Mega Corp: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Corporation, noun: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. "''|'''Ambrose Bierce'''}}

* GenomGENOM Corporation from ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' is a sprawling global economic powerhouse which manufactures everything from toasters to military cyborgs (Boomers). It exerts tremendous influence on the world's governments and entertains plans for overt world domination through the use of the so-called Overmind Control System, which is presumably capable of remotely controlling all AIs on the planet.

== Fan FictionWorks ==

* [http://www.fanfiction.net/~mrevil Mr. Evil]'s ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3137871/1/Hero_High Hero] [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3875254/1/Hero_High_Earth_style High] [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4267279/1/Hero_High_Sphinx_Academy Series]'' has Sphinx Corp. Hinted at the end of the first, played straight with practically owning the town in book two, and in book 3 it grows so powerful they purchase a city and even becomes recognized as a major government power by the end.

** The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' has the Cheiron Group from ''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]'', a gigantic multinational organization that controls a dozen front businesses. One of those departments [[TheydThey Would Cut You Up|hunts, captures and studies supernatural creatures]], both to find new product possibilities and to utilize their powers (by harvesting bits of them) for the company's own use. Their employees are given a handbook containing near-useless information as their only guide to what they're dealing with, so turnover is insane (giving the player characters a job opening).

** ''Traveller'' Megacorporationsmegacorporations make good foils, and can potentially add drama to a [[Intrepid Merchant|Free Trader]] centered game. Alternatively in a court intrigue centered game they can be among the things a PC princeling has to take account of. The nobility and the Mega corporations are interlaced subtlely just as the nobility are interlaced with the Imperial government.

* [[Tabletop Game]]/The ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' setting of ''[[Eberron]]'' has the 13 Dragonmarked Houses, [[Dungeon Punk]] equivalent to Mega Corps, each with their own specializations (Entertainment & Espionage, Banking, Consummer Goods, Private Security, Animal Breeding, Notary, Prospecting, Magical Detections, Overland Travel & Teleportation, Overseas & Air Travel, Hostelling, Healing). Each house descends from a bloodline blessed with a dragonmark, a unique set of birthmarks that grant them powers and skill bonuses relating to a particular theme. Each family used their advantage to corner the market on a particular good or service, as no non-dragonmarked could really match them.

** Elsewhere in D&D, the ''[[Mystara]]'' setting's Minrothad Guilds are an entire nation, made up of several islands, that's organized like a huge corporation. Each island, and each race that lives there, operates like a manufacturing division of the company, while the fully-incorporated "service guilds" are the equivalent of government departments (defense, etc).

* In ''[[Mutant Chronicles]]'', the big powers of the solar system are called "mega corps" and fit pretty well with this trope, but in a slight aversion they have by now evolved into [[Feudal Future]] noble houses of a sort. Exceptions are [[Eagle Land|Capitol]], which is still technically a corporation, and hence a democracy of sorts - you have one vote per piece of stock you own, and the company president serves basically the same role as an [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|American]] president. There's also Cybertronic which is focuses on creating electronics and cybernetics, it does have bits of an Orwellian society style.

* In ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' the mega corps that were unable to adjust to a post-scarcity economy died out while those that could evolved into the Hypercorps. Most are small and decentralized, often existing wholly in [[Cyberspace]] ([[We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future|as labor is almost fully automated]]), but hold a great deal of influence in the Inner System. Mars is run wholesale by the Planetary Consortium, which poses as a republican democracy, but whose power is divided proportionally among the hypercorps who own shares in it. Venus used to be under Consortium rule until the habitats formed the Morningstar Constellation almost by accident.

* ''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'', of course, with Arasaka and Mili Tech as the two most prominent examples, the former pure evil and the latter unscrupulous but not ''as'' evil.

* ''[[Urinetown]]'': [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Urine Good Company]]

* Where do we start with ''[[Borderlands]]''? Let's see now, the one that's probably coming to your mind now is Atlas. They make powerful firearms, maintain a private army outfitted with said guns and other Atlas Artillery, and control most of Pandora, notably T-Bone Junction.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjR0rneQH8 They also fail propaganda forever]</ref> Then there's the Hyperion Corporation, who owns the New-U and Catch-A-Ride stations, the Guardian Angel Satellite, Dahl Corporation, who also makes guns, (Unlike Atlas, they have an [http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Dahl inspiring and awesome] [[Badass Creed]]. Also, they're the largest weapons producer on Pandora.) claptrap repair kits, wind turbines, and can finance the mining operations for an entire colony which, by the way, the also financed themselves.<ref>They seem to be [[Half Life|the Black Mesa]] to [[Portal (series)|Atlas's Aperture Science facility.]]</ref> Jakobs, aside from making Wild West-ish hunting-quality sniper rifles, [[Hand Cannon|high-power revolvers]], and [[Shotguns Are Just Better|shotguns]] seems to be in on the colony supply industry, making prefab housing and fuel tanks, and made a small town for the workers employed to make their guns. Tediore, like everyone else here, also makes firearms, including Outrunner artillery. We're not sure what Maliwan, S&S, Vladof, and Torgue do, though logic states that Maliwan, considering their involvement in incendiary weapons, may have had something to do with climate control in the cold years of Pandora.

* ''[[Ratchet & Clank (video game)|Ratchet and& Clank]]'' - The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[Ratchet and Clank Going Commando]]'''s Mega corp, which controls much of the Bogon Galaxy, and sells highly destructive weapons to anyone with enough coin. Along with anything else. (But don't worry, all of their products are tested and 100% safe.)

* Shinra in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', which produces electric power, military hardware, [[Green Rocks|Materia]], and automobiles, among other things. The heroes at first assume their "only" atrocities are deforesting, pollution, and other environmental crimes; they learn the stuff about unethical experiments, oppression, and malefic later. Even worse, when Sepiroth takes over, Shinra's goals turn towards global genocide.

** Also in the same 'verse; hardly anybody important in the Half-Life universe apart from Chell ''not'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20141006161610/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/10-The-Orange-Box worked for Black Mesa at some point?]

** The third game in the series gives a good look at the scale that Armacham operates on. The first two levels take place in an unspecified Latin American country where ATC operates a huge private prison, and ATC mercenaries walk the streets of the city in full uniform with armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and heavily-armed robotic weapons platforms engaging in a running gun battle withtwith hethe Point Man with total disregard for the local population. Later on, ATC has an entire army occupying the city of Fairport where the first two games took place.

* In ''[[Tachyon: The Fringe]]'' the mega corp GalSpan "The Galactic Spanning Corporation" does not have a monopoly on every product ever made, but it certainly eclipses the other companies featured. Those smaller ones make the parts of your ship. Galspan doesn't worry about such trivialities, despite maintaining it's own military fleet; they mine stars. For the main section of the campaign, they are one of your two options to take for exclusive employment as a contract pilot, and through morally dubious means, their game ending is {{spoiler|the only way your character can ever return back to Earth. Post-game Bora missions put you through some rigamarole towards the effect, but this troper has never found any definite mission or clue in the audio files that say the Bora get you back to Earth again.}}

* Omni-Tek from the [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] ''Anarchy Online''.

* The Shai-Gen Corporation from ''[[Crackdown]]'' and also {{spoiler|the Agency itself}}.

* ''[[Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere]]'' features this in the form of General Resource Ltd. and Neucom Inc., who are at war with each other at the start of the game. The series returned to national conflict setup with ''[[Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies|04]]'', but chillingly, ''[[Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War|5]]'', ''[[Ace Combat Zero|Zero: The Belkan War]]'', and particularly ''[[Ace Combat Advance|Advance]]'' gives General Resource a [[Start of Darkness]], having them start from a humble arms company called {{spoiler|South Belkan Munitions Factory, later Grunder Industries}}. Neucom, meanwhile, started off as the {{spoiler|Erusean Air and Space Administration}}, the clandestine organization behind the high-tech gadgetry of Eruseans in the aforementioned ''04'', including the famed [[Infinity+1 Sword|superfighter X-02 Wyvern]].

** In fact the entire series between ''Electrosphere'' and the [[Continuity Reboot]] with ''[[Ace Combat Joint Assault|Joint Assault]]'' (except maybe ''[[Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation|6]]'') can be safely considered one giant [[Prequel]] to the Usean Corporate War.

* ''[[Raptor : Call Of The Shadows]]''? Your employer is even called Mega corp, and they run a private airforce, sending you against other corporations armed with the usual [[Shoot'Em Up]] hordes of enemies.

* The [[Meaningful Name|Zaibatsu Corporation]] from ''[[Grand Theft Auto|GTA2 II]]''. They are a massive multinational [[Yes but What Does Zataproximetacine DO|Pharmaceutical Company]] with prominence all over [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|Anywhere City]] (and the world), they sell all sorts of products, have their own marked company cars, and even a small military who's weaponry ranges from Pistols to Rocket Launchers. They also get a mention in ''[[Grand Theft Auto III|GTA 3]]'', advertising various products on the radio, though not yet as large as [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|they are in GTA2]].

* SynTek Megacorporation Incorporated from ''[[Alien Swarm]]''. They own an entire star system, including several mining colonies, a penal colony, and a space station. They also own several planets and mining colonies outside their star system and several fleets of starships used to transport employees (dubbed colonists) and materials to and from their colonies. OntopOn top of that, they make everything from medical supplies, to food and drink, to weapons. There is also United Industries and the Telic Corporation, both of which are just as big as SynTek.

* SynTek is also the name of the villainous Mega Corp in ''[[SiN]]'' and ''SiN Episodes: Emergence.''

** Sarif Industries in ''[[Deus Ex: Human Revolution|Deus Ex Human Revolution]]'' is close but not quite a Mega Corp, as it loses in the bio-augmentation market to Tai Yong Medical, who has cornered the market and has performed a lot of illegal research. The latter also has ties to {{spoiler|the Illuminati}}.

* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' gives us Abstergo, a pharmaceutical company on the surface which functions as the modern day front for an [[Ancient Conspiracy]]. Lucy Stillman mentions that her inability to be taken seriously after she finished college - and thus her inability to find a job until she was approached by Abstergo - was likely a series of failures specifically designed ''by'' them so she would have nowhere else to go for employment. She further assures Desmond that while this may sound ridiculous, they ''can'' do it. They also trace Desmond via his motorcycle's registry, apparently without going through the police.

* ''[[Whiplash]]'' has Genron, which produces the main characters, a crazed weasel chained to a [[Nigh Invincible]] rabbit, through animal testing. [[Rewarding Vandalism|Your job is to bankrupt the company by smashing everything in sight.]]

* ''[[BioShock (series)|BioShock]]'' has Ryan Industries, Fontain Futuristics and Sinclair Solutions.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] 3: Morrowind'' has House Hlaalu, a high fantasy megacorporation that belongs to the Dunmer royal house. The other Houses are less mercantile and don't resemble corporations, they are respectively a warrior aristocracy (Redoran), a feudal magocracy (Telvanni), a church (Indoril) and plantation slave owners (Dres).

* ''[[Killer Instinct]]'' has Ultratech, a megacorporation that has replaced all world governments. They kidnap an alien to extort his participation in a fighting tournament, bring demons to earth from other dimensions, manufacture evil-looking military cyborgs, and are bioengineering a velociraptor-human hybrid, among other things.

* The original ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia]]'' had Avenir, which had the economy of Lastation so firmly under their control even their resident Goddess found it hard to outright deal with them {{spoiler|especially since they worked rather hard to keep her in the dark about their shady side for awhile}}, even possessed such considerable considerable economic power they had factories churning out entire armies of [[Humungous Mecha]] that gave them the military power of a nation state. By the end of the game they still retain most of this power, but under the much more firm oversight of the Lastation CPU to much more benign ends.

* Creed Corporation in ''[[Friendly Hostility]]'' and it'sits spin-off/sequel/thing ''[[Other Peoples Business]]''

* HeretiCorp from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''.

* ''[[Nexus Gate]]'' has the Kovolis Corperation.

* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130617171826/http://sosdan.conforums.com/ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yaku-Asobi]'' has TsuruyaCom, which spans multiple star systems in ''[[The Multiverse|multiple dimensions]]''. Its products include everything from [[Carrier Battleship|interstellar warships]], to [[Memetic Mutation|smoked cheese]], to clones, to dimensional gateways.

* The Triptych Corporation in ''[[Strange Little Band]]'' is an example of one of these.

* Precision Horizons in ''[[Above Ground]]'' is an all-powerful corporation ruling the underground human community. The Guild plays a similar role on the surface of the planet.

* ''[[JibJab]]''{{'}}s Big Box Mart counts in regards to big box stores like Wal-Mart and their negative effect on people

* In ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' the solar system was ruled by Megacorporations led by transapient [[A Isup]] until the [[Grey Goo|Nanodisaster]]. Now [[Deus Est Machina|Archailects]] control most of the population of Terragen space but Mega Corps still have a great deal of influence in the Non-Coercive-Zone ([NoCoZo]) and the Periphery.

* Depending on how one looks at it the Irken Empire of ''[[Invader Zim]]'' could be this, or at least striving to be.

* AlomstAlmost every product in ''[[King of the Hill]]'' is made by Mega-lo-Mart.

* Cracked gives us [http://www.cracked.com/article_18845_6-secret-monopolies-you-didnt-know-run-world_p2.html "Six secret monopolies you didn't know run the world"].

* [[Your Mileage May Vary|Depending on what you personally believe]], Thethe Church of Scientology can be viewed as an organization that, at least, ''aspires'' to achieve this.

* In 1967 the Florida legislature granted [[Disney]] maintainsthe authority to maintain self-governmentgovernance over the large chunk of land in and immediately surrounding the Walt Disney World Resort (a.k.a. the "Reedy Creek Improvement District") in Florida. According to [[wikipedia:Megacorporation|that other Wiki]], "Within this district, the Disney corporation has the legal authority to establish its own building codes, power plants and utilities, fire departments, and to seize land outside the district under eminent domain." TheyThat dopower plant part ''explicitly'', howeverin two different sections, stillincluded lacknuclear anythingreactors. comparableThis tospecial aprivilege standingwas army.dissolved by the Florida legislature in April 2022, taking effect June 1, 2023, after Disney executives spoke out against the state's new 'Yet.'Parental Rights in Education'' law.

** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130511060048/http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/362/emerson.pdf A citation] for those who like such things. Disney does have that sort of legal authority but the Florida legislature can remove it.

* Inco, subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale, can sometimes look like an evil Mega Corporation right out of a Cyberpunk story. Richer than whole countries, it buys and takes lands away from their people to mine metals (mostly nickel), bribing politicians to pay the least possible amount in taxes and fees. Once on their land, the union and employment laws of the country do not even apply anymore, and things have sometimes gone so far that the company was removed from the FTSE 4 GOOD index for failing to meet their human rights criteria. It also created a lot of problem for the environment, for example their plan to let go of their acidic waste directly in the Unesco UNESCO-classed lagoon in newNew caledoniaCaledonia (a "coincidence" when the UnescoUNESCO decided to enter the coral barrerbarrier reef on the World Heritage List means that the part where their waste pipeline leads is one of the few not under the protection of the List).

* The [[wikipedia:IG Farben|IG Farben corporation]] was a German chemical conglomerate that consisted of such present day firms as Bayer and BASF to name a few. By the 1930s, it had grown to become the 4th largest corporation in the world behind Standard Oil, General Motors and US Steel, but more importantly for this trope it had become intimately involved with [[Those Wacky Nazis|the Nazi party]], providing much of the German economy's exports as well as a sizable amount of its domestic industrial base. This economic importance buttressed the Nazi party through taxes, jobs and war material, and IG Farben worked hand in hand with the Wehrmacht taking over the chemical industries of conquoredconquered territories, becoming one of the largest users of slave labour in the process. Some of IG Farben's wartime low-lights were the construction of a synthetic rubber plant next to the Auschwitz concentration camp making use of over 80,000 slave labourers, and the patent on the Zyklon B poison gas that killed millions at the same. After the war, the company was deemed to be too corrupt due to the high number of war crimes that it committed and was broken up into its constituent firms.