Malevolent Mugshot

"On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran."

— Nineteen Eighty-Four

In various media, it seems that certain powerful villains have a rather inflated view of themselves. Sure, the heroes might have their leader's face as a symbol for their team, but the various Big Bads and dictators want to go a lot further than that, and will place their name absolutely everywhere. Their base may actually be shaped like them, the flags may have a stylised icon of the Big Bad in place of the Jolly Roger and heck, they might even have Mecha-Mooks and vehicles very much influenced by their appearance. This trope will also always be used if the whole "cult of personality" effect is wanted, such as in a Dystopia, as shown in works such as Nineteen Eighty-Four (along, of course, with the gigantic TV screens showing the Big Bad on the buildings and vehicles). There's also a pretty high chance such a villain will rename a city after himself.

See also Cult of Personality, Conspiracy Placement, Shrine to Self, and Sigil Spam.

When combined with a Cool Vehicle, see Faceship.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• One Piece: Various Pirate bosses model their Jolly Roger after their own appearance.
  • The main cast end up collectively known as the "Straw Hat Pirates", simply because their leader wears one, and he had one drawn on their Jolly Roger.
  • The straw hat itself was originally known for being Red-Haired Shanks' symbol. It wasn't until Luffy and crew had made a name for themselves that it became associated with them.
  • And recently it's been revealed that the straw hat originally belonged to Gold Roger himself, who looked shockingly much like Luffy before he grew his mustache; it's safe to say that the straw hat has a rich history that's only recently being noticed by the world of One Piece.
• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: King Dedede has his name and face carved all over Pupu Village/Cappy Town; from TV channels to its money, almost everything has Dedede's face in it.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Eggman shoots a missile at Tails' Tornado, and the resulting explosion is shaped like his face.
• Saber Marionette J: When Otaru and his marionettes arrive on Gertland, they quickly see that the city is full of posters showing Faust's face. Lime and Bloodberry proceed to deface them to divert the enemy's attention while Otaru and Cherry place bombs in the central computer to destroy it.

Comic Books

• New Gods: The planet Apokolips is simply covered with images and statues of Darkseid, usually paired with slogans such as "Die For Darkseid". In The Great Darkness Saga, Darkseid forces the whole Daxamite race to carve his face into their planet◊.
• In Marvel's Exiles, King Hyperion's home Earth had posters with his face all over. The home Earth was also a radioactive ball of rock.
• In The Powerpuff Girls story "Spare Tyrant" (DC Comics, issue #66), Princess Morbucks has bought an unknown country called Splatvia, proclaimed herself as dictator and with an armed militia has taken over Townsville. Her mug is seen on buildings, militia helicopters and flags.

Fan Works

• Begins as comedy in Fallout: Equestria before deteriorating into total horror as Pinkie Pie's face ends up appearing just about everywhere throughout the wasteland, a sign of her increasing insanity as the war raged on. She was apparently of the opinion that posting her mad, smiling face everywhere reassured people, rather than gave them all horrible nightmares.

Films — Animated

• In The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma does this when Kuzco is believed dead and she succeeds the throne.
• The King and the Mockingbird. The Big Bad King's face was all over everything, and the heroes are imprisoned in a factory that makes even more portraits of him. They soon start defacing the portraits, which gets them thown to the lions.
• After taking over the city, Megamind had a poster with his own picture and the caption "No you can't." It parodied the Barack Obama "Hope" pictures in having a similar art style and a play on his campaign slogan "Yes we can."

Films — Live-Action

• Mr. Tinkles from Cats & Dogs (the above picture) leads a plan to get everyone allergic to dogs by being exposed to chemical carrying rats.
• Batman (1989) has the Joker put his face on his vehicles, which is a tribute to this tendency of his throughout the comics of the 1940s and early '50s, where he seemed obsessed with incorporating his face into everything he used.
• Dudley Do-Right: Snidely Whiplash puts his face on everything, including his flag. It's not the face of the actor Alfred Molina, but the cartoon Snidely's face.
• In the fifth Harry Potter film, the Ministry of Magic has a giant curtain with Cornelius Fudge on it. It gets destroyed in the climax. Interestingly, this is two years and two or three movies before the Ministry of Magic goes full Day of the Jackboot in Deathly Hallows; the curtain is more of a testament to Cornelius Fudge's vanity than anything else.
• In the movie Labyrinth, Jareth's face subtly appears throughout the landscape — where certain rocks line up in a shot, or depicted in shadow. Perhaps a more minor version of this, as it's clearly for the audience's benefit — to demonstrate how thoroughly entrenched he is with the fairy tale world Sarah placed him in. (Or David Bowie has a really big ego...) Or that he's scrying her in some way or another. Keeping track, so that we see him as he's watching her.
• Tomorrow Never Dies: Elliot Carver has his face displayed on as many banners all over the place as your average Soviet dictatorship. James Bond gets a few good digs in at his expense on the subject and manages to destroy one or two in creative ways over the course of the film.
• Speaking of Pierce Brosnan, his smarmy poster appears on the cover for The Ghost Writer. His character, loosely based on Tony Blair, is going to great lengths to sanitize his past in preparation for his upcoming biography.
• Regardless of whether one views the titular character of Citizen Kane as a Villain Protagonist, this image◊ certainly counts as the Trope Maker in film, beating out the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel by seven years. Since the point of the film is to tell Kane's story and let the audience decide if he is a hero or villain (or both), it is also an Unbuilt Trope.
  • Homaged in Batman (1989), with Harvey Dent's election poster.

Literature

• Nineteen Eighty-Four: Big Brother is both the Trope Codifier and an enormous subversion, because he doesn't even exist except as a symbol of the power of the state over the individual. Whether the individual whose face is on... well, damn near everything, actually... is that of some leading-light from the early days of IngSoc or was invented out of whole cloth is anyone's guess; chances are even the Party don't know.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks:
  • Mr. Conklin has an extremely large portrait of himself over his living room fireplace, as first seen in the television premier "Trying to Pick A Fight". It's Played for Laughs, as it indicative of his pomposity and his self-regard. It's worth noting, although Mr. Conklin has a wife and teenage daughter, their portraits are nowhere to be seen.
  • The episode "Old Marblehead" sees Mr. Conklin scheming to get a bust of his head to replace that of Julius Caesar's in the school library. He makes the students and teachers pay for it by levying arbitrary fines via his "Carelesslessness code."
  • In "Friday the Thirteenth", Mr. Conklin posts a photo of himself on the school bulletin board. He is regaled complete in black suit, black hat and midnight-blue tie. His photograph is there to suggest to students and faculty the value of proper dress and deportment. Walter Denton nails a picture of Miss Brooks' body in a French bathing suit beneath Mr. Conklin's head.
  • In "Mr. Conklin's Wax Effigies," Mr. Conklin makes a wax statue of himself. Miss Brooks believes it to Mr. Conklin himself.
  • "Space, Who Needs It?" sees Mr. Conklin, again pranked by Walter Denton, firm in the belief he's discovered a new planet. Conklin names it "Conklin Junior."
  • In "Fargo Whiskers", Mr. Conklin has a small portrait of himself upon his desk. State school-board official Mr. Fargo can't stand sitting there, looking at the photgraph. So, Fargo pushes the portrait face-down.
• Doctor Who, Tomb of the Cybermen: The tomb complex where the Cybermen lie in suspended animation has big Cyberman-heads stenciled on the walls here and there.
• As a Running Gag in Strangers with Candy, Principal Blackman's portrait appears all over Flatpoint High; it seems every classroom has one, like the flag in a real American school, and it's even on the back of the letterman jackets. It reaches a peak during the two-parter where Jerry joins the cult, pushing into full "Glorious Leader" mode even as he and the other teachers and students bemoan the evils of that brainwashing cult that stole Jerry.
• The time traveling baddie Tempus had a liking for these on Lois & Clark. In his repeated attempts to take over America, he plastered Mayoral and Presidential candidate posters of his mug all over Metropolis, usually calling for the annihilation of 'The Enemy' i.e. Superman.
• Dwight Schrute of The Office (US) had one posted in the entrance to the Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch office during his brief stint as Regional Manager.
• In Stargate Atlantis, due to Sheppard and McKay not realizing that the Ancient "game" of Civilisation they were playing was actually real, cue everyone's surprise upon discovering a nation with McKay's face on the flag.

Pinballs

• Darth Vader's masked face appears all over Hankin's The Empire Strikes Back pinball — on the playfield targets, on the bumper caps, on the sides of the cabinets, and on the mirrored backglass.

Tabletop Games

• The Orks in Warhammer 40,000 are rather fond of painting crude ork warboss heads on everything.

Video Games

• In Bioshock, Andrew Ryan and his hated rivals, Frank Fontaine and Atlas, each have their own variant. Ryan's mug appears on Ominous Multiple Screens throughout the city, taunting your pathetic effort to stop him, in addition to his giant bust statue in the lighthouse at the start of the game. Frank Fontaine's bald dome adorns the logo for his rival company, Fontaine Futuristics (which replaces Ryan's logo after you unwittingly help Fontaine in his nefarious plot). Lastly, the city is filled with posters asking, "WHO is Atlas?", referring to the enigmatic hero of the downtrodden.
  • Likewise, Father Comstock's posters appear throughout Bioshock Infinite.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance In the first third of Stage 4, several maintenance bots can be seen erecting statues of Dark Force around the royal capital city to cement his conquest of the Shakun Star.
• Time for another James Bond villain, this time in the sixth generation outing Agent Under Fire. Adrian Malprave, a CEO with a penchant for figure-hugging outfits, glares down at Bond from a portrait hanging over her desk.
• In Revolution X, a dominatrix with a cockney accent (and secretly an alien), Helga, declares war on rock music in general and Aerosmith in particular. Her banners are spread throughout numerous levels, ordering everyone to "OBEY."
• Bowser in the Super Mario Bros. series has an icon of his face on various evil statues, gadgetry, and the Jolly Roger flag on the airships (and a portrait of his face on the front). This is referenced in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door; having Bowser inspect one of the many statues modeled after him will make him mention that once he takes over the world, they and other pieces of "art" with his mug on them will be mandatory in all households.
  • In Super Mario RPG, Nimbus Castle's gallery is filled with nothing but gold statues of its usurper, Valentina. Mario paints himself gold and hides amongst the statues, which lacks foresight when Valentina's mistreated goon wanders in, pecking the statues in frustration.
  • Fawful in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. He even puts his swirly glasses in Bowser's own mugshots in the Koopa Castle, and his ugly smile in the statues in Peach's Castle.
• Wario Land: Shake It! has the Shake King's face both on the flag of his pirate ship and on the intruder alarm for each stage.
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik's face has shown up on bases, spacecraft, and many other kinds of vehicle, Humongous Mecha, Mecha-Mooks, item containers and even a wall decoration...
  • In the bad ending of Sonic CD, when Eggman's personal transport is destroyed by the heroes, the EXPLOSION is actually shaped like his face. How or why he designed it to be able to do that, no one will ever know.
  • Since Sonic Adventure, Boss Subtitles show all of his vehicles are named Egg-something.
• Dr Wily is almost as bad as the Eggman, putting his likeness on many of his personal war machines.
• Gruntilda in the Banjo-Kazooie series. Statues bearing her likeness can be found all over her lair, whose entrance is also shaped like her.
• Lord Recluse, head honcho of Arachnos and de facto dictator of the Etoile Isles in City of Heroes/Villains, has centred his entire organisation's technology, equipment, and architecture around spiders, something of a personal symbol for the man with spider legs growing from his back. This, of course, reflects on the country Arachnos controls.
• Yuri in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge''. The barracks is made in his image.
• Legend of Randorland 3: Randor in the RPG (played by raocow), goes further than just pictures of himself, he makes the architecture in the shape of the letters of his name! See the beginning of this video
• Half-Life 2: Big Bad Dr. Breen has his image on propaganda posters all over City 17, he also shows up on 'public relations' propaganda speeches, known as "Breencasts".
• Weasleby's Lair from Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure has this on spades. The eponymous Quintessential British Gentleman claims that the brigand's state is not what he had expected, but that his taste in decoration is "as questionable as [he] thought".
• In The Warriors, Cleon's arch-rival, Virgil, has a graffiti banner of himself adorning his base. Your gang members deface it in the tutorial stage.
• In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the Pirate Command section of the Pirate Homeworld has amber holographic displays depicting Meta Ridley.
• Rivals of Aether: The Bad Future version of the Fire Capital is a city-wide shrine to Loxodont. Within the small viewable part of the skyline in the back of the stage, three giant neon signs of Loxodont's name are visible.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: The forces of the Municipality are represented by a stylized King of Town logo.

Web Comics

• The banners of the rebuilt Gobwin Knob of Erfworld feature Stanley the Tool's face rendered in a style reminiscent of some Real Life Communist iconography. Something of a subversion in that it wasn't Stanley's idea, but rather a choice made by some of his high-ranking minions when they rebuilt in order to reassure his fragile ego.
• Redcloak from The Order of the Stick has his face on the goblin banners. Worth noting that he is a Benevolent Dictator. To his people.

Western Animation

• On Samurai Jack, Aku's face is everywhere, even in advertising. Even the architecture resembles him.
• Kim Possible
  • Shego did this in when she became an Evil Overlord during A Sitch in Time. Middleton got renamed Shegoton, everything was painted green and black, everyone should be wearing her clothes, and so on.
  • Doctor Drakken put his face on his 'Lahter, Rinse and Obey' shampoo. On another occasion, Drakken punctuated his explanation of his plan to conquer Canada Drakanada by waving a little flag with the Canadian maple leaf replaced by his face.
• Phineas and Ferb: Doctor Doofenshmirtz does this sometimes, as mentioned in Doofanian national anthem in "Hail Doofania!"
  In a bright, shiny place
  There's a flag that bears my face
• In the third season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Firelord Ozai's face is all over everything in the Fire Nation. Statues, posters, whatever. It's an abrupt change from the first two seasons when he was The Faceless as the Gaang roamed the Earth Kingdom.
• In the Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity," there is a poster◊ of Richard Nixon's head in the style of the Obama "Hope" poster that reads: DESPAIR.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: When Trixie takes over Ponyville in "Magic Duel," she covers the town in images and statues of her likeness.◊
• In Barbie and the Secret Door, Malucia has her face implanted on a lot of items, and she even has a golden statue of herself.
• In the Cosgrove Hall series Avenger Penguins, Doom Tower is an Evil Tower of Ominousness covered in dozens of enormous busts of Caracatcus P. Doom's bloated, hideous face.

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