Take Over The World - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): World Domination

"I feel like I could...TAKE ON THE WORLD!"

"Gee, Brain, what we gonna do tonight?"

'"Same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!''
— Pinky And The Brain

"OF COURSE!"

—M. Bison

World Domination™! Ambitious and more logical than destroying the world, as Evil Plans go. They want to be in charge of everything and everyone. This could be just to feed their massive egos, or else they've got somewhat twisted ideals that they want everyone else to adhere to. Either way, it puts them in direct conflict with the heroes, whether professional or "I just want everything to go back to normal" types. Usually said villain fixates on the hero or someone/thing close to them as being part of their master plan. See Evil Plan. If it involves both destroying the world to rule it, it's because Utopia Justifies The Means.

Villains who want this will occasionally combat other villains who want to destroy the world, and sometimes, just sometimes, team up with the heroes to do it. Afterall, you can't conquer the world if it's destroyed, right? Whether or not the villain attempts to stab the heroes in the back the instant the world is safe, or they nod and civilly go back to their Secret Lairs in a gentleman's agreement to face each other tomorrow depends on the villain.

This trope is sometimes subverted when the villain actually succeeds, and it turns out that ruling the world isn't nearly as gratifying as they thought it would be — exactly what does one do with the world once one has it, after all? Plus, once you're ruling the world, you literally have to be in charge of everyone, and that's like herding giraffes. Seven billion giraffes, as a matter of fact.

The more fleshed-out villain will have some specific perception of what is wrong with the world and believe that a strong central authority with vision and strength of purpose can set it right.

For more information, check out the Evil Overlord List, a detailed guide on what should an evil overlord do and not do.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Tadase's goal in Shugo Chara (or at least his would-be self's goal) is pretty clearly spelled out as World Domination.
Princess Tutu's Japanese official website listed profiles for most of the major characters—pretty standard stuff, including height, weight, and each character's "likes" and "dislikes". Most of it isn't too much of a surprise, like Ahiru's love for ballet and dislike of food with chicken in it... but then you get to Autor's profile. What he likes? "World Domination". Apparently that's the reason he's so obsessed with Drosselmeyer's story-spinning powers!
Of course, Ilpalazzo of Excel Saga wants to take over the world, which he believes has become corrupt. He decides a more reasonable goal is to start with just Japan, and the best way to take over Japan is to start with one city.
After Chao Lingshen is revealed as the Big Bad of the Mahora Festival in Mahou Sensei Negima, we finally get a peek at her character bio. Listed under her Likes? World Domination.
"Everyone will become one with Russia."
- Considering the nature of the series, just look at the Real Life examples.

Comic Books

Played straight in Mark Waid's Empire limited comic series. The supervillain mastermind Golgoth actually conquers the world. All opposition is crushed, all superheroes are defeated, and Golgoth is still victorious at the end of the tale. Needless to say, it's a VERY dark story.
Dogbert (of the Dilbert comic strip, of course) has taken over the world a few times (this troper remembers one arc where he does so through hypnosis, but abdicates after he gets bored.) He's also taken over the company frequently, usually becoming obscenely wealthy and retiring within a matter of days.
Darkseid, the Lord of Apokolips, wants to rule the entire DC Universe.
In the Graphic Novel Emperor Doom Doctor Doom succeeds in taking over the world. He hits the Reset Button himself when he realizes he didn't want the world, he just wanted the quest to take it over.
- The Doomster also pulled it off in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, complete with building an army with hybrid Doombot and Iron Man technology and giving himself a castle the size of Latveria. Then the heroes beat him up and Odin blows him to vapour with a lightning bolt.
- He pulls it off in Doom 2099 (or the United States, anyway, which is not actually the entire world). The twist? He's actually a pretty good leader.
- He did it before all of the aforementioned in Super-Villain Team-Up and then intentionally creates a resisting force in letting Magneto snap out of it, and then one X-Men to tag along.

Film

General Zod in Superman II planned to take over ~~Houston~~ Earth after defeating the pesky son of Jor-El.
Senator Palpatine, AKA Darth Sidious, didn't just take over a world, he took over an entire galaxy. Beat that!
- The Borg would've; after all their plan was to take over history, the Earth, and then the galaxy. They were foiled by the Enterprise.

Literature

Sauron already controlled the greater part of the world by the time The Lord Of The Rings opens.
- Two ages before that, his boss — a fallen angel type, name of Morgoth — had similar ambitions before the gods dethroned him.
Lord Voldemort of the Harry Potter series seems to have this as one of his main goals, now that he's functionally immortal.
Deconstructed in Soon I Will Be Invincible. As he works on his latest Evil Plan (and afterwards) Doctor Impossible wonders what "taking over the world" even means, having tried everything from Time Travel to an army of fish:
What does it mean to conquer the world? Is there really a way to do it? Do you have to be the richest one, or the smartest one, or to beat everyone in a fight? Or just to know you could? Is it to be invincible? ... Does it just mean to get the girl you really wanted?
Peter Wiggin, the brother of Ender from Ender's Game begins putting his Take Over The World plan in motion at the age of, like, fourteen? He succeeds several books later.

Live Action TV

Nathan Stark of Eureka admits in one episode that he has dreams about world domination. "But not all the time!"
- Note that those were actual dreams, not aspirations. Make of it what you will.
On Sabrina The Teenage Witch , the Spellman family cat Salem was actually a former warlock sentenced to a century of felinehood for his plotting to rule the world. He is later denied parole when he lets it slip to the interviewer he still dreams of overlordship.
Doctor Who: In "Tomb of the Cybermen", Kleig, a human helping the Cybermen for power, goes on a rant about how the world is a disorganized mess of conflicting ideals, and only his superior intellect could bring it together to solve all its problems. A few seasons later, in "The Invasion", Tobias Vaughn, also helping the Cybermen, would make almost word-for-word the same rant.
- In the new series The Master takes over the world. It gets undone. He does however seem to enjoy it, playing music, torturing his prisoners and planning to take over the universe for all time.
The ultimate goal of every single villain in Stargate SG-1 is the conquest of the Milky Way galaxy. Every. Single. One.
- Even in Atlantis, the Wraith want to capture Atlantis so they have a way to the endless food source that is... the Milky Way galaxy.
  - Well it is a very nice galaxy I think we can all agree. The Wraith mostly like it because even with the Goauld knocking around it hasn't been culled as much as the Pegasus, where they have to hibernate for hundreds of years at a time to avoid starvation.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers makes Rita's motivations clear the moment her ~~can~~ space dumpster is unsealed. "After 10,000 years I'm free! Time to conquer Earth!"
- Same goes for the motivation of every other Power Rangers villain ever.
This is Big Bad Herrick's ultimate plan in season 1 of Being Human.
The Middleman is Genre Savvy about this being a standard Evil Plan.
Khan Noonien Singh wakes up after a near 250-year nap and decides to take over the galaxy in Star Trek.

Tabletop RPG

Pretty much all the evil gods in the Forgotten Realms have this goal.
- Bane has this as his main goal and almost all of his followers' failed plots revolve around this to some degree. Indeed, he is the god of tyranny.
- In Crucible: Trial of Cyric the Mad, the main character's goal towards the beginning was to get a book that would make everyone worship his god, Cyric, thereby allowing him to take over not only the world, but the entire pantheon.
- Shar is an exception: the Lady of Loss wants to destroy the world, not rule it.

Video Games

At the end of the first half of Final Fantasy VI, Kefka conquers the world. The goal of the second half is to dethrone him.
- He does destroy most of it in the process, however.
This is the (repeatedly) stated goal of Murray, the mighty demonic skull in the Monkey Island series. Exactly how he is planning to do this, being a talking disembodied skull with a superiority complex, is slightly less apparent.
Parodied in the Baldurs Gate series with Tiax, an utterly unhinged gnome priest of Cyric, who claims his destiny is to rule the world. Appearing as a recruitable NPC in the first game, the sequel places him in an asylum from where Tiax claims that he already has taken over the world and now rules it all from inside his ~~little padded cell~~ throne room.
This is the ultimate goal in Evil Genius, a Real Time Strategy game where players take control of a wannabe overlord and set off to conquer the world with various criminal means.
Beautifully mocked by Shadow Hearts: Covenant. When the Bonus Boss Orobas appears he begins to spout off about his plans for world domination. At that point, however, Anastasia - who by this point has seen a half-dozen different enemies say much the same things - steps foward and asks, "And then what?" When Orobas asks what she means, she demands to know what he's going to do with the world once he conquers it. Orobas stammers for a bit, and then mutters that he'll have to think about it... at which point Anastasia tells the party to just beat him down.
Most strategy video games have this as an explicit or implicit victory condition.
- Almost all 4X games give you victory when you conquer the world...or the galaxy.
- The Soviet campaign for Red Alert 2 ends with the Soviet Union ruling the entire world.
- The campaigns from Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and Soulstorm fulfill this. They end only when the player faction rules the planet or, in the latter, the solar system.
  - Mind you, taking over the world is not the same anymore when it's only a single system in whole big galaxy.
- Syndicate ended with your Mega Corp conquering the entire world. In the sequel, they control the planet uncontested (until the game starts.)
The Purple tentacle in The Day Of The Tentacle wants to do this, and in fact succeds, after drinking some radioactive residuals.
Threads Of Fate has a main character example in Princess Mint. While Rue, the other main character, seeks to revive his sister, Princess Mint has but one goal in mind: World Domination, baby!
Kira "The Maiden who wants to take over the world" Daidohji of Arcana Heart has this as her goal even though she hasn't hit puberty yet. She's naturally against Mildred's plan, which would destroy the world that she's trying to conquer.
Your goal in Overlord. Why? Because you're THE OVERLORD!!

Web Comics

Subverted in Girl Genius, where by the start of the story, the evil mad genius Baron Wulfenbach has already taken over the world with his no-nonsense straightforward plan. It is then doubly subverted by the Baron hating being the ruler of Europe, but doing it anyways because he believes the world needs him (and it probably does). Indeed, the Baron took over the world largely to stop everyone else from trying to do so and wrecking everything in the process. Because the comic takes place in a world full of Mad Scientists, there's always at least a dozen factions trying to rule the world. Without the Baron stamping them down, the entire continent would probably be aflame with the burnt wreckage of a million war clanks.
Happens a number of times in Sluggy Freelance. Bun-Bun and K'Z'K have both tried to take over the main Sluggy universe (Bun-Bun actually succeeded, for all of ten minutes). The Dimension of Pain demons apparently took over their home dimension in order to make it "of Pain," and tried to do the same thing to the Dimension of Lame. This is also the long term goal of the Hereti Corporation and the K'Z'K cults that have sprung up following the Demon's death.
One of the main characters in Friendly Hostility, Collin, is a megalomaniac who has dreams of becoming a dictator to politically unstable third world countries. Several arcs have sprung from this desire.
Kevin And Kell used the subversion - in a plotline where it appeared that Herdthinners CEO R.L. had been eaten by bears, his even more ruthless wife, Angelique, took over the company and slowly replaced the normal employees with ones that suffered from domestication. Since domestication causes absolute loyalty, she planned on creating an army of them to eventually Take Over The World. After her husband returned alive and well, he reminded her of the headaches of trying to run the whole world and they agreed to just make gobs of money instead. But the last strip in the storyline did show her encouraging her children to play Risk and learn from it...

Western Animation

Samurai Jack actually opens with Aku taking over the world. The entire thrust of the series was Jack trying to go back in time to stop it from happening.
Most of the villains (especially the recurring ones) in Kim Possible. To quote Shego: "Every villain needs an evil plot. Take Drakken. His plot? Yeah, always 'taking over the world.' Always."
- Ironically, the only villain that actually manages to take over the world is ~~The Supreme One~~ Shego.
Need we mention The Brain of Animaniacs and Pinky And The Brain?
- "Yes!"
  - "Narf!"
Avatar The Last Airbender: The Fire Nation. This isn't entirely due to being ruled by a dynasty of Evil Overlords, however. It is stated in the DVD commentary that the initial drive for their attempts for expansion was industrializing and having a greater need for resources, in itself a staple of imperialism. The population of the Fire Nation itself is apparently told they are "spreading their gifts", and also deny that they killed all of the Air Nomads, who didn't even have an army, by ambush.
Lampshaded in an episode of the Spiderman cartoon: When the Kingpin announces he is planning to take over the world, Spidey retorts that he sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
Also lampshaded in an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: A Wonderful Life episode ("Shredderville") shows an Alternate Universe where Big Bad Shredder succeeded in taking over the world, only to find the actual job of ruling so difficult and boring that he begs the Turtles to relieve him of this responsibility.
The generally-assumed goal of the Legion of Doom on Challenge of the Superfriends, albeit it got a bit problematic in the execution. As has been pointed out elsewhere, when you've snagged literally all the money in the world, exactly what do you spend it on?
- Plus, they're going to have to pay in exacts amounts, as no one else has any change to give them back.
On Fairly Odd Parents, most villains want to do it. According to Norm the Genie, most (or all) of humanity wants to. In fact, Crocker and Vicky succeded in 2 of the movies, albeit Vicky only in a Bad Future.
While it's never explicitly stated that Lydia, the villain of Barbie And The Diamond Castle, wants to take over the world, the heroines bent on stopping her treat her actual goal, ruling the birthplace of all music (and keeping all the music for herself) as the same thing.
Parodied in Phineas And Ferb — Dr. Doofenshmirtz restricts all his evil schemes to the Tri-State Area for no obvious reason. The first episode even has him seemingly about to announce that he's going to take over the world, only to switch maps and finish with "Tri-State Area!"
- [The Incredible Crash Dummies Junkman's]] plan, after he's picked up lunch.

Web Original

Precisely what the titular Mad Scientist protagonist of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog tries to accomplish: take over the world, change the Status Quo, put power into different hands.... and impress the girl from the laundromat that he has a crush on.
Dr. Horrible: (re: Johnny Snow, his self-proclaimed "nemesis") "Look, I'm just trying to change the world, okay? I don't have time for a grudge match with every poser in a parka!"
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it!"
This Trope is a running joke for the Nostalgia Critic in his reviews. When the antagonist of any film is revealed to have this goal in mind the review will be interrupted by M. Bison as he was played by Raul Julia in the movie adaptation of Street Fighter. The joke goes like this:
Nostalgia Critic: His goal is, you guessed it, to take over the world
M. Bison: Of course!
- This is, for the record, completely out of context (actually in response to "Guile? Alive?"); this is a callback to a joke in the review itself:
  Nostalgia Critic: What is his goal? Could it be to...take over the world?
  M. Bison: Of course!
The Dark Overlords from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes managed to take over an entire dimension.
Dr. Steel for World Emperor!.
- Toward a Utopian Playland!

Real Life

The person in real life who set the record for most land conquered was Genghis Khan. (Even more, if you also count the conquests of his sons.)
- Alexander the Great warrants a mention, as he conquered what was essentially the known world at the time, before he was 25.
  - Arguably, any significantly large empire that had a lot of land and a large population could qualify. Especially if they had significant international prestige and influence. The British Empire immediately comes to mind, as does The Roman Empire. America and Soviet Russia would (arguably) be the closest modern examples.
  - Alexander is an example of the implicit problem to this idea. His empire was so huge that it didn't last beyond his death, being torn apart by his rival generals.
  - To be fair, Alexander died without a legitimate heir so a civil war to decide who took over the empire was more or less inevitable. Also when Alexander was on his deathbed and his generals asked him who would take over his empire, he allegedly said "Kratisto" ("To the strongest"). So it was his own damn fault.
  - Alexander may have said "Krateros" (the name of one of his generals), but the others may have chosen to hear "Kratistos".
  - Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
Caesar Augustus accomplished this, in that he took over an already-powerful Republic and made himself absolute ruler. Contemporaries would compare him to Alexander the Great, but Augustus pointed out that it was far more difficult to rule an Empire than to conquer one.
Depending on the definition of Take Over The World... you can't do much better than a man who lived pretty much the same lifespan as Alexander the Great, except he was just a rabble-rousing bastard 'son' of a craftsman, who was ignominiously put to death for pissing off The Man, whose very own closest associates scattered and denied any involvement with the guy. Two thousand years later, his self-proclaimed followers are literally everywhere, common and written laws are heavily influenced by his words and actiions, and at last count, over 1/3 of the world's population identifies as Christian. Of course, we are talking about Jesus, but still...
Adolf Hitler, but only sort of. Hitler wanted to ensure Aryan superiority and realised that Nazi Germany would have to take over the world to do this. However, he also realised that this would take a lot of time (he was 50 when he started World War Two) and planned to only take over Europe, leaving the rest of the task to his successors. He came fairly close to his goal.
Napoleon Bonaparte decided to take over the world. Then he lost in the Carribean, so he decided on Eurasia. Then he lost in Russia, so he decided on Europe. Then he lost in England, so he decided on continental Europe. Then he lost to everyone, got exiled, came back to try AGAIN, and lost to the Germans and British. Admittedly, he did manage to take over all of Western Europe.