Zero Percent Approval Rating - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's a rare and lucky Evil Overlord who manages to get The Empire nice and entrenched, perhaps even managing to Take Over The World. And when they do, life probably seems pretty good, what with being master of all they survey. There's just one little problem they sometimes face. (Well, two if you count those pesky heroes, but they'll be dealt with soon enough...) Everyone hates them.

Everyone.

The reasons vary. Sometimes it's the high taxes (or tribute, if you're particularly old-fashioned) they demand to keep themselves living a life of luxury as the peasants starve. Sometimes it's their little hobby of periodically going out and raining terror, destruction, and death upon the quivering populace to remind everyone who's boss. And sometimes... who knows?

One almost has to pity the Evil Overlord who faces this. Sure, it's expected that a few foolhardy souls would form some sort of heroic rebellion. But it must hurt that, with the exception of the Evil Minions working directly for them, every single human being or other sentient creature in their dominion hates their guts and yearns for the day they're overthrown. The only consolation they've got is that most of the populace are willing to keep their heads down and hope to stay out of trouble. But it's a sure bet that even those people still grumble, and those damn rebels can be pretty confident of getting quiet assistance from just about anyone they meet.

Maybe the Evil Overlord is some sort of incarnation of Ultimate Evil who just doesn't care that he or she has a Zero Percent Approval Rating. Then again, maybe he or she should consider some photo ops.

An Evil Overlord running The Empire doesn't always have this problem, it should be noted. Sometimes they favour a certain segment of the population while keeping another segment down, so they have support in some quarters. Other times, they manage to keep their true nature hidden, becoming a Villain With Good Publicity who just about everyone loves except for the few who find out about the true evil hiding behind the Government Conspiracy. Still other times, it turns out that a lot of people just don't care that the people in charge are openly homicidal demon worshiping alien hybrids who eat souls; as long as the trains run on time and the television's entertaining, life is good and whatever evil stuff's happening is Somebody Elses Problem.

This serves a pragmatic reason for writers in terms of keeping things morally justified for our heros. Because if they were taking out an emperor who was popular with the people or whom had done good work for the country under their control for a (usually) personal vendetta, they wouldn't seem that much like heros at all!

For some reason, a Zero Percent Approval Rating rarely stops an overlord from recruiting hordes of utterly loyal Mooks. Trustworthy lieutenants and advisers are much harder to come by for the hated tyrant, though.

Of course, if a Zero Percent Approval Rating really bothers you, there's always the option of Brainwashing, or to single out a couple of people and turn them into Les Collaborateurs. The Evil Overlord who wants to work at it can try Bread And Circuses.

Examples:

The film version of Eragon. The villain is so despised, it seems that nobody, from the peasants to the minions to The Dragon (that is, his most powerful ally, not his literal dragon steed) has anything but fear and loathing for him, no matter how much his reign benefits them personally.
In Superman The Animated Series, Lois Lane visits an alternate reality where Superman and Lex Luthor joined forces to take over Metropolis and seem to have a Zero Percent Approval Rating.
- Also see Superman The Animated Series, where Superman is shocked to find that the people of Apokolips love the evil Darkseid.
  "I am many things, Kal-El, but here, I am God."
Subverted by Baten Kaitos, where the ruler everyone hates (except the people in his capital city, who adore him) is actually being puppeteered by a lesser noble that everyone loves and who is actually The Man Behind The Man.
Played horrifyingly straight in Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix. The king in Yamato is distinctly aware of how much the kingdom hates him, and therefore orders a hundred people to be sacrificed when he dies just to ensure that the country will mourn his death.
Played with in a few of the Discworld novels. In Wyrd Sisters, the Felmets seem annoyed at how long it takes for their tyrannical rule to get to the people of Lancre; at one point Duke Felmet laments "You couldn't oppress a people like that any more than you could oppress a mattress."
- Lord Vetinari is something of a subversion; very few people seem to actually like him or even the patrician system of goverment in general - there seem to be plenty of casual royalists in Ankh-Morpork. However no one wants to get rid of him as he has carefully manipulated the situation to ensure his would-be usurpers hate each other more that they do him. And even if they do get rid of him, what then?
One of the complaints directed against the film adaptation of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta is that everyone already hated and distrusted the government before V came around, and had no fear of saying so. This is definitely not the case in the original comic; one of the most nefarious things about the Norsefire Coalition, as Moore depicted them, was that they were Villains With Good Publicity who actually had valid accomplishments to brag about (e.g., resurrecting the UK economy in the aftermath of a nuclear winter).
- And the fact that if a person in the comic was caught badmouthing Norsefire they'd be put into concentration camps...and there were two-way CCT Vs with audio everywhere...
Narnia's Evil Overlords spanned the entire popularity spectrum:
- Jadis the White Witch: absolute zero approval rating from the "good" races (only the "evil" races were her allies).
- Miraz: Zero approval rating from the Old Narnians in hiding, but was approved of by most of the Telmarines.
- The Tisroc of Calomen, during The Horse and his Boy: From what we're shown of the Middle Eastern-esque Calormen, it's impossible to say what his approval rating is. Everyone except the rich provincial Calormene lords have reason to hate him, but it appears that at least some of the peasants revere him - the protagonist Shasta briefly fantasizes about being this guy's son without actually knowing anything about him for example - while the rich lords envy him and plot to rise to his position.
- The Lady of the Green Kirtle: Brainwashed all of the gnomes into serving her, raising the question as to why she couldn't conquer Narnia that way.
  - Perhaps the spell only works on goblins/gnomes/whatever?
Subverted, or perhaps parodied, in The Simpsons "Easter Stories", where David (Bart) fights and kills Goliath Jr. (Nelson) who took over his kingdom. David gets arrested for "megacide" because Goliath Jr. was publicly beloved and used his huge size to build roads, libraries, and hospitals.
- "We called him 'Goliath the Consensus-Builder'."
Older Than Feudalism (at the very least), as it is simpler to make, say, the Pharoh of Egypt, King Saul of Israel, or Prince John of England, universally unpopular so as to make Moses, David, and Robin Hood heroic in an uncomplicated way. In the novels of Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe), Alexander Dumas (The Three Musketeers) and Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk) the characters are universally liked, or at least accepted, by the populace, who favor them over their legal rulers. The hundreds of Hollywood movies made from or imitating these novels follow that lead and usually exaggerate it.
Luca Blight from Suikoden II holds this title due to fact that he is a genocidal bloodthirsty psychopath while the people in his country...are not.
Almost every subordinate (and just about everyone in general) of Naraku from Inuyasha seems to want to kill him for one reason or another, including characters that are incarnations of himself.
Orochi in Okami. Granted, being a monsterous armored multi-headed dragon probably killed any thoughts of resistance against him.
Marvel's Doctor Doom has been on both sides of this trope. Sometimes the Latverians hate him, but other times they're okay with him — especially since alternative rulers like Prince Zorba are usually even worse. It doesn't hurt that he turned a backwater Ruritania into an industrial and military force to be reckoned with, strong enough to (before the Sliding Time Scale messed it up) stand neutral directly between Western Europe and the Soviet bloc. If he didn't have a terrifying and capricious temper, he'd stay out of this trope entirely.
Although Tony Montana from Scarface: The World Is Yours is usually a Villain With Good Publicity (or, more accurately, an Anti Hero), raising his Cop Heat and Gang Heat too high can cause him to suffer detriments that include gangsters attacking unprovoked and police responding with amazing speed to minor transgressions.
In Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless seems to be hated by everybody - but their hatred of him is exceeded by their fear of him, as his name would suggest. That, and most of Mongo's races are too busy hating each other to focus in Ming himself. (By contrast, in the recent Sci Fi Channel series, he's charismatic and actually has a pretty good PR thing going.)
In Half Life 2, everyone you meet (even those who aren't members of La Resistance) seems to be fed up with the Combine's reign. Then again, this editor guesses the constant relocations, disappearances, warrantless investigations, and oh yeah, impotence field don't help matters.
- Then, in Episode One, they start complaining about how things like the revolution happening never happened when the Combine were still around.
In Star Control 2, we learn about the Dynarri, a race of evil and incredibly powerful psychics that enslaved the Sentient Milieu (in particular the Ur-Quan) and had them do horrible things for them. When you learn about the backstory of the Ur-Quan, who up until now have been either enslaving or exterminating everything in their path, and what they had to do to bring down the Dynarri, you're almost invited to feel sorry for them.
The Winkies feel this way about the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Likewise the Munchkins about Wicked Witch of the East.
After the second American Civil War in Shattered Union, the one faction not composed of former Americans trying to rebuild the country is the armed forces of the European Union. Every other faction sees them for what they really are - Europe's thinly veiled attempt to prop the United States back up (the world economy did collapse as a result of the war, after all), essentially turning it into a puppet state to all of Europe.
In the Mega Man Zero series, Dr. Weil takes over Neo Arcadia in Zero 3 thanks to a Xanatos Gambit. Sure, Copy X was a total jerk, but at least he was good at taking care of the people he governed. Then in 4, we see humans leaving Neo Arcadia in droves for the greener pastures of Area Zero. Gee, I wonder why? Weil tries to rectify the problem... By forcefully taking them back. This doesn't work, so he tries to destroy Area Zero's environment instead. Not only is he making things worse for himself, but Neo Arcadia is blown up by Weil's own Kill Sat, and his approval rating also seemed to be an indication of his chances of survival...
Lelouch seems to be doing this in Code Geass R2: since taking over as Emperor, he's alienated the nobility of Britannia by dismantling the aristocracy, and alienated everyone else by barging his way into the UFN and using his Geass to mind-control everyone, making it seem for all intents and purposes that he's out to Take Over The World. Strangely due to his actions the common Britannia people love him.
- It is. His master plan is to make himself into the enemy of the world, have Suzaku take up the mantle of Zero and be killed by Zero.
- The commoners don't like him very much after he sends wave after human wave of troops into FLEIA blasts (essentially nukes of the Code Geass world) in the final battle. He also did this to be so much more atrocious than Princess Euphemia's actions that the public would forget about her.
The Zanscare Empire were seen as the most despicable villains by UC Gundam standards.
In the Hulk comics' Planet Hulk story arc, The Red King of Sakaar indulges in delusions of godhood, mass genocide, and judging by a flashback to Caiera the Oldstrong's origins, has pretty much been an irredeemable bastard since childhood, all the way to his death (where he tries to DESTROY THE ENTIRE PLANET rather than not rule it). Really, the Mini-Marvels parody of this story arc pretty much summed it up:
Caiera: Wouldn't that be bad karma?
Red King: Everything I do is bad karma.
Macbeth: after successfully being crowned king, everything goes wrong as a result of his murders and all his subordinates begin to depart from him. Even Lady Macbeth, who encouraged him in the first place, loses her mind, and Macbeth goes into a soliloquy about how life is pointless as a result of him having no friends.
The New Rubinelle Army in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is practically a Zero Percent Approval Rating Army. The troops are pawns who Commander Greyfield gladly sacrifices to kill one annoying commander from the rebellion. Waylon is a materialistic fighter captain with no respect for the pilots who he flies with, (Previews actually made him look like a good guy) and Davis is a Dirty Coward and Butt Monkey who joins a cult. Even the IDS had some redeemable personalities (Penny and Cyrus.)
The Dark Overlords from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes are almost universally hated by the populace of their dimension...that is, unless they manage to brainwash them to see things from their point of view.
Machiavelli's The Prince advises against this. It suggests ruling by being both loved and feared; however, it acknowledges instilling both in the populace is difficult. Love is a good choice, but fear is the safer bet of the two, because love is given at will, while fear is involuntary. However, above all, a ruler must avoid being hated.
In Astrid Lindgren's novel "Mio, my son" (or "Mio, my Mio" in some translations), the antagonist, sir Kato the knight, suffers from a particularly bad case of this trope. Literally everyone and everything the protagonist runs into during his quest hates him, including his own servants and nature itself. Just saying Kato’s name aloud causes the sky to darken, moonlight to fade, flowers to wither and birdsong to fall silent. Oh, and his heart is literally made of stone. Everything the protagonist meet during his journey enthusiastically tries to help him defeat Kato, not only people, even rocks and trees actively helps him to hide from Kato’s men since they despise Kato just as much as everyone else. In the end, when the hero finally manages to defeat Kato in a duel, even the knight starts begging the protagonist to kill him which make the hero realize that no one probably hate Kato as much as Kato himself.

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