Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Corrupt Corporate Executive / Western Animation

Go To

Corrupt Corporate Executives in Western Animation.
  • Dr. Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, despite usually being portrayed as a Mad Scientist, is actually quite rich and not only has armies of robots at his disposal but even occasionally employs near-equally corrupt Mobians to do his bidding. The most egregious example of this is in ''High Stakes Sonic", where Robotnik hires the crook, Smiley the Shark, to lure in victims into his new Casino Night Zone so they can literally gamble their lives away and be forced into slavery and contribute to building Robotnik's latest monument. And all of this is going on while Robotnik is dishing out his usual Bad Boss treatment of Scratch and Grounder.
  • Archer: Malory Archer is the head of private sector global espionage firm ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service). In addition to being a Bad Boss to her employees, including murdering the cleaning staff when they tried to unionize, she is supremely selfish to the extent where she does things that threaten (inter)national security if they are lucrative enough. Or if they merely please her, such as her decades-long affair with the head of the KGB. Her main rival Len Trexler, head of ODIN (Organization of Democratic Intelligence Networks) is very similar and infatuated with her.
  • Big City Greens: While Chip Whistler starts out as a farmer who is just opposing the Greens, he eventually takes over his father's role as the CEO of Wholesome Foods. With this position, Chip uses his power to install a Wholesome Foods store right next to and above the Greens' house, running Big Coffee out of business and forcing the people in the apartment complex next the to Greens to move out. Chip then plans to force the Greens themselves to move out, and build a parking lot where their house used to be. Although these plans never come into fruition, he nearly kills Cricket. Afterwards, not only does Chip's position get revoked, but he gets banned from Big City altogether.
  • Biker Mice from Mars:
    • Plutarkian Lawrence Lactavius Limburger from the original 1993 series disguises himself as one of these in order to fulfill his people's mission as Planet Looters.
    • The 2006 revival has Ronaldo Rump, who teams up with the Big Bad Catatonians to further his business empire. He has a cousin named Sir Richard Brand Something.
  • The Boondocks:
  • Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese: Margaret is a CEO who owns plenty of businesses in the town and is a horrible boss to the people working under her, even when the bobblehead factory is nearly empty and has an unappealing appearance. The fact that she enjoys being this as well as the lack of concern of how much pollution her bobblehead factory once affected the titular characters' beloved grove doesn't help her case at all.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command had a minor recurring villain named Norbert Klerm, who runs a company called Comp U Klerm and at one point attempts to market a series of robots designed to annihilate Star Command.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers:
    • Looten Plunder is of this type and is also one of the few villains in the show whose motive for pillaging the Earth (poaching) is all that plausible, most of the others having fantastic motives (Duke Nukem physically thrives on radiation) or doing it out of sheer malice.
    • Hoggish Greedly is also one, just of a more slovenly, apathetic type. He doesn't seem to show outright malice for the environment — he usually just doesn't care about it, and his motives center on obtaining vast amounts of money and resources as fast as possible.
    • Sly Sludge is a corrupt exec who focuses on waste disposal (that is, dumping absurd amounts of toxic waste and garbage wherever) and is sleazy and sneaky. He often runs operations to shrink, compact or incinerate garbage, but either they're fake or they backfire severely.
    • About 50% of Dr. Blight's evil schemes revolve around making herself famous, rich or preferably both, including more than once when she teams up with one of the above characters for some malignant corporate venture. She usually supplies the hyper-advanced tech they need to do their thing. The other 50%, on the other hand, are messing up the environment for the heck of it.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door has several villains who happen to be unethical and vile businessmen.
    • Mr. Boss is a Child Hater who at one point schemed to have his employees' children shot into space just so they'd have much longer workdays. To make this ironic, three Sector V operatives (Numbuhs Four, Three, and Two) have parents who work for his company, while Numbuh 86 is his daughter.
    • "Operation: R.A.I.N.B.O.W.S." introduces Mr. Mogul, who owns the company that makes Rainbow Monkey toys. After noticing that Numbuh Three is able to pick up the scent of Rainbow Monkeys without error, he manipulates her into helping him find real Rainbow Monkeys so he can do something sinister to them. What he intends to do with the real Rainbow Monkeys isn't revealed, but it's strongly implied that he intends to kill them and make their bodies into toys. He also had no problems with doing the same thing to Numbuh Three once she found out his plan.
    • The main villain Father owns a corporation called Evil Adult Industries, Inc. The name of the company alone should be an obvious indication that he uses it to do nefarious things. The fact that the rest of the Rogues Gallery works there is another.
  • The Crumpets has Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried, who both run countless enterprises that they use to trick the public and their family (the titular Crumpets) out of money.
  • DC Animated Universe
  • Season 3 of Daria featured its title character dealing with one of these in the entertainment industry. In "The Lost Girls," Daira finds herself forced to spend a day with magazine editor Val after Mr. O'Neill submitted one of her essays into a "Spend The Day With Val" contest (without her consent). Val's the owner and founder of "Val" Magazine and tries very, very hard to dress and act like a teenager when she clearly is not. Her assertion that she's 28 years old is enough to get Kevin and Brittany, two of the dumbest characters on the show, to gape in amazement at how deluded she is. However, despite appearing to be a self-absorbed Dumb Blonde, Val is also an opportunistic Attention Whore desperate to find out every new aspect of life as an American teenager so she can exploit it to sell her magazine under the guise of it being "Now" and "Edgy." By the end of the episode, Daria tears Val a new one and calls out her and her magazine for the way they exploit teen culture and are messing up young women but emphasizing how important it is to be attractive and popular instead of giving them anything to help them become adults. Val's entire character was designed as a Take That! against real life editor Jane Pratt, founder of the now defunct Jane magazine.
  • Darkwing Duck's foe the Liquidator was once Bud Fludd, the owner of a bottled water company who was poisoning his competitor's water supply. An accident turned him into a water controlling supervillain, but his old traits stick around; for example, he once flooded the city so he could sell "Liquidator Brand life rafts" at a ridiculously inflated price.
  • Dexter's Laboratory
    • The episode "Chubby Cheese" revealed that the head of the titular restaurant chain was actually using Chubby Cheese's as a front for amassing lots of money and taking over the world.
    • The TV movie Ego Trip showed that in the future, Mandark would take over the company he and Dexter worked for and eventually use its resources to take over the world and rule all of humanity.
  • On Dilbert when the title character and Wally become part owners of their company they meet the other CEOs. Reading back the minutes of the last meeting one informs them that "we gave each other stock options, discussed ways to ignore the needs of others and Hamilton had a racial joke."
  • Bob Santino from Dogstar. He was willing to destroy every dog on Earth so he could make a profit selling his robotic dogs.
  • Word Paynn from Dragon Booster is the CEO of one of the largest corporations in Dragon City, making him one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. He is also the series's Big Bad, using his business as a cover for his plans of plunging the world into another Dragon-Human War.
  • Flintheart Glomgold, Scrooge's rival from DuckTales (1987) (actually created by Carl Barks in the comics). He serves as an Evil Counterpart to Scrooge; Scrooge is also greedy, but unlike Glomgold, he's honest. The version of Flintheart Glomgold is DuckTales (2017) might be worse, considering his Murder Is the Best Solution tendencies.
  • HP, the Head Pixie from The Fairly OddParents! He's voiced by Ben Stein (as are the other pixies) and has got to be the most boring creature in Fairyworld.
  • Carter Pewdterschmidt on Family Guy. Originally, he was just an idiotic Manchild who doesn't understand the world outside of business. Post-cancellation, he's just outright evil.
  • The Filmation's Ghostbusters episode "The Battle for Ghost Command" features a man who illegally dumps toxic waste at the city's sewers, unknowingly attracting ghosts until the Ghostbusters discovered the truth.
  • Armando Gutierrez from Freakazoid! knew about the flaw that gave Dexter powers but refused to recall his product because it would affect sales. He is both voiced by and obviously physically modeled after Ricardo Montalban. His ambitions later grow beyond profit margins when he decides to exploit the flaw so he can become a powerful Freakazoid too.
  • Mr. Twitchell from the Frosty the Snowman sequel Frosty Returns. He plans to use his product Summer Wheeze to eliminate snow forever and doesn't care about how his actions would affect the environment. He even punishes one of his subordinates for questioning his ethics by dumping her through a trap door.
  • Futurama:
  • The Crimson Twins Tomax and Xamot are depicted this way in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero since they are affiliated with the terrorist organization Cobra and they use their company Extensive Enterprises to give Cobra funding.
  • "Batteries Not Included", the first episode of the Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon, had the Garbage Pail Kids fight the Funbusters, who attempted to destroy every toy in America by creating and distributing batteries that would ruin any toy that used them.
  • The Garfield Show has two examples:
    • The first is Mama Meany, a Fat Bastard who's introduced trying to run Garfield's favorite pizza place out of business so he can expand his own (largely by using numerous coupons and deals, as his pizza tastes horrible). He's also expanded into at least one other venture: running a home shopping channel and scamming everyone who watches it into buying useless things.
    • The second is Anthony Allwork. First appearing as an Amoral Attorney who Jon owed money to, he later used a weather-controlling machine to create an extreme heat wave so that people would buy his products to cool off. He's also a neglectful father towards his son, Jack.
  • David Xanatos from Gargoyles. He is, however, Affably Evil, fond of Pragmatic Villainy, and a loving family man so he's not as extreme as most examples.
    • Demona and Thailog become these when they create Nightstone Unlimited, under the assumed identities of Dominique Destine (who is never seen at night) and Alexander Thailog (who is never seen in person).
  • Subverted in the Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer holiday special: Austin Bucks is misguided and the Big Bad's original plot involves making a business deal with him, but he doesn't know about any of the villainous things she's done to achieve it and proves to be quite ethical.
  • The Gravedale High episode "Save Our School" had a hotel owner who calls herself The Empress, who wants to put a chain of her hotel where the school is and even hires a health inspector in order to condemn it so she can have it torn down.
  • Stavros Garkos, the main villain of the animated series Hurricanes, is the head of Garkos Enterprises and is usually seeking for dishonest ways to increase his wealth and/or turn his soccer team into world champions.
    • The series also introduced a villain named Douglas Fir, whose character is similar to Garkos.
    • Also in that series, when Napper Thompson's uncle died and left his fortune to him on the condition Napper never plays soccer again, Napper became the target of two villains who wanted to get the inheritance. One of the villains was the uncle's former business partner. Napper lost the inheritance but fortunately, it was revealed neither villain was the appointed next heir.
  • Eric Raymond from Jem starts the series owning half of Jerrica's music company and does everything he can to sabotage Jem and the Holograms or stop them from beating the Misfits, even if his methods put people's lives at risk.
  • Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Though, considering that Misery Inc. already runs the town anyway, he's seen more as a dictator.
  • Master Blaster in Kidd Video is an evil disc producer, coherent with the music-themed nature of the show. He wants to make the eponymous band his slaves.
  • Interestingly, in Kim Possible, Drakken's two plans that came closest to succeeding involved becoming this, first over Bueno Nacho, and the second over Hank's Gourmet Cupcakes. The cupcake business was so successful that Drakken was seriously considering giving up supervillainy to focus entirely on it. However, it went under when a low-carb fad diet became popular and people stopped buying cupcakes. However, Even Evil Has Standards, and Drakken is 100% committed to truth in advertising. In one episode, he tried to sell shampoo that stated plainly on the label that it would brainwash you into becoming his slave. Understandably, it didn't sell well.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Hiroshi Sato framed a competitor with association to the Equalists.
    • Season two has Varrick, who while an ally of the protagonists supposedly deals with the triads, instigates a war with the Northern Water Tribe because their blockade is ruining his business, is not above bribing his way out of a situation and engages in war profiteering. He's also revealed to be escalating the war for profit as well as secretly bankrupting Asami's corporation so that he can buy it out from her. Despite this, he's not evil so much as amoral and he's usually willing to help Team Avatar if it suits his needs (or just because he likes them).
  • W.C. Moore in Little Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers owns the town the show is set in and takes time out of his day to use his Berkonium marble to beat kids at marbles and take theirs for himself.
  • Fisher Biskit from Littlest Pet Shop (2012) initially isn't cartoonishly corrupt, but he is the owner of a large Predatory Business that initially threatens to put the titular shop out of business and in the episode "Heart of Parkness" apparently has no problems harboring an endangered species of snake, or in "Littlest Bigfoot" making a pet shampoo that requires an entire tree to produce one drop. His daughters were much worse, at least prior to his characterization in "A Night at the Pawza", where he tries to prevent a pet hotel from opening long enough for him to open his own.
  • Charles Foster Ofdensen of Metalocalypse, who is the Man Behind the Band, willing to have people killed and/or tortured (and sometimes doing it himself) for the sake of Dethklok's (his "Bread and Butter" by his own words) career. Within the greater scope of things however he's the Big Good since he's the true brains behind the band and the empire, thus making him a primary target of the villains.
    • James Grishnack, producer of Dethklok's movie "Blood Ocean" in Season 1, has a fitting line for this trope: "I've been fucking over celebrities since you were all shitting in diapers!"
    • Season 3 has Damien. He was the son of the executive that first signed Dethklok. He disliked death metal and had a grudge against Nathan Explosion for punching him. Upon taking power from his ailing father, he cut off Dethklok's finances and shut down a concert in order to force Dethklok into signing a new contract, one that would give him the lion's share of profit. Only the timely intervention of the thought-dead Ofdensen stopped him, and he got punched by Nathan again for trying to attack Ofdensen.
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • Downplayed with Gabriel Agreste; he's the head of a fashion company, but we don't see how he runs said company on a daily basis. Most of his corruptness comes from the way he treats his son and the fact that he's the show's Big Bad.
    • Music producer Bob Roth is a straighter example. In his debut episode, he tries to pressure Jagged Stone into switching his choice in music so he can make more money, considers being #2 on the charts reason enough to drop Jagged from his label (which he's rightfully called out on), and lies to Marinette about what the rock star asked his album cover to be like so he can have his way. In a later episode, he sets up a phony music contest so that his son (the pop star that was #1 on the charts earlier) can steal the winning entry to use as his own, and then threatens to sue the original creators for plagiarism if they try to reveal the truth (fortunately, an Engineered Public Confession outs him later on).
  • Magnacat in Monster Allergy appears as this in his human persona.
  • The main villain of the obscure Fox Family show Monster Farm was Pa, a balding farm magnate who frequently tried to force Jack Haylee to sell him the farm using any underhanded methods he could.
  • In My Adventures with Superman, Mad Scientist Dr. Anthony Ivo/Parasite was a Tech Bro that functioned as a Corrupted Character Copy of Iron Man. He was a dramatic, fashionable, and flashy CEO of a billion-dollar company that developed Powered Armor to protect the world from harm but intended to sell his dangerous inventions to anyone that had the cash, and was a sociopath who projected his own selfishness onto everyone else. He had ties to criminal gangs who sabotage competitors and displace neighborhoods on his behalf, which Clark publicly lambasts him for at his party (and is predictably thrown out in response). Not to mention he was a Bad Boss to his Servile Snarker assistant Alex.
  • The My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "Labor Day" has the head of a corporation that manufactures cereal prizes named M.J. Bryce. He manipulates Jenny into eliminating his competition and also attempts to pressure her into stealing the holographic ring cereal prize from one of his competitors. Jenny ends up using the holographic ring to record Bryce admitting that he's willing to steal from his competition.
  • Pantheon: Logorythms is led by people who are willing to do anything to see their late founders' dreams achieved, even if it means holding people prisoner as sentient programs and resources. Chandra's boss arguably outclasses them, as he not only turns his pupil into a U.I through a horrifying and invasive procedure, but casually mentions he's done this to other people. With less successful results.
  • Some shorts feature Bluto and Popeye as business rivals. For example, one had the two of them competing for a military contract to build warships.
    • In the Al Brodax short "Spinach Shortage", Bluto Expy Brutus monopolized spinach and was withholding it to raise prices. While it's anyone's guess if he did anything illegal to obtain his spinach monopoly, it's still illegal to abuse monopoly even if it was obtained fair and square.
  • Cyril Sneer from The Raccoons, but the trope is gradually subverted as the series progresses as he eventually grows a conscience and his principled son, Cedric, eventually takes over the business as a partner.
    • Milton Midas on the other hand, is a much more straight example, as his actions of disposing toxic waste cause a lake to become contaminated.
  • Hannibal McFist from Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, who is one of The Sorcerer's Co-Dragons and also a Villain with Good Publicity as a result of most of Norrisville being Genre Blind; namely, no one seems to bat an eyelash at his company's headquarters being a giant black and green pyramid in the middle of town.
  • Rich Buckner from the Thanksgiving episode of Regular Show. When his ultra-patriotic Thanksgiving song loses out to Mordecai and Rigby's song in a contest to obtain an actual turducken (born every million years), he steals the turducken anyway because it contains a golden wishbone that grants actual wishes, which he intended to use to obtain the rights to Thanksgiving.
  • Roboroach: Sterling Uberbucks is a rich CEO who's also a member of Roboroach's Rogues Gallery.
  • Gart Default from Robot and Monster, who cares little for the safety of his employees or the operational state of the factory they work in and frequently abuses and mocks his younger brother. His rival Pendulum Depot also qualifies, being a Manipulative Bastard who tries to get the Default family's blinking light recipe with Robot's help, but ends up getting Out-Gambitted.
  • Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends has Hanek, the head of a company called Intracom, and his rival Verhooven, both of whom are vampires.
  • Angelica takes the role of one in one Rugrats episode. The hallway to her office has portraits of many Corrupt Corporate Executives (which includes a Wicked Witch and a devil). Her office looks like it's located in Hell, her pigtails are devil horns, and she chases Tommy and Chuckie with insanely creepy robot businessmen.
    Tommy: Boss Angelica...
    Angelica: Yes?
    Tommy: You don't have to be so mean to us...
    Angelica: Oh, I don't, eh? Well, let me tell YOU something! If I wanna be mean, I CAN be mean! Know why? ...CAUSE I'M THE BOSS! I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT! AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, I CAN HAVE YOU FIRED!
  • The Simpsons
    • Mr. Burns. He's dumped radioactive waste at public parks and playgrounds, sold weapons to the Nazis, stolen a trillion dollars in foreign aid money from the U.S. government, and (most famously) built a giant sun-blocking device to keep Springfield shrouded in perpetual darkness, all so his electric company could have a truly complete monopoly over the town's energy supply.
      Mr. Burns: Listen, Spielbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod! We're both factory owners, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, DAMMIT!
    • The Rich Texan. He once owned a logging company and once attempted to cut down Springfield's tallest Redwood tree, until his company was destroyed by the gigantic tree after it slid down a hill.
    • Russ Cargill from The Simpsons Movie. He owns the company that made the dome he trapped Springfield in.
    • Lindsay Naegel is a yuppie businesswoman who always somehow finds her way in some high-powered position and aside from being a sexual predator (which is why she switches jobs all the time) has a hatred of children that led her to lobby into childproofing the city of Springfield.
  • South Park:
    • The big-guy-versus-little-guy version is subverted in the "Gnomes" episode. Tweek's dad's coffee shop is threatened by the imminent arrival of a Starbucks-esque chain, and he conscripts the kids into encouraging the town to prevent this. However, the kids learn from the Underpants Gnomes that successful corporations often get that way because they have a better product. When the townsfolk actually try the chain's coffee, even Tweek's dad agrees it's far superior to what he was making, and the town relents.
    • A particularly foul-mouthed and violent version of Mickey Mouse is used as a representation of Disney's shadier corporate actions, such as "The Ring" criticizing their exploitative use of teen idols.
    • Several Native Americans owning a large casino who threatened to tear down South Park to make way for a highway also count.
    • CEO of Walmart is a subversion. He seems corrupt at first but is in fact a slave to Walmart itself.
    • "Chef-Aid:" "I am above the law!"
    • "The Entity": The airline industry
    • Season 22 has Jeff Bezos, depicted as a tyrannical telepathic alien enslaving Amazon's workers.
    • In Season 23 and the "Tegridy Farms" arc, Randy Marsh, having become wealthy from his Tegridy Farms marijuana industry, becomes this, blowing up homegrown marijuana gardens to maintain his monopoly, making a deal with the Chinese to kill Winnie the Pooh, parading his wealth all throughout South Park gained from his aforementioned Chinese deals (despite full knowledge that China is only buying weed to plant to protesters), killing a dozen cows after his Tegridy Burger bankrupted the meat industry, and selling a mutated version of his Halloween Special to everyone. As a result, everyone finally gets fed up with Tegridy Farms and gets arrested.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Norman Osborn, respected Oscorp CEO, retains this role from his comic book counterpart.
  • Dan Halen from Squidbillies is not just a corrupt executive but an embodiment of pure evil whose company was founded to spread misery and death, going so far as to release a product called the Baby Death Trap.
    • That was mostly so he could sue people referring to one of his other products as a "baby death trap", presumably under the guise of trademark protection (since the original product was probably too dangerous for a libel suit to hold up in court).
  • Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants used to be a lovable example of this, before he passed the Moral Event Horizon and did things like obsess over a penny and try to drive his rival to suicide for no reason.
  • Shere Khan is recast as one of these in TaleSpin.
  • Oroku Saki/The Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) series is one of these. His supposed "office building" in New York is also the main headquarters of the Foot Clan. His adopted daughter, Karai, later inherits his position as CEO of his public corporation as well as head of the Foot Clan during his banishment at the end of one season.
  • Montana Max from Tiny Toon Adventures is a teenage version of this. He owns a number of environmentally-unfriendly factories that make frivolous things such as wooden ice cream spoons and donut holes, which Plucky Duck often tries to stop as his superhero alter-ego, the Toxic Revenger.
  • The Transformers: Failed mayoral candidate Shawn Berger, the owner of a multi-billion dollar company, is tricked into teaming up with Megatron in order to convince the people of Earth that the Autobots are evil, and the Decepticons are the good guys, in the 2 part episode "Megatron's Master Plan".
  • Porter C. Powell from Transformers: Animated. Just ask Sari Sumdac, who found herself kicked out of her own home as part of Powell's extremely hostile takeover of Sumdac Systems. He immediately rehires the clearly insane Henry Masterson, who had previously threatened to cause a nuclear meltdown on national TV, so he can break into the military market that Professor Sumdac kept the company out of. He then allows Masterson to steal Sentinel Prime's body and bails him out when he gets caught, on the basis that alien robots don't have rights. Don't worry, it all comes back to bite him.
    Powell: There's no room for sentiment in business.
  • Mr. Big from WordGirl, who is an evil executive who had a tendency to brainwash people.
  • Yogi's Gang: Mr. Hothead of Hothead Enterprises. He has a device that turns people into hotheads and uses it on Yogi's Gang as part of a plan to force Cindy to sell her dude ranch. He later sabotages the ranch's water supply.
  • The 2012 dub of YooHoo & Friends has the main characters start as the greedy and immoral heads of a corporation called NastyCorp prior to their Karmic Transformation.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top