Basic Trope: A Mad Scientist becomes The Emperor.
- Straight:
- Mad Scientist Bob uses his superior technology and scientific skills to Take Over the World.
- In Bob's empire, scientific discoveries are the primary means of advancing your social status.
- Exaggerated: Bob uses his scientific knowledge to become God and thus automatically become ruler of the universe.
- Downplayed:
- Bob takes over his hometown thanks to his superior technology.
- Bob is a career scientist who becomes The Emperor for reasons unrelated to his technological skills.
- Justified: Bob is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, who believes that mankind needs to be united under one ruler for its own good and plans to later use his inventions to better the lives of his subjects. The current dictator of Bob’s country is also not as smart as Bob, so Bob leads a coup because he believe he can do a much better job.
- Inverted: Science Hero Bob defeats the Evil Overlord with his scientific skills.
- Emperor Evulz, after taking the world, decides to study super science, as his new status as ruler allows him access to powerful information.
- Subverted:
- Bob starts using more and more magic instead of his own inventions.
- Mad Science or no, Bob states he has no interest in ruling this world.
- Double Subverted:
- Magic is just a different form of science.
- Bob does not want to rule THIS world-he's creating a pocket universe In Their Own Image, which he plants to become God-Emperor of.
- Parodied: Bob literally got his degree in World Domination, with a minor in Mad Science.
- Zig Zagged: Bob alters between using science and magic in furthering his conquest.
- Averted: All Mad Scientists stay in their labs.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Thanks to my new invention, I will finally Take Over the World!"
- Invoked: Bob became a Mad Scientist specifically to conquer the world.
- Exploited: Alice is another scientist who gets funding for her own projects more easily because the leader has such a positive opinion of science.
- Defied: Bob considers taking over the world for a while, then abandons this idea in favor of some new experiment.
- Discussed: "I'm worried about Bob. He could easily take over the world with his inventions and scientific skills."
- Conversed: Bob writes an essay about the Emperor Scientist archetype in various works of fiction.
- Deconstructed:
- Most of Bob's new subjects become guinea pigs in his labs and environments of the newly conquered kingdoms are quickly polluted by chemical wastes.
- Even after taking over the world, Bob finds he takes no joy in it, as he has to spend all his time ruling and little of his time in his lab. Seeing as his reason for taking over was to have unlimited resources, time, and freedom to play with syringes, he eventually quits in a huff, with or without using a Doomsday Device first.
- The Peter Principle. While Bob is intelligent, he is no Omnidisciplinary Scientist and he has no interest or idea on how to govern and rule.
- Bob becomes a poor scientist as an emperor as others fear to contradict him, the pressures of ruling and face turns his practices into pseudoscientific dogmatism.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob becomes The Atoner and turns his new empire into a Utopia with his scientific skills.
- Bob constructs a robotic body double to do the ruling in his stead, and is now content to work in his lab while ruling from the shadows.
- Bob finds other expert scientists and engineers to help rule and delegate governance in a technocratic government, hoping that they can bring their own knowledges to find solutions to each of society's problems.
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