A subsidiary of Trope Co. where you'll find all the Villains Out Shopping.
Here, you can find all of the delightfully vile tools you could ever need as a Big Bad. Need a Death Trap? We carry them all, from Acid Pools to Trap Doors! Looking to make your Mooks more reliable? You can trade in the standard issue variety for top-of-the-line Evil, Inc. Mecha-Mooks! Want to build a new Super Villain Lair or Den of Iniquity? We offer not only the materials, but some of the finest dark and foreboding real estate around! Anything and everything you need for your Evil Plan is available and affordably priced.
So, what will it be today?
Not to be confused with Predatory Business, which is about corporations that are seen as evil due to unsavory business practices. Also don't confuse with Villains Out Shopping, which is about bad guys doing normal errands when they're off the clock.
May or may not be a sub-group of The Syndicate, depending on the setting.
See also Arms Dealer, Black Market, Bad Guy Bar, Criminal Convention and War for Fun and Profit.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: Most of the monsters that invade Dreamland are bought by King Dedede from Nightmare Enterprises.
Comic Books
- Several Marvel Universe villains made careers out of this:
- Arcade (X-Men) used to make money by producing robotic "heroes" for the villains to practice on, while Taskmaster (The Avengers) made money by providing training for mooks.
- Justin Hammer (Iron Man) and the Tinkerer (Spider-Man) are well-known super-villain technology suppliers.
- One of Spider-Man's less formidable enemies, the Kangaroo, got a suit of Powered Armor from the "Sharper Villain's Catalogue", but given its quality, the place is likely a scam.
- Leo Zelinsky is a tailor in Brooklyn who makes costumes for the heroes and villains, though he alternates days, opening his shop for bad guys on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and for heroes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. (He sees nothing wrong with this — he's just a guy trying to make a living.)
Film — Animated
- Despicable Me:
- The first Despicable Me movie has the Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers).
- Minions, meanwhile, has Villain-Con, a trade convention for supervillains held in Orlando where the Minions Kevin, Stuart, and Bob meet Scarlet Overkill.
- The entire country of Malaria in Igor, though it's less "buy our evil stuff" and more "pay us to not sell it".
- Megamind subverts this: he builds all his gadgets himself and he gets all his decorative stuff ("computers" that consist of nothing but flashing lights) from a small outlet in Romania.
Film — Live Action
- The troll market in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
- In the Cold Opening of Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond infiltrates one of these. Cue Stuff Blowing Up and an escape in a fighter jet.
Literature
- Knockturn Alley in Harry Potter (Evil Counterpart to Diagon Alley).
Live-Action TV
- The underworld black magic market seen in one episode of Charmed (1998).
- A Season 2 episode of Gotham features "The Merc", a sort of Costco where all the criminals of Gotham go to buy everything from flamethrowers to rocket launchers — with a loudspeaker actually advertising two for one deals, to complete the gag. Only in Gotham...
- Superman: The Lead-Lined Shop is a place located in the bad part of Metropolis, detailed in a 1988 Mockumentary done to celebrate Superman's 50th anniversary. All of its merchandise seems designed with fighting Superman in mind, including Kryptonite of all varieties. (Continuity for The Silver Age of Comic Books still in effect.) Despite this, the owner claims to be a law-abiding merchant, indicating a disclaimer on the wall that reads "It is a crime to utilize the items in this shop for the purpose of Evil".
- An episode of The Unusuals features a store that sells murder equipment.
Tabletop Games
- The Champions supplement Gadgets! mentions two organizations that sell weapons and other equipment to supervillains: the West German KRONOS and Japanese ISE (International Scientific Elite).
- Planescape:
- You can find anything for sale in Sigil, with places like this most common in the Lower Ward and the Hive.
- Dragon Annual #2 mentions the Consortium, a market on the Grey Waste the size of a large city ("without a doubt, the commerce center of the Lower Planes") run by the oldest coven of night hags in existence. They specialize in larvae (damned souls that fiends use in the creation of young fiends) but specialize in larvae products, such as a perfume for temptress fiends called "Evil #7". They also have markets that sell weapons, slaves, and every type of contraband imaginable. The article even mentions a coffee shop in the place that sells Abyssal Brew.
- Rifts has the Splynn dimensional market for the obvious one, selling everything from magic to technology to slaves and minions, though the Naruni try and compete on purely the technological front (not that they just sell to evil, they sell to everyone!).
- Shadowrun: Fixers sell illegal equipment (including weapons and ammunition) to shadowrunners.
Video Games
- City of Heroes, as a natural part of Villains being possible player characters, has plenty of stores selling various goods. Want to make your radiation gun hit harder? Just buy an enhancement from one of the countless quartermasters and stores all over Rogue Isles!
- GoldenEye: Rogue Agent: The Octopus.
- These exist in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for the Player Character, though some may consider them to be Anti-Hero Marts. These black-market dealers include, in order of severity: a pawn shop owner selling knives and 38. calibre pistols without a license; a bored clerk at a 7-11 offloading firearms to supplement meagre pay; a Chinese ex-military herbalist with several "remedies" that can only be bought with cash; a black-market dealer with more than a few ties to organized crime, working from the back of his truck; finally, there's Mercurio, a Ghoul arms dealer working for Prince Lacroix, capable of finding just about anything for anyone. A borderline case may be found in the form of Pisha the Nagaraja, a flesh-eating immortal lurking in the basement of a condemned hospital, who'll happily hand over some very useful items... provided you can find the occult items she's been searching for.
Webcomics
- Evil, Inc. is all about one of these.
- In Sinfest, the Devil apparently runs the vast majority of corporations, and thus, nearly every business is like this.
Web Original
- The unfortunately defunct parody website Villain Supply (later Villain Source) is all about this trope. Be sure to read the small print, however.
- Whateley Universe: Sin d'Rome Mercenarium, a mutants-only Dark Web site selling everything from combat robots and biological weapons to pre-fab lairs and custom uniforms for equipping your Evil Minions. Oh, and they have jobs boards for hiring Mooks, signing on with other villain's collaborative projects, or finding patronage for your own villainous endeavors from various interested parties.
Western Animation
- Supervillain Supermarket and Deli in Codename: Kids Next Door, pictured above. While a villain-exclusive place, the inventory seems typical of most supermarkets and even has discount cards and coupons. That said, it's also bizarrely large — probably because of all the villains needing parking for their crazy vehicles.
- A gag in Family Guy features a literal black market, a supermarket stocked with weapons.
- HenchCo in Kim Possible sells equipment and minions.
- OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: The main villain, Lord Boxman, owns Box More, a factory that sells evil fighting robots.
