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{{trope}}
[[File:BaconAndNecktieMoralityGraph 6986.png|frame]]
{{quote|"''If you have struck any kind of bargain with Griphook, and most particularly if that bargain involves treasure, you must be exceptionally careful. Goblin notions of ownership, payment, and repayment are not the same as human ones.''"
To say that questions of [[White and Gray Morality|morality]] are thorny and [[Grey and Gray Morality|filled with gray]] when they aren't being [[Black and White Morality|hammered]] between [[Black and Gray Morality|stark]] [[Evil Versus Evil|absolutes]] is putting it mildly. Because of this there can be great drama when characters who [[Shades of Conflict|represent a wide range]] of moral viewpoints come [[Teeth
The strangest of these characters are those who espouse '''Blue
Just to repeat: that [[Dark Is Not Evil|doesn't make them bad]], although they are often liable to commit acts we would see as horrific; in that case, they're likely to follow these with completely benign behavior, and not act as if anything was the matter. Because in their world/mind, [[It's What I Do|that's just what they do]]. This trope is one of the trickier to pull off well, because [[Most Writers Are Human]], and it's often hard to portray alien without simplifying it to Evil-by-another-name.
This is similar to [[Values Dissonance]], but the main difference is that societies with [[Values Dissonance]] can, at least on a basic level, generally measure one another by the same concepts of Good and Evil, or even Law and Chaos. With
Conversely, they may have these concepts, but apply them in vastly different ways. Such as regarding motionlessness as the epitome of evil, or viewing exploration as an element of chaos.
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Note that cases involving solely [[Poor Communication Kills|a misapprehension of facts and consequences]] do not count here no matter how alien the reasons; if, for example, a race of aliens thinks [[Immortal Life Is Cheap|killing is okay]] because its own members [[Healing Factor|respawn within a day]] with [[Death Is Cheap|no harm done]], and [[I Thought Everyone Could Do That|mistake humans as working the same way]], that doesn't mean they wouldn't balk at killing if they realized the degree of harm it causes to other creatures. In this case, they may be working by comprehensible moral standards and just gravely mistaken about the implications of their actions.
Likely candidates for Blue and Orange Morality include the [[Fair Folk]], who follow rules of their own making; [[Eldritch Abomination
Compare [[Xenofiction]], [[Humans Are Cthulhu]], [[Humanity Is Infectious]] (all often involving this), [[Non-Malicious Monster]] (sometimes requires this), [[Above Good and Evil]], [[Affably Evil]] / [[Faux Affably Evil]] (they sometimes can come across as this), [[Even Evil Has Standards]] (when handled poorly or bizarrely), and [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good]] (less elaborate forms that resemble this in practice). When two sides go to war and nothing will stop them except total annihilation, that's [[Guilt
Has nothing to do with Bucknell University, The University of Illinois, The University of Virginia, The University of Florida, Auburn University, Syracuse University, Hope College, Gettysburg College, or Boise State University (the colors of all of which are blue and orange, albeit different shades in each case). Nor the Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears, New York Knicks, New York Mets, or [[Memetic Mutation|Mango Sentinels]]. Or the City of New York, for that matter. Furthermore, do not confuse with [[Orange
Whether it has anything to do with ''[[Main Page|us]]'' is left as an exercise for the reader.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The Angels from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.
** Especially Kaworu. By appearances, he comes off as simply [[Ambiguously Gay]] for Shinji, but things become more complicated when you realize that he doesn't seem to conform to human definitions of love or sexuality. He also seems to have a genuine admiration and respect for humanity and its achievements, despite attempting to cause [[The End of the World as We Know It]].
** [[All There in the Manual|A lot of Kaworu's traits come from]] Mark Twain's "''[[The Mysterious Stranger]].''" See below. It's where we get moments like [[Fan Nickname|Evil Manga Kaworu]].
** It should be noted that a definite angel is said to have "Blood Type Blue", while an ambiguous Angel has "Blood Type Orange". Take from that what you will.
* Guu of ''[[
** She loves to act like she's giving Haré an [[Aesop]], but always subverts it completely in the end.
* {{spoiler|Claire Stanfield}} from ''[[Baccano
** {{spoiler|Ronnie Suchiart}} is just as likely to incite a massacre as he is to follow a man for two-hundred years just to give him some company. The only answer he's ever given for his motivations is that he's [[Time Abyss|very old]], [[Eldritch Abomination|very powerful]], and [[It Amused Me|very bored]].
* {{spoiler|Ryoko Asakura}} (an "integrated data entity" disguised as a human) in ''[[
* The Pillar Men in ''[[
* Vampires in ''[[
* The more intelligent mushi of ''[[Mushishi]]'' behave this way. The mushi's form of life is so alien from our own that 'good' and 'bad' may mean completely different things to us and them. For example, in the very first episode the mushi lure a young girl out to the forest for a feast, during which they tell her that they want her to watch over her future grandson. Ginko is also quite ambiguous as to whether the mushification of said girl would've been better off botched or properly completed.
* This plays a large role in ''[[Heroic Age]]'', in which the "Iron Race" (humanity) doesn't understand the values of the "Silver Race" that is warring against them, especially considering that they are [[Straw Vulcan
* Black Hanekawa chides Koyomi from ''[[
* ''[[
* Kyubey of ''[[
* ''[[
** [[The Hero|Gon]] [[Friend to All Living Things|Freecs]] has distinct shades of this. He isn't [[The Unfettered]], because he is guided by a strong sense of right and wrong, but as the counterfeiter he hangs out with finally realizes, "He doesn't care about the good and the bad." Mostly it's enough to peg him as [[Chaotic Good]], but that doesn't really do him justice. Neither the readers nor the other characters can really predict where his moral sense will take him, and he surprises the hell out of even his best friend (a child assassin) a lot. Notable events include:
** A serial killer once trained him and Killua, and he cheerfully allowed the person to go free afterward even after it was pointed out that this would cause more young women to get eaten, because "he helped us."
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** The Chimera Ants enter this territory from time to time, as well. Though they're largely just evil.
*** Although most of the ants are evil and some are good, the king, Meryem, is a master of this trope. All the experiences he goes through continually shape his moral code which fluctuates wildly through the arc, turning him from what appears to be a Cell ripoff into one of the most deep and interesting villains in Shonen manga. And yet he always seems to have his code stuck somewhere in the Blue and Orange territory.
* Togashi makes allusions to this in ''[[
* Togashi ''loves'' this
* Mercurians in ''[[Gunnm]]'' are the descendants of the [[
* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00
* Yuuko from ''[[
* While there are plenty of fans that would love to simply write him off as evil, Mayuri Kurotsuchi of ''[[
* Kimblee in the ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' manga and second anime has an odd code which seems to consider holding true to your role or principles the most important thing, irrespective of their conventional morality. He criticizes soldiers for being reluctant to massacre defenseless people, but expresses admiration for the Rockbells for their determination to save lives (of the ''same people'' the soldiers were killing) as doctors. He sides with the homunculi because they give him freedom to practice his [[Stuff Blowing Up|alchemy]] without restriction, but claims to be primarily interested in who'll win the conflict between them and humans. In the end he {{spoiler|saves Ed from a [[Grand Theft Me]] by Pride because he's repelled by Pride abandoning his claims of superiority as a homunculus to merge with a human to save himself.}}
==
* For some wacky reason, nobody gets
* [[
* Galactus was originally intended to be one of these. More recent interpretations have put more into a [[Above Good and Evil]] territory, with varying reasons for his planet devouring ways.
* The Harlequinade, in ''[[The Invisibles]]''.
* [[The Enigma]] in the comic of the same name.
* One of the ''Eternals'' books invokes this, a bit mixed with [[Beyond Good
* Dr. Manhattan of ''[[Watchmen (
* ''Supergod'' by [[Warren Ellis]] imagines a world where super powered beings essentially live by this trope, because they're so far removed from human values and experience that their resulting morality simply cannot be expressed in human terms. [[It Got Worse|This ends]] [[The End of the World
* One early appearance of [[Doctor Strange]]'s extradimensional enemy [[Eldritch Abomination|Dormammu]] portrayed him this way, with Doc realizing Dormammu did have a bizarre and alien sense of honor which Doc could use to his advantage once he understood it.
* The Endless of [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[The Sandman]]'' show this at times, and at others are utterly human. Plus, each character's personality lends them different ways of dealing with the world. Dream shows this multiple times, such as not punishing a creature which dominates others dreams to create a 'nest' because it is simply acting in its own nature. Death never (well, almost never) interferes with the natural demises of anything, no matter how much she likes the individual and Destiny knows when catastrophic events will occur, and will only summon the others for a meeting about said catastrophes if his book says he does.
* In the ''[[Babylon
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* Used often in ''[[Aeon Natum Engel]]'', especially with the Migou and their greater view of the universe.
* In ''[[The Return (fanfic)|The Return]]'' despite many claims of just being "simple creatures," Succubae relationships and morality is so complex it is no wonder that they view humans as bordering on [[Exclusively Evil]], and vice-versa.
* Very prominent in the ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' fanfic ''[[Embers]]''; this is used to explain the more complicated beliefs which differentiate the Four Nations. For instance, the Fire Nation is marked by an extreme sense of loyalty, while the Earth Kingdom is far more based in morality; while the Water Tribes place high value on family, the Air Nomads are never raised by their parents; and so on. None of these views are depicted as definitely right or wrong, but rather as how each Nation has a society which functions very differently from the other Nations.
** Given an in-nation [[Shout-Out]] when an opposing faction of Air Nomads show up - their robes are blue in contrast to the saffron worn by Aang as a Temple monk.
* In ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers|Galaxy Rangers]]'' fanfics, this sometimes shows up with Shane and Niko, as they outwardly appear human, but were raised in very different environments from Earth. Less common with Niko, as the Circle of Thought and Ariel were decent folk, albeit with different taboos and ideas as they're a race of [[Technical Pacifist]] psychics who merely wish to be left alone. It's ''much'' more prominent in Shane's case, as he was the product of a brutal [[Training from Hell]] [[Super Soldier]] program.
* NewChaos from ''[[The Open Door]]''. What [[Even Evil Has Standards|standards]] they appear to have, such as a nigh-[[The Fettered|Fettered]] absolute devotion to the protection of children and punishment of their abusers, is contrasted with horrifically anarcho-libertarian laws or lack thereof, near-[[The Unfettered|Unfettered]] approach to combat and a variety of what are humanly seen as atrocities. The sheer contrast in their extremes of behaviour has driven people both in the audience and [[In-Universe]] to blanket label them as evil.
* Mao from ''[[Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance]]''. He starts his journey perfectly willing to do ''anything'' for C.C and his actions often seem inexplicably insane in the sheer innocence of their brutality, all the while [[Unreliable Narrator|seeing himself]] as a paragon example of a [[Knight in Shining Armor]] engaged in a struggle of [[White and Black Morality]]. It becomes muddled near the middle, however, as Mao seems to acknowledge that his recent actions ''are'' evil (at least [[Adult Child|as far as he can grasp the concept]]) ''but'' [[Necessarily Evil|necessary]] (again, for C.C.), revealing the [[Grey and Gray Morality]] underlying the story. Regardless, his status as a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] often causes him to do things normal people would balk at [[Refuge in Audacity|without impunity]], such as his [[Memetic Mutation|famous]] attempt to [[A Love to Dismember|chainsaw]] his [[Healing Factor|immortal]] beloved in order to make her ''more compact'' for a cramped plane escape.
* In the ''[[Invader Zim]]'' fic "[[In Short Supply]]," the Irkens' concept of religion is notably odd. Most are Agnostic or Atheist; some are Narcissists, which mean that they see ''themselves'' as the highest moral authority; others are Firmamentalists, who worship space (which helps them justify conquering other planets). A few Irkens, however, cling to their oldest religion, Slarkism. In this religion, the water-god Slark demanded that Irkens be virtuous, and since virtue is painful, he considers pain and even suicide holy acts; this is called Virtuous Slarkism. However, an ancient Tallest named Zim ([[Name's the Same|not that one]]) eventually rebelled and started a [[Religion of Evil]] called Zimist Slarkism, which teaches that evil is better since the evil don't feel pain. Even more oddly, the two Slarkist denominations consider themselves allies, in part because tolerance is Virtuous and insolent indifference to others' beliefs is Zimist.
* The main characters in ''[[My Immortal]]'' seem to have a belief system based entirely on the concept of "goffic" = good and "preppy" = bad. Apparently, no other moral considerations exist. Killing and torture are perfectly acceptable, but shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch is a mortal sin. Tara has ([[Poe's Law|or]] [[Troll Fic|pretends to have]]) the same views.
* In ''[[Eye of the Fox]]'', a ''[[Beast Wars]]/[[Naruto]]'' crossover, Kira's methods or the delight he takes in causing pain to others may be strange to a 'normal' person, he, as a half-demon, sees this as acceptable punishment to people who have wronged him.
* In The [[Mega Crossover]] [[Fanfic|fan]][[Web Comic|comic]] ''[[Roommates 2007|Roommates]]'' Jareth's [[Super-Powered Evil Side|dark side]] thinks in [[Trope]] and measures moral questions in the terms of the [[Theory of Narrative Causality]]. He would kill if that was dramatically appropriate in the story and in character for his current archetype, maybe feel remorse about the life lost, but would think and feel that that was the right thing to do.<ref>(He pushed his best friend off the rooftop because he refused to be the "Hero" (ended up as one anyway) and Jareth was the "Villain" that time and that's what villains do)</ref> To clarify he seems to have some idea about what humans call "good" or "bad" but he thinks of them as [[Trope|storytelling devices]] not morality and as such doesn't value them over any other [[Trope]]. Also his father seems to have similar notions so maybe this is the standard Blue and Orange for [[The Fair Folk]] in the series.
* ''[[Shards of Memory]]'', {{spoiler|Shinryu}}. When Firion gives him a [[What the Hell, Hero?]], his replies amounts to a very condescending "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you too are a god who has existed for eons and thus are fit to judge my actions."
* House-elves in general in the fics of [[Doghead Thirteen]] -- especially in ''Scourge From the North'' -- are about ten degrees off center compared to humans when it comes to their mental processes, ''starting'' with their canon willingness to be [[Servant Race|unpaid servants]] and going from there.
{{quote|Dobby blinked a couple of times, very visibly startled, then said “Ooooh! Youse is holdses on,” selected a large adjustable wrench, and vanished with a pop; a few moments later he was back, brandishing the wrench and saying, “Yes, Dobby is has helped the noxious Mr Filch go to sleeps, now wees is goes and checkses out the Come-And-Go-Room!”}}
==
* The Halloween people from ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]''. They scare children for a living, but are not malicious and do it because [[Punch Clock Villain|it's their job]] and they enjoy it. Interestingly, they (including Jack) [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|can't comprehend]] the basics of Christmas, and when they try to replicate it ... well, things [[Go Horribly Wrong]].
{{quote|"Life's no fun without a good scare."}}
** It's debatable how canon this is (for obvious reasons), but in the ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' series, Jack tends to think of new experiences (such as the Heartless) in terms of how he can repurpose them into new Halloween surprises, but also tends to become quite disillusioned with them if it should ever come to light that it can actually cause people harm ([[Evil Is Not a Toy|such as, again, the Heartless]]).
* The [[Starfish Aliens|Mi-Go]] from the 2011 [[Adaptation Expansion|adaptation]] of ''[[Lovecraft on Film|The Whisperer In Darkness]]'' are a classic example, very much in line with what Lovecraft originally had in mind. {{spoiler|After Wilmarth, the protagonist, thwarts their plan to open a [[Our Wormholes Are Different|mystical portal]] from Yuggoth (read: Pluto) to Earth, and then [[Heroic Sacrifice|crashes a plane]] into the ritual site for good measure, they actually go out of their way to save his brain, place it into [[Brain In a Jar|one of their cylinders]] and take him around the cosmos on incredible adventures. Even though he had foiled a plan that had likely been in the works for several centuries}}. Their minds work very differently, it seems. They're also repeatedly stated to be [[Consummate Liar]]s. Another, earlier scene has {{spoiler|Wilmarth stumble into one that was on its way to the ritual. The Mi-Go simply kicks Wilmarth out of its way and pays no more attention to him, nor does it inform its buddies of his presence. Had it done so, the ritual would not have been foiled in the first place}}.
* The Firstborn, the aliens who built the monoliths from ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]''. The way the books put it:
{{quote|
* ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'': [[Complete Monster|Anton Chigurh]] is described as having a set of rules that make sense to nobody but him. You get some small idea of his moral code in the gas station scene early on in the film where the store manager tries to make light conversation with him. It's revealed that the manager married the daughter of the former owner of the premises and this visibly irritates Chigurh ("You ''married'' into it"). He forces the shop owner to flip a coin to save his life for no exact reason. Later, when he makes good on his promise to kill the main character's wife, he allows her the same coin flip to save her life. She tries to argue with him, but doesn't seem to get anywhere.
* Jeff Bridges plays a very disturbing serial killer in a little known 1993 remake of a 1988 Dutch film called ''[[The Vanishing]]''. In the film, he describes how he saved his daughter from drowning, believing that this act earned her adoration. He then decides that he is unworthy of his daughter's love unless he proves to be capable of performing an equal act of evil.
* Another Jeff Bridges role is CLU from ''[[Tron
* ''[[The Mothman Prophecies]]''
{{quote|
'''John:''' "Before something happens." Do you mean they cause disasters?
'''Leek:''' Why would they need to?
'''John:''' All right, then, are they trying to warn me?
'''Leek:''' Their motivations aren't human.
'''John:''' All right, then what do they want?
'''Leek:''' I have no idea. What you really want is to know: why you?
'''John:''' Yes.
'''Leek:''' You noticed them, and they noticed that you noticed them. }}
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[The Fair Folk]] often are shown as practicing this, especially in modern (or very old) renditions. Good examples are found in the works of [[Neil Gaiman]] (such as ''[[The Sandman]]'' or ''[[The Books of Magic]]'') and ''[[Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell]]''.
** The Sidhe of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' seem to fall into this category, though one went mad because she began to comprehend human pain (and this in turn led her alien mind to try and create a global catastrophe to stop the pain).
*** Lea especially falls into this, as she wants to turn Harry into a hound {{spoiler|because she genuinely thinks it would be the best way to protect him. She made a promise, in fact.}}
** While on the [[Neil Gaiman]] track, God in "Murder Mysteries."
{{quote|
*** For that matter, something similar came up in ''[[
** The Aelfinn and Eelfin ("snakes" and "foxes") in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series, another variation of [[Fair Folk]], are described like this: not even really evil, but so alien that they might as well be.
* The aliens in ''[[Childhood's End]]''. Both the Overlords ''and'' the {{spoiler|Overmind}}.
* Merlin, in ''[[That Hideous Strength]]'' provides [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]] to the post-Roman Christians with his at-times alien morality system. In one scene, Merlin believes Jane should be executed because she has unknowingly prevented the birth of a saint—by using ''birth control''. Not ''abortion,'' you understand: ''birth control''. He says outright that she is worse than Balinus, the hot-tempered Knight of the Round Table, who accidentally killed his brother in heat of battle and so started a feud that played into the downfall of Camelot. In his essay [http://scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html "Religion and Rocketry,"] Lewis touched on this trope by discussing the theological problems that would crop up if we found aliens. Their system of morality might be so incomprehensible to us that we would mistake them for evil.
* The mermaid in the [[Oscar Wilde]] short story "The Fisherman and His Soul." Although she did share in [[The Power of Love]].
* In one of S. P. Somtow's ''Mallworld'' stories, an alien race hosts a banquet for their human hosts, featuring one of the race's prized delicacies. The primary ingredient for this delicacy was roasted alien baby (the children of this alien race were considered vermin until they reached a certain age). The aliens couldn't quite understand why the humans were so horrified.
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* ''[[Perdido Street Station]]'': The Weavers don't have a sense of morality as we would understand it, but rather a sense of beauty. That which is aesthetically pleasing or poetically appropriate to the Worldweave is [[Beauty Equals Goodness|"good"]] whereas that which is [[Evil Makes You Ugly|ugly]] or discordant is "bad." They can also disagree with one another and their aesthetic sense is incomprehensible to people. The humanlike races are deeply uncomfortable dealing with them because Weavers are so utterly unpredictable; they might help you, but they're just as likely to messily shred you and arrange your guts in a pattern that pleases them.
* The ancient race in Robert E. Howard's ''[[Conan the Barbarian|Queen of the Black Coast]]'' are said to have existed on a level of good incomprehensible to human morality before [[Fallen Hero|sinking to a level of evil]] likewise.
* Atevi in [[
** [[
* While the Otherness in the ''[[Repairman Jack]]'' novels is a fairly standard [[Eldritch Abomination]] or group thereof, what exactly motivates the Ally to oppose it is very uncertain.
* The Third Men in ''[[Last and First Men]]'' are essentially a [[Planet of Hats|species of esthetes]]. At one point their entire world was dominated by an empire based on ''music.'' Their final civilization was obsessed with biological manipulation: one faction used to breed ever more powerful diseases and parasites on the grounds that when a "higher" lifeform is slain by a virus, it has a certain ironic beauty.
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] was particularly well known for his ... interesting takes on morality throughout his works.
** The Martians in ''[[Stranger in
*** That could be why the main character in the story who was raised on Mars breaks into a prison, uses his abilities to end the existence of the worst offenders, and then erases the bars in a similar fashion, thus setting everyone else free. He just eliminates anything that he thinks should not exist, including certain people.
*** A few other tidbits: they can't fathom hate or dislike anyone or thing with more than a "mild distaste," this is because they devote so much time to understanding things that they can never truly hate it. Also, they see no wrong in obliterating planetary civilizations if, after centuries of contemplation, they decide it necessary, as they did with the fifth planet in our solar system. No, not Jupiter, the planet that is now ''the asteroid belt''.
** Martians in ''[[Double Star]]'' have a highly complex system of politeness. The main problem of the book is that a politician {{spoiler|may be late}} to a ceremony that inducts him into a Martian clan. There is a legend on Mars about a young Martian who was late to something important, and the consequence of this is ''death''. He was given a second chance, on account of being young and having only a partially formed brain. He would have none of it, so he brought a case against himself in court, successfully prosecuted himself for being late, was consequently executed, and is now held in reverence as the ''patron saint of propriety'' on Mars.
** In ''[[Space Cadet (
** In ''[[Glory Road (
*** She's also horrified to find out that Oscar turned down the sexual advances of their host's
** In ''[[
* ''[[Catch
* This is basically the way the [[Cosmic Horror
** That's no so much Flanderization as it is [[Alternate Character Interpretation]]: Nyarlathotep even in Lovecraft's works was shown to at least understand the fundamental differences between the [[Eldritch Abomination|Old Ones]] and humans (something the other Old Ones didn't.) Depending on the depiction he was either apathetic, mischievously amused, or outright antagonistic about this fact.
** "The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
** The [[Starfish Aliens|Mi-Go]] from ''The Whisperer In Darkness'' consider it a ''reward'' to extract your brain, [[Brain In
** The [[Starfish Aliens|Elder Things]], on the other hand, are a massive subversion. They are by far one of the most bizarre species to come out of Lovecraft's mind, but their interests, desires, and needs are readable enough that a human can piece together their history from the bas-reliefs they used to decorate their houses. One of the people studying their ruins calls them "men of a different kind", despite their vastly different physiology and being long-vanished before the first ape hit another with a sharp rock.
* The sphinxes who guard the first gate in ''[[The Neverending Story (
** In the film, the gnome states that the sphinxes strike those who do not feel their own worth.
* The Elohim from the ''[[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant]]'' straddle this and [[Above Good and Evil]]; since they are Earthpower incarnate and able to see and understand nearly everything they frequently act in ways that are incomprehensible to us mere mortals. To top it off, they also tend to say that anyone who isn't an Elohim can't even think about judging them and their actions. Bastards.
** From the same series, the ur-viles. Initially introduced as [[
* The Inchoroi from R. Scott Bakker's ''[[Second Apocalypse]]'' series (more commonly known for the ''Prince of Nothing'' Trilogy) qualify for this trope. They are described as being {{spoiler|a "Race of Lovers," by which they mean a race "given wholly to their lusts," for whom the vagaries of ejaculation and their lust are king}}. It was presumably a nasty shock for them when {{spoiler|they found themselves stranded on a planet where Old Testament Morality -- including damnation -- is objectively real, meaning that the entire species is doomed to burn in hellfire for eternity upon death.}}
** The Dunyain monks also have a very alien concept of morality. The goal of their organisation is to create a "self-moving soul," a being with absolute free will. In the meantime they consider everyone else to not be autonomous beings but rather slaves to circumstance. Therefore the Dunyain have no compunctions about manipulating people however they like and genuinely see nothing wrong with it.
* [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Genome]]'' trilogy features Brownies, aliens whose behavior is completely insane by human standards.
** Lukyanenko absolutely ''loves'' this trope and uses it whenever possible. For example, in one of his first major works, ''The Lord from the Planet Earth'' trilogy, there were
* The various magical creatures of the ''[[Harry Potter (
** Regarding the centaurs: People in-universe know why they chose "beast"
** Also, I think centaurs would be offended by the notion that magical beasts are inferior to or less intelligent than those other, more humanoid magical beings. For the same reason that some animal rights activists get annoyed by the common assumption that humans are superior to animals (because they might just be intelligent in a completely different way, or have physical skills humans lack), except that centaurs are part-horse, so they would take this assumption way more personally.
** Goblin law states that an item belongs to the goblin who made it. Thus nothing is bought from goblins, only rented for the rest of someone's life, leading to some complications in ''Deathly Hallows''.
** In the Second Wizarding War, the two factions are able to gain allies among magical creatures by appealing to their
*** That hardly seems to count as 'appealing to their
* [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|The Ellimist]] from ''[[
** The microscopic Helmacrons also come across as this. Their two ships try desperately to kill each other off, but once one ship is destroyed by the Yeerks, the other Helmacrons immediately attempt to avenge their deaths. They kill all of their leaders, because any leader who makes a mistake would have to be executed, and "This way she may be a symbol for all to admire." And the females severely oppress the males, so Cassie and Marco decide to give the males a pep talk about gender equality. When the Helmacrons next appear, it seems the Animorphs may have inadvertently started a civil war, with the males and females each trying to wipe the other out.
** Though a little bit closer to home in most of their motivations, despite being the primary villains, Yeerks consider humans to be little more than livestock - indeed, they treat their livestock better than humans treat theirs, as their hosts remain alive. Being exposed to human morality and intelligence (humans are far more intelligent than any of the other mass-Controlled species in the books, save perhaps Leerans, which the Yeerks don't use for long) drives a handful of Yeerks insane.
* In ''[[Star Trek:
** Funnily enough, that last bit about the Tholians was also sometimes used during the middle ages. For a time it was perfectly legal for the two parties in a case to have a fight to the death. The idea behind this was not that strength implied truth, but that God was just and thus would not let an unjust person kill the just person.
** Introduced in ''[[Star Trek: Ex Machina]]'' are the Shesshran, who operate somewhat differently from Humans, and most other races. They are unashamedly belligerent without apparent motive, and like shooting at things to say hello. They fantasize about killing their own children and generally behave in a bloodthirsty fashion. They're actually quite reasonable and honorable
** And while we're in the [[Star Trek Novel Verse]], the Pahkwa-thanh have always considered their prey animals sapient. They don't eat humanoids and "civilized" beings, not because they have an objection to it as such, but because it would be rude. Humanoids don't consider themselves part of nature; to eat them would be impolite, which Pahkwa-thanh are not. If you think you're prey, though, they'll happily eat you. The Frills are another more-or-less-friendly race that is happy to eat sapient prey. Both Frills and Pahkwa-thanh, it should be noted, are Federation members.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Quantum Gravity]]'': The premise is that humans are dealing with [[The Fair Folk]] ("Yes, I'm probably going to try to trick you. You weren't ''expecting'' that?"), [[Our Demons Are Different|Demons]] ("Everything is an art.") and [[Our Elves Are Better|Elves]] ("Allegiances are not simple." + incredible patience), and some beings which may or may not have a traditional consciousness. This is par for the course.
** One fairy comments that she prefers working in adult films with demons because their hearts are pure.
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** In ''Future Boston,'' which is set in the same universe, there's an alien called The Bishop who puts everything in three categories: sapient, food, and inedible by reasons of insanity (anything not yet proven sapient). He casually mentions how he will eat his children if they fail a test.
* The Wess'har in Karen Traviss' ''Wess'har War'' series who have no concept of a "grey area," have no interest in the concept of motivation and have two different concepts of sex, sex and ''ouran'', both of which to human eyes look like...sex. Also no concept of embarrassment. They are also natural "small c" communists with no need for a compelling authority.
* In [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s ''The Alien Way'', there's a race with a strange "honor" code, which considers perfectly honorable to kill your mates, friends and even family members, if it helps you to gain power or opportunities to spread your genes, and the closer you are to the person killed, the more honorable the act.
* Shows up in [[Mark Twain]]'s ''The Mysterious Stranger''. A central plot point is that angels have no concepts of good and evil because they have no original sin. Or more clearly, angels can't do right or wrong, because such ideas aren't in their nature - [[Kick the Dog|they can do things humans consider wrong]], but angels are pretty much indifferent. It ends up being fairly creepy.
** It is actually more accurate to say that the angels have never eaten from the tree of knowledge, as Adam and Eve did. Therefore they can commit sins the way humans do, but have no knowledge of what sin means and thus it is meaningless to them. It may make human morality a fair example of [[Blessed
* ''[[Warbreaker]]'''s Nightblood is a sentient weapon created with the express command to destroy evil. The problem is, a sword has no brain with which it can understand what evil actually ''is'', let alone some mystical way to [[Detect Evil]], so it just kinda guesses. The result tends to leave a lot more people dead than it ought to.
{{quote|
* [[Dichter Und Denker|German philosopher]] Oswald Spengler claimed in his non-fiction book ''[[
* In [[Clive Barker]]'s ''The Hellbound Heart'' (which eventually became the basis for ''[[
* Human morality is very strange to treecats in the ''[[
* {{spoiler|The Enigma Race}} in ''[[The Lost Fleet]]'' demonstrate hints of this.
* A relatively mild example is [[
* The [[Intelligent Gerbil|Lodgeless]] [[Panthera Awesome|Ones]] in Marti Steussy's ''Forest of the Night'': Building a permanent shelter is a no-no. Calling someone's autobiography "boring," or accusing them of embellishing it, is fighting words. Letting your disabled child starve to death because he can't hunt is unfortunate, but not morally wrong. {{spoiler|[[Eats Babies|Eating your child's corpse]]? At least the scavengers didn't get him.}}
* In [[Harry Harrison]]'s ''The Jupiter Plague'' (AKA ''Plague from Space''), a strike team breaks into the quarantined spaceship and finds the recordings of the mission on Jupiter. They find out that the crew discovered an alien race living on the solid core of the planet. Unlike humans, the "Jovians" use biotechnology. They initially offer to talk to the humans but then proceed to slaughter most of the crew in increasingly gruesome ways. Their latest act is sending the human ship back to Earth with a genetically-engineered virus that easily jumps species and is 100% fatal. It doesn't take long for the protagonist to figure out why they behave this way. Apparently, {{spoiler|the Jovians are a [[Hive Mind]] species, where each being is but a cell in a larger organism. As such, they consider humans to be the same way, and all their murders are merely studies. After all, what's killing a few cells to a giant organism?}} It is not revealed if the Jovians finally realize the error of their ways or not. They do {{spoiler|provide humanity with a cure after they complete their study, though}}.
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* Comes up in works by M.C.A. Hogarth, who describes herself as "an anthropologist to aliens". Examples include the caste system and community-orientedness in [[Kherishdar]], or the fact that the Jokka completely separate procreation and love (which is taboo if it is between different genders).
* Chiun from ''[[The Destroyer]]'' is from a village that has fed itself through the ages by hiring out as assassins, because of this assassins are greatly respected in the village. The only target that is forbidden is children. They revere many of the great tyrants of history because they provided a lot of work and thus helped support the village. Lee Harvey Oswald's killing of President Kennedy is shameful only because he was an amateur: he was not paid for it and he used a gun instead of bare hands.
* As with many other depictions of [[The Fair Folk]], fairies and similar beings in ''[[Fablehaven]]'' have very alien concepts of morality. Several of them, for example, don't see anything wrong with killing humans just because they can, because [[We Are
* Subverted with the [[Our Elves Are Better|Marat]], [[Wolf Man|Canim]], and [[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti|Icemen]] in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'', who are initially considered too alien to coexist with humanity in-universe, only for a good chunk of the series to involve [[The Hero]] finding common ground and building bridges with them. Played completely straight with the [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Vord]].
* A constant theme in the works of [[
** In the short story "The Moon Moth", musical virtuosity and swordsmanship are the basic virtues, money is meaningless, and everyone must wear a mask at all times. Protagonist Edwer Thissell uses this against antagonist Haxo Angmark in a beautifully absurd, yet entirely appropriate, conclusion; when Angmark desperately accuses Thissell of having kidnapped, murdered, sold children into slavery, an angry onlooker replies: "Your religious differences are of no importance. We can vouch however for your present crimes!", and {{spoiler|the crowd kills Angmark for alleged violations of local morality: trying to remove someone's mask, insolent behavior, and the like.}}
** Or as frequent Vance protagonist Magnus Ridolph wrote: "In all the many-colored worlds of the universe no single ethical code shows a universal force. The good citizen on Almanatz would be executed on Judith IV. Commonplace conduct of Medellin excites the wildest revulsion on Earth and on Moritaba a deft thief commands the highest respect. I am convinced that virtue is but a reflection of good intent."
* In [[The Otherworld]], werewolf Clay was changed at age five instead of late puberty like almost everyone else, and then left on his own for two years. As a result, his thought processes are much more wolflike. His morality centers entirely around what's best for his pack, with an afterthought of what will make his mate happy. Clay brutally tortured and murdered one werewolf threatening his pack and distributed the photographs freely to discourage others from trying, but the thought of killing people needlessly or for fun revolts him. He wouldn't stop to help an injured stranger - unless his mate was watching - but he has laid down his life multiple times without hesitation for his packmates.
* In ''None But Man'' this is the very heart of conflict between the humans and Moldaug. While humanity judges every action based on whether it is Right or Wrong, the Moldaug judge their decisions based on whether it is Respectable or Not Respectable. Earth's government is willing to capitulate completely to avoid a war, but the sheer lack of Respectability and hints of even worse acts to come from such an action would compel the Moldaug to destroy humanity.
* In ''[[
* In the ''[[Liaden Universe]]'' books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller:
** The Liaden abide by a strict, voluminous honor code that governs all aspects of their life and can seem cryptic and impenetrable to outsiders. Prominent features of this code include the concepts of Balance, which holds that any action (whether harmful or beneficial) must be met with an equivalent response, and ''melant'i'', which crosses "face"-like social status with separation of multiple roles held by a single person. This code also incorporates different dialects of the Liaden tongue (which are spoken in different social situations) and bows of varying depth and associated gestures that convey relationships. On Liad, a social ''faux pas'' can have lethal consequences.
** The Yxtrangi also have a very codified caste and honor system{{spoiler|—to Nelirikk's sorrow}}.
** In fact, most planets and cultures in the ''[[Liaden Universe]]'' have their own cultural mores and honor codes that visiting characters find strange (and vice versa). One of the themes of the series is the difficulty outsiders can have in dealing with "local custom."
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* [[Anti-Villain]] Morgaine in the ''[[
** The Doctor himself sometimes borders on this, thinking almost nothing of taking his friends to dangerous places all the time.
** Another ''[[
* [[Precursors|The Ancients]] of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' ''might'' be this trope after their ascension. Whenever we see living Ancients on ''this'' plane of existence, they are generally depicted as normal humans who were simply interested in science a lot, not the gigantic [[Jerkass
** [[Starfish Aliens|The Goa'uld]] are certainly this, as being taken as a host is repeatedly used as [[Nightmare Fuel]], but for the Goa'uld it is an essential and natural part of their biology. After all, would you want to spend your entire life swimming back and forth in a pond lacking opposable thumbs and sex organs?
*** The existence of the Tok'Ra, who act more like a symbiont than a parasite for their host, would point to the Goa'uld as falling under [[Complete Monster]] and not this trope. It's also strongly implied that they (or at least the ones at the top) are totally batshit crazy due to overuse of the sarcophagi.
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* [[Robot Girl|Cameron]] of ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' has a very simple morality system that revolves around protecting John Connor. If it protects him, she'll usually do it, unless he overrides her (most of the time). If it threatens John Connor, however, she ''destroys'' it without hesitation, and ''regardless'' of whether John or anyone else objects. That's pretty much the beginning and the end of her concept of morality.
** Worth noting is early in the first season, Cameron guns down a FBI informant in front of Sarah for warning the FBI about the Connors, and Sarah slaps her in response, telling her never to do that again. Cameron's response is to stare at her in absolute but emotionless confusion; after all, Cameron just did ''everything'' right by her programming, but Sarah's telling her she did the wrong thing.
** Another example of this occurs later, when Cameron uses a man on the run from the mob to get information on who the Turk prototype computer was sold to. She promises to help the man, but the moment she has the information, she simply walks away and lets the mob hitmen kill him. For a ''human'' character, this would be an act of cruelty
*** Present-day John and Sarah invented the 'stop Skynet' mission, so they're able to define how that mission operates, including setting limits on killing people who might interfere with that mission. (This is compared to the 'protect John' mission, which they cannot interfere with...Cameron will do anything to protect him, period, regardless of what he wants.) However, John never ordered her to not put people in danger or to help them escape danger, just to not ''kill'' them.
** At one point, when John is surprised that a Terminator isn't cruel for cruelty's sake, Cameron points out to him that terminators aren't cruel. This applies to both Cameron herself and "evil" terminators in general, who, while utterly ruthless, don't inflict pain just for the sake of inflicting pain. While they are willing to torture humans (not usually for interrogation, but for other purposes, like hurting someone's loved ones to draw them out of hiding), the moment they determine that this will not achieve their goals they stop and utilize other tactics.
* A sideplot in ''[[
** The Vorlons and Shadows initially appear to be [[Good Is Not Nice]] and [[
* The Borg in ''[[Star Trek:
{{quote|
** The entity Nagilum in the episode "Where Silence Has Lease" traps the Enterprise in a strange [[Negative Space Wedgie]], kills a [[Red Shirt]], and decides to kill a good portion of the rest of the crew to fully explore the concept of death. It seems to truly have no idea that the crew might not be wild about this idea.
** In the episode "Liaisons", had ambassadors from a race that lacked the concepts of antagonism, pleasure and love. One of them studied antagonism by being a jerk to Worf, one of them studied pleasure by pigging out, and one of them tried to learn about love by stranding Picard on a planet and taking the form of a human woman.
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** In the extended canon novel Q&A it is revealed that Q's tests had a point all along... turning Q into a case of [[Values Dissonance]]. {{spoiler|A race known as Them have returned to decide the fate of the entire universe. It turns out They created our universe (the Q included) and, like many others they created before ours, They are now going to destroy it... because They are no longer entertained by it. The Q knew all along and had essentially given up. Q, however, (yes that one) had tested countless races and decided on Humans, Picard in particular, to prove the worth of keeping our universe around. It works. Picard convinces Them to let the universe remain... by ''laughing'' at the absurdity of the situation. All along Q had been teaching Picard to have a sense of humor about things that were out of his control just so he would have exactly this reaction when the time came.}}
*** And then you [[Fridge Logic|begin to realize]] that the fans of Star Trek are essentially {{spoiler|Them}}... what with the recent drastic decline in the franchise's popularity. [[Fridge Brilliance|EPIC!]]
** In the episode "Allegiance," Picard is whisked away to a strange prison with three strangers and replaced by a doppelganger on the Enterprise. When he figures out the experiment he and the others have been unwittingly participating in, his captors (a group of previously unknown aliens) reveal themselves and return him to his ship. They explain that they sought to understand command structures, which do not exist in their culture. When Picard tells them that what they've done is wrong, they claim not to understand the "primitive" concept of morality. But it's clear, when Picard gives them a taste of their own medicine, that he doesn't entirely buy their alleged
* In ''[[The Original Series]]'' the non-humanoid Excalbian race provides another example; they view such concepts as "good" and "evil" as being so foreign that they decide to test them experimentally by staging a battle between representatives of the two.
* An early episode of ''Enterprise'' had the crew being continually attacked by a mystery ship for no apparent reason. T'Pol points out that not every species out there necessarily behaves in a way that would make sense to humans. They never find out what the aliens' motivation was, but they did successfully test their new weapons on them.
* ''[[
* The Head Six and Head Baltar entities of ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* Witness the huge discussion on the [[Angel
** Present in an early episode, "Bachelor Party", with a family of Ano-Movic. Ano-Movic demons are a very peaceful
** Illyria demonstrates this to a large extent, and due to [[Humanity Is Infectious|being in a human body]] she, partly against her will, starts to feel human emotions and assimilate human values. When Wesley betrays her she's perturbed at the fact that it bothers her, as "betrayal was a neutral word in my day. As unjudged a word as water or breeze". She spends quite a lot of time trying to figure out why mortals act as they do. She describes her world view quite well to Angel:
{{quote|
* The Observers from ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' get a little of this, being brains in pans who have evolved beyond the need for physical bodies (even if their brains still need to be carried around by their former bodies). Though in truth it seems more like they're just jerks who pretend like they have their own moral code to justify being jerks. Brain Guy himself explains why he serves as a medic rather than a combatant during a battle as follows.
{{quote|
* The Plokavians in ''[[
* Gosei Knight in ''[[Tensou Sentai Goseiger]]'' believes in protecting the Earth, much as the Gosei Angels do. However, their definition extends to all life forms on it, whereas his definition applies strictly to the Earth itself.
* The Observers from ''[[Fringe]]''. It's almost certain that they have ''some'' system of logic and morality guiding their decisions, but since they basically exist outside of time and their perspective on events is almost as impossible to understand as their writing, working out what's going on in their pale and hairless heads is...well, something nobody human has managed to do with complete accuracy yet.
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** Sheldon has a "this is fact" and "this is not fact" mindset. Usually, the way he sees things, "it is a fact" that he is intellectually superior, therefore deserving of more praise and acknowledgement. Similarly, upon seeing Penny in financial hardship, he recognised the fact that he had more money than he needed, whereas Penny needed more money than she had, and therefore the right thing to do was lend her money.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* Roxanne of ''[[Candorville]]'' [[Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad|views villains as heroic and vice versa]], but there are usually qualifiers for it—for instance, she views eating meat as immoral, but wearing fur as a way of eternally preserving an animal's beauty. That said, with the exception of her own mother, ''nobody'' in the comic thinks this gives her a pass for [[It's All About Me|her behavior]]. [[Even Evil Has Standards|Even multiple murderers think she's scum]].
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* Some of the acts depicted in the ''Reynard The Fox'' fables are pretty horrific by today's standards. For example, Reynard is about to be put to death for committing numerous crimes against the other animals. But Reynard convinces the royals to let him go by playing to their greed and promising treasure. Reynard requests that two of his rivals, Isengrim and Bruin be partially skinned alive so that the fox could wear their pelts for the trip. King Noble, who is supposed to be a figure of benevolence actually grants Reynard's request.
** ''Reynard the Fox'' also contains a heaping amount of [[Carnivore Confusion]]. Though the animals are supposed to be sentient, they are depicted as being still wild and retaining their animal instincts. This makes Reynard, who kills and eats several young chicks, the animal equivalent of a baby eating anti-Christ among the other animals.
* This tends to happen with religions, both ancient and modern (not naming any names), between one another and internally. When someone gets perplexed by the seeming arbitrariness and contradiction of the dogma, the official answer tends to be that god(s) are incomprehensible and the problem is on your end. The best we can do is obey their inscrutable commands and hope for the best. This also comes up in response to the common question of why, in an ordered universe, bad things happen to good people. Many philosophies and religions recognize that the needs of an individual and the needs of the universe at large simply won't mesh up, and a transcendent being is probably only interested in the latter. So while it might look like your god/gods/spirits are cruel bastards for killing your family with that flood, a believer needs to remember that from a divine standpoint it was probably the right thing to do (e.g. the flood was a necessary evil, or death isn't actually bad, etc.).
** By contrast, to the religious, the morality of secular humanists can be incomprehensible; many religious fundamentalists believe that humanists don't actually ''have'' a moral system the way that they understand it, because the arbitrary nature of a statement like "reduction of suffering" as a basis for morality rather than divine mandate strikes them as "making it up as we go along". Likewise, it's hard for the secular humanists to understand the theist point of view that there are no such things as "morals" without a deity to dictate them, and that, without a higher being ''saying'' something is good or bad, there no basis for judging something's goodness or badness at all.
* In the ''[[Mahabharata]]'' the river goddess Ganga bears King Shantanu several children...and [[Offing the Offspring|drowns them]]. When he gives her a [[What the Hell, Hero?]], she explains that it's [[Not What It Looks Like]]; the children are reincarnations of holy souls that need to transcend reincarnation. (They committed [[Kick the Dog|a minor]] [[Poke the Poodle|offense]] in a past life, and so were forced to be reincarnated as mortals, so Ganga lets that happen, and then kills them while they're [[Children Are Innocent|still young and innocent]] [[Loophole Abuse|so they can be released from reincarnation]]. Because she knew that there's no way King Shantanu would be able to comprehend this, she had asked him to [[The Promise|never question her]]...and since ''he just did'', she left him shortly afterwards.
== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* The [[Professional Wrestling]] business, by and large seems to run on this trope, particularly when it comes to how the main stream audiences perceives it. What may seem amoral to an average American may be perfectly nominal to a [[Triple H]] or an [[The Undertaker|Undertaker]], Or a [[ECW|Raven]], or a [[Ric Flair]], or a [[Jeff Hardy]] and so on.
** [[Stone Cold Steve Austin]] seems to be the personification of this trope. It doesn't matter what his moral center of gravity is, he's still a [[Badass]] fan favorite.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Old World of Darkness]]''. There's a detailed description of a great many moralities of [[Vampire: The Masquerade|vampires]] in a supplement named Chaining The Beast. One believes that suffering is good and if you deprive someone of it you might as well kill them because they won't be strong enough to face life. Another believes that everything must change or die and thus encouraging change is the only good thing you can do.
** Worth noting: most characters (including non-vampires) in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' have three Virtues—Conscience, Self-Control and Courage. On the alternate paths of Morality, vampires often switch out Conscience and Self-Control with Conviction and Instinct. Not only do they no longer see virtue in human terms, they don't see it in ''other supernaturals' terms''. (Old world mechanics were not designed to work across venues.)
*** These paths are a favorite of the Sabbat (who believe they are better than humanity, and deserve to rule over them) and the Independent clans. Such alternate paths include the Path of Night (favored by the Lasombra), which penalizes them for ''not'' killing someone if it would make them look merciful; the Path of Metamorphosis (favored by the Tzimisce), which focuses on understanding change [[Body Horror|in the most disgusting ways possible]]; the Path of Paradox (favored by the Ravnos), which upholds causing chaos and breaking mortal laws as virtues; and the Path of Lilith, which teaches that wisdom comes through suffering, so suffering must be good ([[No True Scotsman|in moderation of course]]).
** ''[[
** In the [[New World of Darkness
*** [[Vampire: The Requiem
*** [[Werewolf: The Forsaken|Werewolves]] on the other hand have Harmony, how in tune they are with themselves. Since they're half spirit and part wolf, killing and eating humans is no longer so low on the sin totem pole.
*** [[Geist: The Sin Eaters
*** [[Mage: The Awakening
*** [[Changeling: The Lost
**** Their captors, [[The Fair Folk|the True Fae]], are most definitely this. They come from a world of utter chaos where everyone must strike their own stake to avoid fading into oblivion; ergo, their lives are consumed by conflict and the eternal struggle for more glory. They adopt emotions as passing fancies, but don't understand them; the book cites a True Fae falling in love with a changeling, only to snap his neck when he hesitates to pass the salt and recalling the burbling of a brook in summer when it hears the changeling's dying gurgles. Mind you, this is ''NICE'' for a True Fae. You really, really, really, really, really, [[Overly Long Gag|really, really, really, really, really]] don't want to know what "Nasty" is. Oh, and if they ever ''try'' to understand humanity, [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|they lose most of their power and pretty much all of their memories of Faerie]].
*** [[Hunter: The Vigil
*** [[Promethean: The Created|Prometheans]] round it out by having a nearly identical morality scale to humans... if they raise it that high. Being homunculi they start out with or can develop some very ''weird'' thought processes. Considering their goal is to become human, it's understandable.
*** Spirits are inherently alien beings and even the most intelligent of them is not human and never was. The closest thing one can define as a spirit's morality is that anything which expands one's sphere of influence is "good" and anything that decreases it is "bad", plus some other things like a Ban on a forbidden, unforgivable action. A spirit of fire only exists to burn and is unable to care about what gets burnt. A spirit of love might force an abusive relationship to stay together because breaking the relationship would diminish love and simply cannot understand why a human might consider the victim's escape to be desirable. As a result, there are no unambiguously friendly or good spirits. A Mage or Werewolf might be able to use his powers to bargain with or corral a spirit, but there is no true reasoning with or trusting them and a current alignment of interests can easily fall through.
** In the fanlines, [[Genius: The Transgression|Geniuses]] have Obligation, which is more along the lines of how in-tune they are with the rest of humanity. The lower it dips, or the more powerful the Genius gets, the more likely they are to drift toward Blue and Orange Morality. When that happens, they tend to start viewing people more as collections of spare parts.
* In ''[[Exalted]]'', [[The Fair Folk]] fall into this; at base, the unshaped (and many shaped) raksha simply have trouble comprehending that anyone else is a separate being that might not care about their agenda, and they don't see why humans are so afraid of the chaotic madness of the Wyld. Those who do comprehend humanity still tend to subscribe to alien (read: soul-eatingly dangerous) morality, but [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much|there are exceptions.]] ''Graceful Wicked Masques'' puts it best:
{{quote|
** A similar deal goes with many of the Primordials. They are, at their very core, pure, undefiled concepts, which means they have trouble understanding anything outside their purview. She Who Lives in Her Name honestly thinks everyone would be better as mindless pieces in a hierarchical machine, the Ebon Dragon can't understand why anyone would do something that ''doesn't'' hurt someone else (unless, of course, they're setting up for the inevitable betrayal), and Autochthon views innate progress and innovation as totally awesomesauce but can't possibly foresee the consequences. Adorjan has a particularly impressive case, since she's redefined her Compassion so that killing someone in an agonisingly painful fashion is, to her, a compassionate act because they're so ''quiet'' afterwards and silence is the greatest gift.
* ''[[
** And then there are the [[Eldritch Abomination|Excrucians]], who have a morality that freaks out the Nobilis. Yipe.
* In ''[[
* Some source material from ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' suggests that [[The Computer Is Your Friend|Friend Computer]] works on this system. Either that, or its goals are just really screwy. No one can be quite sure, and trying to be is treason.
* ''[[Warhammer
** Da Orks. Essentially an entire species of [[Blood Knight
** While not as extreme, the Tau are also an example, absolutely devoted to the concept of the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Greater Good]]. The ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]'' novel ''For The Emperor'' spends a bit of time on this, stating that any action that goes contrary to the Greater Good is detested almost to a physical reaction, and they literally can't understand why others would willfully refuse to follow it.
** All of the Chaos gods fall into this. They do what they do because they are made from that thing, and exist to propagate the ideology that they feed on.
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*** To top it off, the uncaring Tzeentch is suppose to be born from the feeling of ''hope'', while the ever-loving Nurgle is born from the feeling of ''despair''.
*** Khorne has his own value system by which blood must be let, regardless of the source, and an honor system, where only death in battle is acceptable, where psyker powers and long range fighting is seen as dishonorable.
*** Slaanesh's motivations can be seen as a devotion to pleasure,
* [[The Fair Folk]] in ''[[Halt Evil Doer]]'' for ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]''. Convention has it that the Lords of Winter are the "bad guys" and the Lords of Summer the "good guys". [[Word of God]] is that convention is completely
* The [[One-Gender Race|aurads]], in the third-party [[Dungeons
* In the [[Dungeons
* [[Eldritch Abomination|The Eldrazi]] from ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]''.
{{quote|"Have you ever killed insects nibbling at your crops? I think that's what the Eldrazi believe they're doing to us." -- ''Shrivel'' flavor text}}
** The game has also been [[retool]]ing ''some'' of the [[Too Dumb to Live]] of its goblins into Blue And Orange Morality about personal wellbeing.
** Even the colors themselves: Every color (of five) has two enemies and two allies, leading to some inherent blue-and-orange-ness:
*** White is law and order. But [[Light Is Not Good]], since white can also become oppressive. White's allies are green and blue; white's enemies are black and red.
*** Blue is interested in knowledge and rational thinking. But [[Evilutionary Biologist|this doesn't mean it's necessarily good]], since acquiring knowledge can lead to ethical issues; blue's allies are white and black, while its enemies are red and green.
*** Black turns inward, toward the self. Remember that [[Dark Is Not Evil]], since if you discover a drug to cure a disease but have the profit motive, you still help people.
*** Red is the color of freedom and emotion. Red sounds inherently [[Blue And Orange]], since freedom is generally considered good while some emotions, like anger, are generally considered evil.
*** Green lives on instinct. Just look at the animal examples. Green can be quite altruistic, or it can be cancerous.
** Phyrexia seems to be getting retooled to this from their former role as more or less [[Omnicidal Maniac]]s. Though incredibly cruel and ruthless from a human perspective, Phyrexians earnestly believe that flesh-based life is deeply flawed at best, if not totally evil, so they're really doing people a favor by killing or converting them in horrifying ways. They're also growing factions along the color lines above:
*** White Phyrexia follows a scripture talking of the inadequacy of flesh.
*** Blue Phyrexia is constantly trying to improve themselves... by taking apart other beings to learn how their few good traits work.
*** Black Phyrexians fights among themselves, each of them trying to prove that ''they'' are the strongest and should get to run Phyrexia ''their'' way.
*** Red Phyrexia is finding itself filled with confusion, the ideals of personal freedom from red mana in conflict with the hive-like nature of Phyrexia.
*** Green Phyrexia seeks to change, grow, and approach perfection through an accelerated form of natural selection.
== [[Theatre]] ==
* There's a play called ''Blue/Orange'' that deals with people of this sort of morality, although the name ostensibly comes from a mental disorder one of the characters has that causes him to, among other things, see the insides of oranges as blue. Not the outside, nothing else orange, just the insides.
* ''[[Cyrano De Bergerac]]'': The play show us an strange example of humans with this type of morality: The [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Gascons]] believe that ''"Good"'' is to be [[Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb|crack – brained]] [[Fearless Fool|and brave]], [[Impoverished Patrician|that to be poor is motive of pride,]] [[Martyrdom Culture|their autodestructive tendencies are not only tolerated but encouraged]], [[Jerkass|to treat others like crap is tolerable while they are not]] [[Of the People|Gascons]] [[Death Seeker|and to die in battle is the best destiny you can aspire]]. ''"Evil"'' is to [[Ambition Is Evil|try to get ahead on life]] [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections|by connections]] and [[False Friend|alliances]] with [[Deadly Decadent Court|powerful people]], and [[The Dandy|display your riches in public]] [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|is shameful]] to the point of being declared a [[No True Scotsman|No True Gascon]]. Most of all, [[Disproportionate Retribution]] and [[Disproportionate Reward]] are completely normal conducts.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* It is possible for the player to be this in any game that includes a morality system, if the player makes choices based on a line of reasoning besides good or evil. Of course, many games punish you for not being either all the way good or evil (for example, ''[[
* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Reapers]] of ''[[
** Much of the abovie is largely subverted by the ending of Mass Effect 3, in which {{spoiler|the arrival of Shepard and the culmination of his/her actions forces the AI regulating the Reapers to admit that the time has come for a different solution.}}
* Akuma in ''[[Street Fighter]]'' is often portrayed as being a dark, evil being, but he's really just got his own morality: if you best someone in a fair competition it's only honorable to give them death. He doesn't kill people like Dan who pose no threat to him, for instance.
** He just flat-out kills M. Bison (or Vega, if you insist on the Japanese names) without a fight, because according to Akuma/Gouki's moral standards, ''he'' is as pure an evil as you can get. Trying to claim false power without actually working for it, falsely claiming to possess power you don't have, murdering people in cold blood without giving them the opportunity for a fair
*** There's also the alternate theory that it was actually a big fight, but it was skipped over for the sake of the game.
** He also refuses to kill Gen after defeating him in a battle, because he {{spoiler|has a terminal illness and ''wants to die'' in a battle.}} Apparently in Akuma's view, that made it an "impure" fight and thus Gen does not deserve to be killed.
*** Even more interestingly, the exact OPPOSITE happens in the comic, where he purposely kills Gen, precisely for the above reasons, as a [[Mercy Kill]].
** He also helps people in need, because by his honor code it is the duty of the strong to use their strength to do for those who are not strong enough to do for themselves (as long as the weak recognize their place deferring to the strong's power) - part of the reason for his aforementioned taking out of Bison was that Bison abused his power and victimized the weak, which in Akuma's eyes is just as dishonorable as it is in the others' eyes (though for slightly different reasons).
** Explored in the ''Ryu Final'' manga, where Akuma became what he is ''precisely'' and ''deliberately'' [[Heroic Sacrifice|so Ryu would know what became of people who lost themselves to the lust of fighting and surrendered themselves to the Dark Hadou]], and would therefore strive to become a purer breed of
** And let's not forget this priceless win quote:
{{quote|
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (
* Morgfyre of ''[[Lusternia]]'' was a [[Warrior God]] before he began [[I'm a Humanitarian|devouring other Gods]] and numerous [[Eldritch Abomination]]'s. Unable to subsume their personalities beneath his own, he instead ''adopted'' them - becoming a gestalt entity, able to think with many different minds and speak with many different voices. Consequently his train of thought can be difficult for other ''Gods'' to follow, let alone mortals.
* Depending on the writers, the Daedra of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' can be beyond human comprehension, ambivilently moral, or just plain evil. Some invididual Daedra have both good and bad aspects, such as Sheogorath, the Daedric God of Madness, Creativity and Artistry. Others are like Molag Bal, who is called the [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|King of Rape]] for a reason.
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* Every character in ''[[Zeno Clash]]'' exhibits this to some degree.
* None of the various factions in ''[[Thief]]'' are aiming for good or evil. The Pagans want chaos, and growing things. The City Watch wants order. The Keepers want balance. The Hammerites want their religion followed, and also want order, and hate chaos. The Mechanists want the same thing as Hammerites, but object to using wood and stone in construction and view that as a deep heresy, and hate growing things even more than Hammerites. Most of them hate each other.
* Wilhelm from ''[[
* ''[[
** [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|Gensoukyou]] as a whole is an example of this trope, with things such as [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|vastly extended lifespans]] and [[Non-Lethal KO|entirely non-lethal combat]] creating different standards of morality. It is completely insane to us to go out and beat people senseless because they aren't human or mess with everyone's lives because you were bored, but not to them.
** Also worth noting is that [[The Fair Folk|youkai]] of various species and ethnicity are the majority population in Gensokyo, so things like [[I'm a Humanitarian|eating humans]] (or [[Carnivore Confusion|other youkai]]) are not at all unheard of, and there have apparently been agreements on which humans are permissible to attack and eat (mainly humans who aren't in an established safe place at night).
* ''[[
** (Un?)Fortunately, the [[Eldritch Abomination|Time Devourer]] happens to be a bit more [[Omnicidal Maniac|obvious about its goals]].
** ''[[Chrono Trigger
* The Occuria, godlike entities of ''[[
* The Orz of ''[[Star Control]] 2'' are friendly enough with most anyone they meet. They are happy to form alliances and aid in battle. They also get [[Berserk Button|angry]] (or *frumple*, as they put it) enough to start a war if anyone talks about the Androsynth, for reasons unknown. A prominent but unproven theory is that they wiped out the Androsynth, again for reasons unknown. Then there's the fact that nobody ''really'' knows what they mean by *connecting*, *parties*, or *enjoying the sauce*. There are many hints in the story that these seemingly innocuous terms mask a sinister meaning. They themselves seem to fall victim to this trope: when they greet the player in deep space, they state that they don't understand why *campers* (aka us) always say "hello" when they meet each other, but they do know this makes *campers* happy, so they do it too.
** One of the theories surrounding the Orz is that they appear like individuals to us, but are in fact a single organism existing outside our universe, alone in its own dimension. This is why the Orz creatures you meet tend to call themselves "fingers", protruding into our space from *Outside*. Orz probably doesn't understand the concept of separate individuals living in the same universe, which would lead it to assume that all the creatures it meets in our universe are just fingers of another being. Therefore, to Orz it would appear as though it has met someone whose fingers keep talking to each other.
{{quote|
*** This is actually reversed with the Xchaggers from ''Star Control 3'': you meet a creature who looks like a bug with many eyes and claws, but when you talk to it you realize that it is not an individual at all - but in fact a colony of billions of individuals operating together. I.E. imagine that each cell in your body had its own identity.
** The Mycon also have a unique logical operation. This stems from the fact that each Mycon shares the identity and memories of each of its ancestors. As a result, their agendas seem to span thousands or even tens-of-thousands of years, and thus their motives for any action are nigh unfathomable.
*** Although this is colored a bit by the fact that the Mycon truly are just outright ''insane''. They're biological terraformers produced by the Precursors, but their programming has become corrupted into a bizarre
** The Thraddash are some combination of
* The Qunari of ''[[Dragon Age]] Origins''. On the surface, they're just a [[Proud Warrior Race]] with a proactive magic phobia (considering the [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|way magic works]], that's actually a smart mindset), but the more you talk to Sten, the more this they start to evoke this trope.
** According to Sten (the only Qunari we interact with in the main game), your career is as much a part of you as your skin color or gender. He only mentions this when justifying his apparent misogyny towards a female PC, eventually deciding that you are not, in fact, a woman. "I don't understand. You LOOK like a woman."
*** The Qunari are not misogynistic so much as they believe that your gender defines what you can and can't do even if you have a strong aptitude for it. They simply don't understand the concept of a woman who fights. Basically it's case of "If it looks like a duck, quacks like duck, flies like a duck" it has to be a duck. To them the word warrior is basically synonymous with male while the word manager is synonymous with female but ironically they regard the importance of both as equal rather than viewing military prowess superior to other skills unlike the rest of Thedas. Likewise they also can't understand the chivalrous (or even humane) attitudes shown by humans; in Redcliffe Sten comments how in a Qunari society everyone, men, women and children would fight to defend their homes from an invader while humans put noncombatant females under the protection of noncombatant males.
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**** Case in point the Qunari basically regard their occupation given at birth as being the same as their soul or very person. They have a simple almost animal like outlook on things; in camp Sten spends most of his time talking to your War Dog since he can relate to him best. Despite this Qunari have a sense of love and friendship and at least in the Sten a sense of childish affectation: he's enamored over cookies and sweets (which the Qunari don't have in any shape or form) and wants to bring it back to his people and once played string with kitten apparently just to help train for fighting. He may in fact be dead serious about that.
*** The Qunari also have no currency and instead provide their people with whatever they need, quite possibly communist like but you never see this in action.
** The Qun (qunari religion) is built around the idea that you have only one important choice: You can choose to play your role or die. They don't see this as a
** This is definitely the case in ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' so much so that people actively try to push the Qunari too far in order to spark a conflict. {{spoiler|Eventually, The Arishok becomes so sick of what he sees as the lack of morals and principles that he feels define organisms that he starts a war.}}
{{quote|
'''The Arishok''': What would the Qunari be without principle? [[Worthy Opponent|Much like you I expect.]] }}
** It doesn't help that they often refuse to talk about their beliefs, thus perpetuating the ignorance. And then take violent actions that more often than not make no moral or ethical sense to anyone but themselves. As far as they're concerned, it's all self-evident. Talking about it just proves to them that you are not a true person - you are ''bas'', a thing. They don't care what your race is, though. Anyone who freely chooses to follow the Qun is considered one of their own and will be treated as such.
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* The [[Eldritch Abomination|Einst]] from various ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' games exist for the sole purpose of preserving the universe(s). Since human consciousness is slowly causing the entropy of existence, that means mankind has to go. However, for unspecified reasons, they've decided that simply [[Apocalypse How|wiping out humanity]] won't do, and they decide to replace it with a ''new'' human race that lacks souls and emotions, and is no longer a threat. Unfortunately, [[Humanity Is Infectious|one of their own]] [[Heel Face Turn|didn't think it could work]].
* The Strogg, the main villains of the ''[[Quake]]'' series, turn out to be motivated not by a desire for conquest, but {{spoiler|survival, as capturing humans and "Stroggifying" them is how they reproduce.}}
* Almost every powerful entity in the ''[[
** Even Erebus is
* The [[Big Bad]] of ''[[
* ''[[Crysis (
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' has [[The Fair Folk|elves]], who find it unthinkable to kill plants, but are perfectly okay with eating the corpses of their enemies.
** ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' also has a set of ethics parameters that are quite easy to modify, making it simple to create a race or modify an existing one with strange moral values. Heck, even the DF ''player community'' can fall into this at times, as they frequently consider [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]] not just amusing but a mandatory part of gameplay; if you don't start gleefully butchering kittens and building giant doomsday devices out of their bones to slaughter your enemies (or dwarven nobility) at some point, you're an alarming aberration and likely to be accused of being an elf in disguise.
* The Brothers of [[Turgor]] seem to have a very strange morality from a human perspective.
{{quote|
* The Shivans of ''[[Free Space]]'' have a morality that is completely incomprehensible to humanity, or indeed any to other being who's ever encountered them. This is because the Shivans do not communicate, indeed do not even ''try'' to communicate: They simply kill all non-Shivans with [[FTL|subspace technology]] on sight, and then hunt down the rest of their species down to the last man and exterminate them all. Nobody knows why they do this.
** It gets even more strange in the sequel, with the Shivans looking set to do the above and the GTVA desperately working to seal the entry point into the rest of GTVA space... and then the Shivans make a star go supernova. There is some theorizing in the outro about ''why'', but nothing is confirmed and it doesn't have any apparent connection to hunting down species with subspace technology.
** Another unexplained action they take in the second game is {{spoiler|kidnapping Admiral Bosch and his command staff alive when they finally managed to get a communication across to the Shivans.}} This is completely outside their usual MO and has confused many a fan of the series.
* Capsuleer motives are seen as this by planet-dwellers in ''[[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Sam Starfall of ''[[Freefall]]'' seems to fall into this. He explains that, coming from a race of scavengers, morality on his homeworld is incompatible with that of human society—stealing, for example, is seen as an act of bravery necessary to help your family survive, especially if done from a stronger scavenger or a predator. But at the same time, he ''revels'' in breaking the law just for the thrill of it, so he may just be using the scavenger morality thing as an excuse.
** [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3000/fc02998.htm Strip #2998]: "Until then, I'll just have to accept I'm at that socially awkward point between nemeses."
* In ''[[
** There's also Elan's attempt to make a decision based on the principles of [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0068.html pure Law and Chaos]:
{{quote|
'''Slaad:''' Turquoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly! }}
** If what we're told about the Snarl is true, it doesn't kill because it's malicious. In fact, it can't even understand the act of killing, because it doesn't understand orderly concepts.
* [[Mad Scientist|Sparks]] in ''[[
* ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'': The rules there are way different from ours, simply because animals are sentient. For example, Kell (a wolf) works for a corporation whose business model is hunting and killing people for use as food. She only objects to hunting species that she's related to, notably rabbits, as she might end up eating one of Kevin's relatives (she apparently ate Vern and Betty Lopear, two rabbits he knew, a while ago). [[All There in the Manual|According to the FAQ]], there are some rules regarding killing, though, as predators can only kill prey for food, and if herbivores kill, they must prove that it was in self-defense.
* Troll society in ''[[
** The [[Eldritch Abomination|Noble Circle of Horrorterrors]]. When Rose asks an oracular artifact whether the Horrorterrors are good or evil, the reply is unintelligible [[Black Speech]]. {{spoiler|Which, upon reading, causes Rose to [[Go Mad
** It's eventually revealed that Troll society {{spoiler|was deliberately made that way by an [[Eldritch Abomination]].}}
* ''[[
** It's explicitly stated that [[Talking Animal|animals of the forest]] "strut and bare their teeth," because that is how animals earn respect.
** [[Trickster Archetype|Coyote]] has [[Reality Warper|amazing and terrible powers]], but uses them for [[Large Ham|his own amusement]], [[Manipulative Bastard|manipulation]], or simply out of [[It Amused Me|boredom]]. Others only guess at what his plans are because he does not think in human terms. He [[Can Not Tell a Lie|cannot lie]], but has a tendency to use [[Exact Words]] and is [[Wild Card|deadly unpredictable]]. He demonstrates this when he shows {{spoiler|the real Ysengrin}} to Antimony, nearly getting her killed. Antimony is angry with him and he reminds her that [[Trickster Mentor|tricking her taught her a lesson]], then [[Great Gazoo|Coyote]] apologizes by giving her a [[MacGuffin|gift]]. {{spoiler|And later threatens to cut off her hand if she tells anyone about it.}}
** Annie discovered that [[
* In ''[[
{{quote|
* As we see in [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=137 this] ''[[VG Cats]]'' strip, Dr. Hobo has two [[Shoulder Angels]]: a [[Black and White Morality|Devil]] and a Clown.
* K'seliss from ''[[Goblins]]'' has no qualms about killing or eating people, but fighting against animated objects? That would just be sick!
** Specifically, he sees no difference between killing, eating, and mating. Therefore, fighting something inedible is in fact a form of sexual deviancy to him.
* The people in ''[[Collar 6]]'' seem to have a wildly different morality system than the people in the real world, based on Atlantean writings. The system
** Mistress Sixx is surprised at Laura's outrage at being drugged, put in bondage and forced to participate in sexual acts, since Laura had previously enjoyed participating in consentual sexual acts without bondage or drugs - not recognizing at least three differences between those cases. Apparently the author was called out on that by the readership, and was forced to make an [[Author's Saving Throw]] with Sixx apologizing for her inconsideration.
* Demons in ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' have a strict set of rules which they follow, but those rules don't match up with our ideas of right and wrong. They even specifically mentioned that evil is a human concept, not a demon one.
* A number of [[Our Monsters Are Different|"Creatures"]] in [[Dan and
* Professor Joseph Corwin in ''[[Tales Of Gnosis College]]'' shows signs of this trope. He is more than happy to lure female undergraduates into weird experiments the involve changing their state of matter or intimate contact with tentacle beasts, but he draws the line at using is technology to make duplicates of people, even when that would be handy. He’s also intensely loyal to his own subordinate.
* ''[[
** When we see the flashback of how Tedd got the transformation gun we learn a few interesting facts about Uryuom society. While it is not illegal to own a TF gun, their [http://egscomics.com/?date=2003-09-16 manufacture is prohibited] due to [http://egscomics.com/?date=2003-09-17 religious objections] to [
** Raven's mother (sometimes called Chaos, other times called Pandora) wants to help her son out, so she begins to instigate many magical incidents, such as granting powers to unaware people leading to near-disasters when they unwittingly use them.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* The Elders in ''[[New York Magician]]''. They don't like people being able to see them.
{{quote|
* Some interpretations of the eponymous character from ''[[The Slender Man Mythos
* Mercenaries in various stories of the ''[[Union Series]]''. It's not about who commits massive war crimes or who plays knight in shining armor, it's more along the lines of being loyal to the original credit line versus switching sides for better pay.
* Most non-humans in [[Tales of MU]], most notably mermaids, demons, and dragons, who each have no problems eating humans. For example: {{spoiler|Ionia, a mermaid, killed another student because she was in water, making her prey. In retaliation Vice-Chancellor Embries, a greater Dragon, devoured her and enchanted the one witness so she couldn't tell anyone.}}
*
* The demons in ''[[The Salvation War]]'' have some rather jarring morality. Since they are still basically in the bronze age, demons have a very rigged and honor based form of warfare that hasn't changed in millions of years. Cannibalism is considered fine for demons, and not eating the dead is considered "wasting them." All this changes when humans arrive.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Marceline the Vampire Queen in ''[[Adventure Time]]'' openly acknowledges this, stating "I'm not mean, I'm [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|a thousand years old]], and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GXrwi3GLVU I just lost track of my moral code".] It mostly explains how she can be an example of [[Dark Is Not Evil]] while still being [[Nightmare Fuel|really terrifying]] at times.
** While Lemongrab is definitely not evil, he isn't a good guy either. He sends everyone to the dungeon for committing petty crimes. Sometimes it's justified, and the sentence is like a reasonable time-out; only a few hours. Other times, it's a horrible case of [[Disproportionate Retribution]], and then it becomes obvious that he hasn't got all his marbles together.
* Dinobot in ''[[Beast Wars]]'': "I have honour, but it is PREDACON honour!"
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'':
** It is likely that Discord, being what he is, is in this situation. "What fun is there in making sense?" He has monstrous and [[For the Evulz]] tendencies to place him in the [[Chaotic Evil]] category but, since creating chaos and disorder is his entire ''reason'' for existing, he pretty much falls under this. To him, chaos is a good thing. He also tries to claim moral high ground because he, unlike Celestia, would never turn another being into stone. Makes sense when you consider that a being of chaos would definitely not enjoy being trapped in a rigid unchanging form where you can't do anything.
** The villains from Season 2's finale, {{spoiler|Changelings and their queen, Chrysalis, are 'evil' because to them, love is a '''food'''.}}
** It should be noted that while both of the above two examples merely provide a motive, they do ''not'' explain the outright sadism both exhibit. That seems to be a personality trait completely separate from this.
* It's a possible trait of inhabitants of the Spirit World in ''[[
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'':
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Many animals can be said to have
** Bonobos' morality is significantly different from that of humans' (though [[All Men Are Perverts|several]] [[All Women Are Lustful|humans]] have said we should follow their example once learning Bonobos resolve conflicts through sex.) The same goes for conflicts between family members, unless there is a chance of impregnation. Impregnation of close family members is the only reason bonobos will refuse sex. Since they never know who fathers are, this works out to 'no mothers with sons, or (maternal) siblings with each other.' Fullstop.
** Even when compared to other animals, cuttlefish look for strange things when mating. While females of other species will seek out the biggest and strongest males to mate with, cuttlefish seem to value cleverness and ingenuity as well. Sometimes, a small male will approach a mating couple, disguised as a female. If the bigger male buys the disguise and invites "her" in, the real female will allow the small one to mate with her, allowing her to spawn both big and smart offspring.
** Rape or forced sex as a way of life is prevalent among [[Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate|ducks]].
** By the moral of pretty much any human culture on earth, bottlenose dolphins could easily be regarded as the most evil animals. In zoos, Bottlenose dolphins are never put in with other species of dolphin, because the Bottlenose will frequently torment and rape them. Dolphins are also one of the few species besides humans to have discovered sex slavery - in the wild groups of males will sometimes surround females and prevent them from eating until the females submit to rape. Some also seem to delight in torture.
** In many species of spiders the male will tie down the female with silk first before attempting to mate with her, probably because she is much larger then him and may try to eat him. Similarly, male tarantulas grow small blunt "hooks" on their first pair of legs when they reach sexual maturity. These hooks have no purpose other than to catch and hold the female's fangs - Blue and Orange morality on both sides, since it's not so much rape as the only way two instinctive killing machines can manage to reproduce.
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*** Females do it, too. If they're stronger, female rats will kill the offspring of other females to make room for their own litters.
** Some mother animals appear remarkably indifferent to their offspring by human standards. It's not uncommon for a mother giraffe to step over a fence and just keep on walking, leaving behind her baby that isn't tall enough to cross it.
** Regarding animals and their Blue and Orange sexual "mores," [https://web.archive.org/web/20131020060624/http://www.blaghag.com/2009/04/natural-sexuality.html here is a cute story that sums it up].{{context}}<!-- dead link; please describe what used to be there -->
** Fratricide is apparently quite common among [[Social Darwinist|bird hatchlings]]. After all, it is easier for the parents to feed fewer mouths, and the weaker siblings would probably compromise the entire species. It's also common amongst spotted hyena pups, but only if they're of the same gender, when one's male and one's female the female takes the lead.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kQ_7GtE529M This bison].
* Many times, differing cultures have regarded each other as having this. A particularly good (or at least obvious) example is the old stereotype of [[Inscrutable Oriental|"inscrutable" Orientals]] and [[Eagle Land|"crazy" Western devils]].
** Ruth Benedict's ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' is an excellent account of just how incomprehensible the Allies - Americans, ANZAC and British - and the Japanese were to each other during WWII:
** On a less dire note, the Japanese seem to have a very different conception of "non-religious" from most of the rest of the world; many of them call themselves non-religious, and yet see no contradiction in visiting shrines or temples or doing what foreigners would consider religious activities. Just try and imagine someone in the Christian world going to church or mass for Christmas and Easter, doing all the prayers and rituals, and then saying "I'm an atheist" completely sincerely and not understanding why those around are calling BS.
* In the [[Church Militant|Islamic Republic of Iran]], homosexuality is [[Moral Event Horizon|punishable by death]]. Transsexuality, however, isn't only perfectly legal, [[wikipedia:Transsexuality in Iran|a sex change is even applicable for financial support by the state]].
* Within contemporary normative ethics are three major types of ethical theory: [[wikipedia:Consequentialism|Consequentialism]] (the morality of an action is dictated by its consequences), [[wikipedia:Deontological ethics|Deontological ethics]] (the morality of an action is based on duty) and [[wikipedia:Virtue ethics|virtue ethics]] (morality is based on virtues). The morality of a given decision will vary widely between them.
* Literature from all sorts of ancient cultures falls into this trope. Some of the stuff we take for granted in classical literature can be pretty bizarre for those unfamiliar with ancient Bronze Age customs. Far from being considered barbaric, it was probably just a description of "the status quo" back then. Advocates of more recognizably modern value systems were considered kooks.
** Eating in public was a major taboo in ancient Greece. It was probably the inspiration for similar taboos found in various [[Speculative Fiction]] works.
** [http://law.ubalt.edu/downloads/law_downloads/IRC_Shakespeare_in_the_Bush.pdf Shakespeare in the Bush] is a delicious account of trying to explain the plot of ''[[Hamlet]]'' to a tribe with very different mores; they have no concept of ghosts, the term which is their closest approximation to "scholar" (literally "person who knows things") is the same as one of their terms for "witch," and they believe that a widow should remarry as soon as possible. They wind up deciding, among other things, that Polonius's death was entirely due to his own [[Too Dumb to Live|mind-blowing stupidity]] regarding hunting etiquette and that Laertes was a witch who killed Ophelia to sell her body.
** This trope is the result of a lot of misinterpretations of the myth of Pandora's box - people now see the hope at the bottom as the manifestation of the one good thing that persists in spite of all bad things. But the ancient Greeks actually saw hope as a negative, because it was a delusion. ''That's why it was in the box Pandora wasn't supposed to open!''
*** Even the idea that Pandora wasn't supposed to open the box is an example, most likely from associations with Eve from [[
*** According to at least some scholarship, the last evil, the one Pandora managed to keep in the jar, wasn't hope. It was the sure knowledge of the future's shape. Humankind still has hope because we do not know for certain just how bad things will be. The ancient Greeks weren't a very optimistic bunch.
* The Aztecs had a thing for human sacrifice. It was originally considered an honor to be sacrificed, so rival cities would host ball games; the captain of the winning team would be sacrificed. Changing mores (and the realization that their conquered neighbors didn't quite feel the same way) partially led to the downfall of the Aztec empire, since the invading Spanish were identified with
** The Aztecs also had a rich history of Imperialism and enslaving people so that they could be used as unwilling human sacrifices led to every single one of their neighbors regarding them as an unholy mixture of [[The Empire]] and [[Religion of Evil]].
** While we see the Aztec downfall as a catastrophe and Spanish conquest as Imperialism, in a sense, they both won; while the Christianity prevailed, the Spanish conquerors did not form a separate caste or nation inside nation, but were quickly absorbed in the Native American population. The conquerors and the conquered became one nation.
*** Actually, they did form a special caste. Peninsulares (European and born in Spain) at the top, then Criollos (European and born in the colonies), then Mestizo (part Spanish and Part Native), then the in some complicated order the Indians, Africans, and mixes.
** The Mayans, on the other hand, were more big on self-sacrifice. They weren't averse to a little human sacrifice, but they were mainly concerned with body purification through bloodletting. Sexual stuff was considered relatively unclean, so the Mayans purified themselves by drawing barbed threads through their tongues and penises.
** Some American Indian cultures had no concept of [[Black and Black Morality|sin]], could not be traced back to [[The Bible
*** And when some Indians first got a look at this "lord and savior" the white man was so infatuated with, the Indians were extremely unimpressed; why would these people worship some loser who got nailed to a cross?
**** Supposedly they did like the whole Christ thing since it involved a deity sacrificing itself, like what their gods did everytime a new sun/world was needed.
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***** Jesus was already depicted as quite Badass in [[The Bible]]. It's just that most people are more familiar with His sermons and self-restraint than His Power. The reason He commanded His followers not to take revenge was because they didn't need to; He'd give those who persecuted His followers sufficient time to repent, and if they did not, He'd avenge His followers Himself. Revelation 19 depicts the Second Coming and Battle of Armageddon, where all the world's wicked try to fight Jesus, but Jesus strikes down the entire army with one swing of His sword.
**** Similarly, one of Charlemagne's ancestors became an enthusiastic convert to Christianity and used to fantasize how, if he'd been at the Crucifixion with a few of his warriors, he'd have been able to rescue Christ by massacring all the legionnaries intent on nailing him up. His bishop had to patiently explain to him that he was somewhat [[Comically Missing the Point|missing the point]].
* James Bowman in ''Honor: A History'' traces the [[Honor Before Reason|honor codes]] of various times and civilizations and points out that they have universal similarities and striking differences. He also believes that the old style honor code is becoming
** An example he gives was of a [[Intrepid Reporter|Obviously Not Intrepid Reporter]] (whom he mercifully refuses to name) he heard of in Iraq who persuaded a female soldier to ride in his car to "use their chauvinism against them" so that no insurgents would shoot at him. The author points out that the honor code of Middle Eastern terrorists is not quite that of a [[Quintessential British Gentleman]], the differences are as complex as the similarities, and in general they would have no problems shooting at a female soldier.
* Take two people completely opposed on some issue
* A literal example from Cold War days. Two power blocs that found it pretty difficult to understand each other's particular ethics and moralities - the capitalist and communist - were facing each other down over a divided German border for over forty years. When NATO had its annual manoevres and field exercises in West Germany, rather than risk offence to the Russians by denoting the "invading from the East" faction the Red Army, and making it obvious by calling the "defending from the West" side the white Army, the convention evolved that called the two sides in NATO wargames "Blue" and "Orange". A whole generation of NATO officers passed through their countries' armed forces thinking of the Warsaw Pact as "Orange Army" and their own side as "Blue Army"...
** Watergate is the perfect example: The Russians couldn't believe Nixon, a powerful and effective national leader, was really brought down by the kind of things that were a matter of course in the USSR.
*** The [[wikipedia:Chernobyl|collapse of the Soviet Union]] wasn't from Chernobyl alone; it was a multi-faceted situation involving many different elements. Economic collapse looms largest amongst these causes, as they took Reagan's bait and engaged in a major arms race while fighting a major war in Afghanistan, something their economy couldn't afford. Meanwhile, Gorbachev's attempt to liberalize their political system (Glasnost and Peristroika) led to increasing unrest and ethnic disputes that they simply did not have the military manpower available to shut down with force as they'd done for forty years, nor the desire as it was antithetical to the whole notion of Glasnost and Peristroika to begin with. The increasing unrest and apparent failure of Glasnost and Peristroika led to an attempted military coup, which failed. However, it paved the way for the various outlying republics to lose confidence in the central government, particularly given that the central government was resorting to heavy taxation of these provinces to pay for everything in the economic downturn. They began declaring their indepencence, and suddenly, the USSR was no more. Chernobyl, though a tremendous disaster, was not the largest element precipitating the crisis, merely [[Goddamned Bats|one of many]].
* People with certain kinds of psychological disorders and conditions, like autism. Some of these are usually considered amoral, or lack of a recognition of morality; however, there are people like this who hate things that are absolutely normal, accept things that most people disdain, judge other people by things that are usually not associated with morality, and - even for the high-functioning ones who can brute-force through rote memorisation their way into faking normality - simply cannot understand the connotations, insinuations, hidden meanings and unwritten rules that neurotypicals operate under and find obvious.
* This argument is occasionally used to justify (although not necessarily ''defend'') questionable business practices—why should a corporation operate based on ethics similar to interpersonal relationships when it only exists to make money as efficiently as possible?
* The codes of conduct held by various established organised crime - as opposed to [[Obviously Evil]] street thug gangs - and esoteric groups can often be incomprehensible to "outsiders".
* This can occur quite frequently between atheists and theists, given that the two groups have entirely different precepts that they consider to be axiomatic (i.e. evident, obvious, requiring no proof).
* Even though you might say
* Until the end of [[World War I]] the British army still regularly used corporal punishments that would be considered barbaric today. Capital punishment for cowardice was common and during the 18th and 19th centuries a naval captain would be put to death if they didn't attack enemy shipping at any and every opportunity unless there was an very good reason for doing so.
* Jonathan Haidt's observations, which became the basis of ''The Righteous Mind'', highlighted this. In essence, there are moral foundations that can be classified under broad categories like care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. He asserts that not only do these impact one's individual moral framework, but that these can also lead to wildly differing views, beliefs, ideologies, etc. based on what foundations take precedence. As a consequence, this can help explain why Right and Left-leaning people can view the same thing in incredibly varied interpretations and why it's difficult for human beings to talk on the same page.
* Libertarians insist they do not fall under the traditional "right vs. left" scale or, if they do, it's secondary to their primary philosophy. The introduction of a libertarian vs. authoritarian axis has generally been accepted among those that try to quantify political views.
* Extremist groups can have an interesting variation of this. What is striking is not so much that the morality is ''alien'' but rather that it is off center. A typical thing might be to praise heroism, loyalty and other things that everyone (including their enemies) would praise but it will come out in a weird sort of way, so that their ability to commit atrocities "proves" their devotion. For instance both Himmler and Raoul Wallenberg would certainly have approved of being self-sacrificing and loyal to a cause. And both would have had [[Understatement|somewhat differing ideas]] as to what that meant.
* The USA might be considered/stereotyped as the "leader of the 'West'/free world" to those outside that bloc/grouping, but there are times when it being a "[[wikipedia:New World|New World]]" to those across the pond seems literal rather than merely a figure of speech. Just go to some form of social media or question-and-answer site like Quora and see how long it takes to find a question or post from a non-American expressing inability to understand some aspect of American culture. Common targets include the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment and lack of universal healthcare. Many a response will demonstrate the inability to understand in the opposite direction.
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