- In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party are extreme control freaks, and nowhere is this more evident than in the concept of Thoughtcrime — they have made even thinking against the government a crime. Their representative, O'Brien, makes it clear that it's not just that they want to control people's thoughts, they get a sick pleasure from forcing people to do as they are told. As he says it, "Obedience is not enough." Unless the people are suffering, the Party knows it has no way of knowing whether or not it is the Party's will they are obeying and not their own.
- Warlord Leon Abbott, Big Bad of Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony and supreme leader of the demons following their exile. He expects all other demons to share his ideals, controls their lives to the point of choosing names for them when they reach adulthood, and inflict humiliating punishments on anyone who he thinks is a dissenter.
- Judge Holden, Big Bad of Blood Meridian. He acts as a Dragon-in-Chief of the Psycho for Hire Glanton gang, as well as a Satanic Archetype for the setting. When asked by one of his associates why he catalogues all the flora and fauna they come across, he responds that anything that exists without his knowledge exists without his consent.
- Brother Jerome in the Brother Cadfael novels and television series.
- The Chaos Cycle: Velizar cannot stand the idea that people will go against his twisted ideas of forcing people under control. When even the idea his brother could be meeting a friend who would take him away was apparent, Velizar decided to kill his brother.
- Lady Peril in Constance Verity Saves the World possessed a "pathological distaste for disorder", having once executed a minion for not buttoning up their uniform properly and interfering in Larry's love life to absurd lengths (as in killing and/or inducing Laser-Guided Amnesia). Considering she runs a Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy with aspirations of world domination, this is to be expected. Her entire Evil Plan in the second book is her stealing Connie's caretaker spell and becoming the new Chosen One] so that the universe would revolve around her.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: Tamlin turns into one in the second book, especially where Feyre is concerned. He's incredibly protective of Feyre, to the point of locking her in his house and forbidding her from leaving, which leads to her having a breakdown. It's somewhat justified in that being Under the Mountain messed him up, but it doesn't help Feyre's own trauma and leads to the demise of their relationship.
- In the Descent novelization, this is St. John's largest character flaw. To his credit, he does recognize this after the first book and begins taking steps to tone it down.
- Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. This gets even better/worse when she quite obviously doesn't practice what she preaches. She intends on using the torturing spell, the Cruciatus Curse, on Harry to get information on Sirius' location, but Hermione says that it's illegal to use it on another human being (It is.) Umbridge decides to use it anyway since "what Fudge (the Minister of Magic) doesn't know won't hurt him!"
- Vernon and Petunia Dursley are more comedic examples of this. They're quite proud of the totally mundane middle-class life they live and go to great lengths to keep it up. While they and their son have little trouble with this, this trope comes into play in regards to the strange things that happen because Harry's a wizard. Even seemingly harmless things, like Ron thinking he had to yell through a phone or Mrs. Weasley covering an envelope in stamps because she wasn't sure how many were meant to go on for Muggle post, get the Dursleys angry simply because they hate any magical-related things interfering with their lives.
- Charlie, a middle-manager in the tooth-fairy operation in the Discworld novel Hogfather. Takes severe pride in his work (making sure the cart-driver signs his paperwork), is quick to make it clear that any problems are someone else's fault, would be on a tropical island if the organisation didn't need him; and has never wondered what happens to the teeth, because that's not his job.
- Also, in Literature/Pyramids, Djelibeybi's high priest Dios has everything running the exact way he likes it, and won't allow for even the most insignificant change. Dead kings will be entombed regardless of their preference note . The king will have chicken for dinner even when he expressly said he didn't want it, and so on.
- Curran from Kate Daniels fits this in the extreme. He cares about his people, but it turns out that due to childhood trauma his main motivator is that he is hellbent on keeping his future family safe. Forcing the various shapeshifter Clans to make peace and work together, shaping them into the Pack single-handedly? All so his future mate would never be caught in the crossfire between Clans. Building the Keep, which is a huge sprawling castle designed to be easily defended, and can protect about 1500 shapeshifters? All so his mate and children would have a safe place to live. Unfortunately, he didn't count on falling for Kate, who rebels against all authority by nature. Naturally, this causes tension.
- In Stephen King's The Shining Ullman the hotel manager is like this. Jack Torrance thinks he is an "officious little prick" and this opinion is shared by more than one member of the Overlook's staff.
- Even though most of the staff consider Ullman an officious little prick, they admit that he's good at his job. Watson, the maintenance man, who HATES Ullman admits that Ullman is good at what he does and definitely earns his salary. Ullman is the first manager of the Overlook who's ever turned a profit for the place.
- From the same author, It gives us Tom Rogan, who micromanages every single aspect of his wife Beverly's life and beats her when she doesn't do exactly what he wants. It's not made entirely clear whether he carries this attitude to work with him, or if his wife is the sole victim of it.
- In The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion this is the motivation of the dark lord Sauron. His love of order and perfection was perverted into totalitarian desire to dominate all life which made him side with Morgoth, the original dark lord, in the first age.
- Malediction Trilogy: Troll prince Tristan. He is so single-mindedly devoted to his one cause (overthrowing his father and improving the lives of his subjects) that he wants to control everything: those around him (and he has magical means to do it), his speech and facial expressions, even his feelings for his wife. He gets called upon it. Several times.
- Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and its film adaptation. A sociopathic Battleaxe Nurse who runs the mental hospital with an iron fist while using her position to bully, intimidate, torture, and lobotomize the patients in her care and accepting no challenges to her authority.
- Arin in The Outcasts is obsessed with order in his personal life. He uses the eagles to drive away the nearby villages so that their relative disorder does not upset his life.
- In Pride and Prejudice, there is only one correct way to do things, and that is Lady Catherine de Burgh's way... at least, in her head it is, and she's very fond of loudly and at length explaining to people what they should be doing. And as she's one of the landed gentry, people are very reluctant to disagree with her. This leads to a certain amount of tension when she eventually meets Elizabeth Bennet, who is not the sort of person to let other people push her around and bully her. Especially when one of the things that Lady Catherine believes is the "wrong" way of doing things is Elizabeth getting married to Mr. Darcy...
- The Saga of Seven Suns has ChairmanBasil Wenceslas, whose pretensions to Magnificent Bastardry fail because he wastes too much time and effort trying to dominate the teenage king Peter. Even though Peter is The Good King, and would be quite happy to work with Basil for the good of the people, Basil's refusal to accept anything less than subservience from the "intractable" king greatly undermines his own position, and leads him into acts of petty dog-kicking out of simple spite. These tendencies eventually take him past the Moral Event Horizon and into his prolonged Villainous Breakdown, during which he becomes even more controlling, and alienates previously loyal subordinates.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has a lot of nobles who are accustomed to total obedience and so come across as this. Tywin Lannister takes the cake, however, as he dictates every little detail of his family's lives, and goes well past the Moral Event Horizon to prevent Tyrion "dishonouring" the family in any way. Even the family members he actually likes get disowned if they defy him, even if they were still loyal to the family.
- Alice Cullen of Twilight often comes across as this. She dictates what clothes her family wears and apparently rarely allows them to wear the same things twice. Throughout the series, she also forces Bella to act as a living Barbie, making her put on make-up and dresses Alice approves of and forcing her to go to dances Bella has no interest in attending. When she finds out that Bella simply wants a shotgun wedding without any fancy ceremonies, she promptly guilt-trips Bella into letting her arrange a massive wedding, even though the Cullens periodically re-marry for public appearances and thus there's no shortage of weddings to plan. In one of the outtakes, Alice is so determined to make Bella wear an outfit she approves of that she forces Bella to wear stiletto heels while Bella's in a foot cast and on crutches, has her broken foot be given a pedicure, and gives serious thought to removing the cast early just so Bella can wear matching shoes.
- In the seventh Warrior Cats arc, the impostor possessing Bramblestar's body. He becomes extremely strict on enforcing the rules, not only within ThunderClan but the other Clans as well, and begins to exile any cat who speaks against his behavior. He even starts checking on what his Clanmates are doing at all times and butting in on private conversations just to make sure they're not doing anything he doesn't want.
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