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alt title(s): Illuminati 
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do, we do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do, we do!
The Question: Reaching back to Ancient Egypt, there's been a single cabal of powerful individuals directing the course of human history. But the common man prefers to believe they don't exist, which aids their success. Supergirl: Global warming? Military upheavals in the third world? Actors elected to public office? Green Arrow: The spread of coffee bars? Germs outpacing antibiotics? And boy bands? Come on! Who would gain from all this?! The Question: Who indeed? — Justice League Unlimited
An almost incomprehensibly powerful group that has lurked in the shadows throughout centuries of history, such as the Illuminati or the Masons. Their reach is vast, and they have unlimited numbers of Evil Minions with which to strike at the heroes. They may control The Government, industry, or both, and their goals may be refreshingly mundane (political power, wealth) or horrifyingly supernatural (summon the Great Old Ones, trigger the Apocalypse). Killing one member of the Conspiracy, even its "leader", does no good, for there is always another waiting behind him to take his place and continue the group's work seamlessly.
Sometimes the conspiracy is exposed, only to be revealed in the last pages (or scenes) that that conspiracy was sacrificed to hide the real one - which leads to the conclusion that if you learn of the conspiracy, it is not the true one, which may take us into Zen territory.
Sometimes the Ancient Conspiracy is neutral or actually a force for good, but more often than not it is evil. (When it is a force for good, it often still does extremely evil things, but because its members believe they serve the greater good.) Occasionally (primarily in series by writers who actually understood earlier source material such as the Illuminatus! trilogy), the obvious Ancient Conspiracy is later discovered to be an offshoot of an even more Ancient Tradition which has lost its way; in such cases, the real Ancient Tradition may provide some veiled and ambiguous assistance to the protagonists, though they will remain aloof themselves.
This trope often has an interesting combination of Did Not Do The Research and Shown Their Work. On the one hand, many writers clearly have spent hours poring over books on history and symbology and can throw out dozens of completely factual precedents and weave them into an interesting narrative. But these same authors often display a horribly deficient understanding of how the social sciences actually work. This can make for very frustrating instances where a writer's knowledgeability in one area is completely undermined by their ignorance in another.
When it appears in a television series, it is usually the Big Bad behind almost everything, The Man Behind The Man to all others. Expect to see a lot of them in the form of The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness. They also tend to employ the Xanatos Gambit and the Xanatos Roulette. In modern times, an Ancient Conspiracy commonly overlaps with The Syndicate.
The Ancient Conspiracy is a subset of the Powers That Be. Contrast with Ancient Tradition. The Path Of Inspiration is a specific type of this.
Examples
Anime
- SEELE in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- SEARRS in Mai-HiME, and there is at least one more, unrelated.
- Both the "Symbol" organization and the Gowa clan in Gasaraki.
- Les Soldats in Noir.
- Enfan in Madlax had the feel of an ancient conspiracy and used the power of ancient texts, though the actual organization seemed to be more recent.
- Both the British Library and Dokusensha in ROD The TV.
- The Hunters in Spiral look this way in the anime, but the manga reveals that they've only existed as long as the teenage Blade Children have been alive.
- Yu-Gi-Oh takes the uncommon (but not unheard of) approach in Season 4 that everything that's ever gone wrong in history was the doing of one conspiracy, namely, the Cult, Doma.
- The Shuffle Alliance of G Gundam, which secretly arbitrated nearly every world war in history and perfected the art of talking in perfect unison.
- Esset in Weiss Kreuz.
- The Bähbem foundation in Rah Xephon
- The true nature of the Heaven's Feel in Fate Stay Night and Fate Zero. Specifically, the goals of the three families Einsbern, Makiri, and Tohsaka.
- The homunculi in Fullmetal Alchemist.
- The Book Men in Princess Tutu.
- The Lost One Hundred Years and perhaps the Will of D as well in One Piece. The lost century considered to be a pretty big threat to the World Government. Such that anyone who is even able to read the ancient history will automatically be targeted by the World Government and labeled a dangerous criminal.
- Celestial Being in Gundam 00. To accomplish their goals of wiping out war and unifying humanity, they have subverted the greatest minds of the scientific community and formed a development chain that lasted over two hundred years, all to ensure utter technological Humongous Mecha domination when they chose to reveal themselves. In the process, they even executed a round trip to Jupiter.
- Scrapped Princess has Lord Browning's plan, a five-thousand-year long Xanatos Gambit to bring down Providence. Zefiris and Natalie keep the scheme on track whatever it takes. Notable for planning The End Of The World As We Know It and manipulating the entire cast into doing their bidding without being evil.
Comic Books
- The Conspiracy from the Batman Legends of the Dark Knight three-issue arc of the same name.
- The Minutemen and The Trust from 100 Bullets.
- The Grail in Preacher.
- The Catholic Church in numerous Chick Tracts.
Fan Fic
- The Circles from the Deva Series, who have suppressed much magic development on Earth.
- Whoever's behind the Omega Project in the Naruto fanfic Genius Losers of Konoha.
Film
Literature
- Brilliantly subverted in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus!, in which it is ultimately revealed that spoiler - click to reveal
There is no ancient organization known as the Illuminati, and that the various groups throughout history that have been using that name have been acting completely independently. Moreover, its current incarnation (the one featured in the book) was actually founded with the express purpose of preventing such conspiracies by recruiting potential conspirators into one organization, where they can be conveniently monitored and manipulated. So ultimately, it's the conspirators who are getting the wool pulled over their eyes. And if that's not enough, it turns out that there actually is an ancient, all knowing conspiracy that has its roots going all the way back to Atlantis, but — as it turns out — it has no interest in human affairs whatsoever. Finally, Fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord mushroom mushroom (Note: the meaning of the previous statement will be published in heaven).
- The Da Vinci Code portrays the Catholic Church as an Evil Ancient Conspiracy.
- The House Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire, once masters of dragons, had served as the ruling family of the Seven Kingdoms for three centuries, during which they attempted to resurrect the long-dead dragons (well dead for about 150-200 years as of the start of the series - Aegon conquered Westeros for the Targaryens using his dragons) and find The Chosen One for at least a hundred years. As by the series standard, the family has not been portrayed as wholly good or evil, but some individuals frequently swerve to some extreme.
- Also, in a straight example, the Maesters, the fantasy equivalent of Omnidisciplinary Scientists (they literally learn a little bit about everything, in order to be better advisor-types). Their love of science and the codifiable, however, has apparently lead them to attempt to destroy all magic, possibly by weakening the dragons, as mentioned above; an old legend states that without dragons in the world, there can be no magic.
- In Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, the main characters invent an Ancient Conspiracy out of whole cloth, which is taken to be real by virtually everyone else... including a couple of groups named in it, who are rather put out that they don't seem to have all that power anymore, and want the protagonists to help them regain it!
- The Consult in Second Apocalypse.
- In Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, the true nature and purpose of The Oversoul could be considered an ancient conspiracy.
- Trystero, a mail-based (and possibly imagined) conspiracy in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.
- In the novel Country of the Blind, by Michael Flynn, the Ancient Conspiracy is not all that ancient, going back only to the early 19th Century, when a handful of American mathematicians, armed with Babbage's Difference Engine, discovered the science of "cliology" (substantially similar to psychohistory in Asimov's Foundation novels), which can be used to reliably both predict and manipulate the course of historical events. This underground society soon schisms into several antagonistic groups, one of which prefers to play the Ancient Tradition role of usually passive observation (while making killings in the stock market), the others seeking power for its own sake. It eventually develops that there may be another set of cliological societies that emerged in Europe at about the same time, because, as Charles Fort put it, "It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time."
- Humourously subverted in The Areas of My Expertise:
"It is true that all of the past fourteen presidential candidates have been Bonesmen, with the exception of Ralph Nader, who was merely of member of the much less prestigious consumer-advocacy society Scroll and Seatbelt. And it is also true that Skull and Bones was originally chartered by the Illuminati and Knights Templar in order to infiltrate the Secret World Government at Yale's New Haven campus. But having failed to make any progress in this goal, the Bonesmen now focus almost entirely on tending to the pterodactyls on their private island and on ritual masturbation."
- In the short story "The Splendid Source" by Richard Matheson, the hero discovers that an ancient conspiracy makes up all the world's risque jokes.
"That is history's secret," rejoined the Dean, "veiled behind time's opacity. Our venture does have its honored past, however. Great men have graced its cause—Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Dickens.... Shakespeare, of course.... Horace and Seneca.... Yea, in the palaces of Tutankhamen was our work done.... Scraped on rock, in many a primordial cave, are certain drawings. And there are those among us who believe that these were left by the earliest members of the Brotherhood. But this is only legend..."
- In Jorge Luis Borges short story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" the protagonist reasons that the only explanation for the creation of the incredibly intricate encyclopedia for the fictional country known as Tlon.
- Librarians, in Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz series.
- In Angels and Demons, the Illuminati are a secret organization of scientists who oppose the Catholic Church, and try to destroy the Vatican with an antimatter bomb. Subverted in that the organization does not exist anymore and all of the Illuminati symbols were planted by the Camerlengo in an attempt to get himself elected pope and restore faith in Christianity. He...kind of succeeds.
- Spoofed in the Doctor Who novel Trading Futures:
"The conspiracy theorists had been saying it for decades - there was a group of people, small enough to fit round a table, who were the secret masters of the world.
"Cosgrove knew of at least nine organizations, of which six were still active, who thought it was them."
- The Cahill Family from The 39 Clues.
- The Grail Brotherhood from Tad Williams' Otherland. It isn't that old (its leader and founding member is a mere 200 years old), but it fits all the other criteria.
- Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep contains an extremely dormant trap setup by the Blight the last time it was active, billions of years ago. Those helpful Skroderiders everyone loves so much? They were uplifted specifically so that they would remain stable—neither transcend nor go extinct—and built with backdoor code so that the Blight could use them as slaves. Hexapodia is the key insight, after all.
- The Second Foundation fits in the Foundation Series, by Isaac Asimov. While admittedly they are "only" five hundred years old by the end of the series, which takes place thousands of years into the future, they nevertheless manipulate the course of Galactic events towards their own ends for centuries. And until the end, quite successfully. However, they get beaten by an even older Ancient Conspiracy, Gaia. Which itself is a 9000 year old Xanatos Gambit by R. Daneel Olivaw, whose plans are more than twenty thousand years old. Wow.
- Dune: The Bene Gesserit work for thousands of years to produce the Kwisatz Haderach. And by "work", I mean, seduce every political leader that showed some talent, however inane, while portraying themselves as being mere servants to those political leaders.
- The Illuminatus theory is filled with these, and range from few decades to tens of thousands of years old, and it's perfectly possible for organizations to split, die, remerge and resurrect, as well as their teachings to get corrupted in various ways. Somewhat rarely for the genre, the protagonists are mostly members of an Ancient Conspiracy of their own.
- The Bane Sidhe are a "good guys" variant on this, from John Ringo's Posleen War Series. Also mentioned is the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), who are working with the Bane Sidhe against the Darhel (who are an Ancient Conspiracy of their own) and human collaborators.
- Played straight in Nights Dawn trilogy, when one of the protagonists discovers that 27th century Earth (though not the Confederation) has been controlled for centuries by the secret "security council" B7, which evolved from a cartel of virtually immortal Corrupt Corporate Executives. Their mooks consist of the criminal underclass, who are made reliable by having their leaders be mind-controlled via bitek technology. At one stage the cartel conspired to have bitek banned so they could have sole use of this technology, thus inadvertently creating the breakaway Edenist culture. Their sole goal is to hold onto their own power, though at least one (the Western Europe Supervisor) believes they have a moral obligation to their subjects — he's something of an eccentric though; bored with his immortal life he eventually takes voluntary exile on a prison planet.
- The Mesan Alignment turns out to be this in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, having arranged The actual fall of the Republic of Haven into the People's republic by affecting their social dynamic for literally centuries.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- The Camarilla (and also the Sabbat, and also the Followers of Set, and also many internal conspiracies within vampiric societies...) in Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. Vampires and ancient conspiracies generally go together like hand and glove, so this trope is often seen in vampire-related fiction/games/movies/what-have-you.
- The Mage/Vampire/Whatever conspiracies are so common in the old World of Darkness that it often seemed like the Holocaust was the ONE event in history that was solely the work of normal humans (since none of the supernaturals wanted the "credit" for it). However, as these conspiracies oppose and counter each other, they often fail to really control anything.
- The Revised Edition, while Ret Conning out the "True Black Hand" nonsense, manages to deconstruct the trope fairly well. While the group in question had plenty of mortal and immortal "agents", the group itself was too fractional to do anything noteworthy with them, and the agents themselves knew so little about the group in question that they were useless for anything important.
- The reboot Vampire: The Requiem does this as well, although the scale of its conspiracies is much more local. They mainly influence mortal society in small ways without any overarching scheme. Sometimes they mess with people just as a game.
- The Technocracy in the Mage: The Ascension RPG is a group of super-scientists who work to change the very nature of reality by making humanity believe in science and disbelieve in magic. Sadly, they have been more successful in eroding people's faith in magic than in making them enthusiastic about science, meaning that people now don't really believe in anything, with general apathy and despair as a result.
- The Seers of the Throne in the successor game Mage: The Awakening are devoted to ensuring that humanity remains ignorant of the Gnostic truths of the universe by keeping as much control of human culture as possible, and directing it away from any supernatural insights whenever possible and necessary, a goal they have been pursuing since before the beginning of recorded history. It's noted that the Seers are organized in the manner of an extremely convoluted bureaucracy, with none of the members knowing the entire structure of it, and with the potential for members to be appointed to offices which are ultimately meaningless, but which can be taken so seriously that they eventually 'evolve' a meaning, based on the importance attributed to them. The Guardians of the Veil and the Silver Ladder are also arguably Ancient Conspiracies, albeit with arguably more altruistic goals (the former seeks to prevent humanity from finding truths they are not ready for, the latter seeks to help all of humanity to Awaken).
- As long as we're on The World of Darkness, there are so many Ancient Conspiracies in Hunter: the Vigil that it's hard to keep them straight. In fact, the largest possible organization of hunters is commonly called a "conspiracy." Ones that best fit the criteria include: the Aegis Kai Doru, relic hunters who date back to Ancient Greece; the Ascending Ones, Arabic alchemists who use the drug trade to fuel their quest against the darkness; the Cheiron Group, a recent megacorporation with some very occluded origins who perform medical experiments of supernaturals to
better mankind increase their profit margins; the Lucifuge, made up of self-proclaimed children of the Devil who seek to fight against Hell and all its works; and the Malleus Maleficarum, the Catholic Church's black bag group.
- In another World of Darkness example, Geist: The Sin Eaters has introduced tiers of organization for krewes, the "gangs" of the game. Tier 3 is the Conspiracy level, a national-to-global level death cult that's pretty much a strange mixture of religion, mystery cult, and political group. Subverted in that there's a reason they're Ancient Conspiracies — no Tier 3 krewes exist in the present day of the setting.
- The fan-made expansion Genius: The Transgression has, among others, Lemuria — an ancient conspiracy that ain't quite what it used to be.
- Oh, where to begin in Warhammer 40000? The existence of Chaos and daemons is kept secret by the Inquisition from as many people as it can be, the Orks and Eldar were originally created to fight the Necrons, the C'Tan spliced the pariah gene into proto-humanity for later harvesting, God-Emperor only knows what's up with the Adeptus Mechanicus... the list goes on.
- And then there's 'effing Tzeentch, a one-god ancient conspiracy who has his hand in everything. Yes, even the plans that oppose each other.
- Well, he is the literal embodiment of conspiracy. So much so that, should his grand plans ever actually succeed, thus ending the conspiracy, he would immediately cease to exist. So it makes quite a lot of sense for him to have two totally opposed goals. Well, as much sense as Chaos ever has...
- Isn't the Emperor something like this as well? I mean, he's basically as old as humanity itself, minus the lives of those first shamans.
- The Ascended from Feng Shui are a conspiracy of animals that have taken human form in defiance of the natural order. They control everything in the 1850 and contemporary junctures since using Time Travel to capture enough feng shui sites to cause a Critical Shift and evict the world's previous rulers, the Four Monarchs, to the Netherworld by pulling history out from under them. Because magic is the only thing that can revert these transformed animals back to their natural forms, one of their driving goals is to suppress magic, relying on the media and scientists to discredit those who try to prove that magic is real, and Pledged hit squads to kill known sorcerers and supernatural creatures. It doesn't exactly help that most sorcerers and supernatural creatures tend toward the evil persuasion themselves.
- The Kolat from Legend of the Five Rings provide the obligatory shadowy conspiracy in that particular setting. Since the basic structure of Rokugan's society was set down by mystical beings from on high, the Kolat seeks to return control of the world to the hands of mortal men. Themselves specifically, of course, lest they be mistaken for having purely noble intentions. Of course, within the setting, doing away with the influence of the Kami would likely lead to an apocalyptic breakdown of the entire society.
- No mention of Illuminati? A card game by Steve Jackson}} Games, where each player takes the role of an ancient conspiracy (ranging from the titular Bavarian Illuminati to the Gnomes of Zurich and the Cult of Cthulhu, to name a few). They then have to take over various interest groups (ranging from political parties to industries to fandoms to aliens). These generate money and can take over other groups, until your cards are arranged in a web. Each conspiracy has a specific goal, although all conspiracies can win by eliminating the competition.
- Take your pick of them in the Dark*Matter setting for d20 Modern game. Ancient conspiracy within ancient conspiracy facing off against other conspiracies. Aliens, humans, and odder things all conspiring for or against something or another. It's probably the main focus of the setting.
- The name says it all. This is also probably one of the best examples of this Trope in existence. What is it? None other that GURPS Illuminati.
Video Games
- The online game Exmortis 2 has the main character seeking to save the final dredges of humanity in a post apocalyptic world ripped bare by monsters from hell. You solve the point and click puzzles, race the descending evil clouds of doom, follow the clues and scare the living hell out of yourself in the process, only to win and discover that the bad guy you thought you were defeating was actually kicked out of his own cult centuries ago. You've been working to get rid of the Exmortis so that he can take over again with them out of the way. Out of the frying pan and into the furnace, in other words. Oh, and your character dies anyway. Damn.(It's a point and click game, but you know).
- In Deus Ex, the Majestic 12 is a Recent Conspiracy that split from it's founding organization the Illuminati. There's also the Knights Templar, because in Deus Ex, a trope is never used once if it can be used five times.
- The Patriots from Metal Gear Solid. However it turns out the Patriots are a fairly modern conspiracy formed in the 1970s which has rather genre savvily taken on all the trappings of an ancient conspiracy as protective colouration, formed using the missing funds of another organization already on its last legs, The Philosophers, who themselves only dated back to around the beginning of the 20th century."
La-li-lu-le-lo! La-li-lu-le-lo! La-li-lu-le-lo!
- The Genoharadan in Knights of the Old Republic. Oddly enough, they did not appear in any other Star Wars works, not even in the comic series of the same name.
- Granted, although they were meant to be highly secretive assassins...
- And the option is open to have Revan kill the entire Genoharadan leadership.
- The Orange and Purple clans in Fahrenheidt.
- In the Mega Man ZX series: The very creation of the Biometal devices, even the ones made and used by the games' protagonists, turns out to be part of a vast plot put into motion over 200 years before the series takes place, courtesy of the second game's main villain, Master Albert—who is a key member of the city-state Innerpeace's governing body. Additionally, it's revealed during the course of the second game that by design, all of the Biometals require a host with Master Albert's DNA to function. Indeed, Master Albert had been randomly seeding the general population with his DNA throughout the entirety of that 200 years. Alternately, this one could be viewed as something of an extended Xanatos Roulette.
- The Templars in Assassin's Creed, though its questionable when one considers that everything you learn about the Templars being in control of the world is coming from their own deceitful mouths, and e-mails you can secretly read imply that they're not quite as powerful as they make themselves out to be.
- Pretty much every famous figure in history is a Templar/Assassin/Ally of either side. For the third variety, see Leonardo Da Vinci. Yes, that Da Vinci.
- The upcoming MMORPG from Funcom, The Secret World, will see the players all over the world trying to unveil an Ancient Conspiracy or two as their primary reason to play the game.
- The Inner Circle from Max Payne. Lampshaded by Max himself; a member of the circle, Alfred Woden, provides an in-depth description of the organization and its activities, following which Max snarks: "You've been watching too much X-Files."
- The Cabal from Blood. They become a bit more publicly known in the sequel, reforming after their god's death as CabalCo.
- Puritas Cordis from Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis. It's unclear whether it was continued from the original, or collapsed and restructured, though.
- Final Fantasy XII has a conspiracy of the gods to "straighten history's weave".
Webcomics
- Kevin and Kell has the Great Bird Conspiracy, which featured the birds of the K&Kverse doing its best to civilize the various animal people of Domain and ran things in the background via seemingly subservient jobs as teacher or secretary. Once it was made Y2K compatible, the GBC left the machinations to a computer program designed to do that job for them, allowing them to retire.
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Illuminati, in Gargoyles.
- Cobra-La, the secret ancient civilization of snake people in the GI Joe movie.
- Parodied with the Stonecutters in The Simpsons.
- Subverted in Huntik: Secrets & Seekers. While the main villainous organization—unoriginally called "The Organization"—would have everyone believe that they are a centuries-old group with tendrils everywhere, they are in reality less than sixty years old.
Real Life
- Thanks to this wiki the terrible truth of The Schizophrenia Conspiracy is finally coming to light.
- This contributor's boss insists that there is a conspiracy by the people that sell CD openers to suppress the information that music CDs are in fact designed to be easily opened. If you know what you're doing you can have all the plastic wrap and stickers off in under 30 seconds.
- One country in Europe was once governed for a short time by people who believed that everything except them was a conspiracy, consisting mainly of communists, foreigners of various nations including Jews, effeminate male homosexuals and corrupted politicians from other parties. Said government created a computer program that was supposed to point the guilty ones and reveal the truth by analyzing press and media, however its results were not released to the public.
- As our Risen Savior J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, founder of the Church of the Sub Genius, has revealed, in real life the Conspiracy's greatest strength is that it is not even aware it is a Conspiracy.
- TV Tropes was created to keep the people in a mindless stupor so the powers that be could take away our freedoms without us noticing.
- Project Camelot, a defense initiative conducted by the US Army between 1964 and 1965, comes very close to "international conspiracy" status. The project was designed to study the sociological currents that caused revolutionary movements in Latin American countries (mostly Chile) and devise ways of anticipating and counteracting them. The military origins of the project were kept a secret from the US public and the Chilean government. Project Camelot quickly fell apart when the Chilean media and US public were alerted to Project Camelot's true intentions. As a result the academic community refused to participate out of fear that their work would be used towards cynical ends and the Chilean government lodged a diplomatic protest.
- A few decades after Project Camelot, social engineering seems to be coming back in style, at least if Project Minerva is any indication.
- A conspiracy of nine indian scholars was founded in 270 BCE. Each scholar was charged with the task of writing a treatise on a particular subject. The subjects range from sciences like Biology and Physiology to more unusual topics like psychological warfare or Alchemy. The treatises have apparently been passed down since, improved and annotated by each new generation. Even today, some conspiracy theorists believe that a current iteration of the Nine comprised of brilliant luminaries continues to improve their treatises, like a geekier version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
- There is no cabal.
Oh, and TV Tropes, whose real purpose is...well, that would be telling.
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