Basic Trope: A Supervillain has technologies or abilities that could legitimately earn him a lot of money by legal means, but he instead uses them for criminal pursuits.
- Straight: Dr. Evilstein has incredible logical and mathematicial abilities. He uses them to rob banks.
- Exaggerated: Dr. Evilstein has created an infinite energy source, various flavors of Nanomachines, and a teleportation technology. He uses them to minor drug and convenience stores.
- Downplayed: Dr. Evilstein has incredible logical and mathematicial abilities. He subtly hacks and commits fraud and embezzlement because only he's smart enough to do it and remain undetected.
- Justified:
- Dr. Evilstein is a Card-Carrying Villain, and he believes "true" villains do not sell themselves out, they take.
- Dr. Evilstein robs banks for personal reasons: the thrill of it, seeing what his work can do, and getting back at that rude bank teller. He doesn't care about money; he might have already made enough with legit pursuits.
- Dr. Evilstein is a misanthrope who doesn't want to help anyone with his inventions.
- Dr. Evilstein is an amoral Arms Dealer, his business is his villainy, although he occasionally rob banks with his inventions whenever he runs out of budget.
- Dr. Evilstein's inventions cannot be replicated.
- Dr. Evilstein doesn't want to market his technology himself because most businesses fail within their first year of operation, and doesn't want to have to answer to employers or investors he considers to be Pointy Haired Bosses.
- Dr. Evilstein's inventions are of the type that any sane regulatory body would put the kibosh on; perhaps they're Powered by a Forsaken Child, have horrendous side effects, or are just Awesome, but Impractical and no investor would take them.
- Dr. Evilstein uses his tech for crime in order to prove his own superiority. If everyone and their brother had access to the tech, he wouldn't be so special, now would he?
- Someone else more powerful is controlling/blackmailing Dr. Evilstein into using his inventions for villainy.
- Dr. Evilstein has far grander ambitions than petty greed, such as world domination, Utopia Justifies the Means, or even The End of the World as We Know It. If he uses his inventions for theft, it's only because that's a quicker way of funding that end, assuming he uses it for theft at all.
- Dr. Evilstein tried to make money legitimately with his inventions but failed, so he turned to crime.
- Dr. Evilstein's logical and mathematical abilities allow him to fill his own special niche in the criminal underworld, whereas using his abilities legally would just leave him one among millions in academia.
- The companies that are interested in purchasing Dr. Evilstein's technologies are far more morally bankrupt than he would ever be. Stealing banks is not a victimless crime, sure, but by targeting the banks that help fund said companies he considers it as "sticking it to The Man".
- Dr. Evilstein is a Dirty Communist.
- For whatever reason, Dr. Evilstein has been blacklisted from any legitimate industry that he could have sold his inventions to.
- Although he is very inventive and a brilliant physicist/engineer, Dr. Evilstein does not possess the social skills nor business savvy to make money legitimately with his inventions. Even if he did start up his own company, that isn't necessarily a guarantee for success.
- Robbing a bank is one of many ways to effectively field-test Dr. Evilstein's inventions, in a setting that he doesn't control and where a lot of things can go wrong. It's a purposeful handicap.
- Evilstein robs banks to prove that competitors' vault-technology is antiquated compared to his.
- Evilstein just wants people to suffer and die. Any money he spends is just a means to that end, and he won't be dissuaded from that end.
- Dr. Evilstein never even thinks of using his abilities legitimately.
- Inverted:
- Super Serum and Hypno Rays are marketed towards Average Joes instead of military or criminals.
- Alex has terrifying powers that could easily make him incredibly wealthy... if he was willing to market himself as a human WMD to the sort of people who are willing to pay just to see others hurt. He's too moral to ever do this, so instead he gets a mundane job like pest control that doesn't pay very well, but is at least easy on the conscience.
- Bigg Banga, a rapper with explosive eye beams, has an album that's about to drop, so he blows up a parked car to get a few cameras pointed at him.
- The villain has terrifying powers that could allow him to rule the world easily, but he's too blinded by greed to see that. He only uses his powers for money, drawing ire from another Visionary Villain.
- Implied: Dr. Evilstein's Establishing Character Moment montage includes him reading a letter from the local MegaCorp about how they're interested in his teleportation technology only for the Doctor to roll his eyes, shred the letter, and walk through the teleportation pad into a bank vault.
- Subverted:
- Dr. Evilstein makes far more money (and/or respect, power etc.) out of crime than he would legitimately.
- Dr. Evilstein says "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" and goes legit.
- Dr. Evilstein actually patented his invention and it makes enough money that he doesn't have any visible financial motive, and makes it seem like someone is using his technology for bad.
- Someone approaches Dr. Evilstein and offers him a job.
- Dr. Evilstein's technology is Powered by a Forsaken Child; no sane person would buy it.
- Dr. Evilstein makes a ton of technology that appears to be only capable of doing evil on its own, but by combining them, he can make something that he can sell legitimately.
- Double Subverted:
- He's only pretending to go legit while he plots his next crime spree.
- He can make more money by being a legitimate businessman and a criminal mastermind.
- He's a Corrupt Corporate Executive who commits crimes in order to sabotage his competition or create demand for his technology.
- Dr. Evilstein quits his new job or never accepts the job offer in the first place.
- Dr. Evilstein's new employer works illegally.
- However, when times become desperate, people start buying his tech no matter the cost.
- Dr. Evilstein only put his technology up for sale to ease off suspicion that he may be up to something, and provide a legitimate cover in case someone realizes a minion is using his technology.
- Parodied:
- Dr. Evilstein creates new construction materials, advanced medical technologies, a Weather-Control Machine - and still finds a way to use them in bank robberies.
- Dr. Evilstein ends up going legit but finds it difficult to stop doing his evil mad scientist speeches during pitch meetings.
- Zig Zagged: Dr Evilstein starts out selling his stuff to other supervillains, then goes into supervillainy himself, then goes straight for a while but it's really just a cover...
- Averted: Dr. Evilstein uses his abilities legitimately to make himself rich.
- Enforced: "We can't let our villain just stop his conquest and become a lawful civilian, now can we?"
- Lampshaded: "Do you know how much people would like to buy all this stuff? Think about it!"
- Invoked: "Now what do I have here... a remote-controlled tank, a Freeze Ray... I know! It's time to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
- Exploited:
- A Corrupt Corporate Executive steals Dr. Evilstein's technology, and patents it, passing it off as his own.
- The Government starts recruiting various mad scientists from prison for research and development projects with the promise of reduced sentences and potentially promising careers after their release.
- Defied: "Supervillainy? Naaaah. I'd rather sell my inventions and make millions off them, thankyouverymuch".
- Discussed: "Couldn't this guy just make more money than banks ever have by going legit?" "Completely correct, but this is Doctor Evilstein we're talking about".
- Conversed: "Have you seen the technologies those villains have? Why won't anyone cut Lex Luthor a check?" "Well, if all villains suddenly went legit there wouldn't be much of a story, right?"
- Deconstructed:
- Dr. Evilstein got his start in criminality because he got screwed over by a Corrupt Corporate Executive who stole the intellectual property rights to his inventions. The bank robberies are in fact an elaborate plot to screw this very executive right back.
- Dr. Evilstein is an Corrupt Corporate Executive who designs his inventions so they would be as expensive as they are useful, so only the wealthiest can afford them and he can earn insane amounts of money.
- Dr. Evilstein tried to market his inventions legally, but his business failed. Now he tries to earn money from his inventions the only way he can think of.
- Dr. Evilstein tries to move into legitimate territory, but his villainous impulses keep getting the better of him and jeapordising that goal.
- Dr Evil Stein sees that, in the long term, it is much more productive to sell patents than to rob banks with their inventions.
- Dr. Evilstein succeeds in marketing his inventions legally. He becomes obscenely rich, but also bored out his mind, so turns to villainy just to break the monotony.
- Reconstructed:
- Dr. Evilstein gets the rights back, but continues to rob banks because he's grown to like it, and is wanted by the law.
- Dr. Evilstein is actually successful in marketing his inventions. He's just incredibly greedy, and robs banks because he wants even more money than he's already earned.
- Dr. Evilstein already markets his inventions, but commits crimes anyway because he knows he can't just buy the world. It doesn't work like that.
- Played For Laughs: Dr Evilstein markets his inventions by robbing banks to demonstrate them.
- Played For Drama: Dr. Evilstein's Berserk Button is people talking about how "You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!". There is a (pretty unfunny) Running Gag throughout the stories in which the Doctor appears wherein someone (from little kids up to Fiction 500 CEOs) tries to talk to Dr. Evilstein about how much money and prestige he would get, with ever-increasingly outrageous monetary amounts proposed, only for the doctor to give them a blood-curdlingly horrible death in response.
- Played For Horror: Not only is Dr. Evilstein's mad science horrifying to behold in general (such as sewing people together in old-school Frankenstein-style Body Horror, and the research involved hiring a Serial Killer) but when someone tries to point out the things he could profit from (imagine the research that went into dealing with tissue rejection, severed nerves and making muscles work right away, doubly so with still alive and conscious individuals) what Dr. Evilstein does to them is hard-R or even X-rated.
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