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Author: nexser

Jan 7th 2013 at 12:21:50 AM

I'm glad someone is working on this, i'm lazy at linking entries but i'll try and help with information i've noticed makes up this trope and quite a bit of examples.

Usually a foreigner/immigrant/outsider looking for new countries, industries or technologies to make or expand his fortune, can also be an inventor or a scientist with business sense.  His title is different from the evil CCE, he is not an executive but the Founder of his company.  This character can exemplify or subvert the idea that ambition and money are bad things. Can be a self made man or an aristocrat looking to expand his fortune. Some times the schemes he funds are not necessarily for money but for science or a hidden purpose, but he usually finds a way to make money of that too.

A curious fact about this trope is that the companies that entrepreneurs build in fiction as opposed to impersonal megacorps are named after their founder with the word industries or enterprises next to it.

This type of characters are usually elegant and sometimes dashing, always eccentric, very intelligent and even more ambitious. They are called a visionaries by admiring peers and a dangerous madmen by detractors. They have an unconventional morality and are used to getting what they want, this can easily make them villains or ubermensch.

Examples
Jonas Venture Sr. from Venture Bros. Adventurer, inventor and captain of industry.
Adrian Veidt from Watchmen. He markets his image and uses his broad intelligence to become a businessman and conquer the evils of humanity, funds especially outrageous schemes.
William Bel, founder of Massive Dynamic from Fringe. Builds company to overcome the scientific needs of the next century.
Francisco D'Anconia was missing from Atlas Shrugged. Significantly expands his families copper empire and then destroys it to "fund" the destruction of the looters.
The titular Character from Citizen Kane. Invests his fortune in building media influence, then squanders a part of it it in his second wife's opera career and building a palace.
David Xanatos from Gargoyles. Richer than many countries you could name, made his fortune from time travel gambits and funding genetic mad scientists.
Most of the Wealthy Superheroes, Iron Man being the foremost but Batman also funds disruptive and risky research. Also some of the wealthy villains like Lex Luthor and Norman Osborne.
Peter Weyland from Prometheus. His company builds humanoid robots and funds space archaeology.
S.R Haddon from Contact. Funds the search for extraterrestrial life.
The Founder of the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse has a hands on approach to this trope.
Hober Mallow from Asimov's Foundation. Inventive space trader and later an influential politician.
Rhet Butler from Gone with the Wind. Risks life in blockade runs to build fortune, calls it profiting in civilization destruction.
Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby. Invests his bootleeging millions in recuperating his high school love.
Hugh Darrow, David Sariff and Bob Page from the Deus Ex Series. Darrow builds the augmentation industry and invests his millions to solve global warming, Sariff seeks to bring the next step to human evolution, and Bob Page seeks world domination and to become a god, curiously their companies are each named Darrow Industries, Sariff Industries and Page Industries.
The Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2 funds the advancement of humanity through unethical experimental research and profitable business fronts.
Barnum in Fable 2 is always trying new inventions and can eventually become the successful developer of a new community, in Fable 3 Reaver becomes a much darker but quite charming industrialist, as king you can indulge some of his more inventive schemes.
Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner builds the Tyrell Corporation to create artificial humans.