Basic Trope: A convention for supervillains, Serial Killers, terrorists and other criminals.
- Straight:
- The First Annual Secret Supervillain Shindig is a black-market convention where all super criminals can make their back-door deals, purchase doomsday weapons and purchase captured superheroes to do with as they please.
- The "Cereal Convention" is a convention hidden in plain sight. What to the general public believes is a convention for cereal enthusiasts or a gathering of cereal box ad-makers is actually a secret gathering of the country's most notorious serial killers can gather, buy instruments of torture and potentially murder each other in each other's hotel rooms.
- The convention is a black-market auctioneer hosted by a weapons dealing organization that auctions off illegal weapons to dictators and terrorist groups.
- Exaggerated: Evil-Co is a convention where all of the world’s most notorious super villains, serial killers and international criminals get together. They host their convention at a public conventions center, complete with billboards, television advertisements and a website, and yet Interpol, the CIA, the KGB and even local law enforcement do not seem to be interested in investigating it or launching a full-scale arrest on everyone in there.
- Downplayed:
- The convention is actually meant for people who were arrested, but for non-violent, low-tier criminal activity (speeding, jaywalking, not paying one's taxes, etc.)
- The convention is one massive gathering for ex-cons akin to a High School reunion, people who have payed their debts to society and are simply seeking kinship with those who have once broken the law and are now free.
- Justified:
- Doomsdays weapons and illegal firearms cannot be mailed to their purchaser and electronic transactions are much easier to track for law-enforcement. Being there in person and handling it with physical money in a briefcase handcuffed to them is the best way of managing these things, and in what better way than in a mall format to browse and select from a wide-range of options?
- Conventions are set in massive centers with literal thousands of people hustling and bustling, so it is likely one can be overlooked when trying to cut a shady deal.
- The role of "supervillain" is considered a respectable business in this world, so naturally there would be a convention open to the public for such a business.
- Inverted:
- J-Con (short for Justice Convention) is a convention where superheroes can congregate, share stories, sign up for Super Teams and ask for aid when the strain of their own territory's crime-rate is too much.
- The 2018 Police and Law Enforcement Conference and Convention is a gathering for a select number of officers of law enforcement (both retired and off-duty) where they win awards for their achievements.
- Subverted: The protagonist breaks in to a convention center where they believe is hosting a secret congregation of the city's many mafia families are gathering, but in twist they are all actually secretly gathered teams of local and national law-enforcement and PIs working together to take down those very same mafia families.
- Double Subverted: The protagonist breaks in to a convention center where they believe is hosting a secret congregation of the city's many mafia families are gathering, only to reveal that it a convention of the county's Police Officers… only to reveal that they are all dirty cops payed off by The Don brought together for their monthly briefing by the Don's head lackeys.
- Parodied: A full-on police raid is done at the local convention center because some of the people there were dressed like comic-book supervillains. A full-on prosecution and tear-filled accusations from super heroes claiming to have feared for their lives by the convention goers ensue.
- Zig Zagged: The convention center is hosting "Villain-Con", a convention of comic-book enthusiasts that are fans of comic book characters that happen to be antagonists. However, the convention itself is secretly being used by actual super villains and actually sell and purchase actual weapons and illegal contraband under the guise of being convention goers buying toys and false replicas. When they are found out and arrested by local law enforcement, it turns out that the police and criminals are all actually people pretending in an elaborate game of "cops and robbers" being hosted by the convention… which is being run by the Legion of Doom.
- Averted: The convention center is hosting Comic-Con. All supervillains are just a bunch of out of shape-nerds in cosplay.
- Enforced: The various products for sale at the Criminal Convention are being sold as toys in Real Life.
- Lampshaded: "Oh yeah, I'm sure impoverished drug dealers do trades like this all the time with former dictators. They meet at the Evil People Conventions and exchange business cards."
- Invoked: An angsty teenage boy wants to join a super villain group, so he looks up online and checks the schedule of his local convention center to see if there will be any super villain conventions in the near future.
- Exploited: The Eliminator decides to drop a nuke on the convention center, figuring out that even if he only kills twenty-five to forty percent of the convention-goers, that is still going to be two or three thousand criminals that will permanently stop being a menace (as for what is going to happen to the civilians surrounding the convention center, the Eliminator decides they are a sacrifice The Needs of the Many needs to overlook).
- Defied: "We have to have every convention in the city under heavy surveillance. Easy targets for costumed freaks wanting to shoot-up the joint."
- Discussed: "Oh, sure. Because people who kill and steal without provocation and are constantly evading law enforcement would be comfortable around deadly weapons and people just as likely to kill them without remorse. The whole place would be like come here and arrest me sign for every single one of them!"
- Conversed: "What do you mean bad guys don't go shopping in a mall? They do that in cartoons!"
- Implied: In an episode that shows various kinds of conventions, one convention has various people in black ski masks and carrying around a bunch of high-powered weapons.
- Deconstructed: Everyone at Evil-Con really are serial killers, rapists, terrorists, international thieves and supervillains of every creed and ambition... and it is a utter powder-keg. The female attendees don't feel safe around the rapists, the LGBT crowd are sharply at odds with the religious radicals, the religious radicals all hate each other, and the vendors are all on hair-triggers due to the various Bomb-Throwing Anarchists, terrorists, and skilled thieves browsing their wares. All the while, the more unhinged attendees are indulging their impulses, the gangsters are settling old scores in the lobby, and the supervillains are getting up in each others faces over petty grudges and insults. Even assuming several Doomsday Devices aren't set off due to demonstrations or carelessness, the amount of suspicious activity tips off the heroes, prompting them to investigate and apprehend all the attendees in one fell swoop.
- Reconstructed: The first few conventions were utter disasters, with mass death and mass incarcerations of the conventioneers and vendors, but eventually the Villain World begins creating their own laid-out list of unspoken rules that enforce Honor Among Thieves. The conventions are held in designated Truce Zones known only to the criminal underworld, and is often only held by and is only for members of a very specific Nebulous Evil Organisation in-mind (they also make a point of dealing with rabble-rousers in a very prompt and final manner). All law enforcement in the surrounding areas have either been bribed into negligence or quickly replaced, all forged licenses and deeds have been planned and given and everything that could go wrong has been anticipated and given a contingency plan (which in turn have their own contingency plans).
- Played For Laughs: The villain convention looks not that dissimilar at all from other conventions such as San Diego Comic-Con, with a nice easy-listening Muzak background track being played over a montage of Blofeld wanna-bes handing out autographs and giving inspirational talks, mad scientists peddling the latest batch of genetically-engineered Anthrax like they were in a Billy Mays infomercial, all of the series' main villains acting like stereotypical nerds fighting each other to get their legends' attention and their goons carrying dozens of bags full of souvenirs.
- Played For Drama: The heroes have to infiltrate Evil-Con in disguise as part of an information gathering operation. This leads to numerous tense moments as the heroes witness a parade of extraordinary crimes while unable to do anything about them, have to bluff their way past questions about their sudden interest in specific villainous parties without giving their intentions away, deal with villains suspicious of the new arrivals' lack of knowledge about the convention's unwritten rules and etiquette, and defend themselves against the more violent conventioneers without giving their identities away through the use of their powers or trademark tools.
