Basic Trope: A Well-Intentioned Extremist who was right.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz wages horrific war to Take Over the World and kicks an inordinate amount of puppies in pursuit of this goal, but it actually accomplished his end goal of Utopia.
- Exaggerated: Evulz seems to be doing things For the Evulz, but somehow the world is a better place for it.
- Downplayed: Evulz is more willing to Shoot the Dog than the heroes, and this has had some positive effects.
- Justified:
- The land in question had been lawless for some time, and so the only way to get anyone to listen was to smack some heads.
- The issue Evulz wishes to eliminate is so fundamental to the current status quo that only a truly radical change could possibly eliminate it.
- Inverted:
- Evulz is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is wrong in the end.
- Evulz does good things, but ultimately his plan is to become an Evil Overlord.
- Subverted:
- It looks like Evulz's plan is going to work, but someone throws a wrench in it at the last second.
- It looks like Evulz's intentions are good, but he eventually proves to be a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- It looks like Evulz was doing bad things, but it turns out all those supposed off-screen 'deaths' or 'Cold-Blooded Torture sessions' were faked.
- Evulz looks at what he would have to do to accomplish his goals, and, after much deliberation, decides the consequences are too great.
- While Evulz was right about the problem, his extreme measures were the opposite of helpful to the problem, resulting in a murderous equivalent of Senseless Sacrifice.
- Double Subverted:
- But Evulz can account for that.
- Which was a further ploy to make it even better.
- Except this was just his final ploy to cement his Utopia.
- Bob, on the other hand, believes otherwise.
- Parodied:
- Evulz destroys 90% of the Earth's population so that those remaining won't have to worry about resources. Everyone cheers because it worked.
- Evulz single-handedly ends world hunger by eating babies.
- Zig Zagged:
- Evulz decides the costs are too great, then changes his mind. But he means well—except he doesn't. Oh, wait, that was the final step in his master plan. And then someone threw a Spanner in the Works. But he got around it. Now the world's a Utopia. Except he was lying, and went through all this trouble to become Evil Overlord of the world. Then he wants to do good, but the general populace is so fed up with his mood swings that they stop him from doing it.
- Evulz's plan, though full of puppy-kicking, does indeed work and get things fixed... though it certainly wasn't the best, and demonstrably not the only way of going about fixing things.
- Averted:
- Enforced: "We want to emphasize that this character is ultimately good, but had to do some pretty dirty things to get there."
- Lampshaded: "And now we get your explanation of how all the evil stuff you did changed the world for the better." "I'm right, you know." "...Yeah."
- Implied: Post-Apocalypse, the descendants of forces that were under Evulz's domain outnumber those of the hero, implying that either 'order' approach actually did save more people long-term or attracted more followers.
- Invoked: "If I make everyone hate me like this, they'll have a common hatred, and work together!"
- Exploited: One of Evulz's detractors plays up his extremist measures, while drawing attention away from the good that comes later, and the fact that when you get right down to it, Evulz's got a point.
- Defied: "I don't care what you're trying to do. I just know what you're doing."
- Discussed: "So...Evulz. You're about to explain how your plans saved the world?" "Don't have to. Look around."
- Conversed: "Think Evulz's plan is gonna work?" "Hope so. I'd hate for all that puppy-kicking not to mean anything."
- Implied: The heroes defeat Evulz. The epilogue shows the empire in a worse state than before. Whether or not this means that the autocratic rule of Evulz was justified, or that the worse state was a result of his rule, is not clarified.
- Deconstructed:
- The Empire at first seems to be what justified Emperor Evulz's actions, but it soon becomes increasingly clear that his Utopia is a hollow one built on far too much blood, and far too many little problems that Evulz overlooked, having assumed that "the ends would justify the means". All of the people he conquered are extremely mixed on his actions, leading to constant conflicts between those who support him and those who oppose him. Evulz' fixation on the bigger picture causes him to ignore how his extreme methods only papered over the original problems of the world before without actually addressing any of the actual issues, thus ensuring that if left unchecked or unnoticed, they'll just return to rot the utopia from the inside out. And finally, Evulz' extremism only ends up alienating the people who he sought to create the utopia for, leaving the whole thing feeling like a hollow success.
- Even though The Empire ended up being a Utopia for a little while, ultimately the methods Evulz used to get there were too much for the public to swallow, and he is overthrown... only just that the utopia falls back into a dystopia again.
- The means turned out to be too great for Evulz to swallow. Guilt ridden, he kills himself.
- Bob, The Hero, had suffered from so much pain and loss due to Evulz's actions and wants to stop him from harming anymore people, but after seeing what the world had become because of said actions, the hero has a mental breakdown, feeling justice was robbed from him and that Evulz wasn't properly punished. The broken hero soon becomes a villain and now wants to destroy the "utopia" that Evulz created, seeing it as the ultimate revenge.
- The real heroes show Evulz that there were other ways to build a utopia, and prove it by building an even better utopia than him. Also, his actions begin catching up to him, his utopia falls apart, and he finally realizes that his methods were unnecessary and have made him into a villain.
- Evulz's ruthless actions turning out to be right reinforces his behavior and he quickly goes Jumping Off the Slippery Slope into full-blown evil.
- The heroes, despite seeing the overall net good that Evulz brought, are still unwilling to forgive him for what he did and tell him that it does not excuse anything he did, demanding he be punished anyway.
- Reconstructed:
- However, the public eventually was persuaded that the methods Evulz used justified Utopia, and so they either restore Evulz to power or install a replacement, and they return being to a Utopia.
- Evulz felt guilty about his plans but no one else did. They make him into a Messiah figure after his suicide.
- A little warrior therapy is all Bob needs for a Heel Realization. He becomes Evulz's second in command.
- Bob himself commits many evil deeds to overthrow Evulz... and upon succeeding, creates an even better Utopia than Evulz did.
- Upon closer inspection, it turns out the "perfect world" the heroes created was nothing more than a False Utopia, a pale copy of the real deal just as corrupt as the old system, only better at hiding it. While Evulz's vision is far from perfect, it's still a preferable alternative to the heroes' solution and the old Status Quo. Likely to exist in a Crapsack World story.
- Evulz agrees and allows the heroes to kill him to achieve a sense of justice.
- Played For Laughs: Evulz does some mildly bad acts, and somehow makes the world better.
- Played For Drama: While Evulz has genuinely improved the world for the better, for the rest of his life he is constantly tormented with the question of whether or not it was worth it.
- Plotted A Good Waste: In a sense, this dynamic makes Evulz an example of Good Is Not Nice; his methods are ruthless and brutal, but nobody can argue with the results. This then leads into another question: Is it worth it?
I came to this wiki and found a barren wasteland. It was then, I decided: no more second chances. No more forgiveness. I enslaved thousands, murdered millions, and kicked untold billions of puppies... and it worked.
