Basic Trope: A villain who believes in Survival of the Fittest.
- Straight: Bob, an ambitious and selfish Capitalist, believes that natural selection means the strong should rule and profit at the expense of the weak.
- Exaggerated: Bob, a racist tyrannical Evilutionary Imperialist, desires to wipe out those with even the slightest sign of weakness and become the "Übermensch" through any means, even if it means causing the Apocalypse.
- Downplayed:
- Bob isn't a sociopath who takes matters into his own hands, but supports legalizing euthanasia and promotes birth control, not out of compassion but because of "population control" and "for the good of society as a whole".
- Bob is more Jerkass than outright villain and believes in personal strength above all else, and sees no point in fighting unless forced for survival - the weak he believes will die on their own eventually and fighting just to prove your strength is a ploy of the weak to look strong.
- Bob generally believes in rule of the strong, but he isn't totally lacking in compassion — he will happily help "worthy" poor people who prove their mettle through strength, brains, or sheer determination to stop their talents from being wasted, even if he doesn't care about other poor people at all. Bob believes that the strongest should rule, but they have a responsibility to use their strength for helping and protecting the "weak".
- Justified:
- Bob lived (or grew up) in a dog-eat-dog environment which warped his philosophy. In this world Bob needed to fight hard to get what he wanted, which means that he's a Self-Made Man, but the shady game he was forced to play in order to reach his ambition has made him sour and cynical.
- Competition drives innovation, and humans have invented a lot of technologies just so that they can survive and kill their opponents. Take away competition and the Arms Race, and humans become lazy.
- Bob is just a Narcissist that uses this as an excuse to look down upon those he views as inferior.
- Inverted:
- Bob seeks to wipe out the "strong" as he sees them as unruly and noncompliant, in favor of the easily manipulated and controlled "weak".
- Bob believes the weak should devour the strong and with enough numbers, he's able to gather an army of weak people to help him with this goal.
- Subverted:
- Bob constantly talks about how stronger groups survive and weaker groups dissolve, but reveals that he isn't talking about warmongering dog-eat-dog-ism, but the benefits of friendship and mutual cooperation.
- Bob looks like a Social Darwinist on the outside, but is eventually revealed to have in secret a genetically-disordered sister, and Bob loves said sister even more than his very own life. The reason why he behaves like a Social Darwinist is because it's a Crapsack World and he had to be ruthless in order to create for his sister a nice, healthy world to live in.
- Bob upholds Social Darwinism until he loses control of his company due to a stroke of bad luck. Afterward, he resorts to begging for loans and other assistance in a complete betrayal of the philosophy.
- Bob does claim natural selection applies to society, but that it's the more compassionate people who survive, or something else that goes against the usual portrayal.
- Double Subverted:
- But he still acts like a Social Darwinist around people because he's a bit of a jerk, and he can.
- Bob eventually goes He Who Fights Monsters and allows his sister's illness to kill her, thinking that if she's too weak to recover after all this time, then she's too weak to live.
- Bob's emphasis on making groups "strong" with friendship and mutual cooperation only implies internally. He's ruthless and xenophobic to even potential threats to his in-group, and has no qualms about plundering them when they are "weak".
- Parodied:
- Bob brings up a lengthy Breaking Lecture about Survival of the Fittest, even giving the equivalent of an entire class in Evolutionary Biology and the ideology of Nazi Germany, only to justify stealing candies from babies.
- Bob is essentially a scrub who thinks it is incredibly unfair that he keeps on getting defeated by Zerg Rushes of cooperating forces of weak amateurs.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob knows natural selection is a fact, but is repulsed by it, but then recommends that we should gain more power and the weak should be "euthanized"...
- Bob points out that much of Social Darwinism is about justifying people's positional advantage as some sort of intrinsic merit. But he does believe that there is an intrinsic factor masked by the environment and thus advocates for a society of radically equal starting opportunities and unequal ends so that the 'true merit' can shine through instead. It is still deranged, inhumane and impractical, but avoids many of the common conflations and self-justifications involved in normal Social Darwinism.
- Averted: There are no references to evolution around.
- Enforced: Author includes Darwin only to prove or disprove his points.
- Lampshaded: "Survival of the fittest, really? You Fail Darwin Forever!"
- Invoked:
- A religious conspiracy sets up a Social Darwinist extremist to discredit natural selection through Guilt by Association.
- God or a group of Abusive Precursors made nature such a strength-favoring Crapsack World as an experiment.
- Exploited:
- A Manipulative Bastard uses the Social Darwinist fad to recruit henchmen (particularly the fit and confident ones) for his purposes.
- The heroes beat up the Social Darwinist, then point out that according to his philosophy, since they are stronger than him he has to do what they say from now on.
- Defied:
- Bob, an evolutionary biologist who continuously writes about natural selection and survival of the fittest, gets accused of being a Social Darwinist, but rejects the implication and encourages altruism.
- Real-life evolutionary biologists are actually obsessed with maintaining biodiversity and preserving endangered species that, according to Social Darwinists, are supposed to be wiped out by Nature's Law.
- Bob scoffs at Social Darwinists, points out the actual Darwinian meaning of fitness is such that an adaptive bacteria or slime mold which can survive everywhere would be the peak of perfection, not supermen.
- Discussed: "Why does it have to be that the strong should dominate the weak?"
- Conversed: "Social Darwinists. I hate these guys." "Why?" "First and foremost: Darwin does not work that way. They just give him a bad name."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's social Darwinist policies cripples his faction's abilities to preform essential functions aside from making war, and possibly the ability to do that as well.
- After losing many battles, Bob begins to see himself as inherently pathetic, weak and unworthy to his tastes, and is Driven to Suicide.
- Bob gets into an actual fight and gets demolished by someone actually stronger than him. Bob then tries to claim that they're "weak" and uses Social Darwinism to hide his weaknesses while using it to justify killing anyone he considers "weak".
- Bob believes that the strong shall thrive and the weak shall perish. His enemies use this to utterly crush him, reducing him to a screaming, flailing fearful mess who begs them not to kill him. Either they do kill him anyway or they decide to enslave him, believing that the strong deserve to rule and the weak shall submit.
- Bob's repulsive Social Darwinist behavior drives away everyone, and thus is even more prone to being wiped out of the gene pool, since in Real Life cooperation and trait diversity is more advantageous for long-term survival than individual strength.
- Despite claiming to be strong, Bob doesn't reproduce because none of the woman fit his standards and the ones that do are disgusted by his ideology. He also failed to consider that the "weak" are far more likely to reproduce and therefore increase their chances of adding themselves to the gene pool.
- The reason why Bob is a Social Darwinist is because he really had to fight/struggle hard to get what he wanted, which means that he's a Self-Made Man, but the shady game he was forced to play in order to reach his goals, and the hardships he faced through his struggle, has made him sour and cynical of the world in general. On top of that, while he's really at the top, Bob has squandered every relationship he's had, and is a bitter and lonely shadow of the man he once was.
- Bob only uses Social Darwinism as an excuse to be a jerk and treat others like shit, and he really doesn't believe in the whole "hard work, strength and intelligence = success and life fulfillment" part of the Social Darwinist ideology. He only got what he wanted by fooling, luring and using other people who actually should be in charge due to their creativity or hard work, and making life difficult for those who saw through his bullshit.
- Bob's philosophy is specifically shown to be a self-serving justification of privilege since it is due to social station rather than any actual merit - let alone heritable merit. Even if the resources were enough to help him succeed he would be the dog that caught the car, since the underclasses he despises as weak were the only thing making his lifestyle possible.
- Bob only believes fervently in raw physical/magical strength, so he keeps getting blindsided by people who actively utilize intelligence and creativity.
- Bob believes in Social Darwinism, even when his body has weakened due to old age and he's effectively impotent in the bedroom. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't do too well and either winds up hospitalized or dead when fighting someone in their prime; he also can't have kids due to erectile dysfunction and because old age makes love making far too difficult for it to be worth it.
- Bob lives an isolated life and is a self-loathing misanthrope. He uses Social Darwinism to justify his resentment of his family and his peers, his job and bemoans over how dull his life is. In reality, he's a sad parasite who fantasizes about the death of humanity but is unwilling to actually hurt anyone and chooses to isolate himself further as his social darwinism is used to justify misogyny, toxic individuality, revenge against those who rejected him and his hatred of the world. He's convinced himself that he's a sociopath as the Social Darwinism takes over him like a parasite and eventually destroys him from the inside out, having reduced Bob to a shadow of his former self.
- Bob believes in Survival of the Fittest but due to him completely misunderstanding it, he ends up a Social Darwinist instead and devotes all of his time to becoming stronger, ironically ensuring that he won't get a chance to pass on his genes to future generations.
- Bob implements a eugenics program, but instead of making humanity stronger, smarter and healthier, it renders the gene pool so shallow that even more people are born with the same disorders he despises. Said people inevitably end up sterilized or killed under such a system, exacerbating the problem until the lack of genetic diversity wipes out the species.
- Reconstructed:
- After losing many battles, Bob begins to see himself as inherently pathetic, weak and unworthy to his tastes, but instead of being Driven to Suicide, he responds with "I should improve myself anyway."
- Bob does realize that in real life cooperation is more important than individual strength, making him decide that being a Manipulative Bastard would have greater benefits.
- Bob starts to put more thought into how he uses his powers, gradually making him Strong and Skilled.
- Bob decides that rather than kill his enemies, he takes full advantage of Defeat Means Friendship to get the weak to work for him instead.
- Played For Laughs: In this universe, Death Is Cheap, so it doesn't matter that everyone is murdering each other and justifying it with "Might Makes Right" because the "weak" who get killed for their "weakness" simply respawn anyway.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob is proven to be a hypocrite, condemning everyone else as unfit to survive while making constant excuses for his own weaknesses.
- In a World… where Social Darwinism was followed to the letter, only the fittest and smartest person survives by killing off all inferiors, thus leading him to become the Last of His Kind and it's very Lonely at the Top.
- Bob believes that the strong shall thrive and the weak will perish, taking it to such an extreme that he believes that only he be the strongest, and kills everyone else to maintain that status.
- Bob gets crippled, loses his wealth, or otherwise loses the thing that he thinks makes him superior in the first place, causing him to bemoan his initial viewpoint or think of himself as worthless.
- Bob having been bested by The Hero and his allies cannot accept that his entire viewpoint is wrong. He then injects himself with serum, turning himself into a psychotic monster intent on destroying everything.
- Implied: Super Bob keeps on his Superhero Trophy Shelf of defeated villains a crumbled statue of a man with a plaque reading "Only the strong will survive." Implying either this or a doomsday cultist.
Back to The Social Darwinist, if you are fit enough.
