201. Under no circumstances will I ever, EVER give a weapon back to the hero engaged with me in a duel. Sporting chances are for sissies.
202. All giant serpents acting as guardians in underground lakes will be fitted with sports goggles to prevent eye injuries.
203. All crones with the ability to prophesy will be given free facelifts, permanents, manicures, and Donna Karan wardrobes. That should pretty well destroy their credibility.
204. I will not employ an evil wizard if he has a sleazy mustache.
205. I will hire an entire squad of blind guards. Not only is this in keeping with my status as an equal opportunity employer, but it will come in handy when the hero becomes invisible or douses my only light source.
206. All repair work will be done by an in-house maintenance staff. Any alleged "repairmen" who show up at the fortress will be escorted to the dungeon.
207. When my Legions of Terror park their vehicle to do reconnaissance on foot, they will be instructed to employ The Club.
208. Employees will have conjugal visit trailers which they may use provided they call in a replacement and sign out on the timesheet. Given this, anyone caught making out in a closet while leaving their station unmonitored will be shot.
209. Members of my Legion of Terror will attend seminars on Sensitivity Training. It's good public relations for them to be kind and courteous to the general population when not actively engaged in sowing chaos and destruction.
210. I will not, under any circumstances, marry a woman I know to be a faithless, conniving, back-stabbing witch simply because I am absolutely desperate to perpetuate my family line. Of course, we can still date.
211. All guest-quarters will be bugged and monitored so that I can keep track of what the visitors I have for some reason allowed to roam about my fortress are actually plotting.
212. If my chief engineer displeases me, he will be shot, not imprisoned in the dungeon or beyond the traps he helped design.
213. I will not send out battalions composed wholly of robots or skeletons against heroes who have qualms about killing living beings.
214. I will not wear long, heavy cloaks. While they certainly make a bold fashion statement, they have an annoying tendency to get caught in doors or tripped over during an escape.
215. If a malignant being demands a sacrificial victim have a particular quality, I will check to make sure said victim has this quality immediately before the sacrifice and not rely on earlier results. (Especially if the quality is virginity and the victim is the hero's girlfriend.)
216. If I ever MUST put a digital timer on my doomsday device, I will buy one free from quantum mechanical anomalies. So many brands on the market keep perfectly good time while you're looking at them, but whenever you turn away for a couple minutes then turn back, you find that the countdown has progressed by only a few seconds.
217. If my Legions of Terror are defeated in a battle, I will quietly withdraw and regroup instead of launching a haphazard mission to assassinate the hero.
218. If I'm wearing the key to the hero's shackles around my neck and his former girlfriend now volunteers to become my mistress and we are all alone in my bedchamber on my bed and she offers me a goblet of wine, I will politely decline the offer.
219. I will not pick up a glowing ancient artifact and shout "Its power is now mine!!!" Instead I will grab some tongs, transfer it to a hazardous materials container, and transport it back to my lab for study.
220. I will be selective in the hiring of assassins. Anyone who attempts to strike down the hero the first instant his back is turned will not even be considered for the job.
221. Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be "Hmm...I think I need a shave."
222. My force-field generators will be located inside the shield they generate.
223. I reserve the right to execute any henchmen who appear to be a little too intelligent, powerful, or devious. However if I do so, I will not at some subsequent point shout "Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools?!"
224. I will install a fire extinguisher in every room — three, if the room contains vital equipment or volatile chemicals.
225. I will build machines which simply fail when overloaded, rather than wipe out all nearby henchmen in an explosion or worse yet set off a chain reaction. I will do this by using devices known as "surge protectors".
226. I will explain to my guards that most people have their eyes in the front of their heads and thus while searching for someone it makes little sense to draw a weapon and slowly back down the hallway.
227. I will have a staff of competent detectives handy. If I learn that someone in a certain village is plotting against me, I will have them find out who rather than wipe out the entire village in a preemptive strike.
228. I will never bait a trap with genuine bait.
229. If the hero claims he wishes to confess in public or to me personally, I will remind him that a notarized deposition will serve just as well.
230. If I have several diabolical schemes to destroy the hero, I will set all of them in motion at once rather than wait for them to fail and launch them successively.
231. I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality.
232. Mythical guardians will be instructed to ask visitors name, purpose of visit, and whether they have an appointment instead of ancient riddles.
233. If I do outfit my minions with gas masks or scuba equipment I will ensure that the equipment is functional and I will train them to use gas weapons.
234. I will instruct my minions to attack the hero at once if they outnumber him. They are NOT to attack him one at a time.
235. I will fight as dirty as possible when facing the hero.
236. I will also instruct my minions to also fight as dirty as possible and to fight with whatever they can find.
237. I will have all hallways in my fortress randomly shift in decoration and color to negate the possibility of anyone blending in to the surroundings.
238. I will always listen if a child of the members of my inner circle tells me they have something important to say.
Additions made based on fark.com (original source here):
1. When pursuing the hero who is fleeing on foot, my helicopter pilots will not make long strafing runs. This will only allow the hero to take advantage of natural cover and improvise weaponry or utilize concealed armaments. Instead, my pilots will hover close to the hero and fire at will with their automatic weapons.
2. I will never play with any seeming innocuous devices, especially fountain pens, that I confiscate from the hero or his associates.
3. Should the hero escape, I will not send my Legions of Terror on a suicide mission to chase him into an impenetrable asteroid field, burning swamp, or forest of carnivorous trees. My Legions of Terror will instead flank the area if possible, and practice basic marksmanship while waiting for the hero to reemerge. Well-trained troops are difficult to come by, and if they let my enemy escape, then they need more training.
4. Any evil uncles or disgruntled envious half-brothers of mine will not be tolerated. They may be incompetent and not openly sulk or plot against me for years, but they will inevitably try to seize an opportunity in my moment of weakness. They will be summarily executed andcatapulted into a faraway province to prevent them from becoming pesky ghosts that would advise the hero.
5. All staircases will have handrails and anti-slip surfaces.
6. I will create an elaborate decoy lair replete with guards, traps, and a scale replica of my current project. Meanwhile, my actual project will be housed in a nondescript suburban office building.
7. All firearms stored in easy-to-reach closets will be decoys that explode upon use. Furthermore, incompetent henchmen will be issued the same weapons and be instructed never to fire them. When the hero inevitably steals their weapon and tries using it, he will blow himself up.
8. When I finally get around to building my fantasy dinosaur island, I will make sure that the electric fence/defense capabilities of the island are not solely in the hands of one computer built in the mid-nineties. Furthermore, an entire team of qualified engineers will be entrusted with keeping that system operational, rather than entrusting the whole project to a single overweight man prone to temptation.
9. My minions will be well-fed, well-paid, and well-rested. A generous benefits package will garner loyalty, boost morale, and ensure that none of them become disgruntled minions.
10. Any of my trap rooms that are a typical slow death type, such as closing walls with spikes, rising water, etc., will only appear to be slow for the first 10 seconds. Thereafter the process will speed up 100 fold.
11. Any would-be messiahs who set foot in my realm who develop a popular following will be apprehended and provided a secluded life of comfort and leisure.
12. When finally encountering the hero for our Climactic Battle, I will greet him as if he were an old dorm mate. This will surely confuse him.
13. My robot army will not be big, slow-moving, and fashioned with inferior AI. Instead they will be built for speed, agility, and remotely controlled by my army of 15-year-old Korean Counter-Strike players.
14. The halls of my Impenetrable Fortress/Craft will always be straight, and my guards will not be dispatched on winding patrols through the corridors. Rather they will be stationed, four at a time, back-to-back, at every intersection.
15. Any jewelry of power will be fitted with a homing mechanism. Such objects are difficult to come by, and the last thing I need is for it to be lost for centuries in a secluded pond or worse—in the cracks of my couch.
16. I will not do a shoddy job erasing the hero's memory and attempt to trick him into thinking he is my partner.
17. Upon capturing the hero, I will immediately declare a "Take your daughter to work day" to have a significant number of human shields on hand.
18. I will not discontinue searches immediately after the hero has been captured. The searches will continue until I am satisfied that he did in fact travel alone.
19. I will not offer a bounty for the hero's capture. Henchmen have a pesky tendency to fight each other over these rewards.
20. I will use a Restraining Bolt on all my subordinates.
21. I will not have hobbies. They will only be used against me by my disloyal subordinates.