Basic Trope: The villain succeeds while the good guys fail miserably.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz actually manages to defeat the heroes, Take Over the World, and escape his punishment.
- Exaggerated:
- To make matters worse, Emperor Evulz and his cronies overthrew the Bomb-Throwing Anarchists and their People's Republic of Tyranny, torture rebels, enslave any and all minorities, and shave the hair off of everyone's head.
- Evulz wins so often that he's practically invincible.
- Not only does Evulz defeat the heroes physically, but he defeats them morally, ultimately turning them into brainwashed minions who love him and would gladly die for him.
- Evulz has succeeded in his Class Z-3 apocalypse, which negates the creation of the omniverse, considering it to be the greatest victory of his entire life as he is the only one not affected by the history erasure.
- Evulz already won long ago, there's no hero to defeat him
- Downplayed:
- Emperor Evulz is killed in the end, but ultimately succeeds in his goals.
- The heroes find that they are not strong enough to destroy the villain, so the villain and hero wind up negotiating, and coming to a compromise in which both of their goals are partially achieved, but neither is achieved completely.
- Emperor Evulz wins, but it's a Meaningless Villain Victory.
- Evulz, A Lighter Shade of Black, wins in an Evil Versus Evil story against the much more evil Eldritch Abomination threatening his empire.
- Emperor Evulz wins, but he’s the Villain Protagonist in a story with a Hero Antagonist as well.
- Emperor Evulz is actually an Anti-Villain who is fighting for a noble cause, but his reprehensible Utopia Justifies the Means actions are what set Alice and Bob against him. While they defeat Emperor Evulz, they then take up his cause and achieve it themselves. While Emperor Evulz's own efforts may have failed, his original goal is ultimately achieved, so in a sense he still wins.
- The story has a Win-Win Ending, so everyone wins, including Evulz.
- The school bully succeeds in their plan about beating up the protagonist and gets away with it.
- Karma Houdini.
- Evulz wins this round but, much to his annoyance, the war overall is still going on.
- Justified:
- Aware of what kind of story he's part of, the Emperor manipulates the odds to create an Evil Plan capable of succeeding within the limits of the narrative rules the world is tied to.
- Evulz learned from the flaws of his previous plans, and steps up his game (at least for the episode).
- Alice and Bob are Idiot Heroes— it's really no wonder that Evulz managed to outsmart them.
- Alice and Bob are in a Cosmic Horror Story, or Slasher Movie.
- Evulz is too powerful to be defeated.
- You can’t always expect the good guys to always win.
- Ultimately, Emperor Evulz has more resources and training than the heroes, and those things often trump morality.
- Villain Protagonist.
- Inverted:
- The Good Guys Always Win.
- A series starring a Villain Protagonist ends with the Hero Antagonist winning.
- Subverted:
- Near-Villain Victory- Emperor Evulz only comes dangerously close to winning.
- Evulz takes over the world. Then the Sole Survivor of the heroes' party goes on one last Suicide Mission/Roaring Rampage of Revenge to ensure that at least he doesn't get to live to enjoy it.
- Evulz was never evil to begin with, and all his actions are good, if diametrically opposed to Alice and Bob's beliefs.
- Pyrrhic Victory- Evulz defeated his foes by blowing up the Earth, now where is he supposed to build his empire?
- Double Subverted: Emperor Evulz eventually gets reimbursed.
- Parodied:
- Both the duo of Bob and Alice,
Marty Stu and Mary Sue wannabes (respectively), fight against Evulz, Villain Sue wannabe. Said duo lost. Thankfully, They took it well. Their comrades, on the other hand, did not. - When Evulz finally corners Alice and Bob, he—takes their candy.
- Both the duo of Bob and Alice,
- Zig Zagged: It seems like Evulz is going to win, but he didn't, then it's revealed his real plan was something all along, and then he fails at that plan.
- Averted: Evulz doesn't win in any way.
- Enforced:
- "For once, make Bob and Alice lose. People these days usually get tired of having the heroes win every time."
- Evulz is an Anti-Villain, Well-Intentioned Extremist, a Magnificent Bastard, or nice. The fans want to see him win.
- This is a prequel to the previous film, Evulz' non-defeat was a Foregone Conclusion.
- Lampshaded: "And just so we're clear, there isn't gonna be a Part 2..."
- Invoked: "Here's the part of the plan I haven't told you: I Win."
- Exploited: Now that good has thoroughly been quashed, all of mankind's most evil professions can at last breathe free; Bankers siccing repo men on their clients to file the very fillings out of their teeth, sleazy businessmen with ear-to-ear grins robbing poor people blind, if not just outright killing them and eating them, and lawyers lawyering up the place.
- Defied: "Remember the Golden Rule: The villain will never win if we keep believing."
- Discussed: "Bob, if we don't make it in time, Emperor Evulz will win!"
- Conversed: "Holy Bleep! Emperor Evulz won in the season finale, and now there's not going to be a Season Six. I guess Tales of Troperia is now officially a bad guy wins scenario."
- Implied: The outcome of the big final battle is not shown... but the epilogue shows that The Empire of Evulz is still standing.
- Deconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz kills the heroes, conquers of the world, and is sitting pretty on his skull throne. And suddenly the thought crosses his mind: "What now?"
- Evulz may have won this time around, but Being Evil Sucks, and on his throne in withering, lifeless wasteland of his own creation, the only people who surround him are a breed of Opportunistic Bastard/The Starscream or insincere YesMen, all of the people he loves are dead, the surviving remnants of his family are estranged and have long since disowned him, all of his Mooks- the ones who survived the war, at least- hate him or are terrified of him... Furthermore, without the fervor of 'righteous' war to keep the populace engaged, the once brainwashed citizenry and the enslaved prisoners of war, in their millions, now have come to realize all the destruction and genocide Evulz has wrought upon the world and have come out to oppose him and threaten his reign with death, to the point where he can't even leave his castle without his Praetorian Guard by his side, a fact that all of his once obedient yet now unruly generals and subservient lords are more than willing to seize upon in their petty struggles for power. In short, he Won the War, Lost the Peace.
- Meaningless Villain Victory / Pyrrhic Victory
- Evil Will Fail
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring
- Reconstructed: "Well, I could always build a new World Wonder so that people remember me when I am gone..."
- Played For Laughs: The story is a Black Comedy with Evulz as the Villain Protagonist.
- Played For Drama:
- The surviving heroes are in despair over their defeat, and the world is shown becoming an even worse place under the rule of Evulz. Some are Driven to Suicide, some join Emperor Evulz out of disillusionment or despair.
- Emperor Evulz himself isn't too happy with his victory: ruling the world is hard, he has no close friends who care for him, his family hates him for what he's done, and he suffers repressed guilt from his crimes. By the end, you feel sorry for him as it dawns on him that all his bad actions were for nothing.
- Played For Horror: Imagine a world completely devoid of human compassion, morality, and forgiveness, a world in which the very concept of love is derided and mocked and hated and avoided like The Plague. A hyper-darwinistic world in which only the biggest, meanest, loudest, and the most cunning of individuals survive and nice guys perish, murder, torture, rape, cannibalism, slavery, and worse are treated as perfectly normal and acceptable, lionized, even, and only punished should the perpetrator fail. Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished is enforced by the law, and do-gooders are either worked to death, brainwashed, executed forthwith, some combination of the three, or some other horrible fate. A Villain World where the bad guy wins would be a terrifying place to be, as they mould the universe itself to fit snugly into their own perception of how things should be done. Life in such a place would be a eternal nightmare beyond description, all because some madman defeated the heroes one time.
Finally, The Bad Guy Wins at last!
