"If all the world's a stage, then I shall play my part
You may say it's cliché, but I say that it's an art
Every deck needs a knave to come and stack the cards
The world may be yours to save, but it's mine to tear apart
One button's all it takes to set the Earth a-quaking
Or is the world afraid and the planet started shaking?
You'd need tectonic plates to serve the schemes I'm baking
And the menu for today is some world domination!"

— The Stupendium, "FIEND LIKE ME | Evil Genius 2 Song!"

Evil Genius 2: World Domination is a sequel to the 2004 cult hit Evil Genius (2004), developed and published by Rebellion, who acquired the rights to the IP when the original studio Elixir closed in 2005.

Evil Genius 2 is a satirical "spy-fi" lair builder where you take the role of one of four villains working to take over the world. The game has separate campaigns for each villain and the style of the campaign favors each one's traits of offensive power, subtle social trickery, scientific domination, or a mixture of all three. The game promises to provide greater variety in playthroughs over the original title with both the unique flavors of the new Geniuses as well as offering the player one of three different islands to choose to build up in the campaign and more options in how to reach their ultimate goal of building their own Doomsday Device and bringing the entire world to its knees. The game also retains the same comical tone of the original title as well.

Released on March 30, 2021, Evil Genius 2 was first announced in 2013. Unlike the previous Facebook game revivals, Evil Genius Online and Evil Genius WMD, Evil Genius 2 is a fully-featured PC sequel to the original base-building title. Updates on the game's development were regularly posted to its development blog on the official website, as well as smaller snippets on the game's social media channels. The game was later ported to consoles on November 30, 2021.

This game provides examples of the following tropes:

• The '60s: The Theme Park Version, with a dash of "spy-fi" and satirical humor on top. Hair? Beehive! Walls? Brown and orange! Lava lamps? But of course! That said, there's hints that it's a Retro Universe, and the mentioned existence of Dungeons & Dragons, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and disco being recently dead pegs it as taking place in The '80s—the world having been ruled by an evil Overlord for a time may have caused this. There's also all the mentions of social media and references to events that happened in The New '10s, though.
• Abnormal Ammo: One scheme involves your minions stealing a gun that fires birds (called the "chicken gun").
• Achievement Mockery: There's an achievement for letting Symmetry, the A.N.V.I.L. Super Agent, successfully steal from your base, as well as one for letting your Evil Genius die for the first time.
• Action Girl:
  • Both your and the Forces of Justice's generic action minions consist of both men and women who heavily armed and ready to fight to the death for their chosen side. After all, Evil is an equal-opportunity employer.
  • There are also female Henchmen such as Full Metal Jackie, an arms dealer toting a grenade launcher.
• Advanced Tech 2000: Instead of using dynamite and pick axes as in the first game, minions now build your lair using a device called the Lair Builder 5000. According to teaser videos, it is literally the five-thousandth iteration of the design, and the first 4,999 were hilariously problematic. The flow of room building hasn't changed, as minions must still move money and objects back and forth from the depot but the Lair Builder was deemed a more fun and "spy fi" method of showing base building.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Enough to warrant their own page.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can have up to five Crime Bosses defeated and turned to Henchmen under your control. Other Crime Bosses beyond that count must be executed or kept as prisoners indefinitely, or you must execute one of your existing henchmen. You can also only have 300 minions maximum, no matter how many lockers you build.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction: Missions involve multiple steps in this game, and sometimes at the game's launch the steps required you to do things that were totally irrespective of the state of your evil empire. For instance a mission might call for a military assault and require you to train ten mercenary minions. You could've had fifty gun-toting mercenaries patrolling your base before that mission started, and the game wouldn't budge until you train ten more. Particularly jarring when other arbitrary restrictions could be completely immediately satisfied by things you already had (such as "have X loot items" or "have X amount of cash in your vault(s)"). This was averted in the 1.30 Patch, where the game now takes your current minion numbers into account and won't make you train new minions (if the mission wants you to build more furniture, you'll still need to do that).
• Arbitrary Skepticism: One of the moneymaking mission is called "Tartarus Sauce", and is about a guy who claims to have found a door into the Greek underworld. It says obviously the claims are bunk, but the money he's making isn't. This in spite of how there's a lot of stuff in the game that's blatantly magical, like a flying carpet you can steal, Excalibur appearing again, and a quest involving Rumpelstiltskin and his magic wheel. To say nothing of loot that ties directly back to Greek mythology, like one where Pandora's Box is found, or the flames Prometheus stole from the gods, the Trojan Horse, or Poseidon's trident in the Oceans DLC.
• Area 51: A side quest involves finding it and raiding it, with the prize being a rack of alien ray guns for guards to wield.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Non-combatant minions don't have the best self-preservation skills. After fleeing from an attacker, they promptly forget all the danger and causally walk back towards said attacker.
  • Having multiple entrances between the base and cover operation seems to make the pathfinding dumber. Minions will frequently take the longer route when escorting agents out, and Civilians become more likely to wander in, apparently seeing going all the way through your lair as a legit path to the other side of the Casino.
• Artistic License – Engineering: Unlike heaters, air conditioners do not exist as standalone units that can be placed anywhere. They need a means of dumping waste heat (since the second law of thermodynamics is a fickle bitch) outside the area they're cooling, otherwise all you've got is a super inefficient space heater. Though the Ocean DLC's temperature system is already not the most popular mechanic in the game, so most would probably call this an Acceptable Break from Reality.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • You get access to your Superweapon about halfway through the campaign and can use it as often as you can refuel it. It falls into this category, though, because the Schemes needed to refuel it will cost you more than equivalent regular Schemes that accomplish the same thing would. Additionally, each superweapon has a downside when fired that can't be avoided.^note Max's M.I.D.A.S. turns some of your minions into golden statues, killing them - but you can sell them for a profit. Ivan's H.A.V.O.C. causes several fires throughout your base. Emma's V.E.N.O.M. makes some minions turn berserk and permanently hostile (inevitably getting themselves killed in the process), Zalika's V.O.I.D. resets some minions back into workers, and Polar's Z.E.R.O. heavily reduces your base's temperature. The 1.30 patch lowered the costs for the refueling schemes along with increasing passive income and the reward missions from firing it, but the backfire remains the same.
  • The Construction Depot item, which is supposed to remove the need of having minions run all the way to the helipad to get new lair furnishings, then run all the way to where you want them set up. Thing is they take up a lot of space and can only be placed in a lab, so they have to be positioned strategically close to where you're likely to build in the future, while also not interrupting other things you need to keep your operation running, to have a point. Also, it's a top-tier unlockable, so by the time you get far enough through a playthrough to have access to it, you'll probably be pretty well settled into your base's design, and the aforementioned strategic placement probably won't seem like it's worth the effort. Even if you do, a lot of times minions will still go to the helicopter depot to receive a new item instead.
  • Robot minions from the associated DLC. They have higher stats than human minions, but they still require dedicated facilities to replenish those stats, they can't be sent on missions instead of human minions, and they explode and set everything and everyone around them on fire if they die.
• Badass Boast: All over the place, but the Genius gives an especially good one to Ms. Foxworth. "Your world ended the day John Steele died. What do you think will happen to your world when thirty of him do?"
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • As shown in the game's key art displayed at the top of this page, Maximilian returns with his tasteful blue suit.
  • Eli Barricuda Jr has inherited his dad's cream suit along with the rest of his style.
  • Incendio is sporting a flamboyant red and gold number complete with frilly sleeves, bow tie, and cravat.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Naturally, just like in the first game. This time, after launching your Doomsday Device at the five F.O.J.s of the world, a final cutscenes has the villains on a stage. It then ends with a shot of them with the world in their hands.
  • Max is giving a speech to a bunch of gold statues before noticing an Investigator who wasn't turned to gold. He takes care of them immediately by shooting them, his statue causing the other ones to fall down as well. His version of Earth is a golden sphere.
  • Red Ivan is giving a speech to his soldiers before ordering them to go out, before launching his rocket fist at the screen. His version of Earth is on fire and with metal braces on it.
  • Emma is surrounded by her spider bots, clouds of V.E.N.O.M. gas, and dead skeletal corpses as she celebrates her victory, before noticing the player and getting a bot to fly at their face and kill them. Her version of Earth is a ball of V.E.N.O.M.
  • Zalika appears before the brainwashed populace before ordering them to attack you. Her version of Earth is a digital hologram.
  • Polar walks out and happily admires a bunch of ice statues, before a guard brings a straggler in front of her. She then freezes them with a smile on her face. Her version of Earth is a frozen globe.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: At least two of the Forces of Justice are corrupt, according to their own Super Agents' backstories - Agent X repeatedly brought heat down on P.A.T.R.I.O.T. higher-ups before being sent off to investigate potential Evil Geniuses, and Wrecking Bola only joined up with S.A.B.R.E. in the first place in the hopes of fixing them from the inside out. They're still the good guys by comparison.
  • It's also why 2/3 of the Super Agents were eventually made recruitable. Most of them were aware the people they were working for were corrupt too, and the Evil Geniuses were only worse because they were open about their willingness to kill and destroy to get what they want. Symmetry basically admits she works for ANVIL because it gives her the chance to meet enemies who measure up to her skills, and not because she's interested in making the world a better place (which, in their own twisted way, the Geniuses are).
• Booked Full of Mooks: Referenced, but ultimately subverted in the mission chain of Atomic Olga, where the Evil Genius pays her brother, a professional figure skater, to put on a show for an audience of minions. Olga still comes knocking on the Genius' door because, despite the Genius doing nothing even remotely evil or sinister to her brother, she is horrified at what could have happened to her brother.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Databanks. By far the most common piece of research equipment that gets used at every stage of the game, especially in side stories. Also one of the first pieces you get.
  • Freeze traps. One of the first to unlock and one of the least exciting, they nonetheless do an excellent job sapping Resolve and holding enemies in place for your minions to respond, and are a good first trap to set up a chain reaction if you use something else to move the frozen enemies.
  • For a given definition of "boring", but it's a belief held by a lot of players that the best henchmen are the "orange ones", or the ones built around just dealing damage (Jubei, Sir Daniel, Eli Barracuda, Full Metal Jackie, Atomic Olga, etc.), instead of the ones who rely on fancy skills requiring careful implementation. You can just point the former at enemies and go do something else knowing the henchmen will fix the problem, whereas the latter demand the player carefully choose a target and a time (and they might not fix the problem regardless).
• Brainwashed and Crazy: You can brainwash enemy agents and turn them into your minions. What kind they turn into is dependent on their type. Deserting Minions can also be brainwashed back into loyalty, but this reverts them to the basic Worker rather than what they may have been before.
• Brick Joke: When the Biologist is first recruited, the Genius mentions getting a headache every time they see them. When upgrading to the Quantum Chemist much later in the campaign, the same biologist approaches the Genius, who immediately complains about the headache.
• Boss Rush: What the countdown at the end of the game can basically become, if you haven't been taking the time to clear out the Crime Bosses and Super Agents up until then. All the ones who are still around will participate in the siege of your lair.
• The Casino: The hotel and casino make a return as a means to distract tourists and the Forces of Justice from investigating your base too closely. They are now built underground as part of your regular base, as opposed to on the surface of the island.
• Charm Person: Eli Barracuda Jr. has his Silver Tongue ability, which weakens the Resolve of the agents he targets with it. His Henchman blog notes that he rose up in the crime world with his dangerous smile and smooth negotiation skills.
• Chekhov's Skill: One of the traits your Minions may randomly have is knowing how to do simple magic tricks. The Genius later capitalizes on this to distract S.M.A.S.H. while the Genius steals a giant emerald.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Military Minions are red and orange, Deception minions are purple, and Science minions are green. This color coding extends to the Evil Geniuses, who are all color coded in promo art (and in their costumes for Red Ivan and Zalika). Maximilian is yellow because he generates more gold and attracts more basic workers (who wear yellow). The color coding also extends to each one's superweapon.
  • Likewise agents of the Forces of Justice wear outfits in their agency's representative color. PATRIOT's wear blue, HAMMER's wear red, ANVIL's wear orange, and so on.
• Comically Small Bribe: Max tries to buy a country early in his campaign. The mission only costs $20,000. He tries to buy a country for less than the cost of some of your lair's lab equipment.
• Continuity Nod: The returning characters from the first game—Max, Red Ivan and Jubei—still use a lot of their original catchphrases, with a few getting updated for various reasons like because Jubei changed his weapon in the time since the original outing. The exception is Eli Barracuda Jr., who keeps his father's recognizable suit and trademark silver-plated revolver, but eschews Eli Sr.'s plethora of disco-soaked sayings.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted with the Ocean Campaigns DLC. While keeping your base warm is a concern if you build in the artic, a room can also be extremely hot due to the machinery running inside it, so you will need to build some A/C as well to cool off the rooms that are made hot by their contents. You can also use this against the Forces of Justice, though some of them will wear clothing that protects them against high or low temperatures.
• Crossover:
  • The Pyro can be recruited as a henchman if you download their free DLC pack. In a nice touch, you can recruit either their RED or BLU variants.
  • Another free DLC pack adds items from Portal, including setting up Turrets and making rooms with Propulsion Gel.
• Cue the Flying Pigs: One Side-story has Agent X claim the Genius will take over the world when pigs fly, and the Genius decides to create flying pigs just to spite him, raiding old facilities to find how to do it. Turns out the flying pigs being manufactured are kiddie rides, and the Genius decides to never speak of it again.
• Cutting Off the Branches: According to various elements in the game, Maximilian did not win the first game, whoever did win used the ID Eliminator Doomsday Device ^note  Mentioned in the flavour text of a loot item players could get for signing up for the newsletter before launch. , and Red Ivan was among the Henchmen who aided this genius. This genius also launched John Steele into space, which resulted in his ally Penny Foxworth forming a program to make average agents as good as Steele. The fate of the other four Super Agents from the first game remains unknown.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: During Doomhilda's plotline the Genius assembles a band to compete against her at Globalsound. After defeating her there, the Genius notices the band's newfound legitimate popularity and sends them on tour. Otherwise Justified in that all of the Geniuses want to dominate the world for reasons beyond money.
  • Maximilian wants to make up for the love and respect he never received as child or as a successful businessman. He initially tries to avert the trope by using his money to buy the world. But when his bid to buy even one country fails, Max abandons politics and decides to use his money to build a Doomsday Device that will force the world into submission and make him richer in the process.
  • Red Ivan wants war and power, pure and simple. He initially wanted back his nation of Ivania, but will settle for destroying it if he has to. He's also not an inventor or a scientific genius, so his Doomsday Device is a weapon he stole from the Forces of Justice and then later upgraded with the help of Full Metal Jackie^note She cannot be recruited as a Henchman until after Phase 2. and kidnapped scientists.
  • Emma just wants to outright wipe out mankind.
  • Zalika believes in The Evils of Free Will.
  • Polar likes the world being a giant ice ball.
• Damage Reduction: It's not really explicitly spelled out, but higher tiers of Muscle minion take less damage from attacks, and certain Traits also grant small amounts of resistance to harm as well. This offsets the fact that no minion's raw Health can exceed 50 without booster items, or 100 with them, whilst many Agents of Justice have at least twice that. Possibly the best example of this trope is the henchman Espectro, who has absolutely massive amounts of health and damage reduction. He may not be flashy, but he's a solid addition to your Quirky Miniboss Squad just for his ability to tank damage for squishier henchmen.
• Darker and Edgier: While the game mostly retains the humor of the first game, there is one area that is considerably darker than anything back then: The fates of the Super Agents. Unlike in the first game, where the Super Agents were mostly dealt with nonviolently (though there were some exceptions), all of the Super Agent storylines end with their death, and they are surprisingly brutal. Special mention goes to Symmetry, who spends her final moments desperately begging for her life before being left to drown, and Agent X, who is left so mentally and emotionally broken by the end that he practically begs the Evil Genius to just kill him and Get It Over With.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Robots explode at zero health. This includes the ones working for you, if you're playing with that DLC. As a result, it's generally best to capture hostile robots and then interrogate them on propulsive traps to launch them into a dead-end corridor where they can't cause any harm when they explode.
• Defeat Means Playable: The recruitment system for Henchman has been overhauled dramatically from the previous title. After recruiting the your first Henchmen, the rest will then begin as independent "Crime Lords" and the player will have to battle their criminal empires, culminating in them personally invading the player's base, and they need to be defeated before the Henchman are recruited to your side. Each Henchman has their own storyline that requires diverting resources from the main campaign in order to either recruit or dispose of them (due to the aforementioned Arbitrary Headcount Limit). As of update 1.12 this is also the case for four of the six Super Agents, and the Super Agent from the new FOJ in the Oceans content pack.
• Did Not Think This Through: The first mission in Maximilian's storyline has him attempt to buy a country. Beyond using a Comically Small Bribe to do so ($20000, less than even the poorest nation in the world's total GDP), he never considers that people might just refuse to sell him their nation no matter the sum of money he offers. Predictably, he's turned down.
• Disposing of a Body: In Evil Genius 1, bodies had to be stored in a walk-in freezer that needed to be expanded constantly. In this game, the Geniuses simply burn the bodies in incinerators once they're well and dead.
• Doofy Dodo: Inverted - one of the loot items is a Smart Dodo Bird, and by smart, we mean that he is able to function as a teacher for science minions.
• Doomsday Device: Just like in the last game, it's what your Evil Genius builds in order to Take Over the World. However, unlike last time, there's one for each Genius and ties into their vile personality.
  • Max's M.I.D.A.S., which can turn entire nations into gold, reflecting his belief that money controls everything, that money is more valuable than the lives of others, and desire to own everything.
  • Red Ivan's H.A.V.O.C., which is a Weapon of Mass Destruction Wave-Motion Gun that rains down atomic fire, reflecting his despotic tactics and desire to build a new Ivania from the world's ashes.
  • Emma's V.E.N.O.M., a Hate Plague that can plunge the world into permanent anarchy, reflecting her views on humanity and wish to destroy the world permanently.
  • Zalika's V.O.I.D., a device that collects the thoughts of humanity for her to control, reflecting her belief that humanity is already complacent and needs someone brilliant to rule them.
  • Polar's Z.E.R.O., a giant Freeze Ray that covers the entire planet and everyone in it in ice, reflecting her belief that the cold and the life strong enough to live in it are the only things worthy of surviving.
• Dragon Ascendant: Red Ivan has had a promotion from an optional Henchman to an Evil Genius in his own right. As a nod to how extremely destructive he was as a Henchman of the original game, Red Ivan is intended to favor an offensive playstyle (and still has his rocket launcher as a special ability).
• Dumbass Has a Point: Some of the tutorial prompts come about from your otherwise hapless minions raising surprisingly valid points that the Genius doesn't catch. The Genius, for instance, needs to be reminded that helicopters repeatedly flying to and from an allegedly "abandoned" island is pretty suspicious to the world at large, which inspires them to train Valets and run a casino as a cover operation.
• Durable Deathtrap: Some of the loot items you steal act like booby traps, and still work despite dating to antiquity. Some of them, like Cupid's Arrow and the Flames of Prometheus, are implied to have divine origins, though, which would explain it.
• Early Game Hell: Even on easy mode, building your base and expanding it can be difficult - since building a vault first actually isn't a good idea, as you need to add new rooms and train new minion types as you unlock them with a limited budget. Building a vault at the start just means you've wasted money on the room to hold the income you're not getting, because the Control Room is how you get income through Criminal Networks in the world... but you need Power and money to make the control consoles, so now you need a Generator room. You also cannot dig into most of the dirt of your island lair at the start, making it more likely you have to put vulnerable rooms near the entrances of your lair.
• Edible Theme Naming: Possible surnames for characters (both good and evil) include "Chipolata", "Brie", "Bratwurst", and "Chips", amongst several others.
• Empty Quiver: One A.N.V.I.L. unique scheme involves pinching a nuke from North Korea.
• Enemy Mine: Seeing the threat that your Evil Genius poses to everyone as greater than their personal conflicts, the Forces of Justice, any undefeated Super Agents, and any undefeated Crime Lords will assault your base together in a desperate attempt to stop your master plan to conquer the world in the final mission of the game. Notably, if the player did not start the missions revolving around Carl Cafard and Clara Jones, they'll be among the Crime Lords attacking your base, despite otherwise hating each other.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Genius refuses to kill Wrecking Bola's dogs, citing this.
  • Time travel, though powerful, is beneath the Genius and they refuse to use it due to it being a lazy way to become powerful.
  • Once the Genius verifies that Pandora's Box has been discovered, they immediately seek it out and steal it to personally ensure it is never used again. If only to prevent something even more evil than they are from being released from it.
• Evil Is Petty: After getting fed up with Symmetry's raids and taunting, the Genius decides to get her attention by shooting her cat. With the Doomsday Device.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: Averted - Evil Genius 2 is a canonical sequel to the original 2004 game, and between those two games, the world has been taken back by the Forces of Justice after the last Evil Genius succeeded in taking over the world.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Crime Lord side stories are this, with you dealing with rival criminals to stop them from undermining your operation, and potentially recruiting them to your side.
• Egopolis: Promoted to Playable Henchman Red Ivan was rewarded with his own nation for his service to the previous game's Evil Genius, the Nation of Ivania. After he was defeated via a democratic election, the Forces of Justice somehow ousted him, and now he intends to Take Over the World so all will be Ivania. This also because Ivania refuses to take him back, when he tries to retake it later in the game. After fracking a massive A.M.M.O. deposit from underneath their feet, he fires H.A.V.O.C. at them and destroys the country out of spite.
• Extendo Boxing Glove: One of the new traps is a wall-mounted boxing glove on a spring, capable of knocking targets flat against the opposing wall.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Unlike in the first game, where every minion of a given type had the same model (and all of them were men), minions of all types now come in varying races and genders.
• Face–Heel Turn: The "Oceans" DLC pack introduces a new Force of Justice with a new Super Agent, Deep Six, who can be corrupted into joining the Genius instead of just killed off. A community event that happened not long after that content's release also promised adding the option of recruiting existing Super Agents instead of killing them. The exceptions were Blue Saint, the most relentlessly optimistic character in the game, and Ms. Foxworth with the Steele Program, which isn't a Super Agent but an army of them, which would be a logistical nightmare to turn into a Henchman.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The first set of missions won't get the Genius the results they want. This prompts them to build their superweapon and make the world listen.
  • For Maximilian, he tries to become President of the World, beginning with bribing various politicians $5000 each and trying to buy a country with a relatively small bribe of $20000. Nobody takes it and/or immediately elects him to rule the entire world, and Max decides to build M.I.D.A.S.
  • For Emma, she tries to expose a candidate's dirty secrets and smash her campaign for Prime Minister due to bad blood between her and the candidate, only for her to be elected anyways. Scientists who agree with Emma's disgust about the election result show up and help her build V.E.N.O.M.
  • For Ivan, Ivania, the country he spends the first half of the game preparing to take back rejects him on what is supposed to be his triumphant return, and he destroys it in a fit of pique with H.A.V.O.C.
  • For Zalika, the V.O.I.D. prototype brainwashes the Investors and causes minions to start worshipping it, forcing her to destroy it.
  • For Polar, she initially tries to go through legitimate channels in getting support for her project to fight global warming, but people think making everywhere constantly cold is worse than it getting hotter. This prompts her to develop her Z.E.R.O. weapon to take matters into her own hands.
• Fake Charity: The Genius sets one up to steal the World's Largest Piggy Bank. This causes missions to periodically appear on the World Map that involve robbing other fake charities.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Like in the first game, the devs threw in everything they could think of. The Arthurian legends happened. Dr. Jekyll and Captain Nemo are not only real, they're alive at the time the game takes place. Kaiju are real. You can plunder relics from Greek mythology. DLC adds Atlantis to the mix.
• Fountain of Youth: An extra mission to find and relocate the magical fountain to your lair was given away as a preorder bonus. It makes minions who drink from it healthier, but temporarily more naive and easier for agents to trick them.
• Freeze Ray: A booby trap from the early game. The final DLC pack adds unlocking handheld versions as weapons for guards, and the fifth avatar's superweapon is one big enough to cover the entire planet.
• Fun with Acronyms: We never find out what the acronyms for most of the spy organizations or superweapons stand for, but in Red Ivan's campaign the Forces of Justice form a coalition against him: Public Entities Against Crime & Evil. Or, P.E.A.C.E.
• Furnace Body Disposal: The bodies of dead agents are disposed of in incinerators so that they don't lower the morale of the minions.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • It's still possible for agents from a destroyed Force of Justice to appear on the island during the endgame, even though the cutscenes treat blasting their headquarters with the superweapon as being rid of them forever. Similarly, minions of all Crime Lords and Super Agents will appear during the Last Stand regardless of which ones you've recruited/killed.
  • The cutscene at the beginning of the side quest to steal the Aurora Borealis has the genius say tourists have been wandering into their office all week. While it's true that's something that happened all the time to players of the first game, tourists never wander through doors into the lair in this game.
  • One resulting in all the geniuses having the same dialogue. When confronting Penny Foxworth for the first time, the genius will always say, "I know you're not John Steele's old handler. She was unmistakable." Emma says this too, even though she's talking about herself. Likewise, the genius will say that they knew John Steele but this doesn't apply to Zalika or Polar (Maximillian and Ivan were in the first game and Emma was John Steele's handler)
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Some Henchmen and Loot Items are locked behind each other and the game will never tell you this. In general, various pieces of Loot are only available during certain windows of the campaign, and some also require you to have a certain number of a specific Minion type during these points (e.g. having 15 Martial Artists after unlocking their recruitment opens up the Meditation Stone quest).
  • You can't recruit Carl Cafard unless you complete The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Gains, a loot-item side-story. This stops becoming available after a certain point, and if you’ve passed it and haven’t completed it, you’ve locked yourself out of getting him for the rest of the playthrough. Also, Cafard and fellow Henchman Clara Jones have a rivalry with each other, and once the player picks one to capture or recruit, the other stops being available.
  • Full Metal Jackie was once notoriously hard to recruit as a Henchman. She originally could only be recruited if four other henchmen had not been recruited yet, two of whom are top-tier fan favorites who are available as your first henchman (Jubei and Eli Barracuda) and the other two of which are also top-tier (Sir Daniel and Dr. Magnolia Ming) and available before Jackie. You couldn't touch any of the stories for these henchmen until after you get Quantum Chemists, which was originally very late in the game, and complete the three side stories required to recruit Jackie without accidentally killing her. The 1.30 Patch relaxed these restrictions to hire her by letting you take Jubei and Eli without silently failing the questline, and a later patch made it so you can recruit all four without any issues (it just skips their part of Jackie's questline).
  • Some missions, such as Sir Daniel's recruitment mission, require you to defeat a Super Agent, with one of his final recruitment missions demanding that you defeat all six of them in a row. If any of the six Super Agents are gone for good, then the mission will be shut down forever.
• Healing Factor: Part of the appeal of Abomination minions is they heal by themselves.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • Red Ivan's Doomsday Device, H.A.V.O.C., was originally built by H.A.M.M.E.R. before being dismantled. After he steals it from them, they're just as likely to be targeted by their former weapon as any other Force of Justice.
  • Launching your Doomsday Device will cause side effects across your base depending on the type; M.I.D.A.S. turns Minions into gold, H.A.V.O.C. sets things on fire, V.O.I.D. downgrades minions into workers, V.E.N.O.M. causes minions to go berserk and attack, and Z.E.R.O. heavily freezes the entire base.
• Human Resources: Maximillian Von Klein eventually uses a portable M.I.D.A.S. Device to execute minions. Strapped for cash? Execute minions one after another, and melt them down.
• Hurricane of Puns: Almost all the mission names have some kind of pun in them, unless they have a movie reference in them instead.
• Informed Attribute: Some missions involve stealing priceless treasures, but for some reason these never show up in the lair (such as Abraham Lincoln's hat in Agent X's questline). Which seems weird mainly with how stealing priceless treasures and putting them on display is a big part of the game.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Besides the aspect of creating a streamlined evil lair to carry out your operations from the original game, there's a whole new tab of "Decor" items that just make things look cooler (some do improve stat regeneration near them, but it's mostly decorative items).
• Irony: Maximilian, whose color is Yellow, has a line complaining how yellow everything is (he likes gold).
• I Shall Taunt You: Much like the first game, it's a perfectly viable option to have your Evil Genius go up to someone in one of your holding cells and mock them for getting caught. While this sometimes gave a little bit of Notoriety in the first game, in this one, it takes off a sizable chunk of the victim's Resolve (in-exchange for a little bit of Smarts from your Genius, which can easily be recovered), making this practical for softening up an enemy for interrogation or brainwashing.
• Joke Item: The Pandora's Box. Unlike the other optional treasures which have a benefit, a benefit with a caveat, or does nothing, the Pandora's Box only drains the smarts of minions, essentially doing worse than nothing if placed in the lair. Insultingly, the side story to get this item never expires until the explicit Point of No Return.
• Last Stand: In the endgame, the Genius issuing an ultimatum to the world forces all Forces of Justice to respond to the imminent threat that their completed Doomsday Device poses, prompting this situation as they swarm the island to save the world. The player has to hold the line against all attackers, with the threat of defeat if the invaders get to the Evil Genius. How difficult this last stand becomes is entirely dependent on how many incomplete Side Stories there are. Every independent Crime Lord left alive will work together to invade the island, and every still active Super Agent will invade together in a separate wave.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The worker minion who acts as the tutorial is immediately noted by the Evil Genius, who angrily demands to know why some low level mook is giving them orders. His response is that as a minion, he's eager to help (and live).
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The Genius's reaction after capturing, securing, and finding out about the true nature of the Flying Pig.^note Revealed to be a coin-operated kiddie ride, not an actual flying pig, thanks to ambiguous newspaper headlines.
• Mad Scientist:
  • Science minions are now more exaggerated along B-movie lines, with high-tech helmets and massive goggles.
  • Zalika, the science Evil Genius is clearly modeled after this trope with her lab coat, bubble-helmet, and goggles.
• Magic Carpet: A loot item you can steal and use to decorate the lair. Unfortunately you can't ride it.
• Magic Versus Science: Many loot items are magic-based, such as Excalibur, Pandora's Box, Terracotta Army, Flame of Prometheus, Fountain of Youth, Meditation Stone, and Magic Carpet to name a few. And naturally, many of them have magical defenses to deter anyone from trying to get their hands on them. Of course, that doesn't stop the Genius, who is primarily a science-based villain. Their methods vary though depending on the loot. For example, the Genius uses modern Hollywood Acid to bypass the spell on the Excalibur in the Stone, but then perform good deeds so that the magical monastery will them deem worthy to access the Meditation Stone.
• Masked Luchador: The Blue Saint, the S.M.A.S.H. Super Agent, is a particularly massive Luchador in a suit, complete with mask and champion belt.
• Mecha-Mooks: Robot workers and robot guards become available in one of the DLC packs.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Carl Carfard and Clara Jones hate each other, and recruiting one will lock you out of recruiting the other.
• Nerf: Social minions are no longer capable of rendering your evil lair nigh-invulnerable like they were in the first game. Soldiers cannot be tagged for Distraction at all and Super Agents will nearly always see through attempts to Distract them and kill the offending minion.
• Necessary Drawback: The "Oceans" DLC's submarine technology grants the player staggering benefits when fully developed ^note granting 20% extra income or slowed Heat drain in all surrounding territories of the ocean zone, or draining 100 Heat from random territories; using advanced types of subs grants additional benefits while the mission is active (e.g. speeding up minion training or increasing Intel generation), but it costs significantly more manpower and funds to develop and use the advanced technology (requiring a unique and expensive Minion type), and the player has to deal with a sixth Force of Justice (J.A.W.S.) any time the Heat rises in their ocean territories. Their Infiltrators are all scuba divers that come up through the same submarine decks that the player needs to access the oceans (they cannot be stopped from doing this), and may even emerge from the Toilet Block furniture item if the player's decks are sufficiently defended; J.A.W.S. Soldiers are significantly more lethal than the default F.O.J. versions and come bearing rocket launchers at higher Heat levels. The player will be richer and more powerful, but they'll need every cent to fight off six Forces of Justice.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Whiteboard, cornerstone of your R&D department, is, as the flavor text notes, not actually white, but calling it a "Greenboard" just confused people and sounded weird.
• Noodle Incident: From hints and snippets such as Red Ivan and Emma's backstories, it's implied that the world had already been subjected to an Evil Genius Taking Over The World at least once. When that happened, and how said Evil Genius was eventually toppled and the world gone back to normal is left unrevealed - but your Evil Genius can get to do it again.
• Not So Extinct: One of the loot siequests rewards you with the last living dodo.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Much like the first game, it's truly a pity the game never leaves the lair sometimes because some of the missions sound epic. Like the one where your minions are sent on running battles with the Time Police.
• Old Master: Jubei, returning from the first game, now sports this look, having replaced his katana with a staff.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The ability to turn dead agents into Abominations (zombie minions) was added with DLC just in time for Halloween 2021. Basically a slightly new take on Freaks from the original game.
• Permanently Missable Content: All Side Stories and Henchmen are available at various points of the Campaign's main quest line. If you don't collect available loot, have the right minions to unlock them in the first place, or recruit/kill Henchmen before doing certain story missions, they will disappear from the Side Story menu and can no longer be earned in that playthrough. The game will let you know by saying that moving onto the next main story objective will clear things off the sidequest list in red writing, though.
• Perplexing Plurals: In the "Everything We Can Tell You" trailer, narrator Ellen stumbles over introducing the title characters because she's not sure whether the plural of "genius" is "geniuses" or "genii".
• Pet the Dog: Before killing Wrecking Bola the Genius assures them that they didn't hurt their pets.
• Police State: Of a sort: presumably after liberating the world from the previous Evil Genius ruler, the world is now ruled directly by the Forces of Justice rather than national governments. They've also shifted territories; for instance H.A.M.M.E.R., the equivalent of SMERSH, now controls all of Northern Eurasia, while S.A.B.R.E., the MI6 equivalent, has lost most former British territory (and all of Europe) but gained all of Africa.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • The justification for Schemes costing Minions permanently is that the Evil Geniuses think that letting them take a cut of the profits and disappear is better than them returning to the base and potentially leading the authorities to them. Although just where the ones who get sent on missions to the middle of the ocean are supposed to go...
  • Also shows up in one of the loot quests. The Genius hears about a Kaiju and thinks about capturing it for their own use. After their scientists run the numbers they realize this would be way more trouble than it's worth, steal its egg instead so they don't leave empty-handed, and fire their superweapon at the monster to show it not to mess with them.
  • The theft of Pandora's Box comes down to this, with the Genius claiming it to keep something more evil than them from being released. Granted, part of their motive is so they're the most Evil person around, but the sentiment is still there.
• Public Domain Artifact:
  • A teaser on the game's social One of the Uber-Loot pieces from the first game makes a return: King Arthur's sword, Excalibur (along with the stone). The Statue Of Liberty's hand and torch is also teased as a loot item in a dev blog about the loot system.
  • Did you do the truly Evil thing and pre-order? Well then, one of your pre-order bonus loot items is the Fountain of Youth.
  • One of the treasures you can steal is Pandora's Box, but it's specifically to make sure nobody opens it again.
• Pun: Pundreds of them, many of them also Shout Outs, especially in the Schemes. Selling a sound system full of fish? All About That Bass. Kidnapping a famous person said to have a body made of stone? The Great Dwayne Robbery. Bribing a bunch of jurors with gelato to vote not guilty? Twelve Hungry Men. A fighting ring in small round tent? Bring The Yurt. And so on.
• Purple Is Powerful: The agents from J.A.W.S., the ocean-based force of justice from the "Oceans" DLC, all wear purple as their uniform color. They're also on the whole more formidable than the comparable agents from other Forces of Justice, possibly to compensate for how their Super Agent can be killed off/swayed into joining the Evil Genius pretty early into the game.
• Ray Gun: One of the loot items you can steal is a set of alien laser pistols from Area 51 your guards can wield instead of normal guns.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Creating the 'Storm Area 51' meme, popular in late 2019, is part of a side-story to rob the place.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: In Max' storyline, you'll have to deal with rebellious versions of your basic minions who use black and red as their main colour scheme.
• Refuge in Audacity: Common among the many Schemes the Genius can pull off.
  • A gameplay trailer shows one scheme to lower heat is to rebrand your Evil Genius as a magician and claim that all of their criminal acts were just illusions.
  • One generic Scheme proposes wrapping an entire town in plastic wrap then selling the residents scissors to cut their way to freedom.
  • Another early-game generic Scheme is simply packing an old loudspeaker full of random trash and expired fish then selling it as an art piece.
  • The first step of stealing the Declaration of Independence is just asking the President if you can have it.
• Rock Beats Laser: Inverted, and used to explain why after you steal Excalibur it's only used to give a stat buff to minions and not as a weapon.
  Flavor Text: Merlin claimed whoever wielded this sword would never fall in battle. That might have been true before they invented guns and heavy artillery.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Not only an available trap, but an available loot item that functions as a trap too.
• Sequence Breaking: The Brainwasher can give you higher-tier minions before finishing their respective Side-Story. That said, you still have to do the side story to unlock the item that allows you to train more.
• Shame If Something Happened: In the line of side-stories dealing with Atomic Olga, the Genius hires Olga's brother, a professional figure skater, to put a performance for an audience full of minions. Olga reacts to this with outrage, as both she and the Genius know that he could've easily been put in danger. The Genius then points out that he doesn't have to be peril like that... so long as Olga stays out of the Genius's way.
• Shark Pool: One of the available traps is a pool with sharks.
• Socialite: One of the new Deception Minions is explicitly named Socialite. They are the second-tier Deception minion, and are primarily geared toward keeping guests and Agents occupied.
• Shiny New Australia: The "Evil Geniuses" development blog mentions offhand that Promoted to Playable Henchman Red Ivan was recruited during the events of Evil Genius and the Evil Genius of that game rewarded him with his own country, the Nation of Ivania. At the start of his campaign, Ivan is forced to flee it when the F.O.J. forces a democratic election that votes him out of office. After spending much of the game trying to reclaim it, he finds that the country's populace doesn't want him back. Enraged, Ivan then fires H.A.V.O.C. at his own country, and then vows to make the whole world his new Ivania.
• Shop Fodder: Every base starts off with a dilapidated casino filled with broken equipment meant solely to be sold for some start-up cash.
  • The collateral damage of Maximilian's Doomsday Device turns minions into golden statues, which can be sold off.
• Shout-Out:
  • The pre-purchase announcement mentioned that the Deluxe Edition would include an additional loot item — the Aurora Borealis, localized entirely within your lair.
  • During a side mission to steal the Declaration of Independence, the first attempt involves trying to convince the President to just give it to you by telling him there's a treasure map on the back... and once you steal it anyway, it turns out there actually is a treasure map on it.
  • One of the distraction missions involves throwing a polka concert starring a "curly-haired musician".
  • One of the Jane Steeles dresses like Trinity.
  • All over the place in one chapter of Emma's campaign. When searching for evidence that John Steele Sr. survived, all the schemes for finding evidence have names that are plays off of various James Bond movie titles.
  • In Jubei's rivalry subplot, you find out his kryptonite is the song "Soul Bossa Nova". You probably know it as the theme song for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
  • The flavor text for the Cupid treasure references a Bon Jovi song, of all things.
  • During Sir Daniel's questline, when it comes time to fight John Steele, a minion points out it's time to pit Spy vs. Hunter.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Icicle Point island base, where the player has to deal with balancing the temperature to avoid problems for their minions.
• Spy Speak: Once you get Counter-Agents (the highest tier of Deception minion), the conversation with your Genius is... certainly something;
  Counter Agent: Eagle to Sparrow. Code word Monarch is Status Green. ^Translation:(Genius) is pleased with my efforts so far!
  Genius: I didn't understand any of that! Say something else.
  Counter Agent: Monarch is Status Red. Repeat. Monarch is Red. Situation FUBAR. Need extraction route.^Translation:Oh, Crap!, (Genius) is pissed, (Genius) is pissed, I don't wanna die! Get me out of here!
  Genius: Get out of my sight and do some espionage before you make me even angrier!
• Straw Critic: Actively exploited by the Genius in one low level money making scheme, which involves ridding yourself of some bad fish and broken electronics by filling a speaker with rotting fish, calling it art, and allowing the natural pretentiousness of art critics to do its thing.
• Super-Soldier: Atomic Olga, the H.A.M.M.E.R. Super Agent, is explicitly described as one.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Your Evil Genius is a devious criminal mastermind, but your minions are... not so bright. This is most prominent with Construction Workers and Muscle Minions, who either don't know what shoelaces are or can't answer a basic mathematical question of their strength. This often aggravates the Genius as they feel handicapped in their bid for world domination. This is averted with Scientist minions who are typically smart enough to give reasonable advice and feedback to Genius, but don't expect the Genius to appreciate anyone potentially overshadowing them.
• Take Over the World: It's in the title. As shown by the dev blog introducing our villain protagonists, the road to taking over the world is unique to each Evil Genius, with each one building their own custom Doomsday Device for the purpose.
• Took a Level in Badass: Social Minions from the first game were mostly meant to keep Tourists and Agents from asking questions, and had no further utility than distracting said characters. Now, though, higher-tier Deception Minions can see through the disguises used by investigators, giving them more utility for base defense. They can also drain Agent stats, making it far more likely that the affected Agents will fall into traps if they infiltrate the lair. In some cases, these Deception Minions can cause Agents to leave the island entirely without ever stepping foot inside the lair.
• Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: One of the treasures the player can steal is a giant emerald. As big as a person and around twice as wide.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: A few examples with side missions due to outstanding bugs, exacerbated by how side missions can't be canceled by the player once accepted. One of the most egregious is Sir Daniel's recruitment Side Mission 'The Other Most Dangerous Kind of Game'. It can't be completed if you've already killed any of the Super Agents, as you have to defeat each one in your lair once to complete the mission.
• Trojan Horse: Literal example, since one of the available loot items is the actual Trojan Horse. Once you steal it and place it in your base, a small army of ANVIL soldiers comes out of it. Later, you can use it for fast, lucrative and massively heat-attracting heists.
• Vestigial Empire: Following the shakeup of the world caused by the previous Evil Genius, SMASH and SABRE suffered rather severe pruning in their territorial holdings. SMASH has been deprived of the Middle East, Africa and Antarctica, now sequestered entirely within Central and South America though gaining Mexico and the Caribbean as consolation. SABRE, in turn, lost India, Australia, and Western Europe, leaving them to control all of Africa instead.
• Villain Decay: Crime lords will often have higher stats as enemies than they will once they join you.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: During the final stage of the campaign, any Crime Lords whose recruitment/assassination mission arcs haven't been started will end up attacking your lair all at once after the initial wave of crime lord goons are defeated. All their stats are set to 150, numbers that would have been more relevant in the early stages of the campaign, and are barely any tougher than the typical soldiers who have attacked your base prior (and later).
• We Have Reserves: Unlike the first game wherein minions could survive executing your schemes, the sequel never has them return from any scheme (and if you cancel, you only get a quarter of the spent resources back at-most) encouraging use of this trope in regards to your minions. Note, though, that they don't necessarily die on the mission - some will get arrested or desert, and survivors take a cut of the proceeds and disappear, and even the Evil Genius outright states that they will not allow them to come back to base whether they succeed or not because "You'll be dragging justice all over my nice clean floors".
• What the Hell, Player?: Henchmen and Geniuses will call you out if you try to order them to do something impossible, such as walk into unmined dirt.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Blue Saint asks the titular Evil Genius why they chose the path of evil when they could have used their peerless mind to save the whole world. The Genius replies that they don't want to save the world, especially when they have better plans in store for it once they take over.
• You Don't Look Like You: Despite being obtainable in both games, Excalibur looks different from the first game.
• You Have Researched Breathing: A considerable level of research is required to unlock such arcane secrets as using stairs to explore the third dimension of your lair, or arming your minions with handguns. Likewise there are things that are unlocked through some rather arbitrary means. This includes the fixtures you can build in your casino being dependent on what social minions you've unlocked, which means things like not being able to install slot machines in your casino until you unlock the Spindoctor minion type, which in the initial release only happened a good bit through the game (a later update added the Spindocter with the first tier of unlockable specialists, mitigating this slightly).
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: As with the original, you can execute minions to provide other nearby minions with a short-lived boost to their performance. However you can also execute Henchmen now, which is the only way to get rid of them permanently - useful if you've found their skills don't suit your playstyle and you're already at your capacity for Henchmen. It's also mandatory if you're going for the Gotta Catch 'Em All achievement to recruit every available Henchman, and, by its own admission, that means Some betrayal required. And if you win the game, all of geniuses (with the notable exception of Maximillian) proceed to pull this trope on you.
• X Days Since: A hall decoration is a counter for how many days since the last workplace accident. Broken, unfortunately, since it'd be hilarious to see what constitutes a workplace accident in a supervillain's lair.
• Zombie Gait: Abomination minions walk around with their arms out in front of them (and they are basically zombies despite the name anyway).