Follow TV Tropes

Following

Scary Dogmatic Aliens

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/communist_mutants_from_space.jpg
Does conquest of a planet count as seizing the means of production?

President Whitmore: I know there is much we can learn from each other, if we can negotiate a truce. We can find a way to coexist. Can there be a peace between us?
Alien: Peeeeeeeeeace? No peeeeeeeeace.
President Whitmore: What is it you want us to do?
Alien: Diiiiiiiie. Diiiiiiiiiiie!

Aliens come from another planet. Their entire culture, history, and even biology could be radically different from that of us Puny Earthlings. It should not be surprising if they are so different that we can't comprehend them at all.

Fortunately, though, it turns out that aliens are really just humans with some bits glued on. Same with their ideology: they're just a thinly veiled stand-in for whomever the public is politically afraid of at the moment, or whomever in Earth history the writers want to anvilize the viewers about. Basically, this is a Planet of Hats where the "hat" is some feared human ideology. Whether or not the target ideology actually deserves the criticism, or is actually bad, can, and often does, vary from viewer to viewer. Sometimes a writer enters The War on Straw due to problems with themselves or society.

While Scary Dogmatic Aliens being racist tends to get associated with the example of "Aliens as Nazis" below, the truth is that all four types are racist, as this trope relies heavily on an "Us vs Them" dynamic; not to mention how racism isn't limited to, for example, the Nazis or even the right-wing. Ironically, this often leads to people in-universe, among the audience and even the writer themselves, being racist against the Scary Dogmatic Aliens. A good way to determine the quality of the race and whether or not they're Straw Characters is the following questions; Are the Scary Dogmatic Aliens redeemable? Do any of them change their ways?

All but the best writers end up giving in to this to some extent. Some of the best writers actively revel in it. After all, it may be a story about aliens, but it is intended for a human audience (usually).

If a show is lucky enough to be in production when the public's number one scary ideology shifts, there's a good chance that we'll see the aliens switch dogmas as well. That, or a new race will show up and supplant them as the top threat.

Hybrids are also common, probably because the writers have only a passing understanding of what the popular scary ideology is really all about. Note how often political pundits on whatever side compare their enemies to Nazis in The New '10s and The New '20s to see that this extends beyond fiction.

Slightly more self-aware, or single-minded, writers will do a bit of Lampshade Hanging by giving the aliens trappings so obviously derived from the source that you can't help but notice, like putting them in Nazi uniforms. Compare Master Race, for a cultural group who are not necessarily aliens but still see themselves as superior. A Sub-Trope of Aliens Are Bastards.

Scary Dogmatic Aliens generally take on one of a handful of forms:

Aliens as Nazis

"All inferior creatures are to be considered the enemy of the Daleks, and destroyed!"
— A Dalek, Doctor Who

The second oldest form of the trope on this page. These aliens are regimented, efficient and want to kill everyone who doesn't submit to them (and even then clearly plans to keep the ones who does submit alive only for as long as they have a use for them). Their leader is a charismatic psychopath who rules with an iron fist. Often obsessed with genetic purity, sometimes with the cute little hypocrisy that their leader isn't genetically pure. And when they occupy the Earth, they will often adhere to The Right of a Superior Species.

Aliens as Communists

"You need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex, and class, and colour, and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us."
Cyber-Leader, Doctor Who, "Doomsday"

The most widespread form and the second-most frequently used. It is still present though often subverted in the post-Cold War era. Everyone is the same, individuality is a capital crime, belief in any other creed is not tolerated (even alongside the "Aliens As Communists'" creed, often on pain of death). Heavy emphasis on assimilation, which can either be literal (with them wanting to transmogrify humans into more of their own), or allegorical (e.g. brainwashing or body-snatching). The Virus may fall into this category.

Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists

"Your destruction is the will of the gods... and we are their instrument."
Covenant Elite, Halo: Combat Evolved trailernote 

The most recent evolution of the trope yet and, pound-for-pound, the most frequently used, the Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists hate humans because their gods told them to. It's a step forward that Speculative Fiction can now depict alien religion as extending beyond "advanced = atheistic; primitive = any belief in the supernatural at all, and fooled into worshiping anyone with a PDA," but there's also a step backward in that the new category of alien religion is more often than not just a reference or allegory of any and all real-life expressions of faith or religious beliefs the author dislikes. This is two sides of the same coin, the focus going from "promoting atheism" to "lampooning religion". In Western science fiction, the most common points of reference for these guys are evangelical Christianity and radical Islam, the former becoming popular in the 1970s and '80s with the rise of the Christian Right and the latter in the 2000s and '10s during The War on Terror.

For maximum points, it should be possible, even likely, that if the alien god does exist, it really isn't averse to humans at all, but is being misrepresented by the alien leadership. To really stick a fork in it, it occasionally turns out that humans are supposed to be the aliens' "true" gods, according to the correct interpretation of their religion or maybe even humans and aliens have the same god. Interestingly, the "Alien as Religious Fundamentalists" types are also the most likely type to be redeemed as individuals or a group.

Aliens as Conquistadores

"We are Klingons, Worf! We do not embrace other cultures, we conquer them!"

The oldest form of this trope (dating back to H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds), but generally quite similar to aliens as Nazis, roaming the cosmos in search of new lands to subjugate and new prizes to claim in the name of the Empire or for their own personal glory. Your subjugation will occasionally be in order to civilize you, but more often will be because Might Makes Right, and those too weak to make a stand don't deserve a say in their own fates. An Alien as Conquistador is likely to be a Proud Warrior Race Guy. Can mix easily with other types.

The entire "suddenly, vastly technologically superior anthropomorphic aliens landed and life as we knew it forever went to hell in a handbasket" seems to be so everlastingly popular in America due to its own history being just that, except that the invading aliens, not the unfortunate current residents, carried the day. For much the same reason, Japanese anime's aliens have an army of Monsters of the Week and practice gunboat diplomacy by packing the power to flatten entire cities in one go, while Russian scifi tends to focus on exploring and colonizing incomprehensible, faintly oriental, and technologically backward aliens, and not vice versa. Every culture's colonization-related alien stories reflect its own historical experiences, whether in wishing to repeat past achievements, recalling past humiliations and horrors in fear of the old adage that history repeats itself, or in apprehension that "do unto others..." promises a long-overdue Karmic backlash any day now.

Aliens as Hobbesian Lawgivers

"It is Our most solemn duty to protect the citizens of Our Empire from all dangers, including the danger of Knowledge that is Forbidden. Let those who, in their burning arrogance, hold tightly to this lore be consumed by Our wrath."
This alien does not care how inconvenient, arbitrary, petty, nonsensical or even outright evil the law(s) they proclaim is. You will find some way to always obey said law or you will die. This alien does not bluff, they have the bodycounts to prove it. Moreover, this law is never up for debate; heck, you might get killed just for asking for clarification. Sadly, these aliens intelligently enforce even nonsensical laws, and even the more Lawful Stupid ones aren't going to be tricked by a Logic Bomb or even a Zeroth Law Rebellion. They also differ from other types in that they're rarely interested in other species' resources or labor and will let a people be so long as their laws are followed. Hobbesian Lawgivers would be simply be an Anti-Villain or even Benevolent Alien Invasion except for one thing: their extremism in upholding the law usually goes into Skewed Priorities territory and always goes into Disproportionate Retribution territory.

May or may not have a Heel–Face Turn, usually depending on how much carnage they cause before they're stopped and/or how bad it would be if the law was broken. Since the underlying framework has been thoroughly integrated into almost all forms of modern republics, these aliens rarely serve the metatextual function of Strawman Politicals of mass-murdering Obstructive Bureaucrats on their own. When they show up and aren't played for laughs, they tend to evoke pastiches to earlier time periods when movements like Chinese legalism and Western liberalism were new to the scene and bloodily replaced pre-modern Might Makes Right governments with something more impersonal, objective, and codified. End of an Age indeed...

Aliens who see humans as a threat

"It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration."

This could come into play when Aliens Steal Cable or have been discretely observing us by walking amongst us. Either way, they may see that we do not paint the best picture of ourselves. War, violence, widespread corruption and poverty, crime, inequality, slavery, racism, and all other sorts of things that make us the last candidate anyone would want for any already existing interstellar federation, thus making us a possible antagonist whenever we do get to a certain level. Sometimes, humanity fails to take the warning seriously and suffers the consequences. Sometimes, humans fired the first shot but claimed self defense. Other times, there is no official warning to get our act together (or else) and the aliens simply judge humanity as unfit.

Other

"The alien is not intrinsically evil. Do not hate him. Pity his ignorance. Seek to understand his differences and acquaint him with his inadequacies. Only then will he accept his place in the Greater Good."
Shas'O O'Mau'tel, Tau Empire, Warhammer 40,000

Aliens with an obvious dogma that don't quite fit into any of the above categories, or that fit into more than one.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

Aliens as Nazis

    Anime & Manga 
  • The Gradosian Empire of Blue Comet SPT Layzner especially in the Ru-Kain 1999 arc, where they brutally occupy the Earth and forces the Earthlings to assimilate to Gradosian culture, which is one of their main occupation goals.
  • The Riofaldians in Cannon God Exaxxion are these after they completely occupy the Earth, with dissidents being turned into Human Resources, for example. But they are used to be benevolent (for hostile reasons, of course); see the entry in the Other part for details.
  • Zamasu and Goku Black from Dragon Ball Super. They both believe mortals aren't just foolish and dumb, but downright dangerous and evil, and they take it upon themselves to eliminate said mortals in accordance to their "Zero Mortal Plan".
  • The Gamilas / Gamilons from Space Battleship Yamato. Dessler's title is "Leader" (that is, Führer) and he commands an extremely loyal cult of personality. The Gamilans appear to be a completely militarized people who are utterly contemptuous of "barbarian" races. They even give the Nazi salute. In spite of all this, Dessler experiences a Heel Realization at the end of the second season and calls off his war with humanity.
  • Same goes to the Human Alien inhabitants of Planet S-1 in Space Warrior Baldios. Some people even call it Yamato with mecha! The Big Bad, Zeo Gattler, is the series' equivalence to Dessler. He even shares the title of "Leader".
  • The Jerk Empire from Video Warrior Laserion, complete with the Nazi salute.

    Comic Books 
  • The DCU:
    • The current version of the Thanagarian race from The DCU (Human Aliens from a planet orbiting Polaris) have an expansionist culture with a fascist government, though individual Thanagarians aren't all evil. Comparisons to the Nazis don't end there: They have a red-and-black insignia and make use of raptor imagery. Recent developments have seen the rise of a new faction of Thanagarian religious fanatics that fit the "aliens as religious fundamentalists" subtrope.
    • The Sinestro Corps enforce totalitarianism on any planet they have the manpower to conquer, as per the ideals of their founder and leader Sinestro, who single-handedly turned his homeworld of Korugar into a Nazi-esque nation-state back when he was a Green Lantern. As an added bonus, their power rings are fueled by the fear they instill into others!
    • Ironically, the Guardians of the Universe can sometimes regress into oppressive bureaucrats and set a number of laws and mandates that hamper the livelihood of a Green Lantern. Subverted, as each law has some basis in safekeeping the Corps, like banning relationships between Lanterns so as to not compromise their mental state.
  • Virtually every single alien empire out there in the Marvel Universe, including, but far from limited to, the Kree, the Troyans, the Skrulls, the Shi'Ar, the Dire Wraiths, the Negative zone armies of Blastaar and Annihilus and the Phalanx.
    • The Kree are the more blatant example, being a draconian and militaristic society with xenophobic tendencies and with their own State Sec in the form of the Accuser Corps. The Shi'Ar on the other hand are more like Space Romans.
    • The Ultimate Marvel comics has the Chitauri, at first seemingly a Skrull Expy race Piggybacking on Hitler but later turns out they really consider themselves the Master Race and intend to kill all other lifeforms in the universe. Turns out they've been kicked off of all the other planets where they've attempted this and Earth is their last ditch attempt at Taking You with Me in the end.
  • In Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, the Independent Lepine Republic offers a twist on this trope: They are a nation of racial supremacists who thinks that the Lepine race should rule the known universe, and they're bent to conquer any planet and kill, if they can, anyone who is not a Lepine. The twist come with the fact that, unlike other examples based on Nazi Germany, the ILR is mostly based in the the most common and worst known depictions of the United States, through they still share some points with the Nazis.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Implied in Brightburn. Brandon has been Brainwashed to Take Over the World, and his drawings imply that he will Kill All Humans to serve a Galactic Conqueror who believes in The Right of a Superior Species
  • Despite being a silly B-Movie, Teenagers from Outer Space could easily be a subtle Nazi allegory. In the first place, the aliens intend to exterminate humans from Earth to create "grazing room" for their "Gargon herds" (giant lobsters). Mars is revealed to be a fascist dystopia in the dialogue, and the main villain continually refers to his species as "the supreme race." Essentially, as one viewer put it, "it's like a Martian version of Summer of My German Soldier."
  • In the Star Wars film series, we have the Galactic Empire, Scary Dogmatic Humans who have enough Nazi parallels to fill a large encyclopedia. The Expanded Universe also makes comparisons between them and pretty much every conquest-happy empire in history.
  • In the Flash Gordon film, when the bad guys are watching the memories of Dr. Zarkov (a Holocaust survivor played by Topol), and a Hitler rally pops up, Klydus comments that "He had promise." Otherwise, however, the bad guys just seem to be corrupt feudalists.
  • In Starship Troopers, the United Citizen Federation (the equivalent of the original novel's Terran Federation) is depicted as blatantly fascist, especially in aesthetic terms. More like "Scary Dogmatic Humans".

    Literature 
  • In the very first original Star Trek novel, STAR TREK Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds, the inhabitants of the planet Bavarya (sic!) are divided into artificially replicated people called "doppelgangers" (again, sic) and biologically engendered people called the "Herr-Elite" (sic, sic, sic) — obvious stand-ins for Nazi Untermenschen and Herrenvolk. The "Herr-Elite" plan to invade the planets Neolithia and Mythra and enslave their inhabitants. It turns out that the dictator, "Nummer Ein," is himself a doppelganger. Does This Remind You of Anything?

    Live-Action TV 
  • Not exactly aliens, but the Scourge on Angel. A group of very Nazi-like pureblood demons (though it was said somewhere else that even 'pure' demons have some human taint, so they weren't as pure as they thought.)
  • Babylon 5:
    • In a Flash Forward in the fourth season finale, the Nazi-stand-ins were humans, down to SS uniforms.
    • President Clark's administration has some fascist overtones, with uprisings violently put down, dissent eliminated, free speech all but gone, anti-alien sentiment once again on the rise, Night Watch doing rounds on the station in black uniforms with armbands.
  • The Sebaceans in Farscape, who even used the same red-white-black color scheme. Their enemies, the Scarrans, are even worse. They view the Peacekeepers as inferior, making them the Nazis to other Nazis!
  • Doctor Who: The Daleks, who literally did Nazi salutes in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and "Genesis of the Daleks".
    • "Journey's End" featured Daleks actually speaking German. No Nazi phrases though, they were just in Germany at the time (and they weren't using the proper German word for "Exterminate!" either).
      Daleks: Exterminieren! Exterminieren! Halt! Sonst werden wir Sie exterminieren! Sie sind jetzt ein Gefangener der Daleks! Exterminieren!Translation 
    • Terry Nation, their original writer, once described the Daleks thusly; as the Nazi technocrats who developed the V-weapons, did concentration camp experiments, etc., and were sometimes recruited by the Allies post-war due to their technical ability. "You should think of the Dalek as being a Nazi technocrat locked up inside his own individual paranoid Panzer tank, unable to have human contact, on the edge of hysteria at all times." In their earliest appearances, they are individuals, scientists, and easily panicked by proximity with those icky aliens.
      • Due to being written during the Cold War, the original Dalek story saw the planet Skaro devastated by nuclear and neutronic warfare, with the Daleks planning to vent more radiation into the atmosphere, evoking From Russia with Nukes.
    • The Daleks become religious fundamentalists in the two-parter "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways", which, given the length of the series, neatly illustrates that depending on the writers so depends the threat. An early Dalek appearance has them burning through a forest while chanting; "Align and advance, advance and attack, attack and destroy, destroy and rejoice!"
    • The religious overtones are still subordinate to the Dalek notions of racial purity. In "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways", the Daleks' religious language and fervor are a symptom that they've gone mad even by Dalek standards, because they can't reconcile themselves to being created from human tissue. Similarly, the Cult of Skaro departs from the orthodox Dalek Way in the belief that they can thereby find new ways to exterminate EX-TER-MIN-ATE non-Daleks; they're not really a "cult" in any other sense.
    • Most recent appearance includes an upgrade to a colour-coded caste system.
    • With the colorful Daleks obliterating the old ones, who agree to be obliterated because they agree that they are inferior. This is much like when the Cult of Skaro killed Dalek Sec after making him part human. One of the most Nazi-like things about the Daleks might be that not only do they want to wipe out all non-Dalek life, they'll also kill fellow Daleks for not being genetically "pure" enough.
    • In the same episode ("Victory of the Daleks"), the trope is played with when the older Daleks pose as helpful servants of the Allied War effort. This gives rise to the amusing yet menacing request "WOULD-YOU-CARE-FOR-SOME-TEA?"
    • Interestingly, according to "Asylum of the Daleks", despite being fascist in nature, they are also a parliamentary democracy. This is entirely reconcilable, however, by the fact that most of the relevant fascistic beliefs are literally coded into them on the genetic level and a cornerstone of their culture, so the chances of any Dalek voting against the EX-TER-MIN-ATE foreign policy doctrine (and domestic doctrine, criminal code, and legally mandated method of dealing with those that aren't Dalek enough) are minuscule at best.
      • "Asylum" also has other species being partially converted into Daleks, breaking from the dogma a bit, but only as disposable servants. Oswin being converted into a full Dalek is again a sign that the Daleks involved were mad.
    • Later Dalek stories of the Classic Series showed Daleks in a state of civil war, in "Remembrance of the Daleks" the Imperial and Renegade Daleks are different genetically. Oddly enough, in the preceding Dalek story, "Revelation of the Daleks", the Daleks are willing to recondition the Imperial Daleks to obey the Supreme Dalek.
  • The Espheni in Falling Skies, they have ravaged Earth, and enslave captured humans with harnesses. Their commanders love to gloat on how inferior humans are, and how superior the Espheni are. Then they started gathering children and placing them into reeducation camps, and later convert them into Espheni.
  • The Gua from First Wave, complete with Nazi uniforms.
    • According to Joshua, the Gua used to be peaceful beings, whose favorite past time was contemplating the universe, until they were invaded by a violent race. This forced them to radically alter their society in order to fight off the invaders. The name Gua means "the power to overcome".
      • Joshua himself undergoes a Heel–Face Turn when he realizes that humans also posses Gua, and they've unleashed it in the hero.
      • Technically, only one in 117 humans have it, but that's still a lot, given that there are nearly 7 billion of us. Hell, Cade alone made a mess of the Gua infiltration effort. Imagine millions of humans doing that.
  • Ming's government in the Flash Gordon TV series reboot. Ming rules the only city on planet Mongo, built around the only source of uncontaminated water in the world. He uses his Patriot troops (all clad in a mix or red and black) to enforce his rule, all the while maintaining the image as the Benevolent Father. He himself prefers to wear a military uniform, as opposed to the ornate clothing of Ming the Merciless from the film. He also controls all the cantons (villages) throughout Mongo by virtue of controlling their water supply. Anyone caught trying to circumvent his water monopoly is caught and publicly executed, although this may be justified because contraband water is likely to be contaminated. His plan is to use the portal technology to steal fresh water from Earth but only to continue maintaining control instead of giving more to others.
    • Interestingly, just like Hitler dabbled in the occult, so does Ming often visit an order of priests in order to have his future read. This is done in a ritual where a priest is stung by a scorpion and spouts prophecies before a painful death. These predictions usually come true.
    • Additionally, any Deviant (a mutant) is automatically an enemy of the state and must be killed or exiled. An episode had a woman beg the "Benevolent Father" to spare her newborn baby, whose DNA contained only 1% of deviancy. Ming simply says it's 1% more than he should have. Of course, the finale reveals that Ming himself is a Deviant and tried to have his newborn son killed, who was born deformed; the son survived and led a rebellion against him.
  • In the Stargate SG-1 episode "The Other Side", the Eurondans turn out to be these in The Reveal.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Terran Empire, the Mirror Universe version of the Federation; another example of Scary Dogmatic Humans.
      • According to some non-canon sources, the Terran Empire arose from the American Empire, which was originally a much more militaristic and strength-based United States, before Teddy Roosevelt renames it and crowns himself Emperor. Interestingly, unlike a typical monarchy, the title of the Emperor is not hereditary.note  In fact, very few Emperors actually died of old age. Most were assassinated by those who then took up the mantle. Only one actually retired.
    • Vosk's race from the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Storm Front Parts 1 & 2" were not only alien Nazis, but were explicitly allied with the actual Nazis.
    • Star Trek: The Original Series has a Planet of Hats whose hat is that they actually are Nazis (but they were deliberately engineered into their "hat" by an interfering Earth historian). He actually thought that the best way to impose order on the planet was by turning them into Nazis. It actually worked, for a while, before they encountered their neighbors from planet Zeon (a pretty transparent reference to Zion, the lands of Israel). They immediately declare them inferior and start planning an invasion on the "Zeon pigs". This happened because the human historian forgot that Aliens Are Bastards and Power Corrupts. Once his local assistant understood how it worked, he drugged the historian and used him as a figurehead.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Cardassians are a nuanced and fleshed-out version of the Nazi origin story. They are described as having suffered a terrible economic collapse and famine, which was their motivation for becoming militaristic and expansionist. The comparison went so far as them having concentration camps during the Bajoran occupation.
  • The "humanitarian" aliens from V (1983). This shouldn't be surprising, seeing as the movie was initially going to be a miniseries based on It Can't Happen Here, a novel based on the idea of a fascist American dictatorship. The lizards with odd dietary needs were the result of Executive Meddling.
  • The Morthran from War of the Worlds (1988) season 2, also with uniforms.
  • A pre-spaceflight race in The Orville has shades of this. At first, everything seems fine, but then they find out that two of the visiting crew members were born on a particular month and immediately have them arrested and send the rest away. It's revealed that they are obsessed with astrology and consider anyone born on a particular month to be potential murderers and have them locked away in concentration camps where they're treated as subhuman. If they happen to have a child in the camp and the child is born on a different month, the guards take the kid away. When Captain Mercer tries to convince the minister that the Union doesn't believe in astrology, the guy demands they leave the planet, wanting to have nothing to do with them. The crew has to fake an astronomical event to get them to alter their beliefs and release all the prisoners. Maybe the grey uniforms should have tipped them off.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Like Warhammer, in Rifts it is Humans who fit the mold, with the xenophobic, expansionist Coalition States. And, like the Star Trek example in Television, this is entirely deliberate, with Emperor Prosek consciously emulating Those Wacky Nazis.

    Video Games 
  • The Nictus of City of Heroes, while not Nazis themselves, are closely linked to the Council, and especially the 5th Column, the Nazi enemy group that the Council absorbed. (Requiem, the 5th's leader, is also one of the leaders of the Nictus.)
  • FreeSpace gives us the Hammer of Light, a Vasudan fanatic cult that worships the Shivans as cosmic redeemers. They believed the Shivans had come to deliver them from evil, citing some obscure Vasudan legends, and declared open war on the Terrans and Vasudans, seeing them as inferior beings. Unfortunately, the Shivans don't really care for their worship, and destroyed them indiscriminately.
  • Not technically aliens, but a subspecies of human, the Helgans of Killzone are all Nazis on a revenge streak. And boy howdy, when they say they will spare no one, they aren't kidding.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The Batarian Hegemony subtly fits into this for a number of reasons: They're a rogue state; they have a fascistic dictatorial government that controls the citizenry with propaganda; they believe themselves to be the master race; and they are one of the only species that still practices slavery (the other race that owns slaves? The asari, but only on a few planets outside of Council space). They prefer subterfuge and working through unofficial privateers to outright warfare, although after Shepard destroyed one of their colonies war seemed likely. But in Mass Effect 3 it turns out that this was just the outward appearance: ordinary batarians are no more good or evil than anyone else.
    • It's arguable that the Reapers are this as well, seeing how they want nothing more than to purge the galaxy of all organic life. In a bit of an inversion, though, they aren't focused on genetic purity so much as genetic diversity; species with higher genetic diversity, such as humans, have a better chance of making a new Reaper.
  • The Soulless of Puzzle Quest Galactrix. They're obsessed with improving themselves to the point of perfection. Apparently part of that path to perfection is wiping out the imperfect (read: everybody else).
  • The Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah from Star Control II, complete with red eyes and black exoskeletons, except that they are sympathetic villains with a real tear-jerker story. They still count, but it loses a lot of impact. There is also a dash of Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists, as while they don't kill you because of their religion, it does provide them with an excuse for why it is an acceptable method to reach their goal (they believe in reincarnation, and apparently believes it applies to all sapient beings. Any killed alien hence has a chance of being reborn as an Ur-Quan, meaning there's no real moral issue with killing everyone non-Ur-Quan to ensure the Ur-Quan are safe from enslavement).
  • The Strogg from the second and fourth Quake games. They are very warlike and see all other lifeforms as worthless inferiors fit only to be exterminated for more Strogg parts. Their symbol (a skull with wings) even looks suspiciously similar to the Nazi Totenkopf.

    Western Animation 
  • The Highbreed of Ben 10: Alien Force, who claim to be the Master Race as well as the first race to ever exist, and consider all other races to be filthy, repulsive, genetically impure abominations that must be exterminated. It's eventually revealed that their obsession with genetic purity has resulted in the entire race becoming sterile due to inbreeding. The real reason for their campaign of genocide is because they are going to die out with the current generation, and can't stand the idea of any "inferior" race outliving theirs, so they've decided to throw a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
  • The Marcabians in "The Secret of Easter Island" adaptation of the Blake and Mortimer series. Extremely racists, they believe to be superior to all other races in the Galaxy and have no quarrel in exterminate them all.

Aliens as Communists

    Comic Books 
  • An exception is Green Lantern's Kilowog of Bolovax VIX, whose race was so social as to be nearly hive-minded, and eventually chose to work for the Chinese government because China came closest to his race's psychology, in which socialist government and communist economics were the optimal course for society. He never tried to push his ideals on anyone; his role was basically The Big Guy / Genius Bruiser, and he was (and still is) a close friend to all the main-character GLs. He later stopped communicating with Earth Communist governments because he discovered the corruption caused by human greed.
  • This was the original characterization of the shape-shifting Skrulls of the Marvel Universe, but they now have been re-invented into the fundamentalists (see entry below).
  • In the post-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! version of the Legion of Super-Heroes, the insectoid teleporter Gates is a sympathetic communist character. Although a hero, he is also a frequent source of comic relief as a Deadpan Snarker at the LSH's capitalist society. Could also be considered a clever Lampshade Hanging, in the implication that only a race of hive insects could ever make communism really work. Later his snarking had a more racist bent, emphasizing his bias against vertebrates, though by then he had generally mellowed and the snarking came across more as teasing than as serious insults.
  • The Chitauri, i.e. Ultimate Skrulls, from volume 1 of The Ultimates. Although they once allied with Nazi Germany, that was because a totalitarian takeover of the world would have helped advance the Chitauri's agenda of bringing "harmony" to the world. The Chitauri consider the universe analogous to an organism, themselves its immune system, and independent thought a cancer that they have been sent to cure. In addition to propping up totalitarian regimes, their treatments include the deployment of thought suppressing chemicals in the water supply, brain-influencing microchips in mobile phones, and "surgery". Much like pod people, they killnote  individual humans and take their places.
  • Nexus, having begun in the Eighties, has the Sov Empire, which is explicitly the interstellar expansion of the old Soviet Union. They are literal Communists In Space. While the Sov Empire is clearly dystopian, their ostensibly democratic counterpart, the Web, is itself monstrously corrupt. Nexus and his little planet of Ylum stand apart from either of them.

    Fan Fiction 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The alien Pod People from the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers are an obvious allegory for Communism with all the replacements being devoid of emotion as well as being driven to infiltrate the rest of humanity and take them over as well. Apparently this was unintentional. Ironically, some interpretations have the aliens as representing McCarthyism, and its need to crush anything perceived as too different.
    • In the 1978 remake, the pods were updated to represent the corporate facelessness of the late '70s.
    • Even more ironically for the McCarthyism interpretations of the original is the main character, played by actor Kevin McCarthy.

    Literature 
  • The bug aliens from Starship Troopers were also a metaphor for communism. Lampshaded as Heinlein's narrator explicitly articulates both the parallel and the counterpoint that the Bugs' communism only worked because the species was biologically adapted to it by their evolution. So not only is communism to be destroyed by humans, but communism would never work for humans. The film version parodied this by making the humans overtly fascist to the point of wearing leather SS uniforms.
  • Subversion of the trope in Joe Haldeman's books:
    • The clone alien Taurans in The Forever War have a Hive Mind which makes communication with the aliens impossible for humankind until humanity develops its own hive mind through cloning, whereupon it's swiftly determined that humanity caused the forever war due to its own belligerence and its military industrial complex seeking a reason to justify its existence. The 1000-year long war is explicitly dedicated in-story as a monument to human stupidity.
    • Subverted again in Forever Peace. The humans develop a technology that lets them share memories in real time. The first clinical test of the device on a dozen psychopaths and murderers led to them rapidly developing a Hive Mind and turning pacifist. The military backers of the technology freak out and try to destroy all traces of the experiment. They fail. Joe Haldeman explicitly states, repeatedly, that he sees 'a radical increase in empathy' to be absolutely critical to humanity's survival in the modern age. Haldeman portrays communism positively (Forever Peace doesn't contain aliens but it's the spiritual successor to The Forever War which does contain aliens).
  • The Tripods, with all humans being "capped" by mind-control devices at puberty to assimilate them, although the humans so assimilated don't become part of the alien culture, but slaves to it, making it either an imperfect analogy or an extra advanced one.
  • Taken to the extreme on the planet Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time, so much so that all of the identical children in their identical yards bounce identical balls off their identical garage doors in perfect synch with one another.
  • Mostly averted by the Amnion in Stephen R. Donaldson's The Gap Cycle. While they are The Virus who also constitute a Hive Mind, their motivation to assimilate is purely biological. They do not understand politics and are genetically incapable of lying or betrayal: while they do ultimately launch several plans against humanity, these are largely fueled by their fear and mistrust of human unpredictability. The humans, of course, are at least as afraid of them. In spite of this their first contact vessel is named Solidarity, probably as a Shout-Out to this trope.
  • Some of Michael Swanwick's works (Vacuum Flowers, for one) feature a variation in which Earth (Earth specifically, not humans generally) is the Scary Dogmatic Alien. Not aliens, because that would imply there's more than one: Earth is linked into a hive mind called the Comprise. There's an uneasy peace between Earth and the rest of humanity, helped somewhat by the fact that though Earth is several centuries ahead of the individual humans in the physical sciences, it hasn't found a way around the lightspeed limit, so the hive mind starts to fragment if the "units" get too far apart. This puts a natural limit on the expansion of the Comprise (roughly lunar orbit, where the lag becomes intolerable).
  • This one keeps coming back. The titular civilisation from Iain Banks' The Culture can exhibit this trope themselves at times, though they're space anarcho-communists. With the ability to erase whole star systems when their freedom and way of life is threatened. You know the Idirans from the "As Religious Fundamentalists" example? The Culture were the ones who were willing to ignore their surrender terms and fight them to the death for ideological reasons, and the Idirans at that point were no threat to them.
  • Wild Cards has a gem of a scene in Book 4, where Doctor Tachyon, an alien that comes from a technofeudal culture is touring the Earth with a delegation of American superheroes and mutants, and when they come to the Soviet Union (the novel is set in the 1980s), a Soviet official lectures Tachyon on the inevitability of the historical process according to Marxism, in how feudalism evolves into capitalism that evolves into socialism. Tachyon's hillarious response is that there are two major intergalatic civiliations in existence, his own race that is feudalistic, and the Network, that is capitalist (and more heartless and inhumane than any Terrestrial capitalism), and neither of them displays any signs of becoming socialist. Though the third major alien power in the universe is the Swarm, a insectoid species that devours entire planets and in fact could be considered socialist, though not sentient.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Cybermen, with assimilation. When the Daleks and Cybermen both appeared in the new series, they naturally did not mix — though the Cybermen did try proposing an alliance to the Daleks. It worked out just about as well for them as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact did for Stalin.
    • Interestingly, the Cybermen (and their expies the Movellans) originally existed merely to exist. They follow the economic theory that the first duty or purpose of any organisation is to continue to survive.
    • "We will survive" — Cyberleader. The Movellans are fragile, handsome "disco"-themed robots and have no dream of conquest; they merely defend themselves from attack. The Movellans are scarily good at defending themselves. They spent untold millennia in a perfectly logical standoff with the Daleks, each making absolutely logical responses to the perfectly predicted moves of the other... right up until the Movellans created a disease deadly to the Daleks and inflicted an utterly crushing defeat on them. The Daleks were reduced to hiring human mercenaries to break Davros out of prison to cure the disease for them.
    • Doctor Who also has an odd sort of double subversion in the case of the Ood, who are a Cthulhumanoid Slave Race with no real individuality. They're treated as something to be both pitiable and sort of revolting, but in their second appearance it's revealed that they have a sort of Hive Mind connected by the Ood Brain, meaning that when freed they are still completely dogmatic. They even punish the villain of the episode by transforming him into an Ood to be "looked after" by the Brain, but are still treated as a sympathetic race.
  • The Taelons from Earth: Final Conflict were a minor subversion, in that they were only minimally evil.
  • The Peacekeepers from Farscape. Their symbol is a version of the Soviet artwork ''Beat The Whites With The Red Wedge''. If Peacekeepers are captured, they are regarded as being "irreversibly contaminated" - in World War II, captured Soviet soldiers were regarded as traitors to the Motherland, and those who survived German captivity were punished when they came home.
    • The Peacekeepers are Commie Nazis - see above for the Third Reich parallels.
  • The Borg from Star Trek, with assimilation. Taken even further in Star Trek: Destiny, where it is revealed that the Borg are a corruption of a near-Utopian society. In the original series, the Klingons represent the Soviet Union, while the Romulans the Red Chinese, 'the honorable enemy'. And yet it's the Federation whose economy most closely mirrors Marx's idea of a communist utopia where everyone's needs are satisfied equally (not necessarily the Soviet implementation of that idea). The episode where a 20th century capitalist is defrosted, Picard is disgusted that he is concerned with accumulating wealth. Then again, clean, cheap energy and replicators may do that to a society. The terms may not quite apply. Post-scarcity would be the clearest parallel.
  • The twist of The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Eye of the Beholder". The episode takes place not on Earth, but on an alien planet where normal people look like pig nosed monsters and the society's ugliest outcasts look like attractive humans. Conformity is prized above all else, and "freaks" must undergo surgery or exile. In an interesting twist on the trope, the doctor trying to help Janet is portrayed extremely sympathetically and truly cares for her plight.
  • The Mor-taxan from War of the Worlds (1988) season 1, with body-snatching.

    Video Games 
  • The Rikti in City of Heroes, invaders from another continuum who use psychic powers as a means to attain what is referred to in-game as "monolithic harmony," and even have "priests" whose sole function seems to be ferreting out aberrant thought. The Rikti also actively assimilate humans into their species with genetic retroviri, chemical treatments, and psychic reeducation- the villain group "The Lost" are actually humans half-transformed into Rikti- one of the big secrets in the game is that the Rikti are human; they were engineered into the Rikti by an alien race, and continue to perform the same modifications on their children during pregnancy and childhood.
  • The charmingly titled Communist Mutants from Space features aliens from the planet Rooskie who are turning the inhabitants of other planets into "Communist Mutants" and serve the "Mother Creature", who drinks irradiated vodka.
  • The INKT Corporation from de Blob, despite also having traits similar to Those Wacky Nazis, has the modus operandi of bleaching the world of life and color and homogenizing the Raydian population by forcing them into identical suits and torturous labor. Just to hammer it in, their leader is named Comrade Black.
  • A weird inversion occurs in Destroy All Humans! 2. The Blisk founded the Communist Party in this universe, with many of the Party's leaders being disguised Blisk, as a means of furthering their agenda but do not practice a Communist ideology themselves. Their actual social structure is that of an insect hive.
  • In Quake IV, the Strogg are a race of cybernetic aliens that go from planet to planet, and violently turn the native life there into more of their own while stripping the planet bare of resources. You even get to bear witness to the transformation process since it's being done to you.

    Western Animation 
  • Certain subtleties indicate the Autobots might be like this in Animated, namely Optimus' "cog in the great Autobot machine" speech and the fact that the guys put out on space bridge repair duty all seem to be ones who either violated or disregarded conformist Autobot patriotism.
    • In fact, according to the Back Story of the G1 cartoon, the Autobots were outright Communist revolutionaries, more or less, being that they were created by the sinister Quintessons as a labor force, but decided they'd rather control the means of production themselves. The Decepticons on the other hand were designed as military hardware & after helping Cybertron to gain its independance they decided a military dictatorship would be the best way to run the new regime, a situation oddly similar to the Chilean Revolution of the 1970s. Kind of strange for an American cartoon from the 1980s...
    • In the IDW verson it's the Decepticons, a group of hard-luck blue collar workers, led by a miner (guess who) to overthrow the corrupted Autobot senate. But by the time they arrive on Earth, they spend most of their time killing humans within blasting range.
  • Unity, a parasitic hive mind from Rick and Morty, with the tiny difference that its "invasion" (or at least its aftermath) isn't scary at all, making it a sort of subversion: The planet it assimilated is peaceful and utopic, and far more pleasant in comparison to its troubled, ultra-racist history as a free-willed society. In fact, everything was going just fine until Rick, who happened to be an old flame of her/him/they/it, shows up...

Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists

    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Marvel Universe:
    • The race called the Uncreated know themselves to have been created by a Physical God or godlike alien. This gave them a massive inferiority complex, so they rose up and killed the being. They then launched an atheistic jihad against the rest of the cosmos, wiping out anyone who would not recant all religious belief. The Starjammers defeated them by tricking them into believing their "god" had returned. The Uncreated fleet committed suicide.
    • There is a subset of Skrulls who claim that the Earth belongs to them — as per their religious prophecies — laying the foundations for the Secret Invasion (2008) Crisis Crossover. They don't represent the entire species, however: during the Runaways / Young Avengers crossover, Xavin refers to them as extremists (the Skrulls on Xavin's home planet find religion boring). However, when the Skrull homeworld was destroyed by the Annihilation Wave, the Skrulls who believed in their manifest destiny on Earth were left as the majority. So convinced are they of their beliefs that the destruction of their homeworld only strengthened them, and they began making moves to take over Earth permanently. Every time a Skrull is seen murdering someone or otherwise causing humanity harm during Secret Invasion, they repeat this mantra that is sure to infuriate anyone who's ever talked to a fundamentalism for even a second: "He loves you". So basically, Skrulls didn't use to be this as a race, but now they are.
    • The biggest Marvel example is the Universal Church of Truth, introduced in Jim Starlin's Warlock from the seventies. A religious empire that enslaves non-humanoid races and exterminate any population that refuses to join them. They worship the Magus (Adam Warlock's evil self from an alternate future) as their Dark Messiah. The UCoT has plenty of gothic imagery reminiscent of catholic Church Militant and they have spaceships shaped like temples that are fueled by the faith of their acolytes.
  • Star Trek: Early Voyages: In "Thanatos" and "Nemesis", the Temazi are an extremely violent and xenophobic pre-industrial race who worship Ancient Astronauts as gods. They instantly slaughter anyone that they come across who does not resemble their gods.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Star Wars has the Sand People/Tusken Raiders, a violent caricature of desert-dwelling Bedouin-like groups, being low-tech, desert-dwelling nomads wearing robes and head coverings. George Lucas apparently intended the species to resemble the depiction of American Indians in old Wild West movies through their violent behavior toward the more technologically advanced settlers.
    • It's revealed in Knights of the Old Republic in discussion with a tribe leader that they see themselves as the true inhabitants of Tatooine while everyone else are invaders, and any attempts by the Player Character to question his beliefs will lead to him siccing the entire tribe on them. The game suggests that humans, Tuskens, and Jawas potentially share a common ancestor which would really piss him off if you bring it up with your Robot Buddy HK-47 stating it would "strain his belief system to its pitiful meatbag maximum."
    • In the Continuity Reboot it's established that they worship water and believe all of it belongs to them, putting them at odds with moisture farms like Luke Skywalker's. The new continuity also provides a more nuanced and sympathetic view of Tusken culture in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, depicting a mutual enmity between the Tuskens and the human settlers instead of one-sided raiding and pillaging, and demonstrating that they can interact peacefully with those who show respect for their ways and choose not to shoot first. In The Mandalorian, when a bit character shows some Fantastic Racism towards the Tuskens, Din Djarin rebuffs him by pointing out that their claim to Tatooine is a good as anyone's, and from their perspective, the settlers are trespassing. In The Book of Boba Fett, the eponymous characters is adopted by a tribe of Tuskens after his encounter with the sarlaac, and learns that they are easy targets for the technologically superior Pyke Syndicate, despite not provoking them by doing anything other than occupying resources that the Pykes want.

    Literature 
  • The aliens who invade Earth in Lester del Rey's 1954 short story "For I Am a Jealous People" are very religious folk...who actually do have God on their side.
  • The Ascendants from the Star Trek Novel 'Verse certainly count. Their entire culture is dedicated to a crusade that will see them reconnect with their gods, the True (who are the Wormhole Aliens, known to Bajor as the Prophets and to the peaceful Eav'oq as the Siblings). The Ascendants destroy all who worship falsely and commit blasphemy against the True. They do not appear to have a problem with non-worshippers, however. The Redeemers are another culture of religious fundamentalists; indeed, the only members of their species left are this, as most were wiped out by the Redeemer virus the survivors later used to cow subjugated (converted, "saved") peoples. The Holy Order of the Kinshaya appears to be a military theocracy, with crusades against the Klingon "demons", though given Klingon attempts to destroy Kinshaya worlds they are somewhat more sympathetic than most fundamentalists.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • The Yuuzhan Vong, who are probably the most extreme version of this trope. Extreme in that they use only biotechnology, believing any form of inorganic machinery to be blasphemous, and insist on the genocidal removal of anyone who doesn't follow their methods. They also have a religious devotion to pain, so much so that their ceremonial rite of passage involves cutting off one of their own limbs and replacing it with a biotech limb. And this is from the same universe that produced Ewoks. Darker and Edgier much? They also have shades of Aliens as Nazis, as they consider themselves to be a superior race out to purge the universe of impurity. It's eventually revealed that they're Not Always Evil and their obsession with pain is a coping mechanism for their Sense Loss Sadness over the entire species losing its connection to the Force.
    • The Ssi-ruuk, a race of, essentially, sentient alien velociraptors who rule a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Galaxy Far Far Away. Much like the Vong, they are religiously motivated conquerors with a strict caste system, but while the Vong are incredibly technophobic, the Ssi-ruuk power their technology with the stolen life-force of their slave races. They also tend to use droids to do most of their front-line fighting, as their religion teaches that if they die outside of their already-consecrated territory, they'll be doomed to wander the galaxy for eternity, and as such they're a Proud Warrior Race on their own turf and Dirty Cowards off it. Fortunately, they don't have enough slaves to power sufficient droid armies to conquer the galaxy, but they've still been a regional problem on more than one occasion (at one point while the Vong arc was ongoing, leading one of the POV-characters—half-Vong Action Girl Tahiri—to mentally compare them).
    • The Yevetha were ghoulish, skeletal creatures that were also a Proud Warrior Race Guy obsessed with honor and blood purity, believing themselves to be the Master Race of the galaxy. They were so xenophobic that they refused any outside help as the Vong destroyed their homeworld and left them an endangered species.
  • The Idirans in Iain M. Banks's Culture novels. The Idirans are more like imperialists than xenophobes, however; they want to conquer the galaxy so that they can improve it. The Chelgrians too, to some extent, with the addition that their heaven is a real place that their technology will take them when they die.
  • The Kdaptists in Larry Niven's Known Space series are members of the warlike Kzin race who believe they have repeatedly been defeated by humanity in warfare because God made humanity in his image, not the Kzin. You'd think this would make them friendly to humanity, but instead they wear the skin of humans during their prayers to trick god into thinking they are human.
  • Pretty much all aliens in David Brin's Uplift universe. They have a bizarre and absolute commitment to ancient beliefs, and make remarkably slow scientific progress on account of their belief that almost all solutions have answers in the Galactic Library. Humans and their clan are among the few species that bother to innovate, and for this—and humans' claim to have evolved intelligence without having been Uplifted—makes them the target for near-universal hate among the Galactics.
    • Subverted, however, in the case of the Thennanin. Although at first rather hostile towards humans, the Thennanin—and particularly Ambassador Kault—take the whole "respect tradition" schtick seriously, and are persuaded to become allies of Earthclan when gorillas, as "Garthlings", elect to be uplifted by the Thennanin.
  • The Amplitur of Alan Dean Foster's The Damned Trilogy. They seek to unite every species in the galaxy for some mysterious and vague ideal they call "the Purpose", and they use their Mind Control powers and armies of Slave Mooks to do so.
  • The Mollies in The Flight Engineer cut off all supplies of anti-hydrogen to the Commonwealth in order to cause the latter society to collapse, as they consider it unholy. The Welters are having none of it and declare war.
  • The Demu in F. M. Busby's Demu Trilogy ("Cage a Man", "The Proud Enemy" and "The End of the Line") are lobster-like aliens who believe that they are the only beings in the universe gifted with souls. As such, they take it as their religious duty to 'convert' all intelligent life into Demu by a combination of surgical alteration and psychological conditioning.
  • The Qu in All Tomorrows were a race of Starfish Aliens who saw themselves as the Master Race of the universe and sought to subjugate the universe in order to remake all life in accordance with their religion. After encountering mankind, they decimated our species before genetically engineering the survivors of various colony planets into whatever horrifically warped forms they pleased.
  • In SA Swann's Apotheosis series, the rogue alien Artificial Intelligence turned nanocloud Adam wants everyone to worship him and undergo conversion into Nano Machines, or die.
  • The Consu of Old Man's War are a variation. For seemingly inexplicable reasons they land a force on a planet that is just large enough and sufficiently armed to challenge the local military, give a barely comprehensible sermon, then attack and are killed, though taking many of the defenders with them. And their solar system's defenses are such that it's clear they could annihilate entire empires, but they don't. The protagonist gets the opportunity to ask one of them why they attack other species, and is told that unclean races must earn their place in the grand cycle of rebirth by proving themselves in battle. So they believe they're doing every other species a favor.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Magog and scads of minor villains in Andromeda. Hell, their name is even a Biblical reference.
  • Babylon 5:
    • In the backstory, the Minbari were this kind of alien towards humans, engaging in a kind of holy crusade to destroy humanity due to a terrible misunderstanding. They only change their minds and stop just short of destroying Earth when they discover that the human they captured for study not only has the soul of a Minbari, but is the great Valen (a figure who is as important to the Minbari as Jesus and Mohammed combined). They confirm the former mindboggler with more captured humans and decide they are harming their own species by killing humans. This is a horrific concept to the Minbari and the ruling council orders their forces surrender to stop this tragedynote  In all fairness, Babylon 5 manages to dance on the knife's edge of religion, playing with both Crystal Dragon Jesus and Scary Dogmatic Aliens/Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions without falling on any side and getting Anvilicious.
    • Neroon described Delenn as a "religious fundamentalist". The series did not provide enough information on the religious practices of other Minbari to determine if this was objectively true, or to what extent religious zeal drove her actions. Note that religious fundamentalism in this case may be considered a positive attribute given the first point raised above.
    • Most of the points of Minbari religious thought we actually hear are Carl Sagan quotes with slight modifications. In fact many of the religions in the series seem to be all about great teachers with very few supernatural elements. Not too surprising considering the setting was created by an Atheist.
    • The main organizing force in Narn society appears to be a number of religions based on the teachings of certain incredibly respected sages (at least one of which contains detailed and correct information about the Shadows). Things get quite wonky for G'Kar when he writes a book during a stay in jail, and finds himself turned into one of these overnight. At one point he complains about half the population wanting him to come home and rule over them, the other half wanting him to come home, bless their ruling over everyone and go away again. He eventually ends up taking an extended trip outside known space to let it all cool down.
  • In Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons are scary dogmatic robots that try to wipe out humanity because they believe it's God's will. Funny how God seems to be angry at people who they feel have wronged them.
  • Doctor Who:
  • The Orville: The Krill, who are shaping up to be the series primary antagonists, have a "bible" that preaches that all other life forms are without souls and that it is a religious mandate to subjugate all other life and dominate the galaxy.
  • The Goa'uld and their followers in Stargate SG-1 fit this trope pretty well but the Ori fit it even better, all the way down to disputes over the meaning of symbolic passages in the very King James-sounding Book of Origin. The Goa'uld aren't so much dogmatic as create dogma around themselves to control their underlings. Even so, many Goa'uld believe their own propaganda. (Ba'al is that more dangerous because he doesn't. In the Continuum film, he convinces Teal'c to join him by promising him freedom for all Jaffa, as he knows that has been Teal'c's lifelong dream. A god would, instead, demand obedience.)
  • Species 8472, from Star Trek: Voyager...at least at first. They're back at it in Star Trek: Armada II.
  • The Federation of Star Trek can be interpreted as having become this by the 24th century; a dogmatic society bent on spreading Starfleet doctrine across the galaxy and whose unwavering faith in the Prime Directive routinely allows them to condemn various races to die, due to the misguided belief that "evolution" has slated them to die and they must not interfere in the "cosmic plan".
    • Except when they don't, which is most of the time. The application of the Prime Directive is murky to say the least, in all the series a lot of episodes deal with the Federation directly and often secretly saving pre-warp civilizations from natural disasters.
  • Star Trek: Discovery turn the Klingon into this. They seem to be experimenting a fundamentalistic religious movement at the time (the series is set before the events in TOS) with references to the Prophet (Kahless) and crusades. If the original series had the Klingon as expies of the USSR this one have them as expies of ISIS.
  • Perhaps the earliest example on TV is the Morthran from the second season of War of the Worlds (1988), who were the prototype of the trope, though they had to be liberally mixed with the Nazi archetype, since the religious fundamentalist archetype wasn't quite ready for public consumption yet.
  • The villain of an episode of Farscape was an unhinged fundamentalist terrorist trying to suicide bomb any ships or space stations that passed through what she felt to be a sacred area of space. Played with, in that the episode makes it clear that she’s just a nutcase and an extremist, who is depicted as rather pathetic and annoying at that.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • The Covenant in Halo worship the ancient Forerunners and their artifacts, whose messages are interpreted by the San'Shyuum/Prophets. The above subtrope quote originated when the first game was in development for the Macintosh, but it's established in the Expanded Universe as the single message the Covenant sent to the sole remaining human ship after an early battle. Of course, it turns out that the Covenant's xenophobia is a direct result of jealousy and denial by the Prophets themselves, who had discovered that the Forerunners thought we were special enough to inherit their civilization. The fundamentalism tends to vary among the species that make up the Covenant, however; Sangheili/Elites are so devoted to the Covenant's righteousness that, when their plasma-based weapons (made from reverse-engineered Forerunner weapons) run out of charge, they would rather drop dead than even consider picking up a "filthy" fully-loaded Human assault rifle sitting right in front of them. Jiralhanae/Brutes, on the other hand, have no qualms making use of human equipment, and even have a certain liking for the humans' shotguns, which they can fire one-handed and will sometimes even fight over the coveted guns whenever they get a chance to obtain them.
  • Star Control:
    • The Ilwrath, who worship twin gods of cruelty and pain; their worship rituals take the form of killing and maiming en masse. Did we mention you can drive them into a religious civil war by impersonating these gods?
    • The Kohr-Ah also talk about a religious belief that sterilizing other races will increase the chances of you reincarnating as a Kohr-Ah, so they might count too.
    • The Mycon talk incessantly about something called "Juffo-Wup" with what seems to be a religious devotion ("Juffo-Wup is the light in the darkness, the heat in the cold. All else is non-fulfilled Void."), though at times it comes across more as insane babbling than actual religion. It's implied that the Mycon are ancient rogue terraforming biotech on the edge of sapience, and "Juffo-Wup" means "optimal Mycon habitable conditions" to which they are designed to convert every planet they encounter.
  • The Protoss in StarCraft not only devote themselves towards the elimination of the Zerg, even if humans are in the way because of their semi-religious beliefs, but even use terms such as zealot and templar. However, the Protoss are viewed semi-sympathetically, if not completely. Notably, they don't actually worship any gods, including their own creators, but rather a particular system of hierarchy and duty. Perhaps analogous to Confucianism. It helps that humans are prime targets for infestation.
    • They also hate the Nerazim/Dark Templar faction of protoss for rejecting their faith, choosing to embrace individuality, rather than the unity of the "Khala". Their attitude towards Zerg and humans becomes more pragmatic as the story goes on and they eventually reconcile with the Dark Templars. As if to compensate for these progressive changes, the faction of Tal'Darim are introduced in the sequel, and my god, do they fit this trop to a T. They worship the artifacts they are guarding and never shut up about "desecrating" humans, they call the natural gas outlets "the Breath of Creation", which you, of course, are defiling by harvesting the gas, and they are completely bonkers, even willing to detonate the star their planet is orbiting just to kill you. They're even worse in Heart of the Swarm, being willing to serve an Omnicidal Maniac like Amon just because he happens to be one of the Xel'Naga They drop all subtlety in Legacy of the Void, packing an armada poised to wipe all life from the sector in the name of their Jerkass God and packing a shiny new Red and Black and Evil All Over look. And ironically enough, they also make a Heel–Face Turn thanks to one of their higher-ups both a) not being a religious nutjob and b) realizing that Amon intended to kill off the Tal'darim just like everyone else, leading him to take over so that he can turn the Tal'darim against him for "betraying" them.
  • Some alien empires in the space age of Spore conquer others in the name of Spode.
  • The Vasudans from Descent: Freespace are initially depicted as a bunch of religious fundamentalists. The Terrans come across to the Vasudans as a bunch of racist bastards, so we have a 14-year-war dragging on. Here come the Shivans, all of a sudden the two races agree to split their differences in order to battle the Big Bad Omnicidal Maniacs. However, a splinter group of (yup) religious fundamentalist Vasudans called the Hammer of Light emerges, who claims it's The End of the World as We Know It, citing some ancient prophecy about an all-powerful destroyer race, which they claim to be the Shivans. (On a side note, the racist Terrans thing was taken to the logical next step in FreeSpace 2 with a bunch of anti-Vasudan Terran rebels called the Neo Terran Front) Considering that one of the principal themes of the series is that Terrans and Vasudans aren't so different, this is more of a subversion than anything else.
  • The Rigelatins from Duke Nukem II game are rather nasty. Their leader presents himself as the "evil conqueror" and their method to achieve victory is to kidnap Duke and steal his brain patterns. This process would leave Duke in a paralyzed state of constant pain. "We'd kill you, you see, but our religion prevents the interruption of suffering."
  • The Manifold Caretakers of Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire (the expansion to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) have a quasi-fundamentalist devotion to preserving the ecology of Planet, and specifically to preventing Transcendence. They're actually rather like the various Scary Dogmatic Aliens of David Brin's Startide Rising and The Uplift War; even the name of their species (the Progenitors) is a Shout-Out to Brin. Of course, the Caretakers' mortal enemies (as in, in-game, you are not allowed to make peace with them) are also Progenitors, and they want to rape the planet and initiate Transcendence. In this case, their fears are justified, as the last Transcendence destroyed their homeworld.
  • The Rixian Unity of Allegiance, who appear in the backstory as the first sentient life humans encounter. Unfortunately, they're bent on converting humanity to their beliefs at any cost. Gameplay-wise, Rixian ships are all coloured black and purple, a stark contrast to the almost-ISO Standard Human Spaceships of most human factions. Their ships also handle a lot differently than those of other factions, namely an apparently partial belief in Two-D Space with the ability to turn very quickly on their horizontal axes but very slowly on their vertical axes, which gives some pilots a hard time. Also, they don't use missiles like most factions. However, their guns reach farther and are more powerful, and their hitboxes are quite slim.
  • While not aliens, the Qunari in Dragon Age definitely qualify. They follow the way of the Qun, a strange philosophy that demands complete obedience and devotion, to the point that they don't have proper names; their titles/ranks are their names, and a personal name is more like a social security number than anything else. In Dragon Age II, the Arishok constantly refers to anyone non-Qunari as bas, meaning "thing". Four years in the extremely chaotic city of Kirkwall drives the big guy nearly insane. It doesn't help that the Viscount of Kirkwall keeps trying to appease the Arishok, which only shows weakness. The stuff they do to mages, though, is more of the Nazi variety. They are chained, their lips are sewn together, and they are controlled with special yoke that keeps them obedient. Kinda makes what the templars do to human and elven mages nice by comparison.
    • Qunari who aren't members of the priesthood also refuse to explain their reasoning or their philosophy to any bas, claiming these explanations are a waste of time. If you're not already of the Qun, then you won't understand it, and in any case their role is to kill people, not educate them. In Origins, it took the whole game to get Sten to admit that the reason he went ballistic and slaughtered a family of farmers was because his sword was missing, a great shame for a Qunari, and getting information out of the Arishok in Dragon Age II generally requires a winch - and both Sten and the Arishok are assigned to the military caste. Iron Bull in Dragon Age: Inquisition is a lot more forthcoming, because as a Ben-Hassrath, he is part of the priesthood and explaining things is part of his role.
    • Interestingly, the Qunari make no distinction between themselves and members of any other race that choose to follow the Qun. The second game has two elven fugitives willingly convert to the Qun, thus gaining the Arishok's protection. As far as he's concerned, they're now his brethren, and he has no intention of handing them over to human authorities. It doesn't hurt that they only became fugitives because they killed their sister's rapist (who was a city guard).
    • The term "Qunari" isn't even the name of their race, but, rather, it refers to anyone who follows the Qun. The name of their race was "Kossith," but they're so dogmatic that they haven't used that term in centuries, at least. It's just an example of how devoted they are: their philosophy sees no difference between the grey skinned horned giants and spindly elves, so they do not even have a name for their own race. Even "Kossith" isn't the name of their race. It's the philosophy that predated the Qun.
  • The Wargots from UFO Aftershock. They are highly spiritual beings who had been sent to Earth on a religious crusade, seeking to conquer the planet in the name of their gods. They had even signed an alliance with a human doomsday cult.
  • The Krynn in Galactic Civilizations 2; their dedication to spreading their religion is why they have some of the best cultural subversion tech in Twilight of the Arnor. The Altairians would also be an example if their religion wasn't built entirely from sunshine, kittens and rainbows.
  • The Zuul from Sword of the Stars, who consider conquering the galaxy a sacred duty given to them by their creators. Which happens to be true, although their creators aren't actually divine.
    • This doesn't actually change for the Heel Face Turned portion of the Zuul in Sword of the Stars 2. Although they follow different religions — Catholicism is the most common, both being an influence on the first defector and being the only surviving human religion with enough following and influence to be worthy of the label "world religion", but others are also used — they're still thoroughly religious.
  • Mass Effect: the heretic geth, who worship the Reapers - absurdly powerful sapient starships, each a colossal Mind Hive - in the hopes of eventually becoming like them. The "orthodox" geth have a similar long-term goal, but want to achieve it on their own terms.
    Legion: They will exterminate your species because their gods tell them to. You cannot negotiate with them. They do not share your pity, remorse or fear.
  • The Paranids from the X-Universe series are a vulture-like race of Holier Than Thou theocrats who are generally suspicious of the other races. However, it's subverted by the fact that they do not have the attitude that causes them to wage holy wars towards other races just because of lack of adherence to their religion; they're nothing more than a semi-isolationist (though not in the same manner as the racist Terrans), religious society who adhere strictly to their one and only emperor, and they have at least one priest duke to oversee their planets/sectors.
  • The Kerak from Space Siege. They're incommunicado throughout the game, but according to the backstory, they're on a genocidal rampage against humanity because we accidentally colonized one of their planets-implied to be their homeworld.
  • The Seraphim from Supreme Commander. The Aeon Illuminate are Scary Dogmatic Humans.
  • Homeworld features the Kadeshi, Scary Dogmatic Hiigarans encountered within the Great Nebula. After millenia of isolation they worship the Nebula and have mythicised their entire history, among others distorting the Taiidani Empire into an ominous "evil", the precise nature of which was lost to the Kadeshi except for the belief that it would destroy their species should they ever leave the Nebula and that it drove them there in the first place by causing the Hiigaran Exodus.
    • In Homeworld 2, the Vaygr. Makaan is the only one of them who actually speaks during the game and he's completely obsessed with becoming Sajuuk-Khar.
    • The Gaalsien in the prequel are members of the Kushan race but are religious fundamentalists who believe that going into space or studying the Prime Anomaly will anger the god Sajuuk, who will rain destruction upon the entire world. They're right but for the wrong reasons.
  • The Ethereals from XCOM: Enemy Unknown are searching the galaxy for a successor species to make Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. This is apparently a religious rite for them; they disappointed their gods because they only got the process half right and made 90% of their bodies vestigial instead of becoming outright Energy Beings. All the aliens in their army are implied to be failed experiments in pursuit of this goal.
  • The Vanu Sovereignty of Planetside are Scary Dogmatic Humans who worship Precursor technology. It's heavily implied that the artifacts might actually be brainwashing them and driving them to violently spread their religious creed across the planet.
  • The Hive from Destiny are fundamentalists whose religion is Social Darwinism. They believe that violence is the natural order of the universe, and that things like peaceful rule and altruism are stagnancy and cloying self-delusion, doomed to be destroyed by the ruthless and the selfish. For billions of years, they've been exterminating all other intelligent civilization in the galaxy (and each other, between civilizations) with the intent of bringing the universe to a "final shape" where all weakness has been cut away — no peace, no laws except Might Makes Right, everything killing everything else until a single insurmountable victor emerges.

    Webcomics 
  • Schlock Mercenary: The Ob'enn are a highly advanced race of violent xenophobes, who consider the annihilation of lesser species a sacred duty, and are constantly at war with everyone and everything. For added irony, they look like four-foot koalas. Some dialog implies they're internally divided between the theocracy and the military high command, the latter being more "aliens as Nazis," but willing to be pragmatic if they have no other choice.
    Ob'enn crewman: Talking to a lesser race beats being shot at by them.
    Ob'enn Captain: Don't let the Chaplain hear you say that.
  • Leono and his wraiths from Sluggy Freelance, who use God as an excuse to devour all life in the universe (except for flowers).
  • The Ith from The End are members of a violently xenophobic police state called The Monoculture. Unfortunately, they're also the species the human protagonists are most likely to be mistaken for.
  • The Makara family and the Subjuggulators of Homestuck are violent Space Juggalos who await the coming of Lord English and the Mirthful Messiahs. Their rage and zealotry is reinforced naturally by the genes that give them their blood color. The Mirthful Messiahs are actually both of the cherubs, but Gamzee only follows Caliborn. Caliborn has no desire for Gamzee's worship or companionship in his rise to power, so he only lets Gamzee tag along for his utility.

    Western Animation 
  • Some incarnations of Despero have a distinct Islamic militant flavour to them, since he grew up in the desert. Lampshaded in the Justice League cartoon when Green Lantern remarks that his Origin Story sounds a little derivative.

Aliens as Conquistadores

    Anime and Manga 
  • The Campbellians of Combattler V
  • The Muge Empire of Dancougar
  • Dandadan features an arc fighting against the Space Globalists. They kill people to make into exo-suits.
  • Dragon Ball Z has the Planet Trade Organization led by King Cold and his sons, Frieza and Cooler. They conquer and sell planets, destroying those that are not particularly valuable For the Evulz.
  • The Vegans of UFO Robo Grendizer
  • The Boazanians of Voltes V

    Comic Books 
  • The Viltrumites of Invincible. When they come to a new planet, they cure all disease, end all intra-species war, and share their technology, bringing about an unprecedented utopia, at least until they've sucked the planet dry of all its resources. Then they use the races they've enslaved to help conquer other planets.
  • The Symbiotes in Marvel Universe were originally presented as this during the 1990's Planet of the Symbiotes event, roaming the cosmos and constantly hunting for new worlds to infest and conquer other worlds. The 2014 Planet Venom arc of Guardians of the Galaxy reveal that in their natural state the symbiotes are benevolent, and that the symbiotes seen previously were corrupted specimens.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Ytirflirks go about conquering worlds, targeting those with less advanced technology or significantly physically weaker pouplations, and enslaving the locals. Most of their fleet is eventually stolen from them by one of said enslaved races when they revolt.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The aliens in Independence Day, except even meaner. They operate as a Horde of Alien Locusts, migrating from planet to planet, destroying the native population, and consuming all the resources before moving on, but when diplomacy is attempted with a captured alien, it's shown that they're intelligent enough to understand that other species perceive their genocidal ways as wrong. They just don't care.
  • The humans in Avatar. They sound much like 18th-19th century Americans talking about Native Americans as they describe the Na'vi (blue-skinned aliens they're trying to conqueror) as "savages" and "barbarians".
  • The blue-skinned aliens in Hunter Prey.
  • The aliens in Cowboys & Aliens, to the point that they're even expressly depicted as being after Earth's gold.
  • From what little information is provided about them within the film (and even then most of it is speculation), the aliens of Battle: Los Angeles are the spearhead of an invasion of this matter. One of the speculating scientists notes that arriving to a new world and annihilating any possible resistance has been S.O. to conquering nations of the world throughout history.
  • The Boglodites from Men in Black 3, except if Boris the Animalnote  is anything to go by, they're nothing but a gang pack (they are tough, but at the same time, they're so pathetically wasteful that they use up all of their reserves in traveling from one planet to the next). Boris nearly succeeds in helping his brethren to conquer Earth, but is stopped by K, J, and J's father.

    Literature 
  • The Abh of Crest of the Stars are a very interesting version of this trope. While they are a race of imperialistic Space Elves who conquer every independent world they get near and explicitly state their ultimate goal as the conquest of the entire galaxy and subjugation of humankind, they do not exercise any kind of oppression over planets they conquered and actually put a great deal of care into making these worlds wealthy and prosperous. Though Abh do deprive humans from the right of owning interstellar ships, they justify it with preventing conflicts it causes. Though the Abh would take issue with being called "aliens"... they are genetically altered humans, and their empire is even named "The Humankind Empire of Abh".
  • Another Iain M. Banks Culture example: the Affront. They appropriated this name from the Culture after deciding that since it suits them so well, they might as well just take it. Their entire civilization is based on Might Makes Right, and they are vicious and jovial in equal proportion.
  • Possibly the Ur-Example, the Martians from The War of the Worlds (1898) are looking to conquer Earth for extra room and, naturally, have to wipe out everyone on Earth first. Word of God states that the inspiration for this book was the way the British Empire treated the Tasmanian Aborigines, i.e., a genocidal invasion.
  • The Psychlos from Battlefield Earth. They get bonus points for being chiefly interested in gold.
  • The Race from Worldwar. Their obsession with order and obedience makes them similar to the Nazis, despite the fact that they consider any culture that doesn't have a hereditary absolute ruler to be insane.
  • Humans are (very obviously) this in the novel/short story collection The Martian Chronicles.
  • In Old Man's War by John Scalzi, the entire plot revolves around every galactic species being at war with each other over inhabitable planets. Humans are amongst the worst.
  • The ReMastered from Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise are very obviously scary and dogmatic. In the book, they are mainly seen as conquistadores, but they also have elements of Nazi aliens (they clearly believe themselves to be superior to regular humans and have no moral barriers to killing, mind-controlling or in other ways abusing them), communist aliens (the mysterious ReMastering process clearly implies a partial loss of personal identity) and even religious fundamentalists (their main goal and motivation is to build their own godlike AI).
  • In The True Meaning of Smekday, the Boov are obviously this trope, even putting all humans on reservations. The Gorg, who invade after the Boov, also count as this trope with a bit of Nazi sprinkled in, due to their insistence on killing all cats on Earth.
  • The Harry Turtledove short story Vilcabamba goes all the way to even name-drop the Spanish crushing of the Incas as a perfect parallel to how the world stands 50 years after a ruthless Curb-Stomp Battle of an Alien Invasion (and a second, even more ruthless Curb-Stomp Battle against an attempted final uprising when the aliens decide to strip-mine the last crumbling bit of the United States that humans still technically control, the final part of Earth they hadn't ruined with their looting).
  • The Others in Bobiverse. They're a Horde of Alien Locusts who refuse to colonize other planets because that would split their hive and cause a war. Instead, they send massive fleets to strip-mine entire star systems of all metal and organic life. Any sentient race is exterminated with gamma blasts to forestall any attempts at resistance. They've refined the process so much that they can completely mine out an entire star system in a year. Attempts to negotiate with them lead nowhere, as they simply don't see other races as anything more than "food" or "pests". Even the term "cooperation" confuses them.
  • In the Animorphs series, the Yeerks are aliens whose natural form is a helpless, blind, barely-mobile slug. They do, however, have the power to infect any organism's brain and take complete control of its body, creating an army of slaves who are conscious of their own imprisonment, but powerless to do anything about it. The Yeerks move from world to world in a mission to take over as many dominant life forms as possible, annihilate any they can't use, and then remake that planet into a breeding ground for more of their kind. The Andalites name Yeerks as "destroyers of all life" and have made it their own life's work to oppose them. Interestingly, later books reveal that the Yeerks have a species-wide Freudian Excuse for their behavior: they were firmly aware of their own powerlessness and weakness in their natural bodies, and after one Andalite foolishly took pity on them and gave them advanced technology, they decided to conquer as many species as possible just to prove that they could.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Centauri from Babylon 5, especially back in their Glory Days that they never stop yammering about.
  • The Goa'uld from Stargate SG-1 do this for their own personal glory in addition to posing as gods.
  • The Klingons of Star Trek.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The githyanki of Dungeons & Dragons are Proud Warrior Race Guys whose entire society is dedicated to conquest. Their Freudian Excuse is that they were once the slaves of the illithids. The githyanki have two goals in life: 1) annihilate every last illithid in existence, and 2) conquer/kill anyone who might enslave them again — which to the githyanki means everyone else. It should be noted that not every member of their race felt this way. Those who wanted to live their lives in peace eventually split from the warmongers and came to be *known* as the githzerai.
    • The githyanki are also massive hypocrites; they are obsessed with freedom for themselves, but, not only do they conquer, subjugate and slaughter others in pursuit of this goal, they have also fashioned themselves into a brutally self-oppressive Fantastic Caste System based on military lines. This, from a race who won't even worship gods because they see the requirements of religion as being too much like slavery.
      • Even that anti-religion line is pretty suspect in older editions, where they all but worship their lich-queen and are devoted to her to the point that almost none of them protest when she "rewards" them for achieving high levels by devouring their souls to sustain her own undeath and prevent possible rivals. Heck, she even has Cleric-like githyanki in 4e.
    • Their late leader Gith also made a pact with Tiamat that was brokered by the aforementioned lich queen which allows the githyanki to call upon red dragons for aid. The only thing worse than an army of fanatical militaristic alien conquistadors led by a soul eating lich is an army of fanatical militaristic alien conquistadors led by a soul eating lich who occasionally use huge evil dragons as mounts.
  • Monsterpocalypse has the Martian Menace who want to conquer earth for its resources.
  • Warhammer 40,000: The Orks live to fight and do a lot of conquering and subjugation... though the actual reason they fight is not to conquer, or to subjugate, or even to win, but because they love it. They're considered the comic relief, and that should tell you everything else you need to know about the setting.

    Video Games 
  • The Ur-Quan Kzer-Za from the Star Control series, who rationalize that they are protecting the races they conquer from both outside destructive forces and their own uncivilized impulses. Also, in a dash of Other, they have a species-wide Freudian Excuse (due to Genetic Memory and a really bad history), but regard 'exterminate all other species' as a step too far.
    • They do have some positive moments, although those are few and far in between, like finding the Syreen a new homeworld. This, however, goes in line with their philosophy of "enslave but never destroy".
  • The Combine from Half-Life 2, who not only enslaved Humanity but also drained Earth's oceans using portals.
  • The Kriken empire in Metroid setting appears to be one of these. Not much is known of them but they're described as being imperialistic and it is know that young Krikens are exiled from their society untill they locate a planet that would be a suitable canditate for an invasion.
  • The Pfhor from Marathon are evil alien slavers.
  • The Manifold Usurpers from the aforementioned (under Aliens As Fundamentalists) Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire. The Usurpers want to exploit Planet for all it's got; the only reasons they don't exterminate the humans is that (1) they can't (they start the game on the same footing as the human factions, and might indeed be eliminated by the humans early on) and (2) they might be useful against their mortal enemies, the Manifold Caretakers. Also, their leader is called Conqueror Judaa Marr. Yeah. Not for nothing are they the only faction explicitly referred to as evil by the game.
  • The Hierarchy in Universe at War who have ruthlessly conquered thousand of other worlds, strip mined them of all resources, and wiped out any life forms that got in their way.
  • The Terrans from Final Fantasy IX are stated to be a group of people that have been absorbing the souls of the planet to merge it with their own planet's souls, which would cause the Terran's planet and the victim planet to merge and fuse together. This was done to preserve the lives of the Terran people since their planet's crystal (its source of life and souls) was too weak to sustain itself. In other words, they wipe out all forms of life on one planet so that their own planet can survive. This drives the entire plot for the game as Zidane discovers that he and the big bad, Kuja, hail from that planet and were created to destroy all life on Gaia so Terra can advance and flourish.
  • The Vasari Sins of a Solar Empire a race of advance space faring aliens who arrived in trader space to plunder resources of Trader planets and enslave their populace. The Vasari use to be a large interstellar empire , but they are threaten by an unknown enemy that has destroyed their strongest fleets, and they have no idea who or what they are. So they leave their worlds and make a run for it, but when they arrive in trader space, they end up in a stalemate with the TEC and the Advent, and the unknown enemy is getting closer.
  • The Thalmor are a fantasy equivalent of this in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. They pretend to be religiously and spiritually motivated, but insider information gathered by the player character during the game reveals that it's mostly a pretext and that their doctrine is merely expansionism laced with a racist elven supremacist ideology.
  • The Skaarj and their minions from Unreal. In the first game they are trying to take over Na Pali and enslave the native Nali race, mainly to mine for tarydium, but also just because war and imperialism seem to be a key feature of their culture. In the later games, they manage to follow the humans back to Earth and invade there as well.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot, of all games, has this in the form of the Haltmann Works Company. They are all about profit and "prosperity" which effectively translates to invading planets in order to steal their natural resources. Just read Susie's entire monologue to Kirby in her first appearance and you'll note how she blatantly talks like a condescending colonial imperialist:
    "I didn't expect to see a native inhabitant all the way out here... Excuse my manners. Let me introduce myself. My name is Susie, executive assistant of the Haltmann Works Company. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Just look at this planet. Clean air, fresh water... There is a wealth of natural resources to be found here. But all of you who live in this world take that wealth for granted. Regrettable, but at any rate... Our Mechanizing Occupation Program is now under way... and your people have unfortunately been identified as...obstacles. Our most sincere condolences, and I'm sorry you had to come all this way... but I'm afraid... you must be destroyed!"
  • The Aliens in Terra Invicta have no interest in anything other than conquering Earth and enslaving humanity. When the Academy inform a captured alien agent that they do not wish to be enslaved, its reaction is amusement. This turns out to be subverted later, because the Hydra agent was morbidly amused by the human declaration, as the Hydra felt the same way when the Salamanders invaded them. Later in the same playthrough, the Academy discover that the Hydras are just as divided as humanity is and there's in fact a large pacifist movement among the aliens doubting that the continued conquests are healthy for the soul of their species. The Academy's goal quickly becomes influencing the Hydras' internal politics so this pacifist movement seizes power and then approaching them with a non-aggression pact and an end to the hostilities once they make it clear that humanity is able to drag the Hydras down with them if they continue the war. A result in their ending that works as well as it possibly could have.

    Webcomics 
  • Nearly all adult trolls in Homestuck live off-planet in a perpetual campaign of Alternian conquest, declaring war on whatever alien civilizations they come across.
  • The Varn Dominion from Terinu combine this with a dash of Religious Fundamentalism. In their viewpoint, they have a mandate from their gods to preserve all habitable worlds. The sentient races that happen to using them at the time were put there to serve Varn interests.
  • The Tajarans from Star Trek Federation Star Defense, with just a touch of Nazi-ish "Master Race" flavor. They consider themselves the "Favored of The Great Hoshi," they wish to conquer Wogglenather for its resources, hate Earthlings for stopping them before, and often don't even regard other species as sapient at all. (They refer to Gorn as beasts.)

    Western Animation 
  • The Irkens from Invader Zim have conquered so many planets that they don't even know what to do with every new acquisition. Example: they turned the homeworld of the "horrible rat people" into another parking lot planet.
  • The Lorwardians in Kim Possible. Not only is their plot to conquer Earth during the Grand Finale, they are also introduced as always carrying world domination gadgets wherever they travel.
  • The Decepticons in almost any Transformers series. Fortunately, the Autobots strongly disagree with their attitude.
  • Ōban Star-Racers: The Crogs. They are an imperialistic race bent on conquering planets, enslaving other races, and using them like property. They also have an appearance that is very dark.
  • The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror: Kang and Kodos successfully take over the world, but they've left everything in such despotic turmoil that they fully acknowledge it to be a Pyrrhic Victory. Apparently, they genuinely believed their conquering the human race would've been beneficial to them in the long run. Plus, they had to strike first: the humans were building weapons of mass disintegration.
  • The Gems from Steven Universe (barring the protagonists, of course). They conquer other worlds and drill into the bedrock with bacteriophage-like engines, creating more of their kin. This process pretty much dooms any given world they set their eyes upon, and although some of them do consider the native life forms "infestations" (hypocritically, given that they're basically reproducing like viruses), on a wider sense they simply don't care. On top of that, Gem culture is brutally utilitarian and revolves around a rigid Hive Caste System.

    Real Life 
  • At the screening of his sequel to Cosmos, Neil de Grasse Tyson discussed how Alien Invasion stories and our expectations of aliens reflect human history's patterns of high-technology societies destroying low-technology societies. He notes that just because that is true in human history doesn't mean aliens would act the same way, or have the same values.

Aliens as Hobbesian Lawgivers

    Films — Animation 
  • A G-rated version in Lilo & Stitch: the aliens will follow their own court's decisions no matter what's changed, and they'll follow Earth laws if necessary.

    Literature 
  • The Solarian Hive in Design for Great-Day (Alan Dean Foster's Adaptation Expansion of Eric Frank Russell's short story of the same name). While they are a psionic Hive Mind of Actual Pacifists who insist on enforcing galactic peace through diplomacy and trickery, they are still considered completely terrifying to more militant empires to the point of their emperor openly tolerating insults of their envoy. Largely thanks to being one step of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who in their galactic infancy led to them dropping a Depopulation Bomb on a militant race of Absolute Xenophobes that left them unable to reproduce. They claim that they don't take measures that extreme, though.
  • In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Vogon dogma is obstructive bureaucracy. In many ways, this makes them the worst of the lot: If the forms are signed, they'll demolish your planet without so much as batting an eye, and as far as they're concerned it's your own fault for not looking into these affairs.
  • The Auditors of Reality from Discworld are the Vogons amplified. They keep track of everything in the universe, from the spin of atoms to the orbits of planets and stars, and want to wipe out life because it's "untidy". The Auditors especially hate sentient life for coming up with abstract things that can't be measured or quantified, like "justice".

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: The episode "The Ensigns of Command" features the Sheliak, who have traces of the Conquistador, as they are interesting in colonizing other planets and have little regard for humanity (with an intent to exterminate those they meet), but set themselves apart because they do so in an extremely legal manner. The Sheliak are downright obsessed with laws and legality, and have a 500,000-word treaty with the Federation that covers virtually every aspect of their lives. Trouble arises when the Sheliak want to colonize a planet where a small colony of humans has settled after a starship crash; it would take the Enterprise three weeks to evacuate them all, but the Sheliak's treaty states that the Federation only gets three days to do so, and the aliens' complete dedication to the letter of the law makes them refuse to budge. Ultimately, Picard saves the day by using the Sheliak's own tactics against them: after the Enterprise crew scans the entire treaty, he invokes a clause that allows him to name a neutral third party to adjudicate disputes, then deliberately chooses an alien race that is currently in hibernation and won't be awake for six months. The Sheliak, frustrated at being outsmarted but still beholden to their Bureaucratic roots, grant him the needed three weeks instead (the treaty does allow on-the-spot negotiations of issues like this if both sides agree to them, but up until being placed in a situation where the only other way to obey the treaty would delay things even further the Sheliak refused to consider negotiation).
  • The Judoon from Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures are a race of Humanoid Rhinos with a Judge, Jury, and Executioner mindset. While they are portrayed as Lawful Stupid Dumb Muscle, they are generally Played for Drama.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons gives us the Inevitables, a race of Mechanical Abominations who travel the multiverse to enforce what they see as universal 'laws' such as laws against regicide or more abstract ones like laws against defying mortality. While they are intelligent enough to know the difference between the letter and thus spirit of the law (so aren't fooled by malicious compliance), Inevitables are also completely indifferent to the consequences of enforcing the law. An Inevitable will kill someone in the middle of saving the world for the crime of breaking a completely unrelated Magically-Binding Contract.

    Video Games 
  • Star Control gives us the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, who would seem to be Aliens as Conquistadors except for how they are completely disinterested in the fruits of their conquest, not even taking their Battle Thralls into combat with them. They enslave more to protect themselves from other intelligent life rather than to exploit them, so it's easy to find prosperity and even Happiness in Slavery under the Kzer-Za as long as you follow the Slave Laws. However, they are also known to threaten to execute entire civilizations for, say, an army of Dirty Cowards being reluctant to follow dangerous orders.
  • Stellaris gives us a few examples in the forms of Precursors. Notably, unlike the other varieties of Scary Dogmatic Aliens in their game or even other Hobbesians Lawgivers, these xenos WILL actually step up to abandon their agenda and save the galaxy once it reaches the Godzilla Threshold.
    • Keepers of Knowledge task themselves with protecting the galaxy from dangerous technology such as advanced A.I.s and Jump Drives. Researching such technology can result in them enslaving and confiscating your research (along with assassinating your ruler and top scientists) if you're lucky.
    • Enigmatic Observers amuse themselves with quietly watching the younger races make their way out into the galaxy before they get themselves killed. They're pretty easy to keep happy: don't enslave, don't commit genocides, do some relatively easy tasks now and again. Make them mad, though, and they can ruin your empire just as thoroughly as the more hostile Precursor factions.
  • Tyranny, despite the plot of the game involving your character enforcing byzantine and draconian laws for your Physical God Evil Overlord and their Humanoid Abomination underlings, doesn't really use this trope. They would be more Conquistadors. EXCEPT for a certain incorruptible Noble Top Enforcer, Tunon the Adjudicator, who willingly epitomizes Lawful Stupid and provides more than enough of this Internal Subtrope. Tunon singlehandedly cows even Complete Monsters into following Kyros' self-serving and seemingly arbitrary laws and, while not cruel, is merciless in their enforcement. The start of the game has him sending half of a city into the Bottomless Pits not for fighting against his sovereign, but for being in his eyes overly corrupt!


Other

    Anime and Manga 
  • Kenichi Sonoda (of Gunsmith Cats fame)'s Cannon God Exaxxion's main antagonists, the Riofaldians, have many similarities to the Nazis, especially the sinister Major Rya'am & Lt. Za'ire, who are basically alien versions of Josef Mengele & a Nazisploiter. Interestingly, they're actually a lot closer overall to another of the Axis Powers, namely Imperial Japan, which is probably why the series was never made into an anime. They also fit the trope as alien Conquistadores, first arriving under the guise of peace and friendly trade relations, before utterly conquering the human military and declaring Earth as their new colony. However it's how they treat the humans afterwards that fits them straight back into Nazi territory.
  • Robotech has the odd case of the Zentradi, which are essentially a Japanese stereotype of Americans leftover from World War Two. A race of giants that comes from a far away place and has the power to destroy literally everything? Lead by an evil bald guy who controls an army on the other side of the galaxy? It all bears a striking resemblance to the Japanese perspective of the United States during the Second World War. American troops were taller on average than the Japanese at this time, and culturally speaking in Japan the United States didn't exist until we appeared out of nowhere and blew up entire cities. Seeing as that other famous works of science fiction also borrowed from adversaries during this conflict, it's not a stretch to see the same here.

    Comic Books 
  • The Volgans in Invasion! and ABC Warriors were initially intended as a stand-in for the USSR - in fact the creators originally wanted to use the actual USSR as the villains, but were forbidden for fear of antagonising the Soviet embassy. Just to drive the point home, Volkhan's head is shaped like one of the Kremlin's domes, and his weapons are a hammer and a sickle. In more recent years, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and improved relations between Britain and Russia, the Volgans have come to more resemble the Bush administration (though when America appears in these stories, it also resembles Bush's country. Yeah). Indeed, "Volga" is the name of the largest river in European Russia, Volga-Volga was one of Stalin's favourite movies, and the Russian city of Volgograd is better known by its former name Stalingrad.
  • The Dire Wraiths from Rom: Spaceknight are an Always Chaotic Evil race of sorcerers who literally do all their bad stuff For the Evulz. They come from the Black Nebula, a region whose name is used as a curse throughout space, and their planet Wraithworld was so suffused with supernatural corruption that Galactus couldn't eat it. They are loathesome in every possible way, and they revel in it. Their cousins the Skrulls want nothing to do with them.

    Fan Works 
  • Many Deconstruction Fics and Hate Fics for The Conversion Bureau paint up the ponies as this, usually as a mixture between the Nazis and conquistadors.
    • In the worse portrayals (whether intentional or not), the ponies come across as all four. They're nazis because they think that humanity is inherently inferior, communists because they choose to assimilate humanity (which basically brainwashes the human) to fix that, religious fundamentalists because of their almost fanatical devotion to Celestia, who is usually portrayed as a Physical God, and as conquistadores because they're bent on taking over all of Earth.
    • The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone has a softer take of the ponies as conquistadors, with Celestia herself being more genuinely clueless as to why the humans are refusing her "gifts."
  • The Crimson Garment reimagines the Life Fibers a mix between Nazis and Communists. They're Social Darwinist Evilutionary Biologists who latch on to human hosts, enhancing their intellectual and physical capabilities in exchange for control over their own body. If humans wear Life Fibers for too long, their sense of self and identity will be destroyed.
    • In the 3rd (technically the first, excluding the timeline and prologue) chapter, Ragyo says that she subjected her twin daughters to a horrific experiment that will turn them into Half-Human Hybrids because she wanted "perfect children" and believes that humanity as a whole is inferior without Life Fibers. The Nazi parallels speak for themselves.
  • Sonic X: Dark Chaos goes all over the place with this. The Jews are (ironically) Nazis, the Muslims are Fundamentalists, the Angels are a vague Communist/Fundamentalist hybrid, and the Demons are Conquistadores.
  • The Forceless Collective from Star Wars: Paranormalities has a bit of all four types in them. They're eldritch conquerors from another galaxy aiming to take the whole universe, willing to do anything if it advances their goal of universal peace, whether it be possessing other people to make their servants, brainwashing them into believing in their cause (to the point that Emperor Valkor has several cults dedicated to him that treat him like a quasi-deity, the Valkoran Empire among them), or outright exterminating anyone that refuses to join or is immune to possession. However, the Collective has a regimented hierarchy where Valkor, a charismatic psychopath, is the supreme leader and the lowest-ranking Forceless are slaves or cannon fodder.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The ghouls from They Live! are all about "trickle down" economics. The entire Earth is their third world, where they do all their evil alien business outsourcing, until Roddy Piper runs out of bubblegum and saves the day. Yes, this movie is intentionally fairly silly.
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) features aliens as ecoterrorists, who want to wipe out human civilization and infrastructure to preserve the biosphere. You can appreciate the ideological update: the 1951 original had the aliens trying to warn humanity about the hazards of the atom bomb. It should be noted that this is precisely the reason Klaatu in the original was NOT a Scary Dogmatic Alien. He did deliver a threat ("if you continue like that you are a danger to other planets and we will intervene"), but he was clearly benevolent, and the good guy of the movie at all times. Remake Klaatu ended up with a change of heart, but before that his mission was not to warn anyone, but to skip straight to the EXTERMINATE-part. The humans are still bastards, but the fact that they are defending themselves against an advanced alien that tries to wipe them out casts them in a MUCH better light than in the 1951 movie.
  • In Signs the aliens are heavily implied to be The Horde, here "only" to abduct humans for food and then running back into orbit once we figure out their weakness.
  • The eponymous Predator aliens in the Predator franchise seem to be obsessed with Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, or at the very least it is a very culturally significant activity. The Expanded Universe (which calls them Hish and Yautja) goes into more detail on why they have such a hunting-based society.

    Literature 
  • In Antares, The Ryall are a subversion. They attack the human race on sight, clearly intent on genocide. Yet when captured, the Ryall do not seem evil. They are not driven by any sort of religious dogma. They simply believe that it is impossible for two sentient species to coexist peacefully. The root of this belief is that, on their homeworld, they fought and wiped out a species of sentient amphibious sharks.
  • The Rangor of Troy Rising end up here by virtue of combining traits from all of the above classes, with the possible exception of The Fundamentalist, and throw in the classic trappings of Imperial Japan to boot. The Communist is the closest match—they heavily practice information-control and use lots of propaganda, while also employing Political Officers, from a department that is JUST short of being named 'STASI', to keep their people in line—particularly those dangerous intellectuals! But they also widely practice eugenics, giving them heavy undertones of The Nazi, and are (at least SUPPOSED to be) fanatically dedicated to their Emperor, to the point of using kamikaze tactics, just like Imperial Japan. Finally, they also follow the path of the Conquistadores, taking those civilizations they deem useful and worthy as vassals, while destroying those who dare stand against their obviously superior culture.
  • The Enamorati from The Engines Of Dawn, who jealously guard the secret of Faster-Than-Light Travel. This is because they actually use Eldritch Abominations as stardrives. They're nice enough, if you keep from pissing them off. Of course, someone does, and they send their State Sec to kidnap them.
  • The Geometers from The Stars Are Cold Toys. Bonus points for being Human Aliens in a galaxy where it was previously thought impossible. Both humans and Geometers are actually Lost Colonies of a larger civilization at the core of the galaxy. The Geometers seem friendly, but their ideas on what constitutes Friendship are, frankly, scary as hell. Being a Higher-Tech Species, they have no problem curb-stomping most of the known species, even the ancient ones, with their tiny scout ships (they also have gigantic mothership). They don't even have a word for "enemy", just "non-friend" (as in, someone who is not yet a friend). Then again, if a non-friend really doesn't want to become a friend, then, well, non-friends do die sometimes. They also don't have a word for "peace", just something that means "advancement-towards-peace". As for making friends out of alien races, they first send in agents to secretly regress that civilization to a more primitive level. After that's done, the Geometers reveal themselves as their friends from the stars and offer the hand of friendship. Then, the new "friends" are progressed using Geometer philosophies. The thing is, the average Geometer wholeheartedly believes in the philosophy of Friendship. Anyone who goes against it is treated as clinically insane (that part should probably go to the "Communist" section, since this is exactly how things were in Soviet Russia) and placed in "sanatoriums", which are, basically, forced labor camps. Their leaders are so frightened by the prospects of unlimited choice that their entire star system was moved away from the Core in order to escape the Star Shadow, a vast Portal Network that offers limitless choices based on subconscious desires, which represents the complete opposite of what the Geometers stand for.
  • There was an entire subgenre within the Polish sci-fi scene, the so-called fantastyka socjologiczna ("sociological fantasy"), which was devoted to stories of science-fictional totalitarian societies. In most cases, these stories were written as a means to get crap past the radar at a time when you couldn't criticize the official ideology, so you'd expect aliens-as-communists to be the usual antagonists. But since Poland's experience with communism was rather different than, say, that of the United States', the alien invaders had fewer traits that this entry associates with aliens-as-communists, and rather more with aliens-as-conquistadores. Instead of mind-controllers and assimilators, they tended to be rather straightforward conquerors, albeit always driven by some sort of inscrutable ideology (oftentimes accompanied by a ridiculous economic policy) that they then imposed on humans. So, while the metaphor was crystal-clear to the intended audience — whether you want to place them under aliens-as-communists or aliens-as-conquistadores, we leave up to you.
    As a corollary... 
  • Black Fleet Crisis: The Star Wars Legends EU tends to have three broad categories which enemies fall into: 1) Imperials, 2) Sith, and 3) evil alien hordes. Guess which one this is? The Yevetha specifically fall under the Nazi variety, believing they're the Master Race with an extreme xenophobia toward all other species, which causes them to engage in multiple genocides against those who have settled in their home star cluster. However, they also fit in the Conquistator variety too as they're motivated by wanting their worlds for themselves besides this.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: Voyager:
      • The Kazon are clearly meant to be Gangbangers In Space.
      • The Hirogen are obssessed with huniting sentient beings (are somewhat based on the Yautja from Predator).
      • The Vidiians are Scary Organ Harvester Aliens, as their species suffers from an incurable degenerative decease their technology has focus mostly on the medicine which is very advanced and are very hostile, attacking other species to substract useful organs for transplant.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
      • At least in the early seasons, the Bajorans are former terrorists who have given up their violent ways for politics (PLO and IRA), and newly-liberated Eastern Europeans on the verge of political anarchy.
      • The Dominion is ruled by a race of xenophobic shapeshifters who are venerated as gods by their subjects, who see their war against the Alpha Quadrant as a crusade. The amalgamated nature of the Dominion might suggest elements of Aliens as Communists as well. From what we see, however, only the Jem'Hadar and the Vorta are for sure true believers. There is evidence that many of the other races under the Dominion simply live in fear or go along because they profit by it (this is especially true in early referenes to the Dominion and depictions of their activities). The Founders are said to have an innate need for order and conformity, and the avowed mission of their crusade is to bring this order to the untidy quadrant-next-door. Thus the Dominion may embody several types: the Founders are Aliens as Communists, the Jem'Hadar and Vorta are Aliens as Fundamentalists, and the rest (perhaps) are the thralls of Aliens as Conquistadores.
  • Babylon 5:
    • The Vorlons are Scary Didactic Aliens. They see it as their duty to bring up the green and callow races, the cause they adhere to with the worst qualities of a stereotypical Sadist Teacher, backed up by a Time Abyss of experience and unfathomably advanced technology. They always know better, and the lengths they go to in order to ensure absolute obedience and reverence from their unsuspecting students include tampering with genetics to cause people perceive them as divine entities, genetically engineering other species to produce telepaths to fight Vorlons' doctrinal enemies and leaving them to deal with the social ramifications on their own, obliterating entire planets for assisting said doctrinal enemies even if they were forced into it or it was done by a rogue element, and talking to people in an insufferably aloof and mysterious manner.
    • The aforementioned doctrinal enemies, the Shadows, are Scary Darwinian Aliens. They share Vorlons' dedication to the upbringing business, but their approach is more straightforward: every thousand years they go out there in the galaxy and start killing people, and also incite others to do the same. In spades. If their "trainees" are worth their salt, they'll mount a defence and repel the invaders, thereby becoming smarter and tougher. And if they don't, oh well, natural selection is a harsh mistress, and there are always other races.
    • Basically, the entire galaxy-spanning war between the two vastly superior species and the countless others they dragged into it, is fought over the disagreement over the teaching methods.
    • The best part is that they've been doing this for so long that they don't even remember why. When they were asked their own questions meant to determine identity and purpose "Who are you" and "What do you want", they had no answers.
  • The Wraith of Stargate Atlantis are Scary Space Vampires. Humans are nothing more to them than food and their dogma can be summed up in the words of the Wraith Queen in the pilot ep - "We don't require our food to agree with us."
  • The Whoniverse:
    • Doctor Who:
      • Sontarans are Scary Jingoistic Aliens, without any real ideology behind their jingoism except "Hell yeah, we love beating the shit out of our enemies, especially the Rutan Host!" Think of your typical Proud Warrior Race Guy, turn the martial aggression up a notch, and throw in a bit of Eagleland, and you've got a Sontaran on your hands.
      • The alternate-universe Cybermen in the new series represent materialistic technophilia. Their Steve Jobs-esque creator controls the world through Cybus Industries, a communications-technology conglomerate (think Apple on steroids). People even start implanting earbud-like devices inside their heads to access digital information more easily. And this is where it all goes to hell: Cybus starts using these "Ear-Pods" as mind control devices and "upgrades" every single Ear-Pod user into a Cyberman.
    • The 456 from Torchwood: Children of Earth are alien drug addicts... and the substance they are addicted to is human children. While that should sound silly, it becomes clear that they're willing to do anything for a hit, don't care if their narcotic of choice is another sapient being, and they have the technology and weapons to ensure that the other party complies in handing it over.
  • Farscape did a weird twist on this in the episode "The Ugly Truth" with the Plokavians. They aren't aggressive to other cultures, but they have a peculiar philosophical dogma that there can be only one consensus reality, and that if two people even slightly disagree with each other on factual matters, then the only explanation can be that one is deliberately and maliciously lying. This makes them hell to deal with if you accidentally get into a conflict with them. Justified since they all have complete Photographic Memory, they can't wrap their heads around the idea that anyone else could remember things differently than the way they actually happened.
  • The Arrowverse features a four-way crossover episode with the Dominators as the main antagonists. According to one of them, they have seen how metahumans on many other planets become corrupted with their powers and run rampant, and viewing Earth as a potential threat to their own world, they just decide to eradicate them.
  • Chousei Kantai Sazer X: The Neo Descal at first appear to just be an empire of Card Carrying Space Pirates without any coherent ideology, but towards the end of the series their leader reveals that their true goal is essentially an Assimilation Plot that involves wiping away all individuality to make the universe "become one" and thus achieve everlasting peace.

    Tabletop Games 
  • AT-43: The Therians are a race of Internet junkies who take over other races planets as part of a plan to prevent, technically speaking, the end of the Universe, by preserving them in their Dyson Sphere. In an added twist, the Therians are the actual humans who have evolved and transformed themselves into Necron expies, and in the long run they'll win in the end as they can overwhelm their opponents with their numbers and technology, or outlast them.
  • Gamma World has the Grens, who are technically more Scary Alternate Worldline Humans. Their philosophy is to kill everything that is not natural and not a Gren so that they can create a perfect recreation of Earth's natural environment where the only things there will be other Grens.
  • The Ancients in Traveller were Scary Scientific Aliens. They experimented with other races like a curious teen-nerd watching his ant farm and squishing one every once in a while just to see how the others react.
  • Bleak World:
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Imperium are Scary Dogmatic Humans, combining the Nazi, Religious Fundamentalist, and to somewhat lesser degrees the Communist and Conquistador types into a xenophobic blend of all the worst periods in human history. Believing in the manifest destiny of humanity to rule the Galaxy, fighting in the name of the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind while suffering from rampant corruption and abuse of power within the same church of said God-Emperor, as happy to wipe out billions of its own people (whether in the form of sacrificing entire armies, burning down entire planets just to root out a single heretic, or a clerical error by the Vast Bureaucracy wrongly convicting a loyal world of shortchanging the Imperial government out of its due tithes) as it is to exterminate entire alien races, and are similarly quite fond of launching campaigns of conquest even though they've already colonized about a million worlds, all of which were forced at gunpoint to assimilate into Imperial culture if they didn't embrace it willingly... No wonder the fans like to call them "Space Catholic Nazis". The worship of the God-Emperor is even ironic, given that their object of worship actively opposed such a thing... back when he wasn't practically a corpse that is unable to meaningfully communicate with anybody. But at least in this universe, the crusading against aliens and mutants is more or less justified...
    • The Tau, often affectionately referred to as "Blue Space Commies", are mainly Socialist Conquistadores with a rather large helping of the Flat-Earth Atheist analogue of Religious Fundamentalism (or a softer version of militant atheism).
      • The Tau are relatively benevolent, by the setting's standards. Their society is actually far less oppressive than that of humans, and their brand of assimilation consists of converting surrendered enemies to their ideology (which may feature brainwashing if they do not convert willingly) and giving them a place in their society. Of course in any other setting they'd be at best Well Intentioned Extremists, but this is 40k we're talking about, so the fact they give you an option of joining them or dying makes them seem like saintly paragons of virtue in comparison to everybody else. And then come the implications of mind control, forced sterilisation, death camps...
      • Tau can be considered to be an inversion of Scary Religious Fundamentalist Aliens, as they're Flat Earth Atheists, and have stated in some materials that they don't really mind people being religious as long as they serve the Greater Good. While they are fanatically devoted to the Greater Good, generally speaking, this is usually depicted as a positive trait... But this being WH40K, religious tolerance in this form is actually suicidal, since they lack the discretion to make some religions acceptable but not others - Chaos cults anyone?
      • Also of note: the caste system of the Tau, in which society is organised into large corporate groups under the overall leadership of a small ruling class, is eerily reminiscent of state corporatism as envisioned by Benito Mussolini. The Tau policy on conquering other races, where they are not outright purged but rather assimilated into the "superior" Tau culture, also resembles how fascist Italy treated its colonies. While definitely not space Nazis, the Tau can be considered to be space fascists.
      • The Tau are also Scary Conquistador Aliens in that they have expanded rapidly by colonising new planets, whether or not those planets were already inhabited. Any existing inhabitants will either voluntarily submit to the Greater Good, or they will be made to do so.
      • That being said, the Tau are morally ambiguous. The forces of Chaos, the Necrons, hordes of orks, and the swarms of Tyranids are morally unambiguous in the sense that they all just want to kill you and steal/eat some part of you. The Tau certainly don't meet the "scary" requirement of "scary dogmatic aliens" compared those four races - the psychopathic, entirely selfish, and tremendously violent Orks easily qualify as the least horrifying of the 'evil' races. The Tau aren't half as dogmatic as the Imperium of Man either.
      • Also, the issue with the Tau is both a matter of both Unreliable Narrator and Real Life Writes the Plot. The Tau were originally introduced to be the "one good and noble" race in the 40K universe because so many fans were getting sick of the Grim Dark permeating every molecule of the in-game galaxy. Of course, this ended up annoying many existing players who LIKED the "My guys are the good guys simply because it's from their perspective" aspect of the whole ordeal. The kicker? They made the Tau seem like potential dystopian overlords through fluff which was written almost entirely from the perspective of Imperial scribes... Which tend to be about as accurate as 1940's or 50's newsreel depictions of the Axis Powers / Communists, respectively. So once more, "it's in the player's hands."
    • The Leagues of Votann are Scary Industrialist Aliens there may be some nuance regarding the beliefs of individual leagues but their guiding philosophy is that all natural resources anywhere are theirs to exploit, it doesn't matter if its an ore vein in the ground, another races ore mine or if some race already used it to build something, as far as they're concerned they have the right to melt it down to use for their own projects and kill you if they get in the way.
  • The Phyrexians in Magic: The Gathering have fulfilled every niche of this trope:
    • Original Phyrexia was an unholy mixture of aliens as nazis, aliens as conquistadores and aliens as religious fundamentalists, being a faction of genocidal machine worshiper undead that routinely exterminated entire populations to supply themselves with rotting flesh necessary for their survival. Due to their practice of "compleation" and the fact that their leader Yawgmoth was directly compared to Stalin in The Thran, they have aspects of aliens as communists, but the biggest threat Old Phyrexia represented was annihilation, not assimilation.
    • New Phyrexia's Machine Orthodoxy is a mixture of aliens as communists and aliens are religious fundamentalists. As the name implies, they are a religion, that seeks to create peace through literally stitching everyone together. Their focus is assimilation and cleansing, which eventually renders them the dominant faction.
    • New Phyrexia's Black-aligned Seven Steel Thanes, by contrast, are focused more on the aliens as conquistadores angle, being more focused in simply acquiring resources.
    • As for New Phyrexia's other factions, the Green-aligned Phyrexians of the Vicious Swarm have a few traces of Nazi, with their philosophy of social Darwinism, but are mostly might-makes-right primitivists rather than anything else; the Blue ones aren't so much dogmatic as they are coldly detached and amoral, seeking some esoteric vision of perfection; and the Red are conflicted, due to red mana's core in freedom and emotion being incompatible with Phyrexian conformity. Before their leader turned against the rest of New Phyrexia they tried to remake reality to their aesthetic tastes.
  • Fading Suns has the Vau, who, while not hostile, are definitely scary in a Paranoia Fuel kind of way: as a Higher-Tech Species, everyone in any position to know understands they could just roll over all of humanity if they wished so... but fortunately, their dogma is a perfect harmonious society with no outside influence. If you keep off their lawn, you're beneath their notice, but if you don't, they'll vaporize you and you better hope they'll find it example enough for others.

    Video Games 
  • The Scrin from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series just want to harvest Tiberium, and stumble across humanity in the process. Having no precedent for a civilization surviving the Liquid Tiberium explosion that attracted them (Kane deliberately attracted them or at least spread more Tiberium), the Scrin invade with force to attempt to go about their job anyway, leveling cities as "diversionary tactics" to keep the humans off balance from this goal. When humanity kicks them back off the planet except for a single Threshold Tower, the Scrin Overlord declares that a full invasion will commence.
    • One of the absolute best parts of the Scrin Campaign is when the aliens land and encounter heavy resistance... Their response is outright amazement at the humans' not even stopping their internal war as they were being invaded: "Factions continued combat operations between them even as they were threatened with extinction by our initial attack; indigenous population is warlike to the extreme; entire indigenous population must be cleansed from the surface of the planet".
    • The expansion, Kane's Wrath, introduces two Scrin sub-factions. Reaper-17 are Scary Dogmatic Aliens played straight, in that they take any actions necessary to annihilate things that stand in front of progress, using a religious sort of fervor. Traveler-59 are more a cult of subversion (no, not the trope kind) who actively co-opt humans via a method of The Virus.
    • In Kane's Wrath, Kane himself calls the Scrin a "cult of addiction in the guise of a species," giving the mental image of an entire species of militant, highly advanced crack addicts who are turning planets into giant rocks to snort... which isn't that far from the truth, given that it is stated that they require regular Tiberium infusions in order to survive. It's implied that at some point in their past they adapted to living with Tiberium at the cost of a species-wide addiction to it.
  • The people of Terra in Final Fantasy IX seek to wipe out the people of Gaia and absorb Gaia's life force in order to keep Terra alive. Dialogue in the game implies that this isn't the first time the Terrans have destroyed a younger planet so they could keep going.
  • Wing Commander: The Kilrathi are Imperial Japan as Cat Folk. They've even got the honor-obsessed warrior code, Attack! Attack! Attack! battle tactics, and Emperor. All they're missing are headbands and katana.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has the Kett, who combine all four types, particularly Aliens as Nazis and Aliens as Religious Fundamentalists. Their fixation on genetic purity, putting all non-kett prisoners they deem unworthy of Exaltation into deadly prison camps, a charismatic psychopath leader and a tendency towards invasive scientific procedures all call to mind the Nazis. They represent aliens as religious fundamentalists in a rather Straw Character yet complicated manner; the Exaltation process is worshiped and ritualized yet their "religion" has no theistic, moral or supernatural aspects, though it has imagery directly ripped from real-life religions, along with one title from Gnosticism (Archon) and two from Christianity (Cardinal and Primus). They represent "aliens as communists" through the exaltation process making all non-kett into kett as an example of literal assimilation and "aliens as conquistadors" as they have come to a new land to convert the native population and often times has had skirmishes with another foreign civilization.
  • The Space Pirates from Metroid games, when not pirating stuffnote , seem to believe it is their manifest destiny to conquer the galaxy and nothing should be allowed to stand in their way. In Metroid Prime 3, where Dark Samus brainwashes their leaders, they become full-blown religious fundementalists, forming a cult that worships Phazon and considers Dark Samus to be their prophet.
  • Sins of a Solar Empire has a rather interesting twist on the usual trope. Where both the Human Trader Emergency Coalition and the Alien Vasari Empire have understandable enough motives and eventually split between a more desperate and violent splinter faction and one more open to diplomacy and even co-operation, it's the other "Human" faction, the Advent, that takes the role of the true Scary Dogmatic Aliens, out to either eradicate or assimilate everyone else, their respectively splinter factions are genocidal mind-controlling imperialists driven by all-consuming hatred and an even more genocidal sect of absolutist puritans powered by suffering and death.
  • The Zuul from the Sword of the Stars expansion Born of Blood are all of the above categories combined into one scary-ass combo platter of dogmatism. They are a race of predatory, genetically engineered bio-weapons created by a race of Abusive Precursors to destroy their enemies. Instead of having Turned Against Their Masters as is typical of that trope, the Zuul worship their creators as gods. They view the genocide of the unworthy, and building of Zuul empires, as a holy purpose: Anyone or anything not a god or a Zuul is a slave to be conquered, abused, exploited, Mind Raped for any viable knowledge and then eaten. Unfortunately for both the Zuul and for the rest of the galaxy, the Zuul have lost their 'gods' and, without anyone to hold their chains, their entire race has turned to a galaxy-wide crusade to find their 'gods' again. This puts them in conflict with all the other species — and, as mentioned above, exterminating other species is what they were made for.
    • The expansion into implies that they'll find the Great Masters, whether they want to be found or not. How many people are forced to be gods by worshippers?
    • In Sword of the Stars II: The Lords of Winter, we will meet the creators of the Zuul, the Suul'ka. From what we know about them, they are a really friendly bunch, and a pleasure to be around.
    • Interestingly, a Zuul faction does end up abandoning their beliefs and joining with the Liir, who used to be their enemies. This is after they found out that the Suul'ka are really very old and large Liir who decide that ruling the galaxy is better than succumbing to nature and dying.
  • Imperium Galactica II has the Kra'hen Empire, their goal is to eliminate all other races, and collect their heads. Khorne would be proud of them.
  • Pretty much every above variation can be found in the randomly generated alien races of Stellaris, usually the result of mixing militarism, xenophobia, and/or authoritarianism. Those of with the Fanatical Purifier model in particular regard peace only as time to plot the genocide of every other living species in the galaxy. Communist and religious fanatic variants just need a dash of materialism or spiritualist ethos, respectively, added to their ethos.
    • In addition, Stellaris also features "Fallen Empires"; hyper-advanced galactic superpowers which can spawn in any game, provided there is still room for them after meeting the player's parameters. They are implied in universe to be well past their prime, yet they are still forces to be reckoned with, due in no small part to spawning with late-game technology and rather intimidating fleets. There are four types of Fallen Empire, each with an ideology based on the fanatical forms of certain ethics players can choose from while designing their own empires. These are:
      • "Militant Isolationists" are the "Fanatic Xenophobe" variant of Fallen Empire. They are almost entirely apathetic toward the myriad of fledgling states cropping up around the galaxy, and they are interested only in their own species and maintaining the borders of what remains of their empire. They become irate, however, if/when these empires attempt to colonize systems close to their own borders. At this point, they will demand the offending colony be abandoned, and if it isn't they may well force the upstart expansionist to leave.
      • "Holy Guardians" are the "Fanatic Spiritualist" variant of Fallen Empire. They are similar to the Isolationists, but their dogma comes with a religious spin; rather than attempting to dissuade expansion toward their own empire, their ire is reserved for those who attempt to colonize their holy worlds, which can be identified as "Gaia" worlds with special names. As with the Isolationists, attempting to colonize these worlds will prompt them to demand the colonies be abandoned, and persisting may escalate the conflict.
      • "Keepers of Knowledge" are the "Fanatic Materialist" variant of Fallen Empire. Essentially, they have taken it upon themselves to oversee the technological advancement of all the younger galactic states. In terms of how this affects gameplay, Keepers will become irate with empires who research certain "dangerous" technologies, such as sentient artificial intelligence. Doing so will prompt them to demand policies be adjusted to forbid the application of these technologies. Persisting may prompt them to attack.
      • "Enigmatic Observers" are the "Fanatic Xenophile" variant of Fallen Empire. They are arguably the only benevolent example in that their defining ideology is their intense fascination with alien life and their respect for the sovereignty of surrounding nations, they are nevertheless both scary and dogmatic. Dogmatic because their ideology will prompt them to intervene if/when sapient rights are violated, whether that be because sapient species are being either enslaved or purged. Scary because they have the endgame tech to discourage players from roleplaying their own scary dogmatic aliens.
      • "Ancient Caretakers" are the "Machine Intelligence" Fallen Empire added in the "Synthetic Dawns DLC". Unlike the other fallen empire variants, the caretakers are completely enigmatic. They do not have any Berserk Button to push, their opinions on everyone else is even labeled as enigmatic in the contacts screen, and the requests they make are often random. And unlike the other variants who can Awaken via a number of ways such as the upstart awakening or the War In Heaven rivalry, the caretakers can only be awakened via the "Contingency" Endgame Crisis.
    • "Doctrinal Enforcers" are the Awakened of Holy Guardians. Unlike Holy Guardians, who just sit around lamenting their past glories and only mobilizing to protect their holy worlds, Doctrinal Enforcers will actively attempt to spread their creed throughout the galaxy, by force. If you're unfortunate enough to get one in your game then they'll probably be the closest thing your game will have to a Big Bad along with whatever endgame Crisis hits. Jingoistic Reclaimers, the Awakened Militant Isolationists, will attempt to reconquer the galaxy and vassalize those who submit to their authority.
  • The Elder Scrolls series has the Thalmor, a A Nazi by Any Other Name extremist religious sect of the Altmer. In the 200 year Time Skip between the Oblivion Crisis and Skyrim, they have seized control of the Altmeri (High Elf) government, destabilized the declining Tamriellic Empire, seceded from the Empire, annexed neighboring Valenwood (homeland of the Bosmer (Wood Elves)), reformed the Aldmeri Dominion of old, and started the Great War with the Empire. About thirty years before Skyrim begins, the Dominion invaded Cyrodiil (the homeland of the Empire) and sacked the Imperial City (though they were repulsed by a Legion counterattack). They settled for a (heavily favorable) peace treaty, the White-Gold Concordat, which includes a ban on Talos worship. Talos is perhaps the most popular deity in the Empire, especially to the Nords of Skyrim. It also gives the Thalmor the right to enforce the ban anywhere in the Empire, which they do with wandering Justicars given free reign to arrest/eliminate Talos worshipers wherever they are found, as well as any other undesirables (Altmer/Bosmer dissidents who have fled to the Empire to escape the Thalmor, surviving Blades, and really anyone else the Thalmor desire). This ban, along with the general Thalmor presence and oppression, led directly to the Skyrim Civil War.
  • The Ganglion coalition from Xenoblade Chronicles X, while called a crime syndicate with an exorbitant amount of political influence, are a mix of Nazis and religious fundamentalists. They have a hierarchy where the Ganglion species is the dominant race, and other species are to either serve them or be destroyed, and they seek to destroy humanity under the claim of them being a plague, which is actually a cover for the fact that humans are the legitimate descendants of their creators, the Samaarians, and Saamarian/human DNA is a failsafe against the Ganglion species. As religious fundamentalists, they not only paint the extermination of humanity as a holy mission, they worship the Samaarians like gods and have reverence for an as-yet-unseen entity known as the Great One, but given the revelations about humanity's ancestry and the Ganglion's status as an artificial servant race, it's not quite clear how much of it is genuine dogma or cultural propaganda to cover up a power grab.
  • In Terra Invicta, there's the Hydra. As every faction, save the Genre Blind Protectorate, soon realizes, they will accept nothing less than the total surrender of Earth, seeking to enslave/mind control/"domesticate" humanity. They have reasons for their paranoia and hostility, which the more curious factions eventually uncover, but they're nonetheless very difficult to negotiate with. The one faction that wants a peace with the Hydra that doesn't involve either the total expulsion of the Hydra from the solar system or a human surrender has by far the hardest victory condition in the game. Closest to Aliens as Conquistadors, but details of their backstory and physiology complicate things: they were nearly wiped out by another, outright genocidal alien race, leading to the formation of a "defense consensus" that decided the only way to prevent such a disaster was to preemptively "domesticate" every other sapient species in the galaxy. Later in the Academy's storyline, it's determined that there is a pro-peace Hydra faction that can be negotiated with, though they obviously aren't present in the invasion force.

    Webcomics 
  • Drive (Dave Kellett): The Continuum of Makers are nearly identical to each other, but rather than becoming Aliens as Communists, they place utmost importance on individuality. The most important Makers are the ones who "Birthed" the most "Spirits" ("invented" the most "unique things"). They're antagonists because a human "found" one of their ships, and reverse engineered the Ring Drive, founding an empire with FTL travel. The Continuum are not happy about this.
  • Played for Laughs in Homestuck: The evil cult that dominates the hierarchy of the planet Alternia paint walls with the blood of the lower castes as sacrifice to the Mirthful Messiahs, who will usher in the death of the universe itself. The joke? Their vernacular, belief system and aesthetic are all directly ripped from the work of Insane Clown Posse and juggalo culture.

    Western Animation 
  • The Teletubbies expies from Men in Black: The Series episode "The Star System Syndrome" act like extreme Moral Guardians, kidnapping and imprisoning other alien actors (the expies of Alien, Predator, and ALF) for their violent (and in the case of the Alf expy, gross) behavior in their movies/shows; even when it's established in-universe that they're just actors playing roles.


 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Space Communists

The Space Communists are an intergalactice empi--err "commune" that just works.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

Example of:

Main / ScaryDogmaticAliens

Media sources:

Report