Brotherhood of Evil

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You dare make us the Trope Namer!? You must die!

Sometimes, the villainous organization doesn't go out and call itself The Empire or The Syndicate. Instead, they prefer to give themselves a feeling of unity in their nefarious and evil purposes. Calling yourselves "The Brotherhood" doesn't sound that evil, but nevertheless it seems to be a popular name among evildoers in fiction. Though the name indicates an organization of equals, there still tends to be one "big brother" in charge regardless.

The Brotherhood of Evil may function like The Mafia, or as a secret society with shadowy rituals and complex codes of honor, and are much less likely to invoke We Have Reserves on their "brothers" unless their sinister leader is just using them for his own purposes. If they're Card Carrying Villains, they might put a "Dark" or "Evil" in their name just to be clear that they're not the good kind of brotherhood.

Examples of Brotherhood of Evil include:

Comic Books

• The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Magneto's supporters in the X-Men comics, which keeps the "evil" in its name despite often having sympathetic motives.
  • This is averted in the films where Magneto tends to refer to it just as "The Brotherhood of Mutants."
• The Brotherhood of Evil from Doom Patrol (which started out as a international crime syndicate, but we only ever saw their top people.)
  • Also showed up as Big Bads of the final season of Teen Titans.
• The Brotherhood of Metallix from Sonic the Comic.
• The Brotherhood of Dada in DC Comics, opponents of the Doom Patrol.

Film

• In Thunderball, SPECTRE has as "The International Brotherhood for the Assistance of Stateless Persons" as one of its covers.

Literature

• The Grail Brotherhood from the Otherland series.
• The dark elves of Midkemia are known as the Brotherhood of the Dark Path.
• Gender Flipped example: the Sisters of the Dark in The Sword of Truth
• The predecessor of the modern Sith Order was the Brotherhood of Darkness, elaborated on in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Video Games

• Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
• The Brotherhood Of Nod from the Command & Conquer games.
  • The third and fourth games subvert this a lot. They are still quite dark but have become the sole source of stability, welfare and support for many people around the world.
• The Dark Brotherhood, the assassin cult from The Elder Scrolls.
• The Brotherhood of the Dark Rapture from Clive Barker's Jericho.
• The Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle, a doomsday cult led by an insane vampire, from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines.
• Just about any organizations in video games that even involve the word 'brotherhood'.
  • Although in Assassin's Creed, the (relatively) good Assassins call themselves "The Brotherhood", while the Templar Order decidedly fits this trope perfectly.

Tabletop Games

• The "Brotherhood of the Beast" in the Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) campaigns The Fungi from Yuggoth and its remake Day of the Beast.

Toys

• Bionicle: The Brotherhood of Makuta under Teridax's rule.

Web Original

• The Assembly of Evil from LessThanThree Comics' Brat Pack, although, to be fair, they are supposed to be used as a propaganda tool for when their boss runs for President.
• The Sith Brotherhood and Brotherhood of the Sith in The Gungan Council.

Western Animation

• Darkwing Duck deters criminals from FOWL, the "Fiendish Organization of World Larceny."

Real Life

• The "International Brotherhood of Teamsters" has noted gang ties and has had leadership embezzle the members pension fund.^[context?]
  • Allegedly
  • From what this troper read it was less like "ties" and more like "viral infection" . The story or so I heard was that a weakness in it's organization rules allowed it to be suborned chapter by chapter simply by concentrating resourses into electing a mob asset into a key position and the system became corrupted before it's honest members were aware. In other words they were not a brother hood of evil so much as the chosen target of a real brotherhood of evil