Lord Business

Villain Overview

Gallery

Evil-doer

Full Name

Lawrence Sebastian Business

Alias

President Business

Lord Business

Origin

The LEGO Movie

Occupation

Terrorist

Dictator of Bricksburg
President of Octan Corporation (all formerly)

Powers / Skills

Expertise in robotics

High intelligence
The Kragle (Glue)
Ancient relics
Mechanical suit
Deception
Political influence
Marksmanship
Manipulation
Cunning
Wealth
Oppression

Hobby

Ruling over Octan Corporation.

Eating tacos.
Collecting items
Maintaining and making sure everything in his city is perfect.

Goals

Become the president of Bricksburg.
Kill Vitruvius (both succeeded).
Capture the Masterbuilders into his Think Tank (succeeded, but then backfired).
Have Bad Cop/Good Cop killed.
Use the Kragle to freeze everyone in place and obtain perfection and then destroy the LEGO World.
Kill Emmet and his friends (all succeeded, but ruined it)
Leave Bricksburg and win a game of golf (succeeded, later failed)

Crimes

Attempted world domination
Corruption
Conspiracy
Terrorism
Abuse of power
Brainwashing
War crimes
Treason
Property damage
Torture
Murder
Usurpation
Attempted cultural genocide
Pollution
Embezzlement
Kidnapping
Unlawful imprisonment

Type of Villain

Tyrannical Businessman

“	A special one? What a bunch of hippy dippy baloney.	„
	~ Lord Business talking about the special one.

“	Hey. Not so special anymore, huh? Well, guess what? No one ever told me I was special. I never got a trophy just for showing up! I'm not some special little snowflake. No. But as unspecial as I am, you are a thousand, billion times more unspecial than me.	„
	~ Lord Business justifying his evil to Emmet and taunting him - one of his most famous quotes.

President Business, also known as Lord Business, is the main antagonist of Warner Animation Group's 1st feature film The LEGO Movie and a minor character in its 2019 sequel The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part.

He is the ruthless and tyrannical dictator of Bricksburg who wanted to destroy the realm by gluing it together with the powerful superweapon known as the "Kragle". He is also the former archenemy of Emmet Brickowski and Vitruvius.

He was voiced by Will Ferrell, who also played the Man Upstairs (his human counterpart) in the same franchise, Jacobim Mugatu in Zoolander, Cam Brady in The Campaign, Franz Liebkind in The Producers, the title character in Megamind, Deangelo Vickers in The Office, the Black Knight in Family Guy, and Larry the Architect in the MTV Movie Awards parody of The Matrix Reloaded.

Biography[]

The LEGO Movie[]

Lord Business is a control freak who detests seeing anything out of place. He cannot stand anything that even slightly deviates from his idea of perfection, so he created walls between each section of the LEGO world to keep all of the pieces in what he believed to be their rightful places and prevent them from mingling with each other in any way not allowed by his "instructions". However, he eventually found that not satisfactory and developed a plan to use the "Kragle" (actually Krazy Glue) to forever seal every piece in place, creating a "perfect" but immobile world.

Since he publicly poses as President Business, most inhabitants of the land of LEGO have no idea he is evil. He is able to run the world competently and efficiently, though underneath the bright and cheery surface lies a dystopia wherein those who refuse to follow President Business' "instructions" are at risk of being captured by his Super Secret Police and executed.

It is later revealed that a boy named Finn based Lord Business off of his strict father, who had a hobby of collecting LEGO, but refused to allow his son to play with them. However, Finn's father and Lord Business both had a change of heart by the end of the movie. The father realized that his obsession was alienating him from his son, who told him that anybody can be special in their own different way and that the fun of LEGO is not just to assemble it as instructed, but to use it to create something new. Emmet also tells this to Lord Business, making him have a change of heart and cure everyone of the Kragle using water. After that, he reformed and became a president again.

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part[]

Immediately after Business's defeat, the Duplo Aliens appear in Bricksburg, announcing their intentions to destroy it and all of its inhabitants. Emmet tries to befriend the Duplo Aliens, but his attempts at friendship end with himself, Wyldstyle, and their friends fighting the Duplo Aliens. In the midst of the chaos, Business unhelpfully tells everyone to get along before he dons a golfer outfit and leaves to go golfing, leaving the others in charge of the problem. Five years later, after the defeat of Rex Dangervest and the unification of Apocalypseburg and the Systar System into "Syspocalypstar", Business returns to tell Emmet and Lucy the bad news on his golfing, but his hair is set on fire by Benny and causes him to run into a fireworks store, where he is blown away, ejecting him from Syspocalypstar.

Personality[]

Lord Business was a tyrant and perfectionist. He was portrayed as a stereotypical evil ruler, a cruel man who needs everything his way. Business was completely strict, arrogant, treacherous, ruthless and above all, evil. Like many tyrants, Business desired absolute order in his domain; he divided worlds so there would be no confusion, and then ruthlessly hunted down the Master Builders. So far, the only person that he showed any respect to is his lieutenant Bad Cop; however, he was still equally pitiless and unemotional to him as well as his enemies, having removed his Good Cop persona and then forced him to freeze his parents with the Kragle.

His public figure was a friendly public official and from sitcoms to voting machines, Business kept tight control over LEGO citizens without them knowing it as the charismatic President of Octan, but as soon as he put on his hilariously over-sized crown and stilted shoes, he would turn into an extremely manipulative and villainous mastermind. In many ways, Business acts as a shepherd to his mindless sheep, he actually admitted live on air that he planned to "put everyone to sleep" if they didn't follow his rules, only to cover it up with Taco Tuesday and then made them forget it by airing everyone's favorite show "Where Are My Pants?".

He also tended to mistake objects from our world as mystical items, leading to some amusing re-naming of household products. Examples include a Band-Aid as "The Cloak of Band-Aid" and Krazy Glue as "The Kragle".

Prior his transformation to good, Business was a quarrelsome sadist: he made Bad Cop freeze his own parents with Kragle, laughed in a maniacal, incoherent, and unreasonable fashion just after decapitating Virtruvius, mocked a captured Emmet by saying he wasn't special and then forced him to watch as he Kragle'd his hometown. However, despite this, the source of all of his villainy was due to never being called special, making him a somewhat compassionate and sympathetic character.

After turning good, President Business turns out to be a coward, as he abandons everyone to fend off the DUPLO Aliens themselves, and doesn't return until after everything has blown over.

It is revealed that Business was modeled after his creator, Finn's father, who was very strict, obstinate, and contumacious, as he would glue all of his Lego creations together, so they would always stay the same. However, after hearing the same speech that Wyldstyle gave Emmet, he had a change of heart, destroyed the Kragle, and unfroze all of his victims. Finn's father allowed him to play freely with his Lego sets as well his sister. And due to the fact he ran away from the conflict between the Lego and Duplo people was, however, actually, an allegory of the brother (Finn) and the sister (Bianca) to handling without their parents.

Appearance[]

As President Business, he wears a gray business suit, a white shirt, and a red necktie. As Lord Business, he wears a set of sinister-looking armor over it. The breastplate of the armor is black and engraved with a necktie-like ornament. He wears a massive horned headgear, of which the horns spit fire, and has extendable mechanical stilts on his legs, which he uses to appear taller. His face and hair resembles that of his voice actor Will Ferrell.

Powers and Abilities[]

Lord Business is a villainous mastermind who uses an arsenal of high technology to rule the world. He leads an army of robots armed with laser weaponry. His most advanced minions are the powerful mechanical Micro Managers, built specifically to arrange every piece into its "perfect" position in order to prime them for the Kragle. He also has a henchman named Bad Cop that does whatever he commands. He can also make flames come out of his helmet, which is only seen twice in the film.

He also has access to several "artifacts" from the human realm, most notable of which is the "Kragle" (a bottle of Krazy Glue) which fuels his ultimate super-weapon and is the linchpin of his entire plan. Other "artifacts" he uses include the "Cloak of Band-Ai'ed" (a dirty Band-Aid), "Sword of Exact Zero" (an X-Acto razor blade), "The Fleece Crested Scepter of Q-Teep" (a Q-tip) used to apply "The Po'lish Remover of Nai'eel" (nail polish remover), "The Orb of Ti'etleist" (a Titleist 1 golf ball), and a penny (unnamed) which he uses as a thrown weapon to decapitate Vitruvius.

Lord Business makes his home/headquarters in an impossibly high tower, protected (among other things) by "lasers, sharks, and laser sharks". This is also where he has his "Think Tank", an assembly of subjugated Master Builders forced to come up with ideas for him.

Quotes[]

“	Really? So it's like a bunk-bed couch? Is that what it's like? That's weird. If you're sitting in the top middle how are you gonna get down without climbing over someone? If you're sitting on the bottom and you're watching TV are you gonna have to watch through a bunch of dangling legs? Who's gonna want to sit on the bottom? It is literally the most useless idea I have ever heard.	„
	~ Lord Business to Bad Cop.

“	Hey guys... listen up! everyone get along.. done fixed it i'm going golfing... Emmet: President business you have to stay and help us!.. •gets on cart• i'm sure you guys can sort it out amongst yourselves your great at that stuff bye.	„
	~ President Business leaving Bricksburg while it's being overrun by the Duplo Aliens after his redemption.

“	Guys Hold on... Hold on.. terrible news!... I miss the gimme putt for birdie on seven... anyway yeah you fix everything how's it going on with all the crazy stuff.. Bennie: SPACESHIP! ..YAAH ow! HOT HOT HOT.. •realises that he is in a store full of fireworks• uh oh!	„
	~ Lord Business's last words before being blasted away by fireworks.

Trivia[]

Albeit not a villain, Lord Business' human counterpart, the Man Upstairs, is the ultimate antagonist of The LEGO Movie, since, while he didn't intend to do anything evil, he ended up influencing Finn (his son) to create the character of Lord Business due to his similar motives and goals.
Will Forte, Jason Lee, Justin Long, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and Jack Black were considered for the role of Lord Business before Will Ferrell was cast. However, Forte voiced Abraham Lincoln in The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, while Oswalt voiced Lord Business's brother Risky Business in The Lego Movie: 4D – A New Adventure.
Both his square hairpiece, cape, helmet, and leg/boot piece were designed exclusively for his character.
His legs and the top part of his boots are also all one piece. The black slanted brick is attached to his legs, explaining why he comes with 2 pairs of legs in Lord Business's evil lair. This was done to make it sturdier, so the boots wouldn't fall off the feet during play. The black pieces are, technically, removable from the legs, but doing so may damage them.
His Minifigure variant has his jacket unbuttoned as opposed to his original variant. However, he is actually based on a real world variant that appears in the film.
It is hinted in his bio that since his company Octan makes voting machines, he may have most likely used them to cheat on the political elections.
In the Game Builder, he appears as an obstacle. He moves up and down, smashing any unlucky heroes underneath his feet. He cannot be killed, so the hero can only dodge his attacks.
His hairpiece differs from the one in the actual film, as the tan on it only covers the bottom part.
He owns a collection of relics whose origins are unknown to the LEGO world's residents, which are actually items made by human beings, among which is the "Cloak of Ban'Daeed" (an old, worn-out Band-Aid. Business himself had also heard that it is "super-painful to take off"), the "Sword of Exact Zero" (an X-ACTO knife blade), the "Fleece-Crested Scepter of Que-Teep" (a Q-Tip cotton swab), the "Po'lish Remover of Na'il", (a container of nail polish remover), the Orb of Ti-Teleest (a Titleist golf ball) and his ultimate weapon, the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with the letters 'z', 'y', and 'u' smudged out). Also seen in his relic collection is a 3.5-inch floppy disk, a binder clip, a key, a golf tee, an apple core, a pen cap, a calculator, a cassette tape, a bottle of White-Out, a staple remover, a highlighter, a rubber band, a package of stick gum, a thumb tack, a fortune cookie, some Post-Its, an Eraser, two mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces forced together, a spring, a 9-volt battery, a permanent marker, the penny Lord Business uses to decapitate Vitruvius, the "Kragle Antidote", etc. Also seen in the video game are tangled earphones, a collection of three gummy bears, and the tin foil used by Emmet and Wyldstyle to disguise themselves.
From behind, Business's helmet and cape form the appearance of a business tie.
In the "Behind the Bricks" video on LEGO.com, President Business stated that he was rather displeased with the filmmakers' decision to cast Will Ferrell as him as he had hoped to be voiced by either Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, or Cuba Gooding Jr.
He had a brother named Risky Business, who was the main antagonist of The Lego Movie: 4D – A New Adventure, though this is most likely non-canon, as Risky was never mentioned in the first film, nor its sequel, and the events of the attraction weren't acknowledged by either.
In the videogame, Lord Business can use the Kragle gun. Additionally, there are red and black platforms that activate his legs. Doing so will allow him to use switches that are too high for other characters. Lord Business can use that platform again to deactivate the legs.
In the videogame, despite having normal minifigure legs, Lord Business is unable to use Dispantsers. This was done due to his leg machines.
He may suffer from OCD seeing as everything has to be orderly and separated in his mind.
The "Oops, I've got the antidote for the Kragle, how did that happen?" scene was cut from the video game, and thus Business doesn't reappear after the Kragle blows up and sends him flying.

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Lord Business | Bad Cop | Sheriff Not-A-Robot

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