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Corrupt Corporate Executive

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Now comes the most entertaining part: the wait.

"Excellent job! Now to restructure the banking system so that we will be able to rob the shirts off of poor people... Uh, I mean, to invest prudently and generate wealth that will trickle down."
— Antonio Lopez, Tropico 4

A senior manager, CEO or owner of a major definitely-for-profit corporation who is out to make as much money and gain as much power as possible, by any means available, regardless of who suffers. To that end, they are perfectly willing to violate business or social ethics, commit crimes (ranging from fraudulent accounting to mass murder), and devastate Mother Nature and human communities, justifying those actions under the name of "just business". They are confident that all they have to do is spread enough money around to get their way or avoid punishment, and are very likely to cross the Moral Event Horizon and/or become The Unfettered in their search for profit. They are also very, very likely to be White (or Asian) and male, like CEOs in real life.

Expect to find them at the head of an enormous boardroom table on the top floor of an Evil Tower of Ominousness. He may be a Bad Boss, but not always. A few of them can actually be very decent employers, with employees who are completely in the dark about their underhanded plans. If so, the public is often just as much in the dark. Naturally, this sort of villain tends to have an Amoral Attorney (or several) on his payroll, in case he does slip up, and a small stormtrooper army of "security personnel" who have carte blanche to commit any number and kind of violent crimes to get a good performance evaluation from the boss. If those resources fail, he often uses money to "buy" or even "own" officials.

They usually fail to consider the full effects of their plan, or the fact that they can make more by going legit, and at times the plan seems to have no concrete way of creating wealth. Usually, they remain in business thanks to Offscreen Villain Dark Matter.

Though there are earlier examples, the modern Corrupt Corporate Executive had (until relatively recently) a distinctly The '80s feel, which made him seem progressively more out of place as those affectations become less mainstream. Earlier Corrupt Corporate Executives tended to be far less stylized and distinct from other "smooth" villain types (often with a healthy streak of Blofeld). However, over the past decade countless high profile real life cases of corporate corruption have arguably diminished the 80s feel of the character and made the Corrupt Corporate Executive a very modern villain.

A well-known variation of the CCE, which is popular in dystopian and Cyber Punk fiction, is the CEO or President of a megacorporation that produces and controls everything (even the authorities) and is the de facto ruler of the world.

Another variation of the CCE is the Robber Baron, a pre-80s, industrial revolution era manifestation that retains all of the CCE's cosmopolitan, far-reaching financial and political power, with perhaps even less governmental or media constraints to consider. Joseph Pulitzer, from the movie Newsies, is a perfect example of this subtrope. The Robber Baron will have a different wardrobe and jargon than the 80s CCE, as appropriate to his setting, but is otherwise indistinguishable.

Another variation on the CCE, found mostly in Walking the Earth series, is basically a Corrupt Hick with a business. The "corporations" they represent are not major multinational conglomerates, but small businesses like trucking companies, hotels, or other "mom and pop" ventures that simply want their competitors out of action. They tend to have little power outside of a single town or county, but can usually amass a small army of redneckish goons and threaten violence with impunity by virtue of paying off local law enforcement and/or the judiciary. This flavor of Corrupt Corporate Executive favors harassing a competing store owned by a kindly old man/woman and/or their family.

This is one of the inevitable progressions that any ambitious character will end in. See Also There Are No Good Executives and Morally Bankrupt Banker. Occasionally, the CCE will be the producer of an Immoral Reality Show.

Compare Greedy Jew and Pointy-Haired Boss. Contrast Honest Corporate Executive, the CCE's natural enemy. And remember that Even Evil Has Standards.

Sadly, this too is Truth in Television. Be that as it may, No Real Life Examples, Please!.

Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Shugo Chara!: While the show is "extraordinarily" supportive of large amounts of ambition, both Gozen and his "director", Kazamu Hoshina, both definitely count for this, although, unlike most examples, they are not motivated by money: Gozen just asks for the Embryo, and Kazamu does as he says. However, while an all - being source of infinite powers in the "care" of a couple of bastards may be a very annoying thing indeed, it's what 'makes' them bastards that throw them straight to this trope: Their methods. Their worst crime would be breaking or corrupting horrifically large amounts of Heart's Eggs, thus stopping the dreams of what would probably be hundreds of children, in order to get the Embryo. As for Kazamu's foolishness while attempting to give Gozen, A.K.A. Hikaru Ichinomiya, his grandson, easter's C.E.O. position, due both towards a distaste of the (Would be forced.) former proposed heir towards the easter heritage, Aruto, partly due towards his (Acheived.) dream of playing his violin, and due towards him emigrating, alone, within order towards avoiding running that company, and an action asking to use a "fitting" heir for easter: Blackmailing throughout violence Souko, Aruto's former wife, towards marrying him, thus giving him parental authority of both Aruto and Souko's children: Ikuto and Utau
  • Extensively referenced in the Cyber Punk series Bubblegum Crisis, where not only are GENOM's executives corrupt, but also controlling both the police and local government via a Government Conspiracy.
  • At first glance, the Yotsuba Group in Death Note appeared to be a group of ruthless businessmen who were willing to turn anything towards gaining money. When one of them gained access to the eponymous Artifact of Doom, they used it to selectively kill off their rivals in order to increase their profit margins. As L and Light's investigation went on, it was revealed that only one of them was willing to go so far. The others were just there because their lives had been threatened by the holder of the eponymous note.
  • From YuYu Hakusho:
    • Sakyou and the Black Black Club. Gambling on the torture and destruction of demons, and organizing a tournament for this reason, just to earn more money... these people DEFINE "corrupt".
    • There is also the Dark Tournament Committee, who are easily bribed to impose increasingly absurd restrictions on the heroes during their fight with Team Masho.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Gozaburo Kaiba and the Big Five. Gozaburo put Seto Kaiba through hell to mold him into his idea of the proper replacement for him and had no qualms with manufacturing and selling weapons to anyone for the right price. The Big Five, meanwhile, made plenty of deals behind Kaiba's back after he gained control of the company and reinvented it as a gaming distributor, including kidnapping Kaiba's own brother, in order to oust him as chairman and revert the company to its former warmongering ways.
    • Kaiba himself. While not as bad as his father, he still abuses his wealth and power for everything it's worth, blocking players he doesn't like from tournaments, refusing to call a halt to the proceedings after several of his players are hospitalised, and taking over companies by threatening their employees. He's even worse in the manga where he has dealings with the mafia and sets up a colossal theme park designed to kill the guests (Well, more specifically to kill Yugi and his friends, but still). (He gets better, though.)
      Kaiba: Am I supposed to be scared to attack?
      Dartz: Well, only if destroying an innocent soul concerns you...
      Kaiba: Nah. As the president of a major corporation, I have to do that every day.
    • Pegasus fits this as well, using his power as the head of Industrial Illusions and host of the Duelist Kingdom tournament for all its worth.
    • Dartz, the main antagonist of the anime-only Doma arc, is the head of the Paradius corporation, a multinational conglomerate that dwarfs Kaiba's company. The whole group is a front for resurrecting an evil, soul-devouring god, and some of the company's activities include running a private prison for children and funding civil wars in other countries.
    • Manjyome's two brothers from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX probably count (although, as Kaiba himself says, they're clearly not very good at it).
  • From Martian Successor Nadesico:
    • Nergal Heavy Industries in general, with the exception of people on the ship from the start. With a name like that...
    • Their rivals, the Crimson Group, are even worse, financing the terrorist coup in the movie.
  • Sir Isaac Ray Peram Westcott in Date A Live Light Novel and its anime adaptation. He is the Managing Director of Deus.Ex.Machina Industries. On one hand, he was the one who invented the Realizers. On the other hand, he wants to seek and harness all of Spirit powers so he can plunge the whole world in chaos and destruction.
  • Ajo from Key the Metal Idol. When he wasn't busy traveling to foreign countries to sell them illegal weapons, he was murdering people who got in his way (no matter how much the audience may like them), kidnapping homeless people to extract their gel (and robbing them of their humanity in the process), extorting people, abusing women, or, in the end, building a giant reactor to steal the essence from 50,000 people at a concert. All apparently to fuel his robot fetish.
  • In Witchblade Wadou of the Douji Group is quite willing to backstab a colleague, risk his corporation's image or abuse his position to work with mad partner from NSWF toward personal goals while endangering bystanders knowingly and by negligence. For contrast, Reiji Takayama (as well as his old staff) in the same Douji Group, despite his occasional blunders, is responsible and becomes Silent Scapegoat to save his company's reputation.
  • The Gowa family and Symbol from Gasaraki. Kazukiyo Gowa is pretty goddamned corrupt, from using hollowed out demons to develop mecha, resulting in his brother's death, his adopted brother's borderline slavery to the family and nearly killing his sister for a new demon, to taking part in a coup that will result in either Japan being left completely bankrupt, or Japan and America both completely bankrupt, only to get a hold of the entire county's financial Data, so he can restart the stockmarket with his hands holding all the cards.
  • Satoru Kanzaki of Area 88 becomes one of these after he takes over Yamato Airlines. Among other things, he was instrumental in adopting a very shoddily built new airliner.
  • The Siberian Railroad from Overman King Gainer uses the monopoly they have to overcharge people on everything, and since the only way to get anything is to use the Siberian Railroad they can do whatever they want.
  • Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions: Grings Kodai. He's the founder and owner of his extremely successful company. He will also go down in history as one of the nastiest pieces of work in Pokemon history. There are no lows he won't sink to in order to get what he wants, including blackmail, lying to a city, kidnapping, and threatening to murder a baby Pokemon directly in front of its mother! He'll also go down in Pokemon history as having one of the most satisfying Humiliation Conga ever given.
  • In Men's Love, many of the characters are portrayed as morally flexible in the interests of business, but Daigo's father definitely wanders into this trope when he bribes Kaoru to break up with Daigo and failing that threatens to expose his sexual orientation so that Daigo can make a marriage that's advantageous to the company.
  • Oyama from the 2009 TV special of Kimba the White Lion. He isn't into money so much as he is into playing God with animals.
  • Albert Maverick from Tiger & Bunny. He's willing to make deals with crime syndicates, murder people who know too much, and mess with a child's mind to make a new popular hero just to keep ratings up. Oh, and did we mention that said child was the son of two of his victims, and another victim worked as his caretaker? Made even worse by how he has NEXT powers too... in which he can rewrite people's memories. And he very much uses them.
  • Variable Geo: Miranda Jahana is the driving force behind The Jahana Group's activities, with Damian as her most loyal subordinate. Once they learn of Satomi's latent fighting potential, they manipulate her into entering the VG tournament, by causing her brother's medical condition to relapse. Then Damian offers to cover the costs of the procedure needed to treat it, on the condition that Satomi agreed to be their test subject. All so they could use her as Miranda's new vessel.
  • Phantom Quest Corp.: Mr. Nagasuki not only is he screwing his secretary on the job, he abuses his position as the museum's curator to try to coerce his employee, Natsuki, to sleep with him. Plus, he was later found guilty of embezzling funds from the museum, so the blank check he had paid Ayaka with, was worthless.
  • Naruto featured Gato, head of Gato Company, in the first major story arc. His company's shipments allowed him to mask his trade in all manner of illicit goods. For unspecified reasons he decided to take over all shipping lanes from the Land of Waves, preventing the island nation from carrying out any of the standard trade and driving it into poverty. Gato went one step further by purposefully targeting anybody who gave the people hope and eliminating them in public and gruesome manners.
  • Hades Vandein, the Big Bad of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force and general manager of the Vandein Corporation. He's the main instigator of the Eclipse incident and the reason why there are Infected running around The Multiverse blowing various towns up, as well as various labs filled with the bloody and fatal results of human experimentation. It's all part of the R&D his company is doing on the Eclipse virus as it'll bring huge profits to his company once they refine the technological advances related to it. After all...
    Hades Vandein: It's not unusual for bloodshed and lawsuits to happen over the development and monopolizing of new technologies.
  • Ragyo Kiryuin from Kill la Kill, dear God, Let's count what this woman has managed to get way with...
    • Helping a Magic Meteor eat random people off the street due to having a global monopoly on clothing.
    • Making clothing that installs a custom Weirdness Censor in anyone without built-up immunity (or nudism).
    • Blatant sexual abuse of both her daughters
    • And attempting to allow an entire stadium full of innocent men, women, and children to be consumed by alien lifeforms
  • Kirby of the Stars brings us the evil Galactic Conqueror Nightmare. He is the owner of Holy Nightmare Corporation (Nightmare Enterprises in the dub), a company that literally rules the entire universe. No, that isn't an exaggeration or a joke, it's exactly what happens.
  • Idol Densetsu Eriko: Eriko's uncle Yuusuke, once he gets control of his deceased brother's entertaiment company, sees Eriko as a potential cash cow, and once she decides to work with her father's best friend instead, tries to destroy her career. He's basically the anime version of Eric Raymond, but perhaps even worse.

    Comic Books 
  • Originally a Mad Scientist, Lex Luthor became a corrupt exec in the late 1980s; most TV versions of this character followed suit. Superman: The Animated Series notably hybridized this by implying that Luthor built his company through developing his own inventions.
    • In his appearances on Justice League, wherein he discovers that he is dying from radiation poisoning from prolonged exposure to kryptonite, Luthor returns to his Mad Scientist role as he snaps and acquires a power suit to take the fight directly to Superman, whom he blames for his condition. Later, Luthor is cured of his disease, pardoned for his crimes as a supervillain, and in Justice League Unlimited becomes a corrupt politician as a cover for his true plan.
    • As well as Superman, Luthor has a hate on for Batman and Bruce Wayne independently due to being a corrupt exec. LexCorp's main rival for several years of DC Comics continuity has been stated to be WayneTech, Bruce Wayne's company, and Batman has taken some glee in foiling Luthor's schemes as a superhero and as a business competitor. In fact, not only did he and Superman engineer Luthor's end as president of the United States, Bruce Wayne bought his company headquarters out from under him.
  • In Krypton No More, Superman meets Morton Kalmbach, seedy president of Metro Chemical (a factory that makes vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen). He admits that his factory is unsafe to work in and several workers have gotten sick from cancer, but he considers that it is a "socially acceptable risk".
  • In Kryptonite Nevermore Superman meets Boysie Harker, a tycoon that owns a island where a volcano is about to erupt and who shoots at his employees when they try to run away.
    Mr. Harker: Name's Boysie Harker! I own this bay — and that island yonder!
    Superman: Does that give you the right to shoot unarmed men?
    Mr. Harker: That's exactly what it gives me! Those people are under contract to work my plantation... and I aim to enforce those contracts — even if I have to kill a few of the lazy louts!
  • Both The Kingpin and Deathwatch from the Marvel Universe are New York crime bosses and the heads of major corporations.
  • Iron Man has a couple of these. One is Obadiah Stane, a literal chessmaster whose Evil Plan caused Tony Stark to develop a drinking problem, allowing Stane to buy Stark International out from under him. Justin Hammer, another one of Stark's business rivals, commonly hires supervillains to carry out acts of intimidation and sabotage against his competitors. Hammer took control of Stane International after the latter's death, and years later sold it back to Stark for one dollar (which led to Stark having to clean up all of Stane International's shady dealings) Such tactics usually have Stark responding by donning the Iron Man armor to defend his own holdings.
    • Hammer's daughter, Justine Hammer, also becomes one when she takes over the company.
  • Green Arrow has his Evil Counterpart Komodo. As Simon Lacroix, he was a business rival of Oliver Queen, and used illegal and underhanded tactics to discredit him and buy up his company for a fraction of its value.
  • Walter Declun from Marvel took over Damage Control, a company that specializes in cleaning up after superhero/supervillain fights. In order to increase profits, Declun manipulated supervillains to cause as much damage as possible and gave some of them mutant growth hormone to increase their powers. This indirectly led to the Stamford incident, which in turn led to the infamous Civil War story arc.
  • Tomboy: Irene Trent has manufactured a drug called Ambidrex which causes murderous and violent tendencies in its users and is sometimes deadly, and is also willing to have innocent people killed in order to hide this fact.
  • Many members of The Trust from 100 Bullets fit this trope.
  • In Flight 714, László Carreidas might fall under this trope. He's not one of the story's antagonists (who are after his money), and not so much corrupt as compulsively dishonest (he always cheats when playing Battleships).
    • However the fact the villains are planning to steal from his Swiss bank account where under a false name Carreidas has more then ten million dollars does imply his corruption. And Carreidas while under the influence of truth serum claims to have lived a very dishonest life, stealing since he was 4.
    • A more typical example is R. W. Trickler of General American Oil in The Broken Ear.
  • Norman Osborn; not only a corrupt exec, he's also a crazy one.
  • Garth Ennis' The Punisher: The End depicts corrupt executives as being responsible for the end of the world.
  • In Echo, the research labs at Henri seem to be neck deep in murder, government conspiracies and potentially world-ending technologies all in the pursuit of an advantage over China and a few quick bucks.
  • Marvel had an actual criminal organization called The Corporation at one point, although, in something of a reversal, they started as a villainous organization (Hydra) that reorganized itself along business company lines (including things such as insurance packages for its members!)
  • Another Marvel example of sorts is Hexus, the Living Corporation, although that happened to an alien Hive Mind that drew its power from people's obsession with its products.
  • The entire board of directors in Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool are this to a T.
  • Last Man Standing has the president of Armtech, Abram.
  • The classic Marvel Universe version is the Roxxon Energy Corporation, a corporation whose management is perfectly willing, even eager, to use any underhanded and/or criminal tactics to secure its profits. While all the superheroes are ready to fight them, Iron Man is particularly enthusiastic since their antics make his own company look bad. Their current CEO, Dario Agger, is a recurring Thor antagonist who runs the place like a nation state / religion, is working with Dark Elves so he can invade other planets for their oil, and occasionally turns into a minotaur.
  • The Blotch in Zot!. It's also revealed that Charity is this trope on a planetary example.
  • Lord Blackpool from Lady Mechanika; a Steam Punk arms manufacturer very much in the 'dark satanic mills' mould.
  • Doctor Strange goes up against one of these in Doctor Strange: The Oath when he discovers a magical elixir that can cure all diseases. Though they insist they are Withholding the Cure so that humanity can make discoveries at its own pace, it is all too clear they are only interested in their profit margin.
  • While he is sometimes portrayed as the exact opposite, Scrooge McDuck is typically this trope, especially in the Italian Disney comics.
  • In Darkwing Duck, we have the mysterious CEO of Quackwerks, Taurus Bulba, whose main goal was to find the new code to activate and control the Gizmoduck armor.
  • General Patrick Pending, CEO of Circle Sea, who attempts to create a genetically-engineered slave race of human/animal hybrids he can sell for profit in Shaman's Tears.
  • In Violine, Van Beursen and his company's board members are this.
  • In Deep Gravity, it turns out that the damage to the freighter Vanguard was deliberately caused by Drummond, the efficiency guy from the corporation which owns it, due to having been paid off by a rival corporation.
  • In the 2015 reboot of Prez, one group of adversaries is a cabal of corrupt CEOs led by the CEO of Smiley Industries, the reboot's version of the corrupt political operator Boss Smiley from the original Prez.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Kingdom Hearts fanfic Oblivion, Ansem is depicted as one — he's the CEO of a massive electronics company, and he's got a secret lab where he's carrying out certain unethical (and unnatural) experiments.
  • Gavin Caine and Roger Arsenault of The New Retcons are both this, but it's hard to say who is worse:
    • Gavin, who tried to halt an investigation into whether building Millborough on a nuclear test site affected the health of its citizens as revenge by proxy on his son Anthony because he refused to assist Gavin in his expansion plans, and the investigation was spearheaded by the wife of the man Anthony chose to work for instead of him.
    • Or Roger, who will fan the flames any which way he can so he can buy land dirt cheap and develop it.
  • Sophistication And Betrayal has Cashmere, who is very willing to engage in unethical business practices to beat out her competition.
  • Mare of Steel has Alexander Silversmith (basically Lex Luthor as a pony); his first appearance has him arranging a bombing to destroy the facilities of one of his competitors, and he is powerful enough that when Rainbow Dash/Supermare foils his plot, he passes it off as third party zealots trying to frame him and stall the economy. And that's before he puts his resources to work helping Steel Wing's campaign against Supermare, or helping Brainiac build a bomb capable of destroying Cloudsdale as part of a Sadistic Choice designed to break Rainbow Dash's will. Neither of which he's punished for in the story.
  • Tanizaki Kazuo, the Big Bad of the sequel to Claymade's The Dark Lords of Nerima.
  • Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race has Marcus Vickers as of episode 7; before then he was mostly ineffectual.
  • Queen of All Oni: Filler Villain Anton Mortimer is an example leaning more towards corrupt jerkass than outright evil: he inherited a Pacific shipping company from his father, which he uses as a front for amassing a huge collection of stolen Asian artifacts to fuel his Foreign Culture Fetish. Since his assistant didn't Read the Fine Print on her contract, he able to treat her like a slave, forcing her to wear a fuka and change her name just so he has a badass Asian sidekick, with no care towards her personal feelings. And he doesn't hesitate to use his money and connections to try and threaten the J-Team and Captain Black into backing off so he can keep a recently-purchased Oni mask — and he's not even ignorant of its power; he knows how dangerous it is, but cares more about it as a collectible.
  • The owner of Freddy Fazbear's in Five Nights at Freddy's fanfiction You Seem Acquainted With Those Doors does nothing about the five missing children until the bite of '87 makes the danger obvious.
  • In the Captain Planet and the Planeteers fanfic Heroes For Earth, this is pretty much the standard MO for everyone who works in the Corporation, as greasing the wheels of government officials, breaking government laws, and strong arming those who dare to protest is done to achieve greater profits and make sure they get away with their actions.

    Films — Animation 
  • Lamon Montgomery from Bee Movie.
  • Robots has Ratchet, The Dragon to Madame Gasket who took control of Bigweld Industries prior to Rodney coming to Robot City. He had a plan to con robots out of their money by convincing them to replace their old bodies in favor of shiny newer ones and shutting down production of spare parts for older models to make the new parts their only choice, going against Bigweld's slogan that you can be successful regardless of what you're made of.
  • Mr. O'Hare in the film version of The Lorax, as well as the Once-ler before the failure of his business and subsequent Heel Realization.
  • President/Lord Business from The LEGO Movie.
  • Hugh J. Magnate from A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!
  • Averted in Meet the Robinsons. The large company Inventco is responsible for mass-producing the evil robotic hats which end up enslaving humanity in one alternate timeline, but it's strongly implied they had no idea that this would happen. The real villain is actually the original hat itself. Otherwise, Inventco does nothing but positive things, sponsoring school science fairs and giving aspiring inventors a chance to make it big.
  • Miles Axlerod, the real Big Bad of Cars 2.
  • "Big Boss" from Rio 2, who runs an illegal logging operation in the Amazon and doesn't hesitate to abandon a few environmentalists in the jungle just to cover up his acts.
  • Chester V from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.
  • Clayton from Tarzan (2013), who uses a conservation project as a cover for securing the Mineral MacGuffin, brings in a private mercenary army to secure control of it, and plans to murder Porter and Jane to ensure that there are no witnesses to gainsay his version of events.
  • Alistair Krei of Big Hero 6, who Robert Callaghan mentions as cutting corners when it comes to his company's application of technology. It's later revealed that one such incident led to the loss of Robert's daughter, when Krei proceeded with the live demonstration of teleportation technology despite the warnings from his own engineer of a problem.
  • The Jetsons Movie: Mr. Spacely, who is normally a Mean Boss to George, hiring and firing him on a whim, graduates into this by knowingly destroying a colony of cute aliens on an asteroid to mine for raw materials. While he does relent and agrees to let the aliens recycle the sprockets, he takes away George's raise.
  • Mr. Gilbert Huph in the The Incredibles. He is an insurance exec who is determined to deny as many insurance claims as he can, regardless of how legitimate they are as per their customers' contracts. So, if Bob Parr really wanted to strike back at this bully, he could remember that Huph is making himself liable for a major Breach of Contract lawsuit.
  • Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo: Calvin Curdles has a spy informing him about any struggles suffered by the owner of the castle he wants to buy to turn into a restaurant. Subverted when it turns out his real reason to want the castle has nothing to do with business.
  • Storks: Hunter is the CEO of Cornerstore, a stork run delivery service that he created to get away from the baby business. When a baby is accidentally created, he is more concerned about the value of the company's stocks than the baby's fate. So much so that he decides that having the baby raised by penguins is better than the real family since that way nobody would find out about their mistake.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Older Than Television: A Corner in Wheat (1909) is about a Corrupt Corporate Executive who monopolizes the wheat market and then jacks up prices, victimizing both the poor farmer trying to sell his wheat crop, and the urban poor who can't afford to buy bread.
  • Another early cinematic example of this trope are Five Brains and Checkbooks from Frau im Mond. They are a mysterious international cabal of capitalists who are trying to hijack the upcoming Lunar spaceflight to control Moon's supposed gold reserves in order to take over world's economy.
  • Unstoppable — There's a train going at full speed with no one driving it. It's filled with toxic, dangerous chemicals and eventually, it will crash. What does the head honcho guy (whose company is responsible for the train) say about this? "I'm not gonna put the company at risk just because some engineer wants to play hero!"* 
  • Gordon Gekko of Wall Street being the most obvious.
    • The sequel has Bretton James, who puts Gekko to shame (and, in fact, put him in prison for many years).
  • Any part Dabney Coleman plays, with the uber-example being Franklin Hart in 9 to 5.
  • In the first RoboCop (1987) movie, Richard "Dick" Jones is an Evil Chancellor form of the Corrupt Corporate Executive, since he is only the vice-president of OCP under the seemingly benign "Old Man". In the sequel, the Old Man takes to the corruption like a duck to water.
    • In the live-action series, the Old Man is considerably more well-meaning and altruistic; still expects a profit margin, but not willing to cause undue suffering to get there. His company, however, is crawling with CCEs on every level, providing handy throwaway villains for every episode. The Old Man is constantly surprised that someone with a Harvard education could be so corrupt.
    • Seemingly the only remotely honest person working at OCP is Johnson, who was Bob Morton's #2 at Security Concepts, and he has some morally ambiguous dealings.
    • The remake has Raymond Sellars, the CEO of OmniCorp (a subsidiary of OCP). He sees Murphy as nothing more than a machine that is the property of OmniCorp. Thus, he sees nothing wrong with overriding Murphy's will with the machine components and then kidnapping and threatening his wife and kid.
  • Kurt Fuller has a knack for playing these types (usually dwindling to a Butt Monkey by the end). See Ghostbusters II, The Running Man and Wayne's World for proof.
  • Lord Cutler Beckett of the second & third Pirates of the Caribbean movies is one.
  • Elliot Carver in the James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies is a corrupt media mogul who has no problem with covertly starting a war between China and the UK to boost his ratings.
    • Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, daughter and heir to her father's Mediterranean oil pipeline, seduced her captor, murdered her father, kidnapped M, and plotted to destroy Istanbul so her pipeline would get more use. She's so much of a twisted villain, she's currently the only Bond Woman Bond himself has killed in cold blood.
    • Auric Goldfinger. A proper Bond villain. If you can't have the United States' gold reserves, you can always just destroy them. Wiping out the entire population of Fort Knox (civilian and military alike) in the process is just collateral damage.
    • Max Zorin from A View to a Kill. How do you effectively corner the microchip market? Destroy Silicon Valley with a massive man-made earthquake. And if the rest of southern California has to go with it? So be it.
    • The whole American government in Quantum of Solace.
  • Carter Burke from Aliens. Though not a CEO, he's the only member of The Squad who answers directly to the Mega Corp. that owns the infested colony and constantly endangers everyone by putting his own agenda (capturing and weaponizing the eponymous aliens for profit) ahead of everyone else.
    • Peter Weyland from the semi-prequel Prometheus. Which isn't too shocking, given that his last name is half of the Mega Corp.'s (Weyland-Yutani).
  • The entire Nemoidian leadership of the Trade Federation in The Phantom Menace, and they only get worse when they become part of the leadership of the Seperatist Army. (Many sources reveal that greed and selfishness - not to mention cowardace - are very common among Nemoidians.) Other factions that lead the Seperatist Army, like the Banking Clan, are cut from the same cloth.
  • Everyone at the Unexploited Land Development Corporation in The Bad Sleep Well is this, especially the high-level executives like Iwabuchi who are willing to order people's deaths to maintain their position and stay out of prison.
  • The cleanliness obsessed boss from the movie version of Cat in the Hat.
  • Noah Cross from Chinatown is one of the greatest examples in cinema. A cunning, ruthless, and perverse sociopath, Cross, already the richest and most powerful man in Los Angeles, renders vast farmlands arid by illegally dumping their irrigation water into the ocean, thus causing their prices to plummet to next to nothing. After forcing the farmers to sell their land to his cabal of corrupt business partners, Cross intends to develop his newly acquired land by irrigating it with the water supply diverted from the city itself, through a new aqueduct and reservoir built from $8 million of taxpayer money. His only gain from this elaborate swindle is "The future!" What's worse, this doesn't even include his more...shocking crimes.
  • Victor Von Doom (later Doctor Doom) in the Fantastic Four movie (not the comic books) was one of these.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive types seem to be a common Big Bad for comic book movies in general, including Norman Osborn in Spider-Man, Kingpin in Daredevil and Obadiah Stane in Iron Man.
  • Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit... And how! Being the sole stockholder of Cloverleaf Industries, he murders Marvin Acme, the owner of Toon Town (framing Roger for it in the process) and then tries his hardest to make certain that Acme's will is never discovered so that Cloverleaf can win the bidding war to buy Toon Town, so that he can demolish it and build a freeway. (And as if that weren't enough, his plan involves murdering every toon living there.)
  • The plot of Fun with Dick and Jane kicks off with such a CEO destroying his company through fraud, Enron-style, and leaving his second in command and his head of PR to take the heat while he himself goes on to enjoy his millions.
  • The Godfather movies have quite a few. The Godfather himself could possibly count as this too.
  • Conal Cochran from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, who planned to kill innumerable people through rigged Halloween masks simply For the Evulz, and because he's the descendant/reincarnation of an ancient evil Druid.
  • The Mayor of Whoville from the movie version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
  • Rachel Bitterman from It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie.
    • Likewise, Tex Richman from the 2011 film. He has a change of heart in the end, though.
  • Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life. He owns the bank, and eventually almost every business in Bedford Falls, excepting the Bailey Building and Loan. In the reality where he really owns everything, general conditions in town are horrific.
  • The board of directors of the toy company in The Santa Clause. Tim Allen's character only realizes there's a problem after he starts turning into Santa Claus.
    • Calling them corrupt seems a bit harsh. They never do anything evil or even unpleasant. The worst thing they do is replace Santa's sleigh with "Total Tank" for their commercial.
  • Arnold Royalton from the live action Speed Racer movie.
  • In Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), the evil CEO B.Z. (John Lithgow) is firstly vilified as an evil CEO who knowingly produces unsafe toys for children. (Why he would make teddy bears stuffed with sawdust and nails when presumably other metal things that WEREN'T construction nails probably would be cheaper isn't elaborated on... he's evil, get it?) When he gets the chance to market candy that will allow those who eat it to temporarily float or fly, he leaps at the chance to make millions and save his reputation, despite the fact that he has to (with no compunctions) Kick the Dog by shrugging off the knowledge that many children are likely to die due to the second, stronger version of the candy exploding if it gets too hot; he intends to take the money and escape to Rio before people find out about the danger.
  • Daniel Plainview of There Will Be Blood.
  • Paul F. Tomkins from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny who turns out to actually be Satan.
    • Although he isn't a corporate executive so much as a stage compere (Open Mike Guy).
  • J.K. Robertson in the MST3K-fodder movie Time Chasers. He starts developing the protagonist's time machine as a weapon, destroys the future, refuses to not destroy the future for some reason, and eventually just starts shooting people in the Revolutionary War. Riffing was pretty harsh on the character.
    Mike (as Robertson): Hi, I'm Bob Evil!
    • "I leave for ten minutes, and Evil Co is in shambles!"
  • Played for laughs with Tom Cruise's character from Tropic Thunder.
  • Rutger Hauer's Richard Earle, from Batman Begins. Rapacious, cold, ruthless, swapping out philanthropy for weapons sales — definitely not true to Thomas Wayne's legacy. (And demoting Morgan Freeman's Lucius to the basement!) Must have been the role model for Iron Man's Obadiah...
    • Also Max Shreck.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera has Rotti Largo, who used his corporation's wealth to push a bill legalising organ repossession through parliament.
  • James McCullen AKA Destro in GI Joe The Riseof Cobra.
  • Ed Dillinger in TRON
    • To a lesser extent, the Chairman of the Board Richard Mackey in the sequel, even though he shows up for only one scene. Apparently, a color manual justifies labeling the same product as new.
  • As mentioned above, Joseph Pulitzer in Newsies. He raises the wholesale price of his newspapers by 10% because he wants more money (and who cares about the starving homeless orphans who have to pay for it?). Later, when his actions have provoked a strike that actually costs him money, he still won't back down, because giving in to demands from ragged street kids would make him look weak.
  • R. J. Fletcher from "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1989 film UHF.
  • Ian Hawke from the Alvin and the Chipmunks film series. In the first film, he discourages Dave from furthering his music career at the beginning, then once the Chipmunks get famous, he proceeds to spoil them, distance them from Dave, and tire them out from constant tours. It wasn't until the Chipmunks see Dave infiltrating one of their concerts that they realise Ian's a bastard in sheep's clothing. In the sequel, he is jobless, but plans to get his revenge by adopting the Chipettes and putting their Battle of the Bands audition on the Internet. They end up getting the opportunity to open for Britney Spears, and Ian puts it in top priority over the actual Battle of the Bands concert, threatening to barbecue them if they don't comply.
  • Parker Selfridge in Avatar.
  • William Easton in Saw VI seems to be this, but he doesn't quite fit the mold as shown each time he has to let someone die.
  • Daniel Clamp, the Donald "I think I am a nice person" Trump parody in Gremlins 2: The New Batch is something of a subversion; he's no great intellect and is more than a little thoughtless, vain, superficial and shallow, but underneath it all he seems to have a genuinely good heart. Reportedly he was supposed to be one of these played straight, but John Glover — no stranger to playing villains — was reportedly sick of doing the same thing and decided to play against the script.
  • Jack Bennett, the CEO of Northmoor in Edge of Darkness. Not only is he secretly working to make dirty bombs for the US government under the guise of nuclear disarmament, he does not hesitate to fatally irradiate environmental activists or even his own employees to keep it quiet.
  • Sidney J. Mussburger in The Hudsucker Proxy.
  • In Dogma, Bartleby and Loki visit a board of executives and reveal each and every one (save for one female board member) to be guilty of something horrible. The worst of them has more skeletons in his closet than the rest of the board put together. After messing with their heads, Loki kills them all except the aforementioned woman (and he nearly offs her for not saying 'God bless you' when he sneezed).
  • Subverted in Inception where Saito may be willing to use corporate espionage and screw with his business opponent's mind, but he's a man of honor through and through. When faced with one of Cobb's partners trying to sell him out, instead of taking the guy up on his offer, he has him restrained, tells Cobb what the guy tried to do, and gives Cobb the chance to have revenge. In that same scene, he has Arthur and Cobb cornered, but he still gives them the choice to work for him or walk away instead of blackmailing them as you would expect from any other corporate hack in movies these days.
  • The Net has Bill Gates Captain Ersatz Jeff Gregg, who uses the Batman Gambit of a cyberterrorist ring to convince the US Government to use his anti-virus program — which is programmed with a backdoor to allow those in the know easy access.
  • Al Pacino's character John Milton in The Devil's Advocate is not only evil, he is actually Satan.
  • Gatewood in Stagecoach.
  • Really averted in Local Hero - an American oil company is planning to buy a coastal village in Scotland to turn into a refinery/distribution center, and the villagers are all delighted at the prospect of selling out. Meanwhile, the CEO's main interest seems to be what's in the night sky there.
  • RoboGeisha: Both Hikaru Kageno and his father, Kenyama, heads of the Kagano Steel Manufacturing corporation. They kidnap and force young women into becoming their personal assassins, attempt to murder anyone and everyone who gets in their way, and they ultimately desire to destroy Japan to achieve their goals.
  • Robert, to an extent, in Mystery Team.
  • Travis from Congo is so obsessed with making money that he sends out multiple expeditions into the dangerous African jungle to search for diamonds that will make his company billions of dollars. When the members of the expeditions keep dying off, he doesn't care. He just sends more people out in the hopes that at least one of them will retrieve the diamonds.
    • Then there's the fact that one of those people is his own son. And no, he doesn't care.
  • Alonzo Hawk in Herbie Rides Again.
  • Gary Winston in Antitrust. He tries to justify his actions (which include stealing others' work and outright murder) by claiming that any startup company in a garage can put his software giant NURV out of business.
  • Averted in Irish Jam, where the Japanese businessman Mr. Suzuki, seeking to build an amusement park on a small Irish island is, in fact, an honorable man. It's Lord Hailstock, the local landlord, who is the corrupt one.
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon has Dylan Gould, who willingly helps the Decepticons. While it initially seems like he's under duress, it later becomes clear that he is, in some respects, more evil than the Decepticons.
  • The Big Bad in The Tuxedo is Dietrich Banning, who owns a bottled water company. His plan is to infect the US water reservoirs with deadly bacteria in order to be the sole supplier of drinking water in the country. He also offers the deal to the heads of the heads of the other major bottled water companies, in exchange for 50% of their income.
  • Pretty much everybody in Miss Nobody has some personal corruption, but for the top spot, it's a duel between two of the executives at Judge Pharmaceuticals: Nether, who tries to push a clearly dangerous drug onto the market to make money, and Sarah Jane, who is a Serial Killer trying to get herself one Klingon Promotion after another.
  • Sam Neill's character Bromley is every bit of this in Daybreakers. Even after a synthetic blood substitute is developed, he still won't release the captive humans from the blood farms. Why? Because rich vampires will pay top dollar for the real thing.
  • John Carlyle from Elysium.
  • Piet Smit from the film District 9 meets much of the criteria. Executive for a Mega Corp. arms manufacturer. Check. Abusing the refugee aliens you've been contracted to care for. Check. Experimenting on them to gain control of their weaponry. Check. Allowing your son-in-law to be dissected live just to gain control of these weapons, and then lying through your teeth to your heartbroken daughter about what's happening. Double Check.
  • The Wolverine:
    • Shingen Yashida from is a rich businessman with ties to the Yakuza.
    • Ichirō Yashida, in the end of his life.
  • Judah Clark from Dead in Tombstone is the mine owner who happily cuts a deal with Red and the Blackwater Gang to keep the money flowing into his coffers.
  • In "Champagne for Caeser" evil and possibly insane soap company CEO Burnbridge "Dirty" Waters (Vincent Price) attempts to sabotage the genius who is using his own game show to bankrupt the company. When the genius gets a cold he sends a beautiful woman pretending to be a nurse in order to fog his mighty brain. Of course, the genius figures it out and uses it against him.
    • At one point his secretary asks Waters why he just doesn't throw the genius off the show. Waters takes her hands and gently explains his thinking. "You see, my dear, if we throw his off the show our viewers won't like it. If they don't like it they won't watch the show. If they don't watch the show they won't buy our soap. If they don't buy our soap, our sales will drop to nothing AND WE'LL LOSE MONEY!"
  • Eric Sacks from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). His Evil Plan amounts to releasing a lethal biotoxin upon New York just so he can profit from making an antidote.
  • Archie Channing from Quigley was this at first. He had a lack of goodness and understanding, which was the reason why he treated all of his employees with contempt, along with the fact that he also hated dogs. However, that all changes when he ends up in a car crash and ends up in heaven, but after the angels there tell him that he never did a good deed in his life, they decide that he must be sent back to Earth in the form of an adorable Pomeranian named Quigley, all while supervised by his guardian angel, Sweeney. At the end of the film, Archie is able to amend his unforgiving ways and is able to make amends with his brother Woodward.
  • Practically all of the main characters in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
  • The Lazarus Effect has Mr. Wise, the owner of the rival pharmaceutical company and the Dean of the school. The latter allows the former to take all the protagonists' research, and the former spied on the team and sabotaged their research once they got results.
  • Billy Madison: Eric is this Up to Eleven. He blackmails Billy's principal into failing him so he can take control of the company. At the academic decathlon, he bombs a question on business ethics.
  • Scanners III: The Takeover: When Helena takes over her father's pharmaceutical firm (after murdering him in cold blood), she takes the company in ethically dubious directions he would have objected to, uses her psychic powers to kill her professional rivals, and eventually tries to brainwash the world.
  • In Jurassic World Hoskins is convinced that Masrani is one of these. Nope, it's a Subverted Trope: Masrani is indeed an Honest Corporate Executive. Bone-headed, sometimes, but honest. The ironic part is Hoskins himself is arguably a Corrupt Corporate Executive (ok, chief of security but he does take over the park after Masrani's death). How corrupt is he? He and Mad Scientist Dr. Wu had deliberately engineered the Indomitus Rex to be intelligent and vicious, then ordered the raptors to attack her, as a field test. Turns out they're trying to breed dinosaurs to replace conventional weapons in warfare.
  • The antagonist, Mr. Jeffries, from Amazing Grace and Chuck. He's essentially a stand-in for the more nebulous concept of the military-industrial complex as a whole: rich, powerful, ruthless, and not happy that some "wild cards" are messing with the system that he derives his wealth and influence from.
  • Bartholomew Bogue, the Big Bad of The Magnificent Seven (2016), is the 'Robber Baron' version; driving homesteaders off their land so he can mine it for gold. Farraday even refers to him as 'Robber Baron' Bogue.
  • The Big Bad of The Accountant, Lamar Blackburn.
  • Hot Fuzz: Subverted with Simon Skinner. Nicholas initially connects the series of murders to him and a land deal but it turns he and the NWA were murdering people in a twisted attempt at winning a community award. His business tactics were quite ethical.

    Literature 
  • The Radix: Deena Riverside and Dilon Armstrong, respectively CEO and owner of Taft-Ryder Farmaceuticals, who hunt for Radix, a holy relic that belonged to Jesus, to develop a new, groundbreaking medicine.
  • Occurs in Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Closer to this than Corrupt Hick is Sir, the amoral, cigar-smoking lumbermill owner who pays his workers in coupons and gives them gum for lunch; in a later appearance, business is bad, as nearby lumber source the Finite Forest is running out of trees.
  • Occurs several times in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series.
  • In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it is mentioned that Willy Wonka's first factory was put out of business due to his recipes getting stolen by CCEs via corporate espionage. This is a major reason why Wonka hires Oompa Loompas, because they are completely loyal to him. As a subplot in the first film adaptation, Charlie is approached by a CCE who tries to convince Charlie to spy on Wonka for him (fortunately, it's only a Secret Test of Character, and Charlie refuses anyway).
  • Robert Sobel's Alternate History classic For Want of a Nail features Bernard Kramer, a Rags to Riches German immigrant who corrupts the democratic political system of the United States of Mexico for the benefit of his Mega Corp.. He even prepares the installment of a dictator.
  • Averted in Starship's Mage by the righteous fury of a CEO whose interstellar corporation would have had a zero-fatality year, if it weren't for the Corrupt Corporate Executives at competing companies. He provides information to the protagonists as they're going up against the corrupt government that was handing out safety "exemptions" left and right.
  • British sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton deliberately set out to invert this trope with Julia Evans, the young idealistic CEO of Event Horizon, in his trilogy about psychic-detective Greg Mandel. She keeps most of her industry in Britain to provide work and a strong economy (this also increases Event Horizon's power and influence within Britain) and quashes potentially harmful technologies rather than make a profit from them.
  • Newman King, founder and CEO of the eponymous retail chain of Bentley Little's The Store. Whereas the average CCE causes suffering as a side-effect of their ruthless pursuit of profit, King and his organization go out of their way to cause completely unnecessary suffering on top of the side-effects of his ruthless pursuit of profit. The company's corporate motto might as well be "For the Evulz." The Store sets up shop in small towns, buys the local government and puts small business owners out of business, like a relatively normal company might. But then it also does things like buy up the town's utilities so it can spy on people's phone calls and e-mails, murder small business owners, , force employees to go out and beat the homeless, stock child pornography and other bizarre, illegal products, whore out female employees, sic zombies on people, trick a man into having sex with his own daughter and send his wife the videotape of it, etc. This is, however, partly done as jet-black satire.
  • Derek Leech in assorted fiction by Kim Newman; a living embodiment of Thatcherism or an Anonymous Ringer of Rupert Murdoch crossed with SATAN himself.
  • Reacher Gilt from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Essentially John Galt from Atlas Shrugged reincarnated as a Magnificent Bastard, he runs the Grand Trunk (essentially a pre-telegraph version of Western Union) and is willing to run the machines until they fall apart (and kill off the operators as needed) in the name of extra money. In fact, he's a con artist like Moist von Lipwig, the book's protagonist, but worse because he has more ambition and fewer scruples; it's eventually revealed he plans to run the company into the ground and buy it at rock-bottom prices under an alias, just to see if he can get away with it. He also conned the original owners of the Grand Trunk by buying the company with its own money, driving them into despair and poverty, and keeps a half-feral banshee on hire to kill anyone who threatens his long con whom he can't buy off or discredit. All this Gilt did because conning and outsmarting people is his idea of fun.
  • The villains of Atlas Shrugged are the Robber Baron variety with an emphasis of power (or 'pull') over money, complete with public welfare projects in order to smooth over the various crimes they commit.
  • This occurs many times in the Destroyer. The example that comes to mind is the Executive of the Vox network trying to take over a rival via using the Evil AI FRIEND.
  • The emissaries from the Western Galactic Empire in Robert Zubrin's The Holy Land, who arrange for the export of helicity from Earth. They seem like average sorts until it becomes obvious that the technology they help Earth import in exchange is used to murder hundreds of billions of innocent people and transform America into a totalitarian regime, and yet their biggest worry is the imminent formation of a Space OPEC that cuts into profit margins.
  • Guilder Worlin in the third book of Warhammer 40,000: Gaunt's Ghosts, who doesn't hesitate to murder anyone who gets wind of his illegal operations and inadvertently leaves the door open for an invasion of the city.
  • Battlefield Earth's Psychlos have a disproportionate number of corrupt corporate executives: Big Bad Terl's whole plan is to get access to some gold off the company records, and is able to blackmail gain "leverage" over his boss by exposing the latter's embezzlements. Their race even has company regulations allowing planetary overseers to take whatever actions deemed necessary to ensure a profit. Of course, anyone who is actually caught embezzling corporate profits is executed.
  • Felix Jongleur, founder and owner of J Corp in Tad Williams' Otherland, seems to feel that it's his right as the oldest living human being to use his financial power to find a way to cheat death, regardless of the cost in terms of money, lives, or morality.
  • In Tom Holt's J.W. Wells & Co. series, many of the members of the board of executives of the eponymous company are like this, and since the company supplies magical services to anyone able to pay enough, the members of the company often have supernatural powers themselves. Both Professor van Spee and Judy di Castel'bianco try to take over the world before being neutralized by the hero, and Dennis Tanner is universally regarded as a highly unscrupulous jerk, though not as evil as some of his colleagues. The latest book, The Better Mousetrap features another corrupt executive from a rival company, who has people killed on a regular basis until she is sent back in time and her magical abilities are neutralized.
  • In Sebastian Faulks' A Week In December, John Veals may qualify, given that he's only out to make as much money as possible and to do it legally - ethics aside.
  • Able Team. Unomondo, who controls powerful business interests in Central and South America, funds Banana Republics and death squads, and is the Big Bad behind a neo-Nazi conspiracy with sympathisers in the US Government itself. Probably the closest thing that series had to a recurring villain.
  • Geryon from Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a more rustic version of this, essentially making him a combination of Corrupt Corporate Executive and Corrupt Hick
  • The sequel series Trials Of Apollo feature Nero and the other surviving Emperors, who secretly manipulate conflicts through their company, Triumvirate Holdings.
  • Subverted in Fletch and the Widow Bradley by Gregory McDonald, where Fletch is drawn into a story that seems to revolve around a Corrupt Corporate Executive but really, the lies, half-truths and doctored documents all turn out to be the result of the CEO's convoluted personal life, for which Fletch and the reader feels empathy.
  • Pavel Kazakov from the Dale Brown novel Warrior Class. A Russian oilman with the goal of building an oil pipeline in the Balkans as part of re-strengthening the Fatherland, he is feared even by the Russian higher-ups, rumoured to be a powerful Mafiya boss and druglord and certainly in possession of much violent power.
    • Harold Kingman from Act of War, a slimy and well-connected oilman whose facilities eco-terrorist group GAMMA seek to wreck. When he tries to get Jason Richter and the CID technology into his hands, Jason's refusal is empathic.
  • Marc Vilo (and to some degree, the rest of the Board of Governors) in The Acts of Caine.
  • Jon Spiro from the Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, has an alliance with the Chicago mob, and states that he intends to spend the last 20 years of his life bleeding the planet dry with the stolen 'Cube' supercomputer; once he's gone, the world can go to hell with him for all he cares.
  • The Privy Council of the Sten Series is a Five-Bad Band of CCE's, whose ruthless money-grubbing is eclipsed only by their perverse proclivities.
  • Occasional antagonists in the Bolo universe.
  • Hollow Places mentions the upper management of Shore State Corrections. They institute policies that purposefully foster recidivism in their prisons in order to increase profits.
  • The Darhel, from John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata, is a race of CCEs. Human CCEs also are seen here and there in the series.
  • Rod Portlyn from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series. How corrupt is he? He deliberately poisoned a colony world to induce crop failures, then came in to buy the increasingly useless land. He kept the farmers on as workers and thus earned their gratitude by "saving them" from bankruptcy. He turned another world in the same star system into a dumping ground for garbage, and he later tries to murder its population. All in the name of profit, obviously.
  • Red Hammernut from Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip. Hires everyone from crooked hydrologists to hitmen to keep his farming operation looking clean enough on paper that he doesn't have to spend money on pollution controls.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga:
    • GalacTech's executives in Falling Free.
    • The White Chrysanthemum Cryonics Corporation in Cryoburn.
    • The literal robber Barons of Jackson's Whole.
  • Sir John Charnage from the Young Bond novel Double or Die is an owner of several failing businesses, and plans to leave England to Soviet Union, taking revolutionary technology with him. His late father was even worse, as he let the men working in his factories work in inhuman conditions, and used his connections in high places to keep it that way for better profit.
  • Xanatos, Qui-Gon's former apprentice in Jedi Apprentice, is the head of Offworld, one of the largest mining consortiums in the galaxy. Under his control, Offworld has stripped numerous planets of their resources, blackmailed and/or bribed governments, and backed criminal politicians on several planets. Its front company UniFy in The Day of Reckoning is no better, keeping the population of Telos pacified with Bread and Circuses while they stripmine the planets holy spaces, and contaminate their sacred pools with chemicals. And that's leaving out the fact that Offworld is also involved with the illegal slave trade, and Xanatos' terrorist vendetta against the Jedi.
  • Morgan Sloat in The Talisman at first. However, the truth is slightly more complicated and involves alternate realities.
  • There are many of these in Daemon, working with unsavoury Private Military Contractors to try and preserve the status quo.
  • Transformers: TransTech story "I, Lowtech" has protagonist Bulletbike, whose only redeeming quality is that he's technically never broken a law or directly injured anyone. Then he gets worse. His Arch-Enemy Ego is no better, and it's implied There Are No Good Executives period.
  • Transformers: Shattered Glass has the human R.J. Blackrock, who turns out to be Playing Both Sides so he can later kill all of the Cybertronians for his own benefit.
  • Max Barry's Machine Man has The Manager, head of Better Future. The bastard even smirkingly admits to putting an EMP in Lola's heart. Well. At least before Dr. Neumann kills him via Destination Defenestration.
  • The Onceler from The Lorax.
  • Peter Sharpe of the Prometheus Corporation, from The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling, describes the Prometheans as shepherds and humanity as sheep. Two guesses on how much value he assigns to the lives of people who aren't "enlightened."
  • Year Zero is pretty much one long scathing (albeit amusing) indictment on the music industry and those in charge.
  • Airframe turns out to have two in John Marcer and Bob Richman.
  • Billington in ''Jennifer Morgue. This is quite logic since the book is an homage to the James Bond books, where the Big Bad is usually a megalomaniac Corrupt Corporate Executive.
  • World War Z features Breckenridge Scott, inventor and vendor of Phalanx, a purported "cure" for African rabies (actually the zombie virus). It was actually a placebo, and he openly gloats about fooling most of the population into believing his rabies vaccine was a cure.
  • The Divide: Snakeweed runs a potion company that considers proper testing a complete waste of time, leading to treatments that work great on one mystical species and are usually lethal to others.
  • Paranoia: Nick Wyatt, head of Wyatt industries, is this personified, as he sees any and all competition, in any field, as something to be conquered, to the point of firing those he disagrees with. He also is not above using blackmail and extortion to get his employees to engage in illegal activities such as corporate espionage, burglary, theft, and breaking and entering, or face being sent to prison for at least 20 years and your life ruined.
  • In Comrade Death, Sarek eventually goes from a Punch Clock Villain Arms Dealer — selling weapons because his employer now manufactures weapons — to the head of the Krieger Mega Corp. and sole producer of arms in the world. All wars benefit Sarek and he sinks his vast fortune into developing new and horrific chemical weapons, even making vague promises to someday provide Not-Hitler with the firepower to blow up the world.
  • Fashion designer Gordon Steuber in Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps. He hires illegal immigrant women (some of whom are underage) to make his clothes in sweatshops, he cheats on his income taxes, and he smuggles heroin in the linings of his clothes. He's also suspected of murdering one woman and arranging a hit on another. He turns out to be innocent of the last two things. But he's still a thoroughly nasty character; when police ask him about the planned hit, he says he has nothing to do with it, "but what a great idea."
  • People that saw the first Jurassic Park film and decided to give the book a try got a very rude awakening when they learn that John Hammond of the book was this trope. He makes no qualms about blackmailing his employees, cutting costs, and endangering people if it means he can open a park (or three) and make a profit out of it. His greed and unwillingness to see how much of a failure the park is eventually got him killed when he was attacked by a herd of compys. Compare that to the film, where Hammond comes across more as a Well-Intentioned Extremist (he genuinely wanted children to experience the same wonder and excitement he feels about dinosaurs, but he still cuts corners to try to speed up the opening day, but is willing to disown the park when he sees how much of a disaster the park had become).
  • The Running Man: Damon Killian is the smarmy head of the Games Company, overseeing the Immoral Reality Shows that are broadcast to the poor populations to distract them from how the network is poisoning the air.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Grossberg, the first head of Network 23 on Max Headroom, is so archetypal that every Corrupt Corporate Executive since has, perhaps unintentionally (or indirectly, by way of Gordon Gekko of Wall Street), paid him homage. Specific foibles of the character type that he manifested include an almost bishonen level of grooming, slicked-back hair, and a severe facial tic.
  • Ziktor of VR Troopers was essentially a Grossberg clone, with the added twist that he was also secretly a monstrous being from Another Dimension.
  • JAG: This trope is often used as defense contracters will sell faulty equipment at premium prices resulting in deaths of service members.
    • In "Pilot Error", Macroplex executive James Reid doesn't believe he is wrong about Pendry's responsibility for the crash, but he resorts to some incredibly underhanded tactics to try and prove it, including a character assassination campaign.
    • In "Act of Terror", Percival Bertram is a wealthy businessman (looking like a Corrupt Hick) who supports right-wing conservative politicians and brands himself as a super-patriot advocating that the U.S. should take gloves of with respect to terrorists to U.S. interests in the Middle East. However, the alleged super-patriot finances terrorism in the Middle East against U.S. interests (supposedly to create a self-fulfilling prophecy gaining his own business interests.)
  • Anton Mercer of Power Rangers Dino Thunder was at first almost indistinguishable from Ziktor. His twist, though, was that he wasn't actually evil: he was just acting that way to keep anyone from noticing that he was in a Jekyll & Hyde relationship with the series Big Bad.
  • Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother can be considered this, after having looked over documents on his desk in an episode his lawyer friend Marshall comments that "I'm fairly certain that if these contracts aren't executed precisely, we will be at war with Portugal." To which Barney simply responds "Forget that, that's a Tuesday for me" and start complaining about his own social issues instead. Though this could be considered a spoof on the trope rather than actually playing it straight. Almost every deal Goliath Bank is involved in seems to involve some at least questionable activity, including possible treason with North Korea.
    • He knows so much about the illegal and probably treasonous activities of the bank that he claims he will never be fired - but might end up in a landfill somewhere. Of course this is Barney Stimpson so we can't be sure.
  • George Bluth from Arrested Development is definitely this trope, he built houses for Saddam in Iraq which may or may not have been used to hide WMD silos. He ends up wanted for the entire spectrum from light to severe treason.
  • Jim Profit (Profit) was another in the Grossberg line — and he was the central character of the show. Though it must be said that Profit isn't exactly corrupt: granted, he does some very unethical things, but he does them to people who turn out to be far more corrupt and/or actively dangerous than he.
  • Edward Vogler from House was a very classic example.
  • Gene McLennen and Jonas Hodges in 24 (as well as a handful of others throughout the series).
  • A good pre-80s example is Tobias Vaughn from the Doctor Who story The Invasion. As noted above, he was very much a corporate Blofeld.
    • Also, The Collector from the 4th Doctor episode The Sun Makers - defeated when the Doctor taxed him to death.
    • There's also Captain Dent from Colony in Space, who murders colonists to clear the planet for mining operations and thus higher profits for the corporation he represents.
    • And there's Morgus from The Caves of Androzani, who murdered the president, conducted industrial sabotage on his own company, arranged for vagrants to toil in his work camps and perpetuated a planetary civil war just to keep his profit margins acceptably high.
    • The new series of Doctor Who has Henry van Statten, whose computer company is based on stolen Imported Alien Phlebotinum including an imprisoned Dalek, and Vaughn's Alternate Universe successor, John Lumic, creator of new Cybermen. Plus Kazran Sardick from the 2010 Christmas special, a man so bitter that he was going to let 4003 people die in a spaceliner crash - not For the Evulz, but because he just didn't care. Also the Editor from "The Long Game", and Max Capricorn from "Voyage of the Damned".
  • Most of the villains who appeared in Knight Rider and The A-Team were of the combination Corrupt Corporate Executive/Corrupt Hick variety.
  • Everyone initially in Wolfram and Hart of Angel. Especially Holland Manners. And the Senior Partners, sort of.
  • Likewise, most of the higher-ups at Rossum, though the person at the top is not.
  • It is subtly implied that Firefly's Blue Sun Corporation is behind some of the trauma River Tam suffered while at the Academy; for example, in the episode "Shindig" she attacks several food cans with the Blue Sun logo on them, and in "Ariel" she takes a butcher knife to one of Jayne's shirts bearing the corporation's logo — while he's still wearing it (though it is also argued that she did this because she knew that Jayne would try to sell her and Simon out to the Alliance later).
  • The Wire:
    • Russell "Stringer" Bell" has very clear aspirations to become a CCE and ascend from his status as just a drug kingpin, and takes economics classes at a community college and starts buying up housing properties to this effect. His own ruthless, double-dealing nature comes back to haunt him, though, and he's killed before any of these plans can come into fruition.
    • There's also Frank Sobotka, who is a corrupt labor union official/harbor foreman. Unfortunately for him, Redemption Equals Death when his "business partners" find out that he was about to talk to the cops.
  • Subverted in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where ZieraCorp is a company run by a rather creepy woman named Catherine Weaver, who acquires the Turk supercomputer. Weaver turns out to be a T-1001, but is actually on humanity's side in trying to prevent Judgment Day and defeat Skynet.
  • SCTV satirised this with the characters Guy Cabalero (played by Joe Flaherty) and Mayor Tommy Shanks (played by John Candy). Another John Candy character that qualifies as this is Johnny LaRue.
  • One of the stock bad guy types on MacGyver.
  • Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock. Jack is rather sympathetic by the usual standards of the character type, but that really doesn't say much. Devon Banks, Jack's rival, may be a better example.
  • Damon in Enlightened is an example of this trope. Abaddonn is already shaping up to be a pretty nasty company on its own merits, added to which he is up to dodgy financial practices.
  • Domyoji Kaede, at least in the j-drama continuity of Hana Yori Dango is implied to use unethical practices to secure her company's massive, monopoly-esque corporate empire.
  • The Korean Series version of the above example, Boys Before Flowers, has the Evil Matriarch systematically destroying her son's love interest's livelihood, while manipulating the corporate empire she created. This includes telling her own children that their father died when in fact he was in a stroke-induced coma.
  • Another example of a Korean Drama is Can You Hear My Heart. CEO Choi delibrately witholds oxygen to his ill father-in-law in order to inherit the company. And that's just for starters...
  • Every CEO defendant on Law & Order exemplifies this trope.
  • Vexcor's Essa Rompkin and Brion Boxer, the Big Bads of Charlie Jade. As heads of an above the law Mega Corp., bribery and having people killed are child's play for them. The really impressive bits are Boxer's plan to steal the water from a parallel earth to replenish the one his company's polluted, a process which will destroy a third universe as a side-effect, or how, to rejuvenate the decrepit Boxer, Essa calls employees up to her office and forces them on the spot to consent — under the threat that they and their family will almost certainly be condemned to poverty if they refuse — to a fatal medical procedure wherein Boxer essentially drains the life out of them.
  • Despite the show ostensibly being about ninjas, the most common villain on The Master (known to MST3K fans as Master Ninja) would be one of these. It might explain why the show didn't last more than thirteen episodes.
  • Every member of the Planet of Hats Ferengi race, if they were high enough in business to be considered an executive. Their race doesn't distinguish between corrupt and non-corrupt, as long as you make a profit.
  • The villains on Damages. Unless they're Dirty Cops who just work for one.
  • The NID from Stargate verse, though they only wanted to get access to alien tech. After they got rooted out, the Trust took over instead.
    • Don't forget Ba'al himself, who somehow manages to become the head of a major corporation on Earth.
    • Del Tynan, a low-level supervisor for Tech Con Group on Hebridan is a conspiracy nut who believes that the Serrakin and the human/Serrakin hybrids are secretly in charge and putting pure humans down as second-class citizens. It turns out that the reason for his complaint is that he was passed over for promotion twice. When the president of the corporation Miles Hagan (who is the aversion to this trope, as far as we know) confronts Tynan, he explains that the reason he was passed over for promotion was due to an internal investigation into Tynan, which revealed corruption. A rare case of a CCE who tries to justify his actions with racist conspiracy theories.
  • Richard "Dick" Roman from series seven of Supernatural. It's hard to get much more corrupt than "possessed by the leader of the abominations God dumped in Purgatory for everyone's safety". He also claims the real Roman was a lower-key example (he picked up prostitutes and then kicked them out of hotel suites).
  • B.P. Richfield of Dinosaurs, who's willing to do anything to make a profit, including causing an Ice Age that will kill the dinosaurs. His only thought was that heaters, blankets, and cocoa were selling like hotcakes.
  • Lionel Luthor on Smallville. Much like his hair follicle-challenged son in the Superman timeline, his agribusiness LuthorCorp has plenty of underworld connections: Lionel killed his parents in a staged 'accident' and used the insurance payout as a startup for his company. (This backstory was borrowed from the post-Crisis Lex Luthor.) His friend and partner in crime was Morgan Edge, who of course later went on to become a major kingpin in Intergang. LuthorCorp functions as a standard soap opera antagonist in the series, meddling in small town politics and running clandestine mutant research in underground labs.
    • Tess Mercer, who replaced the Luthors at the company's helm, is a different variation: a well-intentioned ecoterrorist who used her position to try and order around Clark Kent, her chosen messiah. (Of course, saying that she "replaced" the Luthors isn't really accurate since she is a Luthor.) Once she does a Heel–Face Turn to join Clark's team, she actually uses her habits of this in almost a Token Evil Teammate way to help the JLA out (mostly by using LuthorCorp to fund things just like Oliver does, and using her position as Clark's and Lois's boss to cover for them).
    • Then there's Earth-2 Lionel, who managed to combine this trope with Diabolical Mastermind, fusing LuthorCorp with the Metropolis underworld and essentially becoming The Emperor.
    • The show also has a subversion in Green Arrow, who while a definite Antihero (and the inspiration for the trigger-happy protagonist of Arrow) is one of the most incorruptible characters in the series.
  • Leverage lives and breathes by this trope. Nearly every Asshole Victim in a given episode is either a mega-corporate exec or the country hick version of this, with a preference for going after the former. Word of God has stated that many of their villain/victims are based heavily on real corrupt executives and real crimes that they've committed, with only the tiniest bit of embellishment — and that in some cases, the fictional version has been toned DOWN from their real-life counterpart because the real thing just wouldn't seem believable to TV audiences.
    • Don't forget the CCE who knows about the team's activities and makes money off them. It turns out he's in cahoots with another CCE, who put the team together in the first place.
  • Burn Notice has a few, although the show tends to focus on other kinds of criminals. The most notable is John Barrett (played by Robert Patrick), the head of a private security firm who finances corrupt governments and terrorists.
  • 90% of villains of the week in White Collar are this, due to the nature of the show.
  • Andromeda has Sid Barry (under the name Sam Profit) run TransGalactic, a large shipping company. He has tons of skeletons in his closet, and Beka is determined to expose him. Later on, he tries to run for public office. When Beka decides to release proof that Sid is a murderer and a smuggler, he laughs and reveals that this information is already public but was twisted into making him look sympathetic.
  • Tower Prep is apparently run by a board of these.
  • Wonder Woman (2011 pilot): you have Veronica Cale, who does illegal experiments on trafficked in people and tries to use her connections to politicians to intimidate her rivals. Wonder Woman herself actually averts this. Sure, she's a brutal psychopath who tortures people in hospital beds and murders security guards (and abuses personal connections to get away scot-free — she is corrupt, just not in the sense of this trope), but the way she runs her business showcases she's not interested in wealth. In fact, she sabotages herself in terms of money in one scene, ordering a recall of an exploitative doll, she she gave consent to earlier).
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings us recurring villain Ian Quinn. On the surface, he's a philanthropist who champions deregulation of government interference with scientific research. However, the truth is that he only wants that so that he can profit from the development of dangerous advanced technology, which he's willing to blackmail and manipulate scientists to get his hands on. And if that's not enough to convince you he's evil, the end of his second episode reveals that he's working for The Clairvoyant.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): In "Virtual Future", David Warner played Bill Trenton, a Research, Inc.'s evil CEO. He hires a research scientist who developed a device that could predict the future, but decides to use the device to win an election by murdering his rival.
  • When Calls The Heart has Henry Gowen, who knew about the unsafe conditions in the mine but covered his own hide and was responsible for the deaths of 46 men. He then spent the better part of a season sabotaging efforts to bring the mining company to justice.
  • Inspector George Gently: In "Breathe the Air", a Swiss corporation is covering up the fact that they knew that asbestos was giving their workers cancer years before they shut down their factory. Their ruthless cover-up drives a doctor to suicide.
  • Babylon 5:
    • Edgars Industries, which is planning wholescale genocide of telepaths.
    • Interplanetary Expeditions also is willing to engage in more than a little corruption in order to get its job done, something the Alliance plays into in order to get needed supplies past the EarthGov embargo of the station:
      Sheridan: [to a visiting IPX executive] If you're going to be working here, you'll be packing a lunch. We just want to make sure you bring enough for everyone.
  • Baron Kite, the leader of the conspiracy in Oliver's Travels.
  • Mr Rogers Neighborhood: Believe it or not, this trope showed up in something of a Show Within a Show: Mr. Rogers put on an opera involving a town called Bubble Land, and that opera's villain was the CEO of the Bubble Chemical Company named W. I. Norton Donovan. He sold cans of compressed air as "spray-on sweaters" that protect your bubbles, and when confronted with the sheer impossibility of spray-on sweaters, he tried to pass it off as a joke. These cans of compressed air, when used, actually gave him Blow You Away powers and turned him into a living windstorm. Yes, an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood actually had a corrupt corporate executive who turned himself into a supervillain!
  • Kluen Cheewit: Jeerawat's poor excuse of a lying, lusting stepfather, who uses fear and intimidation to force people to sell their property and lands.

    Music 
  • 'Bad Businessman' by the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
  • Iron Maiden's "El Dorado" is mostly told through the point of view of one of those.
    • As is UFO's "A Self Made Man".
  • The eponymous character of Ray Stevens' "Mr. Businessman."
    "You can wheel and deal the best of them/Steal it from the rest of them/You know the score/Their ethics are a bore."
  • The eponymous bourgeois sociopath of Warren Zevon's 'Mr Bad Example' has a phase of this in Australia, stealing the wages of the aboriginals he has hired to work the opal mines, after previous occupations as an altar boy (where he stole the collection), a carpet fitter (where he laid his clients' housewives and stole their furnishings), a lawyer (when he counselled all his clients to plead insanity), a hair replacer ('swindlin' the bald!'), and a gambler (where he lost all his hair replacement money, mugged a prostitute for her passport and her wig, and caught the midnight flight from Monte Carlo to Adelaide). The song ends with him having to flee another country, cash in hand.
    I bought a first-class ticket on Malaysian Air,
    And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear,
    I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals,
    I'll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals!

    Pinballs 
  • In Popeye Saves the Earth, Bluto is a proud and unrepentant planet-destroying polluter with a cartel of toxic companies.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • In the '80s, Ted DiBiase was one of the early examples of this trope in nationally televised wrestling. He was billed as the "Million Dollar Man" and paid André the Giant to win the WWF championship only to sell it to him immediately after the match. When the bought title was not recognized by the WWF, he declared himself the Million Dollar Champion and created his own Million Dollar Belt. He was also something of a Dastardly Whiplash, as at times he would engage in evil behaviour with no significant personal gain whatsoever, such as when he offered a young child $100 if he could dribble a basketball ten times without dropping it, then kicked the ball out of the child's hands half way through.
  • Eric Bischoff crossed this with The Quisling when he joined the nWo at the end of the November 18, 1996 WCW Monday Nitro.
  • Vince McMahon became this as part of his heel turn following the Kayfabe Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 97, leading to him forming his own Power Stable The Corporation.
  • Don Callis played this role twice. In ECW, he was Cyrus, who was supposed to be the face of TNN and who was supposedly trying to bury ECW and get it thrown off the Network, which was also the name of his power stable. Under his own name in TNA, he played a "Management Consultant" who was looking to oust Director of Authority Erik Watts from his position and who did everything in his power to make life difficult for Jerry Lynn.
  • Victoria played this role when she was the Commissioner of WWE's developmental promotion Memphis Championship Wrestling in 2001, since she was still competing and working as a heel manager for Steve Bradley.
  • Stevie Richards played it for laughs when he was the self-appointed General Manager of Sunday Night Heat, which he had renamed Stevie Night Heat and was supposedly the head of "StevieCorp." His Catch Phrase for this was "ALL STEVIE! ALL NIGHT! NOTHING BUT HEAT!"
  • After his run in APA, Bradshaw became John Bradshaw Layfield (or "JBL") and, playing off his legitimate success in the stock market, became a J.R. Ewing-inspired robber baron who did anything he could to capture and then keep the WWE Championship, keeping a stranglehold on the belt for nine months before losing to rising star John Cena. JBL often belittled anyone below his perceived class status and often threw his money around to get what he wanted. This was exemplified in his early 2009 run when he employed a broke Shawn Michaels to help him take the WWE Championship from Cena. It didn't work.
  • Paul Heyman played this role as the General Manager of SmackDown!.
  • John Laurinaitis as the general manager of both Raw and SmackDown!, depicted as the leader of an evil outfit known as "People Power," which consists of Laurinaitis, David Otunga, Eve Torres, and The Big Show.
  • After Daniel Bryan won and immediately lost WWE's title belt came Triple H and his "Best For Business" regime, officially known as "The Authority", put together to ensure Daniel Bryan would keep losing.
  • In 2014, Joshi fed REINA hired "The World Famous" Kana as a consultant, because every child of HUSTLE apparently had to trust her at least once. Naturally she instructed them to reward her friends, punish wrestlers in their way and bribed her way to victory in the ring, gradually taking over the promotion.

    Radio 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Misspent Youth by Robert Bohl, if the group creates a Corporate villain, then it will no doubt include corrupt and rotten CEOs. It's a game where you play bomb-throwing anarchist teenagers who are out to upend a Dystopia that has it out for them personally.
  • Anyone in a CEO position at Pentex in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Those not in the know merely believe that the company plays fast and loose with environmental regulations and human rights laws to deliver cheap-to-produce product to a demanding audience. Those in the Inner Circle know that the company is actually an extension of the Wyrm, the universal embodiment of decay and corruption, and that their products are stuffed full of Bane spirits that play on humanity's negative emotions — and they don't care if the company makes a profit or not, because they're all licking the Wyrm's filth-encrusted boots.
    • Technically, anyone not in the know shouldn't realize Pentex even exists as an entity; it should just look like a bunch of shady but independent companies that are all in each others' pockets.
  • Orpheus, also from the Old World of Darkness, has a number of standout examples among the ghost-tech corporations: the drug-manufacturing head of Terrel & Squib, the ex-blood diamond baron that leads the mercenaries of Next World, and the unethical experimenting of the founders of Orpheus itself. The corebook also wryly notes Orpheus' complex backs up to one of Pentex's.
  • Cyberpunk 2020 has the character class "Corporate". While you are not required to be corrupt, is there really any fun in role playing a normal executive?.note  The best in-game example may be Saburo Arasaka, CEO and major shareholder of the Arasaka corporation, who is using it in the pursue of Japan's world domination.
  • The various corporations and megacorporations that run much of the show in Shadowrun.
    • Out of all the Corps in the Sixth World, Aztechnology takes the cake. Not only are they the largest practitioners of Blood Magic in the world (A type of magic so evil that before Dunkelzahn sacrificed himself to fuel a Mana-Absorbing Artifact, every spell a blood mage cast would bring the End of the World as We Know It a bit closer),but the board of directors also has connections with The Horrors! They've come incredibly close to having an Omega Order called out on them by the Corporate Court, but their squeaky clean public image has allowed them to prosper. After all, who would believe that the company behind the Stuffer Shack would want to bring about the end of the world?
  • The Chrysalis Corporation in Cthulhu Tech takes it to a whole new level, insofar as their Director is actually Nyarlathotep. Don't think anyone else is gonna be toppin' that one any time soon.
  • Forgotten Realms in its Cloak & Dagger lore has a lot of big traders and merchant cabals ranging from unscrupulous to mafia-like to fiendish.
  • Eberron has many opportunities for this, since the dragonmarked houses are essentially magical Zaibatsu.
  • Rogue Traders of the Warhammer 40,000 universe can often become this, being fabulously wealthy merchant princes given free reign to orchestrate business ventures in the far reaches of space by Imperial bureaucracy. This being the universe that it is, even the Honest Corporate Executive examples of Rogue Traders will often treat employees as expendable and exploit entire planets for profit in the name of capitalism. It's just that there are far worse Traders that will hire incredibly dangerous aliens like Orks and Dark Eldar, or sacrifice the men under their command just because they can. It's all relative, really.

    Theater 
  • Friedrich Dürrenmatt's dark comedy Frank The Fifth is about a bank which is owned and operated by solely such people. The bank uses all kinds of illegal methods, and routinely has customers and employees murdered.
  • The board of directors of General Products in The Solid Gold Cadillac, composed of four stuffed shirts named T. John Blessington, Alfred Metcalfe, Warren Gillie and Clifford Snell.
  • Caldwell B. Caldwell from Urinetown. His Urine Good Company forces people to pay steep fees to use public restrooms (the only kind that exist anymore), and arrests anybody caught peeing without paying. A subversion in that everyone dies as soon as he's overthrown, since his policies actually kept the water shortage from getting out of control.
  • Brook Lansdale in Allegro, a soap manufacturer who may not be the nominal executive of the city hospital but has enough authority to promote his sycophants and fire anyone he doesn't like. He's not so interested in pursuing patients who aren't wealthy, but does take an interest in the protagonist's wife.
  • Phil Romano in That Championship Season is a strip-mining mogul who gives frequent kickbacks to local authorities; he made a significant campaign donation to help his former basketball teammate George Sitkowski become mayor in exchange for generous terms on the land lease for his mines, and when it looks as though George's re-election bid will fail, he tries making a similar donation to his opponent (who refuses).

    Video Games 
  • Syndicate, the game series that lets you play a Corrupt Corporate Executive. There's not a lot of corruption in the original game (beyond using violence to take over territories from other companies), but the backstory makes it clear that most people are functionally slaves to the corporation in control of a particular region, thanks to implants in their heads receiving Mind Control signals.
    • And in the 2012 Reboot, Jack Denham.
  • Act of War's Consortium is a bunch of corrupt business executives who use terrorism as an excuse to jack up oil prices, and also happen to finance several terrorist organisations.
  • Army of Two combines this trope with Private Military Contractors in the form of the heroes' own military corporation, SSC, whose leadership is plotting to privatize the United States military so they can take over the country.
  • The villains of Baldur's Gate is the Iron Throne trading company which just wants to make a shitload of money, but it's later revealed that the adopted son of the local leader is just using them for his much grander scheme.
  • Crey Industries in City of Heroes, which has its own black ops teams and engages in kidnappings, employee brainwashing, and shakedowns regularly (then bribes the judges or claims "rogue employee" when caught in the act). Alarmingly, a lot of the technology that keeps the city running smoothly was built and sold by them, making them seem more respectable to the public than they really are.
  • Critical Depth has both Dana Nagel, CEO of Mondred Corp, who plans to use the mysterious Pods to exploit for profit, and Sebastion Titan, head of Titan Industries, whose plans border on downright world domination.
  • The WEC is the big bad in the Crusader series of games. If you are a bad guy and not a robot or a soldier, you are a Corrupt Corporate Executive. 'No exceptions''. The office politics would make Machiavelli have a nervous breakdown.
  • Bob Page is Deus Ex's Corrupt Corporate Executive Villain with Good Publicity, taking refuge in the unlikelihood of anyone digging deeper.
    • David Sarif from Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a downplayed version, coupled with a healthy dose of Utopia Justifies the Means: While he does and orders some very shady things (such as purposely sticking a bunch of unnecessary military augs into Adam to make him his own private killer cyborg, his covert investigation of Adam's past, and refusing to let police rescue hostages in one of his factories so his private killer cyborg can keep corporate secrets away from the public eye), he's shown to be a benevolent idealist at heart and genuinely believes that what he's doing is for the benefit of all humanity. Zhao Yun Ru is a straight example, though.
  • Arius of Devil May Cry 2 , who seeks and wields demonic power for world domination while publicly the head of the international Uroboros corporation.
  • The Shinra Electric Power Company in Final Fantasy VII, with the exception of Reeve. Shinra's main industry in the game seems more "World Domination" than "Electric Power". Or "Weapons Manufacturer" before even that.
  • Genevive Aristide and her company, Armacham Technology Corporation, from First Encounter Assault Recon, are so corrupt that they have no qualms with murdering their own employees in sight of federal agents and then killing those same agents with uniformed security guards. Nor do they hesitate to arrange for a nuclear explosion in the middle of a large, populated city - and this is just the cover-up for even worse things they've done. Most of them were perpetrated by Harlan Wade. At some point, you begin to wonder if Alma really is the Big Bad, or Wade/Aristide/Armacham itself is. They're wholly responsible for Alma's creation and escape to wreak her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Adrian Ripburger in adventure game Full Throttle is another example of a villainous vice-exec with a benign superior. Since he murders said superior and takes his place relatively early in the game, however, the distinction is probably moot.
  • The Korx in Galactic Civilizations are the literal embodiment of this stereotype — the government and the whole planet are run by one company. So when you play as their leader, technically you are a CEO. Ironically the system works well: everything they have is capital and hence valuable (although they are max evil). Unfortunately their neighbors are externalities...
  • The Morganites of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri operate as a collective of businesses under their leader who is, by default, titled CEO. While not instrinsically evil like the Korx, the faction can be played as amorally as you, the CEO, desire.
    • Technically Morgan got aboard the Unity illegally, having his people install a secret cryo-pod on the ship. He justifies it by saying that, as a major contributor into the construction of the Unity, he, technically, owns part of it.
  • In the Civ-clone Call To Power series, one of the government models you discover in the Modern Age is the Corporate Republic, where corporations assume the role of government agencies. So once again, if you're evil and head the main business in charge of the government...
  • A large number of characters in the Hitman series are Corrupt Corporate Executives. Special mention goes to Sheriff Skurky and Blake Dexter from Absolution.
  • Goldman from House of the Dead initially appears to be one of these, but then he turns out to be much more.
  • The Glukkons in the Oddworld game series are similar to the aforementioned Druuge — a species of out-of-control capitalists. Their lives revolve around harvesting the animals on their planet, processing them, and selling them as snack food. By the time of the first game, Abe's Oddyssee, they've driven one race into extinction (the Meeches) and the others are rare. Thus, they turn on their slave race, the Mudokons, and attempt to turn them into their next product. In the second game, Abe's Exoddus, they've taken to making a soft drink from Mudokon bones and tears.
    • Stranger's Wrath gives us Sekto, the owner of Sekto Springs, a water bottle selling company that made a dam around the Mongo River region, damaging the wasteland and making life difficult for the native Grubbs.
  • Chairman Drek, the Big Bad of Ratchet & Clank, had a far-reaching, planet-looting scheme for making endless profits, the thwarting of which was Clank's sole motivation throughout the first game.
  • Mitsuko Isurugi from Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 is able to plan with all sides except for the Einst, simply because all sides know that she will only look out for herself, and wants the war to continue so she can profit off of it. The only reason she doesn't work for the Einst is because they're Eldritch Abominations and she can't make money off of them.
  • Wario's role in the WarioWare series is as one of these, but as an Anti-Hero rather than a villain. He's a lazy, greedy bastard with terrible hygiene problems, but the Rule of Funny and Rule of Fun get him a free pass via his microgames, and he usually receives some form of Amusing Injury at the end of the game as karma.
  • Max Payne's Big Bad is Nicole Horne, head of the Aesir Corporation, a member of the Inner Circle, the twisted mind behind the nightmare drug Valkyr, and the one behind the murder of the title character's wife and baby girl.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The planet Noveria exists as a place for Corrupt Corporate Executives to operate and perform research outside the bounds of Citadel law.
    • ExoGeni Corp is in charge of the colony on Feros where it conducts experiments on the colonists, allowing the telepathic Thorian creature to exercise its control over them so its researchers can observe the effects. After Shepard's intervention, ExoGeni attempts to wipe out the entire colony. Later in the game, ExoGeni employees' experiments with Thorian creepers lead to disaster after the Feros mission when the creatures go berserk and kill most of them. The last surviving researcher attempts to bribe Shepard to prevent her arrest.
    • The ultimate evil executive in the Mass Effect universe: Nassana Dantius who is implied to have her employees murdered if they leave before the expiration of their contract, and tries to have them all killed out of paranoia in Mass Effect 2. Not only does no-one mourn her once she's assassinated, her company's stock goes up.
    "Tell your assassin to aim for the head... 'cause she doesn't have a heart."
    • Miranda Lawson's Archnemesis Dad is one of the wealthiest businessmen in the entire galaxy, but his role in the actual story is more that of a Mad Scientist.
    • Then there's Donovan Hock, a wealthy businessman (arms dealer) and patron of the arts on Bekenstein. Taking him down is the goal in Kasumi's loyalty mission.
  • And before Noveria, BioWare worked this trope through Knights of the Old Republic with Czerka. Two planets worth of slavery, genocide, environmental damage, and other shady practices. A light-side Player Character can scam them mercilessly and get away with it. In the sequel, they're at it again, trying to screw over Telos, getting cozy with the Exchange (mobsters), and the local rep overrunning the place with mercenaries and paid thugs to subvert the Telosian Security Force.
    • Bites them hard in the ass come Star Wars: The Old Republic where hard-liner Republic Chancellor Suresh has had enough of their flagrant disrespect for the law and orders their assets seized for crimes against the Republic. PlayerCharacters are part of the cleanup crew on the Republic side, but the Empire wants to swoop in and grab whatever they can before the Republic makes off with the company assets.
  • The Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil. Notably, when the government finally had evidence of Umbrella's misdeeds in the Time Skip before Resident Evil 4, they destroyed the company by freezing their business practices, crashing their stock price and driving them into bankruptcy - it doesn't matter how powerful a corporation you are, if you can't do business, you die.
    • And the shadowy Other Corporation Albert Wesker works for. And the Raccoon City Police Department. And most of the S.T.A.R.S management. And really any organisation in the Resident Evil games.
  • Perennial villain of the Daiku no Gensan/Hammerin' Harry series, Hyosuke Kuromoku. Not coincidentally, his company uses modern-style construction workers, while hero Genzo/Harry is a traditional Japanese carpenter, and heroine Kanna is the heir to the company that employs him.
  • Advanced V.G.: Miranda's video game counterpart secretly created Section-9, where she used her own daughter, Reimi, as a testbed for her Gattaca Babies. K-1, K-2, and later, the Material Twins were the result, all of whom were biogenetically engineered killing machines. Though she killed each of them for failing to defeat Yuka Takeuchi. Which caused Yuka to blame herself for their deaths and briefly lose her fighting spirit.
  • Persona 3 has Tanaka, whose Social Link is The Devil and spends his time with the player talking about doing shady business (but not before making the protagonist pay him as an "investment"), though his interactions with the Main Character will encourage him to consider philanthropic work, if only for the purpose of having the people he may potentially help owe him.
  • Saints Row 2 and Red Faction had the Ultor corporation. Doing anything to earn a buck off Stillwater's middle and wealthy classes, they will not hesitate to exploit workers, start gang wars and bring in heavily armed men to protect investments.
  • Master Zilla of Zilla Enterprises from Shadow Warrior. His forays into evil sorcery and his plans to take over Japan with his summoned monsters was what prompted Lo Wang to quit the corporation. When Zilla tried to have Lo Wang killed, Lo Wang took the fight to him.
  • The Druuge from Star Control II are a whole Planet of Hats of Corrupt Corporate Executives. Marriages are entirely based on contracts, and any offspring who reach maturity are forced to pay a percentage of their income to their parents. Every member of the race works for the Crimson Corporation, which owns everything on all Druuge-occupied planets, including air. Thus, anyone who is laid off from the Crimson Corporation is accused of poaching company property, and either executed or sent to be used as crew/emergency fuel on a Mauler-class spaceship. All the while, the Druuge are trying to stab each other (and other races) in the back and claw their way to the top of the corporate pyramid.
  • Avery Carrington from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, also a Corrupt Hick. He's not an antagonist though, being this a criminal simulator with allies and rivals rather than good and evil.
    • Carrington also mentored Love, who played this role in Grand Theft Auto III. They even have similar dialogue between the two games.
  • Adrian DeWinter and the executives of Artemis Global Security in Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.. After getting contract with Brazil to fight Las Trinidas and fought a battle to defend Rio, the US intervened, making the stocks drop, so after a while, DeWinter accepts deal from Las Trinidas (because it pays better) and launched an all-out assault on USA, trying to assassinate the president, disabling country's missile defence system, and trying to nuke the country.
  • Were it not for Edward Diego trying to cover up his corrupt antics, SHODAN would have just sat and quietly run Citadel Station.
    • Similarly, the Von Braun would not be such a death trap and the Many would have remained ineffectually stuck on some chunk of space-debris were it not for a few Tri-Optimum executives.
  • In EarthBound, Geldegarde Monotoli ran the show in Fourside, and it was hinted he made a deal with Giygas to gain so much power. Many citizens complained the abuse of his power ruined their lives.
  • Pokémon Platinum: Cyrus, the leader of Team Galactic. He runs a huge corporation, and that is a facade for the true plan to make him a deity. Could also be considered a severe case of A God Am I.
    • The CEO of Altru Corp. in Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia is also the head of Team Dim Sun. The two are nigh-completely parallel - just replace "oil power" with "Pokémon power".
    • In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Mr. Verich is an obscenely rich man bribing the sailors of Gateon Port, and is likely the man who made a load of money through the mines under Pyrite Town. Given he's the man in charge of Cipher, doesn't it make more sense that he'd finance the construction of Realgam Tower, which served as Evice/Es Cade's base of operations in Colosseum?
  • Ayano of Ar tonelico is introduced as one of these, as the head of the villainous Tenba Corporation. It turns out she's not, and everything bad about the company is actually Bourd's fault. Once he's out of the way, she makes sure it's reformed.
  • Chief Blank from Space Channel 5 is a loon who'll do anything to get high ratings, including brainwash the masses.
  • Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima from the Tekken series probably count. Jinpachi was a benevolent CEO, but Heihachi quickly corrupted it, and Kazuya was even worse (e.g. smuggling endangered animals, which brought Jun Kazama into the picture).
  • BioShock. The game does quite a bit to Deconstruct the idea of the Objectivist writings of Ayn Rand by showing the player an anarcho-capitalist dystopian hidden city pretty much filled with these guys. Fontaine and Sinclair stand out.
    • BioShock Infinite gives us another example with Jeremiah Fink, a cruel and unforgiving Robber Baron who basically controls all of Columbia's industry and maintains it with what amounts to little more as a slave labour force.
  • In Spore, a player can evolve their species into one of these by sticking in the middle path (getting either three or all blue cards) as the Trader archetype, which the game defines "... are in it for the profit; their allegiance is to the almighty sporebuck". This idea really can be played out, in which a trader empire will generally have lowered prices for all general purchases and colony tools, as well as to have the cash infusion super power (which doesn't have a penalty with local empires), which simply allows the progress bar for a system's trade to fill up instantly, allowing you to buyout the planet if you have the cash. Factor it in with the ability to farm spice and the fact that only zealot and warrior type empires (as well as the the Grox) are your only sworn enemies, you can take over a large chunk of the galaxy just through simple exploration and trade and never even have to fight until you're strong enough to do so. And they say money doesn't talk...
  • In Oiligarchy, you get to play as one of these, running an oil company that engages in every Captain Planet-worthy crime imaginable.
  • The recent "King of the Dwarves" quest of RuneScape has the dwarves think the Consortium is that. The ultimate reason for that is the death of two miners in a cave-in, as the Consortium's forces, the Black Guard, was too busy saving the machines damaged in the same terrorism-based explosion to help them. The trope isn't played straight - the decision was necessary to avoid further disasters caused by the city's power supply being destroyed. This doesn't help with preventing all the civil unrest.
  • Reaver in Fable III, the CEO of Reaver Industries. While his business ethics are already atrocious (destroying the environment and actively using child labor), Reaver himself, in his first cutscene of the game shows how he stomps out union protesters - personally, using a pistol.
  • Aperture Science CEO Cave Johnson apparently fits this to a T, especially in his later years when he had to resort to putting his own employees through tests, though he stands out mostly for being a Cloud Cuckoolander and Crazy Awesome.
  • Henry Leland, Chief of Development of Alpha Protocol's Halbech, inc. His character design and voice job appears to have been custom-tailored to make him look and sound as much as a corporate sleazebag as humanly possible, to say nothing of his smoking habits.
  • The Elder Scrolls give several examples:
    • Morrowind
      • Great House Hlaalu is a haven for these types, along with being a Proud Merchant House. Chrobic Backstabbing is rampant and the House's favored skills all lend themselves well to lying, cheating, and stealing one's way to success. Additionally, several of their highest ranking councilors are in the pocket of the brutal Mafia-esque Cammona Tong. When dealing with them, either as part of the House Hlaalu questline or the part of the main quest where you need to be named Hlaalu Hortator, you will need to bribe, blackmail, or, in one or two cases depending on how you play it, outright kill in order to get the support you need.
      • Carnius Magius of the East Empire Company in Bloodmoon. He's embezzling from the Raven Rock ebony mining colony and tries to get it to fail to cover his tracks. Whether you side with him or against him, he'll eventually turn on you.
    • Thonar Silver-Blood and Maven Black-Briar in Skyrim. The former owns Cidhna Mine, the largest silver mining operation in Markarth, and has an agreement with the city guard where any criminals arrested in Markarth can be forced to work in the mine as slave labor. He also hires mercenaries to seize control of rival mines in the area so their owners are forced to sell to him. The latter controls Riften's mead industry, and regularly hires the Thieves' Guild to sabotage her competitors and put them out of business. Also, for extra frustration points, if you do the Civil War quest, you have to make one of them a Karma Houdini. If you take the Stormcloaks' side, Thonar's older brother Thongvor Silver-Blood will become the new Jarl of Markarth, while if you take the Empire's side, Maven Black-Briar will become the new Jarl of Riften.
  • Rich Dotcom in Mega Man Star Force 2. His diabolical plan to take over a hotel is to fake accidents and yeti sightings, thereby driving away customers until the owner has no choice but to sell! Naturally, the actual villains are using him like a chump for reasons that aren't really explained all that clearly.
  • Trade Prince Gallywix of World of Warcraft in spades. When the volcano above Bilgewater Port began to erupt, he extorted a fortune from his own cartel for the right to board his ship. Once onboard, he locked them all in chains as his slaves. His later betrayal on the Lost Isles was not a surprise, but the fact that Thrall let him live and continue to lead the Cartel was.
    • In fact, the Goblin player character is for the most part portrayed as a Corrupt Corporate Executive in the starting quests. Whether his/her experiences escaping from Kezan and the Lost Isles have changed him/her is left up in the air...
    • It can be argued that any Goblin in World of Warcraft with any authority whatsoever is a Corrupt Corporate Executive or a merchant trying to be one someday, or at least those who aren't already a Mad Scientist or a Pointy-Haired Boss, with rare exceptions.
  • Averted in Asura's Wrath with Deus's Reincarnation, who takes time out of his work schedule to help an old man (Who is the emperor he ironically killed in his past life who reincarnated as well) cross a busy street. Olga is his Sexy Secretary.
  • Cassandra de Vries in Perfect Dark, and Zhang Li in Perfect Dark Zero, both CEO of dataDyne.
  • The Bankster skillpath in Dungeons of Dredmor is all about weaponizing the various shady dealings associated with this trope.
    Skillpath description: "There's nothing an adventurer can't face with a bunch of derivatives, a diversified stock portfolio, and absolutely no morals whatsoever"
  • Handsome Jack, the main villain of Borderlands 2 is CEO of the Hyperion corporation and to put it lightly, an egotistical maniac who declares practically everyone on Pandora a bandit (even those who aren't actually bandits) and a despot who is pointlessly cruel to everyone for kicks and giggles.
  • Reality On The Norm: Yathzee, the owner of the company "Yathzeebrand", which is known, among other things, for brainwashing its employees and demanding them to nearly worship the CEO.
  • Tachyon: The Fringe has the Galactic Spanning Corporation (AKA GalSpan), the most powerful Mega Corp. in both Sol and the Fringe. The Fringe branch is run by Regional Director Gustav Atkins. The main story arc involves GalSpan moving into the Bora area of space in order to claim its resource-rich asteroids. Atkins uses a legal loophole to obtain legal rights to those regions (apparently, the ancestors of the Bora never bothered to file for permission to settle in a far-away area of space). Not only does Atkins use his Army of Lawyers to force Bora colonists to leave, he then hires mercenaries to attack those who refuse or are a bit too slow in leaving (yes, including firing on unarmed shuttles). Sabotage is also not out of the question. Whichever CCE runs the Sol branch is also responsible for blowing up a hospital in order to hide the accidental release of a deadly virus. If you take the side of the Bora and win the campaign, Atkins is fired by his bosses.
  • Simon Welk of Smashmuck Champions, owner and CEO of Welk Industries. Aside from creating and/or recruiting the more morally questionable Champions, he once unleashed a super-weapon his company had created onto unsuspecting Hub City so it'd spare his headquarters, Welk Tower.
  • Taiga Gigayama in Armed Police Batrider. He starts by "magnaminously" creating the artificial island of Zenovia as a refuge for people trying to escape Manhattan's skyrocketing crime rate. Only for Zenovia to become even worse, as GiganTech proceeds to take political power over the island, and use its luckless captives to test out black market weapons like Boredom and supply energy for super-weapons like Discharge.
  • The Last Federation, the entire species of Acutians. When dealing with them, instead of dealing with warlords, queen or some sort of government, player directly deals with the three most wealthy CEOs.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Entertainment makes so many bizarre decisions that you'll end up wondering if they're actually evil or just woefully idiotic (the game never outright says which). Here are their "wonderful" decisions:
    • They never fix the animatronics when they start attacking the night watch, and even though their AI is so easy to fix and make them mostly harmless that a simple guard can do it, they prefer to keep hiring new guards as they die (as opposed to hiring a repairman), and even fire any guards who do fiddle with the animatronics' AI.
    • If any guards die, they'll hide the body, clean property and premises thoroughly (to the point of replacing carpets!), and only when the job's done do they inform relatives of the disappearance... by filing a missing person report.
    • The second game shows that they won't put up warnings about breaking the robots apart (in this case, robotic parts contain sharp materials). Instead, they turn one of the animatronics into a "disassemble-and-reassemble-at-will" attraction for the children just because they were tired of putting it back together after they kept tearing it apart. You can see where this is going.
    • The third game reveals they used dangerous animatronic/suit hybrids that, if mishandled, would release the animatronic endoskeleton parts while a performer was still wearing the suit, injuring them severely. Said suits were so unsafe that even breathing on a springlock would moisten it enough to break loose, and their advice on how to deal with springlock failures amounted to, "Could you please bleed to death in this room? You're disturbing the customers." That being said, once a failure does occur they actually have the sense to immediately retire the suits to their hidden Safe Rooms... though they admit they don't care whether an employee wears one despite the dangers.
    • Said Safe Room is noted to be invisible to animatronics, and is present at every location. Great place for a security guard's office, right? Except that rather than destroy the unsafe springlock suits and repurpose the room to protect guards from the homicidal animatronics, the management instead decided to lock the suits in said room, build a false wall over the entrance, and tell employees not to mention it to anyone (especially insurance representatives). They did this to every location's Safe Room.
    • Then Sister Location drops a bombshell with the reveal that the Murderer (named William Afton) is a C.E.O. himself, and built the Circus Baby animatronics to kidnap/murder children.
  • The Big Bad of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is Atlas Corporation CEO Jonathan Irons, who manipulated the world's governments to turn over key security operations to him via not informing anyone that an imminent strike from a known terrorist organization was planned even though he had knowledge of it beforehand.
  • Tarion and Archos in Telepath Tactics. Both of them are callous, exploitative, money-grubbing sociopaths who enslave huge swaths of people and subject them to horrific working conditions in their mines. Here is their reaction to a worker who tried to use their own Loophole Abuse against them and escape:
    Tarion: See to it that Igor's men find him and everyone who follows him; I want every last one of them dead.
    Archos: Yes, sir. Will Igor be taking the customary fee?
    Tarion: 10% of whatever he finds on them, and not a single aurom more. I'll be counting everything he sends back personally.
  • Grand Theft Auto 2: The entire Zaibatsu Corporation.
  • System Shock has Edward Diego who was performing illegal bio experiments on Citadel Station. When Tri Optimum workers were getting suspicious they sent men to arrest him and he blew them up with the station's defenses. He later becomes a servant to Shodan and the hacker has to fight him! Before that however, he gave the hacker an ultimatum to change Shodan's programming in order to get a military grade implant and be set free.
  • President Max Profitt Haltmann in Kirby: Planet Robobot. True to his name, he goes to extreme lengths for the sake of his company's prosperity by exploiting planets (The latest target being Popstar, which naturally ends up being a big mistake) for their resources using his gigantic Access Ark spaceship. He used to be a decent guy until he lost his daughter, which sent him off the deep end.
  • The Cogs, the various Mecha-Mooks from Toontown Online, are either this or a Yes-Man. So stuck-up that actually laughing damages them.
  • As revealed in Fallout 4, the Nuka-Cola Corporation was run this way. Rather than waste money on superior advertising campaigns and Research & Development to uphold their dominance over the market, they simply forced other soft drink companies into bankruptcy, stole their recipes, and rebranded those recipes as new types of Nuka-Cola. They were more than willing to use terrorist actions, including sabotaging advertising campaigns, mugging employees, stealing supplies, damaging machinery and even launch full-scale attacks on soda plants! The Far Harbor DLC contains a "Cola Wars" storyline you can follow by exploring the Vim Soda Pop factory, which reveals how Vim was under attack by Nuka-Cola saboteurs before the bombs dropped, and the Nuka-World DLC contains terminals confirming that almost every alternate flavor of Nuka-Cola is actually a rebranded, stolen recipe from some other company that Nuka-Cola put out of business.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Benjamin Palmer and Lear Dunham from Broken Saints.
  • Zero Punctuation mocks this trope with the Alien franchise. Apparently the decades spent and trillions they've wasted trying to acquire the xenomorphs will somehow be balanced out by the amount they can make trying to sell them to the military industrial complex, assuming they can even be controlled.
  • Malcolm Hargrove from Red vs. Blue; he is largely a background character until Season 12, where his company Charon Industries is financing a civil war on the planet Chorus in an effort to kill everyone so Charon can get full access to the vast quantities of alien technology on Chorus. Also overlaps with Corrupt Politician, as Hargrove is the chairman of the UNSC Oversight Subcommittee and launched an investigation into Project Freelancer which, while revealing some of the highly illegal activities Freelancer was engaged in, was partially a cover so Hargrove could seize some of the experimental technology the project was dealing with.

    Web Comics 
  • Morguase in the modern arc of Arthur, King of Time and Space is a mild example. And Arthur's trying to convince her to be even less of one.
  • The shorthand for this in Mandatory Roller Coaster is old, bald, white men in navy blue suits.
  • Mr. Kornada, from Freefall, is willing to use his (temporary) authority at Ecosystems Unlimited to pervert a program intended to address an issue with the robots on Jean purely for the sake of personal profit, even if the perversion would effectively wipe out over 450 million sapient (if robotic) beings and turn them into mindless automatons, and could well doom the colony that relies on those beings for terraforming.
  • Anyone that works for FOX in Ansem Retort but particularly Ansem and Vexen. They secured the rights to Watchmen just to remind people of how evil they are.
  • Any member of Tera Corp from Antihero for Hire almost certainly qualifies. However, it is worth noting that they have had a good amount of infighting. It would seem that one Corrupt Corporate Executive is not loyal to any other one.
  • The RIAA in Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger..... who are the real life RIAA, drawn out to their logical conclusion. They were so avaricious that they took to scanning dying people's brains on the grounds that their memories contained copyrighted materials. It did not end well for them.
  • Vexxarr used "Is this the same Sony that..?" query for Even Evil Has Standards joke.
  • The three directors of the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission in The Order of the Stick are all styled after executives of hip new startup companies, using coorporate buzzwords ('A community-based grassroots organization dedicated to building bridges between the diabolic, daemonic and demonic populations') and adding disclaimers to their offers for souls, and they are directors of the IFCC, complete with business cards. While they make for a good Crowning Moment of Funny, they are still fiends and will screw you over with their deals.
  • Help Desk has Mr Bunny, the Hoppy Computer Guy, Dark Lord of Microsoft Expy Ubersoft, along with his doubles at SCO and the RIAA. Being evil is what Ubersoft is about. That's why they've never had more than one help desk employee authorized to actually help people at any time (and he quit).
  • In Sinfest, several characters such as Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Tom the Cat. Homer Simpson and Charlie Brown appear as leaders of different major crime families, with the Devil as ruling Don of the Five Families.
  • In Kevin & Kell, there's R.L., CEO of Herd Thinners, later joined by his wife (Kevin's ex) Angelique. Angelique seems to be the more corrupt of the two, as she did sell out the rest of the rabbits and is more scheming, while R.L.'s corruptness is tempered by, of all tropes, Brilliant, but Lazy: he shot down both world conquest and a racketeering scheme because it'd be too much work. (However, he's become a lot more corrupt now that Kell has established a rival company.
    • Ironically, the one time they were jailed (for overstating production), they were innocent of the crime (being set up by a disgruntled ex-employee as revenge for getting fired).
  • The Adventures of Gyno-Star features a shadowy cabal of corrupt corporate executives who plot to "eliminate" Gyno-Star for her meddling ways.
  • Every member of Hereti Corp in Sluggy Freelance is one of these. Their company goal is world domination, after all.
    • And now there's brutal industrialist Crustro and Mad Scientist Dr. Nofun, of their own corporations.
  • Pierce from Sturgeon's Law is a former corporate executive now part of a corrupt company trying to take over the world. There’s a possibility that some of his namesake company's products may contain babies.
  • Larry Scumthorpe from The Scumthorpe Files is the founder of a large Tiberium Mining company that has No OSHA Compliance, polluting the water supply of SimNation and causing radioactive mutations among the population.
  • Questionable Content gave us Beatrice Chatham, Hannelore's mother and a woman who openly laments that the days when you could topple a Mega Corp. with a few transsexual prostitutes and a Polaroid camera are over.
  • Drugs And Wires has Marilyn Hope-Fokker. A grate-A vulture-capitalist, she acquires an agricultural facility in Nebraska and forces it's employees to have a bake-off to avoid having their jobs outsourced or downsized. When she's given a dish that meets her approval and the hopeful employee asks if he can keep his job, she reveals that she's already sold the entire facility to a Taiwanese sexbot manufacturer and everyone is being terminated; the bake-off was just to scout employees for her new bakery subsidiary, since they'll be looking for a new job anyway. And this is all just in her introduction!

    Web Original 
  • Dino Attack RPG:
    • A flashback sequence reveals a story involving two such people going head-to-head. Uærlig Sindstorme, CEO of Mindstorms, Inc., decides to hire a team of small-time crooks to do dirty work against rival Dacta Corp. in order to lessen their competition. Meanwhile, Edward Korrupte, CEO of Dacta Corp., hires infamous assassin Silencia Venomosa to infiltrate Mindstorms, Inc. The results are... not pretty.
    • Implied to be the case with Mr. Bonaparte. He prescribes his patients with "classified" medications, but we have not seen anyone at Napoleon XIV Mental Institution whose mental health has improved under his supervision. Napoleon XIV also has a history of security issues, and he is willing to lie about them to avoid bad press.
    • Dr. Walter Breen also has many traits of a Corrupt Corporate Executive, especially in his days as administrator of Brick League United. Like Edward Korrupte, he was willing to hire Silencia Venomosa to take down his competition.
  • The Onion: "'Layoffs Are Necessary If We Want To Keep The Lights On,' Says CEO Halfway Through Tasting Menu"
  • Dr. Leonard J Alderman from LG15: the resistance, who doesn't hesitate to steal, kidnap, or torture providing it furthers the company's aims. He claims to be doing the world a service, but it's pretty clear he's really only interested in making a profit.
  • The Hasbro Guy from the sequel to Three In The Afternoon, who's behind convincing Lucas and his corporations to mass-produce and sell lightsabers.
  • In Arcana Magi, Oryn Zentharis, Vyndor, and The Board of Directors of Avalon Tech Enterprises want to use the Sentinels to dominate the economy and control the world.
  • Darryl Walcutt, in the Whateley Universe. He's suspected of belonging to the Brotherhood of the Bell. His daughter Tansy is the supervillainess Solange, and we know he has illegally used her Psi talents for corporate espionage. And probably blackmail.
  • Tim Sullivan from Avalons Reign runs the corporation Sullivan Detainment, specializing in private prisons. He has no problem ordering the death of a politician who questions his business practices. On a smaller scale, Dirk Chambers, the manager of one of those prisons, is a drug addict who actually arranges for said politician's demise.
  • In The Cartoon Man, Simon is a small-time version of this, hoping to exploit Roy and Karen's findings for his own gain at least until he becomes a straight-up Dastardly Whiplash cartoon villain, at which point his plans become much bigger.
  • In Game Grumps, Danny is learning about the Zelda convention of cutting down plants to get random drops (typically money). After discussing it a bit, Dan realizes that he's starting to sound like this trope.
    Danny: Oh God, what kind of jaded person have I become? [gruff] Burn the flower beds, there might be money underneath!!
  • Kakos Industries revolves around the heir to an Evil, Inc. dedicated to "Doing Evil Better". Being this trope and more is considered a necessary part of the job.
  • Charles-Antoine Donteuil, the creator of the game in which Noob is set, qualifies for the money-making variant. One of his hidden maketing ploys is behind one of the major elments of the setting, to the point that knowledge of it becoming public is the cause of the first Wham Episode of the story.

    Western Animation 
  • Plutarkian Lawrence Lactavius Limburger from the original 1993 Biker Mice from Mars series disguises himself as one of these in order to fulfill his people's mission as Planet Looters.
    • The revival had Ronaldo Rump, a No Celebrities Were Harmed parody of famed industrialist Donald Trump, who teamed up with the Big Bad Catatonians to further his business empire. He has a cousin named Sir Richard Brand Something.
  • Malory Archer is the head of private sector global espionage firm ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service). In addition to being a Bad Boss to her employees, including murdering the cleaning staff when they tried to unionize, she is supremely selfish to the extent where she does things that threaten (inter)national security if they are lucrative enough. Or if they merely please her, such as her decades-long affair with the head of the KGB. Her main rival Len Trexler, head of ODIN (Organization of Democratic Intelligence Networks) is very similar, and infatuated with her.
  • Ed Wuncler I from The Boondocks, a billionaire business magnate who pretty much controls the town of Woodcrest. Taking advantage of his huge net worth and ties to various authority figures, he's able to get away with doing anything illegal. His son Ed Wuncler II also qualifies as this.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command had a minor recurring villain named Norbert Klerm, who runs a company called Comp U Klerm and at one point attempts to market a series of robots designed to annihilate Star Command.
  • Looten Plunder, from Captain Planet and the Planeteers, was of this type. He was also the only villain on the show whose motive for pillaging the Earth was all that plausible, most of the others having fantastic motives (Duke Nukem physically thrived on radiation) or doing it out of sheer malice.
    • Hoggish Greedly was of the slovenly Corrupt Hick type. He didn't seem show outright malice for the environment, he usually just didn't care about it, and his motives were centered in obtaining vast amounts of money and resources as fast as possible.
    • Sly Sludge was a corrupt exec who focused on waste disposal (that is, dumping absurd amounts of toxic waste and garbage wherever), and was sleazy and sneaky. He often ran operations that would shrink garbage or compact it or incinerate it, but they either were fake or they backfired severely.
    • About 50% of Dr. Blight's evil schemes revolved around making herself famous, rich or preferably both, including more than once when she teams up with one of the above characters for some malignant corporate venture. She usually supplies the hyper-advanced tech they need to do their thing. The other 50%, on the other hand, were messing up the environment for the heck of it.
  • Mr. Boss from Codename: Kids Next Door. (To make this ironic, three Sector V operatives (Numbahs Four, Three, and Two) have parents who work for his company, while Numbuh 86 is his daughter.)
  • DC Animated Universe
    • Derek Powers from the first season of Batman Beyond typifies this trope. His son, Paxton, who later takes over his company, is pretty corrupt too, but is not nearly as competent as a villain.
    • Lex Luthor in both Ruby-Spears Superman and Superman: The Animated Series as well.
    • Mercy Graves takes over LexCorp when Luthor is outed as a criminal in Justice League, and manages to bring it back into solvency by being not quite as corrupt as Luthor (or possibly just less maniacal).
    • Roland Daggett from Batman: The Animated Series.
    • Ferris Boyle (also from Batman) is one of these as well; being responsible for turning Victor Fries into Mr. Freeze and supposedly killing his wife, Nora. Bonus for being voiced by Mark Hamill, before he became The Joker.
    • Grant Walker (again from Batman), who blackmails Mr. Freeze into trying to make him immortal.
    • Maxie Zeus (Batman again) is also depicted as a corporate executive who... well... went a little nuts after his stock crashed. The reason he became insane was because his success in crime made him think he was untouchable and godlike.
    • Edwin Alva, Sr., the head of Alva Industries from Static Shock plays with this. While he's quite crotchety and has a grudge against Static, he rarely targets the young hero. His only redeeming quality is remorse for how he treated his son.
  • Darkwing Duck's foe the Liquidator was once Bud Fludd, the owner of a bottled water company who was poisoning his competitor's water supply. An accident turned him into a water controlling supervillain, but his old traits stick around; for example, he once flooded the city so he could sell "Liquidator Brand life rafts" at a ridiculously inflated price.
  • Dexter's Laboratory
    • The episode "Chubby Cheese" revealed that the head of the titular restaurant chain was actually using Chubby Cheese's as a front for amassing lots of money and taking over the world.
    • The TV movie Ego Trip showed that in the future, Mandark would take over the company he and Dexter worked for and eventually use its resources to take over the world and rule all of humanity.
  • On Dilbert when the title character and Wally become part owners of their company they meet the other CEOs. Reading back the minutes of the last meeting one informs them that "we gave each other stock options, discussed ways to ignore the needs of others and Hamilton had a racial joke."
  • Bob Santino from Dogstar. He was willing to destroy every dog on Earth so he could make a profit selling his robotic dogs.
  • Flintheart Glomgold, Scrooge's rival from DuckTales (actually created by Carl Barks in the comics). He serves as an Evil Counterpart to Scrooge; Scrooge is also greedy, but unlike Glomgold, he's honest.
  • HP, the Head Pixie from The Fairly OddParents! He's voiced by Ben Stein (as are the other pixies) and has got to be the most boring creature in Fairyworld.
  • Carter Pewdterschmidt on Family Guy. Originally, he was just an idiotic Man Child who doesn't understand the world outside of business. Post-cancellation, he's just outright evil.
  • The Filmation's Ghostbusters episode "The Battle for Ghost Command" features a man who illegally dumps toxic waste at the city's sewers, unknowingly attracting ghosts until the Ghostbusters discovered the truth.
  • Armando Gutierrez from Freakazoid! knew about the flaw that gave Dexter powers but refused to recall his product because it would affect sales. He is both voiced by and obviously physically modeled after Ricardo Montalban. His ambitions later grow beyond profit margins when he decides to exploit the flaw so he can become a powerful Freakazoid too.
  • Mr. Twitchell from the Frosty the Snowman sequel Frosty Returns. He plans to use his product Summer Wheeze to eliminate snow forever and doesn't care about how his actions would affect the environment. He even punishes one of his subordinates for questioning his ethics by dumping her through a trap door.
  • Futurama:
    • The villain known as "Mom" is also a CCE trying to take over the world, who masquerades as a sweet, kindly old lady in public.
    • "That Guy", an 80s executive whose name we never learn (the script for the episode referred to him as "Steve Castle"), was a comic exaggeration of this trope.
    • Parodied with Leo Wong, who is a compendium of every criticism ever levelled at corporations.
  • David Xanatos from Gargoyles. He is, however, Affably Evil, fond of Pragmatic Villainy, and a loving family man so he's not as extreme as most examples.
  • Subverted in the Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer holiday special: Austin Bucks is misguided and the Big Bad's original plot involves making a business deal with him, but he doesn't know about any of the villainous things she's done to achieve it and proves to be quite ethical.
  • The Gravedale High episode "Save Our School" had a hotel owner who calls herself The Empress, who wants to put a chain of her hotel where the school is, and even hires a health inspector in order to condemn it so she can have it torn down.
  • Stavros Garkos, the main villain of the animated series Hurricanes, is the head of Garkos Enterprises and is usually seeking for dishonest ways to increase his wealth and/or turn his soccer team into world champions.
    • The series also introduced a villain named Douglas Fir, whose character is similar to Garkos.
    • Also in that series, when Napper Thompson's uncle died and left his fortune to him on the condition Napper never plays soccer again, Napper became the target of two villains who wanted to get the inheritance. One of the villains was the uncle's former business partner. Napper lost the inheritance but fortunately it was revealed neither villain was the appointed next heir.
  • Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Though, considering that Misery Inc. already runs the town anyway, he's seen more as a dictator.
  • Master Blaster in Kidd Video is an evil disc producer, coherent with the music-themed nature of the show. He wants to make the eponymous band his slaves.
  • Interestingly, in Kim Possible, Drakken's two plans that came closest to succeeding involved becoming this, first over Bueno Nacho, and the second over Hank's Gourmet Cupcakes (everyone associated Dr. D with shampoo for some reason).
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Hiroshi Sato framed a competitor with association to the Equalists.
    • Season two has Varrick, who while an ally of the protagonists supposedly deals with the triads, instigates a war with the Northern Water Tribe because their blockade is ruining his business, is not above bribing his way out of a situation and engages in war profiteering. He's also revealed to be escalating the war for profit as well as secretly bankrupting Asami's corporation so that he can buy it out from her. Despite this, he's not evil so much as amoral and he's usually willing to help Team Avatar if it suits his needs (or just because he likes them).
  • W.C. Moore in Li'l Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers owns the town the show is set in, and takes time out of his day to use his Berkonium marble to beat kids at marbles and take theirs for himself.
  • Fisher Biskit from Littlest Pet Shop (2012) initially isn't cartoonishly corrupt, but he is the owner of a large Predatory Business that initially threatens to put the titular shop out of business and in the episode "Heart of Parkness" apparently has no problems harboring an endangered species of snake, or in "Littlest Bigfoot" making a pet shampoo that requires an entire tree to produce one drop. His daughters were much worse, at least prior to his characterization in "A Night at the Pawza", where he tries to prevent a pet hotel from opening long enough for him to open his own.
  • Charles Foster Ofdensen of Metalocalypse, who is the Man Behind the Band, willing to have people killed and/or tortured (and sometimes doing it himself) for the sake of Dethklok's (his "Bread and Butter" by his own words) career.
    • Somewhat subverted, as there is actually a greater evil out there, The Tribunal. Ofdensen's just preventing them from killing Dethklok.
    • James Grishnack, producer of Dethklok's movie "Blood Ocean" in Season 1, has a fitting line for this trope: "I've been fucking over celebrities since you were all shitting in diapers!"
    • Season 3 has Damien. He was the son of the executive that first signed Dethklok. He disliked death metal, and had a grudge against Nathan Explosion for punching him. Upon taking power from his ailing father, he cut off Dethklok's finances and shut down a concert in order to force Dethklok into signing a new contract, one that would give him the lion's share of profit. Only the timely intervention of the thought-dead Ofdensen stopped him, and he got punched by Nathan again for trying to attack Ofdensen.
  • Magnacat in Monster Allergy appears as this in his human persona.
  • Some shorts feature Bluto and Popeye as business rivals. For example, one had the two of them competing for a military contract to build warships.
    • In the Al Brodax short "Spinach Shortage", Bluto Expy Brutus monopolized spinach and was withholding it to raise prices. While it's anyone's guess if he did anything illegal to obtain his spinach monopoly, it's still illegal to abuse monopoly even if it was obtained fair and square.
  • Cyril Sneer from The Raccoons, but the trope is gradually subverted as the series progresses as he eventually grows a conscience and his principled son, Cedric, eventually takes over the business as a partner.
    • Milton Midas on the other hand, is a much more straight example, as his actions of disposing toxic waste cause a lake to become contaminated.
    • The Laramie CEO and several of their other executives use every trick in the book to get around FDA laws, and make smoking more appealing. It is heavily implied they are trying to get children to smoke.
  • The Crimson Guard twins Tomax and Xamot are this in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero; the CEOs of Extensive Enterprises, they provide much of COBRA's funding.
  • Hannibal McFist from Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, who is one of The Sorcerer's Co-Dragons and also a Villain with Good Publicity as a result of most of Norrisville being Genre Blind; namely, no one seems to bat an eyelash at his company's headquarters being a giant black and green pyramid in the middle of town.
  • The Real Ghostbusters dealt with one willing to commit murder to make money. After the heroes dealt with a mob of ghosts who attacked a movie set where a film was being made about a ghost-hunter (as Egon explained, ghosts hate the way ghosts are depicted in movies) the owner of the studio was able to hide three of them and convince them to work for him. He quickly realized he could make a fortune in horror movies with these three ghosts, as they eliminated the cost for makeup, special effects, and best of all, worked for free. Free except one thing they wanted, the lives of the Ghostbusters. He actually arranged this, kidnapping the four heroes and offering to film it, confiscating their proton packs so his "stars" could use them themselves. (The Ghostbusters survived because Ray, who managed to hang onto his PKG-Meter, used it to send out an SOS call; clearly, not all ghosts are evil, because a few benign spirits of action film stars came to help.)
  • Rich Buckner from the Thanksgiving episode of Regular Show. When his ultra-patriotic Thanksgiving song loses out to Mordecai and Rigby's song in a contest to obtain an actual turducken (born every million years), he steals the turducken anyway because it contains a golden wishbone that grants actual wishes, which he intends to use to obtain the rights to Thanksgiving. Mordecai and Rigby stop him in the episode's definitive Moment of Awesome.
  • Gart Default from Robot and Monster, who cares little for the safety of his employees or the operational state of the factory they work in and frequently abuses and mocks his younger brother. His rival Pendulum Depot also qualifies, being a Manipulative Bastard who tries to get the Default family's blinking light recipe with Robot's help, but ends up getting Out-Gambitted.
  • Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends has Hanek, the head of a company called Intracom, and his rival Verhooven, both of whom are vampires.
  • Angelica takes the role of one in one Rugrats episode. The hallway to her office has portraits of many Corrupt Corporate Executives (which includes a Wicked Witch and a devil). Her office looks like it's located in Hell, her pigtails are devil horns, and she chases Tommy and Chuckie with insanely creepy robot businessmen.
    Tommy: Boss Angelica...
    Angelica: Yes?
    Tommy: You don't have to be so mean to us...
    Angelica: Oh, I don't, eh? Well, let me tell YOU something! If I wanna be mean, I CAN be mean! Know why? ...CAUSE I'M THE BOSS! I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT! AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, I CAN HAVE YOU FIRED!
  • The Simpsons
    • Mr. Burns. He's dumped radioactive waste at public parks and playgrounds, sold weapons to the Nazis, stolen a trillion dollars in foreign aid money from the U.S. government, and (most famously) built a giant sun-blocking device to keep Springfield shrouded in perpetual darkness, all so his electric company could have a truly complete monopoly over the town's energy supply.
    Mr. Burns: Listen, Spielbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod! We're both factory owners, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, DAMMIT!
    • The Rich Texan. He once owned a logging company and once attempted to cut down Springfield's tallest Redwood tree, until his company was destroyed by the gigantic tree after it slid down a hill.
    • Russ Cargill from The Simpsons Movie. He owns the company that made the dome he trapped Springfield in.
  • South Park:
    • The big-guy-versus-little-guy version is subverted in the "Gnomes" episode. Tweek's dad's coffee shop is threatened by the imminent arrival of a Starbucks-esque chain, and he conscripts the kids into encouraging the town to prevent this. However, the kids learn from the Underpants Gnomes that successful corporations often get that way because they have a better product. When the townsfolk actually try the chain's coffee, even Tweek's dad agrees it's far superior to what he was making, and the town relents.
    • Much more recently is a evil, sadistic, foul-mouthed Mickey Mouse in the Jonas Brothers episode who plays this trope straight.
    • Several Native Americans owning a large casino who threatened to tear down South Park to make way for a highway also count.
    • CEO of Walmart is a subversion. He seems corrupt at first, but is in fact a slave to Walmart itself.
    • "Chef-Aid:" "I am above the law!"
    • "The Entity": The airline industry
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Norman Osborn, respected Oscorp CEO, retains this role from his comic book counterpart.
  • Dan Halen from Squidbillies is not just a corrupt executive but an embodiment of pure evil whose company was founded to spread misery and death, going so far as to release a product called the Baby Death Trap.
    • That was mostly so he could sue people referring to one of his other products as a "baby death trap", presumably under the guise of trademark protection (since the original product was probably too dangerous for a libel suit to hold up in court).
  • Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants used to be a lovable example of this, before he passed the Moral Event Horizon and did things like obsess over a penny and try to drive his rival to suicide for no reason.
  • Shere Khan is recast as one of these in TaleSpin.
  • Oroku Saki/The Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) series is one of these. His supposed "office building" in New York is also the main headquarters of the Foot Clan. His adopted daughter, Karai, later inherits his position as CEO of his public corporation as well as head of the Foot Clan during his banishment at the end of one season.
  • Montana Max from Tiny Toon Adventures is a teenage version of this. He owns a number of environmentally-unfriendly factories that make frivolous things such as elevator buttons and donut holes, which Plucky Duck often tries to stop as his superhero alter-ego, the Toxic Revenger.
  • Porter C. Powell from Transformers Animated. Just ask Sari Sumdac, who found herself kicked out of her own home as part of Powell's extremely hostile takeover of Sumdac Systems. He immediately rehires the clearly insane Henry Masterson, who had previously threatened to cause a nuclear meltdown on national TV, so he can break into the military market that Professor Sumdac kept the company out of. He then allows Masterson to steal Sentinel Prime's body and bails him out when he gets caught, on the basis that alien robots don't have rights. Don't worry, it all comes back to bite him.
    Powell: There's no room for sentiment in business.
  • Mr. Big from WordGirl, who is an evil executive who had a tendency to brainwash people.
  • Yogi's Gang: Mr. Hothead of Hothead Enterprises. He has a device that turns people into hotheads and uses it on Yogi's Gang as part of a plan to force Cindy to sell her dude ranch. He later sabotages the ranch's water supply.
  • The newest version of Yoohoo and Friends has the main characters start as this prior to their Karmic Transformation.

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Alternative Title(s): Robber Baron

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