enough to travel to the stars.
- They started researching it because they discovered that Phoebe was in fact an extrasolar object that would have hit Earth two billion years in the past. The only reason humanity exists is because Phoebe was caught by Saturn's gravity — the interstellar equivalent of a Pocket Protector.
- Game of Thrones
- Tywin Lannister's speech to Jaime and his discussions with his cupbearer Arya reveals that he aspires to the legacy of Aegon the Conqueror and wants to create with gold and sheer will what Aegon had done with three dragons: a dynasty of Lannister hegemony that would rival and even surpass the Targaryens. Tywin completely fails after winning the war; his bad parenting and abuse of his children catch up to him. His favorite son, Jaime, rejects his legacy, and his daughter Cersei reveals the horrible rumors are true that her children were born out of incest with Jaime. Finally, his least favorite son Tyrion, who he sentenced to death for a crime he knew he didn't commit, kills him, and he ends up dying alone. Everything he gains is destroyed, and his family and legacy have been entirely destroyed by the end of the series.
- Euron Greyjoy seeks to raise the largest fleet in the world and align with Daenerys Targaryen to rule the Seven Kingdoms. When this fails decisively, he changes queens for Cersei.
- By the final episode, Daenerys performs a Face–Heel Turn and has leveled King's Landing out of spite for being rejected by the commonfolk. However, she's not content with merely ruling the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, as she boasts that she will Take Over the World for the Targaryen dynasty.
- The Gifted (2017): As part of the series' Grey-and-Gray Morality, the major villains have a tendency to act based on motives beyond mere Fantastic Racism:
- Dr. Roderick Campbell is a biologist who fully acknowledges mutant-kind's evolutionary superiority over normal humans. Thus, he is determined to give humans any edge they can get, even if that means experimenting on innocent mutants and turning them into lobotomized drone troops.
- Reeva Payge has suffered the worst of human prejudices her whole life. This has led her to believe that peaceful coexistence is impossible, and as such is determined to start a revolution and turn America into a homeland for mutants, where they can live free.
- Goosebumps (2023) reimagines Slappy the Dummy, of all villains, as a Shell-Shocked Veteran turned magician who hopes to use his powers to end war and unite humanity against a common enemy of real monsters. Or at least, that's his stated goal; the protagonists of the series don't buy it, and accuse Slappy/Kanduu of just wanting revenge for his own traumatizing experiences rather than actually trying to make the world better. At the very least, his methods involve the sacrifice of thousands of lives to affect his vision, which pushes him squarely into this trope.
- Gotham:
- Ra's al Ghul, naturally, who in this adaptation can literally see bits of the future. He sees Bruce's great destiny and is dedicated to helping Bruce reach it by making him his heir.
- Jeremiah Valeska as well, who claims in the season 4 finale that his previous plans "lacked vision" and that Ra's opened his eyes to a greater purpose; namely, turning Bruce into the Dark Knight and preparing the city for his arrival. Which involves shooting Selina Kyle and then blowing the bridges to the mainland and turning Gotham into a lawless hellhole.
- In Heroes (2006), most of the Big Bads (Mr. Linderman, Adam Monroe, and Arthur Petrelli) are Visionary Villains. Linderman is a Dark Messiah whose plan to "heal the world" begins with the destruction of New York City, Monroe is a Misanthrope Supreme who wants to kill off 93% of the human race with a super-virus, and Petrelli is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to use a Super Serum to move the human race up the evolutionary ladder.
- In Heroes Reborn (2015), Big Bad Erica Kravid has foreseen the pending destruction of the Earth by a massive solar flare and is taking steps to ensure human survival by teleporting a select few into the distant future to rebuild the planet. Oh, and she's only planning on saving humans; any Evos taken along are only being taken so that their powers can be harvested and controlled artificially in order to aid in the rebuilding process.
- In Homeland, terrorist mastermind and Big Bad (until he's finally killed) Abu Nazir has a very long-term plan to eventually destroy Western civilization, admitting that it might take centuries and many lost lives on both sides, but envisioned his side winning in the very long term, since he thinks they are willing to sacrifice more.
- Kamen Rider:
- Shocker have a very grand vision for improving the world. It mainly involves making their Kaijins the new Master Race and either subjugating or eradicating humankind, but hey.
- Gorgom of Kamen Rider BLACK have more or less the same vision as Shocker except with a few additional qualifiers, such as the destruction of all human technology so they can replace it with their own ancient Magitek and Organic Technology. They also favor completely wiping out humanity as opposed to keeping some humans around as slaves, and the only humans they're willing to welcome into their new world order are their human collaborators who've sacrificed their humanity to become Gorgom Kaijins.
- Kamen Rider 555: Smart Brain are another addition in the franchise's long line of evil groups of genocidal monsters. In their case, they seek to increase the number of Orphnochs, the next evolution of humanity, so they can eventually overtake humankind as the dominant species on the planet.
- Most of the major villains in Kamen Rider Gaim seek to completely overturn the status quo in response to the invasion of Helheim Forest. Takatora wants to ensure humanity survives past Helheim's encroachment by covertly killing off six billion people so they won't become Inves, Ryoma wants to use the Helheim crisis to weed out the weak in human society and bring a god into existence to rule over a post-Helheim world, the Overlord Inves want to conquer the Earth and enslave humanity to prolong their own civilization, and [[spoiler:Kaito Kumon seeks to use Helheim's power to tear down the old world and build up a new one where the strong don't oppress the weak.
- The Roidmudes in Kamen Rider Drive are Killer Robots who want to (you guessed it) wipe out humanity and take the world as their own. What sets them apart from most other monster races in Rider however is that their leader genuinely cares about creating a paradise for his kind.
- The Gamma in Kamen Rider Ghost genuinely believe they're doing humanity a favor by transforming their world to be more like the world of the Gamma. Although Adel does go quite a bit far with it in regard to his Assimilation Plot to make it so every human and Gamma is a copy of him, since he deems himself to be the only perfect being in existence.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: The grand plan of Masamune Dan is to use Kamen Rider Chronicle to forcibly digitize everyone and trap them within the Game World, allowing him to control the fates of every human being in existence as Killer Game Master.
- Kamen Rider Build has quite a few, of increasingly grand visions. Gentoku Himuro wants to turn Touto into a strong military superpower in the name of conquering Hokuto and Seito in order to reunify Japan, Juzaburo Namba wants to exploit the Civil War in Japan to unify the country — and eventually the entire world — under the control of his corporation, and Evolt wants to create a "new world" by devouring everything in the universe and becoming the all-powerful ruler of the empty space remaining.
- The Last Ship:
- Both Admiral Ruskov and Amy Granderson, the main antagonists of Season 1, want to use the cure for the Red Flu to control who lives and who dies, in order to guide what kind of world rises from the ashes.
- Sean Ramsey, the Big Bad of Season 2, is utterly convinced that the Flu is God's doing, and that the naturally immune have been chosen to inherit the Earth. To this end, he is organizing as many of the immune around the world under his control as possible and is killing anyone who opposes him or tries to create a cure.
- Season 3 Big Bad President Peng has the simple but grand plan to see China conquer all of post-plague Asia.
- The Big Bad of Season 4, Dr. Paul Vellek, wants to bring about world peace... by splicing the only remaining crops immune to the Red Rust blight with a narcotic which pacifies people by removing their ability to feel any kind of aggression, turning them into obedient sheep.
- Season 5 Big Bad Gustavo Barros is the Glorious Leader of a revolutionary movement aimed at uniting all of Latin America under a single banner (preferably by diplomacy, but by force if necessary) and using that combined might to usurp the United States' place as a world power.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: According to Adar, Sauron has spent centuries trying to tap the Power of the Seen and the Unseen world by using Orcs as his lab-rats, with the goal of healing, cough "control" cough, Middle-Earth of the destruction he and Morgoth provoked. When he asks Galadriel to join forces with him in the finale of Season One, he does nothing but confirm Adar's words about his true goals to reshape Middle-Earth in his image.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
- Hive, the Big Bad of Season 3, ultimately reveals his Evil Plan is to transform the entire human race into Inhumans, whom his powers will allow him to control, thus bringing about world peace.
- Holden Radcliffe, one of the main antagonists of Season 4, becomes obsessed with creating a virtual world, designed to be free of regret into which he can place every person on the planet, to live in paradise forever.
- Daredevil (2015): Wilson Fisk wants to transform New York City into the greatest city in the world. The murder, drugs, gangs, and utter destruction of anyone in his way, he considers necessary evils, in order to gain the power he needs to effect his changes.
- Iron Fist (2017): When Davos becomes the Big Bad in Season 2, he enacts a plan to steal the Iron Fist from Danny. Afterwards, he goes on a campaign to "save" New York by wiping out all crime by force.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Brenda Holland, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who manipulated May into unwittingly aiding the Apex Cybernetics precursor AET's cruel research into animal brains, is a true believer in Walter Simmons' plan to use the project to ultimately create Mechagodzilla in response to the Titans' emergence. She's loyal to Walter's inner circle, and she sees the creation of Mechagodzilla as a manmade Titan-shaped machine that's under direct human control via a Brain–Computer Interface as the future of mankind.
- Stargirl (2020): The Injustice Society spend Season 1 working towards completion of a years-long plan called Project New America, wherein a machine they build will enhance Brainwave's powers to the point he'll be able to mind control millions of people at once, at which point they'll be able to reshape American society to fit their views — namely, fixing global warming, switching to renewable energy, ending bigotry, enacting universal healthcare, etc. The heroes are surprised to find out about that last part, and even briefly wonder if they're on the wrong side... until they find out that roughly a quarter of the people affected by the machine will be killed in the process, which the ISA write off as acceptable losses.
- Khan Noonien Singh of Star Trek: The Original Series once was "the best of tyrants", ruling a quarter of the human population, and in the AU story "Seeds of Dissent" (part of the Star Trek: Myriad Universes) presides over the genetic transformation of humanity into a Superior Species after his successful conquest of Earth. In the episode "Space Seed", upon his defeat, he gladly accepts the offer to tame a new world. Subverted when he comes back in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as he is preoccupied only with revenge against Kirk, as his wife died there, even though his henchman tries to convince him that this trope would be much more worthwhile.
- Supernatural:
- In "All Hells Breaks Loose, Part Two", the Yellow-Eyed Demon declares his commitment to bringing about a new era.
Jake: You're talking about the end of the world.
Yellow-Eyed Demon: No, not the end — the beginning... a better world, where your family will be protected. More than that. They'll be royalty. Buddy boy, you have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a thrilling opportunity. - Lilith was also envisioned as one of these. She genuinely believes that she is acting in the better of her species (Demons), and is looking to save them from their (literally) hellish existence. She even willingly allows Sam to kill her, knowing that it will release Lucifer, whom she believes will as the ruler of the universe create Paradise. She even tells a Mook that they are going to "save the world". Unfortunately for her, Lucifer despises demons and seeks to destroy them and humans.
- Lucifer, the first Fallen Angel, seeks to destroy humanity with a Zombie Apocalypse, defeat his brother Michael, and turn the Earth into a new Eden, as he considered it "God's last great work". It's hinted that he also promised his followers something along the lines of Hell Invades Heaven, but the latter is just smoke and mirrors — Lucifer despises demons as well for essentially being corrupted human ghosts, and he intends to get rid of them too once he no longer needs them.
- Crowley, after becoming the new King of Hell, forms an alliance with Castiel to find Purgatory and gain access to all the souls therein. As he put it, it's "hell-adjacent" and prime real estate for expansion. However, Castiel eventually cuts him out of the deal, so Crowley teams up with Castiel's rival Raphael instead before both of them are Out-Gambitted by the former.
- Dick Roman, the leader of the Leviathans, took to building a shadowy empire after his kind was released from Purgatory, infiltrating human companies and governments so they could feed the general population with addictive food that would make them both fat and docile, as well as poisonous to any other monster species that could rival them. Basically, turn the Earth into a giant buffet for Dick and his kind to feed on.
- Subverted by Metatron. He manipulates Castiel and the Winchesters into banishing all other angels from Heaven and burning off their wings, but it turns out he didn't really have any real plan beyond getting revenge for his banishment. As the angels trapped on Earth descend into another civil war, he wavers between ruling the vacant Heaven, playing benefactor to Gadreel, toying with the Winchesters, or becoming a Dark Messiah to humanity, but none of it goes anywhere. After he's deposed and order is restored, even he admits that he was really a Big Bad Wannabe.
- Michael from the Apocalypse World has already run his own dimension into the ground, then seeks to become a Multiversal Conqueror to get payback on God. When he arrives in the Prime Universe, discovering that there are hardly any angels left, he starts to perform experiments on monsters to perfect them into an Ultimate Lifeform for himself to rule over.
- In "All Hells Breaks Loose, Part Two", the Yellow-Eyed Demon declares his commitment to bringing about a new era.
- Timeless:
- The founder and namesake of Rittenhouse, David Rittenhouse, believed that the common people have no ability to rule themselves efficiently and that democracy is therefore too chaotic, but also that monarchy is too selfish in nature to serve as a proper alternative. Therefore, in the view of himself and his followers, the only way to truly rule is to use democracy as a facade to placate the masses, while a select few wield power from the shadows.
- Nicholas Keynes, a Rittenhouse member from the early 1900s and Lucy's great-grandfather. He foresaw the creation of time travel and wrote a manifesto on how it could be used to rewrite history to create a "perfect" world with Rittenhouse in ultimate control. At the start of Season 2, he's brought to the present in order to help implement the plan.
- The Wheel of Time (2021): Unlike the other Forsaken, who want personal power, Ishamael knows the Dark One will destroy the world — which he wants, as he sees it as filled with pain and wishes for Cessation of Existence so he can escape Reincarnation.
- Wynonna Earp has Bobo Del Rey, the leader of the revenants. He is driven and determined to find a way for his kind to escape their imprisonment inside the Ghost River Triangle, and nothing will deter him from it. He even considers the ongoing battle with the Earp Heir to be a sideshow that he doesn't have to pay attention to, as it's not as important to him.
- Z Nation:
- La Reina, the Queen of the Zeroes Cartel, intends to use the cure for the zombie virus, combined with the vast resources of her cartel (which is basically the only large-scale governing body left in North America post-Zombie Apocalypse), to rebuild society as she sees fit.
- Dr. Kurian, La Reina's resident Mad Scientist, turns out to be an Evilutionary Biologist, who intends to use Murphy as a template to create an entire race of zombie/human hybrids, who will replace both normal humans and zombies (both of which Kurian sees as doomed to extinction).
- The end of Season 2 reveals the existence of ZONA, a safe zone established by the rich and powerful of America before it was overwhelmed by the zombies. Like La Reina, they intend to use the cure and their resources to rebuild society in their image. Season 4 takes this even further, with the reveal that they intend to unleash a bioweapon which will kill everything — zombie and human — outside their safe zone, so they can inherit the Earth.
- By Season 3, Murphy's Heel–Face Revolving Door has settled squarely on Heel, and he's embraced Kurian's vision. He now intends to set himself up as a Dark Messiah, converting people into a new hybrid race that he can control.
Music
- Doctor Steel's goal is to tear down society and replace it with a Utopian playland, using a mix of propaganda, artwork, buzz saw babies, and albums composed entirely of Villain Songs. If that doesn't work, he'll just blow everything up.
- A variant: In The Protomen's album The Father of Death, Drs. Light and Wily work together on a massive automaton network, ostensibly so that everyone would be safe, secure, and not have to worry about dying on the job. Wily's the one who ultimately gains control of the network, ruining Light's reputation in the process. Light realizes that creating the network was a mistake. To quote Dr. Light, in "The Good Doctor":
"They've waited so long for this day
Someone to take the death away
No son would ever have to say
My father worked into his grave..." - The foremost of Wily's goals as told by The Megas is to replace humans with robots, which he believes are superior, as sung in "Look What You've Done":
"Can you not feel
That we could have a life forged in steel?
I only ask that you see what I see.
This is the answer,
Why won't you believe?" - "Perfect Villain", a Villain Song by Regal Pinion, is about the narrator discussing how he used to be a visionary. Due to Regal Pinion's writing style, this may be a case of the villain being an Unreliable Narrator. When asked of the villain's true intentions, Regal Pinion's response was simply, "Why don't you ask him?"
- The Wall: "Waiting for The Worms" has Pink, now a neo-Nazi dictatorial figure set out his vision of how to get Britain to rule again, involving sending "our colored cousins home again" and bringing back the "Final Solution to strengthen the strain."
Tabletop Games
- The Clans in BattleTech see themselves as the chosen descendants of Kerensky, and believe it's their right and destiny to conquer the Inner Sphere and rebuild the Star League. But each of the Clans have conflicting views and they don't always agree on anything, and their rule is simply a caste-based military dictatorship that benefits the warrior caste only, and their culture mostly favors Trueborns and treat Freebirths like dirt.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: In the 3.5 sourcebook Exemplars of Evil, one of the villains covered is Zargath Human-Bane, an orc who, after reaching adulthood, killed the human who had enslaved him and sought out the great orc civilization he'd dreamed of... only to be roundly disappointed on realizing no such thing existed. Concluding that he would have to build that civilization, he gathered the most powerful orc tribes in the area under his banner, with the hopes of one day unseating all other races and placing a mighty empire of orcs in charge.
- Leviathan: The Tempest: This is a large part of what sets the School of the Sun apart from other Leviathans. While most Schools accept Marduk's defeat of Tiamat and focus on living with and managing the downsides of the Leviathan nature, the School of the Sun believe that if only they can accumulate enough worshippers and eldritch power, they can descend to the status of a true God of Evil, tear down human civilization, and restore the Primordial Chaos over which the Leviathans once ruled.
- Warhammer 40,000: Some leaders are fighting for a strengthened humanity able to endure the grim darkness of the far future... united under the eight-pointed star of Chaos. Others, however, just want something, and the difference is often academic if they're offering you up to the Dark Gods or raining siege shells on your city. Even the Emperor would have been the visionary villain in almost any other setting, as he waged a galactic and xenocidal war while stamping out freedom of religion in hopes of bringing about a peaceful era afterwards (most pronounced in the story "The Last Church", in which he kills an innocent priest to remove the last remnant of religion on Earth because he believes religion is incompatible with his vision for humanity's greater future). He's the designated Big Good in this setting because the visionary villains he opposed literally sacrifice babies to summon demons and craft temples out of (sometimes still living) human flesh, et cetera. However, Horus Heresy makes it pretty clear that whatever he might have claimed about saving humanity from Chaos, what mattered to the Emperor in the end was that humanity survive on his terms and in the way he wanted, as a number of more technologically advanced, more Chaos-resistant human societies were wiped out by the nascent Imperium under the Emperor's orders.
Theatre
- In Pokémon Live!, Giovanni claims his plan will change the world forever, and his villain songs describe ruling the planet and controlling each day to the point that he'll make the sun shine on him alone.
Video Games
- Kerghan from Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura might be the most well-intentioned and extreme extremist of all. He's traveled beyond the veil of death and knows it as plain fact that the dead eventually do reach a state of perfect tranquility in death. Since he's all too aware of how much the living and the undead suffer, his grand scheme is to permanently sever the mortal ties of every soul in existence. He's quite insane, but there's nothing in the story that indicates that things wouldn't work out exactly as he'd foreseen if given the chance. A previously dead companion even confirms that the afterlife is indeed as the villain describes. In the end, you have the option of joining him and helping him to kill every living thing in existence. Whether or not this is the bad ending isn't quite made clear.
- Assassin's Creed has the Templars. While the degree to which they are visionaries varies from era to era, the Templars in general seek a world free of conflict and pain, with them on top ensuring that all are happy and pacified. In particular, Loreano Torres of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag seeks the observatory as a way to spy on all peoples and ensure a better future for humanity.
- Azure Striker Gunvolt Series:
- Both of the Big Bads of Azure Striker Gunvolt and Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 want the power of Joule's Septima, the Muse, in order to achieve what they believe is best for the world. Nova of Sumeragi wishes to use her power to police all the Adepts in the world to prevent them from ever rising up against humanity and destroying the planet, which nearly happened in the backstory, and ensure permanent peace and justice. Zonda of Eden wants to use her power to amplify the powers of Adepts worldwide so they can annihilate humanity for all the crimes and oppression they've heaped on their kind, creating an Adept-only utopia.
- ZedΩ of ATEMS in Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 wants to build a brighter future for the whole world, humans and Adepts, and rule over it as a benevolent dictator while also stopping a world-destroying threat that Sumeragi has been hiding all knowledge of and sealed away in the naive hope it doesn't turn out to be a ticking time bomb. His methods involved armed aggression and terrorism plus hijacking that very world-destroying threat (the baby Primal Dragon Moebius) and subliminally influencing its Winds of Destiny, Change! powers to nudge the world towards his ideal. Unlike the previous villains, he has a Heel–Face Turn after being beaten and chooses to return to his country peacefully to help fight the surge of Adepts turned Primal Dragons world-wide caused by Moebius's awakening.
- BioShock:
- From the original BioShock 1:
- Andrew Ryan built an Underwater City for purely ideological reasons, going to rather ludicrous ends to preserve it, and fully planning to build it back up to its glory days again even after it's become a leaky, ruined mess.
- Frank Fontaine had visions of taking over Rapture. After Rapture fell to ruin, he expanded his vision: he wanted to bring ADAM to the world market. After he discovered how much ADAM Ryan hoarded away, he changed his goal to devouring all the ADAM in Rapture to become a Physical God who would be worshipped as a superhuman adonis.
- Sofia Lamb from BioShock 2 has opposite goals to Ryan's: the foundation of a collectivist society.
- In BioShock Infinite, we have Zachary Hale Comstock and his vision of creating his own heaven in the form of Columbia. While he manages to do it, it's while he becomes the "Prophet" that turns into a godlike figure for the entire town. Plus, it's also while talking about the "white man's burden" and how oppression of blacks, Irish, and all other minorities is completely and totally justified. And that's nothing compared to what he wants to do to the "Sodom Below".
- From the original BioShock 1:
- Command & Conquer:
- Kane is probably most famous, although his plan seems to result in wildly different goals between one game and another (exactly what is the connection between Divination and Ascension?). In the end, his goal was a pretty humble one: to get the heck off of the third rock from the sun and return home.
- In Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Joseph Stalin believes that it is his sacred mission to make the Soviet Union stretch the entire European continent, launching a war that lasts years and leaves tens of millions dead. He was inspired after he witnessed himself as Europe's sole ruler in a dream.
- In Dragon Age, the Architect in Awakening is explicitly referred to as being this by Velanna after the reveal that his "Evil Plan" was to use Grey Warden blood to sever the Darkspawn's connection to the Archdemon, with the sole intention of granting his brethren intelligence and self-awareness, rather than trying to rule over them. The Warden can admit his plan could lead to peace and can choose to ally with him.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Morrowind: Dagoth Ur's vision is warped (he... doesn't seem entirely aware what his Divine Disease does to the minds of those he infects) and cracked (he seems to maintain several visions that aren't entirely compatible), but that is only logical given he is a Mad God, and he is still able to present overthrowing the Tribunal, throwing out Outlanders from Morrowind, and building a paradisiacal new Resdayn before spreading divinity across Tamriel lead by the New God Anumidium in a pleasant, charming, and reasonably coherent manner.
- Oblivion: Mehrunes Dagon is not this (being a being quite literally of ambition and destruction), but his chief cultist Mankar Camoran is something else, at the very least able to fake it to the very end, holding a vision of Nirn reclaimed and reforged as a Daedric paradise, returned after its theft by Lorkhan (he's almost certainly wrong on what Nirn is, and definitely wrong on what Mehrunes Dagon would do, but that does not keep it from being a vision for the world).
- Skyrim: Though less fantastical than previous series examples, Ulfric Stormcloak, Rebel Leader of the Stormcloak Rebellion in the Civil War storyline, is no less visionary. One thing that both he and Imperial leadership can agree on is that a second Great War with the Thalmor-led Aldmeri Dominion is inevitable. Ulfric feels that a united Skyrim without the weak leadership and bureaucratic red tape of the Empire bogging them down stands the best chance. (And his point is further bolstered by the fact that the Redguards of Hammerfell, following their secession from the Empire, drove the Dominion out of their lands on their own.) Ulfric is also rather unfortunately a racist against non-Nords and pissed off quite a few Nords as well when he slew the young High King Torygg (who looked up to Ulfric) in a Duel to the Death for the throne. (An archaic but still legitimate Nordic tradition. However, Ulfric used the Thu'um in the battle, which was seen as cheating by Imperial supporters.) Whether or not Ulfric gets to see his vision of a united Skyrim come together depends on which side the Dragonborn chooses to support.
- Fallout:
- Through the franchise, the Enclave are the descendants of the corrupt Pre-War ruling elite of America, and seek to restore sanity and civilization to a World Gone Mad. Unfortunately for pretty much everyone, this involves committing omnicide on America, and enslaving the survivors of the few vaults that weren't tortured to death.
- The Master in the original Fallout 1. Believes that his Super Mutants are the natural evolution of mankind and the perfect solution to the irradiated, destroyed Wastelands of 22nd-century California.
- Caesar from Fallout: New Vegas. He thinks that the post-apocalyptic earth is proof that democracy has failed, and sets out to form a new society based off Ancient Rome: a monotheistic dictatorship replete with slavery and crucifixion, where the only role of men (except for himself, of course) is to be expendable soldiers and the only role of women is to make more expendable soldiers (whether they want to or not). At the game's beginning, he's conquered Arizona, New Mexico, much of Utah and Colorado, and is poised to begin taking Nevada.
- Benny's goal is revealed to have been to take control of the Securitron Army and overthrow House, allowing him to create an independent New Vegas free from the NCR and Legion. In the Wild Card Ending, the Courier takes up where he left off and proceeds to do just that.
- House as well, although his status as a true villain is rather questionable. House is an enlightened dictator (sorry, autocrat) who wants to guide humanity back to the glory of the Pre-War days, and be the economic superpower and financier behind it all. He has no intent to abuse or oppress people, and is more than happy to provide them comfortable lives so long as he's able to strictly control people through his Bread and Circuses and make a profit from them. He also engages in morally dubious acts to gain power, and is ruthless in crushing and eliminating anyone who stands in his way, but operates via a mindset of Pragmatic Villainy. His ultimate goal, however, is to use the combined NCR and Vegas economy to restart a spaceflight program that will allow humanity to begin anew on another planet.
- The Institute in Fallout 4 is a mysterious cabal of scientists descended from the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They see the post-apocalyptic world as a chaotic and uncivilised mess that's beyond saving, so they plan to build a brand-new society underground. Unfortunately, they're a lot of the reason why the Commonwealth is a mess, as they kidnap people and replace them with synth copies so they can steal resources from starving wastelanders, murder anyone who finds pre-war technology and doesn't hand it over, sabotage the rise of any attempt by wastelanders to become organized (as this would threaten the Insitute's power), and even created the Commonwealth's super mutants through their cruel experiments. They're all for advancing humanity for the greater good, just as long as it's THEIR idea of the greater good — anything else, they'll otherwise happily smother in the cradle.
- Final Fantasy:
- Seymour in Final Fantasy X is a subversion. He thinks he's this because he wants to end the cycle of life and death on Spira. However, the whole party calls bullshit on it because he very clearly enjoys being a horrible bastard and his method of ending said cycle involves killing everyone alive. He doesn't have much of a counter-argument.
- Interestingly, a bit character from the X continuity, Rin, is a more straightforward example. By the time of X-2, the Al Bhed are busily re-introducing robotics and machinery into society. Rin decides that the machines can work in unison better than a human workforce can, but his faulty programming causes them to run amok. (Note that this only happens in his scenario; there are four possible culprits, and only two of them are truly malevolent.) When confronted, he gloats that he intends to continue covering up accidents and won't rest until Spira is a fully-mechanized society — presumably with himself at the helm. This is a little chilling since the character had carefully hidden his ambition up to this point. When Paine called him a jackass for it, he chuckled and claimed that "jackasses are the ones who change the world".
- Vayne Solidor and Cid have the plan to not only unite the world under one government, but utterly remove the influence of the gods by mass producing an alternative to the fantastic nuke that’s used to bribe and control their mortal kings.
- In the first Geneforge game, Trajkov says he is motivated by a desire to emancipate creations such as the Serviles from Shaper slavery and abuse. If you help him use the Geneforge and conquer the world, he does exactly that.
- Heroes of Might and Magic: In Might and Magic Heroes VI: Shades of Darkness, Sandro's ambitions go far beyond his previous incarnations' desire to conquer the world (or the continent, at least. Old-verse Sandro was a pragmatic fellow). He wants to use the Power of the Void to kill the dragon gods since he believes the world they created is a prison. Sandro wishes to create new worlds and be free of destiny forever.
- Mass Effect:
- In the first game, Saren began as one (seeing the victory of the Reaper machines as inevitable, he was trying to prove that organics served some constructive purpose so that there would be a "logical" reason to spare some of them, and thus prevent complete galactic extinction), but the subtle yet continuous Mind Rape inflicted on him prevented him from realizing three things; 1. The Reapers were not actually invincible, and it was possible to have a chance against them. 2. The reason for the Reapers purging all advanced life (revealed in the third game) meant that no logical purpose was served by keeping him or any other organics alive. 3. He was completely indoctrinated, so it wasn't his vision he was implementing. By the time of the final confrontation, he's simply become Brainwashed and Crazy.
- The Illusive Man dreams of a galaxy where humanity is safe and dominant. To accomplish this, all manner of mad science, assassinations, manipulations and implanting himself and nearly all of Cerberus with Reaper implants, sacrificing the whole organization for ultimately nothing are acceptable. He's sometimes described as being both the best and worst humanity has to offer at once.
- Metal Gear: Practically every Big Bad has some kind of grand vision driving them to commit atrocity after atrocity, usually as a way of defeating or subverting the Patriots; Big Boss wishes to establish Outer Heaven as a nation where soldiers are subservient to no one, a vision that is carried on by his "sons" - Liquid Snake and Solidus Snake - as well his most loyal servant Revolver Ocelot. On the other hand, the Patriots as they exist in the modern day were shaped by Big Boss' old Commanding Officer - Zero - and his ambitions to fulfill The Boss' vision of a fully united world with no cultural, national, or militaristic boundaries. And that's not counting one-off antagonists who seek to shape the world in their own vision as well, such as Hot Coldman's attempt to use a nuke as a way of deterring further nuclear weapons from being used, or Senator Armstrong's dream of a Social Darwinist America that brings an end to War for Fun and Profit. Ultimately, none of their plans ever end up truly coming to fruition, as they have all damaged the world too much for their ideals to ever be able to truly fulfill their plans.
- Minion Masters: The Lich Queen Morellia seeks to save the world from a greater evil by uniting all factions under her... in her undead army.
- Moonrise: Chika Itou is not necessarily evil, but other characters consider her a villain for her outlandish ideas about breaking the Masquerade and establishing The Unmasqued World. The Player Character can side with Chika and recruit powerful allies to the cause, or slaughter them wholesale.
- Nexus War: Jacques Moreau from the Laurentia story arc of Nexus Clash was a ruthless mercenary who started a bloody Succession Crisis for the legacy of his father Lucien, which indirectly caused the death of his half-sister and threw the city into a period of chaos. However, Jacques was also a believer in many revolutionary ideas uncommon for his time period (such as class equality, widespread education, and environmental protection) and some of his heirs proved to be much better people who helped shape Laurentia into a Shining City.
- Overwatch has Talon, the main antagonistic force in the game that was responsible for the fall of Overwatch (the organization), as well as its return. It dabbles in nearly every terrorist act under the sun and its initial motivation? To evolve humanity through conflict, a motive that can be seen through some of its personnel.
- Akande Ogundimu, a.k.a. Doomfist III, is a Social Darwinist who was initially drawn to the organization due to him truly believing in its goals, which eventually led him to become one of its greatest leaders. He really means it too, as he's willing to kill both his predecessor and another Talon council leader due to them using Talon only for petty thefts and financial gain, whereas Doomfist has a much grander plan he intends to start.
- Moira O'Deorain, another leader in Talon's council, also carries this. She's a brilliant but highly controversial geneticist who strives to develop genetic programs that could elevate all of humanity to their physical peak. This by itself isn't inherently villainous, but she unfortunately doesn't care for things like ethics, and will take part in Talon's activities if it means she can continue her work.
- Gabriel Reyes, a.k.a. Reaper, wanted to meaningfully change the world as a hero, and spent the better part of his life to do so, even co-founding Overwatch, only for none of it to stick due to the world practically enforcing the evils of suffering and corruption as good men are sidelined in the name of honor and discipline. Following Overwatch's collapse, a near-death experience, and becoming increasingly plagued by his borderline supernatural powers, he's given up trying to pretend with nominal antiheroism and wants to reset the system with a drastic global purge.
- Ramattra, while not directly part of Talon, is an associate with his own vision in mind. He cares deeply for his omnic brethren, seeing them as truly having "souls" with a place among the universe along with every other living being, but sees the attempts at peaceful coexistence with humanity following the Ommic Crisis as fruitless, convinced that humans are complete unwilling to accept omnics as equals and remaining hostile to a race that's only a generation old. He leads Null Sector — an extremist group reinstating the war against mankind — to ensure the long-term survival of omnickind by whatever means necessary.
- Many Pokémon villains are like this. In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Archie of Team Aqua and Maxie of Team Magma seek to expand the oceans and landmass respectively, believing this will be a good thing for the world; the remakes elaborate on their motivations, explaining that Team Magma's goal is to make room for the further advancement of humankind, while Aqua's is to reclaim the aquatic habitats lost to human industrialization for the sake of Pokémon. Cyrus from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl wants to destroy the world and then re-create it as a world with no emotion, knowledge, or willpower, claiming that these things make up "spirit" only lead to pain and conflict. Pokémon Black and White have N, who wishes to free all Pokémon and create a world where they won't be enslaved; much of Team Plasma shares that vision with him. Pokémon X and Y's Lysandre intends to solve global overpopulation and create a "beautiful world" by wiping most of humanity off the map. Finally, Pokémon Sword and Shield has Chairman Rose, who wishes to stave off Galar's depleting energy that will run out in a thousand years by using Eternatus to provide the Galar region with infinite energy.
- Rengoku: According to the second game, the chairman of Deucalion Group, Virgil, have deduced that his ADAMs are the better lifeforms than humans, added a secret purpose to the Purgatory tower to help them develop self-awareness. In case they grow conscious like Captain Gram, the AI manager Deucalion would unleash them to the world. Ironically, Gram Was Once a Man and escapes himself after humanity have long went extinct.
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi in his Sengoku Basara incarnation, seeking to unify Japan under his rule and implement a meritocracy based on the rule of the strong, before leading a unified nation to conquer the world.
- Penelope in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a subversion. She tells the Cooper Gang that her evil goals involve using Bentley's skills to create weapons, make a fortune in the billions, and "change the world", but she's found to be a heartless Social Climber who doesn't give a damn about life in general; she's willing to essentially destroy the world through warfare so she could rule what's left. Her rage against Sly and Murray for seemingly holding Bentley back by existing doesn't help.
- The Ur-Quan Kzer-Za from Star Control II believe that enslaving every race they meet is in the service of the greater good. The Kzer-Za are protecting themselves from potential threats in these other races (they had a bad experience) and protecting their slaves from their Omnicidal Maniac cousins and possibly other, more sinister threats as well. Any slaves who resent this treatment just aren't seeing the big picture.
- StarCraft II: Kerrigan claims that this is one of the most important traits to have if a tyrant wants to outsmart his enemies in seconds. Her potential Bastard Understudy has a lot of trouble understanding this.
- Stellaris has the Marauders, who spend most of the game as a Space People Barbarian Tribe shaking down neighbors for tribute, taking bribes to raid a target, or hiring themselves out as Private Military Contractors. But around the midgame, one of their enclaves has a chance to be united by a Great Khan who turns them into a proper Horde that launches a campaign of conquest, not for mere plunder, but to end the fighting between the other star empires by uniting the galaxy under their rule. If the Marauder Horde is successful enough to conquer at least one planet and force at least two empires to become its satrapies, then after the Khan's death, the Horde has a 10% chance to turn into a federation of equal and voluntary member states, exactly what the Khan hoped for. Alternatively, the Horde may fracture into a number of squabbling successor states each claiming to be the true heir to the Khan's legacy, or simply revert to their pre-Khan society.
The Great Khan: The empire I am building shall benefit the whole of the galactic community. It may not seem like it now, but one day it will become a beacon of stability and prosperity for all intelligent life forms. Peace shall, at last, reign in the galaxy. I will make it so.
- The Tales Series tends to be rife with these villains as Big Bads. It's rare to find a main antagonist that doesn't have some sort of vision for the world, making them into an Anti-Villain by giving them a sympathetic motive while undergoing monstrous actions. Most of the bad guys even admit what they're doing is cruel, but see it as Necessarily Evil. In fact, the heroes of any Tales game often come to agree with the motive, but not the method, finding a way to accomplish the goal with less death and destruction, with each Final Boss as a clash of ideals.
- Yggdrassil from Tales of Symphonia: Initially, he sought to end Fantastic Racism and the endless magitek wars by keeping the world in Medieval Stasis. Over time, his priorities shifted and he gained enough power and technology to become a god, building an artificial Heaven and creating a race of 'angels' by augmenting half-elves with exspheres powered by human souls. The only thing he was missing was a goddess to balance him out, so he bred the Chosen bloodline to create a vessel to revive his older sister as a goddess. Except she immediately calls him out for losing his mind and plunging the world into Hell for his own benefit, then willfully sacrifices herself to save the human girl used as her vessel, and Yggdrassil grabs the Villain Ball for dear life from there.
- Dorian General Van Grants from Tales of the Abyss: Rescue a world that is sickeningly dependent on Because Destiny Says So from its eventual destruction by replacing everything in said world with perfect replicas that cannot be predicted, thus managing to Screw Destiny.
- King Gaius from Tales of Xillia: Gather all of the planet's weapons in one place so that the strong can't prey on the weak, and use spyrite to force spirits to undo the wars that would tear apart humanity.
- Shepherd Artorious Collbrande from Tales of Berseria: Engage in Emotion Suppression on the entire world so that malevolence stops spreading, creating a utopia of perfectly obedient, purely logical people.
- The Ascalon Club in Vampyr (2018) are said to influence The British Empire's destiny and are behind all of its endeavours. Depending on your choices, one of their newest members reveals what their end goals are: conquer Europe in World War I's aftermath, retake the USA and reduce them into colonies once again and finally turn a Royal Family's heir into a vampire so they can have an immortal monarch manipulated by them ruling over humans.
Web Animation
- Alfred's Playhouse: Dictator Pickles, born out of Alfred's suppressed pain and misery, dreams of power and to take revenge upon reality, enslaving its inhabitants.
- Knights of Guinevere: It is undeniable that like his inspiration the stories, properties, technology, and theme parks Orville Park advanced were revolutionary in size and scope, and would dominate the world long after he was gone. That said creative vision would mutate into a galactic-scale corporate dystopia that pollutes the world and forces almost everyone to live in squalor is another matter.
- RWBY:
- Adam Taurus, at best. He claims that he's working to create a world where Faunus are ruling humans.
- Hazel Rainart. Unlike the rest of Salem's group, who are either looking to get power or wreaking havoc for fun, Hazel seems to believe that something good will come of tearing down the Huntsman Academies. His logic is that since Salem can't be stopped, the Academies (Headmaster Ozpin especially) are purposefully sending innocent people to their deaths fighting her.
Hazel: We share a vision. She's gonna create a new world order, no Kingdoms, and no Huntsmen Academies.
- Terrible Writing Advice: During the episode on Dark Lords, JP takes a moment to give an example of this trope with the Dark Lord character, who looks at a mirror of himself and sees a hero, but laments having gone too far down the path of villainy and regrets it, only to shatter the mirror and proclaim "I AM THE HERO EVEN IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT" in a defiant unwillingness to face the truth.
JP: [sarcastically] The last thing we want to do is use the Dark Lord as a foil for our hero using their differences to highlight character traits, nor would you want to use their similarities to cast the hero into self-doubt. Even worse, use their similarities to make the Dark Lord doubt himself by seeing the hero he could have become if only he had made a few different choices. That small difference in choices could nag at him, driving him to envy, jealousy, and, ultimately, regret that he found himself on such a dark path. These conflicting emotions could lead to his hyper-focus on the hero to the point where he misses something essential that causes his ultimate downfall... nope! That would never work!
- Rubirules from TOME. His goal is to revolutionize the world's technology by stripping down Benevolent A.I. SOFDTI, not caring about who might get hurt in the process.
Webcomics
- Drowtales: Zig-zagged with Snadhya'rune Vel'Sharen, who was deeply resentful of her mother for treating her like a mutant and became a psychopath bent on getting revenge through one-upping her mother, but also dreamed of doing so through the creation of an all-consuming empire, where demon-drow hybrid immortals would create an eternally expanding dystopia dedicated to fulfilling her every whim.
- Flipside: The Thin Man insists that everything he does is to uncover the secrets of magic, specifically his theory that it's actually generated by nanomachines of unknown origin, and to share them with the world. Discussed when Maytag points out to him that for someone who claims to be a champion of truth, he relies heavily on obfuscation, Laser-Guided Amnesia, and unethical experimentation, and has never actually fulfilled one of his promises.
"I am happy to be devoured if it is for the sake of the truth."
- Grrl Power has Deus, whose villainy is ambiguous, but he provides an excellent quote for it just before killing an African dictator who wouldn't heed his advice (read: be his pawn): "Most executives only care about the next quarter. They lack vision. I plan in decades." A much later strip has him explain that Maxima's job isn't actually to stop super-powered bank robbers but rather to help maintain the status quo, and as such, he sees a conflict between the two as inevitable, albeit a fair ways off.
- It's shown that he possibly wants to run the world, and started by taking over a country as The Man Behind the Man, with further expansion by invading neighboring countries using super powered troops. But... he also provides basic services that the original ruler didn't, such as on-site daycare for his factory workers. Happy workers are productive worker, after all. (Give that their life expectancy tripled after just 10 years of his "rule", they aren't exactly hurting with him in charge.)
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Fructose Riboflavin wants to kill every member of the Nemesite royal family, especially the emperor (whoever that currently is), as revenge for the late Emperor Krelchzeeber killing Riboflavin's father. It's straightforward (and obsessive) revenge. However, when he's trying to rope others into assisting him, he will sometimes try to paint himself as a revolutionary fighting the Nemesite government on ideological grounds for the benefit of the people; in truth, he couldn't care less about such abstractions or what might come after killing the royal family, he just wants them dead.
- Weijuaru of Juathuur uses his position as king — a position the juathuur are never allowed to take — in order to give juathuur deserters a place to be free of Meidar and to find a way to travel to the other worlds the gods have made. When you find out how much of a Control Freak and Manipulative Bastard Meidar is, the "Villain" part gets dropped.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Redcloak, The Dragon, is motivated by a vision given to him by his god, of goblins being able to be equal to the other races and building their own proper society and civilization instead of scratching out a living in places none of the other races would want to live. If one potential consequence of the plan to accomplish this is the unmaking of reality as it currently exists, well, it's all for the greater anti-good, right? He gets called out by the heroes a few times for using his vision as an excuse to ignore his general Lack of Empathy for most of his people.
- Tarquin as well. He runs a conspiracy to control the three most powerful nations on the Western Continent in order to bring it to peace and himself to absolute power.
- Tarquin's Dragon, Malack, has a vision of his own, intending to use his immortality to continue operating Tarquin's empires following his passing and consecrating them to his god, Nergal. This would explain why Tarquin, who was thrilled that Malack would ensure his unified empire would endure for eternity, was furious with Nale for destroying Malack before this vision could be realized.
- Though most of the characters in Weak Hero are motivated by the Yeongdeungpo Union and its hierarchy, Big Bad Donald has his vision set much higher. It takes a long while for him to get involved with the plot because he's too busy with larger ventures like expanding his finances and business to care about a high-school turf war.
Web Originals
- The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: Conquest-932 is primarily motivated by a belief that the Crew have the capacity to reform into a glorious interdimensional empire, and that they should. It is unclear if he believes that this would make it more efficient at achieving its ultimate goal in the long run, or if he simply thinks it would be cool, but it is a vision he has come very far in pursuing, although he is not really a big threat in the grand scheme of things despite his big talk.
- Dr. Horrible from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has a vague plan to improve the world by taking it over, and even claims "Murder is beneath me", but his plan is so incredibly ill-defined that it's doubtful whether he really qualifies for this trope. He comes up with "anarchy... that I run!" at one point.
- In the Neopets universe, a character named Xandra wants to rule Neopia (the world of Neopets) and have it run by its inhabitants, because she thinks the world's Faeries aren't so reliable. To do this she went as far as to turn them to stone, accidentally unleashed hordes of shadowy creatures, turn most of the heroes to stone, and sent the Faeries' kingdom crashing to the ground.
- The Whateley Universe has several:
- Dr. Diabolik is the most prominent. In seeking his goal of human space migration, intelligence increase, and extended lifespan, he has killed over 17,000 people (most inadvertently as a side effect of his actions, but he is not at all bothered by simply killing opponents when needed).
- Crucible is a Social Darwinist who deliberately creates deadly disasters so that people are forced to Die or Fly.
- Mephisto works for a whole Ancient Conspiracy of Visionary Villains whose goal is to 'wake up' the human race out of apathy and ignorance.
- Worm:
- Skitter eventually develops into one of these, taking over a city's criminal underworld on the grounds that she can make it run more efficiently and with less violent crimes or drug addictions if she's in charge, and creating alliances with other supervillains that mandate their aid to fight the Endbringers.
- Accord became a supervillain so that he could gather contacts and resources to implement his plan to permanently end world hunger — a plan that none of the heroes or governments he proposed it to gave a moment of thought to.
- Coil laid out a plan for taking control of the villains, heroes, and civilian government within Brockton Bay so he could minimize conflict. Upon his eventual success, he would then have his first villain recruits be "forced out" and set up shop in other cities to establish similar regimes.
Western Animation
- Arcane: Silco dreams of uplifting and giving Zaun independence from Piltover, and he'll go to any length to get it.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Fire Lord Sozin from the original series wanted to "share the Fire Nation's prosperity with the rest of the world". This ended up involving the betrayal of his best friend, Avatar Roku; the invasion and colonization of the Earth Kingdom; the (near-)complete genocide of the Air Nomads; and raids against the Water Tribes. (In his deathbed, Sozin regrets what he's done.) This "Great March of Civilization" remains the Fire Nation's propaganda, but Sozin's grandson Ozai just wants to rule the world, even if it's nothing but ashes.
- The main villain of each season of The Legend of Korra is an ideologue of some sort. While they have their respective points raised right, all of them are taking their ideology to the extreme, creating more problems instead of solving the problem outright, which leads Avatar Korra and her True Companions to clash against them while at the same time addressing the problem without the unnecessary bloodshed:
- In Book 1, Amon envisions a completely equal world, without benders, brought about by forcibly purging benders of their "impurity". Naturally, in order to ensure maximum fair-mindedness, this new world order will be governed by the Equalists, an organization led by Amon. It turns out that Amon is himself a very powerful waterbender... and still genuinely believes that bending needs to be eliminated from the world. His issues stem from his self-hate of believing that bending caused him so much misfortune in his life at the hands of his abusive dad that his strong sense of justice becomes so twisted that it enables him to become a hypocritical Knight Templar he presents himself as during his debut.
- In Book 2, Chief Unalaq of the Northern Water Tribe is more than willing to invade the Southern Water Tribe in order to restore spiritual harmony there. His true goal, however, is even more visionary; remove the divide between the spirit and human worlds... by fusing with the spirit of chaos and darkness to effectively rule the world as the Dark Avatar. The only problem is that Vaatu will destroy everything and anything anyway, humans and spirits alike.
- In Book 3, Zaheer is revealed to be the leader of the Red Lotus, a White Lotus splinter group seeking to bring balance and freedom to the world by toppling all governments and permanently ending the Avatar Cycle. While he raises several points about espousing his freedom, his unrealistic idealism leads him to be narrow-minded of the consequences after achieving his goals, like removing the tyrannical Earth Queen from power. Instead of celebrating its liberation, Earth Kingdom escalated into chaos and caused a new set of problems because of the sudden development; when Korra told him about the Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! consequences of that particular action that gives rise to three years of chaos and the rise of the Book 4's villain, he realized that his judgment was lapsed. And destroying the Avatar Cycle? Despite their preparations, they grossly underestimated that the Avatar Spirit is not to be trifled with.
- In Book 4, Kuvira sets out from Zaofu and later the United Republic of Nations (whose territory was once part of the Earth Kingdom) with the intent of reuniting the Earth Kingdom, and later decides that its obsolete monarchy should be replaced with a more forward-looking government... with her holding absolute power as its emperor. Her intentions end up basically like Sozin's — she wants to spread Zaofu's advanced technology to the rest of the kingdom and is genuinely concerned over her country, but she is not above removing people who aren't from the Earth Kingdom and putting them into concentration — ahem, "reeducation" camps, and her unwillingness to admit that she's wrong really costs her everything.
- Ben 10:
- Vilgax is a powerful and ruthless conqueror who built his homeworld into an empire that's taken over quite a few other worlds. He has a megalomaniacal vision of a glorious future where he has destroyed all his enemies and brought order to the universe through his might. All that matters to him is achieving this vision and cementing his empire. His hunt for the Omnitrix, the thing that brought him into conflict with the Tennysons to start with, is just one of many efforts to do this, albeit one that became personal over time.
- Malware sees himself as a visionary who is constantly evolving and is the only one capable of constructing an incredible world. In truth, he's really just a selfish Jerkass who desperately wants to "upgrade" himself (overcompensating for the fact that he was born defective) and doesn't care who he has to hurt to get that.
- Big Hero 6: The Series: Obake's goal is revealed in Season 1's final episode to be to destroy San Fransokyo in order to remake it into a 'perfect city'.
- Early on in Exo Squad, the Big Bad Phaeton gives a few passionate speeches justifying Neosapien conquest of the Homeworlds by pointing out that Neosapiens were bred to be smarter and more compliant than Terrans and thus will be able to create a more stable and peaceful society. He appears to believe in it, too, but then plot and character development happen, and he gradually descends into omnicidal madness.
- Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. While some of his plans are certainly out there, others are actually quite clever, such as the Synthoid infiltration plan (which would've worked if he hadn't pissed off Destro to the point Destro allied with G.I. Joe to put him in his place). He also understands the value of PR and propaganda, using them more than once against the Joes. Most notably, he's a firm believer in the power of money; one of his more notable schemes involved causing all the paper money in the US to turn to ash, and then taking advantage of the subsequent economic chaos to get everyone to invest in "Cobra Currency". Even in his appearance in The Transformers, when asked if his Synthoid technology is still available and for sale, he laughingly responds, "This is the world. Everything is for sale!"
- In the Grand Finale of Jackie Chan Adventures, Drago reveals that his goal after obtaining the powers of his uncles and aunts is to use it to release all the demons trapped in the Netherworld to create a world controlled by demons with him in charge.
- The reason why Brain from Pinky and the Brain wants to Take Over the World is because he sees the current world leaders as incompetent and believes he can solve the problems they have tried and failed at. That is, Brain thinks he can help humanity (and mouse-kind) by providing them with what they want, and he intends to do so through diplomacy and political action albeit with generous portions of coercion and brainwashing.
- Transformers: Prime: Though Megatron originally wanted to bring an end to the caste system that kept Cybertron infested with political corruption and social inequality, Motive Decay eventually set in and Megatron's new goal became rebuilding Cybertron in his own image where the strong ruled without question.
- W.I.T.C.H. (2004): Nerissa betrays her teammates and later attempts to conquer the universe, claiming to seek an end to all war and conflict.
- Xiaolin Showdown: Although his vision is not clearly revealed, Chase Young fits this trope. His initial defection from the Xiaolin order was motivated by his belief that he could never realize his true potential with them, and his disdain for the use of their magical Shen Gong Wu weapons as a crutch. What exactly he plans to accomplish on his own is never stated outright, though the large scale and grandiosity of his schemes imply that he's after something much bigger than personal glory and power.
- Young Justice (2010): Word of God explicitly describes Vandal Savage as this. As he outlines his own motives in the first season finale, he (and the Light, the organization he founded) intends to make Earth the dominant power in the galaxy by means of implementing an extreme survival of the fittest philosophy and opposes the Justice League because he feels they promote stagnation. In contrast to the rest of the Light, Klarion is in it For the Evulz.
