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alt title(s): The Dark Lord; Dark Lord 
"People of Earth, I am Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips! Here is your savior, cowed and broken. I have crushed him as easily as I have crushed all who have dared to oppose me throughout the Cosmos. I am power unlike any you have ever known: absolute, infinite, and unrelenting. You have no choice but to prepare as a long dark future as my subjects and my slaves."
The archetypal High Fantasy (and sometimes Heroic Fantasy) villain.
Usually lurks in an intimidating fortress in a near-inhospitable landscape, plotting to Take Over The World (if he doesn't already rule it), with hordes of Faceless Goons (who are usually none too bright) and a fearful sinister second-in-command at his beck and call. Additional options include a Quirky Miniboss Squad, a black wardrobe with lots of leather, and command over dark magic or some powerful but vulnerable Mac Guffin. He probably has a Zero Percent Approval Rating. Will be a dangerous opponent, even in a straight fight, since Authority Equals Asskicking.
Prone to black, and generally male: hence, Dark Lord. Even more prone to being symbolically associated with death, cold, destruction, pain, and other bad things: CS Lewis' White Witch was associated with white, symbolic of snow, cold, ice, and endless winter, and his Lady of the Green Kirtle with green, symbolic of snakes and poison. When the Fisher King trope is in play, he is bound to live in a Mordor. And it usually is, because the Evil Overlord is often not even human, or no longer human, but a force of evil.
Seldom enjoys Royal Blood, just to make taking him down proper. May have a kid.
Often wears plate armor. Bonus points if his offical character name is "Lord X".
Generally he has an Evil Plan which he pursues with Stock Evil Overlord Tactics. There's not much else to say that's not covered in the Evil Overlord List.
See also Diabolical Mastermind for the step below and Galactic Conqueror, Dimension Lord and Multiversal Conqueror for the steps above.
Examples
Anime
- Many of the Big Bads from Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT fall into this category, including Commander Red of the Red Ribbon Army and Frieza.
- Il Palazzo from Excel Saga is a notable parody.
- Various Digimon villains, including most of the Adventure bad guys and the Digimon Kaiser.
- Emperor Beld and Wagnard from Record Of Lodoss War.
- Gakuto/Gackto/Gaito (and those are just the official spellings) from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch.
- Sosuke Aizen from Bleach is a sociopath manipulator who betrays literally everyone who trusts him and doesn't hesitate to leave even his closest associates Not Quite Dead on the floor.
- Naraku from Inuyasha. The entire show revolves around him and his diabolically evil ambition.
- Orochimaru from Naruto.
- Talpa from Ronin Warriors.
- Lelouch and Schneizel from Code Geass R2 are fighting for this position. Slightly subverted in that Lelouch appears to be one but pulls a Milliardo Peacecraft maneuver like in Gundam Wing by dying a villain but uniting the world, while Schneizel acts all nice when it's been indicated he's the real deal. Of course, having a father who promoted Social Darwinism means they may need something more to overshoot him...or not.
- Yuki Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh GX fits almost all of this trope's requirements during his time as Haou,a merciless tyrant obsessed with the completion of a powerful card and with the elimination of all evil in the world — even if he must use heinous methods in order to do so.
Comic Books
- Doctor Doom holds a lock on this position in the Marvel Universe.
- Superman's Lex Luthor, in some incarnations, resembles a modern Evil Overlord.
- The DCU villain Darkseid embodies virtually every aspect of this trope, on a cosmic scale.
- Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, and the associated serials, film, and TV shows.
- A standard type of of foe for Conan The Barbarian and Red Sonja. Major evil overlords included Thulsa Doom and Kulan Gath.
- One of the more common types of foe in The Warlord. Deimos was the most dangerous and most persistant.
Film
Literature
- Sauron from The Lord Of The Rings. In The Silmarillion, Sauron was merely The Dragon to Morgoth, the Big Bad.
- The Chronicles Of Narnia: Although the Evil Overlord is usually both male and associated with black (hence, Dark Lord), C. S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe presented a female associated with whiteness, the White Witch, as Narnia's evil ruler. The Magician's Nephew revealed that she had been Empress of Charn and destroyed all the life in the world rather than lose. And in The Silver Chair, the Lady of the Green Kirtle is queen of Underland and out to conquer Narnia. Others include the Tisroc of Calormen in The Horse and his Boy and Caspian's Uncle Miraz in Prince Caspian.
- Innumerable examples from Dungeons And Dragons fiction, including the evil gods Takhisis, Bane, and Hextor. Possibly the ultimate example from the RPG is Asmodeus, the King of Hell — the game's equivalent to Satan.
- In the Forgotten Realms setting, Bane is the clearest example, though mortal overlords turn up here and there, including the evil wizard Manshoon. The conqueror Yamun Khahan, a pastiche of Genghis Khan, was a subversion; he was a ravenous warlord bent on subjugating the entire known world through endless war, but was also a Benevolent Boss adored by his people (not unlike the real-world Khan, it could be argued).
- Likewise Magic The Gathering, including Volrath, Crovax, and The Man Behind The Man for both of these, Yawgmoth. Various other examples from M:TG include Baron Sengir, Lim-Dul the Necromancer, and Memnarch.
- The Evil Lord Harry Dread from the Discworld book The Last Hero parodies many tropes of the Evil Overlord: He got started with a Shed of Evil, hires guards so stupid they have trouble remembering their names, and ends up briefly allying with the Silver Horde, but then betrays them because, hey, Harry's the bad guy, it's what he does.
- Also, he hires his guards to be stupid so that the heroes can escape from his dungeons, and leaves chests full of armour, health potions and weapons about his Lairs because that's how the game is played.
- A minor correction: There are no health potions on the Discworld, because you really don't want to inject the magic they have there into parts of your body. Next thing you know, your own hand would be flipping you off.
- Lord Vetinari from the same series has all the trappings of an Evil Overlord, except that he happens to be a Reasonable Authority Figure who is Genre Savvy enough to know that evil doesn't pay.
- Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series.
- Ardavan of The Assassins Of Tamurin is one Evil Overlord who is not the Big Bad. Indeed, The Chessmaster had it in for him had the heroine not killed him first.
- The Shadow Lord from Emily Rodda's series Deltora.
- Arawn the Death Lord of Annuvin from the Prydain Chronicles. He actually started out in the series backstory as the right-hand man to the previous Dark Lord, Queen Achren, but deposed her. It is worth noting that Arawn subverts certain aspects of this trope. Rather than being an unfathomably powerful opponent, he is portrayed as a cunning trickster who corrupts mortals through illusion and deceit. In combat, he proves to actually be quite weak, relying on his army of Nigh Invulnerable undead minions to protect him.
- Capricorn from The Inkworld Trilogy is a cookie-cutter example of this trope.
- He's also something of a capricious ganglord punk. Depends what you take from it.
- The Internet story Tales of Lokaria
 has the Black Master: a man who has lived nearly a thousand years and rules over much of the known world. Did I mention that he has hidden Mind Rape powers? His castle is constantly upgraded with the latest technology. He then purposefully leaves openings to let rebels and heroes in to kill them. He does have a Zero Percent Approval Rating, but his Legion of Terror is very well trained and loyal. And he's kinder than the elfin Kingdom, led by Tidal, despite what people say. He also is extremely Dangerously Genre Savvy.
- His team is as follows. His Dragon, Dracon (no less!) is an ancient half-elf who is immortal and extremely powerful, and his best friend. The Dark Chick was mind-raped into submission. The Brute (the Mook Captain) is entirely loyal and very intelligent. The Mad Scientist has yet to be introduced, but can produce technology to warp reality and use magic.
- Rugaard from E. E. Knight's Age of Fire series is a partial subversion of this trope. While he's pretty much an Evil Overlord, he's a dragon, carries a good approval rating from most of his underlings, even his personal slaves Rayg, Rhea and Fourfang with him intervening to save them more than once, practices Equal Opportunity Evil, shows most of the traits we'd expect of a fantasy hero, and oh, plans to subjugate all the hominids in the world. But it's all justified, you see, because not a single free homonid he's encountered has ever been vaguely nice to him.
- The usurper Waldo in One For The Morning Glory: he conquered the kingdom of Overhill and personally murdered two infant members of the royal family when it was massacred; turned Overhill into a wasteland; and set out to conquer the next kingdom with evil magic, undead, and goblin allies.
- Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy deconstructs the idea of the Evil Overlord pretty nicely; the Dark Lord in the first novel really wasn't that bad of a guy. How Sanderson ties this—and many other things—together over the course of the three books made this troper's jaw drop no fewer than eight times.
- Sanderson plays with this one in all his works. Wyrn in Elantris is a straight example (so far as the audience can tell- his only onscreen appearance is a cameo). Susebron the God-King in Warbreaker is built up as a terrible, possibly insane Evil Overlord but is actually a very nice (and very naive) guy who is controlled by his Well Intentioned Extremist priests and his Not So Harmless secretary.
- Belial from The Salvation War: Armageddon. Interesting subversion: He's not the guy in charge, in fact he's a nobody in Old Nick's court. So much so that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were considered highly amusing party tricks - and the only reason he's there is basically as the court jester. Turns out, however, that they're not quite "party tricks" after all...
- Darken Rahl and Emperor Jagang in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Rahl is more archetypical since his minions know he's evil but still follow him out of loyalty, while Jagang and his empire think they're right.
- Lord Foul in The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant. He wears black, has glowing red eyes, lives in Mordor, wants to destroy the world, is a master of the Xanatos Gambit and commands several armies of evil mutants. The Gadhi from the same series, however, is a Deconstruction of the trope.
Live Action TV
- Darken Rahl in Legend of the Seeker
- Chancellor Dongalor is a parody of this in Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire
- Doctor Who has The Master. And Davros, who has actually been called "the Dark Lord" at various points.
- Lord Zedd is introduced as this. Even after his slide into has-been territory, it was still a very real, very frightening moment when he appeared in the Command Center after capturing Kimberly and forcing the Rangers to pilot his evil zords. His subsequent hand-to-hand fight with Tommy later confirmed his status in this category.
Tabletop Games
- Commonplace in Warhammer 40000, with every Chaos Lord, Dark Eldar Archon and Ork warboss, and half or more of the Imperium's governors.
Video Games
- Dr. Robotnik in some incarnations.
- Ganondorf/Ganon from The Legend Of Zelda.
- The main characters in the Overlord series are archetypical Evil Overlords who wields hordes of gremlin-like creatures known as Minions, have mistress(es) and generally look like Tin Tyrants with Glowing Eyes Of Doom being the only visible part of the character. The first game lets you decide just how evil the Overlord can be, either a destructive tyrant to a leader beloved by the peasants
- Although at the end it turns out that you're pretty much just a patsy for the real one.
- While canonically the Overlord of the first game was apparently a Noble Demon who saved the Elves from extinction and kept Rose as his Mistress, his son in the sequel is much more evil, being either an Ax Crazy butcher or a Dominator who enslaved entire populaces to his whim. Lord Gromgard of Overlord: Dark Legend is portrayed as more an Anti Villain who while still an Evil Overlord is a benevolent tyrant better-liked by his subjects more than his Jerkass siblings.
- Bowser from the Super Mario Bros series fits this to a T in almost every game (sometimes even ones where you're just Go Karting With Bowser), from ominous castles/lairs, plans for world/universe domination, and infinite hordes of largely incompetent goons.
- In Heroes Of Might And Magic 3, the Warlocks and Overlords of Nighon fit this trope perfectly.
- Zetta, Makai Kingdom's Bad Ass Freakin' Overlord of the entire Netherworld...until he blew it up. Damn you, Zetta! Damn you to...oh, wait.
- Makai Kingdom reveals that Overlords are a dime a dozen in the Nippon Ichi 'verse, as anybody with enough mana can rule over their own collection of vassals and worlds.
- Laharl, Disgaea's resident Overlord — though the first half or so of the game consists of you making the role legit (he's been asleep for two years thanks to Etna poisoning him). Other overlords in the series include Baal, Priere, and (in the second game) Etna (who is arguably the most evil of the bunch, due to 20-hour, no breaks or off-days schedules for the Prinny Squad; she left Laharl in-between the first and second games, taking the Prinnies with her, after he ate her favorite caramel flan).
- This Troper feels the need to point out that Baal is, in fact, NOT an Overlord. He's basically the Disgaea version of a cosmic horror: a mass of evil souls (including Overlord souls!) whose sole goal is to kill, terrorize, pillage, annihilate, demolish, defile and generally do bad shit across the multiverse. Raspberyl in Disgaea 3 aptly describes him as an Overlord's version of the boogeyman - except that THIS boogeyman can kill you. Messily.
- This is subverted by the late Krichevskoy, who was never a really bad guy despite being the father of Laharl, who was more or less completely evil, or so we think.
- In La Pucelle, Priere can become an Overlord if she kills too many of them in the Dark World, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over.
- This is the canon outcome.
- The titular character from the Legacy Of Kain series spends a lot of time as this. He does take breaks to save the world, but he actually just wants to keep it alive so he can keep lording over it.
- In the City Of Villains, Lord Recluse is king. Well more like dictator, but he has all the features- Five Bad Band, Redshirt Army, island domains that vary between Vice City and urbanised Mordor.
- Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat. And before him, Onaga.
- In the Warcraft series all the demon lords of The Burning Legion (Sargeras, Archimonde and Kil'jaeden) count, as well as the Lich King in World Of Warcraft.
- Final Fantasy villains often fall into the Evil Overlord bin: but curiously, very seldom the actual Big Bad. Golbez, Gestahl, Garland, Rufus Shinra... Kefka is one of the few that actually is an Evil Overlord at the end of the game when you fight him.
- Exdeath is another good example. He also has the distinction of being the most evil tree to ever appear in any form of media, and certainly the only one who is also the Big Bad.
- Jie Revorse in Star Ocean.
- In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Emperor Vigarde suddenly attacks the peaceful allied kingdom of Renais. He does not actually reveal himself to the heroes, only to the player appointing new generals who are just pawns in a greater plan by The Demon King, Lyon, and Riev. In another cliche, he was in fact not the Big Bad or even in control of his actions, since he has been dead for months prior to the game's introduction and was being animated by Lyon's magic.
- Nergal in Fire Emblem 7 has this to some extent, but not as much as others like Zephiel and Alvis.
- Alvis in Fire Emblem 4 is practically a textbook example, except he actually has some motives.
- As is Zephiel in Fire Emblem 6, though he is ultimately not the Big Bad.
- King Desmond in Fire Emblem 7 can be seen as a similar way, but he does not actually try to hinder the heroes. He in fact wants his favourite child to be the heir, not Zephiel.
- Ashnard in Fire Emblem 9.
- Varesh Ossa in Guild Wars: Nightfall is a very good example, although unlike other cliched evil overlords, she is in fact control of her actions and knows fully well what she is doing.
- The Valuan Empire in Skies of Arcadia has many of these, especially Galcian.
- Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest and its remake Sword of Mana has an overlord as a villain, they even blatantly name him "Dark Lord". He is not actually the Big Bad, to no one's surprise after years of similar storylines.
- Shin Megami Tensei II portrays the Source of all Gods (named YVWH) as an Evil Overlord.
- Grigori Rasputin attempts to become this in Shadow Hearts: Covenant.
- Magus the Fiendlord from Chrono Trigger fits this trope rather well: he has an ominous castle, leads an army of fiends and wages war on humanity. However, his motives make him more of an Anti Hero, who does what he has to do in order to destroy Lavos and find his sister. He can evn join the player's party later in the game.
- Oda Nobunaga in pretty much any Capcom game, including the Onimusha and Sengoku Basara series (and the latter's anime adaptation).
- In Imperium Nova, the emperor of each galaxy is inevetibally labeled an evil overlord by his or her opponents. Whether or not the labeling is true is a matter of discussion.
- Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Al Revis presents us with a humorous, Large Ham version: The "Flayvor of Evil".
- The title character of Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? mixes this trope with the James Bondage, being utterly helpless from abduction by heroes without the help of his God (the player character) and the creatures that inhabit his underground lair.
- Lord Bane from the old TBS Warlords III
- Dagoth Ur in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
- What, no Dracula? Besides the obvious hints, the "Dark Lord" is his official title, and after he's killed off for good in 1999, said title is still up for grabs. Nobody's actually succeeded in taking it proper. Or wanted to, for that matter, in one case - Soma Cruz, being Drac's reincarnation, came close accidentally, and he had to fight to not turn evil. Dmitrii Blinov nearly became the Dark Lord intentionally. Nearly.
Webcomics
- Lord Tedd in El Goonish Shive, but his girlfriend/henchwoman/viser (it's not entirely clear what position she holds, but it's important) swears he's a good guy, and is just being corrupted.
- I think Nioi's title is "artificer".
- And I don't believe she's a hat either way, she's probably a vizier.
- Xykon from Order of the Stick is in many ways a parody of the Evil Overlord stereotype, though he's as genuinely evil as any other.
- Stanley the Plaid/Stanley the Tool of Erfworld is described as an Evil Overlord by Parson because of his use of generic evil creatures and the fact that he has united just about everybody else into an alliance against him. Stanley is highly offended by this, believing himself to be divinely favored.
- And it should be noted that a divine artifact backs him up on this point.
- Lord Horribus from Sluggy Freelance, at least during the "That Which Redeems" arc. Oddly enough, Horribus is really only second-in-command of the demon armies. The actual Demon King spends the entire Demonic Invasion on the toilet.
- What, Baron Wulfenbach doesn't get a mention?
- Klaus is something of a subversion. For one thing, he doesn't want to be Overlord - but if he wasn't there, the resident mad scientists would run rampant, laying waste to the setting. For another, he's not actually an evil ruler - the main rules of his empire basically boil down to 'don't start fights' and 'turn over all Sealed Evil In A Can for proper disposal' . However, he's ruthless in dealing with anyone (or anything) that threatens the stability of his domain, and he's willing to employ at least one homicidal psychopath (Bangladesh DuPree).
- Sparklelord in The Adventures Of Dr. McNinja. Which turns out to be a total lie by King Radical.
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany.
- Josef Stalin, dictator of Soviet Union.
- Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China (although many in China revere him today, so Your Mileage May Vary.)
- Pol-Pot, dictator of Cambodia.
- Many other dictators, as well, have been Evil Overlords. It sort of goes with the whole "ruling through force" thing.
- Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan was/is something of a Double Subversion oddly enough. Portrayed as a megalomaniacal tyrant worse than Hitler or Stalin by American propaganda in World War Two, Hirohito's publicity turned right around after the war, in which he kept his position (albeit a position purely ceremonial in function) and was absolved of any wrongdoing. As a result, many now rest comfortably in the knowledge that all that propaganda was just racist lies. Except that he actually was a war criminal, a fact that has now been made more clear in recent histories of the war.
- Memetic Mutation has turned Vladimir Putin into this, even though he's no longer the Russian president. Must be the eyes. Guy's got some Magnificent Bastard eyes.
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