Sinister Spy Agency

Hail Hydra!

"We are F.O.W.L. We have to be smarter than that. We're not trying to destroy the world, we're going to steal it. Out from underneath McDuck's nose."

— Bradford Buzzard, DuckTales (2017), "Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Twice!"

The espionage profession is often considered to have a certain mystique and glamor to it. Since intelligence agencies are shadowy and secretive organizations by their very nature, and their field operatives tend to be very clever and stealthy, it's no surprise that their mysterious natures have led them to be portrayed as full of suave, debonair spies and elite, noble enforcers of the law.

On the other hand, these same qualities have led to spy agencies being portrayed in far less flattering ways. It's certainly not hard to make villains out of shady puppetmasters manipulating events from behind the scenes or agents of subterfuge secretly gathering information and engaging in subversion. Add in the facts that many real life intelligence agencies have engaged in morally dubious actions and many events are known or suspected to have involvement from intelligence agencies, and it probably comes as no surprise that intelligence agencies are quite frequently portrayed as corrupt and/or evil in fiction.

These depictions of (real or fictional) intelligence agencies will engage in some very ugly behavior. Foreign-oriented agencies will often give help to bad actors abroad, arrange the removal of foreign politicians or even entire governments they don't like, mastermind at least one False Flag Operation, and engage in naked imperialism. Domestic-oriented agencies will often frame and entrap those considered undesirable, help criminals for their own reasons, try to blackmail dissidents, and even go so far as to target public officials who stand in their way. When they work for authoritarian regimes, expect both kinds to be either acting in accordance with the regime's will or trying to covertly take power for themselves. Examples of this trope in democratic countries will typically mislead well-meaning politicians, act without proper authorization or oversight, and generally flout the idea of checks on their actions. Many of these agencies will claim to be acting in the interest of some greater good, whether they actually believe it or not.

Compare and contrast Nebulous Evil Organisation, Secret Police, Shadow Government and State Sec. Related to CIA Evil, FBI Good. Often overlaps with Government Agency of Fiction. The Men in Black may be agents of one. If there's a Government Conspiracy, expect one of these agencies to play a role in it. One of the reasons why Spies Are Despicable.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• HYPNOS in Digimon Tamers starts off as this. While not outright evil, the agency is rather sinister with its mass electronic surveillance, dissecting Digimon, and antagonism towards the show's heroes. When the guy running the agency decides to help the heroes and stop trying to destroy Digimon, HYPNOS loses much of its sinister image.
• Izetta: The Last Witch: The Germanian Army runs a massive spy network, which they use to gather any intelligence relating to their enemies. This spy network is so efficient that, despite Eylstadt's efforts to maintain the secrecy of Izetta's powers, they still manage to uncover more than enough intel to not only exploit her weaknesses once found out, they even create their own version of the White Witch, thanks to documents uncovered from Germania and Eylstadt.
• The Hinagiku from the Mission: Yozakura Family are an inversion. It was founded by Rin Fudo specifically to handle threats beyond the scope of normal law enforcement and repeatedly work with other spies like the Yozakuras to stop terrorist attacks, arms and drug smuggling, among other threats. That said, they're also willing to perform unscrupulous things in the name of the greater good, such as trying to murder Nanao after he eats a bioweapon in case his detoxifying ability fails.

Comic Books

• Grayson is a series about Dick Grayson's second career as a secret agent after his identity Nightwing is believed dead. Batman asks Grayson to infiltrate a sinister organization that is focused on discovering the real identities of the DC universe's superheroes.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Depending on the Writer, this is applicable to S.H.I.E.L.D.. In the best-case scenario, the agency is well-meaning but Lawful Stupid and its moments of incompetence raise as much havoc as any criminal conspiracy and in the worst-case scenarios (such as in Civil War and Outlawed) they have absolutely no problem performing acts that are blatantly unconstitutional, brutal and only allowed by the law they are enforcing because the plot says so.
  • Hydra is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Evil Counterpart, a criminal organization dedicated to the achievement of world domination through terrorist and subversive activities on various fronts. All the more evil because it's also a Neo-Nazi organization (or at least it is when the Red Skull leads it).
• Black Hat from The Department of Truth is an organized agency similar to the Department of Truth that seem to be actively encouraging the propagation of conspiracies in order to change the world for their own nefarious purposes, even employing manifestations like Reptilians and the Star-Faced Man.

Comic Strips

• Spy vs. Spy was a staple in issues of MAD for many decades. It featured two cartoon spies, simply called Black and White, who were constantly trying to ambush each other or blow up things with their respective bombs. Sometimes a female Grey Spy interfered with both of them. All of the various spies were depicted as, at best, morally ambiguous.

Film — Live Action

• The Bourne Series: It seems the entire American intelligence apparatus is a Nebulous Evil Organization full of madmen who will order murders at the drop of a hat, is extremely efficient at silencing anybody who gets the tiniest inkling of their evil (and are equally good at preventing information from being leaked), is virtually omniscient and omnipresent, funds a lot of Super-Soldier and Manchurian Agent programs, and ironically can't kill one dude (even if everybody else he meets unfortunately does not has the same luck).
• Conspiracy Theory: Played with. Dr. Jonas claims to be a CIA operative. If he is, the organization's tactics throughout the movie (coercing MK-Ultra subjects with mind altering drugs, killing public officials, brainwashing people into assassins) paint them firmly as this trope. However, it's implied several times that Jonas is running a rogue operation, and an actual spy agency is trying to stop him.
• The Death of Stalin: The NKVD are depicted as an essential part of the Stalinist regime's terror apparatus, constantly having people killed and imprisoned on trumped-up charges.
• Enemy of the State has the director of the NSA personally murder a congressman who opposed an expansion of NSA powers. Much of the plot revolves around the incriminating video evidence of this crime falling into the possession of an innocent attorney, whereupon much of the agency's resources get focused on a manhunt for him.
• James Bond:
  • SPECTRE in the Sean Connery and George Lazenby films, otherwise known as the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. They're the main antagonists of every Bond film bar Goldfinger, and are a secretive organization hoping for both the Western and Eastern blocs to start World War III, while benefitting from it themselves by taking over the world. They're ultimately stopped for good by Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, when their latest plan is stopped by both Bond and the CIA, and Blofeld himself is either killed or severely crippled whilst trying to escape.
  • The Daniel Craig films Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace introduce Quantum. Initially an Suspiciously Similar Substitute to SPECTRE with the stated goals of killing James Bond and destroying MI6 for opposing their operations, they're later revealed to be a front organization for the actual Spectre, introduced in the film of the same name, where they intend to Take Over the World through Sinister Surveillance in the form of the Nine-Eyes Program. Led by Franz Oberhauser a.k.a. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, they also have a personal vendetta against James Bond himself. Their leadership is ultimately wiped out in No Time to Die, where one of Safin's agents turns a Nanomachines-based virus against them, killing all yes, even Blofeld. Although that one at least is partially Bond's fault.
• Sophie Scholl: The Final Days: Sophie and the rest of her network are arrested by The Gestapo, which results in them being executed just four days later.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • HYDRA first made its public appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger as Nazi Germany's Artifact Collection Agency, using Weird Science and esoteric properties to create weapons to help the Third Reich win the war. Eventually, its leader Johann Schmidt, a.k.a. the Red Skull, planned a coup, his goal being to use the Tesseract's power to conquer the world on his own behalf instead of the Nazis. While HYDRA fell after the Allies won WWII, many of its top minds were recruited into the SSR's successor SHIELD through Operation: Paperclip, leading to HYDRA taking control from within by the time of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it's revealed that they had existed long before the Nazis as an Illuminati-esque cult, worshipping the Inhuman Hive as a god.
  • The Red Room was an espionage agency commissioned by the KGB to create its own brand of Super Soldiers and elite spies. While they were only able to make one super soldier (the Red Guardian), they created many deadly spies under the Black Widow program, eventually going rogue and seeking to take over the world under their leader Dreykov in Black Widow (2021).

Literature

• John le Carré's series of spy novels has British Intelligence encounter not only the legitimate KGB, but another No Such Agency called the Thirteenth Directorate, which conducts acts of war such as sabotage, kidnapping, and assassination covertly in foreign nations. This shadow directorate is accountable only to the current Soviet premiere.

Live-Action TV

• Get Smart: The enemy spy apparatus KAOS is a comedy spoof of such organizations. They're the bad guys and do bad guy things, but it's all kept amusing and light-hearted.
• In the '60s espionage adventure series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the sinister spy agency that opposed the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement was called THRUSH, which employed ruthless agents determined to "subjugate humanity". Thrush also appears in many of the long series of original tie-in novels. Some plots involved mind-control and sinister weather devices.
• Person of Interest: Decima Technologies is a private intelligence agency that tries to help an artificial intelligence Take Over the World.

Multiple Media

• James Bond:
  • SMERSH, the Soviet espionage/terrorism/sabotage organization that Bond had to face off against in the novels as well as in From Russia with Love. SMERSH actually was a Real Life organization, though its lifespan and reach were much diminished from Fleming's description. (The real SMERSH existed only during World War II, officially disbanding in 1946, and was concerned with, according to Wikipedia: "counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, preventing any other activity of foreign intelligence in the Red Army; fighting 'anti-Soviet elements' in the Red Army; protection of the front lines against penetration by spies and 'anti-Soviet elements'; investigating traitors, deserters, and self-inflicted wounds in the Red Army; and checking military and civil personnel returning from captivity.")
  • SPECTRE — the SPecial Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. The organization appeared late in the novel series, and was Bond's full-time archenemy in the movies for quite a while. They're probably the Ur-Example of a rogue intelligence agency devoted to its own profit. Though SPECTRE offers its mercenary service to anyone willing to pay for them, including both sides of the Cold War, their true goal is to pit powerful countries against each other so they'll wear themselves down, enabling SPECTRE to strike at the right time.
  • In the Continuity Reboot starring Daniel Craig, the Quantum organization fills the SMERSH/SPECTRE role, starting in Casino Royale (2006). Two films later, in Spectre, Quantum is revealed to be a subsidiary of SPECTRE, which is now portrayed as a massive, Illuminati-esque cabal working behind the scenes to manipulate events from Black Sites to their side while secretly meeting to discuss their global criminal operations and killing those who get in their way.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. zig-zags the trope as, while they are generally on the side of the good guys and working toward beneficial ends, they also have employed some very questionable means to reach those ends. Then it winds up being played completely straight as it turns out HYDRA, the Nazi splinter group that Steve Rogers fought against during World War II, had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. almost from its creation.
  • HYDRA was originally the Nazis' deep-science division before secretly pursuing its own agendas. During World War II, they had deep cover agents as far as New York City, and had secret bases, factories, and facilities throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. After the war, they continued these covert operations, using S.H.I.E.L.D. to infiltrate other areas of society in pursuit of their goals.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000: The Ordos of the God-Emperor's Most Holy Inquisition are among the most ruthless, amoral, and fanatical of the Imperium's factions. Probably the most, in fact, considering they have essentially limitless authority. Though they're often depicted as grim anti-heroes doing what must be done, they're so utterly bent on achieving their goals and so far above accountability by regular Imperial authority that they often come across as a separate species of humanity. They're also fractured into a plethora of factions and ideologies, meaning some are just unscrupulous Javert-esque investigators, and others are Chaos-artifact-using, daemonhost-deploying, xenos-experimenting borderline-lunatics. It's telling that whenever a more morally reprehensible character is needed for an ensemble 40K story, from fanfics to Black Library novels, they're usually an Inquisitor.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Black Ops: GRU, specifically the Spetsnaz troops under Dragovich, are depicted in a sinister manner. Among other things they do include sponsoring foreign communist regimes such as Castro's Cuba and North Vietnam's war against the American-backed South, building secret bases of operations in or near these locations (either to test their Secret Weapon or to supply future offensives), and planting sleeper agents and WMDs into the United States.
• Halo: The UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is one of the most powerful aspects of the UNSC military, and the one with possibly the most abhorrent actions to its name. Chief among these is the kidnapping of young children who were forcibly conscripted into the SPARTAN-II program and replaced with clones who would shortly after become ill and die, leaving no threads hanging for the families, and no where for the SPARTAN candidates to run back to if they escaped. Even among those who don't know about most of ONI's actions there is considerable distrust for the organization and its personnel.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: GRU is depicted as made up of Soviet hardliners who want to overthrow Nikita Khrushchev and institute a harsher government.
• Nancy Drew: In the game The Silent Spy, Nancy and the Scottish spy agency Cathedral come into conflict with the terrorist organization Revenant, whose goal is to take over Glasgow by unleashing a manmade virus upon the population and getting involved in political affairs to "save" the city. It's also worth mentioning that this organization was responsible for the death of Nancy's mother, who was one of the key Cathedral operatives in stopping Revenant's plot.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic has the Ministry of Intelligence, the intelligence arm of the Sith Empire. It's also who the Agent works for during the majority of their class story.

Visual Novels

• In Root Letter, the villains of the "A Government Plot" route are an unnamed group of Japanese government spies sent to cover up the existence of alien technology that the government plans on using to surpass America and Russia, possibly by world conquest. The agents involved are Professor Naoki Fumino, the Kamiari-An owners Genkichi Uno and Sanpei, and Yuri, Jun Omori's fiancee and co-worker at Patisserie Pure.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle has the nation of Pottsylvania be composed of spies. Two notable Pottsylvanians are Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, who conduct peculiar yet nefarious operations in the United States. One of these involves introducing the Nigh Invulnerable Pottsylvania Creeper into the American ecosystem.
• DuckTales (2017): F.O.W.L., the Fiendish Organization of World Larceny, plots against the Duck Family from the shadows. Their ultimate goal being to end Scrooge McDuck's life of adventuring as a means of eliminating a source of infinite chaos from the world, or so their leader says.

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