Tin Tyrant

Certainly, the dry cleaner will feel oppressed. ^note  Clockwise from top right: Exdeath, Gabranth, Golbez, Garland.

"For too long, Empress Qa-Len has been a thorn in my iron-plated side!"

— Lord Ferrok, Battalion Wars II

When the phrase "tinpot dictator" is literal.

Evil Overlords have the tendency to fight in full plate armor, even in settings where that doesn't actually make sense. Their armor usually has plenty of Spikes of Villainy and is Colour-Coded for Your Convenience in black. Usually, it conceals their face to make them appear more mysterious and menacing. Often upgraded to Powered Armor or a full-body prosthesis/life support system in more advanced settings.

In fantasy settings, this is the standard look for the Black Knight. However, that doesn't always mean that an overlord of this type is solely a physical fighter. He might also be an Evil Sorcerer that made the wise choice of donning armor to offset his main weakness. Besides, they are almost always Large and in Charge so it's normal to see them as evil Magic Knights. And sometimes, the wearer might be secretly a girl.

Spikes of Villainy and a Badass Cape are commonly used accessories.

See also Animated Armor. Contrast with Chrome Champion. Not to be confused with Master Computer, where the tyrant is made of tin.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk is naturally filled with villains (and some heroes) in this style. Probably the most notable one is the legendary High King Gaiseric, also known as the Skull King for his preferred helmet style. In an interesting subversion, if he and the Skull Knight are one and the same person as most fans believe, he became a good guy (relatively speaking) after becoming undead.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Frieza and his father seem to wear a (relatively small) suit of armor for no reason than this trope, as they're so immensely powerful that anything capable of actually hurting them would shred their armor like paper. In a variation, removing the armor is the first thing Frieza does upon getting serious, as for most of the time he's in a power-restricted form and his less power-restricted forms are for the most part much larger.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Alexei of Raven Tail wears a full suit of armor, which helps conceal his identity as Ivan, the guild's master. The fact that Ivan competes in the Grand Magic Games is one of the less flagrant ways Raven Tail cheats.
  • Master Hades of the Grimoire Heart guild.
• The Big Bad in Machine Hayabusa spends most of the 21 episodes entirely clad in a full set of medieval-esque armour, mostly busy sitting on his throne inside his lair. He only removes it, thus revealing his true identity, in the last episode. Particularly conspicuous, considering that the anime has a modern setting and focuses on car racing.
• Prince/King Kaito from Murder Princess.
• Wapol from One Piece has a ship called "The Tin Tyrant", but Don Krieg fits the bill better, albeit without a helmet. He has a suit of armor that's equipped with various hidden weapons that he can use against his foes.
• Shinzo: Both the first and final Arc Villains are armored tyrants.
  • King Daku, the leader of the Insect Enterrans, is made to resemble Tough Beetles.
  • Lanancuras, the Final Boss, looks like a red-eyed giant in rock-themed armor. He's not an Enterran but a Celestial, who normally look like angels with golden wings, so it's implied that Evil Makes You Monstrous is at play here.
• Yuki Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fits this trope in full, as his standard clothing during the Genocidal Overlord phase becomes a black, full-body armor, heavily accessorized with sharp spikes, jewels, a flowing red cape, and a helmet that fully covers his face when the visor is lowered — as can be seen here◊.

Comic Books

• Black Moon Chronicles: Greldinard wears an impressive suit of red armor that he never takes off, while also serving as the Baron of Moork and the right-hand of Haazheel Thorne.
• The DCU:
  • Superman:
    • One version of Zod wears a pink suit of armor — err, red. Totally red. Manly red. It should be red, thematically, seeing as he's both a Communist and takes his power from red suns.
    • The other Post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis Zod (like the Communist Zod, possibly wiped from existence as a result of Infinite Crisis) wears a black suit of armour with Spikes of Villainy.
  • Wonder Woman villain Ares frequently adopts a look with layers of ornate and spiked blued armor, manifesting his face as nothing more than shadow and glowing red eyes.◊ Even when he's in his more casual look of dress pants and an open shirt he'll manifest a shadowy transparent version of his armor when he wants to make it clear he's not messing around.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): In the middle of the run, COBRA Commander always wears his battle-armour. It has the side benefit of concealing the fact that he's an imposter.
• Judge Dredd: Judge Death wears an alternate version of the standard bulky Judge armor. He also happens to be the Chief Judge of Deadworld.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Doctor Doom, enemy of the Fantastic Four, is clad in a metallic suit, but the reasons behind it are partially cosmetic: Doom used to be a strikingly handsome man whose face was burned in an accident, and he has covered it up ever since.
  • Master Menace from Squadron Supreme.
  • X-Men:
    • Apocalypse in some interpretations. Namely, his outward image of a transcendent, semi-divine warlord with his pug-like face and blue lips is sometimes portrayed as a suit of Powered Armor which he borrowed from Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. Underneath it, he's really an ancient, withered husk of a man. Not that he minds:
      Apocalypse: Why so shocked, child? The flesh is but a vessel, ready to be discarded when it has served its purpose. What remains eternal and unstoppable is my will.
    • Although less armored (and evil, at least on a good day) than most, Magneto also qualifies.
    • Cable's evil clone Stryfe, and later Cable himself.

Films — Animated

• In Felix the Cat: The Movie, the Duke of Zill wears full body armor in order to hide his badly disfigured face and body.
• In The Steam Engines of Oz, the Emerald City is now ruled by the Tin Man: once one of Oz's greatest heroes, but now a (literally) heartless tyrant. Under his rule, the city has advanced to steampunk levels of technology; powered by the mighty steam engines of Oz. Tin Man continues to expand the city's territory, threatening to swallow the Emerald Forest and destroy its inhabitants.

Films — Live-Action

• The Lord Marshal of the Necromongers in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) is rather nostalgic for a space conqueror, forgoing any sort of conventional or futuristic outfit for a plate armor suit that he never takes off, only removing his helmet from time to time. Most of his followers are no different, presumably because of their martial society.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Man of Steel, General Zod (along with his remaining followers) wears a black, spikey Kryptonian suit of armor that was salvaged when he and his followers roamed the galaxies in search of Kryptonian life/technology after being freed from the Phantom Zone. He eventually ditches it to fight Superman in the climax since it offers no real advantage against him.
  • In Zack Snyder's Justice League, the New God Steppenwolf, a commander of armies of Darkseid, wears a mean-looking body-covering silvery suit of adaptive armor.
• At the climax of Maleficent, King Stefan battles Maleficent in a suit of armor that invokes this trope. Being very cunning, said armor is made of iron, which burns fairies that come into contact with it.
• The Silver Samurai from The Wolverine sports a suit of silver-colored armor, in this case a suit of Powered Armor.
• Big Bad Physical God Tsukuyomi from Yamato Takeru prefers to wear an elaborate suit of armor (complete with a cape), at least when he's not a giant eight-headed dragon.

Literature

• In the original Dragonlance trilogy, all of the Dragon Highlords had ceremonial plate armor with elaborate helmets. Verminaard actually fought in his. It backfired, as he had no peripheral vision in the armor, and when he suddenly lost his cleric powers, he was killed shortly afterwards.
• In Fate/Apocrypha, the Saber of Red invokes this trope, wearing a full-body suit of silver and red with numerous spikes, a BFS and capped off with a demonic-looking horned helmet, and is actually Mordred, the traitor of the Knights of the Round Table... except she has the same body size and build as her "dad" and looks like a teenaged girl underneath. More than one character actually comments on the stark difference when she takes her helmet off. Also, she's actually pretty nice behind her jerkish demeanor.
• Obould Many-Arrows from the Forgotten Realms books wears a spiked suit of black plate armor that's nearly impenetrable. They even used a spell to give him a transparent visor on his helmet so he wouldn't have vulnerable eye holes. Though, when he took the armor off, he got really dangerous.
• The "evil" emperor in Journeys of the Catechist wears full plate armor. Ironically, not only is he a powerful sorcerer who doesn't need it for protection, it's used entirely to hide his appearance, which he considers ugly.
• Skulduggery Pleasant features the armour of Lord Vile. Made worse by the fact that after the heroes face him, it is revealed that he isn't in there, but has become part of the suit formed from part of the former wearers' personality which has stayed in the suit. The former wearer is Skulduggery himself.
• Being set in a medieval society, most of the lords in A Song of Ice and Fire wear heavy, elaborate, and damned expensive plate armor when they go into battle. Bling of War is, frankly, endemic everywhere — especially among the most powerful of lords and rulers. The Boltons' may be the most sinister sets, however, as their armor is designed to look like their sigil of the flayed man while all nicely tinted red... in case any of their opponents should lack basic anatomical knowledge and could therefore use the hint. Also, they are right bastards: if stories are correct, this goes back to when they were known as the Red Kings of the Dreadfort. Yeah. Lannisters do it with gold on everything, Targaryens love their scales, onyx, and rubies, but the Boltons just use very expensive Squick.
• Tale of Yashima: Many samurai wear armour with helmets that are designed to inspire fear, but this is especially fitting for lead character Yashiro Sou, who is fully decked out in head-to-toe red armour with an oni kabuto to match.
• In The Wheel of Time, Demandred goes in for this look when leading the Shadow's armies at the Last Battle. Somewhat unusually, though his armor includes a helmet and mask, he keeps it off for most of his pagetime, preferring to show his actual (rather normal-looking) face. The armor is also silver, going in for Light Is Not Good rather than Dark Is Evil.
• Wraith Knight has Jacob Riverson as one of the four Wraith Knights with intimidating black demonsteel armor along with black hooded cloaks. Eventually, Jacob graduates to become the new King Below, Evil Overlord of the Shadowkind, with even more intimidating helmets. Played with as he is a Dark Is Not Evil Anti-Hero subversion of a fantasy villain.

Live-Action TV

• Chouseishin Series:
  • Genseishin Justiriser: Majin Daruga becomes this after he steals Demon Knight's Riser power and uses it to transform into the dark-armored Kurogane, an evil version of the Justirisers' Super Mode.
  • Chousei Kantai Sazer X: King Neo Descal is permanently clad in a suit of golden, mechanical-looking armor.
• Majin Sai in Henshin Ninja Arashi always appears clad in a whole-body suit of metal armor. It covers up the fact that he's really an automaton.
• Kamen Rider Zi-O: The title character's evil future self, Ohma Zi-O, spends most of his time in a more regal, heavily-armoured version of his present-day Henshin Hero form (complete with a darker colour scheme). The only times he appears onscreen without being transformed, he's sitting on a throne behind a veil and with his face obscured by shadow.
• In the first few seasons of Stargate SG-1, Apophis wears the same armor his Jaffa has, only golden. In later seasons, he eschews in favors of robes.
• Super Sentai:
  • Himitsu Sentai Gorenger: Iron Man Mask General Temujin is a despot clad in a thick suit of iron armor. Commander-in-Chief Golden Mask similarly wears a suit of gold, pharaoh-style armor.
  • Fuhrer Hell Saturn, the ruler of Machine Empire Black Magma in Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan wears a suit of black armor, concealing the fact that he is a mechahuman.
  • Robogog of the 10-sai is the ruler of the Matrintis Empire in Tensou Sentai Goseiger and has a metal robotic body. He's actually a Full-Conversion Cyborg, so his body is his armor.

Multimedia Franchises

• Star Wars:
  • The Sith in general are likely to be this; many of them were famous for their unique suits of armor. Darth Vader is probably the most obvious example, if not the Trope Codifier. He was most likely inspired by Doctor Doom and armoured samurai from Japanese films, but he is probably the most famous example in popular culture. Vader's armor also doubles as a life-support system, stemming from injuries he sustained in an old battle with Obi-Wan.
  • To a lesser extent, Darth Revan from Knights of the Old Republic.
  • Mandalore, leader of the Mandalorians, in pretty much any era (although they also qualify as Blood Knights, seeing how they take joy in battle). Yuuzhan Vong love their living crab-armor, too, although the Supreme Overlord doesn't bother with it.
  • Darth Krayt from Star Wars: Legacy is a bit of a subversion, as the armor is a part of him. It's Yuuzhan Vong armor, a collection of crustaceans that have bonded to his skin to provide lightsaber-proof armor at the expense of unending agony as they attempt to digest him. Darth Bane wore similar armor, but not of Vong origin.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Shredder, in just about every incarnation. The 2003 cartoon version sports a suit of armor that completely covers him.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Silmarillion, Morgoth takes to dressing like this (though outside of it, at least his hands and face are left uncovered) after fleeing Valinor with the Silmarils. As described when he prepares to duel King Fingolfin:
    And he issued forth clad in black armour; and he stood before the King like a tower, iron-crowned, and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a stormcloud.
  • Sauron is shown in armor in the movies and the show; in the books, he's simply described as "A Terrible Dark Lord", "an image of malice and hatred made visible" (although he's usually portrayed like this by illustrators).
  • In the movies, the Witch-King is something in between this and Animated Armor, since he's a disembodied undead spirit and needs the armor as a surrogate body to manipulate objects.
  • The official The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game from Games Workshop gives rough identities to all nine Nazgul, meaning that as well as Sauron and the Witch King (using their movie designs), they also have the Dark Marshal and the Knight of Umbar.
• Transformers:
  • Megatron, being the leader of an army of Killer Robots, qualifies by default. Tarantulas even calls the Beast Wars incarnation one on one occasion.
  • In fact, just about any evil Transformer in a position of authority would qualify. Even Thunderwing and Bludgeon, who generally stayed in their Pretender shells, fit the bill; Thunderwing's shell could pass for at least mostly machine, while Bludgeon's was a skeletal samurai.

Play-By-Post Games

• An interesting case from the Play-by-Post Game Soul Trigger can be found in Black Hearth the Death Eater. As a Svazhan, a metallic race that evolved on a neutron star, anyone of his people could easily fit the bill. The funny thing is that their race is officially part of the Alliance, and he's the odd one out.

Tabletop Games

• The unofficial Lord of the Rings tabletop game Ambarquenta encourages this by ruling that metal contains Morgothian element and thus gets in the way of casting good wizardry and good-ish sorcery, but does not hamper evil sorcery and necromancy in any way.
• Exalted:
  • The First and Forsaken Lion, an ancient, tyrannical ghost empowered by the dead makers of Creation to go out and kill everything. He's a master warlord and strategist in a gigantic suit of armor. Not that he has much choice, as he was welded into it as punishment for his first major screw-up.
  • One of the signature Abyssals, Falling Tears Poet, is clad in heavy armour, wields a really big hammer, and is approximately the size of a bus. Bear in mind that one of the potential end arcs for the Abyssals is to overthrow and replace the Deathlords.
• The Armored Megalomaniac archetype in Mutants & Masterminds, as well as the somewhat more specific example of the evil Daedalus from Anti-Earth in the Freedom City sample setting.
• Warhammer:
  • Chaos Lords from Warhammer usually wear heavy plate armour decorated with loads of spikes and symbols of Chaos. Chaos Lords and Sorcerers from Warhammer 40,000 wear Powered Armor (or even heavier Terminator armour) decorated with loads of spikes and symbols of Chaos, as well as... er... trophies.
  • In fact, at one point, the mark of a true Chaos Warrior was being granted Chaos Armor, which fused to their skin, could never be removed, and if damaged would grow back.
  • Ork Warlords have a habit of turning up wearing mega armour, which makes them Rusty Iron, Tin, Ceramite, Adamantium, And Rubber Tyrants.
  • Dark Eldar Archons usually wear heavy armor in the style of the Incubi, instead of the form-fitting constructions worn by most of their warriors.
  • Dark Elf Dreadlords usually wear heavy plate armor, and in some cases don't show their faces often.
  • The ruler of the dark elves Malekith has to wear armor all the time. After the Flame of Asuryan opinioned that he was unworthy of becoming the Phoenix King, he's needed a suit of magical armor to give his ruined body strength.
  • Averted by the God-Emperor of Mankind himself, who is the closest 40k has to a Big Good... which isn't saying very much, considering the setting.

Video Games

• Sarevok in Baldur's Gate.
• Hakumen from BlazBlue combines this with being a Samurai Robot. However, Hakumen's armor houses his soul rather than his body. His original body was too broken to be of any further use, hence the upgrade.
• The Nemesis in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.
• Tell the Demon Sovereign from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic that Sauron is suing.
• The Black Knights from Dark Souls are completely covered in their huge, tough black armor and that's all that's left of them. Also Havel the Rock, though his armor is actually incredibly heavy carved rock.
• Dragon Age:
  • Loghain in Dragon Age: Origins is arguably an aversion: while he does run around in full plate armor, it appears to be standard, ordinary, off-the-shelf full plate and is silver instead of black. Of course, the armor was taken from another Tin Tyrant who occupied his nation.
  • Knight-Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II is the dictator of Kirkwall in all but name and sports a slightly more elaborate set of Templar armor.
  • Revenants, who are part of many Optional Boss fights (including Gaxkang) in both games, sport this look. They command other undead and use Mind over Matter to pull your Glass Cannon party members towards them. Revenants come into being when a Pride Demon (the most powerful kind) takes Demonic Possession of a corpse, and most are found after the player disturbs graves, a Tomeof Eldritch Lore, or touches Blood Magic vials.
• In The Elder Scrolls, this is the form taken by Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, whose driving mission to put the universe in perfect order. He serves as the Big Bad in Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion and appears as a knight clad fully in silver armor, wielding a BFS one-handed. His lesser Daedra servants, the Knights of Order, are very similar, implied to be shining suits of Animated Armor.
• Fallout: Frank Horrigan from Fallout 2 is a 12-foot tall, Powered Armor version of this. The Roman-themed Legate Lanius from Fallout: New Vegas is the more traditional version.
  Legate Lanius: We shall see how brave you are when you are nailed to the walls of Hoover Dam, your body facing West so you may watch your world die.
• The Final Fantasy series' more medieval installments love this trope, as seen at the top of the page.
  • Garland in Final Fantasy (although his characterization in Dissidia is more similar to that of a Blood Knight).
  • Emperor Mateus Palamecia in Final Fantasy II: although he doesn't have a helmet, he certainly has a golden and violet suit of armor.
  • Golbez in Final Fantasy IV, as befits a Darth Vader Expy. Lampshaded by Gilgamesh in Dissidia:
    "You really oughta dress the part if you're a wizard."
  • Exdeath in Final Fantasy V. Being a shapeshifter (and a sapient tree), it's unclear if he wears a suit of armour, or if that's simply the form he chooses to take.
  • All the Judges in Final Fantasy XII, but especially Gabranth, another Darth Vader Expy.
  • The fal'Cie play with this, since they appear to be made of tin.
  • The Garlean generals in Final Fantasy XIV all dress like this. Unlike a number of examples here, their armor tends to be functional on top of the form — Gaius van Baelsar, for example, seems to have a number of gizmos, like a gauntlet-gun, installed in his armor.
    • Nael van Darnus, Big Bad of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, deserves special mention because her armor managed to conceal her sex until it was later revealed in the T10 Binding Coil of Bahamut raid of A Realm Reborn.^note It was at first thought that she was originally male and Bahamut's unusual resurrection magic caused her to come back wrong, but Word of God later clarified that she was not the true Nael — she disguised herself as her late brother and replaced him in order to exact revenge on the incompetent Garlean officers that were responsible for his death.
    • The late Emperor of Garlemald, Solus zos Galvus, wore similar armor, except that his face was visible. His grandson and heir, Varis zos Galvus, is seen to be wearing similar armor as his late grandfather.
  • Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: The Sworn Six of Paladia are the mayor antagonists during the first season of the game and they all resemble tin tyrants with elemental powers. Major spoilers from Season 3: The True Hollow Keepers are also a group of tin tyrants, this time with a card motif. They also don sleeker, form-fitting armors that wouldn't look out of place in a Super Sentai or Kamen Rider serial, contrasting with the bulky, over-the-top armors of the Sworn Six.
• Standard fare for the more physically inclined Fire Emblem Big Bads and higher enemies, especially the Disc-One Final Boss or The Heavy. In particular, the default class for a one-off boss is generally going to be one of the armored classes, be it Knight, General, Baron, or something similar. (This is due to the fact that it has the highest Defense, making it a good boss character, but also has enough exploitable weaknesses to be beaten without much trouble.)
  • The originator of this trope is generally thought to be Rudolf, a Gold Knight from Fire Emblem Gaiden. Unsurprisingly, he's an absolute tank of a man in ridiculously heavy-looking equipment, though unlike many of his successors, he backs it up with a similarly well-built horse.
  • Hardin, from Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, more or less standardized the appearance of the Tin Tyrant among Big Bad figures in the series: crimson armor, massive weapon, Shoulders of Doom, gigantic mantle. He even gets a class to himself, called Emperor, and many others would follow suit.
  • Arvis in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War takes on the Emperor class after the Time Skip—unlike Hardin, though, he's more of a Magic Knight, retaining his prowess from his days as a Sage.
  • Zephiel in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade takes many cues from Hardin (down to also getting a personal class, that being King), though he goes for purple armor instead.
  • The Black Knight in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, unsurprisingly for a Darth Vader Expy, wears a massive suit of black armor that conceals his face. He's more The Dragon than the Big Bad, though.
  • Walhart the Conqueror, the second major Arc Villain in Fire Emblem: Awakening, is a tower of a man who dresses in grand crimson armor complete with horns (which earns him at least one lobster comparison), and in battle he rides a decked-out horse like Rudolf. Though never directly touched on or alluded to, Walhart rules and is battled in Valm, the setting of Gaiden several thousand years down the line, and he has several parallels to that game's protagonist (and both Walhart's nation and continent's present-day namesake), Rudolf's son Alm, so his similarities to Rudolf are most likely intentional. He also marks the first of these to be playable, albeit only thanks to dubiously canon Spotpass chapters.
  • The Flame Emperor, also known as Edelgard in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first of these to be female, as well as the first to be usable as a protagonist, albeit only in Crimson Flower.
• For Honor gives us Apollyon, a 6-foot-tall, warmongering despot who likes to wear thick and heavy dark armor.
• Granblue Fantasy has the Seven Luminary Knights employed by the True King... except for the Blue Knight, who's the closest the game gets to a Big Good and only answers to the True King for fear of what would happen if he defied him. Some of the other Knights become less antagonistic towards the party as the story progresses, as well.
• Guilty Gear: Surprisingly, Justice is this, as the drama CDs state that she wears it to protect her frail figure. The hair on the armor, though, is her real hair.
• Magruder in Gun. The reason, kinda, that he's completely unharmed by any of your weapons and has to be taken down by other means.
• Death's Hand in Jade Empire is the Emperor's right-hand man, who had his departed soul bound to a black suit of armour. Master Li declares that "That is the armour of a man who knows no remorse, no pity." The irony is that said armour originally belonged to Master Li.
• Dark Lord Gaol in Kid Icarus: Uprising. It turns out that the armor is actually used to control Gaol, who was a captured spy and is actually a woman. After defeating her, she makes a Heel–Face Turn and learns to control the armor herself.
• Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II gets this form during the first and third stages of the final battle with him. He spends both fights slouching in the control chair of a spaceship, using his powers to fight. It turns out to be the Keyblade Armour of Master Xehanort, his original original incarnation. The armor itself becomes a merciless Superboss in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Final Mix.
• League of Legends gives us Mordekaiser, who is even titled "The Iron Revenant". Once an ancient Evil Overlord in life, he became an even more dangerous conqueror in death, determined to drag Runeterra into his kingdom in The Underworld. He wears a giant suit of armor into his battles, and it's also his means of tethering to the physical world — without it, he only exists in unlife.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ganondorf has been seen in armor quite a few times, but never covers his head.
  • Onox wears full armor and a helmet covering all but his Slasher Smile. He's a Dracolich underneath.
• One of the bosses in the first Lightning Warrior Raidy game is this. This hides the fact that inside, it's a girl.
• Magic Emperor Ghaleon in Lunar: The Silver Star and its several remakes. A notable example in that he seems to wear it because he knows that villains are supposed to wear this sort of getup.
• Lord Deimos from Mace: The Dark Age fits, seeing as he's encased in blood-red armor and we never see any part of him outside of it. He even has the BFS and Spikes of Villainy.
• Mass Effect:
  • Saren has creepy-looking armor that looks like it has Geth parts fused to it. They aren't fused to the armor, they're part of him.
  • The Reapers, in a way: they're all gigantic spacecraft, and thus have got pretty tough black shells.
• Sheltem/Alamar from the Might and Magic series.
• In Myth: The Fallen Lords, Balor wears armor in combat, which is probably all the time. Given the game's heavy Tolkien influences, this is pretty fitting.
• Crow from Nefarious wears a high-powered suit of armor as he carries out his world-domination schemes.
• All of the eponymous Overlords in the Overlord series.
• Heinrich, the final boss in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. He doesn't have a helmet.
• Oda Nobunaga fits this trope perfectly in Sengoku Basara, complete with Spikes of Villainy.
• In Soma Spirits, Dissonance, ruler of the World of Sorrow, is clad in dark-blue armor and keeps his subjects in perpetual misery, out of his belief that seeking happiness will only lead to conflict. He also wants to remove the happiness from the World of Joy. In the routes where he takes the orbs and becomes the Final Boss, one NPC outright calls him the trope name.
• Nightmare from the Soul Series, depending on the game, either wears or is an awesome suit of azure armor.
• Gandohar in Two Worlds and Two Worlds II.
• Warcraft:
  • Unlike the other dragons which run around basically naked, Deathwing has elementium plates grafted onto his body. His body is slowly wasting away due to his vast power, and the plating is basically holding his body together.
  • Arthas fits this trope quite well.
• Zeikfried from Wild ARMs is this to a T. He's ambitious, ruthless, and decked out in all armour. Bonus points for actually being made of metal himself.
• The Witcher:
  • In The Witcher, the Big Bad first appears unhelmed, presumably to make better use of his charisma, then passes for a Magic Knight for a time, and then subverts the helmet trope when what's Beneath the Mask shows.
  • In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the King of the Wild Hunt is presented as an enormous man in a spiky, bone-themed suit of armour and a skull-shaped helmet with a crown on top.

Webcomics

• No one in Girl Genius is this, but Agatha's fashion clank thinks Gil should be!
• General Tarquin in The Order of the Stick, complete with Spikes of Villainy and dark colors. Very shortly after his introduction, though, he removes the helmet for the dramatic reveal of his identity.
• Discussed in Schlock Mercenary, where the pun of this trope is brought to its extreme after the events of Credomar. LOTA, a robotic longshoreman built from the remains of a ruined tank, is naturally covered head to toe in heavy armor. LOTA is then voted in as sole ruler of the colony after the battle over food supplies.
• Big Bad King Jahad from Tower of God, in his first appearance at least. He's shown to be wearing something else in a flashback, and given the size of almost every recurring character's wardrobe in this series, it's unlikely armor's all he wears.

Western Animation

• Angel's Friends has Cassidy and Kubral, the tyrannical leaders of Diabolic Army, are mostly seen with their medieval-like armors that are red and black colored.
• The ruler of one planet in Dogstar, concealing the fact that the wearer is a kid.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Crocker becomes such a tyrant during The Movie, despite being ridiculously skinny.
• Tchang Zu the Thunder Demon from Jackie Chan Adventures wears armor, but instead of black, it's a mix of blue and yellow (the standard colors of Hollywood lightning) with no helmet and a bare midriff. Some of the Oni also wear body suits.
• King Sombra in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• Ninjago: Two of the Overlord’s designs have him in metal armor: While his 2014 design puts him in a black medieval-looking helmet and ornate golden armor, his 2022 design has him decked out entirely in a black, silver and gold suit of armor with pink accents. Inverted through this being stated to not be armor at all, but literally his body.
  The Overlord: This form is merely a shell. A vessel, which I command... and change at will!
• Megabyte in ReBoot is a borderline example. His body is his full metal armor. On one occasion, Dot calls him a "blue tin coward" when Megabyte doesn't show up in a battle.
• Lord Hordak in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power wears power armour that covers his whole body save for the head. It's dark grey, black and red and doubles as a life-support system without which he can barely walk. It also gives him a bulky appearance that his body proper lacks.
• Metallus in Space Ghost.
• Xiaolin Showdown: Hannibal Bean has a Mobile-Suit Human themed after this. He's rarely seen using it though.

---