Monster Protection Racket/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A con man uses monsters to attack an area, then defeats the monsters, earning money and praise.

  • Straight: Slimes attack a village and Bob the hero destroys them. It's discovered that Bob sent the slimes into the village in the first place.
  • Exaggerated: Bob slowly starts to reform a world overtaken by slimes when it's revealed that he was the one who orchestrated the attacks in the first place.
  • Justified: Bob is trying to show that the monsters are more dangerous than the townsfolk think.
  • Inverted: A dragon keeps Bob as a slave to "kill" him in public when he becomes too notorious.
  • Subverted: It looks like Bob caused the slimes to attack a village, but he was framed by the true lord of the slimes.
  • Double Subverted: The true lord is being set up by Bob so he can get even more fame by killing him.
  • Parodied: Bob makes his act just a little too obvious, parading around proclaiming "I am the great hero who has come to kill these completely unrelated monsters!"
  • Deconstructed: After innocents are killed by the monsters, Bob has serious moral compunctions.
  • Reconstructed: Bob decides to become so good at slaying the monsters that it will never happen again...but he'll charge more.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob is a Chessmaster and it's very difficult to tell whether he orchestrated a certain attack or not.
  • Averted: The attacks are unrelated to the hero.
  • Enforced: The author wants to show people not to give people your trust too easily.
  • Lampshaded: The mayor of the village suspiciously asks Bob if he didn't send the monsters to attack the village in the first place.
  • Invoked: This trope is normally invoked.
  • Defied: Bob sees a cage of monsters, but knows he's not a good enough fighter to pull off the con so he continues playing shell games.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Monster Protection Racket.