Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Anime & Manga ==

* Masterfully avoided in ''[[Higurashi]]''. {{spoiler|Shion goes insane and embarks on an attempt at revenge after the boy she loves, Satoshi, disappears. A lot of people are captured, killed or both, including her twin sister, her sadistic grandmother, and the village headman, who are all part of the village mafia. Then Shion goes after Satoshi's little sister, Satoko, because she's mad that Satoko's dependence on Satoshi wore him out. Shion captures Satoko and tortures her to death. ''Then she remembers that Satoshi's last request was that she care for Satoko for him.'' Shion was already crazy, but now she loses any pretense of acting for anything besides her own dark pleasure.}}

* ''[[Fushigiboshi no Futagohime]]'': Fine and Rein find out that Mirlo is in an [[Arranged Marriage]] with a rather undesirable dimwit, and are out to break it up. Reviewer Al1701 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQQ4wqYiE9Y pointed out] that this action seems short-sighted, since the deal for the marriage is in exchange for dimwit's father repairing the Waterdrop Kingdom's cloudmaker. {{spoiler|That is, until the whole [[Arranged Marriage]] turns out to be a big ruse by the Moon Kingdom chancellor. Doesn't stop this from being one of the best eps of the whole series.}}

* In ''[[Berserk]]'', no one ever really addresses Griffith's actions, since they're so amazed at how far he's willing to go in order to achieve his dream of having his own kingdom. Even if those actions may have included {{spoiler|whoring himself out to an old pedophile to raise funds for his army}}, or {{spoiler|planning assassinations to eliminate opponents}} or {{spoiler|kidnapping kids and using them as leverage against other opponents}}. However, the audience is shown this from a more sympathetic light, especially so after his {{spoiler|one year imprisonment and torture which destroyed any chance of him achieving his dream}} since he speaks of his dream so nobly and pure. And then the Eclipse happened. The audience [[Moral Event Horizon|lost all sympathy]] at that point.

== Comic Books ==

* In [[Star Wars Legacy]] Emperor Roan Fel is willing to use Sith powers to get his Empire back. {{spoiler|He finally slips to the dark side when he plans to use a bio weapon on Coruscant to wipe out the Sith, unbeknown to him they are immune to it, but it will kill his allies and billions of lives still on the planet.}}

* Dealt with in a two-issue arc of ''New [[X-Men]]'' involving Prodigy, a student at the Xavier Institute with the ability to absorb the knowledge of anyone in the immediate vicinity, but ''only'' as long as they're in the immediate vicinity. When Emma Frost discovers that he's subconsciously put a block in his mind that prevents him from retaining the knowledge permanently, David asks Emma to remove the block, figuring he'll be able to do so much good for the world that way. The story then fast-forwards a few months, and David is already head of his own [[Mega Corp]] that has developed cures for cancer and AIDS. How did he achieve this breakthrough? {{spoiler|He killed his friend, the healer Elixir, and harvested his organs}}. Okay, that's certainly bad, but we're still at the point where it can be argued to be worth it. The next issue fast-forwards again, to twenty years later, and David is now the President, and has united most of the world's countries into a utopian [[One World Government]]. And he's also {{spoiler|planning the genocide of the Chinese because they refused to join}}. Okay, ''now'' he has to die. Fortunately {{spoiler|the whole thing turns out to be an illusion, courtesy of Dani Moonstar, in an effort to convince him to leave the block in}}.

== [[Fan Fiction]] ==

* Ho-oh from ''[[Poke Wars]]'' wants Pokémon-kind to live in a utopia and he limits his targets to humans only and tries limit the damage he causes. {{spoiler|He soon starts engaging in things like ordering wanton killing of Pokémon contrary to his ideals, utterly ruining the environment and not giving a damn about it, and generally being a filthy hypocrite.}}

== Film ==

* Loki arguably did this in between ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'' and ''[[The Avengers (film)|The Avengers]]''.

** It may even be ''definite'' that Loki did this, seeing as his actions went from more [[Manipulative Bastard|manipulative]] in ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'' to straight-up [[Big Bad|evil]] in ''[[The Avengers (film)|The Avengers]]''.

== Literature ==

* [[Fringe]]: Walternate originally just wanted to save his universe, even if it meant destroying a parallel universe and its inhabitants. Then he attempted to {{spoiler|kill his son and the mother of his grandchild.}}

* An episode of ''[[MacGyver]]'' involved a business owner attempting to have the Challengers Club shut down because one of its members stole a truck from his printing business. What could have been a two sided conflict between a racist business owner - albeit one who had a legitimate axe to grind - and a teenager conditioned by poverty and racism to view white people as the enemy shifts step by step into a case of the boy being a clear cut victim of The Man. First it turns out the business owner framed the kid for stealing the truck as a pretext to have the Challengers Club shut down. Then he escalates to murdering the club owner. Then it turns out he prints white supremacist propaganda and thinks "niggers should be drowned at birth".

== Tabletop RPG ==

* Chaos in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' is grease on the Slippery Slope. As Chaos is a sentient form of [[The Dark Side]] by way of [[The Corruption]], this trope becomes rather understandable.

** Tau as well, when one considers that its for the greater good for sterilization policies, and special "helmets" for their bug allies.

== Video Games ==

* The Protagonist from the [[Saints Row]] series gleefully leaps headfirst off of the slope, and then proceeds to nuke it. In the first game, you start off as a [[Heroic Mime|(mostly) silent]] henchman who more or less indifferently does what Julius, Gat, Lin, Troy, and others tell you without hesitation, and you seem to be a pretty sane individual. While you are killing, you're killing the other gangs for peace , and the cops you kill are corrupt anyway (of course, not counting civillian casualties in your gameplay rampages). But in Saints Row 2, after being betrayed by Julius and being blown up and disfigured to the point of needing severe plastic surgery ([[Gameplay and Story Integration|which is really just an excuse to make a new character]]), it's implied that you went insane and very much stated that you're paranoid, corrupt with power, take deep pleasure in murder, is only after the city, and nothing short of evil- the only people outclassing you are [[Asshole Victim|the gangs you fight and their leaders]], but not by much. As the game goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that you're not very interested in wiping out the city for peace anymore as your actions become more and more violent and [[Crazy Awesome]], [[Berserk Button|espicially after two of your homies get murdered]]. The only person who ever stood a chance of stopping you, your old boss Julius, turns out to have done it because he [[Genre Savvy|savilily]] [[Too Powerful to Live|realized that you were a dangerous person]]; you kill him while happily stating you have full intentions of taking over the city in any means neccesary.

** Johnny Gat qualifies as well.

== Webcomics ==

* Eridan in ''[[Homestuck]]'' was introduced as a [[Butt Monkey]] [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]] [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]], but some of his later appearances have shown that {{spoiler|he pulled a [[Face Heel Turn]] and plans to ally with the [[Big Bad]], then proceeds to slaughter his teammates and destroys the one thing that could have saved his people, which he was ''trying to protect''.}} This is not foreshadowed whatsoever.

** {{spoiler|Eridan was explicitly stated upon his introduction to have genocidal tendencies and slaughters the custodians of young trolls, leaving them defenceless against the many, many hazards of Alternia, on a regular basis. He has been a monster from day 1, but it was treated as a joke up until this point. It was foreshadowed in the sense that somebody beating you with a stick foreshadows you waking up with some lovely bruises tomorrow.}}

== Western Animation ==

** This is what leads to {{spoiler|Zuko's eventual [[Heel Face Turn]]. He'd been hesitating for a while, thinking that his family really were good people, despite all the massive evidence otherwise: its when his Father and sister create a plan to burn an entire country to the ground that he realises they've jumped off.}}

* From the [[Sequel Series]], ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'', Tarrlok starts out as a Jerkass and manipulative self-serving politician. Then he goes completely off the deep end {{spoiler|imposing a curfew on all non-benders and arresting anyone who complains or even has connections with Equalists. He arrests Korra's friends to blackmail her to join him and when she refuses, attacks her and reveals himself to be a bloodbender. By the end of the episode, he's got her locked in the back of a Satomobile to take her somewhere she'll never be found.}}

== Real Life ==