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Evil Plan

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Tony Stark: What's the vibranium for?
Ultron: I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan...
(Ultron shoots Stark with his concussion blasts)

You've got your Big Bad Evil Overlord, looming over the world like a colossus, but he can't just putz around on his throne or hang out in his gym all day long waiting for heroes to kick his ass. While The Omniscient Council of Vagueness doesn't seem to do much but sit around and wait while spouting off cryptic nonsense, they've got to have some sort of hidden agenda to hide or there isn't much of a point.

So they've got to have a plan; an evil plan. Otherwise there's not much of a story, is there? This trope is the reason Villains Act, Heroes React; the villain needs to be doing something evil or the hero has no evil to thwart.

Some popular examples of Evil Plans:

Normally, these are accomplished with Stock Evil Overlord Tactics. Most of the smaller-scope plans can usually be accomplished in a less grandiose fashion but super villains often have Complexity Addiction.

Can involve a Xanatos Gambit but ONLY if the evil plan is arranged so that whatever the heroes do helps the villain in some way. See the trope page for details.

If the plan is poorly thought out, it could be a Missing Steps Plan.

If you are looking for the webcomic called Evil Plan, go here.


Examples:

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    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • All of the events within the first 12 issues of Red Robin were planned by Ra's Al Ghul, who was testing Tim Drake's worthiness as a potential father to his next heir apparent. It ended up an Aborted Arc when the universe rebooted before it could be finished.
    • Batman Eternal: Someone manipulates Gordon, a henchman, and the subway trains under Gotham to make it appear that Gordon opened fire on an unarmed man, hit an electric box and somehow caused two trains to collide head-on. Gordon is then arrested and removed from being Commissioner of Police. It's a minor villain who is responsible using tech derived from the Mad Hatter, but he's killed with a knife that links to Carmine Falcone, who states it was someone else pulling the strings. Bard is also working for Hush, who is working for the same person who got Falcone to return to Gotham.
    • In The Attack of the Annihilator, the eponymous Big Bad intends to raze Gotham to the ground, rebuild the city in his image, and repopulate it with his super-evolved offspring. Since he needs a female for the third step, he considers Batgirl will do it nicely.
  • Darkwing Duck: The BOOM! Comics revival revealed that Quackwerks' takeover of St. Canard and the implementations of Crimebots was just so its CEO, Taurus Bulba, could find out the code to activate the Gizmoduck armor.
  • Green Lantern: In Blackest Night, Nekron, who represents the forces of death on a cosmic level, wishes to consume all positive and negative life force in the universe. To take it, he needs to draw everyone into his realm... effectively making him an Omnicidal Maniac. It turns out that the resurrections of various heroes in the DC Universe were a plan on the part of Nekron to give him thralls to control.
  • Lobster Random: Sergeant Diaz's motivation is just to be liked. So his scheme as Mister Copious is to use Mind Spheres to rob various planets of their wealth just so he can surrounded by adoring socialites.
  • Ric Hochet: Every criminal in the series has a plan to commit the perfect crime, profit from it and not get caught. The only things that change are the motives, ranging from revenge to profit.
  • Superman:
    • In Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Earth-Man's plan is simple: manipulating the people of Earth into believing Superman's alien origin was the Legion of Super-Heroes' alien propaganda, so stirring up anti-alien xenophobia all over the world, with the goal of ruining Superman's legacy and destroying the Legion... and all because the Legion turned him down when he applied for membership. Saturn Girl calls him out on almost provoking an interplanetary war out of envy and resentment.
    • Red Daughter of Krypton: Worldkiller-1 intends to wipe out the weakest members of every alien species. In order to achieve his goal, he takes control of the Diasporan army by possessing their king; though, when he hears his soldiers have been oppossed by a Kryptonian Red Lantern, he schemes to take over Supergirl's body to carry out his desired galaxy-wide genocide personally.
    • Superman: Brainiac: The titular villain has spent decades searching Superman's world to steal one of its cities, extract whatever knowledge he deems worthwhile, and once this has been done, obliterate the solar system.
    • In Who is Superwoman?, the titular villain and Reactron conspire to murder Supergirl: Reactron out of revenge for being defeated, and Superwoman out of needing a scapegoat to frame for her own murders committed to carry forward Sam Lane's plan for genocide.
    • Who Took the Super out of Superman? has Xviar and his superiors plotting to turn Superman into a superhuman ticking bomb to blow Earth up with.
    • In The Unknown Supergirl, Lesla-Lar mind-wipes and replaces Supergirl, and as she's pretending to be Superman's beloved cousin, she allies herself with Lex Luthor and helps him design a superweapon. After Luthor kills Superman, she will "accidentally" kill Luthor while bringing him to justice, and then "[She'll] be the mightiest person on Earth, free to conquer or destroy Earth as [she pleases]"
    • In Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Mr. Mxyzptlk manipulates all Superman's villains into simultaneously attacking the Man of Tomorrow and his friends because he's grown bored of being a harmless trickster, and he wants to try to be evil for at least one thousand years.
    • In The Great Darkness Saga, Darkseid brainwashes the full population of Daxam into becoming his army to conquer the universe.
    • In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Darkseid wants a real powerful Female Fury to slay his enemies, so he kidnaps and brainwashes Supergirl.
    • In War World, Mongul seizes a star-sized weaponized satellite with which he looks to conquer the galaxy. Mongul's stopped by Superman and his cousin, leading to the events of For the Man Who Has Everything, where Mongul incapacitates Superman by attaching to him the Black Mercy, a plant that grants an image of its host's innermost desires, hoping to conquer the planet while the Kryptonian remains asleep.
    • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Mr. Mxyzptlk almost turns one entire universe into fuel for a machine meant to make him completely omnipotent.
    • Crucible: In order to turn the titular super-hero academy into his own paramilitary organization, Korstus takes over Crucible and raises an army of Superboy's clones.
    • In The Great Phantom Peril, Faora Hu-Ul builds a device which causes humans and the inmates of the Phantom Zone to swap places. Once the Kryptonian criminals are free to roam around the planet while the whole of mankind is trapped in the Zone, Faora beats her fellow Zoners and declares herself their queen.
    • Two for the Death of One: Lord Satanis intends to absorb the Runestone of Merlin's powerful magic in order to become omnipotent and rule everything since the beginning to the end of time. But since he cannot touch the Stone, he abducts Superman so he can filter its power through Superman's invulnerable body and into his own. Such an act would kill Superman, but why should Satanis care?
    • In Last Daughter of Krypton, Simon Tycho's plan is simple. Step one: Capturing Kara. Step two: Cutting her up, examining her alien biology and collecting samples of blood and tissue. Step three: Profit.
    • In Strangers at the Heart's Core, Lesla-Lar tries to get rid of Kara by every possible means, using all kind of mentally-influenced unwitting pawns, in order to replace her.
    • Superman vs. Shazam!: Karmang plots to blow up two parallel Earths in order to gather power enough to release the souls of one billion of Martians who died and become bonded to him because of his immortality-seeking experiments. So Superman or Captain Marvel cannot stop him, Karmang forces two of their enemies to manipulate them into a battle which will keep them too busy to discover his scheme.
    • In Starfire's Revenge, the titular crimelord plans to take over the world by stealing money from rich people in order to raise her own private army. So that no superheroes can interfere with her plans, she has one of her scientists develop a power-nullifier pill and orders her conman Derek to test it on Supergirl.
    • In The Death of Superman (1961), Lex Luthor goes to extreme lengths to convince Superman that he has become a good person, so he can murder him and then take over the world.
    • In Escape from the Phantom Zone, Xa-Du lures Psi into the Phantom Zone, hoping to force her to open an inter-dimensional rift which allows him to escape from its prison. Though, Psi wraps herself in an energy cocoon to protect herself from Xa-Du. Undeterred, Xa-Du begins merging his fellow inmates's souls into his armor in order to become powerful enough to break Psi's shield.
    • The Phantom Zone: General Dru-Zod assembles the Phantom Zoners to telepathically influence Charlie Kweskill -who used to be their jailmate Quex-Ul before losing his memory- into stealing several electromechanical components and building a Phantom Zone Projector. When the device is over, Dru-Zod and the Zoners escape from the Zone, simultaneously tossing Superman and Quex-Ul into it.
    • Death & the Family: Insect Queen spends weeks stealthily bonding itself to Lana Lang until she is finally ready to take over her body and start a full-scale invasion of Metropolis, taking advantage of Superman being off-world-.
    • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: Amalak puts in motion a complicated gambit whose final goal is to destroy Superman psychologically by forcing him to forgo his morals and kill someone.
    • The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: In revenge for Superman accidentally exposing his criminal activities to his wife Ardora, Lex Luthor plots to destroy his nemesis psychologically by saving his life multiple times, and manipulating people's perception of him.
    • The Leper from Krypton: Lex Luthor plans to kill Superman by bio-engineering a new and deadly pathogen.
    • Adventures of Supergirl: A villain named Facet sends different super-villains after Superman in order to toughen her up by challenging her physically and mentally.
    • The Death of Luthor: Luthor devises a Supergirl-killing scheme by exploiting her emotions: While and his gang rob a bank, two of his henchmen pose as a woman pushing her baby cart. When Supergirl shows up to arrest Luthor, the minion impersonating a woman pretends to lose control of her baby cart, forcing Supergirl to forget about Luthor to rescue the "baby". When she approaches the cart, the dwarfish minion inside the cart hurls a piece of Kryptonite at her.
    • "The Unknown Legionnaire": Norm Eldor deceives the peaceful Protean aliens into believing that he is a member of the Llorn alien race (who befriended and helped the Proteans in the past) so that they give him a forgotten super-weapon (left behind by the Llorn when they left the Protean homeworld) which Eldor thinks will let him conquer the galaxy.
    • "Superman and Spider-Man": Doctor Doom intends to conquer the world by using his network of underground "Omega" installations to destroy all kinds of fuels in the world, and then unveiling his newly-developed, abundant energy source which everybody can get if they bow down to him.
  • Thunderbolts: The first reason for suspicion whenever Baron Zemo comes up with a new plan to "save the world" is that every one looks exactly like a villainous plot to take over the world. At least Zemo has stylistic consistency.
  • X-Men: In The Dark Phoenix Saga, the Hellfire Club, who have spent centuries manipulating the world behind the scenes, mindrape Jean Grey into believing she's the group's Black Queen in order to destroy the X-Men and consolidate their power base. Unfortunately for the Club, they have bitten more than they can chew.
  • Yoko Tsuno: Ito Kazuky's company created a disintegration chamber. With the end of the Cold War, countries are desperate to get rid of their stockpile of nukes. However, the machine doesn't eliminate the radiation. Nonetheless, Kazuky advertises that his machine is fully functional. When countries will deliver him the warheads for disposition, he'll secretly keep them intact and well hidden. Presumably, he's going to resell them to the black market.

    Fan Works 
  • Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change with the Light did this with Jack O'Lantern, Spider-Woman's Arch-Enemy as well. Jack immediately minimizes most of the risk to himself by using Corrupt Corporate Executive Phillip Watson as his mind-controlled dupe and making it look like Phillip is the one pulling the strings. Jack is giving Phillip instructions on what to say and do, and makes sure to delete all his correspondence with Phillip so it can't be traced back to him. The plan works out just as he'd hoped — the resulting Mob War decimates two of New York City's crime syndicates, allows him to begin implementing his Legion of Doom plan to set up a new supervillain crime organization, Phillip is blamed for the whole thing and Jack gets off scot-free, and he manages to give Spider-Woman a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as the final delicious twist.
  • Time Lords and Terror: The Carrionites wish to extend their empire into Equestria by releasing the S'Müz, which they believe they can control.
  • Queen of All Oni: Jade starts off with a very vague plan to merely gather as much wealth as she can, and to one-up her former family and friends whenever possible. Later, she decides to focus on a) increasing her magic skill and prowess, and b) gathering the Oni masks for her own ends.
  • Can a Boo Be Friends with a Human?: Having intercepted the original plan from Bowser, King Boo wishes to possess Luigi into helping him take over the Mushroom Kingdom, 'cleanse' said Mushroom Kingdom so that it is fit for Boos, humiliate his foes and have a good time enjoying his Revenge while he's at it.
  • In The Story to End All Stories, the plan is to destroy all fiction so that humanity won't be able to create new stories.
  • A Shadow of the Titans has a pretty straightforward evil plan put into motion at the climax of the HIVE Arc: the Oni Generals plan to completely cover the world in shadows, allowing them to pull the whole thing into the Shadow Realm, putting them on top of the food chain.
  • In The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, the Evil Plan that brought Charlotte Flair to Las Vegas is "Project Andre", a plan that called for the top four criminal empires (the Flairs, the McMahons, the Sammartinos and the Yakuza) working to together to strongarm their way into owning four of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas, and more or less bringing the city back to its Mafia roots.
  • In Aura Less Black And White, the Lower Class of Aura tried to kill all people with an aura level above low in Accumula Town by triggering a massive aura overload with aspirin pills filled with liquidized aura.
  • Hellsister Trilogy: Darkseid's plan in The Apokolips Agenda is to find and speak the Anti-Life Equation to eliminate Free Will and enslave the universe.
  • In Blood That Flows, Reinforce Eins used to be human, before becoming the corrupted Living Weapon. Levi's Evil Plan involves discovering this process, so she can mass-produce Unison Devices for her army of Megahs.
  • In A Force of Four, Wonder Woman's enemy Badra and three old Superman enemies intend to blow Earth up out of revenge before proceeding to conquer and plunder other worlds. Nonetheless, Badra is secretly backed by Ares, who wants to create some kind of Valhalla where the entirety of humanity will fight for his pleasure forever.
  • Kid Icarus Uprising: The Novelization: Hades' scheme for the Wish Seed and the Phoenix in Chapter 10: if Pit slays the Phoenix, it'll kick-start a war between the human nations, but if he does nothing, the Phoenix will attack humanity. Either way, the death toll will serve Hades' plans. He even outright mentions TV Tropes and the trope itself while gloating about it.
  • Kara of Rokyn: In "Last Waltz with Luthor", Luthor captures Superman, intending to transfer his powers to selected subordinates who would help him take over the world.
    Now, the full power of the scourge from Krypton could be instilled in several bodies, by a combination of transference and a sort of "power-cloning".
    Starfire, Cyber, and others who proved themselves worthy (and trustworthy, though he trusted the two women very little), would be equipped with the power to break the governments of Earth, to place the planet under his control. Should they rebel, he would remove their powers and destroy them.
    The irony of conquering the world with the Kryptonian's powers was not lost on Luthor, but it was nothing that obsessed him. After all, he was not the gloating Joker. It was a means to an end.
  • The Infinity League:
    • Vince Korinek wants to rewrite the natural balance between humans and Pokemon to give great power to the Pokemon and ultimate control to the human. He plans on doing this with Miranda's DNA, since Miranda is a natural version of his goals.
    • Cain Bernhardt did not explicitly say what his plan is, but it appears to be the standard global domination thing in addition to sharing Korinek's ambitions.
  • The Vampire of Steel: Vladislav, leader of a clan of vampires, intends to summon an Eldritch Abomination named M'Nagaleh in order to wipe humanity out.
  • Avatar: The Last Alicorn: Discord explains his during a motive rant.
    Discord: "So, you think by sealing me away, I will be stopped, do you? Well, I will use my corruption, a piece of my essence to corrupt one of the elements of harmony, and so destroy the current avatar and lead the water nation to a war with the whole world. Then, by my influence, we'll wipe out the fire tribes and the dragons to secure my position. When the avatar returns, I'll take one of the "chapter specific villains" Trixie, and use her as my special agent in the mortal plain to act under everyone's noses. To that end, I'll use her to steal the alicorn amulet, and when Spike gets generosity put into him, I'll steal him away when nobody's looking, and give him to rarity. While this could be seen as giving away the one thing that can hurt me, I'll corrupt the element while it's in spike and vulnerable, so that when it's returned to Rarity, I can use it whenever I want. Then, I'll use Trixie to stall Rarity during The summer sun celebration to ensure the heroes don't win. Then I'll send my creature of darkness, [ Sombra to destroy the elements. If he fails, it doesn't matter that much. Rarity will still be integrated into the group, and moving towards releasing me. Then when Trixie tips her hand, I'll use my corruption in Rarity to open my prison and throw off their aim. It's that simple."
  • Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Henry Townsend and Walter Sullivan (yes there are Silent Hill characters in this story, just roll with it) want to devise a ritual that will slaughter the Apex for all the misery they enacted on the Train under their "Passengers are the only things that exist on the train" mentality.
  • Friendship----ISN'T magic? has Preston Northwest plan to spread lethal poison across all local farmland around Ponyville so he can ruin the local farming and buy up the land cheap to get a monopoly on the area's economy. Unfortunately for him, his practice of hiring the dumbest, cheapest workers he can find forced them to have the plan spelled out in exact detail on the side of the poisoned barrel for all to see just as the princesses arrive for inspection.
  • In The Echo Ranger Demonus has a plan to convert all the Humans on Earth into Power Rangers style monsters, loyal only to him. When the Rangers interfere, the process is slowed down, instead resulting the the birth of Quirks. What he has planned for the rest of the universe with an army of eight billion elite minions is undisclosed, but is enough to make Shigaraki Tomura weep for joy.

    Films — Animation 
  • Many, many Disney Animated Canon villains have these.
    • Hercules had Hades attempt a "take over the world!" thing.
    • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was more about vanity for the Evil Queen, seeking to kill Snow White; "Then I'll be fairest in the land!"
    • Peter Pan was about Hook's revenge on the protagonist for cutting off his hand.
    • The Emperor's New Groove has villainess Yzma plotting to kill protagonist Kuzco and take his place as ruler of the local empire. A remarkable example as she starts with the traditional elaborate plan but then..
      Yzma: Ah, how shall I do it? Ooh, I know. I'll turn him into a flea, a harmless little flea, and then I'll put that flea in a box, and then I'll put that box inside of another box, and then I'll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives, AHAHAHA! I'LL SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! It's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say! (BAM) ...Or, to save on postage, I'll just poison him with this!
    • The Lion King has Scar, who planned to overthrow Mufasa and Simba to usurp the throne of Pride Rock. This is remarkable due to the fact that he succeeds; the flaw is that he's a dreadful king, and by the time that Simba comes back to take his rightful place, Scar had the other lionesses ready to mutiny.
    • Tangled has Mother Gothel, who locks Rapunzel in a tower the night she was born and is determined to keep her there forever, to preserve the immortality granted to her by the magic of Rapunzel's hair.
    • Frozen has Prince Hans's scheme is to take Arendelle's throne for himself by tricking Anna into marrying him and staging an "accident" for Elsa so she can be overthrown.
    • Zootopia has Assistant Mayor Bellwether, who engineers the outbreak of predators going savage in order to play off of racial tensions between predators and prey with the end goal of creating a society wherein prey rule over predators, under her rule.
    • Mulan: Shan Yu goes to war against China out of spite because he sees the Great Wall as a challenge.
    • The Princess and the Frog: Dr. Facilier turns Naveen into a frog, has his traitorous butler impersonate him, and tries to have him marry a rich woman to kill them and take the money, When his Friends question how deep he's digging himself debt-wise, he then offers the souls of New Orleans to keep his own safe.
  • The Incredibles: Syndrome's in three steps:
    • Lure superheroes to his Island Base to be target practice for his Killer Robot (under the guise of taking out an out of control prototype), refining and improving it with each successive battle.
    • Send the perfected robot out to attack a major city, and then swoop in a "defeat" it.
    • After basking in the glory of his ill-gained fame, retire and sell his inventions to the general public, rendering natural-born superpowers obsolete.
  • The LEGO Movie: After discovering the fated Kragle that Vitruvius was trying to protect, Lord Business plans to unleash the superweapon on all the LEGO realms (beginning with Bricksburg, Emmet's home city) by gluing everything in place. In connection with his absolute need for perfection, he plans to accomplish this on a designated day known only as 'Taco Tuesday'.
  • Megamind had all sorts of evil plans that he was just waiting to put into action until he ended up "defeating" Metro Man and everything went weird, such as his "illiteracy beam."
  • Quest for Camelot has Ruber plotting his plan in three steps:
    • Send his Griffin to steal Excalibur from Camelot (until the Griffin lost it due to the intervention of Ayden), and bond it to his hand.
    • Invade Juliana's village with his henchmen, take her and Kayley hostage (with the latter escaping from one of the henchmen's grasp), and transform his henchmen from normal ordinary selves to weapon-combined "ironmen".
    • Attempt to murder Arthur with Excalibur and take over Camelot.
  • The Iron Giant has a paranoid government agent Kent Mansley planning to destroy the Iron Giant at all costs.
  • In The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, the main villain Dr. Satan's plan was to find a woman who had 666 on her ass so he could marry her, which would somehow cause him to transform into a giant demonic being.
  • In Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw, Marvin McNasty schemes to use the Bone of Scone, the artifact enabling humans and dogs to understand each other, to somehow become king and conquer the world.
  • Paulie's scheme in Yogi the Easter Bear was to kidnap the Easter Bunny and destroy his supply of Easter eggs so that he could make a profit from selling plastic eggs.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Plankton's plan Z. Step 1: steal King Neptune's crown. Step 2: frame Mr. Krabs for the theft so Neptune will incapacitate him. Step 3: with Mr. Krabs out of the way, steal the krabby patty formula. Step 4: Use the formula to create krabbys patties and sell them at the chum bucket. Step 5: While everyone is at the chum bucket, give away novelty bucket helmets which are actually mind control devices. Step 6, enslave everyone and take over Bikini Bottom.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Every James Bond villain has had one of these:.
    • Dr. No's plan was to topple American rockets from his island base as part of a mission from SPECTRE, probably with a hostile foreign power as a client.
    • Kronsteen and Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love wanted to steal a cryptographic device from the Soviets and sell it back to them, as well as take revenge on Bond for killing Dr. No. This was also a SPECTRE mission.
    • Goldfinger's scheme was to nuke Fort Knox to devalue American gold and increase the value of his own.
    • Emilio Largo's plan in Thunderball was to steal two nuclear missiles and try to get ransom from the U.S. by threatening to launch them. This, too, was a mission from SPECTRE.
    • Blofeld's plan in You Only Live Twice was to start World War III by destroying American and Russian spacecraft and framing the other. Again, SPECTRE had been hired to do this by a hostile foreign power.
    • Blofeld's plan in On Her Majesty's Secret Service involves hypnotizing a group of 12 unwitting divas and arming them with a virus that causes infertility in the plant and animal life of his choosing, unless the world meets his demands of immunity from past crimes, enter private life after years of criminal activities and to be recognized as a Count.
    • Blofeld's plan in Diamonds Are Forever is to use stolen diamonds to build a Kill Sat and hold the world hostage.
    • Kananga/Mr. Big from Live and Let Die wanted to corner the heroin market.
    • Scaramanga, The Man with the Golden Gun, wanted to corner the market on solar power during the '73-'74 energy crisis. Bit of an Excuse Plot- the real meat of the story is that Scaramanga has abused his girlfriend one too many times and she has duped Bond into going after him by making it look like Scaramanga has taken a contract on his life.
    • Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me wanted to start World War III by hijacking nuclear submarines and launching them at New York and Moscow respectively, as in You Only Live Twice framing both countries a perpetrators of the others plan. He will then build and rule an underwater city as a paradise for the survivors to rebuild civilization. Yes, he is insane.
    • The Plan of Hugo Drax of Moonraker was the annihilation of the human race in order to repopulate the world with his own "ideal" specimens. Given that the original villain of Moonraker was a Nazi, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
    • Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only wants to recover a MacGuffin for the KGB, and to manipulate Bond into assassinating his rival as a bonus.
    • Renegade Russian General Orlov in Octopussy wanted to detonate a nuclear warhead on an American base (making it seem like an American accident), forcing the US to pull out of Europe and leaving it vulnerable to Soviet conquest (though as the much saner General Gogol suggests, a Soviet invasion would trigger World War III and nuclear responses). He is in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Diabolical Mastermind Kamal Khan who is getting paid for it, and hopes to kill his boss / partner in crime in the process and take over her organization afterwards.
    • Max Zorin's ultimate plan in A View to a Kill is to detonate explosives along the Hayward and San Andreas Faults, causing them to flood. The other major bomb was set to destroy a "geological lock" that's in place to prevent the two faults from moving, causing a double earthquake that would destroy Silicon Valley, leaving his microchip company with a monopoly.
    • The evil plan of Big Bad Duumvirate General Koskov and Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights is to get ludicrously rich using the profits from a large shipment of opium paid for using diamonds and to repay the loan from the Soviets they took and are a bit late in returning, as well as pitting the British against the KGB chief who is on to them by framing him for murdering British agents.
    • Sanchez's scheme in Licence to Kill involves cocaine hidden in gasoline sold to Asian drug dealers, conducted via a televangelist, revolutionizing the drug smuggling business. He's also bought Stinger missiles from the Contras and is threatening to use them on American airliners if the DEA didn't back off. The story, however, is more about Bond's Roaring Rampage of Revenge for what Sanchez and his people did to Felix Leiter and his new wife.
    • Alec Trevelyan (aka Janus) of GoldenEye sought revenge against the British government for betraying his family, who were Lienz Cossacks sent back to Stalin in 1945, by detonating the titular Kill Sat over London. Furthermore, he planned to steal billions of pounds from the Bank of England — as well as all sorts of data like credit ratings, land registers and criminal records — and the records of the transactions will be zapped, leaving him very rich and leaving the British — and indeed, the world — economy in shambles. Bond calls him out for being little more than a glorified bank robber.
    • Elliot Carver of Tomorrow Never Dies wanted to start a war between the West and China to increase the ratings of his media empire, and then to murder the Chinese government so his ally in the Chinese military could take over and give him exclusive media access (China being the only country in the world that refused him broadcast rights after he gained the ability to reach the entire world with his new satellite system).
    • The World Is Not Enough has Elektra King and Renard scheming to raise petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul, destroying every gas pipeline except for hers and enabling her to corner the European oil market.
    • Die Another Day's Big Bad, Gustav Graves, took a page from Blofeld's book from Diamonds Are Forever and used a diamond-powered Kill Sat that runs on solar energy. He sought to use it to help North Korea take over the South, as well as Japan and presumably elsewhere (he is actually a corrupt North Korean colonel Faking the Dead and in disguise as a wealthy white British billionaire).
    • Casino Royale involves one bad guy, criminal banker Le Chiffre, who short-sells successful companies and engineers terrorist attacks in order to sink their stock values and turn a profit. The other bad guys are his superiors and clients who are pissed because he is doing this with their funds and behind their back. Bond screws up Le Chiffre's plan by foiling a terrorist attack and Le Chiffre has to hold and win a multi-million dollar poker tournament to pay his clients back. Bond is there to win it to force Le Chiffre to sell out his clients and superiors to MI6 in return for sanctuary before the other villains track him down and kill him.
    • Quantum of Solace involves Dominic Greene wanting to hold the revolutionary government-to-be of Bolivia over a barrel by controlling the majority of the water and not oil through a system of planned underground demolitions.
    • Skyfall: The villain's evil plan, as complex as it is in execution, is just a personal vendetta against Judi Dench's M with no grander ambition, using both his Hollywood Hacking talents and a Trojan Prisoner ploy. That said, the low stakes make it possible to do a great character study on Bond and M.
    • Spectre has Franz Oberhauser aka Blofeld masterminding a series of terrorist attacks in order to trick the governments of the world into setting up an intelligence and surveillance sharing network... which, thanks to his moles, he'll have total access to, allowing him to stay permanently one step ahead of the opposition. On a personal level, Oberhauser developed an Irrational Hatred of 007 just because his father paid more attention to Bond than him when they were in their teens. Driven by Envy and resentment, he kills his father out of jealousy, fakes his own death before creating a Nebulous Evil Organisation, and made his life's mission to not only orchestrate wanton chaos just for his own benefit, but to mess around and inflict physical and psychological pain on Bond to further punish him just because he was favored by Oberhauser's father.
    • No Time to Die starts with Oberhauser/Blofeld trying to lure Bond into a trap and kill him... only for Lyutsifer Safin to hijack this scheme in order to wipe out SPECTRE, and then steal their nanite weapon in order to unleash it on the world.
    • And while we're at it, Never Say Never Again is a rehash of Thunderball with SPECTRE hijacking nuclear weapons and holding the world hostage; Casino Royale (1967) spoof is much the same as above, except Le Chiffre is (as in the novel) working for SMERSH instead of terrorists and his double-dealings (which, again like the novel, has nothing to do with Bond) are a side-plot to SMERSH's master plan, which involves murdering spies all over the world (like the Real Life SMERSH, a Soviet counter-intelligence agency)note  and to fill the world with a biological agent at the behest of its Diabolical Mastermind Doctor Noah aka Jimmy Bond, the real James Bond's nephew, a.k.a. Woody Allen. The agent will kill all men over 4'6" (his height) and make all women beautiful; in other words leaving him as the "big man" who gets all the girls.
  • Each Pirates of the Caribbean involves a villain seeking a treasure but the specifics vary widely.
  • Dr. Leopold from the MST3K-ed film Blood Waters of Dr. Z has one of these on a huge chart with each step illustrated, and which he crosses off as he completes them.
  • The Kagenos' true goal in RoboGeisha is to drop an atomic bomb into Mt. Fuji, which they believe will destroy Japan so that they can rebuild it in their own image.
  • Season of the Witch: The villain is a demon who seeks the only book with the knowledge of how to banish it back to Hell in order to destroy it and the entire movie is the heroes helping them find it.
  • Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery parodies this trope. Dr.Evil explains various evil plans only for his Number Two to point that they already have happened. At last he throws up his hands and says, "Let's just do what we always do: hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage."
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Iron Man usually has to deal with others trying to steal his technology and create weapons out of it.
      • In Iron Man Raza, a Ten Rings officer, wants to become a modern Ghengis Khan and plans to use Stark Industries technology to accomplish this. He's actually The Dragon for the true big bad, Stane, who planned to use Raza to kill Tony and take over Stark Industries.
      • Two in Iron Man 2: Hammer wants to upstage Tony at his own expo and become the number one arms dealer. He recruits Ivan to be his Evil Genius. Then Ivan outgambits him. Meanwhile, Ivan wants payback on Tony Stark for Howard Stark ruining his and his father's lives.
      • In Iron Man 3, the Mandarin is seemingly attacking America For the Evulz. In fact, he's a decoy for Aldrich Killian, who's faking terrorist attacks to cover the failures of his Extremis program.
    • The Incredible Hulk (2008) has similar problems but with gamma radiated blood instead of Powered Armor.
    • Thor is a family squabble between a god who will doing anything to earn his father's approval and love even if it means genocide.
    • Captain America: The First Avenger: It's WWII and the Nazis' Deep Science Division has splintered into their own group and are trying to take over the world.
    • The Avengers (2012): Loki's back and this time he wants to take over the Earth with help from the Chitauri.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Ronan wants the Orb to trade to Thanos in exchange for the later destroying Xandar for him. When he gets the Infinity Stone inside the Orb, he decides to destroy Xandar himself, and then usurp Thanos.
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Ultron keeps quiet about revealing his to the heroes until near the end, which he wants to exterminate humanity via Colony Drop. to create a peaceful world for the rest of sentient life.
    • Ant-Man: Darren Cross wants to weaponize the shrinking technology of Pym Particles so he can sell it to HYDRA.
      • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Sonny Burch wants to get ahold of the Pym's research into the quantum tunnel, convinced that quantum energy will be the next big gold rush. Ghost also wants the Pym's quantum tunnel because she's desperate to cure her quantum instability and is willing to sacrifice Hope van Dyne if it will cure her.
    • Doctor Strange (2016): Kaecilius intends to destroy all of the sanctums of Agamotto, in order to allow Dormammu to consume the Earth, as he believes it make all of humanity immortal.
    • Spider-Man: Homecoming: Adrian Toomes has a pretty straightforward heist plan in mind, to steal a bunch of confiscated alien technology that his crew can then sell on the black market.
      • Spider-Man: Far From Home: The Elementals are embodiments of elemental energy that seek to feed on and destroy realities. In actuality, the Elementals aren't real, instead being holograms being used as a cover for the staged attacks that Quentin Beck/Mysterio is setting up for himself to "fight" off, thus setting himself up as the world's next major hero.
      • Spider-Man: No Way Home: The villains initially are just dragged into the MCU universe by Strange's failed spell and want to return home and avoid dying. However, when Osborn's Goblin persona shows up, he decides to mess with Peter and kill his aunt May in order to makes him abandon his moral code For the Evulz. Meanwhile, Electro realizes that he is more powerful in this universe than his due to the different energy and decides to remain forever by destroying the spell, and Lizard goes along with him, while Sandman just wants to return to his daughter, uncaring if the others die.
    • Black Panther (2018): Erik "Killmonger" Stevens plots to seize control of the Wakandan throne so he can then use the country's advanced technology to supply a worldwide uprising by people of African descent against their perceived oppressors.
    • Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos wants to gather all six Infinity Stones, so that he can wipe out half of all life in the universe in order to bring balance to it.
      • Avengers: Endgame: Thanos from arround the time of the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy revises this plan after seeing that his future self had succeeded, but not only are the heroes unappreciative of it, but also about to undo everything. Now instead of half, he wants to destroy the universe and remake it into a new one that would know nothing of what was lost.
    • Captain Marvel (2019): Talos and the Skrulls are in search of a scientist on Earth who might have cracked FTL travel, which would allow them to expand their conquest of the galaxy. Only this isn't the case. The Skrulls (at least the ones in this film) are actually refugees on the run from the Kree, looking for others of their kind that the scientist, who was actually a Kree defector, was harboring. The real villains are Yon-Rogg and the Kree, who want to exterminate the Skrulls, secure the Teseract that the scientist was studying, and prevent Carol Danvers from learning about her past/coming into her full power.
    • Black Widow (2021): General Dreykov runs the Red Room program to turn women into killing machine and use them to Take Over the World.
    • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Wenwu aka the Mandarin is trying to attack the village of Tao-Lo, believing that his lost wife is imprisoned behind a gate. In reality, he is being tricked by the Dweller-in-Darkness, a powerful Eldritch Abomination who wants to escape its prison and devour the souls of every human.
    • Eternals: The Deviants, led by the now intelligent Kro, want to exterminate every living species and get revenge on the Eternals. In actuality, both the Deviants and the Eternals are pawns of the Celestial Arishem, who is using the intelligent life forms of every planet as energy sources to awaken the Celestials hidden in the cores of the planets, which would destroy the planet itself but also create new galaxies and continue the universe's life cycle. Ikaris carries out that plan out of loyalty.
  • Master: The theory that Liv, a professor, killed student Jasmine. This helped Liv in two ways: it buried the grade complaint Jasmine had filed against her, which was impeding her prospects for tenure, and it also put the college in a position where they were desperate to prove they weren't racist, which pressured the committee to grant her tenure. And it worked.
  • Mystery Men Casanova Frankenstein plans to use the Psycho-De-Fraculator on the city, which will fry their brains. No one knows why he wants to do this but, then again, he did spend the last thirty years in a nut house.
  • The Book of Eli: Carnegie searches for The Bible so he can use it to expand his "kingdom" with 'good news' rather than mooks with guns.
  • Happy Gilmore: An odd example in that the plot's initial conflict, Mrs. Gilmore lossing her house, is not the real villain's plan. Instead, that would be Shooter's attempts to kick Happy off the Pro Tour for stealing his thunder.
  • The Big Bad in Sky High (2005) wants revenge but that's a sidenote to their real agenda, turning everyone in the school into babies and repurposing the school as a villain training center.
  • In The Wolverine, Yashida wants Logan's Healing Factor so he can live forever. This is why he sends Yukio to retrieve him.
  • The Batman movies show more than a few of these on the part of its main villains:
    • Batman (1989) has Joker seeking to poison and kill everyone in Gotham, first by means of a two-part poison with its components hidden in different cosmetic products and then by releasing balloons of the stuff during the Gotham City parade. Both of these things are foiled in grand fashion by the Batman.
    • Batman Returns has three of these on the part of the Penguin, the primary villain of the film:
      • The first, works out with Max Shreck and Catwoman, is to become Mayor of Gotham City and destroy Batman's reputation by murdering the Ice Princess and framing Batman for it (though Catwoman doesn't know about the murder part), as well as taking remote control of the Batmobile for further mayhem.
      • The second, Penguin's big plan, involves kidnapping every firstborn son of Gotham so that he can kill them by drowning them in Max Shreck's industrial byproducts.
      • The final plan, implemented when both of those plans were sent crashing down and sent him into Villainous Breakdown mode, is using his penguin army to destroy Gotham.
    • Batman Forever: The main villain, The Riddler, wants to use The Box to learn Batman's identity and everything else related to everyone, as well as get revenge on Bruce Wayne for rejecting him. Two-Face, in contrast, just wants to kill Batman in revenge for having acid thrown on his face by Boss Maroni (something which wasn't Batman's fault, but which he'd gone insane enough to blame on him following the attack).
    • Batman & Robin has Mr. Freeze, whose plan is to use a diamond-powered ice ray to blackmail Gotham into giving him the research money he needs to Find the Cure! for his wife's condition. Poison Ivy wants to reclaim the world for the plants of the world, but that quickly falls by the wayside in favor of getting Freeze for herself, which she tries to do by means of trying to kill Nora and blaming her deactivation on Batman, resulting in Freeze deciding to try to ice the whole city in revenge.
  • Common in the Indiana Jones movies. In two movies, the Nazis plan to acquire powerful relics to aid their conquest of the world. The plans ultimately fall apart either because the artifacts cannot be controlled or obtained.
    • In Raiders of the Lost Ark, they discover The Ark of the Covenant, which turns out to be a super weapon. The plan, led by main antagonist Rene Belloq, backfires because the power of the Ark is too great for mortal hands to control and thus wipes out the Nazis trying to secure it.
    • In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Nazis pursue the Holy Grail because of its ability to give immortality to whoever drinks from it. At the very end, Dr. Elsa Schneider almost gets the grail outside, but triggers a Cataclysm Climax built into the temple. In the chaos, both her and the cup almost fall down a chasm. The grail lands on a small rock and Elsa hangs onto Indy and can almost reach it with her free hand. However, Indy can’t keep her other hand’s glove from slipping off and she falls to her death. Thus, the last chance for the Nazis to get the grail are foiled.
  • Die Hard:
    • Die Hard has one of the best in Hollywood action movie history: Invade the Nakatomi building and take hostages under the guise of being terrorists and then pull Mr. Takagi aside to make him divulge the access codes to the vault with the $640 million bearer bonds inside. If he doesn't cooperate, kill him and break into the vault yourself both through computer savvy, careful drilling and manipulating the authorities through their own standard operating procedures to make that possible. When the robbery is finished, put the hostages on the roof, then blow it up to fake the gang's deaths and get away in an ambulance you took along in the truck. Unfortunately, Gruber didn't count on John McClane interfering.
    • Die Hard 2 is more straight forward as Stuart takes over the computer systems for Dulles Airport, risking thousands of passengers in the sky to free a South American drug lord. He gets points for ensuring that the anti-terrorist squad the Army sends is is backed with his own men to con the authorities to escape.
    • Die Hard with a Vengeance appears to be Simon Gruber, Hans' brother, instigating bombings as revenge on McClane. It turns out Simon is actually using the bombings as a massive distraction for the police while he and his gang rob the Federal Reserve of billions of dollars in gold. Simon is being paid by Middle East businessmen to blow up the gold in a cargo ship and cripple the U.S. economy but instead blows up scrap metal and keeps the gold for himself.
    • Live Free or Die Hard Gabriel's supposed "revolution" is all a cloak for his true plan, which is to access the ultra-top secret NSA server, download its information and blackmail the U.S. government with all their secrets.
    • A Good Day to Die Hard has the big twist that Komorav is actually the true mastermind of this entire scheme. There was never any "secret file" on crime boss Chagarin, Komorav and his daughter were using him to bring the right men and materials to Chernobyl to steal the weapons-grade uranium kept in a secret vault that Komorav can sell on the black market for a fortune.
  • Superman: The Movie: Lex Luthor reprograms two nuclear missiles, causing one to head to the San Andreas fault in California and the other towards Hackensack New Jersey. The purpose of the latter is to divert Superman away from the former, which is supposed to rupture the fault, causing California to fall into the Pacific Ocean. Prior to this, Luthor purchased thousands of acres of worthless desert in Nevada which would become priceless beach front property once California is gone.
  • The DC Extended Universe:
    • Man of Steel: General Dru-Zod invades Earth seeking Kal-El because he carries the genetic Codex in his DNA which they will use to rebuild Krypton, which unfortunately requires terraforming Earth and destroying mankind.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Lex Luthor arranges a highly convoluted plan to expose Superman as a fraud (because he thinks Superman is an affront to his belief that power and benevolence are mutually exclusive) which involves setting up Batman and the US government against him and when that fails, he creates Doomsday for the purpose of killing Superman, to prove that Superman is not all-powerful. Unlike other examples in this series, he succeeds albeit temporarily since Superman slowly recovers.
    • Suicide Squad (2016): The Enchantress creates a magical weapon of mass destruction to get revenge on mankind for forsaking her as their goddess, as well as to get revenge for Amanda Waller for enslaving her.
    • Wonder Woman (2017): Ares is apparently inciting World War I, though many characters question if he is real or not. He is real, and he wants to wipe out mankind using Deadly Gas he taught Dr. Poison how to make just so he can rebuild the world anew.
    • Justice League (2017): Steppenwolf seeks to reuinite the three Mother Boxes and use them to conquer Earth by terraforming it, so he can regain his lost glory and return to his master's side.
      • Zack Snyder's Justice League: Pretty much the same as the above, although Steppenwolf simply wants to prove his worth to Darkseid and return to Apokolips. He also wants to allow Darkseid to find the Anti-Life Equation, and Darkseid plans a full-blown invasion of Earth with his armada at the end.
    • Aquaman (2018): Orm intends to unite the Atlantean kingdoms under his banner in order to lead them in a war of conquest against the surface world and thereby forever stop the harm he sees humanity doing to the ocean and its creatures, which includes his own kingdom.
    • SHAZAM! (2019): Dr. Sivana's goals don't seem to extend past merely gaining power for the sake of it, and petty revenge against his family. The Seven Sins, meanwhile, are helping him in this so they can use him as an avatar to spread chaos around the world.
  • Misfit Heights: Dr. Zoltar's plan is to raise an army of zombies to help him Take Over the World.
  • Django: Major Jackson and General Ramirez have separate plans to take over the same small Western town. The ensuing Mob War drives the conflict.
  • The Galaxy Invader: Joe Montague, upon finding an alien has crash-landed near his home, spends the film plotting to capture or kill it to sell him to the government.
  • Blazing Saddles: Hedley Lamarr seeks to purchase all the land of a small town by either sending goons to terrorize the locals or exploiting the locals' racism by sending them a black sheriff.
  • High and Low (1963): The kidnapper has a pretty basic one: Abduct an executive's son and demand ransom. Unfortunately, he accidentally kidnaps one of the kid's friends.
  • American Justice: Sheriff Payden, in an attempt to hide his corruption, frames a vacationing cop for a murder one of his men committed, fully intending to kill him in jail and disguise it as an escape attempt.
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: Lord John Whorfin, an extradimensional tyrant who was banished to Earth after being overthrown, seeks to steal a machine so he can return to his homeworld and take his throne back.
  • Perfect Assassins: Dr. Samuel Greely seeks to prove his theories on human conditioning by torturing children to become assassins.
  • Torso: The killer's end goal is to eliminate a witness to his crimes. As it turns out, his initial murders were motivated by a desire hide his impotency from blackmailers.
  • What Have You Done to Solange?: Professor Bascombe seeks to kill everybody responsible for his daughter's madness after making them confess.
  • Mad Max:
  • Teenagers from Outer Space: The Spaceship Captain, on orders from "Our Leader," seeks to set up Gargons on Earth to slaughter everybody and become a farming plant. "Our Leader" himself ends up hatching a scheme to convince Derek to return to their planet after he learns he's his son.
  • Monsieur Verdoux features features Henri Verdoux concocting varoous schemes to seduce rich women and kill them for their money.
  • Yojimbo: Ushitora seeks to usurp his old boss in the process of Taking Over the Town.
  • The Monster Club: George has his girlfriend Angela seduce Raven in order to steal his money.
  • The Screaming Skull: Eric Whitlock seeks to drive his new wife mad and gain her money.
  • Infernal Affairs: Hon Sam seeks to gain information on the Hong Kong police by placing moles in their ranks.
  • Bride of the Monster: Dr. Eric Vornoff seeks to create a race of atomic supermen and Take Over the World.
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service: Richmond Valentine seeks to solve overpopulation by driving everybody except his hand-picked victims into a homicidal fury via a wireless signal disguised as free wi-fi.
  • Stitches (2001): Mrs. Albright seeks to claim all the souls in a bed and breakfast, revealing at the end that she's plotting to claim everybody's souls.
  • Darkman: Louis Strack, Jr. seeks to wipe out the slums of his city and rebuild new, fancy buildings in the process. Seems reasonably well-intentioned, but he's willing to bribe and kill to do it.
  • Don't Open Till Christmas: The killer is icing Santas in order to give his detective brother an interesting case to solve.
  • Trancers: Martin Whistler seeks to kill his society's leaders' ancestors so the society won't exist.
  • Ran: Lady Kaede seeks to destroy the Ichimonji clan by manipulating three brothers into going to war with each other.
  • The Candy Tangerine Man: Vincent de Nunzio seeks to take over a rival pimp's territory.
  • Casablanca: Major Heinrich Strasser seeks to capture an anti-Nazi resistance leader.
  • Cold Sweat: Captain Ross kidnaps Joe Martin's family to make him help traffic drugs as vengeance for selling him out to prison years beforehand.
  • The Babadook: The Babadook seeks to corrupt Amelia into murdering her son and killing herself.
  • Faust: Mephisto seeks to drive Faust into depravity to win a bet with an angel.
  • Bronx Warriors series:
    • 1990: The Bronx Warriors: Hammer the Exterminator, under the Vice President's orders, seeks to capture the late President's daughter so she'll be the VP's puppet.
    • Escape 2000: President Clark seeks to slaughter the Bronx so he can gentrify it.
  • The Last Witch Hunter: The Witch Queen seeks to use a plague to Kill All Humans.
  • Sin City series:
    • Sin City: In "The Big Fat Kill," Manute seeks to destroy Old Town when the prostitutes there kill one of his organization's Dirty Cops. He's doing this in revenge for Ava Lord, who Dwight and company killed after she screwed him over bad (see below).
    • A Dame to Kill For: In "A Dame to Kill For," Ava Lord manipulates her ex into killing her husband for money.
  • Harry and the Hendersons: Jacques LaFleur seeks to kill Harry to prove Bigfoot is real.
  • The Princess Bride: Prince Humperdinck seeks to marry Princess Buttercup, have her abducted and killed, and use said murder as a Pretext for War.
  • The Burning: Cropsy seeks to avenge the prank that caused him to be horribly burned, and is willing to kill innocents to do it.
  • Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: The Sheriff of Nottingham kills Robin's father to take his title before trying to force Maid Marian to marry him so he can kill her brother Richard the Lionheart and take over England.
  • Wizards of the Demon Sword: Lord Khoura seeks a magical dagger to summon an Ancient Evil and shroud the world in darkness.
  • The Crow: Top Dollar seeks to burn Detroit to the ground For the Evulz.
  • Hercules (2014): King Cotys and King Eurystheus manipulate Hercules into putting down a rebellion against them while plotting to conquer Greece.
  • Alien: Ash seeks to bring a Xenomorph to his bosses on Earth, regardless of who gets hurt.
  • Stitches (2012): Stitches comes Back from the Dead and seeks to get revenge on the kids who killed him.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird: Bob Ewell exploits a racist system to frame a black man for beating his daughter.
  • Terminator: Skynet starts the first film having successfully nuked the world, and spends the franchise sending Terminators back in time to destroy the Rebel Leader rallying the surviving humans against it.
  • 100 Bloody Acres: Lindsay Morgan seeks to kill a bunch of teenagers who uncovered his corpse fertilizer operation.
  • Legend (1985): The Lord of Darkness seeks to kill all unicorns so he can plunge the world in darkness.
  • 22 Bullets: Tony Zacchia seeks to kill his former boss so he can sell drugs without said boss's clout killing the operation.
  • Hawk the Slayer: Voltan kidnaps a convent's Mother Superior and holds her hostage for gold.
  • Mars Attacks!: The Martians seek to Take Over the World and Kill All Humans.
  • Two Thousand Maniacs!: The people of Pleasant Valley seek to kill Northerners in retaliation for being massacred during the Civil War.
  • Space Mutiny: Elijah Kalgan seeks to overthrow the government of his Generation Ship, sell anybody not in on his plan into slavery, and use the money to live it up on solid ground.
  • The Black Cobra: The bandit leader seeks to kill a woman who witnessed a murder his gang committed.
  • Excalibur: Morgana le Fey seeks to destroy Camelot in revenge for Uther killing her father.
  • Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe: Secundus seeks to find his Half-Human Hybrid son and kill him to acquire a power source stored in his brain.
  • 48 Hrs.: Albert Ganz is looking for some stolen money, and willing to kill anybody who gets between him and the loot.
  • The Gingerdead Man: Millard Findlemeyer possesses a cookie to kill the woman who got him executed.
  • Bad Taste: Lord Crumb seeks to make humans into fast food for his intergalactic restaurant chain.
  • Toys: General Leland Zevo seeks to take over his late brother's toy factory to use it to brainwash kids into soldiers.
  • Fire with Fire: David Hagan is hunting down a man who witnessed his crimes and testified against him so he can kill him and his entire family.
  • The Punisher (1989): Lady Tanaka abducts the children of New York's mob bosses to make them sell their territory to the Yakuza.
  • All Superheroes Must Die: Rickshaw abducts several superheroes and forces them into increasingly dangerous challenges lest he kill hostages their stead.
  • The Hebrew Hammer: Damien Claus usurps his father as Santa Claus and seeks to destroy all December holidays sans Christmas.
  • The Magic Sword: Lodac kidnaps Princess Helene and holds her for ransom as vengeance for the King killing his sister.
  • Demolition Man: Dr. Raymond Cocteau seeks to assassinate the Rebel Leader Edgar Friendly so he can consolidate his nanny state. Unfortunately, he awakens the madman Simon Phoenix to do this, who kills him and decides to cause chaos For the Evulz.
  • The Rocketeer: Neville Sinclair seeks to acquire the title character's Jet Pack for the Nazis to mass-produce for their armies.
  • Supersonic Man: Dr. Gulik abducts a scientist to make him power his armies with an immensely efficient fuel so he can Take Over the World.
  • Prom Night (1980): The killer is picking off a group of teens who accidentally killed a little girl as children.
  • Phantasm: The Tall Man is collecting bodies from the Morningside Cemetery to make them into his extradimensional slaves.
  • Goth (2003): Goth seeks to corrupt a couple of random into joining her lifestyle of hedonistic violence.
  • Zombie Cop: Dr. Death kills a bunch of children to make a serum and zombify an entire elementary school.
  • The Batman (2022): The Riddler's is, as you would expect, needlessly elaborate: murder the corrupt authorities in Gotham, one by one, starting with the mayor, leaving complicated clues pointing the way to eventually unearthing The Man Behind the Man, then shooting him and getting caught, so that he and Batman could hide in Arkham Asylum and talk while pre-planted explosives take out Gotham's sea wall and flood the city, driving people into a specific shelter where the Riddler's obsessed social media followers can murder them en masse with rifles from the upper walkways. Of note, the clues are so complicated that sometimes the plan is delayed because Batman and Gordon miss a hint or reach a logical but incorrect conclusion.
  • Star Wars
    • In the prequels, Palpatine, a humble Senator from Naboo, rises to ultimate power over an empire by secretly funding both sides of a conflict between the Separatists and the Republic, engineering a crisis that allows him to manipulate the Senate into ousting the previous Supreme Chancellor and electing him instead. Then, he continues to stoke the conflict, influencing the Senate into giving him more and more emergency powers, with which he slowly defangs the Senate and rolls back democracy. Unfortunately, the Jedi Council, an N.G.O. Superpower not beholden to the Republic is starting to catch on to what he's doing, but he has a plan to deal with that too: he's secretly programmed the clone army (also created in response to the war he's controlling) to kill the Jedi on sight with one word from him. All the while, he's grooming a young and powerful Jedi Knight to become his new apprentice right under the noses of the Jedi.
    • In The Last Jedi Supreme Leader Snoke has a nifty one to take out Luke Skywalker. He baits Rey, who's found Luke, out of hiding by linking her mind with his apprentice Kylo Ren, knowing that Kylo's internal conflict will bait Rey into going to him, thinking she can turn him back to the light. Then, when Kylo turns Rey over to Snoke, he reads her mind to find Luke's location, and makes plans to nuke the island he's living on from orbit. His only mistake was letting Rey and Kylo Ren get a little too close.
  • The Big Lebowski: The titular Lebowski's machinations during the kidnapping; If the Dude opened the case and saw that he was never handed the ransom money in the first place, his total lack of credibility ensures that he ends up taking the heat for "botching" the exchange.

    Literature 
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four: O'Brien seeks to crush Winston and Julia's dissent by pretending be a Rebel Leader himself.
  • The Black Arrow: Sir Daniel Brackley murdered Sir Harry Shelton and obtained custody of his victim's son Richard to usurp the fiefdom of Tunstall. Intending to increase his control upon Dick, as well as obtaining guardianship over another heir, Sir Daniel kidnaps Joanna Sedley to set up an arranged marriage between both youths. When Dick starts suspecting his guardian, Sir Daniel changes his plans: he attempts to murder Dick and force Joanna to marry a rich fellow Lancastrian.
  • Voldemort in Harry Potter wants to make a perfect society (one ruled by wizards, pure-blooded wizards, loyal only to him), rule it (with much pain and torture and fear), and become immortal. In fact, the immortality is probably the most important to him. The especially ironic part of this is that while he vaunts the so-called purity of blood among wizards, he is himself not a pure-blood wizard — he is a half-blood, as his father was a Muggle (non-wizard) whom his witch mother tricked into eloping with her with a love potion because she loved him (which he did not reciprocate).
  • Dr. Impossible's half of Soon I Will Be Invincible revolves around escaping from jail, creating a(nother) new plan to Take Over the World and putting it into action.
  • In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, we find out at the end of book 2 that the entire plot of the first and second books were engineered by Ruin in order to get Vin to release him from the Well of Ascension. Also, the search for the Lord Rulers' Atium stockpile which took up a good part of book three was yet another plan by Ruin. Although to be fair, the Lord Ruler and the Terris prophets had planned for this eventuality.
  • No matter how minor the case in The Dresden Files, eventually it will turn out to have at least one of these behind it.
  • Going Postal: Big Bad Reacher Gilt is an even bigger con artist than our Boxed Crook protagonist, Moist von Lipwig. Gilt wants to corner the communications market by keeping the post office closed, so he can make as much money as possible off the Grand Trunk semaphore line before it goes bankrupt (then he can buy it up under an assumed name and repeat the cycle).
  • Trapped on Draconica:
    • Evil Overlord Gothon conquers one kingdom after another in order to enforce a uniform peace. He also wants to capture Ben so he can save his wife.
    • He's actually being manipulated by Kazebar. He told Gothon that Ben's soul could revive her so he could get his hands on the boy and steal his latent power to travel to other worlds and become a god.
  • The Sequel, Legacy of the Dragokin also has two examples:
    • The Kthonian knights seek to wake up Kthonia and wipe out men.
    • Man in Shadow has a different agenda. All that is revealed in this book is that he's working for people with larger ambitions.
  • Light and Dark: The Awakening of the Mage Knight: Shadows want to wipe out life on earth. They're the reason for the trouble. On a more personal level: Syndil wants to find the Bonded containing Danny's father's soul so he can find the Black Bonded. He manipulates Danny into providing him with clues to which one it is. It's implied that his plan is expanded to include measuring the Mageknight's power.
  • Most Big Bads in the Tortall Universe have their goal:
  • Haroun and the Sea Of Stories: Khattam-Shud seeks to poison the Sea of Stories because he can't rule the fictional worlds inside them.
  • The Pendragon Adventure: Saint Dune's end goal is killing the seventy thousand survivors of the ninth book's climax and destroying all the free will in Halla, as well as Halla itself. This would allow him to become the new god of the Dark Solara and new Halla.
  • Song at Dawn: Inverted. It is The Hero Dragonetz who is stirring things up with his paper mill and The Church is trying to stop him. Some of them are business minded but others believe he truly is doing evil because his mill is made from Islamic (i.e. infidel) technology. Other, lesser, villainous plans are as follows:
    • Raymond de Toulouse has the classic take over place X goal but this is a minor plot thread and is treated by everyone like 'business as usual'. Everyone is trying to take over everyone else.
    • Alis' pranks are driven by envy of Estela.
  • Young Wizards: The Lone Power has a "Gift" (i.e. death) and wants everyone to have it, though the reasons why vary based on the specific aspect the wizards are dealing with. In some cases the Power is a proud inventor, in others It's genuinely malicious, and in others It thinks It's being helpful.
  • Adventure Hunters: In a classic case of turning a trope on its head, so does this book do to this trope. The evil king, Jerrod, is more of a Jerkass king only interested in holding control of both banks of a river that divides his kingdom from his neighbor, Ryvas. It is Ryvas, The Good King, who engages in devious scheming to awaken an Artifact of Doom but only because Jerrod is infringing on his land and economically strangling his people.
  • Forever Gate: Someone is doing something to the gols that is causing them to degenerate. Since the gols run everything, this puts the integrity of the entire human civilization at risk. It's the reason Hoodwink's daughter gets involved with the Users and thus the reason Hoodwink started this plot.
  • Howl's Moving Castle: The Witch of the Waste wants to claim Howl's heart, metaphorically. This is why she chases him and curses a rival (Sophie) into old age. The demon contracted to her, Miss Angorian, wants to claim his heart, literally. This is why she arranges a series of events that will allow her to get inside the castle and grab Calicifer.
  • The Exile's Violin: Max plans to Take Over the World with a magical relic and ancient war machines. To find both he exploits a corrupt political system to create a personal army made of criminals.
  • The Apprentice Rogue has no Big Bad but there is still scheming.
    • Falita wants to steal Leona's necklace.
    • Leona wants to seduce her bodyguard as an act of rebellion against her cloistered upbringing.
  • James Bond
    • Hugo Drax in Moonraker wants to take revenge on England for the fall of Nazi Germany by nuking London with the eponymous rocket.
    • SMERSH in From Russia with Love is going to strike a blow on MI-6's credibility by killing James Bond in most humiliating manner possible.
    • Goldfinger is going to steal all the gold from Fort Knox.
    • Criminal organization SPECTRE in Thunderball is going to pull One Last Job by stealing two nukes and demanding a ransom for their return.
    • Blofeld in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is going to destroy Great Britain's economy with a series of viral attacks.
    • Colonel Sun, as per orders from China, plans to disrupt a secret meeting hosted by the Soviet Union by killing everyone in it, and framing the British for the deed.
    • Dr. Anton Murik's Operation Meltdown in Licence Renewed involves capturing six nuclear reactors with teams of terrorists, and blackmailing their owners for vast sums of money for giving back their control.
    • SPECTRE in For Special Services is going to take over North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and get their revenge on Bond for killing Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the process by brainwashing him to help them.
    • The neo-nazi organization NSAA in Icebreaker seeks to start the Fourth Reich through terrorist activities.
    • The bad guys in Role of Honour seek to shake the global status quo by removing USA's nuclear capabilities.
    • The eponymous villain of Scorpius wants to show off his homegrown suicide bombers by using them to disrupt the British General Election.
    • BAST in Win, Lose or Die is going to take over light aircraft carrier HMS Invincible during an international naval exercise, and take the world leaders having a summit there hostage for the ransom of six billion dollars.
    • Wolfgang Weisen in Death Is Forever is going to destabilise the European community by killing all their leaders in a single blow. But before that, he must eliminate a network of agents who could help to locate him.
    • The main villain in Zero Minus Ten is going to nuke Hong Kong as it is handed back to China as a revenge for losing his wealth.
    • Decada in The Facts of Death is going to commit ten acts of violence to provoke a conflict within Cyprus, which is supposed to end with Greece completely claiming the island for its own.
    • The Union in High Time to Kill has a simple plan; steal a formula and deliver it to a buyer. But it is offset by an another, independent villain with his own goals.
    • In DoubleShot, the Union has two goals; help a Spanish mobster to give Gibraltar back to Spain by assassinating the British Prime Minister, and frame Bond for acts of terrorism.
    • Never Dream of Dying sees the Union, sick and tired of Bond interfering with their plans, seeking to trap him and bomb an important event.
    • In The Man with the Red Tattoo, the eponymous villain's plan consists of releasing altered mosquitos carrying a deadlier strain of West Nile disease within a G8 summit conference held in Japan, and organize more attacks like it in major cities around the world.
    • Dr. Gorner's plan to destroy England in Devil May Care is to get them into a nuclear war with Soviet Union.
    • Jason Sin in Trigger Mortis, on orders from from SMERSH, plans to slow down the USA's space program by making it seem that one of its rockets malfunctioned and destroyed a large part of New York.
  • Journey to Chaos:
    • A Mage's Power: Duke Selen Esrah orchestrated Kasile's kidnapping and then the coup at the climax in order to become king.
    • Looming Shadow is Playing with a Trope. While there are a couple of evil sorcerer type villains looking for revenge, prestige, or forbidden knowledge, the central villain scheme belongs to Shadow Dengel. He's basically Eric's Imaginary Friend and his plan is to push Eric into despair over the fact that Eric will never escape the real Dengel's legacy. Working against this "plan" is Eric's motivation throughout the book.
  • Many in Warrior Cats.
    • In The Prophecies Begin (the first arc), there's Tigerclaw who wants to become leader of his Clan. He starts out by killing the current cat who is next in line for leader. When that is over and he's next in line, he plots to kill the current leader. Fortunately this doesn't work out so well, and he's banished. After that, he becomes leader of a different Clan and plots to kill the hero and take over all four Clans.
    • In the same series there's Scourge. His real motivation is to kill Tigerstar, who once beat the snot out of him. He successfully does this, but after that he decides the forest is a pretty cool place and that he wants to stay.
    • In series two, Hawkfrost has a similar plan to his father Tigerstar's. He even has help from his dad's spirit. He manipulates Mudclaw into staging a coup in order to weaken WindClan, and Hawkfrost nearly succeeds in killing the ThunderClan leader Firestar.
    • In the third series, Sol wants to destroy the clans because SkyClan cast him out. This cat is a master manipulator and tends to play the cats against each other.
    • One of the most elaborate plans actually stretches across generations of cats. The Dark Forest (where evil cats go when they die) walks in the dreams of many Clan cats, training them in vicious battle moves and fostering their ambition and bloodthirstiness. Like most villains, they want to destroy the Clans as well. They nearly succeed.
  • President Snow is concerned with the status quo in The Hunger Games. Among other things this means: only one victor, keep Districts divided, putting down riots and rebellions, etc.
  • Clive Cussler has slews of these in his books as his bad guys have schemes that would put a Bond villain to shame:
    • Iceberg: Taking over Central America like it's a regular company.
    • Dragon: Using mini-nukes in cars to blackmail the U.S. into submission to Japan.
    • Flood Tide: Divert the Mississippi River, wiping out thousands of towns and millions of people and ravage the U.S. economy, all to ensure a certain port is the only entry for shipping to the U.S.
    • Atlantis Found: Collapse the Ross Ice Shelf to basically wipe out humanity, ride the cataclysm out in special arks with 300,000 people who think an asteroid is hitting Earth and rebuild humanity on your own Nazi-inspired terms.
    • Blue Gold: Take control of the world's fresh water supply for global dominance.
    • Fire Ice: Unleash methane to create tidal waves to ravage the U.S. while turning Russia's climate more temperate.
    • White Death: Create special mutated super-fish to change the ocean eco-system to push your own supply of fresh fish.
    • Skeleton Coast: Use special super-heaters to form super-hurricanes and dump toxic oil to create a toxic storm to hit the U.S. in a misguided effort to convince people to change their ways.
    • Plague Ship: "Save" the Earth from future disaster by sterilizing half of the human race.
  • Princess Ben: The events of the novel are set in motion by the death of Ben's parents and the plot is driven by Drachensbett's attempts at taking over Montagne.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Agent Carter: The Big Bad of Season 1, Dr. Fenhoff is ultimately revealed to be planning to steal a chemical Hate Plague called Midnight Oil and release it on New York as revenge against Howard Stark (who invented it) for the Midnight Oil-caused death of Fenhoff's brother.
  • Since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. focus on a crime fighting organization, is only natural that the plot is centered about evil plans that the heroes have to stop
    • The first half of Season 1 mostly used the Monster of the Week format, so every episode is centered on a different evil plan (a general wants to steal a powerful artifact to destroy some rebels, a doctor wants to destroy his invention, not caring of the innocent victims, a pagan group want to put their hand of a mystical Asgardian staff, etc.) but the most relevant is the one of Centipede Group, an organization lead by the Clairvoyant a.k.a John Garrett, a HYDRA agent infiltrated in SHIELD that plan to create an army of supersoldiers controlled with cybernetic eyes and sell them to the army; they also seek a SHIELD project that can resurrect the dead to save the life of their leader. Affiliated with him there are also Ian Quinn, a Corrupt Corporate Executive that wants to profit with the supersoldiers but also obtain a powerful substance named Gravitronium for his own personal agenda, and Raina, a woman interested in the human potential of developing supernatural abilities.
    • In the first part of Season 2, most of the villains seek the same object, the Obelisk: HYDRA leader Daniel Whitehall wants to turn it into a weapon; Cal, Skye's father, wants to use it to awake his daughter's powers (as well as killing Whitehall for Revenge); and Raina wants it to awaken her own Inhuman powers. There is also Ward, who wants his own Revenge against his brother as well as maintain his promise with Skye by bringing her to her father.
      • In the second part there are many plans involved: Cal wants revenge against Coulson for ruining his own revenge against Whitehall and for having kept him away from his daughter; the last leaders of HYDRA want to rebuild the organization; Ward tries to help his lover Agent 33 to regain her identity and find her closure (read: Revenge, again); Gonzales wants to take Coulson's place as the leader of SHIELD, although not for evil purpose, but for sincere concern that he isn't a good leader. In the end, they are all upstaged by Jiaying, Skye's mother, who plans to escalate a war with SHIELD and use modified terrigen crystals to Kill All Humans.
    • The first part of Season 3 deals with three different evil plans: Lash's genocidal plan against the Inhumans, Ward's Revenge plan (AGAIN) against SHIELD for the death of 33, and Malick's plan to bring a powerful Inhuman to Earth. The last one succeeds, and the rest of the season is about stopping Hive's plan to turn every humans into Inhumans that he can control with his power and so Take Over the World.
    • Season 4 is divided into three story arcs, each with its own evil plan that drive the plot:
      • The Ghost Rider story arc is centered around Lucy's plan to use the Darkhold to revert the process that turned her and her colleagues into ghosts, uncaring of the collateral damage until Elias Morrow starts his own plan to obtain god-like powers.
      • In the LMD story arc, SHIELD have to deal with Radcliffe's plan to obtain the Darkhold, although it's a Well-Intentioned Extremist kind of plan, since he genuinely believes that he is working for the best of humanity. Specifically, he wants to create a virtual world in which everyone can live forever without regret. He succeeds.
      • The Agents of HYDRA story arc is about Aida's plan to use the Framework version of HYDRA's resources to Become a Real Girl with real emotions. Again, she succeeds, but she can't handle them and after being rejected by the man the she loves, she now plans revenge on his entire team, as well as turning the real world into a copy of the Framework so she can be in control of everything.
      • Common for all three story arcs is the Watchdogs' plan of turning the world against the Inhumans, motivated by Fantastic Racism. Their leader, Anton Ivanov, also has his own personal Revenge plan against Coulson.
    • In the first part of Season 5, there is Kassius' plan to continue to rule the humans that have survived a Bad Future, create and sell as many Inhumans as he can, and then Kill All Humans; he also wants to kill the SHIELD Agents because he believes that they are the cause of the Earth-Shattering Kaboom and want to avert it so his father can invade the planet. However, that's more an obstacle to the team's real purpose: go back in time and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
      • The second half is a shuffle between The Confederacy's plan to acquire Earth's resources, General Hale's plan to betray them by turning Daisy into a Gravitonium super-soldier, and her daughter Ruby who wants to gain that power for herself. In the end, they are all upstaged by General Talbot. Although in a sort of inversion, his plan is a heroic one: absorb as much Gravitonium as he can, became the most powerful superhero on Earth and stop an upcoming alien invasion. He just fails to realize that he would break Earth in the process due to Sanity Slippage.
    • Season 6 deals with three different evil plans: Izel's plan to recreate the monoliths to bring her inter-dimensional race to Earth and give them physical bodies, Sarge's plan to kill Izel, uncaring of the innocent victims until he remembers his past and goes along with Izel's plan, and Atarah's plan to unlock time travel and go back in time to save her planet from Izel, which wouldn't be bad if not for her Stupid Evil tendencies. At the end, her lieutenant Malachi kill her and starts his own plan to destroy SHIELD and turn the Earth into their new colony.
    • Season 7 continues the Chronicoms' plan of the previous season, with the aliens, now lead by Sybil, going back in time to prevent SHIELD from existing, so they can Take Over the World easily. The exact plan changes many time: first they try to kill the young Wilfred Malick in 1931 before he can deliver the key ingredient for super soldier serum to Red Skull, thus preventing the foundation of modern HYDRA, so that SHIELD will not have any reason to be created. Then they go forward to 1955 and try to blow up a nuclear reactor and destroy a good portion of SHIELD, and when they fail try to steal a MacGuffin that will be crucial to SHIELD's modern technology. When even that fails, they change methods and team up with Wilfred to create Project Insight and kill every possible opponent; they also pull out a Xanatos Gambit that, in the worst outcome, will reveal the position of Team Coulson and infiltrate two moles in their plane. When even that gambit fails and their ship was blown up, Sybil creates a plan to regain a body and reclaim her time stream (that allows her to see the possible futures) and then team up with Wilfred's son, Nathaniel, to locate and eliminate the biggest obstacle to their plan, Leopold Fitz, and contact her race's biggest fleet to destroy every SHIELD base, while giving to Nathaniel's crew the goal to destroy the only base that can resist their attack, the Lighthouse.
      • Meanwhile, Nathaniel Malick has his own plan to take over the Afterlife colony by manipulating Kora, the daughter of their leader Jiaying, transfer the Inhumans' powers to his allies, and Take Over the World with the help of the Chronicoms, not understanding that they are just using him.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003): "The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan." Except they didn't. Word of God is that the famous series synopsis at the beginning of every episode was inserted by Executive Meddling, because they thought it sounded cool.
    • The series doubled down with the "Evil Plan" hype in the Made-for-TV Movie "The Plan", showing the Cylon war from the Cylon point of view, which showed viewers what they already knew, that the Evil Plan was actually one Cylon model's petty vendetta to "teach his creators (humanity, and the 'Final Five' Cylon models) a lesson".
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Doctor Who has this as a staple of the vast majority of its stories.
  • In Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Lord Dread has already conquered much of the world, but he's not done yet. Over the course of the series, he plots to enact Project New Order, which consists of four stages:
    • Styx: A deadly disease.
    • Charon: A new army of Bio-Dreads.
    • Icarus: An orbital weapons platform capable of digitizing people en masse.
    • Prometheus: A deadly plasma storm.
  • Kamen Rider: Most villains want to Take Over the World in some way, but several have creative ways of going about it.
    • Kamen Rider Blade: The first step of BOARD chairman HiroshiTennoji's plan was when he unsealed the Undead in order to restart the Battle Fight in modern times. After having the Kamen Riders defeat most of the Undead for him, he introduces his own player into the fight — the artificial Undead Kerberos — and fuses with it to win the fight himself, whereby he'll be rewarded with getting to remake the world in his image.
    • Kamen Rider Double: While he's an insane bastard, Ryubee Sonozaki's evil plan is actually quite well-intentioned. He plans to ensure the continued survival of the human race via the "Gaia Impact", a plan to convert everyone into data and permanently tie their existence with planet Earth so they'll never go extinct.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim: The Yggdrasill Corporation's big plan is "Project Ark", which involves covertly cleansing 6/7ths of the human population on Earth before Helheim Forest invades, although they actually have good intentions in mind, as they're doing it to stave off the Helheim invasion. As they can only produce enough Sengoku Drivers for 1 billion people to survive in Helheim's environment, they've decided to kill off the remaining 6 billion before they can be turned into Inves by Helheim. And then it turns out the plan was really cover for Ryoma Sengoku and his inner circle's real plan — to claim Helheim's Forbidden Fruit and use it to become god.
    • Kamen Rider Drive: The evil plan of the Roidmudes is to find enough worthy candidates to complete the "Promised Number", an energy ritual which will enable them to Kill All Humans and create a paradise for their kind. Although it later turns out the Promised Number was developed by Tenjuro Banno as a step towards his true plan — to forcibly digitize everyone so he can make them revere him as god.
    • The evil plan of the Gamma in Kamen Rider Ghost turns out to be something called the "Demia Project". At first we know little about it other than it's involved in their plans to conquer our world, though it eventually turns out to really be an Assimilation Plot for Adel, who will link himself to every human being on the planet and override them with his own consciousness, creating a world populating by the only perfect being in existence - himself.
    • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: The endgame of Kuroto Dan, Parado, and later Masamune Dan is the completion of Kamen Rider Chronicle. The former two both think the game is their plan, but it's really part of the latter's plan to become the controller of everything.
    • Kamen Rider Build: Night Rogue's evil plan is to create a Living Weapon to give Touto an edge over its rival nations - Hokuto and Seito. It turns out later to really be part of Juzaburo Namba's plan to start a war between the three of them so he can profit off of it. Which turns out to really be just one layer of Evolt's plan to exploit the subsequent Lensman Arm Race to regain his former power. Once he's done that, he begins a new plan to complete the Black Pandora Panel and absorb it to become even more powerful, enabling him to destroy everything in the universe.
    • Kamen Rider Zi-O: Woz's plan is to ensure that Sougo Tokiwa becomes Ohma Zi-O in the future. The Time Jackers' plan is to find a candidate to supplant Sougo as Ohma Zi-O. Except for Swartz, who already has a candidate in mind - Sougo Tokiwa. To save his home dimension, Swartz plans to merge every alternate Kamen Rider-verse together and then use Sougo's power as Ohma Zi-O to destroy them, before returning to his own dimension where he'll be hailed as a hero and the new king.
  • For the Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney + series:
    • WandaVision: The witch Agatha Harkness infiltrates the fake reality created by Wanda disguised as the Nosy Neighbor Agnes and manipulate events to discover the secret of Wanda's magic and steal it for herself. Meanwhile, Director Hayward of SWORD tries to get a sample of Wanda's magic to reanimate Vision's body and turn it into a weapon, then use it to kill Wanda and the fake Vision to eliminate any evidence of his crimes.
    • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Karli Morgentau, leader of the Flag Smashers, is leading various terrorist operations against the government in a misguided attempt to help the oppressed population and restore the world as it was before the Blip, a united world without borders or symbols. Meanwhile, Zemo teams up with the heroes as part of his plan to kill all the Flag Smashers' Super Soldiers (and succeeds), while the Power Broker aka Sharon Carter tries to eliminate all the proof of her involvement in the creation of the serum and even manages to get access to government intelligence]].
    • Loki (2021): He Who Remains, a variant of Kang the Conqueror, has founded the TVA in order to eliminate every timeline in the multiverse except one, to prevent his more evil variants from taking over the multiverse.
    • Hawkeye (2021): The Kingpin, leader of the Tracksuit Mafia, wants to get his hands on a mysterious watch which belongs to former agent of SHIELD Laura Barton and also kill everyone who stands in his way: the Ronin, Hawkeye, Kate Bishop and Eleanor Bishop, his former ally who has betrayed him.
  • Every major villain on Once Upon a Time has some sort of plan:
    • Everything Rumpelstiltskin does in the first season, and first chunk of the second, are merely the closing moves of a Long Game decades in the making, designed to set him free on Earth to find his son.
      • When he backslides into evil in Season 4, he enacts a plan to free himself from the Dark One's dagger, leaving him with all the power but none of the weaknesses.
    • When Regina was still evil in Season 1, her every action was done to perpetuate the Dark Curse, all for the sake of her vendetta against Snow White.
    • Cora and Hook work together to achieve their shared goal of killing Rumpelstiltskin, though for different reasons — he just wants revenge on Rump, while she wants to usurp his place as the Dark One.
    • Greg and Tamara are anti-magic Knights Templar who honestly believe magic is evil and must be wiped out, which is why they come to Storybrooke (though Greg also wants revenge on Regina).
    • Pan wants to steal Henry's heart, so that he can gain true immortality and ultimate power.
    • Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West, wants to go back in time and prevent the events that led to her mother Cora abandoning her.
    • Ingrid, the Snow Queen, wants to force Elsa and Emma to be replacements for her sisters and to kill the rest of Storybrooke.
    • In Season 4B, Rumple, the Queens of Darkness, and Zelena all want to find the Author and use him to change reality so that they can get their happy endings. Something he's all too happy to do.
    • Season 5A sees Dark Swan trying to enact a plan that appears to be an attempt to wipe out all light magic, but is actually to destroy the Darkness. When this backfires, it leads to Dark Hook attempting to carry out an even more audacious plan to summon and permanently resurrect all past Dark Ones.
    • Hades spends his whole arc working towards his goal of getting Zelena to fall in love with him and revive him with True Love's Kiss, so that he can then conquer the mortal world.
    • Fiona the Black Fairy, Greater-Scope Villain and Unseen Evil of the series, has the most terrifying plan of all: either kill or break Emma, thus ending Light Magic, and by extension destroying the Fairy Tale Lands. This would then allow her to create a new universe in her image, with her and her family ruling supreme.
  • A tradition in Power Rangers and their source material, Super Sentai:
  • In an episode of Republic of Doyle one of the villains has a plan that involves taking the occupants of the security room of the university hostage, then taking advantage of the evacuation and access to the security cameras to use the 3-D Printer lab to run off a single copy of her gun design. All of this to prove that her gun works so she can sell the schematics.
  • Sherlock:
    • The whole episode 3: Every case Sherlock has to solve ends up having been orchestrated by Moriarty, looking for a fun challenge. It's implied that he, as a consulting criminal, has been arranging a vast array of crimes all over the place. Subverted in that the whole thing was to distract Sherlock from the plans. Revealed that the plans were a McGuffin, and double-subverted, when Moriarty tosses them away.
    • The entirety of episodes 4 and 6 were also extremely convoluted plans orchestrated by Moriarty as 'levels' in The Game he's playing with Sherlock.
  • Supergirl: The villains of Season 1 spend the whole season building up towards the mysterious Project Myriad. In the final episodes, this is revealed to be enacting global mind control in order to bring about world peace.
  • In the Supernatural episode "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two" (S02, Ep22), we learn that the Yellow-Eyed Demon wanted the Colt and the Special Children to open the Devil's Gate.
  • Super Sentai: Most of the time the villains plan to Take Over the World, but some of them come up with innovative ways to do it.
    • J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai: Shine's ultimate plan is the "Stardust Plan", which involves CRIME building rocket thrusters onto the side of planet Earth and use them to push Earth over to his own planet's orbit, where his people will be able to colonize the planet and subjugate humankind. Thanks to JAKQ storming Crime Fortress Island and the series being Cut Short, Shine's plan never got past the planning stage, which is probably for the best given the number of physics laws it ignores.
    • Choushinsei Flashman: The end goal of the Reconstructive Experiment Empire Mess is to collect genetic samples from enough organisms in the universe to transform their ruler, Great Emperor La Deus, into the Ultimate Lifeform.
    • Choujuu Sentai Liveman: Great Professor Bias's true plan only has hints dropped about it throughout the series, but it eventually turns out to be the Giga Brain Wave, a thought pattern energy wave created by Bias extracting the minds of twelve of his students who've achieved 1000 point brains, allowing him to become fully immortal and Mind Control the planet into submitting to him. He already has 11 brains at the start, and the events of the series were orchestrated by him to find the final brain he needs to complete it.
    • Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman: The Galactic Imperial Army Zone's plan is to sacrifice 1000 planets with intelligent life on them in a ritual to give their ruler, Galactic Empress Meadow, immortality. They succeed on 999 planets, with Earth being the 1000th they need to destroy to complete the ritual.
    • Tensou Sentai Goseiger: Brajira of the Messiah's final plan is the completion of the "Nega End", by which he'll be able to Restart the World and cleanse it of corruption (or really, just to satiate his megalomania).

    Theatre 
  • The Tempest: A rare heroic version; the entire play is Prospero's God Game to end his exile from Milan. 'Heroic' because all he wants is to get his home back and teach his evil brother a lesson. No one gets hurt, not even the evil brother, and almost all of them go back to Milan as more or less friends.

    Theme Parks 
  • At Universal Studios:
    • The Sinister Syndicate's plan in The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man is to steal the Statue of Liberty and threaten to destroy it unless New York City surrenders themselves to them.
    • In Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, King Goobot's plan is to have Ooblar steal Jimmy's latest invention, the Mark IV rocket, and bring it back to the Yolkian Planet so that it can be duplicated and his armies can use it to enslave the earth.

    Video Games 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: C's main plan revolves around obtaining the Artifact of Doom from the otherworldly Hinterland. He deliberately engineered the captured of Ann's brother just to have her Lured into a Trap and use her dormant dimensional link to open a passage to where the artifact is and retrieve it with specialized devices.
  • Raphael from the Soul Series has some of the most ridiculously insane plans ever devised, all for his adopted daughter. In Soul Calibur 2 he planned to destroy the country that he fled from by giving its nobles the Soul Edge on the basis that they would tear the country apart in a demonically-fueled Civil War so that the world would, somehow, be safer for his adopted daughter Amy. In Soul Calibur 3, on discovering that he and Amy had been accidentally turned into basically vampires, he decided to turn the entire world into creatures like them so Amy wouldn't feel left out. Amy may constitute a pretty drastic subversion of a Morality Pet.
  • Shining Force III: The plot to abduct Emperor Domaric in the third game is a rare villain-on-villain Evil Plan, perpetrated by Domaric himself. When he hears that one of his sons is plotting to have him killed, blame it on the breakaway republic of Aspinia, and use the resulting war to seize the throne and conquer the rest of the continent, Domaric sends his own agents to infiltrate his son's conspiracy and allows himself to be kidnapped. Then, when the empire's armies are geared up to invade, Domaric has his mole "free" him, takes control of said army, and marches on Aspinia - just as he's wanted ever since the country seceded 20 years before. He even corners his son's partner in the whole plan, to force him to use an ancient superweapon to break down Aspinia's walls for him.
  • The Legend of Heroes - Trails: This is actually encouraged in Ouroboros, where Enforcers and Anguis have their own separate agendas and only partake in certain events when their agendas overlap.
  • Tales Series often has Well Intentioned Extremists as villains, but their plots have the same narrative purpose.
    • Tales of Symphonia: Mithos Yggdrasil wishes to revive his sister and end discrimination, and to do that he splits a world in two and makes them fight over Mana while his evil army antagonizes the dying one. The first part is being his Unwitting Pawn and the rest of the game is the heroes unraveling the plan and how to foil it.
    • Tales of the Abyss: Mohs wants to cause a war between the local kingdom and empire because The Score says so. Van Grants and his minions are more upfront about their goal of ending The Score, but unraveling the details and creating a counter measure still drives the bulk of the plot.
    • Tales of Legendia: Vaclav Bolud, who wants to Take Over the World and Nerifes who wants to commit genocide.
  • The Legend of Dragoon likewise has a series of Men Behind The Man whose plans drive the plot. From Emperor Doel's plan to usurp his homeland to Lloyd's manipulation of that war to collect Macguffins to the final Big Bad's Godhood Seeker ambition.
  • In the Baldur's Gate series, Bhaal the Lord of Murder sired the the Bhaalspawn in order to revive himself. They would kill each other until none remained, at which point his essence that was scattered among them would have accumulated, and his chosen follower, Amelyssan, would have performed rituals that would have brought him back. Neither Amelyssan nor the last Bhaalspawn (the protagonist) complied to these plans, however.
  • Saints Row 2: Dan Vogel's plan is to strike a deal with the winner of the gang war and get credit for cleaning up Stilwater. The Boss nuked that dream nicely.
  • Spider-Man (Insomniac):
    • Spider-Man (PS4) has Martin Li/Mister Negative's evil plan of exacting revenge against Normal Osborne for killing his family, killing anyone and everyone that stands in his way. Later, Dr. Octavius takes up that mantle as he uses a bioweapon that Osborne developed to ruin his reputation before making a more direct attempt on Norman's life.
    • Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has Kraven the Hunter, who is searching for a Worthy Opponent among New York's supervillains, breaking several out of prison and threatening those who had made honest attempts to reform their lives. This is because Kraven is Secretly Dying of a terminal illness, and he wants to go out fighting against a stronger opponent rather than wait for the inevitable. He eventually gets what he wants from Venom, who has an evil plot of their own: turn the Earth into a symbiote-infested wasteland.
  • In Mass Effect 3, the Illusive Man attempts a massive one: to take control of the Reapers themselves and use their overwhelming power to bring complete human dominance. As brilliant as he was, it doesn't work and he ends up indoctrinated for his efforts.
  • Wild ARMs 5 has Volsung’s plan to reformat the planet so it will stop rejecting veruni and making them sick. Unforunately this process will kill every human on the planet.
  • EXA_PICO:
    • The first game, Melody of Elemia, has three villains acting more like convenient allies than a single group which means there are three of these.
      • Mir wants to wipe out humanity to create a world just for reyvateils because she believes that Humans Are Bastards.
      • Bourd wants to continue the kind of research that's based on the 'Reyvateils are replacable dolls' idea and believes Mir to be its greatest fruit.
      • Bishop Falss, AKA Kyle Clancy wants to ressurrect Mir and take over Platina as the first step to taking over the world and returning it to the prosperity of the first age.
    • The second game, Melody of Metafalica, is a touch more complicated. Basically, the world is in trouble because of Shurelia shutting down the tower to stop Mir from killing all the humans under her jursidiction and there are many groups with their own ideas on what to do about it.
  • Metal Gear
    • Throughout the series, Big Boss's plan is to create an army — then later, a nation of soldiers — independent of any government power, free to fight wars as they chose while beholden to no higher authority than Big Boss, himself.
    • Metal Gear Solid: Liquid Snake's master plan is to create a Forever War where soldiers such as himself will have value.
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Solidus' master plan is to unleash a nuclear blast overhead of Manhattan, causing a total blackout of equipment to 'liberate' it from The Patriots.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Colonel Volgin's master plan is to use the Shagohod as the ultimate nuclear detterence, making the USSR untouchable.
    • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Skull Face's master plan is to use a special strain of vocal cord parasites to eradicate the English language, destabilizing the world while using special nuclear missiles under his control to maintain his idealized vision of peace.
    • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Senator Armstrong's master plan is to rebuild the United States based on his Social Darwinist ideals.
  • Command & Conquer: The Nod Prophet Kane is an uncontested master of these, and in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath pulls of an absolutely staggering one. Short version: the entire Third Tiberium War was orchestrated start-to-finish to bring the Scrin aliens to Earth and allow Kane to steal their technology.
  • Dennis from Double Homework comes up with a plan to sleep with all the girls in his summer school class, despite the fact that they would never touch him with a ten-foot pole.
  • Mega Man:
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha: As of 2nd Original Generations, Euzeth Gozzo has been confirmed to be the mastermind of a spanning multiple parallel universes to assimilate all destructive technology he can in order to surpass the creators of the original Cross Gate Paradigm System and become powerful enough to destroy Keisar Ephes permanently.
  • In Undertale’s backstory, King Asgore was approached by Flowey the Flower, who tried to convince the king to show him the six human Souls, hoping he could just nab them while Asgore's guard was down. That didn't work... So, these days he has a rather impressive plan laid out: wait until another human falls down into the Underground, wait for them to reach the end of their journey where they'll be forced to confront Asgore who, in turn, will be forced to bring out the other human Souls, at which point Flowey can nab them admist the chaos of the battle. This plan works out flawlessly... almost. When Flowey tries to steal the Soul of the PC, the other six human Souls rebel against him... Should the Player choose to spare Flowey after this, he'll pull an impressive Xanatos Speed Chess: He encourages the Player to go for the Golden Ending and then convinces the Playable Character's friends to interfere with the PC's battle against Asgore. This way he can not only nab the six human Souls, but the Souls of everyone else as well. With this power he gains complete control over the Save Files and will be able to Reset the game itself so that he and the Player can play with each other forever.
  • Many different villains come up with evil plans in the Final Fantasy series.
    • Final Fantasy II. The Emperor seeks to take over all of reality, so he baits Firion into killing him, splitting his soul in two and allowing him to conquer both Heaven and Hell in addition to the rest of the world.
    • Final Fantasy IV. Zemus sought to create a new world for the Lunarians to live in after their planet was destroyed, so he tried to raze the Blue Planet but was sealed away. He brainwashes Golbez and uses him to unseal him so he can continue his work.
    • Final Fantasy V. Exdeath sought to merge two planets together in order to gain The Power of the Void and become unstoppable. He succeeded in merging the planets, but was stopped by Bartz and co.
    • Final Fantasy VI. Kefka goes along with the Emperor's plan so that he can gain more magical power, before eventually becoming a god and throwing the world out of balance. This succeeds. After getting bored, he wanted to simply destroy the world, but that was swiftly stopped.
    • Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth plans to use the Black Materia to cast the spell Meteor to wound the planet severely enough to draw all of The Lifestream to one location. Sephiroth would then absorb the Lifestream and become God.
    • Final Fantasy VIII. Ultimecia's ultimate goal was to cast Time Compression, merging all of time and history into one immortal moment that she would rule over for eternity. She succeeded, but the heroes hitched a ride to that one moment and set it right.
    • Final Fantasy IX: After kidnapping Cid's wife Hilda, Kuja actually spends a fair amount of time waxing rhapsodic about his "master plan" to her. "I didn't even have to ask. It was tiresome." Fortunately, she was paying attention, so she's able to explain said master plan to the party - to use the world of Gaia to acquire an even more destructive power. Specifically, Kuja hoped to overthrow Garland of Terra and take control of the cycle of souls.
    • Final Fantasy X. Seymour Guado's goal was to become Sin and kill everyone to free them from suffering.
    • Final Fantasy XII. Vayne Solidor, though not wholly an evil entity, seeks to become Ivalice's next dynast-king by expanding the reaches of the Archadian Empire but also, more importantly, by removing the control over the world's future from the hands of the Occuria. While he fails the former, he succeeds wholeheartedly at the latter.
    • Final Fantasy XIII. The main villain's goal is to lead the group of l'Cie to become Ragnarok so that they can kill Orphan, dropping Cocoon from the sky, killing everyone inside so the combined death would be enough to summon the Maker back into the world.
    • Final Fantasy XIII-2. Caius Ballad's evil plan is to slay the goddess Etro to release chaos and destroy the very concept of time itself to stop the cycle of his charge, Yeul, from dying due to her powers as a prophet.
    • Final Fantasy XIV. The Ascians, often The Man Behind the Man, have one clear goal in all of their actions. To cause enough instability in the natural aether in the world to cause thirteen disasters/"Rejoinings" in order to revive their god Zodiark.
  • Moshi Monsters: The group of villains known as the Criminal League of Naughty Critters, also known as CLONC, often have evil plans.
    • During the missions "Missing Moshling Egg" through "Super Weapon Showdown", they had a plan to build a weapon that would destroy the sun and leave Moshi World in darkness.
    • During the missions "Close Encounters of the Zoshi Kind", they had a plan to build a "Doom Ray" that had a giant magnifying glass which they planned to use to project the sun's light onto Mount Sillimanjaro and melt the snow, flooding the city.
    • In the movie, Dr Strangeglove steals the Great Moshling Egg and plans to get the three items needed to hatch it and, once hatched, he planned to turn the Moshling which hatched out of it into a giant Glump that would lead the other Glumps in an army to destroy Monstro City.
    • In "The Great Moshi Beanstalk", CLONC (especially Strangeglove) wanted to turn all the Moshlings at the top of the Beanstalk into Glumps.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Agahnim plans to undo the Sages' seal and free Ganon, the King of Evil. Zelda tells us he is very close to completing his plan right from the beginning of the game.
  • Several villains of the Sly Cooper franchise are motivated by long-term goals.
    • Muggshot: Take control of Mesa City and drive out everyone who lives there for his own gambling lifestyle. He already succeeded when the Cooper Gang shows up.
    • Clockwerk: He made himself immortal by cyberizing his body and using The Power of Hate to go after the Cooper family and wipe them out out of sheer envy, which has gone on for at least over three thousand years. By around 1994, he ends up destroying the Thievius Raccoonus to prove that the Cooper family were nothing without it.
    • Arpeggio: Resentful that he can't fly, he opts to use Clockwerk to overcome that problem and also seek immortality. He has the Cooper Gang (by trickery) and Neyla seek out Clockwerk's scattered body parts that other members of the Klaww Gang were using for their own vices. With illegal Indian spices provided by Rajan that was secretly feed to the population of Paris through an unsuspecting Dimitri, Arpeggio intends to use the Northern Lights to send everyone in France into a hate frenzy that would provide the fuel for Clockwerk's immortality, with Arpeggio himself inside. He doesn't get the chance, as Neyla merges herself with Clockwerk in front of Arpeggio, and kills him in her first act as Clock-La.
    • Dimitri: His art style was rejected by the snobby elite, so Dimitri turned to forgeries and counterfit money to attack them for their old-fashionness and stand up for other potential artists who were snubbed. His actual goal, as revealed in the third game, is to make enough of a fortune to fund an expedition to locate his grandfather's diving gear. With no luck from the Klaww Gang, he turns to the Cooper Gang for their help in his goal. They agree, Dimitri succeeds in his not-so-evil goal, and makes a Heel–Face Turn in gratitude.
    • Don Octavio: Despises post-Hays Code era media because opera was pushed aside in favor of rock music while his fame was kicking off, and intends to force opera back into mainstream by threatening to sink Venice using tar to revive his career.
    • The Grizz: He wants to exploit time travel to make a fortune by painting crappy cave art in the Ice Age, and "rediscover" them in the present. This is chalked up to resentment over his 15 Minutes of Fame, wanting to get back in the spotlight despite having no talent in art.
    • Penelope: Exploit Bentley's talent in gadgetry by pretending to love him in order to force him into design weapons of mass destruction to sell for a huge fortune in the billions (if not trillions) of dollars, and then use the money and weapons to Take Over the World. She also intends to wipe out the Cooper family and Murray for the same reason as Clockwerk.
    • Le Paradox: Steal the canes of various members of the Cooper clan as trophies, and rewrite history to make himself appear to be of French royalty. Unlike Clockwerk and Penelope, who are both motivated by hatred and envy, Le Paradox's vendetta against the Cooper family is mainly out of sheer ego.

    Web Animation 
  • Broken Saints has a whole big complicated scheme. The short version? Lear Dunham wants to bring down the corrupt power systems of the world and end the suffering they cause. To do so, he plans to use various high-tech gadgetry to blast a Mind Raping "God signal" across the entire planet. Major world leaders and military honchos implanted with a certain chip — a chip they thought was supposed to protect them while the blast took care of their enemies — would find that in actuality the chip enhances the signal, and all implanted with the chip will die horrific deaths, and surrounding un-chipped populations would be hit with massive psychic trauma. The rest of humanity would receive the signal but would not die; instead they would hear the ominous voices, see the giant "eye of God" in the sky, and feel the signal-stimulated fear in their hearts, and submit themselves to the angry God. Those few whose brains are less prone to the signal's power would be drawn to Lear's Evil Tower of Ominousness, where he would make them his apostles, helping him rebuild the world. Oh, and in order to broadcast the "emotion" element of the signal, he uses his own daughter, an empath born and bred to fulfill precisely this function.
  • Red vs. Blue:
    • Omega, an aggressive A.I., has tons of evil plans. They range from rather elaborate - Weather-Control Machine, extremely slow robot army, downloading music - to just plain crushing the entire universe.
    • He later teams up with Gamma, another A.I., and the Freelancer Wyoming in an evil plan to subvert the aliens' religion from within, thereby defeating the aliens and taking control of their entire species. And possibly conquering the universe with their new army.
  • Cinder Fall's evil plan in RWBY finally comes to light in season 3, with the previous seasons dedicated to preparation. Cinder and her team manipulate a public event to generate enough negative emotion to attract an entire legion of Grimm to attack the kingdom. During the attack, Cinder moves in to kill the Fall Maiden and obtain her godlike power, only to be crippled by Ruby's silver eyes in response to Pyrrha's murder. Cinder later attempts to steal the powers of the Spring and Winter Maidens through her lust for power, but for the former, she only kills a decoy, and is defeated by the real Spring Maiden in retaliation, while for the latter, Fria retaliates with an impassable blizzard, insuring Penny becomes the new Winter Maiden instead of either Cinder or the intended successor, Winter Schnee; when Cinder eventually murders Penny for her powers, she still loses it to Winter.

    Webcomics 
  • Tons in Sluggy Freelance.
    • Hereti Corp: 1) create an army of invincible alien clones to conquer the world, 2) locate Oasis by making the trigger for her homicidal rages the symbol for a national fast food chain.
    • Chilus: release a swarm of mind-eating insects to bring about "the end of the world through bugs" as prophecied.
    • Dr. Steve: brainwash his adoptive daughter so she can "go on a date with a lesbian and then tell all." Okay, they can't all be winners.
  • In Dead of Summer, Doug Fetterman has one. It involves making an evil clone of Panther to replace the real one, getting rid of the real Panther, downloading crucial information from KILROY, reformatting KILROY, killing Dr. Light, getting the fake Panther to elect him leader of the Protomen, and destroying all who stand in his way. And if that fails, blow them up using the reformatted KILROY as a Time Bomb.
  • Joel Calley from Concession has manipulated much of the overarching plot seemingly to destroy his older brother for taking their father's company and leaving and killing his twin sister whose vengeful ghost is the reason Joel can't let it go.
  • In Fans!, this trope backfires. Feddyg captures Hilda and replaces her with a duplicate controlled by him, ultimately sending it to kill Rikk; Hilda, instead, causes it (apparently her) to shoot itself in front of him, who's already anxious about the new program. Might have thought that one out better.
  • In S.S.D.D. the Oracle does these out of boredom. For example it would create a superweapon so powerful that the world would have no choice but to destroy it simply to watch its efforts in accomplishing such a goal.
  • Zenith, the "Perfect Female" from Commander Kitty, plans to create for herself the "Perfect Male" and from there create the "Perfect Species"...as soon as she can figure out why they chose elephant feet for him.
  • The Order of the Stick: Redcloak's overarching plot is to seize control of the Snarl and use it to threaten the gods into accepting his demands. That is this trope to the point where he unironically refers to it as The Plan when discussing it.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Magus comes up with a plan to get his body back which is later explained to Ashley.
  • In Inverloch, the question becomes not just "what happened to Kayn'dar", but why Kayn'dar has turned against his people and teamed up with Raul, the human mages' former Archmage, in a plot that involves Black Magic. Their intent is to accelerate the Severing of elves from the spirit world by afflicting them all with the condition in a single event. Kayn'dar is actually Acheron, who wants revenge for his father's murder by an elf, and Raul wants to get back at them for betraying and disgracing him. This would cause magic to slowly die out even among humans because they need elf ancestry to maintain the ability. Notably, Acheron sympathises with the Severed and isn't interested in outright killing, instead, he's specifically after the poetic justice of bringing them down to normal.

    Web Original 
  • The less creative may use the Evil Plan generator.
  • The Necromancer of the Whateley Universe has one, but it still hasn't been revealed, because he's still at the Grand Theft MacGuffin stage of the plot. He still had a massive plan in play just in "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl" where he found out Ayla was having a birthday party in Boston. He spun it into a plan to: break his minions out of the inescapable superjail outside Boston; find out which of his other minions was The Mole; steal yet another MacGuffin; create a hostage situation to get yet another MacGuffin; take out the SWAT teams that would get sent to that hostage situation; get Fey under Mind Control or worse; and also kill a bunch of Ayla's friends, just to send a message to someone who had pissed him off. He pulled off most of it.
  • The Daily Victim plays this for laughs when an employee of an obscure gaming mag plots to get his people into a con. When they get there, he asks the guy at the door to give them their passes. Which he does. The narrator, expecting a refusal, has already set his non-defined, incomprehensible plan into motion. The installment finishes with him desperately trying to stop his associates before they start their part of the scheme.
  • General Mistlethwakey from EHUD Prelude To Apocalypse has his 'Plan', an elaborate scheme to to achieve his goals. Said goals haven't been made clear yet, but he did sic a pack of supersoldiers on the former president, and then spin the resulting public panic to get his underling made president... so there's something there.

    Web Videos 
  • Doctor Steel is "a man with a plan and a mechanical band, who can't do a little cause he can't do enough!"
  • Some Jerk with a Camera: The creation of Disney's California Adventure is portrayed like this, with Michael Eisner as a James Bond villain, complete with an eyepatch, a German accent, fedora and a (plush toy) Right-Hand Cat.
    Michael Eisner: Ve vant zhe tourists to schtay in ze park. Vhy do they leave ze park?
    Disney Employee: Uh, well, uh, Mr. Eisner sir, according to the market research we've done, people leave so they can explore the rest of California!
    Michael Eisner: Then ve vill bring the rest of California, [throws cat away] HEEEEEEEERE!

    Western Animation 
  • The Owl House: Emperor Belos announces to the Boiling Isles his way of destroying wild magic that would occur on The Day of Unity. "Hollow Mind" reveals the true nature is that Belos is a human Witch Hunter seeking to destroy all witches and demons by the usage of a draining spell to annihilate all trace of magic in his effort to "save humanity from evil".
  • Boris and Natasha go through many Evil Plans on Rocky and Bullwinkle, such as a sinister plot for giant, robotic mice from the Moon to eat through American TV antennas so that entertainment-starved Americans will flee the country, leaving it ripe for conquest. Boris is, of course, the Big Cheese.
  • Cobra Commander from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero once wasted a huge amount of resources stealing equipment to build a giant laser... so he could carve his face in the moon. Destro was not impressed.
    • Another attempt by Cobra Commander was to use a love potion to allow The Baroness to seduce a ship magnate, only to have a fight break out between Cobra and G.I. Joe over the chemical, only to have the potion stolen by a crab. At least this time Destro found the whole silly fiasco hilarious.
    • Though usually, at least, Cobra's plans would be somewhat more grounded, such as sabotaging a satellite or killing a particular G.I. Joe agent. Of course, they also had some straight Take Over the World ones.
  • Endlessly lampshaded and over and over again by the various Card Carrying Villains of Kim Possible. In fact, while tutoring a would-be villain, Shego explains how it's the single most important part of being a villain (ironically Shego can't think up an evil plan herself; as a sidekick she's used to her boss Drakken doing all that).
  • The Robot Devil in an episode of Futurama: "My ridiculously circuitous plan is one-quarter complete!"
  • Justice League Unlimited:
    • "Task Force X" has one of the most beautifully constructed Evil Plans. The plan is fueled by Pragmatic Villainy, because Task Force X is formed entirely by sociopaths and a Token Good Teammate, so they can be controlled because they are not psychopaths. The plan must be followed Right on the Tick and it does not permit unnecessary killing because it wastes time. It works because it was planned by a Clock King who is The Sociopath himself and understands how they think. It seems to be a classic Grand Theft MacGuffin... but in reality, it is a Despair Gambit Cadmus is pulling on the Justice League.
    • Parodied in the third season, specifically "Dead Reckoning", in which Grodd's elaborate evil plan turns out to be "transforming every man, woman and child on Earth... INTO AN APE!". This is appropriately lampshaded, and also face-shotted.
  • Parodied in The Tick, in which The Tick has just captured one of the serial robber Idea Men and demands to know "what's the big idea". The idea man explains that their plan was to steal a lot of money, so they'd get rich and wouldn't have to work any more. The Tick is genuinely shocked by this fiendish plan.
  • Played every which way with Phineas and Ferb's Dr. Doofenshmirtz, whose main goal is to "TAKE OVER THE TRI-STATE AREA!". He's not above the occasional revenge sideplot or a little mind control, but ultimately, he wants to rule. The alternate-universe Doofenshmirtz in the "Across the 2nd Dimension" movie has alt-Doof trying to take over the multiverse's... tri-state area. Some things never change.
    • Santa Claus in the Christmas special inverts this trope by incorporating Doofenshmirtz's evil scheme to fulfill the odd Christmas wishes of Phineas, Baljeet, Buford, Candace, and Doofenshmirtz. This also just happens to restore the faith in children of a curmudgeonly elf.
  • The villain in the first season of Wakfu looked for fuel for his MacGuffin, so he can undo a past wrong. In the process, he nearly destroys an entire race, justified by "it will all be undone when I'm successful." In the end, though, it seemed that his MacGuffin isn't very 'fuel-efficient'.
  • Virtually every episode of Pinky and the Brain is driven by a plan to Take Over the World.
  • "I Have A Plan" is the catchphrase of The Evil Count Geoffry from Blazing Dragons.
  • Batfink: Regardless of the villain, the plan usually boiled down to 'kill Batfink'.
  • Superfriends: In The World's Greatest Superfriends, Mxyzptlk tries a scheme in a deliberate Whole-Plot Reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. The imp makes the big mistake of letting his victims get back together after their individual adventures, compare notes and realize their experiences were suspiciously similar. As a result, the heroes deduce the common element of the scheme, sabotage it, and then sucker Mxy with some Briar Patching into banishing himself.
  • In the Code Monkeys episode "E.T.", Mr. Larrity buys the rights to make a game based off Steven Spielberg's movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In an obvious nod to the horrid real-life E.T. game for the Atari 2600, Dave goes to a strip club instead of the movie, and just makes up stuff for the game, which ends up sucking. As it turns out, Mr. Larrity had pinned the making of the E.T. game on a rival company, Bellecovision, and had also been paid a substantial amount of money by George Lucas to discredit Spielberg by making a crappy licensed game based off his movie.
  • In Ed, Edd n Eddy, Jimmy, the effeminate kid in the cul-de-sac, successfully engineers one of these in the episode "If It Smells Like An Ed". He frames the Eds for ruining his Friendship Day celebrations, leaves false clues for them to follow, uses Rolf as his Unwitting Pawn and strikes a deal with the Kanker Sisters, climaxing with the Eds trapped in a shed left to choose their fate: getting beat up by the kids or smooched by the Kankers? They get both. And why did this happen? Because Eddy gave Jimmy a wedgie.
  • Dragons: Riders of Berk:
    • Mildew will stop at nothing to banish dragons from Berk. He thinks they're Always Chaotic Evil because he spent his life fighting them. In truth, every episode further proves they're Always Lawful Good.
    • Later episodes establish Alvin The Treacherous with a different goal; he wants to conscript 'the Dragon Conquerer' (i.e. Hiccup) so he'll have his own Dragon Riders
  • God, the Devil and Bob:The Devil wants to tempt Bob into sin so he'll go to hell, just to spite God.
  • Vicky Broomstick of Regal Academy is always plotting these. They are thwarted by Rose and her friends, thus her goal is get her expelled.
  • In The Simpsons episode loosely based on Evita Principal Skinner has a self-described Evil Plan to cancel Music, Gym & Art classes while pinning the blame on school council president Lisa.
  • The Green Goblin pulls this off in Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) by manipulating Taskmaster, his cronies and those on the Tricarrier into getting him out of SHIELD custody and in possession of the Siege Perilous.
  • Steven Universe: At first, the heroes believe that the villains, the Homeworld Gems, are trying to reactivate the Kindergarten to produce an army of Gems to conquer Earth. They're wrong, their real evil plan is far more horrific: the Kindergarten is merely an experiment ground for forcing shattered Gem shards to undergo fusion to create the Cluster, a gigantic mutant Gem that has been incubating inside the Earth's core for 5000 years; when the Cluster awakens, it'll crack the Earth open like a chick inside an egg. So, basically, they're engaging in rape and necromancy. Why? Because the leader Diamonds on the Gem Homeworld are still sore about losing a war to the protagonist's mother a thousand years ago and want to destroy the whole planet out of spite. And you thought this was a cute little show. It's later revealed that the protagonist's mother also supposedly shattered one of their own, Pink Diamond, who was originally meant to rule Earth as her first colony until the war broke out.
  • The evil scheme of the Yogman Twins from Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? is to take the titular character's brain and use it to take over the school.
  • Several of the antagonists in the Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon had nefarious schemes that the Kids had to thwart.
    • The Funbusters from the episode "Batteries Not Included" tried to destroy all toys by distributing batteries that were deliberately made so that they'd ruin any toy that used them.
    • "Honest Abe Has a Close Shave" had a chunky felon named Boss Man try to steal Wrinklin' Lincoln from Mt. Rushmore so that he could glue him onto a headless sphinx to serve as a replacement head.
    • Chris Mess from "Chris Messin' August" tried to ruin Christmas for everyone by impersonating Santa and convincing all the children that they now had to be naughty if they wanted to have presents.
  • In the first season of Pound Puppies (1980s), Katrina Stoneheart's main goal was to get the Puppy Pound shut down, but she would occasionally just come up with schemes to cause harm to the Pound Puppies just because, occasionally hiring Captain Slaughter to capture them so they can be made into fur coats. When the second season retooled the show so that Katrina owned the pound and ran it like a prison, she still made plans that involved being mean to dogs, but her main goal was now to capture Cooler, Bright Eyes, Whopper, and Nose Marie so that she can imprison them with the rest of the dogs in her pound.
  • Drawn Together:
    • The titular Board of Education in "Foxxy Love vs. the Board of Education" had a rather racist scheme of preventing black people from succeeding at their SATs to keep them from completing their education and ending up stupid enough to continue wasting their money on tacky merchandise, which he intended to do by giving them grape-flavored mentholated pencils that they'd end up eating before they could complete the tests.
    • In "Terms of Endearment", Mickey Mouse (who is obscured in shadow and has his name bleeped out as both "Mickey [Mouse]" and "[Mickey] Mouse" to poke fun at copyright laws) has a plan to capture and exterminate all cartoon characters who are racist stereotypes. This was most likely a dig at Disney being notorious for their tendency to keep politically incorrect aspects of their older work under wraps.
  • The main Big Bad of Ben 10, Vilgax, wants to steal the Omnitrix so he can mass produce it and create an army of shapeshifters to conquer the universe.

Alternative Title(s): Evil Scheme, Villain Plot

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