Just For Fun / TV Tropes Additional Evil Overlord Vows Cellblock J

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901. I will only convince a less advanced civilization that I am a god if I already meet their qualifications for one, there are no rivaling deities, their religion is not a strictly pacifistic one, and I am benefited in some way by worship. If I have advanced technology, I will share it with them as long as it is not capable of destroying me in any way.
902. All soldiers will be instructed that anyone I bother sending them after is worth killing, as are their close friends, especially if those friends have powers of their own.
903. When reading this list, if certain elements contradict each other, I will assume the Original Overlord List to be the more Genre Savvy, and thus follow the rules on that list. Also, I will remember that some things just wouldn't work. For example, although there are some things I must keep on my person at all times, I cannot keep 5 guns, 3 knives, the Infinity +1 Sword, The Infinity Plus One Armor, 5,000 Remote Detonators, 10,000 Keys, The Plans to all my various Schemes, 50,000 of whatever currency I have, several books, a couple of maps, the Game Guide, several Plot Coupons, my shopping list, and my teddy bear all on me unless I have access to Hammerspace At least not at the same time, and labeling all those keys and detonators would be a pain.
904. If The Hero is my trusted lieutenant's son, and I won my trusted lieutenant over with his/her love of family, I will not try to kill The Hero in said lieutenant's presence.
905. Just because the hero is dead for good does not mean I can be totally secure in my power. There will always be someone to take their place.
906. If I am fighting in space, any who wish to be in command of any of my ships must first pass a class about space. This class will try to ensure that my commanders do not believe any of those commonly held misconceptions or myths about the way outer space actually works. This will give me a huge tactical advantage over my enemies who do hold these beliefs.
907. Screw making my defenses Nintendo Hard. I will make them the Kobayashi Mario: Literally unbeatable. No way for my enemies to win.
908. I will make sure I get laid often enough. I will keep in mind that Good People Have Good Sex and make sure both parties enjoy it and we care for each other because then we can never lose!
909. Screw this minion business. I'll just steal Aquaman's powers, then use Cthulhu and Dagon as super weapons, and use the human-size Cthulhu star-spawn and deep ones as infantry.
910. I will ensure that I present myself in a manner that does not garner ridicule from my enemies, unless I am trying to lower their guard at the expense of my credibility.
911. Poor punctuation is unbecoming of any aspiring overlord, and no one wants to follow a leader who can't form a complete sentence, let alone an evil army.
912. When starting my reign of terror, I must make sure that everything is in my favor. I won't be shortsighted fool trying to subvert the evil AI; I'll be the evil AI. Instead of being the naive sap who tries to unlock the Sealed Evil in a Can, I will be the evil that is sealed.
913. To avoid a situation where the protagonist's weakness gives him a stuffy nose while my weakness causes me to die, I will have my doctors cure my weakness to at least equal to my opponent (if they are unable to cure it completely).
914. To secure that my loyal subjects don't see that I'm actually an antagonist, I will work my evil empire from afar… like several countries away… using a webcam. My highest ranked men can hopefully be trusted to cause terror and such without fucking something up.
915. Should I be injured, I will take a vacation rather than put gauze on it, leaving a large target for my opponent to aim at. That doesn't mean I don't need dressing, though.
916. My WMDs will be able to be deployed at any moment, regardless of if it is only at 60% power when the hero bursts in to stop me. That way, while the hero is feeling great for reaching me before the doomsday weapon is at full power, I can shoot him in the gut and fire the DeathLaser at the capital city (causing significantly less damage, but I still make my point).
917. Forget Rule 81, I just won't ever put myself in such a situation in the first place. If I ever have to fight on a moving platform that zooms under low hanging beams, I'll kill my opponent, and then kill the jackass who left a moving plaform in an area with low hanging beams.
918. The giant cannon sticking out of the top of my lair will actually just be a large spotlight. The real weapon will be disguised as a tourist trap in the middle of Oklahoma or North Dakota.
919. If I launch a nuke that can be stopped while in flight I will have another attack launched stealthily while the dumbasses are trying to disarm the nukes (like I'd actually waste my time nuking Hoboken, NJ).
920. If the heroes have already send my plan irrevocably down the toilet, I will not attack them, and if they tell me 'it's over', I'll just surrender. Villains sometimes have successes, but the survival chance when trying to kill the heroes as revenge for foiling your plot are abysmal.
921. I will not be in a situation where surrender is my only option.
922. If the feudal Japanese(-esque) village I dominate is visited by a mysterious swordsman who trounces some of my minions during their routine-terrorising, I'll go to full alert. I will not try to kill, hire, negotiate or even talk with him. I'll take my best men outside of town for a bit to see if he leaves. If he goes to help the villagers, I'll cut my losses and leave in the direction he came from. Wandering heroes like that seldom backtrack, and I'll likely find a village whose previous tyrannical rulers have been disposed off by said hero, which is now ripe for the picking.
923. If I, or any of my minions, are infiltrating the hero's team, the first order of business is to ask him about all those innocent facts about him that I already know. The 6 words any spy dreads to hear is "I Never Told You My Name".
924. If killing an entire family is necessary for my evil plan, I'll order my minions to toss a hand grenade under whichever bed would offer the best view of the place where the parents were killed. That's where the last son or daughter who will come after me sooner or later is hiding.
925. My time-bombs will not include a bright timer, a blinking light, or a beeping sound that would allow anyone to easily find them. My remote-controlled bombs will detonate immediately on triggering, not after 5 seconds of blinking light/beeping sound. If the bomb is next to the hero, he might escape, while if it's close to a villain, he'll just stare in horror.
926. If I make use of a time-bomb at all, all of its wires will be red. Cutting any of them will cause it to detonate. As well, it will be set to detonate when the timer reads one hour and twelve minutes left, as no hero has ever disarmed a bomb with over an hour on the timer.
927. My ventilation shafts will be man-sized - and a deathtrap.
928. I will emulate a hero while doing my evil deeds. Roving parties of adventurers always seem to work for them, so why not give it a shot?
929. I will choose a language in which my Legions of Doom are to give and follow orders—preferably a language my enemies do not speak. Any orders given to them in a different language than the aforementioned are to be ignored, no matter how believable the source's accent is. Chances are, the hero has someone in his party who can speak the language, regardless.
930. While an Evil Overlord should have every right to spend his nation's resources on personal comfort, I will make sure before doing so that there is nothing else that desperately needs said resources. I'm probably comfortable enough as it is, and I do not want my authentic Repin to be the reason why I have ill-trained soldiers with too few weapons.
931. The people of any land I conquer are now my people and should be treated accordingly. Letting my Legions of Doom rape, loot, and pillage to their hearts' content is just asking for partisan problems down the road and will give the hero plenty of allies within my own borders when he visits the area.
932. If I suspect one of my most brilliant generals is plotting against me, I will make sure I have actual proof from sources less biased than I am before attempting to get rid of him.
933. Any prisoners that the hero is attempting to rescue will be killed. If the hero's willing to go on a veritable suicide mission to get them out, they're clearly more useful to the hero alive than they are to me alive. The only exceptions are if they have valuable information that I can't obtain by other means, in which case they will be relocated to another detention facility.
934. Unless I couldn't care less about what becomes of my empire after I die, I will not attempt to divide it among my heirs.
935. If I am killed, anyone in my will who was involved in my death shall receive nothing but a much shorter life, even if my will entitled them to more.
936. I will have a full understanding of what completely idiotic excuses for tactics tend to work when the hero employs them. I will develop appropriate countermeasures that are so obviously effective that any imbecile in front of the screen can tell that the hero's tactics suck in comparison to mine.
937. I will ascend to power by defeating ANOTHER evil overlord. Nothing says "PR" like becoming an Evil Overlord as a hero. I will make sure that the evil overlord I defeated is more evil than I am.
938. Marrying for political power, wealth, or physical attraction (or any combination of the three) makes my consort a possible threat to my rule. As such, it is better for us to get married simply because we truly love each other. First of all, love is power, and it also makes it more likely that, no matter what other people think of her, I will think of my consort as being very beautiful. Besides, no one said bad guys couldn't experience "good" feelings like love.
939. If I am holding someone hostage, I will kill them the instant the hero refuses my demands rather than give the hero time to rescue them.
940. If one or all of the heroes are Shrouded in Myth, I will take all rumors as fact, just to be safe. For example, if I hear they can bend steel with their bare hands, if they are captured I will take measures to ensure that their restraints are stronger than steel.
941. If I capture a hero who's known to have Eye Beams, I will not have him or her facing the cell door and I will not stand directly in front of them. Rather, I will place a clamp on their head to prevent them from turning and frying me, and so they are facing another hero.
942. I will never send one of my female minions into the hero's group to seduce the hero, keep an eye on his movements, trick him into doing my dirty work, etc., because she will almost certainly fall in love with the hero, even if he already has a love interest, and turn on me at the worst possible moment. Even if she is my own lover, even if she is the most loyal minion in my ranks (heck, possibly even if she prefers women), she will still almost certainly side with the hero.
943. A 0.0000000000000001% chance of my superweapon backfiring and killing me is unacceptable. Anything more than a 0% chance of the weapon backfiring is a 100% chance.
944. In the event that I need to seal the hero and his friends inside one of my fortress's side rooms for a while, there will be an electric device in my minion's uniforms that, when placed in contact with the wiring on the inside of a door's control panel, reverse which side will determine whether the door will either open or seal when the panel is shot.
945. I will not use my Kill Sat or any other superweapon to kill the hero, because he CAN and probably WILL survive it. In addition, it might instead kill his love interest or a sidekick who happens to be with him, making his quest to defeat me personal, and thus making the hero even stronger. His forces, on the other hand, are usually vulnerable and are therefore acceptable targets for a superweapon strike—not to mention most of them won't be present when and if the hero is confronting me directly, so it frees up more of my own troops (who can usually be expected to have weapons that CAN kill him) to fight the hero himself.
946. If the hero is a parent, I will do everything I can to appear awesome to his child. Are you REALLY going to kill your son's idol, Mr. Hero? Do you REALLY want to run the risk of having to kill your own son somewhere down the road?
947. Scientists who tell me that their project failed will not be punished unless they told me earlier that it was a success. After all, a lot of these projects revolve around things that haven't been tested, so it's inevitable that some of them won't produce the desired results.
948. Experiments that can destroy cities will be conducted as far away from cities or any major import facilities as possible.
949. I will take all people who take up arms against me seriously, no matter how ridiculous their methods are.
950. The instant I have an opportunity to kill my enemy without endangering myself or my plans, I will take advantage of it.
951. I will keep in mind that the laws of reality might not apply to my universe. Even if anyone looking in from the outside thinks whoever created my universe is insane, I will follow the creator's rules. If women in my universe are the worst fighters in existence, then no matter how unfair it may look, I will refrain from giving my female minions any combat-related jobs. Likewise, even if my universe contradicts things everyone knows, I follow the laws of my universe, not the real universe.
952. If I absolutely must ravish every hapless damsel who blunders my into my clutches, I will at least take the precautions of having her properly washed first and using a condom.
953. If my capital is seized, I will only surrender if the capital was all that was left of my country at that point or if I was seized along with the capital and have no way of escaping alive.
954. Whilst I shall not approve of hostility between my citizens, thus earning me a few brownie points, I shall encourage people to laugh at those idiots with their pants on the outside.
955. Should any of my Mooks run away, I will let them go instead of having my trackers follow and try to kill them. There are always more mooks, and chasing after them runs the risk that they befriended the hero during their wanderings. I will research why they ran away - after all many mooks sport common sense.
956. I will not waste resources developing mecha, planet-destroying superlasers, hovering battleships for atmospheric combat, or similar Awesome, but Impractical symbols of power. Mecha require enormous feats of engineering and programming to successfully move, let alone fight effectively.
957. I will make a mecha for show, one that is easily merchandisable. And I won't disdain Fan Works about it either. No making copyright claims about YouTube videos, and no DRM on any video games made about it. I'm an evil overlord, not the RIAA.
958. Any autodestruct sequence in any of my bastions will, resources permitting, destroy the entire facility at the same time. Failing that, it will be destroyed from the outside in, preventing any intruder from running out ahead of the blast. If the technology or magic exists, Mooks will be teleported elsewhere immediately, bolstering my popularity and preventing any need for retraining when I establish a replacement for that base.
959. If the hero is allegedly dead, I'll kill him immediately after this is announced just to make sure.
960. I will not use torture to extract information from captured enemies. When the Anti-Hero does it, he usually gets the information he's looking for. When I do it to the hero or one of his allies, I will probably get nothing or lies out of them, not to mention the act costs me sympathy.
961. Any special powers I possess will only be used if I need to use them and never mentioned to anyone. While having telekinetic powers may be useful, I'd rather have the hero find out I have them at a time when it is inconvenient (preferably lethal) for him. It's also a useful last line of defense against traitors who have planned for everything else.
962. Each and every bit of information I or any of my underlings have will be encrypted in the best and practical encryption available. Likewise is done for any form of communication. Any software I have must be able to deliver Checksums or other proofs of authenticity at any time — especialy AIs and robots.
963. I will hire and pay royally every hacker I can get. Said hackers will be used to make my systems more secure and to find any holes in software and hardware I or my scientists come up with.
964. If I am a magician in a modern Muggle world, I will remember to get all sorts of Muggle weapons and technology that could help me or substitute for my magic. Even if my magic can't kill the hero, a well targeted missile will.
965. All weapons will have biometric safety that disallows attacks aimed near me. This extends to both conventional and any super weapons. Where possible, implosion-based weaponry will be used in place of explosives for anti-vehicular roles.
966. I will force Disney (or any company that buys a popular franchise) to remake any poorly received installments of that franchise, and do them right. That ought to gain me the loyalty of about half the nerds on the planet, if not even more. Then I will look into sequels for movies (or other works) that desperately need them and some disputed recent comic book events (you know which ones) if that isn't enough.
967. If my last name is the name of a mountain range, I'm legally changing it. Something like Vetinari would be good.
968. I will not Hypnotize the Captive for the usual reasons. I can get my own consort other ways, and inducing a Face–Heel Turn is too unreliable. Instead, it will be for fun reasons. If nothing else, I can screw with the hero a hell of a lot. I'll command the love interest to flash the hero every time he says his transformation phrase. Even if that doesn't stop the transformation, his look alone would be worth a laugh. And just for shits and giggles, every time he says his regular Catchphrase, she will say "I know you are, but what am I?".
969. Perhaps I shouldn't have children who are evil. Good children might turn against me though. So to minimize the risk, I will adopt a girl who is wise, yet sweet, and raise her as a Princess Classic. She won't continue my evil tradition after my death or ascension to godhood, but I'll be dead or a god, so it won't matter to me. Plus having such a sweet little girl around should earn me adoration points just by being a good parent.
970. If a rebellion actually happens, and succeeds in freeing part of my empire, I will not tighten my grip on what remains, especially not try to keep my subjects simple and uneducated. That will just invite greater rebellion later on.
971. My minions, guards, and anyone else with official business in my stronghold will each be equipped with a ring which must be scanned as secured doors to open them. However, the scanner will scan not only the ring, but the RFID chip in the wearer's palm. Anyone who attempts to scan the ring by itself - say, the Hero who just plucked it off a guard he overpowered - will set off the silent alarm.
972. Having a harem is one of the privileges of being an Evil Overlord. However, in the interest of keeping the women loyal and enthusiastic, inclusion in the harem will be on a strictly voluntary basis, and those who serve in this manner for two years will receive a full-ride scholarship at my University.
973. Women who are captured will be treated the same as the male prisoners, no matter how beautiful and alluring they are. They will NOT be added to the harem or otherwise made to serve me as concubines. Part of the point of having a harem is to keep me immune to such things, after all.
974. I will not get married. There are somethings that an Evil Overlord just isn't cut out for. Any woman who could become my bride would necessarily have to be Evil as well, and therefore NOT someone you want to have in you bed every night. Besides, she'd eventually just betray me anyway, and I'd either lose everything I'd worked so hard for, or I'd have to execute her - which isn't as easy as it sounds, even for an Evil Overlord. (Of course, there's nothing wrong with The Hero marrying.)
975. I will make sure that bogus prophecies are spread around the populace, which pointedly do not come to pass. That way, if they ever hear the genuine article, they'll ignore it. Even the genuine prophecies only come to pass because people believe in them.
976. All Innkeepers will be on my payroll, and rewarded for useful pieces of information regarding travelers from afar.
977. If a wandering bard makes up an unflattering song about me, I'll have a good chuckle along with everyone else, invite him to dinner in my stronghold, and them feed him to my monster for my own private enjoyment. One must keep up the appearance of a benevolent despot, but that doesn't meant you let the bastard get away with it.
978. There will be absolutely NO death traps in my private chambers which might be turned against me. They're called "private" chambers for a reason, and there should never be any need for me to bring someone in there who I might want to kill.
979. My personal bodyguard will not have a mechanical arm or a laser-shooting eye as his primary weapon; he will have a pistol. Gimmicky weapons have a way of failing at crucial moments.
980. If and when I capture the Hero's pet monkey/dog/falcon/other such loyal animal, I will not attempt to have it act in any way for my amusement. It's just either going to bite me or try to steal something and escape.
981. When drafting a duty schedule for my minions, I shall arrange their shifts so they'll get plenty of rest. In particular, I want my security forces to be fresh and alert should the hero or any other troublemakers show up at the gates.
982. I will have the hero killed in such a way that a body will be left behind as proof that he's dead. As such, vaporizing him, incinerating him, breaking him apart into individual molecules, etc., are not acceptable ways to kill the hero unless something that can be definitively identified as the dead hero can be left behind—kill or be killed situations notwithstanding, of course.
983. Once I kill the hero, I will have the body dissolved in acid. I will then consider the POSSIBILITY that he might really be dead.
984. I will make sure I have a full understanding of how my universe operates. For example, if a fall from any height can be rendered non-lethal by certain illogical circumstances, I will take advantage of that. I will keep the potential for inconsistencies (i. e. the hero survives a 10,000-foot fall into the sea and everyone else is as good as dead) in mind, though, and avoid the risk if I have any reason to believe my situation is an exception to my universe's illogical rules.
985. I will appoint someone to be the guy that plays the leader of my empire while I take on the role of the mayor of a far away town that sits on the very edge of the empire. If the hero ever shows up, I'll be as nice as possible to him, but say there's little I can actually do against the evil empire. Should my decoy be defeated, I WON'T make a sudden appearance as the REAL leader. I'll just redo the plan while staying undercover (why should I break cover when the hero has probably put me at the bottom of the "Potential Leaders of the Evil Empire" list, below their own family members and an NPC who tells them about a local legend?).
986. As supreme ruler of my empire, it is my prerogative to make whatever laws I deem fit. Nevertheless, I will refrain from making laws that are entirely arbitrary, nonsensical, and/or impossible to enforce without diverting manpower, funding, and other resources away from areas of far more pressing concern.
987. By nature of being the bad guy, there is a good chance my Evil Plan will fail no matter how well I prepare. This being the case, I will make sure I will always have an opportunity to switch to an honest life just in case I ever decide that being evil isn't worth the trouble. (Besides, who better to handle an evil empire than one who actually has been a key part of one?)
988. If I am, in my rise to power, engaging in some illegal activity, all present will be instructed to not use names. There's no point to it. If those I am working with find it absolutely impossible to work without some way to refer to each individual, I will randomly assign them names from a list of words that I create. There is no point in being Thundara, Lord of the Dance, when Dance is so much easier in practice. And though they will, of course, run drills while using these names, all drills will be done in full disguise.
989. My palace guards will have regularly scheduled times when they must report in to the main security office via radio or intercom, even if it's just to report "situation normal". If any guard fails to check in at any of his appointed times, whoever's on duty in the security office is to initiate a full-scale alert on the assumption that said guard was killed or incapacitated by an intruder, and that there's now a security breach in progress. If it's found thereafter that the guard in question failed to check in because he abandoned his post or was preoccupied with anything he's not supposed to be doing while on watch, he's in deep shit.
990. Any items that the hero needs to obtain will not be in the possession of my most annoying-to-defeat elites, but in the possession of my impossible-to-defeat privates.
991. If I attempt to shut down a machine that's "malfunctioning" and my scientific adviser warns me that it has become sentient, I'll listen and respond accordingly. If it is indeed sentient, I'll treat it as a person who can be emotionally manipulated or negotiated with.
992. Even if the hero currently lacks a power, I will factor into my battle plans the possibility that he might suddenly obtain it and turn the tide of the fight. Heroes have an annoying tendency to do that when all seems lost.
993. I will have the cost of all new weapons projects analyzed before even a prototype is built. This way, if the planned weapon is determined to be too expensive to mass-produce, the hero won't have a prototype to steal. Also, if the weapon is too expensive, even the schematics presented to me will be destroyed—I will personally oversee their destruction; leaving the task to someone else almost guarantees that they'll put it off and inadvertently allow the hero to steal the plans and reverse-engineer the weapon.
994. My agents, operatives, and minions will only be permitted to utilize paper-thin disguises in specific circumstances. These include training observers for the level of sophistication expected from garden-variety heroes, operations where the agent is meant to be identified, and entertainment. Anyone caught issuing, being issued, wearing, or developing a Paper-Thin Disguise without the above excuses will be fired. Preferably from a howitzer. All agents who are meant to succeed will be issued in-depth covers, be trained with their covers to prevent slips, and even receive plastic surgery or prosthetic alterations if their appearance is too well-known.
995. It is possible that, by nature of being the Evil Overlord, my people will hate me no matter what I do. In that case, I will forget about being a villain with good PR and instead focus on aspects of my plan that are unaffected by how much my people hate me.
996. I will not dispose of people by sending them into space without a suit, forcing them to walk overboard, or any similar method. Such things carry a chance of the fool surviving long enough to be picked up by the hero, in which case my ex-minion will invariably divulge important information to the hero and/or side with him and suddenly become competent.
997. If I decide to place a tracking device on a prisoner and then let him/her escape (for example, if I'm trying to locate that annoying rebel base that the prisoner won't tell me the location of), the device will be in the form of a nanobot hidden in the prisoner's food. The bot will stay within the prisoner's body. If possible, the nanobot will attach itself to the prisoner's nervous system and transmit a full sensory feed rather than just the now-escaped prisoner's location. In fact, just in case the prisoner accidentally gets the nanobot out through sheer luck, multiple nanobots will be hidden in the prisoner's food.
998. All vehicles, uniforms, weapons, etc., will have tracking devices and recording devices hidden on them. This will allow me to keep an eye on my underlings, just in case someone's plotting my demise and/or shirking their duties. In addition, it will help me locate anything the hero steals when and if he infiltrates one of my bases and survives.
999. All vehicles used by my forces shall have devices installed in them that allow me to remotely shut off their engines if they're stolen.
1000. I will know the name of everyone among my personal guards. People I address as "guard" tend not to live that long. The same holds true for anyone else who answers directly to me.