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"Do you remember what the villains from Captain Planet were like, how they'd steal an oil tanker and deliberately run smack into a beach to teach the sea lions a lesson in complacency? Do you remember wondering why they didn't just sell the oil at huge profits and not have to get beaten up by a big blue man in little red pants?"
"This is a pretty sensible plan. It's far less extreme than say, patenting the device, and getting a business loan, and selling the thing legitimately. And it's far easier than just shooting Batman, and then taking off his mask. "
— The Agony Booth, on Batman Forever
A villain who constantly fails at beating the heroes never realizes their intellect and hard work might mean they'd get a lot more done if they did an honest day's work; any attempt at going straight is simply a ruse to lull heroes into a false sense of security. This may be more a factor of maintaining the Status Quo, particularly those with a conceit of realism, and it's usually mentioned that the Mad Scientist is mad after all. Sometimes glossed over at a villain's death with "If only he'd used his powers for good, instead of for evil." This is a dying trope as comic book characters became more complex, but was extremely common for many villains decades ago.
Consider, for a moment, the Trope Namer: Lex Luthor. His earliest incarnations were generally focused on using his mad scientist inventions for the sort of schemes typical in the Golden Age and Silver Age, with the goals of pure monetary gain, "ruling the world", or eliminating Superman as an obstacle to monetary gain... the question is then raised as to why he just doesn't sell his amazing inventions legally.
In the Post Crisis world, however, Luthor was recreated as a Corrupt Corporate Executive, already a multi-billionaire captain of industry before even meeting Supes. Now, having far more cash than a man could ever spend in one lifetime, Luthor's only want is power, and while he certainly has a great deal of it already, he wants more... and Superman, he feels, is standing in his way.
The current Luthor is a far cry from a purely Mad Scientist, he thus avoids the trope.
When this is avoided, the turn to the side of good is usually planned well in advance. Heroes may even precipitate it by simply asking " And Then What?"
Sometimes this trope is subverted by villains who start out using their talents for legitimate gain, but who end up becoming villains for one reason or another.
Compare Reed Richards Is Useless, Screw The Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers! and Dick Dastardly Stops To Cheat. Contrast Visionary Villain. See also Science Related Memetic Disorder and Sanity Has Advantages for the possible justifications of this trope.
Examples
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Anime
- Pumpkin Scissors. This trope is almost the premise of the series- this is a world where rather than building safer tanks or devices to protect people from chemical weapons, they engineer people who can withstand tank-fire and chemical weapons.
- Team Rocket in the Pokémon anime invented some of the most impressive Death Traps one could ever imagine, almost every episode... until they started running out of money. They were also not above taking and maintaining legit work, until the inevitable screw up, and it's always manual labor anyway. Ironically, their "honest" work was almost always profitable.
- It's mentioned in one episode of the Johto series that they borrowed the traps from Team Rocket, and that they were invented by the R&D at their HQ.
- And they always proved to be much better at whatever work they were doing than they ever were at being bad guys.
- Team Rocket have been woobies for a long time because of this, in this troper's opinion, at least. They can't do anything right.
- In fact, Jessie recently started entering Pokemon contests; not only is she pretty good at it, she has won a few, currently possessing two Sinnoh ribbons.
- Subverted in Tsukihime canon; the 14th Dead Apostle Ancestor, Van-Fem, rather than drinking blood and harming humans, he took a preference to human society/life and built a highly-profitable casino boat in Monte Carlo shortly after World War 1 which earned him a high social status among humans.
- Hideaki Anno is reported to have asked why Neo-Atlantis in Nadia wants to conquer the world instead of just using their superior technology for their own benefit. Reportedly, he got no answer. Wikipedia reports this,
 although the actual source seems unfindable.
- Sunred points this out to his Friendly Enemy General Vamp in Tentai Senshi Sunred. Vamp is such a good homemaker that Sunred tells him "You oughta give up the world domination thing and open a restaurant."
- Inverted in One Piece, when minor villain Wapol actually starts a new life and builds a massive toy-making empire by using his powers to recycle objects into toys.
- Lampshaded in Coyote Ragtime Show when a swindler manages to sneak his way into a high-paying executive job for a major bank purely so he'll be in a position to test himself against their reputedly 'impenetrable' vault — he could easily have lived a comfortable and stable life with a job like that, but the money wasn't the issue.
- Possibly lampshaded in Slayers NEXT. Martina is horribly, comically hopeless as a villain, but turns out to be sufficiently talented in retail and handicrafts to raise a small army of thugs out of her profits from selling (and making) paper flowers for a few episodes.
- Averted in Baccano when Nice (who qualifies as a villain only in the sense of being a criminal) invents a new form of explosive and immediately sells it to the mining industry.
Comic Books
- The British Dennis the Menace designs and builds an incredible Menace Car that can fly and hover and perform every trick imaginable - he could probably sell the technology for a billion pounds, but is satisfied to just "menace" the townspeople with it.
- Many Superman comics, particularly the famous Elseworlds Red Son, allude to Lex Luthor likely making all kinds of amazing gadgets and discoveries... if he weren't so obsessed with killing Superman. Indeed, the Post Crisis refocusing of Lex from a Mad Scientist to a Corrupt Corporate Executive is due to this trope.
- For those who have not read Red Son, Lex starts out a sociopath and his quest to defeat Superman's USSR almost leads the world to ruin, and leaves the USA a shattered country with states breaking from the unions, and a destroyed economy. When Luthor finally destroys Superman, he goes on to eliminate poverty, create a new economic system, eliminate all diseases allowing humans to live for hundreds of years. The whole world is united as one nation under Luthor's banner and the golden age he engineers lasts for millions of years.
- It is implied that this was a planned all along, or at least from the point where he kills anyone with a working knowledge of his plans. His thoughts when he believes Superman has been killed. "One can almost be forgiven for calculating this to ten digits 30 years ago".
- In one Silver Age "imaginary story", Luthor goes as far as to invent a cure for cancer while in prison for the sole purpose of fooling Superman into believing he has gone straight. He later betrays Superman and murders him with Kryptonite rays.
- One story begins with Lex having spent billions of dollars in plans against Superman for that month... and being glad that he's well within his budget. After his next plan to defeat Superman fails, Superman tells him that he's a brilliant man and could do so much for the world if he put his mind and resources to it instead of his hatred of him. Once Supes leaves, Lex, enraged at Superman's daring to tell him how to live his life, doubles his anti-Superman budget.
- In another story, Superman let him think his current plan was working until he got past the "make useful inventions to create good publicity" phase.
- The DCAU style animated movie Superman: Doomsday briefly passes over this for a Kick The Dog moment. It is mentioned that his company has found a cure for muscular dystrophy... but they're holding them back until they can slow it down to a lifetime treatment and make more money, as he's not satisfied with the $300 Billion he estimates it would already make him.
- Lampshaded by Superman himself — in Infinite Crisis, Superman is drained of all his powers. They take a year to recharge, so for a year, no Superman at all. Upon his return, when he discovers that Lex has spent the year obsessing about him rather than doing anything useful, he taunts Lex about it. "Where's the cancer cure, Lex?"
- It's much simpler in All-Star Superman — there, Lex is just so bitter and twisted towards Superman that he can't really be bothered doing anything that isn't related in some way to his vendetta.
- Too bad he never stopped to think that he could just create some big Xanatos Gambit involving him making oodles of money and eliminating Superman. Just because he has to kill Superman doesn't mean he can't get rich at the same time, right? Then again, that would really be simple, now, would it?
- The whole point of his character in this series, however, is that Lex has simply become so consumed with hatred and envy towards Superman that he literally does not care about making oodles of money anymore, if he ever did; he just wants to see Superman dead. Irrational, yes, but not complicated (and let's face it; anything to do with a Xanatos Gambit is by definition complicated).
- The scheme in the Question miniseries comes to mind, where he builds a massive skyscraper which uses feng shui to kill any alien that gets too close to it with no warning. . The Question discovers this and murders a bunch of Luthor's thugs and dumps them in the cement of the foundation, ruining the skyscraper's special properties but leaving it intact as a moneymaker for Luthor.
- In Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, someone DOES just cut Lex Luthor a check for a few million, after he told them how to neutralize the Swamp Thing. That really would be Lex's ideal career, eh? Being paid obscene amounts of money to figure out how to kill hard-to-kill-people.
- See Jonathan Teatime in Hogfather, an assassin with precisely that hobby.
- Subverted in Son of the Bat where the title character brings together Brainiac, Lex Luthor and Ra's al'Ghul to save the world from being erased by time-travellers. It backfires horribly since the 3 of them only looks out for their own individual interest despite any rewards promised.
- In the 2003 one-shot JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, Batman counters Weather Wizard's latest scheme by cutting him a check.
- In the Justice League TV show, Batman pulls the same stunt by bribing the Ultra-Humanite to turn on his allies for a massive donation to public broadcasting so he can enjoy classical music tv programming in prison.
- In the Rock of Ages story in JLA, Batman gave Mirror Master "a better offer" than Lex, effectively infiltrating the Injustice Squad. When Lex offers to double the JLA's price, Mirror Master says that it is not about the money. Batman explains that the money he paid Mirror Master went to the orphanage he grew up in, and advises never to underestimate a Scotsman's sentimentality.
- Lampshaded by Lex Luthor in World War III, when he comments that Prometheus could have made himself wealthy by patenting his exotic technology. Prometheus merely replies that money isn't what motivates his villainy.
- In the Spider-Man/X-Men Expanded Universe novel Time's Arrow: The Present, Spidey muses on "the guys who spend six million dollars building robot suits so they can rob banks". He compares this with his own initial decision to make money as a masked wrestler/novelty act, rather than sell his webbing formula to an adhesives company, and concludes that it's not really about the money; it's about proving something to everyone who ever laughed at them.
- The author of that book, Adam Troy-Castro, has fun with this trope; in the Sinister Six trilogy that he later wrote, he has Spidey sit down and have a little chat with a new minor villain rather than knock him all over the rooftops. He goes on to summarize the extended battle he had with the Six a few weeks earlier, as well as the abilities of the Sixers themselves. During the course of the discussion, he openly wonders why Electro doesn't just take a job with the electric company and earn millions that way.
- Back in the Steve Ditko days of Spider-Man, Spidey did try and sell his webbing formula to an adhesives company. The executives couldn't see a use for a powerful adhesive that lasted only 45 minutes. Personally, I think they just lacked imagination.
- A touch of the Wall Banger in retrospect given not only the developments in "sticky foam" for riot control but the invention of the Post-It note. They had a glue, it was quite sticky, but it didn't make a strong bond or set...so they put it on bits of paper intended to be easily removed.
- That's not a Wall Banger, that's a Shout Out... when you realize that this is the real story behind the Post-It note. The Post-It glue was an accidental failure from research into far more powerful glues. Five years of soapboxing didn't convince the executives at 3M that they had a winner on their hands, and all in all it took close to ten years between the discovery of the glue and the first sales of Post-It notes.
- Lampshaded in the modern Starman series, in which Jack Knight refuses to carry on the Starman legacy unless his dad will figure out how to adapt his "Cosmic Energy" technology to civilian purposes.
- Doctor Alchemy from The Flash somehow got his hands on the Philosopher's Stone - giving him the power to create infinite amounts of riches, transmute any substance to anything else, psychokinesis, and makes him immortal. He uses it, of all things, to commit petty crimes which repeatedly get him sent to jail.
- In a variant, a biography about the Barry Allen Flash notes that the villain that most worried him was Weather Wizard, because he could use his weather control technology to create unlimited environmental destruction instead of just using it to commit relatively petty robberies.
- Another example; Mirror Master is arguably the greatest inventor in the history of the world. He has created such devices as a matter duplicator, teleportation, and interdimensional portals. The first Mirror Master used these things to rob banks, the second uses them for mercenary work. If they just sold them they could become obscenely rich and not have to get the crap beaten out of them by a pajama clad speedster.
- The general inability/unwillingness of the classic Flash supervillains to think bigger has been noted quite a few times in that title.
- The Second Mirror Master actually ruminated on this once, that he and most of the people he ran with could become filthy rich beyond anything they could earn in petty crimes if they sold even half their indivdual tech, and that people had outright pointed this out to him before. He however, concluded he LIKED running around being a super-villian far too much to really consider going legit.
- In another story, a police detective who is forced to team up with Captain Cold calls him out for his criminal tendencies, pointing out how a man who invented a device that could manipulate matter on a molecular level(his 'Cold Gun') would have had no problem getting rich legitimately. The Captain responds by pointing out the detective's preference for expensive suits despite their impracticality in his line of work. 'We all have our vices.'
- How many tens of millions of dollars a year could Bullseye earn as a major league pitcher?
- This was actually addressed; Bullseye did play baseball in High School, but was banned from the sport after murdering some dude with a particularly accurate pitch. This where he also found his love of killing.
- Well you have to eat, to live to kill again.
- No foolin'. Bullseye loves to kill so much that This Troper is surprised he even bothers to charge for it.
- "Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby."
- This is also the case with fellow Marvel villain and hired killer Boomerang. Boomerang started out as a highly skilled major league pitcher, who was blacklisted after taking bribes to throw games. Seeing his potential, the villainous organization known as the Secret Empire trained him and gave him his trademark killing weapons.
- Averted with the Marvel Comics character Taskmaster. Able to flawlessly imitate anyone's physical abilities after seeing them in action once, he initially made money and his reputation training flunkies for supervillains, teaching them how to take down their superhero opponents. Once it became known he was a mercenary, not merely a dedicated villain, legitimate governments and law enforcement started hiring him to teach their people on how to take down superpowered threats.
- In the Marvel comic Heroes for Hire, a mercenary named Paladin breaks into a special armory where the props and weapons of various former gimmick villains are stored, seeking valuable weapons to both arm himself with and to sell. He comes across the "alchemy gun" of the former supervillain Chemistro, and comments amusedly that "This guy invented a gun that could turn lead into gold, and all he could think of was to rob banks with it". Moments later, he had a lightbulb moment, saying "Waitaminute — this thing turns lead into gold... I'm good with just this!" and attempts to escape with it. Unfortunately, the gun is destroyed in the course of fighting his way out.
- He presumably was unaware of the fact that any object transmuted by the alchemy gun turns into dust after exposure to heat or after a certain amount of time.
- So now you have a gun that can turn anything to dust. See the Glowing Light example in Gamebreaker.
- Well, Luke Cage would eventually comment that Chemistro was just one of those guys who had power and wanted to throw it around so people knew he meant business. If he turned things into gold and made himself rich, no one would be afraid of him or know who was boss.
- In one Shazam story, Dr. Sivana is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics because of all his useful inventions he discarded because he could not use them for crime, only to have Captain Marvel find them and bring them to the public. As it is, although Sivana could have earned a fortune if he could legally get patents on them, he is insulted by this turn of events, preferring to become Ruler of the Universe instead. He even goes so far that he promptly breaks jail to attempt to start World War III in retaliation with a ray that sparks violent aggression in people. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel interferes and turns the device into a peace ray that creates a solid 12 hours of world peace. As a result, Sivana is mortified at not only accepting his Nobel Prize under the ray's influence, but also for being subsequently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- A version of this shows up in the Elseworld series Generations, in which Batman ends up taking over Ra's Al Ghul's empire, and systematically dismantles the criminal operations while building up the legitimate front organizations into genuinely profitable and beneficial enterprises.
- Less usefully, Lex builds a giant robot in the 1920's, technology he never uses again.
- Superboy dumped the robot on the moon and Lex was taken to juvie (and later jail after he became of legal age). The reason Lex didn't use the technology again? He died in the 1930's when the Ultra-Humanite's rocket crashed. Ultra later performed a Grand Theft Me on Luthor's body which was fine, except for the deceased brain.
- In the "Tarnished Angel" arc of Astro City, Steeljack talks to the widow of another small-time supervillain who had managed to steal enough money to be set for life if he'd just quit, laundered his loot, and kept his head down. Instead, he sank it into another criminal scheme and lost everything — another highlighting of the usual rationale for why Cutting Lex Luthor A Check doesn't work on some villains and thus isn't attempted more often.
- Not just one other - Steeljack notes that this seems to the case for every small-time supervillain in the Kiefer Square area, including himself. Whenever they did manage to get any money, in would be squandered on more tech instead of put towards basic necessities, in the forlorn belief that they'd eventually strike it big.
- In another Astro City story, a villain actually gets away with a bank robbery so clean that no one knows he did it. That's the problem... He ends up pulling the same robbery again and deliberately getting caught, just so that he will get the credit.
- Also averted with the villain Mock Turtle, who put his skills to creating Powered Armour for a company, only for them to forbid him from piloting it, so he snapped and stole it.
- An episode of Justice League reveals that while Lex Luthor was on the run from the titular league, he left LexCorp to his assistant Mercy... who subsequently dug it out of the imminent bankruptcy that he had driven it into with all of his anti-Superman schemes.
- Something similar happened in the DCU comics continuity. Lana Lang has taken over bankrupt LexCorp and is despairing of a way to save the company from utter collapse... until she discovers that Lex had built himself a comfortable, reusable, and absolutely safe space shuttle so that he could go to the moon and back at will — solely to further his anti-Superman schemes, of course. Lex may have been too blinded to notice that he invented privatized spaceflight... but Lana isn't. She brings the technology to market and uses the profits to start digging LexCorp out of its financial hole.
- Then when Lana goes to one of Luthor's moonbases, she points out to two employees that LexCorp wouldn't be on the verge of bankruptcy if Luthor didn't waste billions of dollars on moonbases built solely for the purpose of klling Superman.
- Later, she discovered that Lex had hidden a clause in the fine print of her contract that if she ever used LexCorp assets to help Superman in any way, she was to be fired on the spot. And so she was.
- A recent issue of Ultimate Spiderman lampshaded and subverted this trope with Ultimate Shocker. Unlike the main universe version, the ultimate version is a real loser being only seen as a joke by everyone and constantly mocked by Spiderman. However after learning that Shocker had created his blasters himself, Spiderman asked him why he didn't made a fortune with selling the technology. The subversion, Shocker reveals that he had worked for a big company creating inventions and while said company made even more money, he was fired without seeing a single cent. Which also added a tragic aspect to the formerly laughable character, because he also explains how he studied at the MIT until his eyes bled.
- Averted in some Marvel comic or other. Molecule Man chats with another supervillain: "So eventually I got out of prison, and I thought" "Now I shall have my revenge!" "No, no. Who needs the grief? With my powers I can live in luxury without ever doing anything to draw the heroes' attention."
- Actually done by the villain Purple Man, who had pheromone-based mind-control powers. He lived the high life without doing anything to attract super-hero attention - only to get caught by Doctor Doom and used as a component in a world-conquest gizmo.
- Lampshaded and played straight, one right after the other in Spider Man. When the Man Who Would Be Hobgoblin first examines the Green Goblin's cache of equipment, he remarks on how incredible the technology is. Specifically, that the personal bat glider must surely represent a breakthrough in the field of aeronautics, and how this proves Norman Osborn's insanity, since he could have made far more money by patenting the design than he could ever have hoped to by using it for crime. In his very next breath, however, the man states that keeping such a thing to yourself would be one part of proving yourself better than those around you, and thus using it for personal gain makes total sense.
- In the first Spider-Man movie, Norman Osborn had designed the glider for the purpose of patenting it, so make of that what you will.
- Another Osborn example comes from him actually curing cancer. Rather than sell it, the very first thing he does is weaponize it and use it against Deadpool.
- At one point, The Riddler realizes this wouldn't work on him in part because of his ego, and in part because he feels compelled to leave clues for Batman. He then performs a variant of this based on his compulsive disorder and rampant ego: he becomes a vigilante detective as well, to keep his ego inflated and potentially beat Batman without having to worry about jail time should he fail.
- Not really a vigilante, right now he's just a PI using his notoriety as a criminal for publicity. But yeah, he's finally using his problem solving skills for something that actually works. One wonders what he'll do if he ever found out that one of his 'fellow PIs' that he used to bounce ideas off of in a private online chat forum for freelance investigators was actually Batman.
- At one point, the Riddler is seen chatting with Penguin, who has discovered he can make more money as a legitimate businessman selling cheaply made merchandise at extortionate, but legal, markups.
- Subverted with the Sleepwalker villain 8-Ball, who actually started out working for a defense firm as an engineer, before he was fired when his employers thought he was selling company secrets to pay his large gambling debts, leading him to create his weapons and costumed identity.
- Later played straight with Spectra, who first got a job in a laboratory so she could rob the place, only to obtain superhuman powers after Sleepwalker interferes in the robbery. At first, she seems poised to become a criminal, but when she reappears it turns out she's gotten a legitimate job using her light-generating powers.
- Justified as far back as the 1960s by the Porcupine, an Ant-Man villain. The inventor of the Porcupine battle suit worked for the American Department of Defense, and thought that the U.S. government would pay him next to nothing for the armor, and so he decided to keep it for himself. On the other hand, given that he turned out to be such a sorry excuse for a supervillain, he probably should have kept his day job, since at least then he'd have had a steady income.
- In one Golden Age Batman story, Catwoman establishes up a fashion magazine as part of plan to steal a fur coat. Think about what the investment versus return on that particular caper must have been.
- Just remember, the Catwoman - no matter her incarnation - isn't in the game for the profit; she's in it for the rush.
- Inverted during X-Factor's first run in with Random - Havok realizes that Random is fighting his team to a standstill because someone hired him. Havok ends the fight by literally cutting Random a check to buy out his contract.
- Subverted by the X-Men villain Arcade, who creates deadly Death Traps involving highly advanced robotics, that he uses to try and kill his victims. Given that he's already enormously wealthy, Arcade doesn't really need the $1 million he charges for his deadly theme parks-it's all just a game to him. Another subversion comes when he finds another market for his inventions, using his "Murderworlds" as training grounds for supervillains who want to get some practice in before going up against the heroes.
- Well, he does need the $1 million, but that's mostly to cover the cost of maintaing the theme parks.
- Lampshaded by the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird when Baxter Stockman, already very wealthy from his legitimate technology company, begins using his Mouser robots for crime. When April asks him why he'd do it when he's already rich, Stockman, who is already mentally unhinged to begin with, simply claims that it's fun! The 2003 cartoon repeats this scene, although this more sane version of Stockman is simply a greedy bastard, chiding April for being naive when he could have even more money than he already had by both robbing banks and leasing his technology to the Shredder, in addition to his legitimate business. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?
- In Mark Evanier's Blackhawk run, Professor Merson worked for the Axis, creating devices such as the Worm and the War Wheel, until Winston Churchill made him a more lucrative offer-so they cut Merson a check.
- Justin Hammer served the purpose of preventing this objection, since he financed and provided weapons to robbers for a percentage of the take. This prevented the incongruous situation of having these criminals invent it themselves.
- An evil engineer called the Tinkerer, first introduced in the SpiderMan comics, would construct supervillains' gear either from his own original ideas or from designs they submitted him, presumably because they lacked the resources to make the equipment themselves. The Tinkerer was also noteworthy in that he had several options for customers to pay him back, either providing the entire sum up front, or setting up a payment plan with regular installments in case the villain didn't have the money right off the bat.
- Ares Buchanan, upon discovering that another criminal had managed to get a rejected android from S.T.A.R. labs due to a scientist with personal problems who needed the money, began raiding the labs for rejected weapons. Although these weapons had safety and long-term reliability issues, Buchanan banked on these not deterring less warranty conscious criminal customers, who could not sue. Again, this prevented the problem.
- Similarly, Punch and Jewelee later go explained as having raided S.T.A.R. Labs, not having built their own weapons.
- This is a very very very common origin for DC tech-villains. So many villains do this that one wonders whether or not S.T.A.R.Labs' security is on the take.
- Marvel's Roxxon Corporation in the 1970's did it on purpose to get their gear field-tested.
- Both the Fixer and Ani-Mator had worked as legitimate scientists. The Fixer was fired from a number of jobs because of his air of superiority and unorthodox approach to simple tasks. Seeking a challenge, he turned to the planning and execution of technologically assisted crimes. The Ani-Mator similarly often wandered off to purse his own interests.
- Doctor Lovecraft in the Justice League initially did legitimate work for his company, but when they pursued financial wrongdoing, they allowed him to purse more dangerous experiments to create mutates to steal for the company. As these mutates later devolved out of sentience, this explains why he could not have gone public with his results.
- The Revenant has managed to 'convince' a number of villains of the PS238 universe that it is better for them to find a more practical way to use their abilities. For example, Mr. Godwin, aka the Crystal Skull, was convinced to stop robbing banks and to take money from people voluntarily... by running a legit casino.
- Ezekiel Stane developed...cybernetic enhancements, an artificial healing factor, and a biological power source strong enough to match Iron Man. Because...because he wanted to kill Iron Man. Obviously the prosthetics industry, biomedical engineering industry and medical science will just have to fucking wait! Genius can't be rushed!
- Stane seemed to be more interested in personal vendetta than profit. There was also an philosophical aspect to it, Stane believed himself to be the new wave of technology with Tony being outdated.
- Iron Man once defeated a villain called the Living Laser. An alternate universe comic has him simply hiring the certified genius as Tony Stark. Unfortunately this doesn't work because like most villains, He doesn't fit into society. This is arguably the best reason for not cutting Lex a check... villains who don't fit in still don't with money.
- Subverted as far back as the 1960s by the Wizard, an enemy of the Fantastic Four. He'd already become extremely wealthy with his incredible scientific talents, but he'd become intellectually bored and craved new challenges. Naturally enough, this led to him taking on the the Human Torch, and then the Four as a collective nemesis, becoming an Evil Counterpart to Reed Richards and forming an entire Evil Counterpart team in the Frightful Four.
- However Wizard's henchman the Trapster follows this trope to a T. He invented a type of super adhesive and decided to use it to rob banks instead of just patenting it, for some reason that they never explained. He even got a pardon after his first criminal outing, by helping the Avengers defeat Baron Zemo and yet still went back crime after that.
- The guy initially went around calling himself Paste-Pot Pete. Making sensible career moves clearly isn't his area.
- Linkara points out in Agony Booth review of Batman #147, that the scientist Garth could have patented an age-reversing ray instead of working with jewel thieves.
- Averted with the Atom's foe the Bug-Eyed Bandit, who became a criminal because no one would buy his technology - no-one would fund his research without a working model of it, but he couldn't build a working model of it without funding. Eventually, he got so ticked off that he just stole the money he needed, built his tech at last and used it to become a career criminal.
- This is Linkara's issue with Amanda Gideon. His reasoning? You already own the city practically and are rolling in money! Why are you dealing drugs!? You clearly don't need the money!
- He also called the one-shot Daredevil villain "The Surgeon General" on her whole organ-stealing shtick, which inherently relies on being a skilled surgeon.
- On the other hand, selling black-market organs would probably be more profitable than the average medical practice... the savings on malpractice insurance alone would be immense.
- Averted in one Tom Strong storyline; an alternate-timeline version of Tom manages to stop his archenemy in the normal timeline from ever turning to crime by pointing out how much more money he could make by selling his inventions legitimately.
- In the animated film Batman/Superman: Public Enemies, Lex Luthor's Presidential Administration rejuvenates the American economy. However, Lex Luthor eventually decide it is his destiny to have the Kryptonite meteor devastate Earth.
Film
- Subverted in the first Austin Powers movie, when Number Two grows furious with Dr. Evil for engaging in world-threatening schemes when their front companies were already making billions a year legally.
- Also in the sequels, as Dr. Evil returns from cryogenic suspension in the beginning of both only to find that Number Two has turned his evil organizations into legitimate businesses. Granted, in Goldmember Number Two finally hit upon the brilliant scheme of making the organization a legitimate business with the ethics of an evil organization, by turning it into a talent agency.
- Inverted in The Incredibles. Syndrome states that he made a fortune for himself by designing weapons and selling them, and that his real motivation for supervillainy was glory and revenge on Mr. Incredible. Except he seeks his glory by manufacturing a threat so he can pretend to save the day. All that effort could have just as easily been put towards actually saving people from legitimate dangers.
- No, that would just make him equal to the superheroes he so despised. Syndrome had to prove himself better than they were. Hence his secretly exterminating superheroes and then planning to epically show them up.
- In the Woody Allen flick Small Time Crooks, his character wants to use a bakery as a cover for digging a tunnel from its basement to a bank. The bank robbery fails, but they make millions with the cookies.
- Subverted in the first Spy Kids movie, where Mad Scientist Fegan Floop has to be goaded by his henchman Minion actually the real Big Bad into finishing his plan: using his successful Boobah-esque children's show as a cover to kidnap and hypnotize the kids of VIPs. As Floop finds his show quite rewarding on its own, he seems to have lost sight of his actually Minion's goals:
Minion: It's time for the most evil part of our plan!
Floop: Syndication?
- In Lord Of War Yuri Orlov eventually abandons his business as an arms dealer and adopts, in his words, "more legal methods of exploiting Third World countries", but notes that it isn't as thrilling as his old line of work, and there is comparatively more competition. He inevitably returns to arms dealing, with the change that it is government sponsored.
- In Buckaroo Banzai alien infiltrator John Bigboote has turned the front company Yoyodyne into a major defense contractor, so is less than enthusiastic when the Big Bad John Whorfin insists on building an interdimensional spacecraft to mount a attack on their original homeworld Planet Ten.
- The Corrupt Corporate Executive in Tron made his name, position and fortune by stealing another programmer's game programs... with the help of his fully sentient AI. Sure, it was evil as all get out, but they could have fixed that in Beta Testing.
- Particularly bad example in Spiderman 2. Dr. Octopus is researching a new power source. In order to control it, he invents a system of mechanical arms that: interface with his brain, also have artificial intelligence, are indestructible, and can throw cars at Spidey all day, but never need new batteries. The goddamn arms would win a number of Nobel prizes, but Peter Parker is there to take pictures of the one invention that doesn't work.
- In fairness this is also the marvelverse so it is possible that those things either already existed in some fashion (IE they had been invented before and this was just a tougher version of them) and also that free energy is still going to get a crapload of attention.
- The Avengers. Sir August could have legally made billions of dollars just by selling his weather control services to the other governments of the world. Possibly justified because 1. he's insane and 2. he wanted revenge on the British government for firing him.
- The Dark Knight gives us a possible justification. The Joker gets tons of money but simply burns it all. He doesn't care about getting money in his crimes. It's about accomplishing something and proving points to people.
Literature
- In Soon I Will Be Invincible, It's mentioned that after defeating Doctor Impossible, Blackwolf's corporation will patent the devices found in his base and make millions. Doctor Impossible is mostly driven by a need to prove himself to the world, and an obsession with the Zeta Dimension that isolated him from normal and academic life.
- This trope was also lampshaded when Doctor Impossible wondered "whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life."
- He also ruminates on the phenomenon that the smarter a person gets, the more likely they are to incline to the villainous side of the scale. There's even a term for it: Malign Hypercognition Disorder.
- Discworld's Lord Vetinari may be the logical conclusion of this trope: he has all the trappings of an Evil Overlord, but he isn't evil, opting instead for a strategic blend of The Chessmaster and Reasonable Authority Figure, because he is intelligent enough to know that Evil is not a good long term plan.
- In Making Money, Moist von Lipwig lampshades this. As someone who had previously been a con man and was now making a respectable living, he now found himself still desiring the thrill of the chase, and "keeping his hand in" with schemes of various sorts. Someone actually mentions to him how silly it is for people to swindle and trick when better money could be made out of living honestly... he glosses over the point.
- This is also Lampshaded in Equal Rites wherein it is pointed out that the time and effort a group of brigands puts into robbing caravans could have quite easily allowed them to earn a good living if they were to work that hard at a honest trade.
- The Goliath Corporation in the Thursday Next novels are an absolutely giant monolith who practically own Great Britain; still they insist on harebrained schemes like trying to enter fiction on a wide-scale basis. On the other hand, we infer that a large part of how they made their money in the first place was on evil schemes...
- Sherlock Holmes: John Clay in "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League" and his confederate were both making some sort of good living — at least enough to pay Jabez Wilson a tidy sum for the ridiculous work of copying the Encylopedia Britannica by hand to get him out of his pawnshop so that Clay could dig a tunnel to an adjoining bank... only to have Holmes nab him after ferreting out Clay's scheme just in the nick of time.
- This was actually justified in the story itself. When Jabez Wilson wonders why they spent so much money on him, Holmes points out that the fifty pounds they paid him was pocket change compared to the thirty thousand pounds they would have gained from robbing the bank.
- Don't forget that Jabez Wilson's pawnshop wasn't doing very well anyway, to the point where it barely provided him with a living. Clay didn't need the meager salary Wilson paid him anyway, as it was just a convenient way to get into Wilson's pawnshop so they could dig the tunnel.
- A TV adaptation establishes a possible reason for this; both Clay and his associate are in the employ of Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. So not only would they be well funded, but it's clearly established that Moriarty considers crime as more of an intellectual pursuit than a means of support, anyway.
- In Les Miserables, Hugo comments regarding the villain Thenardier that had he been slightly less evil, he could have been a well-to-do scoundrel, but instead, he's so crooked that he's constantly in dire financial straits. A similar comment is offered in Vanity Fair about one character who is a stingly and sly aristocrat. The author notes that if he had been born in obscurity, he could have become a wealthy Amoral Attorney, but as a baronet, he does things like being so stingy his crops fail and engaging in constant law suits which while profitable when he wins are more frequently a financial drain.
- Similar to the Roxxon example earlier, the Destroyer series inverted this at least once; in the Destroyer novel Engines of Destruction, the opponent, an agent of a Japanese company attacks American communications as part of a patriotic bid for (as they see it) Japanese interests.
- In the Paul Jennings short story The Strap Box Flier, an inventor goes from town to town selling his amazing glue which, in demonstrations, bonds instantly with a grip like steel. He then gets as far away as possible, before the townsfolk figure out the glue comes undone after four hours. Apparently it never occurred to him that a glue which allowed you to fix something immovably into place for a predictable amount of time, after which it would come undone of its own accord, would be worth an incredible fortune.
- The Golden Rendezvous by Alistair MacLean. The leader of a communist Banana Republic plans to settle his debts with the Soviet Union by robbing a ship of its cargo of gold, then destroying the witnesses with a nuclear weapon he's stolen from the United States. As the nuke is the latest US mini-missile, all he has to do is give it to the Soviets in exchange for cancelling his debt.
Live Action TV
- Subverted in The Wire- Stringer Bell clearly has the smarts to be running his own legitimate buisness empire- and by the third series it becomes clear this is something that he knows. Already he had been using college courses to firm up his understanding of economics and then applying this learning to his illegal drug dealing criminal empire, getting the whole thing running with immaculate efficiency that baffles local cops. He spends the majority of his time desperately trying to work to a point where he can go completely legitimate- an opportunity denied to him by his birth alone- but unfortunately on the road to this end he pisses of Omar Little and Crouching Bowtie Hidden BadAss Brother Muzone, who team up in the third series finale and kill him dead. Bad end.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Warren Meers could have made billions with his life-like androids. Instead, he pisses away his genius robbing banks in a small California town. Then again, Warren is very emotionally immature, such that he may well not have thought of the ramifications of his machines.
- It occurred to this troper that if he wasn't evil, Warren could have been an incredibly useful asset to the Scooby Gang, creating both decoys and fighters for the team with a design similar to the buffybot.
- All three members of Warren's "Troika" seem to have a pathological aversion to doing anything the "normal" way thanks to their histories of social isolation and trauma; this is directly referenced in the "warp drive" speech that introduces the trio, where Warren states that by subverting laws and living lives of supervillainous crime they prove their inherent superiority to people who work for a living. This seems to be hanging a lampshade on what must, after all, be a near-universal characteristic of comic-book supervillains.
- An episode of The Twilight Zone has a group of gold thieves trying to evade the heat. One of them accomplishes this by using a cryogenic device he made to hide for many decades instead of patenting the device and becoming a well respected and incredibly rich scientist.
- In Heroes, Sylar has the ability to intuitively understand how things work. Depending on how far that reaches, and how intimate the understanding is, it could be pretty damn amazing. He's only used it on watches and villainy so far, but think about it. Physics? Quantum mechanics? Relativity? Singularities? Psychology? Economics? Sociology? Theology? Genetics? Psychiatry? "Actually knowing how things work" would win you twenty Nobel Prizes before breakfast, progress technology several hundred years forward and let you retire the most influential, wealthy, powerful and historic human being to ever live. Screw regeneration, man.
- There are hints that Future Sylar used his analytical ability to good effect during his tenure as President of the United States.
- As it turns out, Sylar's ability itself causes brain-eating insanity, explaining why he didn't use it to become famous as a genius rather than as a madman.
- In Season 1, it was established that Sylar's brain-eating was caused by his Parent Issues. The "Hunger" as an inescapable part of his power was a Season 3 Ret Con, if not outright Dis Continuity.
- He doesn't eat brains! That's disgusting!
- Linderman and the other members of the Company seem to be an inversion of this trope. They're spectacularly wealthy, and Linderman talks about using his healing power to help others in the past, but remarks that "helping one person at a time could never be enough"... so naturally he comes up with a scheme to end human suffering entirely by Destroying New York City.
- Maybe he was taking lessons from Ozymandias?
- Nearly every single Doctor Who enemy, with the exception of the Always Chaotic Evil alien species, fall victim to this trope. The Master is an intensely charismatic, competent leader, Davros is stated by the Doctor himself to be one of the finest scientific minds in existence, the Rani's genius surpasses even that of the Doctor, and the list goes on and on, yet the only thing they apply their formidable talents to is death and destruction.
- This trope is simultaneously upheld and averted in that the Master and the Rani were Time Lords, and thus assured of one of the highest standards of living in the universe simply by staying at home. Davros was ruler of his home planet before creating the Daleks. They already had everything in life any reasonable person could desire before embarking on their villainous careers, and knew it - they just chose to be villains anyway in service of their un-reasonable desires, such as galaxy-conquering megalomania.
- In Partners in Crime, the Doctor casually mentions that it's illegal for the aliens to bring advanced technology to Earth, so that isn't as much an option as it seems.
- Averted in the 'Dalek Empire' Big Finish spinoffs, where the Daleks seek an alternate history where they've already conquered the entire universe. What they get is an alternate reality where the equivalent of Davros decided that you catch more flies with honey, and decided to make the Daleks good or at least well-intentioned. "You Daleks have conquered this galaxy?" "Correct" "You have waged war against its peoples, you have destroyed, you have subjugated." "Correct!" "You have commited the greatest crimes our universe has ever known! Neutralise them!" Unsurprisingly, by not being genocidal jerks, they've been far more successful, and the Daleks are rapidly reduced to the edge of extinction yet again.
- Lampshaded in the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", where Mal, upon confronting Saffron, points out that "All the lying, all the games....there's got to be an easier way to steal." At which point she replies that Mal is assuming the payoff for her is the money.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Hancock's Half Hour when the CMOT Dibbler 'Sid Balmory James' discovers that spending all his time thinking up elaborate cons is a lot harder than simply going to the bank and getting an overdraft.
- A heroic example occurs in the early seasons of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with Gadgeteer Genius Billy Cranston. Despite inventing the Rangers' watches, an all but flawless communication system that offers crystal-clear reception, is apparently unhindered by any of the various hazards that get in the way of other types of broadcast signals, is completely portable, and can be used to transport matter by teleporting the Rangers to the command center, he never once stops to think of the vast fortune he could earn by patenting this technology. So Yeah.
- though it is possible that he's using tech that he gained from becoming a ranger to make it, so when he patents the things and has to explain how they work that might cause some issues.
Video Games
- As the world's leading pharmaceutical company Resident Evils Umbrella Corporation had enough legitimate profit to not be dabbling in bio-weapons.
- In one of the Wesker's Files Wesker himself wonders why so much funding is being invested in the further development of the T-Virus when it is already developed enough to be a profitable and formidable bio-weapon. He concludes that Spencer must have an ulterior motive in the development of the T-Virus.
- Resident Evil 5 sheds some light on Spencer's motivations. Ever since he discovered the Progenitor Virus and its mutagenic properties, Spencer envisioned a new world order populated by a "superior breed of humans" that would share his values and worship him as a god. When the first project to create the new master race failed because Albert Wesker was the only one to survive the viral injections that were part of the project Spencer presumably had Umbrella continue research on mutagenic viruses to keep his dream alive. One document in-game even states that Spencer never considered Umbrella to be anything more than just another tool to further his ambitions. He wasn't even worried when Umbrella went under, since only the "worthless" employees would be hurt.
- Lampshaded in City Of Heroes. Sometimes NPCs will say "If the Sky Raiders really only wanted money they would just sell their jetpack designs. There is something more."
- Crey Corporation plays this straight, albeit somewhat deconstructed. They make a lot of products that could be much more valuable as actual products rather than tools of mass destruction — most impressively demonstrated in the use Brain Uploading, human cloning, targeted genetic engineering, and countless lesser technologies to make the same sort of security force that the other factions essentially get free. They also make countless products are just for consumer and military purchase, whether ethical or not, and said security forces are necessary to keep the less ethical products working and profitable. In addition, Countess Crey is less interested in money and more interested in protecting the human race from uncaring heroes, violent threats, and corrupt and uncaring corporations.
- Shu Shirakawa
- Averted in the original Mega Man Battle Network game game by Higsby, a teacher employed by the WWW to brainwash the students of ACDC and steal their rare chips for himself. He later opens up a chip shop.
- Averted hard in Bioshock, as Andrew Ryan forbade Rapture citizens from maintaining any contact with the outside world in order to protect his technologically advanvced underwater city from "parasites," foreign governments, and anything else that might disrupt his Objectivism-based capitalist paradise. It didn't work...
Web Comics
- Antihero For Hire lampshades it on this strip.
- Khrima in Adventurers! never thinks to bring to market his technological advances, from superweapons to robot chefs, as he is enamored with the idea of being evil and conquering the world.
- Parodied in this Shortpacked! strip.
- Freefall: Sam faces this dilemma the opposite way.
- In Sluggy Freelance Hereti-Corp actually does seem to get a lot of money by selling weapon designs to the military, running a web design company, and even setting up a chain of pizza restaurants. They'd probably manage to avoid the Villain Ball altogether, except that every Hereti-Corp CEO seems obsessed with capturing Oasis for as yet unidentified reasons.
- White Noise of Last Res0rt ends up in jail for hacking into a space station (and thus killing several people in the process)... and spends his time in jail wisely, writing up an encryption system as a workaround to the prison's security filters so he can have internet access. The prison turns around and convinces him to sell them the algorithm in exchange for several prison perks (as well as money, of course), providing him with a comfortable (albeit lonely) existence.
Web Original
- Lampshaded in Interviewing Leather:
- Which is really amusing when you consider that Lex Luthor, on whom Lucas is obviously based, was the US president for a while.
- Dr. Horrible said it best: "It's not about making money, it's about taking money."
- Averted in the Whateley Universe. Plenty of the mad scientists do, in fact, patent their inventions, and figure out uses for them. Furthermore, Ayla Goodkind is making it sure to look for these people and CUT them checks.
- And this is mercilessly lampshaded by Ayla Goodkind (formerly, one of the richest teenagers on the planet before becoming a mutant and getting kicked out of the family) herself, when she complains that Whateley Academy needs better contract law help for these inventors, and courses to teach the inventors how not to get robbed by the Corrupt Corporate Executive so they have to turn to crime later in life.
- Averted in a literal version of this trope, where Lex actually asks the President for a bailout check, but Superman fixes the economy.
Tabletop Role Playing Games
- The World Of Darkness plays with this concept a great deal, often with conflicting rationale.
- Mage The Awakening has the Free Council, which are a group of mages who actively and happily sell spells to other mages on a free capitalistic basis. This, of course, leads to the other Traditions being actively against this method out of sheer kneejerk reaction.
- Vampire The Requiem only slightly subverts this, as two whole covenants are based on using and abusing mortal business to build themselves a herd of blood bags. The Invictus uses their vampire disciplines to make slaves of well-placed professionals in key areas of business, finance and politics, and have a somewhat perverse reputation of making the careers of these ghouls fantastically successful. The Carthian Movement, meanwhile, has so many contacts in areas of business and technology that they usually don't mind selling their knowledge of modern technology to elder vampires in exchange for political gain.
- Changeling The Lost has whole Entitlements (secret Changeling organizations) dedicated to being very very good at their preferred mode of employment. The Guild of Goldspinners, for instance, has Rumplestiltskin-like ability to manufacture gold from nowhere. They realize that somebody will eventually catch on to this scheme, so they use their manufactured gold to buy real businesses and get real economic stability. Another Entitlement, the Knights of the Knowledge of the Tongue, open up Hedge-based restaurants and catering businesses to exploit the vast supply of magical fruit in their alternate dimension.
Close Tabletop Role Playing Games
Newspaper Comics
- "Fox Trot" has Jason Fox, who tries several ludicrous schemes to make money, (including thousand-dollar SNOW DINOSAURS, which, you know, would MELT come Spring!) despite the fact that he has effortlessly built machines and coded programs that could have made him MILLIONS had he simply sold them.
- He once tried to form a one-man corporation, but all he had to show investors was "a dinky little program I wrote for fun." Unfortunately for him and them, the Darth Jason virus did not "kill off interest," it "killed off the Internet."
Western Animation
- Batman The Animated Series explored the concept with most of its reoccurring villains. Their potential successes are all the more tragic when their origin Hope Spot for redemption is crushed by external forces or their own complusions, and most never return to it if they actually become insane. The Riddler, originally turning to crime after being shafted by a successful company which turned him to crime actually amasses a reasonable fortune later on with his intellect and toy making. Another is the Penguin, who is sane enough to admit associating with criminal riffraff is pretty distasteful anyway and he'd make much more profit with a skimming-off-the-top grey market nightclub.
- And Mister Freeze has a gun which fires "a beam of intense cold". He's just poked a hole in the laws of thermodynamics and could make billions using that technology to revolutionize cryogenics, but he just uses it as a unique gun. Freeze's main motivation is vengeance for what happened to his wife anyway - it's not about the money for him, it's about having a way to lash out at the world.
- Nevermind that he is also completely immortal in some continuities. Hell, his technology to make people live forever under the most unfavourable circumstances would be worth more than all his other cold-related inventions combined.
- Also, a business mogul in a later episode does take an interest in Freeze's technology... But more in his physical condition and refrigeration suit than his weaponry. He doesn't sell it off because he is simply wanting to keep it selfishly for himself to prolong his life.
- Don't forget, too, that in the Diniverse the Riddler started out using his incredible talents for legitimate gain, creating an incredibly popular video game that made his company a fortune. It was only after his boss shafted him out of his share of the game's profits that the Riddler became a villain. The more recent Batman cartoon and the Batman Forever movie do this as well, with the Riddler trying to use his skills legally, until circumstances turn him into a villain.
- Erm, not so much in Batman Forever. Edward Nigma turned into a villain because Bruce Wayne insisted his invention be put through proper testing and Nigma was too impatient for that.
- In Justice League, Luthor's schemes against Superman eventually get him arrested, so he has to turn away from his legitimate lifestyle in order to save his own life with the help of the Ultrahumanite, who, in the same two-parter, is cut several checks and accepts every one; even the one from Batman to betray his team of villains.
- This trope is eventually Lampshaded in an episode of the Justice League cartoon with a guy who invents a time machine and only uses it to steal minor trinkets from different eras for his collection. When his wife finds out about it, she cusses him out for inventing a freaking time machine and not being able to come up with anything better to do with it than commit petty thefts. Of course, she completely ignored his speech about the whole space-time continuum being damaged and all by rampant use.
- He takes her advice by using it to escape her nagging. He was still being pretty careful about altering the timestream. Then subverted when he takes his wife's advice to heart and very bad things happen when he sets himself up as the lord of space and time.
- In Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly's Mean Machine is obviously the fastest car in the races and he always manages to get ahead of everyone else. If he wasn't so adamant in cheating and causing the other racers to get further behind of his considerable lead, he could have easily won every single race.
- The Beagle Boys Inc. from the Scrooge McDuck universe have moments or clarity like these: in one story, they realize that at their rate of success, they make an average 14 cents per hour. In another story, they open an ice cream parlor as a front to plan a bank robbery, and to their own surprise make good honest money with it. However, they still pull their bank robbery through and, inevitably, lose everything.
- Arguably subverted on Batman Beyond, with the villain Shriek. Shriek had started out as an ordinary sound engineer trying to sell his high-powered sonic equipment to Derek Powers, the Big Bad who co-owned Wayne Industries along with Bruce Wayne, but Powers rejected his offer as too costly. Instead, Powers hired the man who would become Shriek to try and kill Bruce Wayne so he could get full control of the company. The engineer crossed paths with the new Batman, and ended up deafened by his own equipment. Unhinged by what happened to him, the engineer took the name Shriek and became a villain for real.
- Subverted in another episode where a rich weapons designer is fired after some political business thing. After getting rejected from many highly compeditive companies he finds someone to hire him for his designs for a sonic weapon that he designed for his old company. He then donnes a costume villains persona so he can steal the designs and hardware without getting arrested. His only reason for becoming a villain was so he could support his family and still remain wealthy, not any sick thrill in it.
- Played unfortunately straight with Batman Beyond's version of Spellbinder, a psychologist who uses sophisticated Mind Control devices to hypnotize people into stealing for him. Aside from the fact that he's invented all this cool hypnotic equipment but can't think of anything better to do with it than trick people into stealing for him, several fans have noted how Spellbinder probably doesn't even make a profit on his crimes, since the goods he steals likely aren't worth more than the amount of money he must have spent building all those fancy gizmos. And then there's the fact that the guy is a high school psychologist with no discernible engineering training... So Yeah. Maybe he somehow got his hands on some devices invented by the Mad Hatter?
- Played with in Kim Possible, where Dr. Drakken at one point hires a villainous clerical assistant. The assistant helps him come up with a scheme that consists, in part, of using the resources available to him as a supervillain to open a chain of muffin shops as part of the plan. The muffin shops prove to be so successful that Drakken's villain lair starts looking and sounding more like the nerve center of a consumer-driven corporation.
- One plot had Drakken working undercover selling ice cream. He was amazed how profitable that was.
- Not to mention taking over Bueno Nacho, an established, worldwide fastfood chain in So The Drama as part of one of his "take over the world" schemes.
- Subverted by an episode of Batman The Animated Series which centers around a villain who uses his talent at creating Death Traps as a means of interrogation, terrifying his victims into doing what he wants, and typically performs his services for hire.
- An episode of Back At The Barnyard, while admittedly a parody, had "Cowman" fighting a botany-themed villain. His motives boiled down to his monstrous plant hybrids never winning the blue ribbon at the county fair. However, while pretending to be a friendly Willy Wonka-style wandering botanist, he plants a seed that instantly sprouts into an ice cream tree. Perhaps that one could have won him a blue ribbon. Or Nobel Prize.
- In Transformers Animated, when the creator of the Headmasters is fired for wanting to make something with military applications, he decides to make his own company... and start it by stealing approximately 6.3 metric buttloads of money. This requires him to ignore that 1) he could just get a grant from any number of other companies that do work with the military without stealing and 2) if he actually got the amount of money he demanded, he and several dozen generations of his descendants would never have to work another day in their lives. But then he's a Straw Loser gamer nerd, so...
- Stripperella. Spoofed with El Cheapo, who plans elaborate crimes designed to get him the world's largest fake diamond, or a stache of copper bars worth up to $16.
- Used in an episode of The Tick. Supervillain the Mother of Invention, bitter that the best inventions are already spoken for, has a plan to kidnap history's greatest inventors, regressing the present day to a technical dark age so he can steal the inventors' creations and pass them off as his own. In order to achieve this plan, he has invented a helmet which can grab people and objects out of history and transport them to the present. Ben Franklin: "I wish I'd invented that."
- According to Word Of God, a Missing Episode of Swat Kats would've subverted this trope, with the re-captured villains Hard Drive and former Madcat Lenny Ringtail being hired by the Enforcers as detectives.
- According to Word Of God, David Xanatos really does make a lot of honest money from the impressive technology his companies develop. He just doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't take (for instance) his groundbreaking genetic research and use it to develop and sell treatments for hereditary diseases, and to create killer mutant hitmen that he can send against his enemies. This is of course perfectly in character for Xanatos - eating his cake and having it too is sort of his specialty...
- Parodied in one of Bart Simpson's flights of fancy, while he's digging for treasure in the back yard:
Pirate: Captain, this time, instead of burying the treasure, why don't we use it to buy things? You know, things we like?
Captain: [shoots him]
- Dr. Doofenschmirtz makes one "-inator" after another, many of which could probably have very practical uses. Yet he never seems to consider the possibilty of patenting and mass-producing these items. Instead, he uses them for "evil" (or what he percieves as evil)
- A lot of Scooby Doo villains are like this. Okay, there's pirate treasure hidden underneath the old abandoned amusement park. Let me spend a small fortune on holographic projectors, digging equipment, a costume, and various other paraphenalia in order for me to scare people away. The time, resources, and energy involved in the ruse has to outweigh any payoff for at least half of the bad guys.
- Inverted in The Spectacular Spider Man, where Norman Osborn gets paid quite a handsome sum of money from Tombstone to create supervillains who will distract Spider-man and keep him from cutting into Tombstone's profits. When the supervillains then get jailed, Norman (as New York's resident expert in corporate superscience) then gets paid by the government to build cells capable of holding them. As Hammerhead puts it, he gets paid coming and going.
Real Life
- In real life, you have poacher-turned-gamekeeper hackers who discover that breaking into the Pentagon's computers might be fun, but consulting companies on preventing this pays much better. On the other hand, this editor remembers hearing that someone secreted million of dollars out of Citibank and was only caught because they couldn't help bragging about it.
- Frank William Abagnale, Jr., the real-life inspiration behind Leo DiCaprio's character in Catch Me If You Can, went on to found and run a financial fraud consultancy company. Preventing wannabe criminals to pull off the same crimes he once did.
- There is a popular rumor that casinos hire ex-cheaters to help them find other cheaters. They don't. Would you hire a criminal to protect your billions of dollars from criminals? In fact in many places it's illegal for casinos to employ people who have been convicted of cheating.
- Sure; who you really want are the cheaters that didn't get caught.
- The best example with the Mafia is their role in Las Vegas. Here they had a legal, profitable business that they had to skim profits on to make it a criminal enterprise.
- Of course, organized crime often runs a legal, profitable business, because it's an easy way to launder money. If I run a casino, how do the Feds know exactly how much money it made? Put the profits from my protection racket on the books as profit from my casino, and they'll have a hard time tracing it.
- On the plus side, many criminals have been able to use the notoriety they gain from their dishonest dealings to found legitimate careers. In addition to ex-hackers going on to work for computer companies, and embezzlers who go on to become fraud consultants mentioned above, this troper has also seen examples on TV of an ex-thief who then became a security consultant teaching people how to keep their houses from being broken into, a counterfeiter who used his skills to get a high-level job at a computer company and even a marijuana smuggler who later advertised his services as a business consultant and entrepreneur based on the skills he'd gained building his dope-smuggling ring. This troper has also read about art forgers who became so notorious for their crimes that people became interested in their own original work, enabling them to make a living as legitimate artists.
- This troper has heard of an even more convoluted case of forgery crime: A guy sold forged Van Goghs to a rich collector, who wanted to buy forged paintings, because this guy's grandfather had been a famous forger, and his copies of the works of famous painters fetched for hefty sums. The catch was that they weren't forgeries made by his gramps, but by himself. Perhaps he has a family tradition up and running in a while...
- A while back this troper went to some company-sponsored functions in Vegas featuring entertainment by a former pickpocket who went legit as a freelance magician. Can't remember his name but apparently he headlines one of the off-strip hotels or something now.
- That was probably David Avadon, the King of Pickpockets. Unfortunately he just died in September 2009.
- A lot of so-called psychics would fare much better financially with a trip to vegas or a few scratch-off tickets than letting us know what's in the future for Brangelina. Not to mention making assloads of money on the stock market, where there's no limit, like in casinos.
- ...assuming that any of them was legit.
- Additionally, many people have debunked them showing that their abilities can be replicated via magic tricks. So why don't they just become magicians? Unless they truly believe they can do what they claim.
- In addition to their tricks, stage magicians also need to be good theatrical performers and otherwise well set up to succeed in show business. "Psychics", on the other hand, have the much easier job of simply finding and preying upon gullible people.
- Magicians don't have $10/minute hotlines.
- And some of them have been stage magicians already. People like Uri Geller found that they could becomes far more famous and make far more money by pretending to be 'psychic'.
- There is an organization promising to give a million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate genuine psychic abilities in a scientifically rigorous test. Guess how many people managed to claim it.
- Generally, a surprising number of break-in artists, forgers, embezzlers, and other criminals demonstrate a surprising amount of skill and intellect in committing their crimes, which they could have easily used those talents to make money legitimately. It's one thing to be raised in an environment where crime is almost the only way out, but when you consider how many of these guys are already in a position to make a comfortable living with their skills, this trope is arguably played straight in real life much more than you'd think.
- This is, unfortunately, really more of an economic issue. If you can't find anyone who's hiring, you can always find a house to burgle, a work of art to forge, money to embezzle or other crimes to commit.
- You also get to set your own hours and can take a vacation whenever you want. Sure beats working 8-17 in some office job for people you wouldn't normally even spit at.
- To Godwin this trope, Hitler spent resources that could have been used to fight the Russians on continuing the Holocaust, even after it became clear that the Eastern Front would be an endless slog rather than a swift march to triumph.
- The Holocaust was actually handled very efficiently, at least in the concentration camps. Forced labor, stolen possessions and bank accounts from the detainees, tooth gold after they were killed and cremated in yet another really cost efficient way... Even if the Holocaust didn't financed large portions of the war effort, it was at least pretty much a zero sum "game".
- The camps themselves paid for their own bills but the massively overstaffed Gestapo didn't and killing a wealthy part of the population would have resulted in a second great depression regardless of how much money they lost of the actual murders. If Germany would have used its resources to build up its economy, the country would have become an economic superpower even without the war. The post-war German government did exactly that, to the point where Germany once again became one of the world economic leaders and a member of the G8.
- The camps made money, lots of it. The real minuses were when troop and supply trains were sidelined for prisoner trains. Troops that could have been fighting were instead used to round up people. There is also no doubt that his policies of killing and enslaving Slavic people probably lost him the Eastern front, as many first saw the Germans as liberators from Stalin and his harsh treatment of them was a major propaganda tool for Stalin. Stalin might kill you but Hitler would and he was a foreigner as well.
- Actually, it's been stated that after awhile Hitler knew he was going to lose the war, but still felt he could get his goal of killing the Jews. It was a matter of pride, not about money.
- Stalin himself averted the trope. While he committed very little actual genocide, he was a mass murderer, as a result of work camps, random killing, and some shockingly inconsiderate executive decisions. As a result of all this and assorted other state-enforced brutality, Stalin managed to take a country fresh out of feudalism and turn it into a Nazi-beating industrial and military superpower in the space of 20 years. It's been argued that all of the suffering that was spread out through 300 years of industrial revolution was simply condensed 15-fold in the case of Russia, which is really less vindicating of Stalin and more condemnatory of everyone else, although it should be noted that most of the people-saving benefits of industrialism were pretty much completely ignored by Stalin in favor of improved people-killing.
- FBI profiler John Douglas in his autobiography Manhunter mentions how, when still a police officer, he helped break up a gambling operation and at one point had a "very talkative bookie" in the back of his squad car. When he observed that the bookie was smart enough to earn money legitimately, the man simply replied that he did it for the thrill, and elaborated on his view. "You see those two raindrops on your windshield? I'll bet you that the one on the left will make it down before the one on the right. You can't stop us, John. It's what we are." Douglas writes that it was this conversation that led him to wonder whether people who continually engage in criminal acts legitimately think differently from law-abiding citizens.
- The reality show It Takes A Thief is a security makeover show where former thieves first burgle the home or business in question, and then install security systems that would've prevented them in the first place.
- Stéphane Breitwieser traveled all around Europe and stole 239 works of art and other museum exhibits, with a total estimated value of $1.4 billion. He made a whopping profit of $0 because he never tried to sell anything, he just really liked art.
- Does Philosophy count as supervillainy? I recall hearing of an ancient Greek thinker who, as a response to a challenge, used his knowledge of astronomy to predict the coming olive growing season would be especially long, and, with his remaining savings, leased in advance all the olive presses in the area right at the time when everyone was going to need them for making olive oil, thus netting him a moderate fortune. This was all in response to the question: "If you know so much, why aren't you rich?" His answer: I could be if I wanted to be; Philosophers are just interested in other matters.
- That was Thales of Miletus. Admittedly something of a BadAss, he came up with idea of "finding natural explainations for events, as opposed to assuming everything was caused by capricious gods", thereby basically inventing Western philosophy.
- In the book Freakonomics the authors investigated the records of an 80s crack dealing gang in Chicago, and discovered that the average street level crack dealer would have made more money working part time at Mc Donalds than selling crack. They were doing it to pursue their only path to success: the hope of becoming a drug lord.
- The memoirs of one James Crosbie, a moderately notorious armed robber, describe a fairly impressive list of achievements; he held a responsible position at a Kenyan mining company and for a long while was running his own quite successful metalwork business. And yet despite having earned better money during those times -to say nothing of not being on the run from the law- he claims to have felt a much lesser sense of achievement from this than from robbing banks, despite the much greater failure rate, smaller financial returns and lengthy prison sentences. Of course, a better example of an Unreliable Narrator is hard to imagine...
- Really, now...most of the villains on this page are extremely brilliant and totally cracked. If you lived in a world where everyone, everyone you met was a doddering idiot compared to you, would you really want to sell your freeze gun and disintegrator ray technology to that race of baboons? Or would you want to show them how it should be used by taking over the world with it?
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