No-Holds-Barred Beatdown/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A incredibly one-sided beatdown, almost sickening.

  • Straight: Enraged by the Defender pushing his Berserk Button, the Attacker flips in an extreme frenzy beats the crap out of the defender.
  • Exaggerated: The attacker beats the defender to death and keeps going. Eventually, he's beating little more than a pool of blood (and that ranges from blood vessels to flesh and bone).
  • Justified: The attacker is a Lightning Bruiser and Made of Iron, so the defender was sort of Bullying a Dragon.
  • Inverted: Once Is Not Enough
  • Subverted: The aggressor appears to be winning the battle... But hey! Look! Here's Inigo Montoya!
  • Double Subverted: ...Who gets swatted away in a second, only for the attacker to turn back on his original victim.
  • Parodied: The attacker wears himself out several times, only for the increasingly mutilated victim to sputter out "Is that all you got?" pushing the newly enraged attacker to redouble his efforts.
    • Alternatively, the victim appears to have been dressed as a piñata, with the aggressor attacking by buttstroking the victim.
  • Deconstructed: The adrenaline wears off quickly, and he stops due to his agonizing broken fingers; he finds himself disgusted at what he's done to another human being, and realizes his victim will die from his injuries and that the extent of the brutality he inflicted will lead any jury to convict him of murder.
  • Reconstructed: The victim, a multiple murderer who'd been threatening a helpless innocent, was so genuinely deserving that people, though wary of how psychotic the attacker briefly turned, are willing to forgive the excessive force.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: It looks as if the aggressor is going to go into a violent rampage and prance around on the defender's intestines, but he stops once he's got the guy restrained and incapacitated.
  • Enforced: "You can't have a gritty Nineties Anti-Hero movie without a truly revoltingly gory fight scene to establish how amoral he is."
  • Lampshaded: "Stop it! Stop it! He's already dead!"
  • Invoked: "I'm going to make you suffer. Normally I hold myself back, but not for you."
  • Defied: The attacker, with obvious effort, restrains himself from letting his rage take over.
  • Discussed: "Oh god, Sam is really going to get it now isn't he?... I better get a bucket."
  • Played For Laughs: The defender is a muscular, tattooed thug. The attacker is an adorable little girl.
  • Played For Drama: The defender was once the attacker's best friend, and the attacker was desperately trying to get him to join his side. The defender dies from his wounds, and the attacker shuts down, horrified of his own temper.

I think I can handle it now, back to the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.

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