History Main / MegaCorp

* The Schnee Dust Company in ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', which is one of the largest producers and exporters of [[GreenRocks Dust]]. It's so big that it has its own security force and fleet of airships. It used to be run in an ethical way, but became much more exploitative of its workers after [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Jacques Schnee]] took over.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Abaddon", the United States became the North American Corporation, otherwise known as the Company and Noramco, in 2102. American citizens became shareholders but they effectively lost all of their rights, becoming nothing more than commodities to the Company.

* ''Series/RedDwarf''. In the [[SarcasmMode creatively titled]] "M-Corp", the crew download an overdue software update from the 26th century from their mining company, only to learn that at this point in history said company was taken over by the titular evil corporation, which had in fact had managed to TakeOverTheWorld and control vital necessities like food, water and air and could even charge people for their subversive thoughts. Since Lister is the only registered crew member on board, M-Corp goes so far as to edit his perceptions and prevent him from even seeing or hearing anything that isn't owned by them, including Rimmer, Kryten and Cat. He eventually transports to an unknown location run by an M-Corp A.I. that forces him to buy things and is willing to inflict pain on him and put his life in danger just so he can buy items to save himself, and eventually starts charging him in his time and lifespan. This Mega-Corp was so powerful that it was essentially a RealityWarper as it could offer you -- or take ''from'' you -- anything it wanted in order to charge you more.

* ''Series/TheBoys2019'': [[Characters/TheBoys2019VoughtInternational Vought International]] are a Type 2 EvilInc who are responsible for managing the country's superheroes and who are powerful enough to challenge the CIA. They have a ''ton'' of resources and all kinds of products and services despite technically being just a pharmaceutical company, and they're so powerful that in Season 2, they survive a series of scandals that would run any other company out of business for good. Their media empire is ''so'' massive that they own in-universe equivalents of everything you can think of including CNN, FOX, Disney, Amazon, Spotify, Lifetime, every streaming service and every other form of media down to Telemundo.

* ''Film/InspectorGadget'' has Scolex Industries, which produces technology such as robots and androids (such as the [=RoboGadget=] line).

* ''Series/TheBoys2019'': [[Characters/TheBoys2019VoughtInternational Vought International]] are a Type 2 EvilInc who are responsible for managing the country's superheroes and who are powerful enough to challenge the CIA. They have a ''ton'' of resources and all kinds of products and services despite technically being just a pharmaceutical company, and they're so powerful that in Season 2, they survive a series of scandals that would run any other company out of business for good.

** ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'': Pentex. It's a front for the [[EldritchAbomination embodiment of entropy]] and its efforts to poison the entire universe. They have hands in everything from fast food to toys to pharmaceuticals to energy to firearms to [[SelfDeprecatingHumor Role-Playing Games]] -- in fact, most people in the setting don't even know Pentex ''exists'', or if it does, that it's simply an independent entity without any ties to its constituent companies.

Traditionally, it was rare for Mega Corporations to be portrayed other than negatively. Rather than being a simple business making things that people want to buy, they are the villains of the setting, depicted as exploitative, oppressive and [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney screwing the rules]] with their money while maintaining a PeaceAndLoveIncorporated façade. However, in PostCyberpunk stories, some Mega Corps can aspire to be BigGood, providing the hero with [[WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys amazing equipment]], or are owned by and support a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob. There do exist some benevolent portrayals of a Mega Corp; in which they are a large business which employs a lot of people and isn't shown practicing in unethical trade practices. These benevolent portrayals have become increasingly common in early 21st Century media, until increased scrutiny in the late 2010s.

'''RealLife''': Monopolies, monopsonies (only one ''buyer'' of goods in the market), duopolies (only two sellers in the market), and oligopolies (only a small handful of Mega Corp entities that are selling in the market) ''do'' exist in real life, and indeed, very large multinational corporations do exist. And yes, ''some'' of these corporations do engage in unethical practices or political influence, and there ''are'' historical examples of Mega Corps acting either as a state within state or as an semi-independent political entity, such as the Hanseatic League. There have been huge corporations with their own armed forces, such as the East India Company, which at one point had twice as many soldiers as the British Army.

However, it is still an exaggeration to claim that ''all'' [[ThereAreNoGoodExecutives corporations act in this way]]. Those that do become too powerful used to get stopped by anti-trust laws which once even resulted in them being broken up like Standard Oil.

* The ''ResidentEvilFilmSeries'' is a series of live-action ActionHorror films based on the video games of [[Franchise/ResidentEvil the same name]]. In the series, the Umbrella Corporal is a a mega-corporation that produces pharmaceuticals and bioweapons in huge complexes. Umbrella has their own military, including soldiers and rotary wing aircraft.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' with Arasaka and [=MiliTech=] as the two most prominent examples, the former pure evil and the latter unscrupulous but not ''as'' evil. For reference, [=MiliTech=] more-or-less openly owns and operates the US government, and the CEO of Arasaka is referred to in fairly formal contexts as "the Emperor" without a hint of irony.

* ''Roleplay/CosmicInterference'': OSAKI. They have ''multiversal'' influence, can seemingly [[AcmeProducts make everything]], and they can create ''actual deities''. Several {{Player Characters}} are either products, employees, or otherwise related to OSAKI, and they've played some part in at least half the cast's stories.

* ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'' has Namba Heavy Industries, a massive conglomerate involved in (among other things) [[ArmsDealer arms manufacturing and selling]]. They're big and influential enough to effectively be a fourth player in the MeleeATrois between Japan's [[BalkanizeMe divided regions]] of Touto, Hokuto and Seito, all of whom depend on Namba Heavy Industries for the [[MechaMooks Guardians]] they use as military police, and who all have Namba's TykeBomb spies embedded in various influential positions in their governments.

The nastier version are home to the CorruptCorporateExecutive, MeanBoss, PointyHairedBoss, and ObstructiveBureaucrat, and have {{Amoral Attorney}}s on the payroll. In line with their corporate ambition, Mega Corps invest an ungodly amount of money in security, employing not only large contingents of PrivateMilitaryContractors as staff and guards, reaching [[CorporateWarfare military levels in numbers and hardware]], but also HiredGuns in order to take out the competition. As a sign of their omnipresence, they will SigilSpam all over the place and bombastically announce the company's name, which will be almost always a single word followed by "Corporation", "Industries" or "Enterprises". [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japanese Mega Corps]] might prefer "Group" or "Zaibatsu".[[note]] the latter of which is actually an AnachronismStew from UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan[[/note]] Koreans meanwhile prefer "Chaebol".

The nastier version are home to the CorruptCorporateExecutive, MeanBoss, PointyHairedBoss, and ObstructiveBureaucrat, and have {{Amoral Attorney}}s on the payroll. In line with their corporate ambition, Mega Corps invest an ungodly amount of money in security, employing not only large contingents of PrivateMilitaryContractors as staff and guards, reaching [[CorporateWarfare military levels in numbers and hardware]], but also HiredGuns in order to take out the competition. As a sign of their omnipresence, they will SigilSpam all over the place and bombastically announce the company's name, which will be almost always a single word followed by "Corporation", "Industries" or "Enterprises". [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japanese Mega Corps]] might prefer "Group" or "Zaibatsu".[[note]] the latter of which is actually an AnachronismStew from UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan[[/note]]

* ''[[Anime/{{Patlabor}} Patlabor: The Mobile Police]]'': Schaft Enterprises is a multinational conglomerate specializing in Labors, from domestic, to military models. They even smuggle foreign models into the country and conduct illegal field tests, by targeting the [=SVU2's=] Ingrams, in order to gather live combat data.
* ''LightNovel/RebuildWorld'': Being a CyberPunk {{Dystopia}}, the story takes place within a federation of OneNationUnderCopyright megacorps. The most prominent being Sakashita Heavy Industries which dominates the area protagonist Akira lives. Despite them being steeped in corruption (with a whole page of GovernmentConspiracy and Akira regularly taking hush money from them), and using the PropagandaMachine to disguise many of their conflicts as terrorist attacks, Sakashita's CEO Sugadome is portrayed as a BenevolentBoss, and they're ALighterShadeOfGrey compared [[AIIsACrapshoot to the A.I.s in the setting.]]

ScienceFiction, especially of the {{Dystopia}}n and {{Cyberpunk}} sorts, loves its massive corporations. These corporations are umbrella corporations, controlling dozens of smaller companies that manufacture [[AcmeProducts everything]] from clothing to military hardware. They can [[LawEnforcementInc be the police]]. Perhaps there is one company that is a PrivatelyOwnedSociety in its own right. This goes beyond the definition of "monopoly."

* ''LightNovel/TheAsteriskWar'' has the Integrated Enterprise Foundation, an international conglomerate that controls the world economy. Everything it does is in the name of profit, such as bringing entire countries to the brink of poverty, organzing fighting tournaments between teenage superhumans and brainwashing its own members to prevent any defiance.

'''RealLife''': Monopolies, monopsonies (only one ''buyer'' of goods in the market), duopolies (only two sellers in the market), and oligopolies (only a small handful of Mega Corp entities that are selling in the market) ''do'' exist in real life, and indeed, very large multinational corporations do exist. And yes, ''some'' of these corporations do engage in unethical practices or political influence, and there ''are'' historical examples of Mega Corps acting either as a state within state or as an semi-independent political entity, such as the Hanseatic League. There have been huge corporations with their own armed forces, such as the East India Company.

'''RealLife''': Monopolies, monopsonies (only one ''buyer'' of goods in the market), duopolies (only two sellers in the market), and oligopolies (only a small handful of Mega Corp entities that are selling in the market) ''do'' exist in real life, and indeed, very large multinational corporations do exist. And yes, ''some'' of these corporations do engage in unethical practices or political influence, and there ''are'' historical examples of Mega Corps acting either as a state within state or as an semi-independent political entity, such as the Hanseatic League. However, it is still an exaggeration to claim that ''all'' [[ThereAreNoGoodExecutives corporations act in this way]]. Those that do become too powerful used to get stopped by anti-trust laws which once even resulted in them being broken up like Standard Oil.

* ''Film/AustinPowers'': Virtucon, the legitimate face of Dr. Evil's criminal organization. As Number 2 states, the company owns cable companies in 38 states, a steel mill in Cleveland, shipping in Texas, oil refineries in Seattle, and a factory in Chicago that produces miniature models of factories. They also make $9,000,000,000 a year through legitimate business practices alone.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' with Arasaka and [=MiliTech=] as the two most prominent examples, the former pure evil and the latter unscrupulous but not ''as'' evil.

* Wiki/TVTropes has it's very own TropeCo/TropeCo, which primarily acts as a way to make JustForFun faux-infomercials out of tropes.

** ''Series/KamenRiderFaiz'' has Smart Brain, a prominent electronics manufacturer who by the time the series begins are the dominant company in the industry. They also created the belts used by the Riders in the series. And that's not even getting into the fact that they're actually run by Orphenochs, the self proclaimed next step in human evolution, who try to use this company to unite all of their kind to wipe out humanity.
** The final antagonist in ''Series/KamenRiderW'' and recurring antagonist in some of the recent {{Crossover}}s is Foundation X. They are a shady organization who financially back somewhat amoral research projects. Most of their investments go into research involving making humans more powerful, with most of their test subjects being unwilling captives.

** In ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'', there is one called the [[MeaningfulName Yggdrasill Corporation]], which has its HQ be a building in the shape of a giant tree and ruling the city of Zawame with an iron fist. Their main leader, however, insist that it's ''not'' an all-imposing company but rather a foundation dedicated to the betterment of humanity. With TheReveal that [[spoiler:the Helheim forest is actually an alternate world which was completely overrun by the [[EldritchAbomination Inves generating vines/fruits]] and Earth is gonna end up the same way in 10 years at best, Yggdrasill's secret plan to mass-produce as many Rider belts as possible to immunize around 1/7 of the world population, and ''kill'' the other 6/7 to prevent them from becoming dangerous Inves puts the corporation firmly in the WellIntentionedExtremist field... [[DragonWithAnAgenda not that most of the higher members of the staff ever care]].]]