Basic Trope: The destruction of the Big Bad leads to multiple Littler Bads trying to take their place.
- Straight: Colonel Ripper kills the Evil Dictator, but with the balance of power upset, every major power tries to come out on top.
- Exaggerated: The Evil Dictator was ruler of a small nation about the size of Liechtenstein and with an army numbering in the hundreds, but the tiny upset in the precarious balance of power causes every ruler in the world to go to war.
- Downplayed: The evil Dictator is killed, and people are vying for rule of the throne, the people mostly working on their own because of how little attention the evil dictator paid attention to his own civilians.
- Justified:
- The Evil Dictator controlled a large chunk of the world, and enslaved a large percentage of its population. The Alliance that defeated him was never very strong anyway, and the land is rich in resources that other countries need to be powerful.
- The other powers had been planning to deal with the Dictator at some point, but Colonel Ripper killing him throws a severe wrench in their plans. They all shift their timetables to try and take advantage of the vacuum, seeing an opportunity that won't last long.
- Inverted:
- The Big Good is killed, and rather than carry on as The Federation, the forces of good turn on each other as each leader tries to seize overall control.
- The chaotic criminal underground is united by one Big Bad.
- Subverted:
- The Evil Dictator's large, populous, resource-rich land is conquered, but The Alliance is strong and easily negotiates the distribution of the land, while keeping hopeful upstart leaders away from having a piece of the land.
- Alternatively, Colonel Ripper is king of the world besides Evil Dictator, so when Evil Dictator is defeated, naturally all his posessions go to him, without any fuss.
- The Big Bad is killed, and the Power Vacuum sucks a good guy to the top.
- Double Subverted:
- The Alliance divides up the land without any fuss, but no one follows the agreement and a power struggle happens anyway.
- ...So it only goes to hell when Colonel Ripper is himself killed for his inheritance.
- Said good guy then pulls a Face–Heel Turn before being offed by his former compatriots, and this time there's no one left to fill the void between them.
- Parodied: Evil Dictator is cut into pieces, but each piece grows into a new body, and they want a piece of the empire for themselves.
- Zig Zagged: Colonel Ripper kills Evil Dictator, and his generals try to become rulers of the empire. But, then they agree that such struggle would be counterproductive, so they have a non-lethal contest, and the winner is the new ruler. The new ruler is killed, leading to the disintegration of the empire, and several other empires on the periphery try to conquer the land, and one succeeds, leading to basically a status quo ante bellum. Now, Colonel Ripper kills the new Evil Overlord, and the empire is divided up peacefully among the Alliance. But The Alliance finds the negotiated division has trouble in practice, leading to a new power struggle.
- Averted: Evil Dictator and The Alliance fight themselves to a stalemate, and agree to an armistice.
- Enforced: The writer of the story is writing it right after World War II, and wants to explore different ways that the power struggle after World War II could have turned out.
- Lampshaded: "Well this is inconvenient, just as we were on the edge of finally wrapping this mess up!'
- Invoked: Sergeant Starscream is bitter that his chances of progressing upwards in the Dictator's army are limited, so betrays his boss's one weakness to The Alliance, hoping that the inevitable bloody civil war following his death will give Starscream a chance to seize power.
- Exploited: The alliance purposely manipulates the power vacuum, because all the time and resources spent in the enemy civil war are not spent trying to force the alliance out.
- Defied:
- Colonel Ripper, knowing that killing Evil Dictator will create a power struggle, leaves him alive so he can first deal with evil upstarts and the shaky relations in The Alliance.
- Alternatively, When Evil Dictator dies, the would-be baddies take into account how Evil Dictator had to put up with how Colonel Ripper staging a lengthy campaign against him that took up too much time, manpower, and resources for Dictator to enjoy his power. This, combined with the fear anyone taking Dictator's might just suffer the same fate, makes the would-be baddies decide the risk is not worth the reward.
- Ripper makes sure to kill everybody who has any possibility, no matter how infinitesimally remote, of claiming Evil Dictator's throne at the exact same time Dictator dies.
- Discussed: "Dear President: Though Evil Dictator's armies are on the run and his empire will soon collapse, it is my recommendation that you decrease military pressure so more time can be used to deal with the potential repercussions of a power vacuum after Evil Dictator is captured or killed. <3, Colonel Ripper."
- Conversed: "What, so, Pandora is conquered by an alliance of Earth nations, and it's supposed to be rainbows and butterflies after that? What will they do about dividing up the mining rights for the Unobtanium among them?"
- Deconstructed: Evil Dictator wants to see the world in flames, and wants to see The Alliance suffer as much as possible, so when it becomes likely that he will be defeated, he tries his best to sow dissent among the Alliance then surrenders, leaving the most resources for The Alliance to fight over.
- Even if all the lesser evils start fighting over the scraps after Dictator is defeated, they're all constantly fighting each other AND the forces of good. As a result, it's fairly easy for the allies to mop up the remaining mobs after his defeat.
- The heroes are unwilling to kill the Evil Dictator out of fear of this trope. Eventually, they become moral cowards supporting a crapsack status quo instead of trying to actually fix things.
- Reconstructed: The defeat of Evil Dictator is just the beginning, and the real war all along was the power struggle. The ensuing power struggle after the defeat of the Evil Dictator is far more important to settling once and for all the relations between nations that had been iffy for years, and the power struggle ends with a much more stable world.
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