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"Another planet and it's mine!"
Choirs of daemons howl in salute as they sense his flagship exiting from warpspace at the edge of the system. Chains of cities across the surface of the planet are set ablaze in welcome as his battle barge slides into orbit. Thousands of slaves are sacrificed in celebration as he sets foot upon the surface, the very earth beneath him soaked in the blood of his victims.
Generally below the Dimension Lord but above The Emperor and the Evil Overlord lies this guy.
Maybe he wants to conquer the universe. Maybe he wants to kill everyone in it. Maybe he just eats planets. Whatever he does, he'll be crazy-mad powerful, so it's going to take a whole boatload of heroes to take him down.
Sometimes he'll have an army to back him up, but more often than not, he'll work alone, relying on his incredibly vast cosmic powers to crush the good guys. Many have both.
These characters are usually male, although fortunately changing gender roles are offering more and more females the opportunity to enslave entire galaxies. Distinguishable from the Eldritch Abomination in that these guys have somewhat human motives for what they do. Often, this is what the Sealed Evil in a Can turns into once it's unsealed.
Examples
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Anime
- The Holy Nightmare Corporation, the Big Bad of the Kirby anime, is stated to have already successfully conquered the universe and defeated at least one major resistance movement... but a Kid Hero is shaping up to take them down.
- Freeza from the Dragon Ball series. Immensely powerful to the point of being considered invincible, he nonetheless usually has his army to do the actual fighting. Known for exterminating large portions of planets' populations and enslaving the rest, or simply killing off the entire population and selling the planet to the highest bidder, his name was feared by all spacefaring civilizations throughout the galaxy. The fact that he could blow up your planet on a whim just served as further incentive to surrender.
- There's also Lord Slug who also fits this trope well.
- Zoltar from Battle of the Planets (and only Battle Of the Planets. The original Gatchaman was set entirely on Earth, villains and all!)
- Zarkon and his son, Lotor from Voltron.
- Reinhard von Lohengramm, the protagonist of Legend of Galactic Heroes is a rare heroic example of this trope (although he might count as an Anti-Hero. Might.) He wants to unite all of space under his rule. The thing about it is that his Empire is actually pretty awesome because he's a superb ruler. They're opposed by the democractic Free Planets Alliance. A huge topic in the series is basically the conflict between a good autocracy and a rotten democracy.
- Subverted twice: first, Yang Wen-Li, his rival from the Free Planet Alliance is a much better conqueror than him (a pissed Yang can fight Reinhard to a standstill with a tenth of his troops), the only thing stoping him from conquering the galaxy being his lack of ambition and distaste for playing political games; and second, the real Galactic Conqueror is not Reinhard but his wife, Hilda, the only character in the verse who actually manage to outgambit Yang
- The aptly-named Sailor Galaxia from Sailor Moon. No points for guessing what is that last planet she needs to conquer to complete her quest.
Comic Books
- The Marvel Universe's Thanos of Titan has embodied this trope in the past, with his obsession with ultimate power and Death being his primary motivations. His first appearance had him conqueroring his home planet of Titan with similar plans for Earth.
- This is a general characterization for most cosmic-centric supervillains within the Marvel Universe. Some prominent terran-centric supervillains like Doctor Doom and Kang The Conqueror occasionally branch off into this trope, when their ambition exceeds their normal boundaries.
- Annihilus, The Supreme Intelligence, at times the Skrulls and, whenever Lilandra isn't in charge, the Shi'ar emperor/empress tends to fill this role too, especially since Vulcan is in charge now.
- Terminus the cosmic strip-miner.
- A large percentage of the giant monsters from Marvel's pre-super hero days were alien invaders (Goom, his son Googam, etc.). Even Groot, who has since done a Heel Face Turn, started out this way.
- A lesser known one is Arm'Chedon(Armeggedon), an enemy of The Hulk from the 90s and leader of the Troyjan Empire. He was so busy conquering planets that he didn't even notice he had two sons running around until one of them got killed harassing the Pantheon(Hulk's team at the time) on Earth, and the other died in trail by combat with the Hulk. He swore vengeance, but got all of one appearance until well over a decade later.
- Darkseid of The DCU.
- Brainiac of the The DCU. His goals and methods have varied a lot over the years, but he still usually fits this trope.
- Mongul fits it to a T.
- Despero and Kanjar Ro are much lower-tier versions of this trope. Kanjar Ro is usually treated as a joke villain these days.
- Starro the Conqueror, although his more powerful appearances drift him more towards being an Eldritch Abomination.
- Larfleeze of the Orange Lanterns once held an entire solar system under his control, and possesses the power of an entire Corps, though his interests tend more to fulfilling his endless greed. He also commands a vast army of Orange Energy constructs to obey his every whim.
- Megatron from the various Transformers canon.
Film
- Palpatine from Star Wars is the consummate example of this trope, though he did it through pure Magnificent Bastardry rather than outright force. He got voted into absolute power, after masterminding a civil war after a millenium of peace, resulting in him receiving popular support for his authoritarian reforms. By the time he declared himself Emperor, he already had absolute control of the Republic...or, as he declared it, the first! Galactic! EMPIRE!
- "So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause."
- Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon film is referred to as the Emperor of the Universe and the Galaxy. The fact that he can casually cause moons to collide with planets and rain down "natural" disasters on every solar system when he wants to test them definitely places him on the level of Galactic Conqueror.
Literature
- Subverted and played straight with Emperor Zhark in the Thursday Next series. In his book series he regularly destroys and enslaves whole worlds. In person he's a pretty nice guy, though he does tend to overreact a bit, like responding to a shoot out in a Western book by deploying Space Marines.
- Paul Atreides, the hero of Dune, brought his dynasty to supreme power by threatening to destroy the all-important Spice.
- The Mule, in the Foundation series, damn near scuttles the Seldon Plan, as psychohistory can't predict things like mutants with mind control powers and attitude problems.
- The Real goal of Mesa in Honor Harrington as part of their goals overthrowing the anti-transhuman culture.
Live Action TV
- Anubis in Stargate SG-1. As well as the Ori, who have already conquered one galaxy.
- The Master in Doctor Who.
- Pretty much any villain race in Star Trek at some point has aspirations of galactic conquests. But as far as individuals in the series go, the Borg Queen is the best example.
- His Divine Shadow in Lexx.
- Super Sentai and Power Rangers have a few:
Religion
- Xenu in Scientology conquered many worlds and dropped his excess population into Earth's volcanos, leading to many of the evils that plague mankind.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000 has more than its fair share of these, some evil... some really evil. (See page quote.) The most successful was undoubtedly the Emperor of Man, founder and god of the Imperium, the setting's "good guys".
- The other "good guys" of 40, the Tau Empire, also have this as a goal. Most of the other races are more interested in some combination of killing, raping, torturing, or just eating everyone. Black and Grey Morality indeed.
- Not to mention Abaddon the Despoiler. Warmaster of Chaos. Blessed by all the Chaos Gods. He led thirteen Black Crusades and the Gothic War against the Imperium (and failed for now). He is now trying to amass all the Chaos armies and unleash his horde on the most prized Imperium worlds, such as Terra, to finally succeed in what Horus didn't.
- While each of the Chaos Gods qualify as eldrich abominations, they also struggle against one another for control of the galaxy and the souls and minds of all that live within it in the manner of Galactic Conquerors.
- In The Shape Of The Nightmare To Come and The Age Of Dusk, Abaddon finally manages to take over all of Segmentum Obscurus.
- Traveller: Cleon I, founder of the Third Imperium. In something of a subversion, he not only succeeds, but his empire is actually a more-or-less nice one once it is created - whatever one can say of how he created it. Cleon was a skillful politician, businessman, and diplomat. He knew when to entice, when to bludgeon, and how to weave together multitudinous plans, and in general he was a very Magnificent Bastard.
- Albadawi might count. He was a Four Star Badass who pretty much won the Interstellar Wars himself. In his case he was acting as a servant of the Terran Confederation rather then for his own ambition.
Video Games
- The Zerg Overmind from Starcraft wants to assimilate all life in the universe into the Zerg Swarm.
- Emperor Percival Tachyon, from Ratchet & Clank: Tool of Destruction has managed to bring most of the Polaris Galaxy under his sway
- Earthbound's Giygas was this in the prequel, before he became an Eldritch Abomination.
- Bowser aspires to be a universe conquerer in Super Mario Galaxy. He fails.
- Knights of the Old Republic has both Darth Revan in the Back Story of the game and Darth Malak as the current Big Bad. In The Dark Side ending, the Player Character becomes one.
- Freedom Force has Lord Dominion.
- Civilization IN SPACE!! games like Master Of Orion usually have this as an option for winning the game.
- Sargeras the Fallen Titan from the Warcraft universe, whose goal is to lead the Burning Legion to destroy the entire universe.
- Humanity in one ending of Mass Effect.
- The Reapers are an interesting variation of this. In a way, they already control the galaxy, as every piece of technology in it is comes from their technology. Every 50,000 years or so, they make a galactic invasion and wipe out all advanced organic life.
- The Gravemind and its Flood forces in Halo. According to its words, the Flood had already conquered a galaxy "of flesh and bones" and now were planning on conquering the next one. They had problems with that when the Forerunners used all of their highly advanced technology and all of their courage in a attempt to stop the Flood...only to sacrifice themselves and all sentient life in a effort to starve them to death. 100,000 years later, the Gravemind is back in the game but was again defieded, this time by the Humans and the Covenant, who even decided to put all their differences aside until the Gravemind and its forces were gone. That would be difficult since the Gravemind claims that its death would be nothing more than a setback and the Flood will win in the long term.
- The ending to Halo3 just about confirms that the Gravemind and the Flood threat are gone. It consolidated all of its forces on the Ark and the second Installation 4, which Master Chief and the Arbiter have all but destroyed.
- Or is it? In Origins II, it seems that the Flood still exist after the battle of Installation 04 (II) but now are too weak to do anything.
- The Flood is never too weak to do anything.
- BIOS from Forgotten Worlds, who has created gods to serve as his enforcers as he travels the galaxy, conquering and reducing worlds into barren wastelands.
- The Grandmaster from Strider and its sequel, who couples it with his desire to create new lifeforms at will to become a new god.
- Genocide/Scumocide from Captain Commando has already established a Criminal Syndicate of bio-engineered super criminals that has taken over the entire galaxy by the time the game kicks in.
- One boss in Visions & Voices is called the "Minor Galactivore." This guy is not even close to being the final boss.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Lord Lord Krulos of Dino Riders wants nothing better than to return to his star-spanning empire in the future.
- Emperor Zurg, pictured above, successfully conquered the galaxy on several occasions (usually by forcing the Galactic Alliance to surrender to his will, rather than by more "direct" means), but was never able to make it stick for more than an episode or two, thanks primarily to Buzz's interference.
- The DC Animated Universe covers many different generations of heroes, across different decades (even centuries) and facing varied and divergent foes, but none can compare to the ultimate Big Bad, whose mere presence is enough to cow raging mobs of bloodthirsty beasts. There is a reason it is his quotation that is the lead-in to the Evil Overlord page.
- However, the people of Earth opposed him, especially Dan Turpin. Of course, Darkseid did not take kindly on this.
- The Irken Invaders of Invader Zim are a whole caste of Galactic Conquerors who are capable of conquering entire planets single-handedly with proper equipment. The main character is a former Invader who lost his rank after destroying his home planet with a Humongous Mecha and halting the first galactic invasion of his people.
- On The Fairly OddParents, both Dark Laser and Princess Mandie scheme to conquer the galaxy. Though, in Dark Laser's case, he seems content to blow up the Earth.
- Cy-Kill from Challenge Of The Go Bots. He's mostly concerned with conquering his homeworld, but he'll conquer Earth as a useful stepping stone toward that goal, and he'll gladly conquer other planets once that's done.
- Nemesis from Robotix.
- Daemon from ReBoot is a supervirus who can bring entire systems under her control simply by entering them. By the time she actually appears, she has overtaken most of the Net.
- Horde Prime from She-Ra; somewhat unusual in that he has in fact already conquered the galaxy in question.
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