Basic Trope: The existence of superpowers has a negative effect on the world.
- Straight: Captain Justice is a superhero who rules the world by going Knight Templar on anyone who commits a crime, regardless of its severity.
- Exaggerated:
- Captain Justice is a superhero who is so vicious and ruthless in ruling the world that even the tyrannical villains think he's going overboard.
- Captain Justice is an Eldritch Abomination in disguise.
- Downplayed:
- Captain Justice was democratically elected to lead Earth, but his policies turn out to be draconian, although not outright insane.
- Justice rules a small nation, as opposed to a whole world. See Doctor Doom.
- None of the supers take over the world, but these grandstanding "heroes" are tolerated only because they stop outright villains.
- Justified:
- Captain Justice believes that idealism isn't enough to preserve justice, so he feels that ruling the world is the viable solution to do so.
- With such power, why should Captain Justice care about other's opinion? It's not like anyone is capable of going against Justice's wishes.
- Inverted:
- Emperor Evulz manages to take over the world... and turns out to be a very capable ruler, and pretty fair to boot. I mean, the free health-care, gay marriage being legalized, a balanced budget. Villainy and all, but hey, practicality is a good reason to be nice.
- Muggle First parties rise to power in most of the world, and resentment towards those with superpowers becomes the new norm regardless of any benevolence or animosity on their part. Depending on their luck, empowered persons get shunned and ostracized, have to register with a special authority, are confined to certain towns or neighborhoods, or at worst, attacked on sight. Eventually, the authorities go so far as to start killing children suspected of having superpowers, as well as abducting their families just to be sure.
- Subverted: Captain Justice turned out to be one of Emperor Evulz's robot twins.
- Double Subverted: ...But Evulz was just an alter ego Captain Justice created to scare the world into submitting to his rule.
- Parodied: Doctor Nacho threatens to take the world's nachos if they don't submit to him. The world quickly kneels.
- Zig Zagged: Captain Justice turned out to be one of Emperor Evulz's robot twins, but Evulz was just an alter ego Captain Justice created to scare the world into submitting to his rule... Or so it seems. In truth, Evulz was a duplicate from Another Dimension who had come to conquer Justice's Earth... Just like he had on his own world, where he was once called Dr. Totally Radical.
- Averted: Captain Justice never uses his powers to gain control of anything,
- Enforced: "Guys, we need to sell more comics!" "Turn Captain Justice into an evil tyrant?" "Don't care. Get it written, drawn and inked by Thursday."
- Lampshaded: "I'm not your ordinary super hero. I am the savior of the world!"
- Invoked: Captain Justice and the world governments conspire to "stage a coup" in order to root out Evulz's henchmen.
- Exploited: Evulz uses Justice's unexpected tyranny to paint himself as a noble La Résistance fighter so he can take out his enemy and take the throne.
- Defied: Justice is offered the chance to seize power during The End of the World as We Know It, and declines, afraid he may become drunk with power.
- Discussed: Captain Justice ponders what would happen if he went this route, possibly to a villain or hostile group, musing about what a bad idea it would be to push him to abandon, for instance, a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy. He proceeds to imply or outright tell his opposition that this would happen if they were to cross some line such as, just for instance, hurting Justice's loved ones.
- Conversed: "Almost four decades of 'what if Superman was evil?' rammed down your throat again and again and again makes a man sick of it, you know?" "So you prefer those stupid artsy-fartsy 'reconstructions', right? The ones that try too hard to be Silver Age?" "...Superman being darker and edgier I can understand. Superman tackling harsh real life issues I can understand. Superman having to take a few hard choices and make someone else bleed... I can understand. But one more time I see Superman going all Plutonian in a DC comic, and I'm not sure what the hell am I going to do."
- Implied: Captain Justice rules the world, and while they never go into detail about his rules or policies, it is a pretty Crapsack World.
- Deconstructed: Captain Justice burned a lot of bridges on his way up, and eventually he found himself surrounded on all sides by The Starscream.
- Reconstructed: Justice knew they were there, and just wanted to keep them close so he could crush their bodies into bloody cubes once they betrayed him.
- Played For Laughs:
- At every turn, Captain is stymied by bureaucracy when he just tries to get a pencil at a police station to book a mugger. Eventually, he just tears apart the government, forming a new one that is identical to the old, save that pencils are far less regulated.
- Captain Justice is bewared of because he is a Lethal Klutz - Brightburn by way of Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Every act of literally bloody hilarity that occurs throughout the story makes it hard to tell if Captain Justice would be any better or worse as a competent, but vile, super.
- Played For Drama: The atrocities that Captain Justice has done for the sake of his desire for order would make all of the tyrants of the history of the world puke their guts out and die of fright, and being a Physical God means that he is an Invincible Villain. Humanity... nay, the entire galaxy... no, scratch that, the known multiverse has nothing to hope for and nothing to look forward to but having the Captain's boot stomping down on its collective face. Forever.
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