Dictator

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So, you want a BBEG, but you don't want to have superhumans in your setting? Dictators are the obvious answer.

A Dictator is the head of an authoritarian regime, usually strongly personalized. Since authoritarian regimes are generally unresponsive to the needs of their people, and political strongman regimes doubly so, dictators have a terrible reputation, for very good reasons.

There can be some overlap between a BBEG and a Dictator, but there can be some non-overlap. Notably, more than one BBEG has taken on the role of a dictator, but it's possible to have one who is merely an ally of the BBEG, or have a BBEG who is more of a Warlord or CEO than any kind of Ruler.

What makes a dictator?

Dictators can be two different things. There's the roman one and the modern one.

A roman dictator was temporary regent of the Roman Empire for a limited time. Meaning that if the actual emperor were to, y'know, die without an heir, or that the political situation is so shit that you need someone in charge in-extremis, the dictator would take the lead. Now bear in mind that, in practice and in general, the roman dictator was a judge, and he rarely had absolute power.

The modern dictator, can mostly summed up as a leader with absolute power over anything. Meaning that the entire country relies on his decision-making, image, leadership, reputation, coordination, and just about anything else related to the guy, to run properly. Of course, for the large majority of History, people who had absolute power over anything (even a region or small colony) were refered to as dictators. Now whether or not they technically qualified as such is an overall different question, but if anyone had complete control over a country, they would get the "prestige" of being referred to as a dictator. Because yes, for a time, a dictator wasn't exactly seen as a bad thing at all.

Until those goddamn assholes showed up.

Imagine, if you will, you have very controversial opinions which wouldn't even pass without shrieks from the ideologues who oppose you in a democratic assembly. Or, you see some peeps as morally despicable, and thus you don't even want them to have the slightest amount of power or influence. In that case, being a dictator and subjugating the country into obeying your every command has its advantages. There's someone you don't like? Send him to prison without any proof of any foul act or misdeed to his name! There's a very large group of people you really, really don't like for one reason or another? You know what to do. You want an entire cult of personality dedicated to you in spite of how horrid, morally disgusting, and butt ugly you are? Here's your ticket.

Now, usually speaking, any country or "political system" can become a dictatorship. All there needs to be is a man who abuses the rules, usurps power for himself, and nobody with sufficient power/will/not-being-bought-off to call him on this. However, some systems are more prone to have a dictatorship than others;

• Fascism; Obviously. The ideology based around might makes right outright advocates for a nation to be entirely led by a single leader.
  • Nazism or "National Socialism"; also obviously.
• Banana "Republics"; Sometimes, the dictator is just a powerhungry general who thinks the current leader is a wuss. Suppose he's in a third-world country, and said country has ressources that could be exploited for great monetary gain. Well, a big massive trust of companies or investors can push a rebellion and finance said general to establish a dictatorship under the promise that he would have full control over the country as long as he keeps giving them exactly what they want. Is this an extremely petty excuse for a regime? Yes. Does it work? You betcha.
• [REDACTED]; Say there's one ideology that is being spread across the globe like wild fire and you wanna prevent that. So you start spying on a country that just recently adopted that ideology, you orchestrate a coup and let the guy who was in charge of the coup to lead the country. Hey, as long as those commies aren't in power, we can justify the deaths of millions of innocents by a hostile and self-harming government, right? You'll glow a little, especially if you swear you weren't behind it.
• Communism; Unfortunately, Marx didn't think that his dream of a better society would be used by some of the most corrupted crooks of the 20th Century, starting with the power struggle of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Lenin, in the short time he was alive after the revolution, was actually ruling over the USSR, but he at least tried to share his power amongst his men. When he died, the party sought a successor that could lead the newborn Soviet Union away from the famines and shortages of the Tsarist years and the devastating civil war. It didn't took long for Stalin, an ambitious party member that nobody suspected of harboring such aspirations or abilities, to eliminate the competition (as in the infamous Trotsky ice pick incident), create a cult of personality based around him, and use his rapidly expanding power to make sure that political opponents or even critics of his regime were properly disposed of. Oh, and let's not forget how he separated some people into castes and heavily rewarded those who obeyed him the most with fancier things than anyone else. It took the USSR a lot of time to unfuck everything he did. Tankies will deny all of that, of course. Or claim that it was all necessary. Possibly both.
  • Same goes for Mao Zedong. Some claim he had a genuine desire to revolutionize China and get rid of the old aristocracy that kept dividing the country. But even then, due to the indoctrination and sheer pressure he applied to his followers (and his followers to the populace), he pushed an agressive tabula-rasa and made the most abrupt turns. Supposedly for "the good of the country". See; The Great Leap Forward, the numbrous massacres, the destruction of a massive chunk of China's cultural heritage, the oppression of minorities and neighboring countries, and so and so forth.
  • Proletarian Dictatorship also qualify, but the power is shared by a council of either technocrats or "representants of the people". There were only a few system like this one, but they never prevailed. Well, some external factors might have come into play. They are usually more belevolent since they are, in theory, led by the "people of the land" and not aristocrats or nobles.
• Religious: Rare in the real world (arguably, only Iran qualified since 1900), and so, in fictionland, somewhat rare outside stuff that's doing the whole Cult thing. Though most of them are referred to as Theocracies, and the actual man in charge is nothing more than in-name-only spokesperson for the big guy above.

Notable examples related to /tg/

Battletech

• Stefan Amaris

DC Comics

• Darkseid rules Apokalips as both ruler and god, and he's strong and cruel enough that nobody dares question him.
• There's been plenty of examples of dictatorships run by previously-good heroes, with the most prevalent being Injustice (Superman loses his wife, kills Joker in revenge and conquers the world with an iron fist), the Justice Lords (Justice League kill President Lex Luthor, world becomes all-seeing police state), and Earth-3 (Everyone was just born evil on opposite day)

Marvel Comics

• Doctor Doom when the writers want to portray him as evil.

Star Wars

• Palpatine (AKA Darth Sidious) posed as one.

Warhammer 40k

• Da BEEEEEEG umie
• Da BEEEEEEG Bea- Beaur- Be-u-ro-kra-see ov da Imperi-oom
• Give or Take 35% of all Planetary Governors of the Imperium of Man
• That Dick