Basic Trope: A villainous leader stays as the leader despite being evil and disliked.
- Straight: Zorg Khan is widely known for causing wars, committing genocides, and bombing his own civilians. He is kept in charge because everyone is too scared to stand up to him.
- Exaggerated: Zorg Khan Eats Babies, curb-stomps puppies, and uses the Geneva Convention as a checklist. His citizens respond with overwhelming praise and giving all of their mortal possessions. Those who respond negatively or are even apathetic are put in an endless torture chamber.
- Downplayed: Zorg is an asshole but not enough for the civilians to dislike him.
- Justified:
- Zorg uses fear as a tool to get away with his actions.
- Despite being evil, he is still far better than the previous leaders.
- Zorg isolated his civilians from the outside world and surrounded them with constant propaganda. The citizens were brainwashed into thinking that Zorg is god and can do no wrong.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Zorg is not that bad, but got framed. All of the civilians were too afraid to do anything to him, so Zorg just rolled with it and kept his good actions secret.
- Zorg was never the leader, but has deluded himself and others to believe otherwise.
- Double Subverted:
- Zorg stops caring and becomes evil for real.
- Zorg overthrows the real leader and turns his delusion into a reality.
- Parodied: Zorg is in an election with the tagline "no lives matter" and enters the room while drinking orphan tears and eating a human veal burger with the wrapper still on. He won by a landslide because the opponent got exposed for doing even worse things.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Zorg has a Split Personality that isn't a horrible person.
- Zorg is a prince that ruined the kingdom while his better father had a Disney Death.
- Averted:
- There are no leaders.
- Zorg never gets into politics.
- Zorg does not abuse his power.
- Enforced: The author wants to have an obvious bad guy but still has enough mooks for the hero to beat up.
- Lampshaded: "Who elected this guy? All he does is execute people who oppose hi-"
- Invoked: Zergon manipulates his son to be as evil as possible so that the pain of his civilians will not end, even after his death.
- Exploited: A rebel unites Zorg's entire population against him and usurps him.
- Defied:
- Zorg pulls a Heel–Face Turn and took time to become a better person before entering the election.
- Zorg is overthrown by Groz instantly to avoid an abusive reign.
- Discussed: "I can no longer afford to be nice. This all fell apart when my mother showed mercy, now I must rule with a blood soaked iron fist. Traitors have exploited kind leaders. I will become a horrible person, but their fear will be what keeps their society together."
- Conversed: "Why do all of these people work for a boss that doesn't pay them and will kill them for failing? It's because they had no choice in the matter. It's either death at our hands or death in Zorg's torture dungeon."
- Implied: Zorg is on his throne while strangling a soldier with one hand.
- Deconstructed: Zorg's abuse starts tearing his own country apart from the inside out. Morale is at an all time low. His population and military is a quarter of what was once there due to the genocides that he ordered. The economy crumbles from sanctions and the deaths of producers. Allies are alienated and far more powerful enemies are made daily. Eventually, Zorg becomes the king of a vacant wasteland.
- Reconstructed: Zorg invades another country and continues the cycle to continue his power trip.
- Played for Laughs: Zorg us Obviously Evil but won the election because he looked way cooler than the extremely basic man in a suit.
- Played for Drama: Zorg has zero empathy for any of his subjects, but the citizens cannot interfere with him.
- Played for Horror: Zorg is an extremely cruel dictator that publicly executes everyone that disobeys one of his millions of laws.
Back to Infamous, but in Charge
