Utopia Justifies The Means - Television Tropes & Idioms

Kaede Kunikida, Momiji's twin sister, from Blue Seed. Okay, returning the Japan to its natural -- green and unpolluted -- state sounds like a good idea. Getting rid of wars and hatred is even better. The way to achieve these goals? Basically, turning people into plants. Thankfully, Momiji manages to convince Kaede that hope still exists in this world, and that it's something worth sacrificing one's life for.
The free world envisioned by Lelouch vi Britannia, aka "Zero", in Code Geass. Another main character.
- The ultimate goal of Charles, Marianne and V.V. from the same show was very similar to SEELE's Human Instrumentality Project, even down to the destruction of cities, the torment and deaths of countless people and so on. Except unlike The Human Instrumentality Project, there is no option of refusing it.
  - The intent of Lelouch's big brother, Schneizel seems to be yet another variation of this trope; his plan is apparently to enforce "peace" through widespread destruction, raining nuclear annihilation down upon the governments of the world from his massive flying fortress until the people acknowledge him as their god and end all conflict.
  - This all meaning that Lelouch is a good guy even though he is leaning more and more towards the Villain Corner.
Light Yagami, aka "Kira", in Death Note, who wants to make a world without crime or sin with him as its god. Notable in that he's actually the main character.
You could make a drinking game out of how many times Lucemon from Digimon Frontier states that he wishes to create a utopia through the destruction of both digital and real worlds.
- Yggdrasil does that, too.
Director Kakuzawa from Elfen Lied wants to destroy the human race and produce more Diclonii using Lucy, the only fertile female Diclonus, to replace them. He doesn't want to do this for any moral reason, though, but only so that in 100 or 200 years he can be worshipped as the god of the new species.
The Z-Master from Gao Gai Gar wanted to save people from the despair and sadness of reality by mechanizing the universe, eliminating negative emotion (and every other emotion at the same time).
The Ultimate Gundam from G Gundam wanted to kill all of humanity. It's ultimate goal? Fixing the damage caused to the Earth by all the Gundam Fights. Which incidentally was caused by humans.
- Also, in Gundam Seed Destiny, Gilbert Durandal's plan was to create a society completely ruled by genetic determinism, where everyone would be forced to the endeavors for which he/she was genetically more apt. And if someone has to be sacrificed and some countries have to be destroyed with a Wave Motion Gun... well, it's sad but necessary to create a world without war and without pain. Fan opinions remain divided whether he was in the right or not.
The ultimate goal of the Claw in Gun X Sword is the "Time of Happiness", where he will use Saudade to overwrite the minds of all living creatures with copies of his own; with all of humanity in utter agreement, war and strife will vanish. The process will kill him, but as he's dying of a terminal disease anyway, he sees it as a Heroic Sacrifice.
Raoh in Fist of the North Star goes by this trope, so much so that he and Kenshiro stop fighting when it looks like both of them will die, acknowledging that the world is better off if either of them live than they both die. Doesn't stop them from fighting to the death later, though.
- Raoh is a special case though, as he is actually kinda liked by the people for the fact that he conquers, but doesn't destroy.
- Shin outright states that he plans to achieve utopia through slave labor and murderous henchmen.
SEARRS in Mai-HiME was willing to level down Fuka Academy and kill all the HiME to win the HiME carnival and achieve the "Golden Millennium". All right, it's one lousy school, who cares about that? (Not to mention that Alyssa was "Valkyrie No. 143" and the only success in what was presumably a long series of People Jars. What happened to her failed predecessors is left to the viewers' imagination.)
In the Naruto movie Legend of the Stone of Gelel, Master Haido frequently speaks of creating a Utopia without war. In facts, he speaks of it frequently enough to make the audience suspicious; in the end, it turns out that Haido is a power hungry Big Bad, and his talk of peace was just a smokescreen.
- In the actual manga Pain plans to end all war. He wants to achieve this by harnessing the power of the tailed beasts to make a weapon of mass destruction that could destroy an entire country. If a war was started with one side lacking ninja, they would turn to Akatsuki, who would wipe out the entire opposing nation. After this, most countries would be too scared to start a war.
  - It's also a partial subversion: Pain knows that people will eventually forget about all that and just go back to fighting. So the weapon will still be around, meaning it's not as much a utopia as it is a perpetual cold war kept in place by an endless cycle of atrocity.
  - And played straight again with "The Moon's Eye Plan" and Mugen Tsukiyomi.
SEELE's ultimate goal in Neon Genesis Evangelion is the Instrumentality Project, which will destroy the distinction between individual humans, but leave humanity around, so no one will ever be hurt and alone again. And if some kids need to be tortured, a few cities destroyed and a lot of soldiers have to die to make it happen, well it's just people's lives, not anything important.
Subverted in One Piece, where Sir Crocodile stages a massive coup against the throne of Alabasta to seemingly create a utopia for him and Baroque Works; however, the only reason he wants anything to do with the sand kingdom is because of a massive battleship called Pluton with the power to wipe out an entire island, so he can establish the greatest military force the world has ever known, which could even rival the World Government.
The real Big Bad of ROD the TV, namely Joker and the British Library.
Knives, the Big Bad of Trigun, might as well be the textbook example of this. His motto in the anime is "kill the spiders to save the butterflies". Oh, and all human beings are the spiders; only he and his brother count as butterflies. Lampshaded in his vociferations of "WE WILL HAVE. OUR. EDEN!".
- He gets much more backstory and Character Development in the manga and he has more interesting and 'altruistic' motivations, namely freeing his whole species. It's just a bit unfortunate that he does so by attempting genocide on the whole human race, which makes him both a kind of Spartacus figure on steroids and a crystal-clear Hitler figure with much more Aryanism and sociopathy than the original..... Which serves to remind us that human conflicts get polarized more often than not and that one's side's 'terrorists' are often the other side's 'freedom fighters'.
  - Also note that in the anime, he doesn't seem to have second thoughts about getting the plant on Sensei's ship killed (by his human evil minions!!) while in the manga, he is tormented by guilt at killing many plants as well in the Big Fall.
The Dragons in X1999.
Two cult leaders in Yu-Gi-Oh.
- First, there was Dartz in the original series, an immortal king from Atlantis powered by the Orichalcos God (Great Leviathan in the english dub), who required souls stolen in a children's card game in order to gain enough power to clense the world of evil. He gained his three primary followers by manipulating their lives in order to orchestrate tragedies that would drive them toward the same vengeful misanthropy as himself and signing up with his cause.
- Second, there was Saiou Takuma (Sartorius in the dub) in GX, an Expy of Dartz. Saiou was a psychic who was visited by an alien entity called the Light of Ruin (Light of Destruction in the dub), itself an expy of the Orichalcos God, who caused his personality to split in two, one a Dark Messiah/Ubermensch bent on creating a utopia by combining the Light's innate power with an Orbital Laser Cannon in order to literally reshape the planet...somehow, the other a remnant of the idealistic person he used to be before the Light of Ruin visited him and set him on the path of laser forged utopias. Saiou would recruit his followers by either himself or a cultist defeating someone in a card game, which would them cause them to "see the light" and sign up.
- And Rex Godwin from 5D's has arguably achieved this goal already by forcing all uncouth individuals to live in a slum under Domino City.
Ergo Proxy - In the beginning it's the oppression of the AutoReivs, Vincent, and the people who live outside the dome. In the end it's The Proxy Project; The Creators' plan to have the Proxies clean up Earth's atmosphere, kill the "humans" left on Earth, and destroy the domes. While The Proxies end up dying in Earth's cleaned up atmosphere so The Creators can have a healthy Earth all to themselves.
In the Yellow arc of the Pokemon Special manga, Lance wants to Kill All Humans as to create the perfect world for Pokemon and Pokemon alone.

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We are The Authority. Behave.
Ra's al Ghul and the Order of St. Dumas in the various Batman series.
The Myth Arc of Joe Kelly's Deadpool run involved the main character — a Screwy Squirrel Anti Hero — finding out that he was the "Mithras", prophesised to protect a being called "The Messiah", who would bring peace and prosperity to the world, from "Tiamat", who would destroy it. However, when said Messiah showed up, it turned out to be a being that froze everyone in the world in blissful mindlessness. Deadpool had to decide whether or not to fulfill his destiny and prevent all suffering at the price of free will. In the end, he decided to Screw Destiny and destroy the Messiah himself.
Some comics suggest (and in at least one case, demonstrate) that allowing Dr. Doom to conquer the Earth will result in a utopia. Of course, Doom's a despot and a tyrant at the best of times, and another consequence of Dr. Doom taking over the earth is the complete eradication of any kind of free will and immediate and total subservience to Doom's wishes, so this might not be as great as it seems.
Rasputin in Hellboy. Mike Mignola even said that, as a writer, he can't fathom writing someone inherently evil, so gave Rasputin an ultimately good goal that would nonetheless bring about the end of the world.
In Runaways, the Knight Templar Parents are trying to achieve paradise for their children. Not children as in the entire next generation of humanity — they'll kill everyone to achieve paradise for the six children they have between them.
In Watchmen, Ozymandias actually succeeds! However, whether it stays that way will depend on whether anyone reads and decides to seriously examine Rorschach's evidence against him...
In DC Comics's Zero Hour, ex-Green Lantern Hal Jordan (embarking upon his Dork Age) tried to remake all of space and time to his liking.
A prime candidate for this trope: Magneto from the X-Men (comics, animated and movies), who is sometimes willing to kill all "normals" to create utopia for the mutants.
Subverted in V For Vendetta. V has no expectations of creating a Utopia, just to destroy the fascist regime, allowing the people to decide for themselves how the country will be run from then on.

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Antz
General Mandible: "Don't you understand? It's for the good of the Colony!"
Z: What are you saying? We are the Colony!!
- A few lines later, Mandible announces that he is the colony.
In Constantine, the Big Bad Gabriel plans to release Mammon (the son of the Devil) onto the Earth to bring pain and horror, in order to purify mankind and make it worthy of God's love.
Dr. Cocteau in Demolition Man is a "mild" version of this. He actually helps rebuild a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles into a beautiful, prosperous, violence-neutered Utopia. Though he did work a miracle, he exiled thousands who refused to conform to his "Perfect Pearl" vision and wanted to live unhealthy, violent, free lives. Ultimately, his homogeneous city is exposed to violence and change due to his own stupidity.
The entire premise of the movie Equilibrium is a utopian future society created by suppressing all human emotion and anything that might stir it up — through propaganda, chemicals, and Gun Kata-practicing Badass Longcoats.
In Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, Sephiroth claims that his new goal is to use the thoughts of those who died from geostigma to take control of the lifestream and send the planet on a journey through space to find a new planet, where he'll build a "bright and shining future." This gets streamlined in the videogame sequel Dirge of Cerberus, in which the main villain wishes to go off into space with the lifestream itself to rule over a restarted world.
The goal of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance in Hot Fuzz is Utopia Justifies The Means on a small scale, in their quest to win the Best Village Award at all costs.
Hugo Drax, a James Bond villain in Moonraker.
- Also Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me.
The Operative in Serenity calmly commits atrocity after atrocity because he believes he's helping to create "a better world." Perhaps a semi-subversion, in that he does not intend to be a leader in his new world — he knows that what he does is evil, and that there will be no place for him in the better world.
- Also, it is discovered that the Alliance government attempted to develop a drug to dampen people's violent impulses. It didn't work (most of the population they tested it on became totally apathetic and literally lay down and died; a few became the psychotic "Reavers"). Even if it had worked as desired, there would still be the issue of the Alliance's apparent plan to involuntarily dose people with the stuff....
- That's not even counting the fact that the Alliance has been kidnapping and mindraping children in order to turn them into psychic assassin soldiers, all in the name of their vision of a "better world."
Darryl Revok of Scanners thinks that a scanner-run government would be the coolest thing ever. Reportedly, some of the characterization for Magneto was based on this.
"We'll create an empire so brilliant, so glorious ,it'll be the envy of the world."
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (2004). Dr Totenkopf gathers samples of every animal on Earth in order to seed life on another planet. The hero suggests just letting him go, until it's revealed that the engines of his rocketship will incinerate the entire world.
Totenkopf: "I have been witness to a world consumed by hatred and bent on self-destruction. Watched as we have taken what was to be a paradise and failed in our responsibilities as its steward. I know now that the course the human race has set for itself cannot be changed. I am the last, desperate chance for a doomed planet."
In Star Wars Episode III, Sith Lord Palpatine states that once he rules the galaxy, there will be peace.
- Darth Vader's words to Luke on Bespin about bringing peace and order to the galaxy suggests he is following this trope.
- Palpatine is very much Neutral Evil and will say anything that it suits him for others to hear. Darth Vader may be Lawful Evil, but it doesn't mean he thinks his vision of how things should be would be good for anyone else. Besides, he's also speaking to convince a good guy to join him in that scene. In general, the Sith "Utopia" (largely achieved by Palpatine for a time) would be a couple of powerful Sith Lords sitting on top of the heap of everyone else and stomping down on their heads, and they know it.
World peace through dictatorship was Bison's motivation in the Street Fighter movie.
"The pax Bisonica..."
The Village is ostensibly a period drama about a primitive town's struggle with dark magical forces. In actuality, the town is on a modern nature preserve. Its adult inhabitants have fled there to set up a simple way of life which they hope will be free from senseless violence. Like most utopian experiments, this one fails miserably (at least in principle) when one of the town's children tries to murder another in a fit of jealousy. One could reasonably argue that the fear-based "conditioning" the children were put through was more traumatizing to them than growing up in a modern society would have been.
- Also most of the children, instead of being killed by criminals, end up dying of disease or lack of medical care.
In Equilibrium an utopia is created via emotion-suppressing drugs. This removes all hate, jealosy and anger but also removes humanity's capacity for art and creativity. It all crumbles when one of the highest-ranking members of the Emotion Police stops taking his drugs and becomes disillusioned.

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley also does a good job of showing this trope, by creating a sort of mindless utopia where that revolves around sex, drugs, and the mass production of humans to fit into certain roles in society.
On the other hand, it's completely averted in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Winston thinks that the Party's aim was to make a utopia where everyone is equal and happy, and it just happened to have Gone Horribly Wrong, but O'Brian corrects him and explains that they're just doing it for the power.
The plot of Darkness at Noon is pretty much entirely centered around Rubashov reflecting on all the people he's betrayed and horrible things he's done in the name of building a Utopia, while contrasting it with the reality of the CrapsackWorld he's actually helped to create.
In the Isaac Asimov novel The End of Eternity, an entire corps of time-traveling guardians ensure humanity's peaceful, prosperous existence... at the cost of losing creative individuals and locking mankind on Earth, which it turns out will cause humanity to wither and die out as an evolutionary dead end when younger, more ambitious alien societies quickly overtake it in technology and take over all other inhabitable worlds before humans realize that it might be a good idea to move on.
- And far later, his Robots/Empire/Foundation series arguably ended up proposing no less than three possible means towards utopia - the First and Second Foundations, devoted to taking over the world through sheer technological sophistation and manipulation vs. telepathy and mathematics (both of which are intended to lead to a lasting and peaceful new Galactic Empire), and "Gaia", a proposal that would involve stripping many lifeforms, including humanity, of most of their individuality and rebelliousness. An entire book is devoted to figuring out which of the three is the most desirable, but while the rather interesting choice of Gaia is somewhat teasingly ominous, seen as a necessary evil almost, despite having a logical reason behind it, we'll pretty much never actually really know how it it was officially intended to work out for humanity, as Dr. Asimov couldn't himself decide, and instead spent his last years writing two prequels detailing the life of Hari Seldon.
  - Addressed in one of the prequels by David Brin whereby it turns out to be a Batman Gambit by Daneel to placate various factions
Fahrenheit 451 is a classic example, where a utopia is created by banning books, funerals, weddings, and just about anything that causes an emotional reaction.
Played heroically by Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace, where his main characters discover that a project to recreate and study the early Big Bang will, well... cause a new Big Bang. Given that humanity now has the means to wipe out the universe, the heroes decide to force the war-torn near-future Earth into peace by forcibly implanting neural jacks into key figures in the multinational military, and then hooking them up to each other and many others to force empathy and the inability to kill (directly or indirectly) on them, and then eventually on to humanity at large. The final death toll of their project is actually quite small, and much favorable compared to the alternative.
In Lois Lowry's The Giver, the titular character and Jonas, his apprentice, often discuss whether their peaceful and happy lives ordained by the Community is worth the loss of choice, of family, the loss of sexuality, color and music, and if it's worth the "release" (that is, execution) of anyone who transgresses against the rules even accidentally, and of any extra baby that would disrupt the population count.
Harrison Bergeron uses this. Egalitarianism is enforced by handicapping the more intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society down to the level of the lowest common endowment. And if you still happen to be able to destroy your handicaps... you'll be shot dead.
The One Ring in The Lord Of The Rings offers everyone who comes near it a vision of a world bowing to them as a great and mighty lord. The hobbits resist its effects solely due to their humility.
- Admittedly, if you were smaller than even your average dwarf. you would probably find it hard to see yourself as some kind of Evil Overlord as well.
  - Also, if your idea of happiness is sitting around a quiet country side without a care, eating and smoking things you can easily get. Ruling the world would just be needless stress.
The Alternate History novel Pavane concerns an alternate England ruled by the Inquisition, which is ultimately revealed to have slowed down technological advances so to avoid the Holocaust and other calamities of this world (how they knew about this is less clear).
The main character of Perfume envisions a world where everyone bows to his god-like sense of smell, and he's willing to kill anyone he has to without remorse to get it. He is on the verge of succeeding when he gets a taste of what it would be like, and decides that it's not what he wanted after all.
In Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, humanity's fast technological progress gives minor hate groups the ability to bring destruction at a large scale. Humanity is on the brink of annihilation, or a singularity. The antagonist plans to use YouGottaBelieveMe technology to bring about some adult supervision. The same author doesn't seem to have much trust in the near future; a similar kind of supervision appears as the PeaceAuthority, in the Across Realtime trilogy.
The Star Trek novel "Captain's Glory" by William Shatner and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens Lampshades all the "perfect societies" Kirk and Spock had visited over years. Kirk says, "Spock, how many times did we visit a planet were the leaders said they had created the perfect society? And all we had to do to achieve perfection was to not ask any questions."
In the Sword Of Truth series, Emperor Jagang believes that conquering the entire world and killing everyone with magic will sever the connection the Creator and Keeper have with it, allowing mankind alone to advance into a new golden age. He also believes that everyone should be exactly equal and all who have any special talents should be punished for it.
In Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, everyone is beautiful and happy. There's no war and no poverty. The surgery that makes everyone pretty also gives them brain lesions eliminating anger and sadness, but also creativity and independence.
Ursula K. Le Guin examines this issue in at least two of her stories. Both The Lathe of Heaven and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas examine the costs and pitfalls of possible utopias.
In Watership Down, the rabbit protagonists are invited to join a pleasant warren, with abundant food readily available from a nearby garden that is never guarded. The natives of this Lapine utopia have seemingly evolved beyond merely struggling for survival, and delve into art and poetry, as would be expected from a culture of peace and prosperity. But gentle mystic Fiver gets bad vibes and won't enter the warren, and the others discover almost too late that the farmer provides the garden to fatten up the rabbits and make them less wary, and he "harvests" them whenever he wants something for his stewpot. Rather than leave such bounty, the inhabitants have developed a social code that never asks where someone is — because they just might be strangling to death in a snare.
Emhyr var Emreis, Emperor of Nilfgaard, one of the main antagonists (sort of) in Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher cycle, reveals at the culmination of the last book that, according to an ancient prophecy, he and he alone might save the world from a slow, freezing death by having a child with his likewise-prophesied daughter (who also happens to be one of the main characters and the titular Witcher Geralt's adopted daughter, more or less). The son of that child will come to rule the entire world - and save it from destruction. Aside from incest, the plan also involved killing witnesses and starting the medieval fantasy version of World War Two, but all that was quite secondary. Geralt replied that a world that has to be saved in such a way isn't worth saving, and eventually shamed Emhyr into abandoning the plan and letting his daughter go. It is all but outright stated that in doing so he irrevocably doomed the world, though it still has three thousand years to go.
In The Golden Compass, Lord Asriel is willing to kill Lyra's best friend in order to make a portal and gather an army to fight the Authority.
- Of course, by doing that, he unwittingly dooms the entire world of Cittagazze to dystopia due to an increase in the Spectre population.
Played completely straight in The Spellsong Cycle by L.E. Modesitt Jr. The main character, who's canonically Neutral Good, accumulates a five-digit body count by the end of the first book, because she's determined to fix the Crapsack World she's trapped in. Interestingly, she isn't aiming for utopia proper—she's trying to recreate the American democratic system, which is utopian compared to the society she's dealing with.
Damian Cray from the Alex Rider Series thinks that most of the problems in the world are caused by drugs. So he kills a few people who get in his way, a person who just badmouths him, steals Air Force One, and tries to launch nukes at major drug-running countries. So Yeah.
In Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, the religion of Cosmic Unity was born from the idea that since interplanetary warfare would be so destructive, all planets and people must join together in harmony. Since such warfare must obviously be avoided at all costs, everyone who doesn't agree with the idea of joining the church is subject to being attacked and utterly annihilated by them. The virtual Heaven they offer their members is also questionable, though in that case this trope is subverted in that as soon as its custodians encounter a single being that doesn't want to live in it after experiencing it, which they imagined impossible, they begin to dismantle the system.

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Jasmine in Angel used her godhood to engineer her return to Earth as a beatific, mind-numbingly beautiful goddess. Though she unified all who saw her (or heard her voice) and ended conflict, that much power required "volunteers" to be eaten by draining their life force, on a daily basis. If successful, she would have essentially made everyone into peaceful, Jasmine-loving zombies, and also have eaten thousands of people per year, but destroyed all evil in the world (except herself). Not only that, but she was shown to be a very vain being, quite possibly more concernced with being worshipped than with helping people. We also get to see the last world Jasmine visited. It's...not a very nice place, and she abandoned it once she grew bored of it.
- The fifth series used this trope throughout the entire season, putting the heroes in charge of the villain's organisation and having them try to use it as a weapon for good. But what happens when that means getting villains acquitted in court, or playing murky demon politics, or playing nice to a Demon Lord? It eventually was revealed, by their nemesis Lindsey no less, that doing this was crippling their effectiveness against the malevolent Senior Partners. "What you've been doing here every day is learning to compromise and accept the world the way it is. Newsflash - heroes don't do that!" (paraphrased)
The PsiCop Alfred Bester from Babylon 5, who grew up as a orphan baby in the Psi Corps and is willing to kill or mind-control any non-telepath in his way if it furthers his goal of saving human telepaths and other psychics from hate-crimes and discrimination and ultimately helps achieve his dream of giving the telepathic "homo superior" dominance over the nonmutants. On the other hand, he is curiously hesitant to kill a telepath even if said telepath opposes him (instead he tries to persuade them to change their views, or if that doesn't work, tries to capture them and ships them to Psi Corps "re-education" camps). Considering that during the series telepaths are abused and enslaved both by the Psi Corps and the Shadows, and Garibaldi uncovers a conspiracy by an anti-mutant group to infect all human telepaths with a deadly virus so that they would either have to take daily injections of medication (also manufactured by the same corporation) and be easily controllable that way, or die in agony, Bester's paranoia can be seen as simple pre-emptive self-defence.
- The afore-mentioned conspiracy discovered by Garibaldi is also a case of this.
- Except for the gleeful delight he takes in tormenting Mundanes, and the casualness which with he kills them.
- The Shadows and Vorlons from the same series believe their views of society create "perfection" and are well worth blowing up planets for. As these views are diametrically opposed, the rest of the galaxy is in trouble.
The Avatars in Charmed wanted to create a world without conflict. It turned out maintaining it involved the deletion of anyone whose violent tendencies survived their spell.
The Scientific Reform Society in the Doctor Who story "Robot" planned to trigger a worldwide nuclear holocaust unless the nations agreed to yield power to them.
- And let's not forget the Cybermen. When they invaded this Earth through a parallel universe, they declared that they will take over, and change society by removing fear, hatred, classism...by converting the human race into them.
- Most notable of all is Tobias Vaughn, the CEO of an electronics company who sought to ally with and manipulate the Cybermen into taking over the world for him, so he could then doublecross them and create a utopia wherein all idealogical disputes were ceased and unity were attained. Unfortunately for Vaughn, the Cybermen were one step ahead and doublecrossed him first, leading him to ally with the Doctor to take down the threat that he himself had led to the Earth in the first place.
- In Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a group of Well Intentioned Extremists, believing the environment could not be saved, sent a shipload of volunteers on a Fauxtastic Voyage to "another world", to disembark after time had been reversed back to the Mesozoic, and the rest of humanity written out of history.
- In Tomb Of The Cybermen, Klieg and the rest of the Brotherhood of Logicians intended to take over the world with the aid of the Cybermen. Bit of a logical fallacy there ....
Linderman, on Heroes wants to allow New York City to be destroyed by an atomic explosion, ostensibly to unite the world and grant it hope... however, it is never explained exactly why he expects this as an outcome. This may be a Shout Out to Watchmen.
- It's more or less spelled out that he intended Nathan to become a leader of men, to unite people and guide a world horrified by the destruction (With Linderman as the power behind the throne). Of course Sylar, DL and Nikki and Nathan himself proved more unpredictable than Linderman thought
- And let's not forget Adam Monroe, who wants to "fix" the world by releasing a virus that will kill over 90% of the population. Apparently he thinks this will end wars and discrimination and...well anything. And of course when the dust settles and the survivors look around, he, immortal Adam Monroe, will be there to lead them and become emperor over all. Or something.
  - Obvious shout out to Ras Al Ghul/Apocalypse in that Adam believes only the strongest and smartest will be able to survive the virus (Possibly through his intervention) with those he deems unworthy being eradicated.
In the third season of Kyle XY, the upper echelons of the Latnok Society appear to be like this.
On Star Trek, the Borg wish to understand all life forms and establish peace by linking everyone and everything into their Hive Mind, but pretty much everyone they meet would rather die than be assimilated. The Borg have expressed genuine confusion over that point many times.
- The same could be said about the Dominion, as they want to unite everyone and bring "order" to the galaxy. As the Great Link has no concept of internal conflict, they think conquering and bringing everyone else under their control will bring to the galaxy.
- The rogue Starfleet agency Section 31 could also apply. Their utopia already exists in the form of The Federation, but they're willing to do all the underhanded things the Federation itself would never do in order to preserve it.
At the end of the fourth season of Supernatural, Zachariah reveals that the angels allowed most of the seals to be broken, and they want Sam to kill Lilith and break the final seal, so Lucifer will walk free. Why? Because after the Apocalypse, which they are sure they will win, there will be paradise on Earth. And if billions of humans have to die to ensure this paradise? Well, they aren't particularly concerned about that.

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Ska band Five Iron Frenzy mocked this attitude in their song "My Evil Plan to Save the World."

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BattleTech gives us both the Crusader faction of the Clans, who want to conquer the Inner Sphere their ancestors left behind to recreate the golden age of the Star League — with themselves as the overlords and never mind the fact that their warrior culture has diverged wildly from even their rose-colored view of the past, of course —, and (pre-schism) ComStar, an ostensibly neutral pseudo-religious organization hoarding technological knowledge also with an eye towards one day creating an utopia under their benevolent rule...after watching and if necessarily helping the Successor States whose interstellar communications they're incidentally in charge of bomb each other back into the Stone Age, that is.
Planescape has the Harmonium faction. All factions qualify to some degree but the Harmonium are the most clear-cut ones: They seek to create Harmony... By bashing the heads of anyone who disagrees. The standard tactics (brainwashing, executions, etc.) are used. Their plans tends to backfire spectacularly, like their idea of sticking anyone not Lawful or Good enough into reeducation camps... That caused the entire layer of a plane to slide into the Lawful Neutral plane of Mechanus...
Warhammer 40000: The Imperium of Man quit trying to achieve utopia after a galaxy-shattering civil war that resulted in a Church Militant that puts the emphasis on the "Militant" taking over, but the Tau, who do pretty much everything "For the Greater Good!", are a utopia (or so they claim) with an aggressive foreign policy and a fondness for orbital bombardments, sterilization, and concentration camps.
- Except they're the only ones that try diplomacy.
- Aforementioned civil war deserves an explanation. The Emperor of Mankind launches a galaxy wide crusade to unite humanity and conquer it for all of mankind. Uber powerful though he is, he can't do the job alone. So he creates the Primarchs, genetically enhanced demi-gods created from samples of his own DNA. After a slight hiccup to the plan, the Emperor is eventually reunited with all his lost children. Said children proceed to achieve Daddy's dream of human dominance by killing any and all xenos, and all men who refuse to comply. Bad enough. Then the Emperor leaves the crusade...and gives Horus command of the whole show. Horus does well for a bit, but finds it hard to keep up with expectations. He is then killed, and shown a world where he is forgotten, and his beloved father has become what he preached against, a God. Cue immediate patricidal rage, and a call to arms of all who don't like the Emperor (and even a few who are simply indifferent). Horus plans on creating a better galaxy than the Emperor, but rather slips up in believing that the best way to do this is to ally himself with the universal personifications of slaughter, decay, lust, and change. Utopia doesn't seem too high on the menu when you're on the pay role of existence-corrupting, soul-eating, interdimensional Eldritch Abominations.
  - And the biggest irony is that that vision of a dark future Horus saw? That was more or less the future that he caused by rebelling. Oops.
Warhammer Fantasy has much the same. Archaon believes the triumph of Chaos will save the world from corruption, and some of The Undead commanders are trying to turn the entire world into undead because Chaos can't feed off of them like they do the living. And the Lizardmen want to restore the world to the layout of the Old Ones, regardless of of the population migration that's occurred since they disappeared.
In the old World Of Darkness games, some parts of the Technocracy fill this role. The individual Technocrats are generally no better or worse than other mages, and often work towards what they see as a better, brighter future. If that requires crushing anything in their path, stifling dissention and purging the world of wonder and the supernatural...Well, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few heads.
- Cynically speaking, the Traditions could be the same. They had control once. It was called the Dark Ages.
The Jammers from Feng Shui, that madcap band of Bomb Throwing Anarchist Maniac Monkeys and Mad Bombers, are doing it all for the sake of the dream of their leader Battlechimp Potemkin. The Battlechimp's dream is a world without chi, a world where humanity can finally be free to make their own decisions without being influenced by whoever has the most feng shui at his or her command. In order to do this, Potemkin wants every Feng Shui site in all the major junctures and the Netherworld blown sky high, no matter what form the site takes or how many innocent people will be killed in the process, or indeed, what the long term consequences will be if he should actually succeed in destroying the world's chi.

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The Big Bad of Ar Tonelico, Mir, is after a utopia in which Reyvateils, artificially-created magical song maidens, will live free from slavery and mistreatment. In order to achieve this, she seeks to destroy all humans, having pegged them pretty firmly as irredeemable monsters due to her own traumatic history as a Tykebomb. The fact that she names this utopia "Reyvateilia" goes some way towards exemplifying the fact that she's pretty much just a terrified, idealistic child inside.
- In the sequel, she's still at it. Oh, and this time, she's one of your party members. Not to mention that pretty much everyone in your party is a Well Intentioned Extremist at best.
In Bioshock, the player learns that Andrew Ryan, creator of the pseudo-Objectivist undersea utopia Rapture, wound up Jumping Off The Slippery Slope and turning into a totalitarian ruler in his efforts to eliminate his ruthless rival, Frank Fontaine.
One of Lord Recluse's right hand men in City Of Villains, Scirocco, falls under this in a lategame arc.
Sakaki of .hack//G.U tried using the AIDA virus to make a world where everyone would get along.
The goal of the Order of the Sword in Devil May Cry 4 is to use the denizens of the Demon World to destroy the Human World so that they can bring about Sanctus's version of Utopia.
Darth Revan in Knights Of The Old Republic — it's revealed in the second game that he became a Sith Lord at least partly in the best interests of justice and order in the galaxy. Then again, this seems to be a common self-justification and/or recruiting gimmick among Sith Lords, Revan is simply one of the very few who actually tried.
- Actually, Kreia mentions in the sequel that Revan was attempting to unify and solidify the galaxy to prepare for a colossal war with an extra-galactic, outside the Force threat, which just reeks powerfully of the Yuuzhan Vong.
- Ditto Darth Traya/ Kreia (if that's even a spoiler) in the sequel. Wants to destroy the Force so everyone can have free will. But to do that she tries to kill a planet and make the entire galaxy feel its pain. Also uses this to justify the whole revenge spree thing.
Lord Lucian from Fable 2 very much planned for this. While in the Spire, he gives a speech saying "The world outside is a corrupt, rotting husk. I plan to change all that. All I require of you is complete obedience."
The bonus material for Halo 3 describe the Flood as a theoretical utopia, where if everybody joined the Flood, there would be no more violence, war, poverty, hatred, etc. Unfrtunately the means by which it does this is by assimilating all life and rendering them into zombie-like forms.
Big Bad Noir in La Pucelle is sympathetic for much of the game, seeking to create his "Utopia" where half-demons such as himself can be accepted. However, when you find out what his "Utopia" actually consists of, there is only one appropriate response remaining.
A theme of the Metal Gear series, is "Outer Heaven," Big Boss' ideal of a world where soldiers would always have a place free from political manipulation; played almost straight in Metal Gear Solid (where Liquid Snake takes up the mantle), reworked in Metal Gear Solid 2 (where Solidus' ideal is not soldiers but rather America/liberty), conceived in Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (Army's Heaven was a less-than-sincere idea but had the basic concept down), and then nastily subverted in Metal Gear Solid 4, where war has become business, the world becoming a place where soldiers will 'always' be needed, but with none of the ideals behind Big Boss' vision.
- By the end of 4, Big Boss shows up and accepts that his idea was wrong and the pursuit of it only led to more problems.
This turns out to be the main villain's motivation in the first Shadow Hearts. Notably, he actually only decided to take extreme measures after his less extreme attempt failed catastrophically, leading to him being tried and imprisoned as a heretic several centuries prior to the game.
This is pretty much the entire premise of the Messian Church in the Shin Megami Tensei series, and of their patron deity Himself. It only becomes more prominent as the series goes on, from Shin Megami Tensei to SMT II to SMT: Nocturne.
Claudia Wolfe in Silent Hill 3 fits here as well...subverted slightly, in that she's aware that her actions will deny her a place in the utopia she's seeking to create.
The Hero in the Soul Blazer series of games (Soul Blazer, Illusion Of Gaia and Terranigma) is doomed to create the modern, industrial world during the process of his quest (or in Soul Blazer's case, free generally evil people), regardless of how much affection he or others may have for their fantasy world.
Count Bleck from Super Paper Mario would fit this trope perfectly if it didn't turn out that he was just a Nietzsche Wannabe instead, just wanting to destroy everythign without recreating it and LYING about it by telling his minions that he was going to recreate the universe as a utopia. Dimentio from the same game, on the other hand, fits it perfectly, even betraying Count Bleck to destroy all world and remake them himself when he finds out that Bleck is lying.
Lord Yggdrasil in Tales Of Symphonia wants to create a world where everyone is a soulless shell, so there would be no more discrimination. But mainly he just wanted to resurrect his dead sister.
- Common theme in Tales Series games. Pops up again in Tales Of The Abyss in which the Big Bad seeks to kill everyone on the planet and replace them with clones in an attempt to Screw Destiny.
  - What makes the Tales of The Abyss example weird is that the guy was willing use many of the clones created as pawns, cast them aside, and tell them they were just mere tools to add insult to injury.
The nation of Galbadia is taking over other nations in order to spread their prosperity...until Sorceress Edea scooches in and basically says "You're all fucked."
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl have Cyrus, who's convinced that we all screwed up the world beyond repair and that the only way to form a better place is to simply destroy and rebuild it all. And, this being a Pokemon character and plot, you get three guesses what he's going to manipulate to do it.
- His goal was expanded to specifically a world without spirit, which by looking through Pokemon mythology would amount to no willpower, wisdom, or emotion.
  - Subverted a bit in Platinum: Cyrus wants to destroy and reassemble the world, but with him as the only inhabitant.
Fallout 3 features John Henry Eden, who wants to nobly rebuild America to it's status, pre-nuclear apocalypse. To do this he plans on introducing a horrifically virulent bioweapon into the water, leading to the death of anyone who has mutations of any sort. Given it's a nuclear wasteland, that means he's effectively planning on killing everyone except his own troops.
In Final Fantasy XII, to wrest the reins of History from the manipulative Occuria and back into the hands of Man is Vayne's goal, with support from a Well Intentioned Extremist Mad Scientist and their divine mentor. Naturally, the Man to lead Ivalice's new History can be none other than the new Dynast-King, Vayne himself.
- There is also a minor instance of this in Vossler, to whom the freedom of his homeland (even as a puppet state under Archadian rule) is so far above any other concern, he's willing to sell out his own Princess for it.

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The Big Bad in the online Flash series Broken Saints tricks the US government and military into creating the instruments which they think will allow them to set up their version of Utopia. Instead, said instruments will actually trigger the Government Conspiracy's own destruction and set up the Big Bad's version of Utopia. (The heroes somehow manage to step in at the last minute, stop both factions, and use the living Empathic Weapon the Big Bad created to set up their own version of Utopia.)

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In Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire, Celesto Morgan — a seer who has become the Champion of Chaos — fiercely believes in this. Having been on the rough end of humanity a bit too often, he believes that "When an infection is too deep... amputation is the only solution."
Redcloak, the Goblin cleric from Order Of The Stick, has the goal of creating a world where goblins and goblinoids are not simply farms for XP. He's got two ways of doing this. The first is that he and Xykon establish control over the gate and the snarl, ruling the world and allowing the Dark One (the god of the goblins) to blackmail the other gods into doing what it wants. The second involves the snarl being released and destroying the entire multiverse, eating the souls of everyone and anyone in any of the planes, including the afterlife. The gods will be forced to recreate the world, but the Dark One will now have a say in how the world is made.
The Varn Gene Mage from Terinu wants to restore the Varn Dominion. All that involves is capturing the title character and convincing all the races that the Dominion had once enslaved them to join up again. By force if necessary.
The most recent arc in Fans is definitely going into that territory as a group of mystics called the Order of the Dragon plan to overthrow the world's governments in a "bloodless coup" by murdering the Aleph, the personification of the very first written language, thus destroying the concept of the written word itself. When Donna, arguably the least evil of this group of Knights Templar is informed that roughly 6.5 billion people will die as a result of their actions, her response is "Some will survive." To make matters worse, they recruited Keith Feddyg, who's motivated by his own needs, which involve inflicting as much pain as possible on as many people as possible. Oh, and revenge against Ally. The remaining members range from vengeful psychopaths to pathetic losers. Whatta way to run Utopia!

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The city of Ba Sing Se in AvatarTheLastAirbender, when at last it is reached, is a stronghold that has withstood the Fire Nation for one hundred years, a haven for thousands of refugees. However, the price for this is the censorship, even from the king, that there is a war that has been waging for the past 100 years, that the Earth Kingdom is losing. As well, all who say that there ''is'' a war are promptly and quietly kidnapped, brainwashed, and enslaved by the Dai Li militia.
- Fire Lord Sozin once claimed he was starting the war and wants to Take Over The World to "share our prosperity with the rest of the world", and this is apparently what the nation is at large taught. However, there's a good chance he was lying.
  - "good chance he was lying"?! He slaughtered the entirety of the Air Nomads to prevent the Avatar from reincarnating and therefore posing a threat to his plans. Pretty sure he was lying.
  - This troper took that as a slippery slope thing. Roku never suggests to Aang that Sozin was being dishonest with his initial motives (the episode is quite clear that Sozin started out as a very nice guy). The fact that Sozin's vision of 'helping' the other three nations ultimately justifies exterminating one of them shows his descent.
  - Also worth noting that "share our prosperity with the rest of the world" has been a justification for every colonial/imperialist country since the nineteenth century, if not much earlier. A classic case of Villain With Good Publicity, really.
As the page quote shows, the Justice Lords do this in a couple episodes of Justice League. Most of the ends seem well worth the means, especially violating Lex Luthor's Joker Immunity and lobotomizing Omnicidal Maniacs, but the group quickly leap off the slippery slope by getting rid of the right to vote or speak freely while arresting individuals for threatening to not pay for food. On the other hand, there's no rape, murder, arson, or even litter. Unusually, this is one of the more even-handed examples, with both "Utopia" and "The means to it" being shown in fair measure. Fans of the show were left to wonder if, in a world where every prison's a Cardboard Prison, the Justice Lords might have had a point, and the Batmen even debate on it in the middle of the episode.

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Billy: "The fish rots from the head, they say, so my thinking is, why not cut off the head-"

Penny: "Of the human race?"

Billy: "It's not a perfect metaphor..."

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Communist leaders, or at least the earliest and most sincere, may fit this trope : they wanted to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, persecute their opponents, and give a huge power to the State, but saw this as a means to achieve an emancipating Utopia. In Stalin's USSR, it became the Regime's normal way to work, so some wonder whether he betrayed the movement's original goals.
Some eugenicist scientists, especially the Nazi ones. Indeed, Nazis viewed themselves as preparing a special Utopia for German/Aryan people, from which the other races were excluded (or exploited, reduced to slavery). That's why this ideology, generally seen as inherently evil, racist and murderous, provokes less empathy than the communist one, although both are totalitarian.
- It's highly debatable whether any Nazis could be said to have had any kind of utopian vision - even one limited to German/Aryans. After all, most utopias aim for a time of perfect harmony and peace, and Hitler explicitly said that "war builds character; in general, there should be a new war every generation."
  - Hitler wasn't exactly a consistent character. He also wanted to destroy all the "lower races", and stop Aryans from killing other Aryans through force. Whether he realized the mutual contradiction between his goals is anybody's guess.
On this viewing session, scientology.org has two advertisements on this page, Utopia Justifies The Means. (The third advertisement names Herbert W. Armstrong, "an early pioneer of radio and tele-evangelism".) Ironic.
What qualifies as utopia, though? Nearly every single political, religious, or social movement promises to improve the world in some way, according to their view of "improvement." If any goal of "improving the world" qualifies as a utopian goal, then "utopia justifies the means" becomes "something justifies the means".
- It's not the utopia that's the question, it's the means. Doing something morally questionable—or downright evil—in the hope of achieving some misty, vague state of grace, especially through sacrifices that conveniently happen to other people, is what this is all about.
  - So you are saying that the "utopia" part of this trope is unimportant. In that case it would be better named "the ends justify the means".
  - To an extent, yes, but the title of "Utopia Justifies the Means" fits better and has a deeper resonance. "The ends justify the means" doesn't state what those ends are, but Utopia gives a clear view of someone doing something evil in the name of something good.
By modern standards, Plato's Republic would qualify as this since it supports a class-based dictatorship with philosopher-kings at the top of society, supported by a powerful military. Although very authoritarian, there are no slaves or discrimination between men and women.
- Read the book again. There are slaves, completely outside the social pyramid, used essentially as living construction tools. And as for discrimination between men and women, while Plato's Utopia indeed was more equal than real Greek city-states, but Plato didn't actually consider women equals of men - he just thought that if a woman had more talent for warring or ruling than for housework, they should be put in work matching that talent. He didn't believe they could be as good or better than men in the same positions, however.
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine makes an analogy between two campaigns to achieve a "beautiful blank slate" through horribly destructive means.
- In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Ewen Cameron, a highly-regarded psychiatrist, performed research into brainwashing for the CIA. His idea was that if one could destroy a person's current, flawed, personality, primarily via sensory deprivation and electroshock, then a new, perfectly well-adjusted personality could be built on top of it. Minds, of course, do not work that way, and many of his patients were left with lifelong psychological problems.
- The economic violence done by globalization—everything to price instabilities leading to the destruction of local manufacturing capability to the creation of "Export Processing Zones" where conditions are Dickensian at best—is described by its advocates as necessary, indeed, laudable, for the creation of a better world. The human misery here is a feature, not a bug, as it breaks down and destroys the old systems, bringing the planners closer to their notional utopia.
  - Well, advocates would claim that the conditions created by each new system will be better than the one that precedes it, otherwise people have no incentive to adopt it, the Dickensian conditions still providing more benefits than the previous situation. So when it does just make things flat out worse, that is a bug.
  - Yes, but the point is that the people creating the systems aren't the ones who have to live in the EPZs, or be pushed off their land so that some conglomerate can build tourist hotels on it. They don't have any incentive to care if it really does make anything better for anyone but them.

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