Following in the spirit of the earlier article about how difficult it is to destroy the world, here’s Peter Anspach’s Evil Overlord List, a useful checklist of good advice for any super-villains you may be writing.
As you go through the list, it’s alarming how many uber-villains manage to fall into the same traps. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s just a sampling of the wisdom the thinking-ahead madman can apply:
- My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” And shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”
One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstances have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others’ lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.
Check out the other 100 or so here.
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March 10th, 2005 at 2:06 am
Very, very good!!!!
March 10th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
It took me a while, but I finally read them all. A couple of them nearly made me soil myself.
One of the funniest and most logical suggestions was
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Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be “Hmm…I think I need a shave.”