Basic Trope: A villain plans to depose a popular holiday figure, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz kidnaps Santa Claus, planning to become the new Santa for purposes of eeeeeevil!
- Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz overthrows the leaders of every holiday in the world.
- Downplayed: Evulz kidnaps and replaces a Mall Santa.
- Justified: Santa's Christmas magic is a convenient source of power for Evulz, so why not him?
- Inverted:
- Santa Claus overthrows Evulz and brings joy and prosperity to the world.
- Santa Claus overthrows Evulz and becomes an even worse emperor.
- Subverted: Evulz tries to take over the North Pole, but Santa and his elves defeat Evulz.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but then Evulz reveals his new superweapon, which is so big and intimidating that it forces Santa to surrender.
- ...but then Evulz forces Santa's surrender by taking a hostage. Maybe it's Mrs. Claus, maybe it's Rudolph, but whoever it is, it's someone who Santa cares about deeply enough to give up his title.
- Parodied: Evulz takes over Santa's position as revenge for putting him on the naughty list.
- Zig-Zagged: Evulz kidnaps Santa, but then goes back and forth on whether he actually wants to take over Santa's role or not.
- Averted: There is no real Santa Claus in the setting, so Evulz never considers taking over Christmas.
- Enforced: It's a Christmas Episode in a long-running series, so the writers wanted Evulz's plan for the episode to have something to do with Christmas.
- Lampshaded: "Overthrowing Santa Claus? That's low even for you, Evulz!"
- Invoked: There is no real Santa Claus in the setting, but Evulz makes himself the new figurehead of Christmas, usurping Santa in a metaphorical way.
- Exploited: The heroes know that Evulz is going to kidnap Santa Claus, so they set a trap for him at the North Pole.
- Defied:
- Evulz wants nothing to do with Santa because he considers Santa overly saccharine.
- Evulz simply kills Santa and moves on.
- Discussed: "If this was a Christmas special, Evulz would definitely be trying to take over Santa's workshop."
- Conversed: "Let me guess, Evulz is going to overthrow and replace Santa Claus."
- Deconstructed: Evulz takes over Santa's position, but soon realizes that Santa is a very busy man, and that he, being an evil emperor, has no idea how to do any of Santa's tasks. The elves offer to teach him.
- Reconstructed: Evulz's stress leads to laziness, and he decides to forget the responsibilities of being Santa and Take Over the World.
Back to Usurping Santa.
