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Basic Trope: 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.
- Straight: The CEO of Trope Co underpays and overworks the employees while awarding himself huge bonuses, uses unethical methods to drive competitors out of business, makes corporate decisions based on short-term profit rather than the long-term financial health of the company, and cheats at golf.
- Exaggerated: The CEO of Trope Co uses blatantly illegal methods to drive competitors out of business, actively seeks to destroy the health and livelihood of as many non-corporate executives as possible, runs the corporation as a giant Ponzi scheme, and hunts down employees for sport.
- Up To Eleven: The world is a Dystopia where every single business institution is a Mega Corp run by a Complete Monster.
- Downplayed: Trope Co's CEO isn't cruel to his employees or trying to screw over the common man, he just takes "legal shortcuts" to get his way and make sure his company succeeds.
- Justified:
- A certain amount of ruthlessness, ambition and desire for wealth is needed to get ahead in business. However, Ambition Is Evil and the CEO of Trope Co is just carrying this too far.
- Alternatively, the CEO of Trope Co is utterly ruthless out of a fanatical dream to use his company to remake the world in the image of something he holds dear, whatever the cost. Or alternatively if the setting is After the End or something close TO it, because he HAS to keep anything functioning or otherwise doing anything worthwhile.
- Inverted:
- A poor but honest laborer.
- Or an Incorruptible Pure Pureness Corporate Executive struggling to deal with over-zealous regulators/reporters.
- Or a shamelessly corrupt—poor laborer, full of big dreams.
- Subverted: The heroes think the CEO of Trope Co is a Corrupt Corporate Executive, but he's actually an honest and thrifty person who runs the company according to strict ethical and legal guidelines.
- Double Subverted: So the Board of Directors of Trope Co fire that CEO and hire one that promises them maximum profits by any means necessary.
- Parodied:
- The Trope Co Board of Directors hire Dastardly Whiplash to be their CEO on the grounds that all corporate executives are corrupt, so they might as well hire an outright villain.
- The CEO of Trope Co is a pointy-haired jerk who keeps relying on silly Step Three: Profit schemes without seeing that he can make lots and lots of even more money with mundane means, but nobody in Trope Co seems to notice, because they're all distracted by the Get Rich Quick promises.
- Deconstructed:
- The CEO of Trope Co made his way to the top by ruthlessness and greed, but discovers once he's up there that his wealth is hollow, and that he has no actual friends, only yes men. But he has to keep up his corrupt ways, despite the growing pit of emptiness in his soul, because Trope Co will collapse unless he doesn't. Worse, reformers in government are trying to enforce the law and the investigation is getting very close to him. However, this is all pointless as the costs for PR to cover the villainy & keep people willing to deal with Trope Co mount, consuming more and more of the budget, and the more Genre Savvy realize that there was really no way that buying good publicity could work forever.
- After the CEO's short-sighted policies and embezzlement nearly drive the company into the ground the board of directors decides to replace the CEO with someone less corrupt.
- Reconstructed: The CEO is reminded that life at the top is pretty cool after all, and he can Screw the Rules, I Have Money to buy new friends and get the government off his back.
- Zig Zagged: The CEO of Trope Co seems to be corrupt, but is actually staying within ethical and legal guidelines...until the stock prices fall, at which point he starts using illegal methods, but then he's called out on it by his innocent daughter, so he returns to proper behavior, only to be fired in favor of a more profit-driven CEO.
- Averted: All corporate executives in the story are simply businessmen who do their jobs, without overreaching or using unethical methods.
- Enforced:
- Entire work is an anti-corporate Author Tract. The writer is on board, and he had an unpleasant run-in with corporations in his past.
- Alternatively: "We need a major antagonist with a lot of power and no morals. Executives are Acceptable Targets. Let's use one of those."
- "The majority of viewers hate their bosses and jobs anyway, so the boss is evil. Besides, Ambition Is Evil, and you've gotta have a truckload of the stuff to climb to the top of the corporate ladder."
- Lampshaded: "Just how does this plan make money for Trope Co, as opposed to you, personally?"
- Invoked: The Trope Co Board of Directors deliberately hire a CEO who promises big profits by any means necessary, and refuse to hire anyone who seems too law-abiding.
- Defied: Trope Co has strict ethical guidelines, and fires any executive that crosses the line.
- Discussed:
- "I think we'll find someone at Trope Co's responsible for this outrage. You can never trust corporate types."
- "Of course I'm sneeringly evil. Why did you expect to find up here, a nursery crèche and kitten sanctuary?"
- Conversed: "Why are there no good executives on this show?"
Miss Haberdasher, take a note. "Dear TV Tropes, I am appalled by your characterization of the CEO of Trope Co, myself, as a less than honest person. Cease and desist, or I will buy your internet provider and shut you down. Yours Truly, etc." And send it back to Corrupt Corporate Executive.