After the Elaborate Underground Base, this is perhaps the most common form of supervillain lair. A jaw-droppingly massive tower that, well, towers over everyone and everything around it. Visually the trope stems, as a prototype, from the Russian Constructivist movement in particular Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the third In Heroic Fantasy, a castle like this, situated in Mordor or a similar wilderness, is often the home of the Evil Overlord. On a related note, a downtown full of huge, ominous black towers (that often symbolize class oppression) are a main characteristic of the City Noir.