A Real Man Is a Killer/Playing With
A Real Man Is a Killer: In order to be a real man, you must kill a living being.
- Straight: Andy is seen as a lesser man until he kills an animal when hunting.
- Exaggerated: Andy is seen as a lesser man until he manages to kill the entire population of a zoo and/or an entire village populated by an enemy tribe.
- Downplayed: Andy is seen as a lesser man until he can squash a bug that's bothering him.
- Justified: Andy is member of a primitive tribal society that exist as hunter-gatherers.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Johnny kills a lion and drags the corpse back to his tribe/group/family to prove his virility. Said tribe/group/family condemn him for being so desperate for collective approval that he'll kill a living being in cold blood in order to get it.
- Double Subverted: ...So Johnny joins a tribe/group/family that does consider him masculine for his killing prowess.
- Parodied:
- During every weekend, a gaggle of Jerk Jock fratboys descends on the city to kill various animals, take the bodies back to their frathouse and prove their virility to their brothers.
- Andy is seen as a lesser man until he swats a fly.
- Deconstructed:
- See Parodied, but Played for Drama.
- Alternatively, this trope causes a Non-Action Guy to feel so emasculated that he commits a murder in order to prove himself to other people.
- Alternatively, Alex ponders over the various fatalities he's committed, and questions whether or not they were justifiable. He feels immense guilt and suffers a Heroic BSOD.
- Reconstructed: See Justified; the social arrangements of the group the work focuses on have a legitimate need for male members that are competent with killing.
- Zig Zagged: Billy kills a deer in order to prove his manhood. However, the deer comes back as a zombie and kills Billy for revenge. Billy's tribe then praises the zombie deer for its masculinity and killing prowess.
- Averted: Killing is not seen as a rite of passage into manhood.
- Enforced:
- The work is intended to promote very old notions of what masculinity entails.
- The fanbase believe this trope and want to be badass, so the author simply provides them some Wish Fulfillment.
- Lampshaded: "Man up, pussy! You're a pathetic little worm until you grow a pair and kill someone! That's right, if you can't pull the trigger, your dick might as well not be there!"
- Invoked: Andy sends himself out on a mission to kill the biggest bear in ther forest in order to display his masculinity.
- Exploited: The speech under Lampshaded is given by a Drill Sergeant Nasty that wants to motivate his troops to kill.
- Defied: "I will not kill an innocent creature just to prove I'm a man."
- Discussed: The story takes place at a University and this trope gets discussed in an Anthropology class.
- Conversed: ???
Until you kill this back button, you'll never be a real man.