President Evil - Television Tropes & Idioms

So you're fighting a supervillain. You've finally uncovered his secret plan, beaten his Evilbot 3000, and chased him down... until he steps into his embassy, where the majordomo informs you that, due to diplomatic immunity, you can't take one step inside without inciting an act of war.

You've just been foiled by President Evil.

This supervillain doesn't just have an Elaborate Underground Base, they have their own country, often a Ruritania, Banana Republic, or Qurac. This affords them so many resources and so much power that the heroes are never able to truly beat them.

Usually, the heroes aren't fighting against the country itself, apart from the occasional loyal citizen who's been turned into a Super Soldier. Their beef is strictly with the villain, and the country is usually just a convenient plot device.

The villain's leaderly reputation varies between Villain With Good Publicity and Zero Percent Approval Rating. Sometimes, the heroes go into the country and foment a rebellion to get the villain kicked out; naturally, this often leads to someone even worse stepping up (as with Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act) and an Enemy Mine storyline to restore the status quo. Or, the "oppressed masses" are actually Gullible Lemmings who like their leader, and might not be oppressed at all!

Similar to the Evil Overlord, but with an international scope. A Different sort of President.

Examples:

The trope name is taken from the Superman arc in which Lex Luthor became President of the United States, which is most likely a play on the title of the Resident Evil series.
Dr. Doom, archenemy of the Fantastic Four, is probably the best-known, ruling Latveria, an archetypical Ruritania. He's been deposed a couple times, but always manages to get back in.
- And, of course, in the 2099 series of comics, Doctor Doom literally became President Evil when he managed to become President of the United States. Though in that series, he was basically the HERO compared to the soulless evil corporations he was fighting.
- Baron Underbheit, a Captain Ersatz for Doctor Doom in The Venture Brothers, rules over the Mordor Barony of Underland, which is apparently located adjacent to Michigan.
Magneto, archenemy of the X-Men, ruled the island of Genosha for a while, transforming it into a haven for mutants, until it was destroyed by Cassandra Nova.
- It's worth noting that, unlike most of Doctor Doom's enemies, the X-Men have never paid much attention to international boundaries or legitimate governments, and when Magneto headed back towards the crazy end of his personal sanity scale they didn't hesitate to invade the country, attack him in his capital and stab him to near-death. Given that they had also deliberately overthrown the previous government, you'd think there would be tighter border controls...
Video game example: Lord Recluse of City of Villains. Indeed, most of CoV takes place in Recluse's country, the Rogue Isles.
- Not that it makes much difference in the end. But let's not go there.
Another videogame example: Kombayn Nikoladze from the first Splinter Cell game, president of Georgia, is using ethnic cleansing to seize neighboring Azerbaijan's oil, and later attacks the U.S. with information warfare when they try to stop him.
Parodied with the supervillain mayor of New New York City in Futurama. During his term, he stole all the major world monuments and put his face on Mount Rushmore (which he also stole).
- Not to mention Earth President Richard M. Nixon's Head, who needs no explanation to people familiar with actual American history.
  - Sounds like someone's an ardent student of Hollywood History. Supervillain indeed.
  - He wasn't accused of Supervillainy (which would have been unreasonable). Just of being evil (which is less so).
  - While Nixon may or may not have been evil, he was certainly a Jerkass.
In Promethea, several hundred howling demons possess the mayor of New York, a highly ineffectual man with a Split Personality or forty. The net result is that the demons displace the personalities and go on to create a popular series of public works (including legalizing devil worship and pentagram shaped buildings), which actually raises his approval rating.
In Read All About It, Dunedon, the evil ruler of Trialveron, is also secretly Don Eden, mayor of our heroes' home town on Earth.
Nathan Petrelli /Sylar of Heroes becomes the US Prez in the alternate future presented in "Five Years Gone," and tries to enact a program to kill off all the superpowered people in the world (except himself, of course. Because "I can fly. I'm hardly dangerous.").
Philip Nolan Voigt in Marvel's New Universe, a paranormal who can duplicate any other paranormal's abilities, only better, uses his abilities to become President. Sound familiar?
In Doctor Who, The Master, posing as Mr. Saxon, gets himself elected as Prime Minister of Great Britain, and promptly uses his authority to gas the Cabinet, declare the Doctor and his friends fugitives, arrest Martha Jones' family, make fun of / assassinate the US President, take over the world and generally act like a Magnificent Bastard.
And Metal Gear Solid did it, too, with Solidus Snake - ex-President of the United States. The 'ex' part was the all important part, though. He was more a traditional baddie who happened to have once been President. The Patriots were a better example - the Xanatos Gambit-loving council which secretly ruled the United States since about the 1970's, and have plans for world domination. It really gets bad when all the Patriots are either dead, in a coma, a vegetable, or actively trying to stop the rogue AI they created from trying to take over the world
In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows the Death Eaters, which are almost all currently recognized fugitives from the law ever since The Ministry agreed with Harry & friends two books ago (and many of them were already persona non grata even before then, serving sentences in Azkaban), somehow manage to take control over the ministry and all of wizarding England during an open war against the Death Eaters and their ideology simply by placing Imperius curses over a few officials. This allows them to (without ANY real resistance) enact an absurd pureblood regime openly enforced by individuals such as pre-coup Azkaban escapee Bellatrix Lestrange and murderer Severus Snape. About the only thing they DON'T seem to do is appoint Voldemort as the new Minister of Magic!
- There were several attempts at justification in-story, mostly of the "Direct Parallels To Nazi Germany" variety. Voldemort and his most infamous DEs stayed in the shadows, so mostly semi-legit followers like Umbridge were the public face of the DE government, the general wizarding public (portayed consistantly as biased towards purebloods, at best, often utterly dismissive of anything that had anything to do with Muggles) were lied to as to what was really being done to half-bloods and muggle-borns, and those that did suspect the truth were either too scared to act (remembering Voldemort at his height, 20 years earlier) or were otherwise neutralized (like they attempted to do with the Weasleys). This editor thought it was consistent with the way the Wizarding World was portrayed (Ludicrously isolationist and often self-defeatingly silly)
- Of course, given the way the Death Eaters (and their sympathizers in the general population) acted, why Dumbledore and his allies didn't just release proof of Voldemort's true identity and let it sow chaos in the DE ranks, is another issue entirely. Or why other wizarding governments didn't try to send forces into Britain to support the anti-DE forces...
In the Fullmetal Alchemist anime and manga, Fuhrer King Bradley is a homunculus. When Colonel Roy Mustang tries to expose him to top military brass, he gets a shocker: most of them were already in on it. In the manga, the entire country of Amestris was founded by Father and the homunculi. Bradley was a human chosen to be the country's ruler and injected with the Philosopher's Stone to make him a homunculus.
Black Adam as the leader of Khandaq, though that all came crashing down in 52.
During the '80s, when tensions with Iran were still high after the hostage crisis, Batman had something of a Wall Banger when The Joker, who'd just killed Jason Todd in Africa, was chosen to serve as Iran's UN representative, thus giving him diplomatic immunity. I'll repeat that: Iran made The Joker a diplomat. This was later retconned so that it was Qurac, a (totally fictitious) terrorist state, that gave The Joker diplomatic immunity.
Transmetropolitan: Spider's problems get a whole lot worse once The Smiler becomes president. The Secret Service stalks his filthy assistants, assassins start crawling up his butt, and his stories get killed for reasons of "national security." Mind you, he's able to give as good as he gets...
The Dragon of Call Of Duty 4, Khaled al-Asad, becomes the President of an unnamed Middle-Eastern country via a violent coup and then goes on a spree to "liberate" the rest of the Middle East until the United States steps in to stop him. It gets worse.
In the console version of Rainbow Six 3, the Big Bad turns out to be the President of Venezuela, who is secretly the mastermind behind terrorist attacks on the U.S. by seemingly Middle Eastern groups.
Around the time of the Watergate scandal, Captain America discovered that the head of the terrorist organization known as the Secret Empire was in fact "a high-ranking government official" (ie, President Nixon). He was sufficiently horrified by this that he temporarily abandoned the Captain America identity, calling himself "Nomad". This troper has no idea what Nixon was supposed to have meant to accomplish by running a conspiracy to take over the U.S.A.
- Remaining in power for life instead of simply his elected term?
King Geedorah, alter ego of rapper Daniel Dumile, embodies the living hell out of this trope. His methods of dealing with dissenters are expounded upon in the song "The Fine Print": The short version is, he has their heads cut off and mounted on pikes in the middle of town square, where the peasants will throw rocks at the heads for weeks until vultures eventually devour them. As he says, "Maybe then they'll know the right words to speak out loud, at home, in the world, or in the streets."
President Leland McCauley in The Legion Of Super Heroes (postboot version) turned out to be immortal supervillain Ra's al-Ghul in disguise.
Richard Hawk in Metal Wolf Chaos an evil vice-president turned president after he overthrows his running mate in a military coup d'etat. As for his 'evil' credentials during his actual tenure as president... Geez... Where do we start? 'The giant mechanical spider he sent rampaging through Manhattan', possibly. Or nerve-gassing Chicago. Or turning the White House into a missile-launching and armoured fortress and renaming it the 'Fight House'. I Am Not Making This Up, by the way.
The Arch Enemy of the Justice League Europe, and really of the whole Justice League International, the Queen Bee, was the ruler of Bialya.
Subverted in this Sluggy Freelance strip, where the president who's secretly a centuries old wizard who enslaved people's souls isn't actually that bad.
President Kesandru: Living hundreds of years changes you. I used to toy with people, destroy people, all with the selfish goal of untold wealth and power. Now I want to help people, to make up for past deeds. Take steps to make this a better place for everyone ... while still attaining untold wealth and power.
Torg: Politics. It's like having evil cake and eating it too!
In the recent Sam & Max series of adventure games, the fourth episode of the first season, aptly titled "Abe Lincoln Must Die" sees the titular freelance police up in arms against an evil Abraham Lincoln. Or, in this case, a massive statue of Abraham Lincoln brought to life, who then tries to run for president, and the only way to defeat him is to run for president yourself.
In Steel Ball Run (Part 7 of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure) the president, Funny Valentine (yes, that is his name), is a corrupt, morally devoid lunatic who somehow still mangages to be a Villain With Good Publicity (probably the American flag scar). Among other things, he uses government funds to secretly hire criminals and lackeys for his dirty work and he obviously has some sort of plan for ultimate power that involves using said lackeys to get "saint parts" for him. Oh, and he tried to rape a 14 year-old girl in one scene.
President Clark: Assassinated the old leader? Check. Iron-fisted regime? Check. Tried to tempt, coerce, and finally smash the heroes? Check, check, and most definitely check. Of course, since this is Babylon Five, status quo is not god, and he eventually loses.
One of the Villain Protagonists in Ansem Retort becomes governor. He generally abuses his political power just to show that he can and gains immunity for just about any felony the cast commits.
In Codename Kids Next Door, student council president Jimmy Mc Garfield revealed at the end of his debut appearance that he was in allegiance with the adults instead of the kids. At the end of his next appearance, he was sent to prison, leaving Numbuh 1 confident that he would take his place, only to find out that the Delightful Children From Down the Lane had in fact bought the election and become president(s) themselves.
The Big Bads of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 are President Evils, focused on cleansing the post-apocalyptic world of any dangerous mutants. Given that the vast majority of the planet's population is a dangerous mutant, including most of the good guys, this is obviously not a fun plan.
Andrew Ryan of Bioshock is the president/founder/king of Rapture.