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Nebulous Evil Organisation
aka: Nebulous Evil Organization
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Evil R Us Incorporated- now with 30% more evil!
"You really don't know anything about us! Ha! It's so amusing, because we're on the other side thinking 'Oh, the MI6, the CIA, they're looking over our shoulders, they're listening to our conversations', and the truth is you don't even know we exist! "
Appearing most often in less realistic spy/action fiction, the Nebulous Evil Organisation is the natural enemy of Heroes R Us.
Often led by a Diabolical Mastermind, and sometimes developed enough to have its own bureaucracy, It is a vast, deep-pocketed machine with one apparent goal: The proliferation of evil across the globe, maybe with some personal profit on the side.
Like The Syndicate, it has a hand in every conceivable kind of nefarious dealing, from murder to grand robbery to bad traffic. However, its criminal activities have some grand goal, almost always World Domination or The End of the World as We Know It - which is, by sheer coincidence, nebulous enough that nearly any anti-good act can be shoehorned into it. Price-fixing of consumer goods? Fits. Killing political leaders? Fits. Blowing up buildings? Fits. Stealing the gold from Fort Knox? Fits. Attacking the heroes for no stated reason at all? Definitely fits. Expect vast armies of Mooks, a secret underground lair, immense amounts of advanced technology and a clever name.
See also Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy, which the operations extend beyond one single organization.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Pokémon:
- Team Rocket in the anime. Though some of its individual members do have concrete goals in mind (usually some sort of money-making scheme), but the organization as a whole, particularly its management, falls under this.
- Team Magma/Aqua and Team Galactic also can be classified as this, but those organizations have shifted from the more Syndicate-like criminal organization that Team Rocket was to outright Well Intentioned Extremism.
- The views of Team Galactic might fit more as Utopia Justifies the Means with the leadership sometimes bordering on Omnicidal Maniac.
- Team Plasma are a band of Well Intentioned Extremists whose leader, N, seeks to separate pokemon from humans, but the true mastermind Ghetsis, plans on using the organization so that he can take control of the region.
- Giant Robo's Big Fire, an evil organisation who's only goal is absolute world domination! "Together, allegiance or death! Big Fire!"
- Mahou Sensei Negima!: Kosmo Entelecha, enemies of Nagi's group in the past. It wouldn't be quite so nebulous if it weren't Jack Rakan doing all of the explaining. Whenever he goes into the backstory of anything roughly half of it consists of "and then other stuff happened."
- Liar Game's Liar Game Tournament Office. A shady organization out to make a profit, they manage to secure 100 million yen (about US$1.5 million) for each of the participants in the first round...that's US$1.9 trillion.
- Claymore: The Organization. Yes, yes; they are the ones sending out hunters to kill the Yoma, but they also are the ones behind the Yoma.
- The Cutey Honey franchise has Panther Claw, with innumerable guys in spiffy cat masks and cool hats and all manner of typically-female monsters. The original series gave us their goal early on as "the rest of the world doesn't deserve cool stuff, only us!" Different incarnations are different, though: In Cutey Honey: THE LIVE, Panther Claw was about making lots and lots of money through outlandishly evil means (sometimes Crazy Awesome, sometimes Nightmare Fuel, but always with a way to directly profit from the plot of the week.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman has Galactor.
- Tentai Senshi Sunred features Florsheim, an evil organization of monsters bent on world domination. Step 1: Take out local hero Sunred. Dozens if not hundreds of fights later, Florsheim remains winless.
- At one point another such group, the Devil Eye Army, tries to take over Florsheim's turf. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle; Florsheim isn't weak, Sunred is just too damn strong.
- Yami from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. As explained over various chapters (including here
 ), they have their hands in everything from weapon sales to the military to governmental influence, and enough funds to potentially be a self-sustaining nation. Their intention is to preserve and promote the "Satsu-jinken" (killing fist) style of martial arts, a goal they've pursued since their initial formation after World War II because several martial arts masters died during that war. Additionally, the group is known by several names worldwide, including "L'Obscurite" in France, with "Yami" being its Japanese name (both words mean "darkness" in their respective languages). The organization is divided into two factions, one side consisting of weapons specialists and the other side focusing on empty-hand martial arts. At the very top of Yami's structure is the "One Shadow Nine Fists" group, which consists of Yami's ten strongest empty-hand martial artists; the eponymous "One Shadow" is the most powerful being in the entire organization.
- While Yami as a whole espouses the killing-fist philosophy (with their members serving chiefly as assassins-for-hire), the One Shadow Nine Fists leadership core is made up of members who are the most skilled at teaching disciples, as opposed to simply being the best at fighting; in fact, on one occasion it's noted that if the latter condition was the only criterion for membership into the Nine Fists, there would be too much infighting and Yami would destroy itself.
- Interestingly, very few characters in Yami are actually amoral persons: because the "good-teacher" attribute is mandatory to qualify for the One Shadow Nine Fists, several of the ten martial artists in the group come across as being not so much evil as simply being dedicated to their philosophy—once the reader gets to know their personalities—and in fact a number of them still have certain moral guidelines that they will not violate, chief among them the silent agreement with Ryozanpaku that a master should never interfere with his/her student's battles with another student and should never interrupt or intervene in a fight between two masters.
Comics
- Marvel Comics has several: HYDRA, AIM, U.L.T.I.M.A.T.U.M., S.I.L.E.N.T., R.A.I.D., the Secret Empire, Black Spectre, Agence Byzantine, and the Hand being only a few.
- Many of these began as branches of HYDRA: Advanced Idea Mechanics, for example, was their original research & development team before they decided to become independent. Apparently HYDRA's motto ("cut off one head and two will take its place") applies to their branches.
- It gets so bad that one issue of Secret Warriors reveals that even S.H.I.E.L.D. was a HYDRA splinter organ, something not even Nick Fury himself found out until it was too late (to wit, this was early in Dark Reign when they had been shut down).
- For a supernatural flavor, the comic series Nightstalkers had Hydra's Department of Occult Armaments (DOA).
- Mark Waid's Daredevil depicts HYDRA, AIM, the Secret Empire, Black Spectre, and Agence Byzantine as the five cartels that essentially control the global criminal underworld — and are constantly fighting each other for dominance.
- The DCU, in turn, has the H.I.V.E, SKULL, Scorpio, Shadowspire, KOBRA, and the 100 (later the 1000).
- The most recent version of the Society (formerly the Secret Society of Super Villains) qualifies; the original was a Legion of Doom.
- Astro City has Pyramid, a recurring worldwide organization with an Egyptian theme.
- Sin City has the Colonel's Guild which mostly trains/supplies assassins but is also revealed to have Black Market offerings and be in league with mob-boss Herr Walenquist.
- Parodied with S.O.N.I.C.X from Archie's Sonic X comic. They try to come off as a schemeing, evil organisation but they're really just some guys who don't like Sonic. As things go on they come off as complete idiots.
- Jet Dream has CIPHER, whose symbol is a zero, making it perhaps the most generic organization of its kind.
- Watchmen has Pyramid.
- This is not really a good example of the trope; it's more a group of semi-unrelated businesses all of which are involved in acts that are not really "evil" on their own (even their worst activities are more amoral corporate greed than For the Evulz) but which collectively add up to something more sinister. In other words, it's not an evil organization, but an evil person coordinating the activities of the various businesses. Or maybe not even that; it's that kind of story.
- Goodwin and Simonson's "Manhunter" arc that appeared in Detective Comics during 1973-1974 had The Council, whose goals were "take over the world" and "develop immortality so that we're around to enjoy it for a long, long time".
Film
- James Bond series: SPECTRE - the SPecial Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. In the novels, this role was mostly filled by the real-life Soviet organization SMERSH *
Even then, SMERSH was something of this trope, as the real-life SMERSH had been long since disbanded, having only been active as an anti-deserter unit of the NKVD during the war , but SPECTRE showed up late in the series. Probably the ur-example. QUANTUM has this role in Quantum Of Solace.
- M.A.R.S. from GI Joe The Riseof Cobra.
- And Cobra itself in the sequel.
- Captain America (1990): The Red Skull's secret cabal of Corrupt Corporate Executives, General Rippers, and leaders of The Syndicate. It has secretly run the world since The Fifties, and bumps off anyone who gets in its way (including both Kennedys and King).
- The Umbrella Corporation from the Resident Evil movies seem to do little more than make Super Soldier zombies for no apparent reason... even After the End.
Literature
- In the 1990s, The Hardy Boys introduced "The Assassins," a group of Terrorists Without a Cause with hundreds of Mooks and elaborate bases and cloning technology, whose activities tend to enter Bond territory - for instance, the plot to use nuclear bombs to blow up the Ring of Fire volcanoes, reshaping the layout of the Earth's crust.
- The Dresden Files: The Black Council. So far very little is known about it, but it's certainly organised, evil, and particularly nebulous since there's little direct evidence of its existence yet.
- Mark Walden's HIVE Series: "G.L.O.V.E."' from books 9-15. A council of the leading supervillains controlled by the sinister 'Number One'.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events : Though nothing is explicitly stated, heavily implies that the mysterious letters "VFD" refer to the name of an organization that split down the middle into a Hero Secret Service of firefighters and one of these, dedicated in particular to arson. Count Olaf appears to be the group's enforcer, and later on, we meet the leaders...
- In the Replica series, the evil organization known as "The Organization" is constantly trying to capture Amy so they can breed a master race.
- The Shop in Stephen King's Firestarter seems to fall under this category. One of their goals is to create a drug that will turn humans into weapons, and when two of their test subjects have a child together, they are willing to chase them to the ends of the earth to capture her and use her for their own ends. They are so widespread that they have spies in every single town the protagonists flee to. It seems that they have infiltrated every branch of government and they are completely above the law.
- Scorpia in the Alex Rider series starting in the fifth book.
- "The Organisation Which I Represent" is... probably this is the Mediochre Q Seth Series. They're so nebulous it's hard to tell.
Live Action Television
- KAOS of Get Smart.
- THRUSH, from The Man From UNCLE.
- The Syndicate on the X-Files meet in various rooms in New York City (and London in the movie) instead of a central base (though they have a lot of secret sinister research labs).
- Chrysalis from The Invisible Man TV series. They were so nebulous that one of the Agency's main goals towards them was figuring out exactly what their goal was.
- Chuck semi-regularly faces off against the mysterious organization known as FULCRUM.
- It turns out that FULCRUM is only part of The Ring, whoever they are.
- Season 4's Big Bad, this time called Volkoff Industries. At least this time it seems to be a private rather than governmental actor.
- This trope appears, sometimes to the point of stretching credulity, on two of the latter J.J. Abrams shows:
- The Alliance of Twelve (which includes SD-6) from Alias.
- In addition to The Alliance, Alias gives us The Covenant, Prophet Five, K-Directorate, the Triad, The Man, and probably several others.
- Fringe: The Pattern (or rather, ZFT (Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie, which translates to Destruction through Technological Progress), massing civilian collateral damage in an effort to wage war with a parallel universe).
- The Company from Prison Break.
- Babylon 5:
- The Drakh roughly fit this criteria as they seek to spread evil for no apparent reason.
- The Drakh follow on from The Shadows: They want to make the young races "stronger" through war and conflict. They just have different means and a lot of hate for the races who sent their masters packing.
- Wolfram and Hart from Angel. While at first they just appeared to be a company evil lawyers with ties to the demonic underworld, it was soon revealed the company was the personification of evil on Earth. Oh, and possibly every other dimension (in slightly different forms) as well.
- In a twist, Wolfram and Hart doesn't just cause evil—-they actually get their power from it, specifically "man's inhumanity to man."
- Every Showa Era Kamen Rider series had a massive organization with worldwide influence and little evidence of what they really wanted to accomplish (other than the fact that it required a lot of death and destruction.) Namely:
- Shocker from Kamen Rider. In Kamen Rider The First, the organization's name is short for the Sacred Hegemony Of Cycle Kindred Evolutional Realm. After their first major defeat at the hand of the Double Riders, the organization was reformed into Gel-Shocker.
- Destron in Kamen Rider V3.
- Government Of Darkness, often shortened to simply GOD, from Kamen Rider X.
- Geddon and later the Garanda Empire from Kamen Rider Amazon.
- Black Satan, later replaced by Delza Army, from Kamen Rider Stronger.
- Shocker is once again reformed in the form of Neo-Shocker in Kamen Rider Skyrider.
- Dogma Kingdom in the first half of Kamen Rider Super-1, later replaced by Jin Dogma for the second half.
- Gorgom in Kamen Rider Black.
- Shocker reformed twice more as Dai-Shocker and then Super Shocker in Kamen Rider Decade, and returns in Kamen Rider X Super Sentai Superhero Taisen.
- Because of time travel hijinks, Shocker (established as the very same one from the original series) exists well into the next century in the 40th anniversary film Let's Go Kamen Riders. Shocker's the worst due to the Hijacked by Ganon factor. Evidently the Great Leader - one guy with many forms - is behind all those organizations, despite the differing and sometimes incompatible goals of the organizations that actually had goals.
- The latest one has to be Foundation X. This group seems to have an over-arching influence over the subsequent series, being the mysterious backers behind Kamen Rider Double's Museum and the Zodiarts, while researching Core Medals. We also don't know what they're after so far, because their largest appearance, Movie Wars Megamax, has the leader of the plot of the day turn out to be a rogue element; what Kannagi wants isn't necessarily what X wants.
- How I Met Your Mother: Barney Stinson works for the Altru Cell Corporation, and later, Goliath National Bank. Throughout the series he makes references to the shady activities his employers are engaged in.
- Revenge: The Americon Initiative, the domestic terrorist group who the Graysons laundered money for (which they then framed David Clarke for). It seems to be trying to become the new Big Bad of the series.
Tabletop Games
- The Old World of Darkness had quite a few of these:
- Pentex, from Werewolf The Apocalypse, was a faceless multinational holding company whose goals were to perpetuate chaos, spread pollution and devastation, and ultimately prepare the charred remains of the earth for their Cosmic Horror overlords.
- The Technocracy, from Mage The Ascension, was a conglomerate of Mad Scientists, The Men in Black, and Corrupt Corporate Executives who actually were the secret world government in charge of everything. A bit of a variation in that they already feel they control everything, their main goals are to finally crush all remaining pockets of resistance to their control and to completely quash any lingering belief in the supernatural.
- Slightly subverted in own sourcebook, which had rules for Technocratic Player Characters, implied most of the conflict would come from their own superiors instead of their "Traditional" enemies. It also broke the trend by laying out goals, motivations, and concrete plans that were reasonable *if* you accepted their world view as valid.
- Also from Mage The Ascension: the Nephandi, a group of corrupt and evil mages united mainly in their servitude to demonic beings. If it involves corruption, seduction or destruction, the Nephandi want a piece of it.
- A few of these exist in the New World of Darkness as well:
- Vampire The Requiem has both Belial's Brood and VII. The Brood are demon-worshippers and anarchists who believe the Beast is a fragment of divine consciousness imprisoned by Humanity. The best way to get close to the Beast is to do awful, awful things — which often makes them a pain in the ass for other Kindred, as those awful things will draw attention to them. VII is even more nebulous — all anyone knows about them is they kill other vampires for some reason. Even attempts to crack into their heads via telepathy only turn up "VII" branded into their minds. There's even a whole book devoted to VII that offers up three different solutions for their origins, and several others are peppered throughout the line.
- Mage The Awakening has the Seers of the Throne, mages who follow/worship the Exarchs, all-powerful mages who ascended to the Supernal Realms and screwed things up for everyone else in the Fallen World in the process. They believe that magic should only belong in the hands of the worthy ("worthy" meaning "those whose goals align with the Exarchs"), and work to encourage a generally crappy atmosphere in order to discourage uncontrolled Awakenings, mainly through anti-intellectualism, dogmatism, and paranoia.
- T.A.R.O.T. (replacing SPECTRE for legal reasons) in James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret.
- VIPER in the Champions universe.
Video Games
- Evil Genius is all about building this kind of organization.
- The imaginatively-named Himitsu Kessha (lit. "secret society") from the Battle Arena Toshinden series.
- Nozomi Corp from Chaos;Head.
- Inferno from Phantom Of Inferno. They're deliberately referring to themselves as "Hell."
- H.A.R.M. from No One Lives Forever.
- H.A.R.M is only one of them. There's also Danger Danger. There are a few more organizations named in the various intel items that can be gathered. It's hinted they have a friendly rivalry and take part into various contests against each other.
- Shadaloo from Street Fighter started out like The Syndicate and ended up like this.
- Wario Master Of Disguise alludes to this kind of organisation with the company mentioned as owned by Count Cannoli, International Evil Concerns Inc. Although the only thing it's shown to do is built robots to try and kill Wario.
- Cerberus from the Mass Effect games.
- Arachnos in City of Heroes, which is also the government and standing army of a Caribbean island nation, and has every kind of Mook and villain you can imagine. (and it employs all player-created villains) The Council too. (which has a rivalry with Arachnos)
- Also from City of Heroes, the Malta group and the Council. The Malta group has defined goals, though (draconian restrictions on superpowered individuals, or just eliminating them entirely), so they may not count. The Council, on the other hand, is a pretty generic neo-fascist group with no particular goals beyond "be evil".
- The SPY Fox adventure games has the Society for Meaningless Evil Larceny Lying and Yelling. Or, S.M.E.L.L.Y. This causes a bit of confusion when an important item of theirs is found in a trash can.
- V.I.L.E. of the Carmen Sandiego series. As explained in many a game manual, the letters stand for Villains' International League of Evil. There's subtlety for ya.
Web Comics
- Project 0 has the Lancers
- This organization from MegaTokyo.
- Nothing nebulous about them. That's Sony, hence the PS2 thing.
- Hereti Corp from Sluggy Freelance lives and breathes this trope. They've been around for most of the strip's run, and we still have very little idea how they plan to take over the world, other than that it involves Oasis, a Dimensional Flux Agitator, and a chain of fast food restaurants.
- The Minion Master arc introduced an international collection of these organizations, the most significantly featured are NoFun Corporation and Crushtro. The Minion Master is as yet still too nebulous (and perhaps too incompetent) to be identified as evil.
- Winston Rowntree details the typical organisation's structure here, including such positions as "evil publicist" and "evil laundry service" as well as the Five-Bad Band.
Web Original
- The Evil League of Evil in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, ruled by supposed Hellish Horse Bad Horse.
- TAROT, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. It also qualifies as an Ancient Conspiracy.
- An unknown number in the Whateley Universes, including The Brotherhood of the Bell, and the Thule Gemeinschaft.
- Cauldron from Worm, which has some vague, grand scheme to prevent the end of the world. Maybe. Regardless, said scheme involves manipulating politicians and government bureaus, kidnapping, assassinations, alternate universes, and supporting criminals whether they know it or not.
Western Animation
- MAD, from Inspector Gadget.
- F.E.A.R., of the 1960's Birdman cartoons.
- The Venture Brothers' Guild of Calamitous intent, in addition to being a Weird Trade Union.
- Also the original incarnation of S.P.H.I.N.X before they were destroyed by the OSI during the Pyramid Wars of 1987.
- G.I. Joe's Cobra and splinter group The Coil.
- Darkwing Duck's F.O.W.L.
- Parodied in Spongebob Squarepants with E.V.I.L. a.k.a. "Every Villain is Lemons."
- Kim Possible: The Worldwide Evil Empire from one episode, implied to be involved in all sorts of evil from supervillainy to stealing candy from babies.
- Both the HIVE (which includes a supervillain training center, HIVE Academy) and the Brotherhood of Evil on Teen Titans count.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Foot Clan.
- S.C.U.M from James Bond Jr..
- M.A.V.O. (Monsters And Villains Organization) from The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin.
- The Boondocks portrays Black Entertainment Television (or Black EVIL Television, as its board of directors calls it) as an evil organisation dedicated to destroying all African American people through their crappy programming, with a chief executive who maniacally demands that all shows be EVIL, and brutally executes any executives and producers who offer less.
- Phineas&Ferb has the League of Villainous Evildoers Maniacally United For Frightening Investments In Naughtiness. aka L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N.
Other
- Hell is often depicted as one of these. Anything that causes human suffering, The Devil is more than happy to throw his weight behind.
- V.E.V.O stands for Very Evil Video Organisation.
- To some, The SOCIETY.
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