Basic Trope: Two or more villains work together to achieve a common goal they share.
- Straight: Two villains team up to defeat their shared hero adversaries.
- Exaggerated: An entire Rogues Gallery teams up to form a Legion of Doom to stop a single hero.
- Downplayed: The team up only lasts a short time before they turn on each other.
- Justified: The hero or heroes have beaten the villains so many times that they have no choice but to work together to have a chance of victory.
- Subverted: Despite ostensibly teaming up, the villains spend just as much time fighting each other as they do the hero or heroes.
- Double Subverted: ...Although they ultimately decide to work together "for the greater evil," since they can go right back to fighting each other once the meddling hero or heroes have been dealt with.
- Inverted: Heroes join forces to defeat a shared villain.
- Parodied:
- Averted: Despite having a common adversary, the individual members of the Rogues Gallery never learn about each other, and thus have no reason to join forces.
- Defied: Or the individual members of the Rogues Gallery do know about each other, but outright refuse to work together because they all believe they are the only ones worthy of defeating the hero or heroes.
- Zig-Zagged: Villain Team Ups are formed on an as-needed basis, and are often broken once they are no longer useful.
- Enforced: When the writers find themselves with two popular villains, they will often take advantage of their popularity by having them team up.
- Lampshaded: "Don't you just hate it when your two worst enemies work together?"
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Invoked:
- The hero tries to push the villains into joining forces so they can take all of them down at once.
- Or one of the villains suggests to the others that they team up.
- Exploited:
- Especially when the hero knows that the villains' respective egos would ensure that any team up would be short lived and they'd eventually turn on each other.
- Or because one of the villains has a greater goal in mind beyond merely defeating the heroes, and needs the extra muscle to pull it off.
- Played For Laughs: Two harmless villains team up, but their incompetence causes them to get in each other's way and effectively ruin any benefit of the teaming up.
- Played For Drama: Two villains team up, and their working together makes them an even greater threat to the hero or heroes.
- Played For Horror: Two villains team up, and thus become so powerful that they become the greatest threat the hero or heroes have ever faced, often leading to their defeat.
- Implied: The villains are working together from the beginning, and the viewers never see how or why they teamed up.
- Deconstructed:
- The villains team up, but their respective egos ultimately lead to the team breaking down.
- The villains have their own personal goals and motivations and only allied with each other to take down the hero. Because they have differing ideologies, their beliefs clash with each other and thus lead to an Enemy Civil War.
- Reconstructed: Which is useful for a Grand Finale where the hero or heroes have a chance to put away their adversaries once and for all.
