Evil Reactionary

"New York! Prepare to be honked as you've never been honked before!"

"In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty carpool lane of an abandoned superhighway."

— Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Ah, nostalgia. The thing that drives salmon to go back to the river where they were born (okay, so it's not actually nostalgia, but bear with us), drives people to walk 20 miles in snow to get a slice of pizza of a beloved pizzeria that's about to close down for good, and drives salmon-people to remember the good old days when the snow pizza in the river was... You get the idea.

Now. Some people take this a bit too far (see Disco Dan, Born in the Wrong Century, Outdated Outfit, and New-Age Retro Hippie), but don't harm anyone in their quest to relive their youths, childhoods, or more innocent times.

Enter this guy. He loves that time/place. A lot. Enough, indeed, that he will do his very best to recreate it. Whether the society around him wants it recreated or not. Usually it doesn't, if only because, if it did, it would recreate said times itself. Sometimes, this guy will also be fixated on some other place, as well, and will try to recreate it on the world around him (so that, say, instead of going to Italy and trying to recreate the Roman times, they will try to recreate the Roman times in New York).

The Evil Reactionary will usually think of himself as a good guy who's trying to prevent the decay of society. In reality, he's trying to bring back the past through any means possible in order to ensure that he never has to set foot outside of his narrow comfort zone ever again. Their efforts are almost always for naught, since the past Utopia they imagine never existed in the first place.

Sometimes the Evil Reactionary knows that things are better for people as a whole right now, but want to revert things back because the changes didn't benefit themselves or even reduced their standing. And sometimes this character isn't even that old, but has merely internalized nostalgia for a particular period; he might even offend older people who were actually there, and who are as put off by this freakishness as the younger, "modern" people. At worst, he'll collaborate with the reactionary forces trying to overthrow the progressive government.

Those Wacky Nazis in the post-WWII stories are almost always this, due to their traditionalist beliefs clashing with the modern societies.

Compare Evil Luddite, who resents technological changes rather than societal changes. Though considering they go hand in hand, an overlap is possible. This trope may appear unintentionally in a reactionary fantasy where the protagonist comes across as a Designated Hero. See also Still Fighting the Civil War, which occurs when a character is willing to admit that most things have changed, but a particular sociopolitical issue that most people have put behind them is still relevant. May be what a former hero becomes if the progress of society is too great since the former hero's time in the case of Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society. Contrast Good Old Ways where there's an old-fashioned hero, The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized for the opposite end of the villain spectrum, and Villainous Ethics Decay for when the reactionary villain was right (as in, it's demonstrated in the story/lore) that the (criminal) society really has decayed from before.

noreallife No Real Life Examples, Please! Otherwise, we'd just say "every fascist who ever was" and be done with it.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The main antagonists in Crayon Shin Chan The Adult Empire Strikes Back, Ken and Chako, are the leaders of the 'Tomorrow Once More' organization, which is built upon the idea of keeping every Japanese citizen in their idealized version of the 20th century.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: The higher-ups of Jujutsu HQ are a bunch of elders who spend most of their time arguing with anyone who opposes their conservative views and generally look down on anyone who steers too far from what they consider to be traditional Jujutsu (such as Hakari's pachinko-based Idle Death Gamble). When living vessels of powerful curses emerge (such as Yuji or Yuta), their standard approach is to have them executed while ignoring the possibility that they could be a powerful asset if handled properly. They only reason they can't completely get away with their policies is that Satoru Gojo opposes them at every step of the way; after he is sealed in the Prison Realm during the Shibuya Incident, the higher-ups immediately turn him into a scapegoat for the whole debacle based on a mere technicality that blatantly ignores the bigger picture and make it a criminal offense to attempt to release him, under penalty of death. Following that, they revoke Yuji's stay of execution after Sukuna's destruction of Shibuya and force Yuta into a Binding Vow so that he will personally kill Yuji. All of this while doing absolutely nothing to stop Kenjaku's plans.
• The world of One Piece is strongly hinted at to be one where such forces, now known as the World Government, had become victorious. The "Void Century" refers to a century (between 900 and 800 years ago) of the One Piece world's history that has seemingly gone missing. Bits and pieces of what happened during this time have popped up as the series has gone on, including the existence of robot armies, space travel, and technological superweapons. (By contrast, One Piece's modern day weaponry is restricted to cannons, swords, and flintlock pistols, and strongly resembles the 17th and 18th century days of high seas piracy.) The World Government actively hunts down and kills anyone with knowledge of the Void Century, which is why Nico Robin, an Adventurer Archaeologist who can read the Poneglyphs said knowledge is stored upon, has a price on her head.

Comic Books

• There was a Batman issue where a Mad Bomber was demolishing newer skyscrapers in order to restore Gotham's '30s-era skyline.^note Which wouldn't necessarily work out for him, since other skycrapers have probably been torn down since then.
• William Burnside, the 1950s version of Captain America turned supervillain, is so horrified by the changed values of 2000s+ America that he will work with absolutely anyone who promises to fight to restore traditional American values, such as making atheism and abortion illegal, forcing women to go back to being housewives, and putting minorities back in their place as a quiet and culturally separate underclass. In his defense, he's also being mentally damaged by his Psycho Serum, but it's been made clear multiple times that his conservative values have simply made him unable — and unwilling — to adjust to the radically different cultural mores he finds himself amongst, in comparison to Steve Rogers and his progressive values.
• In the Marvel Universe, the Royalist Forces of America are a terrorist organisation (whose leaders are descended from Revolutionary War loyalists) who wish to dissolve America's democracy and re-institute a class system.
• The Runaways once faced an old man who unleashed a monster on Los Angeles with the power to revert the city to the way it was when his late wife was still alive.
• Spider-Woman: Turner D. Century, a crazed lunatic of a supervillain who wanted to change society back to that of the 1890s. Somewhat justified in that he was deliberately raised to be that way by his conservative adoptive father.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): After WWII Diana faces off against Nazis who want to restore the the glory of the Third Reich.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Alkyone flips her lid and betrays her queen in response to the queen being granted a daughter, which she thinks will destroy the Amazon civilization. Years later after failing to kill the baby and confronted with the evidence that the Amazons are just as strong a people as before she resents the changes caused by Diana's birth and life and deposes the queen in order to try to make things "right" again.

Fan Works

• Earth's Alien History has a few examples:
  • The Race has to deal with a wave of terrorism by ultra-conservatives who despise the rapid changes made to their Empire ever since meeting humanity.
  • Conservative elements among the Votanis Collective's military and civilian leadership are so opposed to joining TeTO that they eventually back Rahm Tak staging a Military Coup.
  • During the Reaper War, the leaders of the former Batarian Hegemony (which has since become a Romulan protectorate) are indoctrinated and manipulated into starting a massive terror attack on their homeworld, being so bad that the Romulans are forced to orbitally bombard several cities. This, combined with the sheer brutality shown by the terrorists, finally convinces the Batarians that the "good old days" were anything but.
  • There's also the Bloodwine Society, a group of conservative Klingons who want to undo all of Azetbur's progressive reforms and restore the Klingon Empire to a warrior-dominated culture. When the Kahless clone shows up and also denounces the reforms, they ally with him in launching a rebellion that triggers a Civil War.
  • A short post summarizing the Pact of the Raptor's status at the start of the 24th century notes three distinct groups of conservative-minded individuals — the Sword of Gamilas, descendants of high-caste Batarians who survived the purge following the above-mentioned Reaper War terrorism, and high-ranked members of Ildrian society — who all believe that their respective people's membership in the Pact is removing their cultural identities and making them Romulan puppets, and all of whom intend to act on their anger over it.
  • The Syrannites are a group of Vulcans who despise anything that deviates from Surak's original teachings, to the point of wanting to secede from TeTO, and use terrorist attacks to get their point across. Making things even worse is that their leader is a host for the Goa'uld Seth.

Films — Live-Action

• Joker of The Dark Knight has touches of this, believing himself to be "ahead of the curve" and a representation of what people are really like deep down inside. While he knows he lacks the manpower to do this to the whole world, his entire goal seems to be nothing more than to corrupt as many people into thinking the way he does as humanly possible. He for the most part fails as his grand finale "experiment" with the cruise ships shows most humans, even criminals and murderers, are better than he is, but he does succeed by turning Harvey Dent into Two-Face.
• Enola Holmes: Tewksbury's grandmother had his father killed and is trying to kill him due to not wanting either of them to support a reform bill.
• In Fight Club, Tyler Durden believes modernity has robbed men of purpose and their manhood. Project Mayhem (which we don’t talk about) is about destroying the modern financial infrastructure, in order to take society back to more agricultural, frontier ways.
• In Justice League, Wonder Woman thwarts an attack by a group of "reactionary terrorists" in London. They're apparently looking to send man back to the Dark Ages and the "safety of Holy fear". They kill guards, take people hostages (including a class of schoolgirls) and set up a Time Bomb (and they're apparently ready to die in the explosion, so they might be Death Seekers too).
• In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela takes over Asgard to return it to its conquering, imperialistic roots.

Literature

• The Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church, was almost universally depicted as this in Soviet educational and edutainment literature, ruthlessly persecuting scientists and repressing new ideas to retain their tyrannical power. Not that the Catholics never actually engaged in this, but the portrayals are grossly exaggerated with sweeping generalizations running rampant.
• In the Young Bond novel Blood Fever, Bond fights a secret society dedicated to recreating the Roman Empire.
• The Caliphate from, well, Caliphate. They effectively want a world based on their idealized view of medieval Islam.
• In Christian Nation, the Sarah Palin and Steve Jordan administrations strip rights away from women, LGBTs, and people of different faiths in America over the course of their terms as President to install a government whose laws are based entirely on Christian fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture. Book Burning and government surveillance become commonplace in this new version of America.
• Destroyermen: The New British fleet admiral attempts to kills almost everyone ahead of him in succession with a bomb in the capitol building, hoping to become Governor-Emperor so he could cancel all the reforms (especially the ones about women's rights) that were being instituted following contact with The Alliance and the betrayal of the Honorable New Britain Company.
• Diogenes Club: More misguided than evil, but in "The End of the Pier Show", Brigadier Sir Giles Gallant and a committee of like-minded townsfolk attempt to restore the town to what they regard as the glory days of World War II. Too late they discover that they cannot bring back the good parts of the war without bringing back the bad parts as well.
• Harry Potter: Pure-blood supremacist ideas are a core of Slytherin House's history, and it has resulted in the decay of the house, in Harry's times, into a cesspool of elitism, bigotry, and general social regression.
• Discworld
  • In Men at Arms Edward D'Eath wants to bring Ankh-Morpork back to the days of aristocracy. The man who kills him, the head of the Guild of Assassins, takes up the cause because of the power of the Gonne makes him feel impossible to be beaten.
  • The villain in The Fifth Elephant tries to force the new king of the dwarves of Überwald into civil war because they view him as too sympathetic to modern ideals, like socializing with non-Dwarfs and, most heinously trolls, exposing one's self to light (which in a mine could mean a danger while darkness protects), and actually identifying as one specific gender rather than just being a Dwarf. While the main opponent is defeated there, this mentality continue to be major problem for the Low King of the Dwarfs. This mentality leads to the conflicts in Thud! where they try to destroy evidence that the battle of Koom Valley was an attempt to end the dwarf/troll war and Raising Steam, where they complete the transition into religious terrorist expies and try an outright coup against the Low King.
  • There is another character in the same book who is teased as being this, but isn't. Rather, they are a principled conservative and more concerned with the speed at which Rhys is reforming the fairly conservative Dwarf society. By Raising Steam, they are established as Rhys' loyal opposition.
• Dragonriders of Pern: The Abominators in The Skies of Pern, while primarily Evil Luddites, also qualify for this trope as their efforts to destroy Aivas and anything he restored to Pern are motivated by their desire to keep things as they were before, feeling that any changes will destroy their traditional values and way of life, and that permanently destroying Thread was a bad idea because the threat it posed kept Pern's people working together. As such, they resort to the Evil Luddite method, trying to destroy or prevent the use of anything Aivas shared, in order to turn society back to the way it was before Aivas was discovered. This includes attacking the new Crafthalls founded more recently, since they're based on Aivas' teachings.
• The Free Navy from The Expanse are a bunch of self-aggrandizing Belter Space Pirates who use illegally procured spaceships to put a stop to mankind's expansion into other star systems, where the Belters couldn't compete with Earth-like planets offering more-or-less familiar environment with little adaptation required. Their aim is to restore a status quo from before the Portal Network was opened, but one where the Belters oppress them exploitative Inners instead.
• The Handmaid's Tale: The Republic of Gilead embodies this, not just taking women's rights to vote etc. away but even banning them reading. Anyone who won't practice their religion is publicly hanged, along with the LGBT and others who commit a long number of "offenses" that had been long abolished.
• That Hideous Strength: The NICE tended to refer to the ideologies opposing them as "reaction", implying that they viewed them this way; this was all part of how they portrayed themselves as progressive scientists, wanting to reform society. But the NICE wasn't actually a group of scientists at all.
• General Rumford in Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War fits this to a tee: a political general and Chief of Staff in a mid-21st century state whose take on life, the Universe and everything is best described as that of an early 19th century conservative (atheists should lose their citizenship, women should Stay in the Kitchen, the French Revolution was pure Bolshevism, etc.). He also expends tremendous effort imposing these same values on his country, the Northern Confederation (later called Victoria). He is the story's protagonist, and depicted as unambiguously good.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: The faction of nobles that take over the Centauri Republic in seasons 2 and 3, led by Lord Reefa and aided by Londo Mollari, want the Centauri to return to its old ways of empire and conquest. To this end they make allies with the Shadows in order to subdue the Narn and begin aggressively expanding into the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. They are finally brought down by Londo, only for the Drakh to force him into the same role.
• Doctor Who: In "Invasion of the Dinosaurs", Operation: Golden Age plans to use a rudimentary time machine to return the Earth outside London to a pre-technological age, erasing most of the human race from history so that they can repopulate the planet with eugenically-selected "colonists".
• Game of Thrones:
  • The Sons of the Harpy in Meereen are a terrorist organization led by aristocratic former slave owners who want to bring back slavery after it is abolished by Daenerys Targaryen.
  • Some of Daenerys' supporters would qualify as well, since they imagine that restoring House Targaryen to the throne will solve all or most of Westeros' many problems.
• House of the Dragon: The Hightowers don't believe that a woman can rule the Seven Kingdoms and arrange a coup to install one of their own on the Iron Throne and fully set the Heir Club for Men in stone.
• The Handmaid's Tale: As in the book, the Republic of Gilead takes this to an extreme. Their regime explicitly echoes that of the Puritans, from the 1600s.
• Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung: The king and Councillor Min Ik-pyeong, and their faction, are vehemently opposed to anything Western or modern and led The Coup against the previous king to stamp out any modern influences.
• Supernatural: In "Peace of Mind", Chip Harington is the small town owner of a Malt Shop who hates the way the world changed and that many of his friends couldn't cope with the stress, turning to suicide, alcoholism, or just moving out of town. When he realized he was a latent psychic, he used his powers to have his entire community participate in a Pleasantville-style delusion (along with any outsiders who visited the place), while anyone who attempts to break free he brutally murdered.
• Watchmen (2019): Senator Joe Keene claims he wants to turn America back to its "founding values" and "restore balance", clearly implying he means the times of Jim Crow.

Professional Wrestling

• Ashley America wanted to make homemaking the primary purpose of women in society again. For example, she sought to bring down Valkyrie Women's Pro Wrestling, which came into existence after Betty Niccoli lifted the ban on women pro wrestlers in the state of New York, unless it cut down the number of women's matches to one and make sure it features her.
• Ky-ote Joe's group Arrow Club have a tendency to fall into reactionary rampages, sometimes deliberately antagonizing other indigenous identifying wrestlers or American Indian fans for being too complacent while urging them to join the movement to make America Native again. And by America they don't just mean USA but North, South, Central and the surrounding islands.

Tabletop Games

• Battletech has had several in its vast setting:
  • The Draconis Combine has the Black Dragon Society: Traditionalists within their military who seek to return the Combine to a 'pure', earlier state based on Honor Before Reason. While they're generally quiet while Takeshi Kurita lead the Combine, they are a thorn in the side of his son Theodore and his heirs, all of whom are seen as too progressive for the Society's taste.
  • The Word of Blake is a fundamentalist splinter sect of ComStar who rise to prominence in reaction to the ongoing secularization of ComStar following the Clan Invasion. They eventually decide that if they can't control the Inner Sphere in accordance to what they see as the original purpose of ComStar, they will see the Inner Sphere destroyed.
  • ilKhan Brett Andrews, who almost completely destroyed Clan society in an attempt to purify the Clans of Inner Sphere 'taint' and return them to a state prior to exposure to the Inner Sphere. After years of death and destruction, the other Khans agreed that Andrews' Clan Steel Viper was alto tainted. Andrews dishonorably shooting the Star Adders' Khan with a gun in the Circle of Equals and his subsequent death at the hands of the Star Adders' saKhan proved their views, and led to the Annihilation of Clan Steel Viper.
• This is the shtick (overlapping with Evil Luddite) of the villain Retrograde in the Champions sourcebook High Tech Enemies. His power allows him to transform high-tech items into low-tech, non-functioning equivalents, such as transforming a suit of powered armour into a suit of medieval knight's armour.
• Eclipse Phase is written by a passionately socially progressive, capital-A Anarchist, unapologetically transhumanist company that at one point told Men's Rights Activists to stop being fans of their game, meaning it's probably not surprising that they used this trope in-setting in the form of the Jovian Republic a.k.a. Jovian Junta, a state that limits the level of genetic enhancement available to its citizens, rejects the Body Backup Drive, views people who've been restored from backup as soulless abominations, names things after right-wing dictators and generally doesn't play nicely with the predominantly transhuman population of the Solar System.
• The Guiding Hand of Feng Shui are this at their absolute worst. They want to return China to an era of "enlightenment", and utterly despise modern technology and thinking.
• Freedom City, a tie-in to Mutants & Masterminds, has the super-villain "Sky Lord II", a misguided fan of the Centurion rogue who originally bore the moniker of Sky Lord and who ultimately took up villainy himself to fight the "moral decay" he saw overrunning American society from the 60s to the 2000s. It's unclear just when he wants to turn the clock back to - the 1950s or perhaps earlier, maybe closer to the 1900s - but forcing society to go back to "The Good Old Days" is the foundation of his villainous career.
• The Jnanamukti in Mage: The Awakening are a movement of Evil Sorcerers who combine this trope, Fantastic Racism and Evil Luddite to Omnicidal Maniac levels. They yearn for the mythical days of Atlantis, when magic ruled all things and mages were far more powerful, before the Abyss was torn into existence and magic became a rare and delicate thing. As far as they're concerned, Sleeper civilization and the technology it has developed (alongside the existence of non-Mage supernatural creatures) is the only thing sustaining the Abyss. So, they reason, if they destroy civilization and technology, the Abyss will heal and Atlantis can be restored. Keep in mind that they have no proof that this is the case, they just hope it is. But are they powerful enough to enact their genocidal plans? Well...
  • Elsewhere in the New World of Darkness, specifically in the fanmade parts, Clockstoppers in Geniusthe Transgression are prone to this. Some reject modern technology so passionately that it stops working.
• Warhammer 40,000: Once the Imperium was in the hands of an insane mass-murdering tyrant named Goge Vandire, whose rule came to an end when he was anathematized and executed by the very church he led. Some of his followers survive as a sect called the Temple Tendency, seen by the rest of the Imperium as heretics, and seeing the Imperium itself as apostate. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), this reactionary cult isn't too high on the Imperium's list of problems. The phrase "temple tendency", named after the sect, is also used as a general accusation in the Imperium for clergy too fixated on worldly matters.

Video Games

• In Back to the Future: The Game, Edna Strickland. When transported to Hill Valley's founding in the 1800s by accident, the spoilered person is ecstatic to be in such a "pure" era and makes no attempt to leave... until Beauregard Tannen shows up and builds a saloon. (Said character's views on any place that serves alcohol is to Kill It with Fire.) Oddly, one of the first things this character says to Marty (from his own perspective) is that he should not romanticize the past.
• The Knights Templar in Deus Ex: Invisible War see augmentation as a sin and liberalism as a weakness: They want to return society to a neo-feudal state based on faith and purge the world of AI, nanotech and other advances. Picking their ending leads to pretty much exactly this, with the implication that Alex, being nanomachine-enhanced themselves, didn't live to see the endpoint of their choice.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: President Zazz is obsessed with the past glory of humanity and seeks to revive the original humans, but he rejects coexistence with non-humans and seeks to conquer and exploit them for the sake of humanity. He hates the idea of non-humans living in the lands that once belonged to humans, even though it was the demons who were responsible for wiping out humanity in the first place.
• Hearts of Iron IV mods:
  • The New Order Last Days Of Europe
    • The most obvious example is Sergey Taboritsky, an Ax-Crazy Evil Regent from Komi. His ultimate goal is to restore the Tsarist monarchial rule of Russia under Alexei II. Only problem being Alexei is dead and Taboritsky thinks He's Just Hiding, and will do anything he can convince himself will bring him back — including declaring that All Crimes Are Equal, exterminating all ethnic and religious minorities (especially Jews), gratuitous use of Deadly Gas on soldier and civilian alike, enforcing and exaggerating The Spartan Way on all civilians, killing off Russia's poorest, re-instituting slavery, and other policies so crippling that the whole country collapses into a warlord state.
    • A (somewhat) less extreme example would be Konstantin Rodzaevsky from Amur - a Les Collaborateurs Nazi regime with a fondness for Tsarist days.
    • Another less extreme example is found in the U.S.A., with the politicians George Wallace and Storm Thurmond - whose main goals are mostly to bring back segregation.
  • Kaiserredux has the Constitutional American Republic from the Deep South, who have a fondness for the Confederacy.
• The Cabal of Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising are a band of 21st century power-brokers who want to re-establish the previous world order in a world where industrial use of Nanomachines have created a Post-Scarcity Economy with No Poverty and no material need for war.
• Spider-Man (PS4): Hammerhead, the Big Bad of The City That Never Sleeps DLC mission pack, is a member of the Maggia who is more than a little angry at the fact the organization is almost extinct at the hands of gentrification, members growing old and dying and criminals like Wilson Fisk stealing their power and spends the whole expansion exploiting the chaos of the game's events to try to bring back the "good ol' days" where New York City was a hellhole Gerard Ford had told to "drop dead" and the Maggia reigned supreme.
• Asav, an Indian terrorist and the Big Bad of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, is one of these. Claiming descendance from the old kings of the Hoysala empire, he wants to restore India to the way it was when they were in charge: warfare, bloodshed and Human Sacrifice included. To fulfill that dream, he's willing to buy a bomb from the South African mercenary company Shoreline, take it into a small city on a train, and detonate it, purely to incite a civil war that will put him in charge.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: The Big Bad is ultimately revealed to be an Ancient Evil which wants to revert Amphibia and itself back to a much darker chapter in the froggy alternate world's history. The Core, which was the true ruler of Amphibia during its Multiversal Conqueror days, seeks mastery of the Calamity Gems so it can reactivate Amphibia's magitek and go back to conquering and stripping other worlds bare like it used to. And not only is it willing to strip Amphibia's own resources to rebuild the army, but Earth is its first target for invasion.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Long Feng leads the Secret Police known as the Dai Li and directs them to enforce Medieval Stasis in the city of Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Earth Kingdom, to the point of denying that anything has changed at all in the past hundred years, including the tiny inconvenience that the Earth Kingdom is currently at war with the aggressively imperialistic Fire Nation. He is partially motivated by power, but given that they are losing to the Fire Nation because of his actions (which would eventually result in him losing that power) it is likely he genuinely believes his own justifications — that Ba Sing Se is a perfect society as it is and needs to stay that way, forever.
  • In The Legend of Korra, the Big Bad of Book 2 is Korra's Evil Uncle Unalaq, who is introduced as a hardcore conservative who is very critical of the Water Tribes allowing new technology and ideas into their civilization, and eventually is revealed to be working at turning the clock back even further than that by breaking down the barriers that separate the physical world from the spirit world which is how the world was thousands of years ago, expecting this to turn the tide against modernity even further and creating a better, more spiritual age... ruled by himself and the evil spirit Vaatu, of course.
• In Jackie Chan Adventures, the Brotherhood of Magisters thrived as a ruling secret society during the Dark Ages, and want the UK to revert back to some vaguely Victorian time via magic and alchemy so they can regain their lost influence.
• There was a New Orleans ghost like this in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. He was a Reality Warper that turned the whole area that surrounded him back into 1930s Jazz-era New Orleans whenever he played.
• A couple of examples from The Simpsons:
  • Mr. Burns is a cross between this and a clueless Disco Dan insomuch as he doesn't even know about many of the most basic amenities of the 21st (or even 20th) century.
  • In the episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", Sideshow Bob seeks to bring Springfield back to the glory days before television — by force if necessary.
• Storm Hawks: Cyclonis mentions in the pilot that Cyclonia controlled all of Atmos before the Sky Knights formed.
  Cyclonis: I want things back the way they used to be.
• The Pastmaster from SWAT Kats really misses the Dark Ages. So much so that in his debut he tried to bring them back in the present day. The Swat Kats foiled him. In another episode, he decided to just go back in time to the Dark Ages and take over. The Swat Kats foiled him. Eventually, he suffered Motive Decay and messed with the originally happy future of Megakat City and turned it into a Bad Future just to spite the Swat Kats. The Swat Kats foiled him.
• Mad Mod, from Teen Titans (2003), wants to impose England on everyone else. Specifically, a historical, romanticized England. He also wants to reclaim America for England, though a version where he's the king (what he intends the actual royal family to do is unspecified).

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