Villain World

The future that is Aku.

Marty: I don't get it, Doc. I mean, how can all this be happening? It's like we're in hell or something.
Doc Brown: No, it's Hill Valley, though I can't imagine hell being much worse!

— Back to the Future Part II

One major source of Villain Decay comes from the fact that, no matter how dangerous the Big Bad is presented as, the risk of them winning becomes an Informed Ability since Status Quo Is God means they don't win, and whatever horrible plot they hatched and rant about doesn't even scratch at the Masquerade. This is why audiences are genuinely shocked when The Bad Guy Wins, and why it's one of the most powerful Downer Endings possible. Some stories try to avoid the former by using a limited form of the latter in the form of the heroes visiting a Bad Future, and returning to the present with the motivation to Set Right What May Go Wrong. But not all stories allow for Time Travel, so an intermediate and more challenging route is to have the Villain win part way and have the setting become a Villain World.

The Evil Overlord will have their Evil Plan go off without a hitch either because The Hero and their friends were put out of action, or despite their best efforts, or simply because they weren't around at the time. The armies of the Big Bad are everywhere, every country and the UN gives them absolute power, which they use to institute their vision of the world. Usually the world becomes a Dystopia, sometimes a Utopia with a "minor" flaw like Utopia Justifies the Means or removing The Evils of Free Will. Expect them to rename cities after themself. May also result in a Crapsack World (though one dominated by a specific entity as opposed to just generally crummy). Or they may bring about The End of the World as We Know It and create Hell on Earth. Either way, the heroes have failed to stop them, they have changed the face of the world, and the heroes must now fight to save what's left before the Evil Overlord grows too powerful.

Thankfully, since the Genre Shift happens with enough time for the heroes to regroup they usually do succeed at reversing the villains' triumph. Depending upon the grade of Phlebotinum available, this can end with either an outright reset, or a more realistic scenario where the heroes' help is implied to get the world back on its feet eventually.

Occasionally this will be the result of a Nightmare Sequence or a It's a Wonderful Plot. This setting is the habitat of La Résistance. Very likely to be a Crapsack World. See also Vichy Earth, Easily Conquered World and Evil Only Has to Win Once. See To Create a Playground for Evil for when a villain's goal is specifically to create a villain world. For a specific version where evil counterparts of the heroes are ruling the villain world for fighting for the forces of evil, see Mirror Universe. If the enemies in question are Those Wacky Nazis, see Alternate-History Nazi Victory.

Not to be confused with a planet which is also a villain.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, and the third part of Robotech, which was based on MOSPEADA.
  • In Robotech we also have the second part, as Anatole Leonard, who now controls Earth, is actually a member of the Anti-Unification League, through this is only revealed in the comic book miniseries "To the Stars".
• In Guyver, Kronos takes over the world, polices it, and implements its advanced technology for the use of society. They don't force things but give people the choice to be transformed into Zoanoids, giving tax cuts to participants and emphasising the benefits like immunity to disease and the ability to gain Super-Strength in emergencies, while neglecting to mention that you become subject to Mind Control by their leaders.
• Death Note - The second half, after Light has killed half the cast (including the main hero), is set a couple of years in the future where Kira has started to establish himself as God of the New World, to the point where Japan even has a reality show dedicated to offering him victims. His reign of terror is such that crime rates and wars have dropped astronomically, and he is preparing to kill people he deems weak or lazy in the not too distant future.
• After the first Time Skip in 20th Century Boys, Friend has become de facto ruler of Japan, able put anyone suspected of criticizing him into reeducation camps. It's particularly reminiscent of North Korea, complete with that giant "beehive" hotel, only bigger and finished. After the second Time Skip, a Synthetic Plague has reduced all society tremendously, but the second Friend's cult continue and even more ironfisted rule of Japan.
• This happens in Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure when the protagonist and his powerful Mecha are forcibly transported back to the first dimension. With him out of the way, Ayuko was able to crush her opposition. By the time Kazuki returns, the UN has accepted Ayuko as rightful ruler of the world and the good guys are fugitives.
• The Monster Rancher anime starts out as this, with Moo having nearly conquered the planet and the heroes fighting a distinctly uphill battle.
• The second half of Digimon Fusion has the Bagra Army do this to the Digital World.
  • The Dark Masters arc of Digimon Adventure has several areas of the Digital world compressed into several different Villain Worlds, each themed off the Dark Master who rules them.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Original Dragon Ball: Great Demon King Piccolo's goal is to create such a world because For the Evulz. Being literally outcasted from God's body, destroying the world his good counterpart is ruling over is the best way to get back at him. When Piccolo does take over the world, he tells the planet's inhabitants that he encourages crimes and evil, but will punish justice. The anime adds filler to show how his reign affects the world, turning the world into chaos.
  • In Dragon Ball GT, Baby infects everyone on Earth except for Goku, Pan, Buu, and Mr. Satan. And then he gets his own literal villain world when he makes his own planet with the intent of moving all of the possessed there.
• Gundam shows:
  • The earliest example is Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, where The Titans are free to commit atrocities unopposed thanks to being backed by The Federation. Once their crimes are exposed and The Titans defect from the Federation, this changes.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has a revolving door of these thanks to it's headbutting Big Bad Ensemble. At the start of the series, the United Earth Sphere Alliance rules both the earth and colonies, and it's up to the Gundams to overthrow them. A few episodes in, the Romefeller Foundation and OZ overthrow the alliance and install themselves as rulers under the thin facade of being better than The Alliance. Romefeller is, in turn, taken over by Treize, who is finally dealt with by the Gundams, and replaced by a more benevolent One World Order.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has this in season 2, drawing inspiration from both the aforementioned Wing and Zeta, with Earth mostly being ruled by the Earth Sphere Federation which is itself essentially a puppet of The A-Laws and The Innovators.
  • The Earth Sphere has essentially become this by the time of Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash, as the Earth Federation has become just as bad as the Titans. Gaia Gear and G-Saviour have similar portrayals of the Federation.
  • Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: While the UC as a whole isn't this (the Federation having lessened its authoritarianism by that time), the Jupiter Sphere, which serves as Crossbone's setting, is absolutely one. The whole system is a Social Darwinistic hellhole ruled by a brutal empire bent on conquering the rest of the Solar System.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Being one of the darkest series in the entire franchise, has more than a few elements of this. The Earth is ruled by a series of massive superpowers that openly practice colonialism and human slavery, and the rest of the Solar System, especially Mars, are the colonies of said Superpowers. The Solar Systems true rulers, however, are Gjallarhorn, who are the only faction with (legal) Mobile Suits, or any existing Military at all, and effectively enforce the existing system of imperialism and exploitation. Not to mention practicing, effectively, feudalism among themselves.
  • Things start getting better by Season 2: Gjallarhorn's crimes being exposed at the end of season 1 led to the rest of the nations building up their own militaries, effectively breaking Gjallarhorn's control over the setting. There is a real growing push to end the colonization of Mars, and Gjallarhorn is being pushed to reform by the changing times. On the other hand, usage of slaves and Child Soldiers had actually increased due to the actions of the Protagonists proving their effetiveness.

Card Games

• In Magic: The Gathering's New Phyrexia set, the Phyrexians have succeeded in taking over the plane formerly known as Mirrodin, and reduced the native Mirrans to La Résistance.

Comic Books

• The DCU loves using this trope:
  • The "Emperor Joker" storyline which features the eponymous madman getting the cosmic powers of Mr. Mxyzptlk and remaking the world in his own demented image where Superman is a dangerous criminal hunted down every day by Bizarro and bald super-tycoon Lois Lane.
  • The Ultra-Humanite once got a hold of the genie Thunderbolt and then, controlling the world from a Brain in a Jar, seizes telepathic control of every hero on Earth. His main body is a youthful Johnny Thunder, who is protected by- of course- albino gorilla bodyguards.
  • Earth-3, a world where the Justice League is actually the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, a worldwide dictatorship that killed most of the heroes. Superman is Ultraman, Batman is Owlman, etc. Versions of it are heavily explored in Trinity and Forever Evil (2013) showing that even the non-supervillains are dicks, as they live in a world where brutal rape and murder are socially acceptable. "Forever Evil" implies that Earth-3 isn't just a Villain World, it's a world where the very concept of "good" is utterly foreign. No wonder it's called "The Birthplace of Evil".
  • In Justice League (2018), Lex Luthor travels one million years into the future and learns that he's become a Dark Messiah, with all of humanity following his philosophy of personal empowerment and embracing one's inner self rather than aspiring to be something better. As a result, he created a world where mankind embraced the worst aspects of human nature and subjugated the rest of the universe in his name, literally calling their way of life "Doom". To Luthor, this is a paradise and his only issue with it is the fact that nobody appreciated his ideas in his time, which he immediately attempts to correct.
  • During and following DC Year of the Villain, the structure of the multiverse itself shifts in favour of the Legion of Doom and against the Justice League. The weird part is that Luthor's goals at this point are obtuse enough that this doesn't affect the DCU much on a less cosmic basis. (Except for Gotham getting taken over by Bane, which was only tangentially related.) Once The Batman Who Laughs takes over the plan, however, we get the nightmare Scavenger World of Dark Nights: Death Metal.
  • Earth-X or Earth-10 is an Earth where Kal-El's rocket landed in Nazi territory, and the rest is... you can guess. Post-Flashpoint Earth-40 is an Earth where the Society of Super-Villains terrorizes the planet unopposed. Post-Flashpoint Earth-43 is where Batman became a vampire and proceeded to infect the rest of the Justice League, leaving that Earth at the mercy of bloodsuckers. Post-Flashpoint Earth-50 just so happens to be the world of Justice League S2 E11 and 12 "A Better World", wherein the Justice League snaps after President Luthor murders the Flash and conquers the world themselves.
• The Age of Apocalypse. The villain Legion goes back in time to assassinate Magneto, but accidentally kills Professor X instead, leading to Magneto taking over the X-Men. Without Xavier's leadership, the X-Men can't stop Apocalypse from triggering global nuclear war. Most of the planet now is an uninhabitable Death World; Apocalypse rules a North America full of extermination camps, human experimentation, purges, and bloodsports. Europe is a fortress state fighting a desperate losing war against him.
• The Days of Future Past storyline has the world dominated by the robotic Sentinels. They were built to protect humanity from mutants, but decided that the best way to do that was to Take Over the World and turn it into an anti-mutant Police State since any human might end up siring a mutant. The mutants who aren't killed outright are held in concentration camps. It was later revealed that the nearly identical Bad Future that the mutant Bishop came from was actually a different anti-mutant Police State where mutants are oppressed by ordinary humans after the young mutant Hope killed one million people in six seconds, and it is established there are countless other Bad Futures and alternate where either humans or mutants have established a brutal government where one oppresses the other in similar fashion.
• Both Magneto and Doctor Doom, too many times to count. Examples are listed below:
  • House of M, which it turns out was not part of Magneto's plans at all.
  • Planet Doom, which the good doctor quickly got bored with.
  • The first book in The Chaos Engine trilogy is actually about Doctor Doom making a Cosmic Cube and taking over the world (ruling it as a super-efficient Police State); the second has him lost it to Magneto (who rules it as a paradise where humans and mutants live in harmony- though the cube was defective and while he's ultimately pleased with the results, he originally wished for something considerably darker); and in the third Magneto has lost it to the Red Skull (who places Earth at the centre of a Dystopic, Nazi-themed intergalactic Evil Empire).
    • Something similar to that third scenario happened in Captain America #14-16. In a vision Captain America is given a glimpse of America controlled by the Red Skull under the Cosmic Cube's power: heroes crucified, the Capitol building in flames, the Washington Monument replaced by a Skull statue, and Nazis riding dinosaurs through the streets.
  • In the Emperor Doom graphic novel, Dr Doom uses the powers of the Purple Man to take over the Marvel Universe - all except for Wonder Man (who does not breathe and is thus immune to the Purple Man's pheromones). In the end, Doom more or less allows the heroes to win due to the tedium of micro-managing the entire planet.
    • An early Avengers story had Magneto attempt a Villain Team-Up with Doctor Doom so that they may Take Over the World together, only for Doom to reveal that he has already done that, explaining that he used Mind Control gas to conquer the minds of everyone on the planet- including Magneto, who was only freed because Doom thought Victory Is Boring and wanted someone to stop him- he even let Magneto free any superhero on the Avengers of his choosing to help him (Magneto chose fellow mutant Beast). It has since been a recurring theme in comics that Doom can easily take over the world anytime he chooses, but he finds it too easy and would rather focus on yet more grandiose goals, like attaining godlike power (which he has also achieved several times) or defeating that accursed Reed Richards. He would also prefer it if humanity simply recognise the genius of Doom and give the world to him once they realise he can run it better than they can. Another recurring theme is that he can run it better than anyone else can- a world run by Doctor Doom is often a sinister Police State, but it is also otherwise a utopia free of poverty, crime, famine and war under Dooms' "benevolent" rule.
• Age of Ultron begins in a world where Ultron won, took over the body of the Vision, purged most of humanity and now hunts superheroes for sport. Most major cities are now technological fortresses utterly devoid of life, or rubble. The story consists of the heroes trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong through the use of time-travel.
• Ultron Forever depicts Ultron-ruled future. He's not only subjugated the Earth and assimilated most of humanity, but he's turned the Avengers into his personal bodyguards and taken the Odinforce to become King of Asgard, and the most powerful being in Creation. However, he's utterly miserable. One of his Avengers says he's heard Ultron crying in his private moments, and he's tormented by the fact he has no idea what to do now he's succeeded, or why he even wanted to wipe out organic life in the first place. When he's vaporised halfway through the story, Thor (female version) swears she heard him laughing on the way out.
• A more comical arc of The Defenders has a childish and inept Dormammu steal the power of Eternity and remake the planet. Turns out though his sister Umar really stole the power and only let him think he was in charge... while she was busy raping The Hulk.
• In the comic version of Wanted, the villains have taken over the world - and changed it into what is pretty much our world...
• In Silver Surfer #54-55, we see Thanos conquer the universe with the Infinity Gauntlet, place Death in Go-Go Enslavement, kill the superheroes along with Mephisto and then forces Silver Surfer to be his scribe to write his Bible as Thanos is the new God. It turns out to be All Just a Dream.
• This is part of the premise of The End League. Years ago, Rousseau was conclusively proven wrong when, it turned out that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries of a Mass Super-Empowering Event preferred to use their powers for personal gain. One day they ganged up and slaughtered almost all superheroes. The world has been ruled by supervillains ever since.
• The Wolverine story "Old Man Logan" takes place in a Bad Future where America's been divvied up amongst the supervillains. The part Logan lives in is run by Hulk and his inbred Cannibal Clan, while other regions are ruled by Kingpin, Dr. Doom, and Red Skull.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe examples:
  • The Donald Duck comic "The Duck That Never Was" shows a version of Duckburg where Magica De Spell succeeded in getting Scrooge's number one dime, crushing Scrooge's spirit enough that Flintheart Glomgold was able to take over his industries... all because Donald wished himself out of existence.
  • A few classic Paperinik stories have the time travel version. One case has a variant in which defeating the villain in the future is necessary to prevent his takeover, as the whole thing was caused by a device that forcibly changed the timeline and winning not only allowed to get Paperinik back in his time but to make a small alteration that prevented the activation of the device in the first place.
  • As the series involve Paperinik, Paperinik New Adventures has three examples of its own:
    • "Nothing Personal" has a rather weird and accidental variant of the time travel version: as the time pirate known as the Raider had died of a Heroic Sacrifice in the previous issue, the Organization raised his son Trip to take his father's place in their ranks, and he, as the Gryphon, came back in time to ruin Paperinik's reputation and kill him in the belief he caused the Raider's death, and in the process of successfully ruining his reputation he started a series of events that ended with the Time Police replaced by a front of the Organization, another front of the Organization taking over the droids' market, and Two taking over the Organization alongside a Reprogrammed and Crazy One. This is undone by Odin Eidolon, AKA One, breaking free of the reprogramming long enough to take Trip from before the Raider went on the mission where he died and bringing him to Paperinik, resulting in the end in Trip meeting the Gryphon and being disgusted by him and the Raider never going on that mission, thus never dying and averting the whole chain of events.
    • The first relaunch story "Might and Power" has a possible future in which a restored Evronian Empire has conquered Earth, with Paperinik assassinated in his civilian identity before the Evronians attacked. The story then goes on our hero stopping this from happening.
    • Again in the relaunch, "Ur-Evron" has another accidental variant of the time travel version: thrown back in time on the original Evronian homeworld the day before the birth of the original Evron, Paperinik foils its creation and succeeds in seizing a Galaxy to go back to Earth and in his time... And finds Duckburg devastated, Evronian spaceships hovering over it, and Evron himself gloating on live TV.
• Mark Waid seems to like dabbling in this trope. Played straight in his short-lived book Empire, where a Doctor Doom Expy takes over the world. Played with in both Kingdom Come and Irredeemable, where the world is shown under the influence of rogue superheroes, instead of the nominal villains.
  • Though the latter, at least, probably counts enough as a straight example since the hero in question has well and truly gone off the deep end and brutally murders scores of innocent people and anyone who gets in his way For the Evulz, and thus more than qualifies as a villain in the actual story. Especially since later issues strongly imply he was Evil All Along.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • The Comic starts off with Robotnik ruling the world and the Freedom Fighters aiming to overthrow him. They eventually succeed, but an alternate version of Robotnik shows up and retakes the planet, forcing them to start over again. Also has an example with Sonic's Mirror Universe counterpart, who after gaining power from the Master Emerald and renaming himself Scourge, took over his version of Mobius. A story arc with Silver in the Sonic Universe spinoff series also had an alternate Bad Future where Knuckles, during a point where he gained a near omnipotent Physical God super form, had a series of events that led to him turning evil, and eventually insane, taking up the mantle of an old foe of his named Enerjak. Despite gaining a 0% Approval Rating due to his descent into madness, he was so powerful none cast had any chance at stopping him, and the Freedom Fighters that Silver found in when he traveled to that timeline were only around because Enerjak was bored and let them live for entertainment.
    • While Robo-Robotnik does take over Robotnik-Prime's empire, the Freedom Fighters had gained enough ground in the interim that they had no problem pinning him down... The real point that his arc turned Mobius back into a proper Villain World is after the Xorda show up and Sonic gets teleported to the other side of the galaxy. With Sonic out of the way, Eggman was able to dominate the Kingdom of Acorn, as well as Angel Island, and the rest of his former empire.
  • The major premise of Sonic the Comic. In issue #8 Sonic was thrown months into the future, giving Robotnik enough time to Take Over the World. The comic then became about Sonic leading resistance against him, ending in victory in issue #100.
• In one story arc of The Avengers, Kang conquers the world. Not a dream. Not an alternate timeline. No reset button. The main group of Avengers surrender, then their free members have to form La Résistance while (some of) the captive Avengers find ways to escape, eventually fighting back and bringing Kang down. However, it took several issues and remains part of the Canon Marvel Universe.
• The Wizard's Tale by Kurt Busiek and David Wenzel is set in a fantasy world where the evil wizards have already won the war between good and evil and turned the world into a Mordor-like pit of gloom.
• In Issue 12 of the Invader Zim (Oni) comic, we see a Bad Future where Zim has succeeded in conquering Earth and reshaping it to his desires. It's a total Dystopia, where all the buildings and streets have been remodeled and renamed after Zim, robotic security forces roam the streets, all the enslaved humans have to wear helmets that shock them if they don't bend down to be shorter than Zim, and his ultimate plan, near completion, is to convert the whole planet into a ship, so he can take it to the Tallest, so they can in turn cut the planet in half and use it as a giant candy dish.
• Judge Dredd:
  • In the storyline "Helter Skelter", a group of Judge Dredd's past enemies, led by the tyrannical Chief Judge Cal, invade Dredd's dimension. They all originate from Alternate Universes where they had each individually killed Dredd and created their own version of a Villain World where they ruled supreme, but knowing that there was a universe where Dredd had beaten them was enough for them to team up against him.
  • Judge Dredd's arch-enemy Judge Death hails from his own villain world called Deadworld, an Alternate Universe where the Judges were even more ruthless than in Dredd's reality. Their brutal rule culminated in the rise of the Dark Judges, four particularly murderous law enforcers who considered life itself to be the source of all crime, then used dark magic to become undead monsters and destroy civilization.
• The Transformers (Marvel): When we first see present-day Cybertron, the planet is completely under Decepticon rule, and has been for a very long time. It stays that way until the final few issues, when the Autobots and Decepticons forge an alliance after saving it from an attack by Unicron and then promptly abandon the planet as they think it's falling apart from the damage.
• One G.I. Joe Elseworlds comic is set in a world where Cobra managed to defeat G.I. Joe and Take Over the World. The bulk of the story takes place years later, as Cobra Commander grows increasingly disillusioned with his new regime because actually ruling the world is far more boring, tedious, and generally miserable than trying to conquer it. So he turns against Cobra, destroys his own headquarters, and begins a one-man rebellion against the very Empire he himself created, effectively becoming the new G.I. Joe... except not nearly as heroic.
• The Myth Arc of Grendel is the creation of a Villain World, as the titular Villain Protagonist gradually conquers the planet over the course of decades. Also something of a Deconstruction, as by the time Earth fully becomes a Villain World, the villain in question is long-dead; rather than ruling himself, the idea and concept behind his supervillain identity becomes the basis for and guiding philosophy of a mighty, globe-spanning empire through the actions of himself, his successors, and various ancillary characters. In other words, the only way the bad guys can really win and Take Over the World is by ceasing to be real people and instead becoming symbols.

Fan Works

• A controversial example, good or bad depending on the individual. In the Meta-Crossover Fandom Wars, The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic faction wins after being forced into a corner and using their superweapon, which sucked Earth through the My Little Pony Rift, causing all sentient life to restart from the beginning of their lives as ponies and all of Earth's man-made constructs, save for a few, to be destroyed. Captain Pio, the one who made the final decision to use their weapon, is mentioned in the epilogue to normally think about whether what he did was right. He can never think of a reason that it wasn't.
• The Pony POV Series chapter "Epilogue" depicts a Bad Future ruled by Discord where he won and is completely unopposed, with the Brainwashed and Crazy Twilight as The Dragon and others having gone to the extremes of their brainwashing. Let's put it this way, the dead rising from the grave to devour their loved ones is the least disturbing thing under Discord's reign.
  • It eventually turns out that it's not his Villain World anymore since Nightmare Paradox took over and turned it into an Ironic Hell for Discord. Thankfully, the heroes ultimately manage to win.
  • In the Finale Arc, Discord and his allies perform a Rewriting Reality plan to turn the world into this. Imagine every Grim Dark Fic ever happening at the same time (a contribution of Discord's cousin), along with other general nonsense and chaos. Yes, it's even worse than Dark World! Thankfully, the Pantheon, including the Elders, manage to protect the Crusaders and manipulate things so that they have a fighting chance to set things right.
• In Becoming Female, Ron the Death Eater is characterized as a Straw Misogynist, as is every other male villain in the story. At one point, Ron takes over Hogwarts and turns it into a misogynistic hellhole, with the houses abolished and the school instead divided between boys and girls. All the girls are forced to wear bikinis, work in the kitchen, and are only allowed to attend a class called "How To Be A Slut".
• In the Invader Zim fanfic Gaz Dreams of Genie, a Freudian Slip leads to Gaz using her first wish to make it so Dib was never born, resulting in Zim ruling the world. The city the show takes place in is in ruins, billboards praising Zim are everywhere, and all humans are enslaved and forced through grueling slave labor under the supervision of Zim's Mecha-Mooks. After dealing with this for a single day, Gaz uses her second wish to hit the Reset Button.
• The Harry Potter fanfic Wish Carefully is a deconstruction of one. Rather than go to war with Voldemort and the Death Eaters after Dumbledore's death, Harry instead surrenders control of Magical Britain to them while the Light supporters will leave and take all the Squibs and Muggleborns with them. The Death Eaters initially think they've been given a perfect world to rule over on a silver platter, with Voldemort in charge and all the undesirables gone, but then Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs:
  • The Death Eaters' membership consisted mainly of the aristocratic "old money" families (like the Malfoys) and the criminal underclass (Dolohov and his ilk), whereas the middle and working classes (the people who ran the businesses, produced goods, and provided skilled services that basically kept society running smoothly) were largely made up of Muggleborns and Light-supporters. With the massive loss of the workforce and consumer base, the economy is completely gutted and infrastructure begins breaking down due to a lack of regular maintenance.
  • All the Muggleborns, Squibs, and Light supporters are gone and the treaty forbids the Death Eaters from interfering with the Muggle world (and they'll lose their magic if they do), meaning that the Dark purebloods have no one to lord over... and they're the only ones Voldemort has left to enact his sadistic whims on.
  • The purebloods' tradition of Royal Inbreeding, combined with their newly isolated population, results in each successive generation of pureblood children becoming magically and intellectually weaker over time until they're producing almost nothing but Squibs.
  • No new immigrants are coming in as nobody wants to live in a country lorded over by an insane Dark Lord where draconian laws control every aspect of the lives of every citizen. Because of this, as well as the aforementioned issues of Wizarding Britain having no magical working class and a small gene pool with a low birthrate, their population is in continuous decline. The Death Eaters resort to secretly kidnapping young witches from random areas around the world and force the girls to act as Breeding Slaves (a solution that amounts to slapping a band-aid on a broken leg, as it only holds the inevitable collapse off by a few more generations at the most), which in turn leads to the International Confederation of Wizards putting a Net up over Britain and closely monitor whoever leaves and enters the country.
• Black Out The Sky describes an alternate scenario for RWBY, in which the villains have all achieved their personal goals and succeeded at taking over the world. White Fang becomes a tyrannical world government, all Salem's servants become powerful rulers and all the heroes are either dead, wishing they were dead or fighting a hopeless war of resistance.
• In Fallen Kingdom, Bowser took over the Mushroom World after Mario's death, and Luigi and the resistance have an uphill battle to fight.
• In Zelda's Honor, General Naar from Nevachrea literally storms into Hyrule with his massive undying army, massacring each nation one after another until he claims Hyrule Castle Town itself. Their victory is so absolute that Link and co. have to bunk down with Ganondorf and the Gerudo, protected by their magic, for seven years before they begin to mount some sort of offensive to take Hyrule back.

Films — Animation

• Megamind incorporates a parody of the trope. When he actually does win, he has no clue what to actually do and tells the terrified citizens to just go about their business and wait in terrified anticipation of what he intends to do to them. Ultimately, he actually does very little to the people themselves other than basically just taking over City Hall, screwing around, stealing and trashing some stuff, and hanging "NO YOU CAN'T" posters all over town.
  Megamind: Imagine the most horrible, terrifying, evil thing you can possibly think of... and multiply it... by six! In the meantime, I want you to carry on with the dreary normal things you, normal people do. Let's just have fun with this, come on! And I will get back to you.
• Meet the Robinsons has one ruled by Doris as a result of the Bowler Hat Guy tampering with Cornelius/Lewis' machine.
• In Shrek Forever After, when Shrek signs a Magically-Binding Contract with Rumplestiltskin, Rumple takes over the entire fairy tale kingdom, putting everyone under his iron fist.
• In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Plankton enslaves the entire population of Bikini Bottom and takes over the city, naming it "Planktopolis". Statues of Plankton are all over the place and, as if to highlight its dystopian nature, the sky is perpetually dark brown and devoid of the flower-shaped clouds.
• An abandoned concept for Aladdin has Jafar wishing to not just to be Sultan but to have always been Sultan, resulting in a Crapsack Villain World version of Agrabah. While some allegedly amazing artwork resulted from this, it was ultimately rejected for being "too sci-fi".
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Earth-42, the dimension that the spider that bit Miles originally came from. It's a burning hellhole ruled by the "Sinister Six Cartel" with no Spider-Man to oppose them, its Miles Morales instead becoming the Prowler. Also, J. Jonah Jameson is the mayor.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars:
  • The universe gets turned into this during Revenge of the Sith, and it takes three whole movies and over 20 years to even begin to set it right.
  Palpatine: Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy! And we shall have... peace.
  • The sequels also qualify, as the New Republic is effectively shattered in the first film, leaving the poorly-manned and equipped Resistance to struggle on its own against the First Order until late in the third film. Interestingly, while the heroes do defeat Palpatine and his Sith Eternal fleet, the ending leaves the state of the galaxy ambiguous.
• The Matrix:
  • The Matrix: As revealed by Morpheus, the real world beyond the Matrix became this ever since humanity had the bright idea to black out the skies in an effort to deprive the machines of the sunlight that powers them. The Robot War itself scorched the land and blacking out the sun was the final nail, forcing the machines to turn to Human Resources for their power and ensuring humanity's ultimate defeat.
  • By the climax of The Matrix Revolutions, the Matrix is wholly populated by Agent Smith's copies. Of course, the Matrix was already a Villain World run by ruthless machines, but now it has been take over by an Omnicidal Maniac.
• It's a Wonderful Life has Pottersville. Ok, so it's not the whole universe but the film's so self-contained it might as well be.
• Back to the Future Part II has this happen when Biff gets hold of the sports almanac, and 1985 Hill Valley becomes "Hell Valley" (on the ruined Welcome To Hill Valley sign) with the clock tower turned into Biff's Pleasure Paradise casino hotel.
• In Super Mario Bros. (1993), Dinohattan has been ruled by Koopa for 20 years by the time the Mario Brothers arrive, and in that time he's turned it into a police state that's overusing the world's resources.
• The Twist Ending of Planet of the Apes (2001). General Thade somehow managed to escape, made it back to Earth before Leo did, and conquered the planet in his absence. Leo is horrified upon seeing a statue of Thade celebrating him as the beloved founder of the American Ape Republic.

Literature

• The world of Lyrian from The Beyonders has been thoroughly conquered by the evil emperor Maldor, so much so that the arrival of Jason from Earth to act as the hero was actually a suicidal last resort by some of the citizens. Most of the first book is about trying to find ANYBODY willing to stand up to the Emperor.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort and the Death Eaters successfully mount a coup over the Ministry of Magic, turning the wizarding world into a Voldemort-run dystopia which closely resembles Nazi Germany.
• "After The Last Elf Is Dead" by Harry Turtledove does this to classical Tolkienesque fantasy.
• The Silmarillion by Tolkien does this to Beleriand.
• The Belt Of Deltora series kicks off with the villain taking over Deltora, but failing to eradicate the royal family. A couple decades later, a young boy is sent on a quest to defeat him.
• Mistborn uses this- the trilogy's backstory is essentially every High Fantasy plot you've ever heard, except that the Evil Overlord won and has spent the last millenium ruling with an iron fist. And then plenty of complications get introduced from there...
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, an unseen force controls the world. Unlike other examples however, this is never explicitly reversed, though there is some debate as to whether the use of past tense of the appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak," indicates the eventual downfall of the system.
• In Black Easter by James Blish a wealthy man hires a black magician to summon all the demons of Hell for one day- but they don't go back. In the end, God is dead and Lucifer takes over. One bewildered character protests to a demon that the Bible shows God as winning; the demon replies that during a war each side puts out its own propaganda.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • Edom is actually Earth, except that it is ruled by Asmodeus, a Prince of Hell, and Lilith, the Queen of Demons. Aside from them, the only inhabitants are lesser demons, with mundanes, Shadowhunters, and Downworlders all having gone extinct.
  • Thule is a textbook example, in that it is a dystopia that was conquered by the bad guys a short while ago, so a resistance still exists (albeit dwindling). The heroes end up helping them to topple the villains, of course. It also doubles as a Bad Future, since it chronologically takes place two years into the future.
• The Word and the Void series has John Ross dreaming about a Bad Future where the demons win and America is a dystopian wasteland, and his job in the present as a Knight of the Word is to prevent that future from coming to pass. The purpose of the dreams is to give him clues as to what he must do. In every book, he accomplishes his assigned task, but ultimately it's not enough. In the sequel series The Genesis of Shannara, Ross is long dead and the remaining Knights are living the bad future he dreamed of. The demons have succeeded in destroying civilization, and the remnants of humanity have retreated to walled-off fortifications where they're being picked off one by one. Total nuclear annihilation is inevitable, and the best the Knights can do is to ensure a very few humans and elves survive it, setting up the Shannara world.

Live-Action TV

• Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has the virtual world known as the Framework. Originally created by Holden Radcliffe to be a Lotus-Eater Machine where people can live their perfect lives, free of regret. Unfortunately removing May's regret makes it an Alternate Universe where HYDRA managed to Take Over the World, turning it into a Police State where hatred of Inhumans is institutionalized, the only media is a Propaganda Machine, and all historical records have been rewritten to teach people not to question this sort of thing and that HYDRA were the good guys.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "The Wish", Cordelia tells a wish-granting demon named Anya that she wishes Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, resulting in a villain world where Angel is imprisoned, Xander and Willow are both vampires, the Master is free, the Bronze is an evil lair for vampires, almost everyone rightly hides in fear in their houses every night, and the vampires are opening a slaughterhouse-factory where machines drain humans of all their blood.
  • The Wicked Willow trilogy of books explored what would've happened if Willow had stayed power mad.
• The Arrowverse-wide crossover Crisis on Earth-X has the titular Alternate Universe, a timeline where the Nazis won World War II and conquered the world.
• Doctor Who:
  • Both the second Dalek story and the second Peter Cushing movie feature a Bad Future where the Daleks have taken over the Earth. Since the Daleks are Nazi expies and both stories were made in the sixties, the iconic image of Daleks on the streets of London was pretty powerful Nightmare Fuel for its time.
  • "Pyramids of Mars" had the Doctor briefly visit an alternate 1980, which Sutekh had turned into a scorched cinder.
  • The Master succeeded in taking over the world in "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords". He began by decimating the human population, and also sunk all the islands of Japan, filled Europe with radiation pits and turned the rest of the world into an absolute hellhole, with the remaining humans enslaved to build weapons of mass destruction on a galactic scale. Ultimately, the Doctor, Martha and Jack are able to use the Reset Button and roll back time one year.
  • In "The End of Time" the Master turns every human being on Earth except for Donna and Wilfred into a copy of himself.
  • "The Lie of the Land": Earth gets this again courtesy of the Monks. Images of them, most prominently giant Monk statues, and their "Truth" insignia are everywhere, and everyone but them dresses in black. Almost no-one remembers a time when the Monks weren't around, and those who do are arrested for "memory crime" and executed, while the populace cheers the Monks on. Finally, the Brainwashed and Crazy Doctor broadcasts propaganda for them.
• Legends of Tomorrow:
  • The Season 2 episode "Doomworld" takes place in one, after the Legion of Doom use the Spear of Destiny to rewrite reality to their liking. Team Arrow and Team Flash are all dead, and the Legends have their memories wiped — with two of them outright working for the villains. Eobard Thawne is an icon for saving the polar bears and stopping global warming, Damien Darhk runs Star City, Leonard Snart is stealing money from banks he owns (it's about the thrill not the cash), and Malcolm Merlyn makes Nyssa al Ghul's life miserable just because he can.
  • The last two episodes of Season 5, "The One Where We're Trapped on TV" and "Swan Thong", take place in a reality created by the Fates reuniting their Loom and taking control of everything. It's an Orwellian nightmare, with everyone living in drab, Stalinist-like industrial blocks, constantly being monitored (and immediately executed if they show any signs of defiance), and being forced to watch TV shows that are all propaganda about how they should abandon free will and only do what they're told.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In Season One, just when it seems the heroes managed to defeat the Orcs, Adar secretly instructs Waldreg on how to activate a secret devise in Ostirith, which provokes Orodruin's eruption and turns the Southlands into Mordor, where now Orcs can thrive and multiple under his command.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Storybrooke. It's a small town in Maine that the Evil Queen cursed all the inhabitants of the fairy-tale world to be trapped in while she reigns as the mayor and Rumplestiltskin owns most of the town. The people of Storybrooke don't know who they or each other are, but that makes it worse for some of them when the Queen starts messing up their lives and they have no idea why. Later in the series this is subverted when the curse is broken and both villains perform Heel Face Turns.
  • In the fourth season finale, The Author regains their abilities and creates his own villain world to replace the Enchanted Forest. It's also a subversion, however, as the reason the villains are winning is because the former heroes have been forced into their roles and vice versa (e.g., Snow White is the evil queen while Regina is a bandit on the run from her). It's all undone by Henry, though, who unlocks his own Author powers and undoes the story.
  • And then the season six finale brings things full circle, as the Black Fairy Fiona recasts the original curse, with herself now in Regina's place as the mayor.
• Power Rangers RPM, in a rather shocking twist, begins in a Villain World. Venjix has already taken over the world except for mankind's last hold out. The series revolves around protecting the city and trying to find a way to defeat Venjix.
• In Star Trek, the "main" universe where most episodes take place isn't this trope, but there's a Mirror Universe that is. In the mirror universe, the Terran Empire oppresses many planets while its members fight each other for control of the empire. Until Deep Space Nine, when the Klingons and Cardassians formed an alliance to conquer and enslave the Terrans. Still a Villain World, just from the other side.
• Supernatural:
  • The episode "The End" has Zachariah showing Dean a vision of a world taken over by Lucifer.
  • The Season 12 finale "All Along the Watchtower" shows an inversion of the above example, where it is was Michael, rather than Lucifer, who won the Apocalypse and took over the world in a parallel universe. It's just as bad, if not even worse.
• Super Sentai
  • Uchu Sentai Kyuranger is unusual for a Sentai series because it takes place in an alternate universe where none of the villains or teams from previous seasons exist and the galaxy has already been completely taken over by the villainous organization, with the Sentai team being a small resistance movement who travel the galaxy liberating planets.
  • The Monsters Of The Week in Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger get their powers by absorbing a sealed alternate dimension, most of which are Planets Of Hats. The Movie Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger the Movie: Red Fight! All Sentai Great Assemble!! has the Zenkaigers fight a Monster of the Week who holds the power of a dimension populated by villains from previous Sentai seasons, and his presence threatens to turn the Zenkaiger's world into a villain world by summoning and army of villains.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The setting Midnight (2003) is summarized as "Middle Earth, only Sauron won."
  • There is also Athas, the world where the Dark Sun setting takes place. Most of Athas is a barren desert caused by overuse of the setting's odd brand of arcane magic which drains Life Energy from the surroundings. To make matters worse, Athas is a Death World to rival all Death Worlds, the open wastes are filled with horrifying creatures, roaming undead horrors, and bands of bloodthirsty marauders. The remains of society are centered in city-states, each ruled by an immortal Sorcerer-King. Each of whom rules their city-state with an iron fist, and are so powerful actually disposing or killing one is considered unthinkable. The Sorcerer-Kings/Queens are also largely responsible for the state Athas is in due to their overuse of magic in massive Cleansing Wars (which is also the reason many of standard fantasy races are extinct in the setting). In short; Athas is a world where The Bad Guys Won and they won centuries ago.
  • Doomed Forgotten Realms is an Alternate Timeline where Vecna created a world where every Forgotten Realms Big Bad won.
• Arguably, all of the Old World of Darkness settings. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Princess: The Hopeful: Eons ago, the All-Consuming Darkness and its minions overthrew the Kingdoms of Light, killing the Queens and Princesses, trapping their souls in the Dreamlands to keep them from reincarnating, and proceeding to entrench itself. Now, finally, the Nobility have managed to escape the Dreamlands, and have to try and bring back Light to a World of Darkness.
• The tagline for GURPS Reign of Steel was "The war is over. The robots won." The good news is that there are still humans around (not only is catching and killing all those humans fairly hard work, especially since humans learn what works and what doesn't after a while, but some of the victorious A.I.s don't want to exterminate humanity, for a number of reasons ranging from the still kinda villainous (New Delhi's forcible transhumanization plan) to the relatively benign (London's ignoring of what the humans do so long as they don't mess with its plans)), and the ruling A.I. supercomputers are doing what most victorious allies do after a war — fall out with each other, to the point that some of them are starting to think that maybe a 'human zone' would be a better neighbour.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Daemon Worlds are what happens when a follower has gathered sufficient favor with the Chaos god(s) s/he worships, and becomes a Daemon Prince, later turning the planet they're on into their own personal playground dedicated to said god(s) where Reality Is Out to Lunch and the Warp fills in.
  • One of the more noteworthy examples features the ork warboss Tuska, who lived only to find the best fights in the galaxy. Having led his Waaagh! into the Eye of Terror, the Negative Space Wedgie where most Daemon worlds are found, he proceeded to slaughter his way through them, only meeting his match on one owned by a Khornate daemon. As the Blood Prince roared in a gesture of triumph over Tuska, he used the last of his strength to lift up his power klaw between the Prince's legs and make a gesture of his own. Impressed by their bravery, Khorne resurrects the orks every day to fight forever, a win-win arrangement by all accounts.

Theatre

• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: After Albus and Scorpio travel back in time to save Cedric's life, they change things in such a way that Voldemort wins the war, kills Harry and took over the magical world. Or Britain, at least. In this new timeline, caused by Cedric becoming so humiliated that he joined the Death Eaters and killing Neville before he can behead Nagini, the final Horcrux, Voldemort and his Death Eaters rule Hogwarts with an iron fist, the Dementors now serve them and personally kill those who stand against him, and Professor Umbridge now serves as headmaster.

Toys

• BIONICLE is a more literal example than most, because after Makuta takes over the Great Spirit Robot housing all the islands and their inhabitants, the villain is the world, not just in control of it. Makuta has a near-omniscient view of everything happening inside Mata Nui's body as well as total control over its systems. This forces the Toa and Matoran to form an Enemy Mine with Dark Hunters and the like to even stand a chance at stopping him.

Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a young Link obtain the Spiritual Stones in order to open the inner area of the Temple of Time, where the Master Sword rests. Upon grabbing it, however, Link is sealed away by Fi for seven years (since he was too young to be the Hero of Time). In the time he was sealed, Ganondorf was able to gain possession of the Triforce of Power and take over Hyrule while plaguing it with many misfortunes, destroying the Castle Town and made it a place where only ReDeads live, infesting Kokiri Forest with more monsters, feeding Gorons to Volvagia both to make an example of them and to punish them for not giving him the Goron's Ruby, freezing Zora's Domain, and made a formerly overworked Ingo into the owner of Lon Lon Ranch. Link, now older, must collect the 6 Sage Medallions in order to be able to enter the castle and defeat Ganondorf. Afterwards, Zelda sends Link back in time so that he can live out his own childhood, as well as prevent Ganondorf's reign of terror before it begins. However, this ends up consigning her own timeline to an even worse fate, while the timeline in which Link lived out his childhood and saved a distant land was threatened by Ganondorf again, this time after being sent to the Twilight Realm by the Sages after failing to execute him.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the second half of the game takes place in the "World of Ruin", which is made up of the few surviving civilians and towns scattered around after Kefka gains ultimate arcane power.
  • Final Fantasy VII is set in a Crapsack World where the only known government is the evil MegaCorp Shinra, who drains energy from the Earth and uses it as an energy source, seems to control all forms of mass media, and seems to be the only source of law enforcement. They lose control by the end of the game as most of their executives are dead and their headquarters is destroyed.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, many generations after Squall's time, Sorceress Ultimecia will have conquered the world and annihilated all opposition. Whether the world recovered after she was defeated within the Time Compression, and her final death 13 years before the game's setting, is unknown. However, the future world might not be as bad as it is suggested, i.e. the precently fallen corpses of SeeD troops very close to her castle and some clear interior damage to the castle itself that resembles airstrike/artillery fire. We also don't really see anything of the world beyond Ultimecia's castle itself, so how bad the future world really is remains unclear. It doesn't help that it is outright stated that most living people will disappear during Time Compression, leaving only Ultimecia and Squall's team to fight it out in the compressed reality.
  • Final Fantasy X's world Spira is gradually revealed to be this. Apart from the problems with the Eldritch Abomination Sin rampaging across the world, there's also the fact the church that effectively rules the planet is shown be a Corrupt Church and the bulk of its leaders are remorseless sociopaths. Undead Sociopaths.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Pulse's moon, Cocoon, is ruled by the Fal'Cie, a race of demi-god golems tasked with ruling humanity. Unfortunately, all that time forced to coddle humans without any god for any of them to worship has driven them nihilistically insane. Pulse itself is a jungle planet filled with hyper-powerful excessively-violent animals that make the main characters' magic look like parlor tricks, so most humans are forced to live under the demigods who want them dead.
  • Final Fantasy XV: much like FFVI before it, thanks to Big Bad Ardyn Izunia, the last stretch of the game takes place after a 10 year Time Skip in which the world, with no Oracle to prevent the spread of the deadly Starscourge, the entire planet is in a near-apocalyptic state. It is indicated there is only one major city remaining, and its sole source of electricity is running on borrowed time. Meanwhile, the daemon population only continues to grow despite hunters' best efforts to curb their numbers.
• City Of Heroes: Going Rogue: Praetorian Earth, ruled over by the supervillain "Tyrant", is the 'flawed utopia' version of these.
  • At least, it appears to be. What Tyrant rules is actually a relatively tiny surviving area of civilization in a world otherwise dominated by the human-hating Hamidon. Defeating Tyrant and bringing down his empire just made things worse for the survivors.
• By the end of StarCraft: Brood War, the Koprulu sector has become this, with the zerg as by far the dominant power. In Starcraft II, Zeratul has a vision of an even worse future in which the Terrans and Protoss are hunted to extinction by the Dark Voice and its Hybrids. However, the Korprulu Sector is by default ruled by the Terran Dominion, and their oppression is one of the main problems throughout the game. The main goal of Jim Raynor is to overthrow The Emperor and end his tyranny.
• Although it never comes to pass, creating a villain universe is Dr. Nefarious' ultimate goal in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, on the other hand, has his dream of such a world comes true, only by his more vile counterpart Emperor Nefarious.
• In Overlord, this is your primary goal, with you as the villain on top, of course. The games' Karma Meter mainly exists for the epilogue to showcase what kind of Villain World you've built.
  • Also counts from the beginning. In the first game, the world is ruled over by the seven corrupted heroes who slew the previous Overlord. In the second, most of the world is already conquered by the pseudo-roman Glorious Empire, hunting all magical creatures into extinction.
• The Bad Future from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky may probably count, where because all of time and space completely stopped, the entire world became consumed by darkness and is now ruled by Primal Dialga, along with his Dragon, Dusknoir and an entire army of Sableyes.
  • However, it later turns out that Primal Dialga isn't even the dictator ruling the Bad Future at all! The real dictator of the darkened world actually appears to be Darkrai.
• In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the player faces off against Team Rainbow Rocket, a Legion of Doom made up of the Alternate Universe counterparts of past villains in the series^note Maxie, Archie, Cyrus, Ghestis, and Lysandre, each having made their respective goals a reality because no main characters existed to oppose them.
• The ending of MadWorld seems to suggest this is the case. The Death Watch games are held usually to shift the world in a new direction, with each major power sending in a different fighter. Thing is, it's also a spectacle sport of gore that really gets played up like modern day Roman Gladiator games turned up to 11. Most everyone involved is a sick monster.
• Thanks to Stupid Jetpack Hitler actually working out, the world of Wolfenstein: The New Order takes place in a world where the Nazis have won World War II. B.J. Blazkowicz takes part in a mission during the war to assassinate Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse but the mission goes awry and B.J. ends up in a coma for fourteen years, during which the Nazis secure their victory. The game proper begins in 1960.
• In Tyranny, the world of Terratus is under the control of an Evil Overlord called Kyros, who was victorious in a great war between good and evil. The player is put in the role of Fatebinder, who acts as an enforcer of Kyros' will.
• In Sonic Forces, Dr. Eggman finally achieves world domination with the help of a new villain named Infinite. Giant towering Death Egg Robots raze the land while characters such as Shadow the Hedgehog, Chaos, Metal Sonic, and Zavok help him in his campaign of destruction. Only an underground resistance movement stands in his way, with Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, and the Avatar leading the charge against him.
• World of Warcraft: Argus was the homeworld of the Draenei, betrayed by a trusted leader and captured. Now it's the capital planet of the Burning Legion, one of the villains of the franchise and the main villain of the Legion expansion.
• A Villain Protagonist example comes in one of the two endings to Saints Row: The Third. If you choose to go after Killbane rather than save Shaundi, then his bombs at the Steelport Monument go off, destroying the statue and killing Shaundi. This act of terrorism is The Last Straw that causes the Special Tactical Anti-Gang (STAG) task force to deploy an Airborne Aircraft Carrier to the city in order to end the gang war once and for all. After defeating STAG, the Boss subsequently takes over Steelport and has it secede from the United States, becoming its own independent city-state run by organized crime.
• Dragon Quest Builders 2 takes place in a world where 99% of the population are members of the Children of Hargon that worship Malroth, the God of Destruction. It helps that the world in question is a giant illusion created by the god's High Priest, Hargon.
• In Dragon Quest XI, the second half of the game sees Mordegon successfully usurp the power of the World Tree and Take Over the World, killing untold amounts of people and causing monsters everywhere to become even more vicious and feral then they were already.
• In Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, Surburbia is taken over by the Zombies and renamed Zomburbia, with several statues erected in Zomboss's image. This forces the Plants to go on the offensive for the first time in series history in an effort to retake Suburbia.
• Streets of Rogue casts you as the resistance trying to bring down the Mayor who has created one of these, albeit a black comedy version where chicken nuggets are precious contraband and every single person in the city appears to be a sociopathic Blood Knight willing to throw their life away over the most minor disagreements. If the mission is successful, then you adopt the title of Mayor and immediately become corrupt in exactly the same ways, starting the cycle all over again for the next run. While the setting is limited to just one city, the scope of it due to a nearly infinite number of unique procedurally generated areas and the fact that every time through this infinitely replayable game is just revealing more of it in the same timeline strongly implies that it's a Mega City which has potentially reached City Planet scale.
• Evolve Idle has Hell planets (complete with an orbital period of 666 days) where a unique demonic genus is unlocked. Black hole resets unlock alternate universes, one of which is an evil universe where every race is bloodthirsty and warlike and traditional materials like wood are replaced with bones and flesh from slaughtering the weak.
• The Mojave can become this in the Fallout: New Vegas expansion Dead Money if the the Courier chooses to ally with the Big Bad Father Elijah near the very end, provided they meet some very specific requirements. If they agree to team up with the former Elder, the player is treated to a unique ending slideshow showing a dark portent of the things to come years later to the now doomed Mojave, including how the toxic Cloud is weaponized against the NCR, invincible Holograms kill survivors on sight and a Repconn rocket filled with the Cloud is launched at Hoover Dam to kill everyone stationed there. The last slide ends with the grim words, "Only two remained alive in the depths of the Cloud, waiting for their new world to begin again."
• XCOM 2 is set in a world where the Earth is subjugated and forcefully unified by the aliens into the ADVENT Coalition, which is a Crapsaccharine World Surveillance State. Gene therapy clinics, which supposedly eradicate diseases and ensure the people to live its fullest, are a front for a genmat-harvesting scheme by the aliens (and the process is purely lethal). XCOM, which was once a multinational initiative to prevent alien incursion and world terrorism, are now splintered cells branded as the world's most wanted terrorists and forced to move covertly.

Visual Novels

• The Hope's Peak Saga of Danganronpa turns out to be this. Junko Enoshima set up a veritable world of chaos while she was still alive, and the results stick long after she's died in the first game. To wit, Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls shows an entire town under the thumb of a group of Enfants Terrible influenced by her, and Killer Killer has no end of screwed-up criminals running amok. It takes the establishment of an entirely new organization to even start picking up the pieces that Ultimate Despair left behind, and even then, Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School reveals a mole within their ranks. Things don't start looking up for the world until the very end of the saga.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: After the hobgoblins conquer Azure City, they turn it into a mini-Villain World, complete with enslaved humans and adoring banners of their Supreme Leader, Redcloak.
  • Most of the western continent is ruled by The Syndicate, headed by Elan's father General Tarquin. He and his five lieutenants have a Divide and Conquer scheme taken to extremes, where they secretly coordinate the three empires conquering neutral kingdoms with the intent of unifying each empire through the hatred of the other two, while clandestinely uniting all three as one big exploitation enterprise. And as he eloquently describes, even if he's deposed and the regime he set up is destroyed, the continent will just revert back to its original Anarchy Is Chaos state where every tribe hates each other. By the end, things could get surprisingly better or even worse than anarchy, as the Greater-Scope Villain violently bursts onto the continent - but with an entire ocean of water to deliver to the parched desert.
• Homestuck: B2 Earth. Betty Crocker, who is really an alien (ex-) tyrant from another universe serving a time travelling Eldritch Abomination has a much greater grip on this world, to the point of having a multi-global empire and using Paranoia Fuel subliminal messages reminiscent of They Live!. It's eventually revealed that two of the main characters have been living hundreds of years in the future, when she rules openly, and that her reign of terror caused the deaths of billions and the eventual functional extinction of humanity.
• Sluggy Freelance features the Dimension of Pain which is a dimension completely overrun by demons the only relatively good people left are a few spider people called Arachnaseuses who feed off the psychic peace of their ... 'guests'.

Web Original

• Starting from The Homestuck Epilogues, Earth-C becomes this in the Candy timeline courtesy of a Jane that became essentially the human version of the Condesce. Under her reign, she puts xenophobic laws in place and outright starts interspecies war with the Earth-C trolls, with a resistance formed to overthrow her before things get any worse. The Candy portions of Homestuck: Beyond Canon, being an interquel, take place in the middle of her tyranny.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: In Season 3, King Andrias regains the Calamity Box, and to prepare for the conquest of Earth he begins strip-mining Amphibia of all its resources, turning it from a verdant heavily-forested continent to a polluted wasteland. Those who oppose him are either executed by his hordes of robot soldiers or brainwashed with fungal spores.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In the Abra-Catastrophe! movie, Crocker becomes leader of the world halfway through.
  • The Channel Chasers special also has Vicky the Babysitter from Hell become the dictator of a Bad Future.
• In Xiaolin Showdown's first season finale, Wuya manages to take over the world, if only for two episodes. As does Chase Young by the end of the second season. There's even a Bad Future where Jack Spicer takes over the world.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) starts with Robotnik having already conquered most of the world. Sonic and friends make up the ragtag rebellion trying to take down Robotnik's uncontrolled industrial pollution and saving a population that's been massively Reforged Into Minions with his machines.
• At the outset of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Air Nomads are virtually extinct and the Southern Water Tribe has been reduced to one measly village, but the vast majority of the Earth Kingdom is still independent of Fire Nation control. As the series progresses, however, all that rapidly changes and near the end of the series, this is almost totally the case (with the Northern Water Tribe being the only place free of Fire Nation control, influence or attack).
• This is the premise of Samurai Jack, a hero who has been sent forward in time by Big Bad Aku, and who tries to find a way back in time to stop the world from becoming what Aku has made it into. It's something of a combination between a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the countryside and a Wretched Hive in the major cities. He also brings in criminals from all over the galaxy to settle on Earth, and is worshipped as a god by his followers. Our page image is some promotional art depicting this world.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): The remarkably dark episode "Speed Demon" features the girls accidentally time-traveling into a future-Townsville controlled by Him.
• Project Gee Ke R: The heroes travel to a future where Moloch got control of Geeker's powers. They're able to thwart the event that led to this future as soon as they return to their present.
• Superman: The Animated Series had the episode "Brave New Metropolis" in which Lois Lane enters an Alternate Timeline where due to her death Superman accepted Lex Luthor's We Can Rule Together offer and the two ruled the city side-by-side. The result was a despotic nightmare where Superman was rough and uncompromising with criminals while Luthor imprisoned dissidents and reeducated their children.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) has "Shredderville", where the team travels to a dimension where they had never existed, and Shredder rules as the (overworked and extremely regretful) emperor of New York. An episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) shows a Bad Future that Shredder ruled, though he is much happier about this fact in this version, because the 2003 Shredder is a monster, whereas the 1987 Shredder is a Harmless Villain. Also, Shredderville was All Just a Dream.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers had a few episodes that showed imaginary sequences of one of the villains winning to drive home the consequences of inaction: "Two Futures", which showed an Earth ruled by Hoggish Greedly (due to Wheeler wishing he had never become a Planeteer when it seems he's about to die), "Summit to Save Earth" (where Zarm succeeds in taking over for ten years before the Reset Button is hit), "Utopia" (which features a surreal Cyberpunk world of gangs ruled by Verminous Skumm), and "Future Shock" (which shows a world where the descendants of Looten Plunder, Dr. Blight, and Verminous Skumm rule).
• The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! cartoon had the tomatoes succeed in world domination at the start of the second season, with the rest of the show dedicated to the heroes now in La Résistance.
• Tiny Toon Adventures had the It's a Wonderful Plot episode that showed without Buster in Acme Acres, Montana Max now rules the town and University with an iron fist.
• Rugrats showed that in a world without Chuckie, Angelica dominates the ruined town as a Villainous Glutton.
• The writers for ReBoot really loved this.
  • Done in the two-parter "Identity Crisis" though that ends up being All Just a Dream.
  • Done properly somewhere during the "game hopping" arc of season 3, with the heroes returning to find Mainframe under Megabyte's rule, mostly destroyed and on the verge of collapse. A Deus ex Machina fixes it.
  • Done again at the beginning of season 4 where Daemon rules most of the net and Mainframe is its last hope until it too falls. Things get better again.
  • Possibly done at the very end of season 4 but it ends on a cliffhanger so no one will know for sure.
• Transformers:
  • The premise of Beast Machines is this, as the Maximals awaken to find themselves on Cybertron under Megatron's control.
  • Transformers: Cyberverse has two different examples. In the first, the Quintessons have completely conquered Cybertron, placed its inhabitants in an endless "Groundhog Day" Loop, and are draining the Allspark itself in preparation for wiping Cybertron and its dimension from existence. The second is an alternate timeline where Megatron killed Optimus and stole the Matrix of Leadership before the war even began. Here, he was able to crush the Autobots, liquidate most of the Decepticons and replace them with mindless drones, and even destroyed the Quintessons when they arrived to destroy his dimension.
• Kim Possible: "A Sitch in Time" has Kim's arch enemy Shego conquer the world with the help of the Tempus Simia.
• Rainbow Brite's Rainbow Land started out as this until Rainbow herself defeated the Evil One.
• In The Emperor's New School, a disguised Yzma gets Kuzco to wish he wasn't emperor. The result was... Yzmopolis, her metropolis.
• In Teen Titans (2003), the Big Bad of Season 4, Trigon, destroys the world within ten seconds of arriving on Earth; all water is transformed into lava, all buildings are reduced to blasted ruins, and the Teen Titans are the only people left alive. Needless to say, reversing all this takes quite a bit of doing.
• Phineas and Ferb's Dr. Doofenshmirtz has gotten two of these. The first one comes in "Quantum Boogaloo" in which we see a Bad Future where he has managed to take over. The second comes in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension where his "Other-Dimensionator" takes us to an alternate version of Danville in which his alternate self is in charge.
  • Admittedly, there is some debate in the fandom about how much of the Bad Future was his fault—society was already falling apart, which allowed Doof to take over.
• The finale of Mighty Max reveals this to be Skullmaster's ultimate plan—using the Cap for a special ceremony that will rewrite history so that he will be the eternal ruler of the world in both the past and future.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: An episode has Jimmy's Evil Counterpart steal and modify a flawed duplication device and use it to create a copy of Earth where everyone is just as evil as he is while also causing the original Earth to fade away.
• One unusually-grim storyline on the original G.I. Joe cartoon sent several Joes to a parallel dimension where COBRA had conquered the world and killed all of their alternate-reality counterparts.
• The Jackie Chan Adventures season 2 episode, aptly named "Demon World", has Shendu possessing Jackie, then manipulating the Book of Ages, a magic book where all history is written, in order to alter the past so the demons were never defeated. The result is a world ruled by demons, technology doesn't exist and humans are slaves (including Jackie, who doesn't even know martial arts). The only one who remembers how the world used to be is Jade, since she accidentally tore out a part of a page of the Book that talked about her joining the forces of good to fight against the demons, and thus remained immune to the world change.
• The New Adventures of He-Man has Skeletor and Flogg take over Primus in the episode "The Gift", and remain in control until "The Battle for Levitan", four episodes later.
• One episode of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot has a time travel mishap send the Big Guy robot all the way back to the American Revolution while Big Guy's operator and Rusty travel a few minutes into the future. This drastically changes history, as Big Guy is not there to stop the villains he had been fighting throughout the series. The result is Earth having thoroughly lost an Alien Invasion, with the planet conquered and Earthlings subjugated by the extraterrestrials.
• In a It's a Wonderful Plot/Be Careful What You Wish For episode of Babar, the eponymous elephant king is overwhelmed by work and wishes never to be king while carrying a gypsy amulet. The result is a villain world with Rataxes ruling terribly over both elephants and rhinos.
• One Ruby-Spears Mega Man episode had Mega Man go into a Bad Future where without him to stop Dr. Wily, he won and nearly took over the entire world in the span of thirty years. Notably, Proto Man didn't want him to finish conquering because it'd be no fun without nasty uprisings to crush.
• The Magic Trolls and the Troll Warriors starts 15 years after King Nolaf conquered the kingdom and enslaved the inhabitants.
• In the first two episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic season two, Discord manages to do this. He effortlessly crushes the mane cast with his mind games and proceeds to use his Reality Warper abilities to turn Ponyville into a World Gone Mad/World of Chaos under his rule. To put it in perspective, the fact it's raining chocolate milk from cotton candy clouds is the least crazy thing about it and everypony is Driven to Madness. It's undone via World-Healing Wave when he's beaten.
  • In the two-part finale of season five, Twilight Sparkle finds herself in no less than six of these as she repeatedly fails to prevent Starlight Glimmer from tampering with the past.
    • In the first, Equestria is fighting a Hopeless War against King Sombra's Crystal Empire, with everypony forced to either join the army or devote themselves to supplying and supporting it in some way.
    • In the second, Queen Chrysalis' changelings have overrun Equestria, leaving only a small holdout of ponies under Zecora hiding in the Everfree Forest.
    • In the third, Nightmare Moon has imprisoned Celestia in the moon and is ruling a kingdom of eternal night, with Rarity and Rainbow Dash as her devoted servants.
    • The fourth, fifth and sixth are only glimpsed briefly, but consists of a world where Tirek is rampaging unstopped, a World of Chaos where Discord has turned Celestia and Luna into his toys, and a world being chewed to pieces by Flim and Flam's industrial greed. There is also a seventh world shown, but we don't find out which villain is responsible for it - it's simply a wasteland where Twilight, Spike, and Starlight seem to be the only living creatures left.
• In Gravity Falls, this is what ensues when Bill Cipher succeeds in opening a portal to his home dimension, turning the town of Gravity Falls and its surroundings into a World of Chaos and ruling over it with the help of some fellow monsters that came with him. He employs the previous season's antagonist Gideon as The Dragon in charge of a band of escaped criminals and has them hunt down troublemakers. Of course, he says that the town is just the beginning and intends to extend his rule to the rest of the world. He eventually reveals to Ford that his goal is to spread his reign across the entire universe.
• At the beginning of Voltron: Legendary Defender, the Galra Empire have successfully took over much of the universe and are getting closer to reaching Earth. Voltron and the Paladins' ultimate goal is to free planets and form an alliance with them to prepare for a rebellion to fight them.
• In both She-Ra: Princess of Power and its reboot She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the planet Etheria is under the totalitarian rule of the Horde, Adora/She-Ra and the Rebellion aim is to free their world from them. Both series have an extra level of horror. Hordak is conquering Etheria on behalf of his master, Horde Prime. Outside of the Despondos dimension, Horde Prime has conquered large swaths of the universe.
• In the Gargoyles episode "Future Tense", Goliath and his companions come back from traveling the world to find 40 years have past and Xanatos has taken over New York. It's an illusion created by Puck.

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