History Main / FameThroughInfamy

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* The Black Arachnid in ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' decides to become famous as a master thief, but only [[KarmicThief stealing from horrible people who deserve to be exposed for what they are.]] Also, he tries to encourage his childhood friend, an Officer Jenny, to become a great police officer and live up to a promise they made when they were children.

* ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'': [[spoiler: Obake]] wants to destroy San Fransokyo and rebuild it into a perfect city, thinking this will make the world remember him forever.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Mr. Burns gets a VillainSong fittingly called "It's a High to be Loathed", which is essentially all about this trope.

** The Joker's motivation in ''Film/{{Batman|1989}}'' is to become the world's first fully-functioning homicidal artist" and he causes mass murder and mayhem across Gotham to get headlines on every news front. In fact, his hatred of [[ArchEnemy Batman]] stems from the Dark Knight "stealing" the headlines from him, which he views to be a bigger slight than Bats accidentally disfiguring Joker (then Jack Naiper) at the Axis Chemicals plant.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' episode "Ultimatum" most of the Ultimen have just gone insane after finding out that they're not just clones, but imperfect dying clones. They decide to achieve infamy by killing the Justice League, as "If we're the ones who take down the Justice League, the world will never forget us!"

* Franchise/{{Fantomas}} commits horrifying and elaborate crimes mostly because he enjoys being the most feared and infamous man in France.

* Sam Starfall from ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' is a fairly petty criminal, but goes to great lengths to be famous for it, trying to be the first person ever to commit particular crimes (siphoning the gas tanks of orbiting satellites, for instance) and even organizing his own [[TorchesAndPitchforks angry mobs]]. It mostly works, if only locally, because he's on a planet where most of the population are robots and the humans are too happy to be criminals beyond artful vandalism, and thus [[NormalFishInATinyPond he's technically the most infamous outlaw on the entire planet]] (at least until Kornada's plot is brought to light).

** During the ''ComicBook/EndsOfTheEarth'' storyline, the dying Doctor Octopus attempts to kill off 99.92% of the Earth's population so that the remaining will remember him as the greatest monster in history.

* Comicbook/{{Batman}}:

** Len Wein reused this idea in the issue where Jarella is killed by the robot Crypto-Man; the scientist who sent the robot on its rampage wanted to become infamous, but the robot's battle with ''[[Comicbook/TheIncrediblehulk the Hulk]]'' caused a power feedback that killed him and burned away all his identifying features.
* The minor ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' villain Screwball is more or less only in the villain game to get views on her blog. Her entire schtick is based around the fact she films her stunts and her fights with Spider-Man which then go viral. This plan backfired pretty badly when she ran into the Superior Spider-Man, who got so angry at being humiliated that he gave her a borderline-fatal NoHoldsBarredBeatdown.

** [[GentlemanThief Gentle Criminal]] wanted to become a famous supervillain, but his [[AffablyEvil refusal to commit more serious crimes]] in a world filled with superpowered terrorists resulted in him being seen as not much more than a minor nuisance in comparison. His EvilPlan in the arc he was featured in wasn't even evil; he just wanted the VillainCred for breaking into U.A. without actually hurting anyone there, though it would have had equally harsh consequences for the student body if Midoriya didn't stop him.

* Ultimately the motive of Optimus Prime in the ''ComicBook/TransformersShatteredGlass'' continuity. In his search for TheMeaningOfLife, he came upon the conclusion that there was none and the best one could do was to be remembered by history. As a librarian named Optronix, he wouldn't be remembered, so he took up the name Optimus Prime and decided to become a world-conquering tyrant to ensure his place in the history books.

* In ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe1'', villainous mastermind Gru plans to steal the moon in order to cement his name as the greatest criminal in history, as well as to avoid the newcoming villain Vector to take that title instead.

** The Joker's motivation in ''Film/{{Batman|1989}}'' is to become the world's first-fully functioning homicidal artist" and he causes mass murder and mayhem across Gotham to get headlines on every news front. In fact, his hatred of [[ArchEnemy Batman]] stems from the Dark Knight "stealing" the headlines from him, which he views to be a bigger slight than Bats accidentally disfiguring Joker (then Jack Naiper) at the Axis Chemicals plant.

** ''Film/Scream4'' was similar, but with a twist. The killers' motive was to become famous not as killers, but by posing as the {{Sole Survivor}}s of the massacre they carried out, in a combination of this trope and EngineeredHeroics. They had witnessed how the murders from [[Film/Scream1996 the first film]] had become national news and a pop-culture touchstone thanks to [[IntrepidReporter Gale Weathers]]' TrueCrime books, and sought to top that by filming their massacre and [[MurderDotCom uploading it to the internet]]. [[spoiler:Jill specifically was motivated by jealousy of her cousin Sidney, who became famous as a result of [[FinalGirl her repeated ordeals]] in the prior films.]]

** {{Defied|Trope}} at the end of ''Film/Scream2022''. Gale decides that her next book is going to be [[spoiler:a tribute to her slain former lover Dewey]], not a TrueCrime book about the latest Woodsboro killing spree. She already made enough killers famous, and she'd rather let the ones who [[spoiler:killed Dewey]] languish in obscurity. Unfortunately, ''Film/ScreamVI'' reveals that [[IgnoredEpiphany she went back on her word]], much to the fury of Sam and Tara, who blame her for not only the new wave of murders but also the {{Conspiracy Theorist}}s claiming that Sam herself was the ''real'' killer and that the actual culprits were {{frame|Up}}d.

--> '''Brian''': They'll talk about this for years. [[AttentionWhore They'll talk about]] ''[[AttentionWhore me.]]'' ''Monsieur Grand Fromage.''

* Astor, the BigBad of ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity'', is a fortune-teller who foresaw the return of [[GreaterScopeVillain Calamity Ganon]]. But more than merely seeing the return, Astor sets out to ''cause'' Calamity Ganon's return so he would be forever remembered as the man to bring ruin and destruction to Hyrule.

* Sam Starfall from ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' is a fairly petty criminal, but goes to great lengths to be famous for it, trying to be the first person ever to commit particular crimes (siphoning the gas tanks of orbiting satellites, for instance) and even organizing his own [[TorchesAndPitchforks angry mobs]]. It mostly works, if only locally, because he's in a planet where most of the population are robots and the humans are too happy to be criminal beyond artful vandalism, and thus [[NormalFishInATinyPond he's technically the most infamous outlaw on the entire planet]] (at least until Kornada's plot is brought to light).

* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': In the ''WesternAnimation/BugsBunny'' short "Rebel Rabbit," Bugs, offended that rabbits only have a 2 cent bounty on the grounds that they're "perfectly harmless" compared to more obnoxious and destructive animals like foxes and bears, sets out to prove that rabbits can be just as bad. As a result, Bugs becomes a PersonOfMassDestruction by, among other things, attacking a guard with his own billy club, renaming [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch Barney Baruch's]] private bench as "Bugs Bunny," painting barbershop-pole stripes on the Washington Monument, rewiring the lights in Times Square to read "Bugs Bunny Wuz Here," shutting down the Niagara Falls, selling Manhattan Island back to the Indians, [[MemeticMutation sawing Florida off from the rest of the country]], swiping the locks off of the Panama Canal, filling up the Grand Canyon, and literally tying up the railroad tracks. Bugs earns a $1 million bounty... and has all of two seconds to proudly declare himself "King of the Beasts" before the [[StockFootage entire US army]] hunts him down and throws him in Alcatraz.

* The [[UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} Columbine High School killers]] Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were motivated by [[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/04/at-last-we-know-why-the-columbine-killers-did-it.html a quest for infamy.]] Specifically, they sought to carry out the biggest act of mass murder in US history, one that would top the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and chose their school as the target because they saw it as the ultimate symbol of ordinary American life that would truly shock the nation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were fans of the aforementioned ''Film/NaturalBornKillers'', and even gave their mass murder plan the codename "NBK". While they didn't pull off that lofty goal[[note]]bombs they had planted in the school beforehand [[EpicFail did not go off]], so they were only able to enact the "running gunmen" part of their plan[[/note]], they still succeeded at burning their names into the history books, as the Columbine High School massacre became the measure by which a generation of school shootings would be measured. Building off of this is the short-lived spates of other shootings that usually follow such an act, as other similarly-unhinged individuals attempt to copy them to get their own fifteen minutes of infamy, which has led to [[https://www.dontnamethem.org/ a growing movement of people]] wanting news media to stop using the names and faces of the perpetrators to deny them what they want most.

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', this forms part of [[ArchnemesisDad General Tarquin]]'s motivation to become an EvilOverlord, even more so once he learned that his son Elan would come to oppose him. By his logic, [[EvilIsCool people always think that the villains of stories are cooler than the heroes]], and he believes that being the villain of a story in which a lone rebel hero defeats his father to topple a wicked empire would solidify his place in the history books.

* The [[UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} Columbine High School killers]] Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were motivated by [[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/04/at-last-we-know-why-the-columbine-killers-did-it.html a quest for infamy.]] Specifically, they sought to carry out the biggest act of mass murder in US history, one that would top the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and chose their school as the target because they saw it as the ultimate symbol of ordinary American life that would truly shock the nation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were fans of the aforementioned ''Film/NaturalBornKillers'', and even gave their mass murder plan the codename "NBK". While they didn't pull off that lofty goal[[note]]bombs they had planted in the school beforehand [[EpicFail did not go off]], so they were only able to enact the "running gunmen" part of their plan[[/note]], they still succeeded at burning their names into the history books, as the Columbine High School massacre became the measure by which a generation of school shootings would be measured. Building off of this is the short-lived spates of other shootings that usually follow such an act, as other similarly-unhinged individuals attempt to copy them to get their own fifteen minutes of infamy, which has led to a growing movement of people wanting news media to stop using the names and faces of the perpetrators to deny them what they want most.

[[quoteright:301:[[Film/Infamous2020 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/infamous.png]]]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

A possible UrExample; Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the ground in 356 BC, hoping his act of arson would get him in the history books, and [[ThanatosGambit the Ephesian government failed to defeat him]] despite all their best efforts to {{Unperson}} him.[[note]]They caused a StreisandEffect because people had to know ''whose'' name they mustn't utter on pain of death.[[/note]] His name has even found its way into a phrase "herostratic fame", meaning "fame at any cost".

!!Examples

A possible UrExample; Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the ground in 356 BC, hoping his act of arson would get him in the history books, and [[ThanatosGambit the Ephesian government failed to defeat him]] despite all their best efforts to {{Unperson}} him.[[note]]Well, they actually did such a crappy job at that the result was the complete opposite because people had to know ''whose'' name they mustn't utter on pain of death.[[/note]] His name has even found its way into a phrase "herostratic fame", meaning "fame at any cost".

* As with the comics version of the character, many of ComicBook/TheJoker's actions in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' are designed to publicize his creative wickedness rather than to earn money or power.

* The ''Manga/DeathNote'' prequel ''LightNovel/AnotherNote'' has such an example with Beyond Birthday. Having been born with Shinigami Eyes, allowing him to see and know when exactly someone is going to die, he used this ability to become a SerialKiller, choosing his victims and then killing them on the exact day they were supposed to die, all to surpass [[GreatDetective L]] by becoming the world's greatest criminal.

** {{Defied|Trope}} at the end of ''Film/Scream2022''. Gale decides that her next book is going to be [[spoiler:a tribute to her slain former lover Dewey]], not a TrueCrime book about the latest Woodsboro killing spree. She already made enough killers famous, and she'd rather let the ones who [[spoiler:killed Dewey]] languish in obscurity. Unfortunately, ''Film/ScreamVI'' reveals that [[IgnoredEpiphany she went back on her word]], much to the fury of Sam and Tara.

** ''Film/Scream4'' was similar, but with a twist. The killers' motive was to become famous not as killers, but by posing as the {{Sole Survivor}}s of the massacre they carried out. They had witnessed how the murders from [[Film/Scream1996 the first film]] had become national news and a pop-culture touchstone thanks to [[IntrepidReporter Gale Weathers]]' TrueCrime books, and sought to top that by filming their massacre and [[MurderDotCom uploading it to the internet]]. [[spoiler:Jill specifically was motivated by jealousy of her cousin Sidney, who became famous as a result of [[FinalGirl her repeated ordeals]] in the prior films.]]

** {{Defied|Trope}} at the end of ''Film/Scream2022''. [[spoiler:Gale decides that her next book is going to be a tribute to her slain former lover Dewey, not a TrueCrime book about the latest Woodsboro killing spree. She already made enough killers famous, and she'd rather let the ones who killed Dewey languish in obscurity.]]