Ambition Is Evil

"I have no spur/to prick the sides of my intent/but only vaulting ambition..."

"...The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it."

— Antony, Scene II, Julius Caesar

There's a character who aims to improve their situation in life, be it in terms of money, fame, or power. There is a high probability of this character starting out as evil or becoming evil very quickly. The Visionary Villain and Well-Intentioned Extremist will do horrible things to achieve their Heaven on Earth; The Social Darwinist and The Sociopath will commit every act of crime and manipulation to move up the ranks; the Corrupt Corporate Executive began as a dirt-poor proletarian who wanted to live wealthy, etc. Upon attaining this power, they'll likely forget whatever it was they wanted it for in the first place. The Illusion of Pride, and the inevitable tale of Tragedy for the one who dared to be ambitious is likely.

Fictional and Real Life moral codes have a tendency to demonstrate Selfishness, Greed, Pride, Megalomania, and Machiavellian Chronic Backstabbing Disorder as a consequence of the catch-all term "ambition". If you consult a dictionary it's broader than that. Ambition is the same thing that motivates some heroes to make the world a better place, but in that case, it's more likely to be called "Hope".

This trope is one of the reasons why Villains Act, Heroes React. Villains who don't have great ambitions would not plot grand schemes and motivate story driving conflicts such as Take Over the World or Utopia Justifies the Means, and, therefore, would be boring and petty. It is possible to write an "ambitionless" villain — see For the Evulz — but they risk coming off as a Generic Doomsday Villain.

Usually justified when the existing society is an evil dystopia, or otherwise flawed — "advancing" in such a society would generally mean complying with or encouraging its systemic injustices.^note If a person aims to overthrow or otherwise take power over this society's government, then it might not be evil, depending on how they plan on dealing with the aforementioned injustices. Also justified when ambition, or other emotions, is the personification of evil itself.

Can happen as a result of Status Quo Is God. Normally used as an heavy-handed Aesop about what's really important. Unfortunately ends up in a Broken Aesop that teaches us Evil Is Cool (or at least open to social progress).

The Svengali, since their goal is usually to profit through their (supposed) protege, will usually be an example of this, and turn their protege into one, unless they realize in time.

This is a common trait of The Starscream; indeed, it's often what makes them The Starscream.

The heroic converse of this trope is To Be a Master, where the hero is motivated by ambition. Note that heroes tend to pursue "healthy" goals such as strength and knowledge, while villains are more likely to be after power or money, usually for their own benefit and no one else's and at other people's expense.

For some reason, while even high levels of ambition are bad, equal or greater levels of determination are usually presented as good, or at least not bad. If you have high levels of both, you're The Unfettered. Heaven help the character intending to use their super powers this way; it guarantees Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!. If a character wants to rise above the level of their fellows, it might be a case of The Complainer Is Always Wrong.

This, in a way, is the inverse of Living Is More than Surviving, where achieving more than the most basic things people can do is seen as good.

See also Pride, Personal Gain Hurts and Evil Virtues. Compare with Drunk with Power. Contrast with Self-Made Man and Go-Getter Girl, who pursue their ambitions, and aren’t (necessarily) evil, as well any Rags to Riches story where The Protagonist means to become rich. Compare/Contrast Ambitious, but Lazy, in which ambition without a work ethic is evil, rather than ambition itself being evil.

noreallife

---

Examples:

• Literature

Anime & Manga

• In Air Gear, the Big Bad just wanted to improve his lot in life and ended up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Berserk: Griffith. Originally, he "merely" wanted to rise from a poor street urchin to king in a society that does not encourage this sort of upward mobility. After a few setbacks, he sets his sights a little higher, and sacrifices all of his mercenary band to the Godhand, rapes Guts' girlfriend in front of him, and unleashes a plague of demons on the world in order to reach his goal.
• Averted in Bleach. During his more reflective moments, Ichigo makes much of becoming more powerful so that he can better protect the people he cares about, even if he's doing it by using his Superpowered Evil Side. Combined with With Great Power Comes Great Insanity around the 350th chapter/the final stages of his fight with Ulquiorra, where the latest upgrade to his Superpowered Evil Side only appears interested in protecting Orihime, and will casually attempt to kill anyone else who gets in his way — like, for instance, Uryu.
  • Played straight with Big Bad Aizen. His unlimited ambition is the sole reason for all his evil.
  • Inverted with Starrk, one of the few amicable arrancar. He has a very similar backstory to Aizen, with the biggest difference in their Character Development coming from Starrk's extreme laziness.
• Isamu in Breakshot is described as "an ambitious guy"... because he often cheats to win.
• Subverted in Code Geass; everyone assumes Lelouch Lamperouge, a prince, used the Black Knights for personal gain at best and a game at the worst. However, by the end, a select few realize that all of Lelouch's ambition was for the good of the world.
  • Schneizel, described by Word of God as lacking ambition, ended up being the Big Bad since he would pursue whatever goal tickled his fancy at the moment without any overall or long-term interest. Ironically enough, he believes in this trope, which also turns him into a Hope Crusher, since he believes hopes and dreams are just excuses or reasons to follow one's ambitions, regardless of how they impact the rest of the world.
• Played straight with Death Note's Light Yagami; by the time the US President surrenders to Kira, his father is dead and his sister is traumatized. He even allowed his father to put himself in a life-threatening situation for his own gain, which ultimately led to his demise. And that's not even counting the countless other times Light has made morally questionable decisions in order to realize his dream of a perfect new world. The difference between his innocent, idealistic self and the person he becomes with the Note is startling.
• Averted in Dr. STONE with Ryusui Nanami, the heir to a shipping magnate. He wholly admits to being greedy, but also says that he has enough greed for everyone in the whole world, meaning that he wants everyone to benefit from his efforts. Flashbacks to his youth show him chasing wild dreams and sharing the success with his friends, and his personal butler Francois defended his never-give-up attitude by arguing that the ambition to pursue a worthy goal no matter how impossible it seems is exactly the kind of trait one wants in a leader.
• In Durarara!! Mikado's goal is to unite the Dollars and Blue Squares to show Kida that he can stand on his own. In his own words, "The only way for having your dreams realized is to have power." However this has pushed Mikado's sanity as of later novel volumes out the window for the most part (unless he was crazy from the beginning.) In a good example of the evil bit, he even goes as far as setting people who piss him off on fire.
• Very much averted in Fullmetal Alchemist, where a number of characters (e.g. Mustang, Olivia Armstrong, Greed, and Ling) are ambitious but they are generally good because of this, not in spite of it. Ling's ambition to become the next emperor was the only thing that prevented Greed from taking over his body completely.
  • Greed's ambition is notable in that he desires to possess everything. Most people would chalk this up as evil, but the thing is that he also values everything he possesses. His minions may be possessions, but they're his and killing them is equal to stealing from him.
  • Played straight with Shou Tucker, Mad Scientist extraordinaire. His ultimate goal is to be recognised as an amazing State Alchemist representing chimera transmutation. Thing is, he's willing to turn his own wife, and then his own daughter, into chimeras to achieve that goal, and he ends up getting arrested, murdered by Scar, and remembered only as a desperate and insane criminal.
• Mei from Ga-Rei -Zero- believes that she is more qualified than Yomi to lead the Isayama family. Her ambition allows her Sesshoseki stone to corrupt her, after which she kills Yomi's father and manipulates the family in order to steal the position for herself.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: Kaldus Coendera used to be a small lord of Dolba, but after warring with neighbours, as a self-proclaimed Great Lord of the Shigwentsa region, he tries to connect with the Palzam Kingdeom's royal family to secure his position, even if he has to trample the Tersia Family (who are meanwhile protecting the region from monsters) and innocent people between them.
• Ambition is the defining characteristic of Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, to the point that he rejects his humanity and transforms himself into a vampire for the sake of gaining more power.
• Gihren Zabi of Mobile Suit Gundam is the single most ambitious member of the Zabi family. He's also the single most evil member, and the only one with no redeeming qualities.
• Enchu of Muhyo and Roji desperately wanted to become an Executor to help his ailing mother, while Muhyo did not want the position, and would have turned it over to Enchu if given the chance. The committee for choosing an executor recognized that Enchu's preoccupation with his mother was a risk factor; hearing of her death and losing the position to Muhyo pushed Enchu into his Start of Darkness.
• Subverted for Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia. His ambition to be the number one hero is actually treated as one of his few positive points, despite him being a huge jerk about it. He also refuses to go down the path of a villain, despite the fact that his Quirk would be very suited for it. That said, in Chapter 120, All Might says that his drive to be the best is holding him back from being a hero and that he needs to work on also having an equal drive for rescuing people.
• Naruto: Orochimaru's ambition to have eternal life (which he believed would be more easily accomplished by becoming Fourth Hokage, and he was passed over in favor of Minato) is pretty much the reason why he turned into the Big Bad. Similarly, Danzo was a political rival to the Third Hokage who sought to impose his warlike ideals on the village with means from covert operations to using his mind control powers to seize the Hokage title after Tsunade goes into a coma.
  • Averted for several characters too, most notably Naruto himself, who wants to be Hokage one day and by Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage, whose boundless ambition to change the world created the entire system of hidden ninja villages and drastically reduced the Crapsackiness of the world.
  • This is also inverted with some villains like Nagato, Tobi, and Madara since their wanting to change the world is viewed in a very positive light. But how they wanted to change it is where they gets into trouble.
• Played straight and subverted quite often in One Piece. Most of the villains have pretty lofty goals, but the main characters have arguably the highest ambitions in the series. Inverted with Captain Kuro, who annoys Luffy because his goal to retire from being a pirate is completely lame.
  • Played straight with Blackbeard, whose ambition to become Pirate King led him to kill one of his own crewmates in the back story, capture Ace to secure a position in the Seven Warlords of the Sea, try and kill Luffy, caused a war that led to the death of Ace, Oars Jr., and who knows how many others, killing Whitebeard directly and unleashed who knows how many of the world's worst criminals on an unsuspecting world.
  • Basically One Piece is more like "Ambition is Neutral," as many of the villains they have fought had aims similar to the heroes, and it was merely their methods that were evil, not necessarily their aims. Blackbeard above is the best example as he also wants to be King of the Pirates, but his methods involve all sorts of cruelty. Or Eneru, whose ambition was to go to the Moon, perfectly innocuous except that he wanted to do it by plundering an island of all its gold then planning to blow the island up into the sea.
    • It should be noted that said blowing up wasn't even necessary to the plan. It was just for the sake of it.
  • Hell, "Haki" (Japanese for "ambition") is basically One Piece's resident Life Energy. Those who can control and project it out of their body get a substantial boost in battle. And the most powerful form, which one has to be born with, is the "Ambition of the King" — the sheer desire to reign over everyone else. The main hero has it^note He wants to be king of the pirates, after all. The Big Bad, probably, too.
• Slade (no, not that Slade), a minor character in Rave Master who worked with Haru's dad back when he was a soldier, is the person that Gale turns to report his best friend who has since gone bad and began to run a criminal organization. He promises to tell Slade where the group, known as Demon Card, has its headquarters so long as Slade only arrests King. Slade agrees, then brings the whole army and shoots everyone down in as flashy a way as possible so his superiors will notice and he'll get a promotion. In doing so, he pushed King all the way into Big Bad status, and set his 6-year-old son down the road to that as well.
• In Reborn! (2004), Futa's "ambition" rankings actually seem to measure how treacherous a given person is.
• Averted for the most part in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann; daring ambition is the most powerful force in the universe, and the vast majority of the protagonists indulge. However, according to the Anti-Spiral, it's also the force that will eventually destroy reality, so really it could go either way.
• Tokyo Ghoul explores this trope, particularly in the sequel, :Re.
  • Seidou Takizawa is quite vocal about his desire to get promoted, and this is one reason he frequently clashes with his rival, Akira Mado. At one point, they get into a drunken argument concerning whether being promotion-focused is bad or not. But when push comes to shove, he risks his career by disregarding direct orders and goes in search of a wounded Amon. In the sequel, he plays the trope straight — his thirst for power seems to have played a part in his Transhuman Treachery.
  • Kuki Urie's ambitions might be fueled by an understandable desire to avenge his father, but the methods he uses establish him firmly as the Token Evil Teammate of the Quinx Squad. Though assigned as their acting Squad Leader, he refuses to work with the others....unless, of course, he can use them to achieve his own ends. Intensely jealous of Sasaki's strength, he looks for ways to undermine his leadership and increase his own power even when warned against doing so. After his actions cause him to be dismissed as Squad Leader, he begins plotting ways to destroy the team from within in order to discredit Shirazu. It becomes a case of Be Careful What You Wish For: Urie gets his position back and receives credit for bringing down one of Aogiri's most prominent members... because Shirazu sacrificed himself to create an opening. Urie tries to convince Shirazu to live by promising him all the credit, and is left crushed by his friend's loss.
  • Matsuri Washuu is this trope incarnate. The heir of the illustrious Washuu Clan, he is infamous even among his clan for his ambition and callous disregard for human life. Operations he supervises are known for having incredible success rates, but also extreme loss of life in the process. He actively schemes against his colleagues and his own father, with many within the organization concerned about what would happen if he manages to take over. When asked point-blank whether seeing the bodies of his subordinates makes him feel anything, Matsuri states that it doesn't while looking like he'd been asked a stupid question.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Eva's ambition to succeed her father as the head of the Ushiromiya family instead of her older brother was stepped on most of her life due to the Heir Club for Men, but wow, once she manages to achieve her goal, she goes nuts and kills most of the rest of her family.

Art

• Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: Craving for power is Lucifer's Fatal Flaw. He first wants to rule over both angels and humans alongside God, but he's rebuked because there can only be one God. Upset about it he hypocritically deems God a tyrant and convinces other angels to rebel against him. He loses the war and is banned from Heaven, which causes him great pain but doesn't prevent him from declaring himself the ruler of hell.

Comic Books

• This seems to actually be a trend among superhero fiction; this article notes that rich superheroes tend to inherit their money, while self-made men are usually villains.
• Half the point of The Authority was that, where other superheroes simply react to supervillains' schemes and preserve the status quo, The Authority would use their powers to genuinely change the world. The implications of this vary from author to author, but often involve the team Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and becoming Anti Villains or just plain villains.
• Seahn of The First. He's the personification of ambition, and a nasty, nasty piece of work.
• Subversion: Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) is hugely ambitious, to the point of it frequently biting him in the ass, but his drive is less for personal gain and more for the betterment of mankind... he hopes. His worst excesses (such as Civil War and Armor Wars) are usually not driven by lust for power, but by an overzealous sense of guilt and responsibility.
• Irredeemable: The Plutonian has a very subtle version of this. It's revealed in flashbacks that he has a strong desire for love and adoration. Since his ambitions were very altruistic, and he used his superpowers to make them come true by helping people, nobody seemed to mind (or just assumed he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart and not a need for affection). But then he eventually realized you can't please everyone and gave up on being a hero, and instead ruined a world that he could never get to love him.
• Judge Dredd: It turns out that Judge Martin Sinfield would do anything to become Chief Judge, including brainwashing his predecessor to step down. Of course, he did it all for the good of the city.
• The Hood suffers Motive Decay (he initially just wanted to support his family) because of his ambition to be a big-time supervillain criminal mastermind instead of the street thug he really is. Acquiring the magical hood and boots empowered by Dormammu gave Parker Robbins an appetite for power that has gotten worse with time.
• Rick and Morty (Oni): Doofus Jerry’s hunger for achievement and his desire for greatness is tireless. In his dimension, he is the literal definition of success.
• The first Squadron Supreme miniseries (whose members are Captain Ersatzes of the Justice League of America) had the heroes helping to rebuild the world (after they themselves helped conquer it under an evil alien's mind control) and decide that instead of rebuilding it as it was, they would make it better. They even announced that if people trusted them they would give up control over Earth in exactly one year. However, this was seen as a bad thing by half the heroes, who organized a resistance against them. The reasons given weren't very convincing — they just seemed to be there just to maintain the Status Quo of their Earth resembling the real one. Note that this story inspired both DC's Kingdom Come and Civil War.
  • Only one hero, the Batman Captain Ersatz, actually objected to improving the world. What causes the real split was when the majority of the Squadron Supreme decided to use Brainwashing for the Greater Good.
    • Actually, he made a very valid point in the final issue. Even after turning power back over to civilian authority, the Utopia could only last so long as the Squadron was around to enforce it. There's no guarantee their eventual successors would hold to the same moral standards.
• Downplayed in Star Wars: Legacy by the Fel Empire. The Fels were Reasonable Authority Figures loyal to the Light side of the Force, a branch of the Skywalker family, and cared deeply for the galactic citizenry. However according to writer John Ostrander, they were intended to be seen as A Lighter Shade of Grey rather than outright good as they were authoritarian in nature, valuing power above all else. Played straight by Darth Krayt's Galactic Empire, who after overthrowing the Fels sent the public right back to the nightmarish conditions they endured under Sidious.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: Averted with Prowl, who is the most morally grey of the good guys as he's willing to go to lengths to end the war others find uncomfortable. He just wants the war to end; he doesn't want any credit or glory. For the Decepticons, Overlord is quite possibly the most evil Decepticon in the IDW comics. Megatron always thought that he'd pull a Starscream on him, but Overlord does not care about rank and he doesn't care about advancing in the power structure. He just wants to kill people. Kup speculates that his goal in life is to upgrade from homicide to genocide, and keep killing.
• The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Starscream is this. Bumblebee remarks that his ambition is untempered due to his lack of any ideology and a huge dose of caring only for himself. He wants power and control, but now the war is over, and the world they face is brutal and the people all distrust each other. To get power he... wants to be elected by a committee of his peers. He keeps his smug attitude but does his best to help the society move into a brighter future, one he wants to lead. He even befriends his political rival Metalhawk, and though he snarks at him, seems to respect Bumblebee. When Megatron throws it all into chaos, Scream berates him because of his shortsighted folly and stands with the Autobots. When Megatron is defeated Starscream rejoices, and then kills Metalhawk, uses his death as a political maneuver, swears off his faction, and has the entire public rally behind him. He then banishes Bumblebee and all the Autobots and Decepticons clinging to old alliances. His final words to Metalhawk lampshade this:
  Metalhawk: I thought you were my friend.
  [Starscream murders Metalhawk]
  Starscream: I was. I just wanted this more.
• The cape-killer (Ozymandias) of Watchmen might fit, depending on whether you think he's evil or a Well-Intentioned Extremist. It's true that he gave up a fortune, but that just underlines his ambition (he wanted everyone to know that his accomplishments were his accomplishments, not his family's).
• Wonder Woman (1987):
  • Cassie Arnold teams up with a murderer masquerading as a hero to propel her own career as a reporter by making it look like she's an Intrepid Reporter following a hero like Lois Lane.
  • Veronica Cale is a hardworking scientist and CEO, who hates Wonder Woman for getting "undeserved" praise heaped upon her for "being a pretty princess", does cruel experiments, and treats humans as disposable stepping stones.

Comic Strips

• A running theme of For Better or for Worse is that anyone who shows ambition is doomed to failure or just plain horrible. The biggest example of this can be spotted with Therese, Anthony's ex-wife. She is demonized for not complying with her husband's wishes and giving it all up to become a stay-at-home mom. The fact that she apparently gets postpartum depression is glossed over by Anthony; when she abandons, then completely rejects her own daughter, it's just anvilicious.

Fan Works

Crossovers

• All For Luz:
  • Upon discovering The Multiverse is a thing, All For One has expanded his Taking Over The World Evil Plan for his realm to becoming essentially a Multiversal Conqueror, adding The Boiling Isles and Luz's home world to his conquest. (After taking over the girl's body, first.)
  • Just like in the show, Belos spent centuries engineering the full-blown genocide of witchkind and plans on using that feat to earn praise and approval from humanity and be rewarded by being labeled a famous hero in history. He's also working with his descendant Tyler to kill all Quirk users, too
• Code Prime: Megatron goes from being a gladiator trying to fix the system to wanting to rule Cybertron as the next Prime to conquering a big chunk of Earth and eventually moves up to wanting to eliminate free will, all for his goal of achieving "peace through tyranny". Shockwave feels that "ambitious" is the single best defining word for Megatron.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
  • In his Start of Darkness chapter, it's revealed that Daolon Wong turned to darkness because he wanted the knowledge and power he couldn't achieve as a good wizard, and this warped to the point he now wants to become a god amongst men.
  • Likewise, Wong's Shapeshifter lieutenant Roberta has desires to gain as much power as she can, in contrast to her previous life on the street, which is why she accepted his offer to become a Shapeshifter in the first place. Which is how Miranda is able to turn her against Wong, by making a better offer.
• An Incognito Query: Brought up by Question when he's going over Reagan's background. Considering her lineage, skills in robotics, and overall intellect, coupled with how she seems to have been working a dead end job for over a decade, he finds her very suspicious. After all, you don't work at a dead end with that kind of resume unless it's a stepping stone in ruling the world.
• The Night Unfurls:
  • One of Vault's motives for building a Sex Empire is that, by utilising the Black Fortress and its vast resources, he and the Black Dogs have an opportunity to rise to a position higher than a mere mercenary. Unhappy with servitude under the Goddess Reborn, he wants to bring the current people in power, like the Seven Shields, under his heel, while every man under his rule can "live like kings". Ambition is only a secondary motivation, though.
  • Evil Chancellor, Prime Minister Beasley. Unhappy with taking orders from Alicia, heir of the fortress Feoh, he joins Vault and the Black Dogs so that he can rule over his own part of the future Sex Empire.
  • Evil Sorcerer Shamuhaza is willing to conduct inhumane experiments to both innocents and people on the same side as he is (The Leaping Lizards), for the sake of gaining more power and knowledge, as well as delving further into the Eldritch Truth. All of his test subjects have become either grotesque abominations, or breeders of said abominations.
• A Red Rose in the Blue Wind: Dr. Eggman sees this in Salem much in the same manner as himself.

Buffyverse

• In the Compelled Series, God-King Illyria is determined to destroy the forces of evil at any cost... and intends to do so for the entire multiverse.

ChalkZone

• Shattered Doll: Sandra's desire to make her new restaurant as popular as possible fuels some truly horrific behavior on her part, as she murders innocent zoners and incorporates their bodies into her recipes.

Disney Animated Canon

• Disney Villain Songs (Lydia the Bard): Several of the princesses fall into this:
  • Ariel seeks to take over the surface world in order to make all of humanity suffer for how Eric seemingly betrayed her.
  • Mulan started a revolution with the intent of making a better and more progressive China, but by the time her army is ready to storm the Emperor's gates, all she cares about is gaining power.
  • Megara is another Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who aims to overthrow Olympus and rule over the new pantheon of gods.
  • Tiana took Dr. Facilier's offer and opened the restaurant she and her father always dreamed of having... but she isn't content to stop there, not caring who might get hurt or displaced by her plans to expand her culinary empire.

Godzilla

• AbraxasVerse: Apex Cybernetics. Though the main fic and timeline cast ambiguity on how much their Evil Plan matches up with canon (see Godzilla vs. Kong under the Films — Live-Action folder) and how much it deviates, it's pretty clear to the readers that they're creating humongous mechas on par with the Titans, and they intend to use them for their own power against the actual Titans once they're brought online.

Harry Potter

• Inverted by Tobias Grey in The Anguis Series. He's definitely the most ambitious of his Slytherin mates, shown by his desire to work in the Ministry in Magic, whereas his peers are more content to just enjoy their school life. However, he's also the most scrupulous of them all, being the only Slytherin who refuses to join Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad, even though this hurts his chances of becoming Head Boy.
• The Choices That Make Us: Plenty of Death Eaters in both wars end up in the thrall of Voldemort because they see him as a chance for political advancement of themselves or their pet causes. Also, Mrs. Pankinson ends up serving a life sentence in Azkaban for a series of chilling crimes committed partially to try to impress Bellatrix Lestrange and be taken under her wing.
• Discussed and defied (among other things) in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, where Harry's ambition to become omnipotent and benevolently reorganize reality is fully endorsed by the Author.
• Pointedly averted in this fic: THERMOS!, or, How a Muggle-Born Brought a New Age of Spell-Making to Hogwarts (Entirely by Accident). The main character Phoebe is a Slytherin, and while she's noted to be ambitious (it being the defining trait of Slytherin House and all), somewhat lazy and definitely a Troll (no, not a literal one), she isn't mean-spirited in any way. Her friend Titus, also a Slytherin, comes off as friendly and nice, too. (The author's identified herself as a Slytherin, so it makes sense that she'd write them in a more flattering light.)
• In Why Harry Hates the Headmaster or Alt Sixth Year Ron actually started fighting Harry at the mere mention of ambition, which resulted in Harry giving a somewhat heavy-handed mini-sermon on how ambition wasn't "Slytherin" or "Dark.

Jackie Chan Adventures

• Queen of All Oni:
  • Jade seems to fit this, as one of her major motivations is to prove herself, even as a villain, feeling unappreciated for all the times she helped against evil and saved Jackie's life. Later in the story, she suffers from PTSD, which leads to Motive Decay that makes her even more of an example of this — now, she wants to gather massive amounts of power for its own sake and doesn't care who gets hurt in the process.
  • Finn also at one point makes it clear just how ambitious he is, hoping for a Mook Promotion to higher ranks of villainy. He even tells Viper that he's a better criminal than she ever was, because he has ambitions to move beyond his current position.
• In Queen of Shadows, most of the Circle of Generals have ambitions of gaining even further power (namely, becoming the Yojimbo). However, General Jirobo of the Bat Khan is the highlight of this, as he is so utterly convinced that his progressive views will allow the Shadowkhan Empire to truly flourish, that he's been trying to manipulate the Queen into a Puppet King he can control, something taboo to the Shadowkhan.

Kung Fu Panda

• In The Vow, this is taken further with Lord Shen. Even when he has won the heart of the woman he loves and his future as his parents' heir is secure, he can't help but feel that he must strive to make a name for himself instead of settling to inherit his parents' legacy. This leads him to experiment on black powder and design cannons, and his attempt to prevent the fate he'd end up with for continuing his dark path leads him to be driven away from his home and loved ones, leaving him filled with embittered ambition.

The Legend of Zelda

• In Blood and Spirit, Veress broke off from the main Sheikah tribe to create the Dark Interlopers because of her desire to succeed Impa as the leader of the tribe and lead the Sheikah into battle against Demise. However, since this was not the destiny of the Sheikah tribe, she was passed over in favor of Sheik, her former best friend.
• FFS, I Believe in You: In the sequel, the Mormaer Uisdean is obsessed with personal power and control, and considers it his inborn right to rule over all zora, everywhere. This leads to his oppressive rule of Zola Province, and later to his attempt to invade Hyrule and conquer Zora's Domain.

Mega Man

• Limitless Potential: Dr. Fujiwara serves as a Foil to Dr. Cain by virtue of how he views X as a means to an end. While Cain sees X and the other reploids as sentient beings, Fujiwara is more interested in their potential as weapons, and how the role he plays in their development could make him famous. This eventually reaches the point where he's willing to help Sigma rebel in exchange of gaining full control of Abel City.

My Hero Academia

• Inverted in Young Midoriya. Izuku's desire to succeed All Might and become the next Symbol of Peace is treated as noble, and Miruko even tells him outright that he needs to become more ambitious and start seeking out the spotlight more... or at least greater recognition for his deeds.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Anchor Foal: Many of Fleur's worst traits and most questionable actions are rooted in her desire to move up in the world and reach a much greater station.
• Aurora (PonyholicsAnonymous): All of Dawnbreaker's desire for power and greatness is ultimately rooted in nothing more than wishing to satisfy his own bloated ego.
• Friendship Is Magical Girls: Sunset Shimmer's Start of Darkness was caused by her desire for power and glory for its own sake and her belief that her mother and Celestia were holding her back. Thus why she ritually killed her mother to become immortal and started her campaign to become more powerful than Celestia.
• Twilight Sparkle in Pages of Harmony very much fits this, seeing as her ambition is to "preserve harmony". How does she do so? By Mind Raping, torturing, and killing her friends to extract their Elements. And that's just the start.

Naruto

• The Kakashi Way: Danzo fully embodies this. While Hiruzen naively believed that his old rival was a Well-Intentioned Extremist whose love for Konoha would prevent him from doing anything that would harm its residents, Danzo was more than willing to destroy anyone and anything he saw as an obstacle between him and claiming Hokageship for himself. On top of all his canonical scheming, he also had a hand in several tragedies that he helped orchestrate in order to hurt, ruin, and destroy those he perceived as threats, such as Minato, Kakashi, and the legendary sannin. Hiruzen is aghast to learn just how many of those incidents were inside jobs, including Sakumo being Driven to Suicide, the Kannabi bridge incident, Tsunade losing her little brother and Love Interest... all casualties wrought by Danzo's desire to seize control of Konoha.
• Exploited in Son of the Sannin. Just like in canon, Danzo has the ambition to become Hokage and is shown to be extremely bitter that he's always been passed over for the position every time, which leads him to stoop down to things like allying with Orochimaru and leaking intel to Akatsuki about the jinchuriki's whereabouts, resulting in several missions to retrieve them gone wrong. When he's confronted about it, he reveals that his plan was to let Akatsuki gather all the Tailed Beasts in a single place to take them back for Konoha, or so it seems, as shortly after he turns out to have been under Kotoamatsukami influence, thanks to Obito Uchiha. Rather than outright mind-controlling Danzo, all he did was plant the idea on him and let his ambitions do the rest. Given Danzo's reputation, nobody would have even suspected it wasn't his idea to begin with.
• A Running Theme in sunflower:
  • Before his death, Minato came to suspect that somebody was secretly infuriating ANBU with spies and agents loyal to them rather than to the Hokage. Years later, a scroll is found with a warning for Hiruzen, encouraging him to assign trusted shinobi like Maito Gai to ANBU to root out the traitors.
  • Kakashi expresses disgust at his more ambitious peers. To his mind, ANBU is purely about taking care of Konoha's Dirty Business, not seeking personal glory, recognition and advancement.
  • Yamakujura leads one of Konoha's clean-up teams, and is all too eager to sing his own praises. During an ANBU dinner, he takes advantage of his boss's absence to declare how much he'd love to take his place.

One Piece

• In Castle, Sanjina learns, to her utter horror, that not only does her father wish to restore the Germa Empire to its former glory by marrying her off to Pudding, but her brother Ichiji wants the throne and her, and is more than happy to slaughter the rest of their family if that's what it takes to get what he wants.

RWBY

• Destinies of Remnant: In the "This World Will Have No Peace" timeline, Adam mixes dangerous ambitions into his vengefulness with distressing ease, as part of his revenge involves stealing the SDC away from Jacque Schnee and turning it to his own ends.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

• Catra and Glimmer - Queens of the Horde:
  • Shadow Weaver covets the magical and political powers held by the elemental princesses, and refuses to let anything stand between her and her goal of becoming one herself. She also isn't satisfied with the prospect of only holding one throne.
  • Downplayed with Catra and Glimmer; like Shadow Weaver, both are driven by their ambitions... and desire for revenge. Both are Villain Protagonists to some extent, with Glimmer being just as ruthless as Shadow Weaver in her own ways.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• Bequeathed from Pale Estates: Ned Stark blames the near downfall of the Starks two decades ago on his father's southron ambitions, which still have an effect on them even long after his death. It's for this reason that he's reluctant to play along with his goodfather's penchant for matchmaking and scheming. Seeing as said ambitions led to the deaths of his older brother Brandon, his sister Lyanna, and Rickard himself, and saw Benjen go to the Wall when it was all over, he may have a point.
• In Forum of Thrones, this is a prime flaw of Harren Hoare, whose yearning for more and more power has turned him into a tyrant who ruthlessly bleeds his own kingdom dry.
  • Maron Mullendore and Edward Anturion show many of the same traits, as their ambition is generally the cause for their worst actions and almost exclusively portrayed as negatively.

Star Wars

• Discussed in Free from Force. Ahsoka decries the Seperatists, claiming those in charge only want to "fill their pockets". Darth Maul counters that there's nothing inherently evil in wanting to live a life of luxury. As a Sith, though not a particularly evil one, he freely supports the idea that the cunning and ambitious should thrive over less intelligent individuals.

The Tudors

• Handmaid:
  • One of the reasons why the handmaid privilege fell out of disuse before Henry revived it. If the Queen predeceased the King and the Princess Consort, then the former was legally obligated to marry the latter in her place. For handmaids with particularly ambitious families, that posed a problem; history is littered with families executed for trying to elevate their daughters' newfound status through...dishonest means.
  • Thomas Seymour attacks a pregnant Anne so she can be replaced by the pregnant Jane. Despite whatever Jane believed, it becomes very clear that Thomas was driven by the thought of all he could gain by being the uncle of a prince/future king.
  • Jane is an interesting case. She clearly wants to takes Anne's place, but also recognizes that desiring Anne dead to make that happen is an evil thought; instead, she tries to convince herself that she would be a superior handmaid to Anne, and thus things would be better off for everyone if Anne was dead. In short, she recognizes that ambition is evil, and so tries to convince herself that she isn't ambitious but righteous.

Films — Animation

• Henna from Barbie: Mariposa poisons Queen Marabella to become Queen herself. Unfortunately, this also causes the lights guarding Flutterfield from Skeezites to go out, as their status depends on Marabella's health.
• Archibald Snatcher, Big Bad of The Boxtrolls, is obsessed with climbing the social ranks by rounding up and exterminating all of the boxtrolls. His obsession drives him to spread outrageous lies about the boxtrolls being savage, baby-eating monsters, threaten children, mistreat his lackeys, and eat cheese despite his violent allergies to the stuff.
• As bad as Lightning McQueen from Cars is by putting his ambitions over everything and everyone else to the point of not knowing the names of his own pit crew or caring when they quit (he gets better), his rival Chick Hicks is much worse. In the big race at the end of the movie, Chick seems to be willing to kill his long-time rival The King by causing a horrible crash. Chick wins the race, but everybody hates him and it's highly unlikely he'll be getting sponsorship from the people who employ the guy/car he just tried to wreck.
• The villain's Backstory in Coco: Ernesto de la Cruz only became the star he was after he murdered his musical partner and stole his songs.
• Various villains and antagonists of the Disney Animated Canon are as ambitious as they are evil in their goals and actions:
  • In Aladdin, this is practically Jafar's M.O. His goal was to become the Sultan of Agrabah, even though being the Grand Vizier already makes him a pretty high-ranking official. Then when he gets his hands on Genie, he uses one of his wishes to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world, conquering Agrabah almost effortlessly soon afterwards. And not even that was enough; Aladdin plays into Jafar's pride by pointing out that Genie is still more powerful than Jafar on accounts of the fact that he gave him his powers in the first place and that someone could theoretically wish said powers away. Jafar thus decides to use his last wish to become a genie himself, not realizing the downside until it's too late.
  Aladdin: (As Jafar is being forcibly sucked into his new lamp) PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS... Itty-bitty living space.
  • The plot of The Aristocats is kickstarts when Edgar, the butler of Madame Bonfamille kidnaps his mistress' cats to leave them in the wilderness. He does so after he learns that Madame Bonfamille has made her cats her sole heirs, while Edgar hoped to get hands on her fortune thanks to his long service.
  • Beauty and the Beast has Gaston, the village's full-of-himself handsome guy, who to Belle's dismay wants to marry her and make her his Trophy Wife. He goes to great lenght to make her marry him, including kidnapping her father and attacking the Beast once he learns about his existence.
  • In Cinderella, Lady Tremain would do anything to ensure her ranks and even improv them, especially once the chance to marry off one of her daughters to the prince occurs. While ambition plays a part, most of her abuse against Cinderella in the movie is possibly more out of spite and For the Evulz.
  • In The Emperor's New Groove Yzma's ambition to rule the Inka kingdom leads her to trying to outright murder king Kuzco - unfortunately for her, her Minion with an F in Evil Kronk screws the magic poisons up and he is transformed into a lama instead.
  • Prince Hans in Frozen (2013). There was no way he'd inherit the throne to his own kingdom since he was the thirteenth-born son, so he plotted to marry into the royal family of Arendelle, kill Elsa, and assume the throne.
  • Frozen II reveals that in Arendelle's backstory, Anna and Elsa's grandfather, King Runerad attacked the forrest tribe to get access to the magic they seem to control.
  • Professor Ratigan, Basil's Arch-Enemy in The Great Mouse Detective and an Expy of Professor Moriaty, uses his incredible intellect to get money and power from his evil doings. His ultimate plan - besides killing his nemesis - includes stealing the crown from the Mouse Queen.
  • Hercules has Hades who plans to rule the cosmos - and get revenge on his brother Zeus. His M.O. are shady deals which he tries on Hercules. He eventually fails.
  • In The Little Mermaid (1989) Ursula was kicked out of Atlantica because she attacked King Triton and tried to seize the throne. Then, when Ariel, who has a Deal with the Devil with her, comes too close to getting that first kiss that would undo Ursula's plans, she [[spoiler:sabotages that by transforming into Vanessa and using Ariel's voice to hypnotize the prince, just so Ariel would remain her slave. Then, even after promising Triton to release Ariel in exchange for his magical trident, she tries and fails to kill Ariel. To top it all off, she goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and tries to kill everyone because of how badly her plans have been mucked up.
  • The Lion King (1994) has another example of The Usurper with Scar, Simba's Evil Uncle. He successfully kills his brother Mufasa and becomes new king of the Pride Lands.
  • The Princess and the Frog: Doctor Facilier is an Evil Voodoo Witch Doctor who with the help of his "Friends From The Other Side" seeks for money and power. He also pushes Lawrence, Prince Naveen's loyal servant, to the evil side by promising him to make his life better.
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has the Evil Queen who - like in the original fairy tale - wants to proof she's the most beautyful woman. For that goal, she attempts to outright murder Snow White.
  • Mother Gothel in Tangled is an Immortality Seeker who kidnaps and imprisons Rapunzel, using her magical hair to give her eternal youth. Once Rapunzel escapes her prison, she does anything to get the source of her youth back.
• In Frankenweenie, the main character manages to resurrect his dog out of love, and while still kind of dead, the dog is otherwise fine. The other kids, meanwhile, are Designated Villains because they want to replicate his experiment to win the science fair; their animals all Come Back Wrong, for no apparent reason other than that they had "bad" intentions.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • Downplayed with Tigress in the first film. Tigress is quite overachieving in the beginning, but it's mostly to reinforce her worth in the eyes of Shifu, the citizens of the Valley, and her teammates. Nevertheless, it's these traits and the feeling of being pushed aside by an incoming (and seemingly undeserving) student that drives much of her cruel treatment towards Po.
  • Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2. First, he invents the cannon with plans to use it to make himself more powerful. When his family's Soothsayer predicts that he will be defeated by "a black and white warrior", his response is to try to murder a nearby village of pandas. By the time the film's events roll around, he wants nothing less than to conquer all of China.
• The Once-ler in The Lorax film started out as a young man determined to prove himself to his family by becoming a successful businessman, but when he does become a success, he becomes obsessed with "biggering" his company until he turns into a full-blown Corrupt Corporate Executive.

Films — Live-Action

• Eve Harrington of All About Eve is nothing if not driven. She wants to be just like her inspiration, star actress Margo Channing, up to and including taking the role she has and will stop at nothing to get it.
• Played with in Beyond the Lights. Both Noni and Kaz have dreams and aspirations that are seen as admirable. It's Macy, Noni's mother's, ambition that is seen as evil as it drives her to ignore her daughter's own wishes and micromanage Noni's entire life. It is part of the reason Noni attempts suicide and ultimately leads to her letting Macy have it and firing her as her manager.
• Bones (2001): Jeremiah's first flashback establishes him as being resentful of how Jimmy refuses to accept criminal deals which could help him advance in the world. When Jimmy says he's fine with the status quo, Jeremiah replies that "you got all the status, and I got nothing but quo." He pressures Jimmy to partner with Eddie and Lupovich to get rich selling drugs, and while he's horrified during Jimmy's actual murder, he's unrepentant about helping to turn his old neighborhood into a slum.
• Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) provides a thorough exploration of the trope. Various members and associates of a German steel family vie for control of the family business, set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, using blackmail and murder to advance their means. Their ambitions are ruthlessly manipulated by SS leader Aschenbach, allowing the Nazis to take control.
• The Family Man: The whole movie is about showing Nicholas Cage's character the life he would have had if he had chosen to stay with his girlfriend instead of going off on business. The thing is, he actually seems happy at the beginning of the film and miserable with his new circumstances to the point that he spends a fair portion of the movie trying to get his high-powered career back. Eventually though, he does fall in love with the family but is snapped back to his old life and circumstances are contrived as such that he has to blow the deal of his career to catch his ex-girlfriend at the airport (presumably sacrificing his career for a now-hypothetical family.) Why he couldn't have closed that deal and tried to look her up later is left to the viewer to figure out.
• In Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius wants to make General Maximus his heir specifically because Maximus does not have any ambition to be Emperor and Marcus wants Rome to become a Republic again. Commodus, however, has great ambition to be a wise and just Emperor. When he learns that the position is about to be snatched from him, he murders his own father. This lends credence to an Alternative Character Interpretation that Marcus Aurelius felt that ambition was not the only flaw disqualifying Commodus from the purple robes of power...
• Godzilla vs. Kong: Apex Cybernetics, the Evil, Inc. responsible for the plot of the movie. Though they try to justify their Evil Plan to kill and usurp Godzilla by claiming they're returning firm control of the planet to humanity and are creating a secure line of defence against the Titans, it's pretty clear from Walter Simmons' behavior and Apex's nightmarish lack of regard for the millions of potential casualties they engineer that what Apex really want is to be the ones credited with breaking new ground in the form of their human-controlled anti-Titan Mecha and to be hailed as heroes, at any cost. It's even all but confirmed in the official novelization that if Apex's plan had succeeded without any hitches, they would've gone on to Take Over the World outright.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Elsa Schneider is a well-educated scholar who used her allegiance with the Nazis to obtain the Holy Grail. Her ambition drives her to betray both Indiana Jones and his father to get the invaluable information on the Grail’s location. In the end, ambition was her undoing, as she refuses to accept that the grail couldn’t leave its protective temple, which causes a Cataclysm Climax. Despite the chaos, Indiana manages to keep her from falling to her death in a huge chasm. In her quest to have the grail at all costs, she wildly reaches for the grail, and Indiana loses his hold on her slippery gloved hand.
• A rather subtle version occurs in I Shot Jesse James. Bob Ford’s pursuit of silver and wealth makes him even more possessive of his Love Interest Cynthy, whereas his rival John Kelley’s decision to become Town Marshal (largely considered a thankless job) is treated as a selfless action. This makes the two men's Love Triangle with Cynthy even more intense.
• Many, if not all, James Bond villains are motivated to dominate the world or be very powerful, and they'll use any means to get to their goals, including but not limited to straight-up omnicide or triggering World War III.
• Wan ultimately ends up losing everything she actually loved in her grab for power in Legend of the Black Scorpion. Then someone killed her.
• While Loki initially states that he never wanted the throne, he definitely gets a taste for it during his short rule in Thor. In The Avengers, Loki has a lot of ambition: he wants to be a king of Asgard but would settle for taking over Earth as a substitute. This, of course, leads him to do some pretty evil stuff.
• Master: It's implied that Liv, a professor at Lancaster University who is a candidate for tenure, commits hate crimes against Jasmine and ultimately kills her in order to get tenure and thus secure her place in the college.
• In Nightcrawler, Lou exemplifies this trope. He is literally willing to do anything to get ahead in the business, no matter who he has to hurt.
• Savannah Smiles: Mr. Driscoll wants to run for the state Senate and neglects his daughter even more than usual to do so (while making his wife do the same), eventually graduating to outright destroying evidence that shows his daughter did run away instead of being kidnapped.
• Scarface: Tony Montana is hellbent on improving his lot in life, rising from a former convict and exile from Cuba to hitman and drug runner for the Miami mob and eventually into the position of mob boss while continuing to insist he wants more and feeling completely unfulfilled when he's got nothing to reach for. Tony makes "the world is yours" into his personal motto (having originally read it off an ad on the goodyear blimp) and displays it prominently in his foyer, right where he's gunned down and dies at the end of the film.
• In Stardust, all of the Stormhold princes murder each other in an attempt to become heir to the throne. Only Primus seems decent, and he doesn't need to be ambitious because he's already the heir. The crown eventually goes to the most humble characters who is in line for it.
• The Sith are all about this trope. They actively betray and murder in order to obtain more power, in contrast to the Jedi Philosophy. One particular Sith went so far as to destroy the entire Sith leadership because they had stopped the repeated betrayal that usually only weakened the Sith as a whole.
• In The Thin Red Line (1998) the antagonistic Lt. Col. Tall orders a suicidal attack, because the battle offers perfect opportunity for promotion.
• Tower of London (1962): Every evil act Richard III undertakes arises from his desire to take and keep the throne.
• Vicki: Even though Vicki claims she is not ambitious, this is patently not true (and Steve even outright states this during one of Perp Sweating sessions). She uses those around her to ruthlessly claw her way to the top of the New York social scene, and then tosses everyone aside to move to Hollywood. It is her decision to go Hollywood that gets her murdered.
• Wall Street: Villain Gordon Gekko famously asserts, "Greed, for a lack of a better word, is good." In a World… where money is power, greed is ambition.

Live-Action TV

• In Babylon 5, the Shadows hold ambition as the highest virtue and constantly play to this emotion in the Younger Races to promote their philosophy of Social Darwinism. Londo Mollari, their main 'client' through the story, ends up doing a lot of Dirty Business for his ambitions and suffers greatly for them, especially when he tries putting it right again. Word of God confirms that the Shadow emissary Morden recruited Londo specifically because he had a positive ambition to restore the Centauri empire, while G'Kar only wanted revenge on the Centauri, with no vision beyond that. ^note  At least, that's where they are at the beginning of about two decades of character development. Ironically, the Shadows are convinced to leave the Younger Races alone forever after Sheridan asks them their own Armor-Piercing Question ("What do you want?") and they realize they don't know the answer anymore. The Shadows themselves had no real ambitions.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and its spinoff Angel) there's a similar theme running throughout most of the TV portion of the series. First, with most of the non-evil characters high school students, the monsters and villains become distinguished as those who know exactly "what they want to do when they grow up" — they're doing it. More broadly, the show (based on commentaries, deliberately) emphasizes evil and good as proactive and reactive. When the good guys are farther ahead of their game than a last-minute response, they're generally making a mistake somebody else will pay for. Organized efforts to protect people before they're in danger turn out to have been corrupted from the very beginning. Even when the goal is simply to help people who need it (the homeless shelter in Angel, headed by a genuinely good person), there are hints of evil as entropy: proactively doing good on a local scale inevitably means contributing (at a net loss) to greater if vaguer evils. This seems to end in Buffy's Season 7. Maybe. Lindsey, a villain, had a driving motive of his cynicism and ambitions, as pointed out by his actor:
  Christian Kane: I still think this cat looks at the glass as being half empty. And so, damn it, I’m going to drink the rest of that water.
• Royally averted in Carrusel. Most, if not all of the kids had an idea of what they wanted to be when they grew up. They were encouraged to study and do well in school, as well as to pursue their hobbies.
• Control Z: Natalia's questionable methods to get what she wants come back to bite her hard after the hacker exposes her money theft to the school.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Deadly Assassin", the Master subverts his ally by appealing to his ambition.
  • In "Evolution of the Daleks", Human-Dalek hybrid Dalek Sec spouts the following line after his transformation (note the other words besides "ambition"):
    Dalek Sec: I feel... everything we wanted for mankind. Which is... ambition. Hatred. Aggression. And war. Such a genius for war...
• The Dropout: Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes's ambition to make her mark leads her to make promises she is unable to deliver. She even conducts a trial of her blood-testing machine on actual cancer patients, despite the fact that the machine does not work. Based on a True Story.
• In ER, Kerry Weaver does increasingly underhanded and immoral things in order to advance her career.
• Somewhat subverted with Glee: Main character Rachel is extremely ambitious, but it's portrayed in both good and bad ways: her insistence on always getting the spotlight alienates people, but her go-getter attitude combined with her talent is ultimately what will save her from the fate of many of her classmates (being stuck in Lima, OH). Certainly, she's never seen as evil, though she often seems to lack perspective and goes to extreme lengths such as sending Sunshine to a crack house to scare her out of the Glee Club, this eliminating her (perceived) competition. By the end of Season 2, however, Rachel seems to have learned her lesson. She'll still be ambitious, but she's going to be nicer about it (hopefully). On the other hand, we have Sue, who single-mindedly pursues her goal of destroying Glee Club — and there's Terri, Will's wife, who cruelly pushes him to give up teaching and become an accountant so they make more money. Will is ambitious, though; it's just that these ambitions are directed toward elevating the McKinley High Glee Club as high as possible, rather than making money.
• The Guardians of Justice: Outright stated as Episode 7's title, "Proximity to Power Corrupts More than Power Itself". Night Hawk's envy, paranoia, and psychosis build over the course of twenty-two years, formulating a plan to take over the world so he can defeat what even Marvelous Man couldn't.
• In an episode of Happy Days Richie becomes leader of his squad in ROTC. Ralph and Potsie think it's an invitation to goof off and somehow he's the bad guy for punishing them for it.
• Frank Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street is a fundamentally good man, even if he acts like a prick most of the time. However, he is deeply ambitious and desires to climb the ranks of the BPD, making him susceptible to the manipulations of his superiors, who want to promote him but at the cost of turning him into as much of a venal, self-serving politician as they are.
• A recurring theme on The Honeymooners is Alice telling Ralph he should be satisfied with his job as a bus driver and not keep trying to improve their lot in life. Admittedly, Ralph has a tendency to go with get rich quick schemes, but if the level-headed Alice actually helped steer his ambition instead of belittling him, they might actually prosper.
• The premise of House of Cards (UK) and House of Cards (US). Francis Urquhart and Francis Underwood initially engage in some ruthless Disproportionate Retribution after getting snubbed for a promotion that ends with them in higher positions than they were originally hoping for. But they enjoy the power so much that they keep climbing the political ladder on top of several careers and bodies.
• Kamen Rider:
  • The Central Theme of Kamen Rider OOO is desire, and most of the story arcs are about dealing with some ambition that's run out of control. The main character himself is characterized by an utter lack of any kind of ambition. And then the trope was inverted. Particularly by Kosei Kougami, perhaps the closest thing there is to a Big Good in the series. He loudly and frequently espouses the virtue of desire and ambition because it leads to progress and evolution. This is in contrast to Eiji, whose lack of desire and focus on what's immediately in front of him are initially played as entirely virtuous, but his outlook is later shown to be the result of severe emotional trauma and eventually causes him to start losing himself as he transforms into the Purple Greed, which represents the antithesis of desire.
  • Kuroto Dan in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid wants to become even more famous through developing a new brand of video games better than any others. That's not the bad part. That he starts to go exactly along the lines of arson, murder, and jaywalking to achieve it, on the other hand, is.
  • In Kamen Rider Zi-O, The Protagonist Sougo Tokiwa has this as the source of his problems in current time due to the latter part resulting from the former part of this trope later in his life. Sougo's dream is to become king, though NO ONE in present honestly takes him seriously. 50 years later, Sougo is known as Oma Zi-O, the Demon King of Time who causes and rules over a Bad Future. It has gotten to the point that multiple factions have gone back in time stop Zi-O's road to ascension — one way or another.
• Zig-zagged on Leverage with Sterling, who always benefits personally from the team's actions. While he is almost always an antagonist of the team, he is often portrayed as actually being in the right, especially once he becomes an Interpol Special Agent.
• A recurring theme in Little House on the Prairie. Anyone with money is bad or downright evil (Harriet Olesen, Ebeneezer Sprague), and doing things that will make a character successful will only backfire and provide an Aesop for the protagonists.
  • Every time Harriet attempts to make more money, she has the plan fall apart on her and end up costing her money.
  • When Charles and Caroline go to a high-school reunion, they feel sad when they realize how much more successful everyone else is, but in the end, everyone who succeeded in life wishes they had the life of Charles and Caroline because they have true happiness.
  • When Charles and Mr. Garvey go into the freight business, they're immediately successful, so the first thing they do is go into a fancy restaurant and start ordering things off the menu that they don't even recognize. When the waiter brings them their escargot, they get mad at him, like he's trying to force a fancy life upon them. Charles even yells at the waiter for no reason other than he didn't like the fancy life. Charles and Mr. Garvey leave the restaurant, taking a bottle of wine with them, without paying for any of it. The entire scene is played like this is their "reward" for doing well. Because of this meal, they decide to end their freight business and go home to their wives. Neither one of them had been home for two weeks, but rather than have that be the reason for their return, they focused on the way rich people act.
• Sauron from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power could be the physical embodiment of this trope. Even when he has good intentions, he is going to use the cruelest methods to achieve his goals. After Morgoth's defeat, he continued to make cruel experiments on Orcs just so he could obtain the power of the Seen and the Unseen World, which led to being betrayed be Orcs and temporary killed for his deeds.
• Anyone in M*A*S*H who has ambitions is evil. The only people with ambitions are portrayed as being self-centered, selfish, and just plain bad. Some examples:
  • Frank is always an antagonist, but any time he's in charge, it goes to his head and everyone turns against him.
  • Generals and colonels are often portrayed as people who care more about their careers than anything else.
    • In one episode, Potter gives a brief speech outlining exactly how Jerkass each officer rank is likely to be based on how far away they are from real prestige. (He concludes it with a bit of Hypocritical Humor, noting that colonels are the worst, since "they can practically taste those stars.")
  • When Winchester joins the cast, he wants to be head of thoracic surgery at a Boston hospital. Then again, Winchester is also portrayed as more than competent enough to handle this. Unlike Frank, his antagonism comes from a clashing personality as opposed to incompetence. By the end of the show, this troper wanted him to run that hospital!
  • When the soldier of the month board is coming up, everyone in the competition stoops to some low activities (brown-nosing, cheating) to get ahead.
  • One episode sees the company clerk, Radar, promoted from Corporal to Lieutenant. He's then put in charge of his "friends", who decide that since he's now an officer, he's automatically a Jerkass and no longer their buddy — even though he's shown to be quite laid back, and is only doing the job he was assigned. Radar is so troubled by this that he asks to be demoted back to Corporal at the end of the episode. There's also a nurse who has a crush on him and was always making passes at him, which didn't act on because he was only a lowly corporal. When he's promoted to lieutenant, the nurse loses interest in him and explains that the only reason she was attracted to him in the first place was that it was wrong.
  • Downplayed with Father Mulcahy, who pushes for promotion, is shown regretting his actions and talks about the sin of pride — but he remains a nice guy. And it was because he was jealous of a colleague getting a similar promotion!
• Nirvana in Fire: The Crown Prince and Prince Yu are ultimately defeated by the consequences of their own unscrupulous greed for power. Jingyan seeks power for altruistic reasons and is ultimately able to become Emperor.
• The Office (US): In the first few seasons, Dwight and Angela are the meanest employees who are the most unpopular with their coworkers. They are also the most driven, hard-working, and likely to take charge. Then Andy was added to the cast and he was originally characterized as someone who, like Dwight, would stop at nothing to become Number Three in the office. By the time he was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, this goal had mysteriously disappeared. Ryan was corrupted with power when he got promoted to corporate and Took a Level in Jerkass to extreme levels. Jim is at his best when he is Brilliant, but Lazy and whenever he takes on management duties he finds himself Lonely at the Top and is unsure of how to handle the job. Pam has always had an ambitious streak (even if it was repressed at first) which appears to run much deeper than that of Jim. However, while she originally had the sympathetic goals of wanting to prove herself talented and capable and escape her disliked receptionist job ever since she came back from Pratt she has gradually become more concerned with making money than being competent and has undertaken more questionable means of getting herself promoted. In fact, the only notably ambitious character who neither does mean things just to get ahead of others nor gets an intelligence downgrade after being promoted is Karen (she was sometimes mean to Pam because she was a rival love interest, not out of ambition). And that's because she was always going to be Put on a Bus for unrelated reasons.
• The Outer Limits (1963): This is the lesson of the episode "The Bellero Shield". Judith Bellero, a Rich Bitch inspired by Lady Macbeth, already has a life most people would envy—a wealthy scientist husband, a Big Fancy House — but it's not enough for her. She wants "Power, far-flung holdings, undiminishable authority", and she plans to get them by taking over her father-in-law's MegaCorp. When Judith's husband accidentally intercepts an all-loving alien who uses an impenetrable shield to travel the stars, Judith kills the Christ-like creature and tries to pass its shield off as her husband's invention, which backfires spectacularly.
• Wonderfully averted in Parks and Recreation. Leslie is extremely ambitious (She wants to one day be the first female president) but is also extremely moral and would never even think of doing something wrong to get ahead in politics.
• Political Animals:
  • Frequently discussed in terms of Elaine's political ambition making her look bad because ambition looks better on men.
  • Georgia, the reporter whom Susan compares to Eve Harrington in the first episode, doesn't seem to care who she hurts to get established as a more serious reporter, although she's closer to Short-Sighted Ambition Is Evil And Stupid.
• Inverted in Power Rangers in Space, where being more evil seems to increase your ambition. The Big Bad has a Heel–Face Turn midway through the season, after finding out she's Andros long-lost sister. Unfortunately, not long after, the Greater-Scope Villain captures her and uses cybernetics to brainwash her into being even more evil than she originally was. After this happens she almost immediately begins plotting to overthrow the Greater-Scope Villain, an ambition she'd never been shown to have before.
• In Primeval, Christine Johnson is one of the main villains in Series 3. The reason why she's so evil? She wants to steal an artifact from the future which involves the Anomalies in order to do research on it, and become famous. In fact, Christine is so ambitious, that James Lester described her as "like a Velociraptor, only better dressed". Luckily, in Episode 3.9 of Primeval, Christine Johnson is pushed through an Anomaly leading to the future by Helen Cutter, where she is killed by a Future Predator, probably to Lester's great relief.
• Never, ever go on a Reality TV show and express a desire to actually win. After all, that'd be silly — who'd enter a Game Show with the intention of succeeding?
• Revenge (2011) has Daniel Grayson, who took over his company against his father's wishes and alienated all other friends and lovers in the process.
• The Royals: Prince Cyrus Henstridge is the younger brother of King Simon, and has always been jealous of his brother's crown. He often speaks to Simon and Liam about being deserving of the throne and how a good king would do things, and the unsaid implication lies in his words that he thinks he would make a better king. And indeed, he attacks Simon from behind at one point, effectively killing him and making Cyrus king.
• Played with in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. When Harvey tells Sabrina he doesn't plan on going to college, Sabrina secretly doses him with a magical "Ambition" line of toiletries sold to her by her cousin. However, she uses too much turning Harvey into a Corrupt Corporate Executive that manages to buy the school and plan on demolishing it. When Sabrina's aunts find out, they learn that the Ambition products lacked a key "expensive and imported" component: Perspective, meaning that Harvey was dosed with "Blind Ambition". When Harvey is dosed with Perspective, he cancels the plan, gives all his money to charity, and everything goes back to normal with an Aesop about wanting to change people... until Harvey tells Sabrina that he will go to college after all. (It's important to note that the Harvey at the end of the episode is still Harvey dosed with Ambition-plus-Perspective, not the original, unaltered personality.)
• First Lady Mellie Grant in Scandal (2012) will do anything to stay in the White House and clearly has designs on building a Grant political dynasty. We later find out the underlying reason for this. She was raped by her father-in-law and was too traumatized to tell anyone what happened. Instead, she convinced herself that her staying silent was a Heroic Sacrifice needed to get her husband elected to office so he could do great things. If she were to abandon that ambition, she would have to admit that her 'sacrifice' was for nothing.
• Smallville: Lex Luthor seems to catch more than a little flak for ever wanting to help people. Phrases like "The world doesn't need Lex Luthor to save it" are bandied about constantly, with the implication that because of his destiny to be Superman's greatest enemy (which no one knows at the time because PREQUEL) means that any and all efforts he makes to be something other than a regular nobody will end in a Face–Heel Turn. With his murder by Oliver Queen and having been effectively replaced by his clone, it seems all of that worrying was for absolutely nothing.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • After watching his dynasty nearly ruined by his ineffectual father, Tywin Lannister's dream is to "establish a dynasty that will last a thousand years," and he will do anything, no matter how vicious, to maintain his family's greatness and is ruthless when playing the game of thrones. Robert is even more generous, summing Tywin's goal up as "wanting to own the world". His outsize ambition is the main reason why he doesn't get along very well with his children — in his eyes, they've done nothing with their lives without his help or name, or at least so he believes. He approves of Jaime's great skill as a Master Swordsman but is disappointed that he doesn't apply himself. As for Cersei, he feels that she didn't do enough in her position as Queen and did a poor job raising Joffrey. As for Tyrion, from his perspective, Tyrion was content to spend all his time drinking and whoring until Tywin appointed him Hand and later Master of Coin. From Tyrion's perspective, he hardly ever got opportunities because his father kept insulting him with tasks like manage the cisterns of Casterly Rock, and even when Tyrion did great at that, hardly considers it indicative of any talent.
    • The only trait Cersei Lannister inherited from her Lord father and her brothers didn't. Never satisfied with her station in life, she is by far the most power-hungry of the Lannister siblings, always equating power with victory, no matter the cost (including losing her own children).
    • Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish was born without wealth, influence, or a great title. By Season 3, he's gained all three by being a scheming backstabber.
    • Zig-Zagged by the Tyrells. They aim to increase their own power and prestige through some fairly shady schemes, but are adored in-universe for their appearance as noble and charitable figures, and the fandom can empathize with them in their rivalry with the proud and conservative Lannisters and for being one of the least dysfunctional houses in Westeros.
    • According to writer David Benioff, Stannis Baratheon chooses ambition over family in "The Dance of Dragons" and this is what ultimately does him in. Given Stannis's general characterization before said episode, this explanation has been contested, to say the least. Despite having alleged noble ends, Stannis is bound and determined that absolutely no one but him should sit on the Iron Throne, and every time he has to choose between ambition and his family (or his honor, or his principles) he chooses ambition. Ultimately, this results in his downfall, as even hired sellswords can't stomach the lengths to which he is willing to go and abandon him en masse, leading to his defeat by the Boltons and execution at the hands of Brienne. This exception is, of course, in the backstory, where Stannis supported his family and nearly starved to death in The Siege for a brother he never even liked because blood is Thicker Than Water rather than support his lawful ruler who would undoubtedly have rewarded him handsomely, most likely by fulfilling Stannis' ambition to be Lord of Storm's End.
    • The characters who aren't on Renly's side don't view positively his bid to the throne, as he can't even kid anyone about having any legitimacy. Davos, who may be considered Only Sane Man, even remarks that Renly's actions were unlawful and wrong enough to consider him a justified casualty of war.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • The Hightowers being ambitious and wanting to see their own grandchildren on the throne is treated as much more immoral and dangerous than the Velaryons doing the same, with the Velaryons getting a little flack for it. Both are trying to climb the ladder, but because at the beginning of the story the Hightowers don't have a Valyrian ascendency, dragons and all the edge that entails, they have to rely on conventional scheming and amoral subterfuge more often to try punching above their weight. The legitimacy of Targaryen rule is not questioned nor presented as ambitious, as they became rulers thanks to right of conquest, and Aegon's legacy includes an obligation to uphold a strong realm, which they are trying to mantain and mostly react to events.
    • Larys Strong is shaping up into very much the show's equivalent of scheming backstabber Littlefinger. He hitches a ride on the Hightowers' ambition via Alicent's own, and sacrifices his own father and brother to further his goals.
• Star Trek:
  • In the original series, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, this is explicitly given as the reason why genetic engineering is illegal in the Federation, with Khan as the defining example (naturally, this overlaps heavily with Fantastic Racism). It's specifically mentioned that "superior ability breeds superior ambition", and that dabbling in genetic engineering risks the creation of another superhuman like Khan, "whose ambition and thirst for power have been enhanced along with his intellect".
  • Gowron is initially presented as a Klingon who genuinely gave a crap about honor. Indeed, he's a political outsider who often opposes the High Council. However, as time goes by, he cares more and more about keeping his position as leader of the Empire secure, to the point of deliberately sending a brilliant general he viewes as a rival on impossible missions.
  • Kai Winn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was genuinely dedicated to her faith and her people during the occupation. Her desire to become Kai leads her to be a Fantastic Racist, a murderer, a terrorist, and eventually a traitor.
  • Sisko and Martok are examples of the opposite. When Akorem Laan, a poet, was transported to the future and thought he was the emissary, rather than try to adapt to his new time, he used his newfound power to force everyone else to adapt to him, by returning to the abandoned Fantastic Caste System, and he didn't care how much suffering he was causing. It's clear that what made Sisko such a good emissary was the fact that he didn't want to be emissary, and thus he couldn't abuse his power because he was too reluctant to even acknowledge he had it. Similarly, Worf thought Martok would make a good chancellor because he refused to seek the position, even though he could have taken it.
    Worf: Great men do not seek power. They have power thrust upon them.
• Supernatural:
  • There are some indications that Sam's desire to go to school was bad. Conversely, his desire for the power to stop Lilith is treated as bad only partly because of the way he goes about getting it.
  • Similarly, the moral of the episode "It's a Terrible Life" can be seen as "being a businessman is evil".
• Veep: Selina can be pretty damn brutal when it comes to advancing her political career, something best exemplified in the final season. By the end of the Grand Finale, she's compromised every one of her few morals (selling out Tibet to China, indulging in electoral fraud, allying with Jonah, etc.) and even thrown her eternally loyal aide Gary under the bus to avoid jail time, all to ensure she gets elected President.
• Explicitly addressed and rejected by Toby in The West Wing when he explains to Josh that it's actually a bad thing that Josh's preferred presidential candidate had to be aggressively persuaded to run for President. Toby's argument is that the decisions the President has to make, and the burdens he has to bear, are so extraordinary that they can only be handled by someone who sincerely believes that they were placed on this Earth to do the job. A President needs to be a breathtakingly ambitious person.
• The Wire argues that every system, from law enforcement to schools to government, is hamstrung by personal ambition. Everyone is too obsessed with advancing their own careers to actually do what is best for the community; since selflessly trying to do what's right, even if you succeed, causes you to fall behind in the race for status, the people who end up on top are always the people who sacrifice the most morality to achieve their goals.
• An episode of You Can't Do That on Television specifically deals with ambition. One of the cast members remarks that the problem with ambition is "If you don't have enough, you're lazy, and if you have too much, you're ruthless. You can't win." His solution? Be lazy and get a ruthless manager.

Manhua

• In Cyber Weapon Z, Leiting may look like a Well-Intentioned Extremist but, at the end of the day, what he really cares about is his increasing his own power by siphoning that of the Demon King Solote.

Music

• Both of the scientists in the Evillious Chronicles song Project "Ma" are this.
• "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead has the prominent line 'Ambition makes you look pretty ugly.'

Roleplays

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Finn, whose desire to be a great political leader is intrinsically tied to his unlikable, arrogant personality. Downplayed, however, in that he's a jerkass rather than a villain.
  • Daigo, similarly, wants to overthrow the ruling powers and become a leader who can present himself to the masses as their saviour. While a somewhat noble goal in theory, he quickly leaps off into the dark side when he uses his newfound power to terrorise and murder innocents for the sake of his goal.

Tabletop Games

• The Violent in Anathema gain will from outclassing other shrouds. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious at your job. When your job is to murder millions upon millions of humans, however...
• While BattleTech operates under a mostly Grey-and-Gray Morality, characters who are presented as ambitious (whether that ambition is to work their way up to a higher rank in the military, become governor of a planet, or conquer the entire Inner Sphere) are almost always presented as antagonists. Hanse Davion is the biggest exception — he came the closest to conquering the Inner Sphere that anyone had done since the collapse of the Star League but was generally portrayed as heroic because of his actions.
  • Brett Andrews is one of the worse cases, as the ilKhan (Khan of all the Clans) he puts his personal ambitions and ideas over the betterment of all the Clans. He instigated the Wars of Reavings which resulted in the Clans tearing each other apart, while his Clan the Steel Vipers benefited from it, at the expense of the rest of the Clans.
  • Hanse Davion avoids falling into this trope mainly by not actually being especially ambitious, at least not by Successor Lord standards. Cunning, yes, ruthless where he needs to be, too...but he does have a conscience and at heart genuinely believes that the people he conquers will in fact be better off than they were under their old oppressive regimes (and considering who his primary enemies in his time are it's not too difficult to see why he would think so). So from his perspective, it's actually not All About Him. (Compare and contrast his daughter Katherine, who in her own grab for power after his death plays the trope dead straight and promptly ends up thoroughly wrecking the very Federated Commonwealth he's only just helped establish again.)
• The structure of Dungeons & Dragons averts the trope, since achieving wealth and power is a built-in result of adventuring.
• In Legend of the Five Rings, there exist a set of four "Bloodswords", powerful weapons crafted by an evil sorcerer. They are named Passion, Revenge, Judgement, and Ambition, and greatly increase the given emotion/feeling in their wielder to an extremely unhealthy level. Throughout the story, two separate individuals have wielded Ambition. Both tried to murder the Emperor and take over his throne. Both ended poorly for the individual in question.
• Magic: The Gathering: Ambition is one of the things represented by the color black. Granted, black is not always evil, but it is the usual home of Always Chaotic Evil creatures. Personified by Bontu, the God of Ambition on the plane of Amonkhet, which drove her personality so much that she allied with Nicol Bolas in order to gain more power. Predictably, once Bolas had used Amonkhet to his satisfaction, she paid for it.
• Scion: One of the Dark Virtues is Ambition.
• 7th Sea: "Ambitious" is one of the Hubrises that can be taken as a "fatal flaw" by player characters in exchange for more Hero Points at character creation. However, Hubrises aren't explicitly considered evil traits, just dangerous ones, and characters that have one are just as heroic as anyone else. (The game also includes such Hubrises as "Loyal", "Misfortunate" and "Star-crossed".)
• Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies:
  • "Ambitious" best describes the national character of the Barathi, whose empire is tangled, corrupt, and ridden with assassination and Vendetta-killings. The other nations have their own ideals that can cause conflict, but the Barathi are the easiest to hand for any GM who wants a sinister plot driven by someone's desire for power. Ambition is even listed as one of the fatal flaws that distinguishes a swashbuckling villain from a hero, becoming consumed by the need to win.
  • Characters can also easily take "Ambition" as a Foible (similar to the Hubrises of 7th Sea), which is an open invitation for any GM to have it bite them in the ass. Then again, they can also take it as a Motivation or other Forte so that an ambitious nature works for them rather than against.
• In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000:
  • Tzeentch is the Chaos god of ambition, also: hope, change, mutation, betrayal, psychic powers, lies, plotting, ravens, etc. In fact, in 40K he's the accumulated hope felt by sentient species in the galaxy.
  • The Space Marines believe, "Better to die for the Emperor, than live for yourself."
  • The Tau are all about this, to a point where they can be a Deconstruction. Everything they do is for "The Greater Good": they don't love in the romantic sense (they breed by eugenics with couplings determined by genetic analysis), they will throw themselves into a meat-grinder knowing full well they will die, and even their leaders will sometimes carry a bomb to blow themselves up all for the Greater Good.
    • Worth pointing out that they think personal ambition is bad. Collective species-wide ambition is a virtue. Yeah.
  • Horus Lupercal embodied the Emperor's ambition, and that ambition led him to ruin.
  • Nagash from Warhammer Fantasy wanted to be king, but due to Nehekaran rules of succession, he (as the eldest son) was made a priest while his younger brother was made king. Pissed beyond belief by this, Nagash plotted for a means to overthrow his brother, which he got when some captured Dark Elves taught him the basics of dark magic, providing him with the base to invent necromancy. Nowadays Nagash (as a mighty lich) has loftier goals in mind: killing the entire world and the Chaos Gods so that his will alone would reign supreme.
  • Similarly, the elven prince Malekith wanted to succeed his father Aenarion, the first Phoenix King. When the High Elves instead instituted Elective Monarchy and elected Bel-Shanaar to the position, Malekith accepted it publicly but secretly schemed against him. After murdering Bel-Shanaar and the Council of Princes, Malekith sought to emulate his father and Bel-Shanaar and undergo the same Trial by Ordeal to become king by walking through the Sacred Fire of Asuryan with their blood still on his hands. Asuryan quickly disabused him of his legitimacy, and the ensuing Civil War tore the old High Elven kingdom apart. Staying alive through his own spite and ambition, Malekith still plots to become king of the elves or to sink Ulthuan beneath the waves if they continue to defy him.

Theatre

• Cyrano de Bergerac: In-Universe: One of the traits of the Gascon moral code: De Guiche, a gascon soldier is considered No True Gascon between all the other Gascons because he wants to get power through compromise instead of his personal valor.
• Initially the main protagonist of The Fix, Calvin Chandler, only wants to hang out getting high and playing guitar — it's his scheming mother who forces him into politics after her Senator husband dies, because...
  If I can't be the wife of the President,
  You can bet your ass I'll be his mother!
• Played with heavily in Hamilton, since nobody's exactly evil and often it's more like Ambition Makes You Stupid. Both Hamilton and Burr are deeply ambitious men, but Hamilton is impatiently ambitious while Burr is more willing to wait for opportunity to present itself.
  • Hamilton's ambition doubles as his greatest trait and part of his Fatal Flaw. He's always looking to do more, which both enables him to pretty much invent America's financial system on his own, but he doesn't know when to stop in order to stay out of trouble. With someone like George Washington around to grab him before he runs himself off a cliff, he's a brilliant statesman. Once Washington dies, he starts making more boneheaded moves and quickly self-destructs.
  • Hamilton often presses Burr to be more active and stand up for himself more often but finds himself opposing Burr when Burr actually starts taking his advice. Hamilton's reasoning when Burr demands answers as to why he supported Thomas Jefferson's presidential campaign is explicitly this trope; he states that while he and Jefferson have contradictory ideals, at least Jefferson has ideals and is campaigning in order to fulfill them, while Burr just wants the office for the power.
• Ambition leads Abigaille to usurp her father's throne in Verdi's Nabucco.
• RENT: In "You'll See," it's revealed that before the events of the musical, ambition and wanting to move up on the social ladder are what gradually transformed Benny from an idealistic bohemian and friend of Mark and Roger, to a rather callous and occasionally unpleasant capitalist who reneges on his promise not to charge rent to his former room and housemates and tries to get a lot containing a tent city cleared out and demolished. It's worth noting that both of these actions are to achieve his dream of building a high-tech studio, which he hopes can allow his former fellow bohemians to actually make money off of their art.
• Social hierarchies were a major part of Elizabethan society, so ambition beyond one's station is an important theme in many William Shakespeare tragedies:
  • In Julius Caesar, Brutus claims to the Romans that Caesar's ambitious nature was tyrannical and that stopping him justifies the murder. Antony provides the page quote by acknowledging the dangers of ambition even though he disagrees.
  • Ambition is literally Macbeth's only motivation in favor of kill Duncan: "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition".
  • In Hamlet, Claudius' ambition to the throne leads him to kill his brother and marry the queen.
• "The Way Things Are" from I Can Get It For You Wholesale:
  You've got to climb higher, always climb!
  To hell with the rules!
  Get used to the fools
  Who have to be stepped on
  From time to time!

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: C seeks to obtain an Artifact of Doom called The Dypheus' Breath that will allow him to open portals through Another Dimension which he plans to use for his own agenda. Overtime, he displays arrogant disdain and obsessive ambition towards his coworkers because he believes that his plan will not bring about disastrous consequences and the only way it will succeed if he is the one in control without anyone standing in his way, even resorting to attempting to take over The Consortium out of spite.
• Baldur's Gate III:
  • The Smart Guy Gale was Chaotic Good, but his ambition and Inferiority Superiority Complex was his Fatal Flaw and the direct cause of his downfall prior to the start of the game. If the Player Character doesn't help him learn from his mistakes, he ultimately has a Face–Heel Turn. Invoked by Raphael, who refers to ambition as a sin in one of the game's Multiple Endings where Gale becomes a Deity of Human Origin: the God of Ambition. Raphael anticipates that Gale will cause complete chaos in his new godly role, and plans to use the opportunity to seize more power for himself.
  • Should Minthara join the party, she aspires to usurp the Dead Three's Chosen as leaders of the Cult of the Absolute and seize control of the Netherbrain for herself, and encourages the player character to do the same. Even if that doesn't happen, a romanced Minthara can be talked into conquering Menzoberranzan or Baldur's Gate with her at their side.
• Bug Fables: The Wasp King seeks out the Everlasting Sapling, which can grant immense power and immortality, in order to take over all of Bugaria. Throughout the story, he conveys haughty contempt and callousness towards the heroes, civilians, and even his own soldiers because he thinks that's what a mighty king is supposed to do, and his plan to conquer Bugaria is motivated by his belief that it's what he deserves.
• Crusader Kings 2: The Ambitious trait gives a character a very good stat bonus, but it also gives the character a permanent -5 relations malus with anyone else who has the trait, as well as -25 towards anyone getting in the way of the ambition (typically the character's liege, if any). This means Ambitious vassals are more likely to rebel. Furthermore, its opposed trait, Content, gives a piety bonus. So, it's not so much "ambition makes you evil" as it is "ambition makes you a pain in the rear".
• In Chapter 2 of Deltarune, Spamton is obsessed with becoming a [BIG SHOT!!], and in both routes seeks to upgrade himself into the monstrously powerful Spamton NEO to do so. In the normal route, the Addisons explain that his downfall started as a result of a Faustian partnership with a mysterious caller to achieve fame. In the Weird Route, meanwhile, Spamton uses his and the SOUL's corruption of Noelle and her ensuing rampage to take over the Cyber World, which he gloats now belongs to him.
• Vergil's quest for more power throughout Devil May Cry shows that, while he briefly held the power he was searching for, it ultimately leads to his downfall into literal hell. Shortly after, he marches straight off to fight Mundus. In Devil May Cry 5 the Big Bad Urizen is literally the embodiment of Vergil's ambition and thirst for power created after Vergil split his demonic and sides apart with the Yamato. The horrific lengths Urizen goes to for more power horrifies V (revealed to be the embodiment of Vergil's humanity) and he endeavors to stop him.
• Disgaea 4:
  • This is the sin that sent Fuka Kazamatsuri straight to hell. At the tender age of five, she wanted to Take Over the World, and begged her Mad Scientist father for a little sister who would also double as a Person of Mass Destruction and her own personal Dragon. Once in the Netherworld, she first tries to take over Hades (as she was sick of being treated poorly as a Prinny), then tries to take over the entire Netherworld, and then tries to take over the Human World as well!
  • It's apparently such a big enough sin that in The Fuka and Desco Show she is effectively banned from reincarnation after she and her sister Take Over the World! Though that doesn't bother her too much and declares the Netherworld and Celestia are next.
• Double Homework:
  • Played with regarding the protagonist. His Olympic aspirations seem to make him a stuck-up glory hog, and as he matures, he starts to lose interest in them. And when he loses the qualifier, he’s okay with it.
  • Averted with Rachel. She has — and keeps — the same Olympic ambition as the protagonist, but she doesn’t lose her moral compass for it.
  • Played straight with Dennis. A social outcast who wants to become an alpha male, he uses all manner of immoral and illegal means to achieve his aim.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Bhelen Aeducan is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to drag the dwindling dwarf kingdom into the modern-day, and isn't above poisoning his own family to get on the throne. Should you put him in power, his very first act as king is to execute his rival, followed by unleashing assassins on all his rivals' families, and institutes martial law. Unfortunately, he also happens to be the only leader whose good side is sane; he also opens trading deals with the outside world and gives jobs and rights to casteless dwarves, which manages to save thousands of dwarves from their ultra-conservative hellhole. If the other guy wins, the dwarves continue to be ruled under a dysfunctional, isolationist Decadent Court that repeatedly fails its citizens.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Anders is the only one who shows any kind of ambition towards ending the templar/mage conflict. He blows up the Chantry so there can be no compromise between the two sides.
    • Merrill also has shades of this trope. Her ambition to link her people with their past prompts her to try and restore a broken mirror that's a portal for a demon to re-enter the world from the Fade. While she herself survives, this goal gets at least Keeper Marethari killed, if not the entire clan she was trying to help.
    • Snarky!Hawke plays this straight, being one of the few unambiguously good characters in the game. Despite their actions pissing off more than a few people in the process, Snarky!Hawke acts out of a desire to help people with no reward, has no real goals other than protecting their friends and family and at the end of the day, simply desires nothing more than to head down to The Hanged Man for a drink among friends.
    • Played very straight with siblings Varric and Bartrand. The former is a party member, has no patience for "dwarven honor" and is happy to hang out at the Hanged Man drinking and telling stories. The latter is obsessed with reclaiming his family's legacy, incredibly unpleasant to work for, and leaves you all to die with a little push from an Artifact of Doom.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition: One of the potential companions of the Inquisition, Vivienne, was pretty much described in the promotional material as 'The Ambition'. She's not evil per se, but self-serving, and she tends to cause conflicts with other companions. Being a player of The Game, she's willing to climb the ladder of a society that despises mages like her, no matter how much they piss her off. If she's elected Divine (bad idea), she'll oppress other mages to consolidate power.
• Dragon Quest VIII: In this JRPG, Marcello is obsessed with gaining power and status because he was born to a peasant woman and a nobleman. It doesn't end well. It does, however, end better for him than for the majority of other named characters; at least Marcello survives the game.
• Dynasty Warriors: In the early games, most of Cao Cao's speeches links to the term 'Ambition'. And he is the bad guy in the novel. Becomes more of a grey area once Cao Cao and Wei become a faction of ruthless but ultimately well-intentioned Anti-Heroes in 7 (while still going on about ambition,) while Zhong Hui cites his own ambitions as his reason for backstabbing the Sima family and attempting to seize Wei for himself.
• Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future: Justified. Ambition made dolphins from an alternate reality ruthless and selfish, but only because at the time it was their only trait besides Intelligence (the others having been stolen from them). When those qualities are balanced by the rest — Compassion, Wisdom, and Humility — Ambition instead serves as the noble trait that drives dolphins to fulfill their dreams.
• Zig-Zagged with Praetor Rykard in Elden Ring. Even when his ambition led to him rebelling against the Greater Will (gaining him the Lord of Blasphemy title), his followers didn't have a problem with this, and in fact saw it as heroic. Then he fed himself to the God-Devouring Serpent and merged with it, with his ambitions degenerating into a simple desire to consume everything. His former knights now want you to kill him just to stop him further disgracing himself and his ambitions.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, Ambition specifically falls within the sphere of Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction. While none of the Daedric Princes are truly "evil", instead operating on their own scale of Blue-and-Orange Morality, Dagon is certainly one of the most malevolent toward mortals and is near-universally regarded as evil as a result. Dagon has served directly as the Big Bad of two games in the series (Oblivion and the Dungeon Crawl spin-off game Battlespire) and is later revealed to have been The Man Behind the Man/Greater-Scope Villain for Arena.
  • In the more heretical tales of his life, Tiber Septim, the founder of the Third Tamriellic Empire who ascended after his death as Talos, the Ninth Divine, had a lust for power led him to do some incredibly evil and underhanded things, such as betraying his allies and forcing the young Dunmer princess Barenziah to have a magical abortion because the child would've been inconvenient.
• The eponymous Player Characters of Evil Genius are explicitly... well, Evil Geniuses trying to Take Over the World, in the purest form of evil ambition there is. But among the three, Alexis stands out, as she started a wealthy socialite, quadrupled her inheritance, and the thing that drives her to world conquest is the realization that this wasn't enough.
• This shows up with both the Big Bad Yngvarr and side-villain Vernan in the mod Falskaar ^note a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Brother Arnand laments that Vernan's desire to learn magic eventually got out of hand, which resulted in his expulsion and his experimenting with the Dream Crystal. Yngvarr's ambition to conquer Falskaar is also motivated by his desire to become immortal... doing which could technically put the entire island at risk.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: Caellach, a mercenary who becomes one of the six generals of The Empire. His greatest ambition is to become a king, and he's also Affably Evil and That One Boss.
  • In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Berkut's greatest desire is to become emperor of Rigel. When Alm turns out to be the rightful heir to the throne, he snaps and sells his fiancee's soul to the local Mad God to obtain the power to kill him and take Rigel for himself.
• Genshin Impact: Inverted. In this game, most playable characters are Vision holders. How do you receive a Vision? By having an ambition and drive strong enough that the Powers That Be recognize it and grant you Elemental Powers so you can achieve whatever you set out to accomplish. There are examples of immoral characters who go to extreme ends to achieve their goals, and some characters who believe this trope is in effect like the Raiden Shogun, but overall the view the game takes of ambition is very positive.
• Wolfgang of Growlanser II aspires to create a democratic territory for his fellow mercenaries, who are only of use to the current reigning kingdoms in times of war. However, achieving this goal requires deceit, trickery, and fighting against the game's protagonists.
• Hidden City: In the “Double Game” case, Head of the Security Service Mr. Black discovered that while the Security Service headquarters was isolated by fog his assistant Violet, the head of the Octopus unit which eliminated unwanted situations, chose to join the Shadow Cult and the other Octopus agents joined her. The Facebook page on her, along with the fact that she forced a new election to become the head of the Security Service, implied that she joined the Shadow Cult because of her ambition to become the head of the Security Service.
• Hogwarts Legacy: Averted. Students in Slytherin are generally more ambitious during sidequests than students than the other three houses. However, most of their end goals are generally selfless aims (becoming emissary for the merpeople), benign goals (being the best broom rider in Hogwarts, with the eventual hope of joining a Quidditch team), or purely personal interests (recovering a lost family heirloom).
• Kingdom Hearts: One of the central themes of the series is that reaching for more power than you're entitled to never ends well. All of the major enemy types (Heartless, Nobodies, and Unversed) started with someone being overly ambitious and screwing things up royally in the process.
• League of Legends
  • Hecarim in life was a cruel and selfish knight in service to Camavor. Most of his actions were driven by a desire for power and autonomy, from leaving his master to die for not naming Hecarim his successor as Knight Commander of the Iron Order to murdering Kalista in order to secure his role as the Ruined King's favored servant. Upon becoming a wraith of the Shadow Isles, Hecarim is less ambitious and more psychotically obsessed with violence.
  • Qiyana is the last in line of the royal family of Ixaocan, and a particularly ambitious one at that. She's willing to betray and kill her own family in order to secure the role of empress for herself, and her entitled and short-sighted behavior proves that it would be a terrible thing if she succeeeded.
  • Played for Drama in Xerath's backstory. Originally a child slave of the ancient Shurima empire, all his life he only desired to be free. He would eventually save the life of the young Emperor Azir, who promised him his freedom, and would go on to be educated, taught magic, and become the Emperor's top adviser. However, he never gained the freedom he was promised, and eventually turned to scheming to take freedom. However, just as his schemes were about to bear fruit, Azir finally kept his promise and revealed he always intended to, just waiting for the right moment. Xerath, unable to do anything to stop the destruction of Shurima he had set in motion, could only silently weep at what was about to happen. He was then sealed away in a tomb for several thousand years by Nasus and Renekton before escaping into the present time determined never to lose his freedom again.
• Legacy of Kain: Kain gets called out on this in a few games of the series. He may be the hero of the series, but that doesn't change the fact they actually make a point.
• In The Legend of Zelda, the Big Bad Ganondorf led an expedition to the Sacred Realm in order to acquire the Triforce, a Cosmic Keystone that could grant ultimate power to the one who has it. However, when he touched it, the Triforce separated into three parts, as it would only remain intact for those whose hearts value Power, Wisdom, and Courage equally. Ganondorf only received one piece of the whole: the Triforce of Power, as he only valued Power and wanted to Take Over the World. Meanwhile, the other two pieces, the Triforce of Courage and Triforce of Wisdom, went to the heroes: Link and Princess Zelda respectively. Thus, in all games in the series, it is the job of the various Links and Zeldas to stop Ganondorf from gaining the full Triforce so his ambitions can't come to fruition.
  • Even when he reincarnates as a decent person initially, his cursed blood inevitably drives him to seek unlimited power, as shown in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker where he (ambiguously) started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist or the original concept for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where he was initially just a normal guy (and a Metallica fan).
• Many of the villains in Like a Dragon embody this concept, though few are as tragic as Akira Nishikiyama. Originally an orphan just like his friend Kazuma Kiryu, he joined the Dojima family with the desire to reap the lavish riches of the high-ranking yakuza. However, as time went on, he began to grow jealous of Kiryu's recognition with his peers and superiors as well as winning the heart of Yumi Sawamura, a fellow orphan he pined for but only had eyes for Kiryu, feeling like he could never measure up. It came crashing down the night Nishiki shot and killed their Oyabun Sohei Dojima after he tried to rape Yumi, and Kiryu took the fall and went to jail. A combination of his guilt, the lack of respect his peers gave him and admitting they wanted Kiryu to be their leader, Yumi losing her memory thanks to the trauma and vanishing, and eventually his sick sister Yuko dying over the course of 10 years caused Nishiki to cast aside his personal ties and do whatever it'd take to rise to the top of the yakuza world in an attempt to regain control of his life and be respected. By the end of the first game, he tried to kill Kiryu several times, was willing to try and hurt Yumi and her daughter Haruka, had the man he viewed as a father figure shot and killed a woman who loved him and ultimately died shooting a bomb on the 10 billion yen he betrayed his loved ones for, vowing to make things right with his own death.
• In Live A Live, This ends up being the downfall of Streibough in the Middle Ages Chapter. When Oersted's party crashed into the Archon's Roost and wandered into a dead end, Streibough figured out there was actually a secret passage where the princess was kept, but wanting to get one over on his rival and take her for himself, Streibough faked the room collapsing to get everyone else out, then tricked Oersted into killing the king and becoming a pariah. In the end, his ambition resulted not only in his death and the princess committing suicide to follow him, but Oersted became insane and driven into becoming Odio because of this, dooming all of Lucrece and kickstarting the events of the other 7 chapters.
• Played straight with Nagi, Nami, and The Midnight Killer in Major/Minor. While the former two are looking to restart the universe, their actions have caused death and suffering across the galaxy. The Midnight Killer, Maxine Armstrong, wants to gain possession of The Ark, claiming she'll use the powers of it to stop death — however, she is psychotic and treats the lives of the people she's killing as nothing. It's also hinted that she arranged to have her older sister killed so she could inherit Armstrong Incorporated. Subverted with Acheron and Velasquez: Acheron wants to gain the power of The Ark to prevent his psychotic sister from controlling it, and to use it to combat death; Velasquez wants to help The Federation find a new source of power and seems to care about his royal subjects, but the morality of his methods is questionable.
• The whole plot of Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners is driven by the raw ambitions of one man: Professor Tsuchida. While already highly respected in his field, he still wants more — and when some illegal explorations lead to him uncovering hidden ruins, he ropes a tour group into accompanying him inside. Supposedly to give them a 'once-in-a-lifetime experience', but honestly because he intended to use them as Unwitting Pawns to get past whatever booby traps might be waiting inside.
  • His assistant Dr. Kuroe also demonstrates this, though to a lesser degree. Like the professor, he isn't satisfied with his accomplishments and desires, which leads to him going along with his plan despite some reservations. This leads to some internal conflict as the expedition continues...
  • Then comes the endgame revelation that Tsuchida's true motive was to punish Kuroe for this, blaming him for not being able to save his daughter one year prior. At the time, Kuroe hadn't graduated yet, and while he offered several reasons as to why he couldn't save her, the one that stuck out the most to the Professor was his fear of losing his license. Thus, he believes that Kuroe's ambition helped cause Shizumi's death, and was obsessed with seeing him punished for it.
• Re:Kuroi:
  • The Magic Academy tried to use the Black Pearl to start a world war to increase their influence. They went as far as using the Black Pearl to transform their students into a monster army.
  • Remy's family wanted to take advantage of the Crystallization Strife by having Remy's brother infiltrate the magic researchers while Remy infiltrates the army, allowing them to benefit no matter which side wins.
• Rise of the Third Power:
  • Emperor Noraskov seeks the glory days of an old empire that was eventually split into the Kingdom of Cirinthia, the Republic of Tariq, the Kingdom of Arkadya, and many smaller territories. He overthrows the king of Arkadya, reforms the country into an empire, and tries to conquer Cirinthia and Tariq.
  • Phillip wants to sell out Cirinthia to Noraskov for the sake of gaining political power. He plans on using Princess Rebecca as a puppet queen in order to gain popularity for himself before disposing of her and ruling Cirinthia directly.
• Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins:
  • Prince Teor of the Kness Dukedom starts out as an ally, but eventually, it becomes clear that he's exploring the ruins not out of altruism, but to gain power and glory for himself. He eventually decides to rebuild the Archean Empire with himself as the ruler and plans to trap everyone in Star Spirits in order to preserve Titus's spirit.
  • In the final dungeon, if the player asks Titus I how he can justify his actions, he states that it's human nature to seek power and immortality. His goal is to force everyone on the planet to dream of him and his empire so that he can preserve himself and his legacy forever.
• From Sands of Destruction:
  • Subverted by Pistris Rex. While his sole motive for holding the peace talks is to secure a better seat for himself on the counsel of beastlords, he's perfectly reasonable and willing to make genuine strides for peace. Too bad the Front decided to send in Kyrie, who's known to not have complete control of his powers, as their representative, and the Crimson Sun picked that moment to active his Destruct Code.
  • Eventually played straight by Lacertus Rex. His ambition to destroy and remake the world to his liking lead to delusions of godhood.
• In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, human ambition being destructive is one of the central teachings of Shijima, the World of Silence Reason. Hikawa, one of the most vocal advocates of Shijima, likens greed and ambition to fire; in small amounts they can bring comfort and warmth, but all too often humans allow them to grow out of control until they consume everything around them.
• Penelope in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. Her intent was to invent and sell weapons in the black market for billions of dollars, and Take Over the World. But she needs Bentley's cooperation, as he's the brains of the pair, but she grew jealous of his two Childhood Friends Sly and Murray, who were also friends with Penelope, and came to believe that killing them both would hasten her climb to power and ensure Bentley's continued loyalty. It backfires spectacularly, leaving Penelope broke, friendless, and a wanted fugitive.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: A lot of darkside choices allow for players to achieve personal goals at the cost of committing actions considered morally wrong, so this trope is played straight plenty of times within the game. However, a potential conversation option for Imperial Players brings up the topic of ambition during a side quest on Dromund Kaas, where it's ultimately defied. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting power; what is the problem, however, is what you will do to get it and what you will do once you have it.
• Super Robot Wars X: Power-hungry for acknowledgement, status, and fame, Celric would do anything to secure his path to be Pope of the Order of Mages. As he overthrows Counselor Kildean, and used the power of Ende to feed on his ego, his Warth Dienvel eventually went berserk, along with himself.
• Valkyria Chronicles: This is actually one of the major themes of the game; every single character who actually aspired to achieve their rank in the military is in it for some form of selfish gain and nothing else, and most of them die. The exception is Varrot, who only became a captain because she wanted revenge for her murdered lover., and retired shortly afterward. Everyone who either enlists voluntarily or is conscripted, without pursuing an actual military career, gets a more or less happy ending — and the exception to that is Faldio, who dies explicitly for believing in military strength over the power of love. The bottom line is that in Europa, the only way to win a war is by blowing it up with your belief in pacifism (and regular guns — magic lasers are evil.) It takes this a step further by having the entire main Gallian army die in a huge explosion. Their deaths are mentioned once and then completely ignored by the main cast — because even though enemy Mooks are shown to be human, the Gallian army are Mooks that have no worth at all, presumably because (unlike Squad 7, which is made up of people who volunteered in response to a threat to their hometowns) they're professional soldiers, who only exist to promote warfare and be willingly manipulated by their evil, shallow overlord, General Damon.
  • Valkyria Chronicles 4 fleshes this strawman scenario out; when the Empire threw all fantasy Geneva Conventions out the window, most of the Gallian military and conscripted militia immediately signed up with the Federation out of principles and the promise of a future alliance with a greater power. The remainder of the high-ranking forces stayed home from a combination of cowardice, apathy, and the knowledge that they'd get shiny new promotions if they sat back and watched their superiors sacrifice themselves on the real frontlines of the war. This backfired greatly.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: Melissa's thirst for knowledge led her to become Melinda's apprentice. Like Melissa, Melinda is a seeker of knowledge, but it's for evil purposes. This is also the reason she was sealed away in her castle the first time.
• Discussed and subverted in Overly Sarcastic Productions' retelling of Isis stealing Ra's true name. It sounds like "the highly dramatic inciting conflict of any number of High Fantasy evil god-queen plot lines"...but no, she just uses her nigh-omnipotence to give women easier childbirths and other nice things.
• Red vs. Blue: Sigma is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Alpha's ambition, and as flashbacks in The Project Freelancer Saga reveal, his biggest ambition was to achieve "metastability", the AI equivalent of becoming a person. To achieve such a goal, he corrupted Agent Maine into becoming a psychopath, tortured the Alpha multiple times, and convinced Carolina to take two AI units, all of which either directly or indirectly led to most of Project Freelancer's agents being killed.
• RWBY: Cinder will do anything for power. She hunts Maidens for their enormous power, and is willing to destroy entire cities if she has to in order to achieve her goal. She thrives on chaos and carnage, but her lust for power and obsession with hunting anyone who dares cross her becomes her Achilles' Heel. In Volume 8, Watts lectures her on how her woman-child behavior and single-minded obsession with power has prevented her from being a successful villain and turned her into unlovable comic relief. Cinder takes this to heart - and then murders Watts because his intelligence wasn't worth the threat to her power. A flashback reveals she was Made a Slave and abused until she snapped, and has been obsessed with becoming as strong, feared and powerful as possible ever since.

Web Comics

• In Brawl in the Family, this is the ultimate source of Ganondorf and Dedede's respective Face Heel Turns.
• DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: X specifically gives less quests and rewards to people lacking Desire, ensuring that proactive or amoral Dicers stay on top. Every Dicer has an idea what they want from the Final Die and can do anything for it, including killing everyone else.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Incubus, the Demiurge of Lust, personifies Ambition more than the other power-hungry Demiurges. He started out as a nobody, a starving orphan stuck in a ghost town, when he spied an opportunity as The Chosen One, Maya, was having 'trouble' accepting her destiny. He partially usurped her destiny by 'helping' her, then built her and her companions into the very usurpers of the gods, killing everyone in their path with him as her Vice-Demiurge. Then she abdicated. This enraged him, even though the crown defaulted to him, because he hadn't earned it, something the other Demiurges heckle him about throughout the story. He responded by hunting her down and killing her family, all because he wanted her to fight him to the death with everything she had, so when he defeated her he could properly claim the title.
• In Pacificators, there is Princess Belinda. She poisoned her father, and successfully got the throne. This trope is averted with Muneca, however, who is a good guy. She's still awfully ambitious, though.

Web Video

• In Adventures in Jedi School, Master Mudmud and Villaine sent Randy to assassinate Principal Eval and to procure Sessa, the former so that Mudmud would become the new Headmaster, while the later so that Villaine could have force powers and the two could rule together as brother and sister.

Western Animation

• Arcane: As Vander laments, Silco once had the respect of everyone in the Undercity, but it was never enough for him. Silco wants the respect of topside Piltover and he'd do anything to get it.
• This is both played straight and subverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show's main bad guys are the firebenders. Fire is described as being the element of power and those who practice it have desire and will and the energy and drive to achieve what they want. They are, by their nature, ambitious. However, we are also shown many characters, including firebenders, whose ambition drives them to improve themselves and the world around them. Of special notice is Fire Lord Sozin; his seemingly earnest ambition started the show's conflict generations later.
• In the DC Animated Universe, Batman was driven by a noble but unrealistic cause to rid all crime from Gotham city, which ultimately caused him to alienate the people closest to him. By Batman Beyond, all his vision got him was living utterly alone, in a city that is even worse off than when he was still Batman.
• Batman Beyond also has Derek Powers, who wants to build his company, Wayne-Powers, into the most powerful force in future Gotham, and he's not afraid to throw away all scruples to do it. It'd probably be easier if it weren't for his condition acting up at inconvenient times, and that annoying kid in a batsuit messing up his plans.
• In a Caleb and Sophia video, a student tempts Sophia by giving her the correct answer to a math problem that she has a problem with during a test. In her mind, she sees herself giving the teacher the test sheet with the correct answer that the student would give her, and also her appearing at her own graduation giving a valedictorian speech, in a purple tint — the same purple tint that the Devil appears in during the segment where he tempts Jesus in the wilderness with the three temptations — and so decides against succumbing to the temptation and leaves the answer to the math problem blank when she hands the test sheet back to the teacher.
• Castlevania (2017): In practically every scene that features her, Carmilla at least gives off the impression that she's scheming for more power; something she apparently takes pride in. Hector notes in a conversation with Lenore that this seems to be an inherent vampire trait, the desire to drink more than they actually need, and Striga makes a similar statement in the direct aftermath of Carmilla's death.
  Vampires always have plans, don't we? Maybe it's just in our nature to overreach, grasp at too much at once, try to drink everything. Maybe that's why, in the end, we win all the battles, but always lose the war.
• For Eddy (along with his friends, who are far less deserving) of Ed, Edd n Eddy, Failure Is the Only Option by the end of an episode, usually because he is a scam artist who attempts to weasel the other kids out of money. However, even if they manage to pull off a relatively legitimate business with rather impressive efforts they will still end up getting screwed over badly.
• The Dragon Prince: Lord Viren desire to unite the human kingdoms to wage war against and wipe out the dragon and elven kingdoms of Xadia with himself as the leader, and his willingness to do so by any means necessary (be it bribery, fear-mongering, forging royal documents, assassination, murdering and usurping King Harrow's two sons), corrupting and stealing the entire Sunfire Elven magic source, and turn a whole army of humans into monsters to do so, drives most of the villainy in the plot.
• Huntik: Secrets & Seekers's villain Wilder is definitely this, to the point his ambitions about ruling The Syndicate blind him. Clear and looming threats, combined with his Demonic Summons titans and Smug Snake personality make for a villain who doesn't listen to facts or care about the consequences as long as he gets what he's after.
• Rick and Morty: Subverted. Rick warns the main Morty that a "cocky Morty can lead to a lot of problems", and Evil Morty's vicious murder-spree during his quest for power seemingly confirms these sentiments. However, it's eventually revealed that obtaining power in the Citadel was simply a means to an end for his true plan, which was simply to escape the influence of all Ricks once and for all and to be free. So, in the end, he's not necessarily evil due to his ambition, but rather because of the selfish and cruel lengths he's willing to go to in order to free himself.
• Catra in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is this, due to a childhood of abuse and being unable to escape from her best friend's shadow. She's fully aware that she's working for the villains, but sees climbing up the chain of command as the best path for proving that she's her own person deserving of praise and respect. The reason why she refuses to take Adora's offer to follow her and join the rebellion isn't just because of a sense of betrayal^note Catra had hoped they'd stick together and eventually take over the Horde. Outside of that, she's hurt that the catalyst for Adora's desire to leave was hanging out with some random teens for a few hours, rather than her best friend's suffering., but also because doing so would leave her back at square one: stuck as Adora's sidekick and seen as a background nuisance by everyone else.
• Deconstructed in the Season 22 Simpsons episode "Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life." Lisa Simpson spends an episode dreading ending up like Marge and transfers to an elite private school. Sitcom law dictates that the children there must be insufferable snobs, sending her running back to good ol' Springfield Elementary. Instead, the school suits her perfectly and looks like it absolutely would improve her chances in life. But late in the episode, she discovers the long hours Marge works to cover the tuition. The discovery leads to her lying about how the children are snobs and how she'd rather turn out like Marge, feeling guilty about the strain her attending private school puts on her mother. The lesson here being that ambition itself may not be evil, but fulfilling it can be, because it requires not caring who you have to step on to get ahead.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks suggests this trope is what pushes the Insane Admiral trope in the other entries: according to Vice Admiral Les Buenamigo, Starfleet is very competitive, with people always trying to make a name for themselves. In Buenamigo's case, this means inflicting Laser-Guided Amnesia on someone working on his project and stealing his work in the process, trying to torpedo trade negotiations by forcing a captain to do the negotiations at the last minute and threatening the lives of numerous Starfleet personnel all in the name of showcasing his pet project.
• Teen Titans: Jinx is the only member of the H.I.V.E. Five with any real ambition — which is why she pesters them to try to join the Brotherhood of Evil and escalate their threat to the world. This then turns into an inversion, as while the rest are content to remain petty crooks, Jinx's willingness to take life in a new direction leads her to a Heel–Face Turn.
• In ThunderCats (2011), though the Fantastic Caste System of The Empire of Thundera is presented as deeply dysfunctional, the one person who expresses an explicit, deep desire to rise above his station is the villain Grune, a Four-Star Badass with dreams of being The Usurper of Thundera's king. Frustrated in his efforts, he later settles for the more expedient strategy of defecting to be The Dragon to the series Big Bad, collaborating in Thundera's downfall.
• Total Drama: Courtney is an ambitious, competitive and determined young woman and she's also a ruthless, aggressive and antagonistic person to be around.
• On Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race the Ice Dancers are definitely the team most determined to not only win but also come first in every leg of the race. Other teams want it, but to Jacques and Josee, it's an obsession.
• Megatron in Transformers: Prime started this way. What he initially wanted was to bring social reform to a caste-bound Cybertron, and believed himself to be worthy of the title of Prime. Flash forward to a few stellar cycles later, and he's now a war-mongering tyrant who plans to bring "Peace through tyranny." As in the comic book page, most incarnations of Starscream are paragons of this trope (In addition to The Starscream), wanting to lead the Decepticons for no other reason than the fact that HE wants to be in charge, and will stop at nothing to achieve this, even though he's usually massively unsuited for the position. As he says in Transformers Prime, he is no stranger to ambition.
• Zorro: The Chronicles: Corporal Gonzales desperately desires to become sergeant in Garcias' place, and is willing to follow any order Monasterio gives while showing up Garcia at any opportunity, in order to achieve this goal. Granted, when you're the personal Butt-Monkey to a sergeant who's an outright incompetent idiot, you do tend to want to achieve better for yourself...unfortunately, Gonzales isn't much better than Garcia in the intelligence department.

---